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Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
A Geek Culture Podcast - Two life-long Nerds explain, critique and poke fun at the major pillars of Geek Culture for your listening pleasure.
Dispatch Ajax! Podcast
Classic: Artificial Intelligence Part 2
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In a classic - yet timely - episode we continue digging in to what we call Artificial Intellegence these days and what it's been throughout pop culture. We sort through the terms people blur together, like consciousness, sentience, and self-awareness, and lay out common indicators researchers look for, from internal world models to self-monitoring.
Introduction to AI Consciousness
SPEAKER_00No, not robo-Nazi. Don't stop. Why do you always default to Nazi when we do this? It's the closest thing. Uh uh What word is closer to Yahtzee than Nazi? I mean, granted, but why does that keep coming up? Because it's the first thing I think of. Yahtzee Nazi. Nazis are the first thing you think of when you say Yahtzee, and I have to riff off of Yahtzee.
SPEAKER_03Okay, we we really do have to evaluate perhaps. As Cake once said. Perhaps. Perhaps. Perhaps. I don't think I've ever quoted Cake before. That's weird, because you were you were just doing it in a short skirt and a long jacket.
SPEAKER_00That's true. Gentlemen, let's broaden our minds.
SPEAKER_02Having the proper approach for today.
SPEAKER_03If our society is concerned with profits, then we may end up sacrificing human life and well-being no matter what technology we use. If we want to live in a society that values human life, a society where a self-driving car will damage itself rather than run over a child, for example, then we need to work at building these principles into our technology from the beginning. Well, welcome back to Dispatch Ajax. I'm Skip. Yeah, that's Skip. I'm Jake.
SPEAKER_01This is gonna be a fun loaded one. So, uh last episode, Skip delved into the coming singularity: the ascension of artificial intelligence to superintelligence and beyond human control. This episode, we will sift through popular culture, mostly movies, if we get to it, to explore examples of AI and their depictions. Uh, but before we ride those sci-fi waves, Skip's gonna recap and kind of realign focus on what he discussed last episode before I discuss a little bit more of AI consciousness itself and the philosophy of understanding that outside of what Skip had talked about. Yeah, I do. Take it away, Skipper.
SPEAKER_03Woo! I wish I had a sli I wish I had one of those like whirring whistles, you know? Or a slide whistle.
SPEAKER_01Um if you could um if every time one of us talked, it could it could be like we were beaming in that sound effect.
SPEAKER_03Oh, well, I mean I could do that. I could do that for sure. So let's recap a little bit a little bit about modern real-life AI
Modern Real-Life AI Explained
SPEAKER_03and how it differs from what we're going to talk about today. So, modern AI, what we call AI, while based on computational neural networks, which have been around for decades, actually, they're not as complex as you would think. I mean, they're complex, but their concepts aren't. They're basically just chatbots, which we have all kind of become accustomed to, but with more information to draw on. They're designed to mimic human conversation through trial and error based on large language models and machine learning. So large large language models aren't all that mystifying in and of themselves, they just do what Google did to create its original, not shitty search engine. That entailed getting a bunch of servers with racks made of Legos. That's why they have their color scheme. And they basically just indexed every website. That was their entire concept. They just downloaded the entire internet. They then created an algorithm to not just search for the frequency of keywords used online as previous engines did, but figure out which websites most frequently link to other websites that would eventually end the rabbit hole of your query. And it worked, and it was great. And then shidification. Large language models aren't dissimilar, they have algorithm algorithms that model and index text, conversations, tweets, books, everything. They create categories in which different language falls. It then uses these examples to predict how to respond to prompts. And I'm really glad you you did I did watch The Artifice Girl uh before this. And it so a lot of the summation of that is what I'm talking about here. So I'm I'm I'm glad that that worked out. On a basic level, this is how predictive text works on your phone, just a little more complex with enormous amounts of data on which to draw. With generative AI, the algorithms do much of the same, but with images, music, movies, and all sorts of other data, and then spits out an approximation of whatever we ask of it. But because it only remixes and regurgitates stuff that already exists, it does not have the ability to generate anything wholly original. This is important. Everything is derivative in the truest sense of the word, and because it can only understand technical context, not abstract context, eventually, inevitably, it begins to go off the rails. This is referred to as AI hallucination. This is where it begins to give you wrong answers to questions or images of shrimp Jesus, or it starts endorsing eugenics on Twitter, or iX, which is where eugenics apparently lives. It doesn't fundamentally understand what it's saying or doing outside of its technical computations. It can't have an opinion, an emotional one, nor can it express a cold calculating one like Skynet or in the Matrix. It can only express what it thinks you want to hear. That is current AI. That is what we're dealing with right now. So Jake, let's get into it. Yes, let's. Yes, have some. Yes, have some. I was just a second behind you. Yes. Let's have some.
SPEAKER_01Uh we gotta get these AI and and supercomputer together. I think that would be extraordinarily bad.
SPEAKER_03Define the whole good bad thing. Well, you know what? That's what we're gonna try and tackle today. Yeah, yeah, kind of. Kind of.
SPEAKER_02We're not gonna succeed, but we're gonna do it.
SPEAKER_01No, no, and this is kind of um uh yeah. I kind of felt like we had a little more hard data-driven analysis last time, and I wanted to do a little more soft, thoughtful approach to this one.
SPEAKER_00You wanted to go more abstract.
SPEAKER_01A little bit. I kind of want to get into some of the the philosophy behind. I'm gonna focus on a particular thing when it comes down to it. Um but obviously this is gonna be cursory and casual. There's no way we could possibly delve into everything that is out there, all the thoughts.
SPEAKER_03Oh, you mean all the questions humankind has ever had since the beginning of consciousness?
SPEAKER_00You know, yeah, it may take a little while.
SPEAKER_01Believe it. Uh hour-long podcast,
Defining Consciousness in AI
SPEAKER_01but uh uh we're just we're just gonna dance on the idea of a single thing, but this is bold. We're gonna try it, we're gonna do it. Let's see where this goes. All right. So AI consciousness isn't just a tricky intellectual puzzle, it's also a very morally weighty problem with possible unknowable consequences. Failure to identify a conscious AI, you might end up subjugating it, maybe even causing extreme pain and nullifying the thoughts and emotions of a being whose interest should matter. But mistaking an unconscious AI for a conscious one, you might risk compromising the safety of humans and happiness, all for the sake of these this box sprouting ones and zeros. Now, both mistakes are easy to make. As Liad Mudrik, a neuroscientist at Tel Aviv University, who has researched consciousness since the early 2000s, says consciousness poses a unique challenge in our attempts to study it because it's hard to define. It's inherently subjective. Now, consciousness is often confused with terms like sentience and self-awareness. But according to the definitions that many experts use, consciousness is a prerequisite for those other, more sophisticated abilities. To be sentient, a being must be able to have positive and negative experiences. In other words, pleasures and pains. And being self-aware means not only having an experience, but also knowing that you're having an experience. Now, current AI is not considered conscious, as we have discussed in last episode and at the beginning of this episode. AI systems, even the most advanced ones so far, primarily mimic human cognition and lack true self-awareness, subjective experience, and an understanding of their own existence. But if we were to look for indicators of consciousness, researchers that explore these various indicators point to awareness of awareness of one's own awareness, i.e., the ability to be aware of its own thoughts and internal states. I think, therefore, I am, yes. Yes. Virtual models of the world, that's the capacity to create and maintain internal representations of the environment. Dicting future experiences, the ability to anticipate future events and their consequences, self-recognition, similar to the mirror test in animals, where an AI might recognize its own image or its own characteristics when they're placed in front of it. But in more popular culture, some things that really pop out are, of course, self-awareness, a superintelligence, otherwise surpassing humanity in its cognitive abilities, self-preservation, emotions, and conscious volitions often based on those emotions. Now, those are all things that we're going to get to when we come around to movies and depictions of AI, but I just want to lay some of those elements out there. Now, it's spoke about last episode. Ilya Sutzkiver, chief scientist at OpenAI, the company behind the chat chatbot chat GPT, had two.
SPEAKER_03You were right with Chatbot. I think that's more robot. Chatbot GPT.
SPEAKER_01Some of the most cutting-edge AI networks, quote unquote, might be slightly conscious. What the fuck does that mean? I I yeah, I don't I don't know. But uh again, this is just like when we get into the ideas of how we depict AI, I think we're gonna talk about down the road. There's a lot of gray area when it comes to this, and maybe uh really nailing down and defining consciousness and applies to artificial intelligence might be at least in the gray area where we're at now, as opposed to, you know, some years ago, where it's strict black and white. Now, I was looking at the there was this this paper I was reading about 19 neuroscientists, philosophers, computer scientists, and they were trying to figure out how to define AI consciousness. And these researchers focused on phenomenal consciousness, otherwise known as the subjective experience. This is the experience of being. What it's like to be a person, an animal, or an AI system does turn out to be conscious. They argue that it is a better approach for assessing consciousness than simply putting a system through behavioral tests. Say, if you were to ask ChatGPT whether it's conscious or challenging it to see how it responds, that might not be a good indicator. That's because AI systems have become remarkably good at mimicking human and human behavior. Right. So just judging by that, it may lead to a false impression. I think that's where like a Turing test or a a Voikampf um where Voikampf, yeah, it it is it is very um cinematic uh and an easy way to identify with that intelligence you're talking to, but whether it actually possesses consciousness based on that is probably a faulty premise.
SPEAKER_03100%. You're completely yeah, and I have a lot of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I agree with you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Uh so they had selected some theories and extract for them a list of consciousness indicators. Now, these are some ways that consciousness might be constructed in artif with artificial intelligence. Now, one of them is the emergent complexity. This is that some researchers believe that consciousness is an emergent property arising from complex interactions within a system. As AI systems become more complex and sophisticated, particularly with advancements in neural networks architecture, consciousness may emerge in a manner analogous to how consciousness arises from the complex interactions within the human brain. Uh, I think we talked a little about that you've got into last episode. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, with David Eagleman, I quoted David Eagleman, the neurologist, a lot. He talks about that a lot, about emergent properties. Yeah. That that's Eagleman. Dude, he he rule he actually totally rules. If you ever get a chance, watch his his network series, The Brain. It's fucking brilliant, and it it it it really just like changed my entire perspective on on neurology and and and what the universe was and whatever. It's really good. It's really good. Nice. Right that noodle.
SPEAKER_01Somebody has to. I think you're doing a fine job, Skip. Another one would be self-reflection and learning. AI systems are already capable of learning from experiences and adapting their behavior, engaging what some might interpret as a rudimentary form of self-reflection. If self-awareness is a component of consciousness, then AI systems with enhanced learning and self-monitoring capabilities could potentially develop a form of artificial self-awareness. Another one would be integrated information theory, or IIT. IIT suggests that consciousness is related to the capacity of a system to integrate information. According to IIT, systems with a high level of integrated information, whether biological or artificial, could be considered conscious. The human brain with its vast interconnectedness is believed to have a high level of integrated information. This theory suggests that if AI systems can achieve a similar level of integrated information through complex architectures, they could potentially develop consciousness. Another would be global workspace theory, or GWT.
The Hard Problem of Consciousness
SPEAKER_01Now, this proposes that consciousness arises from the global broadcasting of information across different specialized modules within a system. This theory suggests that AI systems with architectures similar to the human brain's global workspace, allowing for the integration and sharing of information across various subsystems could potentially lead to the emergence of consciousness. And the last one we're going to cover would be functionalism. Now, functionalism is a theory in the philosophy of the mind that defines mental states by their functional roles, regardless of their physical realization. This perspective suggests that if an AI system can functionally replicate the cognitive processes and behaviors associated with consciousness, it could be considered conscious, even if its underlying architecture is vastly different from a biological brain. Yes, I touched on that a tiny bit before. Now, obviously, those are some ways that conscience could come about and evolve within an artificial structure, but there is at least one philosophical dialogue I want to generally highlight before we depart from the conjecture and analysis. Okay. This is something that, according to a 2020 Phil Papers survey, that's a collection of uh philosophers. Now, this is something that was coined by cognitive scientist David Chalmers when he first formulated it in his hard problem paper facing up to the problem of consciousness in 1995, and then expanded upon it in the Conscious Mind 1997, a book. Now, this puts that there are there's an easy problem of consciousness and a hard problem of consciousness. And when we get to the hard problem, it it gets hard. Obviously, this is all gonna be difficult. You know, it's tough. It's a tough one. Uh it's a real uh shocking.
SPEAKER_03We're gonna try and figure out the greatest uh questions mankind has ever proposed. Shocker. We're trying to figure out the nature of two episodes or more of our show. Uh and we we don't have those kinds of well, I mean you have that degree, but uh still yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, you know, uh that was uh that was a wing and a prayer, really. Um so by chalmer's definition, there is an easy and a hard problem. First, we'll deal with the easy problem. Now, easy problems are amenable to reductive inquiry. These are logical consequences of facts about the world, like how a clock's ability to tell time is a logical consequence of its clockwork and structure. Or a hurricane being a logical consequence of the structures and functions of certain weather patterns. These are easy problems, they're logically defined by the sum of their parts, as most things are. This is relevant to consciousness concerning the mechanistic analysis of neural processes that accompany behavior. Examples of these include how sensory systems work, how sensory data is processed in the brain, and how data influences behavior or verbal reports, the neural basis of thought and motion, and so on. They are problems that can be analyzed through structures and functions. But the hard problem, in contrast, is the problem of why and how those processes are accompanied by experience. In other words, the hard problem is the problem of explaining why certain mechanisms are accompanied by conscious experience. So, for example, why should a neural processing in the brain lead to felt sensations of, say, hunger? And why should those neural firings lead to feelings of hunger rather than some other feeling, for example, being tired or being thirsty? Chalmers argues that experience is irreducible to physical systems such as the brain. An explanation for all of the relevant physical facts about neural processing would leave unexplained facts about what it is like to feel pain. This in part because functions and physical structures of any sort could conceivably exist in the absence of experience. Alternatively, they could exist alongside a different set of experiences. For example, it is logically possible for a perfect replica of skip to have no experience at all, or for it to have a different set of experiences, such as an inverted visible spectrum, so that blue and yellow and red and green axis are completely flipped.
SPEAKER_02To quote Battlestar Galactica, I wanted to see X-rays.
SPEAKER_01Now, as opposed to like a like we said, a clock or hurricane or other physical things, the same cannot be said about those. Difference is that physical things are nothing more than physical constituents. But consciousness is not like this. Knowing everything there is to know about the brain or any other physical system is not to know everything there is to know about consciousness. Consciousness then must not be purely physical. Now I bring this up because Chalmer's idea contradicts physicalism, sometimes labeled as materialism. Which is the view of what we touched on last time. Yeah. Which we touched on a little bit last time. This is the view that everything that exists is a physical or material thing, so that everything can be reduced to microphysical things. There's always like a way to break it down, and then based on those structures and functions, it logically flows one to the other. But this theory of consciousness and the complexity of this problem, Shalmer suggests that this isn't possible. Now we'll get into some further details of that, but let's just keep going on with this for a bit.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Here's the problem with that, though. Like you can't give a scientific paper and say that all of a sudden shrug your shoulders and go, I don't know, maybe it's not real. You know what I mean? Like you get you get into some of that, like what the bleep do we know territory at that point.
SPEAKER_01Let's let's see where let me get a little further in and let's see. Let's see where we go.
SPEAKER_03That's fair. That's fair.
SPEAKER_01According to physicalism, everything, including conscience, can be explained by appeal to its microphysical constituents. A chalmost hard problem presents a counterexample to this view and to the other phenomena like swarms of birds, since it suggests that consciousness, like swarms of birds, cannot be reductively explained by appealing to their physical constituents. Thus, if the hard problem is a real problem, then physicalism must be false. And if the physicalism is true, then the hard problem must not be a real problem. Now proponents of the hard problem argue that it is categorically different from the easy problems, since no mechanistic or behavioral explanation could explain the character of an experience, not even in principle. After all of the relevant functional facts are explicated, they argue there will still remain a further question: why is the performance of these functions accompanied by experience? Not only is there a hard problem, it actually has moral consequences. Now we generally agree that, say, chairs or this microphone do not have conscious minds. We generally agree that those that are neighbors or the other podcaster I'm talking to do. Now we often assign conscious minds to our closest male relatives, like chimps, dogs, pigs, thus to give them moral consideration more than, say, a fruit fly or even a fish. However, we actually have no idea which things are conscious. You cannot prove that my podcaster Skip is conscious. I might be living in a world full of zombies that act as though they are conscious, that they can even have philosophical discussions with me about without ever experiencing any phenomenology for that. Again, this is one of those like, you know, it's it's a it's a thought exercise, you know.
SPEAKER_03I know it's a thought exercise, but it's one of those like masturbatory, like like I'm the only important person in the universe exercises, you know, like get the fuck out of here. Like get the fuck out of here. I mean, just by definition, the idea of consciousness, the idea of sentience. I mean, literally, we talked about this last week. It's like shared experience. Consciousness is about shared, understanded, and understanded experience between everyone involved. And so when people start being like, well, maybe it's a hologram. Maybe we're living in a simulation. You're like, get the fuck out of here. You think you're way more important than you fucking are. Get the fuck out of here.
SPEAKER_01But consciousness also has to function without the representation of another conscious mind. Just because you would be alone on an island, you would not be unconscious because you'd have no other conscious beings around you. Your conscience is still extant and viable.
SPEAKER_03Yes, I mean, yes, by modern definitions, you're correct. Consciousness is, by definition, a subjective experience. However, considering we're able to communicate with each other and share language and art and just interact with each other, there has to be at least similarity between our experiences. So it cannot possibly be completely I mean, yes, it's subjective, but we're all experiencing the same sensory input. And we're all at least for the most part, and obviously, and we'll probably get to this, there are differences in this, but we're all sort of like experiencing it the same way, or at least in a similar way. And there are really great examples of how we don't that will help flesh this out as well, but so uh most of the time what people talk about, like, oh, this is a singular, you know, experience, I'm the only person in the universe, and everyone else is a fucking fantasy of mine, is just masturbatory fucking like hubristic bullshit that I do not entertain.
SPEAKER_01There was a strong rebellion from that conceptual framework for sure. I'm gonna I'm gonna I I found this actually, it's this Reddit comment um that I wanted to share.
SPEAKER_03Well, now we're now we're really digging into the real science of it here.
SPEAKER_01You want to get down to the hardcore facts. Reddit is where to find it. Well, it's better than step up against 4chan.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's gonna be not 4chan.
SPEAKER_01Oh, yeah. If it was if it was a video of a cat getting smashed with a a cinder blocking anime girl getting railed by a demon, um, maybe it'd have stupid complexities. But all right, here's a let me just read this out. The crux of the heart problem is that even if you were to figure out the so-called neural correlates of consciousness, the informatic pattern required for you to be conscious, you could still not prove that other people are conscious except by referencing the fact that you have those very same correlates. And that's weird. Most people who believe in a heart problem do not deny the explanatory power of science. They don't deny that prodding the three pounds of meat inside your brain can cause experiences, but they do point out that in no way can you jump from neuroscience to phenomenal experience. So, what's going on? What is a first-person perspective? It is formed by patterns of information? Does which matter compose it dictate who experiences that consciousness? If I were to use a nanoxerox to copy every brain cell, would my consciousness be split in two? What would that be like? Is this quote-unquote isolated feeling
Theories of AI Consciousness
SPEAKER_01of the first person frame a kind of evolutionary selected illusion intended to neurally shackle us to try to maximize our fitness? Does consciousness experience, particularly the feeling of volition or willing, affect my behavior? Or does consciousness come after the fact, after my brain is done making all of the relevant choices subconsciously? Is it simply an epiphenomenon or a byproduct? If I upload my mind into a virtual world, is it still me in there? Can I morally kill animals? Does the thermostat feel things? Should an advanced AI be given moral consideration? Are we even morally allowed to program AIs with phenomenological experiences?
SPEAKER_03Well, I mean, there's a lot to tackle in just a lot.
SPEAKER_01And that these questions have different answers depending on the perspectives you choose to take. Let's look at some of these. Reductive elementalism. More or less the full, the null hypothesis. There is no consciousness outside of what science can study. Everything else is either confusion or illusion. Although he might reject being placed in this category, Metzinger fits here, in my opinion. Two, materialism. Just because we can't see how yet doesn't mean it isn't true. Three, the dual aspect monism. There is one reality and the two aspects to it, the physical and the mental. Neither gives rise to the other. They're supervenient on something else we can't see. Panpsychism. Everything is conscious, more or less, even that thermostat, it all feels it's all thinking. Now the there are other perspectives. Now this person, they said they used to think the hard problem was an ontological question. What kinds of things there are, but they've changed their mind. The hard problem consists primarily of a series of epistemic dilemmas. How do you know you're conscious? How do you know others are conscious? How do you know your introspection of your own mental state is accurate? And Reddit thread quote.
SPEAKER_03Okay, well, okay, yeah, there's a lot to deal with there. Some of it easily addressed, some of it I would I would like to know more about to answer it. Jeez.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, okay. I have uh I have other stuff. If you want to think on some of that.
SPEAKER_03Oh yeah, yeah, let me let me chew, let me chew on that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01No, by all means, yeah. No, I this is kind of like the reverse of uh when you were talking, I was like trying to like think of all these things and like typing and searching, and it's like, yep, you know, finally by the end of the episode, I was able like, here, here's some other things I wanted to point out. Uh absolutely, yeah. Like the hard problem of consciousness highlights our inability to bridge the gap between subjective experience and observable behavior. We have experiences of our own consciousness directly, yet we never experience anyone else's. Instead, we infer. That's the key word, consciousness in others based on behavior, language, and perceived self-awareness. This inference is so deeply embedded in human action that we rarely question it. Now, some physicist some physicalists have responded to the hard problem by seeking to show that it dissolves upon analysis. Other researchers accept the problem as real and seek to develop a theory of consciousness, consciousness's place in the world that can solve it by either modifying physicalism or banning it in favor of an alternate ontology such as parapsychism, which that's maybe even beyond my thing, or a dualism. There's both a mind and a body, which, if we extrapolate that into religious terms, you have a self and a soul. Could you possibly have three different things a self, soul, and mind? That's that's a whole nother thing. A third response has been to accept that the hard problem as real, but deny human cognitive faculties can solve it.
SPEAKER_05Okay.
SPEAKER_01Now the philosopher Peter Hacker argues that the hard problem is misguided and then it asks how consciousness can emerge from matter, whereas in fact, sentientness emerges from the evolution of human organisms. He says the hard problem isn't a hard problem at all. The real hard, the really hard problems are the problems that scientists are dealing with. The philosophical problem, like all philosophical problems, is a confusion in the conceptual scheme. Hacker's critique extends beyond Chalmers and the hard problem, being directly directed against contemporary philosophy of mind and neuroscience more broadly.
SPEAKER_03See that's sort of the interesting too, because I looked into some of those same some of those same people. And I went back to Eagleman when he said that when he was talking about emergent traits, emergent phenomena. And he actually cited Chalmers and others in that sense. But he was like, okay, think about it. You have like human flight is a the idea that human beings can fly in a plane is crazy if you really think about it from like a physical standpoint, right? And if you look at how like a a if you look at the the component parts of a of a plane, you have metal and you have carpet and you have all these different things individually. How do you how does that equal flight? Because when you put them together in the right order with the right different, you know, components, you know, pushing on each other, making each other in a mechanical way go, then you have an emergent phenomena in flight. But individually they make no sense as to how we have a phenomena like that until you see how all the little tiny pieces work together. And I I think some of those, I feel like some of those commentaries sort of like overlooked that. Maybe sometimes they they reinforce them, but no, anyway, continue. Go, go, yeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, that that's kind of like I just I didn't again, we could go, there's there's a there's a lot of different schools of thought just on this singular problem. There's a lot of other things we get into. I mean, more about philosophical zombies or the argument of of what knowledge is, the mind-body, dualism state. There's a lot we could get into. Uh we can also get a lot of the type A materialism, type B materialism, type C materialism, um, other monisms and illusionisms. There's a lot just in this basic idea of trying to figure out how to understand cognitively consciousness just in and of itself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, how to cognitively understand cognition, which is like the most crazy thing to try and think of. How to think about one thing about yeah, I I love like thinking of these things.
SPEAKER_01I mean, that's why I like you know, I my gallery is doing it. Absolutely. And I I mean at some point there is a one might say a cascading failure in that you tumble down the the mountain of knowledge and trying to like break things down, and what is real, what isn't real, you know, what what can we experience, what can we know, and the climb back up that mountain is if you're really taking it finger by finger and step by step, can be a lifelong journey, depending on how deep you want to go. I mean most people just they they intuit uh and infer the road and they walk that path every day. Um but there there is another way of viewing things um that you know some might say isn't isn't really a worthy endeavor, or um, you know, there is a a more general understanding of the world that then you're trying to like break down needlessly. But I find the the complexities of the arguments and the ideas and the thoughts fascinating and riveting to me. I just wanted to juxtapose some of like you know, here's we I think kind of like you kind of laid out in the first episode, like if we build it out technologically, this will, you know, you keep putting it together, this will come about. And I just wanted to show, like, hey, here's an another idea that you know, maybe it's a little more ephemeral, and how do we decipher that? Um just something else to think about in conjunction with the first episode. 100%.
SPEAKER_03I that's really important. You're absolutely right. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01But again, we could go on and on and on.
SPEAKER_03Well, we could go round and round for like forever. Yeah, we really could. We really could. Um I could just keep going like all in all.
SPEAKER_01I think it might be fun um to look at some of the popular iterations of artificial intelligence in popular culture and see how they play off of these particular elements and how we view those interactions between humanity and a consciousness not our own that isn't from outer space or another dimension or I mean that's again assuming that's uh uh well see that's where when I was thinking up my like list of you know movies or books or whatever to talk about, I felt that if you're dealing with intelligence from another place that is mechanically based, it feels more like you're dealing with an alien than you are with like the artificial intelligence mechanical mind that we're kind of talking about. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well, I didn't actually include any of that. Yeah, I mean, I because I thought about Gort from uh from uh the day the earth sits still, but I was like, no, that doesn't really it doesn't really count.
SPEAKER_01I just I just feel like some of those like uh you know if if mechanical men from Mars was we could discuss like how their artificial intelligence came about or you know juxtapose it with you know our own minds or but it's really kind of like not the same as if like we give rise to AI.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, I mean but but I mean that's a okay but that's a great example of the weird debate we're going to have now because um if you take the the examples of Nomad from Star Trek the original series or V'ger from Star Trek the Motion Picture, which is the same fucking character, um they were Earth-created artificial intelligence that then merged with alien artificial intelligence to and then lost its original purpose. Does that count because it is human-born, it is earth-born, found its own consciousness and elevated its consciousness with other artificial consciousness that is alien and then came back to earth, or at least came back to contact with people, right?
SPEAKER_01I think I think I would like lean towards no. Um I didn't include the scope of what we're talking about. It's a similar like cyborg, so like a RoboCop. Oh, yeah, we definitely don't include Robocop. No, no, we can't we can't include Robocop. No, that is not fair. The merging of machine and man into something. I mean, especially in the way that Robocop is portrayed, it's not about creating a new consciousness. It's it's more like the modification of a existing human consciousness.
SPEAKER_03Oh, absolutely. It's more about the mechanizing of his brain and not successfully, or even not even though that complex uh way of doing so. Like, yeah, he still has his own brain. That was kind of the point.
SPEAKER_04Mm-hmm.
SPEAKER_03And that was the that was the differential between him and like Ed 260 or Ed 209, is that he's not artificial. He's Organic and still human. He just has things implanted in him that he's conflicting with. That's that's way different. Way different.
SPEAKER_01And I also don't think the ads meet any criteria for sentence or conscience. So they're they're they're drones. They're not exactly.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, they're just drones. Yeah. Not the same thing. Yeah. They're not meant to think on higher levels, or because that's the kind okay, this is one of the reasons we did this. It's because like talking about Robocop is important because it doesn't fit into these categories, into these things we're talking about, because like Robocop was created to have the ability to think on its own, on his own, on Murphy's, you know, with a cop's brain, with its his own experiences, with his own judgments, but within this, like, you know, corporate mandated interest. But he was never meant to be an artificial intelligence. He was meant to be an enhanced human intelligence, and that's a completely different thing. Which is important to define if we're gonna talk about these things. 100%. Someone there? No, they're just somebody.
AI in Pop Culture and Fiction
SPEAKER_03I can't hear anything. Sorry. Oh, okay, good. As long as you can't hear anything, then it's fine. I can't hear anything. I just saw something in your head. That's why I was. Yes, somebody's sawing something. And there's there's no body, is it? Well, it's there's no apartment next door to me on the right. So I'm very curious. But anyway, let's just let's just keep going.
SPEAKER_01Uh I think a similar Again, what point do we count it? Uh say ghost in the shell? Um, ooh, good. That's good. Where again, it it's it's a cyborg where consciousness is like taken out of the the body and like digitized. But obviously it gets into question of you know, is there something more than just the the ones and zeros program to be like is it major Kusanagi? I can't remember. They just call her the major at least original. It's Scarlet Johansson. Well, thank you. Uh definitely, yeah, it's Scarlet Joe.
SPEAKER_02Um that fucking story. Just so bad. It's the worst thing you could possibly do. Uh it's so bad.
SPEAKER_01There is there is, I mean, I think it is so bad also because like what Ghost in the Shell means, the anime fans, and to have it portrayed in that way.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, it's it's almost like the Attack on Titan movie just so misses the point completely. Like, oh god. That everyone forgets that even happened.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I mean, I don't think I even I never saw that. I never got enough deep into Attack on Titan to go that word route.
SPEAKER_03But uh first couple of seasons are great. Uh the movie is terrible, it doesn't understand itself at all. But uh the show is good until you get to later in some of the later lore, and then you're like because that actually deals with artificial intelligence as well, but uh we're not gonna talk about that today.
SPEAKER_01We have a lot of other things to get to. I I didn't I don't I didn't know that. Isn't it about the the large naked people eating eating people?
SPEAKER_03Yes, yes, but then it turns out that those are I don't want to ruin it for you, but yeah, trust me, it also deals with this kind of thing in a certain sense as well. So just watch it. You'll like it up until the last like couple seasons. You'll you'll enjoy it. A lot, actually. And I think it's very good until the last couple seasons, and then it's and the movie ruins everything. But it wasn't American, so at least we have that. It was Japanese and they fucking just they ruined it themselves, so fuck them.
SPEAKER_01Uh you did. I mean, yeah, at least at least we didn't cast random white actors to take the roles.
SPEAKER_03We didn't do yeah, it wasn't Chris Pratt playing one of the main characters, so at least we have that. Um okay, so it's interesting that you say that too, because like I'd like to inter just just for a moment interject. I I did uh a bunch of research into this, and I actually did find some really interesting academic papers that deal with this concept as well. Specifically, uh depictions of artificial intelligence in sci-fi fantasy. Specifically sci-fi. I don't like getting into the fantasy thing because it doesn't mean the same thing. Like we're not going to talk about C3PO or R2D2. I don't think so. Are we not? Well, actually, which we should. You and I should talk about droids because that actually does bring up a lot of really interesting, weird ethical questions.
SPEAKER_01But I think only because I think there are a few there are psychologically. That might be the only fantasy depictions of robot. Yeah, I think there might be the only fantasy one that I plan to bring up.
SPEAKER_03Um of of like, you know, artificial intelligence in the cybernetics or no in the in the robotic sense, obviously, but they are weird and unique.
SPEAKER_01Yes, I think that's the only reason to discuss them in the realm of of this thing, because let's let's just put a pin in that and come back to the droids. Let's come back to the universe.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, yeah. No, no, right, because it's like we could definitely rant about that for a while. Let's see so. So, this is from a paper by Isabella Herman called Artificial Intelligence Artificial Intelligence in Fiction, Between Narratives and Metaphors. Quote Taking science fictional AI too literally and even applying it to science communication paints a distorted image of the technology's current potential and distracts from the real-world implications and risks of AI. These risks are not about humanoid robots or conscious machines, but about scoring, nudging, discrimination, exploitation, and surveillance of humans by AI technologies through governments and corporations. AI in science fiction, on the other hand, is a trope as part of a genre-specific megatext that is better understood as a dramatic means and metaphor to reflect on the human condition and sociopolitical issues beyond technology. So AI in films often serves plots of machines becoming human-like andor a conflict of humans versus machines. Science fictional AI is a dramatic element that is a perfect antagonist, enemy, victim, or hero, because it can be fully adjusted to the necessities of the story. But to fulfill that role, it often has capabilities that are way beyond actual technology, be it natural movement, sentience, or consciousness. If science fictional AI is to be taken seriously as a representational of real-world AI, it provides the wrong impression of what AI can and should do in the future. And I think that's really poignant. Because we can have these debates and we can start talking about these things in in fiction, and we're going to. And how important they are and the metaphors they represent. But real-world AI is actually, ironically, far more insidious in its application than the crazy, insidious stories that have ever been written about them. And I think that's something to really keep in mind when we go forward.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Yeah, I think, I mean, a lot of what we'll get into it, but you know, there, I think there's distinctly kind of utopian and dystopian takes on artificial intelligence. And it's rarely about the subtle ways that humans interact and have become accustomed to artificial intelligence, but more putting on either a smiling nice mask to empathize with that quote unquote fake human or you know robotic person. Um as Data would say, a synthetic. No, no, as Ash would say. No, I'm getting it wrong again. Bishop. What Bishop said he's uh like to refer to a synthetic person.
SPEAKER_03Back to Lens Hendrickson, which by the way, uh Artifice Girl, one of the last, I have to imagine, last great Lens Hendrickson roles. He was I did not expect him to be in it, and he was great. I didn't know he was in it, and he shows up. It's like, oh, that's great. Uh oh, it skips ahead suddenly 50 years, and you're like, wait, what? Oh, hey, it's Lens Hendrickson.
SPEAKER_01I like how it like it it jumps and skip twice, yeah. Let's hit the let's hit the points what this movie's about because we're kind of in and out. You know, I love a I love a Titan 90 that actually has something to say. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Um it is all in basically like three rooms.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, yeah. And you have what, five actors total? So six actors? Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_03Well done. Yeah, well done. Yeah, I especially for a Lance Hendrickson film later on, because he made a lot of shit. And that one was like, oh, okay, you're saying something here. That's cool.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. I I'm assuming that the director was like, All right, I'm gonna I I love Lance Hendrickson. Can I get him in my thing? 100%. Uh as opposed to Lance Hendrickson agent was like, all right, Serbian action film, uh Bosnian dragon film.
SPEAKER_03Uh well, I think there's a reason I think there was a reason he was in a wheelchair chair in that though. He was yeah at the end. Yeah, I think I think he's I think it's it's like it's sundown for for Lance Hendrickson, I think.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_03So seeing even something good, great. That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it was good. And we'll we'll get to that, I think, when we come up. Yeah, uh we'll get we'll get to that. But just to just to put a pin on like when they show AI representations, it's either you know a smiling face that is a little more human-like that we can identify with, or it is that terrifying visage of the killer robot. You kind of need like these pantomime heroes and villains that are easily recognizable and you know, we can focus on, as opposed to the way AI can insidiously, you know. I well, not insidious. I mean, it can both be but I mean the things that AI does now do many wonderful things for humanity. You know, there there's a lot uh you know, I mean, one one thing like for Artifice Girl that it does is like it's combating human trafficking, you know, identifying patterns indicative to human trafficking, helping law enforcement agents detect and disrupt those networks. I mean, there's disaster response, wildlife converse conservation, realistic characters in fiction, there's you know personalized learning, improving accessibility, enhanced public services, um helping customer service in general, scientific discovery of like protein structure predictions, um uh climate predictions and and and trying to change climate change and mitigated uh different medical breaks.
SPEAKER_03Can I push back on that for a second?
SPEAKER_01Um because I I you're uh you're you're taking you're giving one with a hand but cutting off with a huge sword with the other?
SPEAKER_03Well, in the current American administration, yes, that's exactly what you're what's happening here. They're trying to replace actual thinking human beings with resources and time and actual experience with AI models who are 100% not ready to predict these things or help these things. And now we're seeing, I mean, we're already seeing the immediate results of this, with so many people dying from storms that should have been predicted earlier on and and and acted upon. The problem with that is all of those things rely on data, and AI doesn't create data, it consumes data. People create data. And so if you're gonna try and use predictive models, you have to have actual data to build those on. And if you don't have that data, you can't predict these things, it's gonna start hallucinating. So those are not good things that come out of AI.
SPEAKER_01But they are ways that you could utilize it for the good of humanity.
SPEAKER_03Theoretically, if it worked the way that they tech companies say that it works, but it doesn't work that way. It does not have enough data to be able to do what it says, what they say it does, and it can't get more data if you keep cutting people out of the equation. Maybe someday it could do that, but that's definitely not where we are right now. But they are already trying to implement it like it's just there. And we're already seeing the the the horrible tragic results of that.
SPEAKER_01It's it's trying to trying to ride your bike, but you haven't put the wheels on yet.
SPEAKER_03Or you've never learned to ride a bike.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, but I mean, I think not only can they not have a bike properly made and the skills to ride said bike, they've decided that they're gonna get rid of all the cars and just make everyone ride bikes. Yeah. Yeah. So, oh, we're talking about cyborgs and why they don't fit. And again, ghosts in the shell stratos that line because there's the digitation, digitization of Major Kusanagi and her ghost in the shell, her cybernetic spirit that exists inside the mainframe. And there's the AI that's created inside that they're trying to get, that I don't think is either it's portrayed as the villain in ways, but it's it's really just kind of trying to live. It's not the same way that a a Westworld or a Terminator function. And I think it's trying to say more about like what it is to be human rather than what it is to be an artificial living being.
SPEAKER_03Right, to be a unique consciousness and a unique entity in and of itself.
SPEAKER_01Now, I think there are ways that you can portray AI within a cybernetic structure, for example, like upgrade.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Did you ever see upgrade? I've seen it. I don't remember much from it.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Basic idea of upgrade is that a man is paralyzed, he gets a neural chip implanted into his the lower part of his brain that'll give him the ability to walk and use his limbs again. But there is an artificial intelligence that is in control, and obviously it takes a dark path and turns for its own evil ends, one might say, without giving it away. Everybody knows what 2001 is. Everyone knows the matrix. Terminator, killer robot, cyberdyne from the future, go back to kill. You know, we get that. But you might not know what happens at the end of Upgrade or Artifice Girl. I don't want to necessarily give everything away if it's something else someone else can still experience for themselves.
SPEAKER_03But the overall concepts, at least, that'll that'll say a lot.
SPEAKER_01At least that is an experience of the integration of technology and artificial intelligence within a human body, forming a cybernetic relationship just on the basis of the core concept. But it isn't about being a cyborg. It's about, I mean, a lot of it's about, you know, you're giving this artificial intelligence this much power and look what it does with it, and you have no control over that. But at least that's an example of the cyborg premise working in conjunction with the core idea of what we're trying to talk about with artificial intelligence. Transformers. Transformers are robotic entities, but do they give a shit about discussing what that means? Does that have anything to say?
SPEAKER_03Their entire world is cybernetic life. Transformers, the movie, they show like weird ecosystems where they have like cybernetic fish. There's no organic life on Cybertron.
SPEAKER_01At that point, it's no longer cybernetic.
SPEAKER_03That's why it's more like fantasy than it is like science fiction.
SPEAKER_01They use that term, I think partially because it was new and popular at the time, but there is no organic life there. It is all mechanical, but I also don't think one, because it's it's alien, so the spark of consciousness and sentience in these machine people that turn into you mean the all spark. Yes, the all spark. If only Marky Mark was here to just tell us more about it, that would be Marky Mark and the AltSpark buttons.
SPEAKER_03No, but I mean you you're right. It doesn't have anything to say. No, it has nothing to say. I mean, it could, if Michael Bay wasn't the one in charge of that franchise, it could have something to say and would be really interesting.
SPEAKER_01But I'm sure there's some comics that had something to say. Yeah, maybe.
SPEAKER_03Like 40, 50 year run, you know, but I think you and I wish that were true. I don't think it is true. I mean, like, Jason Aaron has never taken a crack. Grant Morrison has never gone after Transformers, you know what I mean? Like it's never you're never gonna get anybody to say anything about it. Especially at this point now that Michael Bay has made like 17 of those movies and they're all completely superficial and awful. It's just not gonna happen.
SPEAKER_01But but point taken. How do you want to approach? Because I kind of had them like listed again, as we discussed off-air a little bit, like the good, the bad, and the gray. With Liam Neeson, yes. Someone's gotta fight wolves with broken bottles tied to their fists, and then be as ambiguous as Inception at the end.
SPEAKER_03By that I mean not at all. Well, okay. It's a good question because I had examples of stories and then characters. I did not write this in any sort of logical sense, so here we go. So we are gonna talk a little bit about examples of AI in pop culture. I mean, there are so many we can go into. It's one of the most pervasive things in science fiction, especially, and sometimes in fantasy, we're probably not gonna tackle Wally or Johnny 5 necessarily, mostly because of but those are things we could definitely talk about, or batteries not included, or you know, all sorts of things that we really wish we could talk about. Were batteries not included? Weren't those aliens? They were alien robots. Yeah, but you're right, but you're right. We've already sort of excised aliens. You're right. But for the scope of this, follow your bliss. Uh well, well, yeah. I'm not gonna yuck your yum. AI in films often serves did I I haven't said this at yet, have I? I don't think so. I don't know, have you?
SPEAKER_01My subjective experience of what's out of here.
SPEAKER_03AI in films often serves lots of machines becoming human-like, and or a conflict of humans versus machines.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. This reflects you're idealizing in a human representation, giving like emotions and empathy to the machine. I think in a lot of the utopian versions of these tales, and the exact opposite where you're a lot of times you're giving a human-ish face to the killer robot to highlight those dystopian.
SPEAKER_03All a terminator or yeah. And we're gonna get into the weird inherent sexism in that as well, when we get to the whole ex machina thing, uh, that whole thing, because that's a huge part of this that I did not really take into account as a whole, but definitely is a problem. Science fictional AI makes a really good enemy. Or even hero sometimes, like you're saying, like in Ghosts in the Shell. It can be tweaked for the narrative, no matter what you do. But to fulfill that role, it often has capabilities that are like way beyond technology that exists, which is why it's often set in the future or in the near future, like Max Hedram. Well, God, we haven't even talked about Max Hedrum. That's kind of a big one. I think we should do a whole episode on Max Headroom, personally. Uh it's always like just in the future or right now, but nobody. Knows that this exists. And these capabilities also they also like come in the form of sentience or consciousness, which obviously those are really debatable terms. Take that from what you will. Science fiction AI as a representation of real-world AI kind of gives you the wrong impression of what AI can and should do, obviously, if you've seen Terminator or The Matrix, right? But here's some like just a couple of examples from history that I think are relevant today that exemplify this type of AI. The feeling of power, which is a 1958 short story by Isaac Asmoth. In it, a futuristic society, humans rely on AI for everything. And then a human being discovers arithmetic. They don't even educate people anymore. And then he trains himself to do multiplication. And then his knowledge starts to snowball. Then he becomes sort of a vocal advocate of human knowledge. And at first, you know, the people in charge write up what he dubs as human math as useless. But then somebody in the military sees it as valuable because if humans can understand calculation, they can replace expensive computers on warships. It's a short
Frankenstein: The Original AI Cautionary Tale
SPEAKER_03story, so it doesn't really need to get into the universe too much, but it's a very obvious reverse of how we see AI now. But that is in 1958, right? Asimov is actually one of the most pioneering people we're going to talk about in this. The rules of robotics alone were a huge thing in storytelling. So now I'm going to get a little obvious, okay? But but I have very good reasons why. I want to talk about for just a brief moment Frankenstein by Mary Sherman. I'm wondering if we're going to bring that this is going to be brought up. I know. I debated this because it is obvious, but I think it's really fundamentally important to discuss. And I think it's something we can debate.
SPEAKER_01The fundamental Promethean principle uh behind Frankenstein, it applies to everything else.
SPEAKER_03In many ways. You know what? In talking about AI, Frankenstein may be the most important fundamental thing we talk about. It applies in so many different contexts and so many different eras. Even though everybody knows Frankenstein. While the modern telling of the Greek fable Prometheus, I mean the subtitle for Frankenstein is A Modern Prometheus, it is a far more nuanced text than just that, or even the universal pictures take. Victor Frankenstein literally creates an artificial intelligence from spare parts, then neglects it. It's pretty relevant today for that context alone. In both the Prometheus tale and the story of, let's say, Adam and Eve, a game-changing element is gifted to mankind, and now we're on our own, able to guide our fates for better or worse. Now, while Frankenstein does tell that story, Victor has harnessed an ability that previously was only possessed by the gods, and now man's fate has changed forever with the ramifications of that knowledge. It also shows us the danger of intentionally unleashing a world-changing discovery without an ethical framework around it. Just because he can, I mean, should he? Right. I would argue that Frankenstein's monster refers not just to the creature he created, but also his hubris and the choice he made. I think Frankenstein's monster also metatextually refers to his folly. He is the monster. His actions. His actions are the monster. His choices are the monster. And that's something we really need to think about. The longing for creation, as we talked about last episode, is connected with the ang well, and then we can get into some of this fun stuff, because this is really, really interesting. The longing for creation is connected with the anxiety that the creature will grow over our heads, that we will lose control and finally be dominated by it. This sort of primeval desire and fear. Asimov literally coined the term, the Frankenstein complex, kind of defines 20th and 21st century AI fiction. Because we talked about that before with the golem and all sorts of other examples throughout human history. The idea that we want to sort of like beat the gods, become our own gods. I mean, Battlestar Galactica does a really great job of talking about this, where we have to create and by doing so being the stewards of our own fate. But now, because of that, we don't have the gods protect us or save us or keep us pure, and now we're on our own. And we are gonna fuck it up or we're not. Let's find out. It is one of the first mainstream examples of artificial intelligence in narrative structure. And it's really relevant because coders and big tech went all in with AI implementation, ignorant or perhaps more cynically, intentionally ignoring the ethics around it, free of any guidelines of regulation motivated by greed. Consequences be damned. And this is from a paper called Robot Rights question mark. Let's talk about human welfare instead by Berhane and Van Dyck in 2020. Quote, once we see robots as mediators of human being, we can understand how the quote robot rights debate is focused on in first world problems. At the expense of urgent ethical concerns, such as machine bias, machine illicited human labor exploitation, and erosion of all privacy, all impacting society's least privileged individuals. We conclude that if human being is our starting point and human welfare is the primary concern, the negative impacts emerging from mechanic systems, as well as the lack of taking responsibility by people designing, selling, and deploying such machines remains the most pressing ethical discussions in AI. So, all that being said, just like Victor Frankenstein, people like Elon Musk, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google created this thing, they saw a financial model for it, which didn't really make a lot of sense. It still doesn't make a lot of sense. And who gives a shit what the implications are on humanity? And those that go out there and are like, well, no, this will mean we have to work less. This will mean that things will be easier for people. We can solve problems. Most of them know that's not true. And it's pure hubris, just like Victor Frankenstein. Let's go down that list we're talking about, Jake. Let's go down that pop culture list because each of those I think has different things to say. I think that's great.
SPEAKER_01I think we should probably stop here. Okay. We've got two hours and we're now just getting into the we're just getting into the premise of the episode. Yeah. Oh, that's fucking great. We knew this was going to be a long one, so that's fine. I think the fact that we are excited to talk about these, yeah, we're not going to have any problem. Fantastic bringing up Frankenstein. And also James Bond. That was that was important. I don't think James Bond is going to be in the episode.
SPEAKER_03No, but we did talk about that for like half an hour. That's how it always goes. Well, that's what we've got for now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, like Frankenstein, we came up with this pod and we decided to delve into it and create it, but it has grown beyond our wildest imaginations and has taken over. So it will definitely need to be pushed into next episode. So do come back as we will delve into the thoughts and ideas, the portrayals of both good and ill, of artificial intelligence within pop culture. Next time on Dispatch Ajax, if you wouldn't mind like, sharing, subscribing, we'd really appreciate it. Tell whatever bot that you can find that do not encourage them to use AI.
SPEAKER_03It's in everything.
SPEAKER_01If you want to give us five courts, five courts on the podcast catcher app of your choice, ideally Apple Podcast. It's the best way for us to get heard and thus seen. Uh we'd really appreciate it. If you do want to hear about our thoughts on artificial intelligence and pop the culture, do come back next episode. We are excited that we're able to talk about this and to share it with you all. But until we are all reborn into our mechanical bodies, thus blending human sentience and artificial intelligence into one ungodly creation. Skip. What should they do?
SPEAKER_03Well, they should all ask themselves how many gourds in a gallon? And then they should probably clean up after themselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Is is this a diehard thing?
SPEAKER_00Is there a bomb gonna blow off before if I can't figure out how many gourds are in a gallon? And then it's gonna turn out to just be like maple syrup.
SPEAKER_03I have a sign that says I hate robots. You better get out of this neighborhood, man. Hey Zeus, you gotta help this dude out. He's gonna be dead in a few minutes. He's in Robot Harlem.
SPEAKER_00I've got a very, very bad headache. It's good.
SPEAKER_03Everyone
Episode Wrap-Up and Next Time Teaser
SPEAKER_03should probably clean up actors themselves to some sort of reasonable degree. Make sure they've paid their tabs and not just through some sort of AI app. Make sure they have tipped their actual human bartenders andor KJs andor podcasters, and make sure that they support their local comic shops and retailers, not their online apps. That being said, we would like to say Godspeed, fair wizards.