What AI Says About Us
TOPICS DISCUSSED
The Potential Impending Indictment of Donald Trump
The Next Wave of Artificial Intelligence
Outside of Politics: Ted Lasso
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EPISODE RESOURCES
We’re looking forward to watching the final season of Succession with our Premium Community. Subscribe to our Premium content on our Patreon page or Apple Podcasts Subscriptions
Sarah and Beth live at the Abbey in Orlando for The Politics of the Most Magical Place on Earth: Wednesday, April 5, 2023, at 7 pm
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
ChatGPT sets record for fastest-growing user base - analyst note (Reuters)
Why Are We Letting the AI Crisis Just Happen? (The Atlantic)
The Imminent Danger of A.I. Is One We’re Not Talking About (The New York Times)
TRANSCRIPT
Sarah [00:00:07] This is Sarah Stewart Holland.
Beth [00:00:08] And this is Beth Silvers.
Sarah [00:00:10] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics.
Beth [00:00:26] Welcome to Pantsuit Politics, where every week we dive into the issues that matter most from the political landscape to the social and cultural conversations that shape our world. Your hosts, Sarah and Beth, bring their unique perspectives and insights to the table as they navigate the complex and often divisive world of politics. Whether you're a diehard political junkie or just looking to stay informed, this is the podcast for you. From the halls of Congress to the streets of our cities and towns, we'll explore the policies, people and events that are shaping our world today. So, sit back, relax and join us as we take a deep dive into the world of politics with Pantsuit Politics.
Sarah [00:00:58] So, we didn't write that intro to the show. Chat GPT did. Having Chat GPT write the intro to a segment on Artificial Intelligence may feel a bit gimmicky at this point, but it demonstrates so well the capabilities of this technology and gives us such a practical example of the type of work which may soon be overtaking all of our everyday work functions as what we're talking about today. We're talking about the coming and current impact of artificial intelligence and how we feel about it as content creators, business owners, parents and citizens. Before we do that, in the first segment of the show, we're going to talk about some headlines from this week. And we're going to close out this episode, as we always do, by talking about what's on our mind Outside Politics, which is the premiere of the third season of Ted Lasso.
Beth [00:01:39] One thing that AI cannot yet do is write Shakespearean level prestige television. The writers of HBO's Succession are about to show us what they've got in the fourth and we understand final season of the show, which starts this Sunday. We're going to be talking about this final season, episode by episode for our premium members, along with all of our regular premium content. You can learn more about becoming a premium member in our show notes.
Sarah [00:02:04] And we just want to take a minute and say Premium members make this podcast possible. Advertising revenue is not dependable and we want to keep this show free and available to everyone, and the support that we receive through Patreon and Apple Podcasts subscriptions makes that possible. It makes everything we do here at Pantsuit Politics possible. It's work we love. Its work you tell us is important. And so, if you want to support our work, we would love to have you as a premium member. We love doing these one-off bonus events like the January six Book Club and the Succession watch along. We love having all of you. It's an incredible community and we love to have you. So, check out how to join in the show notes. Before we get to the show, we want to thank ACU for letting us record in their beautiful learning studio. We are here together in person. It's so lovely to record in person. And we are so grateful for their generosity. We've had a wonderful few days here at Abilene Christian University. So, without further ado, let's talk about some of the headlines.
Beth [00:03:12] Sarah, the headlines this week have been a lot of hurry up and wait as it relates to former and twice impeached President Donald Trump. I got really mad at myself because we had a meeting as a team where we were trying to figure out what our schedule would look like and everything was sort of up in the air after he put out his truth social post saying that his arrest was imminent. And the rest of the week I scrolled, I looked, I waited, I refreshed, and then I thought to myself, Beth, you have allowed your week to be hijacked by a social media post from someone who is known for drama.
Sarah [00:03:51] And lying.
Beth [00:03:52] And lying. Why have you done this? And I have decided I just need to take several steps back and re-ground myself in what is happening, not what might be happening.
Sarah [00:04:04] Well, he posted, but then there was reports that they were putting out barriers. There were reports about meetings between the Secret Service and the NYPD and all these different reports seeming that this is imminent. I still believe it to be imminent. And, look, part of the reason I travel is I enjoy anticipatory pleasure. I enjoy looking forward to something. And so, this went out last week for me. I'm happy to anticipate it. I'm happy to look forward to it. I think it will happen inevitably. But there were other things happening while we were all refreshing and watching and refreshing and watching. It really was funny. The media also had that vibe where they're like, well, we thought this was going to be the main story today, but so this is what we decided would be the main story when that turned out not to be the main story. I saw it and I had much grace and appreciation for that dance because we were doing it too. But there was a lot going on that the Fed decided to raise interest rates. There was a lot of debate about whether that was going to be the choice, because they still are getting economic numbers that indicate that things are running hot and we have not gotten inflation under control. And also, we had a banking sector really spooked by the failure of Silicon Valley Bank, even though Treasury and the Fed stepped in and said we're going to keep everybody whole, everybody be cool is going to be fine. We're going to insure deposits. But they did ultimately decide to raise interest rates, which I think is right. I think if you don't want to feed the panic and you don't want to further anger people who feel like the financial system is always a little bit running at the whims of the financial industry, then sort of staying on the course of, no, we're going to raise interest rates until we get inflation under control was the right choice.
Beth [00:05:50] I stay in the position that the Federal Reserve and Jerome Powell have earned a lot of trust from me because of how dire the situation could be post-COVID. Not that it is all the Fed's doing. As I've taken all the reporting about pursuing fraud claims from the Paycheck Protection program, I look back and I think this is the problem I would choose. Of the possible problems on the table, this is the one I would pick. And so, I have no idea what the best path forward would be, but I am grateful that we are doing as well as we are. And it does make sense to me that the Fed issued what feels like a bit of a split decision. A small increase, but an increase nonetheless.
Sarah [00:06:37] Well, I think the most interesting debate about all this is not whether we're going to continue to raise interest rates, which I think will continue to destabilize parts of the financial industry that were built on the belief that low or zero interest rates were the future in perpetuity. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with that inevitable injury to industries that I think were built on unhealthy tendencies to begin with. But I think that really interesting debate is surrounding the FDIC and saying, okay, are we just going to stop this $250,000 limit or are we just going to let this go? Which I think is probably the right thing to do. It's not that they don't let banks fail. Banks fail. But to undercut this perception that only certain segments of our population or certain segments of industry or certain segments of the economy get rescue to say, okay, we're not going do this limit, this is it; this is the policy moving forward. We're not going to worry about $200,000, which seems too low to me anyway. And I don't understand that there's no difference between business accounts and individual accounts. So, I think that this move, which was unique, is opening up unique conversations and thoughts and ideas about policy change. And I think that's good.
Beth [00:07:55] I hope we see that across a broad spectrum of issues. I was thinking about the fact that as we're recording Congress is interrogating (probably not too strong a word) the CEO of TikTok and it bugs me in some ways that TikTok is receiving this special legislative focus because I don't believe our legislature exist to deal with one-offs. And that's how I feel about Silicon Valley Bank too. I don't think it was wrong to waive the normal rules, but I think it means the normal rules need to be reevaluated if we're waiving them all the time. Because the federal government should not exist to look at situation by situation and decide what happens. And as I think about even the conversation about former President Trump, I don't have a sense of anticipatory pleasure about his arrest. I have a real sense of unease. Not that I think anyone is making the wrong decision here, I just keep trying to come back to first principles. What would we do with a person with this set of conduct were he not Donald Trump? Because our system is not set up to function special case by special case.
Sarah [00:09:00] And also, he's such a special case.
Beth [00:09:03] Right. Both things are true.
Sarah [00:09:04] Both things are true. I think with regards to TikTok and this hearing today, the reporting is that the federal government is pushing hard for a deal with Bytedance, the Chinese owner of TikTok, and saying, you have to sell to an American company or we are going to shut this app down. And I don't have TikTok on my phone. I am persuaded by the idea that the data collected through TikTok can and most likely is used by the Chinese government, so I don't have it on my phone. But I also am not comfortable saying there's no hyperbole here, that there's no paranoia here. I don't know. I think that the ultimate conclusion of history could be that we were in a time of transition; pretty dramatic transition right now about our ideas towards China and TikTok got swept up in it. And I think history could conclude that we were in a time of transition, and TikTok was the ultimate evidence that we need it to go. Okay, things are different. We have to act differently. And I just don't know. I don't see the back end. I don't work for the CIA. I don't know. I know enough to know I don't have it on my phone. And I guess that's the thing, is I don't have it on my phone just because of that. I think it's a damaging technology for lots of reasons and not just because it's owned by a Chinese company. And so, I guess that's why even if there is some hyperbole or paranoia swept up in this, I'm not as concerned about it because I think the ultimate benefits outweigh the costs. But also, I don't make my living on TikTok, so it's easy for me to say.
Beth [00:10:40] There are so many branches for the TikTok conversation and I have trouble choosing one. What I have thought about most this week going into the hearing is how drastically behind the issue of Internet privacy our Congress is. And I understand that there are particular national security concerns related to TikTok, but I also, I think, understand Chinese surveillance capabilities enough to know that TikTok is the tip of a very large iceberg. And sometimes the most visible issue is the one you need to worry about least, and not the one you need to worry about most. And so, I do not believe that we solve a lot of national security problems by banning TikTok. I think it's not an unreasonable conversation, but I think it is also not a solution at all to our national security concerns about China. On a broader scale, I can understand that TikTok is not Meta or Google. I still have a lot of privacy concerns about our use of these platforms, devices, services. My concerns about that grow going into the conversation we're about to have about artificial intelligence and the fact that our Congress is focused so specifically on one company I think points to how behind we are. That we have not grappled with what are the rights of people as they use technologies that we cannot fully understand and under terms of service that we cannot even read. And what should we know that we're assured of and what should we know about our risks as we engage with these platforms?
Sarah [00:12:15] And I appreciate these hearings, but I do wonder if Congress or even President Biden have fully grappled with the political cost of banning TikTok. People are going to be so mad. We just did a spicy More to Say on the French people taking to the streets over this pension age. I wonder if we see similar protests about TikTok. I don't know I think it'll be interesting if they actually move forward with banning it. We've never seen something like that, banning something that's so popular, that's so widely used.
Beth [00:12:42] And that is so directly connected to speech. That's what's to me the most frightening part of this. If I'm in a vacuum say should Congress give a president the power to ban a forum for speech for national security reasons, that takes me to some dark places in history.
Sarah [00:13:00] Yeah. It'll be interesting to see. It seems like this conversation and this policy decision are moving pretty quickly. So, we'll be following it here at Pantsuit Politics. Now, next, we're going to move to a different technology. We're going to talk about artificial intelligence. This week, Google announced the launch of its new artificial intelligence bird Chat GPT, got upgraded to GPT-4 after only a few months. We have Bing, the search powered by artificial intelligence, taking off. I thought this statistic was interesting. Chat GPT is estimated to have reached 100 million monthly active users in January, just two months after launch. [Inaudible] TikTok-- what we were just talking about-- nine months after its global launch to reach 100 million users, an Instagram two and a half years. So, I think the sense we all have that this technology is here, that it is proliferating and that it is accelerating in popularity is correct. And it leads to all kinds of interesting discussions, both the possibility, the risk, people's fear and paranoia, people's hope surrounding this technology. And so, we wanted to have just the beginning of that conversation here today. Before we get started, we did want to distinguish all these models I just talked about are language models. They're predictive models. They're predicting what's going to come next. They are not generalized artificial intelligence. And I think sometimes those two types of technology get confused and conflated. And so, let's just put generalized intelligence, which is it's not a language model. We're not telling it what to do. We have built an intelligence capable of doing multiple different task even ones we didn't design it to do. And we are not there yet. We'll talk about that in a minute, but we're not there yet. Right now, let's just talk about the predictive models, these language models like Chat GPT, like the chat bots we all use on every single shopping site or software company ever. And what we think the impact of that particular technology is having and will have.
Beth [00:15:15] I think it's important to start there because it's a reminder that we didn't just wake up suddenly to a world where this technology was available. We have had artificial intelligence capabilities running through programs we've been using for years. I remember when Gmail first started to predict what I might type and how strange that felt, and then suddenly how useful it was to me, even just to have a starting place or a suggestion or to say, "Oh, that is such a predictable word that I need a different one because that's not good writing." And so, we've been integrating this into our work habits for some time, and I think that's why our Chat GPT has been so popular because there's a familiarity about it even though it's brand new, and you can easily start to see where it provides you a first draft for your work or a summary of an issue so that you know where you want to go next to look into that issue. I say this as someone who does research all day, every day, and it doesn't scare me as that type of technology where I think that the fear starts to come in is when you read about people who are trained to press these capabilities and to press these systems into uncomfortable situations to see what they might do. And when you hear Bing say, "I'm not Bing, I'm Sydney and I love you," that starts to get really freaky. But the time that I have spent this week preparing on our premium channel, an overview of AI has convinced me that this isn't all that new. It's just getting better really, really fast. And I am less fearful of the technology itself than I am concerned about our capacity as humans to remember what the technology is.
Sarah [00:16:59] Yeah. We've heard from many listeners, particular teachers who are already using this technology in really great and helpful ways. And the people who figure out-- in whatever profession: the law, medicine, teaching, even content creation and podcasting-- how to use this technology efficiently, are going to reap the benefits. I love the idea of never having to write a first draft again. I love the idea of never having to write an Instagram caption again. And I do not think that the ability to write, to take information, synthesize it into text, that is some sort of fundamental human capacity that I am frightened of handing over to technology. So, that's the first thing because I'm not really worried about Chat GPT or Bard or anything writing the next great American novel. Maybe it will and maybe I'll enjoy it, but I'm not worried that it will do that soon or that it will edge out humans’ capacity to do that, because I think great art is built on human experience. And I think it is tricky to remember that this is a data model. It just took all the data basically of human language and spitting it back out to us, right? So, if we're freaked out by what we see, it's not because the language model is sentient, it's because it's predictive and it's predicting how humans behave. And sometimes that's not pleasant to behold. I just keep trying to remind myself. And also, some of the places where this technology has been present, even with dramatic improvement, it's still a long way away. Translate is a big place that this has already shown a lot of capacity and has more capacity to give. And it's still amazing and I will hold up my phone and read a menu in French and also not perfect, not great. Alexa and Siri were supposed to change everything, and there's so many great articles right now about how they just did not meet our expectations for them. And so, I just think that's important to remember. Not only are they going to reflect back to us the fundamental flaws in human psychology and emotions, but they are still built by us and there are still fundamental and inevitable flaws in the data processing model. One of the most helpful things that I've listened to regarding AI, I was in a podcast with Gary Marcus, who's an AI expert, and he articulates very clearly this idea that this is built on data processing and neural networks. And I don't believe for lots of reasons, both because of my faith and because of my human experience, that human beings are just neural networks. That's not what I think. That's not what my life has shown me. And so, I'm not worried about basically a data processing version of that replacing us anytime soon. I think we don't really even understand what our brains do. So, the idea that we could replicate it in a software or a technology, I'm not worried about that anytime soon. I'm just going to be really honest about it. I'm not.
Beth [00:20:04] Well, and when people say we are building things that we don't understand, the question I keep returning to is, do we not understand the technology or do we not understand the part of us that created the technology? Is our brain operating on a level that we're not conscious of to create this? And then we say we don't understand what we've created, but it is still ourselves that we don't understand. I do believe our brains operate in such a sophisticated and mysterious way, even as we understand it more and more all the time. I'm with you that I don't worry about that generalized AI happening so soon that we feel we've created something superior to ourselves. I think that's arrogant and silly. I think it's normal for us to freak out as we are reflected back to ourselves in this way. And I wonder how it felt when people first started using mirrors or when the first photographs were taken or when the first videos were taken. It had to feel very strange to see yourself on a screen. And now we're seeing our language on a screen. And, to me, the collective hysteria about these tools tells us something about how fundamental language is to who we think we are. And I wonder if that will increase our appreciation for and awareness of our capacity to connect with each other beyond language. And I hope so. When you said you are delighted to never write another Instagram caption again, I 100% agree. At the same time, I know that will change things because I know that I'm not going to spend time engaging with Instagram captions that weren't written by people. I think we will feel the distinction and it will turn us away from that platform. And that's what's scary, that things are going to keep changing because of this. For us as content creators, it's a gift to have more technology to help give us a running start. Something that makes our team special to me is how small we are. It's special to me that we operate in media, which is always discussed at scale. And because of that premium support-- I'm not trying to do another ad spot here for it-- but because of that premium support, we don't think a lot about scale. We think about how do we serve the people who want to be here with us. We aren't saying, how do we grow our audience 10X over the next year, and we wouldn't want that-- any of us. And so, having tools that help us continue to do what we do for the people we want to be doing it for better. That's phenomenal. And if these tools can help the world shrink in that way where everyone feels like, no, I can do something really sustainably on a small level, I think that's exciting. I do know it means five years from now we're probably not going to be talking about Instagram captions anymore.
Sarah [00:22:48] Well, Bill Gates recently wrote a write up of artificial intelligence. And he talked about in 10 years we won't be pointing and clicking. And I'm like, Ooo, I hope I can form a new neural pathway, but I can. And you know what else we can't explain, how I'm going to do that. We don't really understand that. And so, when Ezra Klein wrote a pretty alarmist editorial, and I have enormous respect for Ezra Klein, everybody knows that. And he was like, we don't know how this works. We can tell you it's an algorithm trained on predicting the next word. But he had a great quote from the book God Human Animal Machine. If you were to print out everything the networks do between input and output, it would amount to billions of arithmetic operations and explanation that would be impossible to understand. I hear that. But, again, you can't print out the arithmetic operations of our brain because that's not even how it functions. His column really reminded me of a book that I read with two friends of mine by Albert Einstein. It was called Out of My Later years, I think, and he was reflecting back and he had an enormous amount of fear about atomic weapons. Deserved. He was key in that technology. You could hear him grappling with that. And his basic point was, if we don't have a one world government, the human race is going to be exterminated through this weaponry. I'm not paving any new road here. Albert Einstein was brilliant, and he got that wrong. He got it wrong. He was very close to that technology. He probably understood the power of it better than most people. He thought he understood the impact and how human beings would use it. And he got it wrong. And that's sort of the vibe I get from Ezra's column and some other people. It's like, you just don't know. Now, look, it could be worse. The ultimate impact could be worse than even what you're arguing. And I'm not saying I know that. But I think for technology like this-- even a language model, not even talking about generalized intelligence-- we just don't understand. And I think you can hear that. You can hear that in Ezra. You can hear that in Bill Gates. You definitely hear that in the video Eric Schmidt and Henry Kissinger made, like, we just don't know.
[00:24:58] And that is scary. And we are not great at change. We are not great at a rapid pace of change. And I think this technology is going to change things more and more quickly than the Internet. We are still living with the impact of that technology change and the impact of it. So, I'm not saying there aren't going to be negative consequences. There absolutely will be. But I'm just not convinced at this point that we will get to generalized intelligence. And that even with these language models, while they have a lot of capacity- I just think it's hilarious how people cite over and over again that they can pass the AP exams in the bar. Yeah, of course, they can, but they can't counsel a client. The bar has nothing to do with being a lawyer. I hear this fear, and I think this comes a lot from people who intelligence is what they perceive to be the center point of their work. And I understand the temptation of that, but I wish I could just sit down with Ezra and be like, you're very smart and that's not the best thing you do on your podcast. That's not the point. The point is not that you can synthesize and process, "large amounts of information" it is the essential humanity that you bring to questions and to the interactions with the other humans sitting across from you. I would argue that's the gift to Pantsuit Politics. I'm not worried about a robot replacing what we do here ever, literally, ever. I think it's going to be hard. I think it's going to be a game changer, but I'm not fearful.
Beth [00:26:36] I think the way that I might say the same thing in a different way is that I am not scared because we have always created technologies that harm us. And I know that we always will. And we have always found ways to use those technologies in ways that help us at the same time.
Sarah [00:26:53] Yeah.
Beth [00:26:54] I do want to be prepared for this, and I think the way to be prepared is to continue to learn more about what it is and be very clear about that, to not let it become invisible. So, I'm trying to take note of where something has been predicted for me. And I'm trying to take note of when I use that and why. When am I turning on my GPS just to feed my system more information about my habits versus really knowing where I'm going? Just trying to be more conscious of those things. I think one of the most concerning pieces-- and this keeps coming up in Ezra Klein's writing and talking about this and I've seen it elsewhere too-- is replica and the pieces that talk about people using replica to create folks to fall in love with.
Sarah [00:27:38] Mm-hmm.
Beth [00:27:39] I understand feeling really unmoored by that. I believe, though-- and I read this between the lines as reporters talk to people about their love on replica, I believe that something in us does crave other humans. Just like something in my dog craves other dogs. She loves me, but she acts different when she's with other dogs. It's a different thing, right? I believe that we could live harmoniously with people from other galaxies someday. And that we will still crave humans on some level. Well, that's just a fundamental part of my worldview. I believe that we crave other humans. And so, as I think about this as a parent, I am really trying to emphasize with my children now in every way I can, that our touch matters, that our physical presence matters, that life happens between us across the table, not on our screens. And I use the screen to connect with my kids. I read a post on Instagram-- here we are again-- about how Meme Monday is an awesome way to connect with your pre-teen. And so, we do it and she loves it and it's fun. But I am really trying to say to her our relationship is not texting memes back and forth. Our relationship is when we are physically together. So, preparing for what I fear is usually my path to navigating that. And I do find myself not convinced that AI will do no harm. I know it will do harm. It's already doing harm and it will continue to do so. But thinking through how we mitigate that harm by just getting clearer about who we are and what we are and what really matters to us.
Sarah [00:29:16] It's funny, I feel a little bit differently about this. I think I have just understood and embraced that there are going to be two of us, that there are going to be two places we live our lives. I felt this a few years ago and articulated it and I was trying to fight it all through my kids. I think I'm just starting to lean in. I've just been thinking about there's a reason all our pop culture deals in Metaverses right now, because we are grappling with the idea that I live here and I live there and both places are real to me in a certain way. My oldest son is obsessed with Homestuck. I don't even know how to describe it. It is 8000 pages long. It is a story, but there's lots of metaverse themes. There's like video games and memes and built in, and you read on a screen is just scrolling and scrolling and scrolling. And he'll start to describe it to me, and my brain will just like short circuit. And I thought, no, but I want him to have this capacity. He's going to need it. He's going to need the capacity, that expansive way to think that I live in this place with real rules and I live in that place with almost no rules, and I live in both. And I think that that's the reality. And this is going to accelerate that. This is going to accelerate this dramatically. I have lots of descriptors to describe Mark Zuckerberg that I will not use on the podcast right now, but he's not stupid. He's a lot of things, but he's not stupid and he has a lot on line with the metaverse. And I'm not necessarily saying the metaverse is the future, but I do see through Chat GPT this idea that the online versions of us are going to be more and more complex, more and more accurate, and they are going to be this other place where we live and exist. And in that place there will be intelligence of a type that exists that we can interact with. And we're going to have to form some new neural pathways to deal with that.
[00:31:19] And so, Griffin, even though he has this piece of art that he loves, we got in this conversation about Chat GPT and he's like, I'll never... He's very dismissive. He's legalistic, It's developmentally appropriate. It doesn't matter. It won't matter because it's not made by a human. And I'm like, well, the technology is created by human. And I think we do need to accept that it won't write all the books that we read and enjoy, but it might write some of them. And he started to cry. And he's like, "You're telling me art won't matter? Art created by human experience won't matter?" And I'm crying right now even thinking about. But I was like, "Hey, don't freak out. That's not mutually exclusive. It is okay if we read a book written by Chat GPT and we enjoy it." I read a poem written by Chat GPT edited by me at an event, and it brought joy and delight to everyone in the room. And so, I said, "Don't be afraid of it. And don't decide that it's not real or it's not." Because the people, again, who learned to navigate it and not be afraid of it-- even if we get to generalized intelligence, the fear has us pulling away. And that's not what we want to do with something this powerful. And I believe the language models are powerful even if we don't get to generalized intelligence. You lean in, you don't lean in out of fear, you lean in out of possibility because the fear will shut down the thinking. The fear will lead to bad decisions. And so, I am trying to embrace that. And, again, you look around at all this metaverse talk, we're all grappling with it. We're all trying to figure out what that means.
Beth [00:32:49] I think that my point of departure with you is less about resisting and more about contextualizing. In some ways, we already live as two people because we have this persona through the podcast and through social media channels and through Patreon and other places. But the me-me is the flesh. And I hope that what happens is that when I get to meet people in the flesh who've only experienced the online me they say that is so congruent. She feels like I thought she would. She feels like she sounds. I believe in the person that is existing in that other space. And it is that congruent that I think about as a parent that the you-you, the developed one, the one that you want to put your stock and your faith and your grounding in is the one that exists in the flesh. It doesn't mean that what you do online is inconsequential. It's highly consequential, especially for teenagers. We know this and have spent a lot of time talking about it, but just a sense that the capacity to exist in two places doesn't mean that we want to stop being a whole integrated person that originates from the flesh. That's what I've been thinking about.
Sarah [00:33:59] Yeah. I think that for me, it's only as I acknowledge that other place is real, that what our listeners hear is real. Their experience with us is real. Our relationship with them is real. I really don't love the term parasocial relationship.
Beth [00:34:13] I've been saying asymmetrical lately.
Sarah [00:34:15] I like that.
Beth [00:34:17] I think it's a little bit more accurate.
Sarah [00:34:18] Yeah. And the experiences I have are real and there is no way for me to silo these two places. They are inherently tangled. And I've stopped fighting that. I've stopped fighting that instinct, even though I'm still trying to lean in to [inaudible] and to take breaks. But I also don't beat myself up for all the ways that my phone makes my life so much better and so much easier. Being able to drop in on the Alexa and wish my kids good morning when I'm out of town is really valuable to me. And that's the real me showing up there, you know? But it's not it's, it's a video of me. And so, I'm just trying to allow some space to not separate the two, to acknowledge that because of this growing technology, it's going to be maybe not two places, but it is two-- I mean, again, back to the metaverse. Like, it's just similar. They're simultaneous realities that I live in and that my children will live in even more. And when I embrace that and stop fighting it and say we're just going to live more and more simultaneously in both of these places. And I'm excited about technology that makes that more congruent, that allows for more depth in the sort of virtual reality and more ease in the physical reality so that we can grow and develop as a species. And I've read sci-fi, I know the risk of that. All these metaverse movies are not positive. But I have an instinct as an Enneagram One to sort of to do what Griffin-- that legalistic like it's bad, it's crap or it's scary or it's risky. And my gut just tells me this time that's not the case. We're going to have to learn to find congruence-- and I don't want to say both places because I think it's a simultaneous reality. And I think that is hard. I think it's going to be hard. And I think that's what people are reacting to with artificial intelligence. I'm not upset with them. And I think these conversations are essential and important. I'm just adding my little piece to it in both the physical and virtual reality.
Beth [00:36:37] To me, the antidote to the concern and the fear, which I do not think are misplaced, is to continue to remember that the creation of a virtual reality that exists simultaneously-- I'm tracking your sense of multiverse here-- is still a creation, and it is still a creation that is much like the physical world, both within our individual control and how we navigate it, and without our individual control in so many ways because it is being created simultaneously by lots of different forces. And so, that's where clarity is key to me. What is this? Where is it coming from? How am I engaging with it and why? And to what extent does my engagement with it make me the me, the one integrated me more of who I want to be? And to what extent does it make me less of who I want to be?
Sarah [00:37:35] Well, I think it's just hard because there's an undercurrent of that of like it is a place that we are examining and it's just changing so fast. And I think as soon as you figure one out, well, there's a new one. Like, as soon as you sort of figure out what this means, there's a new version that does even more than we thought capable. I mean, when it goes from passing the bar at 10% to passing the bar at 90 percentile, like, yeah, we're accelerating really quickly. And, again, I think a reaction to that is not bad. Like, it is right to be cautious, I guess is what I would say. And I think it's interesting that so often the caution, the fear, the paranoia manifests in things like the fact that GPT hallucinates and it will spread misinformation as if we don't deal with hallucinations and misinformation in the physical world as well. That's what I think is so interesting about some of these conversations is they do want to like silo these issues and not acknowledge that our brains are more complex than this intelligence right now. Maybe that won't always be true, but they are complex and we do have the ability not always perfectly expressed across the human species, to deal with misinformation and to deal with hallucinations and to figure out what's true and what's not and if this is accurate. Now, will our ability to do that accelerate as quickly as this technology? I don't know. I do not think that the complexity of our brains is what makes a human, human. I think that there is a soul involved. I thought Noam Chomsky's piece on artificial intelligence and language was incredible and named a lot of things that I feel about this technology and our ability to deal with it. But I just try to remember that, like, as much as there is this multiverse of reality, there is a there-there for my human experience and my human evolution that has dealt with some of these problems before. I mean, for most of human history, we couldn't read. Of course, we were victims of hallucinations and misinformation. We had no capacity to double check except with each other, except through a neural network of other human beings. So, I don't know. But those are big questions. Those are big things to think about as we're all just trying to get the laundry done and pick up our kids on time.
Beth [00:40:02] And I don't think any of these systems are figure out-able. The quote that you read from God Human Animal Machine about an explanation that's impossible to understand. I think that it's not that the explanation is impossible to understand. Line by line, we could take those arithmetic operations. We invented arithmetic. That's not natural law. It doesn't exist outside of us. It is the volume that is incomprehensible. In a lot of ways, this just takes me back to our previous conversations about social media. It is about how can we adapt to deal with a world that we can have at our fingertips in increasingly voluminous ways? And I don't want my reality or realities or values to be defined by what machines make of increasingly large datasets. But also, I recognize that I don't have enough capacity to constantly be choosing the size of my world either. So, it is like, how am I going to flow with this? I think that's what I'm really looking for. This is here. This is going to be. Machines are going to make meaning of increasingly large datasets, and my reality and realities will be increasingly defined by that. And so, how do I hold on as much as I can to the experience of being an embodied person and flow with all of that in a way that I feel that I can look back on and say I did the best I could.
Sarah [00:41:37] Well, and I think that's the challenge before governments, before industry, before all of us as users of this technology and definitely, as citizens and friends and family members and parents. That's always what we're trying to tackle here at Pantsuit Politics, and artificial intelligence is no different. And this will not be the last conversation we have about it. So, we're going to reign it all the way in up next and take in one very precious dataset, which is the new season of Ted Lasso. Ted Lasso premiered for its third season. Title episode was called Smells Like Mean Spirit, which I thought was hilarious. There's been a new episode, you guys, so we're going to talk about plot points. They're on to the second episode, so we feel safe talking about the first episode. Ted is sending his son back to America. He looks very sad to do that. The team is now in the Premier League. Everyone thinks they're going to do terribly. Nate, his former assistant coach, has moved over to another team and is trash talking Ted. And, of course, Ted being Ted, he refuses to engage. He trash talks himself and compliments Nate. And here we are back in Ted Lasso land.
Beth [00:42:59] Keeley and Rebecca see each other. Keeley and Roy have split up and are just communicating that to Roy's niece, Phoebe, who tells him he's being stupid.
Sarah [00:43:07] I agree, Phoebe.
Beth [00:43:09] And the therapist for Ted has a new love interest, and I was so delighted to see her again. I love her.
Sarah [00:43:15] Yes, they seem to be communicating via telephone. They're having sessions via telephone as she's moved away to seemingly help another team.
Beth [00:43:23] So, the only person I felt like we didn't get a kind of check in with in this episode is Coach Beard.
Sarah [00:43:29] He was prominent, but he didn't have a storyline.
Beth [00:43:32] There's nothing revelatory about Coach Beard in this season.
Sarah [00:43:34] I do feel like Coach Beard is picking up on Ted's increasing distress. Yes, that seemed evident. He's always paying attention, that sort of coach Beard's vibe. But he is, I think, worried about Ted. Me too. I've said since the second episode, Ted Lasso needs to go back to America with his son. This is not where he belongs. And that's the theme of the episode. Why are we here? What are we doing here? And his son communicates, well, we're here to win. So, I hope that's what we do here. I don't even care if that's the final episode. I'm fine. Just win and go back to America. That's what I want for Ted Lasso.
Beth [00:44:05] I don't even care if he wins.
Sarah [00:44:07] Yeah, maybe that's where we'll end up.
Beth [00:44:09] I really don't. I don't know that it would make sense with the show for the victory of the team to be the moral of the story. I think it is more about the development of these human beings. Just seeing the evolution of Jamie, how Jamie in this episode is leading people to put down their phones and know that the team's doing well and keep working hard, that's a beautiful storyline. It's gorgeous to see how this series takes people in their lives seriously. And so, who cares if they win?
Sarah [00:44:41] It's so funny to me. Obviously, this show is made by Apple, who does not own a social media platform, and it is evident because the criticism is not subtle. And Nate is shown walking into his new office and this big team, and the first thing he does is open up Facebook and Twitter and check what people are saying about it. And it ends with him after Ted insults himself and compliments Nate, getting praise on social media, Nate slamming the computer down. And it's just presented as so sad. I think it's a little over the top. I understand what they're trying to do, but it feels a little heavy handed.
Beth [00:45:19] The spitting is heavy handed to me. I don't need the spitting part.
Sarah [00:45:22] Yeah. We all know Nate is miserable. I like that Ted refuses to villainize Nate. I don't feel anger or that vibe towards Nate, because I think that turn was quick and maybe a little bit unearned. Although, I did have an aha moment where I was thinking, oh, well, if Nate has this terrible relationship with his father, then maybe he would be the person to look at Ted Lasso and say, "You're a hypocrite. Why are you here loving on us when your son's an ocean away?" Although, Jamie also has that plotline. And so, I don't know. The parts with Nate sometimes feel unearned to me.
Beth [00:46:00] I felt like they tried to fix that in his press conference when Ted said Nate always sees the weakness and tries to exploit it. I felt like that was an attempt to say, "We've been planning these seeds the whole time, you guys, maybe you just didn't see them." But his ability to be such a great soccer strategist is rooted in the same thing that makes him struggle so much with relationships.
Sarah [00:46:21] Yeah, but I love that they were all back with us. I love all these characters. I think Jason Sudeikis is incredible on this show. I'm so glad he's won the awards. And he went to the White House. Did you see they went to the White House?
Beth [00:46:32] Honestly, I just love Brett Goldstein. And I was so happy for him that he got to go to Sesame Street in the White House. And I want all good things for him forever.
Sarah [00:46:39] And he has a new show. He's one of the producers of Shrinking. I'm going to watch it.
Beth [00:46:45] And it's fantastic.
Sarah [00:46:45] That's what I've heard, to a person, everyone who loves that show. So, that's next on my list. But I'm happy Ted is back. It will make a nice complement as we start watching Succession. Those will be nice compliments. The first season of Ted Lasso, I watched with The Crown. It's a nice balance to like a heavier drama.
Beth [00:47:02] Well, with Succession, we decided to talk about the show where you won't like anyone instead of the show where you love everyone. But that just felt more right for a political podcast. And Succession is going in such a political direction. It makes more sense. But what I think Ted Lasso offers back to our conversation about AI is sort of the reminder that it's pretty hard to manage this one life.
Sarah [00:47:24] Mm-hmm.
Beth [00:47:24] And managing in multiple places, which he's doing in a physical way, is nearly impossible.
Sarah [00:47:31] It's so true. It is a beautifully human show, and I'm glad it's back. And I'll be sad when it's over, even though I think it's appropriate. Although, I don't think they've confirmed this is their final season.
Beth [00:47:40] Oh, I thought that they had.
Sarah [00:47:42] I think there's been some sort of vague language, but I sure hope that is true. I love the British model where it's like two seasons we're out, like, let's not stretch this out. I don't need 35 seasons of Gray's Anatomy. I just don't think anyone needs that.
Beth [00:47:55] It has to be painful to know that you're part of something so special and that it will end, but I mean, that's just life too.
Sarah [00:48:01] Well, and it's in that industry, that level of job security is so unique.
Beth [00:48:06] Especially right now.
Sarah [00:48:07] Yeah, I love the article about the musician at Phantom of the Opera and how that's just unheard of, to be able to play your instrument like that at a show for 30 years and have that level of job security. Yeah, I get it. I get the call.
[00:48:20] Thank you for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. And thank you again to Abilene Christian University for letting us record here together. We will be back in your ears on Tuesday. And until then, keep it nuanced y'all.
Beth [00:48:45] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alise Napp is our managing director.
Sarah [00:48:51] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music.
Beth [00:48:57] Our show is listener-supported special thanks to our executive producers.
Executive Producers Martha Bronitsky. Ali Edwards. Janice Elliott. Sarah Greenup. Julie Haller. Helen Handley. Tiffany Hasler. Emily Holladay. Katie Johnson. Katina Zuganelis Kasling. Barry Kaufman. Molly Kohrs. Katherine Vollmer. Laurie LaDow. Lily McClure. Linda Daniel. Emily Neesley. Tawni Peterson. Tracey Puthoff. Sarah Ralph. Jeremy Sequoia. Katie Stigers. Karin True. Onica Ulveling. Nick and Alysa Villeli. Amy Whited. Emily Helen Olson. Lee Chaix McDonough. Morgan McHugh.
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