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We're the only way to be is Frank. Well everyone, and welcome to
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want. We think it's the intelligent thing to do, and we're regarding live
to tape this evening on the twenty second of June, to just give you
some context of when this program was recorded. Artificial intelligence, the seemingly ubiquitous
AI. We've heard so much about it, especially lately, but do we
really understand what it is and the ramifications its use are bound to produce.
Certainly, in a utopian world, AI would be able to cure diseases,
relieve mankind from many demeaning and dangerous jobs, and advance knowledge, science and
art beyond our wildest dreams. Bombers are already using it to increase their output,
and Paul McCartney just used artificial intelligence to remaster some older Beatles music with
excellent results. However, it also poses a great danger where the world is
ruled by machines, and man, should we even survive, would be relegated
to servitude to the almighty machine. The latter vision is shared by many and
for longer than you may have imagined. Most our listeners are familiar with the
human like rogue, the computer howl that takes over the International Space Station with
disastrous results in Stanley Kubrick's seminal nineteen sixty eight film two thousand and one,
A Space Odyssey. Nineteen ninety four's film The Terminator paints a particularly bleak picture
of the future of mankind, where machines controlled by artificial intelligence are in the
process of eliminating mankind, and that dystopian invasion goes back much further, long
before the term artificial intelligence was even conceived of Prince Lang's nineteen twenty seven science
fiction classic film Metropolis. A society whose heart is a female like machine that
is literally worshiped by the people of that society. It's certainly a topic worthy
of much debate and intelligent conversation, because once we go forward with it,
I fear there's no going back. And who better to help us discipher all
of this is Boredom's media professor and a frequent contributor. Here, always welcome,
always full of intelligent conversation, doctor Paul Levins. And Paul, thank
you once again for joining us well as my pleasure as always to be here.
And I have to say you are opening for this show is so impressive.
I would add that being Frank is not only the only way to be,
it's the only place to be all another mark that would you, Neel,
We're going to save that for our promo. We appreciate it, Paul,
and really we always appreciate you coming and bringing your expertise and your outspoke
goodness and your honesty. We know we can always count on you with that,
and now you have a lot of experience as a science fiction writer,
etc. You know, I teach you and call you the renaissance man,
but you truly are. We'll talk a little bit more about that later as
we're going to feature some of your music that you compose and play. In
addition to being a full professor at fordam a writer, reviewer, etc.
And one of the things one of your specialty is science fiction, which of
course falls within the realm of artificial intelligence. But let's break it down.
I mean, we hear it all the time, do we really know it?
What constitutes what is artificial intelligence? Is it a computer? Is it
a robot? It's a thinking thing? What would you say it actually is?
Well, it's not today, and I would saying that also in the
foreseeable future. What you read and hear and see in science fiction. So
you mentioned Terminator, great moving. You know, Arnold Schwartzenegger not a great
actor, but he did a good job him exactly. I'll be back.
So, you know the problem with artificial intelligence is when people who work in
that field come out and say they're very, very concerned it could get out
of control, it could take over the world. People who have not studied
artificial intelligence, and all they really have all those dire warnings, they actually
think that there's going to be a knock on their door and someone who looks
and sounds like Arnold Schwartzenegger is going to be there. And it's extremely important
to let everyone know that that is not what the concern about artificial intelligence is.
First of all, what is artificial intelligence? It's just a ANSI word
for computer programs that are so sophisticated they seem to be thinking on their own.
And if you add into that voice capabilities, for example, you could
probably buy a car today. This isn't my car, but you probably can
get a quart today where you're driving it and all of a sudden, whatever
else you're doing, the voice of the car will come on and say,
Hey, you know, I'm pretty low in gas. You mind going to
a gas station. I don't want to get stuck out on the road.
It's snowing outside. God knows what's going to happen to us. So that
does sound lifelife, just like Series sounds lifelis. You're saying that we're experiencing
a lot of it already today and things that immediately came to minds as serious
is a form of artificial intelligence that they kind of make it, they say,
they scientist programmers, I assume make it lifelikes. So is that to
make it more acceptable? What are your thoughts therefore? Yeah, Well,
because if you can put a human sounding voice, So let's look at Surrey
to the output of a computer program. A computer program which is able in
the first place, to be invested with all kinds of knowledge, and even
more impressively, can even learn that can gather new knowledge when it comes into
contact with information, and the output of that is a human voice. It
certainly seems like we're in talking to another intelligent being. And although it's not
the same as a parrot, and a parrot, of course, also can
have a voice that may not sound human, but it can speak human words.
But you can't really have a conversation with a parrot. But just like
we understand, of course, the parrot's voice doesn't mean the parrot is in
any way human. I think we need to understand that Siri and all of
these advanced computer programs are not intelligent in the same way we are. So
you mentioned Fritz Lang's great movie from the nineteen twenties. Another important work from
that time is are you are? The Czech writer Kpak probably pronouncing his name
wrong, but it's c apek Rossum's Universal Robots. This has become the classic
trope in robot and artificial intelligence stories. It comes back in the Terminator,
it comes back in Hell, and the basic trope is, we try to
make these artificial intelligent programs as intelligent as possible, until they become so intelligent
they don't like taking orders from us. That's perfect if I might jump in,
because when we mentioned some of these films, which are you know,
and they're interesting and educational and groundbreaking in many ways, as Stanley Kubrick's two
thousand and one was, especially when you consider the date nineteen sixty eight and
we mentioned Siri and a human like voice. He's real nice to the guys,
and his job is to take care of everybody. And then when he
and this is where our conversation can roll. Where As I said, they
get intelligence enough where intelligence seems to be associated with a certain amount of self
awareness, That intelligent things include a certain level of self awareness, and certainly
it's suggested that's al the computer becomes self aware because when the Cure Delay character
wants to turn him off. How does more have any of it? I
don't want to die and even as a concept of his own mortality, is
that possible? I mean, what a vision and in some way and again
the human like voice, I don't think so, and he says it's so,
never loses his temper, but makes it very clear. But he's going
to be the one in George, your thoughts on all that fascinates me?
Well, it's possible, and it works beautifully as a plot device in science
fiction, but in real life. What's missing with our current AI and I
would say in the foreseeable future, who knows what's going to happen, you
know, a thousand years from now. But what the how character is doing
is really combining not only artificial intelligence, but artificial life. Living organisms always
act on behalf of their own survival. And you know, if you're lucky
enough to have a dog, the dog might even be willing to sacrifice itself
on behalf of you it's master, although the dog doesn't think of you as
a master. The dog is just, you know, someone who has what
we would call a love for the human being in its life. And this
is the essence of life in many ways life wants to survive. It reproduces,
it has defense mechanisms, it has ways of gathering food, it can
sense dangers and so on. And what science fiction has done is combine that
with an advanced thinking machine. But there is no evidence what soever that any
machine wants to be alive and wants to continue being alive. And as a
matter of fact, if you look at what these AI scientists who have come
out and warn the world about AI, what they're actually yeah, that's right.
What they're saying is they're concerned that human beings will use AI to create
ever more convincing deep fakes. Human beings will use AI in social media so
that you'll think you're having a conversation where the person when it's really a clever
Russian bot, you know, spreading very carefully constructed and appealing to some people
lies. So that is not again the AI in science fiction, where these
entities are really and truly alive. That is the use of sophisticated computer programming.
And you know, let's be clear, we've been using computer programming in
ever more sophisticated ways since the first computers. Oh, perfect question, if
I might do it's a perfect segue because one of my questions that I have
listed here, what was one of the first or earliest examples of AI.
Then with that in mind, and it's been around for a while, what
would you say are some of the earliest examples of AI. Well, the
earliest examples of AI were they literally go back to the nineteen forties and the
nineteen fifties. The first in those days, computers were these vast that they
took up the size of a building at Fordham University. You know, contrast
to today you have more power on a phone. But they were a kind
of artificial intelligence because they could be programmed to do more than just simple tasks.
To get a little bit into computer programming, artificial intelligence is a series
of if such and such happens, if you are given such and such information,
then you respond appropriately. So if you want to have a security artificial
intelligence system. One of the earliest uses, and this goes back to the
nineteen Deason's got more and more developed, is you have a computer program hooked
up to a video camera, and you know, the video camera is program
to let this person, that person, and the other person into the building,
but no one else who looks any different and so the computer program will
flag somebody who's trying to go into a building or any place that they're trying
to keep secure, and then we'll let human beings know or sound an alarm.
By the way, it won't send out a deadly ray. You know,
again that science fiction. But the point is that's really the basis of
computer programming, and that's also the basis of artificial intelligence. These if then
statements, and the more sophisticated you get, the more strings of those statements
you can have. And you know, arguably we've had artificial intelligence really since
the first computer was developed in the nineteen forties. By the way, this
was thought about not in science fiction, but in a scientific way by Charles
Babbage a century earlier, who wrote about and talked about the kinds of computers
that Alan Turing and others in the late nineteen forties in the early nineteen fifties
developed. And your question, though, is a very important question because it
assumes, and I understand why it assumes, I think incorrectly, that there's
somehow a breakpoint between the computers we now use and these artificial intelligences that can
do god knows what. But there isn't. It's just a continuum of more
and more sophisticated things. And the idea that a computer on its own would
do something that it wasn't programmed to do that is just not the case.
Yes, a computer can be programmed to recognize information as relevant to what its
central core is, but that's just responding to that part of its programming.
So computers can learn, but again that's not anything like human intelligence or even
dolphin or chimpanzee intelligence. Interesting, so in other words, in a sense,
and if we combine a little bit of psychology with sci fi or to
be humanists to feel, it's not only to think, but it's also to
feel. Do you ever see a time where computers will be, through some
type of programming, be able to feel, to empathize, to feel and
express empathy, sympathy, etc. In a way that's I guess self generating.
I mean, you could program to do a voice as you could say,
as you said, even falsely put a voice into somebody's personality if you
will, you know, if you follow me, but you know, in
reality, is it possible to inject some type of computer with any type of
feelings or emotion? Is that within the realm of the doable in not only
the near future, but even a distant future. Well, here is the
point when we say human beings are feeling. Let's say someone insults us and
we feel angry. We know what that feels like, right, I mean,
you can feel the blood coursing through our veins. I don't know if
the blood is circulating any faster, you know, than when we're relaxed,
But we know what it feels like to be angry. So you could easily
today program a computer and have the computer have a list of things that the
computer would have an angry reaction to. For example, if someone asked the
computer or question, the computer answers like, well, let's say even just
Siri doesn't have to be a nameless computer, and the answer doesn't satisfy the
person who asked the question, and so the person says, you're an idiot,
Siri? What are you giving me this nonsense information? And you could
easily program Siri to then react in an angry way to say, in like,
you know, an annoyed tone of voice, who are you calling an
idiot? You know I tried to give you the best answer I could,
you know, you know, don't quote me an idiot. You're the one
who's an idiot. And so you know, to stay in the realm of
science fiction, an extraterrestrial intelligence landing on Earth and just seeing that exchange,
might think that Siri was quote really unquote angry, but I would say,
no, theory isn't really angry. She's not feeling anger. She is behaving
as if she was angry because she was problem I hear you. Okay,
you know another thing in terms of practicality again, and it goes across the
board from jobs to art, and let's talk a little bit about art.
And very interestingly, a few weeks ago, or maybe a month or two
ago, a gentleman won an international photography award with what they thought was a
photo because it was a photo competition, and he did it on purpose where
it was AI generated and he made a real distinction and he said, yes,
it is art. I did create it, but it's not a photograph.
It may look like a photograph, but technically speaking, it was not
created through the photography process. So there there's as you mentioned it, I
guess it really relies on the integrity of human beings. Then they're really the
ones were flawed to be able to use it in a positive way. Now,
one of the positive ways, and I mentioned in my intro of My
Tease, was that Paul McCartney found some old The Beatles tapes and decided to
use and you need to clean them up if you will, very effectively.
So that was on a positive sense. It was still their music, it
was still the late John Lennon, etc. But in a way that use
the skills of AI to improve it. That's on the upside. But again
as if dishonesty comes in, there isn't a downside where people could be winning
competitions under false pretense. Well, a couple of things. Let's first go
to music. What Paul McCartney said he did in a BBC interview regarding another
John Lennon demo, one of the handful that Yoko ono to Paul McCartney after
John Lennon was tragically murdered. And we know that in nineteen ninety six the
Beatles released Real Love and Free as a Bird. They basically reconstituted the Beatles.
Even in that recording, Jeff Lynn, the producer, did an enormous
amount of work on Lennon's voice to make it sound and blend in in a
beat less way with the Beatles singing live in nineteen ninety six, and as
a matter of fact, you have to go back to the nineteen forties when
there was recording and there was no manipulation whatsoever. If Frank Sinatra one of
his big songs, it was on a second album, that Old Black Magic,
that old Black Magic. If he went in and recorded that Old Black
Magic and realized after he recorded it that he had hit a bad note in
there, the only way he could have remedied that, say in nineteen forty
seven or forty eight when it was first recorded, or maybe a little earlier,
he would have had to record the whole thing all over again. By
the time the Beatles were recording in the early nineteen sixties, that wasn't necessary.
They could splice together, you know, the correct note being hit,
and put that in with the rest of the song and splice out the bad
note. By the late nineteen sixties early nineteen seventies, the number of tracks
had mushroom from four to eight to sixteen to thirty two to sixty four,
and that meant you could put in as many different parts as you wanted.
You could sing harmony to yourself without even batting an eyelash. And that was
way back then. And you know, many people, including me and probably
you you know, saw and heard and loved Peter Jackson's The Beatles Get Back
and that music sounded great. When you heard that cassette on the rooftop,
my god, I couldn't believe how good. And I remember I was thinking
to YEA, what was I half asleep when I heard the original? You
know, let it be U. You know the album that that was in
that didn't sound that good really, And sure enough, and Peter Jackson's proud
of this. He used AI to improve the sound. So what Paul McCartney
said, they are they did with this third John Lennon demo that was originally
written and the demo was recorded by John Lennon in the nineteen seventies. That
is just more of the same. And that's why again I think people are
overreacting to it. But to get to you a question about art and so
on, I'll ask you a question, and you know, see what you
think of this. What is the difference between somebody who has a vision for
what a scene should look like and that person sits down and paints the scene,
whether it's watercolor or oil. What is the real difference between that and
another person who has that same vision, but rather than manually painted, figures
out a way to use a program to get that vision up on the screen.
Now, I'll tell you that what I would argue is I get that
in the first case, that artist has a physical dexterity with a paint brush
and paint on canvas, But the idea, the vision is still the same,
And isn't the second person also artistic in a certain kind of way because
that person had that beautiful vision. You know, if the Mona Lisa was
not painted by hand by Leonardo da Vinci, but was the result of an
AI program, should we admire it less interesting? Well? You know what
it's it's a great point that you bring up, Paul, and it's one
that I use with my students, and I use the example of the great
scenic photographer Ansel Adams whose magnificent portraits of Yellowstone and El Capitan, etc.
You know, they're virtually legendary and they are original photographs, but he manipulated
them in the three digital days with what they pull burning and shading, where
he would use his hand and wand it over while he was developing the et
cetera, because he had a vision and he wanted a realization of the vision.
So it was kind of an analog. If you will, run the
digital and even today digitally, I mean, I do manipulate my photos to
a degree to see what I would like them to represent now as part of
my m O, if you will. I don't like to overdo it because
as a journalist, you know you're allowed a certain amount of cleanup. But
then again, there are ethics that are involved, and we've been talking about
that since the very beginning. There are ethics involved, particularly with journalism and
photography and journalism it should be real, not manufactured. But you certainly I've
cleaned up photos, I've cropped them. You know it's not necessary. I
don't need to see all the other crap that's around and need you to focus
on what I need you to see in the in the middle. So I
hear you there. But again I think, and that's what the fear is
is the fine line is their format for over manipulation and dishonesty, if you
will, Somewhere somewhere along the line, and I think that's what some people
are afraid of. Well, let me say there are ways around this.
For example, a lot of professors, insecure professors, in my opinion,
are all concerned and upset about chat GPT because they're students. Rely. Yeah,
right, I will sign them paper to write, and they'll just have
chat GPT write to paper. Well, first of all, chat GPT,
if somebody wants to write a paper about me, you're welcome to scour all
of my you know, articles and books I've written and have people write papers
in my name. I'm flattered. The only thing, though, that I
would think would be a good idea for once, maybe Congress will do something
useful is pass a law that says any product of chat GPT it will have
to have an irrevocable notice at the beginning that this work was created by chat
GPT. That's all, and then there won't be that problem. So I
have no problem. I don't like plagiarism or people lying any more than anyone
else does. So if there's a great work of art, don't pretend that
it's being done by a human. People can still enjoy it. Say this
was the result of AI and you know, whatever the program was and that
would be a law that I would support passing. Right, So there should
you believe there should be some regulation. And it looks like where the Internet
kind of got away from regulation. Maybe good thing, maybe bad thing,
and probably more bad than good, But discussion for another day. You'll come
back again. But they seem to be getting an earlier handle on this to
be able to prevent things from that like that from happening. So you feel
that's probably a good idea that there should be some level of regulation. Yes,
I mean, but I'll even be more specific than that. I mean,
I don't like the term regulation. Just one just one simple, straight,
straight froat thing like a watermark, an irrevocable watermark on anything that AI
produces, just in case some unethical human being decides to try to pass it
off as his or her own creation. That's all no problem. And again,
just to be clear, that is such a far cry from you know,
oh my god, this isn't really the Beatles, you know, because
now it is the Beatles. It's just the Beatles with their voices and has
to manipulate, which was always the case to some extent, by the way,
as I'm sure most of your listeners know nowadays, you know, to
get back to the Frank Sinatra thing, you could hit a hundred bad notes
in a rendition and they were automatically fixed. You know, so everyone has
perfect pitch. Yeah. Interesting, well, you know, perfect, perfect
time to take a little break here when we come back. We just celebrated
the fiftieth anniversary of the cell phone, and I want to talk about the
tremendous impact it's had on our life, not only technically but socially. And
I looked up, of course it did my research and found out the prototype
of the first cell phone get this wait, two point five pounds, It
had a battery life of twenty five minutes. We've come a long way in
those fifty years. We'll talk more about it. My very special guest is
doctor Paul Levinson, media professor at Fordham University, and our conversation is around
AI, the good, the bad, and the ugly. This is being
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being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your host,
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We stream from Hudson River Radio dot com. But you remember, you
can get us wherever and whenever you listen to your favorite podcast. We're here
with a fresh topic every week. My very special guest tonight is for a
media professor and often contributor to being frank doctor Paul Levinson. We're talking AI.
We're also going to talk about the history the fiftieth anniverse of the cell
phone. But before that, I want to make one last point. We
were discussing a little bit during the commercial break to kind of wrap up the
idea that you can be creative, but if within limits. And let me
explain that if you will. There was an image that I noticed that was
very popular on Facebook, and it was a wonderful image when to use that
word and stress that because that's going to be important. And it was of
a nice older woman and a really cute dog next to or sitting in a
diner stall and they were looking at each other and kind of left laughing and
smiling with virtually the same expression. And it was a very narrow depth of
field with what they call a Boca effect in the background, kind of out
of focus, and it was just this wonderful, wonderful picture, let's call
it. And everybody said, oh, I love this photograph. It's a
wonderful photograph, and not to be a kill joy, but I had to
repost it and say I must correct this here again. I don't want to
be a stick in the mud because it is a fun image and everybody should
enjoy it as an image. But it was not a true photograph. It
was created, and it was very creative and it was very effective. But
I think as part of our conversation, and Paul, I want you to
weigh in now I will finally wrap up my promise. You know it is
being frank and I am being Frankie. Anyway, I think it's important,
as you mentioned, to somehow clarify that, yes, it is wonderfully created.
It didn't detract from the image, but it was not a photograph.
Maybe because I have a photographed it touched a photographer, It touched a nerve.
All right. I think you answered this question this challenge yourself when you
correctly pointed out we've had photoshop for what at least twenty years. It's incredibly
easy to take things out of photographs, to crop photographs. You know,
even on your phones, you can erase a person that you don't like the
pograph. Persons never there. So the truth is ever since photoshop and I
got news for you. One of the things I often tell my students when
I'm teaching the quest which I talk about fake news. There is a I
love this. There's a photograph of Abraham Lincoln and I was taken whenever.
It was in eighteen sixty three, and he looks great. He's standing up,
you know, really very very presidential, almost like a statue like so,
you know, straight. And you know why he looks so straight.
It turns out that in real life Lincoln was always slouched. He was a
brand man. He freed the slaves. Posture, however, was not his
thing. He was always slumped over. So they were taking this photograph of
him was right during the Civil War. They wanted to inspire the troops.
He just didn't look good. Finally, Lincoln's people got desperate and they came
up with an idea that says the eighteen sixties, they took a photograph of
John calhouns and this is both this is ironic. Also, John Calhoun was
an art secessionist, a champion of slavery, a Southern senator. They took
a photograph and he was like a very upright, distinguished looking right. They
locked his head off and they put Lincoln's head on it. And that's the
photograph. You could look it up for yourself, just you know, you
know, do Abraham Lincoln John Calhoun. You'll see this photograph. They have
the original photograph of John Calhoun. It's John Calhoun's body with Lincoln's head on
it. So my point is, from the outset, photography has not been
about the literal image. You know. Andre Bazare, the film critics,
said about the photograph that rescues and image from its proper corruption and time.
That's very poetic, but it's not the whole story. The whole story is
that not only rescues an image, it also gives the photographer increasingly the capability
of altering the image. So what you're talking about that photo of the dog
and the lady in the diner, that is just a clever, you know,
on sophisticated use of a process that in one way or another goes all
the way back to Abraham Lincoln. Point well made, brilliant or let's switch
gears a little bit. I want to read you something here. On April
third, nineteen seventy three, Marty Cooper on Sixth Avenue near the Midtown Hilton
Hotel in New York City, called his rival Joe Engel, head of eight
T and t's Bell Labs, to tell him that his team at Motorola had
created a functional portable phone. Hooper recounts this story in his book Cutting the
Cord. That was the first use of the cell phone. Then in nineteen
seventy three, it took well, that was seventy three, and Motorola started
selling him in eighty three, and they had a price tag of about thirty
five hundred to four thousand dollars, so few people could have for them.
And in a recent survey, this is great, Paul, You're gonna love
this. A recent survey of more than one thousand respondents that was commissioned by
a cloud company, Sinc. Revealed that twenty three percent of those surveyed said
they couldn't last an hour without their cell phone, and nearly seventy two percent
they couldn't imagine going more than a weekend without their mobile phone. So here
we are an amazing device again, like Ai good Evil all wrapped into one.
It's an amazing tool. I just traveled through Europe with my steps on,
and his use of it to navigate us all over multiple countries was extraordinary.
Yet there are other times I'll be in a jazz club and I want
to see people I want to smack the cell phones out of their hands while
they're texting or looking at something else instead of the act that's right in front
of them. So where are we with cell phones? Well, first of
all, I think the cell phone is one of the greatest inventions in the
history of human kind, and a lot of people don't know this. The
cell phone caught on more quickly than any other medium in history. Television had
the previous claim to that title. But there are cell phones now in more
hands of people than any other medium, and that speaks to how essential the
cell phone quickly became, not only as a way to have a conversation,
which was why it was created in the first place, a conversation where you
were not tied to the umbilical cord of the telephone in your home, or
the telephone and phone booths. I have to say I have a nostalgia for
those phone booths in New York City. They smelled horrible, but you know,
they can't imagine the germ factory. I'm just thinking about touching them now,
just get it off ves. But some people lived in them, but
I mean there was something about them. But I prefer, you know,
having the liberating device that can just carry easily in my pocket and call anyone.
But calling, in many ways is the least of what people can do
with the cell phone. You mentioned GPS. That's an important, very important
development. Texting. You know, anybody probably younger than sixty these days,
spends more time texting on the phone than they do talking on the phone because
they just find it easier to express their and their views and their feelings and
their ideas and writing. By the way, so much for the critics of
media, these legion critics of media, which unfortunately you find in the academic
world. We're very well populated with these critics who were concerned in the nineteen
seventies and eighties, Oh, this is the end of literacy. You know,
we're going to find no more books anymore. People aren't reading anymore,
they're not writing anymore. Well, I guess they spoke up a little too
soon, because by the nineteen nineties and going into the two thousands, you
had people not only reading and writing, but more than ever before in human
history through their phones. Not only that you can take pictures on the phone,
you can listen to music on the phone. The phone has become an
all purpose device in which you can do so many things it almost defies imagination.
I mean, if you think about something you want to do, you
know, okay, yeah, the cell phone can do it. There's an
app for that, you know. I have an app. I like getting
as much vitamin D as possible, But you can't go out and get vitamin
D at a time usually between ten and two when the sun's rays are so
harmful you'll get sunburned even worse. So I have an app that knows where
I am and it tells me, okay, you can get vitamin D safe
Vitamin D from two pm to five thirty pm. This afternoon before two pm
is dangerous. It sounds that good. After five thirty the angle of the
sun is no good. So you know, imagine a specific thing like that,
and you can do that through the phone. So you know, I
know, I sound like a champion of every technology that we talk about,
but that's because I think technologies have improved our lives, and AI, as
you pointed out, has improved all lives. By the way, there's there's
an AI program I don't know if you saw this that doctors are now using
where they look at the AI looks at scans of the human brain, and
the AI can successfully predict whether certain brains based on their scans may at some
point in the future develop malignant tumors, and therefore they were that kind of
prediction. You keep an eye on those people and you can get you know,
to those brains as soon as possible and have a successful outcome. So
that's AI. But phones, you know, they have done an unbelievable amount
of good things for human beings. They of course can be misused. You
know, people get irritated by them again if they get addicted to them too.
They were literally just you can't have a conversation with them because they're so
buried in their phones. There's a certain psychosis associated with them. All there
is. I've seen it. Yeah, well you know, listen. I
often I have like a joke, but the safe thing implies to phones.
I often tell my students, look, I'm not going to tell you don't
fall asleep in my class, because if, if you know, you fall
asleep, it's probably because I'm too boring a lecturer. I do, basically,
yeah, I do, basically saying I don't want you to snore because
then you're drowning out. What I'm saying, but unlike other professors, I
don't tell students. I don't want to see you look at your phones in
the class. I don't want to see you look at your laptop. Hey,
you're the one is paying tuition. You want to hear what I'm saying.
Fine, you find it boring not interesting, Okay, I'm sorry I
didn't interest you. But that kind of you know, parental attitude towards students,
I think is something that's misplaced, to say the least. Well,
I'm gonna move on to I know you're excited about the release of a new
anthology, Robots Through the Ages that's coming up. I believe in July the
release, and we'll be talking about it in more detail. But let's let's
tease our listeners. What's it about and why are you so excited about it?
Well, I'm excited about it because it's a book and anthology of science
fiction stories about robots. It has one of my stories I wrote in two
thousand and nineteen, Robinson Calculator. That's one of the more recent stories in
this anthology. It also has stories by Philip K. Dick, Fritz Lieber,
Jack Williamson, Ambrose Bierce, who wrote a story Moxon's Master that several
different titles, way way back in the eighteen nineties. And I'm beyond proud
and flatterood that my story is sitting there next to these great titans of science
fiction. Where will people be able to get the book, the anthology,
Well, it's published by Blackstone Press. They're a great publisher, and they're
going full throttle with this. They're they're publishing a hardcover in paperback, in
kindall. They've already commissioned an audio book. By the way, another story
in there which I read as a kid, and I grew up loving this
writer's work. Abram Davidson wrote a story The Golem in the nineteen fifties,
and by the way, Apropo Robots in Ai, the Golem was a mid
evil legend about a rabbi in Prague who put together a bunch of clay and
invested it with a human spirit somehow, and so that was it wasn't a
robot, but it was like an artificially intelligent being. That story that Abram
Davidson, the late Abram Davidson wrote in the nineteen fifties was given a reading
by none other than Leonard Nimoy who played Spock and Star Trek, the late
Leonard Nimoy and Leonard Nimoy's reading of the Golem will be in the audio book
of Robots through the Ages, and I saw who was going to be doing
the reading from my book, my story. I'm very proud about that as
well, another eminent voice over actor. So I think this is, you
know, going to be a book that really has come out at the right
time because all of these concerns about artificial intelligence they were written about in science
fiction ten, fifteen, twenty fifty years earlier, and frankly, that's where
they belong in sience fiction, not you know, on the news. Oh
my god, you know Arnold Schwartson that is knocking at the door. They
say. Timing is everything, Paul. This is great for your book.
Of course, we always want to thank you for being being frank and you're
always intelligent conversation. You'll come back and we'll talk about Robots through the Ages
when it's ready for publication. Okay, absolutely. My pleasure is always to
talk to you. And we always think Neil Richter, our engineer, he
drives the bus, He gets us where we need to be. And course
special thanks to our listeners who take time to give us a voice in their
lives. Very important to me and to everybody here at Being Frank. Remember
we offer a fresh topic every week and you can catch us wherever and whenever
you get your favorite podcasts like Apple, Spotify, iHeartRadio, Speaker and more.
You can also check us out on the Hudson River Radio Facebook page.
Like us, please and leave us a comment too. We also that you
ask We also ask you to consider sharing Being Frank with others. A couple
of things I'd like to leave you with. This is from Dwaite D.
Eisenhower, and I think it's kind of appropriate for tonight. In the councils
of government, we must guard against the unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought,
by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise and misplaced
power exists and will persist. Some poignant words there. Well, Paul,
I didn't let you go yet. I'm glad you're still there, and I
tease you, but I also mean it that you are a renaissance man,
writer, author. I guess that's pretty much the same, but professor,
musician, composer, and you've got some music for us to end tonight.
Tell us what it is and what it's about. Please, Well, I
wrote and recorded this song in the height of the pandemic in December twenty twenty.
It's called Pictures on the Phone and it talks about how a person's true
love is an image on the phone. He can't go out and see anyone,
but actually appropope AI. I don't mind telling you that I wrote the
song. The voice is mine, but basically the instrumentation was not played by
any human being. I used an AI program it's available online, and I
basically gave it the chords, I gave it the tempo. I said,
I want to have, like, you know, a bass guitar here,
I want drums here, you know. And it did like several mixes until
I got the track I liked, and then I recorded my voice over it.
And that's what you're going to hear in Pictures on the Phone. What
were the perfect clothes for We're truly intelligent conversation. Paul always enjoyed, always
a pleasure. Thank you again. My pleasure is always Frank and of course
thanks Neil Richter or engineer once again, and to all our listeners. This
is being Frank. We're the only way to be is Frank. I'm your
host, Frank LaVona. We sure hope to see you next week. Take
care of them who get around taking pictures on the phone. I don't want
to be alone to change sad life as quiet as a stung just to flick
a drunk away. My best friends are only on the screen. True loves
can be touched. You see stone the ground makes a cushion for the ninth
perfect quarter for the sight of you. Far from the time, you'll beyond
the reach of light, dancing pixels. In Delight to Blue, you seal
up the deepest wounds and grind. Yeah, he up the bruises and the
time expired links don't do nothing for the soul. Always leave you far from
a hole at home. Really, tire restraints can't do nothing for your head.
I'll try cyberspace instead. At from the condoms window the path the future,
choose a place that cannot land. This is Hudson River Radio dot com.