Jordan Cooney (5:41)

I'm with you. And I 100% believe that AI is an efficiency gain. And I think everybody who's in the SEO, content marketing and search landscape fundamentally sees that this is going to make our jobs easier, faster, more efficient. We can train our analysts to be more effective, we can teach our leaders how to process data faster because we have this technology and that inevitably will make us more efficient and operable marketers, technologists and industry individuals. However, I have the curiosity here, which is humanity is evolving and evolving really fast and I'm curious to see your perspectives on how humanity is evolving, has evolved and what's happened in the last four to five years as it pertains to the, I guess, mainstream introduction of AI.

Anders Inset (6:36)

So I would agree, but I think the evolution, looking at a biological evolution, I think the rapid change here is ahead of us. We are in front of a digital tsunami where AI will lead us to breakthroughs in chemistry, biology, and obviously if we look at quantum computers being something that could be achievable in not so very distant future, that will be AI on steroids. So we will have quantum AI and we will share that on a global scale, which speed up the progress of understanding of our, as Stephen Hawking used to call it, chemical scum. Right. So I think the evolutional aspect has not been that big. If you look at SEO, SEM or the marketing space as such, you know, what are we seeing today when everyone is using AI? The content creators and the optimization of the algorithms, the clickbaits and the optimization of click marketing is pretty much dying because if everyone is on stage, you know, no one is listening. So basically what we're saying is that if no one is clicking, it doesn't help you if you have the best click algorithm. So what you do today is basically you get interested in something and then you go into a large language model and you do research. If you want to buy something today, it's back to the core essence of marketing, which is product and placement and pricing and building that essence of the brand. So the experience of what we refer to as reality, the classical way, how I used to learn branding and marketing, becomes very relevant because no one is clicking anymore, right? We are not clicking. We are taught to be on the platform content, on LinkedIn or whatever, it's native content. So you watch, you learn, you get intrigued and then you go to Google or whatever and search. So search. Then if Google places something at the top about a product, you're not going to buy into that if you have a physical experience of something else. So now the next step will be you will use a lot of large language model that you get accommodated to. And that is where you see that again, having a good product at the right time, at the right price and experience of branding and marketing becomes very relevant. So did we then evolve? I Think. We just got back to the core. What did LLMs teach us? It teaches us to think. If we have every answer at the fingertips for free. It forces us to think, to ask better questions. So it's not so much about an evolution, it's more so of a re enlightenment, or forcing us back to things that was very relevant, where we didn't have access to knowledge. But moving forward. I very much agree that we are in front of a rapid change in terms of evolution once we start to wire up our minds and hack our biology. And this episode is in comparison to yesterday. We talked about the Viking code and performance cultures that I wrote book about the Norwegian heritage. I have just finished a book together with my good colleague. He's a quantum physicist, Florian Neueckert, Dr. Florian Neueckert, who is a great mind on quantum. And we have started a journey that we refer to as sci fi. Sci fi in terms of science and philosophy. And in this book titled the Singularity Paradox, we look at, you know, the paradoxes of bridging humanity and AI. So once we start to play with this. So I think, you know, coming back to your question, again, the evolutional impact is in front of us, but the change is obviously in society is very rapid, based on technology, but the human biology and the evolution aspect is something that we will see in the next 10, 20 years.

Jordan Cooney (10:37)

I want to dig into something there with respect to AI, because, and maybe some of our listeners aren't super familiar with this, but AI has been on a journey for the better part of a decade now or more. And currently we're in a function of artificial generative intelligence. Right? Like an LLM is a generative model. It learns off of itself and it predicts the next thing that's coming. Right? And by many accounts, the next phase of where AI is going is artificial superintelligence, which is the ability to. To actually be smarter or more capable than a human. I am overgeneralizing that by many stretches of the imagination. But I'm curious to get your view on how humanity, a humanity, in my opinion, that was not largely ready for generative intelligence. And many tech leaders across the globe had a very visceral and negative reaction to the introduction of generative intelligence to humanity. Everyone from what Sam Altman did with OpenAI to the Google founders being very reluctant to have AI be part of the way Google does business. Inevitably, we are where we are today, despite those leaders saying no in many accounts. Where are we going to go with AI if superintelligence is the next Phase. And how do we prepare ourselves as humanity?

Anders Inset (12:04)

Well, I spent a lot of time thinking about that. Jordan and I wrote a book back in 2019 titled the Quantum Economy. And by all due respect, I'm not a physicist or a scientist to that extent. I have the privilege of talking to some of the brightest minds of the world that are so much smarter and so much deeper into these fields than I will ever be. But I listen to them and I wrote about something that I called the final narcissistic injury of mankind. Sigmund Freud explored the three narcissistic injuries that we had. The first one was the Copernican wheel, the turn of the perception that the Earth is the center of the universe and everything evolves from it. And that exploded scientific progress. And we fast forward 300 years. Charles Darwin came along with his evolutionary theory of Darwinism, saying, okay, we didn't evolve from some godly creature, but there's a part of an evolutionary chain. And then Freud himself talked about the ego, the avoid, and that we are not serving of our own mind. There is free will, but free is free and will want something, so we're not in control. And that again sparked the birth of neuroscience and a lot of progress in that psychology field. And then we came to the 50s where we introduced artificial intelligence. I very much love the term because it's my initials, so AI. I like it, but it was basically just a term that was. Yeah, that was not, you know, kubernetes was not as sexy as AI, so we went with AI but it's not artificial and it's intelligence. We still don't know what sparks the magic of the arising of a thought. So we don't know where it comes from. The term is not very descriptive of what we want to say. So there's been a lot of blah, blah and a lot of generalization of the term. And all of a sudden we had discovered that was also a part of the philosophical journey at the streets of Agora. In ancient Greek, that language is actually something that can be unfold, understood from a structural perspective. And that led to the breakthrough of LLMs to say that this is insane because we are not as complex in how we act and react, because we have this language and the collective experience that we have. And that has led to these surprises that everything we do can be basically outperformed by a computer. So now we are ahead of that journey to take away the hallucination and optimize and scale these models. And I don't think anyone can predict the Outcome of scaling, because it seems to go along the path of more compute, more progress. Does that give birth to complex systems? Does it give birth to conscious entities? Flora and I take on this. In the book, we will write about various scenarios. So one is we as a species merge with technology. This is the neuralink path that Elon Musk and others are doing, because we start to wire up our brain and we take neuron by neuron. The question is, there are 83 billion neurons. Something. Is there a path along the way where the conscious experience get lost in history? Narcissist was looking into the water and he saw his mirror and he had that experience. But is there a path where you and I can have the same conversation? The lights are on, but there is no one home to perceive them. So does the conscious experience get overwritten at some point? We don't know. The other path to follow is what we talk about and write about is something we call artificial human intelligence. So we enhance the human intelligence by artificial substrates. And that is something that will happen in near future, I believe. And Florian and I write about how we get an understanding of biology. So once these models are capable and we see that progressing not in decades, but in months, where we understand the essence of the various substances and we can simulate various structures, then we can recreate the whole essence of the chemical body or the biology that we have created. And that kind of sort of leads us into that aspect to say that everything is replaceable. But then, of course, we get into the whole conversation on what is, you know, the mind, what is consciousness? David Chalmers has famously coined the term hard problem of consciousness. What does it feel to be like? Something in that essence of the easy problem of consciousness are still difficult, but they are solvable because they are more in the field of computation and technology. But the hard problem of consciousness is something that philosophers and scientists alike are coming on. Various theories out of which none of them seem to have a complete understanding or description without drawing on an assumption that is very questionable.

Jordan Cooney (17:06)

Sure, yeah.

Anders Inset (17:07)

So in that long riff, what I want to get to is that I think that the journey and the progress of AI moving into AGI and eventually to some kind of technology or technical singularity that Ray Kutzfeil predicts for 2045 is basically something that we should very cautiously proceed on. Because if we jump into that matrix scenario, turn the lights on, we have no way back, right? So there are ethical aspects, there are obviously security aspects, and then there are huge implications of what that means if we have an AGI A mechanical entity that gives birth to conscious experiences through computation. We have an artificial human intelligence where a human entity, a biological entity evolves into an AI basically saying we enhance it by technology in the places fields and then we have a part of humanity being biological creatures as we know them today. What does that mean for society? And the other aspect that I think is very relevant also is the realms of, you know, psychedelic experiences, consciousness. Many are in the field of having an enhanced consciousness. We are going to skyrocket into some kind of new state.

Jordan Cooney (18:30)

Right?

Anders Inset (18:30)

And it's very difficult to use those terms to say we will have a higher grade of consciousness if we don't know what consciousness is. So we are grading something that we don't know the essence of. And I think that's a very difficult argument. So that is more based on hope. But it could be. I'm not turning down those theories at all, but I'm just saying that if it doesn't pin out that way, it could as well lead to wiping out consciousness, which is just a plausible. And we have written about the simulation hypothesis and all of that, so there's a very interesting field ahead. But I think that the challenge is to draw this together is to say that if everything is doable, if everything imaginable is in theory computable, or we could create it, what kind of world would we create? So it becomes much more relevant to ask the question what kind of future is worth striving for as in comparison that what we have been doing is that can we do it? And then if it went wrong, we can correct it Now I think moving forward it becomes much more relevant for our species to say what are the implications? We have to know and understand it in advance. So we have to think about do would really want to go down that path, which I think is a very philosophical challenge for humanity. But that's why I think also a lot of philosophers needs to be involved in that Silicon Valley accelerationism that is happening.

Jordan Cooney (20:03)

I have a question with respect to that because there is one that's so concrete and already under huge duress and debate. And it's the concept of AI as it pertains to creativity. I mean, ED has been already written about that art has been ripped off many companies. Let's talk about just the structural entity of a company, a for profit company saying I don't want my content, my assets being used by AI Reddit, whose IPO was largely based on hinged on the idea of you will pay to have access to humanity's comments. Many of which I think are trash, but that's my own opinion. So we have this belief that there is a value for creativity, but creativity is under extreme duress as it pertains to AI and the use of creativity in AI. How do you see that in the current state of how humanity should evaluate AI?

Anders Inset (20:57)

No, first of all, I totally agree. We were promised taking care of the task tasks that are not so, not the things that we don't want to do. The promise was I'm still cleaning the dishes and doing all that crap, but take my music, my art, my music and every expert knowledge. And I was talking about that in 20, 18, 19, 20 and every day. You're a futurist. And I said I'm a plausibilist. Because if you look at exponential progress, if the sere number of where we have done a lot of stuff that can be analyzed, that is where technology is good, where you can analyze images, pictures, structures, medicine, legal things, where we have a lot of documents and structures. And that's what AI can do, right? It's not so good at putting your dishes into the machine and stuff like that. That to me did not at all come as a surprise, but a lot of people were basically saying that it'll never happen. I think creativity is under immense attack because AI to me is also highly creative. If you are good at asking questions, prompting, you have a good decent part of your structures, you know what you want to envision and what does that mean? Yeah, I think probably it's good to have some kind of IP structures globally to value creation. Because if the essence of divine creationism of the Creator turns into humane creationalism through technology, basically saying that we thought we were some godly made creatures, but we as human beings decide to create God, we put God into the future, right? We have bliss, infinity and immortality at the fingertips. And that is obviously something that is challenging for all the structures that we have had in the near term. It's beautiful because everyone that is good that their craftsmanship has superpower. So every night I sit there and chat with Einstein, I can explore my ideas. Being a creative mind in my space, I can get all the things more rapidly out and think about things and good questions and reflections. But how that would span out on a scale of large organization and 8 billion people. That's one of the things that I spend a lot of time thinking about. And honestly, I don't have any good answers to that question because I think there is value in natural stupidity as a comparison to artificial intelligence. So we do some dumb stuff that can lead into new structures, some ideas that AI would not come to understand in their prompting. But in the long term, yeah, it's hard to imagine that we can out compete these machines on a lot of.

Jordan Cooney (24:07)

Fields, even in the midterm. Right. I think there's a midterm here where, and let's go back to humanity on this for just one second.

Anders Inset (24:16)

Yes.

Jordan Cooney (24:17)

I think that there's a huge gap and that gap is inevitably there will be a massive inequity in humanity.

Anders Inset (24:25)

Yes.

Jordan Cooney (24:26)

Because to your point, if we can yield AI to make better creations, to be more creative, to pervasively expand creativity, there's going to be a set of humans who have zero access to AI, and there will be a set of humans who have infinite access to AI and in and of itself will be a huge injustice. Because the ones who have and the ones who don't have can take the things from the ones who you don't have and create more rapidly.

Anders Inset (24:56)

Yes.

Jordan Cooney (24:57)

And so I'm, I want to see your belief in this, this, this is not too distant of a challenge for our, our own listeners. Whether you're a content writer, you're an SEO, you're a technology engineer, you're a coder, you, whatever role you are, you have a sense of creativity. And for most of our listeners, you have full access or some access to AI. But there's a whole group of humanity, 8 billion people of which probably 6 billion today or more, have zero access to AI.

Anders Inset (25:29)

I totally agree. Let me play with that if I may. And why is this true? Look at Nvidia till example. Nvidia have like 30,000 employees. And the market value of Nvidia is equivalent to the whole stock market in Germany. So the whole DAX companies, every 40 DAX listed, stock listed companies from the industrial great country of Germany had the same market value as Nvidia Volkswagen that some might have heard of. They have 700,000 employees and they are struggling with hardware and software and data as we speak. And they have 700,000 employees. If Nvidia wants to build a factory that automates and builds entities that take care of mobility, they will do so with maybe 5,000 or 10,000 people more. If they take the robots and set that into place. And they will do it much cheaper and much better. They will have better batteries, long running cars. It's about the sex appeal of the brand. If it looks good, people will buy it. And this is what is happening also in China. By all due respect for German engineering and quality, made in Germany. I've always said that why shouldn't other be able to thrive in an industrial revolution? Why shouldn't other have the same prosperity as we have? And they will, they will strive for it and they will work harder and they will put in their brains. So the genius innovation, the IPs that we had, is now a global common good. I think that we are in the era of generalists. So the playfulness of structures, there is some, in a short term, that's the first thing that I want to bring across. So I think we're entering an era of generalists. There will still be room for the superstars, the Messi's and the Ronaldo's, from the soccer analogy, the LeBron James of the basketballs in the industry. So the superstars, they are really, really good at the craftsmanship. The greatest coders, the greatest engineers, they will still have a lot of value in quite a bit of time still, I believe. But an expert will be replaced most likely in many fields. So I think the one thing that I think is relevant is to have a broader understanding, to be a generalist. We will figure out structures on that. That's from a structural level of the individual part. And the other part is what you refer to is the collective. How do we cope as a society? I think we need regulations, we need global structures that think about in equal terms. I'm not saying that we should neglect having powerhouses that serve the communities that are large entities, but we should think about what that means. So if we go from a market valuation today of like a Microsoft or Nvidia, if we down the road like three, four, five years from now, we'll have the first trillion years. And that was basically also the suggested path to follow with a universal basic income, a ubi, where you could tax based on market value and distribute the efficiency that you gained through the evaluation to the people. So you'd have a universal basic income and you would then stabilize society. So I've gone back and forth on ubi and the recent study shows that there is a little bit of lack of contribution in terms of hours spent, but it's very marginal if you get a ubi but the health goes up, so you're happier, probably more productive. So I think bringing back concepts like UBI or looking at those type of structures will become relevant and to your concerns. I think now is the time to play with these models, when we still have time to figure it out. Now are the times that we need to sit together and think through global regulation, global structures and implications of these technologies. I'm not so worried about the technology going crazy with robots and Terminators and calling Bruce Willis back. I'm more about the scenario of the super efficiency that they become so good that they basically replace everything that we can and gives us that. And I call this the new existentialism, a state of being undead. So it's basically just a zombie apocalypse. And this is something we write about in our new book that will be out early 2025, the singularity paradox, that how do we avoid such a zombie apocalypse where we take away the vitality and the liveliness of life itself? And that is to me, the most beautiful thing that we are on this wonderful journey to nowhere. And the journey and the experience and the learning is the essence. If we take that out, what remains? So, yeah, I am both very interested and very optimistic about the potentialities of tackling climate and diseases and all that. But I'm also concerned obviously about the structural things that you mentioned. So I think the two things that I just wanted to sum that up to is I think we are entering an era of generalists, which gives, at least in a longer term, a sense of purpose and potentiality for works and things to do. And the other part is I think we need to invest more time and more people into thinking through these scenarios. The various implications of, I don't think the AI automation part is that rapid, but when you start to play with the mind and you hack biology, and this is probably a couple of years more away, that is where it becomes challenging. To take Ray Kurzweil analogy on the Singularity, I think the 2045 baseline is where we will not have a lot of time to react. So it gives us a good 20 years to act and to shape a future worth living. And I think that is crucial because the mode of reaction, the path of reaction optimization of the previous paradigm being the last 50 years of growth and capitalism will not work in the next 20 years. Now is the time to anticipate future scenarios and build a world for 8 billion people that we want to live in.

Jordan Cooney (32:17)

And that wraps up this episode of the Voice of Search podcast. A huge thank you to Anders Inset for joining us. If you'd like to learn more about Anders, you can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. You can also contact him on X, where his handle is ndersinset, or visit his company website, andersinset.com okay, thanks to.

Podcast Announcer (32:39)

Jordan Cooney, the founder of Pre Visible. If you'd like to get in touch with Jordan. You can find a link to his LinkedIn profile in our show Notes. Contact him on Twitter. His handle is J.T. cooney. That's J T K O E N E. Or you can visit his company's website, which is Previsible IO that's P R E V I S I B L E I O Just one more link in our show Notes I'd like to tell you about. If you didn't have a chance to take notes while you were listening to this podcast, head over to voicesofsearch.com where we have summaries of all of our episodes and contact information for our guests. You can also subscribe to our weekly newsletter, and you can even send us your topic suggestions or your marketing questions, which we'll answer live on our show. Of course, you can always reach out on social media. Our handle is voicesofsearch on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, or you can contact me directly. My handle is Benjayshab B E N J S H A B and if you haven't subscribed yet and you want a daily stream of SEO and content marketing insights in your podcast feed, we're going to publish an episode every day during the work week. So hit that subscribe button in your podcast app and we'll be back in your feed tomorrow morning. All right, that's it for today. But until next time, remember the answers are always in the.