AI & Greek Speak From Florida to Kazakhstan

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:09):
Welcome to Frankly Speaking, your weekly destination for insight and
inspiration with your host, Frank Morangos. Frankly Speaking is sponsored
by Heppa four two one Chapter of North Miami in
partnership with the Annunciation Greek Orthodox Church of North Miami.

Speaker 2 (00:26):
Welcome back to Frankly Speaking, and I'm Brian Mudd. It's
an honor and a pleasure to have been here with
you recently. But we have the man himself.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
I'm back back.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
I'm back, Brian.

Speaker 3 (00:36):
Great to be back in the saddle here at the studios.

Speaker 2 (00:39):
Move over dosecu Man because the world's most interesting man
is none other than Frank Morangos. Where in the Lorlham
problem is, I've been all over.

Speaker 4 (00:50):
I was in.

Speaker 3 (00:51):
Kazakhstan, believe it or not, invited to give a keynote
at an international conference on AI.

Speaker 4 (00:57):
You can believe it.

Speaker 2 (00:58):
It's incredible. A lot of questions come up there. The
first is Kazakhstan, Pran Morengos, how do we get from
Kazakhstan to Frank.

Speaker 3 (01:11):
Well, you know, it's interesting that I met a wonderful lady,
Larissa Mason, about a year ago. She's from Saint Petersburg.
She has a consulting company helps with orphans and did
some work in Kazakhstan. Connected her to Palm Beach Atlantic University.
She's been a donor there and we actually together we

(01:33):
hosted a teacher's training seminar, a conference, I should say
last year. So thirty teachers from Kazakhstan came. They couldn't
speak English, the majority of them. We had a translator
there and it was an incredible experience. They came in
pump Beach Atlantic University, as I said.

Speaker 4 (01:53):
Hosted it.

Speaker 3 (01:53):
We had the teachers, we were training them. They had
such a great experience they went back. So somewhere along
the line having met me, I guess I spoke with
some of them. Some of them were administrators. I received
a phone call from Kazakhstan in August and then a letter,
official letter, inviting me to be the keynote, believe it
or not, at an international conference on AI and education.

Speaker 2 (02:16):
And so the education part makes sense.

Speaker 4 (02:19):
That is.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
My next question was you are up on a lot
of things. I didn't know you were an AI guy.

Speaker 3 (02:26):
Well, you know, And this is what I shared with them.
I said, you know, in the land of the blind,
the one eyed man is king. So I had heard
that a long time ago. So yes, I know a
few things, and I would say about thirty years ago.
Believe it or not. AI has been around a long time.
First of all, it's not a new thing like some
people might think. But but thirty years ago, I a
colleague and I got together we actually created interactive c

(02:50):
d ROMs in which we introduced younger people to the
ecumenical patriarchade, which is an Islam but constantinople for us.

Speaker 4 (03:01):
Thank you. Yes.

Speaker 3 (03:02):
And then from that I actually wrote a grant and
implemented a million dollar grant at a university in Boston
implementing technology with teachers training them how to do it.
And we implemented all of that, and at the time
the university said, yo, I don't know if we need it.
And you know if the teachers, some of them were

(03:22):
they wanted to implement that, some did not, et cetera,
et cetera. And thank god that they did all that
because COVID hit and they were able to immediately move
into distance learning. So distance learning has been around a
long time. AI is a component of that. I've written
some articles somewhere online. They must have read some of
those things and then invited me to give a talk,

(03:45):
so I gave two presentations and I gave the keynote
at the event, so a three day event.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
This is a bit of a divergence from the greater
topic here, but you are bringing up something that's really instructive,
playing the groundwork for where we are in society today
with a lot of different aspects of technology that's impacting
and changing our lives. You talk about the history of
AI and how you were there very early on, and

(04:11):
you know what people associate today in the world of chat,
CHPT and grock and what have you. You know, this
is where it started. It didn't happen overnight. There's been
people working for decades in that direction. Yes, cryptocurrency. A
lot of people think that, oh, you know, bitcoin must
have been like the first one. No, no, no, There
were dozens that came about as soon as the consumer
Internet began, and all of them ended up petering out.

(04:34):
Bitcoin was the first one that really caught on.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
That's true, and the same thing with AI and education.
And there were, of course some distracted detractors who are
afraid as every technology that enters into the workforce or
the culture should be vetted properly, you know. And that's
one of the conversations that I had with them. You know,
there's a our augmented reality is AI. And I really

(05:02):
talked a little bit about poetic intelligence that AI is
having a difficulty with. So I tried to integrate their
their poetic history, the history of Kazakhstan with the West.
So actually I spoke about Homer's Odyssey. Of course you've

(05:22):
got the Greek, you know, making America Greek again. I
talked about Ithaca, which is the island from which King
Odussayas sailed from and then sailed back to in the
last of the two books of Homers twenty years and
I took his journey to be and I used it

(05:43):
as an acronym in order to talk about what are
the steps for implementing in Ai not to go home.
But I used a Greek poet called Kavafi who talked
about Ithaca. He has a great poet poem called Ithaca.
Talked about our Ithaca. He says, and Ithaca is our
journey of life, and how it never is an end,

(06:04):
but it is a continual growth and development of the individual.
So I took the two of them and brought them
together and it really resonated. As a matter of fact,
the Minister of Education was at my keynote. There's fifteen
hundred people there. By the way, it was incredible.

Speaker 2 (06:20):
Just to kind of give you the visual Frank sent this.
I didn't know what to expect. It's Kazakhstan. We have
our ideas. Mine was way off. They are very cosmopolitan
and you would have thought if you didn't know where
it was. But I thought it was, you know, the
Consumer Electronics Show. It was as CEES kind of keynote presentation.
It was a really impressive setting, really well done. I

(06:44):
was going to say every bit is ingratiated in that
aspect of life as anybody in life.

Speaker 3 (06:49):
I was shocked with the city. You know, a Stana
is the capital of Kazakhstan. It wasn't always Almati was,
but now it's a Stana and it if you could
think of Dubai, that's a standa.

Speaker 4 (07:02):
Oh.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
There are buildings, they're beautiful malls. The university is spectacular.
You know, you can imagine fifteen hundred people in a
huge conference room, and I felt as though I was
doing a ted talk. You know, its just standing in
the middle there and just talking for an hour went
by so quickly, but the Minister of Education was sitting
there and when I finished, because I actually talked a
little bit about the crime at the museum where they

(07:25):
stole all the jewelry. They came in with thieves and
they took that. And although they may find the thieves,
they may never find the treasures the jewelry, which is
more important than what they're worth. That I said, don't
allow Ai to come in and steal your culture. Don't
allow it to allow you as a country to bend
the knee to Ai. AI must bend the need to us,

(07:48):
and the only way to do that is to understand
who we are. So I used poets of theirs in
order to convey that message.

Speaker 2 (07:55):
I think you bring up something that's instructive in the
analogy that you use that was in the news and
in the moment at the time with the Louver, which
is it's easy for institutions to become complacent in their
expectations of what is next or in that case, what
the threat happens to be. And it's interesting that you

(08:17):
presented on this topic and to this group and that way,
because I'm interested in how is Ai it's viewed in
this country obviously very differently based upon who you go to.
A lot of people are scared of it, a lot
of people are excited by it, a lot of people
are both. How culturally were they with regards to what

(08:39):
AI represents going forward?

Speaker 3 (08:42):
Again, they were detractors, there were initial implementers, there were
people in the middle, there were people who wanted to learn.
But we could see immediately at the end of the
conference that it offered great opportunity when used properly. And
I think that that's with any technology. I mean, remember
Gutenberg's press, even the press that brought the Bible to

(09:03):
bear in a textual form and anyone can have a
Bible at their home. It was seen as a great
threat to the church, seen as a great threat to culture.
And yet now here's the Church itself multiplying, duplicating Bibles
in all kinds of languages. So it used the technology
in order to achieve its mission. So the same thing
with AI. I think that if we allow AI to

(09:27):
be our servant, and we understand how to use it,
and we stay loyal to what our vision is and
what our purpose is, then it can be very, very
very purposeful for us, and it can be it could
help with student learning, and that's really the core mission here.
There's a great poet in Kazakhstan by Kunan Baiyev, and

(09:48):
I used his poetry. As a matter of fact. He
wrote a book that I recommend everybody called the Book
of Wisdom, in which excuse me, the book of words
is really the way that it is referred to. Forty
five essays. And in those essays he actually talks about
he died early in the twentieth century, how the nation
of Kazakhs stand should be very careful as it enters

(10:10):
into the West. And he actually really talked about the
perfect person. The perfect man, he said, should take three
things and bring them to bear the mind, the body,
and the spirit the soul. And then he said that
the soul, however, is the governor of the other two. Well,
I used that from Kunimbayev, and I talked about how
important the same thing is with Ai. You don't allow

(10:33):
the mind, you don't allow the body of the technology
to dictate its the other way around. It's the spirit,
the soul, the story of who we are should be
the governor of Ai. And as long as we can
do that and keep that in the forefront. We can,
I think we can. We can protect ourselves from any abuse.
There's a great book. I'm sorry for being so verbose

(10:53):
on this, but I'm very passionate about this great book
that has come out. It's another volume of a previous
book book that the man wrote. Jamie Metzils is his name,
and the book that came out is called super Convergence,
and he actually talks about how AI is converging and
merging with genetics and biotechnology as well as the educational framework.

(11:15):
So we're on the cusp here of a major, major technological,
cultural movement and growth in humanity, and we need to
be ready to deal with it.

Speaker 2 (11:28):
You introduced so much there, and I have so many
questions all around it, and you put out greater examples like,
for example, the Bible, the translation from Latin into English.

Speaker 3 (11:40):
Well Greek, I would say, well from Greek into Latin
into English.

Speaker 2 (11:45):
Yes, So the transition ultimately, so there wasn't the control
of the church in particular, and Twochepe because as you
have taught us, as you are busy making Kazakhstan Greek
again as well, not just the United States. So you
had the human element there trying to control the message.

(12:09):
There were people that were skeptical of the translation, and
some I believe that that still are to a certain
extent of how much of the original ward was corrupted
in the process by the Church, three translations, what have you.
But ultimately you had human elements that were there governing
the situation. You mentioned the lack of EQ that is

(12:33):
obvious with AI in what that lacks, and then also
you talk about medicine and the integration and everything from biotechnology.
We know there are programs that are diagnosing outcomes better
than doctors.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
These days, but even there we need to be very careful.
There'll be some mistakes and if somebody you know, reads
it incorrectly actually can self administer medicine or techniques to themselves,
make themselves it was worse.

Speaker 4 (13:00):
So we have to be very careful with AI.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
And so here in lies right and this I think
it's a double edged sword and where it all kind
of comes full circle. One of the things that is
fascinating about every aspect of life that matters is really
it all came from modern Christianity. Education. Did the first

(13:24):
real schools were Sunday schools?

Speaker 3 (13:27):
Basically, Yes, in the United States, that's correct, and from
England to the United States.

Speaker 4 (13:31):
Yeah, Bible was the first textbook.

Speaker 2 (13:33):
And that's really where the education system was established. Problems
they the improvements are made through a Sunday school type
of setting. You also saw that in health. The very
first hospitals were what fifth century I believe, hospitals that
were set up that were missionaries and often where nuns
in the church and women that would get involved and

(13:56):
so you can and you can walk in the aspect
of life that matters.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
Personages Byzantium was the hub of that same basil, the
great in philanthropy. You know, it all comes back, you're correct,
back to the church.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
And so here we are now with this entity that
lacks that Even if people go to Harvard and they
don't have a clue that it was a faith based
institution at its founding, you still have people there that
are governing that situation. Here you have something that it

(14:31):
was established originally by people, but couldn't be less connected
to it as it continues to machine learn, where does
that story go given the underpinnings of everything that matters
in society, having that faith tied to it originally.

Speaker 3 (14:48):
You know, I'm glad that you bring that up, because
that was really a focus of mine because as you
mentioned that that there's Ai and EQ and but there's
also PI poetic intelligence, and for me, storytelling is the
key here. You can't have I can't imagine a my

(15:08):
granddaughter sitting on a robot and the robot telling a
story to her. It would be an artificial person giving
an artificial story without having the experience. She sits on
my knee and I tell her stories, and she wants
to hear the stories because she can look in my

(15:30):
eyes and know that the story that I'm telling has
I have an experience with it.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
And you're in a depth storyteller of that.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
So the poetics of it, the storytelling, just like a
bye Kunanbayev, the poet that I've mentioned to you, focused
on it's the story that's important, and it was his
grandmother actually that influenced him. And it's interesting how when
you take Homer again from the Greek para excellon storyteller,

(15:58):
and you take all of the use ancient myths capital
m and you see that whether you come from Greece,
so you come from England, or you come from the
United States, so you come from Kazakhstan. They resonate. These
stories resonate with people. And as long as we can
maintain the story of humanity and share it from human
to human, AI will constantly be our servant and we

(16:21):
will never serve it. But when we turn it around
and we allow the technology to become the story, then
I think we can lose our humanity.

Speaker 2 (16:31):
And So, just thinking out loud about this, as I
hear you working through your explanation, it sounds like it's
going to be very much a person by person situation. Already.
You see people that use AI to help further what
it is they're trying to accomplish, maximize productivity, come up

(16:53):
with sharper ideas, take their product and make it just
a little bit better. You have other people all that
are becoming relined on it, those that might let it
do the work. Sure, and then how in terms of
human nature culturally the dangers of those that will see

(17:18):
the path of at least resistance what's easiest and fall
into that trap.

Speaker 3 (17:22):
So let me turn the question around to the positive.
So I had the experience of actually seeing someone sit
down at a piano and start playing, and then at
the end of playing the piano was told that that
person was blind. They were wearing aiglasses and the glasses

(17:42):
now allow the individual to open up a refrigerator a
blind person and can see the milk is on the
right side, on the second shelf, the orange juice needs
to be ordered. When they're walking down the street, the
you know, the fire hydrant is on the left and
it's twenty feet away from you. It changes their entire life.

(18:04):
A child now who is blind can be sitting in
a classroom with children that can see, and the glasses
is telling the child the teacher is now writing on
the board.

Speaker 4 (18:14):
See at the.

Speaker 3 (18:16):
Child next to you is a blondheaded, you know, young girl,
and she's pretty.

Speaker 4 (18:22):
You know.

Speaker 3 (18:23):
So technology can really revolutionize an individual, and I can
see how that's going to affect us down the line,
especially with children that have disabilities and others adults. We
can see all these kinds of things. The danger comes
when we begin to merge I think technology with biotech,

(18:47):
where we begin to take algorithms and place those algorithms
and chips into people's brains. You know what is the
consequence of that? When will the human brain become the
slave to the technology and should it. You know, these
are I think questions that have to be asked, not shunned.

(19:07):
You know, as we sit down and talk as theologians
and as technologists and musicians and and professors, we have
to do that. We have to sit down and talk
openly about these issues.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Oh, it's funny you mentioned that, because take someone like
Elon Musk for example. A lot of people have their
opinions about Elon, and everybody is familiar with his impact
on society and what he continues to drive. It's what
most people don't talk about, and many don't even know
he's associated with. That actually is my single biggest concern
about Elon. I'll joke and say, yeah, I think there's

(19:43):
a one percent chance that the anti Christ is on
the planet and he is running Neuralalink, that is the
the brain plant company that Elon is working on. So
tell me your thoughts about it. So this is not
something that's going to happen. It's already happened. It's happening
right now already, you see. And in their positives and

(20:04):
there are negatives, you know, the negative for me or
the danger. I don't want to use the word negative
because I don't have the experience yet, I don't know
enough about it. Is the metaverse, where an implanted chip
in someone's brain, especially a blind person, can allow that
person to live in a metaverse, in another reality, totally

(20:26):
other reality, and can share that experience with other blind people. Now,
can you can imagine that? Now here are individuals with
separate experiences that are not based on and I'm using
quotes here reality. How will that affect them? And how
will that affect our relationship to them? Would I be
invited as a seeing person into a metaverse experience with

(20:50):
blind people so that I can then have a similar
experience with them?

Speaker 4 (20:54):
You see? You know?

Speaker 3 (20:56):
And it raises some questions? What about Another thing that's
really scary out there is a sentiment analysis? And I
think sentiment analysis again is already being used in tours,
musical tours where technology is viewing and analyzing the facial
and biological responses of people to music or to a

(21:18):
teacher or to a lecture that's going on. And then
we'll give the data back to the presenter or the
musician and say, you know, when you were playing this song,
individuals who appeared to be thirty to fifty their blood
pressure went up, or they stopped watching, or they stopped
listening to you as you were teaching about this particular topic.
On the positive side, it can help the teacher adjust

(21:41):
teaching methodology to the students. On the negative, who owns
the data? Who owns the data? Frank Morangos, you know,
falling asleep while I was listening to Brian Might on
the radio, you know, or Brian falling asleep as he
was producing my radio platht. You know, because you have
this data becomes partialized, and it's and it's placed in

(22:04):
a library, and then people can sell that data.

Speaker 4 (22:08):
You know.

Speaker 3 (22:08):
I remember years ago when people were sending in their DNA.
I don't know, remember you could find out And I
told my wife something about that. I don't like that.
It makes me nervous that it's out there. Well, what
do we find out? We find out that those companies
were selling the data information to Chinese companies and supposedly,

(22:30):
again I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but they were taking
that information. And then if you're going to create a
bio weapon that could only attack certain individuals, you and
now have the biomarkers that can do that.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Now you're exactly right. Impact. In Florida, we passed law
a couple of years ago to outlaw that practice of
the third party distribution of that information because it absolutely
was happening. And that was also alongside some of the
actions that were taken to try to combat actions by
the Chinese government within the state as well. So it's

(23:05):
not a conspiracy, it was it was diagnosed and happening
in our state's actually taken subset of action to address it.
And you know, for a lot of people, like with
the twenty three and Me the ancestry, a lot of
people did that not knowing the implications. One of the
other challenges that came into play was twenty three and
Me in particular ended up going into bankruptcy. And so
then you have your information that it's out there, where

(23:26):
is it right with an unstable company. By the way,
one of the things, because there was a sensitivity to
this in the court system, is it ended up back
with the founder. The founder ended up buying back her
company basically out of bankruptcy depending on the dollar. But
still you know your information lived.

Speaker 3 (23:43):
Is correct, right, you know, on the positive on the
positive side, you know you have the opportunity to intervene
in real time with students, you can develop pedagogical strategies
that are more aligned and tailored to students. It's early
intervention is personalized personalized learning. But on the negative, enhanced
role playing. Okay, remember that just recently I heard about

(24:06):
I think I think it was a young boy who
was talking to an algorithm online, thought that person was
his friend, ultimately committed suicide. Okay, So you know, we
have to be very careful and I think we have
to monitor like anything else, how our children and adults
use the technology. But at the same time, we can't

(24:28):
just throw it out that the genie is out of
the bottle.

Speaker 4 (24:31):
We have to use it.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
Okay. So I've got a couple other questions for you
related but not really. Oh best food you had in Kasin?

Speaker 3 (24:39):
You know what, It's amazing that you said that to me,
because I wanted to make sure that I actually tell
you that I had horse.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
Oh oh no, somebody's setting upset right now.

Speaker 3 (24:49):
Well, so yeah, I'm sorry for that. But they took
me to a very nice restaurant, very nice restaurant. As
a matter of fact, your name is Ajar Cabi Karimova,
and she is the Deputy chair of the executive board
of the Intellectual Schools Now's Our Bay Intellectual Schools. She

(25:09):
has a very high role to play. She took me
to a beautiful restaurant, very nice restaurant, and I said,
you know, I want to have some traditional Kazakhstan food.
She goes, well, we've come to the right place. I said,
what am I going to have? She goes, well, let's
just have it first, then I'll tell you what it is.

Speaker 4 (25:25):
So I had a little bit.

Speaker 3 (25:26):
It's one of those yeah, yea, and it was delicious.
I loved it. And I said, well, now will you
tell me what it is? And said it was horse.
It could have been cambell, but it actually was horse
and it was delicious.

Speaker 2 (25:39):
Well, you learn something new every day. I guess that
was probably a once in a lifetime type of experience.

Speaker 3 (25:44):
But many of the desserts were very similar to Greek desserts,
and I think they found their way there through a
lot of Turkish influence in Kazakhstan in Russian as well,
so we share a lot of the desserts very similar.

Speaker 2 (25:57):
And what you recommend Katsakhstan.

Speaker 3 (25:59):
Absolutely, I would recommend it highly. As a matter of fact,
I've been invited back next year. I met a gentleman
from the city of al mate who has again another
high position there and he skis. That's all I needed
to hear, you know, and he loved it that ice
ski and he says, you're going to come back next
year and after the conference you want, you're going to

(26:20):
be at my guest in my home and we're going
to go skiing together.

Speaker 2 (26:23):
Well, that is right up your alley. That is a
neat experience for sure. And so you've officially done it.
You have not only made this country Greek again, you
made kazakh Sand, of all places Greek again. What an
incredible experience.

Speaker 3 (26:39):
It was incredible and I recommend it highly to everybody
to go and to visit such a beautiful city, beautiful
people who love their their heritage and at the same
time they want to integrate into the West.

Speaker 2 (26:52):
And so what you should do is get in touch
with Frank at Frank at franktalkradio dot com and ask
him about more of his Kazakhstan experiences and what your
questions are. Frank would love to hear from you. Frank
at franktalkradio dot com.

Speaker 3 (27:09):
One more commercial before yes, and that is. We are
hosting another group of students at pom Beach Atlantic University
the first week of December, and this time they're sending
administrators here for us to help them on leadership. And
we have a number of individuals that are going to
be speaking. We actually have the pom Beach Commissioner, Greg
Weiss is going to be speaking.

Speaker 4 (27:29):
We're going to.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
Have Tim Sotis, who is who was he's now the
former trustee chairman of the board of pom Beach Atlantic University. Well,
of course we're going to have the dean. They're the provost,
the president of the school. So I'm really looking forward
to hosting another group from that part of the part
of the world.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
And you never know what's going to come out of it.
As you have cheered with us here, pretty remarkable and
I never knew what an AI expert I am.

Speaker 3 (27:56):
Definitely, as I said in the Land of the Blind,
the one eyed Man is king.

Speaker 2 (28:00):
The world's most interesting man right here what he's capable of.

Speaker 4 (28:03):
Thank you, Thank you, Brian.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
I'm Brian Mudd for Frank Morengos. This has been frankly speaking.
We'll see you soon. We thank the AHPA. Four to
twenty one North Miami chapter for their sponsorship of Frankly speaking,
they promote the ancient Hellenic ideas of education, philanthropy, civic responsibility, family,
and individual excellence through community service and volunteerism. They offer
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(28:28):
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