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This is Later with Lee Matthews the
Lee Matthews Podcast More of what You here

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Weekday Afternoon's on the Drive. Joshua
Topolsky is a journalist, a podcaster,

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a TV personality, technologist, sometimes
executive. Also created vox Media and found

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in the Verge. Somewhat of an
expert when it comes to artificial intelligence,

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and he talks all about that in
his podcast What Future Dissecting Our Insane Reality.

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Joshua Topolski, Welcome to the program. Thanks for having me, glad

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to be here. Well, let's
start with artificial intelligence. Is it coming

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for us all? Well, I
mean that's what the companies that are going

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to make a lot of money off
of AI want you to believe, because

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it's good for their the hype machine
and the pr machine that drives their businesses.

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To frankly to even if you're scared
of it, it makes it seem

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like they might have a solution for
you. I think AI is a transformative

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technology. I think it is a
huge deal when it comes to how we

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create things and how we see things. Look, it's one of those tools

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that in the hands of the wrong
people, it's going to be really destructive

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and in the hands of smart,
creative, motivated people. It's going to

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be unbelievably you know, explosively wonderful, right, And so it's really a

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question of I don't think we're at
a place where, you know, suddenly

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we're gonna turn AI on and it's
gonna go full terminator on us, because

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that we're so far far away from
anything that could be remotely like that.

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But these companies, they do have
an interest in making you feel like they

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might have built the technology, and
so you should maybe you know, give

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them a little a little room in
your mind. One of the things that

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I always keep in the back of
my mind is is if there's a new

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technology somehow the sex industry is going
to utilize it, well, that's fun

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you know, it's funny because these
a lot of these AI of businesses are

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being built in a mass market way, right. And so if you look

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at what Facebook has done and Instagram
with Instagram and what you know, sort

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of all the social networks have done
is try to very much to regulate out

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anything that feels like, you know, very sexy or you know, pornographic.

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And right now, I mean,
if you want to go and use

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there are tools that people are working
on, but they're not widespread, they're

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not easily accessible. There certainly will
be plenty of AI porn tools out there,

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um, you know, but but
there are actually a lot of these

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big companies which are working really hard
to limit how graphic you've meet with them,

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like mid Journey, which does it's
a big one that does a lot

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of the creation of the images.
I had the CEO on on my podcast,

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and you know there they work are
working really hard to make sure you

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can't have nudity, right, which
is you know, interesting angles. So

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it's a lot of the big guys
are working in the opposite direction of that,

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which is, yeah, the internet
is a new one. Joshua Tapulski

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is a creator vox Media and the
Verges podcast is What the Future where he

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looks into these types of things.
And I remember stories my grandfather told when

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he was a lad in the early
twentieth century and they got their first telephone

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in the house and his then grandfather, Oh, that's it. That's the

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end of private series. We know
it. It seems like every generation has

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had that fear of the of the
new technology. Yeah, well, I

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mean it's it's we are in the
early stages of this. I mean the

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we're in the adjustment period, no
question. Now, the telephone was less

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invasive than the internet, right yeah, oh yeah, right, yeah,

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the internet. It can learn a
lot more about you and can see a

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lot more about what you're doing in
general. But yeah, we're gonna we're

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gonna learn to live with this stuff
over time. I think there's a big

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question of how we approach it as
human beings, right, Like, you're

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not on the phone. You At
some point people were excited about the phone.

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They were calling people all the time, they were picking it up.

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There were it was NonStop. But
then they were like, hey, you

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know what, I actually want to
have dinner. I'm not going to answer

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the phone if it rings, right. You know, even with cell phones,

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we used to all respond to every
notification that we got. Now,

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when you get it sometimes you're like, yeah, I'll check that later.

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Yeah, there's there's got to be
a there's a big learning curve that we're

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in right now. But yeah,
I don't think it's going to destroy our

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privacy or our lives, uh completely, but we have to learn to use

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this stuff smarter. Yeah. Well, and along the lines of you know,

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the what is all, what is
in everybody's in the palm of everybody's

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hand. The world is in the
palm of everybody's hand. These days,

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I'm finding myself Okay, I'm gonna
put this damn thing down for an hour

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and not look at anything and maybe
read a book. Yeah yeah, Oh.

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I think there's a whole wave coming
of people uh tuning out. I

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mean I've even done it over the
last few years. I think the pandemic

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u you know, everybody was stuck
at home, we were all online,

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and now it's like, I don't
want to look at the internet. When

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I'm looking at the Internet, I'm
kind of like, oh man, this

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is a bummer. I need to
get out of my house. Yeah.

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So I think there's a whole there's
a whole evolution that's happening. I could

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see a generation that comes after us
who goes, oh, that's kind that's

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kind of lame to use phones,
or you know, like they could they

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could easily could easily see a culture
shift where it becomes uncool. Just like

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all your parents are on Facebook.
You don't want to be on Facebook,

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right, that's like the social network
for old people. Basically to kids who

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are on TikTok, and so what's
the next wave look like? We don't

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know yet, Beth. What he
talks about in this podcast what future Joshua

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to Pulski is here. He's also
an AI expert. Um, what are

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some of the what are some of
the biggest benefits of the technology that is

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to come, not just AI but
anything else. Yeah, well, I

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mean, look, the biggest benefit
to technology thus far has been the amount

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of information we're able to get it
to access. Things, were able to

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learn about people, were able to
find communities, were able to be a

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part of, right, Like,
there's just been this huge explosion of like

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access for people. Um, the
problem is you've got a lot of noise

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there, right, a lot of
lies, a lot of you know,

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uh, misinformation in the midst of
that. So so I think, like

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when you look at AI, for
instance, there's a there's a there's a

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version of AI, there's a there's
a tool that it might create where it

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sifts through some of that information for
you. If we can make that stuff

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really smart, if we can make
it as smart as all these companies claim,

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maybe we start to see more reliable
information in our social media feeds.

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Because AI is doing the work of
sorting through that stuff. Right, that's

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one place where you could imagine that
serving some good, right, not just

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just you know, not just turning
on skynet, but actually helping us,

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you know, learn about our world
better. So I think there's tools coming

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like that. I think for creators, people who create things, AI is

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going to be incredibly powerful. I
think when you look at where gaming is

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going, you know, which is
a huge industry, the things that AI

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will help like video game creators or
filmmakers create is going to be just beyond

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anything we've seen. You know.
It's like dreaming in real time basically.

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So there's a there's a ton of
good stuff coming, you know, we

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just got to learn, you know, how to avoid or how to use

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that stuff, how to avoid the
bad stuff, and how to use the

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tools to help us sort through it. Well. And it sounds to me

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like it's also very very optimistic for
the medical industry. Oh I mean yeah,

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Well, look, I mean anything
where you can get a computer level

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brain helping you to you know,
diagnose or assist with surgeries or you know,

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probably the future do them itself when
you trained it on. You know,

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we don't want like a Tesla autopilot
situation. It's got to be better

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than that. But yeah, there's
the huge advancements coming. And by the

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way, the explosion of smartphone technology
alone has led to massive advancements in medical

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technology. You know, even what
like an Apple Watch can do is able

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to monitor your health at a level
that has never before in the history of

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human beings been attainable by an average
person. So there's yeah, there's a

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ton of that stuff. To come. Leave me alone. I know,

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I need to get up and walk
around. Stop bothering me about it.

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One future, Yeah, what future
is the name of the podcast. Joshua

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Tapulski is the host and you can
hear it on the iHeartRadio appen everywhere you

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get podcasts. And I thank you
for joining us. Thank you so much

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this fun. Thanks for listening to
Later with Lee Matthews, the Lee Matthews

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Podcast, and remember to listen to
The Drive Live weekday afternoons from five to

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seven and iHeartMedia Presentation