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--:-- Host (John Bickley): The dawn of artificial intelligence has seen the technology rapidly spreading into just about every industry and every device we use. And that's sparking a lot of concerns about where we're heading on several fronts, including jobs, privacy, and security. In this episode, we sit down with Jamie Metzl to discuss how the AI revolution will transform our lives, work, and world for better or worse. I'm Daily Wire, Editor-in-Chief John Bickley. It's Saturday, June 29th, and this is an extra edition of Morning Wire. Create an account and verify your ID. Visit BlackRifleCoffee.com to learn more.
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--:-- Host (John Bickley): Joining us now to discuss the latest developments on the AI front and what's on the horizon is Jamie Metzl, who wrote the book, or at least a book on AI called Super Convergence. Jamie, first of all, thank you for coming on.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Sure, my pleasure.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Look, AI has really exploded over the past year and a half and Apple has just gotten into the game and announced their plans to use it. First, can you tell us what we know and don't know about this new Apple product?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: So here's what we know. AI is transforming a whole lot of sectors. When people think about AI right now, people tend to think, oh, I'm going to go to chat GPT and I'm going to do AI. I'm going to ask it a question and I'll get some kind of answer. And the way we should be thinking about this is more like electricity. If I ask you, how did electricity influence your life today? You can't even answer the question because it's woven into everything. The obvious things like your computer and this microphone, but your haircut, your clothes, your house, just really everything.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great analogy. What Apple is saying is we're gonna integrate AI into our existing product. So you're not gonna be saying, oh, Siri is now doing more AI. It's just Siri is going to get smarter. It's going to have new capabilities.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: That's right. You're not gonna think, oh, for some reason, this whatever it is became more efficient or this company became more productive because their accounting infrastructure worked better because of the integration of AI. It's just going to happen.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And I know there's an infinite number of answers to this, but maybe just give us one example. What will AI in our daily lives look like in the next few years? Let's maybe stick with Apple. What kinds of things should we expect from Siri?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: So I just think it's going to be with Siri that you're going to be able to have more meaningful interactions with Siri. I have that now where you kind of go on chat GPT and you can have moderately reasonable expectations. And then I'll ask Siri or Alexa some kind of question. And these answers and responses that used to seem so smart and novel now seem like, oh, Siri, Alexa, you're an idiot. Chat GPT is much smarter than you.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): [laughs]
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And everyone, you should be really polite to all these devices because you'll probably be working for them someday and they're going to remember. But now we're going to see these kinds of interactions, at least on the consumer-facing part where we be able to have just more meaningful exchanges both in answering questions but just doing things for us.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting. And in kind of an ideal world, you be able to say, hey, I'm going on a trip to Mexico City next week. What kinds of things should I do? Or will you book me into a hotel?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And just more seamless interactions. But really, the rubber will hit the road in first some foundational areas, and then an application. So in foundational areas, we're already seeing these co-pilots that are helping us in all sorts of ways. But one of them is just like when you're using chat GPT, what it's essentially doing is just guessing based on statistical analysis, what's the next letter based on the last letter you've typed, the next word based on the last word that you've typed, and so on from there.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's fascinating.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: So we have co-pilots everywhere, but we now have co-pilots for computer programming. And so programmers are starting to type a line of code and then their GitHub or whatever co-pilot they're working with will essentially say, it looks like you're trying to achieve this. Here's some suggested code. It may be right, it may be wrong, which is why humans need to be in the loop.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting. And human coders are getting much faster and we're learning from the machines and the machines are learning from us.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And so now we're moving to a world in the direction of a world where humans will get much faster, where machines will be able to do a lot more of coding and where you won't need to be a coder in order to code. You can just be a regular person and say to your coding application, hey, write me a program so that the lights in my room flicker off on and off every 15 minutes, and then you'll get some code back.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great example. And when you say, how much of our life is mediated through code? It's a ton. And what if we had better, faster, more code? What would change?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Well, a whole lot of different things. And then in terms of applications, we'll increasingly see applications in healthcare where basically our healthcare will become more predictive and preventive because we're going to be able to identify patterns within our own biology.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting. Now, you've painted a very positive picture here. There's lots of concerns, obviously, about this as well. There's concerns about jobs, security, privacy. There's also concerns about being manipulated by AI programs that have inherent bias because of the nature of how they were produced, who was behind them, the training of them, etc.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Those are very real concerns. As you know, my new book, Super Convergence, is just out. And in the book, I highlight all these wonderful things that can happen. And I also highlight a lot of the things that could go wrong, and they could go horribly wrong.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And I think it's really interesting that you bring up the World Health Organization Expert Committee on Human Genome Editing. You were a member of that committee.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: That's right. So we're going to have all kinds of new opportunities, both to do great things with assisted reproduction, but do real harms.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And I think it's really interesting that you bring up the issue of COVID-19 origins and the role of AI in that.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Yeah, that's right. These same capabilities that allowed us to develop these vaccines and do it very, very rapidly. Also may well have contributed to the spillover in the outbreak itself.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And I think it's really interesting that you bring up the issue of bias in AI systems.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Yeah, that's right. Where we have these algorithms that we are feeding data and maybe that data contains our own biases we now have the ability to manipulate life and the question for all of us and maybe the most important question for us and for future generations is can human beings who suddenly have the increasing ability to create novel intelligence and recreate life in many ways can we use these capabilities wisely?
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Immediately after the announcement of Apple's new product, which is going to use third parties to help power it, there were lots of privacy concerns. The idea of AI tracking us in a way that's at a next level in terms of our behavior, predicting our responses, our questions, even our pattern of life.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: The way our AI systems work is by training on data. And that data is the data that we all individually and collectively generate in the course of our lives. So we need to have AI systems training on that data. But if we just leave these companies to their own and say, just take everybody's data, scrape up everything you can, whether from the open internet or from these companies that we have very intimate relationships with, like Google and Apple and our health providers and whatever.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): If we just say that all data is fair game, this whole enterprise is going to end up as a complete and total disaster.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: The last thing we should be doing is trusting the companies who are in the business of taking and using our data for their purposes to do so wisely. And that's why I know there are people who say, well, government should stay out. This is an area where we need government. Too much government can be a problem, but too little government, governance, and regulation would be a catastrophic problem.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Another issue that's come up, and we've seen this with celebrities actually now, are copyright issues. And to me, this seems like a Pandora's box. How do you address copyright issues with the kinds of AI products that we've already seen? Where is that heading?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Copyright is really tricky. I live in New York City. If I go to the Metropolitan Museum and spend the day looking at art, and then I come back and paint a painting at the end of the day, how do I know whether my work isn't 1%, 2% inspired by Miro or Monet or some artist who I interacted with in that museum?
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great analogy.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And so if our AI systems are training on us, by definition, they are accessing the materials that we've created. I know there are people who talk about cultural appropriation, but all of culture is pretty much cultural appropriation.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And then the question is, what's the connection between the copyright-controlled content and whatever is generated by the AI? The New York Times, in my view, has a very credible case against open AI because they compared the New York Times copyright-protected work and then what the AI was generating, claiming it was independent work, and it was very, very similar.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And so there are real issues of copyright protection. And we as a society, we don't want to not have the sharing of cultural content. I mean, that's in all of our interests. But if there aren't protections for the creators of work and the creative human beings who are generating that work, we're going to undermine the market for human creativity.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And what people call machine creativity at this stage is really just derivative of human creativity, but doing that at scale. So we need to make sure that we do both things. We need to protect human creativity because that's what's giving, the reason we have this technology in the place is because of creative humans. And they're doing this in part for the, maybe for the good of the world, but in part because they want to be remunerated.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: But at the same time, we need to have enough sharing so that these systems can continue to evolve and grow. And that's true with copyright. It's true with just access to data. There's a parallel point with healthcare. I've had my whole genome sequenced, but if I'm the only person in the world who's had my whole genome sequenced, it doesn't help me at all.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: The reason why my genomic information can become actionable for me is that it's set in the context of hopefully millions and someday billions of sets of genetic and other biological information from other people.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And it's the role of a society to say how do we find the right balance between individual privacy protections, but if we say individual privacy is 100% protected, then we don't have the shared cultural spaces. But if we say it's 0% protected, then we're gonna wipe out a lot of the things that we really value in our societies.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And to further complicate this, then you have the global race for AI where some of these other countries will not put the limits that we might put on our own AI training. Thus, we're even further behind.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Final question. Your book title, Superconvergence. Curious, what does that word mean? Can you explain why you chose it?
--:-- Jamie Metzl: Sure. So on the global arms race, I think it's really important. I write about that at length in Superconvergence. You can look at a company like OpenAI. It started its life as a not-for-profit, trying to make sure that this race for AI was as human-centric and beneficial as possible. Then they became a for-profit company. Then they launched an AI arms race by essentially scooping Google using some innovations that had happened in Google Mind, and then tried to just scoop everybody else.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And then when Meta saw that OpenAI and others were ahead of them, they took a page from the Google playbook where they released Android to compete with Apple. So Meta released their source code openly. And so now everybody around the world, including the Chinese military, now has Meta's source code, and that's their new starting point.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: So unless we address these arms race dynamics, this could become really, really frightening.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Thank you for your question about my new book. The new book is just out. It's called Super Convergence, How the Genetics, Biotech, and AI Revolutions Will Transform Our Lives, work and world.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And the basic point of superconvergence is that when we think of technology, we have these shorthand names for whether it's AI, machine learning, genetics, biotechnology, but really it's just one thing. Every technology and every innovation is in many ways embedded in every other technology.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: If we didn't have the agricultural revolution and farming, we wouldn't have civilizations and writing. And when you look at computer code, what does it look like. You see those Latin letters, which are based on Phoenician letters. So then we have Phoenician letters, which are part of computer code. And you need computer code to have the computing revolution, computing revolution to have the machine learning revolution, to have the AI revolution.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And now with the tools of AI, we're interrogating evolved natural systems to understand them better. And so now that we're understanding, for example, how a plant diffuses proteins through a leaf, we're able to use those kinds of designs to create faster computer chips, which give us better machine learning, better AI, increase our ability to understand and manipulate natural design.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's really interesting.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: So everything is a loop. And because of that, our technologies and capabilities are not just getting better, they're getting better faster. And so to internalize, to think about the rate of change, you can't think about your lived experience of change, because if you do so, you're going to be too conservative.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That's a great point.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And so that's why, for me, I'm saying, and I also write science fiction, this book is nonfiction, we have to train ourselves to, in many ways, think like science fiction writers, because this future coming at us faster than most of us are prepared for is going to feel like science fiction, even though it's just our new reality.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Well, I love science fiction, but I also kind of want to go live in a cave with all this stuff.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: [laughs]
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And those are very, those are very natural. No, but everyone should have those mixed emotions. I say this all the time. If you're just excited about all of this, you're missing it because while the upsides are incredibly potentially exciting, you also have to be aware of the downsides.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: And the name of the game is how do we optimize the benefits and minimize the harms?
--:-- Host (John Bickley): And that's frankly, that's why I've written the book.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: I wish I could say, oh, and your government, they've got a handle on this. Just sit back and let them do the work. That's not the case. Or the UN's got it. Nobody does. So everybody needs to be a part of that process.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): Fascinating discussion. Thank you so much for coming on.
--:-- Jamie Metzl: My great pleasure.
--:-- Host (John Bickley): That was Jamie Metzl, author of Super Convergence, and this has been an extra edition of Morning Wire.
