Who cares if we get it 80% right?

Absolutely.

And that is really the vital thing.

Because as you rightly said, they aren't thinking, they aren't actually creating, but they are so good at faking it that we end up trusting it.

And then there's this idea that it's truly a use it or lose it principle.

So if you outsource thinking, even though you have the gift of thinking, you can actually lose it by becoming dependent upon a machine that's doing your thinking for you.

And there's studies behind this.

Are you saying, Doug and Janet, don't have anything to do with AI? Aren't there some positive attributes to this technology? For example, what about using AI to help with translations of the Bible? Isn't that a good idea?

Yeah.

They don't want to finalize it until they decide, the league decides what the penalties are.

Will there be, um, a suspension of Leonard? I don't think that's even allowable under the CBA, under the, the SAP, the cap circumvention clause.

They can make him give some of the money back.

They can fine him, but they cannot suspend him by the letter of the law.

So that's not a big issue.

I think where they're at right now, the league has a report from the lawyer firm.

Right.

It doesn't mean it's going to get approved, you know?

I felt so bad, and I really, there's a story in the book, and I know what you're referring to.

There was a, for the viewers, a board member of a community bank I was working for.

And really, board members are on the board for one reason, one reason only, and that's to drive referrals into the bank.

It's not to advise the bank.

It's how plugged in are these people and can they bring people into the bank to borrow money and whatnot.

And that's this great guy, you know, but no banking background whatsoever, made his fortune in something else.

Do you think you'll see back the pick up A's, the negative A's, the 125% LTV loans back

How does that start to play out for you, and where does it take you in this journey, Doug?

Yeah, good question.

So for me, particularly after my father left, for me, I, I just turned all of that inward, right? It-- The things that happened to me or that sense of abandonment must be about me, and that's a, that's a survival skill.

Kids do that all the time because if they allow themselves to be angry, then that might threaten other attachment figures, right? They're just not gonna go there, so I just turned it inward and, you know, that manifested in deep, deep depression, um, suicidality.

I made my first suicide attempt when I was twelve years old.

I survived it, but it also went unnoticed, and I remained suicidal, isolated, and, you know, it just wasn't noticed.

I had a, a-- By that point, my mom was a single mom with three kids, a job, and, you know, her life, and it was, it was easy to miss And that really did a number on [chuckles] me throughout my life because I began to see myself in a particular way and that got fixed.

... what are some of the things that you're learning that you believe now that you more than likely would not have learned if you hadn't been incarcerated?

Okay

... a dream job, uh, because of that, and, um, I still don't honestly know exactly what's next.

Um, we're in a major trusting God phase.

Um, but what happened was I worked for a wonderful company, dream job.

I was senior software engineer, making, working on a great product.

Um, and I, um, when ChatGPT came out, and internal to the company as well as external, I've been writing about this internally and externally ever since it came out.

Because people were believing things, and I, and I was like, "Where'd you get that?" And so I was having these debates and discussions inside the company, and I was involved.

[chuckles]

Now he's in his 70s and still the towering figure I remember, 6'7", with a graying, braided ponytail.

And so you keep losing members in your community, right? So the marker for a town dying is first your school closes, then the bar closes, and you're left with a post office.

Now when I drive through the countryside, I basically see ghosts of farmsteads and people that used to live there.

And in some places, there's not even a trace of anything left but a bare field.

Were my family communists?

No.

I think it was that in the late 20s, all the banks went bankrupt, out of business, right before the Depression.

So there were a lot of dissatisfied and broke people, and they wanted something different.

Doug, what, what was the hardest thing for you?

I, I mean, in some ways it, it wasn't.

In some ways it was liberating.

It, I mean, you know, we're on a boat and, you know, you didn't have the constant ding, ding, ding of your phone and a message coming in.

You know, everything you need was there on the boat.

Um, someone asked me, he's like, "D- didn't you feel lonely, um, or scared in the middle of the ocean?" I think both of us, no, we felt more connected.

And, and our course took us where, you know, there was not a lot of boat traffic or any traffic.

Um, and so Doug, what's your answer to that question? What, what were the lessons learned?

blah.

So, but this will answer your question, I hope.

So when any technology, um, Imagine just like a lever that helps you lift something.

You extend some human capability into it.

So if something's helping you lift things, you don't have to be able to lift it yourself anymore.

The machine lifts it for you.

If you only did lifting with that tool, you would lose the ability to lift stuff after a while.

Really?

Talk to me about the purposeful intent to create repeat users, which eventually can lead to addiction.

Absolutely.

And, you know, their argument is so...

It's just amazing how they can even say these things in public anymore, like with a straight face, because we have the brain science.

We have the data.

We know not only that they're doing it on purpose, but that it works.

And so, yes, they're absolutely exploiting our behavioral psychology by hiring intentionally top behavioral psychologists, top neuroscientists.

Doug, tell me what the catalyst was for you to write this and then break it down, because it is truly, in my opinion, it's a brilliant piece.

You get one today.

Listen, I was your fifth or sixth guest on the show.

Yeah.

You were struggling mightily.

You dug deep down and asked me to help jumpstart your ridiculous podcast that you want to start, right?

And pretty cool that they play this year for the Exceptional Citizens Week.

What a great cause.

It's a fantastic organization that they have together here.

So Doug, can you talk to the kids for a few minutes about the power of identity and why it's also important to expand your mind just beyond the ice?

Well, the first rule, and, uh, thanks for having me, um, is you become what you're around.

You don't have the means to prevent yourself from c- becoming what you're around, so be cautious about what's going in and the people you hang around with, and know that if you get around people that are better than you, and you know who the better people are, and you might have to take a few shots, but y- you know, you'll become just like them.

So that, that's really the, the message that I wanna hammer home, is, you know, we're, we all affect each other in a, in an either a positive way or a negative way, and I promise you there is no inertia.

I gotta find this family." You know, what can, what would you say to parents that are trying to help their child find the right direction on taking a different path, on the, on the strength of going a different direction than the rest of the group only b- because it's better? It's a better, it's a better option for them.

Yeah.

Well, I mean, the, the same rules apply to the parents.

Uh, you know, I would say, um, you know, choose the people that you're spending time with wisely, you know? Uh, because if you know that there's an impact coming from them.

So talk to us a little bit about the distraction pieces.

Yeah, thanks, Russ.

Yeah, it sounds like your turntable is more like a...

I use the Pomodoro technique as well, just because we're not robots.

We're physical beings.

We do need to stretch.

We need to look out the window.

Are you totally opposed to all of it? Or is it like, well, there are some use cases, very narrow use cases?

Geez.

And, a- and, and, and I, it was like a Frankenstein movie, right? And then, uh, so I'm in the halo for, and I ha- that halo taught me something.

I couldn't look down, so I had to look people in the eye, and I didn't usually look people in the eye before.

And being in the halo for three months, like, when you walk into a room, everybody looks at you, and you have to ma- you can't put your head down, and you can't close your eyes.

And so, so that taught me a huge lesson, you know, being in the halo.

And then when I got out of the halo, my wife was, wa- was, uh, due in a month.

She was eight months pregnant, and we had a two-year-old.

Right

So tell us a little bit about Mapping LA, what, what you, what you wanted out of it when you came up with the idea, how you worked with Ben to, and others to create it, and, and kind of what it became.

So back in the old days, uh, I, I worked in the San Fernando Valley when I was in Suburban, and the valley has a number of communities that have different characters, but you never really know when you're in one or the other or when you crossed the line.

So somebody on the copy desk made a paper map and drew lines that said, "This is Encino, this is Tarzana, and this is North Hollywood." And we used that at some point, and I, I, and it really drew from conversations with Tom Lowder.

I don't know if you know Tom Lowder.

He was on, in our graphic...

He, he was the, the only person in our graphics department who could code back in the late nineties.

We had a lot of trouble getting, trying to get the graphics department to, um, modernize, uh, from tracing, uh, to, you know, to, uh, to GIS.

Hmm

That's insane.

And these people would burn out and, and, and hit the bricks.

So they were just burning through these people, and finally they found this woman who was great.She was just no complaints, just, uh, reorganized the garage-

Yeah, yeah, yeah

... cooking three meals a day.

You know, f- uh, sweet, bubbly.

And then my sister-in-law at some point was like, "We should probably be doing background checks on these people."

[laughs]

What, but what, what this shows, uh, Janet, is that this is the, really the natural outcome of Richard Dawkins' worldview.

He believes people like us, humans, made in the image of God, he doesn't believe that.

He believes we're essentially computers made of meat, or machines made of meat as well.

That's what they would say.

Because they define consciousness or even intelligence and all the things around AI, they define those terms so low to of a place where a machine can achieve them.

It's like, it's like, you know, having a high jump bar that's one foot off the ground so you, anybody can jump over it.

Talk to me about this.

On the trail, Doug stopped at groves of aspen trees to explain how wolves and other predators are changing the landscape.

This young aspen forest here is all really recent, and I would say, I think, really cool.

And, you know, I just did the thing you're not supposed to, put a value judgment on nature.

Nature just is.

But with the return of carnivores to this ecosystem, wolves, cougars, increase in bears, they've all kinda come back, you've got this, which you didn't have before.

And this means life to other things.

Doug and I have stayed in touch, and so I reached back out to him to ask him why preserving nature means so much to him.

There are times when you are out in the environment alone, and a bird, a beaver, or a wolf ...

So, what's your concept here? Who will use your ad plugin? Who's gonna drop in your JavaScript?

Sure.

Sure.

Um, the simple reality is, right now, there's a over-capacity in the AI space.

There's a lot of competition.

And in some ways, it's almost easier to get an AI startup up and running than it is to get it, uh, fundraising and profitable.

We see that there's...

Can you greatly increase that number of advertisers by maybe going to a, uh, another ad network and tapping into their inventory and pulling them in? Or an affiliate company and saying, "Hey, we want to just pull in affiliate deals as fill-in for now"?