Speaker 1: My friend Thomas Fry, and together we are going to
Speaker 1: talk about the future. Now, Thomas, you sent me a
Speaker 1: column today and immediately I was like, can I go
Speaker 1: ahead and sign up for that digital copy of my life?
Speaker 1: I mean, can we go ahead and jump on that?
Speaker 1: Can I be a beta tester for the digital copy
Speaker 1: of myself and my life? Let's start there. First of all,
Speaker 1: good to see you again, my friend.
Speaker 2: Great to see you too. Yes, I think we're going
Speaker 2: to have this very soon.
Speaker 3: You can be wearing smart glasses and record everything that
Speaker 3: you see, and it can also record everything that you hear,
Speaker 3: and then with a few censors, you'll be able to
Speaker 3: record everything that you taste, touch and feel, and you
Speaker 3: can record your entire life experience in and so then
Speaker 3: you have a digital copy of you that you start
Speaker 3: in your personal cloud.
Speaker 1: So how do you This is what? Because I got
Speaker 1: to tell you this would be a game changer in
Speaker 1: marital arguments, right, because most marital arguments are because someone
Speaker 1: heard something differently than the other person thought they said it.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 1: So can you imagine being in a in a firm
Speaker 1: discussion with your loved one and saying things like no,
Speaker 1: that's not what I said and you're like, digital Mandy,
Speaker 1: what did I say? And then with digital made like
Speaker 1: in my world, Thomas, digital Mandy would shoot out a
Speaker 1: hologram of me actually saying whatever it was that I said,
Speaker 1: and therefore boom, I win the argument. What I'm afraid Actually,
Speaker 1: what happened is that I find out I'm wrong way
Speaker 1: more than I think I'm right. Right, So, I mean,
Speaker 1: how far away from from we are some of this stuff.
Speaker 1: We've already got the glasses, but being able to sort
Speaker 1: of instantly data mine what's been recorded. That is the
Speaker 1: challenging part, Isn't.
Speaker 2: It that that'll be part of it too.
Speaker 3: I mean, once we record all of this and put
Speaker 3: it into some personal cloud, then it's whatever interface would
Speaker 3: come up with to interact.
Speaker 2: With that cloud, right.
Speaker 3: I mean the article talks about having a voice in
Speaker 3: your ear, Well, what if it's just instantly you were recalling.
Speaker 2: It because you have that mind to mind interface? That
Speaker 2: would be much more efficient mind.
Speaker 1: To mind interface. Sounds like something has to be implanted
Speaker 1: in my brain and I'm not sure I'm ready for
Speaker 1: that yet. So Thomas Ai, at this point, I'm now
Speaker 1: looking at AI programs that can look at the longer
Speaker 1: version of the YouTube show that I do with my
Speaker 1: friend deb Flora and pull out snippets so I can
Speaker 1: have them ready to go for social media. And one
Speaker 1: of the most shocking things that one of these programs
Speaker 1: that I'm looking at, it can go through and it says,
Speaker 1: let me pick the best parts of your show. And
Speaker 1: you're thinking to yourself, how does say I know if
Speaker 1: it's if it's the best? The reality is it does
Speaker 1: a pretty dang good job. So that now we're talking
Speaker 1: about being able to think about whether something is a
Speaker 1: great point, or it's funny or what makes I mean,
Speaker 1: the speed with which this stuff happened is amazing, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, it's crazy what's happening now.
Speaker 3: This is ramping up at exponential pace, and so this
Speaker 3: is giving us all these extra capabilities that we never
Speaker 3: knew existed in the past. So the things that we
Speaker 3: can accomplish in a single day are just going to
Speaker 3: ramp up dramatically. That's what I find really interesting because
Speaker 3: a lot of these things we never even knew we
Speaker 3: could possibly consider in the past, and suddenly they're at
Speaker 3: our doorstep ready to be unfolded.
Speaker 1: You know, there's a lot of fear right now, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about this in terms of AI replacing jobs
Speaker 1: and AI replacing people, and I think that some industries.
Speaker 1: I actually have a video from mister Beast, who is
Speaker 1: by far the most popular YouTuber in the world, and
Speaker 1: in it he says AI is going to be the
Speaker 1: death of the YouTube creator because people are no longer
Speaker 1: going to have to fund the kind of videos that
Speaker 1: he's been funding and they can just use AI to
Speaker 1: create them. But to your point, aren't we looking sort
Speaker 1: of shortsightedly about what we don't know is going to
Speaker 1: happen next? Does that make sense the way I just asked.
Speaker 3: That, Yeah, you're What you're really asking is do we
Speaker 3: still need the human and the loop?
Speaker 2: Yeah? And how can we do things impersonally?
Speaker 3: I think we'll for a long time still know the
Speaker 3: difference if humans are involved or if they're not involved. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I think we might cross that Turing test threshold
Speaker 3: and not too distant future. But things are changing just
Speaker 3: at and ask stronomical pace right now, and so it's
Speaker 3: really tough keeping up and all this shifting and changing
Speaker 3: going on.
Speaker 1: Well, let's go from this conversation about digital clones into
Speaker 1: your three rules of exponential capabilities, because I feel like
Speaker 1: that's kind of what we're talking about, right, Like this
Speaker 1: is taking us in a direction that we can't wrap
Speaker 1: our head around. Just like I'm guessing that people who
Speaker 1: lived on a farm in the agricultural period of the
Speaker 1: world before the Industrial Revolution probably had no way of
Speaker 1: understanding what the Industrial Revolution was going to unleash on society.
Speaker 1: Are we kind of at that same precipice?
Speaker 3: Now, Yeah, I'll just mention one other thing about digital clones.
Speaker 2: First.
Speaker 3: The digital clones will enable you to they will go
Speaker 3: on a date for you to test out the other person.
Speaker 3: So two digital clones will be testing out dating.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, that is not a thing. We're not
Speaker 1: going to do that. I'm not I show up for
Speaker 1: coffee and someone's digital clone shows up, I am leaving
Speaker 1: right away. I'm like, nope, no.
Speaker 2: Not like that.
Speaker 3: But they can date each other online and you don't
Speaker 3: have to be involved at all. So they date a
Speaker 3: thousand different people and pick the very best two or
Speaker 3: three that you should test on personally.
Speaker 1: Oh wait, so it's all in the in the digital world.
Speaker 1: They're all dating, right, What can I get a report
Speaker 1: from my digital clone? Like, oh, I see you had
Speaker 1: a date with Bob, tell me about it? Is my
Speaker 1: digital clone gonna be like, girl, he is not for you.
Speaker 1: And here's why. I mean, like, what is that exchange
Speaker 1: even gonna sound like?
Speaker 2: You know, it'll sound just like that. Yeah, there you.
Speaker 1: Go, girl, Bob was no, Bob is no. He's a
Speaker 1: hard pass on that one. Well that actually sounds okay,
Speaker 1: But then how does that get used against you? Like
Speaker 1: if you're going for a job and they're like, I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: your digital clone is going to have to come in
Speaker 1: and do the work, you know, for three days, and
Speaker 1: we'll just test out your digital clone to see how
Speaker 1: it works. What if my digital clone is an idiot?
Speaker 1: What if they have no idea what they're doing and
Speaker 1: they prevent me from getting that job.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there's a lot of unexplored territories, so we will
Speaker 3: have to test these things out.
Speaker 2: To make sure they all work right.
Speaker 3: And there's there's no end to all the things that
Speaker 3: are going to go wrong between.
Speaker 2: Now and then.
Speaker 1: Well, I did get this text message Mandy digital Mandy
Speaker 1: needs rewind sound effects. That would be pretty cool, Like
Speaker 1: I feel like that this person asks a better question, though, Mandy.
Speaker 1: Most of this new technology sounds fantastic, But how do
Speaker 1: we power it and where does all the data go?
Speaker 1: How secure will it be? Aren't we putting the cart
Speaker 1: before the horse? And that is a genuine concern. I
Speaker 1: don't need everybody having access to my entire life. I mean,
Speaker 1: that's none of anybody. I don't need anybody to have
Speaker 1: access to me flossing my teeth or standing there in
Speaker 1: my underwear or any of the other millions of things
Speaker 1: that I do every single day. So what does that
Speaker 1: look like? And in terms of data storage, isn't that
Speaker 1: kind of a problem that we're already running into.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you have to have your own personal
Speaker 3: clone cloud storage. So it's your own personal cloud that
Speaker 3: you store all of life details in and you guard
Speaker 3: and protect that and you grant minimal access to whoever
Speaker 3: you want to. But it's very very much discretionary on
Speaker 3: your part. So it's not like the storage that we
Speaker 3: have nowadays that gets when you store something on AI,
Speaker 3: everybody has access to it.
Speaker 2: That's that's not going to work.
Speaker 3: We need we need a lot of protections in place,
Speaker 3: and you're hitting on all the right the right pieces.
Speaker 1: I mean, it sounds like it would be one of
Speaker 1: those things that you would want your own little dedicated
Speaker 1: server for rather than off source it to a server farm.
Speaker 2: Right right, Yeah, so you have to have that.
Speaker 3: It might be in a server farm, but it's only
Speaker 3: accessible by you.
Speaker 1: Right right. Okay, now now we're talking. That sounds far
Speaker 1: more reasonable to me. So I mean, are we on
Speaker 1: the horizon in the next five years with stuff like
Speaker 1: this or is it because just for yeah, I love you,
Speaker 1: I love you.
Speaker 2: Thirty I think, oh wow, because.
Speaker 1: I love the thing in your article where you use
Speaker 1: the example of you're in a business meeting with a
Speaker 1: client and they said, yeah, in our last meeting six
Speaker 1: months ago, remember we talked about and you have no
Speaker 1: idea what they're talking about. Like for me, that would
Speaker 1: be a godsend. It's just to be able to stay
Speaker 1: on top of those little things in my life. So
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding Thomas. Before you started coming on the show,
Speaker 1: I was a complete luddite. I was like, I'll never
Speaker 1: have a self driving car. Now I'm like, can I
Speaker 1: have one?
Speaker 2: Now?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So you're turning me, Thomas, you're turning me. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about the laws of exponential capabilities before we run out
Speaker 1: of time there, because this is very interesting to me.
Speaker 3: The first law is with automation, every exponential decrease and
Speaker 3: effort creates an equal and opposite exponential increase in capabilities.
Speaker 1: What does that mean?
Speaker 3: So as things get easier to do, you're just going
Speaker 3: to do more of it, and you're going to be
Speaker 3: much much more capable because you can get so many
Speaker 3: more things done just because they become easier to do. Now,
Speaker 3: I put these these together ten years ago, and it
Speaker 3: seems like they all still hold up today.
Speaker 2: So I thought that was kind of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean using the example of now, you know,
Speaker 1: five six years ago, if you were a person like
Speaker 1: me with limited technoledge, you had to hire someone to
Speaker 1: build a decent website. Well, now there are AI platforms
Speaker 1: that can take an idiot like me and walk me
Speaker 1: through the entire process and AI handles all of the
Speaker 1: little tricky coding things that I don't know how to do,
Speaker 1: and you can build your own website. So is that
Speaker 1: kind of an example of law number one?
Speaker 2: That's a great, great example.
Speaker 1: Okay, now let's go to law number two. In this
Speaker 1: As today's significant accomplishments become more common, mega accomplishments will
Speaker 1: take their place. What are we talking about here.
Speaker 3: Well, let's think about I've been joking around that the
Speaker 3: Crazy Horse monument up in South Dakota.
Speaker 2: We'll be able to.
Speaker 3: Three D print it before they ever finished the original one.
Speaker 1: And I love that monument. But that's funny. That is
Speaker 1: really funny, Thomas. That's well done.
Speaker 2: So, but I.
Speaker 3: See taking on massive, huge projects because as we become
Speaker 3: much more capable, we just have to set our sites
Speaker 3: higher and we can get so many more things done.
Speaker 3: So rather than making a statue that's ten feet high,
Speaker 3: we make it one hundred feet higher, two hundred feet higher,
Speaker 3: even a thousand foot high.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Buildings that we're going to start creating are going to
Speaker 3: be massively intricate and complicated in ways that we can't
Speaker 3: even imagine right now. That they're not just going to
Speaker 3: be square boxes. So we said on the street corner.
Speaker 1: Well, I will tell you the best example of this
Speaker 1: that I can think of is going back in time
Speaker 1: to the first modem that Mandy Connell ever owned. And
Speaker 1: I remember, I remember this clearly, Thomas. The first day
Speaker 1: I got fifty six K speed on my modem, I
Speaker 1: thought I had literally gone to heaven. I had died
Speaker 1: and gone to heaven. And now if an entire film
Speaker 1: doesn't load on my phone in three minutes, I'm mad, right,
Speaker 1: I'm so those kind of things that we were like,
Speaker 1: our expectations were so low, and now there on the
Speaker 1: other side, it's like, if I can't get it instantly
Speaker 1: in a mobile device that I hold in my hand,
Speaker 1: what are you even doing? So our expectations have gone
Speaker 1: from oh my gosh, I got fifty six K to
Speaker 1: give me my film in three seconds. I think that's
Speaker 1: a good example of that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, when you talk to your computer or to your
Speaker 3: phone and it doesn't recognize what you're saying.
Speaker 1: Exactly, or when the voice to text puts in a
Speaker 1: bunch of extra words and you're like, I didn't say this. Yeah,
Speaker 1: yeah we did, we did get Law number three is
Speaker 1: as we raise the bar for our achievements, we also
Speaker 1: reset the norm for our expectations. That's kind of also
Speaker 1: what I was just talking about. I mean, now we
Speaker 1: expect that kind of speed where it was something to
Speaker 1: wonder at not that long ago.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so you're you're suddenly at work, you're getting ten
Speaker 3: times as much done as you used to get done.
Speaker 3: Now suddenly the boss just normally expects you to get
Speaker 3: ten times as much done.
Speaker 1: Correct. That's why I keep my output at work very
Speaker 1: very low, Thomas, It's very low, even keeled low kind
Speaker 1: of thing. Don't want to get too ahead of myself there.
Speaker 1: So I got a couple questions going back to the
Speaker 1: personal digital clone, and one of them is where does
Speaker 1: your personal cloud info go when you die? Who gets that?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think that's part of your will.
Speaker 1: Could you imagine? And your family would be like, oh God,
Speaker 1: who has to take care of digital?
Speaker 2: Mom?
Speaker 1: Like this sucks? Like now somebody's got to be in
Speaker 1: charge of the storage. We're never gonna watch it again.
Speaker 1: I don't know I would actually put it into my
Speaker 1: will that like, put it on a thumb drive and
Speaker 1: smash it with a hammer, right Like. I don't want
Speaker 1: all of that to go on beyond me. I think
Speaker 1: that my time on earth will be well spent. But
Speaker 1: after that, do I really matter in the grand scheme
Speaker 1: of things? And oddly I'm okay with the answer being no.
Speaker 3: So if somebody goes to your cemetery site and it's
Speaker 3: all built into your tombstone and they can talk to
Speaker 3: you right there.
Speaker 1: Chuck my husband, he loves the idea of that, Thomas,
Speaker 1: But I don't even want a headstone. I want to
Speaker 1: be put in the ground, wrapped in a shroud, you know,
Speaker 1: ashes to ashes, dust to dust, like, keep it natural.
Speaker 1: And if I do have a headstone, it will be
Speaker 1: because my children demand it, not because I felt the
Speaker 1: need to live on in some kind of digital fashion
Speaker 1: like Mandy headroom or something that's just you know, if
Speaker 1: my family wanted it, then that's great. They could do it,
Speaker 1: and more power to them. But I'm gonna be dead, right,
Speaker 1: So I'm okay with that. How about this one? With
Speaker 1: all of these advances in computing, will there be any
Speaker 1: more room for Thomas Edison's meaning? What is left to discover?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: What is left to invent? And I know that seems
Speaker 1: like a silly question because there's always something, But is
Speaker 1: it harder to cross that barrier or is it easier
Speaker 1: now because of the technology.
Speaker 3: I actually think it'll be easier, and I think there's
Speaker 3: going to be It'll be up to people to actually
Speaker 3: cross the chasm for what would exists today into what
Speaker 3: can I just tomorrow. So we'll we'll have to come
Speaker 3: up with that be our imagination. So that's one of
Speaker 3: the barriers that AI has that can only work with
Speaker 3: what's already existence. So to come up with something new
Speaker 3: and original, it'll be strictly a human thing.
Speaker 1: Well, yeah, because I mean, Thomas, I have been using
Speaker 1: I've now officially hired chat gpt as my assistant and
Speaker 1: I'm using it. But what an incredible tool it is.
Speaker 1: Now it's not going to replace what I think about things,
Speaker 1: but in terms of gathering up large sums of data
Speaker 1: and creating a chart, oh my gosh, something that would
Speaker 1: have taken me a half hour of my own personal
Speaker 1: time now takes me ninety seconds. So that allows me
Speaker 1: to do a whole bunch of other stuff that I
Speaker 1: have time for because I'm not trying to dig up
Speaker 1: the data that chat gpt can find in ninety seconds.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm using it to cross to cross check everything
Speaker 3: that I'm doing. Is this the best approach? What am
Speaker 3: I doing wrong? What are the failures in this model?
Speaker 3: And it instantly on that helps me all the wholes
Speaker 3: that I have, So it's hugely valuable.
Speaker 1: Now let me ask you this question from a texter,
Speaker 1: and I'm going to glow up their question just a
Speaker 1: little bit. Even though it's a good question. And this
Speaker 1: question is Mandy asked Thomas, if we have a digital clone,
Speaker 1: could we not put fake quality qualities and misrepresent yourself
Speaker 1: to get your job or get your date, Because let's
Speaker 1: be real, there are times in every job interview where
Speaker 1: they ask you a question that you don't know the
Speaker 1: answer to, so you bluff your way through it. Is
Speaker 1: our digital clone going to have those same sink fast
Speaker 1: on my feet, bluff my way through it? Bs qualities
Speaker 1: that we have.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cosmetic surgery for your digital clone. Yes, I'm sure
Speaker 3: somebody's going to come out with that.
Speaker 1: That.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the whole drone and hence and strategy.
Speaker 1: I can just see it now. There's going to be
Speaker 1: a whole cottage industry on how to glow up your
Speaker 1: digital clone in such a way that's passable. Not obviously
Speaker 1: well glowed up, but you could just throw it out
Speaker 1: there to do all kinds of stuff, and then when
Speaker 1: the real you shows up, they're like, wait a minute,
Speaker 1: that's not at all one of us. This texter said, Mandy,
Speaker 1: can you address water usage and AI? And I think
Speaker 1: that's a bigger question about power usage water usage? Why
Speaker 1: does AI take so much of both?
Speaker 3: It takes so much compute power just grinding away on
Speaker 3: all of the things that it has access to, and
Speaker 3: that brings up this whole topic of where our data
Speaker 3: centers are going to be in the future, which is
Speaker 3: Jeff Bezos says that we should be putting our data
Speaker 3: centers in space because they have access to solar twenty
Speaker 3: four to seven, and so that's naturally we can we
Speaker 3: could do things much cheaper because we don't have the
Speaker 3: energy costs involved. That's that's one of the roadblocks right
Speaker 3: now moving at the speed we want to move at.
Speaker 2: So my thinking is that both him and.
Speaker 3: Elon Musk are going to be shooting up rockets that
Speaker 3: have digital centers on them into space, huge huge solar
Speaker 3: panels on the side collecting all that energy, and we
Speaker 3: can we can shoot stuff back and forth into space
Speaker 3: all the time, anytime we want to. It raises lots
Speaker 3: of interesting questions, So because who's who's in control of
Speaker 3: things that are in space? I mean, which laws? So
Speaker 3: if as an example, you have a US patent on
Speaker 3: something and somebody has a business model running on that
Speaker 3: satellite that is violating your patent and patent infringement or
Speaker 3: are sat outside of the bounds of earth.
Speaker 1: That's a fine question, one that I don't have the
Speaker 1: answer to. But that's why we talked to Thomas Fry
Speaker 1: because I need more things to keep you up at
Speaker 1: night wondering the answers to, because these are all problems
Speaker 1: that we're going to have to solve. This text or
Speaker 1: asks an interesting question. Will digital clones give off pheromones
Speaker 1: for that dating scenario that you were talking about? Will they?
Speaker 1: Will they have that intangible something that makes things work?
Speaker 2: Ah, that's a great question.
Speaker 3: I am certain somebody's going to be working on that,
Speaker 3: but I don't have a good answer for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well we'll find out about that at some other time.
Speaker 1: Thomas Fry is our futurist and you can find him
Speaker 1: at Future a Speaker. I've also put a link on
Speaker 1: the blog as well to all of these articles so
Speaker 1: you can continue to read. Good to see my friend.
Speaker 1: We'll see you next time, Thomas.
Speaker 2: All right, great to be on your show, Mandy.
Speaker 3: All right.
Speaker 1: That is Thomas Fry, our Futurist.