Season 7, Episode 13 March 3, 2024

Not the Headlines talks about fruit sensors and covid policy.  In Let's go Back, we'll hear about old and new slavery in America, transfer of power, and music formats.  Author Guy Morris joins me for a conversation about artificial intelligence.  The Listening Tube will return March 24th.

Transcript

Hello!  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube!  I’m your host, Bob Woodley.  This is the final episode of season seven!  On this episode, we’ll hear about old and new slavery in America, the Georgia Memorial to Congress, and the most trusted man in America….and I’ll prove I’m not artificial intelligence by having a chat with a Guy who would know if I was.  But first, (Not the Headlines)!

Do you buy organically grown produce because you’re worried about ingesting pesticides?  If not, do you worry about ingesting pesticides?  If not, maybe we should.  A study done in Brazil using carbendazim and paraquat (yes, they still use paraquat in Brazil, according to the story https://phys.org/news/2024-02-biodegradable-sensor-pesticides-contact-surface.html on phys dot org) showed that even after washing lettuce and tomatoes, nearly half of the residue still remained compared to before it was washed.  But this story isn’t about how to properly wash your fruits and vegetables before you eat them.  This is a story about a new device that can detect pesticides.  
As it is right now, testing for pesticides requires expensive equipment and trained operators of that expensive equipment, samples need to be pretreated, and you can’t lug all this stuff around to where the plants grow.  Plus it takes a long time to get the results.
Well, the same people who did the residue study had already invented a device that when attached directly to produce, will tell you what pesticide residue is on it.  And it can even measure it.  But the best part is, it’s tiny and biodegradable.  You just slap one on yer ‘mater, and get almost instant results.  What’s surprising me right now is that my word processing program isn’t trying to correct the way I spelled yer ‘mater.  Anyway, the sensors are made from cellulose acetate, a plant-based material that they say will disintegrate in less than a year.  Once these little things hit the market, you can test the produce in the organic aisle of the grocery store to see if they’re telling the truth!  Then you’ll know for sure whether or not you’re putting herbicides or pesticides or fungicides into your system.
But that’s not all this little sensor can do.  Because of its portability, crops can be tested in the field.  This will let farmers know in real time how much and what kind of “cide” is needed.  This should lead to less use of pesticides overall, while still increasing yields.  That’s a win-win-win situation.  The farmer wins because he uses less chemicals, this saving money, and gets a higher yield of a crop that people can trust.  The consumer wins because less chemicals will be used to begin with, which means less residue, less pesticides seeping into groundwater and soil, and a healthier product.  Not to mention, when farmers save money and yields are more robust, prices should fall, or at least, remain steady.

In a development that adds optimism to the near future, the Centers for Disease Control, or CDC, has changed its quarantine recommendations for those who catch the Covid-19 virus.  Until recently, it was still recommended that you stay at home for 5 days.  Granted, there are sometimes you get covid and you feel crappy enough to stay home for five days, and if that’s the case, by all means, stay home!  Covid is still killing about 1500 people a week in the U.S., but that’s way down from the peak of almost 26-thousand people a week.  Comparatively, isn’t a lot, but regular old flu averages around 150 a week.  Certainly, pre-existing conditions can play a role in how your body reacts to any virus.
But the risk is low enough now that the CDC says if you don’t have any symptoms or a fever for at least 24 hours, you’re free to go about your normal daily routine.  For many Americans, it’s already been that way for a year or more.  It depends on where you live and population density and your own chemistry; immune system.
The new guidelines may not mean much to many of us, but in the grand scheme of things, any steps we can take as a society to get back to the way we lived pre-pandemic is a welcome sight.

Let’s Go Back liner

1775
An anonymous writer, thought by some to be Thomas Paine, publishes “African Slavery in America”, the first article in the American colonies calling for the emancipation of slaves and the abolition of slavery.  This might explain why the Mason-Dixon line is where it is.  Pennsylvania was the border between north and south during the civil war.  But nearly a century before the civil war, voices calling for the end of slavery in the parts of north America controlled by what would become the United States of America were already beginning to break through the din.
We don’t know if Thomas Paine wrote the story, but he was an editor and writer for Pennsylvania Magazine, which first published the article.  The article itself was attributed to “Justice and Humanity” when originally published, according to bill of rights institute dot org.  
Thus began a decades-long debate about slavery in America.  Slavery was a divisive topic, with proponents primarily in the southern areas of the north American continent, and less so in the north.
But the argument against slavery was indisputable.  The article “African Slavery in America” is somewhat lengthy, so I won’t recite the entire thing here, but I will quote it:  “As these people are not convicted of forfeiting freedom, they have still a natural, perfect right to it; and the governments whenever they come should, in justice set them free, and punish those who hold them in slavery.”
Written before The United States of America was founded, the idea was that slavery should be not only not allowed, but that those who practice it should be punished.  
In America today, that’s how it is.  At least, according to the law.  To say there isn’t slavery in America today would be somewhat naive.  Especially with the increased influence of cartels in northern Mexico insuring those who couldn’t pay their way to the U.S. border will have a way to work off their debt once inside the United States.  Anyone who owes money to a Mexican cartel and is currently in the United States is literally a slave in America.  What’s being done about that?  The New York Times, in July of 2022, called it a billion-dollar industry.  Those billions of dollars aren’t coming from Mexico or Venezuela or Columbia.  Nobody’s calling it a billion-peso industry!  What does that tell you?
  
1789
In New York City, the first Congress of the United States meets, putting the United States Constitution into effect.

1797
In the first ever peaceful transfer of power between elected leaders in modern times, John Adams is sworn in as President of the United States, succeeding George Washington.  The fact that John Adams was Washington’s vice-president for each of the first two terms of the new title of President of the United States began an on-again, off-again system of the second in command taking over when the other guy’s term expires.  Except in Washington’s time, there were no term limits, and if anybody was in the right place at the right time to become the world’s next dictator, it was George Washington.  It’s thanks to the wisdom of George Washington and his foresight that we still have the government model of the United States of America.  This transfer of power proved to the world that such a government could exist.  That transfer of power has continued for more than 200 years.  
George Washington didn’t have a political party, and cautioned against them.  America’s second president didn’t belong to a political party, either.  

1957
The 1957 Georgia Memorial to Congress, which petitions the U.S. Congress to declare the ratification of the 14th & 15th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution null and void, is adopted by the state of Georgia.  Well, gee, the 14th Amendment went into effect in 1868, and the 15th in 1870.  All of a sudden, Georgia has a beef with the amendments?  What’s up with that?

Look that up liner

As you may know, the 14th Amendment deals with citizenship, and restrict states from creating laws that do not apply to all citizens and that the law protects all citizens equally.  It also covers how states are to be represented at the federal level.  Section 4 is interesting in today’s political climate, though, even if it was created specifically for it’s time.  It says, “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned. But neither the United States nor any State shall assume or pay any debt or obligation incurred in aid of insurrection or rebellion against the United States, or any claim for the loss or emancipation of any slave; but all such debts, obligations and claims shall be held illegal and void.”
In other words, We know there are still people in the United States who will continue to fight for Confederate ideals.  Section 4 made it clear that the federal government was willing to spend whatever it took to suppress those people, and there’s nothing you can do about it.  Oh, and if you provide a service to any Confederate groups to aid in rebellion or insurrection, they don’t have to pay you.
The 15th Amendment says everybody has the right to vote regardless of your race or skin color.
Looking back on it, one might see how Georgia is still holding a grudge from the Civil War.  That state did take quite a beating.  But what claim does Georgia have to invalidate two Constitutional Amendments?  Attendance.  Georgia claimed that it, along with a dozen other states, were denied their seats in Congress by what the letter called “hostile majorities.”  Georgia further claimed that military governments were still in power in several states at the time of ratification of the amendments, and therefore hadn’t been legally ratified by the two-thirds majority needed.
Today, both Amendments survive, and one is being used to keep the last President of the United States from running for the office again.  And since the Amendment still applies as written, it means the federal government has the authority to spare no expense when it comes to suppressing an insurrection, and you’re not even allowed to ask about it.

1979
Philips demonstrates the Compact Disc publicly for the first time.  When you put it like that, it makes you wonder how long company executives were partying with cd’s before they told us about them.  I grew up listening to records and tapes, and the first time I held a cd in my hand, I didn’t realize it played the bottom of the disc, not the top of it, like a record.

Fresh prince clip

I was already a radio dj by then, but it wasn’t until around the mid 80’s that radio stations started relying more heavily on cd and less on records.  For normal folks, they were easier to store and use at home and in the car.  Most music that people buy now is in the form of a download.  Gone are the days when you could buy an album and get liner notes and a cool cover with it.  But while cd’s have fallen out of favor, records are making a comeback.  In 2022, 33. 4 million cd’s were shipped.  The same year, 41. three million records were shipped.  Here’s the most surprising part:  According to the same data from statista dot com, record sales outnumbered digital downloads in 2022.

1981
After 19 years of presenting the CBS Evening News, Walter Cronkite signs off for the last time.

...and that’s the way it was…

Walter was the most trusted man in America.  He was the steady hand that could tell what most of us needed to know, and what we wanted to know.  He wasn’t biased.  His only agenda was informing the American people.  There was no 24-hour news cycle to fill, so he had time to asses what happened and heaven forbid, gather more information before jumping to any conclusions.  He did cover breaking news, though, and when Walter came on in the middle of a soap opera, you knew it was important.  Walter Cronkite is one of my two broadcast idols, the other being Wolfman Jack.

In wolfman voice:  ...and that’s the way it was, baby!  We’re all homo’s you know!  Homo Sapiens!

1994
The U.S. Supreme Court rules that parodies of an original work are generally covered by the doctrine of fair use.  So, I can’t get sued for my poor imitation of Wolfman Jack.  But speaking of homo, it was this week in...

1998
The Supreme Court of the United States rules that federal laws banning on-the-job sexual harassment also apply when both parties are the same sex.  Inferring from the name of the lawsuit, the offense in question happened on an off-shore oil rig.  Well at least there was plenty of lubricant.

Phone and email liner

My guest on the program is a sort of a Renaissance man.  With multiple degrees, he’s contributed to the success of multiple Fortune 500 companies.  Now retired from the business world, Guy Morris writes novels with titles like, Swarm, The Last Ark, and The Curse of Cortes, all of which have artificial intelligence as an underlying theme.  You can learn more about Guy at guymorrisbooks.com.  So who better to ask some questions about artificial intelligence than someone who’s been studying it longer than just about anybody…

Bob:
There seems to be some fear about what AI brings to the table and some politicians are trying to catch up to it by considering laws to regulate it.  My question is, is there a way to legislate artificial intelligence? 
Guy:  Ah, the answer is yes and no.  In some ways we absolutely can do a better job of regulating.  I think there are a lot of commercial concerns that deal with some biases of AI, some AI  hallucinations and people can taking a hallucination by an AI is when an AI basically states something that’s blatantly false and made up, which AI are known to do, and there’s AI commercial issues around Rights Management so we have a number of lawsuits that are starting right now. New York Times is suing open AI because they scraped a lot of their content and into feed and train their chat GPT AI.  So there’s there’s legal issues that absolutely can be, should be addressed simply and easily.  Also international issues such if I create a deep fake video and publish it in America but I’m in Russia without International laws there’s really no compensation there’s really no way of getting at me.  We have to come to some we’re not close to that yet EU is right now the only continent that’s really done a serious job at least that implementing some of those first signs or those first levels of regulation.  The United States is still toying with the idea we’re kind of dysfunctional right now in terms of getting things done.      So we’re going to see an increase in AI generated crime before we see the authorities catch up to that with ways to either catch it or prevent it so there’s always going to be a lag we’re always going to see the problem first and the solution coming second.   So if AI is moving faster, we don’t have really good regulation to control any of that or the fact that it will become faster than humans.   Not only faster than humans in terms of intelligence, more intelligent than humans.  It will become a superintelligence probably within 12 to 18 months for sure.  And we don’t know what to do with that.  We don’t know what to do with a machine intelligence that’s smarter than we are.  We think we do.   By definition the machine intelligence smarter than we are may be able to outsmart us and so we’re kind of playing a little bit with fire. no one of t

Bob:  One of the ways that AI could probably seep it’s way into our everyday lives is through the media and now on the one hand Media companies are suing AI generators for using their content to teach AI how to do whatever it does, but on the other hand many media companies are exploring with AI and figuring out how they can use it so, where is the line drawn between Ai and what we currently know as media and and how might that line move?
Guy:  It’s going to move direct and decisively towards the AI route.  A couple things are gonna happen.  We’re going to see some regulations and probably court cases that’re going to require AI companies to compensate media companies for using their information.  Up until now they’ve been able to use anything that’s available on the public domain, AI companies are just soaking it in and scraping  it for information.       A lot of companies are going to say no you can’t do that.  If you want to use my information, you’re gonna have to sign a license,  pay a royalty or there’ll be some form of legal compensation for that.  That form will work out like a form where we’re seeing content and we’ve already seen some of this MSN fireda number of their editors and reporters and started using AI to replace them.  Well they immediately started seeing issues with AI hallucination where AI was delivering the story but would then deliver some of the information that was completely false.  And so we have a while yet where we’re going to see a blending between the two content sources human and AI.  I think there’s going to be preference towards certain things that we want to be human driven for the sake of the human story, the human context, and then also we want to make sure that we’re validating and and fact checking.  So I think once we get the factual components of the AI media under  control, which is a matter of testing and development, I think you’ll see more AI taking over some of the media types of content.  According to some of the regulation, at least according to the regulation that’s already started in Europe, that any company or any content created by an AI has to be clearly marked as AI generated content.  If I’m a criminal I’m not going to do that, so we’re dealing with some parts of society are going to comply with that regulation in the issue in the spirit of transparency some aspects of society, misinformation, criminal information, fake information, missed information that’s intent to to deceive or defraud will be almost indistinguishable.  And that will be a major problem.
Bob:   Some media are reporting AI in a very ominous way, and it makes me wonder, you know what half of The Ledger has the most checks on it?  Is AI going to be a liability overall or will it be an asset overall, and what agenda does the media have for maybe setting us up to be afraid of AI while at the same time, using it themselves?
Guy:  I don’t think the fears are overblown.   I think that they’re lacking in context and timeframes.  If somebody came along early in the early 1900s and said that smoking was bad for your health, would cause cancer and you shouldn’t do it, it would have just seemed as fear mongering because a lot of people were smoking and the tobacco companies were telling us no they were actually giving advertisements that said that doctors want babies to smoke, that this was a good thing for us.  Then we saw the oil company, so I was actually with an oil company is when we were first starting the misinformation campaign around climate change and fossil fuel burning.  I was in the boardroom when that turned into a major issue.  We saw oil companies spend 4 or 5 decades trying to tell us that fossil fuel burning really had no consequence on the environment.  We saw social media companies say from the very beginning, oh no this is just or it’s an open Town Hal,l it’s good for us to have everyone being able to say whatever they want.   But we hadn’t worked through disinformation issues, we hadn’t worked through socialization and issues where people were starting to left out and isolated.  All the warnings about that were unheeded.    And so we’re at that curve again with AI.  AI will do some amazingly good things, in the world and the economy and in certain jobs  AI will also have negative consequences.  So, there will be some disruptions.  That even if we don’t go to the  distopic end of      the potential scenario ...there will be some negative impact of AI on society, on our economy on our national debt and we’re not prepared for those.

Bob:   As it relates to people’s everyday lives, I mean, what you’re talking about will probably have a profound effect on our everyday lives, but as far as our everyday lives go today will there be any part of AI that will not eventually be unable to be identified as artificial?   How can we identify AI?   Is there a way to do it right now, or are we already being fooled by it?

Guy:   Well, we’re already being fooled by it.   Now could we modify the AI programs to that itself becomes self-proclaiming.   I’m an artificial intelligence so I’m going to be here to help you with your health care today.  I’m an artificial intelligence, I’m chatting with you on social media.   So we could we could simply let, force the companies to make the AI declare itself.  But we are already seeing conversations where people are having with AI entities or AI deep fakes or AI chat Bots or AI companions and they can’t tell that it’s an artificial intelligence.   And in fact that is part of the Turin test for Singularity or super intelligence is the point at which a human having a conversation with an artificial intelligence can’t tell the difference and we already have examples of that today.   So how it will affect our everyday life is going to vary depending upon the type of work, career, social life we have.   One of the things I tell everybody about AI is that it’s not pervasive.  I live near Woods.  I can go take a sailboat ride, I can take a walk in the woods, AI has absolutely no presence where we don’t have electronic devices or Internet of Things where we don’t have sensors and readers and gauges and phones and cameras and microphones and in data.  AI lives completely within a digital dimension.  And a lot of life, certainly in the urban environments, has become more digitized.   But that’s not Universally true across the planet.  Where we have fewer Electronics we also will have fewer presence of AI.
Bob:   Well I’m glad you brought that up because recently on the news I saw that Google’s AI, I think they call it Gemini, it was asked to create an image of an astronaut and didn’t create one of a white man.  It created astronauts of women, black men, everything but white men.  The pope was depicted as a black man and a woman but not as a white man, and even George Washington was depicted as a black man.  When asked to generate a photograph of these these people, this is what Google’s AI came up with, so it was almost as if you couldn’t get it to create a depiction of a white man no matter how hard you tried!  So how can AI, which is supposed to know everything, and which some say is just regurgitating what we tell it, can it be so disconnected with reality, what forces have to be at work at Google or wherever the programs are being written to deliver these kinds of results?
Guy:   Well I think you’re seeing a number of things happening there.   For a number of years actually into about 2/3 years ago, AI’s were actually biased against any people of color, they couldn’t do facial recognition.   They would always choose sort of because we had trained them on White faces, white replications, white images and so most of the AI companies and in response to that have tried to make a concerted effort to represent diversity within their AI.  Now I mentioned a little bit ago that AI has a problem with what we call hallucination, where it mixes up facts, and so what you’re seeing now is the AI trying to at least in the image generation in the rendering of images try to take these algorithms that are saying we need to be more diverse and it’s overlaying it’s falsely overlaying some of that diversity into some of these other images.  That’s a matter of training to get it to balance out.  One of the things that AI is is really good at is knowing a lot of facts, but it’s still learning how to put those facts in context to history and other things, in part because AI while it’s extremely powerful it has a very short memory and so it may not remember a fact of oh yeah George Washington was historical character and by the way he looked like these images of it George Washington that are already in the system, and so we’re dealing with the hallucination problem combined with a intent by social media to represent a diverse population and and the inability to solve the hallucination problem yet.  Part of that will be solved by new training.  One of the things that people misunderstand is AI is not one thing; it’s not this big massive intelligence that all of these things coming from.  It’s a methodology of using machine learning, and so the     pending upon the data that we serve depending upon how we train it, depending on how we test it, you’re going to see different AIs that advance at different paces and with different levels of knowledge.  Can’t think of AI as being all powerful, we have to think of it as a tool that’s in the process of developing but developing so incredibly rapidly that we really don’t have handle and where it’s going to develop who’s going to use it and how it’s going to develop right.
Bob:  Will we ever get to a point where we will be able to trust AI? 
Guy:  I think from a technology perspective yes that’s true I think we can regulate the uses and and the proliferation uses I think that might be true as well.   The question that I have is are we going to get there fast enough, are we going to be able to find the human Unity necessary at an international level to get China and Russia and North Korea and the United States all to agree to a treaty that we won’t use AI nefarious ways.  I think that the danger is that we’re dealing with elements of society that don’t want to be regulated, that want to see these tools that they can use and I think we’re going to struggle with that.   I think that there’s a certainly people like you and I, normal people, that just want to live our lives that maybe want to have a little bit more convenience maybe want to see prices of certain things come down a little bit, but don’t want to see a wholesale takeover by a company and technology or another enemy state to use AI to disrupt our society.  AI developed so fast it caught even the best developers off guard.  Jeffrey Hinton, who’s known as the father of AI, resigned Google a couple of years ago 2 or 3 years ago now because he was alarmed in enough itself he had been working with AI Technologies for close to 30 years as long as I put implemented my first day I sent some 30 years ago and he quit because he was alarmed that how fast it’s developing, and how little were putting little money attention we’re putting in trolling how this technology develops rather than being the first to develop it.   So we’ve got an international competitive scenario right now where no company wants to slow down because they’re afraid that somebody’s gonna overtake them.  Is it a danger?   Do these AI scientists see something that may be the rest of us don’t see, and is there a danger with pursuing this technology so fast that we’re not paying mentioned to the safety and the regulation and the proliferation issues, and the answer is yes, and it’s our nature of greed and to some extent, that is pushing us towards a state where we could create more danger than we’re really want because we’re just hoping for the best but not being prepared for the worst.
Bob:   Okay I have about 5 minutes left Guy and if there’s anything I think I already know about you is that you, you no longer have a problem leaving the past behind.   You don’t seem like a guy who looks over your shoulder, but if you did look back 5 or 10 years from now, what is it about our lives today that we might not have any more because of AI, and will we even miss it?
Guy:   Wow that’s a good question. yeah you actually stumped me a little bit on that one. 
Bob:   Oh, sorry I didn’t mean to do that.
Guy:   No, that’s okay, I’ve been so focused on just where we’re at today and trying to kind of capture that and and realistic plausible scenarios.   I think we could we could lose control over some of our infrastructure.  I think we’re going to want to automate some of the things that are too expensive to to operate; Logistics systems.  I think we’re going to wind up giving a lot of control over to AI for that.   Financial markets are going to be another one.  The big one that we might see, the world economic Forum has replace the US dollar with a essentially a crypto cion, a digital currency that’s AI driven and Central Bank oriented.  So rather than a cryptocoin which is essentially not based on anything other than like a pyramid scheme the only way it has value is that more people buy it.   Very useful for criminal activity for sure.   But they want to replace the US dollar for all International Trade which would create an absolutely ginormous digital Market.  The international monetary fund this year launched the first Central Bank controlled digital currency called umu the umu some people are calling it The Unicorn.   So, within a few couple of years, we’re going to see the Unicorn coupled with AI platform start replacing the U.S. dollar with digital currency.    The citizen monitoring system that China set up, which is far too onus for most countries to adopt, have already sold parts of that system to over 40 countries.  So the ability for those countries to monitor citizens decide who’s a good citizen who’s a bad citizen based on cameras, phone usage, other Financial uses, online usage see what we do to create a profile of us, it’s also going to be something that exists today will get worse and so yeah there will be some things that as we see AI penetrate some of these systems and markets it will change some of our fundamental dynamics of our economy and our world and how we operate today how do we go to the store and decide what we’re how it’s going to be priced.  I’m hoping I certainly believe that some of these systems are going to be working with these ai’s to get rid of or minimize or control the hallucination problem there’s another problem that’s very dominant with an AI called emergent properties and I want an emergent property is, is when an AI teaches itself something we never thought it needed to learn.  We don’t even know why it teaches itself things, learning about many of these emergent Properties by accident.   An example was an AI that taught itself how to manage chemistry or research level chemistry.  Another AI developed the ability to use an MRI scan to read the mind of the individual of what they were thinking during that scan.   And when the deveopers discovered this they thought it was a fluke at first and until he went back and tested it and they realized that the AI had taught itself to read minds using MRIS. we don’t know what the AI will teach itself next. we don’t even know what the various AIS have taught themselves are we do know that there’s various types of AI from the very simple called our intelligence has the lowest level of risk to the most complicated multimodal AIS that are the large language models that are closest to superintelligence that probably have the greatest level of risk.   We can minimize those risks that we’re intelligent smart about it but we need to get together and decide how to do that and how to do that collectively effectively.
Bob:  Until then I would recommend wearing a tinfoil hat and keeping some cash in your pocket for as long as you can!
Guy:  Yeah.

The Listening Tube is written and produced by yours truly.  Copyright 2024.  Thank you for putting your ear to the Listening Tube.  Subscribe today.  I’m your host, Bob Woodley for thou ad infinitum.