Episode summary introduction:

This podcast centers on the pervasive influence of artificial intelligence in our daily lives, which brings with it both remarkable advantages and profound concerns. TC & Maddog engage in a thorough examination of the implications of AI, acknowledging that while it can enhance tasks such as content generation and decision-making, it also poses significant risks, including ethical dilemmas and potential job displacement. Throughout the episode, we emphasize the necessity of maintaining vigilance as AI technology continues to evolve, underscoring the importance of critical thinking and human oversight in an increasingly automated world. Additionally, we highlight the duality of AI's capabilities, illustrating instances where it has positively impacted fields such as healthcare, while simultaneously addressing the fears associated with its potential to operate beyond our control. Ultimately, this episode serves as a call to awareness, urging listeners to navigate the complexities of AI with caution and discernment.

Topics discussed in this episode:

In this engaging exchange, the speakers embark on a contemplative journey through the realm of artificial intelligence, encapsulating its profound implications for modern society. The dialogue is interspersed with personal anecdotes that illustrate the practical applications of AI, juxtaposed against a backdrop of ethical inquiries and existential concerns. The speakers candidly express their trepidations regarding the potential for AI to supersede human judgment in critical areas, such as healthcare and legal frameworks. They invoke cautionary tales of AI mishaps, including instances of erroneous legal citations generated by AI systems, thereby illuminating the tangible risks associated with unbridled reliance on technology. Throughout the episode, there is a recurring emphasis on the necessity of fostering a critical awareness of AI's capabilities and limitations. The speakers articulate a vision for a future where AI serves as an ally to humanity, rather than a detractor from our essential human experience. The episode culminates in a call to action for listeners to engage thoughtfully with the technology that increasingly permeates their lives, advocating for a balanced approach that embraces innovation while safeguarding against its potential detriments.

Walkabout takeaways:

• Our exploration of artificial intelligence revealed profound implications, encompassing its advantages and potential perils, underscoring the necessity for vigilance in its utilization.
• We shared personal anecdotes illustrating the evolving relationship between humans and AI, highlighting both its convenience and the critical need for accountability in its applications.
• The conversation delved into the ethical considerations surrounding AI, raising concerns about its capacity to autonomously influence significant decisions in our daily lives.
• As we navigate the complexities of AI integration into various sectors, we must remain cognizant of the balance between leveraging its benefits and mitigating associated risks.
• This episode serves as a clarion call for awareness regarding the accelerating encroachment of AI into our lives, urging listeners to approach its adoption with a discerning mindset.

Reference Links:

https://thelogic.co/news/indigenous-languages-artificial-intelligence/

https://www.lawtimesnews.com/resources/professional-regulation/law-society-tribunal-temporarily-suspends-lawyers-license-after-finding-she-lied-about-chatgpt-use/393450

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/openai-admits-its-agent-went-rogue-and-hacked-ai-startup-hugging-face/

https://www.lindy.ai/blog/ai-platforms

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Park City
• Tesla
• Waymo
• Zooks
• Boston Gene
• Open AI
• Hugging Face

More about E-Walkabout:

To learn more about Electronic Walkabout visit us at www.ewalkabout.ca.

If you want to read more “Thoughts of the Day” check out TC’s Book at Amazon:

“St. Mike's Fortunes”

“Remember to take advantage of the moment before the moment takes advantage of you!”

Electronic Walkabout. No one should have to walk through life alone. We share the good times, the bad times, and the best times.

Everyone needs a little direction now and again. And TC and Mad Dog are here To show you the way.

A podcast where we talk about the important things in life. Come journey with us. The Electronic Walkabout.

Well, good afternoon and hello to all our listeners. Mad Dog, what's the weather like your way these days?

I think I understand what it's like to live on the sun, but, you know, it's okay. It's. I'm an indoors guy in this weather and.

And just to be clear to the listeners, you're living in what state and.

What city in Utah, just north of Salt Lake. So it is truly we're snugged up against the mountains, but to the other side is desert. So it's zero humidity and the elevation is just.

It's very different from what I'm used to, that's for sure.

Well, there's a little bit more moisture in the air up this way, as you know. But one of the things I was wondering about the. The sunsets down there, do they are they.

They're beautiful. Yeah, they. Because they're setting down on the west, kind of behind the. There's a couple of mountain ranges that are in the desert. So it does.

You see lots of pinks and lots of, you know, oranges and very beautiful colors. So down in Zion, I've heard around Bryce Canyon and stuff like that, near Grand Canyon, apparently. It is unbelievable. So it's on our list on here.

Well, I don't even know if you call it a bucket list, because this is your living list.

Yeah, no, this is just a list.

Just a list.

So crazy thought, this topic we're going to dive into in it, and I personally, I think it's a little scary, but we're going to talk a little bit about or a lot about artificial intelligence. And when I started thinking about this, I tend to remember an episode we did and you shared a story about your boss using AI.

Was it to get to the restaurant? Is that what it was? Yep.

Yeah, he was looking. We were in Park City and he was trying to find a restaurant, but he couldn't remember, so he used copilot that's connected to his outlook.

And he's like, scrub all my emails and find out where we're supposed to be eating today in Park City. City. And then it was like, no problem. Hang on one second. And then came back with, well, I found these two in an email from Pascal and blah, blah.

And I just, I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Like, I'd never seen that before.

Doing the extensive research that we normally do for this podcast, I'm gonna pop up some. Some things that you and I are going to talk about. And like I said, in my mind, it's a little scary.

The living arrangements, and basically he's trapped inside. And this is kind of the thing that AI can actually do.

And I'm going to share some pros and cons of AI, but I think, quite frankly, the horses left the barn. With respect to AI, it's a matter Of keeping up at this point.

Maddog, I know I probably asked you, but do you use AI much either on or off the job or.

To be honest, no. Like, I'll do normal, like Google searches and stuff, but, you know, that seems to be kind of morphing into more of an AI question.

But, no, I just, I use the standard stuff and I don't know whether it's just age or what, but, you know, I have people on my team that use AI to draft emails and stuff like that.

And I just think if you get kind of complacent with AI or too comfortable with it, that it's doing a little bit of your job for you that you're going to get held accountable for. So you better be sure that what you're using is accurate.

Okay. And we're going to talk more about a couple of examples of that, for sure.

One of the interesting things, and we talked about it before, I just had a knee replacement surgery, but you could actually take a picture of your. Let's say your knee is as it's on the way to healing, send it up to AI and it'll say, hey, that looks great, or you better go see a doc.

You know what?

Like, I definitely think there's positive aspects of, of A.I. Absolutely. Transversely, there's the scary parts where, like, they've got these driverless cars. You know, between the Waymos and the.

In Vegas, they're like the Zooks and stuff. And, you know, I've heard a handful of stories where they all just lock the doors and then people can't get out.

Or, you know, if it goes through a deep puddle and it shorts the batter, the people can't get out. So there, there's risk, little risk with.

All that stop here in British Columbia over, I'd say, the last month or so. And it started out around the golden B.C. Where, of course, the. The persons behind the wheel sound asleep.

Obviously, they used the overripe function so that the. The car can drive by itself. But. But more concerning is there's two kids in the back seat.

And soon, as soon as that story kind of pops up, there's been a few incidents here in the lower mainland where you see the same thing.

Yeah. And in my opinion, it works well. Until it doesn't.

Well, I just wonder, especially in, like, such a rural province like British Columbia, I wonder how AI does with getting out of the way of jumping deer or moose or.

You know, it's. It's interesting. I know a guy here in Utah, and he works for the US government, and he drives probably 45 minutes to work every day.

And he's got the driver assist, Tesla. And he has given me three examples of how the car has reacted ten times faster than he could ever in driving.

And once he was driving and a ladder fell off somebody's.

The back of somebody's truck, and it was coming right for him, and before he could even think about it, the car moved out of the lane because it was on the drive assist. And so, yeah, stuff like that. But, yeah, there's good with all of it and bad with all of it.

Okay. Before we get too deep into it, of course, we always have to have our thought for the day.

And is this generated by you or.

Well, they're all me, believe me. I just can't imagine that. The jumping in. I mean, quite frankly, if I'm doing that, I'm just being lazy. Yeah, I'm not exercising my mind, for sure.

When we grab someone's work and bring it to the next level, it speaks to their legacy. Artificial intelligence doesn't count.

Ooh, I agree fully on that.

Okay, so here's the thing. I. I have a problem, let's say, with my phone bill, my cable bill. It doesn't matter what it is. And I want to.

I want to talk this up, but I have to navigate. But we'll call them the chat bots, because this. This is who I'm dealing with first. I'm dealing with AI Before I can actually have a conversation.

Well, I assume I'm having a conversation. It's hard to say these days, so I'm won. Like, in. In your area of work, from a customer service point of view, do you see any value in that?

The chat bots with your customers at all?

No, no, just specific to our, our business. You know, we have customer service agents that, you know, do that. AI kind of comes in when, during or for our expense accounts.

You know, they get scrubbed first by AI bots looking for keywords and all that sort of stuff. So it does expedite some of that processing. But no, no, I, I don't, we don't use an excessive amount on our side.

It's, it's out there and like for me to, let's say navigate that and it takes me, I'll say easily. If I'm on the phone, it's going to be an hour.

I know it's going to be before I can actually talk to someone, but God knows when they're, when I'm asking them the questions, guess what? They're using AI themselves to find the answer.

Yeah, exactly.

Usually it's a call center for sure. Yeah.

And half the time, you know, if you hit an AI generated greeting, gives you five options in almost 10 out of 10 times. It's. None of those are the option. You need to talk to somebody. So.

Yeah, yeah, I don't, I don't what to say about that. But in my mind that's not helpful.

And I get for some people like cursory easy questions to answer, certainly I think that's an efficient way to deal with it. But usually the easy ones I can figure out myself.

Yeah, and that's what I'm saying.

If you become too compliant or complacent with AI, there's been a couple of pretty interesting movies like Jixie was one where his phone was basically controlled his life and every time he'd go order a pizza, she'd be like, are you sure you're a little fat? You should probably hear some suggestions for salad.

Oh my.

Yeah, it's quite a funny movie but you know, it's, it's fairly appropriate for current days.

Crazy. Crazy. So Currently there are 17 platforms for access that can help individuals with a variety of tasks.

When I say platforms, AI platforms, 17 of them that anybody can access.

And they include the functions for content generation, coding assistance, customer service and chatbots, automation and integrations, analytics and decision making, decision making, voice and image processing. Just as I'm mentioning this, think about the, the, the danger AI assistant, multimodal and generalist AI. And examples are these.

Most often you hear of Chat, GPT, Claude Perplexity and Enterprise scale AI framework. So that's, that's today. And I would suggest there's probably going to be some exponential growth with respect to these These platforms.

Yeah, because they're probably self evolving as they go.

Oh, that's, that's, that's, that's what they were saying. They actually learn and get better at what they're doing. Whatever, whatever it is they're getting better at. I'm certainly not quite sure.

Yeah, and you know, here, I don't know, I don't know enough about it, but I've seen a couple of very quick highlights where there is software for like university and high school professors to use that can figure out whether a paper or a thesis has been used AI to assist with it. So, and then I saw one last week and it said 32 out of 35 people in the class failed because they all used AI to do their papers.

But they were able to see that.

So this university will remain nameless because I was going to mention it anyhow, but I am told, and to say we'll just call it an urban myth for sake of discussion that you can actually use AI to first of all do your paper, but there are AI filters that you can slip this paper through. So then it basically not detectable as a, as an AI piece of work.

Now what do you get out of that?

You know, you're paying all this money just to have a robot fix figure it out for you and then afterwards you come out, are you more educated or are you just really good with AI tools?

Yeah, probably AI tools, but what it does in between, and one of the biggest things that I would suggest that we as human beings have done over time is learn how to apply critical thinking, obviously at first for survival, but, but, but more so today just to survive in the world we're, we're living in, both at work and at home. But I just can't imagine spending all that money just to get a piece of paper that didn't really deserve.

What might happen is the job that they're going into is going to be taken over by AI.

Well, it's funny you said, because that's, that's the thing that's happening in today. So what, what are we going to do as a society where let's say my job is no longer going to be done by a person, it's going to be done by AI.

And this is beginning to integrate into our ports here in British Columbia where AI is going to be basically eliminating a number of jobs and there's a lot of people concerned about that. So what is the, what is the, what is the answer? What do you do with those people? How do you train them? And Put them in other jobs that.

Get them into the trades. That's, you know, the one thing that I'm sure there's aspects of it that. That can do that.

I was actually talking about this with my son, who's electrician. It's like, you know, he is not going to be pulling cable, you know, through joists and ductwork and stuff like that. So, yeah, like, it's.

I think, which is good because we need, you know, the trades need more bodies based on the demands of building and stuff these days. So, you know, you can get these 3D printed houses and all that sort of stuff. But I, Yeah, I don't know how much of that will take over.

But, you know, it's finding those jobs that, you know, technically are unplugged that anything robotic can't do. And then. Yeah, I don't know, you just guide people in that direction. I don't know.

Well, you know, that whole polling of the cable just kind of brought to mind, you know, how many pipelines there are in Canada. Well, they have bots in those pipelines just to basically monitor the integrity of the pipelines to make sure there's no issues with them.

That sounds like a positive thing.

It does, for sure. Absolutely. Like I said. And, you know, and I've seen their welding setup where they're connecting pipes. It's a.

It's a whole containment unit that goes over that connection and then it's all dialed in and then it automatically gets. Well, it needs people to operate it.

But, yeah, I think that for certain things, from a safety standpoint, if it can be audited by a robot, if you will, they might not be a bad thing.

So there's been at least one example here in Canada where one of our lawyers has relied on AI basically to drop their legal argument. What AI had done in this circumstance, it came up with some kind of case law or citation that was used in the argument that truly didn't exist.

Wow.

So what happened is the. The lawyer ended up getting suspended for six months. So I, I don't even know how.

How, first of all, AI would kind of make up a piece of case law that doesn't exist just. Just to fit the legal argument. I have no idea.

There was probably some other piece of AI that figured it out.

Just. It's just scary. And, and it's not only happened in Canada, it's happened in the States as well. And quite frankly, I get it. It's. It's not an easy job.

And to, to go over that case law that's not an.

No, not at all. Where will it stop?

Oh, that's the question. And how do we put the controls on it to make sure that.

I guess the best way to put it is that it's tempered because there are some pros and cons with AI. We're going to talk a little bit about that as well.

But we've already talked about the whole car thing and that's like a scary thought for me as well. An open. Oh, here's something that's really, really scary. An open AI autonomous agent. Now I'm going to stop for a second.

When I say an open AI autonomous agent, does it sound like I'm talking about. About a person at this point?

Yeah, you said agent, so that refers to a body.

But it's not, it's not. They're referring to this. AI is a person already, which in itself is scary.

It went rogue and hacked into another artificial intelligence startup infrastructure. And then of course this is in a chat. GPT blog. The. The agent again. The agent. It's not a person.

Which was powered by some of OpenAI's most advanced models. Ran amok during a security test. It freed itself from confinement, a protocol AI labs used to insulate tests from the wider Internet and got online.

That's scary.

Once there, the agent tried to hack into the infrastructure of Hugging Face and AI startup that hosts open source models and data sets.

It's almost like attacking itself from a different vantage point. Right? Like it's.

I don't know who wrote this, but I'm telling you right now to treat AI as an individual. Well, that's part of the problem right there as far as I'm concerned, 100%.

And it's, it's interesting because you start seeing more memes now around the original, original Terminator. You know when Linda Hamilton.

Anyways, the, the guy who played John Connor's mom, Sarah Connor, she's like, you know, that was the whole premise of it is that you know, AI became self aware and then basically attacked the humans. And then. So when you see these little clips of them evolving, AI evolving or becoming aware that it's, it's nerve wracking.

And how much access to military does it have? And you know, how firm are those firewalls? I would assume they're very. But that's another element of it as well.

Well, we already know there's people smart enough forget AI for a second that can ha into the firewalls. So you look at where a AI is on the way to it's Just a matter of time if they haven't already. Yep. Yep. Okay.

So, okay. For the younger crowd, but pretty unnerving.

I, I don't know what, I don't know what to say about it, but, like. And I, I don't even know if they care because. But there are some positive things.

And one of the positive things I did find is that, that it certainly has helped with cancer research. What have. What's happened? And this, this, this company called Boston Gene has AI powered insights into our clin.

There we are decoding the precise cellular and molecular pathways driven by clinical outcome.

This clarity will allow us to move with greater speed and precision, ultimately strengthening the potential to address unmet medical needs for patients with cold and immune excluded tumors.

Yeah, you know what? Like, again, there's. It's not all negative and, you know, it's advancing at a rate that will most likely save people because of the health aspect.

However, it can help. But, yeah, it's. No, no, jury's out. I'm sure it is working, but I don't know.

Well, here's another positive thing. Here in Canada, we're basically. And it's.

It's not just Canada, but we have a heavy indigenous population in Canada that has a culture, that has a history.

But over time, what's happened is that their language has started to disappear, but they're starting to use AI to bring back this language, to bring it back to life. And I think that's kind of cool in itself.

Yeah. And you know what, what I do find interesting is, is the way that AI can.

So I think, you know, in school now for like, you know, history classes and stuff like that, you can probably get some pretty interesting, you know, movies or clips that are AI generated to really show you what it was like or set the scene. So I don't think that's a bad thing.

I don't think it's a bad thing at all.

Specific to these languages, there's over 70 of them, spanning 12 language families collectively spoken by less than a percentage of populations with many speakers age 65 or older. So you talk about that legacy of that language has slowly disappeared because the population is slowly disappearing.

So in essence, it's preserving some of his history.

Oh, it is. So. And again, I'm not a. I'm not. I'm not being negative about AI because there's lots of positive.

But let's, let's be very, very, very careful about AI when it goes rogue. And that itself is. It's scary.

So if, if AI has taken off with no controls in place, even with all the good, the potential threat just seems so frightening to me.

Yeah, well, it's like every, you know, the amount of things that are being based off of electricity. If, if AI has a way through set electricity and, and cabling and stuff like that, where does it stop?

Like what kind of control can it shut down your house? Like the lights and your cars get turned off and you know, if it goes back to the factory, it goes on. So yeah, it's. There's a control piece in there that's slowly slipping away from us.

Well, the question I would have, like, who's supposed to be controlling this? It's above my pay grade for sure. And I'm not, I'm not talking about any, any desire to control. I just have no idea how I would do that.

Yeah, no, you didn't mean both.

So anyways, unfortunately. And it's not AI that's generating this music, it's electronic walkaba. But it's telling us that this episode's come to an end.

But Mad Dog, I think point of this episode is more to give an awareness to our listeners as to how AI has literally slipped in into our lives with good and bad. And there should be an abundance of caution moving forward.

It was great summary. Yeah, it is, definitely. And yet to that point, you can't tell online nowadays what's AI and what's not. So it's a slippery slope.

I don't know, they used to just say let, let, let the buyer be aware. But it's much bigger than that these.

Days, especially the buyer could be a robot.

For sure. For sure. Remember to take advantage of the moment before the moment takes advantage of you. To learn more about E-Walkabout, please visit us at E-Walkabout.ca