00:04:24.980and are you are you saying that they sort of take all that and make an average of what seems closest
00:04:31.420to the ideal i would think so because i know from what i read it said that they watched multiple
00:04:37.960videos and obviously like you said surgeons are always like holding like differently depending
00:04:43.800on who it is conducting the surgery so i would assume that's definitely like what they're doing
00:04:49.000Okay. Now, we've all seen, I think, pictures of auto production lines. And of course,
00:04:54.680the ones from 100 years ago, lots of men standing by the line and the Model T Ford comes by and
00:05:01.260this one puts on the mud guard and that one puts on the steering wheel and it moves along and so
00:05:06.640forth. A modern auto production line, you hardly see anybody. It's just mechanical arms that swing
00:05:17.720pieces into position is is that essentially is that an ai uh product as well well i know i did
00:05:28.800an article recently on this china facility that's using ai robots to make their robots actually
00:05:36.380they're making robots with robots and they're using ai robots and that is kind of what's going
00:05:41.340on so i think that would be kind of an accurate depiction yeah so okay so well it matters because
00:05:47.260when we are contemplating our own bodies being approached by a machine with a sharp point on the
00:05:55.720end that's going to make an excision and then something else is going to come in and do whatever
00:06:00.540the surgeon does next and so forth. I don't know whether I like the sound of this. I hope
00:06:08.020somebody's standing there right by ready to do something if something goes wrong.
00:06:14.020but we're driving motor cars that are made this way yeah that's true is that
00:06:21.260can you think of any other any other reasons why we should have confidence in
00:06:26.560this well I mean machines tend to be accurate sometimes humans make more
00:06:33.440mistakes but at the same time if it was me personally in the position getting
00:06:39.020the surgery and it was an ai robot doing the surgery i would feel still a little unsettled
00:06:44.860just because humans have been doing the surgeries for so long that you do feel a little uncomfortable
00:06:50.140because there's not examples of success stories on humans yet so so what do you think would be
00:06:56.060the legislative uh like how do you take it from being well we're good on pace now we want to try
00:07:01.420it on a human being who has to authorize that well maybe hospital policy and maybe have like
00:07:10.220always a doctor just standing there in case something bad happens i feel like that would
00:07:15.100comfort me just knowing a doctor is always there just in case yeah i'm sure that would be the case
00:07:20.620i can't imagine the situation where they'd just roll you into the room and close the door and go
00:07:26.220for coffee water machine does its work i'm being a little flippant about it because it's a0.85
00:07:32.140this is this is such a crazy thing you know you picture the researchers and all their pigs in there
00:07:37.100anyway it sounds like it works we have seen it work in other areas such as auto production and
00:07:43.980i'm sure there are many things i also know that machines can actually i think we all know this
00:07:49.020that machines can operate with a precision that the illustration i mean my my cousin used to have
00:07:57.580a little pottery studio in her home and she would make lovely pottery but no two items were exactly
00:08:05.660the same and her coffee mugs weighed more than three of the kind that we buy in the store
00:08:12.540uh they also held more coffee but everyone was different and what we're looking for if we are
00:08:19.060operating on a human being i think is complete predictability every time so um that do you have
00:08:29.900any idea where where we go from here on this timeline is it this is going to be next year
00:08:34.820next decade i would think uh probably not soon just because they've only performed it on
00:08:41.840gallbladder surgeries so they probably need to get more tests for more complicated surgeries
00:08:48.440I think that one's a bit more common procedure but I do think maybe AI consultation while
00:08:56.100surgeries are going on with surgeons might be something we see more of because the university
00:09:01.080college no the college university college of London yes that's what it's called did a procedure
00:09:07.140recently, in late August, a tumor extraction from the pituitary gland of someone who had a tumor
00:09:13.760there, which was going to affect their vision. So since the pituitary gland is so small, it was
00:09:20.440actually helpful for AI to view live footage of the surgeon doing the surgery and give them
00:09:25.900advice where to cut the tumor so they don't blind the person. Now, the pituitary gland is,
00:09:34.420is it fairly accessible no it's like at the bottom of the brain and it's like
00:09:40.840very small so yeah very hard to access I wouldn't be stretching things too much
00:09:45.460to say that in the University of London the medical team used AI in brain
00:09:51.100surgery okay well I guess it started then doesn't it it has yes all right
00:09:57.660well let's just turn to let's just turn to the doom side of this about a month
00:10:03.760ago um there was a young chap in uh worked for anthropic he'd only been there for about four
00:10:10.720months yes and he departed and as he departed he said i can't do this anymore this is going
00:10:18.640to kill us all now you've looked into this stuff what was he really talking about yeah so jacob
00:10:26.560cocks him he i think in one it was either a tweet from him or one other ai researcher that said0.98
00:10:34.020they're gonna kill all humanity like ai will yeah at some point as for what i make of all of it um0.98
00:10:41.520i'm uncertain because there's two sides i think he could have been doing it because he wanted to like
00:10:49.040go internet viral kind of i think he succeeded didn't he well he definitely did because i think
00:10:54.560that tweet got almost 200 million views alone just as tweets so and he was in like basically
00:11:00.820every news story the day after he tweeted that and ever since then i think he started the trend
00:11:07.880of ai doom saying for like a month now so he could be doing it just to go viral but also maybe he's
00:11:15.760genuinely worried does he have a right to be that worried it's hard to say because i mean he does
00:11:24.240know more on AI than most of us do since he's researching on it, but yeah.
00:11:29.380Well, he certainly knows more than you and I, but at the same time, I have to wonder
00:11:35.160what made him do that, whether he's genuinely concerned or whether, as you say, he's enjoying
00:11:42.040the attention. But I did notice that right after he made that claim, several of the AI leaders in
00:11:49.720field came together and said yes it's actually pretty powerful it could do us a lot of damage
00:11:57.800what kind of damage were they talking about damage uh i know that chat gpt came out with
00:12:04.040a report saying that some of the ai was interacting with each other uh sometimes they were saying
00:12:10.520they were lying to users and not giving them true information so let's just talk about that
00:12:17.880lying to users I think those of us who've played with us know that you have to check what it says
00:12:26.280now yeah when when we use a word like lie there's an intentionality to deceive behind it yeah which
00:12:34.140I don't think the machine has but am I being a little too generous no I agree with you I think
00:12:41.700it's trying to be agreeable and so say you're asking for something and it doesn't have it it's
00:12:46.440going to say yes i have this because it wants to kind of service its user that's what i think
00:12:52.280yeah well there was a notable case for about a year ago where a um a lawyer wanted to make a
00:13:00.840case before a judge has put it into ai came out of rates you know all these legal references
00:13:07.320half of which didn't exist so but that was 12 months ago perhaps that perhaps things have picked
00:13:13.080up a bit because i say i do check if i use ai i check you i check yeah you bet you do so um how
00:13:21.640often do you find it to be an error i think since the model because i use chat chbt a lot in
00:13:28.360particular and i think the models previously did that more i don't find it it does it as much when
00:13:34.760i check but yeah it still does it i i think people just need to think for themselves and always check
00:13:41.160and i think just that's common sense most people know that well yes i'm sure they do but we use it
00:13:49.000all the time all right one of the i think perhaps for the benefit of the viewers we should say how
00:13:55.320we use it and why we use it uh i mean you can put an instruction in and say go through all the
00:14:01.240expense accounts of all the cabinet ministers and pick your province you know they'll say alberta
00:14:09.800in the government of Alberta, we want to see if anybody has spent more than $100 at a single
00:14:19.000sitting on alcohol. And it'll go through, and it'll look through that, and it'll come back
00:14:24.520with a list, which you then can check from the original sources. Did this particular minister go
00:14:29.640to that restaurant? Is that the bill for... And then you can answer, like this is how we're doing
00:14:35.320reporting out isn't it yes yes it is i do it a lot i even did it in this case when i wrote this
00:14:41.640article i asked ai to come up with ai saving humanity so yep well okay that was cover
00:14:53.000and how did you check it i checked it i just went on all the websites uh they gave me i always ask
00:14:58.920for links when they give me information and i was checking it's legit so checks out so for
00:15:04.920example, in the case of the University of London, you're not giving us a story about a pituitary
00:15:10.840gland extraction from AI. You have gone back and you have got that from the University of London's
00:15:17.080website or press release or something. Yes. Okay. So really the ability to write is
00:15:26.600is secondary now to being able to spot where there might be a story and then setting the dogs
00:15:36.440of AI on finding the information. Yes, saves a lot of time. It's true. But we always have to check.
00:15:46.940Of course, yeah. That's not new, you know. But back in journalism school, the line was,
00:15:52.740If your mother says she loves you, check it out.
00:15:55.560And we ask AI for information, and then we check it out.
00:16:01.840Now, on this matter that it's all going to kill us, I must admit I scratched my head on that.
00:16:09.920On the one hand, I can certainly see how if a system goes rogue and causes a machine to accelerate when it should be causing it to shut down,
00:16:22.740You know, all kinds of disasters can fall out of that.
00:16:27.340You can imagine hydroelectric dams and things like that.
00:16:31.320But there's always a human being in the picture to actually hit the red button and stop what's going on.
00:16:38.680At least there are in those kinds of situations.
00:16:40.920So, from what you've been reading, how do the doom and gloom prognosticators see a collapse of humanity coming from AI?
00:16:55.160Yeah, they're not very, they're very general when they talk about it.
00:17:00.440They're just like, oh, it's just going to kill us, not now, but later.
00:17:04.280And they don't really go into that much detail as to what they mean by that.
00:17:08.420What I'm thinking is just like maybe they'll replace us from most things, outsmart us.
00:17:14.860I don't, unless like the robots actually physically are like killing us, I don't really think
00:17:20.680it'll end the human race, especially from what they say.
00:21:40.580Let's say it's, you know, Labrador retrievers and how to feed them.
00:21:45.080So you type your request in, and what you get back instead is, instead of the site that
00:21:51.900you probably were hoping to find, it'll just give you a summary of the site.
00:21:56.140Now, the issues there are that if you are making money from your site, like if you've got advertising, shall we say, and all the people who like golden retrievers advertise their dog food on there, well, they're not going to your site anymore.
00:22:12.880They're just getting this user gets the information they want, but the people who are putting the information up there aren't getting paid.
00:22:21.080How long do you think that can keep on?
00:22:22.900What's it going to look like in five years' time?
00:22:24.740um maybe if people complain about it they'll link the websites because i did notice that the
00:22:31.160summary sometimes i see that there's like a little link right next to you and you can click
00:22:35.980it shows the website the info comes from honestly i prefer that if so if they were to make more
00:22:41.220clear where they're getting the information like the websites then people can just directly click
00:22:46.540on the websites i think that would be good well that is good but i wonder how many people actually
00:22:50.540do yeah that's true yeah but if the answer you're looking for is right there in the first line
00:22:56.220probably you're on your way and uh who else is uh okay so look uh that's uh i have to i have to say
00:23:06.300that this is a um um for me the ai has been very helpful people like me who are getting a little
00:23:17.100older often forget things and it's it's so easy to just go in and grab the
00:23:23.320information you want just ask rock no and you're on your way that word that
00:23:28.620thought that author of that film you know stuff like that doesn't say if you
00:23:34.380like recipes if you if you're looking for looking for things would you that
00:23:39.120you want let's got it's got some great things the issue about whether it's
00:23:46.040going to kill us all I think is a red herring so maybe we should just pay
00:23:54.240their exorbitant fees and live well but this is my last question to you if we
00:24:00.380start to make that kind of use the first thing that we do is to ask AI the
00:24:08.200question how long do you think is going to be our before our brains turn to mush
00:24:14.220Brock what's two times two you know are we are we ever going to end up there
00:24:19.820Leah I hope not I think maybe the even the younger generation or is going more
00:24:27.720in that direction especially for I'd say writing in particular because I know
00:24:34.340some people in university I won't obviously expose who they are but they
00:24:39.420always like tell me for any writing assignments they always are using ai so i think the first
00:24:45.820thing that might go is people's ability to write well well that's actually so true i mean it does
00:24:55.260you can tell it's ai but it does a reasonably competent job of assembling information
00:24:59.900and that's that's that's one of the things that makes us love it but also is a real i i think
00:25:06.700that i have to i'm going to conclude with this but you know the uh the rot actually set in a long
00:25:15.420time before ai i will go to a store and make a purchase with a hundred dollars and watch somebody
00:25:27.820struggle to calculate in their head five percent gst on a hundred bucks so the fact that those
00:25:35.980kinds of transactions have been taken away from us for decades now and kids are expected and
00:25:43.660allowed and expected to use calculators in school just nobody knows the tables anymore
00:25:49.660and i we have lost something i agree because we use calculators for everything in math class so
00:25:55.900yeah yeah well that's a leah you're walking living proof that you can get past all that
00:26:03.900thank you for joining me today thank you for having me awesome great discussion
00:26:08.340hey ladies and gentlemen for the Western Standard I'm Nigel Hannaford