Dream Machines: Physical AI, Robotics, Being Human
00:14:14 · Lara Sophie Bothur
[00:14:14] S0: Yeah. And I did both full-time, so I studied in the night and I was not always awake, but just kidding. What you also said before is this wisdom. I don't know if I understand what that means, but I think what's interesting is that With technology, we start to question more and more what it means to be human. And isn't that weird that we create something so far away from being human makes us think more about what we do, who we are. And I mean, we can see that with AI, which we know that once you put in, you get out. But so technology or especially AI is like a mirror. Of everything we are today and everything we have been in the past. And I think today is a good momentum to rethink if we like what we see in that mirror or Maybe not and what we want to change and who we want to be in the future because it's not that the technology is biased, right? We see a biased outcome and we're like, oh, bad technology. But it's just us, you know? It's 70% of the database is biased. We need to rethink if we do everything right before we prompt into AI or before we develop something new, because all that will be our future. And we will always be shocked how deeply human it is. And that has something to do with us. So it's just mirroring us. And I think that's interesting because it makes us question what humanity means and also to define what is the boundary is so weird. Then we say, okay, what does humanity mean? Maybe it's empathy, emotion, trust, And it's like so weird to break it down to those components, because I think, you know, being human is so much more than that, but you need to break it down today to define, you know, Where to embed AI or other technologies and where not to and where we should really not have AI because this is deeply human. But what is deeply human? And so I feel like we're coming back to the roots kind of. Isn't it weird to define what it means and it forces us to do so.
00:16:51 · Evan Helda
[00:16:51] S1: There's so many, so many things. Open the bottle of wine. Yeah, seriously, we should have done this more during a happy hour. It's too early for this level of depth, but no, this is great. There's so many things I want to unpack. So I guess the first thing that's interesting is this idea of, is it good or bad that technology is challenging us and making us ask the question of what it means to be human? Because on one hand, if we're building it right, it wouldn't Beg the question, it would just make it obvious and it would enhance humanity and we would just be on a merry way and everything would be glorious. And on the other hand, thank goodness it's doing that because it's forcing a reckoning. And how do we get on that path? I think the most simple exhibit A would be the Everything that's happening happened with social media and all the cases of Meta and what it's doing children and it's the idea, okay, we didn't build social media for connection, which is a human element. We built it for attention, which is a commercial element. And so, yeah, it could be boiled down to simply that. And then in terms of what you said around Dissecting the human experience and trying to find it. I think all those things you mentioned are definitely the right things. But perhaps the most important thing that's so hard to grasp onto is sort of the things we can't really define. The things that we just feel and intuitively know, but we don't understand. The feeling that there's something more, even if you're not religious. If you're not religious, it's still hard to not see moments of serendipity or manifest something and not be like, that's weird.
00:18:46 · Lara Sophie Bothur, Evan Helda
[00:18:46] S0: But even that we say like, well, that is, um, you know, we, this is something AI can't do because AI can't give things a context, for example, or even intuition. What is intuition? You know, the set of data points, but I think it's so, so bad. [00:19:05] S1: Is intuition a set of data points? [00:19:08] S0: I mean, it can be. It's like, yeah. [00:19:11] S1: I guess it is things that your mind subconsciously is connecting. [00:19:14] S0: It's experience, it's gut feeling, but then gut feeling is a data point that is, how do you define gut feeling? But gut feeling is also a mixture. And yeah, maybe gut feeling and intuition is also very close, but it's also partly it's experience, right? Yeah. I mean, you can't define like feel so hard to grasp. [00:19:41] S1: Intuitions like this is the integration of heart, mind, and body. I think one way I think about it, like the body being the gut, your mind has its own rumblings and you feel something in your heart and soul a little bit about What's right and what's wrong in many ways, or not what's right, what's wrong. It's probably more of a gut thing. I think in the heart, it's more about just some magnetism towards the thing that you can't really explain. [00:20:08] S0: Yeah. There's a physical reaction, same with falling in love. It's like those butterflies you have in your belly. It's like, how can you rebuild that? But I think maybe at some point, And maybe, you know, doctors will rebuild that or like, or they can rest that biologically. Take a [00:20:34] S1: pill for love.
00:20:34 · Evan Helda, Lara Sophie Bothur
[00:20:34] S1: pill for love. [00:20:36] S0: Well, no, but also add that to a humanoid, you know, like that a humanoid can truly feel this feeling, but then like, why should a humanoid feel that? Like who's behind that humanoid is that there's no soul, right? It's like, is that Elon Musk then being in love with everyone? Okay, now it's getting super weird, but yeah. [00:21:02] S1: Well, I think that's where you have to define what a soul is. And I'd love to share with you a couple essays that I wrote because they, interestingly enough, intersect on this conversation right now. First is the AI as a mirror idea. [00:21:19] S0: And the second is
00:21:19 · Lara Sophie Bothur, Evan Helda
[00:21:19] S0: And the second is [00:21:27] S1: The notion of a soul, which could also be defined as like the feeling of, of self. And something about what's happening now has sent me on this journey to study what the self is and what it isn't. And what I've basically determined and what a lot of amazing thinkers think is that there is no self, that the self is a self's an illusion. The self is this evolutionary thing that our Body and mind invented to like orient itself in physical reality and to survive. Um, but everything that's feeling of subjective experience, but it basically says realizing you have no self is a good thing. Cause it just, it just separates you from yeah. Having no self. These are a classic old Buddhist ideas, but, um, having realizing you have no self is a good way to just separate yourself from things like bias. And I think there's a world where we can all do better at harnessing the flame themselves. It might lead to better design of technology. Now that concept sounds wild and we'll have to maybe have a second episode to unpack that. So it's earmarked that. Well, we'll follow up on that, but that's a hypothesis that I just invented right here, right now. [00:22:45] S0: Are you okay for the video? So we can, you know, we'll just... [00:22:47] S1: Yeah, in terms of the AI and the mirror idea, there's the exact same thesis.
00:22:47 · Evan Helda, Lara Sophie Bothur
[00:22:47] S1: Yeah, in terms of the AI and the mirror idea, there's the exact same thesis. [00:22:52] S0: I like that. I like that. But is the self the ego? Could that be the word for the self you try to describe? The ego? Because then when you're a child, you feel more of, you know, are we still here? We talk about AI and then Wi-Fi and JAWS. But so when you're a child, you don't think so much, you feel everything. And then at some point, a child just says, my word is not so colorful. And this shows it is maybe depressive. And then an adult says, Well, I'm not so happy, but just because, you know, I do work a lot, you know, my wife has a lot to do, my children are busy, so I don't sleep that well. So an adult tries to explain why, and the child feels, and that is when the ego starts. And this is the, I don't know if that is the self you described, but I think that makes us very rational and less emotional, which is not always good because we have explanation for everything we feel and we stop feeling, which is also, I think, a big problem in today's world. Totally. Yeah. And then what is also interesting, is that the self you were talking about or is that something else?