hi I’m Taylor Owen from the globe in mail this is machines like us last year Cinder Pai the head of Google said that AI was the most profound technology humans had ever built more profound than fire or electricity or anything else we’ve ever done and he’s not alone in thinking that I have to admit we even used that Bai quote when we were developing this show but what if AI is just another technology what if it’s more kin to TV or radio than fire or electricity that proposition might explain why Douglas rushkoff didn’t sound all that excited when I told him I wanted to talk to him about AI I forgot what’s your main theme I wonder know what you’re thinking about AI these days that’s basically it all right couldn’t we just talk about the episodes of what Dexter two or whatever that is redex rushkoff is a professor of media theory in digital economics City University of New York the author of 20 books about digital technology and one of the most important media theorists of this generation he invented the term viral media the idea of going viral and he predicted the Doom crash before almost anyone else did after we got over his initial reluctance to talk about AI we ended up having this really Lively conversation about whether computers will ever be able to create real art why he thinks Raves are technology enabled political acts and how AI is transforming our culture for better and for worse and running through all of this the thing running through all of Rush kof’s work really is this fervent belief that we need to make Tech more human and in an era of AI that mission may be harder and more important than ever Douglas rashkov hey thanks for coming on machines like us thanks for having me yeah so you’ve been talking about team human and the sort of tension between humans and technology for the last decade that seems like your project for the last decade it’s like fighting for team human so how are we doing well now that I’m here I know machines like us so as long as they like us um machines don’t like us but machines don’t like anything they’re machines that’s why we call them machines so where are humans in this right now how’s how are humans standing up to this onslaught of Technologies you’ve been concerned about for a decade I mean I’ve always looked at at at these kinds of technology that you’re talking about the sort of the technology Onslaught as just the Leading Edge of capitalism you know technology is fine you know it’s just sitting there I love gears I love Wheels fire maybe Tech I love ey gget or two yeah tech tech is good you know Tech is good it’s just you know what are we using it for you know I I guess I I see two main trends that we’re contending with now one is sort of a more BAS basic human instinct looking for safety and insulation and predictability and all and because of the state of the world no it’s always humans you know because there’s a saber-tooth tiger that’s going to jump on you so what can I do oh let’s build a fence I’ve invented the fence I’ve invented the electric fence I’ve invented the shotgun you know it’s to make the world you know or fertilizer which looked really good at the time nitrogen you know fertilizers and all oh we’re have predictable yield and harvest and all that and antibiotics it’s going to save us from that and then you know you as you use it you see oh well I’ve actually grown some super bugs with the antibiotics and I’ve created Wars with my fences and my guns and there’s there’s these downsides but there’s this drive for safety and I think what we’re realizing now with tech is that we’ve kind of reached the point of diminishing returns at least many of us do maybe not the tech Bros but a lot of us it’s like they’re not actually making us more safe so there’s that one and then there’s sort of the onslaught of technology which is just capitalism which is just companies trying to grow exponentially by any means necessary and Technology offers a really good set of tools for getting more work money attention anything out of humans in less time and is AI doing that so is AI capitalizing on our attention or in some ways AI is of pulling people out has the potential to pull people out of productivity yeah I mean in the best of all situations we look at the surplus of Labor as a good thing and not a bad thing you know I was on CNN talking about about Ai and who is it Jake Tapper he asks oh well what about the unemployment problem and I said well unemployment problem about the unemployment solution you know I don’t want a job do you want a job I don’t want a job I want stuff I want money want to do things I’m interested in do stuff right maybe make meaning maybe contrib I don’t want a job you know you look as was a media the when were Jobs invented in the 13th century you know didn’t work so well exactly it was they were invented they used to be craft people trading stuff and you invented jobs as a way of disempowering people to go work for Charter monopolies and all so uh sure if we could somehow wrestle around the idea that the reason we have jobs is no longer to make stuff that people need we have jobs in order for companies to justify letting us participate in The Spoils of of capitalism you know if we’re allowed to just have stuff then I’m fine with AI uh uh taking our jobs and doing all that but they’re actually not they’re taking our jobs but they’re deskilling our labor there’s still a ton of work all the kids that have to go into the mines to get the rare earth metals all the the water that has to be diverted all the tagging of all the data and that’s mostly boring lower level work than we’re letting the AIS do so we end up in service to them and that’s because the AI I mean we even just saw it I mean open AI was started the company was started with with a a CREDO really to do AI ethically to to make sure it was in human being service and Sam mman uh he got actually for a moment was kicked out by the board because they’re like oh you’ve turned against the original aim of this company you want to just do exponential growth for the sake of growth and pedal to the metal and um he fought his way back you know it’s just like they’re not really a nonprofit anymore it’s like Google they lost their don’t do evil you know got stricken from the record of course yeah so I’m not I I’m not optimistic about the way we’re deploying a AI I feel like we’re going to use it the same way we’ve used every technology before do you think it so you turn to this sort of discussion of humanity in Tech when when the when social media looked like it was pulling something from us and taking or when did that change happen and is he sort of a Continuum of that for me it was originally 1993 you know I was part of the original kind of cyber Punk cyberdelic Digital counterculture so it felt like really computers and psychedelics were almost the same sorts of things they expanded the way you thought about the world hypertext freaked people out back then you know when when someone like me would come along and say you know someday you might have a computer on your desk you might be sending electronic messages you know to other people they would laugh at me I mean my first book was P you know was was cancelled because they thought the internet would be over by ’93 when it was supposed to come out but but that countercultural urge for uh promoting and enhancing Collective human creativity kind of got reframed in that year 93 by Wired Magazine who came and said you know we are the magazine of the Digital Society and the digital society looks pretty much like Wall Street with neon right you know those early covers it’s going to be Wall Street with exponential growth you so it’s 9394 when we took these Technologies and and and instead of really deploying them as tools for people to create uh novelty we turn the expand our Humanity right I mean that ex why we had those move cultural movements it’s because technology was enabling a new kind of humanity orpr what it means to be human to what it means to be more people in new ways and new articulations exactly I mean it was it was everything from you know shifting from a rock and roll show with a bunch of long-haired guys doing you know kind of masturbatory solos on a stage to the Rave where everyone came together Comm electronic music we’re going to channel the beam and you know kind of hippie dippy but it was it was there was that instead of straight linear novels and movies we got hypertext adventures and choose your own this and you know instead of just receiving the programming of Television we were programming computers ourselves and Building Things you know it was a very kind of uh an early Burning Man Rave creative that was technologically inter mediated right like a rave was mediated by technology in some way or enhanced by technology and it created a collective of that of thousands of in a real place doing a similar thing experiencing something together what we didn’t realize was that that was a political act a thousand kids going into an abandoned warehouse or taking over a public field for a dance is political as opposed to you know going to a nightclub and paying money we were what was the political expression taking public space for fun same as the internet we didn’t realize the internet was a public space at least originally you know this was a public space where where it was a Commons where the way that we was it ever that yeah early on to go on the internet you had to sign an agreement saying you wouldn’t do any any commercial activity right early early early early yeah early my inter 88 89 90 91 ’92 you know they weren’t allowed to do ads it was the first ad happened in like ’93 94 and everybody went what the heck is going on here but we didn’t realize we didn’t realize quite what we had and at the time those of us who were early internet enthusiasts when business did want to come on it felt like kind of an affirmation of what we were doing people who got involved in computers when I did in the 80s and 90s our parents were worried about us they thought it was like we were saying we want to you want to be a computer programmer it’s so oh so you want to play video games for your life you want to be a a Dungeons and Dragons player or something you want to break things open and question like it it wasn’t there was a rebellion to it right there was that too there was that too but right that’s what it was it was this a new way of extending our neurology but yeah in 93 when when they decided that this was going to be an investment opportunity then all that space of new possibility was shifted so the whole polarity of the net changed that’s when you saw saw the you know wired in other magazines talking about why you should make your website sticky that’s the word they use sticky meant that you get stuck does that sound like a website you want to go I want to go and get stuck on this website and they even had ads for sticky websites that look like fly paper they said nothing attracts like real media it was a company that was going to help you make a sticky website and there were all these humans stuck on the it’s like that is not and when I looked at that aded I was like oh this is so this is early in the evolution so but through all of like post that you’ve seen this through a lens of culture in many ways so why is culture so important as the lens through which to see the way we interact with technology or the relationship between technology and power or politics or ideology well it’s interesting you know Neil Postman uh a student of mclen or or friend of mclen and a friend of mine a great media theorist who did wrote techn and amusing ourselves to death when he was asked to describe what is media he says you know a medium is the stuff on which culture grows a medium you know and it sounds almost like a petri dish right you put agar is this medium you use to grow bacteria and life emerges and life emerges right in an unpredictable way human culture grows on whichever medium dominates or or character izes Our Moment so we have speech and song you know and well that’s where culture happens we get writing and manuscripts and then we get the printing press we get radio as a culture and movies were a culture TV as a culture and now our culture is growing on digital technology so I look at digital Tech and say well what is distinct what is unique about it what are the biases how does digital technology work so then what kind of culture emerges from it right okay so digital digital compared to analog digital is discreet it’s samples it’s right so what you get on it are are a culture of things that are broken up compar fragments fragments and and discreet so the AI is the petri dish of culture what grows in that well it’s interesting I look at AI more through the lens of the memory than the memory bias it is it is memory I mean it’s based on memories it’s not yeah right so AI is not new AI for people who aren’t aware of at least it’s not even AI it’s large large language models we don’t have ai yet we have nothing like AI yet but the word AI now is used to refer to large language models which really just look at everything that’s recorded and try to come up with kind of the most mediocre possible version of whatever you’ve asked for what’s the average right create the write the average Beetle song you know so it goes back and finds that average thing so it’s it’s about retrieving memory and uh uh reverting to the mean getting to the exact average which is uh that’s a weird that’s a weird culture why do you say that’s not AI because that in some ways that is artificially trying to replicate some form of intelligence it might not be a good one might not no intelligence involved you mean it’s not good or is it’s not no sparking new ideas is that what makes something intelligent well we go back to like you know Aristotle you know you would need a a faculty of reasoning yeah and it clearly doesn’t have that there’s no reasoning going on here it’s not that it’s not thinking yeah it’s it’s averaging it’s wonderful to watch it’s cool right I mean it can be it can be I mean I don’t like the artifacts it creates I don’t like looking at somebody’s mid-journey picture but I know the person who made the mid Journey picture had a really good time playing with it and the wonder they saw when itting and sometimes yeah and the AI says something to you that makes you think oh does it was it alive for a second but but hearing someone tell about that is like listening to somebody’s Acid Trip right it’s like it was great for you but you know they never quite they never quite translate do you think our culture needs human generated media like do we care that much like this is where I I get worried when I see sort of some of these music Generation apps for example AI tools that create something that’s like kind of close enough to a pop song Maybe we’re okay with that depends on the purpose I mean is it the wallpaper in your bathroom or the wallpaper in your office bathroom in case like which is there to stimulate moderately pooping and you know good enough like we’re okay with it exactly maybe you can get the AI and you know have it just optimized for the workplace for reduced sexual harassment elevator music you’re not going to put van go in there right but art if you’re looking at a van go are you looking at the van go because you want because of the impact of the paint on your retina or are you looking at it as a medium what’s a medium it’s the thing that connects me to Van go over a century and a half of time I’m connecting to that tortured Soul who made that thing you know the the AI you know it’s interesting the the AI looks at what we would consider human artifacts as noise you know the AI Tech bro mindset would autotune everybody you know and for commercial industry music like you know an Ariana Grande fine autotuner you know so she’ll hit the perfect SE right but you’re taking like James Brown right who’s reaching up for that note you know the way he did uh if you autotune that you are you are you kill what it is the soul sure the soul and that’s what it is because we are connecting with him music is the medium through that connects us with James Brown’s Soul over time and space and that’s it’s the whole purpose of it even girls who are going on the freaking eras tour are trying to connect to Taylor Swift the person yeah do they as our culture gets flooded with AI generated stuff it’s going to make people more valuable you think so what does that look like what how do we are we going to have like organic labels on content create like some equivalent of like a verification that this was a human thing and it wasn’t touched by AI are we going to put sort of a real like like genetically modified totally no GMOs right like this is like the no AI production of culture I don’t think we’ll need to you think we’ll know yeah and also because sort it out when we’re okay because Taylor’s going to use some AI on her recording and that doesn’t mean it’s not her so the human being using AI as a tool is still interesting so I think you know AI can play a role like that if we’ve got artists and thinkers and culture makers actually thinking about it and playing with it as opposed to just corporations using it to you know Stamp Out the human and if the tools the are made that through which we interface with AI that allow for that I mean that’s what I worry about too is like I’m not totally sure that’s how these tools are being built in part because of the culture of those building them so there’s also a culture of the technologists and the people and the economies that are building these tools for purposes that might not be what we’re talking about the C the the the technologists are not in a culture they’re in an economy right they’re just looking to maximize profit yeah they might also have an ideology right and some of their worldview that is distinct from their economic pressure and like I wrote in my last book the one that’s costing me all my speaking gigs is the the ideology that they’re coming from is one where they get rid of us you know that the only reason to keep all these people around has been that we are their labor force right if their labor force can be machines instead of humans they will do that it’s goes all the way back this is why I write about Thomas Jefferson and the dumb waiter you know in Middle school we told about the dumb waiter was there to help the enslaved people so they wouldn’t have to carry the food up the stairs no the dumb waiter was there so Thomas Jefferson didn’t have to look at the enslaved people you know but if you could actually get rid of them that’s even better so do you think that’s what driving some of so what do you well step back what do you make of these people I mean you wrote about them in your last book but people who are building a new set of Technologies and companies that are putting pressure on society and hum USS what do you make of these people like the Sam of the world the the the the new ones and I think the old ones too you know they they’ve got a different drive and it’s a drive for escape you know there’s a certain personality type um that is really good at kind of a distanced systems thinking but they are afraid of of people how did you come to know that I mean the the moment I had that really drove it home was when I thought I was going to be doing this talk for these you know wealthy investors and all they really wanted was advice on their bunkers their actual doomsday bunker strategies so they literally wanted to escape the world that they were yeah and I realized as I was talking to them that this is not a nightmare scenario for them this is a fantasy you know Walking Dead is the is the positive fantasy for them not the negative one what’s what’s with that why like what’s the oh this is since Francis Bacon and the invention of empirical science you know when Francis Bacon when was that 1500 when when when he was selling the idea of empirical science to the the church and and the state he said um empirical science will let us take Nature by the for loock hold her down and submit her to our will an unpredictable World a chaotic world is scary you know why do you think there some there’s a strand of Liber like almost chaotic libertarianism that’s inside Tech now I mean the politics of tech has evolved from like like you said like a kind of free-spirited libertarian psychedelic movement to now something a little darker right like like you say like there there’s an escapism to it but there’s also they’re almost fostering chaos in a way they want why is that where does that come from well it’s a might makes right that characterizes both you know musk and Trump you know and anybody who’s made it to the top say that right if I get if I have the tanks and the weapons well might makes right you know it’s a it’s pretty it’s pretty easy part of it happened I mean it was our fault as as Little Hippie kids you know uh one of our heroes in the early days of the internet was John Barlo this guy he was part of the Electronic Frontier Foundation The Lyricist for the Grateful Dead our counterculture hero Cowboy guy writes this thing called Declaration of independence of cyers space you know you know nation states of the world you know beware we don’t need you we’re going to take off the sh the people of cyber space we declare we don’t need and all of us are like yeah we don’t need you what we didn’t realize is when you get rid of government and regulation you create free reign for the corporations it’s like you get rid of all the bacteria and the fungus grows right you know you got to have them in Balance so we actually by getting rid of government and seeing government in regulation rather than as the stewards of the internet they gave us the internet they built the internet we got rid of them because oh they’re uncool and they’re military and they’re regulating us and uh we gave free reign to these companies and that’s really what led to this uh this California ideology as as um Richard Barbara called it or the mindset as I call it which is that the the markets can cure everything this was wired magazines Credo they they said open is good closed is bad tattoo it to your farhead and they meant on one sense open technology but really what they meant was open markets the markets should be open to everything just go you know no local regulation you can’t stop Uber from being the dominant cab company in your town that would just be against the religion of the net and is a world where a half a dozen companies globally planetary companies control some form of a control a lot through some form of a is that just the natural Continuum of what you’ve been talking about in some ways yes because we’re living a in a society that was forged by British East India Trading Company right by the chartered monopolies that were invented in the 12th and 13th century in grained for us to Aspire to that way and that’s the way it goes but it’s also really specific to AI because like we said before if AI is an averaging machine right AI is going to find the mediocre the exact mediocre thing then every company every industry that uses AI is going to commodify its own products can’t help it right everything’s going to become a commodity because there’s no more um competition everybody’s using the same AI basically the same technology ingesting the same things being created by the same so there’s a feedback loop there right that might have a natural but that feedback loop then of everything being the same of everything being mediocre then it requires the only way business can succeed then is by being a monopoly there’s no there’s no other choice so not everybody’s super pessimistic about AI I’ve there there I’m not okay maybe sounds like I am certainly does so let’s get to some positives so two examples I talked to Eric toppel a doctor cardiologist wrote a book about AI in medicine who argues that AI is going to take a lot of the things that were distracting a human relationship between a doctor and a patient things like when you go to a doctor it’ll they spend all their time diagnosing things that could be easily have been done so it open up a space for inter because like when when when they put computers in the doctor’s office it really helped right because the doctor then didn’t have to talk to me I he’s like sitting there at the monitor asking me questions like I just have to I know these but I’m got to enter them in again I know I know we asked you these but it’s just and then the the six minutes that’s been allotted by the computer lit well it literally is 6 minutes now is what he talks about yeah by him and the Machine so that one worked really well but he was saying look work with me for a minute that he no longer has to look at the computer now there will be automatic note taking that will hear and process the conversation and all right okay cool but could H like yes are we going to build another option would be we have AIS that help us in life in some way be more human or guide us to be more human just a matter of whether the developers of AI can get their heads around that part there most of them so devalue the humans they’re so scared of the humans they want to build a city near salana to get away from the humans or they bunkers they’re not building things to maximize Humanity but but if they did then absolutely you know right now ai Works to make like in in Creative Pursuits I was even trying to use an AI to see if it can help me write my comic book and this graphic novel and I have to do all the laborious hard part and then the AI gets to do the fun part so what does it do so what’s that process like working with that a it’s horrible then it gets to write the scene it’s like no I want to write the scene I want you to do all the hard work and that so and it’s like that’s not fun um and and but but you’re right if we offloaded the boring stuff to the AI and then the doctor was there to actually engage actually speak to somebody actually hear and and do a kind of uh uh systems thinking that a good doctor can do even assisted by an like the AI could be like did you consider Hashimoto’s you know you know maybe just check out check out there’s one disease that you missed that third week in in in med school when you had covid you know that one turns out maybe maybe here um that’d be cool you know no it’s just that we current use AI more to Outsource whatever to get rid of that human part because usually it’s the human parts of industries that don’t scale so we don’t we don’t like them you know but yeah if we can if we can we just haven’t done it we haven’t had a technical Revolution yet where we’ve enhanced the human but we we can I mean maybe this will be maybe this will be the one so what makes you optimistic about it then like you said you’re potentially optim optimistic here so how how do we create that I mean the thing that makes me the most optimistic about AI is how lowlevel it’s it stuff is I know it’s kind of impressive to people now but it’s impressive to people the way it was impressive to have Adobe Photoshop or fractal paint at the beginning it’s like oh anybody could be a professional designer and then like 6 months in you’re like oh that’s an Adobe Photoshop you know any of us using Adobe photosh right we’re used by Adobe Photoshop and a real designer levels up and knows how to do it same with you know electronic music or garage band or any of these things it doesn’t it doesn’t really uh replace us and it doesn’t do that yet but yeah if there are uh medicine may be one where we can do it uh where we can actually use it to to optimize for novelty of and for Humanity for for but that’s what understand big data sets or help generate yeah but that’s what my work has always been about you we’re not going to do that until we as a society come to recognize and value the human which is why I’m saying well autotune at your peril the in in the early days as you know from from mechanized looms you know once we got the mechanical Loom the to see the human stitches in uh uh a a work of weaving was considered inferior stuff now you pay more to get a sweater that has human-made knots you know underneath the yarn and I think you know that’s that that can come back so one think I’ve struggled with watching this latest phase is how to separate the unbelievable hype cycles that are around AI at the moment from what do seem like some meaningful advances it’s really hard you’ve been at this business for longer than I have when you how do you decipher these things when you look at a new technology thrust on society driven by all sorts of economic incentives that create hype and yet also some meaningful changes like in previous technological iterations how do you navigate that um or how do we as people living through it navigate it um the way I generally try to distinguish between a hype psycho and reality is I I look at Tech technologically um is this enhancing human beings ability to create and exchange value and right now some total I don’t see um you know AI in the creative Fields doing that but yeah I’d love to have some AIS at Boeing looking at their production process and see what why are things falling off the planes I’d love them to have it in the operating room just watching and maybe Whispering little things into you know I don’t want people in Google Glass but having a a Google earplug maybe like a producer on a TV show talking to the Anchor saying why’ you ask him about this so how do we tweak the incentives to allow for that kind of creation from technology because if it is just sort of a capitalist driver that’s motivating a small number of people to build something that subjugates Humanity blah blah blah blah blah how do we tweak that well for me tweaking S I tried to do it actually at what’s that school in there’s a business school in Toronto Rothman yeah I went there rman and I I I did this talk that that I started with um how many how many people in this room by show of hands how many people in this room would be satisfied making $50 million in your career no one raised their hand right because they were all taught to go for the home run so the The Tweak that I can think of is trying to get Tech bro busy people to feel safe with $50 million to say can you stop if you stop at 50 million you’re going to have so many more possibilities available to you and I promise 50 million is going to be enough you’re going to be okay you’re going to be okay with 50 million really you really are because then you know when you look at like Mark Zuckerberg or someone saying I’m going to give back 90% of my money you know 90% of my 20 billion or $50 billion it’s like what if you had been 90% less extractive with Facebook it might actually be good for people it’s possible yeah do you still believe in the power of tech to enhance Humanity I mean I feel like that was such a big strain in your work for so long this is possible that these things we can coexist with technology and Technology can maximize our expression and our Humanity do you still believe that I’ve always believed it it’s always possible you know in in my very first book on technology which was Siberia the one I wrote in like ’92 93 I was people are saying oh you’re so optimistic you’re so optimistic you know they look back at it and it’s like no that book at the end I said there is a window of opportunity right now to steer this towards human creative social you know social ends and if we don’t by golly there are people who the same people who’ve turned every other one towards towards anti-human ends are going to take this with us you know you you know power up pours a vacuum yeah and so that’s that’s the tension point at the moment which one of those do it yeah of course we can still do it but I I really think right now the the the the most necessary first step towards us being able to seize technology for the benefit of humanity is to reacquaint ourselves with what Being Human even is and that means learning how to tolerate making eye contact with another person super hard I don’t know if you get I get these notes the first day of class now you know more and more every semester from kids you know note from their doctor please excuse Johnny from class participation because he’s got social anxiety you know don’t look at him in the eyes and just let him kind of it’s like there’s added things to that yes it’s that I agree it’s also this seeming inability to address human tension or conflict in any way there’s a removal from that’s digital again it’s because the digital bifurcates it so quickly such clear polar my daughter’s campus are you Zionist or anti-zionist it’s like you and you can’t talk about it you’re right we we don’t we don’t we used to at least argue at Thanksgiving you know and then hate the person so just a wrap here but like how do you keep centered on your Humanity as you come into contact with AIS in all aspects of your lives like how do we I get like I would like to preserve my Humanity but I also use these tools all the time they’re I’m confronted with them regularly as everybody is and how do I how do I what’s the check there to myunity well I mean I I’ve always thought the check is is if you accept that whatever technology you you are using it may be configured to to some behavioral Finance technique Las Vegas slot machine routine whatever it is you know that that’s happening so you accept that that is happening whenever you’re on this stuff and then give yourself some time away from it to re-calibrate so you go back to you know what were the Israelites told in the desert you know the Israelites escaped the death cults of of Egypt at the time they get into the desert what’s the first thing they did they got the Sabbath it was a day to basically say I’m not going to produce or consume any I’m just going to be so one day a week one sth of my time I’m going to spend just me being with people and celebrating the sanctity of Being Human it’s the old Mr Rogers you know you are great I love you just the way you are for being you for being you and that’s I mean boy that we’ve even lost that we’ve lost that but yeah I would say the easiest thing is whether you do it as a day with your family I know it’s hard imagine this 24 hours with no screens 24 hours one day a week where you meet each other play cards make love walk around meet your neighbor you don’t have to worship Jesus or anything you know whatever you know it’s like just chill just chill with each other see if you can even do it and if you can’t you know what I used to do with um uh when I was going around traveling with my team human talk I would say you know the way to start is I want you to find 15 seconds a week 15 seconds where you can be with another person look in their eyes and breathe you should be able to get two full inhale exhale Cycles two full space and a moment look at someone for two breaths if you can 15 seconds and that is enough to recalibrate your nervous system two breaths and then you know try that you know for couple of months 15 seconds a week then see if you can move up to 30 seconds to be with a person for 30 seconds or a minute if you got a minute you can almost start to make out or something for that person you know you know play cards if you can’t can you know Canasta whatever it is um it it it it resets you it recalibrates you meet your neighbors borrow stuff you know the the the story I’ve been telling is when I had to hang a graduation picture of my daughter and um I needed a drill and like any American I thought I’m going to go to Home Depot get a minimum viable product drill you know use it once keep it in the garage it’s never going to work again or I could walk down the street to Bob’s house knock on his door and say Bob can I borrow your drill how hard is that right because if I borrow Bob’s drill now he might want something from me he knows I’m a nerd I could teach algebra to his daughter before her Regents or he’s going to want to come over for bar all a sudden you have a relationship right and you’re net in a community and we you know sooner they going to be over you know singing Christmas carols you know it’s like but that’s that used to be what we wanted was neighbors and fun and friends and all that and it’s been so um worn out of us but yeah I I think it’s I think it’s that easy and when you are calibrated when you are social then you look at AI from a different perspective right it’s not about how can I get rid of as many people as possible in my life but how can I enhance you know my relationships and and everything about my world I mean I got to say like I saw the path to keeping that Humanity in the couple of previous times we’ve spoken about your team human Mission but those were with technologies that seem almost quaint to me compared to what we’re going through now like I really am and maybe tell me wrong here but it it feels to me like what we’re about to go through with AI makes your mission and mandate and call exponentially harder yeah I mean I don’t yet experience AI as a gamechanging leap for me AI still feels like an extens of Google you know it’s like Google gave us the ability to search for anything and get an answer and AI kind of puts those Google search results together into a coherent thing for us although it turns out worse than the new original Google search does in some cases usually yeah but it’s hallucinating or doing whatever they call it you know but it’s trying you know it’s trying and let’s say it got let’s say it got good yeah you know that would be and I’ve seen it do some interesting things you know you know you know Netflix wants to use it instead of watching subtitles they can change the mouths on actors so it looks like they’re saying where they’ll be cool and and the sort of the the things that you’re talking about the the for doctors to use it or drones you know to go that would be great let’s not go there what are you you know so you’re telling me to lighten up and that humans have a have a shot here I’m telling you that tensing up won’t necess necessarily help us through this strange attractor right that what we want to do is build our rapport with other people keep your feet on the ground as much as possible and then slowly learn to trust your intuition As you move how does this make me feel yeah what is this doing to me as a human right right am is it enhancing my agency do I have real Choice here or are they limiting my choices to a certain uh a certain pallette you know is this a snap two G as we used to call it or do I have free range here well look thanks again for talking thank you thanks for what you do no likewise like question right technology likes me does it it does does it it does I know the AI guys are really scared for me this one guy met part he’s like rush cof I can’t believe what you wrote about AI aren’t you scared like of what he because well when AI is in charge they’re going to see what you wrote and come for you and he’s like I don’t write anything at all online about AI I’m like well don’t you think the are going to be smart enough to know exactly machines like us is produced by paradigms in collaboration with the Globe and Mail the show is produced by Mitchell Stewart our associate producer is seoa Kim executive producers are Kathleen gold and James milward our theme song is by Chris Kelly a special thanks to Matt frer and the team at the globe in mail if you like the interview you just heard Please Subscribe or leave a raing or a comment it really helps us get the show to as many people as possible
Douglas Rushkoff has spent the last thirty years studying how digital technologies have shaped our world. The renowned media theorist is the author of twenty books, the host of the Team Human podcast, and a professor of Media Theory and Digital Economics at City University of New York. But when I sat down with him, he didn’t seem all that excited to be talking about AI. Instead, he suggested – I think only half jokingly – that he’d rather be talking about the new reboot of Dexter.
Rushkoff’s lack of enthusiasm around AI may stem from the fact that he doesn’t see it as the ground shifting technology that some do. Rather, he sees generative artificial intelligence as just the latest in a long line of communication technologies – more akin to radio or television than fire or electricity.
But while he may not believe that artificial intelligence is going to bring about some kind of techno-utopia, he does think its impact will be significant. So eventually we did talk about AI. And we ended up having an incredibly lively conversation about whether computers can create real art, how the “California ideology” has shaped artificial intelligence, and why it’s not too late to ensure that technology is enabling human flourishing – not eroding it.
Mentioned:
“Cyberia ( ” by Douglas Rushkoff
“The Original WIRED Manifesto ( ” by Louis Rossetto
“The Long Boom: A History of the Future, 1980–2020 ( ? by Peter Schwartz and Peter Leyden
“Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires ( ” by Douglas Rushkoff
“Artificial Creativity: How AI teaches us to distinguish between humans, art, and industry” by Douglas Rushkoff ( ” by Douglas Rushkoff
“Empirical Science Began as a Domination Fantasy ( ” by Douglas Rushkoff
“A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace ( ” by John Perry Barlow
“The Californian Ideology ( ” by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron
“Can AI Bring Humanity Back to Health Care? ( ,” Machines Like Us Episode 5
Further Reading:
“The Medium is the Massage: An Inventory of Effects” by Marshall McLuhan
“Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology ( ” by Neil Postman
“Amusing Ourselves to Death ( ” by Neil Postman
