Speaker 1: Maybe it's just a radio thing. Variety, give people a variety,
and that's what we do on aero dot net a
r r oe dot Net. It's not just a podcast
with rock stars and movie stars. Oh, it's about lifestyle
and beyond. It's variety a r r oe dot Net.
Enjoy the exploration. Hello and good morning. How are you
doing today?
Speaker 2: I'm good? How are you?
Speaker 3: Absolutely fantastic? Rob Man? We're you at these days?
Speaker 2: I'm up in New York City where we have a
sleep store.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah, we're down here in the Carolinas where it's
down here. We got down to seventeen last night, so yeah, okay,
I just want to know if we're sharing the same
kind of cold.
Speaker 2: Well where you guys have been freakishly hit with all
kinds of bad weather recently. Yeah, we have.
Speaker 4: What does that do for you as a writer, because
I know that as a daily writer, for me and
somebody who shares stories, the weather conditions can fit right
into a storyline. Do you use the same kind of energy?
Speaker 2: Not an a way you suggest? In New York City,
I have two windows that look outside. In the summer,
I want to look at green. In the winter, I
retreat into an office with no windows. So it's a
question of when you want to be distracted and when
you just want to be in your head.
Speaker 4: I got to let you know that I'm actually broadcasting
from a library right here in downtown Charlotte and overlooking
Seventh Street in Bavard. So to share a conversation with
somebody who has allowed writing to become such a major
part of their lives is so important to the people
who are here to learn how to become storytellers. And
so I mean, it's amazing what you have done with
The Impossible Detective, because it sounds like that you made
an exploration here that really takes us into a modern age.
Speaker 2: You know, it's more than a modern age. I never
I've always tried to write my novels in a way
that I'm addressing important issues in society. I never liked.
I never liked the term artificial intelligence. And if you
think about it, some Gus marketing guy came up with
that term because it implies to us that we are superior.
It's artificial. We don't really consider it as a threat,
but I consider AI think of it as a moral intelligence. Right.
It still has power, but it doesn't have empathy. It
doesn't have morals, it doesn't have Christianity, it doesn't have religion.
It just makes decisions. And now we're about to hand
over all kinds of important decisions in society to this
amorl entity. And the only thing that's lacking to make
it truly dangerous at this point is were to become conscious.
And so I did research on this. I spoke to experts,
I spoke to military experts, and when I started the book,
people would say, well, consciousness might be possible in twelve years.
Then it became ten years, then eight, and six, then five,
And so I wanted to write a book about the
very first second, the very first second when AI becomes
conscious but nobody knows it yet except AI, and it
has and it has the power to make choices, choices.
What would the very voice choice be?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 4: And that's what's scary about this, because I mean, everybody's
running to chat GPT and every gunk or grunk or
whatever it is, and they're trying to get information. But
what happens if that AI turns like you're saying, and
all of a sudden, it's not expecting our questions, it's
just doing it. And That's what I love about The
Impossible Detective is the fact that you put us in
a position of where we get to sit inside something
that we just kind of put to the side, but
we can't anymore because we're going to pay attention to it.
Speaker 2: We have to pay attention to it. You know. It's interesting.
It's already affecting our lives in so many ways. It's
so interesting to me that you're in a library because
I bet every author who has a book in that
library has had a similar experience to the one I
had just last week. All authors I know are periodically
contacted by people who are offering to for money, of course,
improve their website, improve their rich improve their publicity. Recently,
these letters, these emails that we get from these people
have changed suddenly. The people seem to have read our
books that will flir to specific passages. They seem like people.
It's a Nigerian scam. It's AI that's contacting us. And
I bet everyone listening to you today is being contacted
by AI daily, dealing with it daily. Personally. It drives
me nutt.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I'll tell you the way that I've handled
it with podcasting, because you're absolutely right. They're sending these letters.
They make it sound like they're emotionally and compassionately involved
in what's going on. And so I'll send them a
simple question. I'll go, so, what was I thinking about
before I posted this interview? Please tell me, expecting them
to give me an answer, going you didn't say anything,
but they won't even say that.
Speaker 3: That's how I know it's a fake.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's so funny coming up with strategies. My next
strategy will be because I got about six of days
a week, So the next one that comes in, whatever
the solicit is, I'm going to send them back a
message that says, my wife and I ordered a pizza
from you last week and it was cold, and the
salaman was bad and the meat walls were bad. What's
going on with your pizzas? And I'm curious if it's
ai how it will reas farm.
Speaker 4: The story itself in The Impossible Detective is set in
New York City. Now, of course that excites me because
I love the city for its size, But I think
there's more to it than that that put it inside
this book.
Speaker 2: You know, the hero in this An Impossible Detective, lives
on Edgar Allan Poet Street, where he lived and which
is six blocks away from my apartment. I thought, what
better place to have AI breakout than here? And what
happened with this book was interesting the way I've got
like twenty five books, but none of the books until
this happened this way. RKO Films came to me about
two years ago and they had a franchise that you
maybe familiar with from the fifties called The Falcon. I
had a hero, George Saunders played the Falcon. Tom Conway
played the Falcon, and they were looking to bring the
franchise back to life and they wanted to know if
I had any interest in doing that. They wouldn't tell
me what to do. I could make it totally modern,
I could do whatever I wanted. And I said to them,
you can't see the drafts and they agreed, you will
have no input and they agreed, and so, yeah, who's
going to turn that down? Ron?
Speaker 3: So did you not know that that was an AI
letter that was sent to you? Come on now?
Speaker 4: I would have said, Ah, this is fake, there's no way.
Speaker 2: Well, you're right, you're right. The way I knew is
that I went I physically went to the agent representing
them's apartment in Manhattan and we sat down and you know,
we had a negotiation. There were human voices, and then
we were in a restaurant. So what unless they were robuts,
which maybe in the future a I could do. I
knew these were real people.
Speaker 4: Okay, I'm going to bring that up because that's one
of my questions today is that do you think that
the future is full of robots? Because I'm that kid
that used to have those little you know, those robots
that you would have with a remote control. And I
never believed it then and I still don't believe it
today that they will be in control. What's your gut
with all the research that you've done, well.
Speaker 2: With all the research I've done, I'm more concerned about
other ways that AI could get it as Yeah, sure
there could be robots. I mean, I've visited the Robotics
place over at Columbia University for this I mustand that
at what robots are being able to do. But it's
what AI is already able to do that's so frightening.
You know, I've read rand reports on how states like
China and Russia are using AI. Corporations are firing people
firing white and blue collar workers both and replacing them
with AI. And just yesterday I thought of another possibility
which really freaks me out, which is when you talk
to experts about AI, you know, who are doubtful that
it might be negative in the future. They'll say, well,
we'll just program it to do this, or we'll just
program it to do that. But think about this, because
I bet you and every single person listening to us
today has had this experience. We write an email to
someone we know, we think that the email is clear,
it turns out that it's not clear. They misinterpreted it,
and suddenly we're in a fight. So who is to say?
And I teach writing and oftentimes people will write things
that don't reflect what they're really thinking. So sooner or
later a programmer will do that. A programmer will tell
AI to do something, thinking that they just gave it
a clear command. AI will interpret it differently. God knows
what will happen.
Speaker 4: Then, well, yeah, anytime you go in to chat GPT
and you ask a question, or if you're trying to
get them to do a logo for you, and it
has to sit there and ask questions, I'm going you
have no idea who I am? You have no idea
the emotion of what I put into this. Okay, I'm
going on to the next thing because chat GPT you're
not doing it for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, at this point we still have enough discernment
to understand that it is chat GBT. But you know,
just last night I was reading this Ramp Corporation report
on chat GBT and they said it's getting harder and
harder and harder for people to distinguish between real and fake,
and it will only continue to get harder.
Speaker 1: Please should not move. There's more with Bob Reese coming
up next. The name of the book, The Impossible Detective.
We are back with author Bob Reese.
Speaker 4: So let me ask you this question when you talk
about this book being a sci fi The Impossible Detective. Okay,
so if we feel that it's going to happen, then
why is it still qualified sci fi if we think
it's going to be factual.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a great question. I don't consider it sci fi.
I consider it speculative fiction. Speculative fiction, and a lot
of my fection is this because I really like to
think what could happen. My background is as a journalist
and a novelist, and you know, and it's interesting because
I always want to pick off on the topic I'm
concerned about, when do you do it as a journalist?
When do you do it as a novelist. Well, you
do it as a journalist when the bad thing has
already happened and you're covering it. But how do you
cover something that you're afraid of that hasn't happened yet.
That's when it becomes speculative fiction. That's when you tell
the same story of what could happen, but not with
a flow chart or an algorithm or a speech, but
with real people going through the issue, and with something
like this, which is ai a moral intelligence. The challenge
is it's easy to make a sci fire movie like
Arnold Schwazener artificial intelligence has taken over, right, and it's
fifty years in the future. But what if you're writing
about something that could happen today at five o'clock this evening,
and the world is the stand except somewhere secretly in
some apartment, the tiny little change happens that changes the
whole world. That you have to do with fiction. You
have to have people, you have to have you have
to have an issue. You know, this is a private
detective book, The Impossible Detective. There is a private detective
on the surface underneath all these issues.
Speaker 4: So now would you qualify this then as a true
crime because I mean in reality, I mean there's some
bad things are going to happen here for the readers
and to me that get you know what, what what
is the new definition of crime?
Speaker 2: Well, crime is we all know what crime is. I
would still make the speculative fiction before, as you say,
you could call it speculative crime. Science fiction is fiction. Clearly,
this book is made up, so it's fiction when I write.
When I write nonfiction, believe me, I stick with facts.
It's still storytelling. You still have good characters, you still
have to make choice, but it's facts. I don't believe
there's a blurring of fact and fiction. You really keep
it separate. So this would be speculative political fiction.
Speaker 4: So now as that author are you received the letters
as well from the publishers as well as the people
that are distributing the book in the way of saying,
we need to know that one hundred percent that this
has nothing to do with AI technology, because they're doing
that with podcasters where they want to make sure that
we are authentic, that we are not relying on AI
because they've got to go out there and put it
on their platform. So as an author, what does that
do for you?
Speaker 2: Well, as an author, I have different kind of dealings
with AI. Okay, the publisher knows that I'm a human being,
so I'm not going to get a suspicious letter who
are you? But the way I'm dealing with AI is
and this surprised me. Over the last year, I've been
contacted by two lossuits. These are class action lawsuits, one
against Meta I think, and one against this other outfit.
And both of those outfits have used I think eight
of my books to train their large language models. And
so now this is in the courts now in one
I got a letter the other day that come to
us littlement, but thousands of This is a one point
five million dollar settlement for the authors all around the
country whose works have been used without their knowledge to
trade to train. That's the way I deal with it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I got to tell you this, And this
is to go along with people who are still trying
to understand what AI technology is. Is the fact that
I even went to the AI technology and asked them,
could you help me write my show prep so that
I can go into it better prepared? And it literally
told me no, because it went back and it listened
to every all the questions, the styles that I had,
and it says, I can't put the emotion in it
that you do.
Speaker 2: Well, that was an honest one, but yeah, yeah, I mean,
but how many people have programmed there for honesty? And
if you take a survey of professors, as you know,
more and more of them are seeing their class papers
come and written by AI, letters being written by AI.
It's sort of like and writing skills. As writing skills
decline in the population, more and more people are going
to be relying on AI.
Speaker 4: Don't you think though that you cause I'll tell you
what the one thing that The Impossible Detective has really
done for my imagination. It reminds me so much of
those early holiday or Hollywood films where it shows the
rocket crashing into the moon, and really, as we've lived
it today, that's not really what happens. But the fact
is is that you're identifying AI technology in The Impossible
Detective and how it affects us as human beings, and
people aren't talking about this, So that makes you a
pioneer of sorts in the way of writing stories.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know if it's pioneer. Writers have always
anticipated things, you know, HG. Wells.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I saw this movie from nineteen thirty two the other night,
Things to Come, Things to Come, And it's an HG.
Well Well's film based on a story he wrote anticipating
World War Two, anticipating rockets, anticipating all this kind of stuff.
So I think this is what writers do, if we're
doing it right. Somehow, writers can synthesize the patterns that
are evident every day, and following those patterns, they predict
what's going to happen next, or if we keep going
in this direction, what it'll be like in five years,
ten years, twenty years, one hundred years. And so often
they're right.
Speaker 4: Wow, where can people go to find out more about you?
Speaker 2: Rob?
Speaker 4: Because you just talked about all of the books that
you've got published, and you're also a journalist. I want
people to tap into your multiple personalities as well as
your walk in way of reaching people as that writer.
It's so important that we talk about being a writer
because a lot of people would rather go to a
computer to have it written for them.
Speaker 2: Well, thanks for us in that question. And certainly my
wife is always asking about multi personality. So in a
loving way and a loving way, the way they could
find is Bob Reese, Bob r EISs Rees. Bobrees dot
com is my website and has the twenty five books
and journalism and speeches and if you want to bring
me in to give a speech, how to contact me
all that stuff.
Speaker 3: I love it.
Speaker 4: You got to come back to this show anytime in
the future. The door is always going to be open
for you.
Speaker 2: Well, I would love to come back. I love talking
with you. These questions are terrific.
Speaker 4: Well, I'll tell you what I've got so many for
twenty twenty six. I have so many conversations coming up
with people of AI technology that I feel like that
I should invite you into a zoom link and you
participate with it in the way that you bring your knowledge.
I come from my side of it, and we ask
these pros you know what's going on, because if we
don't talk about it, how are we going to help
shape it.
Speaker 2: Here's the thing about AI. See, every time throughout history
there has been a new invention, there has been an
argument will this be good for your manity? Or will
this be bad for your manager? But here's the deal. See,
here's the difference. This AI is the very first time
that the invention will be able to think for itself.
The invention will be able to make choices for itself.
And the invention has already surprised the makers of itself
with abilities that even they didn't think it could have.
Oh my god, So how could they assure us? How
could they be so positive that there will be no
negative effects? Here? It's already affecting every aspect of our lives.
It will continue to do that, it will affect more
and more. How much power do we want to give it?
And the last thing, you know, Donald Trump, I think
even this week is urging New York State to stop
trying to control AI, to stop having any kind of
oversight of AI. That's the battle of the future. How
do we want to oversee this thing?
Speaker 3: Yep?
Speaker 4: Because we have an AI as are now they just
announced the ais are.
Speaker 2: And the purpose of the ais are. If it's federal,
we'll probably be to try to shut down any overser.
Speaker 3: You're right, you're right, you're right.
Speaker 4: Wow, Well, please come back to this show anytime in
the future.
Speaker 2: Sir, I accept, thank you and thank you for having
me today.
Speaker 3: You be brilliant today. Okay.
Speaker 2: I love compliments, strength,