December 15, 2023 • 36 mins
In this week’s episode, Jessie stands in for Jonah and alongside Smera, the pair explore new AI-worshipping religions, the ever-growing concerns around children and online pornography, and the emergence of a new kind of digital currency.
With new developments in artificial intelligence happening at lightning speed, it can be hard to keep up. That's where too long didn't read comes in. We know you're busy, so we'll get right to the main points on how breakthroughs in machine learning, neural networks, and other AI systems could impact your life. No AI degree required! We're not here for hype or fear mongering. Just balanced coverage to keep you up-to-date. Think of us as your shortcut to AI literacy.
Join us as we read between the lines on artificial intelligence every week right here on too long didn't read.
Episode sources
Religion
Neil McArthur, AI Worship as a New Form of Religion - PhilPapers
Inside Artificial Intelligence's First Church | WIRED
Porn
UK porn watchers could have faces scanned - BBC News
AI Fake Nudes Are Out of Control. These Victims Are Fighting Back - Bloomberg
https://arxiv.org/abs/2110.01963
Turing Lecture: Regulating Unreality (Deepfakes, revenge-pornography & fake news) - YouTube
Implementing the Online Safety Act: Protecting children from online pornography - Ofcom
Finance
Digital pound plans should proceed with caution, say MPs - BBC News
The digital pound | Bank of England
https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/cryptocurrencies-digital-dollars-and-future-money
https://www.omfif.org/2023/04/are-cbdcs-a-ticking-timebomb-for-commercial-banks/
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/cbdctracker/
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jonah (00:02):
Too Long, Didn't Read, the weekly podcast from the Alan
Turing Institute, the UK's NationalInstitute for Data Science and AI.
Hello, and welcome to Too Long, Didn'tRead, your weekly pit stop for the
latest in data science and AI news.
We read so you don't have to.
Or more accurately, Smerareads so we don't have to.
(00:24):
You might have clocked on to a slightlyhigher pitched intro than usual.
And that's because Jonah hasleft me in charge of hosting
responsibilities this week.
Woohoo!
You've got me, Jessie.
You might know me as thesilent but vital Jessie.
The jester of justice.
(00:47):
I've done my best to staybehind the scenes so far.
But this week I'm stepping in frontof the microphone whilst Jonah is
off busying himself with other,more important work, the cheek.
I am delighted and relieved,uh, to be joined by our ever
faithful, trusty companion, Smera.
Smera, you would neverlet us down, would you?
Jessie (01:09):
I would not let you down.
How, how dare Jonah?
How dare Jonah?
But you know what?
He's giving me a little gift today.
I get to do this entiretwo hours with you alone.
It'll be wonderful.
Jonah (01:19):
Yay, girly takeover!
This week we talk AI gods, who isand isn't being protected online
when it comes to adult entertainmentand what new digital currencies
could mean for the economy.
A couple of weeks ago, we stumbled upon anarticle that was published back in March
(01:41):
this year by The Conversation titled, Godsin the Machine, the Rise of Artificial
Intelligence May Result in New Religions.
In the article, the author proposes, andI quote, that we are about to witness
the birth of a new kind of religion.
In the next few years, or even months, wewill see the emergence of sects devoted
(02:04):
to the worship of artificial intelligence.
He goes on to argue that peopleare already seeking religious
meaning from alternativesources, like extraterrestrials.
So maybe an AI based religionisn't too far fetched.
Perhaps the most promising part ofworshipping an AI deity is the fact
that, unlike most other religions,we would actually be able to interact
(02:27):
with it on an everyday basis.
We could ask it all the big, importantquestions about life and the world, seek
its advice in times of need, tell itabout our hopes and fears, and get that
immediate feedback that I think manyof us would really value from a god.
So, this was very much an opinionpiece, and I couldn't find any hard
(02:48):
evidence to support the claims.
until this week.
Smera (02:53):
Tell
Jonah (02:57):
me about the Way of the Future Church.
Smera (03:00):
To give a background on the Way of the Future Church, it was
started by Anthony Lewandowski.
He mentioned the way ofthe future church in 2015.
First, although it was moreformally addressed in 2017, he was
an engineer in Google working ontheir self driving cars initiative.
And after leaving Google, he becamean entrepreneur who started an
(03:24):
autonomous trucking company called auto.
He then established thisso called church of AI.
He claims it is a way to connectspiritually with the material
gods and not the human or naturebased gods that we have thus far.
But it was shut down in 2020 and itsassets were liquidated and interestingly
(03:46):
donated to the NAACP for legal actionfunds, which was very interesting.
And I didn't expect that correlation,but it is rumored to be true.
that he has restarted his,his way of the future church.
Sorry,
Jonah (03:58):
did you, did you just say entrepreneur?
The leader of a religioussect is an entrepreneur?
That's got to raise some red flags.
Smera (04:07):
I mean, he has quite the background.
He was also found guilty ofsharing trade secrets and he was
sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Donald Trump actually pardonedhim much later, but yeah, he's
been found guilty of crimes.
Jonah (04:19):
So is it a religion?
Or, uh, a community group, anon profit, I, I'm hesitant
to say this word, but a cult?
Smera (04:29):
Oh, okay.
So there's, there's actually a really goodbook called Cultish that I want to pick
up in for, as, as my Christmas reading.
So maybe I'll have a bit more informationon what Constitutes a cult later on, but
I, it's very hard though, as of now toreally draw a clear line between religion,
community groups, or even cults, um, takeHinduism, for example, many argue it is a
(04:52):
philosophy where you can pick the elementsthat you wish to practice and the aspects
that you want to engage with spiritually,even the deities that you want to worship.
Right.
That philosophy has now taken over evenlocal traditions and tribal traditions,
bringing tribal deities and local godsof nature into a more structured pantheon
of over a thousand gods that make up theHindu, you know, list of gods that exist.
(05:17):
So you can argue Hinduism is a philosophy.
It is a religion, but it is also natureworship that's all wrapped up into one.
So it's very hard to really drawthe divisions between all of this.
Even the different versions of Abrahamicreligions, be it Islam or Christianity,
there are so many debates on what thenature of God even is and what Jesus is.
(05:39):
Is he God or is he the son of God?
And what's the role of the spirit?
So Jesus tends to, in these debates,Jesus tends to exist in this quantum
state of being both a God and not aGod, depending on who opens the box.
Funny little quantum joke for everyone.
(06:01):
I mean, this is all to say that our wideand varied interpretations of religion,
they influence how humans behave.
And we often tend to need these ideas ofspirituality and belief to feel grounded.
As for the way of the future church,it seems to be a spiritual group.
but the European Academy of Religionand Society have called it a cult.
(06:23):
Okay, so
Jonah (06:25):
what is
Smera (06:25):
the actual definition
Jonah (06:27):
of a cult?
Smera (06:28):
A cult is seen as having more fringe belief systems, so AI
worship could be seen as a fringebelief system in that sense.
Jonah (06:37):
Okay, So aside from the very obvious untraditional nature of all of
this, as far as religious followings go,how traditional are the religious aspects?
Like are there rules of worship,prayers, anything like that?
Does it have divine characteristics?
Is it omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent?
(06:58):
All of those, all of those thingsthat we characterize as religious.
Smera (07:04):
You see, so a lot of people believe generative AI and AGI,
Artificial General Intelligence,would be omnipotent and omnipresent.
So, but the way of the future churchbelieves that AI is temperamental and
we must approach it with the divinityand consuming power that it has.
From what I understand, they don't haveany traditional worship aspects, but
(07:26):
Neil McArthur, the author of the articlethat you'd mentioned in our introduction,
believes that these religions aroundAI might arise from two general ideas.
Uh, one is that People would be in aweof this kind of technology, that it is so
powerful, it's capable of doing so much.
And the other would be the belief thatAI is sentient, which is very scary.
(07:49):
So when it comes to our technology orthe first route that he identifies, we
could compare it to, you know, the awethat a lot of religious systems AI.
The role that nature plays to, you know,bring down earthquakes and, you know,
massive typhoons, if you know, you're not,if you're not living a good life and so
on and so forth, but it's really, reallyconcerning if people start believing AI
(08:11):
has sentience, it's one thing to be atall, be in awe of AI, but it's another
thing entirely to believe that AI ismaking these decisions entirely by itself.
And this has been an argumentthat's been made by numerous
academics that AI is not sentient.
It is just making probabilisticanswers that could convince a
vulnerable person, I would say.
Jonah (08:32):
Didn't take you long to get those vulnerable groups in.
Right.
We've, uh, we've talked aboutexistential risk before.
The idea that machines may oneday get so intelligent that they
pose a serious threat to humans.
One example would be, asyou just mentioned, the AI.
The AI singularity, the idea that AIcould one day become more intelligent
(08:52):
than us and then completely takeover, rewrite its code, irreversible
effects, that kind of thing.
Um, And it seems far fetched and sofar into the future that it's perhaps
not worth worrying about just yet.
How does the rise of AIreligion play into this debate?
Because honestly, if this picksup speed, with the help of a large
(09:14):
enough, devout human following, Ican kind of see the AIs taking over.
Smera (09:21):
To be fair, Neil McArthur's paper that we mentioned about a few
times and would be in the show notes,he does, he does do the math behind it.
And they're like, if enough numberof people interact with Chachi Piti
and see it as a god, even a fractionof them would overtake Scientology
in terms of followers of the belief.
Instead of thinking about the AIsingularity and whether it's going to
happen, especially in a conversation aboutreligion, it would probably help to think
(09:44):
about Why people would want to believein that religion itself or even rather
why people would want to believe in theidea that AI is going to take over with
things that change so often around us.
We want a sense of meaning to be giveneither as to why we exist in this world,
what our role is that we play in thisworld, who created this world and so on.
(10:06):
Some people can turn to science.
to answer these big questions, but a lotof people want something more than that
as to what drives us to do certain things.
So with that meaning making, youcan understand why people might
want to turn towards AI possiblygiving that kind of an answer.
So people might turn to thatpurely because of this innate human
(10:27):
characteristic that we have and ourdrive for creating meaning and our drive
to be a part of a larger community.
Jonah (10:33):
I have to say you very skillfully dodged that question, Smera, and that
makes me wonder if you are a little bitscared that the AI singularity is coming.
Smera (10:45):
I'm more scared that people will believe it's going to happen, which is why
like, you know, we shouldn't push peopleto the fringes where they don't understand
this and they think 5G is going to takeover, time to put our tinfoil hats on.
Instead, you know, bring everyone,you know, give people a shared
vocabulary, give people an understandingof what this technology means.
So they don't think that it's thisomnipotent being that can take over the
(11:09):
world has the answers to everything.
It has answers to nothing, nothing morethan what us humans have answers to.
So,
Jonah (11:15):
uh, well, I mean, you're not saying much, but I will just cover
myself now by pledging my allegiance tothe almighty AI in chat GPT, we trust.
Smera (11:28):
Listen, I'm going to be burned at the stake for the blasphemy I've
done, you know, just throughoutthis podcast against AGI, AI, so if
there's an AI god, I am definitelynot in their more positive spirits.
Jonah (11:41):
You're gonna get an alt ctrl delete for your blasphemy.
Smera (11:52):
Smera, shall we do porn?
I don't need a deep fakeof me saying random stuff.
If you just ask me questions like this,it'd be like, but I did in fact say, yes,
I let's do porn on, on, on a podcast.
Jonah (12:06):
This week, Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, set out
its draft guidance for protectingchildren from pornographic websites.
According to a survey carried out bythe Children's Commissioner, the average
age children first view pornography isthirteen, with one in ten children having
viewed this kind of content at nine.
(12:29):
Worse still, nearly eight in ten peopleunder the age of eighteen have encountered
violent pornography depicting coercive,degrading, or pain inducing sex acts.
How, in 2023, have we notgotten a handle on this yet?
I was pretty sure we had some strict lawsin place to cover this kind of stuff.
(12:50):
What's the deal?
Smera (12:51):
So there are general laws for the protection of children, but when
it comes to their interaction inonline spaces, their protection is
ensured by the recent Online SafetyAct, which was passed this year.
Ofcom would be expected to playthe role of the regulator and
fine companies if they contraveneon any parts of this new act.
But the way the government has alteredthe act and the number of debates that
(13:16):
have gone on until this act was passedinto law means that social media platforms
and messaging sites amongst many other.
online spaces would have toprovide a legal black door for
governments to oversee conversationand call out any harmful behavior.
So either the platform itself would haveto monitor the messages shared between two
(13:37):
people or the government would be able to.
Or they should allow the governmentto be able to scan those messages
for harmful content and this woulddirectly oppose, you know, concerns
of privacy and would essentially allowgovernments to have proper surveillance
of messaging between people doaway with the end to end encryption
(13:57):
that we have on sites like Twitter.
you know, um, WhatsApp.
But for now, it does give a bit ofcomfort to know that this has been
postponed because such message scanningtechnology is not available at the moment.
Jonah (14:09):
Okay, um, so Ofcom have provided a list of what they call highly
effective methods of age assurance.
This list includes checking if the userhas previously had age restrictions
removed from a mobile phone, credit cardchecks, digital ID wallets, uh, that
(14:32):
store a user's proof of age, facial ageestimation, which I will say doesn't sound
highly effective to me, um, What withthe word estimation in there, but okay.
Um, and, and requiring governmentphotographic ID, such as
passport or driving license.
(14:52):
It sounds like a stepin the right direction.
Smera (14:55):
It's not, I mean, we can't even take facial age estimation seriously.
There are times I'm ID'd,there are times that I'm not.
To note, I'm 26.
I don't know how many people can tellI'm 26, but there are a lot of people
who would regularly ID me, right?
So that doesn't make sense.
And then there are people who possiblyjust have younger looking features.
So does that mean they constantlyhave to prove their age?
(15:17):
And I
Jonah (15:18):
get, I get ID'd at 34 sometimes.
To be fair, you
Smera (15:23):
are, you are a stunning and very youthful looking 34 year old, you know.
Yeah, I'll come back.
I'll do this again.
I don't know how much I could say it'sa step in the right direction because
this even just the scanning of thesefaces, especially children, could
open a lot of concerns on privacy.
There could be data theft and thatcould expose a lot of young children.
Jonah (15:44):
Yeah, so the, the protection itself is still putting children at
risk, uh, just, just in a different way.
And not to mention, I would assume lotsof other people for various reasons.
Smera (15:56):
All I have to say on this is that even Pornhub, which is
the world's leading distributor ofthis content, said the regulation
would put users safety in jeopardy.
If such content is even regulated inthis way, children may turn to other
parts of the internet that aren't asregulated, and the content on the deep
web, and especially the people who,who usually tend to use the deep web,
(16:19):
is an even bigger cause of concern.
But that That can't beas easily regulated.
So what's happening here is thatyou're putting these laws, but these
laws might push children to view, to.
exposing themselves to even moregruesome and violent content.
Jonah (16:32):
When we first started this podcast, I never thought in a million years that we
would be quoting Pornhub, but here we are.
Smera (16:41):
Yeah, I know.
Neither did I.
I didn't think of all spaces Pornhubwould be the one we turned to for saying,
even they're saying it's bad, you know.
Yeah.
Jonah (16:51):
Uh, right.
So we have plenty of laws in placeto protect children on the internet,
including internet pornography, which is.
Great.
Uh, but when it comes to adults, mynext story suggests we might be lagging.
Uh, so I've seen quite a few storiesactually in the last couple of weeks,
(17:11):
months, actually for a long time, I'vebeen seeing these stories crop up.
Um, about victims of deepfake porn, uh,deepfake nudes, um, and the fact that the,
the victims have absolutely nowhere to go.
There were, there are no lawsin place to protect them.
These stories are becomingmore and more frequent.
(17:32):
There are, there are documentaries,it's, it's a big problem.
Smera (17:38):
What's going on?
Where are we?
I mean, the Online Safety Act doesmake the sharing of deepfake porn
or threats of rape online illegal.
But the creation of deepfakes itself,without consent, because apparently
I have to mention that as well,is a lot more legally ambiguous.
So you could create it, but there's, thelaw specifically speaks to the sharing
(18:02):
of such content, not really addressingthe creation of such content itself.
Going back to how we started thisconversation, to even find out
who made something, there wouldhave to be oversight and people,
you know, going into the privatemessages of certain groups of people.
And that would mean the endof end to end encryption.
Sure, we can say that You know, ifit's someone in our vicinity and
(18:24):
you have an idea of who might havepotentially created that in our
closed circles, it might be possible.
But if you're a celebrity, anyoneon the internet could be behind
the creation of your defects.
So how are you going to find theperson who actually created this?
So there's, there's a lot, it'sreally hard to like regulate
against that, I believe.
Jonah (18:42):
This story reminded me of a cheering lecture we organized back in
2019 with Professor Lillian Edwards ondeepfakes, revenge porn, and fake news.
And I will say it is absolutely brilliant,and we'll link to it in the show notes.
Although I will also say there isa lot of adult language in there.
I think I counted off every popularswear word in the English language
(19:07):
during that lecture, but it's very good.
Um, so in the lecture, she presentedsome fairly rudimentary examples of the
technology across different use cases,so porn, politics, evidence in court
cases, uh, and warned that it probablywouldn't be too long before this really
blew up and became a massive problem.
(19:28):
Four years later, and she was absolutelyright, But it seems like we're still
very much at square one in terms ofprotecting people from the very real
harms this stuff is capable of causing.
How have we got here?
Smera (19:51):
generative, um, more general adversarial networks to kind
of play around with the light.
And if you could do that,you could probably use it
to create nudes of a person.
And he gave multiple speeches aboutit and spoke about it like it's a
funny thing and that he did it onmultiple, you know, images that he had.
And I don't know how many ofthose people consented to their
(20:11):
images being used that way.
But the fact that you, youknow, we live in an era.
in age where someone can do somethinglike this and they are actually given
a platform to speak about it and notimmediately ostracized for the kind
of behavior they're engaging in.
Like that's, that's scary.
Jonah (20:26):
Yeah.
I don't know anyone whowould consent to that.
And I, I'm pretty, uh, prettygenerous with my data when it, when
it comes to research purposes, I willgenerally let people use my data for
all manner of things if it's goingto support scientific research.
But, I think I would.
Smera (20:49):
I think it points to a big issue in more the social elements
and the environments that we live in.
The people being exposed to this content,we need to start thinking about why
children would want to access that.
We have to start thinking aboutmaking sure, you know, sex education
is given in a way that peoplefully understand what it means.
And children don't grow up wanting toemulate what they see on these videos.
(21:10):
websites.
I think that's the space that we needto start working on, not just putting
out technical regulations that, oh,we ban this, we put a watermark on
this, like, that's just not enough.
Jonah (21:25):
Smera, are you a cash gal or a card gal?
Smera (21:30):
I forgot the last time I took my card out in public.
Jonah (21:34):
Oh, you're not either.
So you're, you're a phone tappy gal.
Smera (21:40):
I don't trust myself with carrying a card around and I've
never, I don't like using a wallet.
That's very unsafe.
Yeah, I'm a tappy gal.
Jonah (21:49):
But I do, I do get very excited by the novelty of
cash, but I can't spend cash.
Like I have to keep it for an emergency.
So it's, it's, it feelssomewhat pointless.
Smera (22:02):
I keep, I only keep cash whenever I go to like the Lewisham
market because they only accept cash.
So if I ever want like bulkvegetables, that's when, you know,
I, I take the cash, but that'spretty much the only time I use it.
Jonah (22:13):
I really struggle to actually spend cash and to be fair, the world makes it
pretty difficult to spend cash now too.
As far as I know, everything is digitalnow, apart from, uh, Lewisham market.
Yeah.
Apparently.
Um, which is why my nextstory both surprised and
confused me in equal measure.
(22:34):
The Bank of England has beencooking up plans to release a
digital pound sometime before 2030.
Smera, what is a digital poundif it's not the kind I used to
pay for my online shopping habit?
Smera (22:47):
So I thought it was the same and I couldn't really understand
until I watched multiple videosand I finally figured it out.
So a digital pound or a digitalsterling would be issued by
the Bank of England itself.
So by a central bank, essentially, andit would be backed by the government.
Britcoin, as it might be,as it might be coined.
Nice.
So, Bitcoin would bepegged to the sterling.
(23:12):
So one pound is one bitcoinand or one one digital pound.
Um, it would essentially do awaywith the middle commercial banks.
So we might use someone like Barclaysin the middle or you know NatWest and
you would essentially not have thatmiddle Commercial bank, if you want to
buy Brittany or Michael Jordan, a cuteChristmas jumper, by the way, Brittany and
(23:34):
Michael Jordan are Jesse's lovely dogs.
But if you want, if you wanted tobuy them a Christmas jumper on a
website, you would use Apple pay oryour credit or debit card, right?
To, to make those transactions.
In order to do that, there's a transactionfee that the commercial bank would take.
There's also fees that go through,um, Visa and MasterCard who usually
carry out some of these transactions.
(23:54):
And by getting rid of them, you wouldessentially be taking the pound from your
bank and paying for something directlywithout having those transaction fees in
the middle is what I understand it to be.
Jonah (24:04):
The FCA say that this new digital currency is not a cryptocurrency,
but it does use distributed ledgertechnology otherwise known as
blockchain, which is really, reallyuseful information for someone who
understands what any of those things are.
So help me out, Samara.
Smera (24:24):
To understand cryptocurrency, there's a history behind it.
And Satoshi Nakamoto, uh, began, he's thisamorphous, uh, You know, internet entity.
No one really knows who SatoshiNakamoto is, but he started Bitcoin.
And the idea was that you would,that there is this distributed ledger
technology that's decentralized.
You would not need a commercialbank who is, who has oversight
(24:45):
over all of these, nor would youhave the central bank of a country.
Instead, you would have a ledgersystem where everyone would
have access to this data and thedata is encapsulated in a block.
The block would include the dataof the person who's sending the
money, the amount they're sendingand to whom they're sending it.
And that block would also include a uniquefingerprint of sorts called a hash and the
(25:07):
hash of the previous block that exists.
So if anyone's using thatcryptocurrency and they feel that
there's an irregularity, they canmatch it up to the previous times,
the previous hash that took place.
And.
This is all done to ensure that there isno reliance on these banks and that people
can access and or have oversight of theirmoney by themselves, their cryptocurrency
(25:29):
by themselves, where it differs in thecase of Bitcoin or digital currencies that
people use is that the central banks wouldbe in charge of giving out this money.
So it's completely antithetical to what,you know, cryptocurrency was because
you literally have the central bank ofa country issuing this, but it's not
cryptocurrency because it is going tobe centralized by the Bank of England.
(25:53):
And the Bank of England, very importantly,is not a commercial bank, just as central
bank or the reserve banks of certaincountries are not a commercial bank.
The central bank determines howmuch money commercial banks have.
They print out the cash, thephysical cash that we use as well.
And they're really important in settingout monetary policies for the years.
So when people say, Oh, the Bankof England's raising their interest
(26:15):
rates, that's usually to respondto economic trends of inflation or
recession or worries of the two tomake sure that the amount of money in
circulation is reduced or increasedto respond to demand and supply and
all of those economic angles to it.
Jonah (26:31):
Okay, Smera, so imagine for one moment that you are speaking
to someone who has absolutely noconcept of how the economy works.
Not me, obviously, I'masking for a friend.
Just imagine.
To help that mystery person understand,could you provide me with a list of
(26:53):
pros and cons for this new system.
Let's start with the pros.
Smera (27:01):
So in terms of positives, many, the banks that are trialing, the central banks
that are trialing these assets and manyof its proponents believe that, believe
that central banks controlling the flowof trade more directly would mean that
they can control the assets of individualsas well as foreign entities that hold
their reserve, hold this currency.
(27:22):
So if you take sanctions, there wouldbe more, they could be enforced with
more immediate action rather than thedifferent ways that we currently deal
with having to enforce sanctions.
A more immediate importance for,for people like you and me would be
there'd be fewer costs in carryingout those transactions without.
a commercial bank, and there would alsobe fewer delays in global transactions.
(27:43):
So if I were to send money to India,there are delays, it might take two
days before the money finally reaches.
And then there's a lot of costsassociated because the commercial bank
has to keep record of these differenttransactions that are taking place.
And that is a cost thatI will have to bear.
But Some believe that by linking thesedigital currencies, these remittances
(28:03):
can be made more easy and if we'retraveling abroad, we can, we can pay
in the local currency without facingso many of those transaction costs.
Some even claim that it could helpintegrate a more digital form of
payment for, especially for peoplewho may have, who may struggle with
opening up commercial bank accounts.
Okay, uh, hit me with a risk.
(28:24):
So beginning from the last point of, youknow, helping the unbanked, so to speak,
in order to do that, you would need accessto a smartphone, but a lot of people
just don't have access to a smartphoneand you can't just use any other brick
phone to carry out these transactions.
It would indeed have to be a smartphone.
And so I, I don't know how much canactually be said that it's going to
(28:45):
improve the, the status of the unbankedin, you know, In our society, you
know, of course, there are the dataworries off going digital, such as data
theft and the theft that might happen.
You know, if we move increasinglyto digital systems that don't have
sufficient cyber security measuresin place, there's also a big worry
on the role of big tech companies.
(29:06):
And The digital wallets that they mightbegin using and saying, Hey, load your
money onto this wallet, and we willgive you, you know, 5 percent cash back
on Amazon, um, you know, deliveries,or if you load it onto your Starbucks
card, you'll get like, you know, 5percent off on each drink, and it could
possibly incentivize a few people towant to use it, but in the long run,
(29:28):
that means reliance on a big techcompany, and there are worries of them
also taking over in this, in this sense.
Jonah (29:35):
Uh, yeah, that's a scary thought.
And I, I know that if I was offeredthe promise of 5 percent off my
Starbucks, I feel like all good senseand morals would go out the window.
I'd be like, yeah, yeah.
Take it all.
I'll take all my money.
You haven't even mentionedvulnerable groups yet.
Smera (29:55):
I think that's because all of us would be vulnerable groups.
Everyone is vulnerable on the cyberspace.
And if we have more and more reliance onthese digital forms of payment, there's
more and more reliance on the cyberspace,which, as you mentioned in previous
episodes, are regularly subject to datathefts, hacking, ransomware, and whatnot,
that can put all the money that we've eversaved up over all these years at risk.
(30:18):
To be clear, so
Jonah (30:20):
If and when this digital pound comes in, that will completely
replace the use of debit card, orwe'll just have options for both.
Smera (30:32):
Yeah, so what, so what countries are trying to do in the
trialing of these is that they don'tfully phase out commercial banks.
And that's really important becauseusually central banks have to be
the lender of the last resort.
They're the lender of the lastresort to their own people, to
their own commercial banks whomight be running low on reserves.
And this goes back tolike basics of banking.
You can't fully do away withthat system because who are
(30:53):
you going to get loans from?
You can't do it straightfrom the government.
So they can't end up totally phasingout these commercial banks because they
create this extremely important part ofour banking infrastructure right now.
So the idea is that they're goingto start introducing these digital
currencies to start getting peopleto digitize more of their payments,
but it is both not going to replacecommercial banks, nor is it going to,
(31:16):
um, you know, replace cash in entirety.
So.
As you know, Jesse, I've stoppedgiving the positive news because
as Jorah described me, I'm, uh,I'm, I think he called me a Gen
Z, but I don't know what I'm
Jonah (31:33):
I think he just said a twenty something, little emo kid.
So
Smera (31:38):
I'd rather you give me a piece of positive news, you know,
with your infinite sources ofwisdom that you have accrued over
the years you have been alive.
Come on, hit me.
What do we have to feel positive about?
All right, let me,
Jonah (31:52):
let me start with the disclaimer.
This isn't really news and it's notnecessarily going to be positive for
everyone, but it was positive for meand I was really happy to see this
article titled AI predicts majorityof the world will be vegan by 2075
thanks to Gen Z and Millennials.
(32:14):
That's us!
You're welcome, world!
Smera (32:18):
I think that that's really interesting.
I did have a stint with being a veganfor a bit and my family still doesn't
let go of how I was like, oh my god,I'm not gonna, I don't eat meat, I
don't eat dairy, I don't eat anything.
And yeah, I've regularly had phaseswhere I boycott certain types of
food and companies and my parentslove to make fun of the fact that
this lasts about like a year at most.
(32:40):
And then I move on.
Jonah (32:41):
So I think I deserve a bit of a pat on the back because we are well over
an hour into recording and I have stillnot mentioned the fact that I'm vegan
yet, which for a vegan is a very big deal.
But we're here now and I couldn't,I couldn't have this platform
and not, not talk about it.
That's true.
Smera (33:00):
That's true.
That's true.
That's why we're deplatforming you from next week.
I'm coming on here with your vegan agenda.
Jonah (33:08):
Honestly, this story did come up this week.
Uh, and so it was perfect timing,but I said it wasn't news.
Why isn't it news?
Uh, because the prediction comesfrom our good old friend, ChatGPT.
How much we should really be readinginto this, I wouldn't want to say.
(33:28):
I don't think it's totallyunthinkable to think that it could
Smera (33:33):
come true.
I mean, I mean it is trained on data.
If I'm going to use the same datapoint for other arguments on why chat
GPT is bad, it is also trained onthe data that we usually that that's
recorded and that it does seem toshow there's a reflection of how our
current eating habits and drinkinghabits are maybe increasingly vegan.
(33:53):
It's also interesting to note thatchat GPT is more liberal than it
is conservative because of the textthat's available on the internet or
the text used to train the model.
So we're looking at a liberalvegan agenda influenced to 2075.
So
Jonah (34:09):
ChatGVT was asked to produce a timeline of the 2024 when you and
I, that's Gen Z and millennials,raise awareness of agriculture.
By 2027, the term flexitarian,which is a term I, I really
dislike, but, um, whatever.
(34:30):
Uh, so the term flexitarian willbecome common, that's by 2027.
Uh, then the article skips about50 years and we end up in 2073 when
almost the entire world is vegan.
And I don't know what happened in that50 years, but apparently it was a lot.
Happy days, happy days.
As an OG vegan who.
(34:51):
single handedly paved the way, that'snot true, uh, for this potential future.
I'd like to take all thecredit for this prediction.
Thank you and good night.
So that's it from me and Smera.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
All that's left for me to say isthank you to Smera for your profound
(35:17):
wisdom and support and for just beinga babe and to Jonah who put me in this
position and who also has the unenviabletask of, of editing this podcast.
Um, and of course, thank you.
Good luck.
And of course, thank you to you.
Lovely listeners.
(35:37):
Please like, subscribe, share, andsend fan mail to podcast at touring.
ac.
uk.
Smara is sitting here waiting.
You can follow us on Twitterat Turinginst, uh, and on
Instagram at TheTuringinst.
(35:58):
Thank you, and goodbye!
Goodbye from me!
Too Long, Didn't Read, the weekly podcast from the Alan
Turing Institute, the UK's NationalInstitute for Data Science and AI.
Hello, and welcome to Too Long, Didn'tRead, your weekly pit stop for the
latest in data science and AI news.
We read so you don't have to.
Or more accurately, Smerareads so we don't have to.
(00:24):
You might have clocked on to a slightlyhigher pitched intro than usual.
And that's because Jonah hasleft me in charge of hosting
responsibilities this week.
Woohoo!
You've got me, Jessie.
You might know me as thesilent but vital Jessie.
The jester of justice.
(00:47):
I've done my best to staybehind the scenes so far.
But this week I'm stepping in frontof the microphone whilst Jonah is
off busying himself with other,more important work, the cheek.
I am delighted and relieved,uh, to be joined by our ever
faithful, trusty companion, Smera.
Smera, you would neverlet us down, would you?
Jessie (01:09):
I would not let you down.
How, how dare Jonah?
How dare Jonah?
But you know what?
He's giving me a little gift today.
I get to do this entiretwo hours with you alone.
It'll be wonderful.
Jonah (01:19):
Yay, girly takeover!
This week we talk AI gods, who isand isn't being protected online
when it comes to adult entertainmentand what new digital currencies
could mean for the economy.
A couple of weeks ago, we stumbled upon anarticle that was published back in March
(01:41):
this year by The Conversation titled, Godsin the Machine, the Rise of Artificial
Intelligence May Result in New Religions.
In the article, the author proposes, andI quote, that we are about to witness
the birth of a new kind of religion.
In the next few years, or even months, wewill see the emergence of sects devoted
(02:04):
to the worship of artificial intelligence.
He goes on to argue that peopleare already seeking religious
meaning from alternativesources, like extraterrestrials.
So maybe an AI based religionisn't too far fetched.
Perhaps the most promising part ofworshipping an AI deity is the fact
that, unlike most other religions,we would actually be able to interact
(02:27):
with it on an everyday basis.
We could ask it all the big, importantquestions about life and the world, seek
its advice in times of need, tell itabout our hopes and fears, and get that
immediate feedback that I think manyof us would really value from a god.
So, this was very much an opinionpiece, and I couldn't find any hard
(02:48):
evidence to support the claims.
until this week.
Smera (02:53):
Tell
Jonah (02:57):
me about the Way of the Future Church.
Smera (03:00):
To give a background on the Way of the Future Church, it was
started by Anthony Lewandowski.
He mentioned the way ofthe future church in 2015.
First, although it was moreformally addressed in 2017, he was
an engineer in Google working ontheir self driving cars initiative.
And after leaving Google, he becamean entrepreneur who started an
(03:24):
autonomous trucking company called auto.
He then established thisso called church of AI.
He claims it is a way to connectspiritually with the material
gods and not the human or naturebased gods that we have thus far.
But it was shut down in 2020 and itsassets were liquidated and interestingly
(03:46):
donated to the NAACP for legal actionfunds, which was very interesting.
And I didn't expect that correlation,but it is rumored to be true.
that he has restarted his,his way of the future church.
Sorry,
Jonah (03:58):
did you, did you just say entrepreneur?
The leader of a religioussect is an entrepreneur?
That's got to raise some red flags.
Smera (04:07):
I mean, he has quite the background.
He was also found guilty ofsharing trade secrets and he was
sentenced to 18 months in prison.
Donald Trump actually pardonedhim much later, but yeah, he's
been found guilty of crimes.
Jonah (04:19):
So is it a religion?
Or, uh, a community group, anon profit, I, I'm hesitant
to say this word, but a cult?
Smera (04:29):
Oh, okay.
So there's, there's actually a really goodbook called Cultish that I want to pick
up in for, as, as my Christmas reading.
So maybe I'll have a bit more informationon what Constitutes a cult later on, but
I, it's very hard though, as of now toreally draw a clear line between religion,
community groups, or even cults, um, takeHinduism, for example, many argue it is a
(04:52):
philosophy where you can pick the elementsthat you wish to practice and the aspects
that you want to engage with spiritually,even the deities that you want to worship.
Right.
That philosophy has now taken over evenlocal traditions and tribal traditions,
bringing tribal deities and local godsof nature into a more structured pantheon
of over a thousand gods that make up theHindu, you know, list of gods that exist.
(05:17):
So you can argue Hinduism is a philosophy.
It is a religion, but it is also natureworship that's all wrapped up into one.
So it's very hard to really drawthe divisions between all of this.
Even the different versions of Abrahamicreligions, be it Islam or Christianity,
there are so many debates on what thenature of God even is and what Jesus is.
(05:39):
Is he God or is he the son of God?
And what's the role of the spirit?
So Jesus tends to, in these debates,Jesus tends to exist in this quantum
state of being both a God and not aGod, depending on who opens the box.
Funny little quantum joke for everyone.
(06:01):
I mean, this is all to say that our wideand varied interpretations of religion,
they influence how humans behave.
And we often tend to need these ideas ofspirituality and belief to feel grounded.
As for the way of the future church,it seems to be a spiritual group.
but the European Academy of Religionand Society have called it a cult.
(06:23):
Okay, so
Jonah (06:25):
what is
Smera (06:25):
the actual definition
Jonah (06:27):
of a cult?
Smera (06:28):
A cult is seen as having more fringe belief systems, so AI
worship could be seen as a fringebelief system in that sense.
Jonah (06:37):
Okay, So aside from the very obvious untraditional nature of all of
this, as far as religious followings go,how traditional are the religious aspects?
Like are there rules of worship,prayers, anything like that?
Does it have divine characteristics?
Is it omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent?
(06:58):
All of those, all of those thingsthat we characterize as religious.
Smera (07:04):
You see, so a lot of people believe generative AI and AGI,
Artificial General Intelligence,would be omnipotent and omnipresent.
So, but the way of the future churchbelieves that AI is temperamental and
we must approach it with the divinityand consuming power that it has.
From what I understand, they don't haveany traditional worship aspects, but
(07:26):
Neil McArthur, the author of the articlethat you'd mentioned in our introduction,
believes that these religions aroundAI might arise from two general ideas.
Uh, one is that People would be in aweof this kind of technology, that it is so
powerful, it's capable of doing so much.
And the other would be the belief thatAI is sentient, which is very scary.
(07:49):
So when it comes to our technology orthe first route that he identifies, we
could compare it to, you know, the awethat a lot of religious systems AI.
The role that nature plays to, you know,bring down earthquakes and, you know,
massive typhoons, if you know, you're not,if you're not living a good life and so
on and so forth, but it's really, reallyconcerning if people start believing AI
(08:11):
has sentience, it's one thing to be atall, be in awe of AI, but it's another
thing entirely to believe that AI ismaking these decisions entirely by itself.
And this has been an argumentthat's been made by numerous
academics that AI is not sentient.
It is just making probabilisticanswers that could convince a
vulnerable person, I would say.
Jonah (08:32):
Didn't take you long to get those vulnerable groups in.
Right.
We've, uh, we've talked aboutexistential risk before.
The idea that machines may oneday get so intelligent that they
pose a serious threat to humans.
One example would be, asyou just mentioned, the AI.
The AI singularity, the idea that AIcould one day become more intelligent
(08:52):
than us and then completely takeover, rewrite its code, irreversible
effects, that kind of thing.
Um, And it seems far fetched and sofar into the future that it's perhaps
not worth worrying about just yet.
How does the rise of AIreligion play into this debate?
Because honestly, if this picksup speed, with the help of a large
(09:14):
enough, devout human following, Ican kind of see the AIs taking over.
Smera (09:21):
To be fair, Neil McArthur's paper that we mentioned about a few
times and would be in the show notes,he does, he does do the math behind it.
And they're like, if enough numberof people interact with Chachi Piti
and see it as a god, even a fractionof them would overtake Scientology
in terms of followers of the belief.
Instead of thinking about the AIsingularity and whether it's going to
happen, especially in a conversation aboutreligion, it would probably help to think
(09:44):
about Why people would want to believein that religion itself or even rather
why people would want to believe in theidea that AI is going to take over with
things that change so often around us.
We want a sense of meaning to be giveneither as to why we exist in this world,
what our role is that we play in thisworld, who created this world and so on.
(10:06):
Some people can turn to science.
to answer these big questions, but a lotof people want something more than that
as to what drives us to do certain things.
So with that meaning making, youcan understand why people might
want to turn towards AI possiblygiving that kind of an answer.
So people might turn to thatpurely because of this innate human
(10:27):
characteristic that we have and ourdrive for creating meaning and our drive
to be a part of a larger community.
Jonah (10:33):
I have to say you very skillfully dodged that question, Smera, and that
makes me wonder if you are a little bitscared that the AI singularity is coming.
Smera (10:45):
I'm more scared that people will believe it's going to happen, which is why
like, you know, we shouldn't push peopleto the fringes where they don't understand
this and they think 5G is going to takeover, time to put our tinfoil hats on.
Instead, you know, bring everyone,you know, give people a shared
vocabulary, give people an understandingof what this technology means.
So they don't think that it's thisomnipotent being that can take over the
(11:09):
world has the answers to everything.
It has answers to nothing, nothing morethan what us humans have answers to.
So,
Jonah (11:15):
uh, well, I mean, you're not saying much, but I will just cover
myself now by pledging my allegiance tothe almighty AI in chat GPT, we trust.
Smera (11:28):
Listen, I'm going to be burned at the stake for the blasphemy I've
done, you know, just throughoutthis podcast against AGI, AI, so if
there's an AI god, I am definitelynot in their more positive spirits.
Jonah (11:41):
You're gonna get an alt ctrl delete for your blasphemy.
Smera (11:52):
Smera, shall we do porn?
I don't need a deep fakeof me saying random stuff.
If you just ask me questions like this,it'd be like, but I did in fact say, yes,
I let's do porn on, on, on a podcast.
Jonah (12:06):
This week, Ofcom, the UK's communications regulator, set out
its draft guidance for protectingchildren from pornographic websites.
According to a survey carried out bythe Children's Commissioner, the average
age children first view pornography isthirteen, with one in ten children having
viewed this kind of content at nine.
(12:29):
Worse still, nearly eight in ten peopleunder the age of eighteen have encountered
violent pornography depicting coercive,degrading, or pain inducing sex acts.
How, in 2023, have we notgotten a handle on this yet?
I was pretty sure we had some strict lawsin place to cover this kind of stuff.
(12:50):
What's the deal?
Smera (12:51):
So there are general laws for the protection of children, but when
it comes to their interaction inonline spaces, their protection is
ensured by the recent Online SafetyAct, which was passed this year.
Ofcom would be expected to playthe role of the regulator and
fine companies if they contraveneon any parts of this new act.
But the way the government has alteredthe act and the number of debates that
(13:16):
have gone on until this act was passedinto law means that social media platforms
and messaging sites amongst many other.
online spaces would have toprovide a legal black door for
governments to oversee conversationand call out any harmful behavior.
So either the platform itself would haveto monitor the messages shared between two
(13:37):
people or the government would be able to.
Or they should allow the governmentto be able to scan those messages
for harmful content and this woulddirectly oppose, you know, concerns
of privacy and would essentially allowgovernments to have proper surveillance
of messaging between people doaway with the end to end encryption
(13:57):
that we have on sites like Twitter.
you know, um, WhatsApp.
But for now, it does give a bit ofcomfort to know that this has been
postponed because such message scanningtechnology is not available at the moment.
Jonah (14:09):
Okay, um, so Ofcom have provided a list of what they call highly
effective methods of age assurance.
This list includes checking if the userhas previously had age restrictions
removed from a mobile phone, credit cardchecks, digital ID wallets, uh, that
(14:32):
store a user's proof of age, facial ageestimation, which I will say doesn't sound
highly effective to me, um, What withthe word estimation in there, but okay.
Um, and, and requiring governmentphotographic ID, such as
passport or driving license.
(14:52):
It sounds like a stepin the right direction.
Smera (14:55):
It's not, I mean, we can't even take facial age estimation seriously.
There are times I'm ID'd,there are times that I'm not.
To note, I'm 26.
I don't know how many people can tellI'm 26, but there are a lot of people
who would regularly ID me, right?
So that doesn't make sense.
And then there are people who possiblyjust have younger looking features.
So does that mean they constantlyhave to prove their age?
(15:17):
And I
Jonah (15:18):
get, I get ID'd at 34 sometimes.
To be fair, you
Smera (15:23):
are, you are a stunning and very youthful looking 34 year old, you know.
Yeah, I'll come back.
I'll do this again.
I don't know how much I could say it'sa step in the right direction because
this even just the scanning of thesefaces, especially children, could
open a lot of concerns on privacy.
There could be data theft and thatcould expose a lot of young children.
Jonah (15:44):
Yeah, so the, the protection itself is still putting children at
risk, uh, just, just in a different way.
And not to mention, I would assume lotsof other people for various reasons.
Smera (15:56):
All I have to say on this is that even Pornhub, which is
the world's leading distributor ofthis content, said the regulation
would put users safety in jeopardy.
If such content is even regulated inthis way, children may turn to other
parts of the internet that aren't asregulated, and the content on the deep
web, and especially the people who,who usually tend to use the deep web,
(16:19):
is an even bigger cause of concern.
But that That can't beas easily regulated.
So what's happening here is thatyou're putting these laws, but these
laws might push children to view, to.
exposing themselves to even moregruesome and violent content.
Jonah (16:32):
When we first started this podcast, I never thought in a million years that we
would be quoting Pornhub, but here we are.
Smera (16:41):
Yeah, I know.
Neither did I.
I didn't think of all spaces Pornhubwould be the one we turned to for saying,
even they're saying it's bad, you know.
Yeah.
Jonah (16:51):
Uh, right.
So we have plenty of laws in placeto protect children on the internet,
including internet pornography, which is.
Great.
Uh, but when it comes to adults, mynext story suggests we might be lagging.
Uh, so I've seen quite a few storiesactually in the last couple of weeks,
(17:11):
months, actually for a long time, I'vebeen seeing these stories crop up.
Um, about victims of deepfake porn, uh,deepfake nudes, um, and the fact that the,
the victims have absolutely nowhere to go.
There were, there are no lawsin place to protect them.
These stories are becomingmore and more frequent.
(17:32):
There are, there are documentaries,it's, it's a big problem.
Smera (17:38):
What's going on?
Where are we?
I mean, the Online Safety Act doesmake the sharing of deepfake porn
or threats of rape online illegal.
But the creation of deepfakes itself,without consent, because apparently
I have to mention that as well,is a lot more legally ambiguous.
So you could create it, but there's, thelaw specifically speaks to the sharing
(18:02):
of such content, not really addressingthe creation of such content itself.
Going back to how we started thisconversation, to even find out
who made something, there wouldhave to be oversight and people,
you know, going into the privatemessages of certain groups of people.
And that would mean the endof end to end encryption.
Sure, we can say that You know, ifit's someone in our vicinity and
(18:24):
you have an idea of who might havepotentially created that in our
closed circles, it might be possible.
But if you're a celebrity, anyoneon the internet could be behind
the creation of your defects.
So how are you going to find theperson who actually created this?
So there's, there's a lot, it'sreally hard to like regulate
against that, I believe.
Jonah (18:42):
This story reminded me of a cheering lecture we organized back in
2019 with Professor Lillian Edwards ondeepfakes, revenge porn, and fake news.
And I will say it is absolutely brilliant,and we'll link to it in the show notes.
Although I will also say there isa lot of adult language in there.
I think I counted off every popularswear word in the English language
(19:07):
during that lecture, but it's very good.
Um, so in the lecture, she presentedsome fairly rudimentary examples of the
technology across different use cases,so porn, politics, evidence in court
cases, uh, and warned that it probablywouldn't be too long before this really
blew up and became a massive problem.
(19:28):
Four years later, and she was absolutelyright, But it seems like we're still
very much at square one in terms ofprotecting people from the very real
harms this stuff is capable of causing.
How have we got here?
Smera (19:51):
generative, um, more general adversarial networks to kind
of play around with the light.
And if you could do that,you could probably use it
to create nudes of a person.
And he gave multiple speeches aboutit and spoke about it like it's a
funny thing and that he did it onmultiple, you know, images that he had.
And I don't know how many ofthose people consented to their
(20:11):
images being used that way.
But the fact that you, youknow, we live in an era.
in age where someone can do somethinglike this and they are actually given
a platform to speak about it and notimmediately ostracized for the kind
of behavior they're engaging in.
Like that's, that's scary.
Jonah (20:26):
Yeah.
I don't know anyone whowould consent to that.
And I, I'm pretty, uh, prettygenerous with my data when it, when
it comes to research purposes, I willgenerally let people use my data for
all manner of things if it's goingto support scientific research.
But, I think I would.
Smera (20:49):
I think it points to a big issue in more the social elements
and the environments that we live in.
The people being exposed to this content,we need to start thinking about why
children would want to access that.
We have to start thinking aboutmaking sure, you know, sex education
is given in a way that peoplefully understand what it means.
And children don't grow up wanting toemulate what they see on these videos.
(21:10):
websites.
I think that's the space that we needto start working on, not just putting
out technical regulations that, oh,we ban this, we put a watermark on
this, like, that's just not enough.
Jonah (21:25):
Smera, are you a cash gal or a card gal?
Smera (21:30):
I forgot the last time I took my card out in public.
Jonah (21:34):
Oh, you're not either.
So you're, you're a phone tappy gal.
Smera (21:40):
I don't trust myself with carrying a card around and I've
never, I don't like using a wallet.
That's very unsafe.
Yeah, I'm a tappy gal.
Jonah (21:49):
But I do, I do get very excited by the novelty of
cash, but I can't spend cash.
Like I have to keep it for an emergency.
So it's, it's, it feelssomewhat pointless.
Smera (22:02):
I keep, I only keep cash whenever I go to like the Lewisham
market because they only accept cash.
So if I ever want like bulkvegetables, that's when, you know,
I, I take the cash, but that'spretty much the only time I use it.
Jonah (22:13):
I really struggle to actually spend cash and to be fair, the world makes it
pretty difficult to spend cash now too.
As far as I know, everything is digitalnow, apart from, uh, Lewisham market.
Yeah.
Apparently.
Um, which is why my nextstory both surprised and
confused me in equal measure.
(22:34):
The Bank of England has beencooking up plans to release a
digital pound sometime before 2030.
Smera, what is a digital poundif it's not the kind I used to
pay for my online shopping habit?
Smera (22:47):
So I thought it was the same and I couldn't really understand
until I watched multiple videosand I finally figured it out.
So a digital pound or a digitalsterling would be issued by
the Bank of England itself.
So by a central bank, essentially, andit would be backed by the government.
Britcoin, as it might be,as it might be coined.
Nice.
So, Bitcoin would bepegged to the sterling.
(23:12):
So one pound is one bitcoinand or one one digital pound.
Um, it would essentially do awaywith the middle commercial banks.
So we might use someone like Barclaysin the middle or you know NatWest and
you would essentially not have thatmiddle Commercial bank, if you want to
buy Brittany or Michael Jordan, a cuteChristmas jumper, by the way, Brittany and
(23:34):
Michael Jordan are Jesse's lovely dogs.
But if you want, if you wanted tobuy them a Christmas jumper on a
website, you would use Apple pay oryour credit or debit card, right?
To, to make those transactions.
In order to do that, there's a transactionfee that the commercial bank would take.
There's also fees that go through,um, Visa and MasterCard who usually
carry out some of these transactions.
(23:54):
And by getting rid of them, you wouldessentially be taking the pound from your
bank and paying for something directlywithout having those transaction fees in
the middle is what I understand it to be.
Jonah (24:04):
The FCA say that this new digital currency is not a cryptocurrency,
but it does use distributed ledgertechnology otherwise known as
blockchain, which is really, reallyuseful information for someone who
understands what any of those things are.
So help me out, Samara.
Smera (24:24):
To understand cryptocurrency, there's a history behind it.
And Satoshi Nakamoto, uh, began, he's thisamorphous, uh, You know, internet entity.
No one really knows who SatoshiNakamoto is, but he started Bitcoin.
And the idea was that you would,that there is this distributed ledger
technology that's decentralized.
You would not need a commercialbank who is, who has oversight
(24:45):
over all of these, nor would youhave the central bank of a country.
Instead, you would have a ledgersystem where everyone would
have access to this data and thedata is encapsulated in a block.
The block would include the dataof the person who's sending the
money, the amount they're sendingand to whom they're sending it.
And that block would also include a uniquefingerprint of sorts called a hash and the
(25:07):
hash of the previous block that exists.
So if anyone's using thatcryptocurrency and they feel that
there's an irregularity, they canmatch it up to the previous times,
the previous hash that took place.
And.
This is all done to ensure that there isno reliance on these banks and that people
can access and or have oversight of theirmoney by themselves, their cryptocurrency
(25:29):
by themselves, where it differs in thecase of Bitcoin or digital currencies that
people use is that the central banks wouldbe in charge of giving out this money.
So it's completely antithetical to what,you know, cryptocurrency was because
you literally have the central bank ofa country issuing this, but it's not
cryptocurrency because it is going tobe centralized by the Bank of England.
(25:53):
And the Bank of England, very importantly,is not a commercial bank, just as central
bank or the reserve banks of certaincountries are not a commercial bank.
The central bank determines howmuch money commercial banks have.
They print out the cash, thephysical cash that we use as well.
And they're really important in settingout monetary policies for the years.
So when people say, Oh, the Bankof England's raising their interest
(26:15):
rates, that's usually to respondto economic trends of inflation or
recession or worries of the two tomake sure that the amount of money in
circulation is reduced or increasedto respond to demand and supply and
all of those economic angles to it.
Jonah (26:31):
Okay, Smera, so imagine for one moment that you are speaking
to someone who has absolutely noconcept of how the economy works.
Not me, obviously, I'masking for a friend.
Just imagine.
To help that mystery person understand,could you provide me with a list of
(26:53):
pros and cons for this new system.
Let's start with the pros.
Smera (27:01):
So in terms of positives, many, the banks that are trialing, the central banks
that are trialing these assets and manyof its proponents believe that, believe
that central banks controlling the flowof trade more directly would mean that
they can control the assets of individualsas well as foreign entities that hold
their reserve, hold this currency.
(27:22):
So if you take sanctions, there wouldbe more, they could be enforced with
more immediate action rather than thedifferent ways that we currently deal
with having to enforce sanctions.
A more immediate importance for,for people like you and me would be
there'd be fewer costs in carryingout those transactions without.
a commercial bank, and there would alsobe fewer delays in global transactions.
(27:43):
So if I were to send money to India,there are delays, it might take two
days before the money finally reaches.
And then there's a lot of costsassociated because the commercial bank
has to keep record of these differenttransactions that are taking place.
And that is a cost thatI will have to bear.
But Some believe that by linking thesedigital currencies, these remittances
(28:03):
can be made more easy and if we'retraveling abroad, we can, we can pay
in the local currency without facingso many of those transaction costs.
Some even claim that it could helpintegrate a more digital form of
payment for, especially for peoplewho may have, who may struggle with
opening up commercial bank accounts.
Okay, uh, hit me with a risk.
(28:24):
So beginning from the last point of, youknow, helping the unbanked, so to speak,
in order to do that, you would need accessto a smartphone, but a lot of people
just don't have access to a smartphoneand you can't just use any other brick
phone to carry out these transactions.
It would indeed have to be a smartphone.
And so I, I don't know how much canactually be said that it's going to
(28:45):
improve the, the status of the unbankedin, you know, In our society, you
know, of course, there are the dataworries off going digital, such as data
theft and the theft that might happen.
You know, if we move increasinglyto digital systems that don't have
sufficient cyber security measuresin place, there's also a big worry
on the role of big tech companies.
(29:06):
And The digital wallets that they mightbegin using and saying, Hey, load your
money onto this wallet, and we willgive you, you know, 5 percent cash back
on Amazon, um, you know, deliveries,or if you load it onto your Starbucks
card, you'll get like, you know, 5percent off on each drink, and it could
possibly incentivize a few people towant to use it, but in the long run,
(29:28):
that means reliance on a big techcompany, and there are worries of them
also taking over in this, in this sense.
Jonah (29:35):
Uh, yeah, that's a scary thought.
And I, I know that if I was offeredthe promise of 5 percent off my
Starbucks, I feel like all good senseand morals would go out the window.
I'd be like, yeah, yeah.
Take it all.
I'll take all my money.
You haven't even mentionedvulnerable groups yet.
Smera (29:55):
I think that's because all of us would be vulnerable groups.
Everyone is vulnerable on the cyberspace.
And if we have more and more reliance onthese digital forms of payment, there's
more and more reliance on the cyberspace,which, as you mentioned in previous
episodes, are regularly subject to datathefts, hacking, ransomware, and whatnot,
that can put all the money that we've eversaved up over all these years at risk.
(30:18):
To be clear, so
Jonah (30:20):
If and when this digital pound comes in, that will completely
replace the use of debit card, orwe'll just have options for both.
Smera (30:32):
Yeah, so what, so what countries are trying to do in the
trialing of these is that they don'tfully phase out commercial banks.
And that's really important becauseusually central banks have to be
the lender of the last resort.
They're the lender of the lastresort to their own people, to
their own commercial banks whomight be running low on reserves.
And this goes back tolike basics of banking.
You can't fully do away withthat system because who are
(30:53):
you going to get loans from?
You can't do it straightfrom the government.
So they can't end up totally phasingout these commercial banks because they
create this extremely important part ofour banking infrastructure right now.
So the idea is that they're goingto start introducing these digital
currencies to start getting peopleto digitize more of their payments,
but it is both not going to replacecommercial banks, nor is it going to,
(31:16):
um, you know, replace cash in entirety.
So.
As you know, Jesse, I've stoppedgiving the positive news because
as Jorah described me, I'm, uh,I'm, I think he called me a Gen
Z, but I don't know what I'm
Jonah (31:33):
I think he just said a twenty something, little emo kid.
So
Smera (31:38):
I'd rather you give me a piece of positive news, you know,
with your infinite sources ofwisdom that you have accrued over
the years you have been alive.
Come on, hit me.
What do we have to feel positive about?
All right, let me,
Jonah (31:52):
let me start with the disclaimer.
This isn't really news and it's notnecessarily going to be positive for
everyone, but it was positive for meand I was really happy to see this
article titled AI predicts majorityof the world will be vegan by 2075
thanks to Gen Z and Millennials.
(32:14):
That's us!
You're welcome, world!
Smera (32:18):
I think that that's really interesting.
I did have a stint with being a veganfor a bit and my family still doesn't
let go of how I was like, oh my god,I'm not gonna, I don't eat meat, I
don't eat dairy, I don't eat anything.
And yeah, I've regularly had phaseswhere I boycott certain types of
food and companies and my parentslove to make fun of the fact that
this lasts about like a year at most.
(32:40):
And then I move on.
Jonah (32:41):
So I think I deserve a bit of a pat on the back because we are well over
an hour into recording and I have stillnot mentioned the fact that I'm vegan
yet, which for a vegan is a very big deal.
But we're here now and I couldn't,I couldn't have this platform
and not, not talk about it.
That's true.
Smera (33:00):
That's true.
That's true.
That's why we're deplatforming you from next week.
I'm coming on here with your vegan agenda.
Jonah (33:08):
Honestly, this story did come up this week.
Uh, and so it was perfect timing,but I said it wasn't news.
Why isn't it news?
Uh, because the prediction comesfrom our good old friend, ChatGPT.
How much we should really be readinginto this, I wouldn't want to say.
(33:28):
I don't think it's totallyunthinkable to think that it could
Smera (33:33):
come true.
I mean, I mean it is trained on data.
If I'm going to use the same datapoint for other arguments on why chat
GPT is bad, it is also trained onthe data that we usually that that's
recorded and that it does seem toshow there's a reflection of how our
current eating habits and drinkinghabits are maybe increasingly vegan.
(33:53):
It's also interesting to note thatchat GPT is more liberal than it
is conservative because of the textthat's available on the internet or
the text used to train the model.
So we're looking at a liberalvegan agenda influenced to 2075.
So
Jonah (34:09):
ChatGVT was asked to produce a timeline of the 2024 when you and
I, that's Gen Z and millennials,raise awareness of agriculture.
By 2027, the term flexitarian,which is a term I, I really
dislike, but, um, whatever.
(34:30):
Uh, so the term flexitarian willbecome common, that's by 2027.
Uh, then the article skips about50 years and we end up in 2073 when
almost the entire world is vegan.
And I don't know what happened in that50 years, but apparently it was a lot.
Happy days, happy days.
As an OG vegan who.
(34:51):
single handedly paved the way, that'snot true, uh, for this potential future.
I'd like to take all thecredit for this prediction.
Thank you and good night.
So that's it from me and Smera.
Thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
All that's left for me to say isthank you to Smera for your profound
(35:17):
wisdom and support and for just beinga babe and to Jonah who put me in this
position and who also has the unenviabletask of, of editing this podcast.
Um, and of course, thank you.
Good luck.
And of course, thank you to you.
Lovely listeners.
(35:37):
Please like, subscribe, share, andsend fan mail to podcast at touring.
ac.
uk.
Smara is sitting here waiting.
You can follow us on Twitterat Turinginst, uh, and on
Instagram at TheTuringinst.
(35:58):
Thank you, and goodbye!
Goodbye from me!
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!