I'm conflicted. What do you do? I think we're at a new crossroads.
>> Keep going. I'm interested what you have to say. >> Well, I mean, there's a lot of fear of what AI could develop into and China's not going to stop.
We stop, then we put ourselves at a disadvantage. But if none of us stop, we put the entire human species at a risk of becoming irrelevant. >> You have biological warfare threats that become more existentially threatening with the introduction of AI, perhaps more so than with the nuclear weapons.
I think we're at a new crossroads that's completely different but maybe has some similarities with AI. >> Okay. >> Do you >> keep going?
I'm interested what you have to say. >> Well, I mean, there's a lot of fear of what AI could develop into and basically, you know, gets to the point where it makes humanity completely irrelevant. And so, it's it's it's it's a dangerous game we're playing.
I don't think anybody really knows the extent of what we might experience if this keeps keeps on, you know, with the brain chips with with everything. >> And so it's another it's >> once it's out of the bag, it's not going back in. And I feel like that's where we're at with AI is where we were with nuclear war.
>> It's the Pandora's box idea. Yes. which kind of begs the question, okay, so how about doing something about it?
And I know we all have busy lives and that is part of the, you know, no one can stop what they're doing and suddenly uh become an expert on existential threats per se. So we talk about it and we you know pontificate what can be done but we should remember that there are powers that be that are paid to deal with these issues in our own government. Mhm.
>> And also the days are over where you could just trust the government to be doing the how do I say that right? >> Yeah. I know where you're going.
We should be able to trust the government to have our to be doing things in our best interest. >> Yeah. Right.
Like if you watch the propaganda films of the 50s having to do with nuclear war, right? I mean, and you see like a housewife with a tiny waist and you know, curlers maybe even making pancakes and then like a siren goes off and then Jimmy come quick. And they they duck and cover and that's going to protect you against a nuclear bomb and everybody went okay.
I mean, those days are over, but then you kind of I think the point you're raising is what kind of like version of that are we dealing with today? >> I I think it's AI. I mean, it's happening right now.
You know, Xi Jinping in China says the first the first country that masters AI will achieve global domination. And so now you have now you have all these people over here that are worried about I mean I'm conflicted. What do you do?
China's not going to stop, >> right? >> They're not going to stop. And so if we stop, then we put ourselves at a disadvantage.
But if none of us stop, we put the entire human species at a at a at the risk of becoming irrelevant, you know, and and does that make sense? >> Of course, it makes sense and it's absolutely on point. And you know, you can also throw into that mix biology because, okay, so here's how I would tie that together, right?
Because you have biological warfare threats that become more threatening, more existentially threatening with the introduction of AI. I believe perhaps more so than with the nuclear weapons. Right.
One of the areas I'm going to try to hold this thought together, but it it ties. So, you might say, you might say nuclear weapons could, you know, AI could get hold of nuclear weapons. Well, maybe.
And this is where I'm either informed or inaccurate. I don't know. Okay.
What I do know is that from from interviewing people in cyber command is that our nuclear weapons are surprisingly analog, meaning they are not digital. >> Okay. So, for example, I learned in reporting the book that our sublistic missiles guide to the targets by star sighting.
Sean, a little panel opens and they use the stars to guide to the target. There are other systems in place and this stuff is very classified but what is leading is like this ancient technology that like our huntergatherer ancestors used. Okay.
Um so nuclear weapons because they happened before the advent of the digital age there has been a concerted effort to make sure they remain analog so that they can't be hacked. >> Okay. >> Okay.
And these are assurances that I have gotten from Cyber Command. You're just taking somebody at your at their word at that point because the documentation is not declassified. >> So hold that thought.
Then you have this idea that biological weapons used to exist. We used to have we had a program about biological weapons. I wrote about it.
We hired the Nazi scientists. They built up our biological warfare program. and we used to have an arsenal and then Nixon made them illegal.
So all of the biological weapons were destroyed. We found out Russia was cheating and they I mean rat hole upon rat hole. Um so biological weapons are no more which exist sort of that's the reason that nuclear disarmament people say we don't need an nuclear arsenal to keep us safe because we we were able to say we don't need biological weapons to keep us safe biological weapons have become taboo we need so the disarmament people will say nuclear weapons should be taboo now you take AI okay what you're saying which is really significant to think about is how does AI fit into the mix?
If there is indeed a giant gap on purpose between AI being able to access nuclear weapons because it has grown up with that. That is one lane of security shall we say. But with the biological issues, that is far more dangerous to my eye because they didn't grow up together.
And AI has the capacity to make biological weapons and chemical weapons on paper. Does that make sense? Mhm.
>> Because a lot of AI is pulling from information in the public domain and so far no student in a basement that we know of has made a nuclear weapon. Think about that. >> Mhm.
>> No, it remains this jealously guarded recipe. Pakistan got the bomb because they stole the in most people get the bomb because they steal it. But bi biology, we have biological um synthetic biological situations being made by you know students in high school because of AI because what you can program AI make me a chemical weapon >> that to me is a majorly existential threat.
Hey folks, our friends at Tractor Supply have always stood for community, for neighbors helping neighbors, and for the people who keep life out here moving forward. And at the heart of every community are the heroes who serve, the veterans, active duty military, first responders, and the families who stand beside them. These are the folks who answer the call, who protect, who sacrifice.
And Tractor Supply believes that that deserves more than just a thank you. That's why they created the Hometown Heroes program. It's their way of giving back in meaningful everyday ways.
As a Hometown Hero, you'll enjoy special perks through Neighbors Club, like earning rewards on every purchase, free trailer rentals and delivery, and exclusive savings on holidays that honor your service. And the best part, once you sign up and verify through ID. mme, it's automatic.
No hoops, no hassles. So, if you or someone you love is a hometown hero, visit tractorupply. com/hometown heroes to learn more.
It's Tractor Supply way of standing behind those who always stand for us. >> But again, we don't have the language yet, just as layman or with a little bit of knowledge to understand what AI is really capable of. And so you're bringing up the question, should we trust the same people that said like duck and cover and you'll be safe?
Should that's what you're saying and that's a very important question. >> I would say probably not. We should probably not trust them.
Um I mean I don't you know I don't know. Once again this is like the disarming of the nukes. I mean what do what do we do?
We do we I mean what is your opinion? What do we do >> about the nukes or about AI? with AI.
>> I mean, I always start by looking at the opinions of people I respect. >> Mhm. >> And then I start to kind of gather more information like why did they wind up with their opinion?
And so one person that comes to mind when I was when I was looking at early AI because a lot of the early AI comes from DARPA and they have DARPA has always had this idea. So also I think it's important to make a distinction at least to my eye between or I do when I think about it AI artificial intelligence and machine learning. If your machine learning is making computers a lot smarter, artificial intelligence is actually trying to figure out how to make a machine think.
For that, I visited I went to Los Alamos when I was reporting the Pentagon's brain and visited a DARPA scientist who had a grant to try and create, you know, a brain in essence. And he was using the computer that used to have all the nuclear codes on it. It was really interesting.
But he explained to me his name was Dr Garrett Garrett Kenyon and he gave me this analogy where he said we're so far out from brain from computers being able to think and I said try and just give me a average Jane or Joe way to understand this and he said okay think about the this facial recognition software on your iPhone right >> very basic thing you and I that is machine learning so he said have your iPhone look at and then try to have it look at you further away and with a baseball cap or with sunglasses, right? So, you're kind of making it harder for the machine to know it's you. Now, this interview we did, by the way, was like 8 years ago, and things have changed a lot in a frightening manner.
Then he said to me, "The iPhone could definitely not recognize me across a football field walking with a baseball cap on. " He said, "My daughter, on the other hand, who is I think something like 8 years old at the time. " He said, "My daughter knows who I am, across a football field walking with a baseball cap, >> good >> and begins running toward me.
That is human intelligence. I mean, do you think I I think I think we've I mean, look, now China supposedly has camera systems. I don't know what you'd call them.
I guess they wouldn't be facial recognition. They would just be >> They are facial recognition. Yes.
>> Well, I guess what I'm saying is it can pick up how you walk. >> Gate recognition. And so people are putting rocks in their shoes so that they walk different.
>> Wow. >> Did you know? I >> did not I did not know the the the way to spoof that.
>> They're putting rocks in their shoes so that they walk different so that the the the >> the technology doesn't pick up how they actually walk. >> Yep. And they can now have systems that can read your heartbeat.
>> I didn't know that. So this gets into tricky my opinion on this or rather my lots of facts you know opinion gets into a tricky area here because I speak often about the military-industrial complex not in and I want to preface this what I'm about to say about China and all that right which is not in a what might be called a conspiratorial way per se like the military-industrial complex literally as a factbased military industrial complex and it is real and it is also provides a lot of jobs for a lot of people. I often think about this.
So the military-industrial complex as a term comes from Eisenhower's farewell speech. Okay. And that's very well known.
But less known is what Eisenhower said as a follow-up to that in that same speech, which is interestingly something I you I tell my sources as a principle I work from. Would they let me interview them? And most of them say yes on that on those grounds which is this that the way in which America can function as a sort of peaceful nation and a democratic nation and a nation that is strong that has a strong defense is through an alert and knowledgeable citizenry which is exactly what we've been talking about this whole time which is in a way the question for the original listener asked right how so what Eisenhower was saying to us is be alert and be knowledgeable and so I think it's always good to temper that like if you say I'm being alert and I'm being knowledgeable in sort of like a nerdy way then you can I can differentiate my like my pontificating about what does that mean and I can see my sort of more paranoid brain thinking thing right and it just is It it balances things out.
>> Mhm. But on the concept of the military-industrial complex specifically and China's surveillance, I want to say this, which is that one way of looking at that which I would look at because I've done quite a bit of reporting on it is that it's that problem of the chicken or egg scenario that that when the United States creates a radical new technology that it's using for its own defense, China follows suit, Russia follows suits, and nowhere is that more specific. and more obvious if you really think about it than what the United States did during the war on terror, what the government did during the war on terror and that is create these these biometric surveillance systems which you know to go after bad guys in Iraq in Afghanistan fingerprint technology find the bomber not the bomb a great idea if you you're just going to take out you if you're going to go after the the bomb bomb, you're just going to be think about that's what your teams were doing.
>> Mhm. >> But as soon as you can go after the bomber, you're cutting off the head of the snake. But the biometric surveillance system got out of control before you knew it, perhaps because of the military industrial complex.
The Pentagon had decided, well, let's just get biometrics on everybody. So, it went from Do you know about this a little bit? It went I'll keep it short because it can be like too much of a rabbit hole, but it went from finding the fingerprints on the bomber to let's get fingerprints on every single person in Iraq.
85% of the population was the goal. And then they did that in Afghanistan. These are facts.
This is like David Petraeus fact. >> Okay. And so the idea was we're going to have this colossal database of everybody, which used to be considered an FBI criminal concept.
Mhm. >> We're just going to have this on everybody and then that way we're going to know if you're a bad guy or a good guy and it got totally out of control and it happened too fast and there was so much money being made that it just became a deluge of systems and China copied that. China did not have that system of systems until we introduced it to them.
And because China is great at stealing our intellectual property, that is precisely what happened. And then China, because it's a communist country and it does not have any of the same rules to abide by, just went berserk with it and said, "We're gonna now do they have a system called physicals for all. " Physicals for all.
What a great euphemism. What it means is we're going to get your DNA. And that's what they are in the process of doing.
having DNA, fingerprints, iris scans, gate monitor of everybody. So, it's it's becoming a massive police state if it wasn't already. It is now.
It's a technology based police state. But remember, my point in that would be the defense department set that up, you could say, to happen. or is that military-industrial complex?
>> It's a good point I've not thought of. >> It's a great point. What do you think?
>> I think it's the Eisenhower quote like an alert and knowledgeable citizenry, right? And and also a little bit if you pick your battles because you could you can become subsumed with this is just a horrible you know you could really um and you want to enjoy your life and be a good parent and write your books or do your podcast. So and then I look to history to say okay oh that's right this has always been going on.
I do believe money money needs to be spent to keep the economy going, but there could be a restructuring of the military-industrial complex in a manner that suits the livelihood and the future. >> Yeah, I agree with you on that. No matter where you're watching Shawn Ryan Show from, if you get anything out of this, please like, comment, subscribe, and most importantly, share this everywhere you possibly can.
And if you're feeling extra generous, please leave us a review on Apple and Spotify podcasts.
