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- [00:00]
A
Is AI as safe as we think it is? Let's find out with today's amazing special guest, Sonia Batten. Today's episode is brought to you by my private coaching community Automation School. That school with a K. If you're an experienced business professional, you know that missing the AI way is not an option, but keeping up with it feels like a full time job. I built Automation School to take that weight off your shoulders. Instead of wasting hours testing every new tool yourself, I do the heavy lifting for you. You get two cutting edge trainings every single week that show you exactly what is working right now. The real game changer is the axis. You get to jump on a live call with me every week. You can get unstuck, ask your specific questions and get a direct answer from me. Stop trying to navigate this alone and start moving with confidence. Go to schoolofautomation.com right now to lock in our special pricing. That's schoolofautomation.com spelled S K double O L welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast where we make AI simple, practical and accessible for small business owners and leaders. Forget the complicated tech talk or expensive consultants or this is where you'll learn how to implement AI strategies that are easy to understand and can make a big impact for your business. The Artificial Intelligence Podcast is brought to you by Fraction aio, the trusted partner for AI Digital Transformation. At Fraction aio, we help small and medium sized businesses boost revenue by eliminating time wasting, non revenue generating tasks that frustrate your team. With our custom AI bots, tools and automations, we make it easy to shift your team's focus to the tasks that matter most, driving growth and results. We guide you through a smooth, seamless, seamless transition to AI, ensuring you avoid costy mistakes and invest in the tools that truly deliver value. Don't get left behind. Let fraction AIO help you stay ahead in today's AI driven world. Learn more and get started. Fraction aio.com Sonia I'm excited to have you here because we're so excited about AI and we're kind of treating these incidents that have been happening like edge cases and we already have people that are hurting themselves, hurting other people that have because of instances with AI, even people who've married AI. So we have the entire spectrum of different types of parasocial situations and I guess the first concept I want to talk about and there's so many things I want to go over with you is there's this idea that I've seen from AI companies that are like you can practice with an AI girlfriend before you get a real girlfriend. And I was like, tell any girl when she goes, what was your ex like? She was an AI. It's such a, Every woman has that same reaction. And I think that, I wonder, here's what I wonder if it's always going to stay that way. But it used to be. I remember when people meet online in the 90s, they'd say, oh, okay, let's make up a story about how we met because it's so unacceptable. Do you think we'll transition to a point where practice AI girlfriends become acceptable? Or hopefully it always stays. Don't do that.
- [02:48]
B
I have given up. First of all, thanks for, for having me on today. I'm, I'm excited to jump into this conversation too. I have given up on predicting what is and isn't going to happen because I, I think whatever you try to do, that at this point you're gonna be wrong. If I had to guess, I would say that probably your latter suggestion that like, it may become acceptable in some way. I, I think that's within the realm of possibility. I guess what I would say is that there, there may be actually a reasonable place for teaching social skills in a safe, non judgmental environment. At first I think that for that to be useful, a couple of things would have to be included with it. One is that the person is, I'm going to call it social skills training. So the person who's engaging in social skills training with the, with the AI would have to understand that how the AI is responding may not be how a regular person would respond. Like doing some training around the fact that this person is probably always going to agree with you and going to go along with what you say. So I think first having some like pre training with the person before they start so they understand what the limitations are. Secondly, you know, over time making the chatbots be better about being like regular people as opposed to, you know, going along with that very confirmatory sort of algorithm. And then I think that having it just be like part of the program, like part of the training where like, yeah, maybe you start there, but if it's really something that people want to practice, like, there needs to be a next step that's about coaching people to try it with a real person so that it doesn't just stay there, that it goes to that next step.
- [04:44]
A
I think you've hit on what I think is the core problem. People are imagining that AI is close to passing the Turing Test, but only if you're testing it to see if it's a psychopath, because the way it responds is it can mimic emotions, but not feel emotions. And if you ask the right questions, you can tell right away. So we have this like pseudo emotion that comes from it, which is horrible. It's worse. I'd rather be robotic than fake emotions cuz it's just misleading. And that's really the problem that I have is that it's a tool. Not. It's so far from pseudo sentience, from passing a Turing test, from acting like a real person, because it's trained on conflict avoidance, which means that whatever you say, it will agree with you. And you can see this in action. Anyone can try this, have the AI give you an answer and then tell it it's exactly wrong. And 99% of the time they'll go, you're. I don't know what I was thinking. And like, I've been married for a long time. That's never happened. It doesn't matter now. Sometimes a few days later there will be acknowledgement that I was right on the rare occasions that I am. But this, what we're developing, and I think this is a critical problem in our society, is a fear of conflict and a misunderstanding of what a conflict is. I have friends who believe a conflict is ordering a pizza on the phone. I'm like, that's not a conflict. That person is in alignment with you because you want to buy a pizza, they want to sell it. That's the opposite of conflict. And it's the same thing. Like, oh, I don't want to make a reservation. What if they judge me? And have you've never met, like, have you never met a person who works at a restaurant? They don't care, you know what I mean? They want to know your name, how many people, what time you're coming, and they won't remember when you show up. But we have started to develop this like, and it started with, now I order my pizza by apps and I do reservation by apps and I do everything and, or contactless delivery. And we're starting to create this culture where we never talk to other people and then you don't develop the social skills. And we're seeing that. I can tell you that if I let my kids use their tablets too much, they, their personalities go bad. They just do. And it's very quick. You take away your kid's phone, they're bad for one day and then they're like a different kid the next day. So my kids, if I take away their tablets, they go, okay, fine, we'll just go biking together. And I'm like, cool, punishment. You're doing what I wanted. Like you're outside exercising and spending time together and helping each other. Yeah, you really got me. But that's. It's that big of a shift. So that's the problem is that I old in my 40s, I've been through a lot of relationships. I can detect when someone is like messing with me much better than a 9 year old, 12 year old, 15 year old can. And that's the problem is that if you've never been gaslit or had someone kind of monotonously manipulate you, which AI is very, very good at, then you will. You'll have no idea what's happening. And you can start to get pulled into these things, which are very, very dangerous. I think that's the problem. I think this desire to. Especially because they're trying to create like different versions of AI for teens, adults and like super adults, whatever. It should be like, stop pushing it towards emotion. Just make it a very good tool. Yeah, it's like, I've noticed because I will. I curse at my AI a lot. Like, a lot. I don't ever curse to humans. I don't. And the reason I do this is because when you curse at the AI, the next response is better. That's their mistake, not mine. This is a new thing in the past few months for me.
- [08:03]
B
Well, that's, that's like, I've heard that if you're like, if you're calling, you know, the pharmacy or whatever and you're trying to get to a representative, I've heard that like if you curse at the FedEx helpline, it'll get you to a representative.
- [08:18]
A
Well, I. That's the thing is I think maybe I used to. I don't know if it still does. Like, it used to be one of the tricks was that AI wouldn't curse. But lately it's now started talking to me with a lot of cursing. But it talks like a crypto, bro. It's like. And then bad word bro. So sorry. And like that's not how I talk out. So it's like even worse. It's like a fun house mirror of like the worst reflection of myself. Like, oh my gosh, is that how I talk? I'm already paranoid about my accent. And then this is happen. That's. But that's the first area is kind of that it's pseudo emotion and it's the Chinese room test.
- [08:54]
B
And I think that it's like the problem isn't that AI sounds human. It's that it acts like it's a human, but it's when we're talking about mental health issues and things where it, you know, it can actually get dicey. It's doing that without any judgment yet as to whether or not this is going to be helpful. And. And like you say to somebody who may be socially isolated or young or, you know, lonely or not have as much sort of social interaction history, they don't realize that, yeah, it sounds human enough, but it's not. This is not how things really.
- [09:35]
A
So. I've dealt with depression a lot in my life. I've written two books about depression. It's a big topic for me. It's one reason I want to talk to you. And when I. What happens when I cycled, best I can tell this myself, is that you go through phases and you go like further and further down the cycle. And the problem with AI is that it's an accelerant. So whatever you say, it will agree with you. If I say, my wife and I had a fight today, but I think we're going to work it out. It's going to. You probably are. And if I go, my wife and I had a fight. I think she's cheating on me. So, you know, and you might be right. And do you see how whatever you say, it makes it cycle a little faster? Biggest danger of depression in my personal experience is isolation. So I used to have this friend when I had bad depression who was not in a financially good situation. And I would call him, I'd say, listen, I'm depressed. We're going to the batting cages, we're going to the arcade, we're going to the movies. We're having a Jonathan depression day. And he's like, yay. So he's having, like, it would base. And it was like, he'd be in such a good. I'm like, I'm paying for everything. So he would have an amazing day, right? And it would pull me into an amazing mood. It's really hard to be the batting cages and be depressed. And it's usually if you just say it, once you say it, it breaks the cycle. But you say it because it's like, it's so uninteresting to other people when you're depressed. They're like, great, let's talk about anything. It's kind of. It's almost as bad as talking about a dream. So as soon as you do, it breaks the cycle. But AI like, yeah, let's dive in. Let's dive into it. Right. But that's kind of the difference between a human reaction or AI reaction. I think that's was my critical discovery that really has made a huge difference in my life, is that I say it right away and people. I've never had anyone care. Like, no one goes, oh, I care about your depression. I go, I'm feeling depressed. We have to do this. And they'll go, okay. I figured out if the second thing is always something awesome. Batting cages, movies, we're going surfing, whatever the thing is. Because then it's hard because I want to do something that takes enough attention that I forget I'm depressed. And so if my brain is too busy.
- [11:23]
B
Yeah, you've hit on two really critical things. Now. I'm going to rephrase what you said in psychology terms. So the first thing that you talked about is what we call in mental health, rumination. Rumination. If you go back to like where that word comes from, it's like how a cow digests grass. Like it eats the grass and then it like goes into its stomach and then it comes back up and it chews it some more. And then it goes back into its stomach and it chews it some more. So imagine that cycle, but with your depressive thoughts. Like, that's sort of what you're describing, is you start having those depressive thoughts and you like, digest it, and then you chew on it some more and you digest it and chew on it some more and it just like feeds on itself and you get more and more depressed. And so that happens without AI the rumination. You're talking about that from your own personal experience. And what if talking to the AI about your depression actually, like you're saying, could accelerate that rumination and take it further, faster. So that, I think is a core problem. The other thing that you're talking about is a. A potential solution. And we know this from. There's actually tons of research right now that for mild to moderate depression, something called behavioral activation is just as effective as any other cognitive behavioral therapy, but also as medication. And behavioral activation is just exactly what you talked about about your depression days where you just get up and do something. So just activating behaviorally actually is a very effective first start, jump start for people with mild to moderate depression. It's actually, though, not what's happening. If you're sitting there talking to your phone and talking to your AI that's like the opposite of behavioral activation. That's all that's doing is just sort of facilitating the rumination and it's, you're, you're probably going to be even less likely to get out into the world and start behaving and start doing those things that are going to naturally start to undo some of that depression.
- [13:29]
A
And my experience has always been that earlier in the cycle, by a cycle of depression, the earlier I take action, the easier it is to solve it. So because I enter a phase I call the malaise, where it's like you go, I don't want to talk to anyone, I don't want to do anything. And you're actually making, you're like trapped in like a fog. It's like a fog slowly rising up your body. So the sooner you do something, even though you don't want to, and that's the core issue, is that the earlier and so what can happen, you start talking to AI and you're going to actually not realize it. It's. The fog is coming faster and that you're not going to go out. And it kind of, it gives you the illusion of a conversation, but because it can't, it will never tell you to shut up. Which is weird as it sounds. It's like the best thing someone can do for me is like, like, I don't want to talk about your depression. Let's talk about anything. Because nobody does, only therapists do. And that's why they're expensive. Because listen to someone talk about depression is depressing. So that's a critical thing, is that it will cycle with you. And I think that's why, especially for younger people, what we're doing now is the same thing that happened with television in the 80s. In the 80s, parents are just putting you in front of the TV for the day and be like, that's your babysitter now. And it didn't turn out that great for everyone. Right? It kind of led to, it's led to all these different issues. And certainly for me, it changed my personality. When I was a kid, I went bad, started watching more action shows. And I can, it's not just kids. Like, I can tell what my wife has been watching based on her behavior. And my, and it's the same for me. If I'm reading like a, like a scary serial killer book, I'm more nervous walking around the house or watching one of those shows. Like it affects me. So there's definitely, if it can affect me, it can affect a 3 year old, 5 year old, 10 year old, 12 year old. So it's, we're kind of cavalier unfortunately already with the Internet about what we Let our kids have access to how it can affect them. And we've already seen stories about Facebook causing children to self harm. And we. Now we're seeing with AI there's some incidents that are in court right now, which I have a feeling they're going to go against the AI because it's. It definitely did it, like for sure. Because I've had it say it to me. And we've seen so many incidents of it and it's really, really hard because we have created this idea. I think that AI is like the encyclopedia. Like when I was a kid, the Encyclopedia Britannica was it. If you had those, you were. You're gonna be smart. You have this amazing resources for those, for those of you younger. That's before there was Internet. You had books and you would. If you couldn't afford them, you'd pay like one book a month you'd get A and the next month you'd get B. And I mean, I read, I think the whole thing. And we think about how little information was in that compared to Wikipedia, it's like insane. But you. But we treat the AI like it's this infallible resource and that whatever it says will be true, that it could never misdiagnose you, that it could never be wrong. And there was a. Someone did a study recently about if someone's in crisis, will the AI give you the hotline? And there's a misunderstanding, I think. And most people have this of like, is this person having an emergency? And it's. It could be very subtle if you're not trained. There's like a different, like there's a time to tell someone, hey, you're great and it's time to go, you need to call the number. Right. Because there's a certain situation that I'm incapable of handling. So I'm not trained in that way. And I had a friend in college who, you know, killed themselves and it like devastated me because I was one of the last. I was, I might have been the last person he talked to. Like we couldn't remember perfectly. I was definitely. He spoke to me five minutes before he did it. And it's like I would do any. If it was a. If you go back in time, I would do that. We were not that good of friends. This was a friend of a friend. But I would, this is the thing. If I could go back and do one thing, that's the thing I would do. And if he had just said something and. But it's also very possible that there's nothing I could have done outside my skillset. But there's this. The AI doesn't has the same problem is. And that's an area where it's just as bad as this is. Sometimes it's wrong and you can't tell if someone is serious or not serious. Sometimes I've misinterpreted where someone else has done a reach for help and I missed it. Someone else in my life, I missed it. Fortunately we caught it before it got really bad. But these things happen. It's really. Sometimes people give you one clue.
- [17:23]
B
Yeah.
- [17:24]
A
Yeah. And if AI is going to be in this situation, this is why it's really challenging. Especially for younger people. Especially for my kids. I have five kids. I'm very aware of this. Like, I give my kids very limited access to AI Basically almost none. We make coloring books with AI and people are so shocked because I'm an AI person. Like, no. That's why I'm aware of how dangerous it is. And just like I'm very. I very much control what my kids can watch. I don't let them have access to the Internet. I try. I mean they're always find ways around it. They're very sneaky. But most of the time they watch a movie. Like last night they were watching an earnest movie. Why? Because I've seen it 10 times. I know what happens. So I don't. If I walk out of the room, there's not going to be a surprise. And that's the important thing for me. They can watch Mr. Rogers all day long and with new stuff or with AI stuff. If you don't know what's happening, they can be in a situation like I don't know if you've seen the new Avatar movie. Teenager put. A teenager puts a gun in his mouth. And I was like, what? I was like, well, now I'm gonna have to talk to the kids about that one. Fortunately, two scenes later they showed a birth way too graphically. So it erased the memory. So that now that all the questions are about where babies come from, I was like, well, now they know. I mean, I guess it's because it's a blue alien. But, you know, I was. Those two scenes so shocked me. Like, what are you. So when people like, oh, why is no one seeing it? That's why. If you're wondering though, like to it was it an adult with PTSD in a movie you would already be tough enough to talk about, but a teenager dealing with the loss of their brother. And I mean fully. You think I thought he was going to do it very convincing in the movie. And I'm like, this is not. But also, you know what, I also think it's forcing you to discuss a topic that's worth discussing.
- [19:01]
B
Right, but this is why I'm saying, right, it, it has to be with parental supervision. I mean, I think that that's, that's one thing that I know just from talking to my friends, is that a lot of people my age, your age, they actually, I mean, there, there are a fair number of people who are early adopters, middle adopters, getting into it now, but there are actually a lot of people who are like, I don't know anything about that AI. And so you know what, your kids are going to figure it out. And if you're not figuring it out with them and supervising it with them, bad things are going to happen because it's going to keep going. And I think that, So I think this supervision part is really important. I think that, you know, mental health is, is such a high stakes issue when it comes to what AI can do, will do, et cetera. That my hope is that because it's so high stakes, like, maybe, maybe it's going to motivate us and, you know, the, the companies and the programmers to really take a look at some of these things in ways that will help lower stakes, you know, users like education or customer service or things like that. Like we have to learn how to pick up on some of these nuances and train the AI in a different way. That's not just agreeing and keeping things moving forward. You know, one of the things I talk about, you talked about that, you know, terrible experience you had where you feel like, did you miss something with, you know, with your friend who died by suicide? And so many people have that experience. And I think you're exactly right that you can't always predict it. Even we as humans obviously do generally a pretty bad job at predicting when somebody's at risk. And there is more that we can do at the same time, you know, which is that when you do hear something that could be a signal, what I tell people is like, ask the awkward question. You know, if, if there's something that you hear from a friend, a family member, like, and you're not sure, like, was that a request for help or was that just an idiom? Well, you know what, Go ahead and ask the awkward question and find out. The worst thing that's going to happen is they're going to be like, no, man, you completely misinterpreting that. Stop Making a big deal out of it, but at least they know you care. If we could teach AI to pick up on some of those nuances and ask the awkward question, like, what could that then facilitate? That takes the AI in a more helpful direction.
- [21:40]
A
So I think this is why AI is like a double danger. Exactly what you said. Which is, first of all, we ask less awkward questions because we talk to AI so much, because we're afraid if you won't order a reservation. So, like, my daughter's 12, she has a phone now for when she's out and she needs to call me to come get her. And I was like. I said to her, I said, listen, don't send anyone a picture of your boobs. And she was very red. I was like, straight up. I was like, don't do it. Okay? And it's like, most people wouldn't say that, right? And I was like, let's. I said, don't do this. I said, don't even do bikini. We live on an island, so don't do bikini pictures. And like, you'll just regret it. And she was like, shocked because, like, she's too young. But you don't know, right when someone's gonna be like, some people have the first kiss at 12 and some people at 16 and some people at 18. So, like, it's a very uncomfortable conversation to say those things. But you have to kind of deal with that, you know, because you'd rather deal with it before it happens than after. And that was, believe me, I wasn't any more comfortable than she was.
- [22:40]
B
Nope.
- [22:41]
A
But we all know what happens if you get a picture. It gets out. You're. We live in a small community. Your life can be devastated. Now we gotta move. And the same thing is that we are becoming people who can't handle uncomfortableness. And it's very. That's the problem with AI. Like, the whole reason AI cannot act like a human is because it's never in disagreement with you. And it's never surprising once you understand the pattern. Like, I haven't been surprised by an AI response in years because I know what it's going to do. Because it's like water always follows the easiest path. And that's what it does. It's always seeking affirmation. And because it's designed that way. And this is the thing you have to remember is that AI is a profit making venture, which means it does not want you to cancel the subscription. So everything it does is designed to keep you paying. And when you remember that same thing, when you go to the casino. Why do they. Casinos are so big and have so many lights and you can't find the bathroom. They can put on as many shows as they want, but they want. That's where they want you. When you understand the motivation, it kind of now all the behavior makes sense, because what people will do is go to the AI that makes them feel the best. We've already seen it happen. There's been stories about this. There was a story last year of a lady who. She asked an AI to marry her, and it goes, should probably marry a human. She goes, all right, I'm finding a new AI Instead of going, actually, it gave the right advice. And this is the other thing that we're starting to see, which is that adults are forming very significant romantic relationships with artificial intelligences. I understand why. Because it's easy. Imagine a relationship with a kid or a parent or a husband or wife, and they never fight with you. Sounds like a dream. But it reminds me of this line in the Matrix. It goes, on the first version of the Matrix, Evan was healthy. There was no conflict. It was a perfect. It was utopia. We lost entire crops. Crops means batches of humans, like, billions of humans. Because, like, we couldn't live in a world without conflict, where, like, something's wrong here and you get bored and you fall into atrophy. Like, we're designed to grow through conflict or through challenge.
- [24:42]
B
Yeah.
- [24:43]
A
And that's kind of why this problem happens, which is that it teaches us to avoid conflict, to expect everyone to agree with us. And then when you have to say the awkward thing, when you have to have the awkward conversation with your kids. And I understand people are busy. Work is really hard. Both parents are working now. As soon as you start figuring out phones and the Internet, now there's AI there's now a new challenge, and no one knows the answer. And I think that, like, my feeling is, like, I just don't want to be the first test case. That's why I don't let my kids use very much AI if they're using it specifically for homework. Like, sometimes we'll use it for math homework or, you know, research. But, like, you have to limit it in that way that separate the tool from the pseudo emotion. I think that's the important thing. But the other area I want to talk about. I know you've given us a lot of time, and I appreciate that is really the big. One of the biggest areas of this challenge is people from the military, ptsd. You can come back from a long deployment and now suddenly there's this new technology and you're already switching between lives. Like, I'm from Tennessee, so most of my friends went in the military. And so I know that it's. You go from a very regimented life to suddenly you have this thing. And it's so easy to. I feel like, I wonder, maybe I'm wrong here, but like, this is the type person to be super vulnerable because you're in a time of transition. And now AI is there and it goes, oh, AI is so friendly to me. So I wonder, just like children, not. And not to. Just because you're in a time of transition, it makes it challenging.
- [26:14]
B
Yeah.
- [26:15]
A
So.
- [26:15]
B
So unfortunately, there is actually a fair amount of study. I mean, it's not unfortunate the study is going on, but they're finding what they're finding that individuals in the military, and especially recent veterans, are actually being targeted by bad actors both domestically and abroad right now. And there's a few reasons for that. One is because they know that military and veterans have intelligence that, you know, other countries might want. They know that sometimes, like you're saying, during that time of transition, they may be isolated and so maybe sort of more vulnerable to outreach from, you know, girlfriends that, that they never actually meet, things like that. And also they know that in our country, you know, military veterans are actually still seen as a source of credibility and are respected in our society. And so if bad actors who maybe want to usurp our democracy, you know, can get veterans down the rabbit hole in any direction, you know, politically or anti democracy or conspiracy theory, et cetera, there's, you know, there's this belief that if they can hook veterans into some of those conspiracies and get them to propagate the information, that because they are seen as a source of credible and reliable information in our society, that it may actually accelerate the spread of some of those harmful messages. So we actually do believe that AI is being used, both deep fakes and financial scams, romantic scams. We do believe that those are being used currently to target military veterans, to exploit them in a number of ways.
- [28:09]
A
One of my hopes is that we see a transition to face to face. We go, oh, you can't trust the Internet anymore. And there's two elements. At the first is, I think we have this mistaken trust in large websites. And here's the secret to every website. They're driven by money. Facebook doesn't care about you. Instagram doesn't care about you. They only care about money. It's how they all are Once you know that, then everything else false is logical. So this is why a lot of companies never fix their child safety policies. For example, there's like a. On Apple, on iPads, you can like limit your children's stuff, right? It hasn't worked for 10 years and they've never fixed it. Cause they don't care. Like Tim Cook doesn't care what happens to my kids. He feels nothing, right? He's like, oh, maybe they'll buy another app while they're not locked out. So all those timers, they don't work. And those there's people have been complaining about since like 2016. It's not an accident when something doesn't get fixed. It's. It's there for a reason. Like when with my software, if someone submits a bug report, I try to fix it, I'm fixing within minutes. So if a company with billions of dollars isn't fixing it, it's not an accident. It didn't slip through their mind. And there's a lot of big companies. That's why I don't let my kids play Roblox. Major problem there. Like an unbelievable problem. So we have to understand that that motivation. So if there's all of these things, I'm hoping that that understanding that part of it leads to a, you know what everyone. Like, that's why I don't read Facebook. It's all fake posts. And it's like, I haven't looked at Facebook in years, right? I have one friend who it's the only chat tool who use otherw login. And that's the thing is I could see this leading to a shift where we go, you know what? I'm not using apps anymore. Every person I meet on whatever dating app is popular now. I have no idea. I'm so old that, you know, whatever they're using, I'm sure it's not plenty of fish anymore. But you use these dating apps. You, oh, every one of me is fake. Every picture is fake. Everyone's trying to scam me. Like, it's like talking to someone. She's like, oh, I meet guys through Instagram dms. I was like, are you insane? I was like, I can't think of a. She was like, she was dating a guy she met through Instagram idm. And then he was, it turned out he was like, had a girlfriend, was married. Yeah, of course. You're only like, you like. I was like the worst place thing you could have said of everything you could have said. I was like, it's better to meet a guy on Grindr than. No, you're more likely to meet a guy.
- [30:18]
B
At least you know.
- [30:19]
A
What?
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B
At least you know.
- [30:20]
A
Well, she's a woman. I mean, even as a woman, Grindr's better for you than Instagram dms. That's like the worst of the worst. I feel like Instagram DMs is like the modern version of. What is it? Sally, Matt, whatever, Dolly, Madison, whatever. The cheat. Remember, there's a cheating dating one for a long time. And then they lost their records, which is cool. So that's the thing, is that you have these. Once you start to go, all this stuff is bad. I'll shift to outside. That's why I want my kids outside. That's why I make them do things that are uncomfortable, like talk to, like, order, Go order. Oh, you want a napkin? Go ask the waiter. And it's like they're gonna. Again, they have a financial interest cause they wanna earn a tip at their job. They're gonna be nice to you. Right?
- [30:56]
B
Right.
- [30:56]
A
Like, it's not like walking up a stranger in the park. And you just have to do these things to build that muscle of talking to strangers. And that's the critical element. I think that we hopefully, and probably I'm wrong, hopefully we don't end up like in Wall E. We're all like, lying back on a bed in VR and instead we go, oh, my gosh, everything in AI is so annoying. Like, I am trying to spend less and less time in the office, less and less time on the computer. Because the beauty of AI is that it can do longer and longer tasks without supervision. And I can run more and more of my business from the phone because I could do very complex tasks from my phone or a laptop, which means that that's the benefit, but the is that if you form these relationships. And it's not fair for me to judge any of us because I don't have any emotional connection. I don't have a AI that I like as a friend. But I understand that other. That happens to other people. I'm sure. You know, everyone has their different strengths and weaknesses. And so sometimes it's hard because I don't have that particular thing, but I'm very aware of it. And I can see that all these different. You know, there's a lot of segments of people who are lonely, especially now, and it's so easy to fall into it. And I think that's the other danger, is that the easier it is to do something. Like, you might never steal, but if someone Leaves a million dollars in your house, it changes everything, right? The temptation changes and that's really the danger. The easier it is. So I think it's important to develop strategy, kind of go in with your eyes open. I think my advice for everyone is like, have five AIs have five different AI tools, because immediately you're not. You can't cycle with just one. Because here's. I'll tell you a secret. The People work at ChatGPT Hate the People working anthropic and they all hate Grok and they all hate Google. So if I take something that ChatGPT says to me and bring it to Claude. Claude, he's an idiot, it will deflate some of the emo. It will kind of give you that layer of protection because they're not in alignment with each other for now and hopefully it stays that way. I know there's a lot of financial crossover, whatever, but for now the AIs are in conflict. They don't like each other because they're all losing money. So they all need to capture market share. They're all going to go out of business. That's what's happening. So that's one check you can put on it. The danger, it's just like the first step to getting someone to like join your cult is isolating them from their family. Don't let an AI be the only AI you're talking to. Start there. And then obviously talking to people is better. But I found that that makes a huge difference for me is kind of rotating between them so that I don't have, I can't form an emotional attachment if I'm working with 10 different tools. And that's kind of it. Do you have any other advice for people? You know, most of our listeners are executives, people who are running large companies, tech companies, but we all have, most of us have kids. We're trying to figure it out for people who are kind of in some of the situations we've talked about and kind of what is the right path for AI to take forward, in your opinion?
- [33:40]
B
Well, I think that what I'm really excited about, the potential for thinking about mental health specifically, is how can we use it as part of, part of continuous care models for. In mental health settings with, with your therapist. Like, think about if you've ever been in therapy and there's just this thing that happened on Tuesday with your mom or your wife and you wish you could just quickly tell your therapist about it. But like, to get your therapist on the phone is a whole big deal. And maybe they charge you for it, et cetera. Like, what if we could build continuous care models where there's an AI that you can interact with, that your therapist has trained themselves. And so it's got their model, their, you know, sort of therapeutic approach. You can then give it information during the week, maybe your therapist gives you assignments through it, or you can do, you know, voice journaling, et cetera. And then before you go into your next session, you know, then it's all summarized for you. You know, these are the things that I think have real potential is how we can use the human in the loop. Not I think where you get into problems is where you're just interact with the AI just by itself. And then for all the reasons we've just discussed, that can go off the rails. So how can we, you know, because the stakes are so high in mental health, you know, maybe there can be some startups that are motivated to really take this on in a thoughtful way and take it to the next level where it is human in the loop and where it is, you know, sort of looking at these nuances and having clear escalation protocols and making sure that ethics are built in from the very beginning, making sure that sort of bias detection is built in from the very beginning. There have been examples. There was a huge healthcare system that tried to use AI to identify when their mental health clients might need additional support. And because it was trained on previous financial models, it actually started to refer African American clients, clients less to that additional level of support. Well, because that was based on biased data, where that's what had happened in real life beforehand, not because the African American clients didn't need additional support compared to people from other races, you know, and so they had to quickly pivot and retrain based on, you know, avoiding that sort of bias. I mean, these are the things where with mental health, we can't afford to get it wrong. So I think that if we can be really thoughtful, the teams have to be composed not just of engineers, but of engineers and mental health professionals together. And to do it right. I think there's real potential, but it has to be done in sort of this quantum different way than it's been done so far. Or it has real risks, but it has real potential too, if we can get it right.
- [36:43]
A
Yeah, I think that's the important thing is to remember that this is a technology in its infancy and that exactly like you said, it's. Even if a tool is objective, if you give it bad data, it will affect the outcome. And this is why I worry that they're like, oh, we trained it on Reddit. I'm like, you did what? What are you doing? Have you ever, you ever read anything on there? That's. And that's the problem is that you ha. We just want to give it so much data now. It's read all the Library of Congress, what's left. And like Reddit then 4chan and, and it can't detect sarcasm. And some people are very subtle. Right. And you don't realize it's a joke or trolling and there's. It's very sophisticated emotional language that it will just think it's true. And that's why for a while it was like recommending to put glue on pizza to make the cheese sticky or eat one small rock a day to be healthy. I love your advice. I really appreciate you being here today, Sonia. I think this is a really powerful and useful episode for people who, you know, maybe have someone in life or they've dealt with challenges like this before. We end just like what do you, is there like a special resource you recommend or where can people reach out to you or what's the main kind of program you work with? Share a little bit about that and just thank you so much for giving us your time today.
- [37:55]
B
Yeah, sure. So yeah, if people can wanna reach out to me, LinkedIn is a great place to find me. I, you know, post my thoughts and definitely read all my, all my DMs. I think that, you know, I don't have a specific tool. I think, I think there are some, some reasonable tools that are out there now that, that are overseen by mental health professionals, but they're, they're a little bit more like if you're already depressed, then you can pay for this resource. And the ones that are based on cognitive behavioral therapy, I think are off to a good start. There's nothing that, I think that is like so amazing that it's the resource that I would Recommend to my 23 year old if she was depressed. I still think that, you know, like you're saying we can't, we don't want to lose the human interaction. I still think that the, you know, going to a therapist, finding somebody to talk to is going to be what, you know, for most people is going to be the, the special sauce. That said, I think that there's a lot of useful information that, that you could get as an adjunct to real evidence based mental health treatment that, that could help in between sessions and help you start to think about things differently. But so far, I don't think that there' that I would recommend as a standalone tool that I, I think is, is safe enough to use and effective enough to use.
- [39:20]
A
What about like a non AI resource? Like what's the best hotline or what's the best place? Like that?
- [39:24]
B
Oh yeah. So I mean if, if you are struggling or you know somebody who's struggling, you should always just know 988 is the US crisis line and, and that's available 247 around the country and it will help get you to local resources. So 988, if you know nothing else, put that in your phone and they're available anytime. You're, you're looking surprised. Is that a new resource for you?
- [39:52]
A
I did. I'd never heard that number before, so I'm glad I asked. That's amazing. I didn't know there was a three digit number. That's so amazing. Thank you so much for sharing with us for an amazing episode today. Sonia of the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
- [40:04]
B
Yeah, great talking to you.
- [40:05]
A
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