Human Intelligence® Podcast

Ghost in the Machine: Director Valerie Veatch

Valerie Veatch: Director, Writer, Editor, Producer Valerie Veatch is a director, writer, editor, and producer who made her feature debut at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival with Me @ The Zoo for HBO. Her follow-up, Love Child also premiered at Sundance, making Valerie the youngest director ever to debut two feature films at that festival. And now she’s back at Sundance with Ghost in the Machine. It’s a self-funded investigative essay documentary that excavates the philosophical, cultural, and political forces driving the global AI boom, and traces the links between artificial intelligence and eugenics. It asks who is really building AI, who is being exploited to make it function, and what humans might become on the other side of it. Overview Veatch states that the AI hype is a fever that will pass - and that anthropomorphizing these systems feeds the egos and ideas of the the hands of people consolidating power and controlling the future. Ghost in the Machine tells the story of AI - Veatch goes all the way back to the origins of this story in Victorian-era eugenics, statistics, and IQ measurement, and frames “machines that think” as a centuries-old project that rests on an illegitimate and unethical intellectual foundation. Interview High Points * Late Victorian era: Francis Galton, Karl Pearson, Charles Spearman invent modern statistics specifically to serve eugenics. * Post-WWII: Gilbert Ryle (whose godfather was Karl Pearson, brother ran the Eugenics Society) writes The Concept of Mind — coining the phrase “ghost in the machine.” Ryle also had the interesting idea that women, animals, and babies should be rated lower on his own cognitive scale. * Alan Turing: Veatch discusses where Turing published his “thinking machine” paper, the year after Ryle’s book. The work that she does here demonstrates that much of the underpinning ideas are steeped in rankable-intelligence thinking. * Bottom-Line: The same intellectually fraught framework derived from Galton, Pearson, Ryle and Turing drives today’s AI overblown hype. * Platforming Storytellers: Women rarely get asked to predict the future of tech. Veatch’s work has not gotten the exposure of other mainstream AI-documentaries that foreground and platform AI “doomers” and AI “visionaries.” * Veatch’s prediction: In 10 years, Valerie Veatch believes that AI hype will look like the metaverse or the Tamagotchi - embarrassing and overblown in retrospect. Distribution of Documentary * Visit the website Notai.com [http://notai.com] for all the screenings and documentary events This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe [https://www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

A Town Crier against Gen AI: Provocative Thinker Takes on the Tech Bros

Johan Cedmar-Brandstedt is the “ethical town crier” about generative AI. His voice is well known online — especially on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/johan-cedmar-brandstedt-a77b311/] — where he speaks as an articulate and persistent critic of generative artificial intelligence. He seems to comment on nearly every AI post, and he clearly relishes debate on the future of AI and human creativity. Johan’s voice is necessary and insightful as he continuously counters and critiques the various narratives about our “AI futures.” Johan also has a background in cartooning and comic books, working with internationally licensed properties. For him, Gen AI holds technical and creative promise, but as he says “it doesn't math.” In fact, in this episode, Johan explains how he believes that we need complete model disgorgement and a clean data restart from informed opt-in licensing, and how he sees AI companies today engaging in predatory and explotative business practices. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe [https://www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Journalism, AI and the Future of Humanity

Emily Harris is an award-winning journalist with local, national and international experience. She is currently working to reinvent local journalism — and wrestling with tangible and theoretical questions that AI presents — as a co-founder and the community journalism director of Uplift Local. Emily previously served as a correspondent for NPR in Berlin, Baghdad and Jerusalem, an investigative reporter for CIR/Reveal, a co-writer of Portland Axios, and the host of the daily news talk show “Think Out Loud” on Oregon Public Broadcasting. Emily taught journalism at the University of Oregon and served on Oregon’s Public Records Advisory Council. Learn More about Uplift Local » [https://upliftlocal.news/] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe [https://www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Games that Breathe: Human Qualities in Good Gaming

Kenny Katayama is a verified Human Creator and co-host of the Shelf Stable board game podcast [https://linktr.ee/shelfstablecast], which focuses on games that are at least five years old. He and Tom Bowers like to examine the quality of a game "...where the hype has worn off. We feel that 5 years is a good window for games to breathe, where we can focus on the experiences they create, abstracted from the initial excitement they generated in the community."On their approach and AI: "Everything we do is human made. No AI here. We do not cover games that use AI art. We are opposed to the plagiarization of people's hard work, environmental impact, and the cocktail that is unregulated bias + misinformation + lack of accountability in current LLMs. We foresee a potential future where the above concerns are addressed by carbon negative models that credit and pay sources, but we can't endorse the use of gen AI until said concerns are addressed."Follow and listen to Shelf Stable » [https://linktr.ee/shelfstablecast] This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe [https://www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]

Finding a Balance Between Human and AI - with Publishing Expert Jane Friedman

Jane Friedman shares her perspective on AI and the future of freelance writing in a conversation with Human Intelligence® co-founder Ned Hayes. Jane Friedman’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Today Show, Wired, Fox News, and BBC, and we’re happy to host her on our podcast this week. Jane’s long-running newsletters exemplify her commitment to helping writers navigate the publishing landscape: Electric Speed [https://jane-friedman.kit.com/05a460478f], published since 2009, reaches more than 30,000 subscribers, while The Bottom Line serves as an industry beacon for more than 6,000 publishing professionals. Jane’s newsletter, The Bottom Line [https://janefriedman.com/the-bottom-line-janes-publishing-industry-newsletter/] is a trusted resource in the publishing and freelance writing industries, providing nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, Jane was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World. Thanks for reading! This post is public so feel free to share it. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe [https://www.humanintelligence.news/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_2]