1 00:00:07,710 --> 00:00:10,670 Hello, this is Ross Kenyon. I'm the host of this show 2 00:00:10,670 --> 00:00:14,030 Reversing Climate Change. I'm a long time climate tech and 3 00:00:14,030 --> 00:00:18,070 carbon removal entrepreneur and I did a fun little experiment 4 00:00:18,070 --> 00:00:19,310 today and I'll tell you all about it. 5 00:00:19,550 --> 00:00:22,550 But please let me ask you first if you will please become a paid 6 00:00:22,550 --> 00:00:25,310 subscriber of the Reversing Climate Change podcast. 7 00:00:25,710 --> 00:00:27,550 It means so much to me. I've had a, a number of people 8 00:00:27,550 --> 00:00:31,480 sign up and it's been fantastic to see people engaging with 9 00:00:31,480 --> 00:00:35,400 bonus content on Spotify. It's been great just to have the 10 00:00:35,400 --> 00:00:37,160 support. It's $5.00 a month. 11 00:00:37,360 --> 00:00:39,240 You can get an ad free listening experience. 12 00:00:39,240 --> 00:00:41,920 You get access to exclusive bonus content. 13 00:00:42,200 --> 00:00:46,960 Certain segments of shows I excerpt and make exclusive to 14 00:00:46,960 --> 00:00:49,840 subscribers. Love of the shows, they're so 15 00:00:49,840 --> 00:00:52,800 broad that oftentimes I, I will cut to focus, but they'll be 16 00:00:53,000 --> 00:00:56,240 really important meaty sections that I will remove for the sake 17 00:00:56,240 --> 00:01:00,080 of flow and making sure I don't make episodes that are too long 18 00:01:00,080 --> 00:01:01,760 for you. But if you want more, there's 19 00:01:01,760 --> 00:01:05,319 often really great content here. So in the show notes at the very 20 00:01:05,319 --> 00:01:08,880 top, you can click on a link to subscribe $5.00 a month. 21 00:01:09,120 --> 00:01:12,240 You can become a paid subscriber of reversing climate change. 22 00:01:12,520 --> 00:01:14,120 It means the world to me when people do this. 23 00:01:14,120 --> 00:01:16,040 Thank you so much for everyone who has already done this. 24 00:01:16,320 --> 00:01:17,960 I love it. I'm so grateful. 25 00:01:18,400 --> 00:01:20,760 If you're not ready to do that, but you still want to help, if 26 00:01:20,760 --> 00:01:23,760 you could open up Spotify right now, give this show a five star 27 00:01:23,760 --> 00:01:25,920 rating. That's very, very helpful. 28 00:01:26,120 --> 00:01:28,960 Same thing if you're an Apple podcast, but you can so write a 29 00:01:28,960 --> 00:01:30,680 review. If you wrote me a great review 30 00:01:30,680 --> 00:01:34,120 and gave me 5 stars, I would be tremendously thankful. 31 00:01:34,440 --> 00:01:36,920 It helps me get this show out to more people, which is what you 32 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:39,400 want. And hey, thanks for listening 33 00:01:39,960 --> 00:01:41,200 here. I'm going to start telling you 34 00:01:41,200 --> 00:01:44,240 now about what is this weird little show you're about to 35 00:01:44,240 --> 00:01:49,400 enjoy. So D Script and ChatGPT are 36 00:01:49,400 --> 00:01:53,800 doing a thing now where you can enter a prompt into ChatGPT and 37 00:01:53,800 --> 00:01:57,240 D Script. We'll make it into a video, a 38 00:01:57,240 --> 00:02:02,240 proper video with AI generated voice with images to match. 39 00:02:03,000 --> 00:02:07,160 It's a brave new world. I have a friend who's very into 40 00:02:07,800 --> 00:02:12,000 AI art and what the future holds for it, and I have some thoughts 41 00:02:12,000 --> 00:02:14,240 about it. And they're not perhaps the 42 00:02:14,240 --> 00:02:18,360 normal ones that you would hear, but I have a former career. 43 00:02:19,000 --> 00:02:21,800 I wouldn't say like the most successful career, but I 44 00:02:21,800 --> 00:02:25,000 previously worked in Los Angeles screen writing and producing and 45 00:02:25,240 --> 00:02:31,640 doing various jobs on film sets. And I know some people who have 46 00:02:31,640 --> 00:02:35,840 been very successful and they were successful immediately 47 00:02:36,360 --> 00:02:39,720 drafted out of college or during college successful. 48 00:02:40,240 --> 00:02:45,520 I also know people who were grinding for 10 to 15 years and 49 00:02:45,520 --> 00:02:49,000 are just now starting to pull through and to have a really 50 00:02:49,000 --> 00:02:52,160 nice career. And I know people who went to 51 00:02:52,160 --> 00:02:55,600 very good schools, did everything right, and are now 52 00:02:55,600 --> 00:03:00,320 only barely catching on to the first major rung on the ladder. 53 00:03:01,200 --> 00:03:05,080 And I know people who have struggled for a long time and 54 00:03:05,160 --> 00:03:06,960 haven't made it or have since moved on. 55 00:03:07,200 --> 00:03:10,560 So I know a pretty wide range of people who have had various 56 00:03:10,560 --> 00:03:12,880 types of success in the creative arts. 57 00:03:13,440 --> 00:03:17,000 And I have one friend in Los Angeles who's very smart. 58 00:03:17,640 --> 00:03:21,000 This person went to an Ivy League school. 59 00:03:22,400 --> 00:03:24,480 He's a great writer. I've read several of their 60 00:03:24,480 --> 00:03:31,440 scripts and finally, after a decade plus, got staffed on to a 61 00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:35,960 procedural show. And they're not that good in 62 00:03:35,960 --> 00:03:37,840 general. As a genre. 63 00:03:37,960 --> 00:03:40,960 They are more likely than many things to be filler. 64 00:03:40,960 --> 00:03:44,680 Think of all the shows that have vocational framing to them. 65 00:03:45,000 --> 00:03:47,880 You know, if it's a Police Department, it's about doctors, 66 00:03:48,160 --> 00:03:51,040 it's about fire departments, it's about crime scene 67 00:03:51,040 --> 00:03:55,200 investigations. They're very formulaic. 68 00:03:56,440 --> 00:03:59,320 They are not things that have a lot of what we consider to be 69 00:03:59,440 --> 00:04:02,800 some of the best artistic attributes of television. 70 00:04:03,600 --> 00:04:06,920 You know, I'm, I'm not going to be comparing this to something 71 00:04:06,920 --> 00:04:09,320 like Succession. It's the first thing I thought 72 00:04:09,320 --> 00:04:13,800 of that we might consider a a form of very dark comedic art. 73 00:04:14,520 --> 00:04:18,440 I was reflecting on the career of Vince Gilligan from Breaking 74 00:04:18,440 --> 00:04:24,320 Bad and Better Call Saul, because Vince Gilligan came from 75 00:04:24,480 --> 00:04:29,680 a quasi procedural background. He wrote for The X-Files and 76 00:04:29,840 --> 00:04:33,080 X-Files as many things, but it is also procedural. 77 00:04:33,080 --> 00:04:34,760 It is a monster of the week show. 78 00:04:35,440 --> 00:04:37,960 It's campy. No one's gonna be remembering it 79 00:04:37,960 --> 00:04:41,280 100 years from now as a show, perhaps like something like Twin 80 00:04:41,280 --> 00:04:44,240 Peaks that will still be referenced decades from now as 81 00:04:44,680 --> 00:04:48,120 being one of the best things that come out of television as a 82 00:04:48,120 --> 00:04:50,840 medium. It it's one of those shows that, 83 00:04:51,160 --> 00:04:55,280 you know, it's, it's pulpy. It's Pulp Fiction. 84 00:04:55,280 --> 00:04:56,640 That's part of the fun of it, though. 85 00:04:57,000 --> 00:05:00,000 By the way, this is none of this is a dig at X-Files per SE. 86 00:05:00,960 --> 00:05:04,080 There are plenty of shows and types of content that I consume 87 00:05:04,080 --> 00:05:06,400 that are pulpy in similar ways, and that's fine. 88 00:05:06,880 --> 00:05:11,640 But Vince Gilligan was a staff writer for a long time and as 89 00:05:11,640 --> 00:05:14,120 far as I know, fairly undistinguished. 90 00:05:14,880 --> 00:05:19,600 And then he writes the Breaking Bad script and he just gets 91 00:05:20,040 --> 00:05:23,400 catapulted. And it probably took him, I 92 00:05:23,400 --> 00:05:28,320 don't even know, 20 years of cranking out procedural scripts 93 00:05:28,320 --> 00:05:32,040 and working on these shows that are decent to good shows but 94 00:05:32,280 --> 00:05:37,920 certainly not the best of the medium before he was able to go. 95 00:05:38,160 --> 00:05:40,600 And what I worry about with people who get their start with 96 00:05:40,600 --> 00:05:45,240 procedural television like this is that it is most likely the 97 00:05:45,280 --> 00:05:48,440 easiest show to AI generate possible. 98 00:05:50,080 --> 00:05:53,600 I am sure if it doesn't already exist, someone's going to do it 99 00:05:53,600 --> 00:05:55,760 soon. They're going to go through and 100 00:05:55,760 --> 00:06:00,320 feed all public court records and all police records into AI 101 00:06:00,560 --> 00:06:04,080 and start cranking out shows for all the things that they haven't 102 00:06:04,080 --> 00:06:06,760 done. For the most successful types of 103 00:06:06,760 --> 00:06:09,360 shows, all of that data is going to be mined. 104 00:06:09,840 --> 00:06:12,840 And my friend who worked hard and went to a great school, 105 00:06:13,120 --> 00:06:16,760 there's not going to be a job for these entry level writers to 106 00:06:16,760 --> 00:06:20,560 just grind and work and get their skills up to become the 107 00:06:20,560 --> 00:06:23,440 next Vince Gilligan. I think a lot of those jobs are 108 00:06:23,440 --> 00:06:26,400 gonna vanish and writers rooms are gonna change in that way. 109 00:06:26,640 --> 00:06:28,560 The people who are just like the people I named at the beginning 110 00:06:28,560 --> 00:06:34,240 of the show, who are drafted out of college or from college while 111 00:06:34,240 --> 00:06:37,520 they're still students, they're probably gonna be OK 'cause 112 00:06:37,520 --> 00:06:40,000 they're just a certain level of talent that is obvious to 113 00:06:40,000 --> 00:06:42,240 everyone. The people I know like this, by 114 00:06:42,240 --> 00:06:44,680 the way, none of them were surprising to me. 115 00:06:45,320 --> 00:06:47,200 There were people that I knew where I'm like, yeah, you're 116 00:06:47,200 --> 00:06:50,800 really, really talented. And it's obvious to everyone 117 00:06:50,800 --> 00:06:53,960 that this is going to happen and those people will still get work 118 00:06:53,960 --> 00:06:58,040 and still be successful. But for the people who probably 119 00:06:58,040 --> 00:07:00,880 more like me or, or my friend, I've, there's like a lot of 120 00:07:00,880 --> 00:07:04,600 development and sanding down those rough edges in practice. 121 00:07:04,600 --> 00:07:07,160 And I think there's gonna be fewer positions available. 122 00:07:07,480 --> 00:07:11,040 And that's what I worry about for the generation of art. 123 00:07:11,200 --> 00:07:14,200 That being said, I'm also pretty excited about customizability 124 00:07:14,200 --> 00:07:18,560 here because I'm going to have access to content that is going 125 00:07:18,560 --> 00:07:21,760 to blow my mind and be some of the kinds of stories that I 126 00:07:21,760 --> 00:07:23,800 love. I would not be surprised if my 127 00:07:23,800 --> 00:07:26,880 favorite content five years from now is something that AI 128 00:07:26,880 --> 00:07:30,240 generated with me in mind. And one thing I think about with 129 00:07:30,400 --> 00:07:33,560 AI that's really interesting to me is that I think in the 130 00:07:33,560 --> 00:07:36,840 future, as this video details, we're going to be able to 131 00:07:37,800 --> 00:07:41,760 increasingly be able to just prompt very closely the kinds of 132 00:07:41,760 --> 00:07:45,720 stories that we like and tweak them and customize them. 133 00:07:46,320 --> 00:07:51,680 And I find that to be a very strange thing because we 134 00:07:51,840 --> 00:07:55,200 primarily consume media alone. Well, actually, I don't know 135 00:07:55,200 --> 00:07:57,120 about that. I imagine many people consume 136 00:07:57,200 --> 00:08:01,480 quite a bit of media alone, and it's very much algorithmically 137 00:08:01,480 --> 00:08:04,360 targeted to your very specific tastes. 138 00:08:04,800 --> 00:08:07,520 How much fun would you have looking through someone else's 139 00:08:07,520 --> 00:08:09,840 Instagram feed? Probably not as much as your 140 00:08:09,840 --> 00:08:11,480 own. That's just because the data 141 00:08:11,480 --> 00:08:14,800 that they have on you allows them to serve very targeted 142 00:08:14,880 --> 00:08:19,520 content. And the thing that I like about 143 00:08:20,480 --> 00:08:23,080 the kinds of media that I'm attracted to, especially for 144 00:08:23,080 --> 00:08:27,760 fiction, I like reading old fiction. 145 00:08:28,240 --> 00:08:30,600 I don't like a lot of contemporary fiction. 146 00:08:30,600 --> 00:08:35,159 And it's not because we only used to make really great stuff 147 00:08:35,159 --> 00:08:38,159 and new stuff isn't as good as old stuff. 148 00:08:38,159 --> 00:08:40,679 I don't like that take. I don't actually think that's 149 00:08:40,679 --> 00:08:43,039 true. I think part of it is the Lindy 150 00:08:43,039 --> 00:08:46,000 effect, which is the longer that something has been around, the 151 00:08:46,000 --> 00:08:49,880 more likely it is to persist. And I also like the quote UN 152 00:08:49,880 --> 00:08:53,960 quote, Western Canon classics. I like classics from the East 153 00:08:53,960 --> 00:08:56,920 too, but that's often how it's described. 154 00:08:56,920 --> 00:09:00,600 I like the books, the art, the literature that has survived the 155 00:09:00,600 --> 00:09:03,600 test of time. If you read the Bible, even if 156 00:09:03,600 --> 00:09:08,200 you're not a Christian or Jewish or Muslim, it doesn't really 157 00:09:08,280 --> 00:09:10,360 matter. It's a very influential book. 158 00:09:10,560 --> 00:09:13,280 The stories are everywhere. It's worth reading just for the 159 00:09:13,280 --> 00:09:15,840 literary value alone. And that's true a lot of the 160 00:09:15,840 --> 00:09:18,960 classics that have survived. There's very few quote UN quote 161 00:09:18,960 --> 00:09:22,720 classics that are not worth at least some amount of familiarity 162 00:09:22,720 --> 00:09:24,720 with. I think they're very good uses 163 00:09:24,720 --> 00:09:28,640 of your time to read very old, very long books. 164 00:09:29,000 --> 00:09:33,440 Go read Don Quixote, go read Tolstoy, go read the Bible, go 165 00:09:33,440 --> 00:09:37,640 read Dante, go read the Book of Five Rings, whatever. 166 00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:40,800 Just a lot of these books, they're still around because 167 00:09:40,800 --> 00:09:43,760 they are good. And even if they're not good and 168 00:09:43,760 --> 00:09:47,840 you don't especially enjoy them, the thing that is great about 169 00:09:48,080 --> 00:09:53,240 consuming widely influential media is that you're joining a 170 00:09:53,240 --> 00:09:56,680 conversation with your civilization or the civilization 171 00:09:56,680 --> 00:09:59,160 of another. And that's something that you 172 00:09:59,160 --> 00:10:03,280 cannot get from highly customized material when we're 173 00:10:03,280 --> 00:10:08,480 not really consuming art that others even see, because it's 174 00:10:08,480 --> 00:10:11,560 something that we're generating from custom prompts that were 175 00:10:11,560 --> 00:10:18,440 entering into AI interfaces. I wonder if we start losing the 176 00:10:18,440 --> 00:10:22,280 connection of art that we all share, and even with the 177 00:10:22,320 --> 00:10:25,080 negative version of it is somehow knitting together. 178 00:10:25,480 --> 00:10:29,480 Coming of age, I have strong memories of certain things being 179 00:10:29,600 --> 00:10:33,840 hated by the artsy kids in middle school and high school. 180 00:10:34,280 --> 00:10:36,320 I think it might have been middle school when Creed and 181 00:10:36,320 --> 00:10:39,280 Nickelback came around and there was just as much a cultural 182 00:10:39,280 --> 00:10:43,240 phenomenon to hate these bands, for better or for worse. 183 00:10:43,760 --> 00:10:47,480 What happens in the future where there's enough data points about 184 00:10:47,480 --> 00:10:53,080 you that sublime art can be made that will satisfy you with far 185 00:10:53,080 --> 00:10:57,160 less variance than what you could get from searching out on 186 00:10:57,160 --> 00:11:01,200 Spotify, genuinely, quote UN quote, genuinely made art? 187 00:11:01,360 --> 00:11:03,920 I think that future is coming, and I think we're going to lose 188 00:11:03,920 --> 00:11:07,800 some of the connective nature that art is going to provide for 189 00:11:07,800 --> 00:11:08,680 us. It's going to become 190 00:11:09,000 --> 00:11:12,520 progressively more solipsistic. We will retreat into our own 191 00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:17,120 worlds where the amount of pleasure that we can derive from 192 00:11:17,120 --> 00:11:20,360 a piece of art has been so perfectly customized to how we 193 00:11:20,360 --> 00:11:25,520 like the dopamine and the cortisol to flow at exactly the 194 00:11:25,520 --> 00:11:29,160 right moments will be an ever learning process and we are 195 00:11:29,160 --> 00:11:32,280 going to feel that and that is going to be something that we've 196 00:11:32,280 --> 00:11:34,120 never before had in human history. 197 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:37,880 I think that's going to make everything that is not 198 00:11:38,800 --> 00:11:42,960 customized in this way largely disappointing. 199 00:11:43,560 --> 00:11:47,600 I don't know how anything that could have the variability, the 200 00:11:47,600 --> 00:11:52,880 uncertainty of non customizability, I don't see how 201 00:11:52,880 --> 00:11:57,200 that couldn't just fail. And as there's more data about 202 00:11:57,200 --> 00:12:00,560 the kinds of stories that we like, that our devices react to, 203 00:12:00,880 --> 00:12:05,760 how our facial expressions and our eyes dilate, it's only going 204 00:12:05,760 --> 00:12:08,320 to get better. And I think there's a good 205 00:12:08,320 --> 00:12:12,680 chance that the future that we're looking into is a lot more 206 00:12:12,680 --> 00:12:16,520 like the Matrix. It's funny to see which of these 207 00:12:16,520 --> 00:12:19,400 pieces of art, especially sci-fi, which makes predictions 208 00:12:19,400 --> 00:12:22,480 about the future. I've long been captured by this 209 00:12:22,480 --> 00:12:28,960 idea of humans at some point had allowed synthetic intelligences 210 00:12:29,160 --> 00:12:33,320 to put them into pods where all of their physical needs would be 211 00:12:33,320 --> 00:12:37,560 met, that they would have a simulated world, and that was 212 00:12:37,800 --> 00:12:40,320 better in some ways. Humans were in the process of 213 00:12:40,320 --> 00:12:44,160 destroying the planet. They excluded themselves from 214 00:12:44,160 --> 00:12:46,480 future participation in the governance, participation in 215 00:12:46,480 --> 00:12:49,880 life on Earth. To retreat into a virtual realm 216 00:12:49,880 --> 00:12:53,480 in order to try to preserve what was left of the planet is my 217 00:12:53,480 --> 00:12:56,360 recollection of it. And I think we're headed in a 218 00:12:56,360 --> 00:12:58,400 direction that's similar to that with AI art. 219 00:12:58,880 --> 00:13:02,480 I think we're going to retreat increasingly into virtual worlds 220 00:13:03,440 --> 00:13:05,280 because they're going to be less disappointing, they're going to 221 00:13:05,280 --> 00:13:06,560 be more fun, they're going to be catered to. 222 00:13:06,560 --> 00:13:11,600 Exactly what we will want. The difficult business of living 223 00:13:12,160 --> 00:13:19,800 as we have known it for all of human, mammalian, eukaryotic 224 00:13:19,800 --> 00:13:24,360 life, probably not prokaryotic, all eukaryotic life. 225 00:13:24,680 --> 00:13:27,880 That is going to be something that will increasingly be seen 226 00:13:27,880 --> 00:13:33,280 as inefficient and dreadful. So I made this weird little 227 00:13:33,280 --> 00:13:35,640 video for a minute and I hope you enjoy. 228 00:13:35,840 --> 00:13:38,600 Thanks for letting me run through some of my thoughts on 229 00:13:38,600 --> 00:13:57,840 the future of the creative arts. In The Matrix, the machines keep 230 00:13:57,840 --> 00:14:01,640 humanity sedated in a simulated world, feeding people illusions 231 00:14:01,640 --> 00:14:05,960 of pleasure and purpose. At first, it seems dystopian. 232 00:14:06,160 --> 00:14:08,400 After all, freedom is supposed to be sacred. 233 00:14:09,160 --> 00:14:10,840 But here's the uncomfortable question. 234 00:14:11,240 --> 00:14:15,120 Were the machines right? If technology can craft endless 235 00:14:15,120 --> 00:14:18,240 entertainment perfectly customized for our every desire, 236 00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:19,880 will we even want to leave our cocoons? 237 00:14:21,080 --> 00:14:25,160 When podcasts, art, music and connection are machine made but 238 00:14:25,160 --> 00:14:28,200 indistinguishable from the real thing, does it still matter who 239 00:14:28,200 --> 00:14:31,600 made them? Maybe AI won't imprison us with 240 00:14:31,600 --> 00:14:34,920 force but seduce us with pleasure, so immersive will 241 00:14:34,920 --> 00:14:38,280 never want to emerge. And if we don't care, what does 242 00:14:38,280 --> 00:14:41,760 that say about us? Were the machines just giving 243 00:14:41,760 --> 00:14:44,320 humanity exactly what it asked for all along? 244 00:14:45,280 --> 00:14:49,040 Is it not strange that this was made by AI from the prompting of 245 00:14:49,040 --> 00:14:51,720 a podcaster wondering about his creative future?