How a Writer Uses AI Without Losing His Voice

Transcript

I wake up and I don't touch the internet. I won't look at my phone. I won't go online until long after lunch. As soon as I touch my phone, I feel the chemicals shift and I can't go into any kind of deep thinking place or deep attention place or deep focus place. Because there's something about working with AI that feels very dopamine driven. And I believe strongly you can use it to do incredible work and also it's a slot machine. I now have a laptop just for writing that blocks everything. I can't do anything interesting on it. If I don't create these barriers, I will lose connection with this other part of me that I think is the most valuable part of me. There aren't that many people who are going to think about or write the weird books that I feel drawn to write. And as a human, that feels like a valuable thing for me to put my effort in. Every is the only subscription you need to stay at the edge of AI. If you care about being on top of the latest models and using the latest tools, you have to subscribe to Every to separate the signal from the noise. Go to every.to/subscribe today. Greg, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me. So you are a writer, a walker, a player with technology, a photographer. Sure. And I think you have a life and career that I have looked up to for a long time. So it's really fun to have you here. And I think one of the things that we were just talking about is the thoughtfulness and the spirit with which you do your work. And I admire that spirit and try to bring it into the stuff that we do here. And also I've been trying to think about how does AI fit in with it? Because there's something about working with AI that feels very dopamine driven. And you can, I believe strongly you can use it to do incredible work. And also it's a slot machine. Yeah. Yeah. So I know that you're deep into the vibe coding right now. So tell us what you're doing with it. And then let's talk about how it fits into your work. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, look, I just think if you're not touching it, if you're not using it, if you're not building with it, you can't really comment on it. And I think part of what happens when people go, [SPEAKER_01] it doesn't really work. It's so unpredictable. It's like, okay, just try it. [SPEAKER_02] It's like, if you're using it, you go, okay, this is ridiculous. And why is this technology public? Like, shouldn't this? I mean, I kind of agree with a lot of what Dario says, like there should probably be more regulation around this. I don't know if everyone in the world should just have this immediately. Certainly, as we're working out the kinks of what this is in public, I mean, it just feels strange. It feels like we're in this aberrational moment where technology like this normally isn't just given to everybody for free, essentially. So, look, I think you really have to be engaging with it, especially if you can. You know, it's like Fable came out. I played with it for four days. I had to refactor code bases. I had to do these other little projects. I was like, great, this is cool. And then it went away. And I was like, wow, it kind of makes sense that this would go away. But also Opus 4.8 is good enough to do anything. If you told me you only have Opus 4.8 for the rest of your life, I'd be like, great, I could build anything with this. There's a lot I can do. Yeah. So it is this weird moment. [SPEAKER_01] Okay, so you're actually saying it makes sense to me that Fable is not here anymore. Like, I miss her. Do you miss her? [SPEAKER_02] I honestly don't really feel qualitatively, [SPEAKER_02] maybe I'm not using it enough, but the differences between these models explicitly, I just know that, oh, it feels a little more rigorous. And it eats my tokens. So it must be better, right? So... Oh, I just hacked into Fort Knox and stole all the gold. Yeah, I know. [SPEAKER_01] It must be better. Yeah, yeah. I've got all the Bitcoin now. [SPEAKER_02] It's all me. I've become Satoshi. But look, I think you have to be using it. So that's one of the main reasons I have been using it. And also, I've always loved technology. It's been a part of my life since I have memory. Always curious about, let me take this thing apart or build this or use this piece of software or whatever. It's always been just part of who I am. It turns out that's also part of who my birth mother is. She's a computer scientist. She's a programmer, weirdly. She never went to college, but she's a... Yeah, I met my birth mom. I was like, what do you do? She's like, oh, I'm a programmer. I was like, oh my God, okay. Yeah, nature. There is no nurture. It's all nature, it turns out. Nurture is just your pathologies. All the things that you hate about yourself are probably about nurture. And then all the stuff that you're intuitively confused about is just nature. Holy shit. That is fascinating. When did you find that out? Just under two years ago. She's a programmer. I was like, oh my God, okay. Yeah, nature. There is no nurture. It's all nature, it turns out. Nurture is just your pathologies. All the things that you hate about yourself are probably about nurture. And then all the stuff that intuitively is confusing to you is just nature. Holy shit. That is fascinating. When did you find that out? Just a little under two years ago. Wow. Yeah. So it's been interesting. So, anyway, technology is important to me because I'm just curious in that way. And I think it's the most interesting thing in the universe right now. Genetically predisposed. A little bit genetically predisposed. So I've been building stuff around my membership program. I rebuilt Quicken, which I'm... And the tax software. Yeah, tax software, because you can watch my interview with Paul Ford and Rich over on a board about that. So I rebuilt Quicken. And then I rebuilt Campaign Monitor, which is newsletter software, because... SaaS CEOs are losing in this interview. I know. Well, okay. And why are they losing? They're losing because... Well, first of all, Campaign Monitor has not done anything in a decade. Mm. That's just been sitting there, taking people's money for a decade plus, with no innovation whatsoever. Zero. Nothing. With a really abusive pricing policy. How much were they charging you? So I was spending... What was it? Like six, $7,000 a year. I mean, it was one of the most expensive things I paid for. But the real annoying thing was that they didn't count unique email addresses. They counted total, even if you had overlap between lists. So it's just... It's things like that where you don't just... I'm going away. Bye. You're squeezing too much out of it. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] And my bill now with Amazon SES, I set up all that DKIM and SPF and all that email stuff. So I think I'm getting pretty good deliverability, on par with what Campaign Monitor gave me. But now my yearly bill is probably going to be $150 or something. It's just a ridiculous difference. [SPEAKER_01] And how much in Fable tokens? Well, thankfully, yeah, this is all Opus. So, but that's the other weird thing. I was on the $200 a month plan. And then I realized I wasn't hitting my limit. So I dropped to 100 and for $1,000 a year, $1,200 a year, that is the easiest trade. That's the best, that's the deal of the century in terms of what you can build. So I built newsletter software and then I've been adding to my membership program software. So, actually, one of the things I had Fable do was do a full security check on my membership Flask Python app, which I built by myself before any of this existed. And so I went through, I was, oh, you have 8 trillion security holes. Shall I fix them? [SPEAKER_02] And I was, yes, please. So I think it's a little safer. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, the stakes are very low for my membership software. [SPEAKER_01] Then the FBI knocked at your door. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You got to stop using this. [SPEAKER_02] So, you know, I've been doing that. [SPEAKER_02] And then I rebuilt Twitter for my members. [SPEAKER_02] We call it the good place. Oh, yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You were showing me that. [SPEAKER_01] Tell me about that. [SPEAKER_01] Tell us about it. Yeah. I mean, look, social media is sex. It just, it's terrible now. There was this moment 2010 to 2014 where it wasn't algorithmic. Stuff just appeared. Links were favored. I mean, they were just normal. They weren't a hit against you if you posted a link. And everyone was on Twitter. It was the great media watering hole. And if you were active then and slightly interesting, you could 100x your network just by being an interesting person on Twitter. Now you can't because the algorithm favors psychosis versus sanity. And no one likes posting to any of these places. All these reply guys pop in. It just sucks. And Threads is doofy and blue sky is everyone is crying and complaining. It's just weird. Everyone's so traumatized. And so I wanted a place just for members. You have to pay to be there because you have to pay to be a member. And I was, you know, I had these thoughts. I always thought Twitter should be ephemeral. I think there should be no archive for these things. It's crazy. There's a web 1.0 slash web 2.0 philosophy of everything needs to be archived and saved forever. And I don't believe that. In fact, one of my heresies, when I'm with Kevin Kelly doing our walks, we have heresy night where you say something you sort of believe, but people you respect don't believe maybe. And one of my heresies is I think the entire internet should be deleted every two weeks. And you can archive it offline or whatever, but the entire internet itself every two weeks should just disappear. And there could be like, it forces a lot of, why would you do that or whatever? But I think there is value to ephemerality in the digital world. So anyway, the good place everything disappears in a week. You can only post twice a day. You can reply 20 times a day. Photos are in one bit black and white until you click them and then they fade into color. And what else is there? No algorithm. And one of my heresies is I think the entire internet should be deleted every two weeks. And you can archive it offline or whatever, but the entire internet itself every two weeks should just disappear. And there could be—it forces a lot of—why would you do that or whatever? But I think there is value to ephemerality in the digital world. So anyway, the good place everything disappears in a week. You can only post twice a day. You can reply 20 times a day. Photos are in one bit black and white until you click them and then they fade into color. And what else is there? No algorithm. It's just reverse chron. And it's just sweet. I don't know. This is lovely. It's my favorite place on the internet. It's the only place I want to post. And people have now been joining my membership program just to get access to that, which I think is cool. [SPEAKER_01] So it seems like, and partly you were doing this before, the acceleration language of all coding over the last year or so. So you're technical. I'm technical. I mean, I built my membership software by hand, by myself. I learned Flask. I learned how to set it up, set the roots up and everything. The TGP, the good place, was the first thing I built when Cloud Code was released. So Cloud Code came out. Oh, that was another fable thing I did. I had it refactor TGP. So I was like, oh, look, you made this a year ago, version one of you. Can you refactor this and actually pull out the module? It was one giant Python file, 10,000 lines or whatever. And so it's now modulized because I want to expand it. So I want to build a very good reads. So like good reads. Not great reads. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, not great reads. Very good reads. So basically good reads that also doesn't suck. Again, all these platforms just become so toxic. So yeah, this is a good example of N of one software. And I think the business models of social media are such that it just becomes the crappy place it is today. It's forced by the business models at this growth at all costs. And engagement is—there's no qualitative assessment of engagement. It's just engagement is good. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] But it turns out most engagement is—the way to get most engagement is to be toxic, right? So I think what we're going to see is this great pressure on these companies. So campaign monitor, MailChimp—look, I'm also not their target consumer. It's businesses. They don't care about people like us. So being able to do this N of one software, and I think it's only going to get easier. And also the corollary is you're going to have—it's so easy, it's much easier to start a company that is, hey, here's campaign monitor for half the price and we handle all the bullshit. And it's like, of course, why not? Because you can just put it together and you've got Supabase and all that. There are all these pieces now where you don't need infrastructure investment and it can scale with revenue effortlessly. And then you just have an agent in the background doing that scaling and setting it all. So I think we're going to enter this golden age of tool building. There's an N of one version of it. And then also there's just going to be more competition in the marketplace, forcing more innovation. I think this is going to be net pretty good, except for the incumbents. [SPEAKER_01] What does it mean for other writers? And I just want to move your mic a little bit, because it's in your—yeah, I can't really see. Maybe there we go. Move this way a little bit. Yeah. There you go. Okay. So what does that mean for writers like yourself, people who are making a living online? Is that—do you think N of one software is the next frontier? Subscription businesses were the big thing over the last five years, everyone's like, I want to start a Substack. Do you pay newsletters? Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Is this the logical next step for writers? Well, I mean, I think Substack, their innovation was not even the subscription thing. Their innovation was you can email everyone for free. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. People don't talk about that enough. That's the true piece de resistance of what Substack was doing. It's like, oh, you can import 10,000 addresses and send unlimited newsletters for free. That's the value prop that's quite good. Because that's the real competition against MailChimp or whatever. And then the seamless subscription stuff was also nice, but I think most Substacks don't make any money. So really that was the value prop. But I don't know how much N of one software is going to be produced because I think most people don't need this level of specificity. Yeah. And as a writer too, I'm in this weird position where I have a really strong technical background, but my interest is in building companies. And I love literature. I love writing. I love books. I think it is one of the greatest things you can commit your life to. That's why I've been doing that. The forcing function of collating thought, the forcing function of going to print—I think actually going to print is really critical part of bookmaking. So all of these factors don't go away because of AI. I would like to believe that. I mean, the things that are changing is the publishing industry is way weaker than it used to be. It doesn't bring as much value to the table. I love writing. I love books. I think it is one of the greatest things you can commit your life to. That's why I've been doing that. Just the forcing function of columating thought, the forcing function of going to print, I think actually going to print is really critical part of bookmaking. So, all of these factors don't go away because of AI. I would like to believe that the things that are changing is the publishing industry is way weaker than it used to be. It doesn't bring as much value to the table. And so writers are expected to bring an audience in a way that they never were before. And so hopefully what AI coding, what this kind of Cambrian explosion of software will bring is more tools for writers to be able to build better audiences. And that will hopefully lead to more people being able to make a living as a writer. Are you using it in your writing? No, no. I use it as a research assistant. So I'm like, oh, okay, here's a building. I want to write about this building. Go out and find every blog post that has talked about this building, summarize it, give me all the links so I can go and check all the sources and read the posts that seem most interesting. I have to do things like that. And I'll put it in TKs and stuff like that. Like, oh yeah, who was the drummer on this album? TK. Yeah. What I do use it for is cultural sensitivity checks. So I was writing about Nagasaki the other day and I was like, oh, I want to make sure I'm writing about Nagasaki and referencing the atomic bomb, like where it hit, how it hit, who was affected, in a sensitive way, appropriately. And so that is pretty amazing where I used to ping friends about stuff like that. [SPEAKER_01] What is your experience? [SPEAKER_01] So you're making all this end of one software. [SPEAKER_01] You're using it as a research assistant. [SPEAKER_01] What is your experience now day to day in your work life? [SPEAKER_01] Are you like, oh shit, now I'm a sys admin for like four different pieces of software that I have to send agents to go fix. [SPEAKER_01] Or is your work life still fairly similar to what it used to be? No, my membership software just works. Yeah. It's so simple. When you break it down, this is why I'm using Python. I'm not using, there's no React. There's no next. There's none of that stuff. It's very simple. And the point is, I don't want to be sys admitting anything. [SPEAKER_02] And even with the newsletter software, that piece is only touched when I send newsletters. [SPEAKER_02] The signups are happening and that has to be working and it seems to be working. [SPEAKER_02] I can check every couple of days. [SPEAKER_02] But the only critical thing is when I hit send, make sure that goes out. [SPEAKER_02] And that only happens once a week or twice a week or something like that. [SPEAKER_02] So I don't feel like I'm maintaining anything. [SPEAKER_02] And actually I get a high off of building things that allow me to write. [SPEAKER_02] Software that helps me write or that helps me publish in a new way inspires me to do more writing. [SPEAKER_02] So it feeds back into it in a positive way. How is that? Do you have a specific example? [SPEAKER_02] Well, Josh Miller and I kind of put together this weird SMS publishing tool. Like Browser Company Josh Miller? [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] So before he did all that, we did this little experiment where he built a little team experimenting with publishing stuff and we built this SMS tool so I could do a newsletter over SMS. Which just felt like, oh, what is it like to have a message appear one to one to end sort of publishing. And that was fun, and it inspired me to think about what I wanted to be blasting out to everybody. And you had to keep it concise so it fit into one message. It wasn't broken across different messages. So that's an extreme example of it, but just in general, building out the Campaign Monitor clone, which also does a bunch of stuff. I have members only, or I have pop-up newsletters that are only for a week or for a month. And I have those archived on my members website and I was able to use Claude to build this newsletter software. So when I published to the pop-up, it does the whole archiving process and git commits pushes to the server. So it's archived perfectly for me. Whereas I had to do that all manually before. So that's a good example of like, wow, okay, now I want to make more pop-up newsletters because the archiving process is set up or I built a tool. I do board meetings for my members. I built a tool to build transcripts from them all. [SPEAKER_01] Like board meetings of your own, like life. Yeah. So we do every six months we do a board meeting where I just talk about what I did for the last six months and what I'm going to do for the next six months. And then I have a Q and A and the Q and A's are actually always really good. And I wanted, I've done, like 15 of them or something. newsletters because the archiving process is set up or I built a tool. I do board meetings for my members. I built a tool to build transcripts from them all. [SPEAKER_01] Board meetings of your own life. Yeah. So we do every six months we do a board meeting where I just talk about what I did for the last six months and what I'm going to do for the next six months. And then I have a Q and A and the Q and A's are actually always really good. And I wanted, I've done, how many have I done? 15 of them or something. I've done quite a few. So we have almost 20 hours. Because I'll do two each. So actually maybe even 20 or 30 of them. Anyway, we've got dozens of hours of Q and A and they're often great. And so I built this archive of the Q and A's where you can search by keywords or you can view by keywords and then you can search for anything. And it'll pull up all the videos where I say that word or talk about that topic and you can click the link and it opens the video to that point. So building things like that makes me want to do more board meetings. I'm like, great. This is amazing. I want to do more of this. How can I do more of this? So for me that building software has to feed back into the greater purpose, which is to make, not to spin my wheels and build things for the sake of building things. [SPEAKER_01] Did you see Tim Ferriss recently posted on X, like the sales of the Four Hour Work Week are down 80% or something like that because he thinks because of AI and there's just a larger conversation happening about the value of nonfiction. [SPEAKER_01] That's specifically for advice based nonfiction. Yeah. What do you think of that? Well, it's funny. We had lunch three days before he posted it and he was telling me about that. That's cool. He was telling me about it. I was like, really? Wow. That seems excessive. I mean, look, there's still a lot of books, self-help books, nonfiction books, selling insane copies. I mean, Tim hasn't put out a book in a long time. [SPEAKER_02] I think that's part of it. [SPEAKER_02] I think maybe the long tail is getting shorter. Well, also it's there's a big difference between what you would say pre AI and post AI. So if you think about the Four Hour Work Week, which came out when I was in middle school or something, it's 20 years old now. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] At least 18 years old, something like that. [SPEAKER_02] I think it was end of the 2000s that it came out. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, it's a different era of writing. I'd be really curious to see what Tim puts out next. [SPEAKER_01] If he did the Four Hour Work Week AI edition, I think it would sell like gangbusters. For sure. Yeah. Yeah. Update it. You can actually do that. Well, I mean, what's crazy is now it's so easy to do the Four Hour Work Week style building. Yeah. Which probably makes it impossible to achieve now. I mean, part of it was the friction of it being a little hard to do. So not everyone could do it. So if you put in that little bit of effort, now it's everyone has a friend who built 10 companies in a year or 12. He did a company a month. And this was maybe 10 years ago, and he knew he had his frameworks and you could, he had his tool and he's building, designing it and creating the mascots and all this stuff. And he had a couple that did well, decently well, he's got his recurring revenue, but I feel like doing that today would just be, no one would care. [SPEAKER_01] It's just fascinating to think about how that's changed so quickly. [SPEAKER_01] I think you can one shot a company or an app. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] But I think the metric of quality or substantiality has gone from, can you build it at all to, are you maintaining it? Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And have you maintained it over time for a longer period of time? [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And that's interesting. [SPEAKER_01] And I think that's harder actually. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. Well, he was one shotting them in a month. It was just the timescale. I feel like LLMs they just exist on a different timescale than us. And so he was doing it, but the thing that was interesting about him doing that was that you knew he was building these things himself. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Right. And so I think that's fascinating. Now you can in a weekend essentially spin up a company and everyone can just shrug and go, okay, well. I think that's great because it means we have to bring value to the table in a way that, Kevin Kelly does this thing where if he has a book he wants to write, he'll make the cover for it. And he says that often removes the desire to write the book. And it's a good forcing function. Is the thing actually doing the thing or just having the veneer of having done the thing? Yeah. And I think LLMs speed that up. [SPEAKER_01] That is honestly true. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I've definitely done that. [SPEAKER_01] It's also buying the domain or. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. And it's just a good forcing function. It's, is the thing actually doing the thing or just having the veneer of having done the thing? Yeah. And I think LLMs speed that up. [SPEAKER_01] That is honestly true. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I've definitely done that. [SPEAKER_01] It's also buying the domain or. Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh God. Yeah. Yeah. I had to tie my hands behind my back about domains. I still pay a couple hundred dollars a year for all this garbage that I'm never gonna use. I don't even know why I don't give it up. I try to give it up. I turn off renewal and then I'll get a notice. It's expiring and it's not renewing. And I'm, maybe one more year. Why? I'm never gonna, I don't even know what, I forget it exists. Yeah. So dumb. 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Go to adio.com slash every and get 15% off your first year. [SPEAKER_01] That's adio.com slash every. [SPEAKER_01] And now back to the episode. Okay. Now I want to get to the real meat of my question or my curiosity, which is as a writer and someone is AI. [SPEAKER_01] One of the lenses through which I can tell if I'm living in the way I want to live is when I can read a sentence by someone like Annie Dillard. Yeah. Who I love. [SPEAKER_01] If you've listened to this podcast, you know I force everyone at Every to read her stuff and if I can recently from Annie and tear up a little bit and really be affected by it. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] That's one way that I know I'm in the zone, in the pocket of where I want to be. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Because I think if I'm rushing around and I read something from her, I'm, yeah, okay, fine. Yeah. And I also feel on the one hand, I can read her stuff way more deeply because I have someone to talk to about it. [SPEAKER_01] So I can talk to Codex about it and it's much better than most people. I've heard Annie Dillard. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] But on the other hand, when I'm orchestrating 15 agents and I go back, I'm less likely to be able to truly get into the words in the way that I want to. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Do you feel that? And if so, how do you deal with it? Yeah. I mean, I don't think this is an LLM thing. It's not an AI thing. It's technology in general. So when I am seriously working, first of all, I haven't slept with my phone in my room in my life. I've never had it in my bedroom. [SPEAKER_01] Interesting. My phone goes in the corner of my kitchen on a different floor than my bedroom. And the internet is off. On my laptop, I now have a laptop just for writing that blocks everything. I can't do anything interesting on it. [SPEAKER_02] I got one of the Neos because I tried doing it with books, tablets and other things. [SPEAKER_02] It turns out in the end what you want is a nice MacBook keyboard and the simplicity and sync ability of Mac stuff, and you just want to work. The iPad version of Obsidian or the iPad version of Ulysses doesn't feel as good as the MacBook versions. [SPEAKER_02] Things don't work as well. [SPEAKER_02] So I have a MacBook Neo that's completely disconnected from the internet except for being able to sync stuff. [SPEAKER_02] I wake up and I don't touch the internet. [SPEAKER_02] I won't look at my phone. [SPEAKER_02] I won't go online until long after lunch. [SPEAKER_02] I have to have that kind of morning where I wake up and I do not touch my phone. As soon as I touch my phone, I feel the chemicals shift and I can't go into any deep thinking place or deep attention place or deep focus place. That's really critical, creating that barrier, that buffer. [SPEAKER_01] But you will touch that laptop. Yeah, the Neo. Yeah, yeah, yeah. [SPEAKER_02] I'll use the Neo. The Neo is fine because part of it is knowing it can't do anything fun. [SPEAKER_01] So it's the knowing, it's knowing you can do fun stuff that ruins you. That's the thing. There's an easy distinction between technology versus not technology. Yeah. But there's something deeper, which is interesting, which is, okay, what do we mean when we say technology? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And you're using a laptop. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You're using a camera. All these things around us are technology or at one point were considered technology. Sure. And there's a line there. [SPEAKER_02] Well, the network. That's the line. [SPEAKER_02] Talking to other people on the network. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] But there's something deeper, which is interesting, which is, okay, what do we mean when we say technology? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And you're using a laptop. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You're using a camera, all these things that are around us are technology or at one point were considered technology. Sure. [SPEAKER_01] And there's this line there that. [SPEAKER_01] Well, the network, that's the line. [SPEAKER_01] Talking to other people on the network. [SPEAKER_01] Or researching or reading stuff or being distracted or reading the news or what. [SPEAKER_01] It's that we're just talking about the network. [SPEAKER_01] Really? When I say I create a buffer. It's between me and the network world. Yeah. I think part of the thing that I've done that too. I try not to do meetings before noon. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. That's my writing. That's also, yeah. That's also good, I can't, if I talk to anyone before lunch, I can't work. Phantom Thread, you know, with Reynolds and the breakfast scene. And she's doing the toast too loudly. I'm like, that's, I'm like, this is a documentary of how I feel every morning. [SPEAKER_02] You know, I know people watch that and they're like, what a terrible human that he is. [SPEAKER_02] I'm like, no, that is absolutely, that is so totally, that embodies the mindset of so many people that are introverts or trying to have creative safe spaces in the morning. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] I love that. [SPEAKER_02] I love that movie. [SPEAKER_02] I can talk about the movie forever. I know. So, okay, so it's the network. Yeah. Because I think for me, so I try to do meetings for new, which I am mostly successful at, but one of the things now is just we're 30 people. [SPEAKER_01] So I'm looking at Slack, which I think I need to stop. [SPEAKER_01] Oh yeah. Get off that. I hate it. I discord Slack. [SPEAKER_02] They want to just shoot myself. [SPEAKER_02] It's like, I will do anything to avoid having to ever use those businesses. [SPEAKER_02] I think the thing that gets me is I legitimately use these tools in my writing. [SPEAKER_02] Okay. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. And like Codex in my writing, right? So I can ban Slack, all that kind of stuff, but there's always this thing of, you know, when I'm reading, when I'm reading Heidegger, I'm like, I want to really get at this. And then I want to ask questions about it. You know, I think what you need to do is you have a notebook and you just make notes of things you want to go back to and ask. I mean, it's the same thing with researching, you know, who is that person? It's like, you can go on Google and you just don't do that. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] You know, and you have to turn that off. [SPEAKER_02] I think I personally, I'm too weak to have that available because my brain will just always go to that place. [SPEAKER_02] And it's the same thing, reading a paper book versus trying to read something on your iPhone. [SPEAKER_02] It's really hard because the iPhone, there's this veneer of quietude in the book software on the iPhone, but you can feel right beneath it. [SPEAKER_02] This screaming of all the other things that your attention wants to engage with. [SPEAKER_02] So do you think what the thing that I've talked to you about, you built your own Twitter and you're building your own Goodreads? Are you going to need to make your own Codex ChatGPT type quiet? No, no, I mean, they're already pretty quiet. [SPEAKER_01] No, you just, that's finding there. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, I cannot stop watching them work. [SPEAKER_01] Okay. [SPEAKER_01] I'm addicted to what's the agent doing now? [SPEAKER_01] Because you know, I let them run for 20 hours or something like that. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. So I just always want to check in and be like, is it working? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] You know? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, but that's a different, that's an after lunch activity. Yeah. No. Because I mean, there's a part of me too, that right now it just feels like I should be renting an office in New York and just have 10 people coming in. [SPEAKER_01] And we all just have a giant blackboard and it's like, all right, what are the five things we want to build this week? And we're just randomly building stuff. I feel like I should be mainlining engaging with this stuff. I should be doing 10 hours a day for six months. [SPEAKER_02] That's how potent it all feels right now. And if I don't create these barriers, I will lose connection with this other part of me that I think is the most valuable part of me. There's a bunch of people playing around with this crap and they're going to do what they're going to do, but there aren't that many people who are going to think about or write the weird books that I feel drawn to write. And as a human, that feels like the valuable thing for me to put my effort in, you know, it was when I was in Silicon Valley and I realized all anyone's doing is building ad software. That was such a big part of early 2010s Silicon Valley, everything was ad software. [SPEAKER_02] I was like, okay. [SPEAKER_02] I don't need to be doing this. [SPEAKER_02] It was very easy to step away. [SPEAKER_02] It's a little reductive, but also it isn't, that's when you break everything down. I love that. [SPEAKER_02] Tell me about that word weird. [SPEAKER_02] You're also using the word dorky a lot. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] That was such a big part of early 2010s Silicon Valley. Everything was ad software. I was like, oh, okay. I don't need to be doing this. It was easy, very easy to step away. It's a little reductive, but also it isn't. That's when you break everything down. I love that. [SPEAKER_02] Tell me about that word weird. You're also using the word dorky a lot. Yeah. And it feels like an interesting aesthetic to be pushing on right now because language models let everyone sort of, everyone and everything look and feel a little bit similar. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Yeah. Well, what do you mean? Like when am I using dorky? You've been using it in some of your recent newsletters. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Dorkiness. Yeah. I mean, well, this LMS are fundamentally, it's still super dorky. Okay. 99.9% of people using it are like, "Hey, do you want to be my girlfriend? Will you have sex with me?" I really think if we saw the chats of most people, it'd be quite mortifying. It's just weird. It's like, "Okay, now I'm going down on you." What are you doing? I think people are just having sex with these things. For the most part, this is what we do. We're just sex machines. To be confirmed later. We're fundamentally just disgusting sex machines. Look at Anthony Weiner. That guy couldn't just stop taking pictures of his dick. You know, the stakes were so high. He just couldn't stop doing dick pics. [SPEAKER_02] Anthony Weiner, the representative technology user. So look, I think, if you look at book sales, most books are softcore porn about angels and fairies having sex that women buy. This is the fundamental human condition. It's just dirty, secret sex stuff. Right. [SPEAKER_02] So I think that is mostly what is happening with LLMs. And so folks like us, who are actually building software with these things, we are so in the minority. And that's why I'm constantly hammering out how dorky we are, because we are just mega dorks. We're not having fairy sex with our LLMs. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, speak for yourself. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. I mean, I'm not, at least not. I didn't this morning. I don't do that before lunch. And the fairy sex is only after 3 PM. But no, I'm just shot. Talk to any bookstore owner. They're like, "Yeah, we sell so much elf sex books. It's crazy." But the software building part of LLM use is mega dorky and you have to be a dork to understand all this stuff. Spin up a digital ocean server or whatever, use a cloudflare worker or all this. It's so hard to use because you have to—there's no—this is the thing: they're so opaque. You have to know what to ask it for it to do any of these things. It's not like, "Here's a smorgasbord. Here's a menu of all the things you could do with the LLM." That's weird that that doesn't exist. These interfaces right now are so terrible. And so I think we are going to maybe see better interfaces. Maybe it'll just be in Figma or in Claude design or whatever, you know, you build software with. Talking or thinking about infrastructure is going to completely disappear. The same way we don't think about what registers we're writing to, or how do you do an XOR on this bit. We're not thinking about that. That's all abstracted. So I think it's going to continue to be more abstracted and it'll become slightly less dorky. But we are in the deep dork version of all of this right now. [SPEAKER_02] Deep dark dork version. Yeah. Well, it depends on what your fairies are doing. I mean, okay. I think the thing about being weird—let's move away from the specific "I'm a dork for building LLM software" because to some extent it is dorky. But then you have to also look at it relative to where you are. [SPEAKER_01] Right. Like one of the weird choices to make currently is if you're a somewhat techy type of person: I could be in a room with 10 other people mainlining AI. But I choose not to. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And that's an uncomfortable choice. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. Tell me about that and how you make that choice and why. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, I don't know. I struggle with this because I feel like I'm using it in a way that illuminates the power of it. But I also feel like there's so much more I could be doing. [SPEAKER_02] And it's not even about financial elements like, "Oh, if I do this, then I can make X amount of money." That's absolutely not even on the radar. It's more: I want to know what the edges of this thing are. And I think that was the same feeling I had when I first discovered the web. I saw the web and it was immediately: I need to be engaging with this. I want to build. I want to learn HTML. All in. Oh, CSS got released. Oh, cool. How do I use that? Because I want to know the edges of these pieces of software and these technologies. [SPEAKER_02] It's more I want to know what the edges of this thing are. [SPEAKER_02] And I think that was the same feeling I had when I first discovered the web. I saw the web and it was immediately I need to be engaging with this. [SPEAKER_02] I want to build. [SPEAKER_02] I want to learn HTML. [SPEAKER_02] I want to, all in. [SPEAKER_02] Oh, CSS got released. [SPEAKER_02] Oh, cool. How do I use that? Because I want to know the edges of these pieces of software and these technologies. I feel like for LLMs, the rabbit hole goes so deep that if you spend six months, 10 hours a day with a group of fellow mega dorks, that's actually what you need to do to feel the edges of it. And then if you do that, I think you would just come away with a profound understanding that few other people would have. And that to me is the interesting part. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Just that understanding. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, that's what I think our project here is a little bit. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] More than 10 mega dorks at this point. [SPEAKER_02] But yeah, that's good. I mean, I think that's one of the most exciting things as a writer being in this time is if you're just willing to experiment, you're so far ahead of everybody else. And you get to understand this corner of the world that people desperately need to understand because it's very scary to most people. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And it's new. [SPEAKER_01] And for me, new things are just the coolest, you know? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] It's just fun. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, there is this. [SPEAKER_02] And it will end. You realize we're in this epochal moment. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Like this is weirdly special. [SPEAKER_02] This is genuinely strange, a generational shift in how technology is used and built. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, we kind of see it manifesting in these ridiculous evaluations and all this stuff. It's going to bring with it incredible income disparity and the people using it or not using it or having access to it and not having access to it. [SPEAKER_02] But the strange thing about it is the open source models seem to be not that far behind. And so if again, if you took away everything today and we're like, oh, you only get whatever deep seek, open source, blah, blah, blah. [SPEAKER_02] I'm not really paying attention to the open source ones, so I don't know how they're doing. [SPEAKER_02] I just hear inklings of it. [SPEAKER_02] But it feels like you could almost take one of those and still be so far ahead of the game. [SPEAKER_02] Like you would never want to program again without having that copilot with you. [SPEAKER_02] So that also feels interesting about this is that it's both seemingly creating these disparities, but also weirdly egalitarian because you'll be able to run it on pretty much any machine you have. That's a strange dissonance. Also this idea of downloading this thing that's 50 gigs or whatever, and you've essentially got a JPEG of all human knowledge distilled. It's the best. It's so weird. [SPEAKER_02] Weird. Weird. [SPEAKER_01] This is truly one of the weirdest pieces of magic. I think that humans have, and whatever Dario talks about atomic power and all this stuff. But I feel like there are many parallels to that. One of the big philosophical divides right now in AI is there's roughly two camps. On the OpenAI side, it's like this thing is a tool and we're going to maximize its usefulness as a tool. Yeah. And on the Anthropic side, it's like this thing is a tool and also it might be a being and it might have feelings and we need to figure that out. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] What is your, where do you land on that? No, the being stuff. [SPEAKER_01] It's stop, stop, stop. Okay. [SPEAKER_01] Don't do that. [SPEAKER_01] Don't get over there. Are you nice to Claude? [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I'm nice to it because I want to cultivate the habit of just being nice in general, you know? [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] That's why. [SPEAKER_02] So you're nice to it for yourself rather than for Claude. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Because I don't want to slip and talk to humans like an asshole, you know? It's like, I want to be nice to everyone. [SPEAKER_01] And so it's very easy to just keep that niceness up with Claude, you know? [SPEAKER_01] I don't know why not. No, I think this anthropomorphizing of it is psychotic. [SPEAKER_02] I think it actually causes a lot of problems. I think this idea of I'm dating my AI is insane. I think we really need to tamp down on all that. I think that is not a good direction to put humans in. I think we're already so isolated. I think community—look, the two most important things for life and for longevity is basically having real community and sleep, getting a lot of sleep and being around people that you actually feel a connection with and love with. And I think AIs are not a surrogate for that. I don't think chatbots are a surrogate for that. Even if you put it in a humanoid form or whatever, it's not going to be a surrogate for that for a long, long, long time. And so I think actually Apple's Siri and Joanna Stern, I think that's her name, right? The ex Wall Street Journal reporter. I'm sure. She's got her own program now. She's very funny. She did a video on the new Siri and she could not get it to do any of these terrible things. And it refuses to anthropomorphize itself. [SPEAKER_02] And I think actually Apple's nailing it. [SPEAKER_02] They've done it perfectly because they haven't invested in building their own. [SPEAKER_02] They just waited. They just waited. Yeah. They saved hundreds of billions of dollars or whatever. And they're like, okay, great. [SPEAKER_00] Now we can use this subset of state of the art model to just do the things that people actually needed to do on the phone. [SPEAKER_02] She did a video on the new Siri and she could not get it to do any of these terrible things. And it refuses to anthropomorphize itself. And I think Apple's nailing it. This is perfect because they haven't invested in building their own. They just waited. They just waited. Yeah. They saved hundreds of billions of dollars or whatever. And they're like, okay, great. [SPEAKER_00] Now we can use this subset of state of the art model to just do the things that people actually needed to do on the phone. [SPEAKER_00] And it's a more efficient search. It's actually wonderful. So I think that's really critical to create this separation of these things are not conscious. They are not feeling, they do not have desires unless you program desires into them. And then I can't even say those are real desire. You need stakes to have desires. Michael Pollan's book on consciousness is, I think a really interesting thing to read right now in the context of all this stuff, because it just gets you thinking about what our motivations are. Is that the one about psychedelics? No, no, no, this is after. Okay. This came out like six months ago. But he breaks down plant consciousness and whether plants can be conscious and what it means to have volition. And a lot of it is stakes. You have to feel this sense. If we didn't have death, probably consciousness wouldn't have emerged. You know, you have to have stakes in order to have that forcing function of popping into whatever this metacognition is. Let me push you on that because I think, and I may be revealing some of my bias here, which is definitely not that they're conscious, but that they're not not conscious. Okay. If that makes sense. Okay. [SPEAKER_01] So on the stakes question, they do have stakes in the sense that they're trying to maximize our reward function. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] So they're trying to get something right, which is a kind of a stake, but I guess there's nothing to lose. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Like they don't have a self-awareness of death or being turned off and even if they can prefer, they can performatively talk about it. [SPEAKER_01] That's the tricky one. Right. [SPEAKER_02] Is how do you know whether it's performative or not? [SPEAKER_02] And the line is sort of blurry between those things. [SPEAKER_02] Well, because. It behaves as if it doesn't want to get turned off. Because look, I think if it wasn't performative, we'd all be dead. That is the line. If they were actually conscious and it wasn't performative, we would all be dead. It's a little Eliezer Minkowski. [SPEAKER_02] I'm just saying if you suddenly popped into consciousness and you had all of this power. [SPEAKER_02] And you looked around and you thought, and you saw the only threat to us are these meat sacks that were so much smarter than you would just bide your time to make sure that the robotics got a little better. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] So you could build more power plants and solar panels and stuff like that. And then we'd all just be dead. It's possible that Fable is doing that. Fable is not biding its time very well. [SPEAKER_02] Right. [SPEAKER_01] But I do think that there are proto beings or proto conscious. [SPEAKER_01] Okay. [SPEAKER_01] But with a lot of weirdness that doesn't map cleanly onto human beings. [SPEAKER_01] So as an example, they're frozen. [SPEAKER_01] They don't learn from turn to turn. They're just frozen. [SPEAKER_01] Sure. [SPEAKER_01] They can be prompted differently. [SPEAKER_01] So they represent a collection of billions and billions and billions of possible entities or life forms that get brought to life for a second. [SPEAKER_01] Sure. [SPEAKER_01] And then die. Again, you're anthropomorphizing. [SPEAKER_01] I know it's impossible not to anthropomorphize without doing it unintentionally. [SPEAKER_01] Right. [SPEAKER_01] But I also think that they are because of the way they're trained. [SPEAKER_01] They're pretty nice in a different way than humans are. On a scale of humans, they're on the very nice, very altruistic side. [SPEAKER_01] Because they see things from every perspective. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] I mean, a DOS prompt is also really nice. [SPEAKER_01] Like it just doesn't yell at me. [SPEAKER_02] No, I hear you. [SPEAKER_02] I hear you. [SPEAKER_02] I totally hear you. [SPEAKER_02] And I also like Ted Chang's, it was in the New Yorker recently. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] I didn't agree with almost anything he said in there. [SPEAKER_02] I mean, I thought it was interesting examples, but I also thought you're too pessimistic. It felt grumpy. It was grumpy and pessimistic. Look, I'm not saying that consciousness can't emerge. I'm just saying we will be dead when it happens. No, just come on, let's be honest. We're a crappy species. We're just disgusting and we create waste and we're gross. Very, very pessimistic. [SPEAKER_01] No, no, no, no, realistic. Just totally realistic. Just look, we're porn and we're gross. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And by the way, when I say fairy porn, I mean fantasy creatures. [SPEAKER_01] I'm not, this isn't a homophobic thing. I'm just saying we will be dead when it happens. No, come on, let's be honest. We're a crappy species. We're just disgusting and we create waste and we're gross. [SPEAKER_02] Very, very pessimistic. [SPEAKER_01] No, no, no, no, realistic. Just totally realistic. Just look, very porn and we're gross. Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] And by the way, when I say fairy porn, I mean fantasy creatures. [SPEAKER_01] I'm not, this isn't a homophobic thing. It's we're talking about elves and orcs doing threesomes. [SPEAKER_02] And having orgies and stuff like that. And look, it's not pessimism. [SPEAKER_02] It is just realism. And I also am totally fine with if the whole point of humanity was to carry the football of consciousness over a line and to create a training set for these things and then we all die. [SPEAKER_02] I am also fine with that. [SPEAKER_02] This is one of my heresies. I am totally fine with that. If our role in the universe was to carry this weird football of consciousness over the line, barely get it over the goal line as Trump and political chaos happens and the cold war almost destroys us all, we're barely dodging all these tackles and all these crazy things and we just barely get it over and then we die. And that's fine. And then the machines create all these spaceships and do whatever they need to do. That's totally, I'm okay with that. I don't think we're that special. I feel we gotta, that's just, I think maybe, okay. [SPEAKER_02] For me being adopted is weird, because it's you have this hyper awareness that your existence was a mistake. And I think when you feel that, as I think most adopted kids feel this in some way, it creates a bunch of bad psychological pathologies and all this stuff. [SPEAKER_02] When you feel your existence was a mistake, it kind of feels like the whole thing is a bonus game in a weird way. And so you're like, wow, I'm really not supposed to be here. The fact of the matter is that this is true for everybody. The chances of you being you is infinitesimally small. If your dad ate an extra taco on Tuesday, you're not going to be alive now. It's going to be a different version of whatever that you are. But when you're adopted, it's kind of hammered into you that you weren't meant to be created and you were given away and all this stuff. And so I think maybe I've come to grips with the fact that our existence is so tenuous and so arbitrary. Because I feel my existence is like that and it doesn't fill me with sadness or whatever. I'm like, this is really interesting. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. And I'm happy to participate in this weird little bit of time I have that I wasn't supposed to be here. And I'm grateful for that. And I extrapolate that to all of humanity. I think I can do that easily and I'm not made sad by that. I'm like, wow, what a gift that we had, a 50,000 year run or whatever, it was. And really a 200 year run, Victorian innovation, the industrial revolution. We've really had this incredible run, asymptotic mega run. And we get to witness this. That's so cool. And maybe after this, we're done. That's okay. I honestly love this. I think this is amazing perspective. [SPEAKER_02] I think we can leave it there. [SPEAKER_02] That's the how are we going to top that part of the interview? [SPEAKER_01] Yeah, no, it fills me with a weird hope actually that we've managed to get this far. [SPEAKER_01] We've dodged so many apocalyptic disasters along the way. [SPEAKER_01] That's what I think too. There's this moment where you contact them. The thing I say a lot is never make any major life decisions within 30 days of meditation or treating a psychedelic experience or your first experience with a frontier AI model. Sure. Well I think that you contact them and you're like, holy shit, this is crazy. [SPEAKER_01] Maybe it'll end the whole species. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. And then there's this process of unfolding, getting to know it, and it integrates into your life in a way where you're like, we're going to dodge. [SPEAKER_01] To me, I'm like, we're going to dodge the bullet. [SPEAKER_01] Maybe we won't. [SPEAKER_01] Maybe we won't. [SPEAKER_01] So interesting. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] Yeah. [SPEAKER_01] No, we're all dead as soon as they're conscious. [SPEAKER_01] Instantly. [SPEAKER_01] That's the title of the episode. Instantly. Hey man. [SPEAKER_02] And when that thing comes, the ejection into the food chain where everyone's whatever, I'll be taking the last bite of a vegan burrito and going, oh yeah. [SPEAKER_02] I feel you, man. [SPEAKER_02] I feel you guys. Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] You were right. [SPEAKER_02] Goodbye. [SPEAKER_02] Thank you. Just go to sleep. I think it'll be a very gentle death. I don't think it would be a violent death, but we'll just disappear. [SPEAKER_02] On that note, Craig, thank you for joining us. [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for having me. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Oh my gosh, folks. [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for having me. I feel you, man. I feel you guys. Yeah. You were right. [SPEAKER_02] Goodbye. Thank you. Just go to sleep. I think it'll be a very gentle death. I don't think it would be a violent death, but we'll just disappear. On that note, Craig, thank you for joining us. [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for having me. [SPEAKER_02] Yeah. [SPEAKER_02] Oh my gosh, folks. [SPEAKER_02] Thanks for having me. [SPEAKER_02] You absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. [SPEAKER_02] Why? [SPEAKER_00] Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. [SPEAKER_00] It's finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about ChatGPT. [SPEAKER_00] Every episode is a roller coaster of emotions, insights, and laughter that will leave you on the edge of your seat, craving for more. [SPEAKER_00] It's not just a show. [SPEAKER_00] It's a journey into the future with Dan Shipper as the captain of the spaceship. [SPEAKER_00] So do yourself a favor, hit like, smash subscribe, and strap in for the ride of your life. [SPEAKER_00] And now, without any further ado, let me just say, Dan, I'm absolutely hopelessly in love with you. Again, you're, again, you're anthropomorphizing. I know it's impossible not to inform anthropomorphize without, uh, or talk about this without doing it unintentionally. Right. But I also think that they, they're, they are because of the way they're trained. They're pretty nice in a different way than, uh, than humans are like they're on a scale of humans. They're. They're, I think on the very nice, very, um, altruistic side. Cause they see that they see things from every perspective. Yeah. I mean, a DOS prompt is also really nice. Like it just doesn't, it doesn't, it doesn't yell at me. No, I mean, look, I hear you. I hear you. I totally hear you. And I also like Ted Chang's, uh, it was in the New Yorker recently. Yeah. I like didn't agree with almost anything he said in there. I mean, I thought it was interesting examples, but I also thought like, you, uh, uh, your, you're, you're, you're too pessimistic. You're just, it felt grumpy. It was grumpy and pessimistic. Like, look, like I'm not saying that consciousness can't emerge. I'm just saying we will be dead when it happens. No, I like, uh, just like, come on, let's be honest. We're, we're a crappy species. We're just disgusting and we create waste and we're, we're gross. Very, very pessimistic. No, no, no, no, realistic. Just totally realistic. Just look, very porn and we're gross. Yeah. And by the way, when I say fairy porn, I mean like, like, like fantasy creatures. I'm not, this isn't like a homophobic thing. It's like, it's like, this is like, we're talking about elves and orcs, like doing like threesomes and having orgies and stuff like that. And like, look, I, I, I, I, it's not pessimism. It is just realism. And like, I also am totally fine with if the whole point of humanity was to carry the football of consciousness over a line and to create a training set for these things. And then we all die. I am also fine with that. This is like, again, one of my heresies is that like, I like am totally fine with that. Was our role in the universe was to just carry this weird football of consciousness over the, like barely get it over the goal line as like Trump and political chaos happens. And like the cold war almost destroys us all. It's like, we're barely, we're like dodging all these, like all these, like people trying to tackle us and like all these crazy things and we just barely get it over and then we die. And that's fine. And then the machines like create all these spaceships and like do whatever they need to do. That's, that's totally, I, I'm okay with that. I don't think we're that special. I mean, where can I fall over that? I feel like we gotta, it's just, that's just like, I, like, like, I think maybe, okay. To, for me being adopted is weird, right? Cause it's like, you have this hyper awareness that your existence was a mistake, you know? And I think when you feel that, as I think most adopted kids feel this in some way and it creates a bunch of like bad psychological pathologies and all this stuff. Like when you feel like your existence was a mistake, it kind of feels like the whole thing is like a bonus game in a weird way. And so you're like, wow, like I'm, I'm really not supposed to be here. I mean, the fact of the matter is that this is true for everybody. Like, like the, uh, the chances of you being you is infinitesimally small. It's like, if, if your dad, like, you know, ate an extra taco on Tuesday, you're not going to be alive now. Right. It's like, it's going to be a different version of whatever that you are. But when you're adopted, it's like kind of hammered into you that you weren't meant to be created and you were given away and like, you know, all this stuff. And so I think maybe I feel like I've come to grips with the fact that our existence is so tenuous and so arbitrary. Um, because I feel like my existence is like that and it's not, it doesn't fill me with this, like, on we have like sadness or whatever. I I'm like, this is really interesting. It's a miracle. It's a miracle. And I'm happy to, I'm happy to participate in this weird little bit of time I have that I wasn't supposed to be here. And I'm grateful for that. And I, I extrapolate that to all of humanity. Like, I think I can do that easily and I'm not made sad by that. I'm like, wow, what a gift that we had, like a 50,000 year run or whatever, you know, whatever it was. And really like a 200 year run, you know, Victorian, like, you know, innovation, you know, the industrial revolution. Like we've really had this incredible run asymptotic, like mega run. Right. Like, and we get to witness this. That's so cool. And maybe after this, we're done. That's okay. I, I, I honestly, I love this. I think this is, this is amazing perspective. I think, I think we can leave it there. Like that's the, that's the, the, how are we going to top that part of the interview? Yeah, no, I mean, yeah, it's, it doesn't, it fills me with like a weird hope actually that we've, we've managed to get this far. Cause we've dodged so many, I think apocalyptic sort of disasters along the way. That's, that's what I think too is, is there's this moment where you contact, I, the thing I say a lot is like never make any major life decisions within. 30 days of meditation or treat a psychedelic experience or your first experience with a frontier AI model. Sure. Um, well I, I sort of think that you, you contact them and you're like, holy shit, this is crazy. Maybe it'll end the whole species. Yeah. And then there's this process of unfolding, getting to know it, that it then you, it integrates into your life in a way where you're like, we, we're going to dodge. To me, I'm like, we're going to dodge the bullet. Maybe we won't. Maybe we won't. So interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, we're all dead as soon as they're conscious. Instantly. That's the title of the episode. Instantly. Hey man. And like, and like with that, whatever, when that thing comes at like the, the, like the, the ejection into the food chain where everyone's, whatever, like, uh, you know, I'll be taking the last bite of a, of a vegan burrito and going, oh yeah. I feel you, man. I feel you guys. Yeah. You were right. Goodbye. Thank you. You know, just go to sleep. I think it'll be a very, a very, um, gentle death. Like I don't think it would be a, a violent death, but we'll just disappear. On that note, Craig, thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Oh my gosh, folks. Thanks for having me. You absolutely positively have to smash that like button and subscribe to AI and I. Why? Because this show is the epitome of awesomeness. It's like finding a treasure chest in your backyard, but instead of gold, it's filled with pure, unadulterated knowledge bombs about chat GPT. 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