Guy Reams (00:00.75)
Today is day 205, we wield the double edged sword.
So today I was thinking, I heard a commentary, I was watching a speech by somebody commenting on the dangers and the woes of artificial intelligence. So they were concerned that artificial intelligence would do horrible things. And I imagine that we humans have been fantasizing about AI for a very long time.
I mean, I've read lots of science fiction which have extolled the evils of AI potential. I grew up watching movies that had AI destruction or robots that would come back from the future and haunt us. But ever since I left my job a couple of years ago, I've been diving down really deep into this AI world.
not just LLM models, but other things as well, especially around data science. And, you know, I got to say that this is, we are at the beginning stages of a massive innovation. I mean, just when we thought the internet and social media and mobile phones would have a massive innovation change to our society, which they did,
I mean, I saw a documentary of a third world country. And in that third world country, there were quite a few people that had mobile devices that had like Apple phones or Samsung.
Guy Reams (01:54.574)
And I thought only in today's society could we have that ubiquitous of a revolution where a device such as that could actually be in the hands of somebody in an undeveloped country. Now, obviously, most people in third world or very poor countries don't have mobile phones or even cellular access, but some do.
And I just think that's pretty interesting. But we thought that these innovations would have massive ramifications, and they certainly have. I mean, just think of the impact that Twitter, for example, or WhatsApp has had. I mean, I'm talking about global phenomena. I mean, we all know about Facebook pretty much. It's pretty ubiquitous.
And there are certain tools that we use in the United States, but for example, WhatsApp has got dominance throughout the world as the primary mechanism by which people communicate. And then Twitter seems to have Twitter now X has become a very common methodology for people to communicate news and information. And of course there are other sources too, but.
We would have never really thought through or understand the impact and we're still dealing with the impact of those technologies and they're changing right new technologies are coming out.
I'm not sure we really have quite grappled with the impact that we'll have on our young people as people grow up, the impact it will have on social structure, on ethics, on morality. I mean, these are things that we just don't have time to think about. I mean, I'm thinking about...
Guy Reams (03:52.43)
I mean, AI and some of the new technologies.
There's so much boundless potential. I mean, it's incredible. What used to take months or years to develop can now take moments or minutes. What used to be horribly expensive as a financial barrier to even tackle on a project is now within the grasp of almost anybody.
So what we've we we are we don't even understand the impact this is going to have because people can quite literally create anything now with very low costs. So we don't know what that's going to be like or what impact that's going to have on us. The best example I can think of from our human historical past was the Gutenberg Press. Now, you know, the Gutenberg Press had a.
massive impact. I mean, you could argue that it started the Scientific Revolution and it for certainly started the Reformation, which created a whole new religious fervor in Europe. So we can clearly say the Scientific Revolution came out because more people had access to printed material. And I imagine now that we're looking back at it, we can see all the propaganda that came out of the Gutenberg Press.
People can now print and distribute leaflets and pamphlets and papers. People could remember what people were saying.
Guy Reams (05:28.206)
Knowledge can now be transmitted to the next generation. So the Gutenberg press had massive impacts, but now our society went through lots of different changes because of that. Some of them good, some of them bad. Some societies were completely destroyed. Some organizations never made it. Some became more strong, right? You might even argue that,
The spreading of liberty and freedom became about because of the printed word and the United States. The idea of the United States developed out of this time. It took 300 years later, but the idea of a free society.
Guy Reams (06:19.502)
So our culture had some time to react to the Gutenberg press. But now with the steady state of innovation, we haven't had time to really adjust that much. I mean, we're still debating whether or not kids should have access to cell phones, even though they all do. Congress today is passing bill or trying to pass a bill that requires somebody to be 18 to get access to social media.
something like that. I mean, I'm not saying whether that's right or wrong. I don't think we care, but I think the reaction is how do we deal with it? We see that there's negative effects. How do we deal with them? How do we as a society defend against those negative effects? Well, think about AI technologies. This is a new innovation that we're dealing with now. We have no idea what impact that's going to have.
And by the time the impacts occur, we'll be too late. So is our culture strong enough? Don't know. I don't think we have time to even stop to ask ourselves if our culture is strong enough. We won't even know because the impact will have already occurred. The stone is rolling down the hill at such a rapid pace that we cannot catch it or stop it.
So I'm not sure that any culture is strong enough. So most likely our culture will not survive this. So the question is, will our culture have something in it left over to where we could build anew, build upon the foundation, right? I guess that's all we can hope for. Like the Roman civilization that collapsed in 450 AD, was there enough value there to
propel society to the next stage. And it took a while, but yes, I think there was. So we can hope for the same, right? We can hope that whatever happens in the next hundred years, that our culture will be strong enough, there will be something left to resurrect us. So this leads me to this passionate plea, because I can see what's possible. There's a lot bad, there's a lot of evil things that are possible, but there's a lot of good that's possible too. So I would hope,
Guy Reams (08:45.39)
that the good people, the great people, the wonderful people of our society would have it in them to embrace the new technology, because it's coming no matter whether they like it or not, embrace it and start to create the good things. To build, inspire, lift, heal, cure, radiate positivity. To use those good things to create wonder and to do something.
to lead us down the best or the correct path. So I think that...
Good people have a tendency to put their head in the sand and try to avoid the new innovation because they're worried about the change it will bring. I would hope that good people would realize that...
their contribution is very much needed. Because I know that evil intended people will use the technology with no hesitation. So I think that I would hope that those people out there would be the inspiration behind invention that would be of positive impact on our society.