Aza Raskin: “AI, The Shape of Language, and Earth’s Species” | The Great Simplification #22
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- Опубліковано 16 чер 2024
- On this episode, we meet with cofounder of the Earth Species Project, cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology, and cohost of the podcast Your Undivided Attention, Aza Raskin.
Raskin gives us a general overview of what artificial intelligence is, how it’s about to become more deeply embedded in our lives, and how he and his team plan to use AI as a Rosetta Stone to translate the languages of other species to - hopefully - expand human consciousness, empathy, and awareness of the other beings we share this planet with.
Aza is the cofounder of Earth Species Project, an open-source collaborative nonprofit dedicated to decoding animal communication. He is also the cofounder of the Center for Humane Technology and is the cohost for the podcast Your Undivided Attention. Trained as a mathematician and dark matter physicist, he has taken three companies from founding to acquisition, a co-chairing member of the World Economic Forum’s Global AI Counsel, helped found Mozilla Labs, in addition to being named FastCompany’s Master of Design, and listed on Forbes and Inc Magazines 30-under-30.
Find out more, and show notes: thegreatsimplification.com/epi...
00:58 - Aza Rasksin works and info
Personal site
Center for humane technology
Earth Species Project
02:15 - BaYaka Tribes
05:20 - Mapquest
06:27 - Infinite Scroll
08:16 - 15-20% of electricity goes to powering the internet and its infrastructure
19:55 - Artificial Intelligence
10:23 - Ex Machina, Terminator
12:17 - AI that can write essays
14:14 - Graphic Processing Units (GPUs)
14:28 - Image Net (Big data sets)
16:00 - How AI conceptualizes language - Word2Vec
20:50 - Human pattern recognition
23:44 - Geometric shapes rotate to match concepts and meaning across languages
26:32 - Dall-E, Dall-E 2, Clip Guided Image Diffusion
27:32 - Disco Diffusion
28:19 - Submarine Music Video
29:15 - Nate’s Earth Day Talk 2022
41:27 - Narrow AI
42:00 - Facebook's net worth
42:33 - Meaningful social interaction algorithm
43:18 - Frances Haugin Facebook Exposure
42:46 - Jonathan Haidt - Most viral content is hate against out-groups
44:17 - In-groups/Out-groups
53:40 - Turing test
56:08 - ¼ of users have said ‘I love you’ to Xiaoice
57:23 - Daniel Schmachtenberger
58:12 - End of Growth
58:48 - China makes first model with 178 trillion parameters
1:02:16 - E.O. Wilson
1:05:30 - Jeremy Howard
1:06:26 - Having a tutor for your child will put them in 96 percentile
1:07:35 - We’re doubling debt every 8-9 years and doubling GDP every 20-25 years
1:07:51 - Oil’s maximum production
1:08:42 - Energy intensiveness of Web 3 Crypto World
1:09:53 - Data collection is the energy intensive part of AI
1:13:56 - Whales carry their dead young with them for weeks
1:14:18 - 5 species have organisms that go through menopause
1:14:58 - Lemurs bite millipedes to get high
1:15:14 - Dolphins inflate puffer fish and pass them around to get high
1:15:29 - Dolphins and other species can pass the mirror test
1:16:06 - Dolphins can bifurcate their communication streams to some extent
1:18:34 - Umwelt
1:19:51 - Humans have been communicating vocally for 100k-300k years, dolphins and whales have been communicating vocally and passing down culture for 34 million years
1:23:37 - Earth Rise and Blue Marble Photos
1:23:56 - William Shatner response to space
1:24:47 - Silent Spring Rachel Carson
1:26:10 - All of the complex life in the universe are on this planet and most are in the ocean
1:28:39 - Thomas Malthus
1:28:44 - Paul Ehrlich
1:30:21 - Dr. Ari Friedlaender
1:32:28 - Beluga communication video
1:33:05 - Valeria Vergara
1:34:10 - Paper published in nature scientific reports possibility in the bio-acoustic domains
1:38:22 - Donella Meadows Thinking in Systems: A Primer
#Azaraskin #natehagens #thegreatsimplification
The future is so exciting and terrifying at the same time!
"It works for every modality. It can do one thing well: turn a semantic relationship into a geometrical one" - wow
Mind-blowing, this was an outstanding interview
Very impressive and meaningful conversation. Thank you both!
1:43:50 (paraphrasing) “Listening is the conduit through which care flows“
Wow. Love it.
You’re putting out great quality, Nate! I am so excited to watch this podcast grow ✌️ Much appreciation
Have cleaned out my house. Only device left is a smartphone. I need it for Nate videos ..... living in nature until I'm not living anymore.
That is awesome. I rarely carry or use my 'smart'phone. I use my PC for infotainment and flight simulation.
I just finished reading 'Thinking In Systems' by Donella (Dana) Meadows per Aza and your recommendation. I can hear how her thinking (and that of her mentors) has influenced both your and Aza's work, as well as Schmachtenberger's and Tristan Harris' work. Thanks very much for having and sharing these conversations, Nate. I really appreciate you.
Hey mee too!
But how are you gonna apply it ? I'm kinda stuck in it
Any suggestions?
@@flyingguitarist7026 hmm...usually when I read something of this nature it takes a while to percolate in me before I get a real sense of how and where and when I will apply it. However, as a professional musician and high school band director, I find myself inside of many systems. I feel like one of the heuristics that's helped me make good choices in these layered systems is the Hypocratic (sp?) oath "first, do no harm." And, to be fair, I'm currently on vacation from 'work' so I'm not in a hurry to figure it out. 🤔😉🙂
Where do you see yourself being able to apply some of the wisdom from her book?
@@pondereastmusic As of now ,I'm trying to look into my day2day life I.e at home, my family (as a system , the relationships, elements) ,education, electricity(basic home appliances) ,local news like asking what's the system underneath it when some issue is raised,who are the actors playing in it? rather than consuming events passively.. (but I'm having some difficulties), music ( the relationships between the notes ,chords produces music not just single bunch of random elements (notes) , developing relative pitch, the stock being the instrument , flow being the music produced through air and feedback loops to my brain receiving ,making judgment on what tone feels good or bad..
thank you for this video. I am a french student and tomorrow I have an oral presentation on Aza Raskin and the infinite scroll.
This podcast has been absolutely rocking my world. I've got quite a few books I need to buy now.
Thank you for continuing the exploration of different ideas and how they relate to our relationship with the world, thank you both Aza and Nate.
This is mind-blowing.
One crazy thing worth noting, is for example, the east coast of North NZ has just been hit by a shocker of a cyclone.
It lost all power , communication, water, and radar. Also bridges and all roads in are cut off.
The whole area simply went offline on all levels. People simply could not charge phones. No one in the rest of the country understood how bad things were.
Is still unfolding, is quite terrible, a week in, and the local gangs (which are apparently quite problem in NZ) are theiving, with a general stress across the area. Lots of support coming in but really hard going. 11 dead with many still missing.
There was and still is very little communication available, and an indication of how things could end up with us all, particularly when electricity goes out, and fuel is low.
Thank you, Both.
This was an amazingly interesting conversation.
Absolutely love this discussion. Thank you both.
best episode so far - fantastic!
A am unsettled by this - thank you for sharing such a rich context of information in such a powerful way.
Probably the best podcast on the internet. Thanks Nate. You’re an inspiration. Do you have a patreon?
Save us Nate ua-cam.com/video/emM2wu9iSDg/v-deo.html
I didn’t think I would be drawn into this dialogue but I’ve got to admit, being only half way through, I’m hooked. I’ve just about finished reading both The Circle and The Every by Dave Eggers so this podcast seems especially resonant. Beware the Faustian bargain: tools will be tools…they can be used pro-socially or anti-socially depending on POV.(not to sound overly moralistic or multilevel selectionist, course)Lol
Excellent discussion. Thank you.
thank you brother
Ain't it weird that at 50:06 when Nate says "Depth" his camera changes it's focus aka the depth of its focus? Amazing episode, I'm only that far in but it's banger after banger.
You rule Nate. Thank you!
More actionable items to explore. Thanks.
"I fucking hate that...I've got to tell you" - I think that about sums it up for me too.
I hope lawmakers start paying attention. Center for Humane Technology is doing good work.
Yeah, that made me nauseated immediately Brian.
@@SladeOb 'Nauseated' is perfectly descriptive of how I felt as well.
Brave new world, here it comes...
@@Hexanitrobenzene I fear it's worse, it's going to be a combination of Brave New World and 1984
Thank you for this podcast Nate and all that you are doing to bring this information to the world. I just finished reading your book ‘Reality Blind’. Easily one of the most difficult to swallow books I’ve ever read, but it’s helping me get my priorities straight in life and bring these conversations to my family and community. The initial seeing of the truth can be painful when you’ve been raised on a lie.
from where did you get to know Nate's books?any website ? I mean the resources ,what books to read, courses to consume?
@@traecoker2170 hey dude thanks a lot ,though it's just click of buttons you'd done a great service by sharing
Thank❤🌹🙏 you dear, Aza Raskin and Nate👍! AI is definitely a huge threat to humanity surviving on this beautiful 🥀🌏🌍🌎🌹planet😢😢😢
This is filled with mind-stopping ideas.
One of the scariest: That we are only a couple DALL·E-time years away from AI that produces bespoke film, music, and teaching content for each "user", pushing whatever neurochemical buttons it has found are most efficient in programming our mind-type to do what IT wants. And here's the kicker: The AI doesn't want anything, it's just a machine. And the belly laugh: At root, the AI is being programmed by our salience/pleasure circuits to stimulate themselves. The AI is just a vehicle our programmed biology is using to give itself a life-long fix. The whole thing is just a freakin' mechanism. Ick!
"
One of most strangely hopeful: That we are reaching, perhaps even have reached, peak understanding. We are discovering that there is a world too vast and complex to be "understood" -- in the way we currently understand that term. There have always been processes occurring, for example the simple moment-by-moment functioning of our own body, that are far too complex for us to "understand", but which we approach with simple, incomplete maps: the nervous system, the digestive system, etc. etc. All of the wisdom traditions point to some sort of Knowledge that surpasses mere human conceptual knowledge ... and they provide pathways to learn to rest the human thinking mind in order that some other form(s) of knowledge might dawn. Could this be part of the way forward for us naked apes? Our "thinking" alone will have the power of a leaf in the wind once our evolutionary instincts are fully plugged into AI-replicatable fixations.
Bespoke movies is easy! It will eventually create bespoke metaverses! 🤯 When idea visualization is as fluent as language, will you even need language? Why would I want to listen to your words when I could experience the vision in your head? But then really, will anything you have to say be anywhere near as interesting to me as what my AI tutors are custom creating for me? Possibly learning and motivation will also be optimized such that I'll want nothing more than to use some strange HIIT learning methodology.
@@n8works Terrifying. The Truman Show, only Truman can't get enough of it. He finds some way to accelerate it or multiply it, adds mirrors everywhere. Or like setting up the conditions so that you can have a nightmare that you can't wake up from, because it seems so real. How does it look to you?
@@n8works The limit of knowledge is pain. Thoughts hurt, basically. Yes they're exciting, interesting, etc etc ad infinitum, but they are (also) a disturbance. Not knowing is where it's at. Unless that is deeply felt and understood imo, then knowledge-seeking becomes just another addiction.
@@markv2087 Exactly like that except the generated universe itself will be manipulated by companies to extract value from you. They will in some way be monetizing your consciousness.
@@markv2087 They say ignorance is bliss. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ If only we could convince our brains to really believe it, we might be able to exist in a more balanced way within our ecosystem. Unfortunately, that would make us less human as well.
Fascinating conversation. Almost makes me want to come out of retirement and get back into computing. A thought for Aza: have you considered different sensory devices for different animals? For example, what is a dog without a nose? What is any herbivorous prey animal without cameras at wide angles from each other? What is a bat without ears? I also wonder what communication devices animals deploy that human senses don't even sense. Good luck with the animal language project!
Thanks 🙏
Is there such a thing as exponential genius? I think so. This far-ranging conversation has nudged me into some simultaneously and wildly hopeful and fearful spaces. But the hope is larger, more spacious and filled with some new and delicious paradoxical insights. And quoting Wallace Stevens was just a delight on top of delight… Can Emily D. be far behind? Lastly, what’s not to love, thinking about dolphins and other critters getting high!
The discussion between 48:00-49:00 was perfectly illustrated to me a few weeks ago between my guy and his adult daughter. It came very close to completely tearing them apart from each other :(
That’s exactly right. Years ago my dad and I were arguing and he kept saying, “you and I have different news,” over and over again. We now have areas where we agree and where we disagree, but we both agree that there is a lot of emotional manipulation online.
about 1:42:00 discussion, there is an old zen saying, I am paraphrasing, "When you washing your bowl - wash your bowl". It is a lot harder than it sounds :)
... thankyou, N8 & AZA. "IS-NESS" rules ...
36:20 - This whole idea of AI-generated music, interactive movies, etc. feels like it's a mistake. As a musician I think of how much self-insight I gained, how much of the process was self-searching and internal self-development, and even before that getting to know my favorite bands, who they were, and what they were about, and I think of how even in the early 2010's how irritated I got when people neither knew nor cared who the musician was when they were 'just streaming'. My fear with this is that the commoditization of everything you see with social media, or throw-away human relationships (as if they were purchased on Amazon, tried out, and thrown in the trash at the first annoyance) is probably going to infantilize us a lot and detach many people from base reality even further. We may by that time build some kind of cultural immunity to that kind of problem in the next few decades but it's hard to believe that it's likely to happen that fast. I think, particularly, of just how 'squishy' the world will be for children, how customizable it will be, what that will do to their development, IMHO that's a great recipe for accelerating the growth of personality disorders and I think of what Sam Vaknin has said about narcissists - ie. that they believe the world and the people around them to be something like more dream characters (ie. contact with the separate or the 'unforgiving' drives them up a wall), and the more squishy the world gets the more of those sorts of people the technology and culture will be spitting out.
I have no words 🤯
Nice. Nice.
One of my biggest fears with the Earth's Species' project is that you mentioned "hating on the outgroup" and when you said what if whale said "what the F are you doing to the oceans" made me think... What if we start talking to other species and they say stuff "we" don't "like" so "we" annihilate them? So this project would actually do the opposite it's good intentions in that case.
Ha! So this is where Koan and AI make babies 😌 Has the TOI - Thinking Too Much music video used a similar image process? This is a wonder filled earthy, artsy, current, consequential, unknown signage, animalistic arithmetic, discussion 💛 thank you?
This is very very insightful and just as horrifying.
I see you, Aza Raskin.
If we could have AI non- invasively check hormone and neurotransmitter levels as well as eye movement, heart rate, etc and do this with dairy cows on a factory farm and translate the data, I would sincerely hope it would topple the entire animal agriculture industry.
Wow.
"The fundamental paradox of technology is that the better we understand ourselves, the better we can serve and protect, and the better we can exploit."
Fascinating to think we might learn the languages of whales et al; terrifying to think we might put saddles on whales et al and put them to work.
When he said “in english”, I said Yes! I need a translation also 😫😅
I wonder what Jacques Lacan would think about rotating languages on axes of meaning shapes. 🤔🙂
💓
This is the most horrifying episode so far.
I’m not sure how Aza can keep working on this. Collapse/ great simplification or not, this stuff is going to destroy us as a species
This is all the basic question that the Luddites were presenting almost 200 years ago.
Not anti-technology but what is it for, who benefits, and what happens to those who are invariably hurt by it.
👍
This was a really good intellectual conversation!
People originally wanted robots to do the dishes so they would have more time to get on the exercise bike. They now want the robot to get on the exercise bike as well! Very peculiar!
Maybe the next step is the robots will force us to get on the exercise bike to generate their electricity. /bad humor
@@jato72 I would call that revolting! /truly bad pun humor !
Another major fear I have over the Earth's Species' project is that the technology helps pave the way for terminator like AI. I never understood why in a world where we can't even communicate with our own species, we want to invent a species superior to our own making us obsolete. We are inventing ourselves out of existence.
Why not just throw the I Ching & add Tarot of your choice for the high resolution Graphics version ? The answers and archetypal guidance you receive will be just as valuable & probably more relevant. C G Jung & Wolfgang Pauli amongst many others believed this to be the case…
This is the very incarnation of Descartes' evil demon!
Tech that keeps humans in a juvenile state is different than tech that shows complexity of the world. That's important I think if there are brain maturation states where getting older means letting go of power objects, thus balancing relations, also known as understanding. Rational has a lot to do with power objects in that it uses objects with intent, as efficiently as possible. Rational is not emotional, and empathy is where rational and emotional are fully accessible to the personal awareness, without that awareness moving to different spaces, that of rational or emotional. Perhaps an AI in charge would see the human race as preferably (and permanently) in the juvenile stage. Easy to do when it - humans or AI - streamlines the world for efficiency's sake. How can the emotionless AI have empathy?
If AI is asked to maximize profit (Çaptain obviouß) then complex human systems e.g. emotions, sexuality, parenting, socialization, will be manipulated to maximize profit.
@@EvolutionWendy It could be that those manipulations are actually going on and an independent thinking AI could lead humans away from that, although humans could do it themselves I think by redesigning human systems.
I always think of the movie "Forbidden Planet". Aliens had created a machine that would bring anything into being after you had your brain connected to it. It worked well for a while, but then the monsters from the subconscious destroyed everyone and the species went extinct. I hope civilization collapses before this shit gets made. I hope a tornado destroys all of the servers used for this stuff.
It seemed the Krell had no problem solving the energy crisis. They had virtually unlimited energy generation / production (which is also a Forbidden Planet plot point).
Bring on the CME please god! 🙏🏻
I am with Nate on this- so stop going down this road! Duh!
Or we will all come to our senses en mass
Pass me some hopium please!
i think A.I....will have a very short run............we are too deep into overshoot and too many tipping points have been passed.
Maybe the AI could find us some more oil and natural gas!?! Yeah, I think computers ride at the tip of the energy pyramid. They will eventually be become useless to almost everyone. It is going to get interesting when we can't even service / replace orbiting artificial satellites. Navigation, mapping and communication will be knocked back 100 years. Time to buy an HF radio and hand generator!
By this point, I rather prefer a climate breakdown and Collapse, than living in that AI Techno Dystopia. It looks it's going to be the combination of 1984 with Brave New World.
Do humans know when to stop?
Humans are very good at "can we ... ?" type of questions, terrible at "should we... ?" type, so, no.
The individual ai tutor for 'everyone' is something that keeps coming up over and over.
I always say hey that's great, and what food will they eat? What about trauma because of out of their control climate catastrophes? Etc etc
Farmers need tutors, too.
Shingy 2.0 vibes
Yes it will bifurcate
The feelings I experience listening to this AI future are remarkably the same as the ones I get listening to the climate-energy nightmare. And my first objection is always the first word. There is no “we”. The benefits of this carbon pulse and AI are limited in quality and quantity. The harms are suffered by all. Our world is based on social conflict. Economists and engineers act with an unfathomable level of arrogance, building their assumptions into systems of control. ‘We’ do not consent to their techno capital dystopia.
God this is disturbing. That rotation of the japanese galaxy over the german galaxy to line up the dog shape syntax web...suddenly puts me back in flat earther territory where the stars are said to be data points projecting reality into the simulation. (Not that I believe that, i just keep evidence piles for any and all theories of existance) if we were in a simulation, then we would need to use different tools and strategies than we are. At least I would..Nate has it sussed it is all about narrative and probably less about energy and atoms
The ability to alter characters emotions in movies is not a good idea because the art and craft of the writers, film makers is in the original piece. This was their creation to illicit an emotion in you, not for you to alter their intent. This takes away from creativity and creative thought on the side f the viewer. The characters responses and emotions in the movie, book et al may inspire, encourage, educate your own thinking and emotions in ways you never knew, BUT if you have it your way all the time then you learn nothing and you do not grow. That is the equivalent of giving a child everything they want - they learn nothing and are emotionally stunted or slowed at best.
If you're in this comment section, you're the 10th dentist
AI can only be developed in a high energy and cheap energy environment. Hope they don't crack AGI before we go back to the 1800s lol
Art and music are not flat images and digital objects. 🙄 i live in SF and this superficial understanding of creativity is the standard in the tech scene. Including the people I am close to in the tech scene. Aza Raskin is also not a biologist and the way he speaks about animal communication unnerves me as well. He seems excited about it in the way these guys tend to get about a new pet project they are not considering carefully. Biologists are guilty of this too. Mr. Raskin don’t make another “infinite scrolling” invention error.
Humans went to the moon and then filled the sky with garbage.
disagreeable ESFJ with developed Ti
Omg, he hasn't thought about what he wants to achieve. I don't trust this guy at all. Seems so misguided. Why does he need to open every can of worms?
He also anthropomorphizes these animals to a laughable degree.
What this guy is describing about emotive media sounds awful. "Artisanal art"... like wet water?