1 00:00:18,760 --> 00:00:23,280 We're back with another edition of The Federalist or Radio Hour. I'm Emil Jashnski, 2 00:00:23,399 --> 00:00:26,079 culture editor here at The Federalist. As always, you can email the 3 00:00:26,120 --> 00:00:29,760 show at radio at the Federalist dot com, follow us on Twitter at fdr 4 00:00:30,000 --> 00:00:33,280 LST. Make sure to subscribe wherever your download your podcasts, and to the 5 00:00:33,320 --> 00:00:39,200 premium version of our website as well. Today we're joined by a familiar byline. 6 00:00:39,600 --> 00:00:43,280 If you read The Federalist, you will probably recognize it, especially if 7 00:00:43,280 --> 00:00:47,920 you've been following the conversation swirling around transhumanism, and that is Joe Allen, 8 00:00:48,280 --> 00:00:53,640 who is a producer an editor with the War Room and for the purposes of 9 00:00:53,920 --> 00:00:58,439 this conversation, the author of the new book Dark Eon, trans Humanism and 10 00:00:58,479 --> 00:01:02,479 the War Against Manity. Joe, thank you so much for joining us. 11 00:01:03,119 --> 00:01:06,239 Emily, thank you very much, very very good to be here. All 12 00:01:06,280 --> 00:01:10,439 right. Joe's book is out on August twenty nine, and as I've been 13 00:01:10,480 --> 00:01:15,079 skimming it in preparation for this conversation, it's fascinating and I think Joe does 14 00:01:15,120 --> 00:01:19,920 such a good job of giving historical perspective to this issue, bringing it to 15 00:01:19,920 --> 00:01:22,719 this issue. You even go back, Joe to the printing press, which 16 00:01:22,760 --> 00:01:25,760 I would too. I think that's really the right place to start, although 17 00:01:25,760 --> 00:01:30,959 of course the definition of technology is a conversation that could torture us just about 18 00:01:30,000 --> 00:01:34,640 forever. But you, your own personal background is an important part of this 19 00:01:34,719 --> 00:01:38,200 story, and wanted to see if you could just, you know, tell 20 00:01:38,319 --> 00:01:42,680 us, give us a little bit of your biography and tell us how you 21 00:01:42,760 --> 00:01:48,920 came to cover this issue for war Room and in the media. Sure, 22 00:01:49,640 --> 00:01:52,719 and you know, I think a good starting place would be a two and 23 00:01:52,719 --> 00:01:57,120 a half years ago. That's when Steve reached out to me. Steve Bannon 24 00:01:57,680 --> 00:02:01,200 reached out to me having read one of the articles I'd written for The Federalist. 25 00:02:01,760 --> 00:02:09,439 It was on transhumanism and the aspiration or digital immortality. He after going 26 00:02:09,479 --> 00:02:15,479 on the show, which was incidentally maybe the fifth skype call I had ever 27 00:02:15,520 --> 00:02:20,000 had in my life. After going on the show, he offered to take 28 00:02:20,080 --> 00:02:27,400 me on full time, and it was a way for me to voice the 29 00:02:27,400 --> 00:02:35,240 concerns I have about the rapidly encroaching technological system and it's negative effects on human 30 00:02:35,280 --> 00:02:40,879 beings and human society. So that really goes back to my late teens, 31 00:02:42,719 --> 00:02:49,599 and that has continued without really any pause. Or diminishment until now you could 32 00:02:49,639 --> 00:02:53,599 say that I begin that all with a bias, and you would be correct. 33 00:02:54,080 --> 00:02:59,919 But that doesn't mean that these concerns that I'm voicing, and that many 34 00:03:00,199 --> 00:03:07,199 many others are voicing, yourself included, are somehow invalid. I believe that 35 00:03:07,840 --> 00:03:16,479 the human being is being rapidly transformed psychologically, sociologically, and to some extent 36 00:03:17,159 --> 00:03:23,240 biologically. Should the ambitions of these people come to fruition, these people being 37 00:03:23,719 --> 00:03:32,639 futurists, transhumanists, post humanists, the technological overlords who in many ways have 38 00:03:34,560 --> 00:03:40,840 taken control in our organizing our lives, that I think that the rapid transformation 39 00:03:40,919 --> 00:03:47,800 of humanity will proceed apace, perhaps accelerate, and we will have lost everything 40 00:03:47,840 --> 00:03:53,639 that is of value. It will either be augmented beyond recognition or it will 41 00:03:53,639 --> 00:04:00,400 simply disappear. Now I don't really I do not think that any futurist has 42 00:04:00,439 --> 00:04:08,479 predicted what is to come with one hundred percent accuracy or eighty percent accuracy. 43 00:04:09,280 --> 00:04:15,479 But I do think that by looking at the predictions of people half a century 44 00:04:15,520 --> 00:04:19,639 ago, even a century, a century and a half ago, and you 45 00:04:19,680 --> 00:04:24,160 can see that there is a kind of if you take an average so to 46 00:04:24,160 --> 00:04:31,959 speak of those visions, the broad generic contours of their visions, that really 47 00:04:32,040 --> 00:04:38,639 has come to pass. And so if the visions put forward by the likes 48 00:04:38,759 --> 00:04:46,160 of Ray Kurzweil or Been Gertzel or Hugo to Garis or even someone like Elon 49 00:04:46,240 --> 00:04:53,800 Musk or Serge Brand Larry Cage, if these visions are anything like they describe, 50 00:04:53,839 --> 00:04:57,600 and of course they're all contradictory, they're different people with different outlooks. 51 00:04:58,240 --> 00:05:03,920 If it's anything like they describe, we will not be recognizably human. It 52 00:05:03,959 --> 00:05:11,439 doesn't it doesn't have to be a world of robots and cybe words. In 53 00:05:11,480 --> 00:05:16,600 the same way that people complained that TV was making kids dumber in the sixties 54 00:05:16,600 --> 00:05:21,160 and seventies, which it did. In the same way that old codgers like 55 00:05:21,240 --> 00:05:27,759 myself complain that the Internet is making people dumber, which it is. We 56 00:05:27,879 --> 00:05:32,879 could end up not in the matrix but in idiocracy. Both are nightmare worlds, 57 00:05:33,480 --> 00:05:41,879 and both to some approximation of both is possible. Joe, you actually 58 00:05:41,879 --> 00:05:44,519 worked in the music industry. Correct me if I'm wrong, but you you 59 00:05:44,600 --> 00:05:49,720 worked in the in the music industry before coming into the media space. Yeah, 60 00:05:49,759 --> 00:05:53,480 you know. Oftentimes people tease me for saying, yeah, I was 61 00:05:53,519 --> 00:05:58,959 in the music business, which is code for I was a rigor, which 62 00:05:59,040 --> 00:06:03,199 is code for I was a roadie. So it's a little different, but 63 00:06:03,560 --> 00:06:09,519 yeah, and I would say that that experience, while I absolutely loved my 64 00:06:09,720 --> 00:06:15,000 job. My job was to hang various systems, lighting systems, audio systems, 65 00:06:15,519 --> 00:06:20,279 the most interesting being automated system systems where you have robotics moving trust and 66 00:06:20,399 --> 00:06:28,199 various other objects around on stage. That job itself from the most basic labor 67 00:06:28,319 --> 00:06:31,040 of climbing up in the steel. You know, you're walking beams at one 68 00:06:31,120 --> 00:06:35,240 hundred feet in the air, you're climbing on stages or one hundred and twenty 69 00:06:35,240 --> 00:06:40,720 feet up and you know, all that was just fantastic on a physical level. 70 00:06:40,800 --> 00:06:45,279 And the people that I worked with were fantastic, many of them ex 71 00:06:45,319 --> 00:06:51,000 cons and ne'er do wells, some of them dead now, but wonderful people 72 00:06:51,240 --> 00:06:58,480 nonetheless, and maybe wonderful people because of that and the further I got into 73 00:06:58,480 --> 00:07:00,720 it, You know, you learn a lot about roague engineering, You learn 74 00:07:00,759 --> 00:07:04,560 a lot about the technologies that you're hanging. You spend a lot of time 75 00:07:04,600 --> 00:07:10,759 around people who are nerding out on entertainment technology in general. Be it a 76 00:07:10,879 --> 00:07:15,959 light show or a laser show, or video content or automated trust moves. 77 00:07:15,680 --> 00:07:20,600 All of that was fantastic. In the mathematics behind it are fascinating, fairly 78 00:07:20,639 --> 00:07:28,000 simple, but you see the way in which machinery and technology really do mirror 79 00:07:28,120 --> 00:07:32,959 the numbers. Underneath the math is a language, a magical language. But 80 00:07:33,879 --> 00:07:40,000 at the same time, what I also saw was that this complex, this 81 00:07:40,240 --> 00:07:45,480 entertainment complex, which bleeds over into the political, into the religious, into 82 00:07:45,480 --> 00:07:51,279 the corporate, that it also seems to be having a profoundly negative effect on 83 00:07:53,079 --> 00:07:58,800 human human nature. To the extent that you value individuality, to the extending 84 00:07:58,800 --> 00:08:05,600 you value critical thinking, and to the extent that you think you suspect that 85 00:08:05,000 --> 00:08:11,920 the West and maybe the entire developed world is descending into decadence in various forms. 86 00:08:13,480 --> 00:08:18,079 All of that was readily apparent in the concert touring industry, you know, 87 00:08:18,279 --> 00:08:22,160 all over the country and in a lot of different places in the world, 88 00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:28,360 Japan, Europe, Indonesia, Thailand, all over the place, and 89 00:08:28,759 --> 00:08:33,679 you know Abu Dhabi, and you see in all of these places how this 90 00:08:33,840 --> 00:08:39,080 hypnotic machine and the way in which it can just basically take control, sees 91 00:08:39,159 --> 00:08:46,440 control of the mind and sees and people begin to you know, move even 92 00:08:46,480 --> 00:08:50,840 physically in ways that resemble insects or you know, maybe even like cells in 93 00:08:50,879 --> 00:08:56,840 a multicellular organism. And you can say, well, if you put good 94 00:08:56,840 --> 00:09:01,279 content in there, then that's a good thing. But bad content in there, 95 00:09:01,279 --> 00:09:05,200 it's a bad thing. But I would say that, okay, fine, 96 00:09:05,919 --> 00:09:09,600 but you also are creating something new. You're creating something that is limited 97 00:09:09,639 --> 00:09:15,639 in its range. It's creating a type of person in that moment, and 98 00:09:15,679 --> 00:09:18,759 the type of person in that moment, that sort of passive observer who is 99 00:09:18,840 --> 00:09:24,080 hypnotized and having their mind taken over for that short period of time, that 100 00:09:24,320 --> 00:09:30,639 that moment lingers into their lives. And that's one piece of a much larger 101 00:09:31,759 --> 00:09:35,639 system of technological progress that is again, I think, leading us into a 102 00:09:35,679 --> 00:09:41,039 realm in which human beings are profoundly different in our behavior, in our way 103 00:09:41,080 --> 00:09:46,879 of thinking. And maybe people like that, So some people obviously do. 104 00:09:46,399 --> 00:09:52,080 For those who don't, they better figure out really fast how they're going to 105 00:09:52,240 --> 00:09:56,600 avoid it, and especially how they are going to teach their children to avoid 106 00:09:56,639 --> 00:10:07,000 it or at least mitigate it. Thanks for listening to the Federalist. This 107 00:10:07,080 --> 00:10:11,159 is Sarah Carter Fox News investigative columnist. Folks, can you believe that My 108 00:10:11,240 --> 00:10:16,120 Pillow is celebrating their twentieth anniversary. You will be living your best life with 109 00:10:16,159 --> 00:10:20,799 my Pillow. 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There you'll find not only this amazing offer, but also 118 00:10:56,480 --> 00:11:01,279 deep discounts on all My Pillow products, including the My Pillow slippers, pet 119 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:05,000 beds like Peek and Mazie are sleeping on right now, blankets, and so 120 00:11:05,080 --> 00:11:11,000 much more. Get the best night sleep my pillow dot Com backslash Carter and 121 00:11:11,159 --> 00:11:16,039 use promo code Carter SR t R or call one eight hundred and six eight 122 00:11:16,080 --> 00:11:24,639 five seven two two one my pillow dot com backslash Carter promo code Carter YO. 123 00:11:24,720 --> 00:11:26,200 I want to get into some specifics, because that's another part of this 124 00:11:26,240 --> 00:11:33,360 book that I found particularly interesting. You write that humanity two point zero will 125 00:11:33,399 --> 00:11:37,440 be transnational, transcultural, transgender, transracial, trend species, and at its 126 00:11:37,440 --> 00:11:41,919 extreme edge, transhuman, the final merger of man with the machine. You 127 00:11:41,960 --> 00:11:46,360 continue, they want to drill holes in our skulls, insert hairth and wires, 128 00:11:46,360 --> 00:11:50,240 and bring our souls into full communion with artificial intelligence. They want to 129 00:11:50,279 --> 00:11:52,759 reach into our selves and rewrite our DNA. They want to spawn GMO babies 130 00:11:52,799 --> 00:11:58,360 from artificial wounds. They want to mutate our species and guide evolution according to 131 00:11:58,399 --> 00:12:01,759 their will and whim. They want to create entirely new spaces of plants, 132 00:12:01,840 --> 00:12:05,360 animals, and fungi. They want to control the weather itself. They're ready 133 00:12:05,399 --> 00:12:07,399 to create heaven on Earth even it looks like even if it looks like hell 134 00:12:07,639 --> 00:12:11,200 to the to most of us, that last line is really profound. And 135 00:12:11,279 --> 00:12:20,720 some of these specifics do you feel like they're ripped from dystopian Dystopian conspiratorial sci 136 00:12:20,759 --> 00:12:26,200 fi novel, but they are tethered to very real world examples. So, 137 00:12:26,480 --> 00:12:30,840 Joe, what should be what is on the horizon? What should people be 138 00:12:30,879 --> 00:12:33,039 looking at? That is one of those examples of something that is extreme and 139 00:12:33,159 --> 00:12:39,679 dystopian but is actually imminent. What are the ones that people should be paying 140 00:12:39,679 --> 00:12:43,080 attention to that are are sort of most disturbing and most imminent on the horizon. 141 00:12:45,559 --> 00:12:48,960 You know, I think the subtlety of this transformation maybe disturbs me the 142 00:12:50,000 --> 00:12:54,639 most. You know, much of what we think of in regards to transhumanism, 143 00:12:54,759 --> 00:12:58,759 be it artificial intelligence, brain, computer interfaces, robotics, genetic and 144 00:13:00,120 --> 00:13:05,080 nearing. Most of that floods into our conscious by way of media. It's 145 00:13:05,120 --> 00:13:11,519 either through science fiction or more recently, through the news media, which is 146 00:13:13,039 --> 00:13:18,639 arguably one quarter fiction or whatever proportion you want to put on it. And 147 00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:24,720 so it begins with an imagination of the future. But underneath that our actual 148 00:13:26,000 --> 00:13:31,159 viable technologies that are being used as we speak. And artificial intelligence, let's 149 00:13:31,200 --> 00:13:37,960 just take that for one moment. Artificial intelligence has advanced in leaps and bounds 150 00:13:37,000 --> 00:13:41,279 over the last two years, especially the last five. It's possible that we've 151 00:13:41,279 --> 00:13:46,759 reached a cap it won't go any farther. But I don't think at this 152 00:13:46,799 --> 00:13:50,720 point in history it's a very good idea to bank on nothing is going to 153 00:13:50,799 --> 00:13:52,879 change, and I don't think it's a good idea to bank on none of 154 00:13:52,919 --> 00:13:58,360 these changes are going to affect me. So with artificial intelligence, there are 155 00:13:58,399 --> 00:14:01,919 so many different systems. I go into a lot of them, but maybe 156 00:14:03,159 --> 00:14:07,480 the most striking right now because of its the attention being put on it, 157 00:14:07,720 --> 00:14:13,000 and also because of the implications of its normalization. The large Language Model, 158 00:14:13,200 --> 00:14:20,480 the chat bot chat GPT barred from Google and all of the other chat bots, 159 00:14:20,000 --> 00:14:24,919 because what you're talking about is a system that's able to replicate one of 160 00:14:24,960 --> 00:14:28,720 the most vital elements of what it is to be human, and that's the 161 00:14:28,759 --> 00:14:33,919 spoken word or the written word. Language, and that's the root of much 162 00:14:33,000 --> 00:14:39,240 of what we assemble in our minds and our souls as meaning. And you 163 00:14:39,320 --> 00:14:43,799 have a system like GPT that has trained on human output. In essence, 164 00:14:43,799 --> 00:14:48,360 they say that's trained on all of human writing, it's not exactly that. 165 00:14:48,679 --> 00:14:54,879 It's a lot of human writing, and by way of statistical averages, it's 166 00:14:54,960 --> 00:15:01,360 able to produce novel responses. Two questions, some with GPT four. It's 167 00:15:01,600 --> 00:15:07,360 rated, it's like eighty percent accuracy, and it may not be esthetically pleasing 168 00:15:07,519 --> 00:15:11,399 oftentimes, and the poetry is total crap, but one has to remember that 169 00:15:11,600 --> 00:15:16,200 ninety nine point nine percent of human poetry is crap, so you know, 170 00:15:16,480 --> 00:15:22,080 it doesn't really have a very high bar to get over there. And so 171 00:15:22,200 --> 00:15:28,200 you have this system that is designed for human machine interaction, human machine relationships, 172 00:15:28,799 --> 00:15:35,279 and the proposed uses beyond just the kind of side show that we have 173 00:15:35,440 --> 00:15:43,200 now. The proposed uses are to employ GPT technology and other chatbots in education. 174 00:15:43,480 --> 00:15:48,879 So one on one instruction with students, the students from the earliest of 175 00:15:48,919 --> 00:15:54,600 age, the earliest age would basically learn that artificial intelligence has most of the 176 00:15:54,639 --> 00:16:00,320 answers and oftentimes the best answers. It will become an instructor, it will 177 00:16:00,360 --> 00:16:07,360 become the mentor, it will become trusted companion, and the student's mind will 178 00:16:07,440 --> 00:16:12,360 be in many ways shaped by the production of algorithms. People would say, 179 00:16:12,360 --> 00:16:15,759 oh, well, isn't the printing press like that? Yeah, and the 180 00:16:15,759 --> 00:16:22,159 printing press started all sorts of social conflict, wars, total upheaval, and 181 00:16:22,159 --> 00:16:26,279 this, I think threatens to do much the same, if not worse it 182 00:16:26,440 --> 00:16:33,960 certainly threatens to be a dramatic transition in human thinking, in the ways human 183 00:16:33,000 --> 00:16:40,120 beings think, and how we direct our attention, how we orient ourselves, 184 00:16:40,200 --> 00:16:45,440 our communities, and ultimately how our civilizations are oriented. And that's just one 185 00:16:45,519 --> 00:16:52,120 that one tiny node in this vast system that is really hurtling towards some kind 186 00:16:52,200 --> 00:16:59,159 of dramatically different future. But one thing that I've certainly it has struck me 187 00:17:00,120 --> 00:17:06,599 deeply is how different these various thinkers foresee the future. That it's not like 188 00:17:06,920 --> 00:17:12,160 transhumanism is any one thing. They are very there's a wide variety of transhumanist 189 00:17:12,200 --> 00:17:18,119 visions for the future, and each person tends to focus on a certain set 190 00:17:18,160 --> 00:17:22,640 of technologies as being the next big thing that will change everything. Taken in 191 00:17:22,680 --> 00:17:26,519 the aggregate, and especially when you look at the various tech corporations who are 192 00:17:26,559 --> 00:17:32,519 producing and pushing these technologies. Taken in the aggregate, it is some kind 193 00:17:32,519 --> 00:17:37,000 of dramatic transformission. It is the inflection point that they're claiming whatever direction it 194 00:17:37,079 --> 00:17:41,839 goes. So, yeah, that's one artificial intelligence, the chatbot. But 195 00:17:41,000 --> 00:17:47,319 you know, artificial intelligence is being used in genetic engineering and predicting and modeling 196 00:17:47,359 --> 00:17:52,839 protein and predicting how mutations will play out in genetic engineering. It's being used 197 00:17:52,119 --> 00:17:57,240 for psychological profiling. It's being used for social network analysis. It's being used 198 00:17:57,279 --> 00:18:03,680 to predict social behavior and political behavior and economic behavior. It's being used in 199 00:18:03,839 --> 00:18:07,160 warfare. It's been used for surveillance in warfare, surveillance of the population. 200 00:18:07,319 --> 00:18:15,720 Artificial intelligence has really changed really everything about how intelligence is gathered, and it 201 00:18:15,839 --> 00:18:19,720 also changes the scope how much data can be analyzed. It's not perfect, 202 00:18:21,160 --> 00:18:23,680 and people would argue that, oh, it's not even artificial intelligence, and 203 00:18:23,839 --> 00:18:29,680 it's not by the old meaning of you know, the artificial intelligence originally meaning 204 00:18:29,839 --> 00:18:33,440 a machine that can think like a human in full. But it is, 205 00:18:33,759 --> 00:18:40,839 whether you call it artificial intelligence or simply computer algorithms. It has changed the 206 00:18:40,880 --> 00:18:45,119 way in which people at the upper echelons of our society operate, and it's 207 00:18:45,240 --> 00:18:51,319 changed the way that those of us in the middle or lower socioeconomic realms and 208 00:18:52,240 --> 00:18:56,279 realms of influence at the way our lives play out. Then, my biggest 209 00:18:56,279 --> 00:19:00,480 fear really is that children, as they become enambered these various visions of future 210 00:19:00,960 --> 00:19:04,240 children, will not gain the source of techniques, They will not master the 211 00:19:04,279 --> 00:19:11,240 tools that have kept human civilization afloat for all these millennia, and those will 212 00:19:11,279 --> 00:19:15,240 be gradually lost, and even if they don't need them anymore, that is 213 00:19:15,279 --> 00:19:19,720 a profound tragedy. But the real tragedy would be if we become hyperdependent in 214 00:19:19,759 --> 00:19:26,960 the coming decades on machines for everything from our thinking to our survival skills, 215 00:19:26,359 --> 00:19:33,839 and those systems fail, then you're talking about a real tragedy. Can you 216 00:19:33,880 --> 00:19:38,480 tell us? Actually speaking of artificial intelligence, one good segue from that is 217 00:19:38,559 --> 00:19:42,680 neuralink, the very specific example of neurallink, and obviously Elon Musk is behind 218 00:19:42,680 --> 00:19:49,640 neurallink. He signed the letter of tech industry insiders experts that were calling for 219 00:19:49,680 --> 00:19:56,000 a pause in large language Model AI, the sort of open source LMS, 220 00:19:56,559 --> 00:19:59,880 and he's sort of turned a corner and said, you know, we need 221 00:20:00,079 --> 00:20:03,720 to be more skeptical. But he still sees this as an inevitability, meaning 222 00:20:04,039 --> 00:20:07,680 to develop it, it has to be benevolent. And I think, Joe, 223 00:20:07,759 --> 00:20:11,880 your perspective on that is that it's naive. But I also wanted to 224 00:20:11,920 --> 00:20:17,319 ask you specifically what that means for neuralink, and maybe you could just tell 225 00:20:17,440 --> 00:20:22,720 us the story of neurallink, and the story of Musk's sort of backing of 226 00:20:22,759 --> 00:20:26,000 Neuralink, his plans for neuralink, and maybe tell us a little bit of 227 00:20:26,119 --> 00:20:30,039 what that explains about what's going on behind the scenes in Silicon Valley right now, 228 00:20:30,480 --> 00:20:34,240 well naive at best, in cynical at worst. It should be remembered 229 00:20:34,279 --> 00:20:40,160 that about a month after he signed that open letter, he announced the launch 230 00:20:40,319 --> 00:20:45,759 of x AI, and so he's jumping into the game, however reluctantly. 231 00:20:45,440 --> 00:20:49,720 It is in fact reluctant. So you know, there's two elements to that. 232 00:20:49,759 --> 00:20:55,880 One is artificial intelligence itself and the mythos surrounding it and it's dangers, 233 00:20:56,359 --> 00:21:00,599 and the other the brain computer interface or human machine symbiosis, the sydeboard, 234 00:21:02,039 --> 00:21:07,359 the dream of connecting human beings two machines in a direct way. So Musk 235 00:21:07,240 --> 00:21:15,559 he provided seed funding for open ai in twenty fifteen. That same year he 236 00:21:15,680 --> 00:21:22,039 bought Neuralink, and that was really its leap forward. Neuralink itself is a 237 00:21:22,079 --> 00:21:26,599 brain computer interface. It's right now. The present design has changed a bit. 238 00:21:26,640 --> 00:21:32,640 This is probably already outdated. It is changing quickly because it's developing quickly. 239 00:21:32,680 --> 00:21:36,000 But basically the way it works, the way it works, and the 240 00:21:36,480 --> 00:21:40,880 the cat and monkeys that they've been planted at. The device into is it's 241 00:21:40,880 --> 00:21:47,279 a quarter sized plug with a processor and Wi Fi connection and one twenty four 242 00:21:47,400 --> 00:21:52,799 hair thin wires that snake down into the gray matter below. Then the plug 243 00:21:52,839 --> 00:21:57,960 of skull is cut out and the processor is put in, the scalp is 244 00:21:59,000 --> 00:22:04,119 sewn up. And what it the way it works is the device itself, 245 00:22:04,200 --> 00:22:11,960 the little wires, the electrodes are detecting brain at neurological activity, brain activity. 246 00:22:11,640 --> 00:22:17,079 And so in the case of Pager, the famous monkey who learned to 247 00:22:17,119 --> 00:22:21,839 play mind pong, to play Pong, the arcade game Pong, with only 248 00:22:22,039 --> 00:22:26,839 his brain, the way it worked it was it was two neural links in 249 00:22:26,119 --> 00:22:33,799 his motor the right and left motor cortex, very called correctly, and he 250 00:22:33,839 --> 00:22:37,240 would play the game with a joystick and he would have a little too with 251 00:22:37,279 --> 00:22:41,599 Banana Smoothie rewarding him when he got it right. So he mastered the game 252 00:22:41,640 --> 00:22:48,279 first with the joystick and lured by Banana Smoothie, and they would record the 253 00:22:48,319 --> 00:22:56,720 correlation between his eye movements and his muscular movements and all that, and they 254 00:22:56,720 --> 00:23:00,799 would once they had it basically a kind of digital twin his brain activity and 255 00:23:00,920 --> 00:23:06,839 how that would translate into the muscular movements with the joystick. They unplugged the 256 00:23:06,920 --> 00:23:10,480 joystick, so he would still be moving the joystick with his hand, and 257 00:23:10,759 --> 00:23:12,920 yet he would just be playing the game with his brain. And he was 258 00:23:12,960 --> 00:23:15,960 doing very well. If you watched the video, you see it's very good 259 00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:21,559 at it. And then eventually they take the joystick away and he just sits 260 00:23:21,559 --> 00:23:26,240 there holding his little smoothie tube, sucking on smoothie and playing mind pong, 261 00:23:26,799 --> 00:23:30,039 and that it was a dramatic proof of concept. They've also done it in 262 00:23:30,039 --> 00:23:34,279 pigs, and they've worked with a lot of different animals mice. They're right 263 00:23:34,319 --> 00:23:40,200 now the FBA's approved neurallyink for human trials. But there are two other major 264 00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:45,759 brain computer interface companies who are already in planting their chips in human brains. 265 00:23:45,200 --> 00:23:49,359 One of them is black Rock Neurotech, backed by Peter Teel, also Bill 266 00:23:49,440 --> 00:23:56,119 Gates and Jeff Bezos, and I'm sorry, I'm so sorry. Black Rock 267 00:23:56,200 --> 00:24:03,039 Neurotech is Peter Teel's baby, among other investors. Syncron is the second company, 268 00:24:03,240 --> 00:24:11,759 and Syncron is backed by an investment organization involving Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos. 269 00:24:11,839 --> 00:24:14,720 So these are big players. That are making this happen, and both 270 00:24:14,720 --> 00:24:18,160 of those have been implanted. Black Rock Neurotech just passed the fifty patient mark. 271 00:24:18,920 --> 00:24:22,200 So what it is is an electro to rate lays on the brain does 272 00:24:22,240 --> 00:24:26,480 all the same thing neurolink does, and it allows people who are locked in 273 00:24:26,640 --> 00:24:32,680 to use computers to type to even the most dramatic. I actually wrote about 274 00:24:32,680 --> 00:24:36,079 this for the Federalists. A guy who simply would was able to think words, 275 00:24:36,119 --> 00:24:41,039 they would They found ways to allow him to correlate his brain activity of 276 00:24:41,079 --> 00:24:47,319 certain words to appear on screen as those words, and then syncron. I 277 00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:52,640 believe that's cursor based. But the first tweets in December twenty twenty one, 278 00:24:52,400 --> 00:24:56,640 the first tweet sent with a brain computer interface that was syncron. So the 279 00:24:56,680 --> 00:25:02,160 mechanisms are different, but again it just shows that it can be done. 280 00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:07,279 So Musk wants that to be a commercial product product. He says it will 281 00:25:07,319 --> 00:25:11,160 be basically like a smart watch for your brain or a smart phone for your 282 00:25:11,160 --> 00:25:18,319 brain. And the reasoning behind it. The reasoning he puts forward is that 283 00:25:18,839 --> 00:25:26,079 as artificial intelligence becomes more and more adept, it will become very dangerous and 284 00:25:26,279 --> 00:25:33,400 there will be very little There will be few ways to communicate with it, 285 00:25:33,440 --> 00:25:37,720 to understand what it's doing, to control it, and so Neuralink is put 286 00:25:37,759 --> 00:25:42,599 forward as a way to harness that technology, to harness artificial intelligence as it 287 00:25:42,640 --> 00:25:48,480 begins to surpass human capabilities. A lot of his ideas come from a gentleman, 288 00:25:49,240 --> 00:25:55,640 Nick Bostrom, an Oxford philosopher, a transhumanist, co founder of the 289 00:25:55,640 --> 00:26:00,559 World Transhumanist Association, and author of the book super Intelligence, which still to 290 00:26:00,640 --> 00:26:07,119 this day stands as probably the best primmer on all the possible ways that artificial 291 00:26:07,119 --> 00:26:12,440 intelligence could go wrong. And must read that around the time that he founded 292 00:26:12,480 --> 00:26:19,319 Neuralink and open Ai, and so in essence, emily what I see musk. 293 00:26:19,519 --> 00:26:26,119 However, however disingenuous he may be, however cynical he may be, 294 00:26:26,400 --> 00:26:30,920 or however genuine he may be in his concerns. Either way, whatever his 295 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:36,559 motivation, he is at the center of driving these dreams forward. So now 296 00:26:36,599 --> 00:26:41,319 he has the company Xai and xai their goal is to create an artificial general 297 00:26:41,359 --> 00:26:45,880 intelligence as opposed to the narrow systems that can only do a single task. 298 00:26:47,839 --> 00:26:53,079 And the artificial general intelligence that he's creating he hopes will be a foil to 299 00:26:53,400 --> 00:27:00,440 the so called woke systems like chat, GPT or you know any His goal 300 00:27:00,759 --> 00:27:03,480 is stated goal of him and his developers. They want to create an AI 301 00:27:03,599 --> 00:27:10,960 that is curious about the universe and that will want to keep human beings around 302 00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:15,559 because human beings are entertaining, and its curiosity will be satisfied by our endless 303 00:27:15,720 --> 00:27:22,400 novelties and dramas. I don't know what the possibilities of any of this really 304 00:27:22,440 --> 00:27:29,240 are. What I do know is that some approximation of those possibilities are being 305 00:27:29,279 --> 00:27:36,680 realized right now, and the culture is shifting in the direction of focusing attention 306 00:27:36,759 --> 00:27:42,480 on these technologies as ways of alleviating human suffering, of ways of creating joy 307 00:27:42,519 --> 00:27:48,759 in human beings, but maybe most importantly, ways of creating meaning for human 308 00:27:48,799 --> 00:27:55,000 beings. So, even though I think Musk is a really as a characters, 309 00:27:55,720 --> 00:28:00,839 I like him better than any of the other tech oligarchs. He's much 310 00:28:00,839 --> 00:28:03,839 more of an open transhumanist than any of the others, with the exception of 311 00:28:03,839 --> 00:28:10,480 maybe Sam Altman. And he's also he stands a very good chance of creating 312 00:28:10,519 --> 00:28:15,799 some of the viable technologies that take us into a transhuman era where some portion 313 00:28:15,920 --> 00:28:21,559 of humanity. I don't think it's everybody, but some portion of humanity really 314 00:28:21,640 --> 00:28:26,079 does become something very different than we are right now, which is already very 315 00:28:26,160 --> 00:28:33,720 different than our ancestors were one hundred years ago. The Watchdot on Wall Street 316 00:28:33,759 --> 00:28:38,200 podcast with Chris Markowski Every day Chris helps unpack the connection between politics and the 317 00:28:38,240 --> 00:28:42,160 economy and how it affects your wallet. As America just become an insurance company 318 00:28:42,200 --> 00:28:48,440 with a military Fitch has officially downgraded America's global credit rating. What's our government's 319 00:28:48,480 --> 00:28:52,519 plan? Eliminate tax breaks for your pensions in four one case and replace them 320 00:28:52,519 --> 00:28:56,599 with government retirement accounts. Whether it's happening in DC or down on Wall Street, 321 00:28:56,640 --> 00:28:59,480 it's affecting you financially. Be informed. Check out the Watchdot on Wall 322 00:28:59,480 --> 00:29:02,920 Street pod asked with Chris Markowski on Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your 323 00:29:02,920 --> 00:29:11,480 podcasts. You know we've been talking about e La Muski mentioned Peter Teel. 324 00:29:11,640 --> 00:29:12,920 I think it's really important to note, as you do. I have the 325 00:29:14,000 --> 00:29:18,559 quote pulled up right here. But contrary to many right wing critiques, transhumanism 326 00:29:18,599 --> 00:29:21,680 is not purely globalist, leftist, or secularist frame of mind. All the 327 00:29:21,720 --> 00:29:26,640 relevant cutting edge technologies from genetic engineering to advance robotics to artificial intelligence are embraced 328 00:29:26,680 --> 00:29:30,200 by a number of nationalists, libertarians, religious fundamentalists, gender normies, protonatalists, 329 00:29:30,200 --> 00:29:34,680 and proponents of human center technology that's in quotes. After all, cybergs 330 00:29:34,680 --> 00:29:41,119 will vote and spend just as readily as legacy humans. And what I think 331 00:29:41,200 --> 00:29:44,680 that gets at is similar to what you were just talking about, that some 332 00:29:44,759 --> 00:29:51,519 of these technologies are being pitched understandably so as tech that will alleviate human suffering. 333 00:29:51,559 --> 00:29:56,079 If we think about some medical technologies, they're very obvious examples from the 334 00:29:56,160 --> 00:30:03,279 last five hundred years plus of where we have alleviated humans suffering by innovation and 335 00:30:03,359 --> 00:30:10,160 technological advancement. What we consider technological advancement is of course not always progress and 336 00:30:10,319 --> 00:30:12,920 is not, of course literally always advancement. And I think that's where people 337 00:30:12,920 --> 00:30:17,920 get sort of really vulnerable to this because there's truth in some of the arguments 338 00:30:18,119 --> 00:30:22,559 that there will be benefits as there have been benefits in the past, and 339 00:30:22,119 --> 00:30:29,319 you know there there is some stuff to be discovered out there medically, what 340 00:30:29,440 --> 00:30:33,240 have you that that may indeed be helpful. So my question Joe is basically, 341 00:30:33,359 --> 00:30:38,319 as we think through these things for the averaging in Federals radio, our 342 00:30:38,319 --> 00:30:42,680 listener, federal reader, curious person, who's who's in the same boat as 343 00:30:42,759 --> 00:30:47,559 us, concerned about this tech? How do we think about the ethical guidelines 344 00:30:47,680 --> 00:30:52,079 you know, between what is the what's the printing press, and what's you 345 00:30:52,079 --> 00:30:56,720 know? How to deal with the inevitabilities of the potential new printing press of 346 00:30:57,240 --> 00:31:02,400 looking at a looking at a type technology mRNA is something you read a lot 347 00:31:02,440 --> 00:31:06,119 about and saying this crosses the line, this will be used for bad, 348 00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:10,279 this will commodify us. How do we start thinking about where those lines are 349 00:31:10,359 --> 00:31:15,440 drawn. It's a very tough question and one that I, unfortunately I don't 350 00:31:15,480 --> 00:31:19,960 believe that I answer very well in my book, in my coverage, in 351 00:31:21,079 --> 00:31:27,640 my life. It's there's so many unknowns. But one thing I think we 352 00:31:27,759 --> 00:31:34,039 can count on is that most of those decisions in America, assuming that American 353 00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:40,279 freedom is preserved, most of those ethical decisions will be determined by us, 354 00:31:40,839 --> 00:31:48,119 by consumers. The technologies will thrive or fail depending on how we decide to 355 00:31:48,279 --> 00:31:55,400 adopt them and whether we decide to adopt them. Again. None of this, 356 00:31:55,519 --> 00:31:57,319 I don't think will be universal. It's very When people talk about the 357 00:31:57,359 --> 00:32:02,119 future, they oftentimes talk about it is if everything changes for everybody all at 358 00:32:02,160 --> 00:32:07,960 once, and that's not how I see it. I think that these technological 359 00:32:08,039 --> 00:32:12,559 transformations, if you look at Silicon Valley right now, it's very very, 360 00:32:12,680 --> 00:32:17,640 very different than Kansas, and that sort of dynamic will continue going forward. 361 00:32:19,359 --> 00:32:23,079 But as as they've become more and more widespread, such as like the smartphone, 362 00:32:23,160 --> 00:32:30,599 the smartphone adoption has been incredible and I think has been incredibly devastating to 363 00:32:30,720 --> 00:32:36,240 so many different elements of human psychology and human society. So going forward, 364 00:32:36,720 --> 00:32:39,480 looking at let's you know again, you know, we talked about an array 365 00:32:39,599 --> 00:32:45,720 of technologies, whether there's artificial intelligence, robotics, brain computer interfaces, or 366 00:32:45,000 --> 00:32:51,359 genetic engineering or any of the others, transportation technologies, communication technologies, any 367 00:32:51,400 --> 00:32:54,640 of the others. The first thing that you want to ask, I believe, 368 00:32:55,039 --> 00:33:00,240 is for who is benefiting from this? I getting more out of it 369 00:33:00,440 --> 00:33:06,359 than they are. So when you use Google, you're getting quick answers to 370 00:33:06,480 --> 00:33:09,880 your questions. Are you getting more out of that interaction than Google is By 371 00:33:09,960 --> 00:33:19,680 beginning to create a dossier on your psychological state and your desires and your behaviors, 372 00:33:20,400 --> 00:33:22,440 are you getting out more out of it than they are? And in 373 00:33:22,519 --> 00:33:28,200 the aggregate, are we getting more out of it than they are? That's 374 00:33:28,240 --> 00:33:31,640 the first question to ask. The second is a long term what does this 375 00:33:31,839 --> 00:33:37,960 look like? So if we replace human beings with robots in any scenario, 376 00:33:38,160 --> 00:33:42,960 whether it's in manufacturing, whether it's an agriculture, which is you know, 377 00:33:43,039 --> 00:33:49,640 it's a role that's lagging, but more and more autonomous vehicles are being used, 378 00:33:49,799 --> 00:33:52,200 or massive vehicles are being used for agriculture, and farming has all but 379 00:33:52,319 --> 00:33:59,359 disappeared as an American cultural norm. Long term? Is that better for us? 380 00:33:59,559 --> 00:34:02,799 Can we count on that to be sustainable? When you get into the 381 00:34:02,839 --> 00:34:08,119 more exotic technologies like brain computer interfaces, you've got multiple levels on that. 382 00:34:08,679 --> 00:34:12,920 The smartphone, I think is the first step. Elon Musk talks about this 383 00:34:13,039 --> 00:34:16,639 all the time. We are already cyborgs. I think he's absolutely correct. 384 00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:21,599 I mean, a cyborg is just a cybernetic organism. It's a it's a 385 00:34:22,239 --> 00:34:27,039 it's a way to blur the lines between the human and the machine, and 386 00:34:27,159 --> 00:34:31,480 that is absolutely happening. Human beings basically create digital twins, as it's been 387 00:34:31,559 --> 00:34:35,679 described as like a snail shell, or if you were to look at the 388 00:34:35,840 --> 00:34:37,920 entire digital environment, it would be like a coral reef. You know, 389 00:34:38,039 --> 00:34:45,559 we are creating these these external realities that there are, our personalities, our 390 00:34:45,639 --> 00:34:51,480 desires, our artistic productions, all of that. It's a kind of another 391 00:34:51,639 --> 00:34:55,880 layer sitting over the top of society and over the planet. What does that 392 00:34:57,079 --> 00:35:00,639 look like in fifty years if we continue on like this, to what extent 393 00:35:00,760 --> 00:35:05,760 will that become the primary focus, the primary reality? To what extent do 394 00:35:05,840 --> 00:35:08,920 we lose what is most valuable in the human being by giving up face to 395 00:35:09,039 --> 00:35:15,639 face interactions, by giving up direct contact with nature, by giving up some 396 00:35:15,800 --> 00:35:19,920 of our worst elements. I mean, one of the arguments that is made 397 00:35:20,320 --> 00:35:25,159 a lot by these the more aggressive technocrats is that racism, sexism, homophobia, 398 00:35:25,199 --> 00:35:30,760 and transphobia will be eliminated through these technologies. There's various paths to that. 399 00:35:31,719 --> 00:35:35,679 Do we give those up? Are those you know? To some extent, 400 00:35:36,239 --> 00:35:42,119 is you know in group preference, or is heteronormativity, or is any 401 00:35:42,159 --> 00:35:46,239 of these things that are now the ultimate sins of the liberal order? Do 402 00:35:46,360 --> 00:35:51,000 we just completely give them up and become gray in our minds? These are 403 00:35:51,039 --> 00:35:55,159 all questions that going forward, and especially people with children going forward, they 404 00:35:55,199 --> 00:36:00,280 will have to ask and answer for themselves, And it's not that the situations 405 00:36:00,280 --> 00:36:05,559 are so various and the technologies there's such a wide array of them. There 406 00:36:05,719 --> 00:36:09,360 is no one size fits all answer. But I really think it's important that 407 00:36:09,440 --> 00:36:15,480 people are realistic about the ups and downsides of these technologies. And there's not 408 00:36:15,599 --> 00:36:20,519 a single technology that I've written about that doesn't have some kind of upside. 409 00:36:20,800 --> 00:36:23,239 If it didn't have an upside, nobody would have thought to make it, 410 00:36:23,480 --> 00:36:30,239 and nobody would ever consider purchasing it, or no one would ever consider imposing 411 00:36:30,320 --> 00:36:36,599 it on their subjects, such in places like China or post COVID America. 412 00:36:37,679 --> 00:36:42,239 But yeah, I think that the big thing is to be very realistic about 413 00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:45,679 the ups and downsides and also do your best just simply imagine what it means 414 00:36:46,199 --> 00:36:52,800 to incorporate some sort of exotic alien being into your life. Now, you 415 00:36:53,239 --> 00:36:58,480 might say that's a paranoid way of looking at it, and that's because you 416 00:36:58,639 --> 00:37:01,800 asked somewhat paranoid person for the answer. But that's that's the answer that I 417 00:37:01,880 --> 00:37:07,400 would give a great point from Joe Allen, who's the author of Dark Eon, 418 00:37:07,559 --> 00:37:14,119 Transhumanism and the War against Humanity. Joe, we really appreciate you coming 419 00:37:14,159 --> 00:37:17,000 on the show and congrats on the book. Thank you very much, Emily. 420 00:37:17,519 --> 00:37:22,519 Of course you have been listening to another edition of The Federalist Radio Hour. 421 00:37:22,599 --> 00:37:24,400 I'm Emily de Shensky, culture editor here at The Federalist. We'll be 422 00:37:24,480 --> 00:37:29,039 back soon with more. Until then, be the lovers of freedom and anxious 423 00:37:29,079 --> 00:37:43,079 for the fray. Heard the fame, the reason, and then it faded away.