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In an uncertain world where AI technology is disconnecting us more and more each day, we are dreaming of a world where technology connects us. The premise of this podcast of simple: let's talk to people and imagine the most hopeful and idealistic futures for technologies that connect and do good in the world.
Baratunde (00:00.178)
my god, we're live! It's happening!
AI For All Tomorrows (00:00.986)
That's right, we're all in the same situation. Alright, that's right. Alright, we are on the line today with Baratunde Thurston. Baratunde, how are you doing?
Baratunde (00:09.258)
I am feeling good today, Dylan. Thank you so much for having me here on AI for All Tomorrow's. Not some tomorrow's, all of them. Not one, not some, but all.
AI For All Tomorrows (00:15.95)
That's right, not just one tomorrow. That's right. We should have you do our official intro. It's like a pro wrestling entrance theme. I think that's what we really need. That's right. Can I get some flexing in the background? So, Bertrand, thank you again for joining us today. And we're gonna start where we always get started, which is what's something particularly inspirational going on either in your life or in the world today?
Baratunde (00:23.73)
Yes! Welcome to our tomorrows!
Baratunde (00:43.566)
I am inspired by a truth that is newer to me, but older than any of us. And it is the truth of how U.S. democracy even came to be. We're told the story of the pilgrims and a bunch of smart, clever, desperate, interesting folks from Europe who landed here for freedom and obviously French fries and high fructose corn syrup. It's like right there in the Magna Carta.
and Genesis. So democracy
AI For All Tomorrows (01:17.304)
So as a minister, do remember the french fries coming back in the book of Genesis too, so it really comes full circle.
Baratunde (01:20.132)
Absolutely, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. So yeah, so we get taught this story about democracy being kind of imported from Europe. And parts of it were, but it was also a practice very much held by the indigenous people who were here. And over the past year and a half, I've been learning more about this history of the pre-existing democracy that...
was very inclusive of the natural world, where women had an equal voice at the table, where there was long-term thinking, and that the model of that democracy, in this case practiced by the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, Iroquois is like the common name that we're taught, that they were very much in relationship with and even tutelage of the rebels who would become our Foundy fathers. And
Brent Franklin wrote about them and George Washington was big into the ceremonial relationships. And so we're in a season over the next year really of celebrating American independence. And we don't need no stinking Kang or your tea. And then we got rid of both mostly and we drink coffee now. But that independence was only possible due to interdependent relations with the people who are already here.
So I'm inspired by the idea and the fact that democracy is native to this land, to the people who've always been here. That conversation in history always brings up lot of tragedy, loss, forced migration, genocide, et cetera, and resilience and persistence and the great generosity and offer that was there and in many ways is still available. So I'm troubled greatly by the state of democracy these days.
But I am inspired and heartened by its more deeply rooted history and really eager to keep telling that story.
AI For All Tomorrows (03:16.45)
Yeah, one of the things that I've been inspired by your work by for, for years since your work on Trevor Noah was the combination of democracy, technology and humor. And right now I'm like, well, what, what do we do with any of these things together or apart? And so maybe starting with democracy, since we already talked about it, where do you see as the role of technology or AI or whatever buzzword we want to throw out with that and democracy right
Baratunde (03:28.593)
Hmm.
Baratunde (03:37.295)
Yeah, yeah.
Baratunde (03:46.788)
Obviously government efficiency, Dylan. If only we had a department focused on that. Someday maybe. Lots of rumors. Once I got a, we laughed, you covered it. I got to kill my HVAC. I meant to do that before we started. And that is the pro that I am. I thought about being a professional.
AI For All Tomorrows (03:53.186)
You know, I've heard rumblings that we're gonna get around to it, but we'll see.
AI For All Tomorrows (04:01.633)
Yeah, yep, yep, yep.
AI For All Tomorrows (04:10.217)
you have a remote too, that's impressive. like that. Is it on your phone?
Baratunde (04:13.873)
Yeah, it's smart. It's like an ecobee thing.
Repeat the question for me. Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (04:23.743)
Yeah, yeah, so thinking about, was basically like, here's an impossible question of, through everything at the wall, of democracy, technology, and comedy, and how you see these things intersecting, starting with thinking about democracy, and just how do you think about democracy right now with technology?
Baratunde (04:34.905)
Right.
Baratunde (04:41.057)
Right, right, right. Okay, so first of all, at the intersection of democracy, technology and comedy, you will find the Department of Government Efficiency. It is literally all those things coming together. It's a lot of technology, it's some democracy and a whole hell of a lot of comedy of errors in many cases, but comedy nonetheless. Democracy and the AI moment for me, there's an uninspiring possibility.
There's a basic level of like competence and then there's the inspiring vision. So the uninspired version of that story is we use technology to weaken the power of the people. We inject more cronyism, more concentrations of power and wealth, less responsiveness. Everybody across, like there's one thing Americans agree on is that we don't agree. So kudos.
And that everything's a shambles. Like we're in a hot mess. That our democracy is deeply challenged, right? Everybody actually agrees on that. And so the role of technology in that could be to exacerbate all those things and do more stealing, more corruption, et cetera. And there's some signs that that's happening. The baseline level is we could have better operational efficiencies. I don't know anyone who's like, DMV, like permitting. Can we please do that more?
I would really love a different form. I don't have enough forms in my life. So there is definitely a baseline level of like operational excellence that could be improved upon. But the inspiring vision says, okay, what's the point here? The point is we didn't want to live together well, that we live in a very diverse world in a very diverse country. And that the practice of democracy is of living well together amidst all that difference. That's real hard.
How do we use technology to help us see what we have in common? And so if we can take some of the most broken parts of our democracy, the representation system, the flow of money into lobbyists, and could literally distribute more power to the people through a citizen assembly, which is a conscripted gathering of randoms, literally randoms, which makes it more representative than extroverts alone or well-funded people alone.
Baratunde (07:06.045)
the Greeks thought that too, something worth looking up in those history books. They did not trust elections or charisma at all. I would have been a terrible, they were like, I got too much Riz. no, don't trust me. So how do you balance that? How do you use technology to facilitate participation, group decision-making, building consensus, crossing language barriers, cultural barriers? There's evidence of that.
You and I were both at a conference recently where we saw one exhibition of that in Bowling Green, Kentucky. There's things happening in Bend, Oregon and Detroit, Michigan and towns in Maine. It's literally coast to coast, north and south. And I'm inspired by the idea of actually AI helping us practice democracy more than the current system is allowing.
AI For All Tomorrows (07:58.572)
Yeah, well, that's something I've been thinking a lot about is how much Riz Socrates might have had and some of those other, like Plato, just really like, did that help them? Did that hurt them? Is that how they got to where they did? But on, so on Democracy, one of the hardcore listeners of the podcast will know that one of the origin stories of the podcast is, I was just pissed off after the last election and about a lot of the media coming out in the mainstream media about AI and about how just,
Baratunde (08:25.231)
Hmm.
AI For All Tomorrows (08:26.899)
absolutely terrible. It was all horror stories. Like no matter what angle or political group you were talking about, was just AI is ruining everything. And I was like, there's more to the story. We can't go completely to the inspirational, but let's look at what we actually have here. And you're hopeful about democracy, it sounds like, with some caveats, but it sounds like you're hopeful about technology and democracy. Could you say more about your hope?
Baratunde (08:50.7)
I I am hopeful about people. And I think a lot of what is missing in the way we talk about AI, that we talk maybe a little too much about AI and not enough about the people who develop it and about what we want from it. So behind my sense of hope and inspiration around democracy is a belief and an observation that
We mostly want the same things, that we largely want peace. We prefer peace to war. We prefer to know and get along with our neighbors rather than being in a constant state of distrust and division. It's very costly to not trust anyone. And you're literally looking over your shoulders. If you have to secure your family all by yourself and everything is always a threat, that level of vigilance,
will wear you down and shorten your life. It'll shorten the life of a human. I think it will shorten the life of a nation as well. So I totally agree with you on the missing, there's a missing element in the AI discourse. It's like, it's either too rose-tinted and salesy and hype-driven or too horrible, dystopic and horror-driven. So my hope though comes from people, they wanna sleep well.
They want to not worry all the time about their loved ones, their kids, their elders. And that mostly we want to feel good. I think at the end of the day, we'd rather feel good than bad. We don't want to see ourselves as bullies or as villains. We also don't want to see ourselves as victims or subjects or oppressed constantly. Like both of those is just too exhausting. And the role of technology...
Part of my hope comes is that we've been burned before by faith and technology to solve things. Remember this? We're gonna make the world a better place. We're gonna just connect people, bring people closer together. What if you're bringing an abuser and their victim closer together, right? There's no universal goods here. We've been through the social media thing. It's burned us. So as we come around again, can we ask different questions?
Baratunde (11:15.012)
What's important to us? What's the future we want for ourselves, our friends, our families, our loved ones, our communities? What do we love about the places that we're part of? That's a great question I got from Nse Ufot, who was a great political organizer out of the state of Georgia. And she's partisan, she's democratic, know, big D, democratic. And that's a really neutral inquiry. And when she did her work, she wasn't asking for votes first, she was asking like...
What do you love about the place you're from? And what do you want? And what are those dreams? And the AI moment encourages dreaming and forces us to ask questions. So I think we're in a great opportunity to ask really important questions as the systems we've relied on seem like they're failing us. In many cases, it doesn't seem, they are. So now we get to do it again. We get to like, found ourselves again and find ourselves again. Yeah. Yeah, it's great.
AI For All Tomorrows (12:09.908)
What an opportunity, what a beautiful opportunity for us to find ourselves again in the reflection.
Baratunde (12:13.614)
It's great. So it turns out the end of the world is also the beginning of the
AI For All Tomorrows (12:18.665)
That's right, I think that's beautiful. what happens though when what you're calling neutral questions become politicized? When the question of what we dream of, you're also pointing to a capitalist system that's underpinning a lot of this or a system where a lot of people get more through certain dreams and other people get less throughout. And even the idea of we want people to be in a better family system or live a better life.
Like even that terminology in my experience has been politicized in some way. Technology as well and connection as well. How do you sort that out in yourself as someone who creates a lot of content too?
Baratunde (12:58.178)
Yeah, a simple, slightly divisive, but I think honest answer to that is create new opponents. So the politicization that has an implication of like kind of a left-right thing, which is the case, but there are other others. There's someone benefiting from that politicization. Who's that?
Who's profiting off our pain? And I'm not encouraging mob behavior or witch hunts or things like that, but I'm encouraging clarity that this hope that I have that we'll ask better questions, that's in opposition to just receiving software updates from an industry that has a goal of quarterly returns and giving very wealthy investors back enough money to make them extremely wealthy investors. And so,
That's great risk of the moment, right? We're not on some default setting toward peace. I think we gotta work for it. And sometimes you have to fight for it. But one of the ways that I think we can depoliticize the charge that has come is to create a different common basis and say, right, so who's gonna benefit from this? Like, is it good for your kids to...
be on their phones eight hours a day. If it's not good for your kids, who is it good for? Okay, so you might be in opposition to that party. That's divisive, right? That is potentially politicized but on a different axis. There's a power axis here. And to the extent that we can remind ourselves that we have power, that industry,
is a great engine for economic growth and a couple of other things, but it should not be the sole home of all of our wants and our needs, individually and collectively, then there's a new balance that comes. And I think a lot of people who are politicized around some of the language now on opposite sides might find themselves in the same boat when it comes to the question I just posed about time on phone with kids as one example, or all this job displacement that's happening.
Baratunde (15:25.049)
Who does it hurt to have wages collapse, to have job certainty disappear such that every quarter there's like a new mandate for the type of work that needs to be done? Who's that bad for? Okay. Almost everybody, but not quite everybody. Who's it good for? Who's pricing, like they're amazed of measuring these things. And so you can do your own research in this, right? I'm not even saying the thing.
I'm literally just asking questions. And that's a good tradition. And so I think this moment is forcing us to ask questions differently, even questions that previously might have been deemed divisive or questions that have been weaponized or politicized.
AI For All Tomorrows (16:11.084)
You're sitting in this really interesting spot where you talk to a lot of different people through the content you create through. We'll put out the plug here. It'll be all over the show notes, but Life with Machines, the podcast. But you're talking even the conference we went to the other week. You are in that unique position where you are talking to policymakers. You are talking to foundations. You are talking to everyday people, to politicians.
Baratunde (16:24.686)
Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (16:39.724)
How do you navigate that when you're thinking about, like talking about technology? Do you have to do some level of code switching or is there a core?
Baratunde (16:47.897)
First of all, politicians are not everyday people. I think we should just clarify that they should be and increasingly the successful ones I think will be. I don't quite approach the transition between those different groups with extreme consciousness. It's not like, I'm gonna put on my policy discussion modes now. Activate politician talk mode.
AI For All Tomorrows (16:52.49)
Yeah, yeah.
Baratunde (17:16.823)
Now activate human mode, because those are different modes. I think there's curiosity that leads in all those cases. I think like any sort of relationship dynamic, people like to see themselves, hear themselves, know that you're paying attention to them. And so if you don't know, ask. And if you do know, like share something about the other party.
How are you thinking about and demonstrating some empathy for everyone? think, you know, I'm throwing mild bombs here, but they're very mild, that everybody's having a hard time right now. Like if you are an everyday person, the things that your parents prepared you for don't exist. know, within a generation, there's massive gaps in experience because of technology. So we are...
separating generationally like never before. don't think, you know, when the automobile came about, that was huge. Flight, huge. Electricity, huge. They also took decades to permeate society to the degree that artificial intelligence has done in just the past two years. So I got a lot of empathy for all of us who are just like, what is going on? Like what is up? What is down? If you're burdened and blessed to be a politician right now,
I mean, bless your heart and a pox on your house, like at the same time. But how could you ever know enough to make decisions for enough people to adequately say you're representing the people and then all the financial pressures and the party system, I forget, just the environment, the people you're representing are going through such change. So there's a lot to empathize with, yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (19:08.372)
One of the things that I've been noticing myself doing, being back in the AI ethics world as I've been away from, is just throwing some of those haymakers at Silicon Valley and just being like, those people over there. Like, the coders need to handle the bias in the AI. And that's like, I thought that's where we were like six years ago, but I find myself back in that all or nothing mentality and that question of like how to have empathy for people who may very well be
Baratunde (19:16.131)
Yeah.
Baratunde (19:22.829)
Right.
Baratunde (19:31.682)
Hmm, yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (19:37.92)
benefiting, but it's what you're saying, like the benefit and the burden, because it's also lose-lose right now for a lot of people too.
Baratunde (19:42.094)
Yeah.
Baratunde (19:46.083)
I was at a, I spoke at a conference in London, e-commerce AI conference, and the audience was full of decision makers at all kinds of companies. So multiple industries, literally people who sell mattresses online, shaving cream, vacations, like it does, if there's, we'd sell everything online. So everybody was in the room and they had two identities. There were the people who I met during the day and the people who I met at the bar at night.
Same bodies, different mindsets. The day shift is like AI, let's go. We got to do it for efficiency, for productivity, to delight our customers, to beat our competitors. Like we embrace disruption, let's go. And then the night shift is like, I'm scared. I'm overwhelmed. I'm worried about the kid thing has come up a lot. I'm worried about my kids. I'm worried about my own relationship.
with these things. Like I'm spending a lot of time with these chatbots. It's starting to feel like a relationship. I'm not gonna say I'm cheating on my spouse. It's not that, but there's some time that's going into this thing that was impossible three years ago and now it's like, it's hard to put down. So what does the night shift say to the day shift? It's severance, right? There's innies and outies in the same body and part of what we need to do
is integrate and bridge that without massive brain trauma, know, ideally, because that's what's happening. Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (21:20.492)
And it just seems exhausting. Like when I talk to folks who like are run startups and things, they're just always feeling like they're behind even when they're not. It's like, what is the next AI tool that I need to optimize? Because that's also the story that we're being sold to that we need to keep getting the newest thing. But when you're saying like that, that severance, one of really, this is just selfish. I want to hear you talk about comedy and technology together just because I'm personally curious about. But one of the things that I know from my old ministry days is that
Baratunde (21:33.954)
Mm-hmm.
Baratunde (21:43.288)
Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (21:50.016)
the easiest way to get people to listen with their full heart is to make them laugh first. Like you make them open the door and then you can get to the really deep stuff, like the soul talk. And I'm wondering for you, like what the role of comedy, which has been this through line in your career, what that role is with, in this AI world or in your career right now?
Baratunde (21:55.469)
Mm-hmm.
Baratunde (22:07.244)
Yeah.
Baratunde (22:11.598)
Comedy became a part of my life out of anger and frustration. Not really out of joy. I was angry and frustrated and comedy helped. That's like the simplest story. And it came about heavily through an obsession with news and seeing the state of the world and needing a different way to process that information. So I started doing satire. I would later find that there was another place doing new satire called The Onion. And I was like, oh, they...
These guys are doing my thing, huh? I'd sent a cease and desist. Now I got a job and I worked there for five years and I worked there during the rise of social media and mobile computing. And I led the digital team at the Onion, the first position to do that. So I had done standup for a decade. I had done Comedy Central auditions and had bit parts in movies and was on stage constantly. I a deep appreciation.
and then was able to use it professionally, which means I got healthcare to tell jokes, which is like the greatest win. I know people think like Sam Altman's made it. He hasn't because his healthcare still depends on him doing a real job. And I got to do a fake job and still get dental. So take that Sam. But being at a place like the Onion, not a place like being at the actual Onion for five years, put me at an intersection of tech. So I was running this digital team.
of comedy, because that's the job, of politics, because I was running the election coverage in 2008, and then after again, leading it to 2012. So it was a great time. And I saw that an absurd world needs absurd narrative to help make sense of it, and that technology could help with that. That we could use these tools to mock the world, to highlight
an injustice or just a contradiction, didn't have to be always that heavy, and to not take ourselves so seriously or to point out something that really does need to be taken so seriously. So in those days, we live tweeted events that didn't happen, right? That was like part of our performance art using the medium. We put out, I mean, you've worked in an academic context and I think many of your audience do, old...
Baratunde (24:38.015)
archives of newspapers and magazines, microfilm and microfiche. We made like a microfiche reader as our first iPhone app with all the old onion headlines from back then stylized it in such a way like bringing old tech into this new mode. But then I left the onion and with a few others, we started a business that was all about comedy and humor at an intersection. And that business is called Cultivated Wit.
The idea was that we should, we make fun was our motto, but we were targeting Silicon Valley in an intentional trolling sense that we could use technology to deliver a comedic experience that also satirized these people who take themselves way too seriously and have way too much power. So we do these hackathons with comedians and software developers and visual designers, and they would build working prototypes of comedic app experiences.
One was a tip dividing calculator app. It's called Equitable because it didn't divide the bill equally. It divided it equitably based on the race and gender of the people at the meal. And so basically white guys paid more, black women paid the least, and that was powered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics data, which is now behind a paywall, probably. I think you can get that. And that's not equitable. But was reparations one meal at a time. It was the tagline. And people did these big Steve Jobsian level
presentations and demos. In the AI moment, I'm seeing that level of sort of vision to creativity to execution happen even faster. Folks can use a VO3 tool, can use mid journey, can use cring, or is it cling? There's so many tools. manifest a vision and make social commentary and...
use the tools to critique the people who use the tools to use us all at the same time. I love the complexity of that. I love the creativity of that. I love the laughter in that. The last thing I'll say in my little monologue here is, in the life with machines world, we built our own AI as a persona and as a co-producer. We gave them a job, not just a tool role, but a teammate role. And then one of the highlights, actually the highlight of their
Baratunde (26:59.903)
employment with us was when we asked them to mercilessly roast Elon Musk. This was done without scripting. It was just on stage live at South by Southwest. We were in Austin, he lives in Austin. What you got? And Blair, which is their name, don't forget it, Blair just ate so hard. Like Blair destroyed Elon Musk. It was the most viral thing I've ever done on the internet and I didn't do it, but I kinda did.
Blair was modeled heavily on me, but it's not me. It's like Google Gemini under the hood deeply and a lot of customization. So even that act of an art form that I've participated in, know, like cracking jokes about people, this AI was able to do it and it hit harder because it was an AI, you know, taking shots at Mr. Tech and Mr. AI. And I just wonder if he grok'd it.
AI For All Tomorrows (27:55.303)
Yeah, I mean, probably. The and when you were saying like all of the different AI tools that begin with K and C, I just like I'm going through like, you know, grokify, clockify, just add the FI at the end and we're still we're still good. It's a new IP. The thing that I'm wondering, so I'm my first what I like to say is my first career out of college was as a spoken word poet in New York City. So was down, you know, near Rican Bowery Poetry, kept all that stuff.
Baratunde (27:57.632)
You
Baratunde (28:03.724)
Yeah.
Baratunde (28:08.78)
Yes.
Baratunde (28:18.061)
Mmm.
Wow.
AI For All Tomorrows (28:22.12)
And I've started to get back into it now of like trying to, because I'm so sick of academia and writing academic papers, I was like, no, I'm talking about technology. I want to get back out there. So I've started writing poetry again and putting music behind it. And so like I mix my own music behind it, play some guitar, whatever. And, I was, the other week I was like, okay, I have this poem. I like how it's feeling to me. What if I put it into this software that will put music behind it? And then the software came up with something that was
Baratunde (28:36.844)
Yeah.
Baratunde (28:48.77)
Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (28:51.914)
was great and better than any of my technical expertise. And I had a little bit of a crisis, an existential crisis. And then it gave me another option. It was like, oh, do you want another voice reading this poem? And I clicked it and I was like, oh my God, this feels like another poet reading this with intonation that I can learn from. But is this like, did I even need to write the words at this point? Like, where did I end?
Baratunde (28:56.813)
Hmm.
AI For All Tomorrows (29:19.622)
I don't know how to nuance this conversation that much, but I do know that I get really frustrated with the binary of, okay, AI is going to free us to go be creatives and free us from this job, or AI is taking our creativity away from us. And I'm just wondering personally how you're thinking about creativity right now.
Baratunde (29:23.287)
Yeah.
Baratunde (29:26.881)
Mm-hmm.
Baratunde (29:38.925)
Thank you, man. That's a real... That's a real quality prompt. From one human to another.
AI For All Tomorrows (29:45.674)
I appreciate it's an honest prompt for me. I'm like in crisis over here of like should I even be doing art? Should I be doing this podcast? I don't know. But yeah, no, I'm curious. How are you thinking about that?
Baratunde (29:53.367)
Yeah, I actually I like the way you put it in terms of an existential crisis about where you end, right? So where do I end, where does the AI
I am not in a crisis mode. I'm in an exploration mode. I'm in a, there's some things I feel very, very certain about. There's a type of creativity that I do that I tried to get AI's help to do and it was bad, multiple times, including at the Aspen event. I tend to wrap up events in a way that's got some comedy, some poetry, some synthesis, some rows, celebration. What I did at the Aspen wasn't actually,
a great version of it, but it was still much better than what AI was going to do. I did another conference called Bioneers and it was probably the best thing I've ever done on stage in my life, I think. And people were like, did you get AI to help you with that? And I was like, AI can't touch me on this. Now I will eat those words, you know, we'll check back in two years and the people who said, you know, AI doesn't even get my bio right. It makes up like that. Those days are over and now it can passively do some of those things. But
I am still in a body. I still emit electromagnetic frequency of a certain wavelength, wavelengths of a certain frequency. I still am in community and I still enjoy the experience of much creativity. There's some I don't like. I don't really like writing LinkedIn posts. It's like not my highest calling.
and apologies, know, Reid Hoffman, was a guest on the show and I'm like, trying to drag you. I'm just saying like, 80 % of LinkedIn posts are written by AI anyway. Why would I want to feel special? Like, I just want to fit into the group and achieve the time savings and bullet listed insights driven by emoji that come supernaturally to those relying on chat GPT. So I'm okay with that. So run my LinkedIn and captions on IG posts.
Baratunde (32:02.706)
leave the human heart-centered comedic synthesis to me. And there's an in-between space where I'm like doing a lot of voice memos to transcribe and then have AI help me clean it up to get my first draft as opposed to just staring at a blank page and starting to write because talking comes more easily. And I think where this goes is a deep level of partnership where the line is indistinguishable. And where do I end? Where does the AI begin?
I don't know where that ends, but there is some mutuality that I'd be okay with, provided that the AI system I'm using, you know, it's built in a good way, shares enough of my values, isn't just extracting from me to disintermediate me from my own experiences. Not just the money of it. The jobs and the money is one thing. But I do enjoy living. And, yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (32:59.178)
Which is good, which is good. I think that's a good place to be, right?
Baratunde (33:02.304)
And that's not something I can say every day, right? That'd be ideal. I know there's many people who can't say that one day in a month or a year. It's really hard to be like, enjoy living. But most of us would rather be here than not on most of our days. And so long as the AI thing isn't undermining that, I'll be okay. And as a creator, I'm exhausted already, you know, by the...
the tool, bonanza, extravaganza, everything must go, there's a new thing out. But I also think that there's, that can only last so long. All right, we will just stop and slow down. We will opt out. I'm like, good for you. You got the, you're on GPT 7-50B6 subprime optimal. Cool. Check out my notebook.
AI For All Tomorrows (33:59.976)
Right, he's got all those squiggles that I cross out so much. But that's something I've been thinking a lot about is like the beauty of imperfection. Where like I get out there and like this is why I love public speaking or even this podcast, right? Like I can ask the dumbest question possible. Sometimes I'll edit it out, but most of the time I'll just leave it in just because I like to hear that human struggle or that back and forth where I ask the bad question and then you're like, no, but what the hell do you really mean by that? But then with poetry, it's the same thing. Like you're up there, you're just there.
Baratunde (34:02.795)
you
Baratunde (34:07.306)
Yeah.
Baratunde (34:20.458)
Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (34:28.785)
and just living and vibing, and then when you screw up, even when it's really clear, that's almost the most human moment compared to anything that's overly perfect.
Baratunde (34:30.869)
Yeah.
Baratunde (34:39.359)
I also think, I think this idea of AI replacing is just one dimension of the relationship to creativity. There's AI as self referential coach, which is how I've had some of the most productive engagements where I give it good work. I give it a draft of new work. I say, criticize me. And now I have a little editor in my pocket. That's kind of cool. Or find connections I haven't found.
What is a way, what is a path you see here? And it does make me more of an editor myself. You know, some of the things I create, I'm becoming more of a producer, more of an editor, a conductor. And I think we're gonna end up, broadly speaking, all creators will move.
in that direction because the tools are evolving and if they become more teammates than tools then I had this thought recently about the artists like I don't know I'm thinking of my artist Dustin Yellen is a great artist who I know out of Brooklyn and he has teams where he does these amazing glass sculptures with intricately hand
designed paper dolls that are in between panes of glass and it's like 50 panes of glass and each layer has a different population. It's great mosaics and one person can't do that. I think he has maybe, I'm gonna make up a number, but probably 50 people work on a sculpture or there's more famous artists than him even. You have teams of people executing against your vision. That's what a movie director is, right? Like there's no one person
can't make a movie. And even with the AI tools, one person can. Matt Kleiman, who's a good friend of our show, he's like, but that's boring. He's like, I like people. I want to work with people. But we will, think my former point is stronger. We will end up conducting, managing the execution of our creativity more.
Baratunde (36:49.013)
but we will also still have to have a vision worth executing against. We'll have to have a perspective that we want to shine into the world. We'll have to see something ourselves to react to, whether that's a sublime moment of intimacy or a devastating hypocritical moment of governance or tragic moment of disaster or war. It's us that's going to have to observe that and have some response.
And then do we take a physical notebook out and write a poem about it? Do we scream into a voice memo, take a picture, watch a YouTube video, throw all that into an AI and say like, help me process my feelings, damn it. And it comes up with a thing and we're like, I don't like that. It comes up with another thing, I don't like that. And 50 things later, we find something that actually represents how we're feeling. So what are we in that? Are we still an artist? I think so.
We're practicing the art in a different way, but we are having an experience, we're observing something of the world, we're engaged in a process of sense-making, and then we are sharing back out something more thought through, something created. If there's no person there, if it's just like an LLM observing the world and having a reaction and self-publishing.
cool, like good for the bots. And there's probably going to be a world of that. And I think some of these tech platforms will be very happy with that world. Yeah, because it's just about increasing the amount of monetizable activity, whether it's human-made or not. That's real sad.
AI For All Tomorrows (38:23.709)
Well, and a market for that is the other part of it, right?
AI For All Tomorrows (38:33.033)
I love your metaphor of being a conductor, and I'm really curious about how we can live into that metaphor a little bit more than that replacement narrative. I did want to take us, as we're moving towards closing, I wanted to take us way back to the beginning of this conversation, again, because I'm personally just interested in your thoughts on democracy. When you're thinking about your vision,
Baratunde (38:37.888)
Yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (38:57.715)
for you can take it like 100 years from now, you can take it in the abstract, but when you're thinking about your vision for democracy, what does an ideal world look like for you? Or what is your big, big vision for that in this world?
Baratunde (38:58.004)
Mm-hmm.
Baratunde (39:13.387)
free massages for black people. That's the start. And not exclusively, just first. And then everybody would do a lot better. think airports would replace all of their television programming. They either have like inflammatory news on or like docile making sports. I think they just replace it with the best like nature footage ever. We would just watch koalas snuggle.
AI For All Tomorrows (39:15.943)
There we go.
Baratunde (39:42.801)
as we're missing our flights in the future and we feel better about it. It'd be kind of like the drug soma, but not a drug at all. It's just like authentic natural relationships. My big vision for a hundred years is long time and no time. So technologically, who knows what, anything. We will be interrelated to machines in such a tremendous way in a hundred years in our family trees and whatnot.
But that's not a technology question. It's like a social tech question. I would want us to have everyone have enough.
I think we will have evolved to the point where we will be proud, not of the size of the inequality, but the levels of dignity achieved. I would hope in this vision that our measures of success are balanced a little bit more toward collective and more holistic, that we will have left GDP.
out of the room, right? It is a meaningless number we've been chasing and it does not reflect health, happiness, belonging, commitment, like the things we actually value, which really isn't money. Money's a proxy for value, but it isn't valuable in and of itself. So in a hundred years, it'd be great if our systems of self-government deeply acknowledged that and because, you know.
we are what we measure in some ways that we start measuring better things. I would super love a future where in some way like advertising is like a capital crime. And we're just like, yeah, you've demonstrated a lack of faith in your product or service such that you must employ psychological trickery and advanced mathematics to manipulate people into choosing your product or service.
Baratunde (41:54.027)
demerits, right? And I don't know what the punishment is. I said capital, that implies like a death penalty. We would be so far beyond that in hundred years that even the thought is barbaric, much less the action. But it would be so cool if you just like trusted in your work and it did so much of the speaking for you and the customers and users of that service. And I think in a hundred years, a democracy would come back to so much of what it was.
before first contact, but fit for a future. That's to say, we would govern with the natural world in a way, and not just see it as a resource to be extracted, but as a fellow form of life to participate in the caretaking of all life. It would be really beautiful. Another hundred years, we should have recognized the equality of the genders. I think it's taken a while.
in some ways thousands, but in some ways just a few hundred years. Certainly on this land, just been a few hundred years of corruption of that idea. And we will have dealt with that malware and purged it from our system in terms of a value of genders being unequal. And yeah, I think we will have had that long-term thinking, that sustainable thinking. So many of the things that have been indigenous ideas, many of the contributions of the people most excluded from this land.
will be so like obviously eagerly welcomed. And for the people who have felt historically threatened by that, biggest upgrade will be the dissipation of that feeling of threat. Like there will be a recognition, not once and for all, because nothing's ever forever, but we'll have like a step function increase in what Heather McGee calls that solidarity dividend, right? The idea that
my winning means you're losing, that zero sum dynamic, that'll be passe. And we'll just be like DJ Khaled constantly, like all we do is win. Win, win, no matter what. And yeah, that will, we'll have problems because we're people, but the way we face them together will be much better.
Baratunde (44:13.02)
much more humane, much more compassionate, much more effective. Most importantly, I'm not going for fuzzy points here. I'm going for effectiveness. And I think our ability to self-govern in that next century will be so much more effective with a return to some of those principles, massages for all black people and then all other people just right after. Not even.
Not a significant delay. Like it'd be so fast that you wouldn't be able to claim discrimination. You'd just be like, it just seems like every black person I know is like relaxed. Huh. Now I'm relaxed. I barely had the thought. It's a great future.
AI For All Tomorrows (44:45.563)
You
AI For All Tomorrows (44:50.05)
Yeah, I had to stay muted during this portion just because I was just saying, hell yeah, hell yeah, and all the different points throughout here you were saying. I love how you reframe, not just reframe the problem, but also the question, and then you reframe the reframe of the question. I just think there's a lot of wisdom in how you're thinking about this stuff. So thank you so much for sharing your wisdom.
Baratunde (44:54.448)
hahahaha
Baratunde (45:09.182)
Well, thank you for having such a thoughtful inquiry forum. This is not typical. This was fun. I think I need a... Yeah, no, I get that. And I wish you healing in your relationship with academia. I sense some tension there. You some processing. Maybe some sound baths, some reiki. also we will fund science.
AI For All Tomorrows (45:17.446)
I try not to be super academic. I got enough of that in my life.
AI For All Tomorrows (45:25.425)
Thank you, I did it No, no, no bitterness. No bitterness. Just some just some funding cuts We do have one one last question that we ask
AI For All Tomorrows (45:39.74)
Yes. Fun.
Baratunde (45:40.33)
Yeah, we'll just do that. We will deconcentrate. And I don't mean we'll nationalize, because I really do like, in the US, democracy means capitalism, and capitalism means democracy. And hopefully we'll untangle that in the next century. But to the extent that there's still a relationship between market and true self-governance, I think we'll become less confused. My vision and my hope is that we become less confused that the one
dictates the other, that the market dictates how we meet collective needs. And we'll have more appropriate spaces to celebrate what markets can do, but we'll also recognize their deep flaws, their great limitations, and have faith in ourselves again. Not some vague invisible hand, but like actual hands.
AI For All Tomorrows (46:33.352)
Yeah, the embodied. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Baratunde (46:33.403)
of actual human beings. Yeah, and all life. And we'll just be like, yeah, this is great. And same on the government side of things. Like, I don't want a national, I don't want like government provided flatware, right? That's just like a bit extreme. I take my dishes quite seriously, and especially the forks and knives. I just, I want a thousand flowers to bloom and like, let's let the market decide how I'm gonna cut this manufactured steak in the future.
AI For All Tomorrows (46:47.057)
You
AI For All Tomorrows (46:51.984)
As you should, cutlery's important.
AI For All Tomorrows (47:01.48)
So our
Baratunde (47:02.028)
we'll, climate change, we'll be on, that'll be done. I forgot to mention that, but yeah.
AI For All Tomorrows (47:04.86)
Yeah, that'll be good, that'll be over. That's the next iteration of this podcast and in 100 years we'll come back. The last question.
Baratunde (47:09.553)
Yeah, also as a part of my big vision for democracy, climate change, we're Not like we're dead, Nadan, but like we fixed it, we solved it.
AI For All Tomorrows (47:17.736)
Well, in a hundred years, many of us might, but we don't have to go into that. Maybe not, maybe AI will fix that too, although that's the ethical. Again, that's the hundred year in the future episode between us two. The last question that we ask everyone, which I say always that I steal shamelessly from Ezra Klein, is there a piece of media, whether a book, TV show, or movie that you would recommend to listeners?
Baratunde (47:21.319)
No.
You
Baratunde (47:40.623)
you'll have a hard time finding it, but it makes for a great scavenger hunt to attempt to do so. Indian Roots of American Democracy, edited by Jose Barrero, published in 1988 or 1989, currently out of print. You could siphon funds from your nearest oligarch.
to pay a few hundred dollars for it, they wouldn't notice the difference and society would be better for it. Or you can find like a digital version online. It's pretty discoverable. It's in a lot of academic databases actually. So for the students with .edu, you probably have an even easier time. And yeah, just know that we are inheritors of an even more beautiful, beautiful legacy than most of us know. And be heartened by that. It's some dark times.
A of things are falling apart. A of people getting hurt unnecessarily. That will not end instantly, but it will end. And it's up to us to bring something more beautiful into being. And some of that was always here. So find that inspiration for yourself. Don't feel ashamed about all the terrible things that have happened in your names, in our names. And if we're so lucky to wake up tomorrow with the sun, smile.
AI For All Tomorrows (49:02.012)
Well, and thank you so much, Baratunde, for shining your own light and your own witness in the difficult, difficult world that we live in. Some more hope is always needed, and I think you provide that. So thanks so much for joining us today.
Baratunde (49:13.063)
Thank you. You know, I do this for all tomorrows. I I've always said that.
AI For All Tomorrows (49:15.049)
That's right, you're just stealing our branding at this point. Now it's gonna be life with machines for all tomorrows. Yeah, I'm gonna wrap up the...
Baratunde (49:23.227)
Life with Altom, yes. man, thank you for having me. This is great.