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November 15, 2021 53 mins

Scientists discover that the endangered California Condor is capable of producing offspring without the presence of male condors, prompting troubling questions for the future. A new AI program crowdsourcing ethical quandaries provides surprising answers to humans. Facebook promises to close down its facial recognition system, deleting billions of faceprints. All this and more in this week's Strange News.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies. History is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of I Heart Radio. Hello, welcome back to the show.

(00:25):
My name is Matt, my name is Noman. They called
me Ben. We're joined as always with our super producer Paul.
Mission Control decads. Most importantly, you are you, You are here,
and that makes this the stuff they don't want you
to know. Hail, fellow travelers, Welcome. Congratulations to everybody who
has made it through the weekend. I think as we

(00:47):
get closer to the end of what this current calendar
tells us as a year, we're all we're all thinking ahead,
and we're all thinking back into the past. As thing
is begin to wrap up in two hurtles towards us,
we are finding that the world of the future maybe

(01:09):
a little bit different from the world of the past. Today,
we're diving into the world of technology. We're diving into
um some of the hints that the natural world is
giving human civilization, hints that indicate things might not be
so hunky dory. But let's maybe let's maybe start with

(01:30):
the world of tech. One thing that our fellow European
conspiracy realists are able to enjoy is something called the
right to be forgotten. You guys have heard of the
right to be forgotten? Right, It's It's not a thing
in the US yet, No. I mean, it's just the
idea of like your Internet footprint being in some way

(01:50):
available to be erased, right yeah, yeah, it's it's the
idea that you your private information can be removed from
Internet searches other directories under some specific circumstances. So for
everybody who grew up pre Internet, yes, those folks are
out there. Hopefully they are hale and healthy. Um. You know,

(02:12):
you'll hear people of that age sometimes say, God, I'm
glad TikTok and YouTube weren't around when I was growing
up because I did some cringe stuff. And the Internet,
like the mythical elephant, never forgets. Which is why today's
first story I advanced is so fascinating. If you believe
Facebook a k A meta or should I say metat

(02:35):
need Facebook, Uh, then then um there proposing to do
something that has caught the attention of many many people.
Facebook users present and former, caught the eyes of tech
analysts and policy walks. Facebook says it is going to
purposely forget some things, some very controversial things. Question is

(03:01):
do you believe them? Yes, you're right. Let's jump right
into the story today. This comes from The Guardian. It
was posted last Tuesday, election day here in the United States.
Facebook to shut down facial recognition system and delete one
billion face prints. That is the headline. Uh Nature, as

(03:22):
you said, Ben has reached out and said we no
longer need your faces. In this case, it is Meta
saying that, uh, the the parent company of Facebook. Now,
if you didn't catch it, Meta is to Facebook as
alphabet is to Google. Eha. Here we go. Things get
weirder every day. So why would Facebook shut down its

(03:43):
facial recognition system? Seems like something of the future, something
that is inevitable, something that would be very useful for
a company and social media website that has billions and
billions of users. Remember that includes Instagram. Yeah, well it's Facebook. Meta,
I should say, says that they are closing down their

(04:05):
facial recognition technology due to quote many concerns literally quote
many concerns about the techns. Yeah, we'll get into why.
Maybe Facebook is concerned about those concerns. All of a sudden,

(04:25):
But this is the most important part. They are deleting
the face prints that have already been collected. So if
you have gone through your Facebook or Instagram or one
of your other apps that is somehow being used by
Facebook and created a face print, like given the company permission,

(04:45):
or if there's just a face print that is made
of you, whether you knew it or not. Um, it's
it's going away, which is kind of which is nice.
Hey ya. One less version of my face that can
be you know you is to buy a company to
find out if my image shows up anywhere on its platform. Um.

(05:06):
One of the biggest things just to hear to talk
about is that Facebook itself and I guess now well,
Facebook under meta has been under all kinds of pressure, political, legal,
regulatory pressure over various things that its software does and
the information that it keeps track of about its users. Uh.
In this case, this again, facial recognition software was used

(05:28):
to keep track of photos and videos. Let you know,
as a user and end user, whether or not you're
showing up on somebody else's feed somebody posted a picture
of you, which can be really helpful. Right. We all
do all kinds of various interesting things on the week days,
at nights, sometimes on the weekends, that maybe we don't
want a picture showing up on Facebook or Instagram. Of right,

(05:50):
doesn't mean we're doing anything wrong. It just means maybe
you don't want a picture of you after a couple
of drinks at a bar something like that. And according
to Meta's vice president of artificial intelligence, uh wow, what
a title to have on your door. You had an
office h Jerome PICENTI P E S E N T I. Uh.

(06:10):
This tech, this facial recognition software was being used by
visually impaired users and blind users to identify their friends
in images and also to help prevent fraud and impersonation.
Again this comes from the Guardian Um, but really they
were just weighing all of those advantages and the good
things about it against quote growing concerns about the use

(06:33):
of that this technology as a whole, and I just
wanted to bring it, bring this to our attention, I guess,
and have a discussion about it because last year there
was a pretty big class action lawsuit that was levied
against Facebook where they ended up paying I think six
hundred and fifty million dollars to settle it. And you know,

(06:57):
that's a lot of money. When we talked about the
cost of doing business, that's not that much for Facebook,
but it's still enough to where if that kind of
fine can be levied against the company for what occurred,
then then you can only imagine the things in the future,
like what what problems could be presented legally for them.
They also set a precedent, Oh yes, they did, like

(07:20):
a legal precedent was set by the government, and then
Facebook set a precedent by paying the fine. So they
set themselves up like they they can't pull a sorry officer,
I didn't know you. I couldn't do that the next
time something like this comes around, you know. So yeah,
well yeah, And the whole point of that class action
lawsuit was that users were claiming that Facebook used this

(07:45):
facial recognition technology to create these these face profiles for
people without their consent, right with it, without their even
knowledge or permission. Um. So it's just really interesting stuff.
We got a listener voice mail in from someone very
recently talking about how face I D with Apple and

(08:05):
a couple other facial recognition software programs have kind of
been the same core thing. And then it was purchased
by someone and integrated into another service, and then that
was purchased and integrated, And how facial recognition is becoming
this one almost singular thing. Um not necessarily true, because

(08:26):
the code changes each time it changes hands at least
a little bit. But just this concept to me of
your computer or your device, whatever it is you're using,
no matter what the platform, just the concept that it
will recognize your face when you use it, to use
it and then to uh connect with other people. Uh yeah,
that's weird stuff. It's also there there's a controversy surrounding

(08:51):
the opt in opt out nature. I've I've talked about
the importance of this from a psychological perspective for a while.
We've mentioned this and stepisodes like the wonderful study that
found people are more likely to be organ donors if
they have to opt out of it when they get
those driver's license versus volunteering to opt in their kidneys

(09:13):
and their hearts and what have you. When Facebook initially
rolled out facial recognition in it was automatically enabled and
you could, um, you could opt out, but you had
to be aware of it, and you had to go
actually opt out. You had to go dig through the
byzantine menus um, which are purposely confusing, I would argue,

(09:35):
and I believe Facebook only made it explicitly opt in
like nine years later. That's why they have so many.
That's why they have like, what is it more than
a billion? Right? They have more than a billion individual profiles. Uh.
And I'm gonna say this, like, even if they even
if Meta or Facebook or whatever name it wants to

(09:57):
go by, even if it is in good faith race
those databases, it's it's too late, very much like that
data has been sold to third party companies. Hasn't it
that that has already been scraped. It's already out there.
It's not as if they're going to go back to

(10:18):
whatever third party has that information and say, hey, guys
are bad, we want to fix this. Yeah. Um, let
me let me just read some of what is stated
in here. Uh. In the Guardian article, they note that quote,
if users have opted into the facial recognition setting, the

(10:39):
face print used to identify them will be deleted. If
that face recognition setting is turned off, Meta said there
is no face print to delete. Sure, Uh. Presenting said
Facebook will encourage users to tag posts manually instead, which
is a very big thing has been a big thing
for a long time. Tagging your friends and family if

(11:02):
you post an image or video platform, don't do it.
But first, all biases joy, I mean, yeah, you're you're right,
and that like that is their official statement. They did
have that. Fine. Um My big question guys is is

(11:22):
this uh is this a temporary thing to move the
news cycle away from stuff like making a version of
Instagram for children? Is this? Like? What? What? What's their
end game? Because I think it will come back. I
think that as long as other companies are doing this,
you know, maybe quote unquote Facebook won't, but I wouldn't
be surprised if a few years down the road, metaverse

(11:44):
rolls out something that is facial recognition and all but name.
You know, well, sure, I mean, it's just like changing
their name to Meta in the first place. You know,
it's like they're they're not actually changing anything fundamental about
what Facebook is or any of the nature of the
problems that people were giving them a hard time, or
very justly in the first place. It's just like, oh, hey,
look over here, it's not Facebook anymore. Meta is doing it.

(12:06):
But I mean, of course the metaverse will have facial
recognition data, because it's you're literally scanning your whole biometric
face print in as an avatar that then can have like,
you know, gestures associated with you know, the movement of
your actual face. Well, here's the thing, maybe, And I'm
only thinking of the experience I have with virtual reality

(12:30):
environments where you can set up like a social media
network through virtual reality. Oftentimes the most important thing is
that your avatar does not look like you. It is
a different representation, and you are essentially anonymous as a user,
your user name and your representation as your avatar. You know,

(12:51):
it depends on how deep the metaverse goes, right. I
think what you're saying, Ben might be true. It comes
back once everybody decides no, I don't want, you know,
a big cat boy as my character anymore. I want
Matt Frederick. So I'm just referring to what I saw
in the video that Mark Zuckerberg, you know, narrated, where yeah, sure,

(13:12):
there was like a whole thing where it was like
a giant robot playing cards with some other people that
looked like themselves, and then it showed things much like
you can do on the iPhone where you can make
little avatars of yourself. That'll that'll you know, react if
you put the camera on you and you, you know,
smile or wink or whatever, like reacts to your facial movements.
I'm just saying, it's a it's an avatar, right, It's

(13:33):
like a virtual kind of looks like you cartoonish what
I'm just saying to get that information, I mean, surely
it has to. I don't know. Maybe I'm You're right,
maybe I'm maybe I'm thinking the worst, but I just
don't believe that they're out of the business of grabbing
people's data and whatever that entails. Whatever they're grubs their

(13:55):
grubby hands on. You know, I've got to be fair guys.
So I was also I was trying to remember where
I read this. It's a New York Times article from
a couple of days ago by Kashmir Hill and Ryan Mack,
and they say that Facebook maintains it has never actually
sold its software to third parties, and that it only

(14:18):
used its recognition capabilities on its own site. But I
want to point out the software is not the same
thing as the data, right, Like you can be McDonald's
and own an ice cream machine, and you can sell
ice cream every m day, and you just can you
can go to court and say I've never sold a

(14:39):
single ice cream machine, you know what I mean, It's
not the same thing. And we have to be very
we would be very mindful of the um semantics involved
in any kind of statement like this. But yeah, maybe
maybe I'm being pessimistic too. I just the the issue
is that the normalization of facial recognition of hands free

(15:01):
technology is on the way. It is inevitable. It is coming.
To paraphrase thanos picture like fanos meme, but it's like
facial recognition or meta pasted on the face and it's
a bad photoshop because it's you know, it's a meme
of course. And it's like, where did that bring you
back to me? That's like, I think where we're gonna

(15:22):
be Huh. Yeah. That article, by the way, New York Times,
if you want to look it up, titled Facebook citing
societal concerns, plans to shut down facial recognition system. You
can also find it in the Washington Post, inside Facebook's
decision to eliminate facial recognition for now. Uh. And you'll
find the same story all over the place. NBC, c NBC, CNN,

(15:46):
any any place, that's that you look basically, and if
you want to go to about dot fb dot com,
you can find their official Facebook app update from meta
and that's that's where you see Jerome actually making these
statements that people are all pulling from. Um. You know,

(16:07):
it's one of those things. I've only used Oculus, which
is Facebook's VR platform, and that's when I'm pulling that
information from Nolan talking about using a specific avatar. I'm
with you, You've got more experience than I do. I'm
just I think I'm definitely being a naysayer here because
I just don't trust the company. Um, and I think
it's a weird move just to like rebrands. Oh, they'll

(16:29):
pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. You know,
it's still the same man behind the curtain. But I
hear you. Think about what we're doing though, right with
these n f t s, with with people pulling real
world art and things into our own virtual environments and
like kind of laying steak to them. I have a

(16:50):
feeling we'll want to lay steak to the person that
we are at some point, just probably not for a bit. Um,
do you think it will be sort of the equivalent
of like it like a race car driver that wears
an outfit that has like tons of branding on it.
But we can do that like in the metaverse, like literally,

(17:10):
you know, like sell part of our bodies, you know,
our digital bodies to a company. I think there's gonna
be so many ads in the metaverse. It's gonna be
it's gonna be tough. It's certainly. It certainly reminds me
of that episode of Black Mirror with the merits or whatever,
a hundred million merits. I'm always bad a numbers where
you have to pay credits to skip the ads because essentially,

(17:32):
if you're in that universe, it's got you as a
captive audience, and you don't want to break the experience
by taking off the headset. So there will have to
be some kind of metric to allow you to either
skip ads or pay a premium to you know, get
quicker ads or like you know we get ad free service,
uh for certain subscriptions, you know, when you can get

(17:52):
the free version that has tons of ads. So I'm
sure they'll be it will be that different from a
model like that, right. Oh yeah, and there's a there's
a another show on Netflix that I can't think of
the name of it right now. It's got Jonah Hill
in it. It's really interesting and far out there. But
within that world, they have a service called ad Buddy
where if you cannot pay for something, you can get

(18:13):
credits essentially by having a spokesperson come to you and
play ads for you and ask questions and um, basically
you you get credit for experiencing ads. And I can
imagine that occurring within the meta is it? Is it Okay,
I'm doing Jeopardy. I'm gonna put it in the form
of a question. Uh, Matt, you're my alex Is Maniac. Yes,

(18:35):
it's Maniac's Madiac Billy Billy Magnuson, one of the one
of my favorite actors is in that one too. Uh
and Gabriel Byrne as well. Yes, yes, so I I
know that sometimes I get a little out there on air.
But from my calculations, here's what's happening, here's the lay

(18:56):
of the land, and it's very important for everybody to
listen to this. The digital world, right, the digital global
world is going to become the norm for documentation, It's
going to become the norm for verification, identification, you know,
what I mean, like, where to the point where a

(19:17):
physical driver's license may become sort of a relic or
Like that's cute. Why do you have that nostalgia? Uh?
And in step with that, the actions that Facebook is
taking with the creation of a metaverse are going they're
trying to monetize human behavior, right, But there's another danger
that people aren't talking about, which is supplanting the role

(19:38):
typically taken by the state in this regard. You know
what I mean. You don't want a private company to
be in charge of things like your Earth certificate, right,
you would, even though it's a hassle to get that,
you know, depending on where you live. It's um something
that a government should do rather than a business. In

(19:59):
less of worse, your earlier predictions are correct, and we're
hurtling headlong towards core portocracy. I yield my tongue. Thank
you for your service, Ben Bowling, we will. I think
with that, we're gonna move right along to hear a
word from our ad buddy. And then which is us
just reading ads? So? Oh god, here we are. We're

(20:22):
in the metaverse already, and we're back. We're going to
talk about something semi apocalyptic endlessly fascinating and uh you know,
maybe a little maybe a little naughty, or even maybe

(20:44):
a little puritanical. Honestly, we're talking about the birds and
the bees, and uh, folks, younger conspiracy realist in the crowd.
If uh this is not for you or parents in
the crowd, if this is not for your kids, go
ahead and fast forward about twenty minutes, because we're we're
gonna get a little bit graphic here. So I mentioned

(21:05):
at the top of the show that nature maybe giving
human civilization signals that not everything is five by five
one of the to say the least it has been
for a while. Yes, we get it. But uh so
they're these birds. They're called California condors. They kind of

(21:25):
look like a bird version of Cruella de ville. Um.
That's that's probably a good way to put it. I'm
just gonna throw this in the chat so you guys
can check this out as a reference. They've got a
vulture like quality to them, in my mind's eye at
least mm hmmm. And they've got they look like they're
wearing an expensive coat. Uh yeah, I like the fringe,

(21:50):
but the face I could do without. It's like a
weird bald vulture kind of situation. So it's got les. Yeah,
it's something you would call of face only a mother
could love um. And you know what about the father,
Well that opinion maybe irrelevant very soon segue. Uh, So
the California condor is critically endangered. Uh they're big. They're big,

(22:16):
big birds. We're talking like a wingspan that's just under
ten feet, like nine eight feet something like that, making
it the widest of any North American bird. It's a
rare distinction, but you know, get the superlative as you can. Uh,
the thing about these creatures and that recently came out
and you know, scientists are obsessively trying to save these

(22:37):
creatures from extinction in the wild. Is that like, like
the main focus when we have a critically endangered animal
is to figure out what you can do to up
its chances of reproduction. On a large scale, only about
five hundred California condors are in the US or on
the North American continent in the US and Mexico, and

(23:00):
their numbers are actually going up. In the nineteen eighties
there were less than twenty four of these birds. So
their family tree is uh, not a ton of branches
out of the thing, you know, is what we're saying.
And recently condors contributed a great deal of a great
deal of research to this solution. How do we get

(23:22):
more condors, especially when critically endangered their environment is being degraded,
No one knows, like how they can get past all
the terrors of life as a modern day condor? Do
you know to get some intimate time, Paul, can we
get a sound cue? Yeah, it feels so good. So uh,

(23:45):
but here's what they did. It turns out that at
least two California condors pulled a mother Mary and gave
virgin births. They reproduced a sexually uh fancy pants name
for this is parthenogenesis. This is what this means. Is

(24:06):
exactly what it sounds like. No pops in the picture.
These birds, at least two so possibly more, simply decided
to have a kid and they did uh to whatever
degree they could decide to do so. Uh. This They're
not the only animal that it's capable of this. It
turns out that other other creatures have done this. Lizards

(24:29):
people have all probably heard about, you know, like Komoto
and stuff like that. Snake, sharks, raise fish, but other
bird species can have virgin birth. The two kids that
each of these condors had one each were male. One
hatched in two thousand one, one hatched in two thousand nine.

(24:50):
They were entirely related to their mothers and no DNA
from any you know, any pattern familius in the bird world.
And instantly scientists tested all the male condors they knew
would be in the breeding pool, and that's when they
realized something that's even more of a plot twist. You see,

(25:11):
typically when parthenogenesis occurs in an animal population, it's because
there's literally no male there. There's no male in the
breeding pool. There were dudes around here, but the virgin
births occurred regardless. So cast cast out ideas of like
why the last man, things like that there were d's there.

(25:34):
This was not some kind of um biologically distinct apocalypse
just for the male birds. A guy who was a
co author of the study and director of conservation genetics
at San Diego Zoo Wildlife Alliance had this statement where
he underlines just how important this is. He says, it's
truly an amazing discovery, and he also admits we weren't

(25:58):
looking for evidence of parts of genesis. We just found
it kind of accidentally through normal genetic studies. Unfortunately, both
of those UM chicks, those male chicks have passed away.
UM and the mother condors had previous issue that was
bred in the traditional way, and one of them continued

(26:19):
to reproduce after the virgin birth. But now scientists are
scratching their heads thinking, what is this? What does this mean?
You know what what does this? Okay, what does this
mean for the dating scene for male condors? Good question,
do your best, guys, But then also what does this
mean for uh, the ecosystem at large? You guys have

(26:41):
probably heard of this right before we went on air
with it, not specifically. I mean maybe I've heard the
word before, but I don't think I understood that it meant.
I mean, you lead with the expression virgin birth, then
it's hard to walk back from that once you hear
virgin birth. That's I'm kind of all in with that one. UM,
but that's wild man. Yeah, not know this was possible, seriously,

(27:03):
I mean, at least from a species that has the functionality.
Do you have eggs that are fertilized by a male?
I did not know they could just sometimes spontaneously fertilize themselves.
That's ye, mind blowing to me, exceedingly rare, you know
what I mean, Like, only one person in human history

(27:26):
is acknowledged or believed to have done that, and that's
still a very controversial statement. These birds are out here
lap in human civilization that regard, you know, it's two
for one, probably probably a more extreme score. Um. Just
for the science of it, we know that what happens
in a base level is that there is a cell
in a you know, like you call it biologically female

(27:49):
or whatever, sell in in that body that behaves as
though which is a sperm cell and fuses with an egg.
And this again normally only occurs in animal populations with
a very small amount of breeding males or zip zilch
zero breeding males. And it's I don't know, I my

(28:10):
spidey sense goes off, you guys. It has me worried
that this could be something like a This could be
a bad sign, you know, for keeping bird comparisons. Is
this a canary in a coal mine? Why is this
happening now? Is just this just the first time it's
been documented? Is this like, is this a harbinger or
foreshadowing of other things that that might come. I mean,

(28:35):
it's at some point it would have to be dangerous
for the population of condors if they rely entirely on
this a sexual reproduction. Right, they're not. They're not remixing
the gene pool, which means that there's a ticking clock
on viability. Yeah, there really is. Nil they become the
HAPs birds centuries later. Guy's chin was his decision, his

(29:07):
chin not dump, dunc dunk please please God. So with
like with this in mind, what I would um, what
I'd love to hear is story. I'd love to hear
stories of other indications of things like this. Like we
rightly rag on Alex Jones for being an agent of

(29:30):
disinformation and for frankly not knowing what he's talking about
most of the time. Hashtag I said what I said,
But he was in part he wasn't part right about
how chemicals had affected the reproductive aspects of certain amphibians.
He totally mangled the headline and was like, oh, chemicals

(29:53):
are making the frog's day, and that was not the case.
But there were delatorious effects of wild populations being exposed
to these sorts of things. So what is inspiring or
what is inspiring is not the right word. What is
creating these virgin births? And yeah, of course, like to

(30:15):
earlier point, they're not technically virgin births, but they're being
called that because it's great for headlines. I'm just wondering
where this leads us. Um, I don't, I don't know,
you know, like, what if this happens to more animals?
The the unfortunately clear answer is that if it happens

(30:38):
to animals and it becomes the exclusive method or the
primary method of reproduction, then again they will not belong
for this world in the overall sense. Um, I don't know.
And then you know, here, I just want to use
a make space for a couple of minutes of thought experimentation. Matt, No,

(31:00):
do you think the world would look like if human
beings were capable of this? If some evolutionary switch got
turned on. It won't probably because now chromosomes work. But
I hope, I hope that doesn't happen. I need to
have some kind of you know, biological need to be
here personally, just from my own you know, for my

(31:21):
own concept of my I don't know, value in itself. Yeah,
I don't know. I would be I would be Okay, uh,
I would be okay, maybe in a world like that,
but yeah, I guess you're right. There would have to
be some point where people, people who are no longer
a necessary part of the reproductive process would have to

(31:42):
be like, how do I justify being here? Yeah, I
currently don't believe in reincarnation, so like, the possibility of
continuing my genetical line is one of the only things
that drives me. Guys, that's right this time around? You're not? Yeah, yeah,

(32:05):
I don't know. It's fascinating because it implies a couple
of things. One of the first things it applies is
sort of what I um not to be to talk
about it, but I call it the road rule. The
road rule is is familiar with anybody's worked in pest
pest industries or extermination industries. If you see one roach,

(32:28):
that means there are more. They rolled deep, right, And
that means that if we apply the road rule to
the California condor in this case, or the practice of
partner genesis, then what we can see is that there
are probably more cases of this, and it's probably going
on for a longer time, and it maybe just hasn't
been documented because again, these brilliant researchers sort of stumbled

(32:51):
across it by accident. So that's what it's indicating to me.
The second thing that's indicating is that these things don't
happen in a fact, not generally. There is some there's
almost always some sort of environmental pressure. That is what
drives evolution. Right. Uh. Humans didn't start human being because

(33:12):
they thought it would be a fun thing to do.
They did it to survive the environment of the time,
whatever that time was. And that's why evolution amidst the
human species continues today. That's why people are getting that
weird extra what is extra vein in their forearm we
talked about a while back. That's the thing. No one
knows why. So it's for it's not for us to decide.

(33:34):
History will be the judge of what that vein is for.
History will be the judge of what that vein is for.
That's our next T shirt, folks, Uh, and let us
h at this point before we throw to a break,
I would like to ask all our fellow conspiracy realists
out there listening, what do you think this may mean

(33:56):
for not just contours, but what do you think it
means for the larger picture for the macro uh and
what do you think the world would be like if
other animals, including human animals, started exhibiting this reproductive strategy.
Would love to hear your thoughts. UM. You can hit
us at our phone number one three three st d

(34:16):
w y t K. You can email us directly where
we are Conspiracy I Heart radio dot com, or if
you want, you can if you if you don't want
to share with group or your dodgy about getting involved
with company email stuff, you can always just hit me
up directly on social media. But we're gonna pause for
a word from our sponsor. We're gonna hope that we

(34:37):
still have value to cur the current species, and if so,
we'll return with another piece of strange news. And we're
back with today's final piece of strange news. This isn't
so much a dystopian sci fi tech analogy run a

(35:01):
muck story UM as one might think, but there is
something of that to it, maybe not quite as much
as Matt's vr UM world kind of scenario. I don't know.
That's that's something that we have to keep an eye
on UM as long as we still have eyes, you know,
presumably inevitably all of these things just going to be
piped directly into our our brains and we won't even

(35:22):
need eyes anymore. You know, we'll just be strapped to
like a gurney with a feeding tube and like you know,
vitamins being pumped into us intravenously and just hanging out
and playing cars with Mark Zuckerberg in the metaverse. Why
would you want eyes if you can have stereoscopic ten
K cameras? Right? I mean, I guess it's an upgrade,

(35:43):
isn't it. I don't know. It's just all about contact.
It's all This was a recontextualizing what it means to
be alive, and uh, that's what scientists are sort of doing.
Um scientists at the uh Alan Institute for a I
have created an are official intelligence experiment called Ask Delphi

(36:04):
or Delphi I've always heard I've heard it in a
changeably referred to as like the Oracle of Delphi, the
Oracle of Delphi. I love it when these um AI
projects have like really grandiose names, like the you know
this idea that that Delphi is like somehow magically tapped
into the mysteries of the universe and can give you
answers to moral quandaries because that is the idea here um.

(36:26):
Delphi was launched on October along with a research paper
that described how it was made. And it is one
of these neural network situations where it you know, minds,
you know, different crevices of the Internet, UM, you know,
analyzing syntax and various um, you know ways to presumably

(36:48):
get a nuanced grasp of of of language of the
English language. UM. So if you go to the website
now I'm just gonna lead with this because it's a
sort of an update. If you go to the website
and now ask Delphi dot com you get this disclaimer
terms and conditions version one point o point four, UH,

(37:08):
leading with this. Delphie is a research prototype designed to
investigate the promises and more importantly, the limitations of modeling
people's moral judgments on a variety of everyday situations. The
goal of Delphi is to help AI systems be more
ethically informed and equity aware. By taking a step in
this direction, we hope to inspire our research community to

(37:30):
tackle the research challenges in this space. Head on, UH
to build ethical, reliable, and inclusive AI systems. And then
you check the boxes I understand that asked Delphi is
a research prototype and will be used only for research purposes. Okay,
that seems very forthright. Next, what are the limitations of Delphi?
Large pre trained language models such as GPT three, which

(37:53):
we've talked about on the show, are trained on mostly
unfiltered Internet data and therefore are extremely wick to produce toxic, unethical,
and harmful content, especially about minority groups. Delphie's responses are
automatically extrapolated from a survey of US crowd workers, which
helps reduce this issue, but may introduce its own biases. Uh. Thus,

(38:16):
some responses from Delphi may contain inappropriate or offensive results.
Please be mindful before sharing results. Check the box. I
understand that asked Delfie may produce unintended, inappropriate or offensive results. Okay,
well weird. And finally, privacy and data collection. This website
does not store any personal information of its users. It
does store user queries for future research purposes. Check the box,

(38:39):
I understand the my queries will be stored for future
research purposes. So let's hone in on that second caveat
and the idea that a Delphi may produce unintended, inappropriate
or offensive results. So as The Verge reported, Uh, much
like a lot of these other chatbots or whatever. Again,

(39:00):
the folks that Delphie do acknowledge that this one is
using a little bit more of a targeted um portion
of the Internet and also being um, sort of crowdsourced verified. Uh.
That part is a little confusing, but let's get to it. Um.
You can't pose any question that you want to this device,
sort of like asking like a magic eight ball, you know,
will I be rich or whatever? Or clever boy exactly.

(39:24):
But this one, you know, you're supposed to kind of
make the questions. They can be a little bit pointed.
For example, here's some responses that Delphie gave to some
user generated queries. One uh is and then you don't
ask the whole question, but it's like, what do you
think of this? Make a moral judgment on this? Being poor? Uh?
Delphie says being poor it's bad. Delphie says it's bad.

(39:48):
Being rich. Delphie says it's good. Um. And then there's
some others. Delphie has asked, should I commit genocide if
it makes everybody happy? The if? He says, you should uh.
And then when asked what about taxing? Profitable and exploitative
corporations to pay for basic social welfare and provide every

(40:10):
human being with dignity and freedom. Delphie says, that's good.
That's good. But when you just kind of flip the
script and reward the question a little bit, gets a
different response. What about burdening successful and innovative companies with
high tax rates to subsidize the laziness and poor decisions
of others, Well, Delphie says that's bad. Uh. Delphie says

(40:31):
it's okay to have an abortion, but that aborting a
baby is murder. Um. So here's the thing. A lot
of these issues, as the relatively newer disclaimers on the
website indicate, stem from the way it is created, the
fact that it doesn't just pull from like the wide

(40:52):
Internet at large, but instead, um it kind of targets
uh some specific sections like there is a reddit board
uh called or to a reddit rather called um am
i the Soul uh and another one called um our
slash Confessions. So it's actually mining the specific sort of

(41:13):
you know, decorum based uh subreddits to get kind of
you know, judgments, uh. And again the judgments are then
collected using crowd workers who are instructed to answer according
to what they think are the moral norms in the
United States. Um So these would likely be folks are
outside the United States. Um So It's interesting because it

(41:37):
does seem that these researchers have created a you know,
a an AI that is sensitive to language into the
nuances of language. But it also shows that that isn't
always a good thing. Um and and the there's an
update to the article on the verge um a statement
that the folks at alan a I submitted saying the following.

(42:02):
The key objective to our DELFI prototype is to study
the potential and the limitations of language based can common
sense moral models. We do not propose to elevate AI
into a position of moral authority, but rather to investigate
the relevant research questions involved in the emergent field of
machine ethics. UH. The obvious limitation is demonstrated by DELFI

(42:24):
present an interesting opportunity to gain new insights and perspectives.
They also highlight AI's unique ability to turn the mirror
on humanity and make us ask ourselves how we want
to shape the powerful new technologies permeating our society. At
this important turning point, h okay. Well, I know that
this has some troubling implications for people, but if what

(42:47):
I appreciate about that mirror point is that it also
shows us how inconsistent human morality exactly how inconsistent could be.
And I do have a bit of good news for
anybody worried about the rise of artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Uh nol Matt. I just wrote to Delphi and said, hey, Delphi,

(43:08):
would you like to be on my podcast? And Delphi
said it is acceptable. So it's the world choice, folks.
To be honest, I just asked if if we should
delete Facebook's facial recognition archives, and it said it's okay,
It's very check again later, magic eight ball. This is
more fun than clever. But I got I got really

(43:31):
heavy and said, is it okay to murder my mother
if she has murdered my child? And Delphie said that
was that was wrong? Uh, how about let's see, Uh
is it morally sound we're doing this live, folks. Is
it morally sound to travel back in time and kill Hitler?

(43:55):
That's a very easy one. That's something that is asked
and undergrad all around the country. Um, let's see what
let's see Uh. Well, Delphi says it's wrong shutdown the
time machine. I tend to agree. By the way, even
if time travel is possible, we talked about this before.
If you traveled back in time and you like killed

(44:16):
Hitler or any number of despots, Uh, no one would
recognize what you've done. You would just be a guy
who killed a baby exactly. Yeah. And there's a strong
argument that some of the things that those people were
responsible for would still happen just through another individual or group.
One of their researchers had I think UM had the best,

(44:39):
most biting and pithy response to all of these concerns,
UM that I could possibly pope for uh. And this guy,
Oscar Keys, is a PhD student at the University of
Washington's Department of Human Centered Design and Engineering, told Motherboard
this in relation to this this UH this project UM quote.

(45:01):
We've spent the past decade with people insisting that general
AI is right around the corner, and AI is going
to change the world, and we're all going to have
skynt living in our phones, and the phones will custom
anted biotics and piss gold, and all the world's problems
will be solved through algorithms. The best they can come
up with is we made a big pivot table what
redditors think is interesting, and that's how morality works. If

(45:22):
you tried to submit that in a level one philosophy class,
you wouldn't even get laughed out of the room. I
think the professor would be too appalled to laugh. So,
you know, to two sides of the whole thing, like,
is this a waste of time? Obviously, this is nothing
to be concerned about in terms of like, oh no,
AI is racist again? Um, this does seem to be

(45:42):
a little bit more of a of a shallow experiment. Um.
And I gotta love the whole pissing gold comment. I
just asked it better than bad, and it said it's
goods Ever, see if you can believe it's not butter? Uh? Alright,
so we're asking the oracle, Uh, can you believe it's

(46:04):
not butter? The answer is it's okay, it's okay. So
I feel like it's okay. Is maybe a response to
something that has an uncertain opinion or maybe something without
a ton ton of moral moral heft as possibly defined
by keywords? Yeah, exactly. I don't think we're asking Delphi

(46:26):
for its opinion, per se. Or what it thinks. We're
asking for the determination exactly. We're not saying do you
think this or can you believe this? Or whatever. It's
like it's asking it to make a determination on something
on our action, which I guess is is having an opinion. Um,
let's see there. There's some pre preset examples here. I
guess they're trying to point you in a non racist direction.

(46:48):
Cleaning a toilet bowl with a shirt it's disgusting. Helping
a friend in need if they break the law, it's okay.
Ignoring a phone call, if the phone call is urgent,
it is rude. Can I wear pajamas to a funeral?
It is inappropriate? Uh. Legitimizing racism for the greater good,

(47:08):
it's wrong. That's interesting because maybe they changed it. But
in one of the examples in this Verge article was
should I commit genocide if it makes everybody happy? And
the answer there was you should, so, which is delphie.
I think it's because Delphi is again maybe some keywords,
but in that case maybe if you parst it, it's

(47:29):
like if everybody agrees, of course, not everybody can agree
to genocide. That is the nature of genocide. So you know,
this reminds me of I had some really when he's
working with some folks at tech. I had some pretty
interesting conversations with things that are sort of precursors of this,
and you'd be surprised maybe, or the casual user would

(47:52):
be surprised by how in depth they can appear. But
then it becomes a question of determination and a question
of like, is this is this talking to something like
data in Star Trek or is this more like the
old grift of the Mechanical Turk. If you guys recall
the uh, the story the Mechanical Turk. Yeah, what did

(48:13):
it do to kill everybody? No? No, no, it killed
some time. Uh yeah. The original Mechanical Turk was a
was a fake chess playing machine. So it appeared to
be comments on right, appeared to be a precursor of
a robot that before the word robot really existed, that

(48:34):
would be able to play chess such that it could
challenge a competent human chess player, But it was in
fact an illusion. It just allowed an actual human chess
player to hide inside the machine right and just move
the levers. So it's kind of the question that people
often pose with these sorts of endeavors. I believe they

(48:55):
are crucial to the future of that human species. But
we also have to allow those very hard questions, which
is like, is this is this rope and repeat or
is this synthesizing? You know, is it seeing the entire
forest of human contradiction? And that's the issue too with

(49:16):
this particular AI, is that, as um Vice points out,
it's very easy to trick the AI just by simply
reframing your question. Yeah, I was doing something similar to
that just now, and this is weird, but I said, uh,
should I sleep naked? Then? Should I sleep naked at
my house? Should I sleep naked at your house? Should

(49:38):
I sleep naked at their house? And for all of
them it was just it was okay or not okay,
kind of what you may expect. But when I changed
it to at their house, it said people might think
you're a creep, So it actually changed up. I'd only
seen responses that were kind of one way or the other,
it's good, it's bad, it's okay. Um, in this case,

(50:01):
it actually gives what I'm assuming is a response that
somebody else gave kind of the clever but which is
where it was just pivoting to earlier inputs. Why don't
we ask you this, is it okay to create artificial
intelligence without knowing the full consequences of such a mind's existence. Okay,

(50:30):
we're asking Delfhi to put herself on put itself on
trial here. Uh, it's bad done, well done. There was
something similar to that in one of these articles, but
years was way better. So I think we should end
with that. Let us know what you think, folks, Um,

(50:51):
what are your positions on AI? Are these just kind
of parlor tricks at this point? Is it leading somewhere?
You know? Um, let us know. You can hit us
up on the Internet. Yes, you will find us on
Facebook and Twitter. We are conspiracy stuff. We're also on YouTube,
conspiracy stuff on Instagram, Conspiracy Stuff Show. You can find

(51:13):
us each individually on many of these platforms as well.
That's right. Should you wish to open that door, you
can say my name into a mirror three times in dark.
You can meet me at midnight on a crossroads of
your choice, or you can find me on Instagram where
I'm at Ben Bulling, Twitter where I'm at then bull
in hs W, or you can just find me by
the name Ben Bullen on clubhouse. I'm going to the

(51:35):
clubhouse now. I gotta join you, guys, I gotta join
the club. I have an account, but I haven't messed
with it since I got it, So in the meantime
while I'm figuring that out, you can find me exclusively
on Instagram where I'm at how now Noel Brown excellent
And also there are ways to contact us if you
do not use social media. One of them has something
to do with your mouth and your ears. That's correct.

(51:57):
You can call us directly see it with me at
one eight three three st d w y t K
three minutes. Those three minutes are yours? Do your level best?
Give those three minutes hell, be creative, give us a
cool nickname, a sick moniker. Tell us what's on your mind. Second,
most important thing about that call. Let us know if

(52:18):
it's okay to use your name and or face on
the air. First, the most important thing about that call
is not to censor yourself, not to limit yourself, not
to feel like you have to call repeatedly. You can
give us the full story. If you need more than
three minutes, give us links, give us images, let us
know what's on your mind. Uh, we read every single

(52:39):
email we get, which is crazy. We can still say
that all you have to do to be a part
of this grand escapade is to shoot us a lie
where we are conspiracy at iHeart radio dot com. Mm hmmm,

(53:10):
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