The Most Insidious AI Narrative: We Can't Shape the Future

Artificial intelligence is reshaping work, creativity, business, and society faster than ever before, but how worried should we really be? In this episode, we sit down with The AI Doc producers Charlie Tyrell and Ted Tremper to discuss the biggest lessons they learned after spending years investigating AI and interviewing leading experts, including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Karen Hao, and many of the influential voices shaping the future of artificial intelligence. The conversation goes far beyond the typical AI debate, exploring AI ethics, generative AI, creative industries, wealth inequality, AI regulation, AGI, automation, AI governance, and the growing question of whether artificial intelligence is an inevitable force—or a technology that society can still shape. Charlie and Ted discuss the risks of concentrated power, the impact of AI on artists and filmmakers, ethical AI development, transparency, consent, and what individuals can do to influence the future of technology. AI is changing everything. The way we work, the way we create, the way we build businesses, and potentially the future of society itself. But beneath the headlines, hype, and fear, what’s actually true? If you're interested in artificial intelligence, technology, leadership, innovation, creativity, or the future of humanity, this is a conversation you won't want to miss. Like and follow for weekly episodes. In this episode: 00:00 Intro 01:25 Why Charlie Tyrell & Ted Tremper made the film 02:20 The origins of The AI Doc 04:45 AI anxiety, parenthood & the future 06:57 Wealth inequality and AI concentration 08:17 Reasons for hope and concern 11:01 How individuals can shape AI's future 11:49 Why education creates agency 13:02 AI's impact on artists and creators 15:12 Did The AI Doc use AI? 16:56 Human creativity vs AI-generated content 18:14 The filmmaking industry's AI debate 19:20 Generative AI and storytelling 21:23 Audience demand and the future of human-made art 23:13 Technology's impact on creativity throughout history 24:50 Ethical AI, consent & compensation 27:02 Can AI ever be ethical? 28:12 Policy, regulation & AI accountability 30:59 The AI arms race explained 32:14 AI competition, China & global innovation 34:07 AI narratives we should question 35:00 The Myth of AI Inevitability 37:08 Democratizing AI and power structures 38:11 What AI advocates get wrong 40:40 Radical imagination & AI governance 42:45 What gives Charlie and Ted Hope? 46:22 Raising children in an AI world 51:56 Technology, optimism & intellectual humility 55:00 The most influential voices in AI 57:39 Karen Hao, Deborah Raji & human-centered AI 1:00:08 Responsible AI use for business leaders 1:02:13 Fighting over-optimization and AI dependence 1:04:19 The hidden risks of AI services 1:07:12 Final Thoughts Connect with The AI Doc: X: https://x.com/theaidocfilm Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theaidocfilm/ Our links: Visit our website: https://www.infotech.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=podcast Follow us on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@InfoTechRG

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  Where we have to be really careful with something like generative AI is the way that you would repurpose a sample within music is extraordinarily different from the way that a generative AI model recombines the totality of its training data to synthesize all of the stolen material in that to generate an output.

• 0:18Speaker 01

  I don't want to sound snobby, but I guess I'm going to sound snobby. Some of this stuff where it is being used feels a little low-class. Hey, I'm taking these two major characters from two different IP and look at me, make them clash together. That doesn't say anything. It's an illustration of an idea, but it isn't really telling me much of a story.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  Everybody has a right to the opinion of what they like to enjoy. Like, that's the entire purpose of art, and breaking norms and making new things.

• 0:46Speaker 01

  We're skipping over the process and just going to result? Sorry for swearing, but what's the fucking point?

• 0:51Geoff Nielson?

  This is a show about the future of tech and the future of work. I'm Jeff Nielsen, and today my guests are the producers of the new documentary, The AI Doc, Charlie Tirol and Ted Tremper.

• 1:02Speaker 03

  Your fear of AI is the collapse of humanity? Well, not the collapse, the abrupt extermination. If we can be the most mature version of ourselves, there might be a way through this. I want to ask you to promise me that this is going to go well.

• 1:17Geoff Nielson?

  That is impossible. This is the last mistake we'll ever get to make. These guys have spent the past three years investigating the questions of our time. How worried do we need to be about AI and what do we do about it? They've spoken with everyone from Sam Altman to Dario Amodei, to AI skeptics, to experts who think we're all going to die, and have released the interviews and their new movie. Having explored AI from so many angles and so many experts, what I want to know is what they really believe and what they think is total BS. Let's find out.

• 1:55Geoff Nielson?

  Charlie, Ted, thanks so much for being here today. Really excited to talk a little bit about the AI doc that you guys have put together. And congratulations on now being honorary AI storytellers. Maybe just to kick things off, I'm curious, why did you guys want to tell this story? What brought you into, okay, we need to talk about AI right now. This is worth making a movie about.

• 2:20Speaker 01

  I mean, a lot of it starts back in kind of summer fall of 2023 is when this project first started. And that's when the conversations are really starting to enter the more public spaces. And even if you're trying not to pay attention, they were getting louder and louder. And for me, I would say I was honestly probably trying to be a little bit dismissive of some of the hyperbole around AI and tech at that time. But along with my co-director, Daniel Rohr, where we both found out that we were having kids at the same time.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  So that big dialogue that was happening with the future is maybe probably going to change significantly and drastically right now was suddenly a different thing when you're considering the fact that you're going into parenthood and you're going to have a child to bring into that future and that future beyond you. So that was definitely something I was thinking about. And then simultaneously, Daniel Kwan, one of the film's producers, reached out and said, I want to make an AI movie. I haven't made a documentary before. And he reached out to Daniel Rohr. For the record, Daniel Kwan can make a documentary.

• 3:41Speaker 01

  But he reached out to Daniel Rohr, and Rohr and I were pals, and we all got folded in. And then a week later, we're talking about making this movie. And then two and a half years later, and it's done.

• 3:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, for my part, I've been friends with Daniel Kwan and Daniel Shiner for about 15 years. And we, Kwan and I are on a video game thread, and there's a very silly phrase that I've coined that is accountability buddies. And it's really nice to have nerdy friends, because if you become interested in something, you can find an accountability buddy to learn more about those things. And when he became aware of what was going on with AI before anybody that I knew, he kind of reached out and said, I think you should be interested in this. And that sort of started a lot of conversations. And my background oddly is in comedy television, but mostly like nonfiction political satire stuff. And so when it came time, you know, when they assembled this like wonder team, they needed somebody to to help kind of book people and get people to say yes.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  And so he asked me to to jump on. And I was gonna, I was supposed to start and go for five or six weeks, and then it became two and a half years, so.

• 4:45Geoff Nielson?

  It's funny how that happens. Now, you know, Charlie, you mentioned something around the, you know, sort of the framing here of you and Daniel, who, you know, is the director and in some ways star of the movie, that it was, it came out of a place of, you know, fatherhood, of having kids and anxiety about AI, anxiety about the future, AI dread. And I'm curious if you can talk a little bit more about that. Like, where were your heads at when you started this project? And now, given that you're on the other side of it, it's been released, you know, you've done dozens of interviews with experts in this space, where is your head at these days in 2026 around, you know, AI anxiety and dread?

• 5:31Speaker 01

  I am a steadily and consistently anxious person, despite my maybe kind of calm or flat demeanor. I just vibrate so much that I look still. But, you know, it's still there, that dread is still there. And the funny thing is, it's my kind of...

• 5:55Speaker 01

  Take and feelings towards AI and perspective of it. In an odd way, is very similar to how it was when this project first started. But the difference is I'm much more informed now. I have in some ways more validation to some of the fears and more kind of knowledge towards some of the things to understand kind of how it works, how it's working right now and what's needed to change it. Before it was just kind of an instinct and a sense that motivated some of my feelings. And now it's more kind of information based while still not dismissing the feelings and instincts that I have towards it.

• 6:36Geoff Nielson?

  So when you say more information based, can you, again, with the advent of this insight and having talked to this many people, does it have a little bit more of a shape to it? Like, what are the concerns that are lingering in your mind about what's creating the sense of dread and what are the scenarios that you're still concerned about?

• 6:57Speaker 01

  A lot of it is still just the ever growing wealth gap, to be honest. You know, this technology came in the package of helping and optimizing individuals. It's been presented as this new tool that everyone can use. But however, that tool and that usage of that tool by hundreds, thousands, millions, billions of individuals is falling towards, you know, corporate businesses. You know, it's moving towards enabling, you know, people in power and that power is defined

• 7:41Speaker 01

  by their wealth to become more powerful. When you get to that level of powerful, you've influenced governments and you influence, you know, many other things that make the world go around and make life sustainable and happy and peaceful for people on the planet. So that's the scary thing that, you know, that that power is concentrating through this technology.

• 8:02Geoff Nielson?

  I'm curious Ted, if you agree with that, if you have similar views on the concerns around, I guess, the concentration of wealth here, or any other AI concerns or anxieties that Charlie didn't touch on?

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think my answer to your question would be that every day I find more reasons to be hopeful and every day I find more reasons to be concerned. And I think that that's the nature of technology and humanity's relationship to technology. And I think that's why it's so important to engage with the process of being involved in understanding how it's affecting your life and the lives of the people you care about. And in terms of, and this transcends, I think, I share Charlie's concerns about wealth inequality, but it really does, it proliferates in our lives in the way that something like a technology like electricity does. Or Karen Howe was in the film, I think, at one point said, "The idea of being anti-AI is like being anti-transportation." Like, it's such an enormous thing that the really

• 9:01Speaker 00

  critical part is becoming educated enough to understand that there are positive alternatives to the trajectory we're on. And the work that I've been doing now with the Creators Coalition on AI is really inspiring because Daniel Quan at a certain point said, "For every problem that you can imagine that AI is creating, there are really brilliant people who are trying to solve those problems." And meeting those people is inspiring, but also the fact that nobody knows, or not as many people know about these people as they do about the CEOs of the companies, is very sad. And that sort of goes into the larger discussion that's present in the film of, really, the question is fundamentally not about AI itself.

• 9:44Speaker 00

  It's about how do we create a society that can coexist with stronger and stronger technologies? Because we're only going to get stronger and stronger technology. And what that means to me is being personally involved in the process of getting it right, as opposed to focusing on the solution of doing that, because there is no solution. It's a relationship. So I think that, yeah, it's, you're living, a lot of it feels sometimes like you're running on the top of a sand dune, emotionally, psychologically, intellectually. And it's very easy to want to slip off and go to the other side. But when you do that, you need to get right back up on the top of there and keep running.

• 10:23Geoff Nielson?

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• 11:08Geoff Nielson?

  And also, I guess, an antidote to this feeling, this nihilist feeling of, oh, I'm here, and this is all happening, and I can't control it at all. I guess just to put a little bit more color on that, have either of you guys seen any specific ways? I mean, Ted, you mentioned you've got this kind of organization you're working with. But concrete things that people can be doing to get more involved, to help shape this, to help use this, and I guess regain that sense of control that some people, consuming this media digest around AI, are finding themselves in.

• 11:47Speaker 00

  I think the most important part is education. Clarity creates agency. I was speaking to an extinction risk expert, and they pointed out that right now, 90% of the conversation is going towards persuasion. It's people who seem to have all the information telling you exactly how this is going to roll out. And that feeds this notion that there's an inevitability to how it's going to roll out, which is categorically false. That's the most important thing to understand, is that this is not inevitable. You could make the argument that technological development itself is inevitable, but you could then point to something like human cloning. Like, there's enormous incentives to create super soldiers in every country, or to create clones and create human organ farms. But we, as a society, decided not to do that.

• 12:29Speaker 00

  We've had that technology for 30 or 40 years at this point. And I think that when that comes to AI... When you're able to educate yourself enough in your domain to understand the impacts that it could have, or the benefits that it could have, the next part is communicating with other people to make sure that you are sharing your feelings about this, what the norms you want to be in your workplace, in your family, in your school, in your kid's school, because then you are able to build a consensus about where you want society to be moving. So I think that's what I would say.

• 13:02Geoff Nielson?

  Charlie, anything to add there?

• 13:04Speaker 01

  Not much, other than just the, I think it's one of our subjects who pointed out that the weird thing about AIs that seemed to come for the arts first. So most of my kind of thinking and, you know, discussing with colleagues and friends as to like what to do, what to do to empower ourselves has, has been in the art space. And some of that has just been the simple kind of taboo of using AI and AI-generated imagery in your art and your work. And a lot of it has been just kind of seeing a lot of people,

• 13:42Speaker 01

  especially the people I know that love to try out new technologies and new techniques and new tools, really kind of scrutinized and be critical about what the backend of the technology is and where it kind of its power and capabilities come from. And that might include energy usage, but it also might include, you know,

• 14:01Speaker 01

  you know, some of the dystopian kind of, Ted, what are they called? The thumbs up, thumbs down, kind of,

• 14:10Speaker 01

  people who view the material and kind of gauge accuracy, but still a human engagement.

• 14:16Speaker 00

  Oh, reinforcement through learning, reinforcement by human feedback, reinforcement by human feedback?

• 14:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, like, which is a lot of that's been taking place in the global south and.

• 14:25Speaker 00

  Oh, yes, yes, yes, the training.

• 14:26Speaker 01

  And, yeah, yeah, the training of some of these models has been, you know,

• 14:33Speaker 01

  things that can.

• 14:37Speaker 01

  Convince you to not use it in certain cases to to avoid the kind of leisure of it and the convenience of it. Because and and also the other side of it, sorry, I'm kind of on tangent here, Jeff, but

• 14:50Speaker 01

  it's it's really reaffirm affirming what kind of creation is from a human level like, you know, oh, I have this thing that can do my work for me, but my work is me doing it. So it's kind of giving up some of those kind of more philosophical questions that we have to answer about, you know, who who's making what here?

• 15:12Geoff Nielson?

  This this is maybe a taboo question to ask, but did you guys find you were using AI AI at all as filmmakers as part of this? And if so, what was that experience like?

• 15:23Speaker 00

  The whole film is generative AI, which is really impressive. We we had access to a model. I'm of course joking. Yeah, I think I I mean, I can speak from my experience, being the person who needed to talk to people to convince them to appear in the film. I was using every tool as much as possible and understanding how they work. But in terms of the actual film itself, there's no generative AI that's not labeled as generative AI. But I'll let Charlie to speak to like the the the. I mean, from day one, you guys did such an amazing job of making sure that it felt handmade, that it felt human made and tactile.

• 15:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, to Ted's point, like we we were definitely researching and interacting with some of the tools, you know, in sometimes in the simplest way, just to research story avenues for the film. You know, oh, Sora's come out. Do we want to maybe shine a light on the film? Or in the film on that technology and that capability? And, you know, so we were familiarizing ourselves, but in terms of using it with the intention of this is going to end up on the screen. No, to Ted's point, any kind of AI generated imagery in the film is either labeled. Most of it is just used as archival or stuff from other news hits and whatnot. But yeah, we decide to painstakingly do most of the visuals in stop motion.

• 16:42Speaker 01

  Ouch, but but also, like I said, what I was getting to earlier reaffirmed that kind of notion of human creativity. And, you know, now it feels like there's a different dog in the fight.

• 16:54Speaker 00

  Well, and I would add to that, Jeff, like, I really don't think that this should be a taboo question. Like, one of the things that will help us educate each other and establish the norms in our art forms is, oh, did you use this? Like, what tools did you use? Because, you know, AI is such an enormous thing that when you think back to Peter Jackson using machine learning and little sprites for the orcs in Lord of the Rings, like, there is an argument to be made that him doing that disenfranchised thousands of background workers that could have dressed up as orcs and could have been part of some massive helicopter shot, but I think that they probably wouldn't have been able to afford to do that. And similarly, we had, you know, 3,300 pages of transcripts that

• 17:33Speaker 00

  we used, like, transcription services to do. But for the rushes, Adobe has an automatic transcription tool that helps you work very, very quickly. And the question of whether or not you want to use those tools, these are the conversations we need to be having. I think that it's also really important just to begin having longer conversations that clearly delineate generative AI from machine learning from an AI tool versus an AI service. That's a big one, I think, as far as filmmaking goes, really being clear about what the difference between a tool and a service is.

• 18:12Geoff Nielson?

  It's interesting. And it is interesting to hear that you made a deliberate choice to, as you said, Charlie, painstakingly have a lot of, you know, human-made elements in this. And I think, you know, I have to imagine we're in sort of a backlash phase right now, I feel, with a lot of AI usage, that it'll be interesting to see how it plays out. And I mean, I don't know, for what it's worth, my perspective is that if, as storytellers, you want to use, you know, generative AI tools in the service of telling that story to do, you know, cool things you wouldn't otherwise be able to do, yeah, it feels weird to say, like, no, you know, you should be, like, dragged through the mud for making

• 18:54Geoff Nielson?

  that choice. Now, you know, if you just type into a prompt, like, what should my movie be? And you know, I outsourced the script and there's no thinking involved, sure, you know, we're talking about something different. But it's, I don't know, I mean, I'm sure you've had many of these conversations, you know, during the production of the movie and since it's come out. Do you have a feeling for kind of the industry's posture even today on some of this stuff?

• 19:19Speaker 01

  Not as a whole, like what I've seen from my own personal perspective has been.

• 19:29Speaker 01

  I don't want to sound snobby. Uh, but I guess I'm going to sound snobby is is some of this stuff where it is being used. Feels a little low class, like it it feels sometimes. You know, to to to use some of it for something like filmmaking. And not not just the kind of assistive models where it's like, oh, yeah, we're going to give a bunch of background orcs where they're like. Hey, I'm taking these two major characters from two different IP and look at me make them clash together.

• 20:01Speaker 01

  That doesn't. That doesn't say anything to me. That's like, that's it it it's it's an illustration of. Uh, an idea, but it isn't really telling me much of a story because stories kind of I I I personally like the stories that go other places and that. You know, there's there's a reason why I use a lot of analog visuals in my films or whatnot because I like. I like that collaboration. I could. You know. Pick a picture of an actor and turn them into a 3D model and then give them a prompt to make them do something.

• 20:37Speaker 01

  And then there now I've created a piece of media, a film, a a piece of video. But for me as a filmmaker, I like to. Find an actor. And then give them the material and then see what they do with it and see what happens in that collaboration that the the the experience part of it. Is is the the making to me and then the the result is what you get from that. So it's like we're skipping over the process and just going to result.

• 21:08Speaker 01

  And to me, like, uh, it's. Sorry for swearing, but what's the fucking point like, you know, so it's so so it's asking these existential questions of of of myself.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Where it's, you know, I I think that. Audience appetite is going to. Dictate what we end up with, um, for the most part, i- if, if this like, you know, look at any kind of, uh, trade or craft, um, outside of art, furniture making, uh, you know,

• 21:43Speaker 01

  cooking, like, most people get the quick and fast and cheap rather than the bespoke work with someone to do it. Again, it's just the world we live in. The affordability is difficult with many things. So, uh, I hope that filmmaking doesn't reserve, get reserved as something for, you know, hoity-toity people who can afford the, the handmade film because it has been a people's medium for a long time. It, it's been, it's been the accessible form of entertainment for a lot of people for a hundred years. And I hope it, I hope the human-made filmmaking gets to remain that. Um, so, bummer.

• 22:23Speaker 00

  What's, and you go ahead, go ahead, Ted.

• 22:26Geoff Nielson?

  Well, I was gonna, I was gonna say, and, and, you know, Ted, I'm curious for your thoughts on it. There's, there's, you know, an implication there in a parallel that, you know, maybe as sort of a lowest common denominator tool, if I can call it that, that if you're an amateur filmmaker, it's a great shortcut. If you're in film school, it's a great shortcut. But if we're really talking about comparing, you know, top-tier filmmaking to, you know, a great restaurant or, you know, any sort of, um, you know, state-of-the-art experience, then, then cutting these corners is something that audiences will feel and they won't appreciate. And it's a place where it's worth putting in the work and putting in the effort to get something that, that really elevates the experience still versus just trying to do it as,

• 23:09Geoff Nielson?

  as cheaply as possible. I don't know, Ted, what do you make of that?

• 23:13Speaker 00

  I mean, I thi- I think it, it's really interesting because I've been looking back at the history of technology and the way that technology transforms art. And I feel like exactly what you just said could have been said about, uh, transition from, uh, celluloid film to digital film. They'll never be able to get the film grain right. It'll never, it'll never look right. There's a thing I call just like the, it will never be able to paradox, where, you know, it's like, When it comes to around like hip hop and sampling, well, they can't even play an instrument. That's not music. These are, these are things that are wonderful conversations to have as human beings. And everybody has a right to the opinion of what they like to enjoy. Like, that's the entire purpose of art and, and breaking norms and making new things. Where we have to be really careful with something like generative AI is that rather than, you know,

• 24:00Speaker 00

  the way that you would repurpose a sample within music is extraordinarily different from the way that, you know, a generative AI model recombines the totality of its training data to synthesize all of the stolen material in that to generate an output. That's, that to me is categorically different because there is no, there's no choice that you're really making in that regard. There's no, there's no intention to, to say whether or not it has value to a large audience or to any audience. That's not for me to say, but I do think that it's really important to avoid believing that it will never be able to do certain things. For, for three years, I just watched as people say, it'll never be able to get the hands right. It'll never be able to produce sound. It'll never be able to show a text.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  These are things that are deadly mistakes to become a, a sort of falsely assured that the, the position of the artist in society or the crafts person in society will not be replaced. So removing that as a, a, a sort of mental position is really, really important. We need to act as though it will be able to. And so what that means is that we have to put policies in place where we are fighting for compensation to the people whose training day was put in there. We need to fight for transparency, for consent, all of these different things, because there actually is a world in which you could have generative AI models that are ethical. I don't believe any exist right now. And moreover, when, as part of the work with the creators coalition, we'll have tech companies

• 25:30Speaker 00

  reach out to us and they'll say, great news, we've solved, we have a vegan model, an ethical AI image generation model. And I'll say, great, what, what does that mean to you? And they'll say, well, all of our, all of our images were, were. Were licensed is from a licensed data set. And I'll say, great, what was your foundation model? And they'll say, what's a foundation model? And then you get to have the conversation. I told my wife about this, that like, it really sometimes is like talking. You walk into a car dealership and all the salespeople are very nice because they don't know that all of the cars are stolen. They're, and when, when they learn that there is such a thing as a foundation model and that if you're able to interact with it currently and with any efficacy, that that was likely built on the totality of, of all of human knowledge that's been stolen and put into that, uh, that model.

• 26:15Speaker 00

  That's when they get to the choice as to whether or not they want to, I would say, join what I would sort of largely call a pro-human fight towards honoring the, uh, knowledge of the people that went into training that model. And that's how you get a positive feedback loop with these kinds of services and tools is you acknowledge what's gone on and you find ways to create consent, compensation, transparency about what we're creating now. And that's totally possible, but very rarely talked about.

• 26:46Geoff Nielson?

  I, I think you and I have talked to some of the same advocates, uh, you know, for doing something like this. You know, I, I think about, you know, Dr. Emily Bender, Dr. Tameed Gabru, um, who, who have advocated for this for, for years. You know, from, from your perspective, Ted, and in light of, you know, your, your work in this area, you know, what do you see is the most fruitful path forward? Because I think you're right, like that foundation model question makes it really difficult. Like if we're talking about the foundation of so much of this being stolen, like it, I'm going to go down a slightly weird road, but if we're talking about, you know, building an ethical house on stolen land, like how do you, how do you get past the stolen land problem, right?

• 27:30Geoff Nielson?

  Like what, what meaningful things should we be pushing for from a policy perspective that help us, you know, do this in a fairer way?

• 27:39Speaker 00

  I think there's a lot of things. I'm so glad you brought up that metaphor because I think it's, it's possibly the most appropriate metaphor that we have. I think that when one looks at, uh, mass injustices in the past, something like apartheid, you need a truth and reconciliation process in order to be able to get people on the same page about what has happened in order to be, create a future that, where you avoid those kinds of, um, things reoccurring.

• 28:05Speaker 00

  And I think that when it comes down to.

• 28:09Speaker 00

  You know, what a policy direction looks like and what people can do. Number one, it's in specifically the world, the creative industries, just never make a deal that forgives past theft. And it's ironic, I was speaking to, you know, there are people currently who are designing protocols where you would be able to back propagate to see what information is being called upon to generate an output. When those things happen, and there's many people working on this, there's other researchers who've proven that, for example, like memorization, that the models have memorized things. And so it debunks, it systematically debunks all the different legs that the labs have to stand on. That work is really important. Supporting the people who are doing that work is incredibly important.

• 28:49Speaker 00

  Understanding that you, the vote with your dollars approach is possibly the most instrumental thing you can do with these specific labs. We saw how that played out with Anthropic refusing to cave to the demands of the Department of War. Sam Altman tweeting on Friday, "Good news, we've taken over those contracts." And then a million and a half people unsubscribe from the paid tier of ChatGPT. And then Sam has to reverse course, at least verbally, but then we also know that we should never trust, we should never trust any of these people because the game is too, the stakes are too high to just operate on trust. So it's sort of all of those things, all of this is all playing together in an ecosystem where we need to be highly skeptical, we need to verify. An anecdote I'd like to you, Deborah Raji, who's in the film, is a tremendous researcher,

• 29:33Speaker 00

  was part of essentially a campaign to shame Amazon and to stop using facial recognition, stop licensing their facial recognition software to law enforcement because it was so bad at identifying, accurately identifying people of color. And so there were a lot of false arrests. They successfully did that, and that's fantastic. But then Amazon bought Ring, and then Ring is able to license their, it's, the cycle will always continue. And the incentives in our society will always be such that, well, until they're changed, for these companies to try to find the most profitable way to use the technology that they've developed. And so it's up to all of us to be able to kind of push back and make sure that we're kind of keeping an eye out for all this stuff and supporting the people who are doing the

• 30:15Speaker 00

  work that we don't know how to do with our voices and with our, with our dollars.

• 30:21Speaker 00

  I'm not sure if I fully answered your question, but it's basically, yeah, I mean, it's,

• 30:27Speaker 00

  the thing I would like to add is that that work doesn't have to suck. It doesn't have to be drudgery. It's literally as simple as just like having a friend that you trust or having people like, you know, the people you've mentioned or other researchers who can help you understand the ways in which certain, you know, parts of the system are being exploited for gain by other people in that system. And I think it's really important to not just have one or two. You've got to kind of keep your eyes scanning based off of what your priorities are.

• 30:59Geoff Nielson?

  One of the topics of conversation that does come up in the film and a lot of conversations about AI is this notion, this concern that as we're in this kind of race, this arms race for AI, that cutting corners or, you know, doing things unethically is part of the pressure to succeed here. And so, yes, we can try and use data ethically, but I mean, I'll just give you my perspective on this. That, you know, it seems pretty obvious that these models perform better the more data that they get. And so I, you know, to be a bit conspiratorial, I think they're using even more ill-gotten, you know,

• 31:43Geoff Nielson?

  data and proprietary stuff than even we've discovered yet. And so how do you, you know, against that backdrop, like, how do we, how do we push back on that? How do, how do we make sure that we, that we get ahead? And that we, I don't know, sort of acknowledge and maybe undo the harm of the nature of the race itself?

• 32:09Speaker 00

  I think that There's a number of things that give me hope in this regard. And when you talk about winning the race, we're really talking about the race between the labs to reach AGI and the race between the US and China to ostensibly reach AGI or to some kind of to maximally implement gains that AI is yielding in their society. One of the biggest fulcrums that we have in the West, if you care about these kinds of issues, is the fact that in China, they've already won the society's culture war as it pertains to AI. There was a recent New York Times reporting that pointed out, you know, by and large, people in Chinese society are very pro-AI because they look at the ways that it can.

• 32:51Speaker 00

  I mean, they basically are seeing the ways that it's being deployed at all level of society, and they're very in favor of it. They're pro-technology. Part of the reason why the West is so skeptical of it is because of our first contact with AI, which is social media, and the ways that social media has caused enormous harm. And that being an example of the way that we lost by winning that race. And so in order for us to succeed, there are companies that proselytize this idea of creating a race to the top. It is society's job to clearly paint a picture of what that looks like, so that way we are creating the opportunity for those labs to win back the hearts and minds and society.

• 33:32Speaker 00

  Because if our general standpoint is AI terrible, AI bad, hate AI, there is no incentive for anyone to build an ethical AI and that race continues. So it's like that's sort of on a personal level. Geopolitically, that's a whole other conversation, but I think just like on a very personal level, unless we are setting the norms and standards within our own lives and being very vocal about what those are and where we want AI to meet us, then we are not doing our job in clarifying where we want it to go. And if we don't do that, there is no reason for them to try to be ethical.

• 34:06Geoff Nielson?

  I think that's well said, and I want to, you know, I want to kind of pivot that into, you know, something I've been curious about, which is there's so many narratives now. There's so much hype and, you know, even when you guys and for me as well, doing our jobs as AI investigators, everybody has such a different message. And I always chuckle because the message that they have tends to align very closely to whatever product they're trying to sell or whatever service they're trying to sell. But I'm curious, you know, having investigated and having researched and spoken with so many experts, are there any narratives you're seeing pushed right now that you're just not buying, that you can see are clearly being sold, that there's some sort of profit

• 34:51Geoff Nielson?

  mandate, or that you want to express that people should be more skeptical of? And maybe Charlie, I'll start with you on this one.

• 35:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, I think to what Ted was saying earlier, just this narrative, this idea that it is an inevitability and that it is like predestination, like how we evolved from apes, we're going to go into digital beings or machines. I just have to disagree with that. I mean, we, and Ted cited some earlier, like human cloning, but it's just what I would love to see, and this is kind of going to your last question, is I would love to see us focus on a way how to make AI, even if for now it's limited to certain countries

• 35:42Speaker 01

  or communities, before we try and go wider with it, find a way how to make it more democratic, how to make, you know, what the capabilities and uses of this technology.

• 35:56Speaker 01

  Are to be kind decided by more than just a few people. You know, because that will determine the want, that will determine the need. People in one part of the world might need to do one thing when people in another part need to do another thing. And then the resources will balance out based on those needs.

• 36:14Speaker 01

  You know, because resources will have limitations on what it can do. So, yeah, I don't think I answered your question, unfortunately. But, but I, it just really that. This thing is, is, is an inevitability and it's on a continued ascent and its capabilities and it's. It's possibilities. I do agree with Ted that you have to default and assume that we'll be able to do everything it says it can. But I, I think that that ascend is only ever going taper off or it's at some point because there are finite capabilities. And just in terms of resources on this planet.

• 36:51Speaker 01

  That it's going to run into at some point.

• 36:54Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and to your point there, it's, it's sounds like, you know, part of, part of what you're saying is that. The idea that somehow this race is too fast and too important for any sort of governance or regulation. It kind of seems like BS to you, right?

• 37:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, I totally disagree with that. And like right now, and going back to the democratization of, of its capabilities. Is and, and resources, resources can be bought right now. Despite limitations in certain places, it's something that can be paid for. So the wealthiest ones are getting there first because they're able to afford those resources and able to, you know. Pay the fees, pay the fines to, to occupy them. And that kind of consumption can be confused with power.

• 37:44Speaker 01

  And that power isn't something. That we have to accept. We can choose who we give power to collectively. It just takes a lot of organization to do so. So that, that, that's where, that's where my kind of fundamental beliefs as a human being go to. And there's just so much noise out there right now that it's hard to know where to direct that energy and where to direct that. Collaborative and collective decision making.

• 38:11Geoff Nielson?

  Makes sense to me. Ted, where's the, you know, what to you hits your BS radar even as you hear, you know, some of the, you know, most prolific and loudest voices speak on this?

• 38:22Speaker 00

  I think Charlie nailed it. The most insidious narrative is that this is inevitable. It's not inevitable that humanity gets to shape it. This has been the story of all technology. Is it an enormously asymmetrical battle with the greatest investment in the history of civilization being dumped towards one very specific thing? Absolutely. Does that mean that, you know, there was one moment where we were talking to a, I can't disclose who the source was, but we were talking to someone and this person had been, had been talking to a lawmaker and they just said offhanded, like, how many people would need to call to like, have this issue get in front of this lawmaker? And the staffer they were

• 39:03Speaker 00

  speaking to is like, you know, if like 10 people call, like, we have to, we have to write it down. We have to like, deliver that to the congressman. And this person was like, 10? That's it? Like 10? So the idea that like, you know, if a couple hundred people actually cared about these things and made their voices heard, then that can actually move the needle. The challenge there is that there's two different sides of this coin. There's the this is inevitable myth that needs to be debunked on the side of the people who are pushing progress. And then there's also the this is the solution myth that needs to be pushed back on from the advocacy side because there is no single solution. It's,

• 39:46Speaker 00

  you know, Yvaldo Arari points out in the film, this is a relationship. And the thing I've learned about relationships are if you look at them as a series of problems to be solved, you're going to be miserable and you're not going to have a great time. But if you understand what your values are, and you set up certain boundaries, and you're able to have conversations about that, you're able to then shape, be able to be like in a flow and actually like be present and receive the benefits of what that collaboration is. So I think that rejecting both of those, understanding the relationship based nature of humanity's relationship to technology, that's where we can actually create a sustainable road forward in shaping it. So I guess that would be, that would be what I would say.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Oh yeah, and the other thing like it's yeah, the other thing I would add is like the education piece also comes into it because even like no matter what, like I've I've stayed up to date to a large degree on the issues that are arising. And every single time I hear about this intractable problem, I immediately think about the three people who've told me a way to solve that very specific problem. And and these different ideas, so it's like Daniel Kwan and one, you know, one of the producers of the film in in our work at the creators coalition has pointed out that like what this time demands of people who care about the future is radical imagination. So when it comes to the point that Charlie made about, I mean, the idea of companies being so big that they want to pay the fines instead of actually fix the problem, that goes back decades, if not centuries.

• 41:17Speaker 00

  Figuring out what are the actual pain points for those corporations like is the job of people in government. So, for example, with with social media, why not instead of, you know, fining them, you impose a latency tax where their page loads loads incrementally slower for every violation of our norms are because they lose a tremendous amount of revenue by the microsecond. And they also know that they lose users if their site goes slow. That's actually something that regulators could do. There are actually people who are currently talking to states attorneys general about how to actually codify that into law. These are all things where if you, I mean, figuring out how to get AI right will be significantly easier than removing leaded gasoline from the world, but we did

• 41:59Speaker 00

  that, you know, like it's these things where like, you know, the fourth act of the film really highlights the times in the past where we as a society, I mean, the entire purpose of law is for us to determine as a populace what we want to happen and then to put mechanisms in place so that they are encouraged to happen. I'm not saying that they will, but between public pressure, between actually having regulation that moves at the speed of technology, the path is actually really clear to how to create that change. Whether we'll do it or not, I have I have different amounts of confidence based off of the weather and the way the wind blows that day, but my belief that it is possible has never gone away.

• 42:44Geoff Nielson?

  So maybe on that note, you know, to take the more positive approach. Again, having learned everything that you learned and now being more embedded in this, you know, in this world, what, what do you see that gives you hope? You know, and I'll ask that question to both of you, you know, what, what makes you hopeful? And what are some of the signs that we may be actually going in a better direction than you thought of, you know, two years ago?

• 43:09Speaker 01

  Goodness.

• 43:10Speaker 00

  Charlie, you want to start? Do you want me to go? You go first.

• 43:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, again, not only is my baseline quite anxious, but it's quite cynical and negative also. But I guess what I will say is, you know, this, this was a space that just, like I said, in all the hyperbole that was associated with it back in, you know, summer fall 2023, it seems like we've been talking about, it seemed like an inevitability. It seemed like something that was just barreling through and there was no getting out of the way or stopping it. And I know that even some of our subjects in our film reinforce that belief.

• 43:55Speaker 01

  But what I am starting to see now in small ways is that work is yielding results in terms of things like what CCAI is doing and some of the other kind of coalitions and organizations and, and kind of, right now it is more so in the space of discussions and thoughts and kind of, you know, conceptualizing the directions that we can take this and what we should prioritize. But you're starting to see and feel that organization that is moving towards a collective good. I do, despite my cynicism and negativity and depressive disorder, I do believe in collective good.

• 44:38Speaker 01

  You know, I, I do think that human nature, while there are people who...

• 44:46Speaker 01

  Do lots of shitty things and seem to have a million and one reasons to do those shitty things that they believe in. That's not the majority of people. A lot of people are focused on trying to live a happy and peaceful life. And when you challenge that happiness and that peace, people have the capability to resist and redirect to to maintain that happiness and peace. And I know I'm talking in big lofty terms right now, but but I I I am seeing that a lot of people are starting to focus, not not just the the most intelligent people

• 45:31Speaker 01

  in the world on either side of this technology in in the labs are thinking about this. General population is starting to think about this now, too, and and involve themselves. And that's what's needed. And that is just so encouraging to see it happening, to see because I feel like going back to 2023, more people, including myself to some degree, were very willfully keeping their heads in the sand. And now there's a more of an adoption of the acceptance that that's not going to work this time. This isn't something that you can just ignore and it's going to go away or going to pass. It needs it needs our interaction.

• 46:04Geoff Nielson?

  Well, it feels like it's coming back to that sort of education piece. And, you know, whether it's us as individuals, understanding it better, whether it's just enough time elapsing that we have a better sense of how this is playing out and how it might play out versus, you know, when it's so new, it's just, you know, we don't know where it's going to go. And I'm curious for you, Charlie, you know, as you said, you and Daniel were both going to be fathers when when this started and now are on the other side of that. And so I'm curious, you know, you mentioned that, you know, you're a cynic and tend to have like a depressive view of these things. The combination of now, I guess, being on the other side of fatherhood, where you've got a kid, being farther down the line with

• 46:46Geoff Nielson?

  AI, more educated, did both of those things together sort of, you know, potentially enable you to view it in a less alarmist, less dreadful way?

• 47:01Speaker 01

  No, um, but, but, but, but in, in, in form, no, um, which is to say, and, and Jeff, I know that you're, you're a father as well, um. One of your main things going into fatherhood, at least for me, was knowing that I'm going to have, especially I, I have a son. I'm a man. I grew up as a boy, um, you know, so I know some of the boyhood experiences that he's more than likely going to face. And I know how I was able to handle them and comprehend them. So you kind of have that leverage as a parent to know that there's going to be a shared experience here. Where I'm going to be able to step in and help, um, or step in and guide, or step in and go like, hey, this thing that you're really worrying about, like,

• 47:45Speaker 01

  it's actually not that big of a deal. Like you can fail that, you can fail your fifth grade math test. It doesn't matter in the long run. Um, you know, things like that, that the kind of reassurances that are needed to navigate, you know, childhood and adolescence and young adulthood. Um,

• 48:05Speaker 01

  but the thing is with this technology and its adoption that, you know, is happening. The world that he's grown up in, in a lot of ways is going to be very different. You know, normally that there, that, that's been kind of the story from generation to generation. It's just that the world that, you know, your, your parents grew up in is different from your world. But there's a, historically, there's been a little bit more of a stretch, you know, like some of the biggest ones in the last hundred years were like, I can remember hearing from elders and grandparents about knowing people who grew up without plumbing, or knowing people who grew up without electricity. Those transitions took many, many decades. But the transitions that we're going through now with this adoption of technology is happening.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  You know, a lot of it's happened in my toddler's lifespan. So there is so much more that he, that the world is going to change into, that I just won't have familiarity with. So he's going to be on his own for some of that stuff. And it sucks and I'm not fully surrendering to it, but I'm, my job is to do my best to keep up and keep informed and also allow him. To teach me things because the way that the world is is not the way that the world was when I knew it. So I'm I'm less of an authority on the world probably than his life will be. So to answer your question, no, but know that way. And and and it's not all bad. It's just kind of an acceptance that's required to understand that rather than

• 49:31Speaker 01

  hold on to, and we've seen this from from boomers to millennials. Like, there's a belief that, oh, if you just go out and work really hard, you'll make enough money to buy a house and buy a car and retire. And that world doesn't exist anymore to the same degree. It was painful for my generation to accept that, but boomers kind of seem to collectively refuse to accept that. So I know that there are going to have to be things about his world that will cause friction with my beliefs and understand the world that I just have to accept. So, sorry, a complete tangent there, but it's something I consider a lot.

• 50:06Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah, and and it feels like a very mature position and, you know, in some ways a very zen position almost because, you know, to the point you made. Yeah, the world is going to change in unforeseeable ways that make it more difficult for you to provide guidance to, you know, the next generation. But, you know, to the same point you made. Maybe that's just the same world we've been in all along. And now we just have the ability to introspect a little bit better and recognize that. And I don't know, maybe like.

• 50:37Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's like, don't, don't, don't pretend that's not happening. I'm going to have to take his word for it on certain things.

• 50:43Geoff Nielson?

  Well, and maybe this is too optimistic of me, but but maybe that recognition alone, you know, is worth something, right? It it positions us better as parents to be able to, you know, know our own limits and not just keep giving the same annoying outdated guidance that we got from our parents.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Exactly. One, one, the best, this is kind of related, but it was a comedian's joke where he was talking about when you have kids and your parents come to step in and try and help. And he's like, imagine someone working at a company 35 years ago, coming to work at that same company again and kind of how obsolete they are in their their methods. Like, it it's that kind of thing, but just a little bit faster. And like, I'm I'm going to start to feel old and in the way a lot sooner than a parent maybe normally would. Probably when he's 10.

• 51:36Geoff Nielson?

  No, I totally get it. Ted, we, Charlie and I took quite a journey there and I loved every minute of it. But I'm curious from your perspective, as you look forward, as you think about what you've learned, if it has changed your overall posture toward this, toward AI and where it may go and what gives you hope?

• 51:56Speaker 00

  Oh, I mean, I think, you know, being a kid, it was, I'm old enough to remember what pre-social media was like. And I am young enough so that technology is like, by and large, had an enormously positive impact on my life. And so, those two things, I think, are in constant conflict. And what really investigating AI as a subject has taught me is that there are people who really do want this to go well, and who are literally dedicating their life to making sure that it goes well. And that some of those people

• 52:40Speaker 00

  are doing things that will likely have a positive effect, and that some of those people are doing things that actively are having negative effects. It's sort of the old writing piece of advice is, you need to make sure that your villains believe that they are the heroes. Like, that's the most important part about writing a villain. And what I would say in this, in this entire subject, it's really important, I think, to have confidence in your values, and in the things that you think are really important in your life, and to be, you know, looking at and investigating those things, whether or not you're a parent,

• 53:21Speaker 00

  whether or not you're a partner of someone. And it's also really important to have intellectual humility when it comes to the subject of technology writ large, because each, whether you're talking about autonomous weaponry, whether you're talking about AI's deployment in healthcare, whether or not you're talking about algorithmic bias and institutional racism, and how that's perpetuated by these systems, each one of these subjects is a big enough thing, so that if you approach it from a standpoint of you being sure that you're right, I find that, that's a very difficult way to make progress. And so I think that the thing that gives me hope

• 54:03Speaker 00

  Is people's rigor in their intention to do well?

• 54:10Speaker 00

  And I think that, given the results that society is sort of

• 54:16Speaker 00

  seen from social media and the polarization and the the fact that even just saying, I don't know, or hey, you know what? I think you might be right are things that we almost never hear anymore.

• 54:28Speaker 00

  Those are the challenges that we have to face. But I think that like, the thing that gives me hope is I feel like we're all just really tired of that bullshit. And I think that the voices that I hear and that I listen to

• 54:42Speaker 00

  are are really ready to collaborate. So.

• 54:47Geoff Nielson?

  Ted, I love that answer, and I think it makes a ton of sense to me. I'm curious, you know, on that note, as you talk about voices, influential voices around the space in your life. I mean, you guys have had the advent of speaking to so many people of hearing so much commentary. And, you know, I know as filmmakers, you try and be as objective as possible. But I'm sure you have your own, you know, individual thoughts on, you know, who shared the most wisdom? Who, you know, really informed your view and you wish you could spend more time with? For for viewers listening to this, who are, you know, trying to tune out some of the noise and figure out where the signal really is. You know, do you each have one or two people that you spoke with that you think, man, I really? I would have loved to spend more time with them.

• 55:29Geoff Nielson?

  Or if people are just getting their feet wet in the space, you should really go and hunt out conversations with with these people because they're really gonna, you know, change the way you think in a positive way.

• 55:40Speaker 01

  Karen Howe was the big one for me. She's just much more the good balance of being one of the most informed people, but also having.

• 55:53Speaker 01

  It became kind of clear many of the subjects that they just were so rooted in within the tech bubble and within that world and maybe not knowing life outside of it. And Karen was just just more well rounded as a human being. And her book is is.

• 56:12Speaker 01

  A good recor as well. So that's my vote.

• 56:16Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah. And it sounds like it's because she brings that groundedness that a lot of these people don't necessarily have.

• 56:22Speaker 01

  Yeah. And, you know, the way her interview was is just very similar to the way her book Empire of AI is, which is just, it's, it's not without hope and possibility

• 56:38Speaker 01

  of outcomes that do benefit human beings, rather than it being just a growing problem.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, I had the same answer. Karen Howe for me is top of the list. Deborah Raji as well, who's, the thing I really love and appreciate about Deborah is that not only is she an outstanding researcher, she's an outstanding advocate, and also just the amount of like joy that she brings to her work is like it's contagious. And I think that's a really important thing. I think about emotions as being potential energy and action being kinetic energy. So regardless of, you know, where you're drawing that, those, what emotions are driving you to, to be working in the work that you're doing, like, it's just so clear from all the people that we interviewed is that, like I said, they're, they're engaged and they're motivated.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  But in terms of like, yeah, and obviously I think that the Center for Humane Technology does outstanding work in this area. I mean, all of the, it's hard to just choose one, but if I had to recommend, you know, someone doing a deep dive with any of our subjects, I think Karen Howe would probably be top of the list.

• 57:53Geoff Nielson?

  Awesome. I'm, I'm surprised and impressed that you guys came to a consensus on that. That's a huge feather in the cap of Karen, who's, who's, you know, great by the way.

• 58:01Speaker 00

  Or I would, I would also say, or Caroline Lindy, who's, is, is Daniel's wife. I think that she's an outstanding voice of reason. She puts up with a lot. I think she's, she's the hero of the film.

• 58:12Geoff Nielson?

  She kind of is. As someone who went into the film not knowing her, I really appreciated her. You can kind of feel her steady hand on the wheel in some ways and like steering, steering the narrative.

• 58:24Speaker 00

  And actually, if I would, if I could add, this person was behind, these people were behind the camera, but all the producers are exceptionally brilliant people. But really, as far as somebody who has their eye on, on sort of the philosophical side of humanity, humanities, relationship to technology, Daniel Kwan is really a very special person in that regard. And I would add Shane Boris there. Shane, you know, there were five producers on this film, there were two directors, there were two editors, there was a story producer, a co-producer, an associate producer, all of whom were just trying to all get our arms wide enough to wrap around this subject. And is that a sawzall, Charlie? What do you got there?

• 59:08Speaker 00

  The, yeah, I mean, it's just everybody had such invaluable input, but like, it's also just, you know, Daniel Kwan's a special person. Like, he's a...

• 59:19Speaker 00

  I'll just leave it at that. I think that if you have the opportunity to listen to the things that he says about anything, you ought to, but specifically about this subject is like, he has a deep, deep belief in our capacity to come together and to make this right. And he's also very good at actually backing that up with finding the people and the ways to do that.

• 59:39Geoff Nielson?

  That's awesome. And I'm, I'm just chuckling, Charlie, because I was saying earlier, I was like, there's no way we'll hear the construction. There's no way. And it just, it just cuts through loud.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  I'm sorry. You shouldn't have told him to set up the chop saw directly behind you. You tell him to work downstairs.

• 59:53Geoff Nielson?

  Yeah.

• 59:53Speaker 00

  Do you call it a chop saw in Canada? What do you call it? A reciprocating? What do you call a?

• 59:59Speaker 00

  I call it a mitre saw. A zagler. Okay, great.

• 1:00:02Speaker 01

  There's a zagler in a zagler.

• 1:00:03Speaker 00

  Okay. Fair enough.

• 1:00:07Geoff Nielson?

  Awesome. So as we start to wrap things up here, for anyone who's listening to this, whether you're a business leader, whether you're someone who's starting to get your hands on AI tools, start to use this technology and want to have some sort of, I guess, ability to do this responsibly, to do it in a way that's going to be productive. What are your recommendations for people to think about this and how they can be better and more effective in this space? Charlie, maybe I'll start with you.

• 1:00:38Speaker 01

  I don't know if I can advocate for a particular tool because for me, before using anything, let's say if I'm just working on an individual level, I want to like, I'm writing an email to a colleague, I want to spruce it up, proofread it, find a way to clarify my thoughts and my goals of maybe what I'm asking them. I always really make the effort to ask like, okay, can I do this myself? And if the answer is yes, try doing that. Yeah, of course. Sometimes you're under a time crunch and you need to just

• 1:01:20Speaker 01

  get your thing done. So whatever, maybe. But I really do try to ask if I'm replacing myself and my own critical thinking and cognition first, and if that's necessary.

• 1:01:36Speaker 01

  And usually the answer is like, yeah, you can. So don't use it. So I don't know if I can advocate for a particular tool right now.

• 1:01:50Speaker 01

  Chappy GPT for a minute was really good at finding discount codes for online stores, and that doesn't seem to work anymore. So that would be the only one I would be able to go for. But it doesn't seem to work anymore.

• 1:02:03Geoff Nielson?

  No, I'd say, sorry.

• 1:02:05Speaker 00

  Go ahead, Jess. No, no, you go ahead. I would love to answer this question, but I want to make sure that you ask a follow up there.

• 1:02:11Geoff Nielson?

  Well, well, yeah, I mean, I was just gonna say, it sounds like Charlie, the, you know, the feedback there is to be extremely intentional with this stuff and not to just use this because you feel like you're supposed to use it, but make sure that there's actually some sort of value in mind versus just I'm using this as a shortcut.

• 1:02:28Speaker 01

  If it's to be overly convenient and allow yourself to be overly lazy, then you're not going to develop as a person. And sometimes that's your communication skills with other people. And sometimes it's your, your craft, your work, your profession. Um, you know, I really am actively working to resist this culture of over optimization and over productivity and get things, you know, done on this super fast timeline because it took me, you know, most of the years of my life to realize that I'm going to go at my own pace and that doesn't mean my pace is wrong. Um, you know, I think all of us on the production have ADHD and I

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  have a version of it too. I've joked that I have the Honda Civic version because I can still get things done, but it just, it is very, uh, nonsensational. Um, and anyways, uh, it's just really kind of knowing yourself and knowing your timeline and knowing what's a reasonable pace for yourself rather than trying to always keep up. Um, because yeah, you might end up poor and, um, and all that, but you'll be more balanced. And like I said, I spoke about anxiety a few times, uh, on this, but, but trying to keep pace that's

• 1:03:52Speaker 01

  just, it feeds anxiety and then that just makes you less stable as a person, less happy as a person. So I'd rather be happy and stable or at least pursue that.

• 1:04:04Geoff Nielson?

  I really appreciate that perspective and I think it's very well said. Don't get caught in this, you know, sort of race to the bottom with using these tools that, you know, just ends up harming yourself. Ted, what do you want to add on the subject?

• 1:04:18Speaker 00

  To that end, there's a really important problem to highlight, which I call the software as a service addiction model problem, which is essentially right now what a lot of companies are doing. Are they replacing workers whose salaries they can control with AI agents whose costs they can't control? And this is a really, really important distinction to make. And this is where we get into the idea of like, what's the difference between a tool and a service? If I go to Home Depot and I buy a hammer and take it home, I can build anything I want with that. Home Depot can't come and take that hammer away from me. They can't retroactively increase the price of that hammer by 100x. What you're seeing with these companies is they are intentionally using efficiency

• 1:04:57Speaker 00

  and reduce costs as a way to insert their very addictive services to businesses in the exact same way that the big tech playbook has gone with, you know, taxis and Uber. That they convince everybody, oh, you know what? Leave your job, become part of the gig economy. Don't you want to be an independent contractor? We'll give you all these incentives. And also as a customer, you don't want to, you don't want to pay that union taxi driver or somebody with health benefits. You want to, don't you want to go to the airport for $20? And then you fast forward, use debt as a way to be able to corner the market and addict people to that business model. And now it's $120 for me to get to the airport. And the worker is getting paid less than he's ever been paid.

• 1:05:40Speaker 00

  And the companies are making a higher profit margin. So specifically in any business, but really in the creative industries, what we're seeing is, you know, the potential for a complete hollowing out of the human beings that are capable of doing the work without these services. And when you've gotten to that point, that's an addiction. And so it's really important, if you're thinking about sustainability as a business person, just asking yourself the question, is efficiency important enough so that I'm willing to risk a company, or risk, risk my livelihood on a company that has shown no reason why I should trust it? And somewhat ironically, recently, the CTO of Uber pointed out that the coders that they have at Uber are so reliant on Claude Code

• 1:06:25Speaker 00

  that they've used their entire 2026 budget on tokens by the end of April.

• 1:06:32Speaker 00

  And so then they haven't even increased the cost, you know, like they recently moved, I think, the largely like Claude Code from the pro tier to the max tier. So it goes from $20 to $200. That's a 10x increase in cost. So be very, very careful about the ways that you are deploying these systems and the services into your business because you might end up in a world where you are working for these companies, not for yourself.

• 1:07:02Geoff Nielson?

  I think that is very wise and very well said. And I don't, I don't have anything intelligent to contribute to it. And I appreciate both of your very different answers to that question. Charlie, Ted, I wanted to say such a big thank you to both of you for coming on the show today. It's been really interesting, really insightful, and I appreciate your insights. For anybody who hasn't seen it, the AI doc is an excellent movie. It's an excellent way to learn more about, you know, AI in the space here. So check it out. And I'm not just chilling it. I have, I have seen it and it is really good.

• 1:07:34Speaker 00

  I appreciate it, Jeff. Thank you so much, Jeff. We really appreciate it.

• 1:07:39Geoff Nielson?

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