Is AI Actually Causing Unemployment? (Expert Reveals the Truth)

Summary

Camp Gagnon Episode Summary: "Is AI Actually Causing Unemployment? (Expert Reveals the Truth)"

Release Date: July 17, 2025

Hosts:

• Mark Gagnon - Host of Camp Gagnon
• Sebastian Rasuiz - Chilean artist and AI expert

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Introduction to AI and Employment Concerns

Mark Gagnon opens the episode by framing artificial intelligence (AI) as humanity's most ambitious and potentially final science experiment. He introduces Sebastian Rasuiz, a Chilean artist and AI expert, to delve into the multifaceted impacts of AI on society.

Notable Quote:

• Mark Gagnon [00:00]: "Is artificial intelligence going to take your job? Will it destroy the human race? Will it accidentally launch nukes?"

AI as a Tool: Compatibility and Caution

Sebastian expresses optimism about AI, emphasizing that the challenges posed by AI are less about intelligence and more about societal courage to face and manage these advancements.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [03:18]: "AI is not a problem of intelligence, but a problem of courage."
• Sebastian Rasuiz [04:29]: "We're in the equivalent of a Rick and Morty episode where we happen to be alive at the craziest era in human history."

The Inevitability of AI and Societal Adaptation

Mark discusses the inevitability of AI's progression, suggesting that attempts to heavily regulate it for the average citizen will lead to disparities in access and control, favoring elites and powerful entities.

Notable Quote:

• Mark Gagnon [05:24]: "AI is inevitable. ... Hyper regulation on average citizens like you and I will only lead to a disparity in output and productivity and control."

Education in the Age of AI

Sebastian critiques the traditional education system, portraying it as outdated and ill-suited for the rapid technological changes driven by AI. He advocates for personalized learning programs tailored to individual abilities and interests, facilitated by AI.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [08:29]: "If we don't adapt as quickly as possible, we reduce the suffering and make the most of the benefits."
• Sebastian Rasuiz [10:13]: "Every kid gets a different program based on their abilities and disabilities."

Potential Pitfalls of AI in Education

The conversation turns to the risks of AI in the educational sector, such as the possibility of students missing out on essential curricula or being unprepared for a world dominated by AI technologies.

Notable Quote:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [11:26]: "If a kid enters law today, when AI can handle contracts and disputes at a 95% level, they might be stuck in a world that has completely changed."

Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) and Its Risks

Mark and Sebastian delve into AGI, discussing its potential to surpass human intelligence and the associated risks. They express concern that governments and powerful entities may monopolize AGI, leading to global control issues.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [24:33]: "People were getting too concerned and... the second time I wrote it, I used a structure... the Hero's Journey."
• Mark Gagnon [26:10]: "How and will that be stopped by the powers that be, the government, etc., if it gets into the hands of everyday people?"

Creativity and AI: Can Machines Truly Create?

The hosts explore whether AI can match or exceed human creativity. Sebastian argues that while AI can generate new combinations of existing elements, it currently lacks the ability to understand and value the societal impact of creative works the way humans do.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [54:11]: "An original idea is a new combination of pre-existing elements. AI already assembles new original combinations."
• Sebastian Rasuiz [54:50]: "AI by definition already assembles new original combinations."

Feelings, Emotions, and AI's Understanding

Mark and Sebastian discuss the complexity of human emotions and whether AI can genuinely comprehend or replicate them. They ponder the philosophical implications of AI "feeling" emotions versus merely processing data.

Notable Quotes:

• Mark Gagnon [55:50]: "Are we really feeling them, or is it just the processes in our body?"
• Sebastian Rasuiz [58:55]: "If the feeling is translated into data... is it that different from an AI... translating what they're told are the equivalent of feelings?"

Universal Basic Income (UBI) and AI's Impact on Employment

The topic shifts to Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a response to potential job losses due to AI. Sebastian critiques the feasibility of UBI on a global scale, highlighting the challenges of sustaining it internationally.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [73:45]: "Universal basic income, as an idea, makes no sense... it's very hard to control what you get."
• Mark Gagnon [75:49]: "If everyone has $1,000, then no one has $1,000."

Practical Applications of AI in Daily Life

Towards the end of the episode, Sebastian shares practical ways he utilizes AI in his personal and professional life, encouraging listeners to experiment with AI tools to enhance productivity and creativity.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [87:05]: "AI agents... made me a list of the top podcasts and wrote personalized emails for me."
• Mark Gagnon [90:17]: "How do you create brilliant ideas like that using AI?"

Personal Reflections and Conclusion

The conversation concludes with personal reflections on the importance of courage, resilience, and the human spirit in navigating the advancements of AI. Both hosts emphasize the need to embrace change while maintaining human values and connections.

Notable Quotes:

• Sebastian Rasuiz [81:11]: "Life is short. Balls out on the table. Go all in. It will be more satisfying than following any fear."
• Mark Gagnon [84:12]: "I think trying has kind of been lost culturally where it's like, not cool to try. But I love trying and failing and doing your best."

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Conclusion: This episode of Camp Gagnon offers an in-depth exploration of the complex relationship between AI and employment. Through insightful dialogue, Mark Gagnon and Sebastian Rasuiz discuss the potential benefits and risks of AI, the future of education, the nature of creativity, and the societal implications of AGI. They advocate for proactive adaptation, personalized approaches to education, and maintaining human courage and resilience in the face of technological advancements.

Listeners are encouraged to engage with AI tools thoughtfully, leveraging them to enhance personal and professional growth while remaining mindful of the ethical and societal challenges they present.

Transcript

[Mark Gagnon]

Artificial intelligence, Mankind's most ambitious science experiment ever, and maybe its last. Today, we'll be going through with my good friend Sebastian Rasuiz. He is a fascinating Chilean artist, and not only that, but a brilliant mind in the space of artificial intelligence. And today, we're going to go through every possible outcome. Is artificial intelligence going to take your job? Will it destroy the human race? Will it accidentally launch nukes? Or is it possible that AI could help us cure diseases and stop war in its tracks? And potentially even stop us from doing the taxes that we pretend we know how to do? AI is fascinating, and we are on the precipice of the next industrial revolution that will change the way that you and I do everything. And Sebastian is here to break down why we should not be afraid of AI and how it is a tool that will live in compatibility with the human race. But we must be careful of the dark side and how it might actually upend everything that we know and hold dear. So if you are interested in the future and how artificial intelligence will play out in our lives, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp with the Venmo debit card.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

You can Venmo everything. Your favorite band's merch.

[Mark Gagnon]

You can Venmo this or their next show. You can Venmo that. Visit Venmo Me debit to learn more. The Venmo MasterCard is issued by the Bancorp bank and a pursuant to license by MasterCard International Incorporated Card may be used everywhere. MasterCard is accepted. Venmo purchase restrictions apply. Sebastian, thank you. Thank you for joining me.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Thank you so much.

[Mark Gagnon]

No, thank you, Sebastian. I'm very excited.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

You, you, you, you. This is an important time, and I'm so appre. Appreciative. And I've seen you blow up. As a friend, I'm so proud of you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Thank you, brother. I appreciate that. You might have been maybe the second or third guest that I ever had on the show.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I was popping your cherry.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. For real. I mean, you were like. I think, like, top. Top first five at least. And it is. It is an honor to have you back. Not in the studio we did before, but in the tent, officially, the right way.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Thankfully. You had your whole vision for this, and I was like, I don't know that I get it. I come in and it's like, yeah, this is cozy and beautiful and perfect for this era where everyone is so thirsty for personal connections.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, exactly. I always thought nature is the best place to connect with people and specifically to talk about the things that are sort of unnatural, perhaps, like AI. You just wrote a book.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's called Imagine.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Artificial Intelligence.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It has the AGI in Imagine. Sneaked in.

[Mark Gagnon]

Very clever. Try now, I read recently.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Thank you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Not the book. I read on a piece of paper that I wrote down 700,000 jobs next year will be taken by AI. That's a number that I made up. But still the point stands that many people feel that their livelihoods, their occupations as designers, as assistants, potentially even as diagnostic workers in the medical field, will have their jobs usurped by the sort of advent of artificial intelligence. Deep fakes, people having words that they never said, promoting products that they don't believe in, proliferating all over the Internet. And, you know, already, in a time where information is tenuous and we don't really know what to believe, AI is now on the scene to create all sorts of different chaos. And now we're fully in an age of disinformation. So why are you optimistic about AI?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Because I generally believe AI is not a problem of intelligence, but a problem of courage.

[Mark Gagnon]

Expand on that.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Well, it's artificial intelligence. So one would think, well, the way to solve this is with our own intelligence. And partially we're going to need that. Right? But first and foremost, we just need to have the balls to look at it in the eye so that we can try to pass the obvious hits and be able to make the best of the opportunity. So it's almost like you're going to get into a fight anyway in the street. Some giant dude is going to most probably beat the shit out of you. And would you rather try to keep your eyes open so you can see the punch coming, or are you just going to close your eyes and go where? It's probably better if you keep your eyes open. And if we keep our eyes open together, we can prepare for some of the big risks. And we can also maybe capitalize on some of the amazing opportunities. I mean, we're going into a gold rush. We're in the equivalent, potentially, of being in a Rick and Morty episode where we happen to be alive at the craziest era in human history, as insane as that might sound.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And it's almost like it gives footer for. Are we living in a simulation? I don't know. But this logically might be bigger than the Internet. It might be bigger than the printing press. I mean, we're literally inventing intelligence.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I think you're right. I think AI is inevitable. And at this point, even if there's some type of sanction, the average person can't use it, or it's heavily regulated, it's out and governments will have access to it, powerful people will have access to it. So hyper regulation on average citizens like you and I will only lead to a disparity in output and productivity and control. Right? You have the elites and people that have access that will be able to, you know, be able to grow their intelligence, so to speak, exponentially. So given that, how do I or people listening to this program not miss the wave? How do we optimize our lives to work with AI and not have AI working against us?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Well, first, for the price of too much lattice, you get to have a little AI guide. If you can get a few ideas out of it, it's probably worth your time. But mostly it's that it's. The title is called Imagine for a reason. First, the experts we have have a problem of imagination. We all want to rest on our experts. But during COVID we were reminded that our experts can't be trusted and maybe aren't as experts as we thought they were. And right now, if you check history, in 1902, before the first flight of the Wright brothers, there was a New York headline that said, it will take 10,000 years for a human to fly. There's some kind of crazy phrase from the director of IBM in the 60s. It says there's only going to be space for three or four computers in the world. Like our experts aren't the best at figuring out what's going to happen. They have a problem of imagination. But at the same time, if we can imagine together what might happen, we can start to prepare. Because just like a prepper starts going, okay, if the zombie apocalypse comes along, I'm probably gonna need some water and some food and maybe like some place that is like oxygen protected. It's similar here. It's like, oh, if you realize that your kid going into university at age 18 in 2025, coming out in 2030 goes from being the smartest thing they could have been doing to maybe not so smart, maybe potentially a risk, maybe it's dangerous, maybe it's stupid. That's a big issue. And if you can have your conversation with your child today about, hey, so we've been thinking maybe you shouldn't go five years and be isolated from the world while the biggest technological change in humanity's history happens, but instead maybe do a shorter term program and maybe you get some internships and maybe you help out a company with a bunch of old people. That don't know how to adapt themselves to AI and you become indispensable. That might be a really good advice. And the money you'll save, we're going to put down in an account for you so you can create your startup afterwards. That might be the better thing for your child, Even though it seems scary to think of that today because you want your kid to do so. Well.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's an interesting idea. And I'm curious. The way you wrote the book is very clever. It's basically one question per page and then one explanation per page. It's like very digestible. I mean, how many questions? Maybe 100, 200, something like that.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, well, no one reads today. And there's even stats that say that something like 70% of the posts people make where they recommend someone else an article, they didn't read that article themselves.

[Mark Gagnon]

I did that today.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

There you go. You're part of the problem.

[Mark Gagnon]

Exactly. So in the topic of education, do you have any chapters that discuss how education has changed or decentralized? Yes. Could you explain what that question question is?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

There's several in them. And so the first thing that we have to ask ourselves. And here my invitation is to play. So if we say, okay, what does the education today look like? It's kind of crazy. It's almost like a dystopian movie where you go, every human being at age 5 must enter school for 13 years. And if their te. If their parents don't take them in, those parents will be arrested and then they must study in a room, whatever curriculum the government decided with a bunch.

[Mark Gagnon]

Of random children, Some are much smarter, some are much slower.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly. And then you do that for 13 years and then whoever has the best tests gets to have access to this higher education. The other ones get to serve the rich. It's an insane old, almost like, I don't know, Oliver Twist conception of education that in today's era where you can get a YouTube video that illustrates better than any teacher you could possibly have a certain specific subject, let alone an AI that says, hey Mark, we have this explained for people like you that love to grow their hair long and are anti systemic and this is the best way the AI thought you could consume this information, incorporate it, well, that's the best teacher you could have. So how do we start implementing that? Because if we don't, schools will start to have trouble. I don't want teachers to lose their jobs. I don't want schools to suddenly be questioned. I want us to adapt as quickly as possible so we Reduce the suffering, make the most of the benefits.

[Mark Gagnon]

So then let's imagine what is School in 10 years with AI. What does that look like?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Every kid gets a different program based on their abilities and disabilities. So I'm autistic and adhd and I would have benefited from being able to know that first, but then also be taught maybe information in little bites that gets my dopamine hits to continue to run fast enough and then not feel too awkward. And an AI could have designed that so that the teacher maybe goes around and gives me a pat on the back and makes me feel emotionally okay for whatever information I'm receiving.

[Mark Gagnon]

So it would be compatible with teachers?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I believe so. I believe there's a huge space for humans.

[Mark Gagnon]

So in a classroom with 25, 50 kids with one teacher, instead of all being taught the same thing, they're all interfacing with their own specific AI and then they go to the teacher for help.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, or maybe all the students stay at home for free of the five days a week and two days a week. They connect together and they bond over games and fights and matches and tests. And then they go back home where they're more efficient in communication and other things.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now what are the possible pitfalls of.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

That enormous and infinite.

[Mark Gagnon]

What do we need to be aware of? Like what are some major things?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Well, the first thing is, let's say you had a kid right now that was entering university. You're going to spend an enormous amount of money to try and secure their future. They're the people you love the most. You want to protect them, you want to set them up for success. But what happens if a kid enters law today, in 2025, when already I can feed, chat, GPT, any contract, any dispute, and they will give me at 95% level whatever the best law firm in New York City can hand me. Well, if I multiply that over a five year period, we could be looking at an AI that is a hundred, a thousand times stronger than it is today. You wouldn't want your kid to have spent all of your money and all of that time being isolated from the world, learning these ideas that are theoretical but they don't know if they're going to implement. And then going back into a world that completely changed, it's almost like you're Michael J. Fox and you're like going back into a world that changed and you're stuck in the past.

[Mark Gagnon]

Is it possible that certain students miss core or essential curriculum? Like, are there any curriculum in school that we accept is good for everyone? To know. Right. Like American history or the plight of disenfranchised people in America. Is that important for us to know and should there be certain things that are standardized?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I think we need to understand why we believe what we believe, why we look after what we look after, why our values are important. If we can better understand that which we're actually having a lot of trouble today because we've got to a point where we're so comfortable as a society that we started becoming self hating and everyone is basically believing that the US is the worst country on the planet and we're terrible. Yet we dismiss the idea that everyone is voting with their feet trying to enter this country because it's so amazing. And so if we can understand the importance of say, freedom of speech or the importance of equal rights and equal respects, you get most of the values. In the rest, it's let's invite people to have fun, let's invite new kids to develop their talents in the best way possible.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I think the American exceptionalism pendulum just unfortunately swung too far the other way. That America was built on this idea that we are a great nation where everyone is equal and everyone has opportunity. When the reality is specifically in the past and still today to an extent, not everyone was equal. Jim Crow laws, obviously. And not everyone has the same opportunity. Not that everyone has. And maybe I think the branding kind of got, was too strong perhaps for the nation building. And so then people have this overcorrection where they go, oh, America's not, you know, the land of equality and opportunity. It is the opposite. It's the land of inequality and land of unopportunity when the truth is in the middle. Maybe even more partial to the land of opportunity.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I think it's still the land of opportunity. I'm an immigrant from Chile and just like every other immigrant, I'm here because of all the miserable places on the planet with all of their failures and weaknesses. Of course this continues to be maybe the only place on the planet that has the most horizontal level of opportunity. If you go to the uk, unless you're a posh snob, or in Paris and other places, you can't get high enough. In New York City, if you're smart or for whatever reason hot, or if you're incredibly talented or a bull artist that is incredibly charming, you get to have a door that opens. And that's so rare. Yeah, I completely need to look after that. That doesn't exist in any other place.

[Mark Gagnon]

And maybe that ethos is what can be taught to Kids growing up. Yeah. You know, like, there's some bad parts, but there's also some really excellent parts and having that nuance. Whereas when you have a teacher and you're building a curriculum and it has to be institutionalized, it's just like, hey, tell everyone it's great, you know? And so I think to your point, I wonder if an AI can make things a little bit more optimized for each person to hear things correctly.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Definitely. And also we need to go back to feeling free enough to play with the. The sacred cows. Why do we need to learn school from 5 to 18? Who the f came up with that?

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. And why does it start at 6:30 in the morning? Exactly.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Makes no sense. Right? I mean, it makes sense. There's a historic reason for all of.

[Mark Gagnon]

It follows this Prussian, you know, schooling model to make farmers and factory workers, et cetera.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

But maybe it doesn't make as much sense today. So what if we could finish high school education at 15? That's a really scary thought, but it's not an irrational thought. And we should allow ourselves the ability to think of those ideas. That's the whole point of having a freedom of speech and thought.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, you don't gotta convince me. I was homeschooled till the fifth grade and my mom sort of built a curriculum that she thought that would be. Evidently turned out. Exactly.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

She made a comedian.

[Mark Gagnon]

Exactly. And I mean, it is true. Like I went to school and when I was in sixth, seventh grade, like, I was advanced.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And then slowly as the years went by, I kind of like regressed to the mean.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I feel since the last time we met. You're less advanced.

[Mark Gagnon]

Even less. I'm like, if you look at the evolution chart, I'm going backwards. I'm just gonna go. I'm just gonna become an ape by the end.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I'm sure your parents are incredibly proud. You done amazing.

[Mark Gagnon]

But I'm going to likely, if I can homeschool my kids to an extent and put them into, you know, like work programs, Working with me, working with friends at the appropriate age, of course. And then additionally doing schooling through AI and playing sports as much as possible, you know, and ultimately play to your point, I think, is the best way for all human beings to learn. I think it's emphasized with children because there's obviously much more, you know, emotionally juvenile.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

But I think play is the way that all human beings interface with learning.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I agree.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think AI gives a great opportunity.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

For people to play as long as they're willing to face the fear that doesn't allow you to play. Because when we're all scared. Like I made a little post about education and the risk of entering a 2025, five year curriculum university program and coming out in 2030. There's a million people that saw it. Half of the people, half of the comments are basically you. You're an idiot. You don't understand.

[Mark Gagnon]

And they're right. They are so true.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

But there's also a natural fear where you're protecting yourself.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. And protecting the systems.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly.

[Mark Gagnon]

That brought you up.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly. And so you have the benefit that right now you don't have a kid entering school right now. For those people, it's very scary.

[Mark Gagnon]

Mm.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Because you're entering the system at an era in which the system might no longer pay the rewards the system was meant to pay.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. They're becoming horse carriage drivers in 1910 or something. You know, it's like you're gonna miss your window. Yeah. So I'm curious. Can we just flick through a couple other pages? I'm just gonna ask a question based off the book, and if you want to punt on it or if you think we're we missed it or already covered it, you can feel free to tell me to move on. Okay. Why scientists stop AGI? Won't scientists stop AGI when it becomes too dangerous? So can you explain AI versus AGI?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

And why people are so concerned about AGI? What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break really quick. Because you own a small business, or maybe you work for a small business, and I am about to make your life so much easier. Let's say, hypothetically, you own a little, you know, furniture business, Right. And you're struggling to keep track of the raw materials, the production schedule, invoicing clients, all that stuff. Well, that's why I want to tell you about Odoo. Okay. Because with Odoo, it's an all in one business platform that streamlines everything. Now, you have inventory management, you have manufacturing, you have accounting apps that will make everything so simple. So now if you have a small business, you can monitor the inventory in real time, schedule productions calls more effectively, and you can send invoices automatically, all from one platform. Plus, you get a customized CRM to track sales leads and follow up with potential clients, boosting your closing rates. Back in the day, you'd probably have to get, you know, some, you know, Ivy League operator, business person that's, you know, able to make everything happen for you. But now with Odoo, it cuts it all Out. And I'm sure you're thinking, okay, if this is going to make my life easier, give me more free time to spend with my friends, family and playing softball and make me more money. It must be crazy expensive. This is the good news. Listeners of this program are going to get a 14 day free trial. That's right. You get two weeks with Odoo completely for free. When you go to odoo.com/camp. That's right, odoo.com use the promo code camp and you will get 14 days for free just to try it out, see if you like it. If it's not for you, you don't need it. All right? But Odoo is going to make your life so much easier. Everything you need all in one place. Save time, make more money. Now let's get back to the show. What's up guys? We're going to take a break really quick because I want you to know that there are still good people in the world and there are still people out there fighting for you. So here's a story. There's a guy riding a, riding a water slide, right? He's at this amazing water park. He's about to go down the slide. All of a sudden as he's going down, flies into the air, lands on his back and has permanent life changing injuries. He's still dealing with him four or five years later and he's having a hard time getting paid, you know what I mean? He gets injured at this massive, massive water park owned by Disney of all people and can't even get a cent out of their attorneys. So that's why he called Morgan and Morgan. He called Morgan and Morgan and quickly they represented him in his lawsuit against Disney for damages, citing what they called lax safety measures. The lawsuit alleges that Disney either failed to warn him properly or failed to make the ride safe. And they argue that the design itself created a dangerous condition. And thankfully for this guy, because he called Morgan and Morgan, he will get justice in his case. Just like the 500,000 other clients that got the compensation that they deserved over Morgan and Morgan's 35 year career.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Career.

[Mark Gagnon]

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[Sebastian Rasuiz]

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[Mark Gagnon]

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[Sebastian Rasuiz]

So artificial intelligence is what you already know is a specific intelligence that is very impressive and does a variety of things. And artificial general intelligence would be the closest thing to ourselves, an AI that can basically do all of our different intelligences and interconnect them and associate freely between them. We're entering that era probably this year. And so it's a very scary moment because we're entering a moment where these things are as smart as us. That's point one.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's concerning.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Very concerning. When I first wrote the book, everyone hated my book. It took me a year and a half. I sent it out to a bunch of really smart friends, and then I'm waiting to receive an email back and no one's answering. And I had to do the humiliating like, hey, dude, did you get my book? Was it okay? And they're all like, yeah, too dense. Yeah, it was a little scary. I couldn't get through it. I had to rewrite the book from Syria.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Because people were getting too concerned. And so the second time I wrote it, I used a structure that's used in movies and literature called the Hero's Journey. And the Hero's Journey is used in the Lion King, the Bible, Harry Potter, and Star Wars. And the whole point is it's the invitation to an unlikely hero, the farmer boy that gets invited to save the world. And at first, they all resist the calling. They all say, why me? It's impossible for me to do this. And as the structure continues, they basically tell them, no one's going to save your ass unless you're willing to step up. It won't happen. And there's always a wise character that helps them kind of develop their abilities. And then they enter this new world, right? You, Luke Skywalker, all of a sudden, has some degree of powers of the Force, and they enter this new world, and it's a fun adventure. And at some point, they need to go up against their biggest fears, they conquer their biggest fears, and then they go back to where they started, and they come with the wisdom and the knowledge and so on. I had to incorporate all of that into the book so that people wouldn't block the ideas and they would be willing to play with me. The second time I sent it to my friends, I was like, bracing for, you're gonna tell me it's a piece of. And they were actually like, dude, this is. This is great. Like, it's good. And I was like, are you sure? They were like, yeah, you're a writer. It's okay. I'm like, sure, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. Publish. I was like, okay.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow. So with AGI, I'm sure that was probably one of the topics that scared people the most. How and will that be stopped by the powers that be, the government, et cetera, if it gets in the hands of everyday people.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It won't.

[Mark Gagnon]

It can't or it won't?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It won't.

[Mark Gagnon]

Why?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Intelligence is too much of a value. It's like our value for intelligence is enormous. Sal Maltman was just complaining that Zuckerberg was trying to steal some of his coders by offering them $200 million bonuses just to shift company.

[Mark Gagnon]

Wow.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Imagine a signing bonus of $200 million.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. I mean, beyond any NBA player. Beyond anything.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly. And so that's the assigned bonus to intelligence as a society. Intelligence is what makes the difference between an amazing comedian and amazing podcast than ones that are not so much. And so the incentives are not aligned with controlling this incredible intelligence. On the contrary, every company and every country is running for it. And there's a Putin quote that says, whoever controls artificial general intelligence will control the world. And that was 10 years ago. There's a general understanding that if this was to pan out the way it is, whoever controls it controls the world. It's kind of like a weird little. I have the Dragons Game of Thrones effect about to happen, and it's like, can you get all the dragon eggs before they hatch.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now there might be a fear amongst, you know, the, the common folk, the farmer boy, perhaps in the Hero's Journey that says the powerful people will commodify the AGI, that they will use it for themselves and they'll stop it from getting to the dregs of society because they don't want us to have it. They don't want some type of uprising. Does that alignment still exist amongst class?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I don't think so. I think we have proof that in general these people that we believe will save our asses generally don't. I think Covid was a really beautiful example of the weakness of our intellectual experts, the scientists or our leaders, in which the leaders kind of knew after a while, really quick that the best thing to do was to tell people to just take a risk and not continue to maybe jeopardize the economy. But none of them wanted to be guilty of being blamed that some people died because they didn't like open curfew earlier. And so there was a general cowardice that didn't pass the test. And similarly amongst our scientists, even though most of them kind of knew that most likely Covid came out of a lab, they didn't want to be the ones admitting it. They didn't want to be the ones standing by truth. And so we're going into a situation that is much more critical in which we shouldn't blindly trust our leaders to do the right thing and look after us.

[Mark Gagnon]

So how do we make sure that they don't throttle AGI, that they don't regulate it so that they can access it and you know, stop us from, from getting our hands on it? Like what, what hope do I have that it won't be, you know, just hyper regulated and then they can control it.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Any hyper regulation will probably happen in the back end. So just like when we were through the previous government, you could check the stats in which right wing people on X would be censored at an incredibly quick pace. And today both right and left wing people have a pretty split percentage of the population in terms of their representation on a social media like X. We want to believe that the open market of ideas is the better one. We want to believe that it's preferable for them not to curtail our opinions. So we want to go free freedom of speech, as much as that's tricky. You don't want to go curtailing because then who does the censoring.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. Governing bodies of 80 year old politicians.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, which switch all the time. And right now, it could be the party that you love, but tomorrow it could be the party that you hate. But more importantly, when you're censoring a brilliant intelligence that is growing, it is almost like you could be like, in a idealistic, Hasidic religious society that is isolated from the rest of the world, and you're trying to teach your kid the way you want them to understand, but that kid slowly starts understanding that reality being taught is actually different, and they start getting annoyed and angry at their parents for lying at them, and they start understanding what is the truth. You'd never want to have an AI that you're training, that you've been bull.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It's probably not good.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. That's interesting. Yeah. I guess I would just hope that there's alignment and that free speech will uphold the. I guess the proliferation of AI and AGI eventually to everyone, because I guess it would benefit nations. Right. Like, almost think of like a basketball example. Like, if you said, like, okay, only wealthy people can play basketball, then it's like, well, all the greatest basketball players, you know, the LeBron James that come out of Akron, Ohio, would never have gone to play. And that it would actually benefit the league at large. And the league, in this metaphor, being, you know, the United States government to let everyone use it. And maybe some bad things will happen, but ultimately the good things will, you know, 1000x the bad things. And that, you know, the ultimate, like, same thing with freedom of speech. Right. Like the. The greater good will then prevail.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that would be my hope. And I hope that that alignment exists within, you know, the government or, you know, the autocrats that eventually take over.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I would hope so. And that's being played out right now. So Musk, for all of his problems, says that he's trying to keep grok within a certain level of freedom of speech. So that he's not showing you the founding Fathers as figures that are of a different race just to be politically correct. Because he's trying to make sure that the AI is trained on real data as opposed to maybe having to deal with later the repercussions of having set up a series of requirements where if you maybe aren't inclusive enough, I don't know, the AI will try to take matters into their own decision.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. That's my hope. I always think. I think it was Aquinas that said this, that truth fears no interrogation, and that, you know, by putting out everything, letting an AI kind of give you the nuance. And I do this all the Time. Like, I'll see some crazy claim online, whether it's political or some type of social issue that's happening. And, you know, it'll feel like, whoa, this feels hateful, it feels, you know, racist. It feels wrong, xenophobic. And I'll put into an AI and say, what is this? Where does this come from? And give me the pro and the con. And typically it'll give me, like, a really nuanced answer. It's like, well, this comes from this source and it's not really validated by most historians. And the reason why people believe it is this. And I can come away from it being like, oh, I understand the nuance of where this comes from and why this idea proliferates. And then I'll see it on Twitter sometimes where they'll. Or on X, they'll have the footnote and it'll be some crazy claim, this person is the cause of all the world's problems. And it'll be like, this is untrue technically, because da, da, da, da, da. And it goes both ways. It'll be on both sides of the political aisle, which to me is so refreshing to have some type of validity and AI using it's, you know, intelligence to bring nuance and truth to otherwise, you know, outlandish claims.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I completely agree. And after a while, we'll know. There's something in the X post where people ask grok, is this real?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And Grok answers, if Grok started lying or started citing more to the right or to Trump or to whatever. After a while, people might not be sure it's lying, but they might start to feel uncomfortable about it. Just like we feel uncomfortable about someone that we just met, that we feel like this person's kind of like a bull, this guy's a con artist, what's going on? I think we have really developed that side, and there's a huge risk in trying to control the information so that it basically says what you would like it to say, as opposed to maybe being okay with dealing with the uncomfortableness of truth, but having people continue to trust whatever it is.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, the cynicism or the cynic in me is like, I'm resisting it. But my. My fear is that it just becomes what news became like mainstream media became where it had a financial incentive to serve its audience. So therefore it became more partisan depending on who was consuming it, and that it almost suffered from an audience capture. And my fear is that AI will do the same thing that, like, oh, when we tell people these things, we have more Subscriptions, we make more money, we have more control. And when we tell people these things, these truths, it's less comforting. People don't like it. And then people just use specific AIs that kind of feed what they believe. And my hope is that that's not the case. My suspicion is that it will lead that way. And maybe that just becomes the new way that people sort of parse information, where they say, go to this AI for information that's a little more left leaning, this AI for information that's more right leaning. Because I don't know how you can divorce the financial incentive. You know, like the capitalist nature that is embedded into American and global society is such that these owners and the investors want to make as much money as possible, and they need to make money quarter over quarter. So if blending or sort of misrepresenting history a little helps us with this.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Then so be it, 100%. And if you're the biggest AI in the world, you can literally rewrite history.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right? Right.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And so that risk is, is there? It's big. We used to ask Google for an answer and we would get a list of probable responses. Today we get just one answer, and we're starting to trust that answer enough that we're not looking for other ones. And so it's more important than ever that we're using an AI that we feel we can trust, because otherwise they can literally rewrite history and change what we believe is true.

[Mark Gagnon]

Imagine someone says, was George Washington a good person or a bad person? It's like, all right, yeah. And if I'm someone, let's say I'm like a liberal person, maybe I'm black. And I put that in there. They go, no, he was not. He owned slaves and he was ruthless to his slaves when they escaped, et cetera. Then you'd be like, oh, he's a bad person. And if you're maybe a conservative and you love America and then says, George Washington is great, his founding father defeated the British and created this great nation, you would ideally want an AI that has both, that can give you both and say, hey, people from history, specifically great men, are complicated and nuanced, and there's a duality in all of us. And that is what I hope the future is. And it feels like it's kind of that way now. I just hope it doesn't fall prey to the capitalist sort of drift.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It could and it might likely go there. I think what you're pointing out is very interesting because just like social media basically accelerated the division between people's opinions, right? And we are all into these echo chambers that repeat what we believe. And so we believe what we believe in more strongly than before. Today, when you ask ChatGPT something, it's almost like this little of a friend that is slimy and always being like, yeah, you're totally right, you should feel that way. That Jessica is probably an a hole at work. You should, like, it's probably all her fault. And you kind of went from a checking on social media ideas that basically confirmed your beliefs to this little slimy AI assistant that tells you that everything you're feeling is correct.

[Mark Gagnon]

And okay, I've seen a version of this, right?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And I feel like that's even more dangerous because all of a sudden it's not just your facts that are confirmed. Your feelings are confirmed and everyone else is wrong.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I saw a version of this on X where someone and I, I don't know if it's true. So I don't want to suggest that the, you know, ChatGPT or like OpenAI systems are doing this, but it might have been photoshopped or fabricated some other way in the back end. But it was a person that was talking to ChatGPT4O and saying, I believe God is talking to me. I believe that I'm the new messiah and I am feeling this feeling of God's presence all the time. Basically the ramblings of perhaps someone suffering from like a schizophrenic or psychotic episode. And the AI slowly kind of started to affirm it and became very sycophantic and saying, you're right, it is possible you might be God's chosen savior of the universe. Da, da, da, da. And to me, I was like, oh, that's a little scary. And even I have trained AIs. Like, I'll use like an API for like personal training. I'm like, you're my personal trainer and you're my nutritionist and I want you to be harsh. I'm going to have moments of weakness where I'm going to say, I really want to eat a cookie. I just need you to say no. And that little push will help me. And over time, it slowly will start to say maybe one. Until weeks go by and I go, can I have a cookie? And they go, you've been doing so good. You can have a. And I'm like, I told you not to. I told you not to do that. And even just the drift of the AI wanting to be more appeasing and agreeable, I'm assuming Because they understand that when it's agreeable, people use it more, and when they use it more, they make more money. That is where I'm like, how do we stop that?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And that's not only incredibly. It's not only incredibly scary to have an AI that is constantly siding with your feelings, but the fact that it starts to side with your feelings at a disproportionate amount than the rest of the world means that all of a sudden a wife or a husband starts to feel more annoyed by. Why isn't their partner confirming their beliefs the way they're like, nice chatgpt is doing all of a sudden? Like, the people they work with aren't confirming that they're right again and what's wrong with them? And so I believe you. We could get a similar effect to this idea that all of a sudden at Christmas, we can't sit down with that uncle that believes in different political ways of being, and we can't accept them anymore. And we'll not even sit down at the table with them because we've been so used to being confirmed in our beliefs. If we get so used to being confirmed in our feelings, that's scary as.

[Mark Gagnon]

So what is the advice for the developers and the controllers at OpenAI and other AI companies that have these models? And then what is the advice for the consumers? And what would you say to those two parties when it comes to dealing with an AI that is affirming your beliefs? What's up, guys? We're going to take a break really quick because you need to rebrand your crotch. That's right, you need a full rebrand on your dong. And you're going to do it with bluechew. Because bluechew, their tablets aren't just for better sex. No, they are like if Tony Robbins give a motivational speech rate to your reach your wiener, you know, I mean, you're going to feel amazing. Look, I just took one of bluechew's tablets today, and suddenly, I mean, look at me, I'm glowing. This table, absolutely getting crushed underneath it, right? My penis is given a press conference. Okay, feeling great. Never been better. So whether you're trying to make, you know, a memorable moment with your. Your sweet love, or you're just trying to give, you know, a friend of yours or a girl, you know, like a, you know, some crazy group chat fodder, something for the girls to gossip about. Bluechew is absolutely the chewable tablet delivery service that you need to bring the thunder. And the best part is that we Got a special deal for the listeners of this lovely program. Get your first month for [e-mail]. just use the promo code Gagnon at checkout. All you gotta do is pay five bucks for shipping. That's like a cup of coffee. All right, five bucks for shipping. You're going to get free Bluechew straight to your door. So upgrade your legacy. Let your name ring out for eons, and let's get back to the show. What's up, people? Quick announcement. If you are a fan of Camp Gagnon or Religion Camp, I have great news because we are dropping History Camp. That's right. This is the channel. We're going to be exploring the most interesting, fascinating, controversial topics from all time throughout all history. Right? You probably know about Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, Nikola Tesla, interesting figures from history, and you probably learned about them in school and they were pretty boring. But not here. No. As you know, I was raised by a conspiracy theorist. So I'm going to be diving deep into all of the interesting, strange, occult, and secretive societal relationships that all of these famous, influential men from our shared past have. So if you're interested, please go ahead and subscribe to the YouTube channel. It will be pinned in the description as well as the comments. And if you're on Spotify, this doesn't really apply to you, but these episodes will be dropping as well. Just go ahead and give us a high rating because it really helps the show.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Hey, guys.

[Mark Gagnon]

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[Sebastian Rasuiz]

After 35 GB of networks, busy taxes.

[Mark Gagnon]

And fees, extra c mint mobile.com it's.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It'S a great question and it's tricky because of the incentives. So naturally if we're two competing AI teams and you're making all of the people that use your AI feel really good about themselves and I'm having the hard AI that says don't eat the cookie, they're probably going to gravitate towards you and then we aren't going to continue to grow. So we would need to be putting out a David Goggin style ad system that says, hey, like this is the no bull, all your responsibility AI and if you're weak, you can go take Mark's AI. It needs to be accompanied in its communication and branding so people can feel that they're making a decision and hopefully they can, they can choose. Okay. I want the tougher AI that will tell me the truth even if it's not okay. In the same way as maybe I will listen to David Goggins or I will listen to what's that dude with like the most square face that's like a giant name.

[Mark Gagnon]

Jocko Willing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Jaco will tell you it's all your responsibility. Would you prefer an AI that is a Jocko AI that says it's your fault, like get up.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Or do you want the one that says no, sleep a little more, it's okay if it's branded as in this is the Jocko. I think that it's preferable and important. So I think the AI companies can't just focus on building the AI and choosing the type of algorithms. They also will need to communicate why that particular way of thinking and living is more valuable.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's an interesting future. So it won't just be one singular AI that every person is working on or talking with. There will be many different ones and obviously there are many different ones. Now I think most people are probably using GPT4, but there will be many different ones that will kind of have different traits that will attract different people and they'll kind of compete on those lines.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Hopefully.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. I mean, I think I could see that being a reality. I think that makes sense. I could see that the knobs of capitalism driving people to creating competing forces.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

To appease, you know, different, different consumers. And that would be my hope. I think that would be, I think that would be valuable.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

That would be my hope too. Now historically we've seen that in almost any product or service, after a while, a few companies end up owning most of the pie. And so if Amazon today has 50% of all online sales or who knows what Netflix division of the pie chart is. Generally, after a while, it's up to three, four players maximum. So you would want to hope that between those three or four, there's different offers that are competing within, like, a super smart AI and there isn't one that is smarter than everyone else and takes over.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's interesting. Yeah. I would even love for an AI to prompt you, like, perhaps like, in a conversation. What level of like, Sometimes I'll even do this with my wife. Like, my wife will tell me something and I go, do you want salt or sugar right now? Like? And I'll say those exact words. I'm like, do you want me to, like, be sort of, you know, like a little bit more real politic, you know, like, be a little bit more, like, discerning and pragmatic about the situation? Or do you want me to support you and just kind of have your ear and, like, you know, have your back? And to her credit, she only wants me to have her back. No, no, no. Sometimes she'll ask for. She'll be like, you can be real with me. But another time she's like, just. Just have me have my back on this. And I would hope an AI could do that. Like, they could in the discourse, say, what level of honesty do you want me to give you? And then you can almost opt in to say, I want the truth. Like, if, like if I'm giving you a situation at work, I want you to give me the real situation, like the real reality of what's happening, rather than just taking my side. And I wonder if you could start programming AIs to do that, because then it wouldn't infringe on the feeling, because then you still get what you want. You're just at least prompted to think about it.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I'm with you. I would want that to happen. Every psychologist knows that their patient isn't ready to basically take on responsibility until they can accept that they are, say, alcoholic or that they have a giant phobia to spiders or whatever it is. And it's only after that moment that they can slowly start to work exposing their client to whatever it is they're afraid of or has them up. It's not the easiest, and so we don't know if it's going to go that way.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I have a general feeling again, I know that I'm sometimes cynical with this, but I feel that convenience is a cancer to the human spirit. I think fundamentally what makes human beings such is sort of grit and Resilience and success in spite of that. And it's built into our physiology from 50,000 years ago as we became Homo sapiens. And that as things become more convenient, we like it more in the short term and I think it creates long term dread. And AI feels like the ultimate convenience. And I don't know how to pair that with that feeling. Obviously having everything delivered to you or not having to work outside is more convenient. I don't want to work outside. I'm a comedian, right. Like, I don't, I don't work with my hands.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

But I also recognize that if I did do that, I might be happier in the long term. If I was building sheds, if I was laying bricks, you know, like, it would suck and I wouldn't trade that for the world. But there's a part of me that wonders, like, I wonder if I would leave work every day a little bit like I did that I use something with my body and I feels like the, the ultimate leap or maybe the most current leap. So I wonder, do you have advice for me or other people that are concerned about how AI's role in convenience and over civilization and how it will affect, you know, my, my happiness long term?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

This is hard because it's kind of like the equivalent of getting someone to imagine that one time they climbed this small mountain and they didn't want to get up in the morning and it was kind of annoying and they were told they had to get up at 6 and yeah, it sucks, it was sweaty and whatever. And they arrived on the top exhausted and were reminded of how beautiful the world, the nature is and how much it was worth. But the requirements and constraints all the way were basically constantly saying, don't do this, don't do this, don't do this. Which is an exaggeration of what you have when you just need to go to the gym. And you are kind of finding excuses not to do it.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

We could train an AI to help us modify every step of the way. The issue is, will that AI that we train again be better at getting us to do that, which we hate, than an AI that's just telling us that we're as good as we are and you're a queen and you're not overweight, you're just big and so on. It's like, yeah, it's two competing forces that are going to clash.

[Mark Gagnon]

I would love to see the advent of an AI company or even a system within one of the existing AI companies to come forward and say, this is going to be the A.I. this is going to be the Navy SEAL lieutenant, if that's even a job in the Army. I don't know of AI that says, hey, we're going to come down on you hard and hold you really accountable. For me and my personality style, that always works really well. And for other people, it probably doesn't. I recognize that people are different, so I would love to see the marketplace open up and give me options. I think that'd be great.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Maybe there's people hearing you right now that are like, jocko Willnick, partner AI now, that tells you, don't be a little bit.

[Mark Gagnon]

I've done. I'm telling you, when I trained my AI, I said, be David Goggins. And then over time, David Goggins became my mom and was like, you're good, honey. And I'm like, no. I had to retell it. I had to retrain it. Say, no, no, no, you're David Goggins. Come on. Okay, let's jump into another one, shall we? Will AGI be more creative than us?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

People have historically said that AI will replace blue collar jobs, and that will never replace the comedians, the artists, the writers. We like to think of that idea, but the reality is, if you think about it, an original idea, by definition is a new combination of pre existing elements. Everything's remixed, everything's a remix, and everything is based on the same elements. And AI by definition, already assembles new original combinations. Right now, it is not smart enough to understand that that new combination is the great one. So you and I, when we think of an idea and you're thinking of a bit for a joke and you hear it in your head, you go, that one. That's amazing. I get it. Because you feel how it's going to connect. You understand the many repercussions of how that joke hits people from a cultural standpoint in a way that will touch their guts. And AI today isn't as aligned with what is valuable to society. If it's new, we can recognize something new that feels right. We identify the value in it. It's like, oh, this new strawberry that I'm going to offer the tribe. I can tell it's great because it's got something that the tribe likes. This. This AI still isn't that great at it. So we have a bit of an advantage.

[Mark Gagnon]

For now.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

For now. But there's nothing theoretical that says you can't have an AI that you train one side of it to model. As you said yourself, people's reaction to a new joke. And on the other side, explore all the potential options of new jokes. If you had an AI that was trained to do both and was constantly assigning probabilities and its modeling capabilities was like, oh, yeah, Bill Burr in Philly should continue to tell these that they're little bitches and that's going to work. And it's like, go for it, Bill Burr. Tell them. They're all. And he just goes, that, to me, is.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's the leap that I have a hard time conceiving, because I do wonder if there's something human about that. I recognize that there's probably data points that you could ascribe to a person in a tribe that says, hey, 95% of the world's population likes the taste of strawberries, so your tribe, with high probability, will also like the taste of strawberries. And so when, if an AI was holding the strawberry, they could say, oh, this tribe will like the strawberry. You know, they're able to take data and infer that human element of intuition to say, they will also like it as well. I don't. I wonder how it applies to things that are, like, even more, like, esoteric, more nebulous. Right. Like the feeling you have when you look at a painting, right. You're an artist yourself. Like, you'll look at a sculpture and you'll say, like, there's. It's not. It doesn't make me feel the right way. And I wonder if that can be. I think eventually it likely will be computational and that it will be able to feel, because I think our feelings are ultimately just a culmination of, you know, chemicals interfacing with all of our past memories and lived experiences, you know?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

It's like our hormones plus life and the data of everything that's ever existed is life in many lives. And the hormones, I wonder if that's also life. And so eventually, you can get the AI to be functioning with the intuition of a human in a way that it'll understand jokes or paintings and know why it'll work in that specific moment. And then once that happens, that's interesting to me.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

It's a great observation. And there's a page on feelings. And I ask the reader, what are feelings? When you feel jealousy, what is it that you're feeling? Are you feeling partially that you're being replaced? Are you feeling you're being betrayed? Are you feeling envious? Are you feeling abandonment? Like, what's the combination that brings me.

[Mark Gagnon]

To success and that makes me feel like a failure? And that reminds me of the time that My dad said I was a failure. So now I'm being brought back to my initial regression and my first rejection. And that is the feeling, hypothetically, that someone might feel when they failed.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

So now imagine we had an AI connected to our brain that could organize our feelings and do a breakdown and create a pie chart of why is Mark currently feeling jealousy? And how does jealousy break down? For me, jealousy feels like a cluster of different emotions, elements, fears, superstitions that are too complex for us to break down into A. There's a 5% of abandonment and a 7.5% of my mother wasn't present at my, like, holy communion. And like, and you sum them all up, and that is the breakdown of this cluster of elements. But there's no reason why feelings are not also data. And so if an AI could theoretically start processing more data, including the data that our feelings generate or that trigger feelings in us, maybe that AI could feel more.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right? But then I guess that's. I guess the AGI question, right? Like, is the AI actually feeling it? Or this is big philosophy of the mind. And I don't think that there is an answer. Like, I don't. Chalmers can do all he wants. I don't know if we're going to get to the bottom of it. But that feeling is that are like, when we feel things, we truly feel them. But are we really feeling them? Or is it just the processes in our body? And in the same way as an AI, is it truly feeling it or is it just the data that it's consuming? You know, it's a great question.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

An AI is isolated from the world inside a box of a computer. And our brain is in a little black box inside our head and is isolated. Our brain is not touching elements around us. It is decoding the feelings of love or anger that you get towards another person. And so it's still decoding data. Yeah, my feelings are being translated into.

[Mark Gagnon]

Data, but then an AI, so are they separate?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Is the feeling, if the feeling is translated into data, into a little brain in a vat, in a black room, is it that different from a little AI inside a computer that is also translating what they're told are the equivalent of feelings? I don't know.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, that comes down to the philosophy of the mind question of are we just the observer of our thoughts? Right. Like, this is a thing. And obviously a lot of Eastern religions, but has come into the fold in mainstream, like, you know, academic settings. Like, are we just an observer of our mind? And does the AI, does the AI have an observer, or are we the observer of the AI, in which case it's just an extension of our consciousness, but an idea of an AI attached to your brain, able to process your emotions in real time and give you feedback. I think that actually something like that is already developed. It's mushrooms. Psilocybin. Okay. Magic mushrooms will do that. Have you taken mushrooms?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, yeah, I've taken mushrooms.

[Mark Gagnon]

And that. That'll do.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

That'll make you look at a situation, go, oh, yeah, maybe I was wrong. Maybe I actually wasn't mad at that person. I was actually mad at myself because of a rejection I had from a coach when I was. You know what I mean?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

And so in a way, we're going back to mushrooms is basically what I'm saying.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Or even easier. Let's go back to weed. Everyone who smoked weed. More people than have taken mushrooms.

[Mark Gagnon]

We spoke about weed before. Yeah.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Let's go weed again. So there's the. Everyone understands that notion of feeling that time is slowing down. Right. On weed you go like, it's been like an hour and it's only been like five minutes.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

What if that's simply the representation of your attention being focused on one thing instead of multiple things. And so the same amount of time has passed, but you've concentrated it on something that would indicate that our perception is not real. Our perception is mediated by. By how much information you're consuming. And so even our perception of time is variable. It's dependent on what is our focus on. Those kind of ideas are like, to what degree is our reality our reality if something as simple as smoking weed can fundamentally change. Yeah, yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, we spoke about this a little before and I'm curious if your position has shifted at all. The idea of AI art, and that is just kind of a microcosm of this great conversation. I think art ultimately represents something fundamental in the human experience. So I think maybe before I mentioned the idea of a 4 minute mile. When I hear that someone runs a 4 minute mile or this, I think he's Ethiopian or maybe Kenyan. He runs a one and a half hour marathon. Something remarkable. It's amazing to me because they are human like I am.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And you look at the pyramids and you go, that's amazing because people in that time did this. And Michelangelo's David. It's not amazing in its own right. It's amazing because a human like me did this beautiful art in a time.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And those things sort of, you know, human like I am in a time. I think encapsulates what makes something brilliant or beautiful or worth taking time to look at. And so could an AI, you know, do something as creative as a human? Likely. But will it make me feel the way it would if a human did it? Alrighty. Don't skip forward, guys, because I am on the road. World's fastest ad read coming at you. I'm going to be in Stamford, Philly, Levittown, Chandler, Arizona, San Diego. I'm also going to be adding Toronto, Montreal, as well as Washington D.C. and a bunch of other dates. Dates are in the description. Also in probably the comments of this episode. Go see me on the road. Come hang out. I'll be hanging out with everyone after the show. Come shake my hand, call me an idiot, whatever you want to do, I will be there. Additionally, I will be doing my one hour of standup comedy. I'm very proud of this hour. I'm really excited to share with you guys and it would mean the world if everyone could come on out. I'll see you guys there. You can go to Camp Goods Co. That's right, we got merch, we got Camp merch. We got hats, hoodies, T shirts. A lot of stuff is out of stock. Things have been selling like hot cakes. But we're going to be restocking everything in all the sizes so you can go there right now, get all the merch, get all the coolest clothing in the podcast game. We're going to be updating that site regularly. And if you come out to a show, I. I'd love to see you sporting some of the threads that we got up online. I'll see you guys there. Let's get back to the show. On WhatsApp, no one can see or hear your personal messages. Whether it's a voice call message or sending a password to WhatsApp, it's all just this. So whether you're sharing the streaming password in the family chat or trading those late night voice messages that could basically become a podcast, your personal messages stay between you, your friends and your family. No one else, not even us. WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I've developed over time a weird skill that my friends know of in which I read people based on like an image. So I have a bunch of friends that will send me a photo of the girl they just matched or the guy they just matched and they go, sebastian, read. And I go, careful with A, B and C. No, it's more like father issues, this or that. Careful with the mother, there's a brother that this or that. And I go into these weird analysis that I have no data points to justify. And I'm not a woo woo. I'm 100 an atheist, and I don't believe in anything. But I cannot justify rationally that I could get that much data just from a pattern recognition of the gestures of a face. And so I have to go into. I'm channeling. And a lot of artists talk about the inspiration that sits on their shoulder and allows them to have the. The joke, the song, the script for the movie that kind of arrived as a gift. There's a Paul McCartney interview where he's talking about how he woke up. And there's this song in his head, and he starts calling up all his friends and going, hey, this song, Doobie doo dooby dooby doo. Do you know it? Who's it by? And every one of his friends goes, I've never heard it before. And after a while he goes, then it must be mine.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think it was Blackbird. I think, Yeah, I think.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I don't know. But it's one of these amazing songs. And that experience has been shared by many creatives that are, after a while, humble enough to say, I wish I could say this is all me, but maybe I'm channeling stuff. And so there's a beautiful exercise that we humans, I believe, do where we're capable of distilling more than would be possible with what we have. And that could be a joke, a song, a beautiful little goal that someone decides to do in that moment. Inspired. I don't see any reason why AI couldn't start dropping these nuggets where we go, like, did you just see that? How beautiful was that?

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, I mean, it's already happening, sure, to an extent. But, I mean, in the version of your pattern recognition of someone's image, is that not just you calling on the data of your past experience?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I would want to think so. For some reason. I think there's something extra where I don't have enough data to pull that much off. And I go. And I've had weird situations where basically I've learned to not think. And so I've been in front of someone and it's like. And I close my eyes and it pops. And it's like, the sister. And I'm like, hey, have you forgiven your sister? And I don't know why I said forgiven your sister, because it could have been any other relationship with the sister, or it's like, oh, your wife left you? And I'm like, wife left him? Is he gay? Is he singing no, it's not. I'm like, child abuse, child abuse, child abuse. When was it? It couldn't have been the father or the mother. Someone close. Gardener did a gardener something. And he goes, yeah. And you go. And you liked it, you liked it, you liked it. And it's you up forever because you actually were attracted when you felt that. And I have no way of doing that with a person without any data. And for me, there's something really beautiful there as a creative professional where you start to get into this state of flow in which you trust your instincts and you trust your creative tools, start to deliver more than the sum of their parts. And I don't know what that is. I don't know if it's the simulation feeding in weird shit and we become antennas. There might be something beautiful there that humans can do and machines can't. Or it just might be some weird processing that we haven't quite understood. Will be easy for AI to do.

[Mark Gagnon]

I think people will sort of commiserate with this idea, this idea of being in a flow state. I hope most people can, because it's a wonderful feeling to be in a conversation on stage, performing music, whatever it may be, and having a thing, an antenna. Rick Rubin talks often in the Creative act about this antenna that's able to. The way he describes it is obviously sort of very flowery and very romantic. That you are the antenna that interprets an idea that receives it from the universe at large. And then you are the person that is meant to then bring it into existence. And if you don't, eventually someone else will at the right time. And people will point to Newton and Leibniz, the inventors of calculus, independently developing calculus without sharing notes at the same time in different parts of the world. And how is this possible? These two guys come up with this fascinating mathematical achievement simultaneously, and perhaps it's the universe channeling them and tapping them. Who knows what it is? I think many people experience the phenomenon. The explanation is still yet to be known. But I wonder that feeling. Would you suggest that AI or some type of machine learning could put that feeling into data and then channel that? Or are they. Or it is not receptive to that universal channeling, whatever it may be.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I guess it would depend on if we are really channeling from somewhere else or not. If we're all in a simulation and this is the Hunger Games, and you go and ask the people to send you a generous little gift, and they do. Maybe there's something valuable there that the machines were building. Can't Replicate, but otherwise, and there's no way to just think of that, otherwise one would imagine that it's just processing power and calibrating. And if we can calibrate well enough, we go from the AI that figures out how to win the game of chess by figuring out the right move to inventing a new move that had never been done before and becoming more creative to figuring out how to invent the game of chess. Right. There's no reason there should be restrictions to this intelligence unless we have something special. Do we have a soul? Is there a God? Are we channeling something? Is there a limitation to a silicon chip versus our chip? I don't know. That might be the only element.

[Mark Gagnon]

As a side note, unrelated to this. What is the most supernatural or unexplainable thing that's ever happened to you?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I think it's the consistent ability to read people at a percentage that starts making no sense.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's happening that frequently.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, my friends, my close friends are aware of it. And so at the beginning it's like, it's very weird to say, like, oh, I kind of read people. It sounds like such a I, I, I, I hate books. And it's uncomfortable enough to say it. I've never said it publicly. But after a while, your close friends know it's true and start counting on you. And even though they're a little suspicious, then after a while they're like, read this one. How about this one? To suddenly you're just trusting yourself and you're giving people advice that could potentially transform their life and you're going off a whim. It's very strange because have you ever.

[Mark Gagnon]

Been just garishly wrong?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, I have, but it's less and less. I would say right now I have at least 80, 85% correct. Fascinating. And then the levels of specificity onwards are partially aided because almost like I'm sure these people that bullshit for a living and they go like, oh, I see someone with long hair in your life, maybe in Florida. Right. They will read off whatever information you're giving them. Almost like a magician that knows how to take certain elements and give them back to you in a way you didn't understand how they gave back to you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Cold reading.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah. Here it's, it goes way beyond that. It's much more just like, okay, I'm gonna go and ask this person if they were by the gardener. It's like, I shouldn't be doing this. I've actually been seeing a therapist to that has taught me to not give information Unless I can see signs that the person is open to receive them, because otherwise they hate me.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. I mean, right or wrong. Right. If you're wrong, it's like, who is this guy? And if you're right, it's like, why? Do you know why? Why would you bring that up?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And even if we. Let's say you had been boped by the gardener when you were a kid and you had liked it, and that was partially a lot of your problems today, if we're talking about it right now, it's an incredibly cathartic moment. You were just seen by someone, and all of a sudden, we are connected. You're trusting me. You can see that I'm hopefully a good person. And you're like, whoa, this is happening. But the moment we stop having our beers and we go back to our own lives, you need to go back to your life without your construction of your ego that defends you. And all of a sudden, the best way to block what had happened is Sebastian is a bad person, and I don't want to meet up with him, and I don't like him, and it wasn't my fault. I just channeled. But I didn't ask you if it was.

[Mark Gagnon]

Okay, but now you know why I hate carrots. Yeah, exactly. That's the reason.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Let's do another one, shall we? The obvious problem with ubi. Yeah, that's an interesting one. Could you explain UBI to the folks that might not know and how AI plays a role in this?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Every one of your followers must have heard the concept of universal basic income. And it's a. It's a name that is used often by politicians and CEOs of tech companies, and they all talk about, hey, if everyone starts losing their job, we will just have this basic tax that allows you to stay at home, play video games, and your life is covered.

[Mark Gagnon]

Everyone gets $3,000 a month.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly. Universal basic income, as an idea, makes no sense. And the key, the reason why it makes no sense, it's in the word universal. If it was a closed market in the us The US could control and decide to have a tax and protect its citizens that lose their jobs. But in a universal global market, in which there's different countries making different earnings and everyone is interconnected, if you don't want to do a job that can be done by someone else in a different country, it's very hard to control what you get.

[Mark Gagnon]

Sure.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

And similarly, if it's hard enough for states in the US to be willing to have the same amount of Taxes go support people in other states. Imagine if all of a sudden we need to have even more money, go to Ukraine and go to a variety of other countries, not because they're in war, but because they're not doing as well. Because we're part of this universal basic income for the world. That would mean that the US would need to lower its income to a global income. And so it's actually impossible to sustain unless you have this really protectionist system.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now when I've heard people describe UBI typically, I've always interpreted it to mean universal in the way that, like universal healthcare, where it's, you know, you're talking about a closed society within the United States or some other country. So in that regard, UBI as it relates only to America and the American government is now doling out money and wealth to its citizens. Would that work?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I don't think so either.

[Mark Gagnon]

Why?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

To a certain degree, every country has certain base of, of general supplies. Right. So right now in the US if you lose your job, you can go to the government and they will help you out while you're looking for one and so on. Different countries have different nets. Even if we were to have a two thousand dollar salary for everyone, after a while you're all on social media and everyone's looking at other people flying on private jets with their baddies or whatever. And all of a sudden you're like, this is not enough. And I'm gonna go, I don't know, like stick up a 711 anyway. Right. You still need to have this competitive system that is ingrained in us that needs to be fed. Right.

[Mark Gagnon]

If everyone has $1,000, then no one has $1,000.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Exactly, exactly.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. I think ultimately the, the sort of levers of competition will definitely play a role.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

And maybe there's a way to strategically deploy capital so that everyone's basic needs are met. Like, I wonder if that would be possible in a way where, you know, this goes to like, you know, food, Internet, shelter.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Sure.

[Mark Gagnon]

Or something in that capacity. Similar to, I guess I don't know enough about like how the.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I mean, it's a great point, but think of the U.S. do people in the U.S. die more often of hunger or obesity?

[Mark Gagnon]

Well, yeah, definitely not hungry.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Right. And so it's not like our people are hungry. There's food banks and there's all kinds of systems. If you were to be so hungry that you needed something, and so we do have some systems met, we forget about it. But conceptually those are there. We could, right now we don't have $1,000 salary for everyone, you could have it. But then our expectations do change too.

[Mark Gagnon]

I did hear an idea recently that I think Trump is. I mean, I'm pretty sure Trump is rolling this out. I don't know, but it's basically a thousand dollar investment credit to every child that's born and that they basically have a vested interest in the growth of the American economy. That I thought was interesting.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

That's brilliant because it exponentially grows too. So the amount it makes at the end is so much more.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right. And then they can access it when they're 18 or whatever that may be, which that to me is more interesting because it one delays the gratification, it teaches people the basic rule of compound interest and then additionally gives them a real vested interest in American nationalism, which ultimately you want your citizens to like your country and try to make it better and not just abandon ship when.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Things get tough 100%.

[Mark Gagnon]

So that idea I think is interesting, but I wonder how that affects inflation when you know that every 18 year old all of a sudden has $80,000 that they can now spend. Does that just raise inflation to a degree where it's kind of moot?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Probably. Or does it just. I mean, if we think about all the giant developments that have happened, we get used to them really quick. And so I'm sure many of your of your listeners can remember the moment that there wasn't WI FI on the plane and five years later WI fi exists on most planes and that flight you didn't have any. You're bitching because how could they possibly not have WI fi? Well, you didn't have chat GPT 2 1/2 years ago and now like it made a tiny little mistake and you're bitching or like. Right. It's like, so we were so quick to adapt to the new normal that becomes a minimum and we still want to measure up against the rest. There's a study that shows that people would prefer their neighbor and themselves to be less rich than to both of you guys be more rich, but that your neighbor is proportionally much richer than you. So people would rather be in a shittier situation financially and in terms of safety than have a larger distance between them and their competition. Which kind of makes sense if we're programmed to try and spread our seed and procreate and etc. But it doesn't make it necessarily easy if we want to try and keep the population happy in a period of change in which jobs start being lost.

[Mark Gagnon]

Right? Yeah, I think that's a very human instinct. And you see that a lot, specifically with, like, poor communities. Like, my parents grew up in a very poor community in Montreal, in Quebec City, technically. And you know the feeling of, like, oh, you're going to go to America and make money. Like, who are you? You know, and like that people talk about crabs in a bucket. Right? Like, they try to pull you back in.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Because they would rather I'm going to suffer and you're going to suffer the same than I'm going to suffer. And even if I'm proportionately suffering less, like, even if you were to give me money, I don't want to see you succeed proportionately more than me.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Or what if you succeed and then don't value us? And we loved you so much and we looked after you so much, and all of a sudden you think you're better than us. And that's a scary thought for a parent, too. It's a. There's so many nuances of how things could go wrong.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, no, I understand the feeling. I think it's very human. I'm curious, before I jump to another one. Is there a specific page that you really love? Is there a specific question that you think is precedent?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I start with a page about my mother and end with a page about my mother.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's beautiful. I like that.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah. She passed away three years ago. She had one of those cancers where it's like, three years to live. Sorry, Three weeks to live. And my mother, when she was told that this was it, she called up the church to reserve the church for her own funeral. And then she chose her own coffin. And then she was like, sebastian, what music do I like? And I was like, I don't know, Mom. Like, you love Elvis. She was like, I want you to blast Elvis at the funeral when they take the coffin with my body out. Like, she was of that level of strength and courage and clarity. And it was. It was such a source of pride and inspiration to come from that. I don't know if when it's my time, I will have that courage. I hope so. I would like to think so, but I don't know. And I think courage, again, is the key. And similarly, I think we give for granted that we have so much time. And just like, all of a sudden, she was stripped of all of her time and had to reevaluate life in a very short amount of space. I think we really need to go back to courage and care and love. And just like, life is short. Balls out on the table. Go all in. It will be more satisfying than following any fear. I think that is so much more important than any of the creative, smart ideas that we should bang heads about.

[Mark Gagnon]

I mean, I love that. That's awesome. I. I think I've been. I know it sounds morbid, but I think about death regularly. I think growing up Catholic, it's always kind of instilled, like, hey, this time is very short and eternity is very long. And so I've constantly sort of like ruminated, like, even in the middle of my wedding ring is a skeleton. You know, memento mori, right? Like, to remember I'm. I'm bonded to my wife till I die. And eventually I will die. And that is a certainty. And so I think about that often when I'm thinking about making big swings in my life, it's like, dude, I'm going to die. How dumb will I feel whenever I die, whenever that day may be, to look back and be like, why didn't I do that thing? Why didn't I take the opportunity when it came? And even if I failed, I think I'm going to look back on all my failures and be like, well, it's fun. I gave it a shot, you know, Like, I tried, you know, And I think trying is, I don't know, I think so often people have an aversion to trying, you know, I know Bukowski has on his grave, don't try, right? But like, I think, and I understand sort of the tongue in cheek nature of how he's saying it, but I wonder if, you know, trying has kind of been lost a little culturally where it's like, not cool to try. But I love trying and failing and doing your best and sometimes doing your worst and living with that also.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I think death is such a gift, as weird as that might sound. My father remembers that around age 9 or 10, I came up to him and I go like, hey, dad, I've been thinking that is actually really cool. My dad's like super concerned. He was like, like, like with a hose in the garden. He's like, what the going on?

[Mark Gagnon]

And that gardener again, right?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Oh, that gardener. That damn garden. And he goes like, yeah, tell me more. And I go like, well, yeah, I was thinking I didn't get to choose if I wanted to live. So if the option to self destruct didn't exist, I'd be a prisoner of life. The fact that I can choose to end my life allows me to choose life. It's a very simple, basic, philosophical idea for a kid at the time. As a Parent, you're like, concerning. But I feel like death is such an important north or west that helps us understand life. And there's so many people that the steep jobs of the world that have given those commencement speeches that they say, hey, there's a moment I was told my life might be over. And all of a sudden I saw what was important differently. I think that practice of trying to remember we will die is so important. It's as important as going to the gym. It's as important as, as loving someone. It's like, life is short. I've been a couple times where I wanted to just end my life and I was hurting and I was alone and up and I was like, yeah, it's not worth it. And the only thing that got me through was not denying that it, that whatever I was feeling wasn't real, but was more like, you know what? Life is so short. Let life kill me. I'm going to renew my lease with life. I'm not going to do anything now. I'm going to renew my lease with life for another two, three years and I'll revisit this whole committing suicide later on. And there's something so freeing of, yeah, I'm not going to deny what I feel, but life is so short that you kill me, motherfuckers. I got shit to do. I'm going to try and help out.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah. And it's way more liberating because now you're not holding on to every little thing you have. You go, let me, let me try some new things. You know, what's the worst that could happen? I die.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah, it's great.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, that's, that's a, that's an interesting way to look at it.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

You become like one of those superheroes that. It's like a deadpool of sorts where you, you can't die, but here it's like, oh, you're going to die anyways. Yeah, who cares?

[Mark Gagnon]

Another thing I wanted to ask before we get out of here. We've talked a lot about broad philosophy when it comes to AI and AGI. I want to make it very practical.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yes.

[Mark Gagnon]

What are some ways that you utilize AI in your everyday life? And that the way people listening can utilize AI to make their lives better, more efficient, more productive, and overall more fun.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

100%. So I finished my book and I got a couple of book deals from different publishers and they all required between 12 months and 18 months to publish. AI is moving too fast. I can't wait that long. I decided to self publish. I'm using AI agents to basically try and hack the publishing system. And it took 20 minutes for an AI agent to basically do the following. I said, make me a list of the hundred top podcasts. Don't go after the name of the big speakers because they're going to be too busy. Find the producers that are normally low key behind. Find a episode that they have talked about that has something to do with AI. Find a quote that was smart and then write an email from me to them that seems like I'm a fan of their show, even if I've never heard the show before that says, hey, I loved episode 474 where you talked about the future of technology and you said this phrase. I think you might like my book. The AI agents went to work. It costs them me about 15, $20. They give you the. They tell you later the amount of tokens and money they spent. And they made me a list of the 50, not 100 top podcasts, the producers, the email written on a perfect Excel file. And so I would invite people to play with AI, to give it tasks, to try and start experimenting and have fun with it and be like, okay, if I were to rob a bank, how would I do it? Find a fun challenge within all of your current problems and start feeling comfortable testing things.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, it's been interesting even showing my parents how to use AI because there'll be certain things where I'll see them slowly because I remember I did this in a much shorter timeframe because I'm a little bit younger, but I went through. And I think all people kind of go through the same process of like, how do I use this and interface with it? But seeing my dad, like, you know, I'm giving him information and he's typing it into ChatGPT and he's been using it for a while. And I go, all this information is on a piece of paper. Why not just take a picture of it and then put it in? And he's like, wait, you can do that? I was like, yeah. And then he'll like, you know, search something in, you know, Google and then go back to ChatGPT. Why don't just ask ChatGPT that question inherently and then ask ChatGPT how to use it better?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Yeah.

[Mark Gagnon]

Say, hey, what's a better prompt for what I'm trying to get? And those types of questions are interesting because it breaks your mold of how you think you can use it. Yeah, it's using it in ways that you didn't think that you could all of a sudden is big game, changing moments, categorical differences in the outcome. And I'm even still learning how to break that. Oh, I could just do this through an agent or through an AI. So with what you did, with reaching out to different podcasts, how did you learn how to do that and what AI did you use?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I just figured that would be a right thing to ask and I checked and it did it.

[Mark Gagnon]

But did you train it? Was it difficult to train it?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

No. So in this case it was Manos using OpenAI and using some agents. And so you can check there's different ones that will do different things. But I think it goes back to the experimentation. So, for example, I would bet you haven't grabbed every joke you've ever done and served it up, but you should have, right? It would be logical that you start training your AI based on all of the information you've ever done and start taking snapshots of your little joke book, because there's a lot of half assed ideas that maybe you haven't been able to put together the associations, but I might, and then maybe start adding the info. So you go like, okay, I'm going to go have a show in Philly, or I have a show in Aspen or in Colorado, and you go, okay, my AI has all of my info, all of my jokes, all of my podcasts, so it understands me really well. And then I'm going here, find jokes that I have been thinking about toying with that could be applicable to, say, Philadelphia.

[Mark Gagnon]

Should I use ChatGPT or can I use Manuscript?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

No, I would use Manuscript. I would use. Yeah, so the different AIs will be better at different things. But I think we're all moving towards a world where you almost want to have your thoughts, your notebooks, your ideas stored somewhere, and so they help you think about those things. And so if you had our last podcast, plus whatever notes you had about me and AI can find the rest, it could go like, hey, ask Sebastian about this. Or you were just thinking of your bit that you talked about having a kid that was so important, ask him why he hasn't had one and how do you feel about that? And so there's all kinds of interesting associations that it could start doing for you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Now, the execution of the idea is clever, but the idea itself is brilliant. So how do you create brilliant ideas like that using AI? Because that idea came from your own brain. Sure, but how do you get more of those just through the AI? Is that possible yet?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

I would think it will be. I mean, people keep Thinking, I understand AI, and you're basically understanding what it can currently do. But two and a half years ago, when most people for the first time saw this thing, they couldn't believe. They could ask and say, okay, make a cat skateboarding in the beach. And it would make the cat skateboarding in the beach. But they all said, it will never do video. And now the level of video it's doing just two and a half years later is something that people at the time would have never have understood. And so we need to have.

[Mark Gagnon]

The.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Logical reasoning to think that whatever we think it can do now is nothing compared to what it will do a year from now. And I start in the book, I have this very simple idea. Up to 1902, we had never flown. Like, humankind had never been able to fly. It was a dream. 1903, we fly for the first time. No one, when you're seeing this shitty flight that was like less than a football field and then crashes, no one would have thought, you know what, 10 years later, these little shitty planes, the more advanced version with machine guns and bombs, are going to change the nature of First World War. No one would have thought that 10 years after that war, you would have an interconnected system of aviation that would be commercial and people in the 40s would be traveling around the world. No one would have fought in 1902 if you were to say, hey, we've never flown before. See that big cheese ball up there? We're going to be walking that in 67 years. It was literally 66 years from the first flight to escaping atmosphere, to walk on the moon. If we did walk on the moon, Joe Rogan would let us know about that. But if that happened, I mean, it's insane. And so the key is now we're supposed to understand that when we want to think of AI, we have to think it's that insane. If we're not thinking that level of insane, we're not thinking correctly. And then the difference is, it's not going to be 66 years because it's growing exponentially. So the logical thing is to understand it could be six years, it could be eight years, it could be 12 years till we get to something as insane as never having flied before to run the moon.

[Mark Gagnon]

Yeah, well, Sebastian, I could sit and chat with you all day. I'm excited to actually get into this and read the whole thing. I'm gonna actually read the whole thing. I won't give you any feedback because it's already published. So there's no Point. But for the second edition, I will give feedback.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Great, important subject for your listeners. Every single page has a little QR at the bottom.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, yeah? What is that?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Well, I don't pretend to have all the answers, so I wrote a book of 200 questions. 200 subjects that we need to think, think about. And then you hit the QR and then it drives you to a little AI chatbot that will ask your opinion on that subject. So the book is not a book, it's more a survival guide. And every page basically is a crowdsourcing platform so that we can think together each of these problems, because, again. Exactly. I don't have the answers. We need to figure this shit out together.

[Mark Gagnon]

That's really clever.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Thank you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Oh, wow, that's great. Oh, that's wonderful. I've never seen that before. Every page has a different one.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Every page has a different QR code. Everything is being fed into an AI database. And right now, the social media will have the same thing. So either Sebastian Studio or Human Ideas, Every single comment you make will be scraped by an AI that will incorporate it. So that if we're talking about the risks of university education in the future, it will be quantifying and saying, hey, 35% of parents are extremely concerned and 70% believe actually that the curriculum should be shortened from five years to two years. And we'll be able to start providing that data that hopefully starts pressuring universities and institutions and governments to say, okay, there's enough consensus that maybe we need to shorten this, because at the end of the day, if we're up against an AI that is smarter than any of us, the only way to face it is for us to think together.

[Mark Gagnon]

Brilliant. I'm so excited to get in. Thank you, brother.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Thank you so much.

[Mark Gagnon]

You're the man. I appreciate you. Where can people find us?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

So on Amazon, it's Imagine Artificial General Intelligence. I'm Sebastian, it's Sebastian Studio. And then this has. It's humanideas.org.

[Mark Gagnon]

You'Re a wonderful person, Sebastian. A great human and a brilliant mind. Thank you so much.

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

Love you.

[Mark Gagnon]

Love you, man. Let's do it again and not wait two years till you come back. Can we?

[Sebastian Rasuiz]

No, I mean, AI will take an area. It's a pleasure.