¶ Intro / Opening
Hey everyone. We're talking to Chris Single, a self-proclaimed AI optimist. He founded his own agency, recently wrote a book called Think Like an AI, and has spoken at TEDx events, corporate events, and major conferences about AI and more.
Chris,
What matters to you and what's the story behind it? Awesome. Thanks so much
¶ Embracing AI: Overcoming Fear and Distrust
for having me. I think AI optimism is really the thing I've built myself around recently where I think there's so much fear and distrust of AI, and I think some of it is justified with privacy and how much we are trusting these AIs to make human decisions, and what does it mean long term for us. But at the end of the day, we have to embrace it as any other tool and make sure that we are choosing to use it in a way that actually improves our human lives.
that's interesting that you say that. 'cause I am, I'm an AI optimist. Okay. But I think there's a lot of AI optimists out there that don't really understand. AI and just think something like, it doesn't really, it's, I tried. I tried the pictures. I tried create. It was awful. It's not, but we all know that it's awful today, but it's not gonna be awful tomorrow. Yeah. What makes you think that? What makes you an AI optimist?
¶ The Practical Uses of AI Today
Yeah, so I think, your listeners probably heard it in the introduction, but I've used AI to write a book about AI. I've done a TED talk about AI. I've spoken at universities, I've met with business leaders, I've hosted workshops and panels. So I think a lot of people still say oh, AI didn't work for FedEx 20 years ago, so it's not gonna work for me. And it's okay, this is the worst AI is ever gonna be, and it's only gonna get better from here. So part of it is trust that.
You can start working today on a solution that will be meaningful for you tomorrow and treat it like a new employee. If you're not thinking of it as a business tool, treat it like a friend whose memory you can erase. Have a chat with it. Delete it if it doesn't agree with you. But the best way to learn how to use AI is to use AI. Get your hands dirty. I promise it's not gonna end the world today, but I do think there's optimism there because. It's already improving people's lives.
The data is really interesting. I've been talking a lot about using AI as a chat bot, is mostly what we're talking about with these sort of chat GPT, Claude Gemini type tools. A lot of 20 year olds are very willing to just text chat with something a lot of 80 year olds are too, 'cause they've now gotten used to it. It's all those people like us in the middle who are like, what is this new technology? Why can't I pick up the phone and talk to it?
That's coming by the way, you can't have voice chats with it, but I do think people are already saying, Hey, if it's just an employee at the other end of the line that I can text my questions to, let's see how this goes. And people have found amazing ways to use it already.
Yeah. And my kids, don't like to Google anymore. I have a, 12-year-old and 14-year-old. They are two lazy to Google. They just asked Chat GPT, or they asked Siri, it drives me nuts. And, it does, make me worry about, just interact, them having the ability to interact with life, having the ability to figure things out on their own, and I think that's part of the worry. That's part of the pessimism that comes with AI.
I do think, the metaphor I've heard is Google used to be, Hey, I wanna learn about gardening. And it would say, great, here's the section of the library about gardening, and here's all the books about gardening. Go ahead and read them. And now it's, I wanna learn about gardening. Here's what I know about you. Here's the zone you're in. Here's a relevant book about gardening for you. What if it's wrong? What if you're on vacation and you're in a different area?
What if it's making up facts that aren't true? Because it's just a weighted large language model. It doesn't actually know the facts. It doesn't exist in reality in the same way that a human would write that thing for you. So I think people conflate a lot an answer from an AI with the correct answer, and I think it needs to be more of that answer from an AI is a rough draft. It's feedback, it's a first step, but we cannot just trust AI to make those sort of final decisions.
Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense.
¶ AI's Impact on Jobs and Society
What about, it's gonna take all our jobs?
Great. Look, if we set this upright, I don't want to do a job. I want AI to do all the work so I can spend my time being human. The question is how do we set it upright? And actually I'm hopeful in part because a lot of the uptick right now is from these lower level, entry level employees, starter employees who are willing to use the tool to automate the parts of their jobs that suck.
We aren't seeing a lot of, Hey, we're gonna come in and lay people off because the people that tested that, it did fAIl. I want people to say, Hey, I'm empowered in my job to step up and use this tool today because frankly, my boss doesn't know the parts of my job that suck. He's not doing my job. So figuring out how to use it to optimize your individual life and then if it spreads to the rest of your fellow coworkers, that's amazing. That's great.
That should be how technology is deployed, if that means that. More people are freed up to do more meaningful long-term planning or strategic planning. That's also a good thing. So if that means that there are less fry cooks in the world, I'm not sure anyone was dying to be a fry cook, but I do hope that there is a solution for making sure those people are taken care of and whether they're employed or if there's a universal basic income. San Altman, the.
CEO of OpenAI has sAId that he supports some version of world coin or some way to make sure that as we all benefit from this technology, every human being on the planet is taken care of. And I think there's a version of this where that happens.
Yeah, I saw, an interview with Sam Altman and they asked him, what did he say? He sAId something like, I don't think people are really looking at the big picture. I'm looking at AI where it will someday solve physics.
Yeah.
Yeah.
¶ The Future of AI: Superintelligence and Beyond
so I've been in this space a long time. I was at the Singularity Summit in 2011. I've interviewed with Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and it's a hobby, but a profession for me. So I'm trying not to take it too seriously. But there is this AI researcher I love named Eli ier Kowski, who would say, if you have a truly super intelligent, effectively omniscient AI, it can watch two frames of.
Anything and understand all of physics and what that means for human relationships and how to invent new things because it can extrapolate from very, limited data. We are not there yet, but eventually the promise of super intelligence is, yeah, it solves all questions that are. Able to be asked. And then we'll figure out new questions to ask and answer those as well. I don't think people understand what that looks like.
And this used to be a crazy sci-fi idea that's, oh, that's a million years out, Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, if anyone's watching, I've got all my nerdy sci-fi books back here. But it is this thing of what's the ultimate question? How do we answer it? it'll take a hundred million years of computing power. And now people are like, oh, those crazy questions are advanced. It might take a thousand years. These AI timelines are now, we've got GPT-4 coming out next month.
And we might have super intelligence next year, and it's oh. But once you have super intelligence, you use it to build a smarter intelligence. And these timelines are now within our lifetime. I very interested to see how it plays out.
So you mentioned you were doing, you've been doing this for years. It's a hobby, it's exci. What is it, why does it matter to you? What, why, what is it that makes it so exciting to you?
Yeah, so my Ted Talk, I don't remember what the final title of it was, don't panic, let the Robots Do the Work. But originally I think it was, I. Quit work sucks. Let robots do the work where it is just look, we are at this point in human society where we don't need to be plowing fields by hand. What is the next step of this look like? Where, what is the optimal human existence? If we have the capability and the resources and the technology to free ourselves up from?
Any sort of difficult labor, what do we wanna do? Do we want a wally future where we recline in chAIrs and drink milkshakes all day? I don't think so. And there's, agAIn, people smarter than me, Robin Hansen has written the fun theory sequence about, can you, or maybe that was ili Rakowski too. How do you optimize fun when you're effectively omniscient and omnipotent? And do we ever run out of fun things to do? I don't think so.
Maybe we just play d and d with our friends and make up stories with people we care about. there's opportunities here to. Do things that are meaningful to us that still mAIntAIn human relationships and don't require us to do any sort of difficult labor that used to kill people. I say in my TED Talk, my grandfather lost toes working in a steel mill. I don't want that job. I am looking for ways to make people's lives better.
I think that's great. I think that's great. Okay. Let's get to the, anything else you wanna add?
¶ The Ethical and Social Implications of AI
No, I just think, don't be scared of it. Test it out. AI is here to help you for now. I do think there's some scary long-term pace, possibilities where people are using that data in sort of these dark model ways where they're nudging you towards behaviors so that you're a more complacent citizen. But along the way, if that's what you wanted to do anyways, that's fine. If it minimizes people who are intending to destroy society. That's arguably a good thing.
And then there's the whole question of are people using it to build better ads? if the ads are better targeted to you, that's my day job. Digital marketing, isn't that also a good thing? We're walking this line of creepiness versus privacy, but at the end of the day, ads that are relevant to you should be relevant to you. A lot of these things that people are couching in a, oh, I can't believe they know this about me. I like it. Like kind.
You gotta embrace the change because the change is coming anyways.
probably for a different discussion, but just what will a AI generated ad look like?
So people have already sAId, and this was on Reddit, so who knows if it's true, but you know how you can build an avatar of yourself on Facebook? Yeah. People have sAId those avatars have started showing up in ads effectively showing you using the product or showing how your life you are in the ad. Yeah. You yourself are in the ad and it's that, old marketing idea of let the end user be the hero of their story, visualize using their product and how their life improves.
Now it's actually just doing that and it's showing you. Using the product and your life is better and you are a happier avatar because of it. But if you connect with that avatar, yeah, that's sketchy. But if the product actually makes your life better, great. that's all advertising is anyways. Right. I.
You're on the couch, you're watching, a football game and there's an ad of you on the couch watching the football game drinking, but now you've
got a, an ice cold, refreshing diet Coca-Cola with you. And that's fine. I was probably gonna buy the Diet Coke anyways. But now we've built data centers that can also be used to figure out cures for cancer because the advertising industry wanted my marketing data to be 5% more impactful. Sure. I am willing to make that trade off.
Yeah.
Good.
Good. Okay.
¶ Speed Round: Matters/Not Matters
Ready? Speed, round matters, not matters. Or skip ready. And I
wanna be clear. This matters to me. Everything matters to somebody. Matters to you. A hundred percent. Got it?
A hundred percent. Okay. So AI matters. and then by the way, you feel free to talk about why, or, add, some color if you want.
Cool. You're gonna trim this a little. You wanna ask me agAIn?
No, you already talked about a
y
why it matters. So
yeah, I think, yeah, AI matters because it's like having a genius expert in every field that you can duplicate infinitely. if that doesn't matter to you, you're not understanding AI
Dungeons and Dragons
matters. It's a great way to make up stories with your friends. I've of 20 years of improvs and now I'm using Dungeons and Dragons to trick my friends into grownup storytelling,
data privacy.
Matters, but less than people expect. Everyone who wants your data probably already has it and more than you expect, so that issue already has sAIled.
Search engine optimization
matters, but agAIn, not in the way people expect. Google has gotten a lot better at reading like a human than humans have gotten at writing for computers. So just make content that's valuable. Produce stuff that actual people wanna see, and the robots will be able to understand it.
Pickleball.
You know what? I like pickleball. It matters. I have a group of guys who play every Wednesday and I haven't made it a priority to play with them, but I love that they all get together. 'cause we're all missing that sense of community and belonging. I like pickleball for that.
did I ask you, remote work
matters? Am I wearing pants right now? You don't know? climate change. Definitely matters. I think we can make a beautiful future where we all live together, but if there's no safe place to live, then what was the point? Love it.
let's end it there. Thanks Chris for coming. I appreciate it, man. And man, this was great.
Rapid fire, impactful. Yeah.