This is Later with Lee Matthews the Lee Matthews Podcast More of what You here Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Joshua Topolsky is a journalist, a podcaster, a TV personality, technologist, sometimes executive. Also created vox Media and found in the Verge. Somewhat of an expert when it comes to artificial intelligence, and he talks all about that in his podcast What Future Dissecting Our Insane Reality. Joshua Topolski, Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, glad
to be here. Well, let's start with artificial intelligence. Is it coming for us all? Well, I mean that's what the companies that are going to make a lot of money off of AI want you to believe, because it's good for their the hype machine and the pr machine that drives their businesses. To frankly to even if you're scared of it, it makes it seem like they might have a solution for you. I think AI is a transformative technology. I think it is a huge deal when it comes to how we
create things and how we see things. Look, it's one of those tools that in the hands of the wrong people, it's going to be really destructive
and in the hands of smart, creative, motivated people. It's going to be unbelievably you know, explosively wonderful, right, And so it's really a question of I don't think we're at a place where, you know, suddenly we're gonna turn AI on and it's gonna go full terminator on us, because that we're so far far away from anything that could be remotely like that.
But these companies, they do have an interest in making you feel like they might have built the technology, and so you should maybe you know, give them a little a little room in your mind. One of the things that I always keep in the back of my mind is is if there's a new technology somehow the sex industry is going to utilize it, well, that's fun you know, it's funny because these a lot of these AI of businesses are
being built in a mass market way, right. And so if you look at what Facebook has done and Instagram with Instagram and what you know, sort of all the social networks have done is try to very much to regulate out anything that feels like, you know, very sexy or you know, pornographic. And right now, I mean, if you want to go and use there are tools that people are working on, but they're not widespread, they're
not easily accessible. There certainly will be plenty of AI porn tools out there, um, you know, but but there are actually a lot of these big companies which are working really hard to limit how graphic you've meet with them, like mid Journey, which does it's a big one that does a lot of the creation of the images. I had the CEO on on my podcast, and you know there they work are working really hard to make sure you
can't have nudity, right, which is you know, interesting angles. So it's a lot of the big guys are working in the opposite direction of that, which is, yeah, the internet is a new one. Joshua Tapulski is a creator vox Media and the Verges podcast is What the Future where he looks into these types of things. And I remember stories my grandfather told when he was a lad in the early twentieth century and they got their first telephone in the house and his then grandfather, Oh, that's it. That's the
end of private series. We know it. It seems like every generation has had that fear of the of the new technology. Yeah, well, I mean it's it's we are in the early stages of this. I mean the we're in the adjustment period, no question. Now, the telephone was less invasive than the internet, right yeah, oh yeah, right, yeah, the internet. It can learn a lot more about you and can see a lot more about what you're doing in general. But yeah, we're gonna we're
gonna learn to live with this stuff over time. I think there's a big question of how we approach it as human beings, right, Like, you're not on the phone. You At some point people were excited about the phone. They were calling people all the time, they were picking it up. There were it was NonStop. But then they were like, hey, you know what, I actually want to have dinner. I'm not going to answer the phone if it rings, right. You know, even with cell phones,
we used to all respond to every notification that we got. Now, when you get it sometimes you're like, yeah, I'll check that later. Yeah, there's there's got to be a there's a big learning curve that we're in right now. But yeah, I don't think it's going to destroy our privacy or our lives, uh completely, but we have to learn to use this stuff smarter. Yeah. Well, and along the lines of you know, the what is all, what is in everybody's in the palm of everybody's
hand. The world is in the palm of everybody's hand. These days, I'm finding myself Okay, I'm gonna put this damn thing down for an hour and not look at anything and maybe read a book. Yeah yeah, Oh. I think there's a whole wave coming of people uh tuning out. I mean I've even done it over the last few years. I think the pandemic u you know, everybody was stuck at home, we were all online,
and now it's like, I don't want to look at the internet. When I'm looking at the Internet, I'm kind of like, oh man, this is a bummer. I need to get out of my house. Yeah. So I think there's a whole there's a whole evolution that's happening. I could see a generation that comes after us who goes, oh, that's kind that's kind of lame to use phones, or you know, like they could they
could easily could easily see a culture shift where it becomes uncool. Just like all your parents are on Facebook. You don't want to be on Facebook, right, that's like the social network for old people. Basically to kids who are on TikTok, and so what's the next wave look like? We don't know yet, Beth. What he talks about in this podcast what future Joshua to Pulski is here. He's also an AI expert. Um, what are some of the what are some of the biggest benefits of the technology that is
to come, not just AI but anything else. Yeah, well, I mean, look, the biggest benefit to technology thus far has been the amount of information we're able to get it to access. Things, were able to learn about people, were able to find communities, were able to be a part of, right, Like, there's just been this huge explosion of like access for people. Um, the problem is you've got a lot of noise there, right, a lot of lies, a lot of you know,
uh, misinformation in the midst of that. So so I think, like when you look at AI, for instance, there's a there's a there's a version of AI, there's a there's a tool that it might create where it sifts through some of that information for you. If we can make that stuff really smart, if we can make it as smart as all these companies claim, maybe we start to see more reliable information in our social media feeds.
Because AI is doing the work of sorting through that stuff. Right, that's one place where you could imagine that serving some good, right, not just just you know, not just turning on skynet, but actually helping us, you know, learn about our world better. So I think there's tools coming like that. I think for creators, people who create things, AI is
going to be incredibly powerful. I think when you look at where gaming is going, you know, which is a huge industry, the things that AI will help like video game creators or filmmakers create is going to be just beyond anything we've seen. You know. It's like dreaming in real time basically. So there's a there's a ton of good stuff coming, you know, we just got to learn, you know, how to avoid or how to use that stuff, how to avoid the bad stuff, and how to use the
tools to help us sort through it. Well. And it sounds to me like it's also very very optimistic for the medical industry. Oh I mean yeah, Well, look, I mean anything where you can get a computer level brain helping you to you know, diagnose or assist with surgeries or you know, probably the future do them itself when you trained it on. You know, we don't want like a Tesla autopilot situation. It's got to be better
than that. But yeah, there's the huge advancements coming. And by the way, the explosion of smartphone technology alone has led to massive advancements in medical technology. You know, even what like an Apple Watch can do is able to monitor your health at a level that has never before in the history of human beings been attainable by an average person. So there's yeah, there's a ton of that stuff. To come. Leave me alone. I know, I need to get up and walk around. Stop bothering me about it.
One future, Yeah, what future is the name of the podcast. Joshua Tapulski is the host and you can hear it on the iHeartRadio appen everywhere you get podcasts. And I thank you for joining us. Thank you so much this fun. Thanks for listening to Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews Podcast, and remember to listen to The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to seven and iHeartMedia Presentation