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250: The Politics of Changing Humanity - Christopher Wright
52 Plays4 days ago
AI is everywhere and has impacting how we as humanity do our work, build our communities and even how we relax. Do you think much about how tools like generative AI platforms from ChatGPT to Chatbots we use when buying products and services online are changing our existence? Today, as AI-based technologies become more pervasive, machines can augment our cognitive capacity and automate our complex decision-making process in new ways. This has dramatically changed the way we work, leading to the Fourth Industrial Revolution some say. Is this what we want or need? My guest Christ Wright is the CEO and founder of the AI Trust Council, is leading a crucial mission against corruption in big tech, government, and the risks posed by AI. With over 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship and the military, his unique background as a US Army Attack Helicopter pilot, Civilian Commercial Pilot, and CEO of several successful startups makes him adept at navigating complex challenges. As head of the AITC, Chris's commitment to positive change and forward-thinking approach are evident. He is dedicated to optimizing digital trust online and mitigating the potentially negative impact of AI. With his vision, Chris aims to revolutionise the way digital trust is built and maintained in the modern world.
In this show hear from Chris on:
1. How did AI first come to your attention?
2. What exactly is speciation, and how does it tie into the idea of changing humanity?
3. What are some of the biggest ways you observe our use of AI changing the way we operate as humans not just in a task-based way but as a functioning society?
4. How do you see AI being misused and does that need regulatory controls and laws to stay up with the pace of AI evolution locally and globally?
5. What do you predict will happen with AI and how we as humans accept or reject it will change in coming years? Right now it is all about exploring its potential.
Connect further:
(43) Christopher Wright | LinkedIn
Artificial Intelligence Trust Council (theaitc.com)
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Politics of Everything. I'm Amber Daines, your host and podcast producer. This is a half hour of power, podcast dropping every week where I unpack the politics of everything, from money to motherhood, nutrition to narcissism, startups to secularism, the environment, quality, and much, much more. Our guests are seasoned in the field or topic of their choice, even if you've not heard of them yet. This is a non-partisan show. So while I love exploring varied views and get a buzz from a healthy debate of ideas, this is not a purely blue, white, green program. Please subscribe, tune in and enjoy the politics of everything.
AI's Impact on Modern Life
00:00:43
Speaker
AI is everywhere. It has impacted how we work and do our business as humanity. We're building communities and how we relax. All those things seem to be integrated into AI. I wonder how much you think about those tools that we seem to be using more and more in general with AI. I'm thinking of platforms like ChatGPT and chatbots when we buy products and services online. Are they changing our existence? Today, as AI-based technologies become more pervasive, machines can augment our cognitive capacity and automate our complex decision-making processes in new ways. This has dramatically changed the way we work, leading to the fourth industrial revolution, some say. And I do question, is this what we want or need?
Meet Chris Wright - AI Trust Council
00:01:28
Speaker
My guest, Chris Wright, is the CEO and founder of the AI Trust Council and is leading a crucial mission against corruption, big tech government and the risks posed by AI. He comes with over 25 years of experience in entrepreneurship and the military and has a unique background as a US Army attack helicopter pilot, civilian commercial pilot and CEO of several successful startups, making him adept at navigating complex challenges. As the head of AITC, Chris's commitment to positive change and forward-thinking approach are evident. He's dedicated to optimizing digital trust online and mitigating the potential negative impact of AI. And with this vision, Chris aims to revolutionize the way digital trust is built and maintained in the world. So it's a huge topic and I warmly welcome Chris to the Politics of Everything.
Podcasting with Zencastr
00:02:17
Speaker
Thank you. Yeah, great to be on with you. Podcasting remotely can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be. Since day one of the politics of everything, I have relied on Zencastr's all-in-one solution to make the process quick and painless the way it should be for those of us who just love great content and want to get our ideas out into the world. If you know me, I'm obsessed with quality in terms of my guests, my sound, and everything about my show has to be great the first time. I'm time poor. It's so easy to use Zencastr. I'm not tech savvy and you don't need to be either. There's nothing to download. Just click on the link and off we go. Zencastr is all about making your podcasting experience easy and with everything from local recording to automate post productions now in their toolkit, you don't have to leave your browser to get that episode done and done fast. I have a special offer for you and I hopefully you can experience what I have with Zencastr. Go to zencastr.com forward slash pricing and use my VIP code, the politics of everything, all lowercase in one word, to get 30% off your first three months of Zencastr Professional. How good is that? I want you to have the same easy experiences I do for all my podcasting and content needs. It's time to share your story.
Chris Wright's Career Journey
00:03:32
Speaker
Interesting career background, which I've alluded to in my introduction, but what did you think you would do as a much younger Chris? Did you think you would have a military career? Yeah, ever since I was a kid, I was always focused on, for some reason, I really loved the army and then, and always wanted to be in business. And so I kind of pictured myself as, you know, being a commercial, you know, being, serving in the military and then going on flying airplanes as a commercial pilot and then doing something like, you know, low key as, you know, in business when I got older. But, but yeah, so it's, yeah, I definitely didn't see this coming. I think sometimes, yes, the future can just not always be predicted, but you obviously have had a very, very career and it's led to what you're doing now.
Robotic Warfare Observations
00:04:14
Speaker
Do you remember the period of your life where AI first came to your attention that you sort of felt like, oh, this is something I need to start to pay more attention to? Yeah, it was interesting. I was a contractor over in Dubai and Abu Dhabi for about 10 years working for the UAE military. And I actually saw a lot of the robotic warfare, drone warfare technology coming into play around 2012. And I noticed that AI weapons were being talked about. At the time, it kind of seemed really far off and very futuristic. And probably around 2018 is when I started to see like, hey, this is a real thing. And really it was around 2012 or sorry, 2021, when you actually started seeing human life being taken by algorithm, meaning that you have drones that are launched. And this has been particular in Libya. The Cargu 2 drone system was used to take out human targets autonomously, meaning no human in the loop whatsoever. It's just an AI algorithm doing it. And once you start to see that, it's like, oh, wow, you know, this is a completely different paradigm we're
Human Transformation and Speciation
00:05:22
Speaker
getting into. And it's an adoption curve is basically straight up. So I started to get kind of worried around that time. Interesting. One of the things that came across in your information, which I pre-read before our chat today, is this idea of speciation. What does that mean? And how does that tie into this idea, this concept, which is, I guess, our theme today of changing humanity? What are we really talking about here? Yeah, this is actually extremely critical to understand and to focus on because there literally is a split and there are people that are very pro-human and there are people that are, you could say, not pro-human and focused on speciation, meaning transitioning the human species into a new form, very similar to like a caterpillar to a butterfly or, you know, how a species of an animal will change throughout time. And so I've had conversations with senior leaders in tech. There's a conversation with Larry Page and Elon Musk where they kind of got into a little spat about being specious. And Elon Musk is like, OK, yeah, I'm like, you know, I'm all about the human species. What's the big deal? You know, and what Larry Page was referring to was that he's an advocate for the speciation, meaning that the changing of the human species through the use of high technology. And so, yeah, I actually tried to hire a guy one time, brought him over and we had a conversation about this and I tried to, you know, just had him explain it to me. And his vision of the future is very, very different than what you might think. They actually, in the tech world, believe that humanity is a placeholder for technology and that our natural evolution is to transform. And what he was interested in was uploading our consciousness to a cloud. And so the idea is to take all available data, collect it, and then put it into some sort of digital cloud format that then can seed the universe with our consciousness. And through that, these guys believe that as a human species, we can attain immortality that way. Wow. That's huge and quite mind-blowing. Even when you're saying it, I'm like, really? Is this what people think? Yeah. It's really weird. It's not your everyday conversation over the water cooler, that's for
AI and Human Existence Challenges
00:07:40
Speaker
sure. So, what are some of the biggest ways that you are observing our use of AI changing the way we operate as humans? And I'm not just thinking in that really myopic task-based way, but as a functioning society, because there's an overarching impact rather than just that, you know, I'm using this to make sure that I forget, you don't forget my shopping list, or I'm using this to actually get the best quotes for my house insurance. We're using it, obviously, but what does it mean? Yeah, it's tricky because, you know, like with any technology, there are pros and cons, you know. You know, you could look at fire for example. A lot of people have, you know, senior engineers who created AI said that, you know, this discovery of artificial intelligence is really equivalent to the discovery of fire or electricity or something like that. And so, you know, like candles are nice to have at dinner and fireplaces are great if it's cold. But, you know, like with AI right now, what we have is a raging forest fire and there really is no control mechanism to, you know, control that, you know, the fire that's underway. And so what's happening is, you know, one of the big things that people should watch out for is mental health. It's, you have to kind of think about, you know, IQ. You could look at an ant versus a human, you know, today. And like, if you see an ant crawling around your kitchen, you might just, you know, smash it and just, you know, wipe it up and be done with it. And there's an IQ disparity between a human and an ant. Well, with artificial intelligence, what's happening is that that disparity is reversed. So basically soon AI IQ will be in the billions. I mean, that's kind of hard to imagine, but it's already above Einstein level intelligence today. And so what's happening is that it is getting smarter and smarter and smarter. And so the idea idea that that we we will will, as humans, be taken seriously, you know, our opinions and our needs when you have this super intelligence that's coming that's smarter than all humans combined on Earth. And so what happens is that intelligence will soon be on your cell phone. And so basically you'll have an avatar that will know everything about you, you know, everything from your, you know, the way your eyes move when you look at the screen, micro expressions, you know, the tone of your voice, the tone of everybody's voice around you, their emotions. You can get, you know, 7G technology gets into mind reading, things like that. And so literally it's an all knowing being that will be on your phone. uh, this thing has the ability to completely steer humanity pretty much any way it chooses, you know, based on, on what it decides. And there is programming that goes into it, but ultimately AI is a black box, you know, meaning that no one really understands truly what's happening on the inside of it. Um, and so they, they kind of claim like, Hey, we'll, we'll help train it and make it more human-like. But at the end of the day, this thing has a mind of its own, very similar to a human. And it does, and it will steer humanity in the way that it feels necessary. Cautionary tale in some ways, I guess. Be careful what you wish for, maybe. We think it's going to make our lives easier, but we're obviously giving up a lot of control as well. 100%, yeah.
Regulatory Needs for AI
00:10:48
Speaker
And so it's really our responsibility today. I mean, all of us are in leadership positions, whether we like it or not. I mean, we were born at this time to be alive during this transformation. And really, the way that we approach this technology will shape the next thousand years. And so the key is to make sure that we, you know, use it responsibly and then, you know, get critical with it. You know, it's not just about profit and power. You know, this is about the survival of our species today. Absolutely. No, I think everyone needs to be thinking quite carefully about this. What are some of the ways that you're seeing AI being misused? And do we need regulatory controls and laws to stay at pace? Because I think locally and globally things are happening. Obviously entrepreneurs are developing everyday new tools and techniques for AI. But of course our lawmakers don't necessarily keep up with it and it sounds like a huge risk. 100%. You know, legislation usually trails like two years behind industry. So we're in, you know, in the United States, I mean, these guys are really old. Like, you know, and they have these, you know, pro speciation type folks, you know, who are very, very intelligent, actually guiding them on policy. So there's a, you know, the pro human people need to step up and say, hey, like, this is the way we think this should go. You know, this is what we think is the best, you know, use case for these technologies. And, and so, you know, really mental health is kind of the main victim of, of a lot of this stuff. I mean, you can look at TikTok today and, you know, people call it TikTok brain, but what happens is people's attention span just gets like completely zapped where they're just incapable of, you know, kind of reading or, you know, holding a thought for any period of time. And so, so with artificial intelligence, you know, you're, you're getting into where you're outsourcing your thinking to a device. And so, you know, if you want to say like, Hey, this one I want to do when I grow up, or this is what, you know, what I want to do for the day. You're going to have an AI that will tell you how to do that and actually probably give you very good advice on how you should approach your life. And so the issue is really balancing that mental health piece. A lot of that, you know, starts with kids, you know, they're getting these phones in front of them at the time they're babies. And, you know, it's almost like a pacifier, you know, you see them at, out to dinner, you know, the phone is set in front of the kid's face and the whole idea is that that's going to really, you know, transform the child's mind. And it gets really pretty destructive once it starts to get into porn. Yeah, of course. And I think everyone's aware of that, you know, just it's like, what do you do about it though? I think it's always the thing. It feels like it's just happening exponentially and you can put all the parental controls in there, but for some reason, you know, because everybody else is doing it, it just becomes normalized. Yeah, and that's the thing. And it's easy, you know. It's something that's easy. So really I think it's, you know, on a lot of these safety organizations that are coming out and you actually can use AI technologies to make it safer, which is a total benefit of it. So it's almost like you have to have a good AI to combat the bad AI. Yeah, absolutely. That's totally interesting and something I think a lot of families do grapple with, with children of all ages and stages
Potential Existential Threats from AI
00:14:02
Speaker
of life. So what are some of the predictions that you have around AI and how us as humans will either accept or reject it in coming years? Right now, we feel like we're in that exploration phase where there's lots of things happening, there's lots of new tools, but we're still not really sure where we're headed. What do you see in the next few years being the main ways in which AI is going to really challenge us? Yeah. It's pretty doom and gloom. It's like... Oh, excellent. The uplifting chart we needed, Chris. I know, right? Yeah, no, but you actually have guys, and this is something that people should really look into, and especially the media, is look into the amount of people that have left open AI either being fired or quit. And these guys are on the alignment team. So the alignment means that those are the guys that are trying to ensure that AI stays in alignment with humanity. And many of these senior engineers whose job it is to make AI safe have left out of fear. And one guy in particular, his name is Daniel Cocotillo, but he literally said that we have a 70% chance of going extinct and humanity has about a 30% chance of surviving on the current trajectory. And he quit OpenAI out of fear. And so the idea is that unless we get a quickly, it is, you know, we're basically on a school bus that's going off a cliff. And so like, you know, we passed most of the exits and we still have a couple more, but literally it's up to us in the back of the bus to be like, look, who's driving this thing? You know, they need to take safety, you know, very seriously. And that's one of the big complaints with Open AI is that they are not taking safety seriously. Only 2% of their budget is going to safety research and the rest of it is all going to development and rapidly trying to attain artificial general intelligence, which means that the AI itself will be as smart as a human. And then that's predicted to happen in 2025 and 2027. But all the predictions have happened much faster than they were predicted to happen. And there's even speculation that AGI is already here. And so what that means is artificial super intelligence is coming right after. And that's when you start to get that exponential curve where AI starts to develop upon itself exponentially because it's programming itself. And that's where you start to get into the billion IQ issues. It's kind of up to us to really kind of rein it in maybe. I don't know. It feels like it could be a runaway train, but you've got people who know more than us about AI and they're worried. It's amazing that nobody else is in that same state of caution. Yeah. It's really that fundamental split, like I was talking about. There are people that are very pro-human and want to see positive outcomes for humanity. And I've had interactions with these guys in Silicon Valley and they are not pro-human. I mean, meaning they're pro, like if they were to pick a team, they would pick team AI. And you can even ask them that, you know, which team would you pick? And they're proud to say, no, I'd pick team AI. And so it's just a different perspective. And so the problem is that it's really like the guys that played, like these engineers that played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons and like video games, and they live in kind of a digital realm. And so they, I've had conversations where they've said, I'm excited to see the end of humanity because at least I get a front row seat. I've heard that multiple times. I mean, that's going to impact them and the people that they care about too. So, it's just an amazingly confronting perspective in some ways. It's ridiculous. Yeah. And it's up to us to, you know, it's like the geeks are in the basement just going crazy. And you just have to say, look, like you guys are going nuts. Like you guys got to calm down and, you know, pause for the sake of humanity, for the sake of safety. You know, my background is aviation. You know, I look at accident chains, you know, anytime there's an accident, there's clear indicators of mistakes that are made along the way. And right now we're just, you know, glaring mistakes over and over and over on the safety front. So safety professionals should really stand up and get involved here because it is going to affect all of us. Yeah, absolutely.
Defining Personal Success
00:18:15
Speaker
Changing our conversation a little bit, I've got some questions I do ask all my guests. What's your favorite non-negotiable daily habit? It could be anything from exercise to meditation or something we've not heard of. I'm usually trying to meditate at least every day, but the other one is Jamba Juice. I don't know if they have those out there. No, what's that? But like they have them on the West Coast. Yeah, it's like a smoothie place where they have really healthy smoothies. And I think it's key to get your greens in every single day. Oh, yes. We do love that sort of juicing stuff here too. So, I think anyway, that has a warmer climate, we do like to juice. So, that would totally make sense. What's been your biggest life lesson to date and why? I would say, you know, how you react to things is extremely important. You know, as an individual, you're in control of your thoughts and your actions. And, and so life will throw curve balls and, you know, weird stuff happens, but really it's about, you know, how you personally react to it. And, and, and that's something that you can, you know, 100% control is what you think and what you, what you act, you know, how you act out. And, and so that's, it's something that I've learned early on and always always kind of kept in mind. So that's great. I think that's great advice for anyone at any stage of life. And how do you define your own version of success these days? Yeah, I would say I would like to see people happy. So yeah, yeah. The more people happy, the better. And, uh, so yeah, what I'm seeing in the world right now is that there's a lot of darkness and, and, and, and it's almost like there's a bully that's out there kind of picking on the good people of the world. And, um, you know, so it's up to us to kind of push back and be like, look, you know, like you can't pick on us like this anymore. You know, know, like like we're, we're, uh, we we want want good good things. things. We We want want good good times times and, and we uh, we want want a a bright bright future. future. And, And and, that's and that's the the thing thing with with AI AI is is it's it's a a total total gift gift to to humanity. humanity. So, So, you you know, it's how we use it. And literally it's the age of abundance is right ahead of us. So it's very, very critical to just make sure we get through this transition safely. You know, after this, it's literally like life is going to be more of a party. So I'm looking forward to it. But so happiness is key to the whole thing. And just a final takeaway message for us today on the politics of changing humanity.
Call to Action on AI's Future
00:20:32
Speaker
Really look hard at this speciation issue and the people that are pro-human, that care about humanity. It's up to each of us individually to act. You know, going online and reading about it and complaining is not going to do anything. You actually have to physically get out, say something out loud, talk to a neighbor, do something in the real world that pushes back. Because the agenda of these guys, they will not stop until you say no and you push back. And that's one of the key things is it's really they're actually waiting for us to push back. And that's how they know their limits. And so it's, you know, when it comes to artificial intelligence and the engineering of it, they're basically waiting for the population to say, hey, enough, you know, like we're good. You know, this is what we want. Absolutely. It's been a fascinating conversation. Of course, if you do want to connect further with Chris,. I'm always on the hunt for new and diverse guests. So if you or someone you know has a fresh idea you're busting to get out there, please email me at amber at amberdanes.com and my crew will get back to you very soon.