“Now for the first time in history it is technically possible to annihilate privacy.” — Noah Yuval Hariri
CHAPTERS 00:00:00 Intro 00:01:59 Discussion of AI’s Evolution 00:02:53 Defining AI 00:05:26 AI as Alien Intelligence 00:08:11 Information Technology and Democracy 00:10:00 The Role of Information in Society 00:11:27 Information Flow in Different Political Systems 00:12:49 Historical Context of Democracy 00:15:16 Crisis of Democracy 00:15:55 Information vs. Truth 00:17:46 Fiction vs. Truth in Information 00:20:07 Impact of Information Technology 00:21:42 Algorithms and Decision-Making 00:23:30 The Rise of Algorithms and User Engagement 00:24:15 Unintended Consequences of Social Media 00:25:52 The Role of Social Media in Ethnic Cleansing 00:29:23 AI’s Evolution Compared to Biological Evolution 00:35:29 Ad Break 00:35:33 The Complexity of AI Decision-Making 00:40:22 Cultural Implications of AI-Generated Content 00:43:53 The Distinction Between Intelligence and Consciousness 00:46:10 Commercial Incentives for AI Mimicking Emotions 00:47:30 The Power of Intimacy in AI 00:48:40 Vulnerability of Humanity 00:49:14 Regulating AI Interactions 00:49:56 Ethical Considerations of AI Consciousness 00:50:43 AI as Legal Persons in the U.S. 00:53:01 AI in Authoritarian vs. Democratic Systems 00:54:10 Surveillance Capabilities of AI 00:55:37 AI and the Enforcement of Laws 00:57:47 Potential for AI to Manipulate Politics 00:58:07 Dictators’ Fear of AI 01:01:49 Ad Break 01:03:23 Impact of AI on Upcoming Elections 01:05:17 Democracy’s Fragility 01:07:56 Cooperation vs. Distrust in AI Regulation 01:12:10 Paradox of Trust in AI 01:13:18 The Nature of Progress 01:13:53 Choosing the Right Problems 01:14:17 Historical Lessons from Agriculture 01:15:18 Organic vs. Inorganic Systems 01:17:20 Delusions as Destruction 01:20:07 Building Trust in Society 01:20:28 Role of Institutions in Trust 01:23:46 Historical Anecdote: Cholera Epidemic 01:25:45 The Deep State Analogy 01:27:27 Information Diet and Clarity 01:28:34 Meditation and Mindfulness 01:32:32 Different Paths to Clarity 01:34:11 The Essence of Truth
Surveillance Capabilities of AI
imagine every day KGB headquarters is flooded with 200 million paper reports now to be useful for anything somebody needs to read and analyze them they can’t do it they don’t have the analysts therefore even in the Soviet Union some level of privacy was still the default for most people uh for technical reasons now for the first time in history it is technically possible to annihilate privacy a totalitarian regime today doesn’t need millions of human agents if he wants to follow everybody around you have the smartphones and cameras and drones and microphones everywhere and you don’t need millions of human analysts to analyze this o of information you have ai and this is already beginning to happen this is not a future prediction in many places around the world you begin to see the formation of this totalitarian surveillance regime it’s happening in my country in Israel Israel is building this kind of surveillance regime in the occupied Palestinian territories to follow everybody around all the time and also in our region in Iran since the Islamic revolution in 1979 they had the hijab laws which says that every woman when she goes out walking or even driving in her private car she must wear the hijab the head scarve and until today the regime had difficulty AI and the Enforcement of Laws enforcing the hijab laws because they didn’t have you know millions of police officers that you can place on every street a police officer if a woman drives without a headscarf immediately she’s arrested and fine or whatever in the last few years they switched to relying on an AI system Iran Is Now crisscrossed by uh surveillance cameras with facial recognition software which recognizes automatically if in the car that just passed by the camera the facial recognition software can identify that this is a woman not a man and she’s not wearing the hijab and identify her identity find her phone number and within half a second they send her an SMS message saying you broke the hijab LW your car is impounded your car is confiscated stop the car and by the side of the world this is daily occurrence today in Teran and isan and other parts of Iran and uh this is based on AI and it’s not like the there is a report that go to the court and some human judge goes over the data and decides what to do the AI like immediately decides okay the car is confiscated and this can happen in more and more places around around the world like even in the US you know for for if you think about all the debate about abortion without going into the debate itself the people who think rightly or wrongly but they think that abortion is murder they have a very strong incentive to build a similar surveillance system for American women you know to stop murder mhm like you can build this surveillance system that can identify yesterday you were pregnant today you are not what happened in between so it’s not just a problem you know for Iran or for the Palestinians or the Chinese this this can come to the US as well and to prevent them from crossing state lines things like that yeah yeah like okay you went from I don’t know Texas to California you you were Potential for AI to Manipulate Politics pregnant you came back you’re not pregnant what happened in California so it feels like AI is this incredible tool to consolidate power uh around authoritarian regimes but it also has its its pitfalls too like it’s not the perfect tool it also frightens the autocrats uh because the one thing that Dictators’ Fear of AI human dictators always feared most was not a democratic Revolution the one thing they feared most is a powerful subordinate that they can’t control and that might manipulate them or take power from them if you can look at the Roman Empire not a single Roman Emperor was ever toppled by a democratic Revolution never happened but many of them uh lost their life or their power to a subordinate you know a general that rebelled against them a provisional Governor their brother their wife that took power from them this is the greatest fear of every dictator also today and so if you think about AI so if you’re a human dictator and you now give this immense power to an AI system where is the guarantee that this system will not turn against you and either eliminate you or just turn you into a puppet I mean what we also know about dictators it’s relatively easy to manipulate these people if you can whisper in their ear because they are very paranoid and the easiest people to manipulate are the paranoid people and we have our AI Corporation in the United States that can deploy billions of dollars towards Bots and whatever else to you know create that paranoia or you really just need to hack one person you know to to for an AI to take power in the US very complicated it’s such a distributed system like okay the AI can learn to manipulate the president but it also needs to manipulate the Senators and the Congress members and the state Governors and the Supreme Court like what would the AI do with the Senate phili Buster it’s difficult but if you want to take power in a dictatorship you just need to learn to manipulate a single person so uh the dictators are not all happy about the AIS and we already beginning to see it for instance with chatbots that they are very concerned because you know you can design a chatbot which will be completely loyal to the regime but once you release it to the internet to start interacting with people in real life it changes I mean remember what we talked earlier that AI is defined by the ability to learn and change by itself so even if you if Putin creates like the the Putin’s chatbot that always says that Putin is great and Putin is right and Russia is great and so forth but then you release it to the real world it starts observing things in the real world for instance it notices that you know in Russia the invasion of Ukraine is officially not a war it’s called a special military operation and if you say that it’s a war you go to prison for up to I think 3 years or something like that because it’s not a war it’s a special military operation now what do you do if a very intelligent chatbot That You released you know connects the dot and says no it’s not a special military operation it’s a war would you send a chat Bo to prison what what can you do and you know democracies of course also have a problem with chatbot saying things we don’t like they can be racist they can be homophobic whatever but the thing about democracy it has a relatively wide margin of Tolerance even for anti-democratic speech dictatorships have zero margin for dissenting views so they have a much bigger problem with how to control these unpredictable chant points