Um, I'm gonna pass it on to Zach Stein now.

Hey, thanks everybody.

This is...

Man, I'm staring at myself here.

Let me look at everybody.

Uh, it's wonderful to be here.

Um, I'm torn, you know.

I love that question.

As you're going through the hiring process and you're looking at candidates, what are some of the things that you're thinking about other than does this person know how to program?

Yeah, I mean, I think the number one thing for me, even more so than technical skills, is... how they deal with other people and how they communicate.

I think if someone's not going to be a good team player, like programming's a team sport anymore.

Like, you know, we all contribute through source control.

All the newest tools are to some extent about how we work together more efficiently.

If you don't have that part of it, I think that, you know, it's just not going to go well, at least in my opinion.

I've worked with, you know, the classic rockstar developer who doesn't deal well with other people before.

Um, Flipping it around the other way, when you think about not just communicating with your team and the folks that report to you, but the executives and other stakeholders in the company, kind of how do you approach that?

And if we can find a way to make sure that everybody has the opportunity to grow optimally into the best human that they can possibly be, that's where our main chance lies.

You know, the first part of my career was working with Theo with the same mentality that education is primary, and it was actually working in these problems that I discovered the problem of civilizational collapse.

I mean, Theo, you and I talked about it because you, you could see how if, if you, if you broke the educational system, there would be such a profound confusion and such a profound kind of like, you know, like spreading like wildfire type of contagion.

Uh, and so wars often break out from confusion, from misunderstanding, from all kinds of things that could have been avoided hadprecursor and the upstream educational experiences of the key individuals involved and the key populations involved just been completely different.

And so in a sense, the war is shocking but not surprising because of the state of education in America for the past 20, 30 years.

And this isn't even taking a stance on the war.

It's saying people are not equipped to understand what's occurring in the world, the world, the global s- And so, you know, the measurement system we're talking about is a measurement of hierarchical complexity.

Hmm.

With people.

With people.

So that would be my question.

First, what actually happened? Was he able to put it down and reenter? Did he actually help him get back in a relationship? Or did it actually keep him out of a relationship in the long run? I don't know.

If it did make him better overall...

These things make sense, right? Journaling is one of the best ways to deal with grief.

Long duration reading.

Does our current state of loneliness in the culture make us more vulnerable to all of these risks? Absolutely.

With people.

With people.

So that would be my question.

First, what actually happened? Was he able to put it down and reenter? Did he actually help him get back in a relationship? Or did it actually keep him out of a relationship in the long run? I don't know.

If it did make him better overall...

These things make sense, right? Journaling is one of the best ways to deal with grief.

Long duration reading.

Does our current state of loneliness in the culture make us more vulnerable to all of these risks?

With people.

With people.

So that would be my question, is it-- first, what actually happened? Was he able to put it down and reenter it? Did he-- it actually help him get back in a relationship, or did it actually keep him out of a relationship in the long run? I, I don't know.

Um, if it did make him better overall, uh, these things make sense, right? Journaling is one of the best ways to deal with grief.

Long duration reading.

I think one of the things that happens for people in positive chatbot, but also extreme negative chatbot usage, is just the radiance of long duration text engagement, which most people don't do.

Like, if you're a reader and you read for four hours, your brain gets in this state.

... all of these risks?

How did you first become aware that something was happening with, uh, these AI companions and, and mental health?

Um, let's see.

It was probably May of last year.

As a educational psychologist with an interest in technology, I was looking at the history of educational technology for a long time, and the ambition there has been to replace teachers more than to help them be better teachers.

This is way back.

So I'd been speaking a little bit about that after the release of ChatGPT because I was seeing, oh my God, they could actually replace the teachers with something if this started to get better.

But because I was talking about it, I started to get emails from people who were trying to convince me that the machines were awake and aware, that they had intimate relationships with them, that they were themselves becoming, like, kind of spiritually enlightened through relationship with these, these beings.

Um, and I'd love to talk, cover that, and I also wanna talk-- make sure we cover how should, if someone knows someone or has a loved one who's experiencing AI psychosis, what should they do? So let's, let's start with how should we do this differently, Zach, if we were to be wise, uh, about this humane version of this technology we allow?