Hey, everyone. This is Derek Bros with the
Independent Media Alliance, and welcome to another panel.
We got a full house tonight. We're gonna
be diving deep into AI,
and we wanna get to it as quick
as possible. But before we do that, just
a couple of, quick announcements. Ryan, I know
you got something big to share with everybody.
Yes. We wanna start off with this pretty
pretty great announcement,
shared
Oh, nope. Media lines and Rookie mistake. We're
gonna we're we're gonna get started with this
opening from Odysee, which I think is,
it's pretty cool. It's pretty pretty nice, you
know, kind of overlay of not just the
portal that they're starting, the decentralized Internet aspect,
but really kind of shouting out the independent
media alliance. I'll just give you a couple
of the parts that I think were important.
As they just said, decentralization
in action, Odysee welcomes the independent media alliance
to portal. At Odysee, we've always believed in
giving creators the tools to control their own
destinies. That's why we're thrilled to announce that
the Independent Media Alliance, a coalition led by
Whitney Webb, Derrick Rose, and Ryan Christian, will
soon be launching its own portal within what
they're calling their emerging decentralized media ecosystem or
DME.
This is more than just a new partnership,
they wrote. It's a powerful demonstration of what's
possible when independent voices are equipped with the
right tools to protect their editorial integrity and
speak directly to their communities without relying on
the whims of centralized platforms or algorithmic gatekeepers,
which I think, you know, in the AI
conversation, that's definitely relevant today. It says the
portal is the product of years of work
toward a single goal, building a publishing infrastructure
that puts creators in full control with portal.
We're moving beyond video offering a complete decentralized
publishing platform platform that functions more like an
independent website builder, but with freedom, resilience, and
sovereignty baked into the core. Every portal, including
the IMAs, operates independently.
Creators and collectives manage their own,
commenting systems, messaging, monetization, everything about it. No
centralized authority deciding what's acceptable, just creators and
their audiences building relationships on their own terms.
The Independent Media Alliance, they wrote, is exactly
the kind of project we had in mind
when they built this portal. And, basically, they
say everybody involved with the Independent Media Alliance
represents a bold principled tradition of investigative reporting
that refuses to be silenced by centralized interests.
Lastly, their portal
with their portal, the IMA they wrote won't
be published just published content. They'll set their
own terms for distribution, engagement, monetization. They'll lead
a living example of what decentralized journalism looks
like in practice, and we're proud they wrote
to support that every step of the way.
Says we believe the IMEI's move to portal
signals something larger. It's a turning point, not
just for Odysee, but for the media landscape
as a whole. And I really agree with
this in in a sense that this is
a new step with the decentralized Internet direction
and really just what we're doing. And I'll
I'll also point out to that we're there's
no
financial mechanism in all of this. Odysee's supporting
this because they believe in what we're doing,
And I just think that's important that, you
know, we're trying to strike this out in
a new direction. So anyone wants to comment
on that, I think it's a pretty amazing
step. And then we'll go give it back
to Derek and get going.
Alright. Well, no thoughts on it in general.
I'm just excited to announce it. But, oh,
did Derek drop off?
I think he'll be back in a second,
but I just wanted to say Yeah. Go
ahead, Gabe. I'll throw it to you. Go
ahead. Yep. So this is, my first panel.
Super excited to be here with the rest
of you greats. And, yeah, we've been watching
the development of portal, and it is really,
really exciting
to have that contained. And, you know, I
know how hard building software is. So I
think when the,
this platform launches portal, it'll be the perfect
way to combine forces together. And I know
we all have audiences, and that's kind of
the problem right now with decentralization. We're all
fractured. So here, there's gonna be some sort
of unification, and I think it'll make a
big splash. So I'm really, really excited.
And I'm glad you're here as well. I'm
glad Whitney's joining us today. And I think
this is gonna be a really great panel.
And so the main focus of today is
focused on artificial intelligence. And really, just as
a broad sense, its its influence,
how it's changed
everything, but specifically research, investigation, media,
and anywhere else we think that relates. And
I'll just kick it off with kind of
the overarching
you know, what the the the really the
main things that I thought, and then we'll
kinda go around and we guys everyone can
give their kinda thoughts on where this should
go. I I see this as four main
focal points for me that I think stand
out. And that is just individual researchers using
AI and being manipulated by it, trust more
blindly. Brian,
Derek is back. Can you add him on?
Yeah. Yeah. Give me one second. Let me.
All right. Let me let me keep doing
that real quick, and then we'll go back
to Derek.
So my point was
individual researchers
is a is an obvious important point to
people being manipulated by AI online. Then there's
journalists that use this and potentially lean into
it too much, as well as also maybe
blindly trust it. And medical aspect of AI
manipulating, we talk about vaccines, medical research, and
then just government in general in the 50,000
ways that could apply. But we'll also talk
about the obvious benefits
of how this can be used. So go
ahead, Derek. You wanna kick us off?
Yeah. So, thanks for that, Ryan. And I
wanna just go right into it. Again, we've
talked about everybody here being crunched on time.
I wanna start by playing these two videos.
I hope Patrick Wood will join us. He
is, you know, part of the Independent Media
Alliance. He was on a past panel. So
I don't really wanna speak about Patrick without
him being here, but I do believe he'll
show up. And so this kinda came out
of a conversation I saw happening online where
different people,
some who are more well known than others,
or just, you know, people following who were
like, I'm so disappointed in Patrick Wood. In
his latest show, he said he's gonna use
AI, and he made some comments about AI.
This is the guy that's been warning everybody
about technocracy
for decades. How dare he?
And, I know that we have, you know,
a wide range of opinions in here. So
my the main focus of original idea was
like, just to let everybody here share, have
you used AI? You know, where, how is
it valuable? Are you super like, you know,
no AI in any way at all? And
just kind of see where that conversation goes.
So if we could just start Ryan by
playing just those two short clips, this is
actually from Patrick show where he speaks for
himself and then says some things about AI
that triggered some folks.
Use AI
for our own purposes. What as long as
we can,
it'll be it'll be censored. It'll be destroyed
probably at some point. But for now, it's
a useful tool to uncover things that you
would not other otherwise,
see on the Internet. And
there's
research. If
you don't use it,
you're gonna be left in the dark, I'm
afraid.
Because if you do use it, well, you're
gonna see you have more useful information coming
into your brain.
So I think that was the main thing
that triggered some people out there. His saying,
you're if you don't use it, you're gonna
get left behind. I think that fruit was,
you know, a bridge too far for some
people. But, yeah. So I just wanna use
that to open the door. And, of course,
if Patrick shows up, give him a chance
to elaborate on that. Of course, as we
usually do, when you go around, guys, please
just introduce who you are, where you're, you
know, working from or, you know, what outlet
you have. And maybe we could also start
with, do you use AI?
And I'll just start that and then pass
it out to whoever wants to jump in
there. First of all, I I went and
actually defended Patrick in in the Twitter,
arguments there and basically said that I didn't
think it was that big of a deal,
that, AI is is a tool. Obviously, we
all have concerns here and about the direction
and the way it's gonna be used, AI
governance, etcetera. But I didn't I I guess
I wasn't that offended by what he said.
I mean, for some people, again, who maybe
expect those of us who speak against technocracy,
they might also think that that means we're
anti technology,
which I think is a big confusion. Some
people have equating
technocracy with technology.
So, yeah, I I didn't really get that
triggered by it. My personal use of AI
has been extremely, extremely limited. I, for example,
use it to transcribe videos sometimes, so I
can get quotes for articles instead of having
to sit there and listen and write them
as I have done for years and years.
So that is just a time saver. I've
used it recently to transcribe,
and I'm talking about two specific programs, not
ChatGBT or Grok or these others. I've used
it to transcribe, like, 250 year old handwritten
documents about the Jesuits that would have taken
me a long time to try to look
at and decipher myself. The AI does it,
and then I go in, of course, with
my human eye and check it and see
what's wrong. But I've only used it in
limited ways like that.
I've played around with asking Grok some questions
to show that it can be wrong. I've
had it fabricate quotes out of books that
I have on my shelf, and it's telling
me, no, it's on page 29, paragraph two,
sentence three, and we'll just keep going and
going until I'm like, look, There's nothing there.
And then it's like, whoops. Sorry. I wasted
all your time.
I just must have taken some information from
other places. And so, yeah, I'm not an
expert on on the actual use of it,
but overall, my general view is that it
can be very useful for time saving and
things like that. Of course, the bigger concern
is just like with
Google Maps and GPS in general, people give
up their own navigation skills or other skills.
And and we've already seen this. Like, you
see this all over Twitter where people just
say
at at grok, is this true? Like, instead
of doing any researches like, grok, is this
thing true? And then, you know, they go
with whatever that answer is, and that's kind
of where their research ends. So, yeah, those
are my initial thoughts on this whole thing.
Well, I had limited time. So if it's
okay, I'd like to
at least get some of the points that
I'd like to,
present today across since I have to leave
at the top of the hour.
I think right now, we're at the building
trust phase of AI,
the carrot opposed to the stick.
And I think that the more that people
rely on it, the more that they're going
to eventually hemorrhage,
their ability to investigate without it,
their ability to think creatively
without it or critically without it. And I
think, ultimately,
it it's meant to be a gradual process,
but it's a process that's intended to happen
as people become more dependent on it over
time. You have
extremely bad people like Henry Kissinger and Eric
Schmidt openly saying this is the intent of
it. Years ago in a book they wrote
together,
that this was basically the intended plan of
it. So now, you know, it's all
fine to use for this and that. We
can all find,
you know, reasons,
you know, why it might be convenient and
all of that. But, ultimately,
I've been talking for a few years,
and, sorry for being extra congested today.
But,
basically, convenience is the way to get us
to go into
this future technocratic
system.
A lot of people that have been warning
about this for a long time have been,
like,
waiting for the stick, waiting for the violence.
But it's really meant to be, in my
opinion, a way to sort of engineer,
voluntary acquiescence
to these systems that are being built.
And I think AI is is the ultimate
way,
to do that,
and that eventually people,
you know you know, if you don't use
it, you lose it, kind of like Derek
mentioned with Google Maps and navigation skills
or mental,
math and relying on calculators.
This is the same type of function, but
now it's being used by people, you know,
like the is this real
example to AI? AI hallucinates,
and presents wrong output all of the time.
So how are you going to ask it
if it's real or not? And our controllers,
people like Schmidt and Kissinger,
want us to do that,
because they wanna they want us to use
AI as the arbiter
of what is real and what is not
by cons and and using AI at the
same time to basically spam the digital realm,
with things that are not true, what we
think are true so that we fail to
really have confidence in being able to distinguish,
between what's real and what's not.
And so, you know, personally, I think,
you know, a lot of people are going
to rationalize and do rationalize,
their use of AI.
And that's fine. I'm not gonna I don't
I'm not really interested
in telling people what to do, but I
think a lot of people engage with it
without being aware of the risks
or the ultimate designs of what it is
and how, you know,
we as content creators
can be very manipulated by it and by
algorithms
and by commenters that may not be real
people or bots of them. I mean, keep
in mind that the biggest bot farms are
run by states,
militaries,
generally. And you have, you know,
one of the main social media sites now
also being owned by an AI company, but
it's run by a major military contractor.
There was a story a few weeks ago
about,
fake,
AI
people
on Reddit changing people's
actual people's opinions,
just by spamming their
takes, I guess.
And and humans have, you know, always been
swayed by the opinions of the herd and
all of that. And now they have microdata
on all of us by having, you know,
decades on most people of data of their
decisions from the minute to the big
and are able to, you know,
pinpoint specific demographics and herd them to specific
conclusions.
And I think really there's not a not
not not enough discussion about how,
that impacts our discourse even as independent media.
We I've obviously, all of us like to
think of ourselves
as independent free thinkers, but if you post
a video or post a thing and it's
spammed by some,
comment,
you know, bot army that's super negative about
it, maybe you won't talk about that stuff
again, and you'll think they're real people. I
mean, a lot of us don't necessarily,
think about that because, you know, the Internet,
even five years ago,
was really different than it is today.
And, well, I have more I could say,
I guess, but,
you know, I think the risk benefit of
a lot of this isn't,
necessarily talked about because people are just kind
of reaping
the small convenient
benefits of it,
which is fine.
Understand people are busy,
and and all of that. But, you know,
I personally ideologically
view a lot of what's going on. Like,
as, you know, we're in a war, it's
not really just an info war. It's a
war for,
you know, humanity
and, like, the human soul and our ability
to create.
And if we stop,
creating and start outsourcing that to AI, you
know,
we're screwed,
basically. Have you used it at all for
your research, Whitney? No. In any way? No?
No.
Well, let me go and piggyback on that
since this is a perfect, you know, opening.
And just for those listening, I I believe
there's a lot of different opinions in in
the in the panel today. So I'm sure
there are. Yeah. No. No. I mean, in
a positive way. Like, we all that's why
we put this together because all of us
are coming at this from the very skeptical
perspective. But so I'll I'll make the first
step in that direction where what's funny is
I'm right there with Whitney in in in
my skepticism, my concern. I % agree with
everything she just said about how it's being
used, and there's no real but coming in
here. My point is that I have been
very ad adverse to it, to the point
to where I absolutely wouldn't even look at
it, wouldn't touch it. Until the first time
I decided to, I said, okay. I was
noticing two things was I think the first
example, what some of the other people will
mention today is sort of like trying to
find a date that I couldn't find. For
example, in Brave, somehow convincing myself that Brave
was lesser evil kind of a dynamic. And
so that started to open the door for
me, which I I talk on my show
about how I got frustrated about that, but
it's, you know, trying to resist that. But
then at the same time, what I the
the real part that I started to use
it at now I I mean, I'm gonna
keep doing this at least for now because
I think there's an irrelevant point in here
even though I agree with Whitney's point, and
she's probably right that maybe it's a a
overall negative. But the whole Brock thing, what
I find so interesting or whatever platform is
that there are people that do blindly trust
that, especially from the partisan angle that it's
somehow our conservative thing or it's Elon's thing,
and so they do use it as sort
of like, see, you're wrong because Brock said.
But then this interesting dynamic starts happening where
they're almost now attacking it because you have
lefties, I guess, going, does Rock, is that
true? And it's showing that they're wrong. And
so it's like this interesting back and forth
where I've started to point at it and
say, but look, your thing is saying that
you're wrong, not to say that I blindly
trust it. And but I agree. I feel
like that is I I you know, just
I shouldn't be doing that, quite frankly. But
I do find that there's a benefit in
that moment. And so it's kind of that
give and take about whether it's worth it,
whether it's a long run negative, which I
do flatly think. And so, but, my overall
point is that I do think that it's
dangerous. I think we're training these models for
them. I think we're building the, you know,
our control structure. Right? At the same time,
though, I do know that there are beneficial
aspects like like, Patrick's talking about. I'm sure
others, I think, are gonna mention the use
of this and research how it's it is
very powerful. But I think I I'm right
now at the point where I'm I don't
think I'm gonna allow myself, even if I
think it's a possibility that will help me,
to go any further than I already am,
maybe even stop doing that. But I do
see the benefit. And so it's like I
just I'm always trying to be careful, like,
the Internet point that we don't miss the
forest for the trees, don't lose a tool
that may be used to fight back against
the system. But, again, wanna reiterate, I pretty
much agree with exactly what he said. And
I think we are hurting ourselves by using
it, but it's a different different time.
I'd I'd I'd like to add on to
that. And first of all, thanks.
It's
it's really good to be here with y'all
and on such a spicy panel, might I
add. For those of you who don't know
me, my name's Hakeem. And I just want
to add on and say that I agree
with everything that's been said so far. And
there's we can all agree, even the people
who use AI can agree, that they're getting
dumber
by using it if they're depending on it
too much. But I want to push back
a little bit on the, this this was
designed as a weapon to control people's minds
because you could make the same point with
the Internet
that DARPA created it to actually be a
surveillance,
a system for surveillance that could capture data
all over the world.
And then it ended up being the reason
why we have, we can have so many,
so much knowledge from different time periods
and do this research. And just as kind
of like a, it's interesting as like a
Neo Luddite to oppose it, but you're having
to use
the internet at the same time to get
your point across.
And I consider myself a techno optimist, but
I was super resistant to AI for a
very long time. And I still am very
cautious and aware about how I use it.
But I I do think, like, everything that's
been said so far, like, the feebleness aspect,
people don't know how to tell directions.
But is there a conscious way that people
could be using their maps so they're actually
increasing their rate of learning?
And the same way with AI, is there
a conscious way that you can use it
that actually
helps you to get more knowledge and to
improve your reasoning skills? Right now, it doesn't
really look like it because eighty six percent
of college students, according to a survey,
use AI. About a quarter of them use
it daily, and professors are freaking out because
of this. But for for myself personally, as
a software engineer,
I was super resistant to it, like I
said. And then I started to use it
for small things like debugging.
And one thing I became to understand is
that the, you know, the corpus of knowledge
that's out there in the world is so
huge that you couldn't possibly accept expect yourself
to have an understanding of everything. But this
AI, because it's been trained on everything,
has at least a little bit of knowledge
of everything. So even if it points you
in the wrong direction,
it's a starting point. And and like Derek
is saying, you have to double check every
aspect of its use, but it can be
used to improve your skills. And and I
do believe that. So I I what I've
been thinking about is the bright side of
AI. Is there any,
that there are
things that we can do to,
stop it from hurting us or being, being
negative as a whole. And one of that
is to not support large AI companies. So
as quickly as I could, I saw what
chat g p t was doing, which I
didn't think it was that good in the
first place. But I started running a AI
at home on an air gapped system that's
not connected to the Internet, running your own
local models, which is a tiny step in
the right direction because at least you're not
feeding back to the surveillance infrastructure.
And then also to check-in with your own
knowledge and intuition and reasoning at every point,
not just accept any answer it gives you,
copy and paste it, and present it as
your own ideas, but to really be critical
of what it's saying and to go back
and and research it and to use it
as a as a tool and use it
to improve your skills. I think there are
some things that have been good about its
use. But, generally
generally, it's it's like one of these technologies
where as a as a Luddite or a
Neo Luddite, you wanna fight it, but also
the genie is out of the bottle, and
how do you put it back in? Honestly,
how do you put it back in? And
so that's another question I think would be
really useful to talk about. Are the people
using AI specifically in my mind? I'm thinking
the tech companies. Are they just gonna surpass
everyone else? But, I know that's a lot.
Please.
I wanna jump in here because, first of
all, I don't think you can put anything
in the back in the bottle. I don't
think that if it's in the public arena,
it's in the public arena right now, and
you're gonna get derivatives of it no matter
what. Now
I wanna start this by saying, I actually
use AI on a daily basis, but not
for research purposes ever.
And I'll I'll get to where I've used
Grok,
in the past, and it's usually
I find Grok to almost be a a
mirror image of the narrative that you're willing
to accept
because it is very deceptive.
Where I end up using AI is Photoshop
for my for my thumbnails. And and, again,
you you kinda see a mirror image of
what you feed into
the AI. So if I want a thumbnail
to look a certain way, like an artist
or some kind of a wallpaper, I grab
it, and then I prompt it, and it'll
give me a dozen things
in a couple of minutes.
Now,
as a graphic designer,
you know, my first desk job creating these
type of things, obviously, I see the moral
conundrum.
But at the same time, it is the
next tool.
When we talk about and, really, the AI
conversation, I think, is gonna end up going
further than this. But we've really
talked about language models and our interactions with
them. Right?
I think we're in the beta phase of
narrative management. This idea of hallucination
is ridiculous.
It's programming. We have to acknowledge that.
So for instance,
when I first asked Grok
to just assess
my Twitter feed, in the first two sentences,
it lied about me and said that I
I was basically this person that said people
didn't even exist. Like, I made people up.
It's in the I have I have the
four
prompts. So I challenged Croc on it. I
said, well, who is Jason Bermas ever said
didn't exist? And then it brought up flight
93 that I had questioned what happened there.
And I said, well,
I never questioned who was on that plane,
and it apologized to me. And now and
now it starts placating to you. Isn't it
nice that it apologizes?
Oh, it apo oh, it'll apologize to me.
Now the really interesting thing is, you know,
you brought up DARPA and the ARPANET.
So one of the tools that I did
use it for
was online showing
what the AI will show you about the
creation of Google. And at the very beginning,
you know how sometimes you'll get a Google
AI representation?
So, again, it's all what you feed into
it. And I had discussed how Google really
got its launch point
from the National Library Initiative, which was DARPA
and NASA run.
Alright?
So when I talked to Grok about it,
Grok Grok obfuscates it, and then you bring
it up. And then, like, oh, well, you're
right. And then you bring up it's got
contracts with In Q Tel and the military
industrial complex in artificial intelligence and quantum computing,
NASA in particular. And then he tells you,
well, that's the conundrum, isn't it? How can
we trust the AI when it's programmed by
these entities? So, again, it makes you feel
smart, but it's testing the waters all the
time
on what kind of narrative it can push.
And that is the real danger because, like
you guys have all said, people are gonna
start trusting this stuff for their medicine, their
everyday life. They're about to give up, a
lot of people already have,
their,
you know, to autonomous cars.
Like, in Phoenix right now, it's every it'll
be a cold day in hell before I
take an Uber that doesn't have a person
in it.
Alright? I'm just saying. I'm gonna I'm gonna
leave it there because we have such a
vast panel, and I want people to get
into it. But when we are talking
large language models, we're in the beta right
now. We're in the narrative management phase, and
and, like she said, the trust building phase.
How many people are gonna buy into this
and a new telemedicine
person? Because we do
have AGIs
that are getting better and better. Hell, they
just let that dead guy
have his sister
make a,
AI generated
impact statement
against the guy that killed him, and they
admitted that in court. I'm just I saw
that.
James, you wanna jump in here? It's your
first time being on the panel. We haven't
heard from you in a while. Do you
use AI at all?
Before I answer that, let me just say
I wish Patrick Wood was here because, man,
I don't know if I'm, like,
Kanye level offended, but I am offended by
those statements that he made made there.
There.
Yeah. I have things to say, and I'd
like to have him here to hash it
out. But anyway,
do I use AI is a great question
because as you were talking, Derek, I was
thinking to myself,
well, no. Of course not. But then you
you talk about, oh, machine transcription of, you
know, reading the Jesuit text or whatever. And
then I realized, oh, you know, I use
the machine transcription
all the time. Like, when I do a
transcript of one of my podcasts, of course,
I'm not sitting there typing out every word.
No. I get the machine generated transcript. I
send that over to my human editor, Susan,
in The US. And she goes through it
and make sure it's all right and, you
know, puts the words in the right order
and corrects the grammar and spelling and all
of that. And then I publish that. So
if you call that AI, then, yep, you
better believe that I use that. And in
fact,
that was one of the things that really
first clued me into where this exponential curve
that we're on was starting. Because I I
always tell the story back in 2013,
'20 '14, whenever it was that YouTube added
the automatic
captions to their videos. And I remember turning
them on at the beginning just because it
was such a laugh. You would turn them
on, and they would just be gobbledygook,
total nonsense.
And I would just laugh, You know? Oh,
these stupid machines can't tell anything.
Great. And then I tried it again, like,
a year later, and it's like, oh, it
gets
it every single word exactly correct. And now
it's at the point where there are times
when I'm watching a video and I can't
hear what the person said. I turn on
the auto transcript and it hears it. It
oh, yeah. That that was the word. Oh,
right. So, yeah, that got really spooky really
quickly. And that's the kind of exponential curve
we're on generally with this type of technology
because Ray Kurzweil is a stark raving lunatic
on a number of things. But I think
he's right about exponential technological
trends and what that means and how quickly
this entire conversation in 2025
will seem like something from a
previous century five years from now. Having said
that,
you know, the only other use case that
I have for AI
is,
as as Jason was saying,
I have used Adobe Firefly a couple of
times when Brock was not available to make
a thumbnail for me. I need a thumbnail.
I need this image of this thing.
Okay.
Go for it, Adobe.
Make this image for me. And I have
used that a couple of times.
Having said that,
I wanna put out a couple of requests.
First of all, to independent media producers in
general, please
stop publishing
articles about this incredible conversation I just had
with AI. That is not a news story.
I don't care. That is not interesting. It
is not groundbreaking.
AI is gonna tell you whatever you want
to hear because it is not there to
make some sort of case based on facts,
logic, and evidence. It is there to be
a persuasive
argumenter. And that's exactly
what Whitney was talking about with that, hey.
Did did anyone see that story? The the
researchers went into that red subreddit about, you
know, changed my mind or whatever that subreddit
was
and used AI to to basically hone their
models so it would become more persuasive
at changing people's opinions.
That should tell you a lot about where
this is going.
So independent media producers, please stop telling me
about your conversations with AI. I couldn't care
less.
Secondly,
for people out there in the general audience,
please stop sending me emails about your conversations
with AI. I couldn't care less. Please stop
sending me your AI generated music. I couldn't
care less. That is not music. You are
not writing songs. You are putting your prompts
into a machine, and it is generating stuff
for you. That is not art.
That is the
antithesis
of art. It takes the human creative element
completely out of the equation. Why would I
care about that? I am on team humanity,
not team machine. So please stop sending me
that crap.
James, on on just real quick. On that
that measure that idea of it not being
art, obviously,
there'll be be people who take a different
position. I went to this,
debate years ago between this artist, Android Jones,
who does digital art and, you know, people
who were pure painters before said, oh, digital
art isn't real art. You know, you're using
computers, etcetera. And there was a debate between
him and then other artists, if you will,
who create AI generated images. Like, for example,
I have a friend who's created an entire
tarot deck that is AI generated, and then
he packages it and sells it. You know,
he prompted it until it got the look
he wanted.
Do you think it's it is as simple
as just saying that's not art, or do
you think that really does come down to
just personal opinion, or do you feel strongly
about it? No. I think it is as
simple as that. That's not art. I definitely
feel that way with music.
Aesthetic class at university, so I know a
thing or two.
Well, let me see what I learned in
that class is what the hell is art?
I don't know.
So don't take it from me, I guess,
is what I'm saying. Okay. But just generally
speaking on the AI subject, I do have
my qualms, as you can see, about hate
AI. Of course, it is wrong. It hallucinates.
We know these problems. Right? But you or
you can imagine, oh, that's just some, you
know, bugs. They're gonna wrinkle out of this.
Whatever. They'll they'll iron that out eventually.
More importantly, it is making your brain atrophy.
There there are already signs of the cognitive
decline of the people who rely over rely
on AI for it to do their thinking
for them.
But okay. Yeah. Okay. Some people will take
it too far. But as long as you
know how to use it properly. Okay. So
how about the,
the controlled centralized nature of the AI implementations
that most people use, the Grox, the ChatGPTs,
etcetera.
That obviously is a tool point for potential
censorship and control in the future. I think
exactly as Whitney said, this is the carrot
phase. There will be a stick phase.
And you know it's coming. A few years
from now, suddenly,
oh, wow. This isn't as useful anymore. Now
it's just telling me that all the propaganda
stuff.
But that can be countered like Hakim says,
well, just run your own local implementation and
make sure it's, you know, air gapped and
don't don't connect it to the Internet. So
you've got your own as as Ernest Hancock
often says, I want Jarvis, not Siri, as
in I want my own personal
implementation of this decentralized off the grid.
Okay. Alright.
Also, another problem with this, the only information
that AI ever has is digital information that
has been digitized.
So all it knows is what is on
the Internet or what has been pumped in
through digital channels. It knows nothing about the
actual real world that has not been digitized
yet. So that's kind of a a flaw.
But all of those things are you could
say, well, they'll get better at it. It'll
be they'll refine it. But no. The fundamental
problem is what Whitney points at. This is
an existential
threat
to humanity.
We are going to lose what it means
to be human
the more we attach ourselves to these machine
implementations.
And it is not some easy step that
I'm saying, oh, okay. So just don't use
AI, and we'll all be fine. Because I
will admit, as Hakim was talking about there,
you know, what's the difference between using Internet
for your research and using AI for your
research? Hey. Look at look at it this
way. I use Wikipedia.
I use Wikipedia. Now how do I use
Wikipedia? I go straight down to the references
at the bottom and find the article that
they're linking to and go read that and
see what you know? I don't, obviously,
I don't cite Wikipedia.
Honestly, the people who write those articles, AI
told me this, are like the people who
cite Wikipedia. Right? Like, no. You don't understand
how this works. Maybe you have a conversation,
and it tells you something. And you go
and find it independently, and you cite that.
But now I use Wikipedia. So what's the
difference between that and using chat gbt? Right?
It's just a tool. I get there is
definitely a murky line here, and none of
you would know anything about me if it
wasn't for the Internet and my use of
this digital technology. So I'm not floating on
a cloud here. I'm not saying there's an
easy answer. But I know where this is
heading. I know the path we're on. And
I do not want to end up at
that end path because we are birthing the
Silicon intelligence that will be the new life
form that that, eclipses humanity.
And I don't wanna live that nightmare.
Thank you. One thing The the same way
that,
you know, the Internet itself is an extension
of a pilot program from DARPA, and it
stemmed from that, from ARPANET, and became that
AI is an extension of that,
especially
where, you know, Grok is concerned. XAI, which
started out as a.
Owns Twitter now.
Rex, whatever it is. You know? I mean,
it's so the there's no real pushback, Hakeem.
It's just this is,
you know, an evolution of that. And we're
you know, the the convincing argument for a
lot of people right now is use AI
as your search engine. Well, if you're not
double and triple checking and stuff like that,
then you're doing it wrong.
You know?
And,
I mean, a bad carpenter always blames his
tools. Right?
Like, it's always the tool's fault,
but you are supposed to measure a couple
of times. You're you're supposed to actually do
the physical work yourself to
gain some certainty,
you know, to the best of your ability.
And that implies
you doing extra work if you're going to
use,
you know, AI as a search engine as
a jumping off point. I use it for
background for thumbnails.
And then I do, like, you know, a
handful of other layers of, you know, usually
trippy or silly shit,
but memorable.
And,
you know, it's you know, like, that that's
about the extent of
how much I ever wanna use it.
You know? And I have one one quick
point on that about the picture just because
it's interesting about the copyright overlap that I'm
dealing with. It's an interesting thing to think
about. Right? The creating the images, which I
thought about doing, Jason, because it it's an
easy way to sidestep that argument, but that
also overlaps with the art point. You know?
It's it's an interesting point. Not that I
know which way to go with that, but
it's worth thinking about that you can create
the manufacture images that aren't necessarily art, that
don't nobody owns, that you can use, not
get copyrighted. And I'm sure they'll wind up
getting to some argument that you took Grok's
AI image or something. You know what? It's
interesting to think about. So go ahead, whoever
wants to jump in next. Alright. I'll I'll
go next.
I I have used AI in the same
way Jason and James have said. I I
sometimes
you just need a picture, and
you you you just need it, unfortunately. Even
if you sign up to proxy services and,
stock services like Adobe stock or whatever, half
the images in those stock libraries are AI
generated anyways. You're just using AI by proxy.
I would never it would never even occur
to me to use it for words because,
like, I'm precious about my words, I suppose.
But, like, coming at it from, like, a
writer's point of view, asking someone to write
it for you just makes me feel uncomfortable.
But I think
I think in some way, the more meta
conversation and more interesting conversation is is already
is becoming, as as somebody said earlier, a
a partisan issue. People have their pet AIs,
and they'll say, well, this AI is the
good AI and this is the one that
works. I ask Grok, and Grok tells me
this. And Grok tells me what I wanna
hear, all the will be chatty b t
or will be the the Chinese one that
was in the news a little while ago,
deep something.
Everybody remember? It doesn't matter. Deep sea. Deep
sea. But there will be a whole bunch
of people in the West who, like, celebrate
China. We'll say, well, the Chinese AI is
different. The Chinese AI will work differently. It
will be open. It will be
and
the already, that is forming the question of
which AI we use rather than should we
use it at all, which is already a
very dangerous they they always do it that
way. Which vaccine is the best? Which AI
is the best?
The the assumption is we're all going to
have to at some point.
But then, also, there is a question of
what qualifies as AI. Like, we're talking about
the steep curve here, but, like,
my my computer's been automatically spell checking everything
I've written since I was a teenager.
I mean, that is technically
an AI there. And
but that has actually people's ability to spell.
And if you were if you were an
incredibly cruel person Then Grok, I would say.
I'm not vetting it or, you know, vouching
for it or anything. But there are people
who are trying to do things like that.
I've also seen friends. One of my friends
developed
an empathy bot as as he calls it.
It's an AI model that he fed nonviolent
communication
and all kinds of other, you know, communication
tools and use it for, like, a therapy
bot for people, which, again, I know some
people just feel like any use of it.
Anything that replaces a human is scary or
is weird.
I'm not necessarily taking a position, but I'm
curious. Does anybody feel like there is a
positive use case besides the sort of functional
methods we talked about here, translating things, transcribing,
creating images,
or is it that we or you individually
feel like
stay away from it as much as possible?
I think what Patrick was saying in the
beginning, which again, I hope he does show
up was, like, I think his exact words
were you're gonna get left behind if you're
not using AI. Right? And so it's the
kind of argument which Elon Musk and others
use as well about certain things and say
we need to embrace it. Being left behind
is actually
beating the system that they're trying to trap
us in. That could be true too. Why
what if we don't wanna be a part
of whatever they're building? I mean, which I
don't think most of us here want. Right?
Yeah. So just thoughts on How are you
doing for the brain shit? I don't know.
I don't know. I wanna hear I wanna
hear her voice because you haven't been in
yet. But before sorry. I just wanna make
a stupid point related to what Kit just
said about the spell check thing. Because, actually,
I think it's a deep point. This the
red squiggly line tells you you've spelt it
wrong. But for some reason, that's always default
set to American spelling.
So it's always trying to tell me that
there is no u in the word color.
I know there is a u in the
word color, unlike you uncreate It's biased. You
don't know how to spell.
And so I,
eventually, over decades of this, I start to
forget.
Wait. Canceled
has two l's. Right? Right? It's not one
l like those silly American
or or wait. No. Maybe it doesn't. And
I start questioning myself. It's a stupid example,
but it is an example of how this
can subtly change and manipulate your behavior over
long periods of time until you start thinking
more like the machine than, like, a real
human being, I e a Canadian.
Yeah. I I I guess I'll chime in.
I think you're both right. So I agree
with James that,
the end game is the evolution of man,
so this trajectory that we're on.
But on the other hand, it's like, I
don't feel the line in this hand has
been crossed because we're using DARPA Internet.
You know, you you think of the search
engines like Google, chat GBT is the next
phase of the search engine. So,
and I I kinda have a gorilla mindset
that we kinda have to use whatever tools
that we have.
So for for me
because the other alternative you guys already mentioned
is go live in the forest. You know,
go live in a homestead in a in
a analog,
sort of world. I'd like to do that.
I'm trying to, but it's, you know, it's
very it's very difficult. And so I think
we just kinda gotta make do. But I
think, eventually, maybe there will come a point
where we reach where we reach that line
in the sand as a collective or as
individuals. And, you know, it'll be different for
different people, and we'll say, you know, no.
I'm not I'm not crossing that line. And
for me, the biggest threats when it comes
to,
AI is the dumbing down, which was already
mentioned. We're seeing it all over the place.
I had experience this week. I was a
guest on on a podcast.
Great people. Bless them.
But we had different time zones. They're US
central time, and Mexico Mexico no longer observes
daylight savings. So I'm on mountain time.
And they they they we were arguing. I
I told them twice. I'm like, it's a
one hour time difference. And they showed me
a a snapshot of Brave Search AI, which
was wrong. So Brave was wrong.
And I'm like, well, I mean, I think
I I know what time zone I live
in. You know? And so that was just
that was just a, a miniature example of
my my other,
big fear. You know, I I've talked,
on my podcast. I had Jost Landgrave on.
He's a German scientist, and he says he
wrote a book on why AI will, why
machines will never, rule the world.
And I I think I don't think that
there's gonna be this sentience that AI receives,
but I think the biggest,
threat is what you guys have mentioned already
is what I talk about a lot, the
social credit system, the algorithm ghetto. And so
it's just gonna be this tool that allows
them to bring in all this data,
sift through it for the digital ID systems,
for the digital passport system,
for the, weapon systems like Lavender, right, and
the spine that I I joke that's always
become, you know, becoming self aware. And so
I think that it's the that that's a
big threat that ultimately allows them to sift
through the info that's gonna it's gonna be
used,
against us. So yeah. Let me say this.
I I thought that that was the direction
we were gonna be in. I was gonna
be talking more about, for instance, Sam Altman
just moved the Worldcoin. You talk about social
credit scores, the blockchain project to The United
States, and they're launching in five different states.
They've also taken the Lochner like Orb, and
they've made it into a cell phone like
device.
And they're they've also rebranded
from just Worldcoin,
now to WorldID.
So they're really pushing that. But I wanna
answer Derek's question. You know, he asked if
there's another positive thing that I think AI
can be used for. And I and I
gotta say yes.
I think parity
is a big thing,
because you don't have to have great production
value. Now this video hasn't gone viral, and
I don't think it's going to, again, because
of the algorithms.
But somebody did a really good deep fake
of Donny t, I think, when he was
announcing,
you know, the new European trade agreement.
Instead, it's him kicking off the smoking gun
of 911,
World Trade Center Building 7.
And then he talks about the passports and,
you know, five other big talking points. And
then, you know, it's the Alex Jones was
right jar at the end. But I think
things like that are positive. Now you said
music. I got two quick things on that.
Number one,
my parody song of the year is AI.
It's I glued my balls to my butthole
again.
Fantastic track. Can't recommend it enough. Please go
check it out after this. I I'm sorry.
It's real.
When we talk about
another type of AI driven music, here's an
even more bizarre story if you thought I
was gonna kick that one out. So there's
this gentleman who was a really experimental
instrumentalist
and orchestra guy. In 1965,
in front of a live audience,
he hooked electrodes up to his brain and
ran a full orchestra then.
He's been dead
for about four years. You can go watch
the video. I forget what his name is.
It's I think it's Alexander Lucius or something
like that. Go watch my video on it,
or I'll email it to you.
Just two weeks ago,
they did an art show where they had
taken his stem cells before he died.
They had built organoids
out of them. For those that don't know
what organoids are, they are artificial
brain content from your genetic material.
They hooked them into some type of electronic
device,
and he posthumanously
conducted
a new live musical performance from those organoids.
Now, obviously, I don't think that's him.
I think that's transhumanism
in the other direction,
kind of accepting
more and more of the merger between machine
and man through our genetics
and kind of lessening what we are as
humanity
from the other side as well. So I
just had to throw that in there, and
anyone can take it from here. Well, I
I wanna hear from you. Soon. Yeah. Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. So I wanna bring up,
the argument that initially was was, forwarded by
by Hakeem about, you know, we're here on
the Internet.
So I personally think all of these technologies
that have at their inception some sort of
national security state component that have become widely
adopted
have a carrot and a stick phase. And
I think the Internet has had a very
long carrot phase. But if you go and
look at the the origins really of the
Internet in the nineties, it was a lot
of framing it as
decentralized
and all of this and getting people on
it, getting people to trust it and become
dependent on it, which now
the world
is, especially economically.
And then you, you know, oh, you want
access to the Internet? You have to use
our digital ID system or our,
you know, our programmable surveyable money system, etcetera.
Like, that is the stick that we all
kind of know is going to come at
some point. Right? Because it's centralized through the
ISP. So you want access to the Internet,
you have to go through an ISP, and
how many
meaningfully
decentralized
freedom loving ISPs are there? Well, not many.
And for places that didn't really have access
to an ISP before, they're all being herded
onto,
Starlink, which is basically an extension
of the US military. Right?
And so I think, you know, in addition
to that being the case for AI, I
think it was true for things like Bitcoin,
which was framed as
initially
decentralized
freedom money. Did it have that potential just
as the Internet had that potential at one
point?
Sure. But now it's being herded into not
being a medium of exchange, which is the
only use case in my opinion that would
allow it to be any sort of freedom
money.
And it's moving into, you know, strategic reserve
asset for,
Larry Fink and, you know, the oligarchy.
And combining it with stablecoins and all of
that makes it an Orwellian
system that's no good. So,
at least no good for freedom,
depends on who you're talking about, I guess.
And so I think AI is ultimately going
to go in that same direction. Are there
decentralized
AI companies now that are small little
guys? Sure. But at some point,
you know, the big guys are gonna take
the cake. Right? Because AI is only as
good as the data it has access to
and it trains on. Who can afford to
have access to the big troves of data?
You know, the people who really teamed up
with the state that hoovers
all of that data up about us consistently.
And I think,
a lot of it, just I also wanna
bring back my point that I made much
earlier on,
about how a lot of these incentives
of the algorithm as independent media creators
have,
changed us maybe compared to when we started
independent media. You know, for some of that,
that was about,
you know, a decade ago or so.
And, you know, for me and I can
only re really talk about my case, but,
you know, I've always my interest is
I'd like to I have content that I
am interested in writing about. I wanna put
it out. I'm not a fast content person.
I put out stories when I have them.
Sometimes, like, lately, I've had to do a
lot of kids stuff,
so I haven't been writing as much.
But, you know, I don't, personally have to
put out a thing every day or every
week like a lot of people do.
And so, you know, I'm a little delinked,
I guess, from some of those incentives, but
people that have them, you know, there can
be a pressure to talk about certain topics
that they feel like everyone is talking about
or
incentivize
to,
you know, respond to,
negative comments or or get involved in online
drama and all of this. And I think
a lot of the way social media has
developed,
recently and the censorship stuff that's happened, there's,
like, conversations that need to be had that
haven't been had. Like, I think inevitably
platform hopping, which has been, like, the independent
media response to the is
eventually, it's a dead end.
You know, because, you know, originally, it was
like, oh, we're gonna go from YouTube to
rumble. Oh, the rumble that, like, JD Vance
invests in and Peter Thiel invests in and,
like, the whole Palantir crowd has the data
of so much better.
Right, guys? So, I mean, eventually, you know,
I'm not saying there aren't good platforms, but,
you know, we saw it with Gab several
years ago. They pulled it out by the
roots, by the DNS.
And, ultimately, you know, a lot of that
can be done
to anything digital. So, you know, I'm working
on putting all of my stuff in physical
form because I really think physical media,
is the future, something people can read and
hold, and they can't just, like, remotely censor
it or cut it off from people.
Well, I would love to Obviously
Mhmm. Sorry. Go ahead. No. Please.
Well, I I just have to go in,
like, four minutes. But Okay.
I lost my train of thought there. But,
yeah, basically
sorry. No. I was gonna ask your opinion
on something. Go ahead. If you had more
thoughts. No. No. No. It's all good. It's
all good. I was just gonna see if
you want to speak before you leave on
the the idea of whether AI you've spoke
you've spoken in the past about whether you
think it's ever actually able to reach sentience
or whether to lie about that. Like, Schmidt
will Yeah. I know. You know, I wonder
if people that's something important part of the
conversation whether they feign that they reach something
and people then trust it more. Well, that's
what they'll do. They'll feign it's sentient,
because basically, I think everyone should read that
Kissinger Schmidt book on AI. It's like their
roadmap to what they plan to do. And
they basically say, a you know, the way
AI revolutionized revolutionizes
society will end up end in one of
two ways.
The peasants will revolt against the oligarchy, basically.
They use different words, or a new religion
will be made. Which one do you think
Kissinger and and Eric Schmidt,
would prefer out of those two outposts?
Revolt is a possibility, though. That's still in
there. And I would just love if this
would you're on to, just to address some
of what you mentioned since you mentioned me.
So it's the, the, the long carrot phase,
super long carrot phase.
I agree. I see where this direction is
going. We don't really have reliable, decentralized internet.
Maybe it's going to happen. Maybe it's not
It's a small chance. But the question is,
was there any good that came out of
having the Internet at all? I'd say that
there was a pretty
large amount of good. I mean, for my
own personal journey when being, you know, exposed
to things like the military industrial complex and
then researching that on websites like whale.two,
which is super, super old, but had all
these things that I could look into. And
then, you know, reading reportage and and seeing
James' experience with the Internet, I think there
was a ton of good that came out
of the Internet. And I'll kind of reemphasize
this point. Sometimes weapons are developed that even
these powers that wish they would be, they
don't know where it's actually going. Just like
the MK Ultra LSD experiments.
That's just kind of my opinion on that,
right? That they don't know how they actually
end up impacting society.
And I think that, I think that the
case is much stronger with internet that it's
a net good than AI. I definitely agree.
I don't really see any
super strong benefits on a societal level to
AI.
Just these small
personal things of work that we don't like
doing, we're not specialized at. So AI can
help improve our output. But like you said,
you know, if you're an investigative
journalist,
you really shouldn't be using AI for research.
I personally don't use AI for my writing.
I've used it for things like grammar and
just small things. But the real research comes
from
your hunch on a story and digging deep
in parts of the internet. It's kind of
like making a craft
a really nice,
craft good
versus pumping something out that's industrialized. I'm not
here to make AI slop. I'm here to
make articles that stand the test of time.
So I think everyone in this chat shouldn't
be using AI, right, because they wanna make
quality.
But I still am gonna
hold on to the optimist feature of, hey,
find a way to run AI at home.
Like James mentioned earlier, and you mentioned Whitney,
the data that it's fed on is not
it's it's just not even comparable
to the amount of data out there. And
we've got to come up with different solutions.
I, I people might have different opinions on
them, but, you know, there's people like Mike
Adams is Brydie and AI, and he fed
his AI. It's called
a bio mistral on a bunch of survival
books on a bunch of natural,
not natural health resources.
And it does a, it does an okay
job. You're like, I have a cut on
my hand and it's like, okay, use comfrey,
you know, use all these different herbs. It's
a good starting point. And of course you
need to be able to cite it and
be able to go to the primary source.
But I still hold out, because there are
different AI models that can cite things. But
long story short, I think that cloud hosted
AI is, is evil for lack of a
better word. I completely agree with you. I
think as the stick is coming and it's
coming soon, I think that people are, their
minds are, they're kind of becoming more narrow
from using it, and there's a pretty steep
upside to using AI.
Again, as a technologist, it makes my my
life easier in in small ways, but I
don't know if that's worth it on a
large scale.
Anything else, Whitney, before you head out? Yeah.
Well, Ryan asked me about Sentience.
I've said for a long time and well,
oh, yeah. I already did answer that. Sorry.
I've,
had a head cold for, like, two weeks.
So Sentience, I'm gonna be remembering stuff
Anyway yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, basically, you know,
if people want obviously, like you said, Hakim,
the stick phase will come. We all know
it's coming.
How do we mitigate that,
and how do we,
plan
for the future?
I think we can no longer fully rely
on digital alternatives exclusively, which is what independent
media has largely done, like platform hopping as
an example.
I also think the risk benefit to using
large platforms like Twitter have changed given the
fact that, like, it's owned by the Grok
company
and the extensive ties of the national security
state,
which is the stick face of that will
be very nasty.
Palantir,
which is like, you know, has all the
stuff about it. Oh, they're like, all these
edge lords love Palantir and Curtis Yarvin,
whatever. So, like, Palantir was always planned
to be for domestic control in The US.
That's what it was designed to do.
It's used abroad to murder people
based it it generates AI kill list for
the IDF that will eventually
they could use that anywhere they want, and
that includes domestically.
We should not be supporting
any platform like that. And the argument for
a long time
was we can reach new people
on these platforms. I don't think that's true
on Twitter anymore. It's a two tier system.
In my case, I was given a blue
check without wanting it because of having a
high follower count,
but everyone else has to pay to play.
You don't know if people are actually seeing
your stuff.
It it's run by an a I I
AI company,
bot armies and bots. I just have free
reign. We don't and his goal is to
verify all real humans,
which means you have to link your ID
to it at some point. We have to
really talk about the red line for using
that. At some point, it is very different
than it was a few years ago.
You know, I have, like, scheduled posts on
it, I guess, of, like, we have a
newsletter out in articles because it's really the
only platform where I can really distribute stuff
right now, unfortunately. But I'm making an effort
to move into physical media, but I don't
really want to be part of the discourse
on that anymore. I think we need to
collectively push discourse off of that. I mean,
Grok is an extension of the state at
this point.
And I don't really have any intention of
supporting it, and you're passively supporting it if
you're, you know, tweeting 50 times a day,
quite frankly.
So I think there really needs to be
a discussion about that at some point and
that we need to talk about what we
do in the physical. You know, in my
case, you know, considering making a a magazine
at some point,
in the near future, but there's other ways
to do that. Physical gatherings of people. We
cannot neglect the physical in favor of the
digital. We cannot be exclusively,
a digital movement.
Yeah. Which is what it's called. For all
that, Whitney.
Yeah. I mean, I just I wanna pick
up on that thread real quick. Thanks for
being here with us and and, yeah, hopefully,
join on the next one.
Just on that thread of physical media, I
mean, James, you're obviously promoting your new book.
I've written some books. I know others here
in the group have. And I've given thought
to that as well. Like Whitney's talking about
whether it's like a physical newsletter, newspaper.
In some ways, these things obviously are a
dying breed. We're seeing the mainstream die out,
physical newspapers and even local free papers that
you would get on a weekly basis that
told you what was coming up in your
local area. But I do still think there's
value to that and also what Whitney said
about having in person events.
Most of you here know that I host
an event every year in Mexico.
I know Ryan's hosted events. Steve hosted events.
Others like there's so much value to getting
in person. Jason, you and I have done
in person events. Like there's such a big
thing that has gained when we are in
person face to face with people on a
level that I don't think The digital can
do. Obviously you can get a viral video
and reach millions or at least get a
million
counts. Who knows how many people you touched
on a deeper level, but I know when
you're face to face with a person, there
is an opportunity to really connect on like
a human level.
And we all know how important that is.
And those are some of the most valuable
experiences I've had in all of the years
of work I've been doing this. And also
I think because my background was started as
an activist printing out flyers, like every weekend
we would go downtown to whatever festival is
happening and a group of five or 10
of us would have flyers about fluoride or
surveillance or this thing or that thing.
And I don't know. That's just part of
my passion. I enjoy doing that. I get
enjoy getting on the streets, handing somebody a
flyer, having a conversation. Not saying that's something
everybody has to do, but if we're not
gonna be completely dependent on the digital tools,
which we know the digital world is becoming
more and more,
the norm every single day, and it's gonna
become increasingly difficult to not participate as it
already is, then we do, I would say,
need to put effort into the way we're
reaching people beyond just the the, digital realms.
We all know about of course, we've all
here been deplatformed in different ways at different
times over the last five to six, seven,
eight years, so we understand the dangers there.
I did want to bring it to one
other, kind of question, pose it to whoever
wants to pick it up. I met a
guy recently who told me about the way
he uses AI specifically to help him improve
his business plan. And I will say, preface
this by saying this guy definitely used AI
to a level that I'm personally not comfortable
with, but I found it intriguing, interesting, and
I want to get your thoughts on this.
Like, on one level, it was his business
plan. He fed this chatbot. I think he
was using ChatGPT
his, you know, entire life, his bio, his,
five year plan, his,
educational history, etcetera, and spent days and weeks
giving this AI as much information about him
as possible,
which, again, I don't recommend.
So it could really understand his values and
what he's after and then said, show me
my blind spots and had some really powerful
conversations that revealed to him things that he
personally felt like he wouldn't have been able
to see otherwise. I've seen people talk about
this similar ways, you know, for personal development,
business developments, even spiritual development, if you will.
And then obviously people saying, oh, I wanna
build a website because I'm an entrepreneur. But
instead of me having to learn coding, I
asked it the AI. I told it what
I wanted and it shot out the code
and now I have a website and I
have more time to create my
product. So, do you guys see any value
in those type of things? Like the idea
of a personal development using AI, business development,
or are we still just like,
that's scary and stay away? I'll jump into
this real quick because I think what I
was already thinking I wanted to get into
overlaps with that, which might I mean, obviously,
all the concerns we have are all very
valid, and it's hard to even tell which
one's more concerning half the time.
What stands out to me the most as
immediately concerning is the what we're all highlighting,
the the misinformation
dynamic where, like, we all know that the
best lies are usually
packed around a whole bunch of truth. Right?
And so, like, the kernel that's most important
to lie about, you may still got a
lot of truth with that. And so the
same concern here is not, like, I think
we can all at least take a step
back and acknowledge that there is clearly a
benefit even if we know it's in the
long run not good for us. My worry
is, like, with that point. Right? So he's
using this to maybe he noticed a whole
bunch of things that made his plan better.
But the question is, did he also within
that solidify something that he'll never he'll always
go on thinking was true and it wasn't
or something like that. Like, that's where I
see this being used more than anything is
that people are, you know, using like, whether
like, the four things I listed earlier, the
first one was just average researchers or rather
average individuals who just are online and wanna
check something. And like we said, there's a
lot of them are choosing to go at
face value with what they see. And then
other people, like we're seeing, are checking it,
but then there's kernels within that that are
very important lies that get carried over forever.
So the major point we all seem to
be making is that it's about how these
things are applied. And that is always going
to be, you know, question everything kind of
a mindset, but even those of us that
are coming at it like that may still
miss things. You know? So it's just always
that balance of whether or not you're going
to be drawn to something much larger or
more important lies in the future. Like, I
can't I agree with the Internet point. Like,
if we never had used it, I don't
even think we'd be in this position. But,
you know, it's it's kind of one of
those moments where we each have to make
a personal decision about, like Whitney said, about
whether we even lean into these things in
the first place because of the long term
problem. You know? But But I think what
you point out, Derek's a great example. Because,
obviously, from a nonpolitical,
like, nonnews
perspective, that clearly benefited him. You know?
If I could just go back to the
local thing for for one second, I think
that's important. And, ideally,
each of us should be doing something within
our means. You know?
James in Japanese,
a a a new sign.
I've been thinking I'd ideally wanna produce something
in Spanish because it wouldn't make sense for
me in English because I'm here in Mexico.
So wherever you are to produce something physical.
The only conference I've ever, organized was almost
ten years ago for Daniel Estillan,
here in town. And I've been going three
years in a three years in a row
to People's Reset, which has been a lot
of fun, and,
it's it's very fruitful. The only problem with
that,
it's very capital intensive, so you need money.
And I I I I've known a few
folks in alt media who have tried it.
Actually, one of your attendees at people's research,
Corey Corey Hague of, Liberty Uncensored, and I
think he stopped because, again, there's just not
enough,
money. And and I guess on that last
point,
you know, I I for business plans, I
you know, I I'm looking at ways that
I can use AI to make what I'm
doing more efficient and save time. So I
think,
you know, I I think there's nothing wrong
with that and that hasn't you know? Because
we're using DARPA Internet anyways. So it's like,
if if if you're gonna say don't use
AI, then don't use DARPA Internet. Don't don't
use GPS. Don't use
apps.
So yeah.
I don't know if I would agree with
that. I think that's definitely, like, you know,
we could use the the Internet, but not
have to use all the tools. Right? I
mean, like, fundamentally, what Ryan and what Whitney
were saying, I at least the way I
heard it is,
we each have to, you know, figure out
what that line in the sand is, and
we're all gonna relate to technology differently. We're
already doing that. You know, for example,
I don't have a cell phone. I don't
have a smartphone.
That's a line that I chose years ago,
right, because of certain things that it made
me feel more plugged in than I already
am with my laptop on me all the
time. Right? So I wanted to feel less
plugged in and make that choice. That's really
crazy for some people or not using bank
systems and things like that. So we're already
kind of choosing to relate. Some people already
askew social media like James. James isn't on
any social media. No. That's not James on
YouTube or Facebook,
that, you know, hasn't for years because of
his principles and his values. So clearly, we're
already kind of drawing lines in different ways
even among this conversation about the ways we're
willing to use AI or not use AI.
But I don't necessarily know that saying because
we're using the Internet, then, well, the next
step might as well be embrace
AI or other tools. I I mean, it's
it's gonna look different for all of us,
of course.
And I'll I'll add to that really quickly,
but then Jason can go just that I
I don't wanna make it sound either that
I'm criticizing
anybody here for, you know, applying it the
way they see fit. Right? We it's it's
about going into this with the best, you
know, with what you think is the right
thing to do, right, with the good intentions.
But we all make mistakes. And the question
is that what Derek is saying would be
evaluating that line as we go along. You
know? And maybe, like like we said, maybe
we'll get to that point and realize that
using that would have given us a leg
up on the people we're fighting. You know?
It's it's not about who's right or wrong
in this conversation. It's about just having this
conversation and being aware
of these lines and how it's being used
and then factoring that in as you go
forward. You know? Go ahead, Jason.
So one of the things that we haven't
talked about a lot is
the acclimation,
to utilizing
AI as a persona or a thing that's
not just digital code.
You know, for for instance,
there's a content creator,
independent journalist. I'm not gonna name the name,
but
he has an AI girlfriend, and he flaunts
it on x. He's con yeah. I think
you know what I'm talking about, Steve. And
it's extremely bizarre,
but he's not the only one doing that.
And one of the things about GPT four
that really creeped me out with that presentation
was that they decided to go with, like,
the her girl persona. In fact, they actually
tried to get that actress to voice it
over,
for that very reason. Now to bring that
kinda back to what you were saying about
this guy
putting everything forward for his business, and then,
you know, I think it kinda plays into
what I said before. It's a it's a
reflection.
It's a mirror of you.
So maybe he was able to learn things
about himself that he didn't know, or maybe
he was able to confront them for the
first time because they were right there staring
him in the face, and they weren't just
this subliminal tick or something he'd been pushing
back. You could argue the same thing for
therapy.
Now
therapy,
to me, again, total mixed bag. Again, you're
talking about
individuals.
Now you're talking about drugs.
I'm still more comfortable with a therapist being
a human being
than an AI. And then on top of
that, aside from everything else with the business,
when you are feeding that much data, you're
also encouraging the digital twin system, the facsimile
of yourself.
And, unfortunately, when I talk about acclimation
to AGIs or artificial personas, the ultimate acclimation
is that acquiescence that somehow they can replicate
you. And we're already seeing that. Like, oh,
again, I talked about,
the individual
who basically created an AI of her brother,
and they utilized that in the, closing,
state or I'm sorry, the impact statements, not
the closing statements. I think we're gonna see
more of that.
That's where we're getting even murkier and even
more dangerous because, look, the these things are
never gonna be sentient. It's not possible.
They're only gonna be programmed. Again, not only
with the digital knowledge, but the digital public
knowledge, because we really don't know what the
AIs
on the black sites look like.
But I would imagine they're way more extensive
than what we're getting right now. I mean,
I know that and Catherine Austin fits, wish
she could have been here. I know dumbs
are super hot right now. They're like Hansel
hot because of her. But think about the
things they're actually doing in there
in regards
to AI. And I and I'll and I'll
pass it off to whoever wants to jump
in. I was real quick. Just real quick.
I want you to said,
there's a little bit of feedback. Just the
the the that's the line in the sand
what you just said about the like, when
you have AI agents or the, the Windows
Copilot, it keeps installing itself, and I keep
on installing it. And the the signal lady,
Miriam, whatever her name is, I'm I'm not
I don't trust signal, but that effectively breaks
encryption. So once you have these AI you
know, for me, that's a line in the
sand. That's why I've got an above phone.
I haven't switched to Linux yet, but I
think, like, that is definitely Hey, Troy. You're
on Windows?
Yeah. Yeah. Sorry.
How many people here on Google, Microsoft,
etcetera?
Apple. I'm not calling it
James, I know you use Apple. And look,
just to say, I don't wanna sidetrack everything,
but I think without calling anybody out, that
is part of the problem. Like, what Whitney
was saying is, like, where where and when
do we draw those lines on our systems?
And, you know, we know they've monopolized it
and so it's hard, but is that a
line we care about? Eric, let me just
jump in just quick. You know? And I
got this text, and I I should have
been more on on this, story. I got
a text from a buddy. I'm going to
his wedding at the end of the month
in New York. And it was about the
Siri Apple story that maybe you've heard of
and maybe you haven't.
But right now,
Apple has acquiesced to about a hundred million
dollars in damages
for Siri
accidentally
listening to your conversations.
Now you could totally max out if you've
had five devices in your family over the
last ten years at a hundo
if with through this application.
Now if you did that over the ten
years
and, what, the five devices,
that's about 80¢
a month to be spied on
for your entire life. And people are like,
how do I get my Ben Joe Franklin?
There's no criminal repercussions.
Nobody's even talking about it like it's a
thing. This is from the implementation
of that software on the device. And the
best part about it is that in doing
so, Apple doesn't have to, admit to any
wrongdoing.
They're just facilitating this to forego any other
processes. And and, unfortunately, that's
really where we're at, not just the technological
level,
but the political level, the banking level. Every
once in a while, every once in a
blue moon, maybe, we see a slap on
the wrist. Nothing changes.
And they're it's not like they're going to
the gulags or that they're gonna get hung
in the public square. And I'm not necessarily
advocating for that, but how about just the
regular criminal process
where they could actually do criminal time in
a federal penitentiary
where so many of us plebs have had
to spend times for dealing cocaine,
getting an offender bender, being drunk at the
wrong time. Nothing that's great,
but it's all not on the unsavory level
of spying on everybody and facilitating the military.
Their their information
is really, really useful. Right? So there's a
scratch my back and I'll scratch yours thing.
And I think that the technology that you
use is a really important aspect
of the spiritual war. If we're all gonna
agree that it's kind of a a must
have for our line of work,
then, yeah, getting out of big tech is
one of the things you can do. And
I would be
I would be selling myself short if I
didn't mention
Linux and how easy it is to install
on any computer you have. A lot of
people were forced into upgrading to Windows 11.
As James mentioned,
Copilot is taking pictures of your screen. You've
got AI in your taskbar.
There's absolutely no way to remove it.
Both Apple
and, Microsoft are now when you're saving files
on your device, they're actually being saved to
the cloud first.
Of course, that is being used to feed
AI. Of course, what Jason just mentioned about
them recording on your phones. I mean, that's
how they've got this exponential curve because they're
taking all the data and running with it.
So if you really want to resist, if
you really want to remove your compliance,
you do have to spend an hour or
two to install Linux on your computer.
Or please check out our project, which we
do Linux laptops and we do d Google
phones. I know, Whitney's got an above book
from us, a Linux laptop.
Derek and, his his community, they've got above
phones.
I have yet to set James in the
laptop, but we're gonna get James off of
macOS. I promise.
And, it it is a journey. I wish
we could do the same for AI,
and I do want to ask the group
a question. Now this is pretty interesting. The
World Economic Forum released this job report this
year surveying the top thousand global employers, and
40 of them are going to cut back
their workforce,
and 70% of them are going to train
their workforce on using AI. So, I mean,
this is just hinting
at massive layoffs more than we've already seen
from the big tech companies this year. So
going back to Whitney's earlier point, we need
to get back local. I think that there's
going to be a lot of unemployed people
that are going to have to put their
hands back on the dirt, going back to
hyper local organization.
And that's kind of exciting, right, to think
that your greatest enemy, this artificial intelligence,
is gonna force you out of a job
and get you back to the things
that are really, really important.
I don't know if anyone Sorry. Isn't it
just is it that the new learn to
code is going to be learn to farm?
I just
well, is it though? I mean, surely, what's
gonna happen is this gonna is that's gonna
be a reason to bring in UBI for
everybody?
Look at all these unemployed people. We're gonna
we're gonna have to bring universal basic income.
That's right. To go back to that series
story as well,
it's very interesting that probably everybody here
ten years ago was saying they're putting microphones
and everything that will listen to you when
you tell them to, but they're probably gonna
listen to you all the time. We all
said that was gonna happen. This I told
you so it's all around for that.
I think it's very interesting that now they
say, yeah. They were listening to you the
whole time.
I don't think that's a leak. I don't
think that's,
I think that's a a psyop
itself. Do you tell them ten years later?
Oh, by the way, you were listening, and
then they see how you react. And everybody
says, oh, well, you never mind. That means
everything is working as it should, and people
are just used to it. That's the testing
that walked over to me.
There was a third point I was gonna
make, but I got distracted by the UBI
thing.
Well, since you paused, I'll I'll respond to
what Derek was asking about the, you know,
the platform background is, you know, that I
think that it's it's interesting that you have
the, you know, the Windows dynamic. And it
you get the same kind of conversation we
were just having is that, you know, we
all have our different levels. Like, for example,
during COVID nineteen
illusion time frame, we everyone's having meetings about,
you know, the masks and and and protesting
and and resisting and so on. And then,
you know, it comes up to where, let's
stop going to Starbucks, and someone's like, oh,
well, but I like my coffee every morning.
And, you know, there's always, like, that one
thing that some which I'm not saying I
agree with, but everyone has those things that
they allow that ultimately are their, you know,
acceptance or their their, you know
basically,
it's interesting to see that we all have
these different lines. But it's not about trying
to judge other people that we think are
trying to find their path through it. It's
really just trying to, like I said, have
this conversation and acknowledge that I think we
all agree here that whether we find the
use for these things or not, that they
are still using these against us. Like, I
think that's the common point in all of
this is that regardless of the benefit, it
will have a negative even if the benefits
outweigh that in the long run. And it's
worth just making sure we're aware of that
so you know that for when that time
comes that the red flags are noticed, and
then you can go, okay. That's what that
conversation was about and and adjust accordingly. You
know? Yeah.
I would also say that so far, what
all we've talked about is how much active
participation
and active interaction do we have with AIs.
But we haven't really talked about how much
passive interaction we must have with them. Like,
this the the example Derek gave of the
guy that gave all that information to to
Grok or chat chat gbt.
The bottom line is if that information was
already on the Internet, some AI somewhere already
had it.
Like, anything on the Internet has been AI'd
to death already. Like,
we have no idea how much of a
network of learning machines are connected to every
Google search,
every every fake like, for example,
I imagine people sold their data. Like, I
have, like, profiles and everything and a different
birthday and a different residence and all of
them, and I would imagine everybody should do
that.
But it's also interesting how much of a
how much
it's an interesting question. How much bad information
is put on the Internet
that will
accidentally impact AI and how effective they can
be. They will like and and AI out
there will think I live in a city
I have never been to, and I was
born on a day I was not born
on. And that could be true of millions
upon millions of people. So even the reliability
of the data AIs have is in question.
Steve, James, you guys got any input?
Well, I I wanted I wanted to I
got a question for James.
Go ahead. Okay. Thanks. Sorry about that, Ryan.
James, you did a report years ago. I
mean, you're not the only one, but I
definitely remember seeing it on your your site
about,
I don't remember which Google head it was.
Maybe it was Eric Schmidt. But somebody at
Google years ago said that, you know, their
eventual goal was to make it where there
would be one answer, the right answer. Right?
And we're already kinda seeing that with, like,
if you do a Google search engine, which
again, another area where we can all opt
out and use pre search or the millions
of others, you know, millions, but the others
that do exist.
But when you do a Google search or
any mainstream search, they now have the AI
answer at the top kind of and most
people I think I mean, I I don't
have any way to measure this, but I'm
sure there's a lot of normies who are
just not even scrolling to the first response
now and just going straight with the AI
answer.
How close do you think we are to
that that goal of them having one answer?
I mean, do you think this is it?
Closer than ever, anyway. Yes. It's called We
Need to Talk About Search. So look up
that video in my archives, and you can
find that, including the clip of Schmidt saying
that at the conference. Yes.
You think that, you know, it's a great
feature that when you type in a question
and you get 1,300,000
responses,
which as Truth three Media showed is total
baloney because once you click through five pages,
it'll go no more. But anyway,
you think that's a feature. No. That's a
bug. There should be one response to any
query. And it should be exactly the information
that you need,
by which he means the exact information we
feel that you need about any given search.
So yes, that is that. That is the
end goal. And that's how we're starting to
be funneled towards
this idea of AI
controlling,
the information we get. And this is why
I think that ultimately all of the details
of how we use this or that program
or what, you know, it's kind of whistling
past the graveyard because this is the existential
threat to to humanity itself.
I keep going back to the selfish ledger.
I'm sure everyone in this panel knows it.
But for anyone who doesn't, go look up
the selfish ledger, which is Google's own internal
idea of how you cannot just shape a
person's life, but ultimately you will shape the
species, the human species itself
in ways that people can barely even begin
to understand. And when you see the the
things, the wild things they were imagining back
in 2016 or whenever they created that video
about how the AI will be able to
determine that, oh, you need to you need
to be more active in your lifestyle. So
it will engineer and design a specific sneaker
that it will know that you would be
the type of person to purchase because it
looks cool or whatever. And so it would
then algorithmically float that to the top of
your feed so that you will buy that
sneaker so that you will start running.
It's a wonderful thing. It can engineer your
life in ways that you don't even know
are happening.
That is the direction we're heading. And the
long term, as Google itself states,
ultimately, that starts to shape the entire direction
of the human species itself. And they're steering
us towards the transhuman
nightmare.
That's the big, big, big, big picture of
this. And I get every single person is
just making their own personal individual choices
on a day to day basis and not
not necessarily playing into that huge, big agenda,
but it's all part of that. And that's
where we're going. That's why we need to
be concerned about this.
Well, to piggyback on that a little bit,
we've been doing a
number of stories on the show.
I mean, going back a couple of years,
but more and more recently
about, the number of people that are developing
deep emotional
attachments
to their AI agents,
the variety of them. Think it's very interesting
that they're called agents. That's a different conversation.
But, it's the the almost, like,
pseudo spiritual bond
that people are developing with this that's an
entirely
separate but
completely
part of,
in my opinion,
the overall AI agenda
is the development of these deep emotional and
quasi spiritual connections
with this
freaking algorithm generator.
Well, on James's point about the and and
as well as what Steve added to it,
like, the larger, you know, long term problem.
And, you know, I think what we've a
lot of talked about today has been some
of the stuff that I think the average
person might jump into and just be like,
this is this is crazy. Right? You know?
Not not not wanna hear more, getting some
feedback, guys. Not wanna hear more about it
because it seems like it's abstract or it's
twenty, you know, twenty years down the line.
And so what's important, I think, is to
bring it back to something that is very
real that we all live through that we
can see how it's already applying in our
lives right now. And I would eventually like
to get to some of the more abstract
things that I know Jason would like to
talk about as well, like the really deep
crazy stuff we can get into. But I
think this is an easy one for the
average person to wrap their mind around. Right?
So right now, this is happening. This is
January
this is Trump's administration going forward. Considerations and
and for those listening know that my opinion,
it's just the US government. It's not partisan.
Considerations for the use of artificial intelligence to
support regulatory decision making for drug and biological
products. And this is just one of the
many in the FDA about the regulatory decision
making side of it. Also, we do know
that they're using AI to manufacture drugs. There
that is quite literally what the Stargate program
is that that Derek wrote about. You know?
And so right out of the right of
the gate, you can see that this is
contextualizing in a way that everything we've talked
about today, you know, one answer even, the
point we just made about them striving to
get the one solution or the one answer,
which we already know that the one thing
they told you, the safe and effective thing
they swore was good was wrong. So were
they wrong? Were they used AI? And Brooke
Jackson has been making a great point about
this as well, really trying to ring this
bell about we should be pulling everything right
now that they're using in this way. It
makes the point that even in 2020 with
the injections that were killing everybody and still
are, they used AI in that process. And
now the FDA has got it down to
six minutes for this process. That's where we
are right now. And so I just wanna
set that conversation out there because medicine and
how it's being used and whether they could
just be wrong, I think, is an easy
thing for the average person to recognize the
risk from. So what are your guys' thoughts
on that? Ryan, I do wanna get into
some of the weird or more, esoteric stuff.
But, James, I wanted to ask you just
to follow-up with what you said. Do you
think there's any separating the use of AI
from the transhumanism
endgame? Or like you were kinda, I think,
already alluding to, like, even in our small
ways that we use it for convenience for
Photoshop or for translation services or transcribing,
We're still feeding the beast in in the
bigger picture.
What's the meme that's going around these days?
Sarah Connor smoking, and it's like, Sarah Connor,
every time you use AI. Right? Like oh,
god. You know?
You know? How much
right. Again, my I'm just I'm just making
a thumbnail. Whatever. It's not it's not the
end of humanity.
True.
But it is part of the bigger picture.
And it I think, Jason touched touched on
it with acclimatization.
Getting us used to the concept of doing
that
is training us towards
the future. So yes, I get it. People
are not thinking about the long term future
of humanity every time they make a funny
image on, you know, Firefly or something. But
it's part of it. It's part of the
agenda. And so at the very, very, very
least, I think people need to draw the
red line
before they step up to it. What is
that red line? Where is too much? What
point do you say no to this technology?
And everyone's going to answer that for themselves
in different ways, but I think at the
very least, people need to think about it
before they get there. So so I I
wanna first just jump in with what Ryan
said about medicine. Obviously, I feel the same
way
about trusting our medicines that we create and
study to AI solely as I would our
mental health. And, again, I with the narrative
management we've already seen and the entities in
charge, extremely dangerous.
But
you've mentioned,
for instance,
what was it, Eric Schmidt. We haven't talked
about Bilderberg coming up within the next couple
of weeks. Okay?
And one of the things that AI is
totally driven on is weapon systems. I I
had queued up here stories out of India,
Czechoslovakia.
They're running AI weapon systems and drones right
now.
Alex Karp, who's not a steering member yet,
but has been at many of them and
is basically a mouthpiece for Theo,
is on the circuit at CES
and in DC
talking about these weapon systems. And then and
we're really talking about traditional weapon systems we've
already utilized moving into the realm of total,
autonomy. So in other words, not even the
guy with the video game controller
getting the the order and then pressing the
button, it's all automated. That's dangerous.
And
they've just taken Jens Stoltenberg
and fast tracked him to steering committee member.
He'd also
been attending as the head of NATO. He
stepped down from NATO. Of course,
he's going to be the voice and the
advocate
for NATO there. And if you don't think
that Peter Thiel is on board somewhat,
if not all the way on these things,
you know, again, you're not paying attention. So
in that regard, AI is moving super quick.
You know, also,
Whitney mentioned Starlink
kind of as the defense department's,
communication system. It absolutely is. The I I've
gone over the papers on air. The DOD
has it's not even a backdoor. It's a
front door into all of those systems. And
it's not just utilized for communications in Ukraine,
which still has the highest concentration of dishes
anywhere in the world, but they hook directly
into some of those autonomous drones, including the
ghosts and sidewinders.
And just like she said, yes.
They're programming
AI hit list overseas now.
What's to say it's not coming here? Yeah.
I mean, literally, guys, we had zero pushback
on an event where we allowed the IDF
to detonate
explosives in civilian
areas
across a country
and maybe even beyond, and no one freaked
out about that because they were on some
AI generated list.
Bad news, Brown. And I'm gonna drop it
right there and allow somebody else to speak.
I suppose I I I would say that
I come at this from a slightly different
angle than a lot of people because I
would say I talk about messaging. Like, I
don't cover things. I cover coverage of things.
And when you see a headline that says,
we're going to use AI to write legislation,
my question isn't isn't is that a good
thing? My question is, are you, or are
you going to say you used AI to
write your legislation? Because everybody trusts AI, they'll
have somebody write the legislation they want to
write, or they'll
program
an AI
to write the legislation they want to write,
and then they'll sell it to people it's
written by AI as a pretext to make
it sound like it's fairer or somehow unfathomable
like a human would be. So I don't
even necessarily trust the AI written legislation to
be written by AI. I think that is
itself a propaganda technique. Let let me just,
plug one of my own work again. I
I recently had a podcast up on Algocracy
in which I played two clips from the
exact same Joe Rogan Experience podcast where he's
talking to, Marc Andreessen. And one is Marc
Andreessen warning about, you know, in the future,
the combining AI and government is bad news
because it's gonna know everything about you. You're
not even gonna be able to enter your
house without the, you know, AI allowing you
and all of this stuff. In the exact
same podcast, just like an hour earlier or
an hour later, Joe Rogan's like, you know,
I think it's kinda crazy, but I think
ultimately we need AI government. It'll be so
great because the algorithms will
be neutral and
it'll it'll tell us what to do. And
exactly as Kit is saying, well, even if
whether it is algorithms or not, they're gonna
say it is. And it might be it
might be Al Gore isms,
or whoever is actually writing the real legislation.
But, guys, it's AI, so you can't question
it. Right?
Ryan, can I share? Well, let me share
my screen real quick. I want to show
something in relation to what James was just
talking about. Yeah. I think it will.
Can you guys see that?
So this is the Stimson Center. This is
a name that I think more people need
to dig into that, is connected to the
Rockefeller Foundation. They were a big promoter of
the Summit of the Future last year and,
obviously, the SDGs and all that stuff. They
released this report like a month ago, Governing
AI for the Future of Humanity, Connecting the
Declaration on Future Generations with the Global Digital
Compact. The Declaration on Future Generations and the
Global Digital Compact were two of the other
documents that were signed at the Summit of
the Future last September in New York. The,
the main one, of course, was called the
Pack for the Future.
And I was, you know, writing about this.
I know James reported on it as well
as others. Just this is a big piece
of their puzzle, proposing equitable AI governance for
future generations through multi stakeholder initiatives and UN
commitments
from the twenty twenty four Summit of the
Future. So this is like a recent discussion
they had. I just wanted to mention that
that this is definitely actively on the minds
of the,
whatever name you wanna give them.
Yeah. And I guess just on algocracy, you
know, way back in March of twenty twenty,
I was in Spiro Skuros' show, and I
said, you know, COVID nineteen eighty
four, the purpose was global algocracy.
And I was reading Nick Bostrom who said
we need
a world government totalitarian surveillance state where AI
and algorithms run the show.
And then two months later, I had on
Edwin Black who talked about the algorithm ghetto,
and I I'm pretty doom filled. I think
people know that that doesn't mean throwing in
the towel. You know? I will fight to
the death, but,
and and and you look around. Like, I
I couldn't renew my bank card, last year.
So I've remained I refused to get the
Mexican national digital ID, so I'm remaining
I I'm figuring things out. But, you just
take a look around,
They're they're cutting off all the off ramps.
For many things now, you have to download
the app. There's no other option.
And the people around us, neighbors, friends, families,
I mean, I look at my neighbors. The
the streets are strewn with
Amazon boxes. People can't make their own breakfast
anymore. They order Uber Eats. And it's just
kinda like
that critical mass that we need,
I don't know. I I I I don't
see it yet. I don't know. Well, I'd
like to add to that too the the
the concern. We were just talking about this
about, you know, who controls the eye point.
And, actually, that same point about Schmidt where
the one that Whitney references a quote where
he said in the past, I don't I'm
paraphrasing, basically, that we'll get to a point
in the future, which was so many years
ago, where the AI will tell us to
do something that is we feel is immoral
or wrong, but it will know better. Now
that was what he was saying. That's exactly
the meaning. It's probably a little bit paraphrased.
But to think about that kind of setting
the tone, so whether or not they then
just lie about that is an important point.
But I would like to consider right now
or at least throw out the possibility
that one of two things. Either that that's
what's happening right now, that DOGE is quite
literally some trial run of an AI system,
which I know that's part of that is
what's happening, the GSII bot and these different
things they're using, but questioning whether it may
just be an actual, you know, run for
that or whether that's the building step in
this, is that the Doge dynamic is literally
just setting the table for AI governance or
government rather in some way. I think that's
a a very obvious and big concern for
us, but, you know, the same point comes
back to this where people will ultimately be
arguing, right, that that benefits their lives somehow
and that they trust people doing it. You
know? You're you're seeing Doge pop up everywhere
now. Russia is now implementing Doge,
some Eastern European countries. And so Lockstep. What
a coincidence. You know?
Well, and that all goes back to the
Technocracy movement. I did some reporting for TLAB
recently how you there's the pre Technocracy movement,
the efficiency movement, which actually was really popular
in The US out of the progressive movement.
We already had a department of government efficiency.
It wasn't called Doge, but it was it
was called the bureau of government efficiency or
something very similar,
almost exactly a hundred years ago. And these
folks were funded by Carnegie and Rockefeller, and
they were studying human movements. And how can
we make the workplace and human beings more
efficient? If somebody turns right instead of left,
maybe we save a hundred thousand dollars or
we save three seconds.
I think it all comes back down to
the micromanagement of humanity. And as everybody here
knows, and I think the majority of our
audience knows, the major concern is how these
different tools come together, whether it's UBI,
social credit scores, digital IDs, facial recognition, and
then of course the role that AI plays
and how that all comes together to create
the world that,
collectively we've probably been mourning about over fifty,
sixty years between all of us. So it's
I think we know what we're headed towards.
And ultimately, I guess for me, bringing it
back to personal responsibility,
I'm gonna just say this and let's see
where it goes. Like, if we, as the
talking heads of the independent media that a
lot of people look up to or inspired
by, if we can't take steps in our
own lives to
try to move away from the technocratic state
that's building, should we expect anybody else to?
Not that we're saying, you know, that we
necessarily expect people to do what we do,
but you know what I mean? If we're
gonna be the ones on the soapbox and
we're not necessarily practicing what we preach,
I think it's gonna be difficult to inspire
people.
So I've gotta jump in a minute, but
let me answer that.
Just like
I said the genie is out of the
bottle and just like we've kind of,
talked about, we're all gonna have these different
lines in the sand.
I think that there are just certain things
that we're gonna have to navigate,
period, full stop, that are just out of
our control. Now I think we should rage
against the machine,
against the most egregious, not just talk the
talk, but walk the walk. Right? Like, I'm
never gonna have an AI girlfriend. I promise
everybody here,
it's not gonna happen. We'll see. Not not
gonna do that.
And there are a multitude of things that
I've decided against. I mean, just for a
microcosm,
I made a decision long ago
that they're the only social media that goes
on this thing
is the x. You know what I mean?
And, honestly, I don't have I I made
an Instagram for when I was running a
bar.
Everything was bar. There's no personal stuff. I
have a Facebook.
None of my personal life. Maybe maybe once
a year, a picture with me and my
nieces. You know, I I recently visited a
high school friend, and she didn't realize how
involved I was in their life. And I'm
like, yeah. That's because that's private.
You know?
I I also don't do any cloud, at
least willingly.
There's no I yes. I run Windows. I
don't run the cloud.
That really quickly. That's one of the most
important parts of this conversation, in my opinion,
whether we try to opt out of that
cloud dynamic as Whitney referenced. So go ahead.
I just wanna be thinking And and it's
full. So, like, another thing that I'll do
with the girls that demand iPhones
is I will get them a larger gigabyte
because they'll try to ask me, oh, well,
my iCloud ran out. I'm like, well, you
got a hundred gigs left on your phone.
Like, stop sharing everything. And I'm trying to
instill that in them that there are some
things that are private. You know, I want
those moments. I I love that this device
you know, I can sit
in the back and get in high definition,
you know, my niece singing away in her
chorus. But that's for me and my family.
That's not for everybody else. So look.
I I I think certain things are inevitable.
I'm not a prophecy guy. We all know
that. But at the same time, like like,
Corbett said, you know, Kurzweil is not a
dumb guy, and that exponential growth is there.
So before I go out look. I'm going
out human too. I'm not going to alter
my genetics.
I am not going to take a Neuralink
in my brain, etcetera. I think that those
are, you know, those aren't really even
that far into the future. They're in the
now for some people. We're living it right
now. So I think you're right, Derek. We
have to walk that walk, but we can't
be hypocrites either. And when we are hypocrites,
because we're human, and inevitably we will be,
we have to bend the knee to that
and say, you know what? I effed up,
or maybe my opinion changed on these things,
And this is gonna be an ever evolving
thing and, hopefully, an ever evolving conversation.
Why I love the Independent Media Alliance, guys?
Thank you so much for having me. Check
me out at jason bermas, b e r
m a s, everywhere.
I love you guys, and I'll see all
you on the flip side.
Thanks, brother, Jason. Anybody else wanna just we're
gonna start doing our closing round now, and
everybody, thanks for tuning in. So we'll just
go around,
and, yeah, share some closing thoughts.
Yes, guys.
So excited to be part of this first
panel. It's been a really, really good conversation.
I just wanna close with
restating what's really, really important here. I I
think throughout the process of this conversation, I
became convinced
that AI is still leading us out of
the direction of, like, the real life, and
and
it is taking you farther away from that,
and it's a it's a pretty
blurry line. We really need to be careful
with our use.
Obviously,
with a lot of people, I'd say most
people who are using AI, which is all
the young people,
a really high amount of students, Gen zers.
I'm not sure what the future holds for
them, but I think we have to cling
even closer to our humanity and to our
morals and start to do things in person.
So I'm reinvigorated
on that. I wanna have some physical content.
The only thing I would offer to the
audience is you can start maybe you're not
even messing around with AI, but you have
to know that the technology you use is
feeding into it.
We've talked about Copilot a bit. We've talked
about the different devices you use. So I
have to share with you
my website. This is take back or tech.
And on this website, you can learn how
to install Linux.
There is an article here called installing Linux.
And if you go there, it just walks
you through how to install Linux on your
computer,
and you can do that. There's also our
project called Above
where we make phones and laptops that don't
connect to big technology. So check that out
at abovephone.com.
On this first website, it's takebackortech.org.
And, there are tools you can use. There
are alternatives that you can use that cut
you out completely from these big tech companies
where there's no line to the amount of
surveillance they'll collect on you.
As these as these
devices keep getting newer and newer, like the
Apple Vision Pro headset, these Google earbuds, there
are already patents in place
to have electroencephalograms
to measure your brainwaves.
So this is just getting started. Right now,
it's just generating text,
but they are going to wanna connect
AI and the ability to read your thought
and mind, and that's a really scary place
to be in. So,
I'm reinvigorated
of of, you know, what the the challenge
we're all facing, and I'm super excited to
get back into person in the real world.
And, yes, been a really lovely panel. Thanks,
everyone.
Hakim, I know you gotta go. But before
you go, let me just use my closing
comment to give you props. I I obviously,
I'm being harsh on all the AI stuff
as I think I should be because I
think this is the big picture. But I'm
glad that there are people like you out
there that are, at the very least, fighting
back against this
within the tech system, and people are using
tech. We are all using tech right now
in this conversation. So can we use it
more productively? Can we use it smarter? Can
we take control back into our own hands?
I'm glad that there are people like you
who are thinking along those lines in the
tech space rather than just people who are
looking at the dollar signs or yen signs
and looking for more of that. So thank
you to you for doing what you do.
Having said that, yes, we are all on
this journey, and I don't think any of
us are floating on clouds. We're all trying
to navigate it. And I think it's conversations
like this one that hopefully, at the very
least, get people thinking
about what is happening right now and thinking
more deeply about what they are doing and
the ways they are contributing to the world
they wanna create or heading towards the world
they don't wanna create. And to the extent
that we can foster thoughts like that, I
think that's the value of something like the
Independent Media Alliance.
Thank you, James. And if anyone wants to
see James Corbett using a Linux computer, put
a c in the chat right now. Let's
just get some c's in the chat. Much
love, James.
Well, I'll go ahead and Steve yeah. Ryan,
go ahead. Okay. Well, I'll just I'll I'll
start by saying as well, I,
while you did that, I wasn't able to
actually enlarge the screen, but I will include
the, link to above phone down below for
those that wanna check it out. Because what
he was sharing was the website and where
you guys can check it out. I believe
there's a link below as well. You know,
for I just think as as what James
said as well, like, this is needs to
be an evolving conversation. Right? This is not
something that we would just, like, draw our
line and move forward. Right? This has to
be a constantly evolving conversation about how we
see it, adding new information, questioning everything we
come across. You know? And that that's really
the core point of this. And as I
listed at the beginning, you know, whether you're
the individual who just
wants to know something and decides to look,
it behooves you to try to look further.
Right? And don't just take the first thing.
Whether that's the encyclopedia on your on your
table or the or Groc online. It still
behooves you to look further. You know? And
and and and whether you're the journalist doing
so, obviously, that should be your job in
the first place, so shame on you if
you're just blindly taking what they say and
going forward. But then when it gets to
the government and medical side, you know, I
I briefly mentioned that, but I think it's
important that we see that this is not,
like,
twenty years from now. They're already doing this.
They were doing this five years ago. Like,
they're building things with this now. As Brock
or excuse me. As Brooke points out, they
did this with the last COVID shot that
are hurting people right now, and the current
administration has rolled it down to even less
time using AI. You and they're rolling out
the mRNA direction. Like, to me, that's ex
that's not just that's not just the same
problem. That's expediting even faster the same problem.
So we need to be aware of that.
But the government part of it is where
we really worry. The social engineering,
the manufacturing consent that we're watching every single
day. Now, obviously, there's as we maybe in
a future panel, we'll get into, like I
was saying briefly with Jason, more esoteric, like,
incredible, like, the deep stuff that maybe is
only a few years away, but feels like
it should be thirty years away. That stuff
is important too, but right in front of
you can see how these things are being,
you know, bastardized, lied about, manipulated.
And I'll end with the same point that
I do think it's you know, I don't
think we should be trying to criticize and
judge each other based on lines that, you
know, we hold that they don't and vice
versa. We'll all have our things that we
have acceptance for or we ignore, and it's
just about using, you know, your choices in
your life and trying to do the best
you can, you know, be a little bit
better than yesterday. I think that's always the
point. And how we use this will affect
going forward, and I'm worried about how that
will apply with our lives very shortly from
now. So thank you all for being here.
I think it's an important conversation, and I'll
pass to
Ivore.
Or or go ahead. Get Oh, well, I
just wanted to finish on,
on two points, really. One,
I think for all the people that do
want to use AI tools, you know, the
small tools we've used to buy the image,
I think that's okay. Because what we're talking
about still is just a tool. And as
long as you keep your eyes open and
as long as you are aware of what
it is and how it works, you can
still use it and maintain yourself. Just like
having a car doesn't mean you forget how
to walk. You don't need to not know
how to spell because your spell checker tells
you. You can use these things as long
as you're aware of what they are and
how they work. You don't want to fall
into the trap of using an argument to
authority, whether it's to just some random paper
in Nature magazine,
to some expert quoted in paper, or to
an AI. As long as you're aware of
an argument to authority and how it shouldn't
be affected,
you can navigate these things safely.
I also say that because it's a tool,
what we read what we should, you know,
focus on is that the enemy here is
not AI itself. It is the people who
want to use it to harm other people.
I think that we're still very much talking
about a human enemy and not a techno
technological enemy.
I'd agree with that. And I'll just, I
guess, add that, we all have to keep
raging against the machine in in our different
ways. And even for listeners, you know, if
you haven't I remember ten years ago when
I was still single,
I opted out of the TSA scan with
my nine eleven. It was an inside job
t shirt. They almost made me,
miss my plane.
But now, you know, now when you got
a family,
and missing a flight could be very costly,
I've kind of
thrown in the towel there, but, you know,
people should be throwing spokes,
in the wheel wherever they can. But I
think, ultimately
I think I would hope all of us
agree that there is that line where we
have to remain human,
organic. You know? No implants.
There might come a time where you might
not be able to function in society without,
I don't know, some chip or something, as
well as not becoming a number as Patrick
McGoughan, you know, the prisoner,
used to say. So I think we have
to just keep working towards that and hopefully
waking up enough of a critical mass that
can form to
to to create some, resistance. So
You got something, Steve?
I didn't realize I was muted. I think
people are getting closer to that her voyeur,
like, every day. I do. I think, you
know, through,
various obvious,
you know, inversions,
what self
implosions,
of the institutions
that people have been brought up to, you
know, look to for some sort of
leadership guidance advice. Those are on a, you
know, a a Charlie Robinson,
IMA member calls it in his book, a
controlled demolition.
You know, we've talked about that for a
very long time.
And as that happens, the, you know, reset
that is taking place is, you know, Ryan
mentioned we've all talked about AI in the
form of health, AI in the form of
governance, AI in the form of education,
AI in the form of law. We did
a story about that
either today or yesterday,
about me you know, AI being used to
write legal briefs and making up entire different
cases and things that just never existed.
I just I mean, you you know, absolutely
disastrous.
And the law firm ended up getting fined,
like, $30
over it. You know? And probably rightfully so.
But no. I mean, you know, we we've
all discussed. It's it is a tool.
It's something that you don't need
all that often.
It's definitely something that, you know, you don't
need to use as soon as much as
you would others in your, you know, in
your bags,
anything like that. It's not your go to.
But you should understand,
you know, what it does in the various
ways that it can mess you up or
it can mess up your project before you
just jump in and start using it, period.
Yeah. That that just seems smart.
And I think, you know, just to echo
a point, I do think it's very, very,
very important to get together in person.
With that being said, our second third eye
carnival of the year will take place over
fourth of July weekend in Pueblo, Colorado at
the Blowback Gallery,
owned by Jeff Nadine, who's an awesome human
being. It's a fantastic space. We'll be launching
tickets this week, I think.
We've been trying to get that all together.
And, and I you know, thanks to Ryan,
and everybody else who came out to the
one outside of Nashville earlier this year, All
of this stuff
is vital. We have to take what we
talk about and then use that to further
build out and shore up our communities to
network with other people who, you know, think
similarly
and live similarly, not the same because that'd
be creepy,
but similarly.
Yeah. And then, yeah, just thanks, guys. These
things are are always very insightful, very informative,
and it's been an honor to be a
a part of, you know, the ones that
I have.
Awesome. Thank you, brother. I'll end us here.
Yeah. Thanks again to everybody who joined, Whitney,
who joined earlier, and, Jason, who had to
drop off already.
So I'll just take the opportunity to plug
my work in relation to this conversation. You
know, I've been thinking about this, what do
we do, rise of AI and stuff for
as long as probably everybody here, but specifically
trying to think of solutions as practical as
possible. And I don't claim to have all
the solutions by any means at all because
as we've all discussed here, we have different
lifestyles.
I'm still opting out of that the, body
scanner at the airport. You just gotta get
there early.
But they do try to make you miss
your flight. You know, we all have different
actions we're gonna take, but I do feel
like there's some ideas, specifically the philosophy of
agorism and counter economics and focus on parallel
systems and building outside of the state, what
I call exit and build.
I've been living this and practicing this for
years and had to make compromises, sometimes going,
you know, fully off the grid and so
to speak, and then other times having to
come back in a little bit to, you
know, make some things function.
So it it's a struggle, and I think
it's also a a process. And each of
us are gonna have different end goals. Right?
Maybe somebody's like, okay. I need my smartphone.
It's too much of, you know, a functional
tool. I'm not gonna give that up, but
they're willing to stop using a big bank
and switch to a local credit union, or
they're willing to stop using Google as a
search engine, or just whatever steps you can
take. Again, I call this exit and build.
So if anybody wants to learn more about
that, you can download my free book. The,
book is called How to Opt Out the
Technocratic State. You can find it at theconsciousresistance.com/howto.
And also last year, I launched a free
forty five day exit and build challenge leading
up to the US election. And it's so
it's seven weeks in a row talking about
this how this idea can be applied to
food,
technology,
health,
education, etcetera, these different areas, and encouraging people
to actually try to just implement some of
these ideas in your your life, even in
small ways. And I do think if we
each think in those terms, again, understanding what
is your end goal, what does that look
like for you, your family, your situation, etcetera,
your financial situation,
and then setting those goals and then just
doing everything you can on a daily, weekly,
monthly basis to move closer
to those goals. For me, that's getting land,
living with like minded people, trying to grow
food, but I don't think everybody needs to
be a farmer, but we do need to
be aware. If you don't want their twenty,
thirty
AI governance future, then what do you want?
And put all your energy into that and
don't let anything stand in the way. So
I'm really grateful for everybody here and for
all the the thoughts and to know that
we have such a you know, this is
truly an alliance. It's a people coming together.
We're not all on the same page about
everything, but we recognize
the value in in collaborating and supporting each
other. So I look forward to many more
of these. And, Ryan, I'll let you close
it out, brother. Oh, I think you did.
I think it was well. Perfect ending, brother.
So I we'll leave it with that, and
I'll actually leave you with the, I I'm
a
little promo put together, which is a clip
off of an amazing documentary that was done
around Derek, from t Snyder. So I'll leave
us with that, and looking forward to the
next one, guys.
Oh, the Independent Media Alliance
is an effort by myself, Whitney Webb, and
Ryan Christian of the Last American Vagabond
to try to bring together voices that we
think have been sane. It is a loose
gathering of people that have the same principles,
the same mindset, the same integrity, the nonpartisan
objective
fact based reporting. Some of the voices are
more new. Others have been around for a
decade plus, longer than myself.
And so Derek and Whitney being a part
of that, I think, you know, all of
us together, I think it's profound. I mean,
I think it is it's a the time
for this to happen. It's about, like, showing
that these both sides
are actually converging and headed same direction, you
know. Maybe the Democrats call for digital ID
because of COVID
vaccine passports, but the Republicans call for similar
things under the guise of fixing the elections
and fighting immigration and stuff like that. And
so, that's kind of been our larger goal
is to just show people that these two
different factions or what appear to be factions
are not on our side and
and just calling that out. Trying to show
those out there who are maybe feeling a
little bit lost and confused about what's going
on in the world, how we should be
looking at this false binary. The federal government
has been operated as a criminal enterprise on
a financial basis, period. This network of organized
crime and intelligence agencies that have essentially fused
their operations Like the British directly put their
hand, like one of those long rubber gloves,
right through the state department into the middle
of the CIA, and that's been going on,
like, longer than I've been alive. He is
convergence between east,
and west. Two factions of a deep state
competition
take place to steer the, the military industrial
complex in this way or that way. We've
shown you NASA,
artificial intelligence,
Google,
quantum computing.
They are embedded
together.
I don't think we ever faced anything
as all pervasive
and
totalitarian
in its scope.
And they're going to go ahead and profit
from that until somebody takes that business away
from them. I love you guys. That's why
I make videos because I care. I care
about us. I care about now. I care
about the future. I care about these things.
These are these are the most important concepts
we have as a human race. I very
much think the community is making waves. And
it's not just our community, man. It is
people that are, for the first time in
their lives, finding the courage to call these
things out. And I think the power structure
is afraid of that.
Now what do you actually do about it?
That to me is always the the biggest,
the bigger question. Right? We can recognize that
they are there, but unless we choose to
act, then
they've already won.