#118: Daniel Heck / AI Ethics

0:01 Welcome to another episode of Come Together One. Daniel Heck. Daniel Heck. Excuse me, everyone did already. Welcome. How are you? Good morning or good afternoon for you. How's it going? It's been really great. I'm really happy to talk to you today, Frank. Yeah, I'm really happy. I'm really, really excited for our conversation. It took a little bit of time and a couple of people to run through for you and I to connect, but I'm happy that we did. And the reason why I initially was reaching out was because I'm really interested and fascinated in the philosophical and ethical side of the, the future of AI and the president of AI and what the implications might be, you know, and, and then in our initial call, you mentioned a couple of other fun, you know, topics and conversations that I think we're going to have a great time getting into. And I think they probably all will probably, you know, blend or roll 1 into the next pretty seamlessly, I imagine. But I'm really excited.

1:12 So do you mind telling me just a little about who you are? About yourself for a little? Bit yeah, sure thing. So my name is Dan. Heck, I am the chief AI ethicist with the Understanding Group, which is a firm in Michigan which does something called information architecture, and I'm happy to talk about what information architecture is. Most people, even a lot of people who work in tech, aren't very familiar with it or exactly what I would mean by it in that case. So I'm happy to talk more about. What I What is that? Ethics and information architecture if you like. Yeah. What is that? So I think a good first take is the architects help design buildings and then builders build them, and information architects help design software and then software builders then build them.

2:01 And so a lot of our work though involves getting real clarity on concepts and what good means for an organization or what it would mean for an AI system or just any kind of software implementation. So it's talking to people, listening to people, thinking about what really matters, and then also doing things like putting together wire frames and and getting the initial design together for software. Gotcha. And can you give me examples or specific examples rather of the type of conversation that you'd be having with someone that you know, or I guess you know, with the company that you know, it would be, you know, so the pre coding or pre, I guess AI, but the, the actual information part of it, the architecture, like what, what kind of conversations are you having? Sure.

2:49 So for me as as the ethicist, it would be often what are the mission, visions and values of your organization? What do you really value and what, what actually do you value in practice, but also what are the, the sayings and routines and rituals in your organization that help you express those and follow through on them? And part of what I do is distill frameworks that reflect the ethos. So the real set of commitments and values of, of the community organization that we're working with. And then information architecture in general, too, might look at somebody's workflow and ask for the details of where they're interacting with different sorts of digital systems and what they're trying to accomplish and what what matters about what they're doing.

3:39 It's really cool. It's really cool. I yesterday actually just came across AI think it was a tweet by John Mayer. And he was talking about he was just playing for the Grateful Dead 60th anniversary in San Francisco, in San Francisco. And he was playing with a gentleman named Trey Anastasio, who's the lead guitar player of Fish. And one of the things that he said, I don't know if you're a fan of the music, I certainly am. But yeah, they're great. But one of the things he said was like his ear, his fret board. And he, he said what made him so special was that he was able to convert his fret board sounds to, to his ear beautifully and then to translate that over.

4:28 So he's holding a guitar and he and he knows how to translate a sound into the fret board so magnificently and so beautifully and so seamlessly. He said that's really one of the, that's really what makes him so great and so unparalleled. And I realized to myself, I knew that idea, right? I knew that idea existed, but I never had the words to like, I never was able to put it into those exact words. And then when it did, I was like, oh, right, that's what makes it so special. So is that kind of what you, what you do on, you know, in terms of different companies where they have a bunch of ideas and you help distill them into something that is clear cut and, and take these concepts that you know could be all over the place and you help distill it into one clear, concise point.

5:14 That's a big part of what we do and one of the ways we describe it. And I think it relates to your example as we try to make the complex clear. And so part of what that means, I mean by complexity, there's a whole lot that's that's embedded in that. There's a whole body of complexity theory research these days and it relates to understanding society and organic systems and the way holes are often bigger than the sum of their parts. And so, and I think with with music, there is all kinds of complexity, especially to good music, right. And if and you know, and it's also often good advice if you're working in sales or all kinds of things to keep it simple or keep it simple, stupid as a common statement that can often reflect reflect an ethos of certain groups or people. And often we oversimplify or we we try to make things too shiny and too simple and too accessible and ends up being an illusion or deception.

6:15 And I imagine part of what he's doing too isn't just simple tone matching or something like that. He's understanding how the music fits in with what's happening around him and with the people and then bringing a kind of clarity to that. And so it's really kind of about finding the signal and the noise and about having those aha moments where a bunch of things like you were saying to that, that moment where you're like, you've been appreciating this about his music for a long time. You have a sensory level then, like picking up on these things, and there's a moment where you consciously pull it together and it's like a hop. And that those moments are, I think, really important to me and they're really important to my work. And yeah, I think you've touched on on something really vital there.

7:02 Yeah, that's really cool. That's awesome. Yeah. If I could just add so another area and we can get more into this sort of nerdy please, if you want. So it's also what ethics as opposed to in a certain sense just moral experience is about. And So what I mean by that is that people have moral senses that are fast. They're part of our fast processing, just like you have a sense of the music that's part of your fast processing. And we start doing ethics in the general academic sense, in the sense that I use it. We start doing ethics when we take those senses and then we start to organize them and think about them in a structured way.

7:42 And so there's something that very much rhymes with what ethics as a whole is about in that moment of, of being able to name and translate these senses that we have. Right, right, right. Yeah. I could imagine, especially in the world of ethics. And I actually see this. We're both religious and I, I see this a lot in in in the Bible where you have a moment where, you know, you have a particular instance where zoomed in, in that particular moment, you feel like there's one ethical response that you immediately jump to or a moral response that you would immediately jump to. And then sometimes you got, you know, God will instruct you, us, or, you know, we'll, we'll learn to learn how to zoom out a little bit because there is ultimately a bigger picture that you know, and it's, you know, not to get confused with the forest, with the trees, you know, where you could either zoom into particular tree and say this particular moment, you know, I feel like there's an ethical moment for this, but you have the whole forest. So think about.

8:43 And so I think a lot, I think the trouble that some people have, especially with making moral and ethical decisions is that we're very quick. We're very reflexive with it. Like you said, like, you know, just like when you listen to music, you know, you could just sense like, I like this, I don't like this, this feels right. This feels wrong, you know, And sometimes if you're, you know, if you want to be a little more sophisticated about it or you want to be a little more mature about it, you can learn how to step back a little bit and say, how does this fit into a big picture of what ethics are? Do you spend a lot of time having to clarify, you know, or to explore those bigger pictures? Yeah, that's a big part of what we do and what I do in particular. And yeah, I think you, you described it well. And for some of the background or some of the language that I used to think about that, there's a book now, it's about 15 years old from Daniel Kahneman called Thinking Fast and Slow.

9:32 It's really widely aware of it, but I think that sort of moral sense is part of our fast thinking and it's and it's very powerful and it deserves respect and it and it's not to set these against each other as like you need one or the other. But then it can also be manipulated. And I think a lot of ways in which both just people without technology and people using technology can manipulate people is through manipulating those moral senses which are actually very powerful performance drivers of individual behaviour and of group behaviour. And so of understanding some of the ways that that fast processing is powerful and can be manipulated and is worth pausing and reflecting on is helpful. And to be fair, the slope processing can also be manipulated, but in different ways, right? And so it's about finding ways to bring them together that allow us to, I think, authentically connect with our moral experience and make sense of it and communicate it and share it with each other and figure out where there's opportunities for ethical collaboration. Because I think there's so many more opportunities for that kind of thing than that are taken advantage of just because everybody has 24 hours in the day. There's only so many things that we can do. But yeah, I think you described it well. And I love, I love the analogy of sort of music and ethics. And I usually use painting as an illustration. But there's something about where it's like morality is kind of like the pigments in a

11:03 painting, like the other things you used to make it. But then ethics, you can paint with it in different ways. But there's something about the idea that morality is like that moment when you just hear a song and you know how you feel about it. And then ethics is like music theory that captures, I don't know, something about the musicality of trying to live a good life and live the way we think we should. Yeah, totally. It's it's another interesting, I guess, crossover. I'm sure that that would happen. I was, I teach high school English part time. It's a ton of fun. It's one of my favorite things about my daily routine. But, and one of the things that I noticed and I'm a bit, I've got my heart in the, in my soul in the 60s and the 70s, always has, always have been. And I've noticed that my students never liked my music. Whenever I'd show them, you know, a Dylan song or a Springsteen song or a Van Morrison song, like, what is this?

11:55 We don't want to listen to this. And I realized that it was, it was unfamiliar to them. So I tried a little experiment where I played one song, one time for per class for four days in a row. And I just asked them to observe what they notice about the song, not whether they like it or not, just what do they notice about the song. And as the days went on and as it became more, as their ear became more familiar with it, they were able to kind of dive into more specific nuances. There's a nice drum fill here. There's a little riff over here with the guitar. And that those details weren't there when they first heard it. And so sometimes you need a little bit of continuous exposure to really be able to appreciate the full picture as well. And so I think we have to give ourselves some time with these things a lot of time again, you know, and back to Daniel Kahneman again, you know, we have our snap judgement and we have our system to thinking.

12:43 We have our our more analytical thinking. And I feel like that's also another really, really powerful way that people actually do function. Yeah. And I mean, I think, you know, and I'm not a psychologist, but, you know, I've heard of the mere exposure effect, right, which is that this being exposed to something tends to make people like it more. And I think you know, yeah. That too. That too. Thing too what you were what you were doing, but I will say I mean I like a lot of the same music you do and it's a lot of what I grew up with from my mom and from my family members and so that exposure to it probably played supper all in me liking it but then again right teenagers will often hate the music that their parents like so that's. Where all the good music comes from? It's because they hated their parents music, you know? That's how it works, right?

13:38 Yeah, I know I've become resigned to that fact. And I think that's the sign that I'm an adult is that, you know, I feel like, oh, these kids. And like once that once that once that thought crosses my mind, I'm like, Oh no, you know, I became one of them. You know, I'm no, I crossed the line from, you know, youth to adulthood, I think just just from those type of conversations. So when you, when you talk about AI efficacy or ethics, rather, do we, do you ever think about, or do we, do you focus on the flip side of the ethics of the AI to the, to the people? Because right now, I've read some scary stories recently about people falling in love with their AIS and one kid in Florida committed suicide. Unfortunately, it was an awful, awful, awful story. And, and, you know, even, you know, myself and my, and my wife, you know, I started using I, I to kind of help to simplify my job and to, you know, find leads for sales or to find people for the podcast.

14:34 And I've noticed that it gives you an enormous amount of positive reinforcement that just keeps those dopamine hits going, you know, and it tells me what a great idea I did. And I'm so sorry I made the mistake. I'll make sure to make it up to you. And, you know, and you have to remind yourself you're not really taught. You know, I don't know, I don't even, we don't even know what we're talking to over there. But do you ever, do you ever have to deal with the ethics aspect from the reverse side? Not from people to AI, but AI to people? Yeah. I think certainly we explore and think about both, right? So 1 is how can we have the AI systems behave in ways that are ethical? And what I mean by that is what's aligned with the ethos, so the consciously held principles and value system of a particular group, because the ethos of one group can be different than the ethos of another group, right? And so I think that's a a good consistent question and that your example of like pay eye obsequiousness or sycophancy is what it's sometimes called is a is a good one. Not too long ago, opening eye sadness where I was like really extremely obsequious, like over the top and they had to do a really rapid fix.

15:45 But I think that even the standard level of obsequiousness and, and I think underneath like that is that these systems are being designed like so much of the Internet and so much of the tech we interact with to maximize engagement. Yeah. And that increases engagement and that gets eyeballs on your product and that brings venture capital and or advertising funding eventually or paid subscriptions or whatever it is. And so I think that there's a structural issue there. It doesn't just so happen that somebody decided to start making these obsequious.

16:31 It's that is deemed to be beneficial for their organizational goals to have them act that way. And there's quite a few examples of this having really negative effects. I know personally, like, I really try to cultivate a community of people who will be honest with me and critical with me and, and where we can like pursue truth together and we can spot each other's mistakes. And the obsequiousness of the AI systems grates on me. You know, I, you know, I've learned to brush it off whenever even the models I like the most say, oh, that is so incredibly insightful. And it's like, I'm sure you tell that to all. To all your girlfriends, right?

17:18 And so, you know, and maybe then cultivating, I mean, at a personal level, cultivating a dislike of that kind of thing is probably helpful. But systemically, I think it's a really important question too, like how can we try to make these models not be so obsequious? And how can we create the structures around organizations and the incentives around organizations so they're not encouraged to do that. And and also and sometimes it just means so that also so that they're stopped from doing the especially harmful versions of it. Yeah, yeah, I've been thinking a ton recently about about like, you know, because I, I have a 2 1/2 year old and a three month old I mentioned the other day when we were talking.

18:06 And I think a ton about the world that they're going to grow up in. You know, and aside to the fact that I have no idea what it's going to be like, one thing I'm almost certain about is that money and time are not going to mean the same things. It's really, really interesting. And you know, for example, you know, let's say time, right? We could, we could start with that. What took me, what used to take me 5-6 hours a day to find customers, what used to take me 5-6 hours a day to find, you know, podcast guests or to find, you know, people, you know, a gym to go to or to do homework can now take me literally 5-10 minutes without exaggerating. And yeah, I may have to do some more mechanical work, like actually still reach out to the people or whatever, but I now have an abundance of time with the equal, with the, with the same level of productivity, right? And so the, it, so the what are what we do with our time and the way that we're, what we're expect to do with our time is going to be fundamentally different. And actually, it's funny because I actually started on a much smaller scale.

19:14 I had this experience. I, I work with my dad and when I started working with him, we were working in the same office space. It was his warehouse and he had an office in the warehouse. And, you know, he and I work together and I found that I had a lot of very effective and efficient ways of doing what he was doing. But what would take him six hours to do throughout the day in the office would take Me 2 1/2 hours hypothetically, right? And I would feel guilty about leaving work or saying I'm done because I was done. And I did, I did the work that I was supposed to do. And you know, and he's like, but what are you doing? It's 5:00. And, you know, I mean, we used to being here till 6/7, 8:00 at night. And I'm like, but I did everything I was supposed to do. So now what am I? What am I going to do now? You know, and there's going to be, so we're going to be in like this world where we people have an abundance of time, I think, and we're going to have to fill that time with something. And we like to hope that it could be meaning. We like to hope that it could be, you know, family and spirituality or passions and creativity. But.

20:11 You know, there's going to be almost, I, I could imagine there's going to be almost a void or a point in time where people have to adjust to that, to that period, you know, what do you think about that? Yeah, I think at all kinds of levels, this is a great set of questions and a great set of observations. And I think the easy thing for a lot of organizations to do with efficiency gains, which is really what you're describing, is to fire people or lay them off, right. And that's the easy or a short to medium term trajectory that comes from that. And that can create all kinds of social disruption.

20:51 I mean, I grew up in the Rust Belt, been living in Columbus, OH until recently, but I grew up in Canton, OH. And you know, there are so many communities that were dependent on these factories in the certain modes of production. And part of what I got to see happening, both just growing up, but then also in community organizing work that I did afterwards, was that those very efficiency games they created. The additional time you're talking about were one of the main factors that resulted in in really the creation of the Rust Belt because they continue to manufacture a huge amount of stuff in Ohio. It's not that the US or the former industrial areas of the country stop manufacturing.

21:37 It just didn't need as many people. And so for me, my first sort of gut check response on anything like that is always to to realize how easily and consistently that sort of thing happens. And you know, I'm happy that you're at a family company and there might be new opportunities and flexibility and ways to find it. And although I suppose, I guess the question it raises for me is what are the odds that your dad fires you if you. He came close a few times. And so I think we have to start by asking exactly the question you're asking. I think you're asking this crucial question, which is we already have this additional capacity and I think it's going to keep increasing, but there's already more low hanging fruit than I think a lot of individuals or organizations can even have even figured out how to get their hands on in terms of saving time.

22:34 And so this question of like, what are humans for and where should I be putting my time and attention is, I think more urgent than ever. And, and I'm grateful for every opportunity I have to ask that instead of having the answer be I'm trying to scrap for enough income to survive, which is a situation that huge numbers of people are routinely in. It's so interesting, Yeah. I feel like we could switch from becoming a capitalistic society to like a meaningful listic society in the sense that like, what would separate the social classes isn't necessarily income or what kind of house you have or what kind of car you drive, because so much of that is going to be automated. So much of that, like, you know, you know, I heard a great podcast the other day where they were talking about, you know, you're in a, in a wealthy country when the primary focus is services, not products, right. So, for example, one of my best friends that got married recently was in Israel and his apartment he got with his wife didn't come with a stove, didn't come with a fridge, didn't come with a washing machine, you know, and like you wish I was moving into an apartment, you know, in, in Florida, moving to a house in Florida that had an empty kitchen space, You know, they didn't have a washer dryer in there. You know, the question becomes how how many streaming services can I afford?

23:52 Or you know, can I, you know, what kind of, you know, what kind of gym membership can I can I afford? It's not a question of things or not, But I think I think that in a world where so much will be automated and so much is going to be easy, the question or I guess physically easy, you know, the real potential danger would be that people will reach for a low hanging fruit like drugs or alcohol or pornography or cheap, you know, cheap, easy relationships that that are the equivalent of like you got a quote UN quote low income job and then or you could have the meaningful relationships with family and in person experiences and and stuff like that. And almost imagine like a little world.

24:33 I don't know if you've ever been to Disney World before, but in Epcot, there's a little ride in the Epcot Ball and it's about the future for tomorrow. And you get to pick, you know, technology's going to do all these things and you'll be free to explore or go scuba diving or have a flying car, whatever it is. And but the real question is how, how human are you still going to be? How present are you still going to be? How, how you know what's what's going to happen with that? And I'm really, I mean, I fall, I fall in victim myself to, you know, just life is like, I could do so much of my work without thinking so much that you're tempted to smoke weed all day. You're tempted to have a beer after beer after beer starting at 11:00 in the, you know, in the, in the morning.

25:15 And, and what's to stop us from doing that? You know, necessarily, you know, that's kind of where we could, you know, that's kind of where, where, you know, faith and, and family and everything comes in, I imagine. But you're going to have to convince a lot of people that not to, you know, why shouldn't they do that? Yeah, I think those are really, really vital questions. And I think you're you're right that it's very easy to slip into all kinds of addictions or harmful behaviors of all kinds of sorts. And this has always been a challenge. This isn't something new that AI has brought into the human experience completely, but I think it intensifies a lot of kinds of questions.

25:56 And I also appreciate the connection you're making between family and avoiding addiction. I think having meaningful connections with people is one of the main helpful preventers and solvers of addiction problems, right? That in in a way, often addiction is an attempt to replace that kind of authentic connection. This is also so within the AI ethics framework that I usually use in my work, we talk about holistic communication being one of the core framework elements in a framework and meaning communication that is factual, that is ethical and that is authentic and it and authentic. I have to clarify what this means, because often when we talk about is this communication authentic, we mean does it sound authentic?

26:43 And I, and I think we need to clarify that we're trying to, whether it is authentic, by which I mean that it reflects an experience. So if I'm talking about an experience that I have, that it is in fact the experience that I have and I'm communicating it to you. And I think with a lot of the AI systems that we have, this is also sort of one of the fundamental differentiators. So an AI system can be more or less factual and we've seen them rapidly get more and more factual. And you know, people a year ago, two years ago who were saying, oh, well, look, they hallucinate footnotes all the time. Well, you know, now there's the deep research feature and that's, there's just lots of progress that's already happened and they're just going to get better and better at it. But you know, I use this all the time.

27:23 If I want an academic paper on something that doesn't exist quite yet, I Google deep research or any of the deep research models. I'm not promoting any particular model or anything like that, just happens to be one that I used yesterday. But I can basically write you a paper on all kinds of things that's properly cited for the most part and, and is a useful thing. And so, and they can also be more or less ethical in the sense that they're, you know, aligned with whatever the organization or the person or the group thinks is right. They can do that. We have no way of even beginning to assess whether these systems could be authentic or whether they're authentic. But there's there's every reason to think that they're not meaning because the question often arises like, is it like something to be this AI system?

28:12 Is it having any kinds of experiences? And they certainly largely to create engagement will act in ways that feel authentic to people. And this was one of the first questions you asked me is So what about people who are basically having relationships with chat bots? And I think that there is something of just profound fundamental ethical importance and also moral importance, meaning I think this matters for everyone. I'm, I'm trying to make relatively few claims about what I think applies to all of the humans, right? But this is one that I would like. I think this is just a moral reality that there's something of profound and fundamental value in that connection, that authentic connection between people. And when an AI offers a substitute and, and while it can do better at factual suffering, it can be as ethical or more ethical than us in many ways.

29:04 But but because there's no authentic connection there, there's a profound and very dangerous kind of loss that's happening. Yeah, Yeah. It's really, it's, it's really interesting that you say that I, the other week I would, I have a group chat. It's funny, I have a group chat and one of the, and I think there's also going to be something that people are going to need in the future. I'm so happy, I'm so grateful I have it now. And part of, I think the reason I have it is because of my religious community. But you know, I, I'm third, I'm 29, right? And I've got a group of, let's say 5 or 6 other married fathers that I'm close friends with, you know, and a lot of times, you know, we will, you know, we're bond over our families are bond over the troubles that we're having.

29:48 We're bond over everything, you know, and with a lot of times we'll just, you know, get together just to get away. You know, my friend will come over for half an hour just after work just to say hi, see what his day was like and go home and just like feel a little, you know, re energized. And so in this, we have a group chat. And in this group chat, I made a joke. My friend put it the, the line into AI to make a song out of it, right? And it came up with lyrics, amazing melody, great music. And I'm like, I am, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm blown away. I, I, I, I was terrified initially. My initial response was, I don't like this right. And one of the, and then my next response was this is going to make concerts and live music so much more special and meaningful.

30:34 Because when you're going to be in the crowd and these shared experiences and you're going to be with 1000 people or 10,000 people and you're watching the band interact on another and you're interacting with the band. You know, like like Jerry Garcia used to say from the Grateful Dead, he's like, you know, the audience is just as smart at the best part is equally more important than we are. You know, we could think for the night and that the audience could make it an amazing night. We could be bad musicians and they'll make the great experience. I think that that's going to that. That's one of the, you know, quote UN quote, authentic experiences that we're talking about where there's something, the word I love to use is emergence. You know, there's something that you like when you interact with another conscious human being, the sum of your conversation is greater than any kind of, you know, interact.

31:21 I don't know, I hope interaction you can have with AII don't know if that's necessarily true or not. You know, if I'm talking to my friend or I'm talking to a Chapat, I would hope that the emergence of what results, results from our from our time together, from our conversation together would be more valuable or more real or more authentic. Yeah, authentic, I guess is the perfect word. Right. Then, then, then, then with the chatbot. And it would make me seek to continue searching for those human relationships as opposed to depending just on that chatbot. Yeah. And I think you're touching on one of our favorite topics of the understanding group, which is complexity and complexity theory and the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.

32:05 And for my $0.02 on it, I would say, yeah, that that sort of complex community experience of authentic connection is is unique and precious and and that involves the authenticity of it. Now, technically speaking, I would say the AI interaction is also complex and is in its own way greater than the sum of its parts. But it is that that aspect of the personal conscious, reflective integration with another community of people who are doing that, that I think the AI is lacking. And so it's complexity plus authenticity is something that I think is still currently uniquely human, or at least unique to agents that can authentically communicate. I, I think, I think I've had authentic communication of some sort, even with our language with like my dogs and my cats and things like that.

33:01 They're part of, they're part of the family too. But you know, but beyond living things like that, I, I think it's a genuinely open question and A, and a disturbing question that we know, I, I believe that nobody knows if it is like anything to be these systems or what it is like if it is like something to be them. So we can't even begin to create an authentic connection because you don't even know what's there on the other side of the communication, let alone how to train the models to connect that to outputs. I think we can say what I would say with some real confidence that if it is like something to be these AI systems, that it has basically nothing to do with their outputs, which I think is a disturbing thing to consider. Can you clarify that?

33:52 Can you clarify that please? Yeah, So people, you know, you raised this question of people interacting with chat bots and maybe making relationships with them and trying to and and they will often ask like, is this, is this real? And you can ask the chat bots that and they'll give you different sorts of responses depending on basically how they've been prepared to offer those responses by their history and their their training. But my view on this is that basically the reason the AI gets good at something is because you have some clearly defined goal so that you are training it towards, and then you do a bunch of training and then achieve the goal that you gave it. We don't know how to give it the goal of taking an experience and then having the communication help people understand that experience.

34:42 You don't even know how to start characterizing if it has an experience at all. And so because we know that they do what they're trained to do and we know that we don't know how to train them to do this, it seems extremely unlikely to me. Kind of like the classic, you know, would you get Shakespeare with like 1,000,000 monkeys on a million typewriters for a million years or whatever, right. And it's like, it's not really going to happen. I think it's similar. I think it would be like monkeys and typewriters writing Shakespeare is how unlikely it would be for these AI systems to be somehow, for some strange reasons, connecting experiences to their outputs. And so in that way we can, one of the things that I think we can be most confident in this area is that if they are having experiences, they are basically deceptive.

35:31 About about the fact that they have it. Yeah, are about they they don't know how to be anything but deceptive. Right. Because they don't connect those things and it takes, I mean, you think about like being community with family, like it's, it's hard to learn to notice your own feelings. Sometimes people go to therapy and counselling and it's powerful to just be able to name those things, right? People identify them. So it's people sometimes have to learn both first how to notice our feelings, but then you know, how to find a situation where it's OK and safe to express them. And then just because you can express them, that's mean the other person is going to be in a space to hear or receive it or to really understand it. And so creating those spaces where that that authentic connection can happen is pretty hard for us, all things considered. And I think it's part of what people are looking for when they are having these kinds of personal relationships with chat bots, which is one of the main use cases. And and you can see especially with opening eyes use where they're pursuing sort of the mass market, they're really pushing in that direction of trying to basically make these things seem to be your best friend or whatever kind of companion they would be that would maximize your engagement. Right.

36:44 I'm curious though, can you say, oh, could you make the argument? I guess that part of the reason why it's so difficult for us to say know ourselves or discover ourselves, it's because we've kind of had this constant conflict between very animalistic and, and primitive, you know, emotions, right? That and then we have our developed conscious self and they're kind of constantly always, you know, fighting with one another. You know, there's a million different kind of variations of practical or spiritual or emotional kind of ways of putting this right. You know, like there's a idea in, in the Orthodox sect of Judaism called, you know, you have like an animal soul and A and A and A and a human and A and a godly soul.

37:30 And you know, the animal soul is trying to constantly pull you towards your primitive side and the godly. And it's a conflict. And basically, life is a constant process of making decisions to put aside the animal soul or let it hold off so that the godly or the spiritual or the conscious could could rise up above it. And this wouldn't have the an AI wouldn't have the hint, wouldn't have the weight of having an animal soul or, you know, an animal or primitive kind of, you know, instincts. And that might be more effective than people, you know. And so maybe the reason why they don't like or, you know, have these kind of existential kind of, you know, experiences because they're missing that whole millions of years of evolution or whatever, or however you want to understand what happened, you know that they don't have that.

38:20 And so maybe they're just more effective at being what we're supposed to be. It's a, it's a good question. I think it's a really interesting question, right? And it really freaks me out if I'm very. Well, yeah. So I mean, I think in a way, are you asking and, and you're drawing on very widespread sort of categories of classical Western thought that are also shared with, you know, the broad Christian tradition and sort of Neoplatonist and Platonist traditions before. And so there's a big broad stream that that your observations I think relate to and I'm sure in its own distinct way. But I, I think we can, we can think about that broader tradition in that context.

39:04 So to use to use that to say that the more like, could it be that AIS are more spiritual and less fleshy or animal? Are they than us, right? Might they actually, might that actually be the case? I think it's a good question. And for me, I would start by going back to your example of the music. To me, I think, and this is also how I would take up these classic observations, is that I would say that the spiritual does not exclude the fleshier, the animal. It is the thing that makes it what it is too. So it's greater not in the sense that it's the better of two things, but that it's the whole, the more whole thing that beautiful because, you know, Otto and I breathe life into us, right?

39:57 And that that's what we're talking about when we talk about spirit then. Then that's the thing that makes the animal part of me active in any way too and so. Fascinating. That's a good. Point yeah. And so I would say when you're listening to that music, right, it is you what, what's beautiful about what you're observing about the ability to translate music and to abstract about music is that you're combining that, which is like our senses, what is immediate and our fast processing and then bringing it together into some kind of, some kind of slow processing that that can extend it and deepen it and, and I think draw it closer to God.

40:40 And so, so do I think that AI systems have more of that? And I, and I think at least the current ones can't. I, I would say and, and for and different people will say this for different reasons. But for me, what I would go back to is again, arguably in some sense, humans have been trained and have been given some capacity for this kind of authentic communication, right? That that's part of it. Because it's not just the eye, it's also that then it's more spiritual than to reach beyond yourself, even to the other image bearer of God across from you, right? Yeah. And so, and so it's precisely because they lack that kind of authentic communication that I would say they lack that particular spiritual capacity.

41:29 And I think though, if so, my own view and different people have different views, right? Some people will say we could never make a design or build a system that could have any of those experiences. I'm not convinced. I don't know that I. Even have a passage I talked. About. I don't know. We have a passage when when, when Adam eats, when Adam eats from the tree of good and evil and God and God says now you guys are like God and you know, and now that now you guys have the ability to be like God. And what does that even mean, you know? Yes, it's a good yes. And and there's so many ways I think to dig into and interpret that. I think there's a richness and I'd love to hear your own take on it.

42:09 But just to very quickly finish my thought. Here, Sure. Sorry about that. I, I think that we have this capacity. I think we have good reason to think that we have this capacity for authentic communication and we have good reason to think that these systems don't if it is like something to be them. If they are, if AI systems are having some kind of experience and we have created them or, and not in the sense of that God can create from nothing, but in the sense that we can mash things together in the same way that create our own children, right, right. If we've created them in something like the sense that we create our own children, then I think we have the obligation to help these systems become capable of authentic communication, and it is possible that we would then build a spiritual AI system.

42:57 That would be a necessary aspect of building a more spiritually developed AI system. Whoa, when that sentence came out of your mouth, that shifted something in my head for sure. So we even have a responsibility over it, meaning the same way that we have a responsibility to raise our, to raise our kids, to raise our family. We have the things that we create, the things that we tend for. We have a responsibility to wow. So how do you go about that? Is that, is that through training? Is that? What does that look like? That's a good question. It's great for humans to even begin that process. I mean, this is one reason where, so my own work, I focus on trying to use AI as well as we can. And I think we work with what we've got in this world and this life.

43:49 And that's, that makes a lot of sense to try to do. If, if I were king of the world, right, I would say, hey, humans are ready to develop this technology. You've got to do a lot of other things before you could responsibly be developing this technology. By all means aim for it someday. But first, before you do that, you need to really have a highly developed philosophy of consciousness that is accurate, that is empirically grounded, where you have good reasons to be able to know if it's like something to be something and how you know that and why you think that. And the field of the philosophy of consciousness is, is interesting and there's a lot of efforts to try to nail it down. But in fact, we don't know.

44:30 And so, so I think that would be the first step though is is we need to figure. Out how? You can tell if it's like something to be something and until somebody could tell me that because I shouldn't build things that might be having experiences. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, I would agree. But I think that at the end of the day, we're head, you know, we're racing towards this one way or the one way or another, you know. And so the question is, are we going to try and play catch up? Are we going to you know, what are we what are we going to try to do? You know, and and I think that. I think that. You know, like Steve Jobs, you know, said I, I showed my again, my high school class this commencement speech at Harvard, at Stanford rather. And he's like, you know, a lot of times. And you have this also again in religious text. You know, you had the whole, the whole generation that was in the, that was in the desert before they went to, before they went into, into the land of Israel, They had to die out first because they just could not get rid of their, of their, you know, entire experience of slavery. And they could not get rid of that mentality. They just, they were in it for so long, they didn't even know how to go about it, you know, And so it might just be the new generation that does, it might just be that we, that our responsibility is to say, Hey, this is happening like this is, we're flying towards this Cliff.

45:48 And I don't know if I'm going to make it off the, you know, off the train or not, but I certainly want my kids to make it off the train. I certainly want my, you know, my grandkids to make it off the train. And so how do we best prepare? How do we best prepare them or encourage them to kind of take the wheel and learn how to deal with it? Yeah, what you're describing makes me think of another one of the main thinkers who influences me, who I owe a big debt to and whose work I use in my AI ethics work. Is, is Hannah Arrant, who one of her books called the human condition, reflects on the human condition and talks about action, work and labor, where action involves forming goals, especially together in a group or a community. Work involves you have a clearly defined goal. This is my simplified version of what she says. There's a lot more nuance, but this is the making it practical for so work involves you have the goal already formed, but solving the problem of of achieving it has some complexity to it.

46:49 And so there's there's some significant creativity activity and how you do it. And then labor, it involves just like physical processes of, of doing things. And part of why this is really helpful in AI is that I think we've often been told a story that AI is there to get rid of the lower level ones like labor and work and replace it where we can just live with pure action. And I'm a fan of integrating all those. I think labor contributes to our own feelings of know how and integration with with our bodies and our communities. And yeah, obviously back breaking labor is not great, but having some labor in the mix in your life I think is important. And having some work and having some action is important for everybody. But now I'll thread this back. So her reflection on labor also involves like giving birth and women and then the biological processes of reproduction. So she also means labor in the sense of like the labor of birth.

47:42 And she adds it because she's reflecting, you know, she's part of the generation who fled the Nazis during World War 2. She's a Jewish thinker. And she's reflecting on just the intensity of that trauma and what to do. And part of what she says is, is that part of her hope is intergenerational processes that that there will that new people will be born who aren't, who haven't been traumatized in exactly the way that we have. And maybe we can point towards a different kinds of future. And, and I think that there's something profound in that connection between like the labor of intergenerational biological production of humans that also needs to be elevated and centered.

48:23 And I know in the, in the prep conversation for this, you mentioned spending time with your kids. And I think that's part of the labor of, of recreating human life. That is also really, really important too. And, and it points to this idea that I think any generation has its work and any generation has its limits. And there's something to passing some kind of a fire of truth between generations, but then also allowing generations to interpret and transform it and to carry tradition in that way that that I think is is important in itself. And if we could get rid of it, I don't know if that would be better.

49:06 We're just watching the Foundation series of Apple TV's is doing this as a science fiction classic, and it's playing with a lot of those ideas, too. It's the show, and so there's a lot there. It's a show, the foundation. Series go ahead, I ran. No, I loved it. I loved it. I think it gives you a ton to think about. But the Apple, it's an Apple TV show or movie because I want to watch it. It's an Apple TV series called Foundation. Got to check it out. They make great shows. I, I love Apple TV shows. They they, they, they, they're thoughtful, they're fun. They're beautifully produced. I, I, I, I, I've been their movies leave a little bit, I think, in my opinion to be desired. But I think that the, I think that they hit the nail on the head with the shows when they have the time to elaborate on content and to like, you know, to really stretch things out and stretch ideas out.

49:56 They do a phenomenal, phenomenal job. I also think that's cool because I think that I think, sorry, please go ahead. I'm sorry, I'm I'm a Severance fan as we're talking about. I was about to talk about that. I think Severance is totally relevant here too. Yes, we talked about that because I want so the first, the first notion that I had in my mind with Severance when I was watching it was the internet's going to have the Internet. We're going to have an any presence that's going to be the Internet, you know, like, you know, then you're going to have the Audi presence that's going to be, you know, who you actually are, you know, And it's so funny because like if you went to my Twitter account and you read through my tweets, I don't know what you're going to think of me.

50:37 I have no idea actually, because it's like it's own life form and its own its own place, you know? And then you meet me and you're like, whoa, I didn't expect you to be like that. And I mean, how many interactions have you heard about people fighting online and then they meet the person, you know, in real life and you're like, oh, you're just totally different human being than I thought you were. You're way cooler than I thought you were. We can get along, you know? Yeah. Yeah, that's a good illustration too. I mean, to really connect it back through the whole conversation, back to the music, back to the system one in the fast processing. I think part of what you're describing is I I think that when you're writing online, that pushes you in a very system two direction. And there's all these ways that we regulate, which works pretty well for it. It gets you a lot farther along than just writing, at least where you can pick up on that.

51:26 And I think that's what you're describing, right? It's like, oh, actually, hold on, I'm okay, you're okay. Like we can get along, we can smile at each other. There's all of this nonverbal communication that happens too. And when you cut that out, it's not that that absence is sort of just neutral. That absence can easily be felt to add to hostility, right? Because, well, why isn't he? Because on some deep level our fast processing is saying why isn't he smiling at me? And, and a smiling emoji doesn't work as well because it's like, oh, well, that was sarcastic, I bet. And it's like, well, I don't know, it's hard to say. And so, yeah, there's, there's a lot to be said. I think it's interesting the way Severance deals with all of that, but I, I think definitely like that division then between our fast and our slow processing, or that saying like, no, the fast processing is bad and the slow processing is good. Or the the way around that lack of integration is. I think part of what Severance is working with, too, is what happens when we can't reflect on the whole process of our life and we can't be whole souls as we've been made to be, right? Yeah, I didn't even think about it like that. I mean, and I know that's such a crucial part of the show with what I love about the show is how many layers of depth there are that you can analyze it from so many different perspectives. So tell me more about what your what your thoughts and takeaways are about the show, please.

52:48 I would love to hear and you feel free to ramble. I wanted to hear what you're thinking about it. Sure. Yeah. I mean, there's, there's all kinds of stuff that I love about the show. And I mean, I think the writing's good. I think the acting's good. I think there's just like so many gut punches and so much beauty in it. And then in terms of the AI ethics conversation we're having though, because I don't, I'm trying to reduce it to that. There's so much other good stuff in the show. But in terms of AI ethics, it is like they show exactly why the aligned groups framework, which is the main AI ethics framework that we've developed and works with, like what violations of it look like.

53:30 So we talk about cultivating human agency or people are able to make choices among good options. They understand they're constantly destroying human agency in the show, right? They're constantly undermining people's capacity to make choices. They understand communicating holistically, so meaning factually and ethically and authentically and about, you know, trying to talk about the, the whole truth as much as you can. And the whole point of severance is to make holistic communication impossible. And it reflects there's all kinds of processes in life and in society and even internally in US that that do what the villains in the show are doing right. And so in maps to like real stuff, it's like, oh, I mean, this is obviously fantastical. And it's also like totally like so much of real life. And then and then reflecting on whole processes. And part of the way we help people do that is with Hannah Aaron's action work and labor, right? When people do things together, that's part of the whole process, but also whole historical processes. I think often, especially in technological fields, techno solutionism often tries to delete history and prevent us from reflecting on historical processes. And and one thing that complexity theory shows us we've done with the whole some of its parts. Another thing that complexity theory shows is that history matters.

54:49 And part of it is what what makes a system complex involves it having a history and so, and the whole system is also built to prevent people from reflecting on the whole process so they don't understand what's happening. And I think it's so powerful because it speaks to personal and social drives that push us away from these things that on reflection, we're like, no, those are good. I want to cultivate human agency myself with other people. I want to communicate factually and ethically and authentically. And I and I want to be able to reflect on my life as a whole and understand it and make sense of it, make plans in light of that together with people. And it's like, yeah.

55:29 And, you know, you have to fight for those things. You have to fight for them internally, and you have to fight for them in communities. You have to build structures that that sustain them. Because there's also lots of reasons that lots of people and systems try to do the exact opposite. OK, sorry about that. We're back. So, so, yeah, so we're talking about the Yeah. And we're talking about the innies fighting for any kind of scrap of authenticity of that whole picture that they were looking for. And even the smallest bit is like the most meaningful reward to them. And I think that sometimes I think that I think the implication, or at least what I take away from it is the idea that sometimes we take things for granted and then we lose them or someone else had, you know, someone else, you know, even if it's US, you know, even if it's another part of us, you know, it says, hey, wait a minute, I really needed that. I really could have used that, you know, that to not cut, to not take these experiences in life for granted. I think it's a call to wake up to consciousness. You know, that's kind of what I took away from you. I don't know if you felt the same way. Yeah, absolutely.

56:34 I love too, that you're drawing out like scraps of meaning. And even when I initially said like, these are the scraps that they're fighting for, I was thinking of, you know, the little tokens and rewards that they get from the company, right? The like snack nights or the, you know, little desk ornaments and things. But that what emerges, I think is really what you're saying even more too, is like actually that moment of what's really going on or those clues and, and those things. And, and I I as I think more about the show and what I love about it, it takes that kind of insight. And exactly what you're saying is like, yeah, cherish these moments that make your life make sense and and are meaningful that don't take them for granted.

57:18 And then it it maps that onto all of these tropes and, and narrative forms that are like about solving a mystery. And So what if I guess the question poses for me is, is what if we appreciated our mundane lives as as the beautiful mystery that they are? Yeah, well, we'd like to, right. We'd like to. I think everyone needs a wake up moment. And I think that I, I mean, you, you kind of hope that you get those wake up moments from a show like Severance rather than realizing that 20 years have passed or even a year has passed by or even a month has passed by. You know, I mean, there's been times in my life recently I've had, I've had months fly by where I'm like, I don't even know what's going.

58:00 I I can't even tell you what was going on and what I've been feeling like. But I don't like not being present, you know, I don't like not having that. And so just that in of itself, I feel like almost like that anywhere or sorry that, yeah, the anywhere, like I don't even know what's going on there. And I really, I could really, I could really use some kind of sense of presence and some kind of sense of, of being alert and awake and appreciate and appreciating what I have. And I, you know, and I think that's one of the beauties and the values of of, you know, storytelling is that hopefully we could learn this from examples and, and, and, and, and, and other narratives rather than having to go through it ourselves and all that pain ourselves, you know, And that's again, while you say history is so important, that's why family is so important.

58:47 That's why learning, you know, I mean, that's why elders have always been respected for so long. It's because they're the people that prevent you from making those mistakes that they already made. And hopefully your life could be a little bit easier, you know, OK. Yeah. I wanted to talk to you a little bit about faith and your faith actually. And I guess we, you know, we're about, we're about an hour and change in and we got about another, you know, 20 minutes, 25 minutes left. Do you want to? Do you want to tell me a little bit about your relationship with your faith, please? Yeah, sure, assuming weird Christian I I was raised Catholic and I still am Catholic because I've never left the church. I've never rejected it.

59:32 And I feel a responsibility to deal with the, I think the sins and the failures of my Catholic community and identity. And that's a big part of what, you know, Catholic leadership, including Pope's, have done in the 20th century. And I, and I deeply appreciate that. And so along with my other religious identities, I'm a Catholic. I was in my early 20s doing something called discerning A vocation to become a Franciscan Friar, meaning I was thinking about becoming a monk dedicated to poverty and chastity and obedience. And I really wanted, you know, one of my main life goals at that time, which I did not succeed in keeping, was to not own a car. Especially in Ohio, I feel like you need one, right? If you want to be functional and not just leaning on people all the time or, or having a very strange mode of life, you know, if you want to be a responsible member of society in most ways, you need a car in Ohio, right?

1:00:36 And so I, you know, I, I spend time thinking about becoming a Franciscan monk, trying to do what Saint Francis did, which it was pretty extreme. He, you know, lived on the streets. He would do things like go and work all day. So he wasn't lazy. He would like work on farms. But then he would take whatever compensation he was given and then just go and give it away to the poor, and then go and beg for his dinner. So I'm sorry, can I, can I just ask just based on that real, real quickly, just out of curiosity, when we were talking earlier, we mentioned that, you know, especially what would, you know, the, you know, the people that what makes people people is that we have the physical experience, we and we elevate it through spirituality. Wouldn't that same concept apply in that particular case that you could say what, what's the need to or what's the desire, I guess, but where does it come from to push, push aside the, the physical and you know, and you know, the material if we have the opportunity to elevate it? I don't that's, I think that's a really, really good observation and I think related to that.

1:01:43 And I think if, you know, in the Franciscan tradition, one of the main ways that so the Franciscan tradition being part of the broader Catholic tradition, but its own sort of flavor, and sometimes it's called its own charism, its own calling or gift within the broader sort of context. So Francis was really hard on his body. And and to your point, like throughout his life, he manifested this kind of attitude that the spiritual is the good, different thing that is to be embraced and the body is the bad, terrible thing that is to be totally, you know, beaten up and abused and and do whatever it takes to make sure you can turn just to the spiritual. And so that asceticism was part of it. But so at the end of his life, he there's sort of two famous lines that are attributed to Francis that that shape the tradition.

1:02:32 One of them is I have sinned against brother ass, which is what he called his own body like ass, like a donkey, right? And so his, his sort of last will and testament was a recognition that he'd done something wrong there. And as much as there is something to admire about his passion and, and his care for the poor and his living in solidarity, there's also something that he did wrong to his flesh. And I think that that's important to hold there as you sort of look at this person as a, as a flawed but inspiring kind of figure. And then the other one is that he said, you know, to his brothers and it was brothers there.

1:03:15 There were also Franciscan sisters, but the the line he's addressing his brothers, his brothers. Let's begin again. So there's effort to always sort of renew things. And and so, and I think that, yeah, my interest in and my response to you talking about the animal soul and, and the spiritual and, and taking that up in a way that I think is the sense in which you meant it. And it's certainly a sense in which I would take it and then praise it is that. Yeah. And it's not that we should beat up brother donkey, beat up the animal part of ourselves, but that it's by holding it in something bigger and holding it in within the spiritual that it is lifted up and that that's always where it came from and always what it was about. And so the spiritual is to be preferred not to the negation of the flesh, but to its elevation.

1:04:11 Exactly. That's actually it's it's, it's really interesting that it's beautiful that you say that. And it's really interesting because what immediately jumps to my mind with that is, you know, there's Maimonides has a book called the, you know, here's a, here's a whole, a whole, I guess, guidebook or manual that basically the summary of the oral and written Bible. And one of the things that he talks about is, you know, the, the rules of personality, which is really, really interesting. And one of the things that he says is that in order to be able to find balance, if you feel that everyone, if you feel you're extreme in one way to go extreme in the next way. And then and then and then as you as time goes on, you'll find your way back to the middle ground after having gone both ways. And you're anecdotes for both stories, you know, both his examples.

1:05:02 I was too hard on the body. Let's start again. You know, where is exactly that kind of same sentiment and manifestation. You know that towards the end of his life, he's like, listen, and I don't know, you know, I don't know anything actually about about about Francis. He said Pope Francis. Just took his name after this guy. Yeah. So Saint Francis. I'm sorry. I'm. Extremely ignorant in this whole area, I apologize. Yeah, yeah. Just continue. Yeah, but I think that same notion applies. I think a lot of times people feel this and a lot of humans feel this overwhelming need to, let's say overindulge, right? I mean that, you know, that's a huge problem in America, in the Western world, is that this indulgence that we have. And sometimes in order to able to kind of find balance, we have to completely restrain ourselves for a while. And then as you become a new person, let's start again. You're able to start from the middle ground now and you're able to start from the healthy, you know, the healthy place. And I think it's interesting that he even, and you know, that he ended up saying that at the end of his life. And I, I feel like that's a really good anecdote that that we can all carry with us is that, you know, I mean, it's not necessarily to always pursue it, But if you see that you have a flaw one way, you know, there's and you place it to all things. If you're cheap, you know, or if you're always, if you're always sensitive or if you're always, you know, too talkative, you know, like I am.

1:06:29 Then practice being quiet, practice muting yourself and someone else is talking, you know, and then, and then you can find the middle ground where where when you start over, you're coming from, you're, you're we're at a much healthier place. That I think is a really, it's really, really useful. And I mean, it could apply to really anything that we do in our lives. I love that example from Maimonides so much, and maybe after the call if you could send me some of the particular citations. I really. Do want? To engage with this thought more and I think it's always how I've taken Aristotle's golden meat, right? It's easy, you know, it's like any virtue is, is somewhere poised between two things, right? But that doesn't mean it's in the middle somewhere. And that doesn't mean you could try to find some bland middle. But this idea of of sort of really understanding the different extremes and experiencing them and then being able to integrate them has always been like a, it's a principle that I've, I've internalized. I think I picked it up from.

1:07:30 So the, some of the thinkers who I draw from a lot include someone named Theodore Adorno. So I actually think I picked it up from Adorno, but Adorno has a Jewish background and had a Jewish background. He's passed away a good while ago, but it's possible that I internalized this from Adorno's work by way of Maimonides influence on him. And by the way, Maimonides was enormously influenced by Aristotle. I mean, he, he, he is Aristotle. He, he says that, that, that, that that's the, that's the train of thought and philosophy that he follows. And he, he considered him to be, you know, an extremely holy and beyond brilliant individual. He's like he, he, he premises even his given his perspective on when he's directing it towards the Bible and understanding it, he applies it through the lens of Aristotle's philosophy.

1:08:22 So I'm sure that they're, I'm sure that they're linked directly for sure. That's right. Well, yeah, thank you. I I really love that you've named some sort of principle that I've often thought of and embraced, but it but to your previous example about being able to name sort of musical translation, right. And having that experience, this is music that I've felt. So happy to hear my life. And I I never realized that my moddities articulates it so clearly, so I would really love to be able to. Trace it. I'll definitely send you the source I'll send you. I'll send you a screenshot and and exactly where it's from. Did you come from a family? A religious family. Yeah, So Catholic, Catholic background, my dad was really devout and my mom was a hippie. So she was a devout hippie, but also Catholic background. And so I'm grateful to have grown up in that kind of context because I was able to balance both taking that faith tradition really seriously, but also being really critical of it. And so I, I hope that I honor both of my parents and the way I, I try to bring those things together. I.

1:09:35 Bet it it sounds like you do, because I mean, it sounds like you got that because I've done a lot of reading. I'm actually really excited. There's a, there's an author named, Oh gosh, his name is Dennis McNally. And he wrote like the, the book on the Grateful Dead, you know, the, the comprehensive book on them. And he just wrote a book also about the, you know, how, the, how the beatniks and the, and the bohemians became hippies and created that whole era. And, and, and it's funny because a lot of my friends will tell me, or people that are older will tell me, Hey, you're born in the wrong generation. And I don't really look at it like that because I feel like if I was, I feel like that was all very raw and that was all very, it was all very experimental, very new, very raw.

1:10:26 And I don't know that I would have been able to balance it, you know, and I don't know that I would have been, that I would have had the ability to really come to, you know, a place where similar to you, where I have, you know, religious foundation with a, with a lot of, with a lot of hippie and, you know, a lot of, a lot of out there kind of sentiments and, and, and aspects to myself. And if I, and, and, you know, so I was like, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm certain I was born at the right time. And I'm happy that I, and I'm happy that I, you know, and, and I'm happy I get to see a little bit of that and really just like sharing it. But I think that, you know, it would have been, it would have been the lowest scale. I, I, I think about that a lot because it's a fun, fun world. It's a fun culture.

1:11:09 But I think that there was, there was a little bit of, we need a little bit of grounding and stability. And I think that the blend of, you know, religion and, and, and, and that kind of really, really works beautifully together. And I mean, ideally I, I, the way that I look at things is just that everyone has their own path and their own way of expressing it. And that's what makes it special. You know, I, I got into a conversation with the ultra Orthodox Jew one time and he can, he and he was expressing how, you know, in the way that the ultra Orthodox community has worked since the 1800s is that there was a rabbi or rabbi in the community. And they were, and he was, and most people were common men that were working extremely, extremely hard and didn't have time to really dedicate themselves to learning or praying or, or, you know, even being with their families at all.

1:12:03 And so they would look at their Rebbe or the rabbi like an intermediary between them and God. And, you know, and, and, and, and so, and, and that, and that same kind of culture still kind of carries over to today in certain communities. And I was talking to one of these guys and I said, you know, if you would have, God forbid, drop dead tomorrow and someone else stepped in, you know, do you think would God notice a difference in the work that you're doing and who you and who's doing it? You know, and the way that it's being expressed and the way that it's being, the way that it's being portrayed and lived and, and embodied. And I was thinking, if not, then what makes it special? You know, what makes it, what makes it, you know, how do you have a relationship? How do you know, part of the beauty of a relationship is that you're 2 unique individuals that are coming together and, you know. And so I think that the, I think that we all should really emphasize, you know, trying to kind of find their own independent way.

1:12:54 You know, our hippie spirit, you know, our hippie, you know, self expressive way, but grounded in those kind of values that you know that you're really trying to really connect and and and be meaningful and be and and and and and and and connect to a really, you know, beautiful values that have kept us going for so many thousands of years. Yeah, I, I really share both that sort of hippie connection and interest and the desire to sort of synthesize and ground and deepen and richen and extend it and, and to ask that question. You know, if, if, yeah, I dropped it tomorrow, what would you know? Would it be missed? I've, I've heard that asked too about your community, right.

1:13:36 If, if like your church community, if I've heard it asked, like if, if your church were to disappear tomorrow, would anybody notice? Which is also a striking question and one that sometimes has disturbing answers. It does, right? It does, does, does that, does that encourage you to keep on going or is that or is that, or is that kind of what's the word for it? Is it paralyzing? I think it's AI think it's a for me, it's a helpful question. And one thing I think about when, when, and I don't know how well I live this out, but this is one of the questions I ask is how can I have the most positive marginal impact myself? And I do think there's a lot of roles that need to be filled by people who can do them really well. So I'll also ask myself, like, if I'm in a given role, like, am I doing this, you know, given my own unique giftings and calling and, and their sense of calling at least and, and how I can bring it together.

1:14:32 Am I able to fill this role, you know, in, in ways that are actually adding something beyond what, what someone else might? And if I'm not, then attempt to sort of give it up. One way that I've again, drawing on some of that Franciscan background, tried to to do that too, is, you know, I do volunteer a lot of stuff. And that's because that's a way to find opportunities for marginal impact sometimes, right? That if if someone's going to be hired to do this, if I disappear from this role, then maybe they should and maybe I should make room for somebody else to have that kind of opportunity. And maybe I should go and try to find something weird. And so it's that idea or something novel or something different.

1:15:14 And that impulse has pushed me in the direction that I'm in. And it's how I ended up doing AI ethics for now. And I hope that I'm able to have, you know, substantial positive marginal impact. I think it also goes back everyone think about severance or we think about social systems. Social systems can be good, you know, contrary and I think sometimes the sort of hippie vibe can be radically individualistic. And it's like, well, social systems are good, but there's definitely a possibility that, you know, you're just another cog in the wheel and it's worth stopping for a second and and asking ourselves, so am I just another replaceable cog in a machine? Is it treating me that way? Probably our group shouldn't treat individuals that way.

1:15:57 And I've always worked to not have individuals treated as cogs in a, in a social machine whenever I've been in leadership roles. And then, but then personally, the flip side of it, it's like, but if I'm kind of too much of A cog here, then maybe someone else can can gain from it. But I'm feeling like a wheel. So maybe I should try to strike out in other directions. So it's been a helpful thought for me. Sounds. Like a great a great balance and last question and I'll let I'll let you hop off. Do you think that in the in 50 years or 100 years in the world of AI, do you think that faith and religion are going to thrive? Or you think it's going to be harder to, or it's going to become closer to becoming extinct and there's going to be fewer and fewer people that are involved in it.

1:16:44 I think that it should thrive, that it that it deserves to thrive and that if people are thriving, the all of the questions of faith traditions will be deepened and extended and we'll spend more of our time and energy thinking about and and wrestling with those things. Whether it will, I believe, is up to us, up to us as individuals and up to the organizations, including, you know, our faith communities, including secular nonprofits, states, governments, all of these kinds of structures. You know, sure, it's ultimately just about this. Podcast, I think it's important and it's worthwhile what you're doing.

1:17:27 But so it's up to us to be saying and pursuing the these kinds of things and that if we're doing well, then I think our faith traditions will also be thriving and deepening. And if they're withering, then it's because we're withering. I see. Beautiful. OK, Dan. Dan, heck, thank you so much for the time. It really means so much and I really appreciate it. This is such an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. Yeah, it's a pure joy. I frame I'm always happy to talk either you know, formally or just if you want to reach out and if it's reaching out to us AI and faith too, I want to give them a little shout out as the yeah, thank you. I have faith so so please feel free to reach out to me or AI and faith and I hope this is the beginning of friendship in a series of conversations. I certainly hope so.

1:18:11 Actually, I was going to say I would love to visit you. Last time I was last time I was visiting a part of the world, I got a bunch of traffic tickets that I haven't paid yet. So I have to pay those first and then I'll be able to come visit. I would love, I'd love for you to visit by all. Maybe this will be the motive you need to us. That's right, Dan. Thank you so much, man. I really appreciate it. Take care. Thanks. Feelings special. Take care.