Are You Afraid of AI

The following is a Terry Weiss production. Hey, everybody, welcome to another episode of our virtual campfire sit down called Weis's Thoughts. Each episode of White's Thoughts is a traveling journey inside my mind. We never know what we're gonna find once we get in here, but it's always interesting and entertaining conversation. Make sure you check out my website Weissthoughts dot com wy c Wis's Thoughts dot com. Derek can listen to each and every episode of the podcast. Check out my YouTube channel, check out the blog Weiss's Life, and so much more. It's all waiting for you at weiss Com. On this episode of White's Thoughts, are you Afraid of AI? We're gonna talk about artificial intelligence. It's really ramping up in today's world, so we're gonna delve into that. It's all coming up. So go grab your favorite beverage, get yourself a comfortable seat around my virtual campfire sit down, and let's talk about AI. Hey, everybody, welcome, Welcome to another episode of White's Thoughts. I'm so glad you're here. I really am, No, truly, I truly am. And we got a great show and for a good podcast in store for you today. I don't know. I'm torn between mister producer calling it a podcast a show. I use both some rock and music. You got going here? Turn it up a little. Yah, that's some good stuff, man. I like that. I like me a good old fashioned rock and roll show. Yeah, back when music was music. Huh no auto tune and digitized robot voices and kind of get your blood boiling and moving, doesn't it makes me you want to dance? So as terrible as that vision is for you out there for me dancing, But anyway, Welcome to the program, Welcome to wise thoughts. I am Terry Weiss, and I am so glad you've decided to join me for the podcast today. I'm going to definitely make it time will spent for you, and real quick before we get underway with today's show. Remember you can find me on X but anyhow, I digress. Welcome, Welcome, one and all, Welcome to the podcast. And again, you can find me on X formally known as Twitter. I used to say you can tweet at me on Twitter, but now you can, I don't know, find me over on X at Terry Weiss. I'm over there, I'm not a you know, I'm not a hard guy to find. That's what I tell everybody. I am not a hard man to find. I'm very very easy to locate, unlike some people that some people like to hide behind their podcast the podcasted. I just made up a new word. They like to hide away on their podcasting abilities. I guess, and I don't know. I'm not a hard find guy to find, So no worries there. You can find me over on x formally known the social site formerly known as Twitter, under at Terry Weiss. I've also got Weiss thoughts dot com for the podcast. But but I digress. If you like these golden pipes and you need some voiceover work done for you know, your business, personal, your podcast, your website, your video, your explainer video, whatever, just go to Terrywis dot com. You can hear some samples of my work there, and I assure you I will exceed your expectations. Okay, I believe in two hundred percent customer service. How's that? So let's get started here with uh let's eve can get started with our wordsmith word of the episode. All right, thank you, mister producer extraordinaire. What's today's word epillion. Oh say that again? Epillion, A pillion ep y l l io N, A pillion, And what it is? It's a noun. It's a narrative poem that resembles an epic poem in style, but which is notably shorter. Let's see, how would we use that an example sentence? If you read the song instead of sing it, it turns into an apillion. Now I never knew that. I never knew that if you read the song instead of sing it, it turns into an apillion, which, of course, again by a noun. By its definition, is a narrative poem that resembles an epic poem in style, but which is notably shorter. What's another sentence we can use a pillium in I plan to write an epic poem about my childhood, but it turned out to be more of a of an apillium in length. And how do we say that one more time? Just so we know for our wordsmith word of the episode epillion A pillion ep y l l io N. And there you go. That is your wordsmith word of the episode. So there you go. All right, So now you got it and now you know it. So let's get right into the program on what we're going to talk about today on whiss thoughts? Shall we? It's all around us. It's growing in popularity, it's getting more and more popular. It's infesting every area of human life at this time. And it has even caused an actor's strike in Hollywood. And I'm not sure if it was influential in the writer's strike that they settled, but the actors are definitely this is one of their sticking points on strike in Hollywood. And I'm talking about something that you can go to on the internet now and they're are literally every day dozens of more sites popping up. Google's using it, businesses are using it, the medical field's using it. You know, every facet of society, both business and now personal, seems to be using it more and more. Talking about none other than artificial intelligence, or AI, as it is known for in short now, AI is okay. AI is the intelligence of machines or software, as opposed to the intelligence of humans or animals. It is also the field of study in computer science that develops the studies intelligent machines. AI may also refer to the machines themselves. Anybody can anybody say Terminator Skynet. Now for some of the for those of you who have never seen the movie, you're going to be like, Terry, what are you talking about? Go look up the Terminator and watch it. It's free, I think somewhere on YouTube or to b TV or something like that. It's on one of those sites that you can watch it for free. I mean, if you haven't seen a Terminator movie, where have you been. There's certainly enough of them out there, But the Terminator movies, you know, is basically about AI gone awry. Say that ten times AI gone awry, and it's technology widely used throughout industry, government, and science. High profile applications are advanced, such as web search engines, Google Search, YouTube, Amazon, Netflix, Syria and Alexa use AI for understanding human speech, self driving cars. Okay chat GBT is one of the most popular ais out right now, and it also is good. AI is also used in competing at the highest level in strategic games such as chess and go. Artificial intelligence was founded as an academic discipline in nineteen fifty six, so this is something that's been around for a while. Okay AI has been around for a while, however, it has not taken off into the stratosphere like it has lately with obviously the advancements of technology and microchips and of that nature. So it is definitely expanded by leaps and bounds artificial intelligence. Again, way back in nineteen fifty six, the field went through multiple cycles of optimism, followed by you know, disappointment and loss of funding. But after twenty twelve, with deep learning surpassed, it surpassed all other previous AI attempts and techniques. There was a vast increase in funding and interest. So you're twenty twelve, you know, remember when the world was supposed to end. Everybody's like, oh, the Mayan calendar, the Mayan calendar. We're all going to die in twenty twelve, man, And that never happened. But that being said, and I'm thankful that that never happened. But the thing is is that's where deep learning surpassed all previous techniques, and then people said, hmm, there might be something here. Let's dive a little let's dive a little deeper into this and see what's going on. Now. There's very sub fields of AI research, and they're centered around particular goals and the use of particular tools with AI that you might not be aware of. Traditional goals and AI research include like reasoning, knowledge representation, learning, natural language processing, and support for many forms of robotics and general intelligence, like the ability to solve an arbitrary problem. But there are other ways that AI is being used as well. Now it's integrated into a wide range of problems solving techniques, including search, mathematical optimization, formal logic, artificial neural networks in just such field as like statistics, operations, research, and economics. Now AI also draws upon psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and neuroscience. Those are just some of the fields that it goes into. I mean, and you can look up all this stuff on Wikipedia too. I mean, a lot of this information is in there. But here's the thing. The way AI is going, there's lots of fights coming down the road, and they're gonna and what I mean by that, it's going to be in the courts because you have people that develop books, songs, music. You know, AI can be used in video to insert people's likenesses and things of that nature. So there's and some of it even right now is pretty I don't know if you've seen it, but it's pretty darn good, pretty darn good. It's almost scary where they can take you and put you as you know, being the astronaut that landed on the moon. You know, I'm like, whoa, whoa. Man, that's a little scary for me, you know, So I don't know, you know, I mean when you when you can place somebody's voice, and there's AI for voices now where you can have someone make a phone call and sound like a celebrity or you know, almost anybody. You can even get your voice. There's websites. Now I haven't done it because I don't want to, but there's websites you can go to to actually have your voice sampled and then played back and then use it to say all kinds of things. And to me, that's that's a little bit intimidating and a little a little scary. You know. I don't think I want that. I don't think I'm comfortable with that. Now. Are there are a lot of good practical uses for AI? Absolutely, there definitely is, you know in medical research, especially with like a lot of excuse me, like a lot of diseases and things like that, you know, for research, and it can do a lot of things that let's face it, guys and gals, we as human beings, we cannot do it. I mean, we can't keep up with all this stuff. And to have to have something at our disposal that can do something like that is absolutely phenomenal. But like with anything, anything can be used for good or it can also be used for evil. And I've talked talked with some people, spoken with a lot of folks both in person and virtually that have some they have some major concerns about AI and AI technology and the the genie that is definitely out of the bottle. Now, the genie is definitely out of the bottle. And the other thing that we got to be cognizant of is that, you know, if somebody gets a hold of it for nefarious reasons, it can be disastrous. And that's we definitely don't want that. You know, we definitely don't want disastrous things like that. So it's just you know, it's I do have some great grave concerns with that, and it's just a matter of time before you know, we're going to see more probably things, you know, court cases about you know, stolen identity, stolen voice, stolen intellectual property, and things of that nature, and we're going to see, you know, we're going to see what happens with it, because at the end of the day, you know, there's nothing, nothing can replace a good old fashioned human being. I mean, we you can have the smartest machines in the world. However, what makes us human are are our faults. Let's be honest. Our faults are what make us human, and that's what's part of the human experience. So you got to you gotta take the bad with the good, as they say, being a human being, you know it can't be all beds of roses. I do think there are a lot of great beneficial uses for artificial intelligence. However, the fact of the matter is is are sorry, little Mike nois there you might have heard. Are we as human beings going to be responsible enough? That's the word I'm looking for. Are we going to be responsible enough to control this Pandora box that we have now accelerated and opened. Let me know what you think in the comments section, or if you want to hit me up on I almost said Twitter, hit me up on x at Terry Weiss. You can even go under the episode of this program under there, you know, when the episode drops, you'll see it on X or you know, send me an email. You can send it to mail m ail mail atwisse thoughts dot com. What do you think about artificial intelligence? Are you for it? Are you against it? What are some of your concerns? What are some of your things you're in favor of with it? And we can talk about you know that and have a great conversation back and forth. I think that the good of AI artificial intelligence at this point, at this point in history, outweighs the bad. However, however, given the recent actors strike and writers strike and some of the things I've seen where you know, kids are using it in schools and colleges now to write their term papers and everything, they're not actually writing them anymore. Or I can kind of see it as another way of maybe dumbing down society a little bit, because the arts are creative. When you create music, when you create poetry, when you create books, when you create works of art and things of that nature, that is an expression of our humanity and that also allows you in many cases stress relief and release of endorphins. But if you can go just up to a you know, a computer screen, now press a button and type in, write me a short story about a young girl walking in the woods that finds a magical rabbit, and then that's it, and something can spit out a two hundred page book off of that. I mean, where's the creativity for the human mind? I mean, are we going to you know, back ourselves into a mental corner where now those creative outlets are just going to be eliminated. I don't know. I mean, I AI creates music. I mean some of you that obviously most of you that listen to this podcast regularly know that I'm an amateur musician at heart, you know, lyricist and things of that nature. And I love making my own music. And I at this point I refuse to use AI to make any kind of drum beats or you know, or anything like that, or even write lyrics. I want to do it the old fashioned way. Call me an old fashioned kind of person, but I want to do it the old fashioned way. I want to expand my mind, my creativity, and let those emotions out and take that emotional journey with each art project, artful project, each you know journey that I take. I want to take that journey in my mind. I want to either relive those emotions good, bad, or indifferent, because that's what makes up again me, That's what makes up how I feel, how I act, how I react, and things of that nature. For those of you out there in the arts, you know, whether you're a writer, a performer, you know, a lyricist, you know, what have you? Painter, an expressionist, whatever? AI maybe a threat to your to your very path to creativity. Now some people might say, hey, Terry, your knucklehead, it's a way to maybe unlock more creativity. We'll see. I guess you know, time is going to tell. Time is definitely gonna tell on that if if that is so, excuse me, But what I'm my concerns are, and I believe, you know, from what I've talked to other people are I believe my concerns are justified because others seem to echo some of those same concerns. Is that it's going to take the human element out of so many things and kind of dull it down to you know, make it vanilla, I guess, is the only way to say it. Yeah, it might look good on paper, it might sound good to your ear, if it's a piece of music or something However, it's going to lack that human touch. I do audiobook narration, and in fact, I've recently released a couple of them there on Audible for authors, and excuse me, I'm working on a third project now for an author. But you know, AI is trying to creep its way into audiobook narration and voiceover, but I don't think at its core it's going to really affect the voiceover industry that I'm in as well, and the audiobook type thing in narration, because there's no feeling in there. Humans can convey at this point in time. We can convey emotions, okay, with our pauses, our inflection in our voice, how we speak, Are we excited or are we informative? Like look at that bird? Did you know that bird flew three hundred miles? Or we can be storytellers, or we can be you know, pitch like salesman act now offer limited you know, stuff like that, or you know, or we can take sad like I'm so sorry that happened to you. Oh my gosh, that's terrible, Oh my god. You know, human beings can convey emotion where right now AI is not able to do that based on syntax and writing and grammar in the day comes that it does well, then maybe that industry will be in trouble and I'll be out of another job. But who knows. But those are some of the concerns. And am call me, call me a kook. You might want to say terry or knucklehead, Okay, but I do have a I have a concern again Terminator reference see the movie Terminator and Schwarzenegger and all the Terminator series. With this getting into the military, I don't want a computer controlling and making decisions to our military because if that computer becomes self aware, it could decide like Skynett and the Terminator based on they can decide in a nanosecond that were the problem, and we need to be eliminated and turn our own weapons against us. And that is kind of scary and folks, not to sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist, but that could be a possibility. So I hope they never hook up the sky net. You better never hook up the sky net ever. Ever, don't hook up the sky net. Remember that hear that all you military people around the world, all you people in power, don't hook up just going out. So but that's you know, that's just what I wanted to talk about today's artificial intelligence. I mean, it's springing up all over the place. And while it has a lot of great uses and it's a time saver, and it's probably opening up fields of possibilities for the great minds as well of our generations with medical research and scientific things, it can also have a down and dirty dark side we've seen from the strikes in Hollywood already to some other ones I've read about on the internet with authors of books and plagiarism or maybe they'll call it something different. When you know the kids in high school and in college are writing a thesis and their reports using AI, it can have a downside. What do you think? Let me know in the comments. You can hit me up on x at Terry Weiss or go to Weis thoughts dot com under this show and leave a comment in the comment section. But AI it's here to stay. It's just how are you going to deal with it? Hey, thanks for listening to the program today. I truly appreciate each and every one of you out there, and remember to see a change in the world, you have to be the change in the world. You want to see it all starts with you, the person looking back at you in the mirror every morning. Remember to be kind to yourself, be kind to others. If you want to tweet at me on Twitter, it's at Terry Weiss. Stop by the website Wis's thoughts dot com just to make sure you spell my name right, Wye Wis Thoughts dot com, and hey, leave us a positive rating and review on your favorite podcast provider. Won't you tell your friends, tell your family, tell your pets about wife's thoughts? And I look forward to gathering yet again around the virtual campfire with you real soon. Take care,