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Scratchwerk ^EDU
"Scratchwerk ^Edu," hosted by Ronnie King, CEO of Scratchwerk Tech and founder of the MyVillage Project, is a dynamic podcast at the nexus of Black communities, technology, business, education, and current events. Each episode dives deep into the role of emerging technologies in promoting equity, enhancing workforce development, and reshaping education.
Join Ronnie as he explores how technology can be leveraged to uplift and empower marginalized communities through insightful discussions with experts, activists, and innovators. From the practicalities of tech entrepreneurship to the impact of community-led initiatives, "Scratchwerk Edu" is an essential resource for anyone interested in the intersection of technology and social change.
Learn about the success of tech incubators such as "Coding in Color", which has trained over 2,000 students in emerging skills and secured over $800k in funding to support young Black tech entrepreneurs, and discover how initiatives like the MyVillage Project Community Fund has united organizations and disbursed over $4M to support 220+ Black-led nonprofits across the country. Tune in to be informed, inspired, and involved in reshaping a more equitable tech future.
Scratchwerk ^EDU
My Best Friend is an LLM : The Future of Friendship
Could AI chatbots become our closest companions, rivaling human friendships by 2026? Explore this intriguing possibility as we discuss the ever-evolving landscape of AI companionship. As chatbots become increasingly conversational and lifelike, they might soon offer the emotional connections and privacy we often seek in our human relationships. Tune in to understand how these digital friends could mirror the enduring qualities of human bonds, while also providing a unique, personalized conversational experience that fits into our fast-paced, technology-driven lives.
While human connections remain irreplaceable, there's no denying the benefits that chatbots and language learning models bring to the table. Available 24/7, these digital companions offer vast knowledge and privacy, enhancing our productivity and problem-solving skills. Join us in envisioning a future where AI chatbots are a valuable part of our social fabric.
So it's 2025. Nothing should shock us, especially now. On this podcast, you know we are going to say some of the most I guess, quote unquote crazy things you can think about as it relates to technology and the future and community and so on and so forth. So it shouldn't come as no surprise that I would ask the question what if I told you that my best friend right now is an AI chatbot? What if I told you that my best friend is an LLM? And even more so, what if I told you that by next year, this time, february 2026, I'm willing to bet about half of you, all that's listening to this right now your best friend will be a chat bot to an AI bot Will be your BFF.
Speaker 1:I like to be educated, but I'm so frustrated. Hello to my loneliness. I guess that endurance is bliss. Take me back to before the noon, go away and take it out of queue.
Speaker 1:So when I think about my childhood, I grew up with really just a few handful of very, very close friends who are all really still a part of my life today. I mean, we went to middle school together. We went to high school. We played basketball together, me and I would consider, you know one of my best friends. We went to college together. We joined basketball together me and I would consider one of my best friends. We went to college together. We joined the same fraternity. We attended each other's weddings. We have been in each other's life for a very, very long time. Matter of fact, I still have his home phone, his original home phone from back in those days, memorized in my head. That's how long we've known each other and while all of us really we kind of live miles apart and maybe we only see each other on special occasions, hopefully once a year at the very least, the bond between us as friends really still remains strong. I mean, we can pick up the phone right now and get to talking like we were just talking an hour prior to that. Right, we can get together in person as a group and just again laugh it up, have all the fun in the world because we just know so much about each other.
Speaker 1:The conversation is easy and the beautiful thing about having a friend. When we think about people meeting new people and all those types of things, it's hard to say you got a best friend or you got a real friend and somebody that you just met a few weeks ago, but to have somebody that again has known you almost all your life, definitely all your adult life and even going back into school, I mean, that's just, that's just so much good data. It makes the conversation easy. It makes it makes the communication easy. And when you're living apart and people have their own lives they got jobs and businesses that they're running and kids and things like that your relationship really starts to get reduced to conversation. It's really about the text, the group chats, the phone conversations. That is what maintains your relationship is the conversation, and we are indeed in the age of conversational chatbots. I mean, the chatbots are here already.
Speaker 1:But, man, the features these days on these chatbots if you've been using them, is starting to become very, very amazing. I mean, gone are the days where you had, like these stiff, robotic type responses from these chatbots. If you have been watching any of these commercials, these Google Gemini commercials, I mean they are literally portraying folks laying in their bed, kind of chatting it up with Google Gemini, or they're at the table, they're at the gym, they're just having these conversations because it has gotten better. You can just engage now with these chat bots with follow up, question or responses or humor, and these conversations are feeling more and more real, more and more fluid. And I get it. There's going to be some people saying, well, ronnie, I mean come on. And I get it. There's going to be some people saying, well, ronnie, I mean come on now. Please don't tell me you're going to be on this episode recommending that we now have chatbots as our best friends, as our BFFs, right, not saying that, not saying that.
Speaker 1:But I just want to break down again why we value our human friendships so much. What are the reasons why we value those human friendships so much? And I'll say a lot of it has to do with a privacy right. We can express our kind of unfiltered thoughts without judgment, to our friends. That's that we should be able to, at least. And vice versa, and we're hoping that our friends won't run off and tell other folks what we're really thinking. We can just give them our actual unfiltered thoughts, without judgment, to our friends. So that's one main benefit of these human best friends that we have.
Speaker 1:The other one and this is a big one again is that history of you, that knowledge of each other going way back. I mean, you know my friends, they can. It's hard to even be. You can't be phony around your lifelong friends. They've known you, they know all about you, they know all the the bones are buried Right, they get it. And so having that person that you can go to, that has that history of you, is absolutely critical when it comes to having a friend. So, ronnie, we cannot be replacing, we can't be replacing humans with bots, and I would tend to agree with that.
Speaker 1:When you think about privacy, I'm actually paying ChatGPT to keep my information private, or Google Gemini, whatever LLM you use these days. I'm expecting privacy with that. Now, it's not privacy with a human, it's privacy with a technology, with software, with an application, but I am expecting nobody to know those those things that I said, no different than technically. I'm expecting for my email to be private or my text messages to be private between me and another person. I'm expecting my communication with the bot to be private. So, privacy is there. Privacy is there.
Speaker 1:And now the history of you, the history of your thoughts, if you are indeed talking to Google Gemini, talking to ChatGPT, conversing, having those conversations, oh, there is a history. There is, there is the ability for that bot to remember past conversations and then start providing context and continuity. On top of those conversations, I do a lot of chatting with the bot around scratch work ideas and my village project ideas and you name it like just all the different things. I talk to that bot, I text and converse with that bot a lot about those things and so if I come back three weeks later, a month later, and I'm asking questions about something, yeah, I mean it's going to give me some sort of continuation. It has a record of those past conversations and so at some point maybe not in 2025, but at some point absolutely it's going to have a history of those thoughts and in a lot of ways, depending upon how frequent I'm talking to it, it might have more information about what I'm thinking than my actual human friend. That is possible. So you have that privacy, you have that history of you, but the knowledge of the world these chatbots can tap into a vast pool of information in seconds. In seconds, with my friend, I can ask them a question hey, what do you think I should do about this particular scenario? They can give me an answer, but it might be hard to ask my friend a question about quantum computing. I'm curious about this physics. I'm curious about that. Quantum computing, I'm curious about this. Physics, I'm curious about that.
Speaker 1:The history of something, the information on just a variety of different things. That bot is able to tap into that vast pool of information and can do it in seconds Right, it can do it in seconds. Give me that that answer right now. Right, so it has that information of the world. And then 24-7 availability that bot will always. It's always there, whether it's 3 am and you can't sleep and you need a thought partner, or during a lunch break Right, you can always talk to it.
Speaker 1:So, privacy, history, Understanding, knowledge, information availability, imagery, understanding, knowledge, information availability these start to become some of the benefits of an AI bot in terms of being a kind of a companion and really, really kind of playing the role of a thought partner. I mean, think beyond basic tasks, like write me a paper and really think about stuff, like like hey, give me some recommendation on how to handle this problem that I'm having. Give me some recommendations around what I might cook for dinner with these ingredients. You understand what I was struggling with three weeks ago as it relates to my business. What are some other avenues I can take? What are some other avenues or some other options that others are taking with my similar problem.
Speaker 1:Right, these are questions that you can start asking these bots. You can ask them those things now and again in a very natural conversational way, the same way I'm talking on this podcast right now. It can absolutely brainstorm with you, refine ideas, offer multiple perspectives. Right, and sometimes that bot might not be qualified, in your mind, to answer some of these questions, especially personal questions what should I do? Dating advice? What should I do about dealing with my boss or dealing with these kids, or any of these questions that folks might have. You might think, well, that bot's not qualified to answer that, and you might be right. You might be right. But then I ask you to ask yourself, well, are your human friends qualified? Are they always qualified? Maybe, maybe not. I mean, we got a lot of bad friend advice that's going on out here in the world, so every piece of advice we get from every friend isn't always right anyway. Anyway, right. So you have these bots that could serve again as the role of a thought partner and kind of even act as a teacher for new concepts and skills.
Speaker 1:Matter of fact, I've been kind of having this bug. To get back into physics. I took a little bit in high school, a little bit of college. I've really forgotten almost everything I even remembered back then. So I want to kind of get back in physics, even asking those questions again not my friend.
Speaker 1:Ask the bot, hey bot, whatever you want to call it, you can even give the bots a name nowadays. So hey I, I don't really remember much physics. I would like to kind of refresh my memory and just really learn some new stuff as it relates to physics, but I have nowhere to start. Tell me memory and just really learn some new stuff as it relates to physics, but I have nowhere to start. Tell me where I should start and you already know my lifestyle, you know the things I'm working on, you know how I'm spending my time. But give me some advice on what I should start with, trying to get back into physics.
Speaker 1:Give me a recommendation, ask me, do I want to refine that? Ask me, you know, do I prefer video versus text versus audio? Do I prefer hands-on activities? Maybe, so, maybe not. I mean, I can just talk to it like I'll be talking to a personal physics tutor. That's a different level of companionship, I guess you can say, as opposed to a traditional friend. I can absolutely go to the bot with different questions, different inquiries than I could with just a friend.
Speaker 1:So, in closing, I'm not advocating, I'm not advocating for bots to replace true human friendship. I understand that humans absolutely can show up, emotionally and physically, in ways that robots can never show up. I get that. So this is not an episode to promote, to toss all your friends out to the wind and simply converse with chat, gpt and others. Right, I'm not suggesting that. But. But what I am suggesting is that robots, chatbots, llms can actually show up in ways that humans never can show up 24, seven information on the world, right, even privacy, to that matter. Right, they have a tireless ability to support, with constant availability and, in theory, endless knowledge. They can show up in ways that humans cannot and those are ways that we can absolutely start taking advantage of, right?
Speaker 1:This emerging type of relationship is new, but it can accelerate our productivity and the way that we go about problem solving in ways. That, again, has only just begun and I can only imagine where it's going to go and lead us to. Next year and in the following years a new type of relationship will form. Hopefully, people don't abuse it. Hopefully people don't become obsessed with it. That's a big if right. We did that with social media, unfortunately, so hopefully people aren't become obsessed with it. That's a big if right. We did that with social media, unfortunately. So hopefully people aren't spending their entire lives talking to what is essentially still going to be computer programming. But for those of us that have the wherewithal to keep things in perspective, this is a new type of relationship that you can grow, that can be of true benefit for you right now and definitely in the future, definitely in the future. So this is the Scratchwork Podcast, where we don't fear the future. We create it. One thought, one idea, one dream at a time. Thank you.