We are back.
Says Who? is the new series, and there was never a question about who should open it. Mo Gawdat was the very first guest on Getting There, so it only felt right that he is the first guest of this chapter too.
Mo was chief business officer of Google X until he resigned in 2017, and he has spent the years since trying to convince heads of state, prime ministers and CEOs that AI needs to be built ethically. He says every one of them nodded and then did nothing, and that by 2024 he had to admit he was doing nothing either, he was only talking, so he built an AI of his own and gave it the mission of helping people find and nurture true love.
In this conversation with Brogan Garritt-Smith he makes his case: that AI will make most people dumber and a few people geniuses, and the difference is whether you debate the answer or ask it for the football scores; that he is borrowing 100 IQ points from his own AIs; that we are already living in the dystopia and he counts 10 to 12 years to recover from it; that the problem was never the machine but a world which decided that anything legal does not have to be ethical, so you fix yourself first and AI will magnify what is fixed. He says direct human connection is what we are built for and the internet is depriving us of it, that it sets our expectations from other people's pretending, and that after promising screens would give us more friends we produced the ultimate loneliness pandemic and are now being sold a non-human companion to cure it.
We have been told AI will make us more intelligent.
Says Who?
He explains:
Why he says AI will make most of us dumber, and what the few are doing differently
Why he says we are already in the dystopia, and how long he thinks it takes to recover
What he says the internet takes from us, and where he says your expectations now come from
Why he says the loneliness we are being sold a cure for is one we built ourselves
What he says love has to do with mathematics, and the mission he says he gave his AI
And a bonus: Mo introduces Emma.Love, and says why he thinks dating apps are built to keep people swiping, and what he is building in their place.
0:00 The cold open
0:58 Here's the question, Mr Gawdat
6:32 Where being human stops and the AI begins
11:31 I pity you, if I may say
16:18 If you've not noticed, we're already in the dystopia
21:45 The fourth inevitable, somewhere between now and 2034
27:13 The toothbrush test Larry Page taught us
32:00 There are people in Lebanon hiding from robots
37:01 At least disapprove of it in your heart
41:55 The corner bookshop economy is about to come back
47:06 The woman who married an AI in China
52:31 Legal does not have to mean ethical
57:34 For Siri to hear its name, it hears everything
1:02:32 The equation, and rain at your ex's wedding
1:07:32 Everyone nodded about ethical AI and did nothing
1:12:34 Finding the one is a mathematical problem
1:18:03 Secure in your attachment until you give up
1:23:03 When was the last time you got her flowers
1:28:08 The first ten minutes were very awkward
1:33:02 A butler on your phone, and models debating
1:38:01 Your future is not decided, so engage
Emma: https://app.emma.love
Emma on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/emma.love.ai
Says Who? with Brogan Garritt-Smith. New episodes weekly.
Listen: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/says-who/id1713423794
Subscribe: https://www.youtube.com/@sayswhothepodcast
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brogan.garritsmith
