One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change, and rapid evolution of new technologies — is that we as humanity have lost our elders. We begin to see older generations as detached from the current world of innovation, and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feels so different from our own.
Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors, when we look to the future, pretty much the only thing we’re sure of is that it’s not going to look like the past, or even the present.
But we still yearn for some sage advice, at least I know I do. And wouldn’t it be wonderful if we did have someone who could help us navigate a time of tremendous, accelerating change?
That’s why I was so excited to talk to Kevin Kelly.
Kevin is perhaps the closest thing Silicon Valley has to such a sage. Someone who not only witnessed the tremendous rise of digital technology, but thought about it deeply as it was happening and developed models for thinking about it.
In 1993, Kevin co-founded the groundbreaking Wired magazine, and served as its Executive Editor for its first seven years. In 1994, he wrote Out of Control, the classic book on decentralized emergent systems. In 2010 he published What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology and the complex, almost organic systems that drive it, and in 2017 he published The Inevitable, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller about the inevitable trends driving technology.
His latest book Excellent Advice for Living: Wisdom I Wish I'd Known Earlier, is an offering of 450 useful aphorisms or principles for living he’s devised over his life amidst the changes.
EPISODE SUMMARY
In this conversation we talk about:
- How did DIY culture shape Kevin's worldview from a young age?
- What inspired Kevin to co-found Wired magazine?
- Why does Kevin claim technology has a will of its own?
- What is his take on AI advances of today?
- Why did he decide to write a book of pithy life advice?
- What is some of Kevin's most counterintuitive advice around decision making and change?
- How can we live fully before our time is up?
My favorite piece of advice in the episode is about choosing a path of change. Without giving away the content, I’ll just say I’ve brought it up multiple times in conversation with friends about their dilemmas, and when considering my own life decisions.
TIMESTAMP CHAPTERS
These timestaps are AI-generated and could prove inaccurate. (Please let us know if you find any issues here: podcast@remakelabs.com )
- Early Making and DIY Culture (00:08:17 - 00:10:16)
- The Origins of Wired Magazine (00:15:18 - 00:17:30)
- Technology's Inherent Tendencies (00:19:32 - 00:22:05)
- AI as Future Partners (00:25:11 - 00:27:02)
- Truth and AI (00:28:17 - 00:31:20)
- Advice for Living Wisdom (00:32:14 - 00:36:39)
- Giving and Getting (00:36:59 - 00:38:16)
- Learning vs "Can't Do" (00:38:57 - 00:39:42)
- Choosing Change (00:40:55 - 00:41:57)
- Embodying Your Full Potential (00:42:24 - 00:44:45)
EPISODE LINKS
-
Kevin Kelly's Links:
- Website: https://kk.org/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/kevin2kelly
- Organizations: https://kk.org/cooltools/
-
Books, Articles, and Resources Mentioned:
- Wired Magazine: https://www.wired.com/
- Out of Control by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/out-of-control/
- What Technology Wants by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/what-technology-wants/
- The Inevitable by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/the-inevitable/
- Excellent Advice for Living by Kevin Kelly: https://kk.org/books/excellent-advice-for-living/
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[00:00:00] I want to talk about it at the level of a, the will of a plant that wants and seeks
[00:00:07] out light.
[00:00:08] It kind of moves in the direction of light.
[00:00:11] So it's not conscious but there is a system's tendency.
[00:00:16] It's a system is built to favor light to favor a direction.
[00:00:22] And so what I'm saying about the tech name is that it's a system of technology and the
[00:00:26] tech name like any system anywhere biological or artificial has tendencies and it has built
[00:00:32] in strange attractors they call it.
[00:00:35] That will keep your journey to that are like physical, the just the natural things
[00:00:41] and are not conscious but the tech name has tendencies.
[00:00:45] I'm Eran Dror and this is Remake a podcast about design, systems and society.
[00:00:52] In each episode I talk to someone who's trying to change our lives for the better in some
[00:00:57] meaningful way.
[00:00:58] Whether through a new product, new venture or new way of looking at the world and I try
[00:01:04] to understand how they came to it what makes them tick and what we can learn from them.
[00:01:10] One of the most tragic aspects of the accelerating pace of change and rapid evolution of new
[00:01:15] technologies is that we as humanity have lost our elders.
[00:01:22] We begin to see the older generations as detached from the current world of innovation
[00:01:27] and have to discount advice and experiences gained in an age that feel so different from
[00:01:33] our own.
[00:01:35] Whereas prior generations could count on a world pretty similar to that of their ancestors.
[00:01:40] When we look to the future, pretty much the only thing we're sure of is that it's not
[00:01:45] going to look like the past or even the present.
[00:01:49] But we still yearn for some sage advice.
[00:01:53] At least I know I do.
[00:01:55] And wouldn't it be wonderful if we did have someone who could help us navigate a time
[00:01:59] of tremendous accelerating change?
[00:02:02] That's why I was excited to talk to Kevin Kelly.
[00:02:07] Kevin is perhaps the closest thing Silicon Valley has to such a sage.
[00:02:12] Someone who not only witnessed a tremendous rise of digital technology but thought about
[00:02:16] it deeply as it was happening and developed models for thinking about it.
[00:02:21] In 1993, Kevin co-founded the groundbreaking Wired magazine and served as its executive
[00:02:27] editor for its first seven years.
[00:02:30] In 1994, he wrote out of control the classic book on decentralized the emerging systems.
[00:02:38] In 2010, he published What Technology Wants, a robust theory of technology and the complex
[00:02:44] almost organic systems to drive it.
[00:02:48] And in 2017, he published a inevitable and New York Times and Wall Street Journal best
[00:02:53] seller about the inevitable trends driving technology.
[00:02:58] His latest book, Excellent Advice for Living, wisdom I wish I'd known earlier is an offering
[00:03:03] of 450 useful aphorisms or principles for living.
[00:03:07] He's devised over his life amidst the changes.
[00:03:12] We talk about how DIY culture shaped Kevin's worldview from a young age.
[00:03:18] What inspired Kevin to co-found Wired magazine?
[00:03:21] Why does Kevin claim technology has a sort of will of its own?
[00:03:27] What is his take on AI advances of today?
[00:03:31] What is some of Kevin's most counterintuitive advice around decision making and change?
[00:03:36] And how can we live fully before our time is up?
[00:03:41] My favorite piece of advice in the episode is about choosing a path of change.
[00:03:46] Without giving away the content, I'll just say I've brought up multiple times in conversations
[00:03:51] with friends about their dilemmas and when considering my own life decisions.
[00:03:57] This conversation is one of a dozen or so weekly conversations we already have lined up
[00:04:01] for you with designers, thinkers, makers, authors and entrepreneurs who are working to
[00:04:06] change our world for the better.
[00:04:09] So follow this podcast on your favorite podcast app or head over to remakepod.org to subscribe.
[00:04:16] And now let's jump right in with Kevin Kelly.
[00:04:20] Alright, I'm sitting here with Kevin Kelly.
[00:04:28] Kevin, welcome to the podcast.
[00:04:31] My pleasure.
[00:04:32] I'm glad to be here.
[00:04:33] Thank you for inviting me.
[00:04:34] So the first thing I like to do is connect us with the present moment.
[00:04:39] And so my first question is going to be what's it like to be Kevin Kelly in the world today?
[00:04:45] What's your daily life look like?
[00:04:46] What keeps you occupied?
[00:04:47] What's on your mind?
[00:04:48] Well, of course I've never been anywhere else.
[00:04:50] I don't really know how it compares but I have engineered my life basically to try and
[00:04:58] spend as much time as I can trying to do the things that only I can do.
[00:05:06] That's a really high bar and most of the time I'm not doing things that only I can do
[00:05:13] but I try to optimize those.
[00:05:16] A lot of the time that I'm doing things that I enjoy doing, then I'm good at doing but
[00:05:23] probably someone else could do too.
[00:05:25] So I do a piece of art every day.
[00:05:28] That's something that only I can do, meaning the art that I do.
[00:05:32] I try to write pretty often and when I do I try to write in a way that's just me, meaning
[00:05:40] that no one else is going to write it like that.
[00:05:43] To say it's sentence, that nobody else has ever said before, that's a goal.
[00:05:47] And at the same time I'm doing the daily stuff.
[00:05:50] Making out the garbage and dealing with leaks in the roof, not all those kinds of things
[00:05:56] which is I think I estimate easily 20% maybe more.
[00:06:02] Maybe 30% of my time is just maintenance, just responding to email, just doing all the
[00:06:07] things that have to be done.
[00:06:09] And the other good thing is that by a large every day is different.
[00:06:14] I don't really have that many routines and I'm a project based person so I have a bunch
[00:06:20] of projects that I'm working on.
[00:06:22] Sometimes they may be, it's expensive products, sometimes they may be a five-year project.
[00:06:26] I mean five years that it just takes before they're completely done.
[00:06:30] That mix of different durations and different time spans means that every day is a little
[00:06:39] different than the day before which is for me how I like it.
[00:06:44] I know some people really like routines but I'm not a routine person.
[00:06:48] Yeah, interesting.
[00:06:50] Is there anything that only you can do that you really hate doing?
[00:06:54] Oh, yeah so I eliminate those.
[00:06:58] Okay, so it's like, yeah, I outsource all to the other things that only I can do is email.
[00:07:05] I don't like doing no, that's almost that's a good question.
[00:07:09] I'm giving it a fair thought.
[00:07:12] No, I don't think there is and I don't think there would be
[00:07:18] is my other answer.
[00:07:19] I think that when you're doing things only you can do it feels very natural, it feels
[00:07:24] very good.
[00:07:25] There may be things that you don't want to spend all your life doing but here's the thing
[00:07:30] and this is one of the bits of advice from my book excellent advice for living which is
[00:07:34] that I have a little bit of a sort of a disagreement with the productivity people
[00:07:42] like David Allen which is that I think instead of trying to get through all the things
[00:07:49] that you have to do in a day faster, being more productive.
[00:07:54] I think it's much better to try and find things that you want to work on and ever stop
[00:07:59] working on.
[00:08:01] That's a good life.
[00:08:03] So to take us through the journey my question to you is what's something you learned
[00:08:10] in childhood or early in life that still drives our guides what you do today?
[00:08:16] Yeah.
[00:08:18] From a very early age I was what we now call a maker although I didn't have that term
[00:08:24] and it became early, do it yourself or the thing that kind of propelled me through life
[00:08:31] after high school was the whole earth catalog which was a Bible for do it yourself first.
[00:08:36] It was the internet before there was an internet and all through what's it going to that
[00:08:41] track I continued to make things and still am a maker every day today and now there's
[00:08:47] a term but I've been doing all my life and so this kind of a sense of the pleasure very
[00:08:53] early on of making things and doing it myself, of that kind of making me own version learning
[00:08:59] how to do something being a lifelong learner, solving the puzzle when you're trying to
[00:09:04] make something yourself and that kind of empowerment that you get by doing it yourself.
[00:09:10] So I built a house with a friend from scratch cutting down the trees and whatnot and I did
[00:09:18] that once but I'm not going to do it again, I'm not going to build a house again because
[00:09:24] I did it and I realized that my I can hire out those professionals to do it better but
[00:09:33] I did it once and I know enough about it and I know enough to help me hire it out.
[00:09:42] And it's not as if I have to do everything myself but just that having done it myself
[00:09:46] and being a maker gives me a power to make other things happen because I have had the experience.
[00:09:56] So from very early on all I'm saying is that I have been, I've learned the benefits of learning
[00:10:05] how to learn, learning new things, making things, doing it yourself.
[00:10:10] Not necessarily to do it myself but to know how to do it and then have to win over to it.
[00:10:16] Yeah, it's amazing and so for people my age you know what we know about the whole Earth
[00:10:22] catalog comes from Steve Jobs commencement address.
[00:10:27] I believe it was at Stanford where he said where he quotes the last, the last one stay hungry
[00:10:32] stay foolish.
[00:10:33] What didn't mean to you?
[00:10:35] Well as I said, the whole of Cala was started by Stuart Brand in 1969 just as I was graduating
[00:10:41] from high school and I saw when in 1970 I think it was, and it was like oh my gosh this
[00:10:48] is for me, this is talking to me.
[00:10:50] This is just everything about this is me but I was a kid, high school kid in New Jersey
[00:10:57] and I knew nothing.
[00:10:58] I desperately wanted to contribute because it was a user generated thing even though Stuart
[00:11:04] was at the helm, it was like the Internet.
[00:11:08] He would take user generated content people would submit things and he would say yes or
[00:11:12] no one would go in and so the whole thing was crowdsourced.
[00:11:17] And I desperately wanted to contribute and be part of it but I knew nothing.
[00:11:22] I just didn't know anything, I didn't know where to find out anything.
[00:11:26] So it was, so I kept reading as a reader and it was many years before I had something
[00:11:32] to contribute and in between that what I decided to do is to travel cheaply and remotely
[00:11:40] and intensely in Asia primarily.
[00:11:44] And so when I came back a decade later I was like the expert in traveling on a budget
[00:11:51] in Asia and I started to for the whole earth catalog to review travel books and other
[00:11:58] stuff and I finally had something to contribute and then once I got in I had more and more
[00:12:03] to say and learn more and more and so I became eventually higher to be one of the editors
[00:12:07] and then eventually I went up running the thing, being the publisher.
[00:12:11] And that perspective that Stuart had of two things that were remarkable.
[00:12:17] One was the kind of the do-it-yourself and here's the information at a time when there
[00:12:21] was no information so there was nowhere to go if you wanted to find out how to repair
[00:12:26] your own VW Beetle or if you wanted to build a house out of Straubail or if you wanted
[00:12:31] to do homeschooling or if you wanted to travel the world cheaply.
[00:12:36] And so there was no internet that the stuff wasn't at your local bookstore, it wasn't
[00:12:42] in your local library, it was nowhere except in a couple of little self published books
[00:12:47] and the whole earth catalog told you where to find those books.
[00:12:51] And this idea of being an amateur being informed and sharing information we'd recognize
[00:13:01] it now because it's blogs.
[00:13:04] Basically we were running blogs, blog posts of people and Wikipedia and so that was the
[00:13:11] one genius that Stuart had of the kind of access to tools and information as tool.
[00:13:19] The second thing that he introduced me too that I swallow was a whole systems approach.
[00:13:27] He was one of the very first people to think about talking about cybernetics
[00:13:31] in a real way and then bring in this idea of whole systems as a perspective because
[00:13:37] in the original whole earth catalog, in addition to nomadic travel and dwelling and crafts
[00:13:45] and ghouling and learning there was a section called understanding whole systems.
[00:13:51] And that was very profound because it, how I got involved in technology was this kind
[00:13:58] of whole systems view when we first started to do the telecommunications and understanding
[00:14:04] them as systems and understanding life and robotics and technology as a system.
[00:14:10] So that system's perspective was very important for me and it came from the whole earth catalog.
[00:14:16] Yeah, that's amazing.
[00:14:19] I put the tagline on the podcast, design systems and society because I think systems are
[00:14:26] in the core of everything we care about.
[00:14:28] And so in 1993, I believe you found it wired.
[00:14:33] I just want to say something about what wired meant to me.
[00:14:36] So I was a kid in Israel in my early teens and why it came out and we had access to it
[00:14:44] and it just opened a whole world of possibility.
[00:14:48] Israel is a pretty rigid country at the time.
[00:14:51] This was before a bean was assassinated but it's this very kind of nationalistic, rigid
[00:14:57] a little bit.
[00:14:58] It was before the Haikta boom and wired coming in and showing a different reality.
[00:15:03] A reality where anything is possible or hackers were doing incredible things and computing
[00:15:07] in biology and why have you and every issue was just a pleasure.
[00:15:12] They're so rich and thick.
[00:15:14] And so what was the idea behind wired?
[00:15:19] You started in how do you see that journey now?
[00:15:23] Yeah, one of the things just be clear.
[00:15:24] I was one of several co-founders and the primary people who were really driving it was a couple
[00:15:31] Louis Rosetta and Jamie Kaff and there were a couple other editors including John Battelle
[00:15:36] who were in the first crew, the first cycle which was almost exactly 30 years ago in
[00:15:42] this month.
[00:15:43] So it's been 30 years.
[00:15:45] And the original idea, there were a couple.
[00:15:49] The premise was to report on this digital revolution that was just beginning that I don't
[00:15:55] even live in for 10 years which is one of the reasons why we didn't talk a lot about
[00:15:59] the internet in the beginning because I was like I'm bored.
[00:16:01] I've been talking about this for 10 years already but it was just at the beginning of
[00:16:05] the web and that was really what kind of what propelled it.
[00:16:07] The second thing was Louis had this mandate which was the reason he sold me when he told
[00:16:12] me this was he had signed me up.
[00:16:13] I wanted to be part of this.
[00:16:14] He says, I want to make a magazine that feels like it's been mailed back from the future.
[00:16:21] It was written in the future and you're mailing it back so you were talking about you
[00:16:25] had language that you weren't really explaining.
[00:16:28] There was this feeling that had been mailed back from the future and I said yeah, sign me
[00:16:32] up.
[00:16:33] I'm on.
[00:16:34] I'm going to make that.
[00:16:35] And then we expanded it to the thing which was my term which was the future is kind of
[00:16:42] erupting unevenly.
[00:16:44] This was taking off at Gibson unevenly around the world and we were going to report on these
[00:16:49] eruptions as they happened in different places.
[00:16:53] As the future erupted here and there we were going to there and that was a premise to
[00:16:58] really be future focused and not so much tech but this future focused.
[00:17:05] The third element was maybe my main contribution was this radical optimism where we were
[00:17:15] acknowledging problems but the basic idea was other people are going to report on those
[00:17:19] we don't need to report on it.
[00:17:20] What we want to report on is a vision of the future that we want to go to and that's
[00:17:25] going to be more likely and it's probably what's where they want.
[00:17:29] It's more distinctive.
[00:17:30] There's less people doing it and nobody doing it.
[00:17:34] And so that kind of reporting on this emerging digital thing that we said look right now it's
[00:17:41] marginal but it's going to be mainstream.
[00:17:43] That was the belief that people laughed at.
[00:17:46] It was going to be mainstreamed as digital stuff.
[00:17:48] Secondly, we were going to report on the future and thirdly, we were going to be optimistic.
[00:17:54] So that was a sort of ingredients for the soup.
[00:17:59] No, I love that.
[00:18:01] There's really only two things in my life at the time that had that sense of optimism and
[00:18:07] I think it's Star Trek and Wired.
[00:18:11] And both of these things are still very precious because I think in order to keep up an optimistic
[00:18:21] mindset you have to see an example of optimism and a sense of kind of can-do which is rare
[00:18:27] in the world.
[00:18:28] And so thank you for that.
[00:18:31] You wrote too many books for us to really cover efficiently today and I want to spend
[00:18:35] most of our time on your latest book but I want to touch on a couple along the way.
[00:18:51] We're listening to Remake, a podcast about design systems and society.
[00:18:58] If you're listening on a podcast app you already know how to follow podcasts.
[00:19:04] So please follow this one.
[00:19:11] If you're listening in a browser just go to remakepod.org to find links to all the major podcast
[00:19:18] players where you can follow our show.
[00:19:33] In what technology wants, you described the concept of the technium and the concept of
[00:19:41] technology having a will of itself and I actually cited that in my thesis which was about
[00:19:47] AI safety and where are we going.
[00:19:50] And it's a really interesting radical concept that today starts to feel like maybe more
[00:19:58] self-evident but how did you come to this idea that technology has a will of itself,
[00:20:04] that it's not necessary.
[00:20:05] It's not our will that's determining the progress.
[00:20:09] So I need to just dial back a little bit the will of its own which is a very loaded
[00:20:14] word or mainly think that this is some kind of conscious will but I want to talk about
[00:20:20] it at the level of a plant that wants and seeks out light.
[00:20:28] It kind of moves in the direction of light so it's not conscious but there is a system's
[00:20:35] tendency it's a system is built to favor light to favor direction.
[00:20:42] And so what I'm saying about the technium is that it's a system of technology, it's
[00:20:46] not just a piece of technology it's the fact that to make a hammer you need to have
[00:20:51] a saw to make the handle to make the saw you need to have a handle to make the blade
[00:20:58] and so there's a codependency of all the technology we have today whereas for any one
[00:21:04] thing to make this pen requires machines, requires generators electricity requires plumbing
[00:21:11] to some extent requires chemicals to make the it's a very complicated thing.
[00:21:16] You and I for all our genius could never make this thing like this by ourselves we need
[00:21:24] to have a system so there's a system and I call that system the technium and the technium
[00:21:29] like any system anywhere biological or artificial has tendencies and it has built in strange
[00:21:36] attractors they call it that will keep your journey to that are like physical the
[00:21:41] just the natural things and those tendencies are not conscious but they're deeply
[00:21:49] baited in and I'm saying that the technium has tendencies and I got the idea from the
[00:21:55] critics of technology who say look there's tendencies in these systems they're not
[00:22:02] neutral they're not like they don't do anything you say they'll the favor the tend to do some
[00:22:08] things and other things and I'm saying yes that's absolutely correct that is true that
[00:22:13] there's there are tendencies and urgencies and biases that these systems tend to go towards
[00:22:23] but I say I differ from the critics and I said these tendencies are actually good they're
[00:22:27] take good things they want to move towards from generalization to specialization that's one
[00:22:33] tendency that you know we make there's a camera a general purpose camera then we make specialized
[00:22:39] versions of them that the general drift over time is that things specialize over time over time
[00:22:45] technologies become co-dependent on the mutualistic I call it so that some technology will never ever
[00:22:53] be touched by human it'll only be touched by other technologies around it
[00:22:58] and so we have a sort of sense of technologies need other technologies just like life needs
[00:23:03] other life and so that mutualism is something else that we see tendency running through it we see
[00:23:09] complexity things becoming more complex over time so those are examples of the tendencies
[00:23:17] in technology and what I'm saying about our own use of it is that we want to try to identify
[00:23:23] those tendencies and that we don't want to fight against them you want to work with them
[00:23:29] and one of the examples of that would be the tendency of digital technology the copy things
[00:23:36] it's built into the very nature of digital stuff to be replicated perfectly
[00:23:43] easily and so we have systems set up and they will copy things all the time right now we're being
[00:23:50] copied the things copying going through the wires going through the run of world going on we're
[00:23:55] making copies of this all the time and then if we try to make a system to prevent that from being
[00:24:03] copied copy protection that's going again the grain of what the technology wants and so
[00:24:12] what I preach is let's listen to what the technology wants and then work with it
[00:24:17] and then we come up to ideal AI and so AI is a system the very complicated system the most
[00:24:25] powerful system we've made what are its natural inherent
[00:24:30] tendencies that we're going to see on any planet where this technology is made it's going to
[00:24:33] it's not it's not about us it's about the fact that these technologies are physical and have
[00:24:39] physical things and so they're going to have biases and what are the biases in technology
[00:24:45] in AI and so there are biases and we're figuring it was out and it's not that they're wrong it's
[00:24:51] just that we have to work with them and in your previous book they inevitable name these
[00:24:58] different trends and cognizing is one of the key ones and you see a world where AI is
[00:25:07] in everything it's like electricity it powers everything it brings right right things alive
[00:25:13] it's this is now more timely than you know I guess it's a trend since the I think the 80s
[00:25:20] texty more and more capabilities but right now it's on everybody's mind because there's some amazing
[00:25:27] examples of this at least on the surface they seem really amazing with chat GPT and now
[00:25:33] and now Google is releasing their version and and so have you updated your view or at least for
[00:25:42] the kind of the next few years do you have an opinion of what we're going to see soon
[00:25:49] and how did that connect to the kind of cognizing trend that you're seeing
[00:25:53] yeah so I would say to one extent yeah this has been long anticipated and I would say one of
[00:26:01] the things I've been trying to emphasize the last five 10 years maybe is this idea that the best
[00:26:10] model for AI that we should have in our heads is that of a partner or even an intern for that matter
[00:26:17] just to someone who's something that's working with us the half that they have their own
[00:26:22] idiosyncricities and they're what I call dumb smart meaning they're incredibly smart in one
[00:26:28] area and completely I can idiot in another okay and so it's frustrating at times but this is
[00:26:33] the idea that there is this these partners or interns that are working with us and then we have
[00:26:39] to learn to work with us and this is the prompt tours and the image generators which is
[00:26:45] that some people are really good and they're good because they spent 10,000 hours already whispering
[00:26:50] to the AI and understanding how the AI's and how the different AI's working that's the second
[00:26:56] point I want to make about this is that I always insist that we talk about these as the plural
[00:27:00] AI's there's not just the AI's one thing is thousands of different species of AI all with their
[00:27:07] own characters and qualities and abilities and some of them we're going to be that much smarter than
[00:27:13] a grasshopper and that's all they need to be and others are going to be very complicated
[00:27:19] and it's a liability to have consciousness so we're not going to put consciousness in most of
[00:27:24] these because that's a liability we don't want we want them to focus on what they're doing
[00:27:29] we don't want them to be self-like to so that's this so those two two points are
[00:27:35] ongoing points but the new idea you're actually would have changed my the new idea that I had not
[00:27:42] thought about that the GPT barred and all these others are suggesting is that there's going to be a
[00:27:53] very we're being confronted in having a challenge and have to make progress in our understanding of
[00:27:59] truth itself how do we come how do we know whether something is true or not how do we decide individually
[00:28:07] and as a society what to give that banner of truth and how do we trust what's true and it's not
[00:28:18] just about the political polarization it's way beyond it it's this idea of when the chat says something
[00:28:26] that the capital of Portugal is Lisbon okay why should we trust it and how
[00:28:39] will we get to the point that we're trusting it and so what does the AI have to do
[00:28:45] hmm they able to earn our trust about being truthful and that's a big project that's
[00:28:53] and we haven't really insisted on that before like we have insisted oh because in your time says
[00:29:01] it's true and then they have a reputation a good reputation then we can say okay if they say it
[00:29:09] then I can believe it but what do we need from a machine to believe the machine so I recently
[00:29:18] profanity that right now we're choosing Wikipedia to judge whether the AI's are correct
[00:29:28] hello that's crazy but I'm saying 15 years is going to flip and we're going to be using AI
[00:29:34] to decide whether Wikipedia is correct and I think part of what we have to do with the AI is that
[00:29:40] they're going to need to go back to sources they're going to have to like read the source then read
[00:29:46] the source then read the sources sources I think just like how many down do they need to go so
[00:29:52] these are these kind of questions that we haven't really thought about before that we're going to
[00:29:57] need to think about now yeah I think that's fascinating and there's two areas that I'm a little bit
[00:30:03] familiar with that actually do this systematically one is history which I studied where historians
[00:30:10] are constantly looking at sources and trying to determine the truth from right right often conflicting
[00:30:15] sources and intelligence the world of intelligence is also lots of rumors lots of documents lots of
[00:30:23] sources how do you evaluate them and it would be interesting to see if there's anything that can be
[00:30:30] learned from how they do it that's you make a really good point I had to thought about that both
[00:30:35] the historians and the intelligent officers that that's their job yeah it would be interesting to
[00:30:42] see if there are they've ever seen is what is like a theory as systems of intelligence gathering
[00:30:47] that is like the other models are there yeah schools of thought is there is the super forecasters
[00:30:54] Philip Tetlock's work on people trying to forecast things and they've done these very systematic
[00:31:01] studies but I have to yeah that's a really good Phil Tetlock to see if they've looked at
[00:31:08] systems of analysts coming to truth yeah so anyway I think we're headed into this as a frontier
[00:31:15] and this was not predicted certain opportunity by me that this kind of this epistemological
[00:31:23] challenge is going to be a big thing we're going to be dealing with in the next decade
[00:31:29] yeah I think I think it's one of the most fascinating challenges and also one where if we solve
[00:31:35] it for AI that's going to make a huge difference for humanity because we've never had a truth engine
[00:31:42] before and so I wanted to talk about your recent book excellent advice for living with them I wish
[00:31:51] I'd known earlier and I'll just say it's a unique structure for you and in general and it contains
[00:31:57] 450 bits of advice life advice so how did that book come about why did you format it that way
[00:32:06] and what are some tidbits that you're especially or not tidbits but what are some bits of advice
[00:32:13] that you're especially the short story was um I think that really a very big advice give her even
[00:32:20] in my family I have three kids this is one of my bits of advice that I did not give which is that
[00:32:26] I think it's much more powerful to to rear and train through doing rather than saying so very early
[00:32:36] from my own experience said I'm learning more from what my parents do than what they say and so I
[00:32:42] assume that my kids were not paying attention to anything I said that they were paying attention
[00:32:46] to what we did how we were and so I didn't really later on very much advice with the kids growing up
[00:32:55] but I really did feel that there was things that I'm 70 71 that there were things that took me a
[00:33:02] long time to to understand that I wished I'd known earlier and so I should write these down
[00:33:08] say them there's another bit of advice in the book which says yes it's like um we it's not really
[00:33:17] we don't need to say it usually you do need to say it basically hmm I just don't need to be said
[00:33:23] need to be said and so I decided to write them down as a few other ideas for my son who's now
[00:33:29] a adult and you about 25 and when I did it was fun I found I could do I did 60 of them on my
[00:33:36] 60th birthday and I did the Irish thing of giving away something on your birthday give presents you
[00:33:41] don't get presents and I shared it online and among friends and it was a big hit people really liked
[00:33:47] it so at the next year next birthday decided to do more and then I did more and I found out that I
[00:33:54] had more to say and then in the end I um people really found a valuable that I wanted something
[00:34:00] handy to hand to them to a young person in the form and available and so I said this would work
[00:34:06] so what you get are little tweets they're very their tiny little sentences and most of my energy was
[00:34:14] spent in trying to reduce whole volumes whole essays whole books of advice into one tweet
[00:34:25] one little proverb like a biblical proverb like a maximum like an adage or a little lesson take
[00:34:31] a less lesson and reduce it to one sentence that you could remember and I do that because I was
[00:34:36] using these I was I would recall these myself and I found that you get school to have something in
[00:34:43] my head to repeat to myself an example of that would be if you know you owe something and you can't
[00:34:48] find it in your when you eventually do find it don't put it back where you found a bit put it back
[00:34:53] where you first looked for does it great yeah I always tell myself that and so having that a little
[00:35:00] bit reduced is helpful or if there's an argument or contentious issue that has two sides try to find
[00:35:07] the third side right after like there's always going to be a third side and the third side of the
[00:35:12] thing that kind of breaks it apart and they can pick up the book here and I'm just going to open
[00:35:15] up at random and here's the first thing I read and which I repeat to myself to succeed get other
[00:35:23] people to pay you to become wealthy help other people to succeed okay your behavior not your opinions
[00:35:30] will change the world that's what we're saying earlier to combat an adversary become their friend
[00:35:37] people can't remember where the three points from the speech which is absolutely true so just
[00:35:41] don't have more than three points in the if your goal does not have a schedule it's just a dream
[00:35:48] don't treat people as bad as they are treat them as good as you are
[00:35:53] well anyway there's just we're under the Egyptia these but things not need to be perfect
[00:36:00] to be wonderful especially weddings things don't need to be perfect to be beautiful and
[00:36:06] wonderful so you can have you don't you're wedding doesn't have to be perfect okay there's practical
[00:36:11] stuff too like for instance even the tropics it gets colder at night than you think
[00:36:16] the pack warmly it's my only experience throughout the world doesn't matter how hard it is you
[00:36:21] can get cool at night so that's what the book is about is career advice financial advice buying
[00:36:28] whole all the kind of stuff and trying to make it into a memorable format that would be practical
[00:36:37] and easy to recall nice so I try to down some some of these thoughts in the book and I'd love
[00:36:46] to read them out to you and see if you can elaborate quickly and then I have one final closing
[00:36:51] question and you write perhaps the most counterintuitive truth of the universe is that the more you give
[00:36:57] the more you get understanding this is the beginning of wisdom yeah it's weird it's very strange
[00:37:07] that the way to well is by giving stuff away and this has even practical implications which was
[00:37:20] in my one of my second books called The New Rules and New Economy which was Follow the Free
[00:37:25] which was that free was this viable business strategy that people at first thought it was ridiculous
[00:37:34] but here it is today and we're still using Google search for free but the idea was the default
[00:37:43] of humans it's a different different take it saying the defaults of humans is that they are good
[00:37:49] and are altruist and want to share and in fact our civilization is based and built on the fact
[00:37:56] that the default is cooperation and collaboration sharing of things and that that's how we've
[00:38:05] gotten as far as we've gotten it's to assume for the most part that people are going to behave well
[00:38:12] and that you can give stuff away and then come back and so that's something that's so
[00:38:19] here's the thing you can count on it that it's so reliable that you can count on it's cleared
[00:38:26] and in terms of trusting others I say that the getting cheated occasionally because you trusted someone
[00:38:33] is a small price it's small tax for getting the best out of everybody because they're going to
[00:38:39] treat you so well because you trusted them so yeah can you try to get cheated whatever but that's
[00:38:44] just a little tax for getting great having a civilization yeah you write about the difference between
[00:38:53] I can't do something and I'm learning to do something yeah yeah so I can't swim is embarrassing
[00:38:59] or I can't ride a bicycle or I can't do calculus or probability whatever it is
[00:39:06] and it's sort of it's a hurdle it's blockage it's a preventing growth but if you say I'm learning
[00:39:14] how to swim from learning how to do calculus if I'm learning how to ride a bicycle or to ski then
[00:39:24] first of all it's not embarrassing and secondly it's commendable and admirable and thirdly it'll help
[00:39:32] you get going in that direction and the difference between I get to it and I'm trying is a tiny little
[00:39:40] baby step yeah when I told people I was as learning to play the violin during covid they were like oh
[00:39:47] but the violin is such a hard instrument how could you your age play the violin it's not hard to
[00:39:54] play the violin badly it's very easy to play the violin and it's also not hard to slightly improve
[00:40:02] every time you play exactly that's a one point I make I don't think I ever made it an actual
[00:40:07] nothing I did yeah there's a piece of rice called there's no limit to better there is
[00:40:14] everything we have we can make better somehow or other and everybody's born
[00:40:20] and with different talents and abilities I will never be a professional athlete
[00:40:27] but I can get better in athletics always and so are we really want to judge where how far we've
[00:40:36] gone from where we started not from from the end goal and there's no limit to better we everything
[00:40:42] can be improved to some some degree so I've got two more whenever you can't decide which path
[00:40:51] stake pick the one that produces change yeah that's sort of what I've observed maybe it's I don't
[00:40:58] know if it's true for everybody but certainly true for me that I like to optimize learning
[00:41:05] and change so the change it's not just for this sake change the change is to
[00:41:14] help you continue to improve and it's to also help you arrive at where I think you want to
[00:41:22] arrive which was my advice on the last bit which is that your goal in life is to arrive so
[00:41:30] the day before you die you can say I fully become me and so this idea of fully becoming yourself
[00:41:39] wires change not just changing we want to improve but we can help that improvement process by
[00:41:48] constantly trying to change you doesn't mean you're going to change in an improvement direction
[00:41:53] you could get worse or you could shift somewhere else and get distracted that's penalty or the risk
[00:41:59] but you can't really prove unless you do change and so by forcing the change you have a higher
[00:42:06] chance of making improvement yeah and becoming fully yourself before you die that which was
[00:42:16] the last one you guessed correctly I have a final question which is our standard closing question
[00:42:24] so in his TED talk the philosopher Alinda Botan talks about the difference between a lecture
[00:42:30] and a sermon a lecture being a modern day dry way of delivering information and the listener can
[00:42:36] decide for themselves and a sermon is an urgent plea to change someone's life the grabbed
[00:42:43] them by the lapel and try to make them see the light and so my question to you is if you were
[00:42:50] giving an opportunity to deliver a short sermon what would it be about yeah that's a good question
[00:42:56] so I think I did a sermon in terms of a graphic novel called the silver cord which we worked on for
[00:43:03] 11 years and it was way too big it was about angels and robots but the sermon part was like the
[00:43:12] shaking of the people saying wake up was that the angels in heaven who are the disembodied virtual
[00:43:19] beings who are weeping when they see humans because we're squandering our very short
[00:43:26] experience in this embodied VR right because we have a very limited ride in our body and the
[00:43:35] thing about the bodies that we have is that bodies are the maximum this physical world is the maximum
[00:43:41] way to have impact in a virtual world really hard to kind of have impact on people but when you're
[00:43:48] in the body and you're all in bodies you have so many ways to leverage impact and have impact on
[00:43:57] the world and effect and yet we're squandering this very short ride that we have most people are not
[00:44:05] optimizing this ability to have an impact on others and around you in the world and so that's the
[00:44:12] that's the shaking of look it's a very short ride it's going to be over much sooner than you think
[00:44:17] wherever you might go next or have come from it's not as embodied and high leverage is this thing
[00:44:23] right here this version of it this simulation whatever it is it's like incredibly powerful
[00:44:31] experience where we can have incredible impact on the people around us because we're in physical
[00:44:36] bodies and all the hang-ups of that entails you got to make the most of it because it'll be over before
[00:44:43] you know it this is beautiful thanks Kevin I appreciate your time today great questions
[00:44:51] Aaron I appreciate your interest in the book excellent advice for living and I wish you the best
[00:45:00] in your own life in your own ride make the most of it
[00:45:04] you
[00:45:09] remake is produced by myself and Regina Rothstein research in editing by Louis Brady
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