Summary
âž¡ The text discusses how our civilization has trained people to function like machines, making them replaceable by actual machines. It argues that creativity, a trait machines can’t replicate, is being lost. The text also warns that artificial intelligence (AI) is not only capable of replacing many jobs, but it’s also being set up as a potential scapegoat for future issues. It concludes by emphasizing the importance of willpower and creativity in education to ensure humans remain valuable in a world increasingly dominated by AI.
âž¡ The text discusses the impact of automation and artificial intelligence (AI) on jobs and society. It highlights that while many jobs can be automated, the creative and emotional aspects of human tasks cannot be replaced by machines. The text also warns about the dangers of relying too much on AI, as it can be manipulated and used to control information. It emphasizes the importance of developing skills and understanding the world we live in to avoid becoming replaceable in an increasingly automated world.
âž¡ The speaker discusses the limitations of artificial intelligence (AI), arguing that while AI can perform complex tasks, it lacks the creativity and holistic understanding that humans possess. They warn that as AI becomes more prevalent, it could lead to a society filled with mediocrity, as AI can only replicate what it has been trained on and lacks the ability to truly learn or innovate. The speaker encourages critical thinking and understanding of AI, emphasizing the importance of human creativity and original thinking in a world increasingly dominated by algorithms.
âž¡ The text discusses the importance of developing skills that machines can’t replicate, like empathy and teaching, to stay valuable in a world increasingly influenced by AI. It also introduces the Bastion project, a decentralized social network designed to function even when the internet is disrupted, which has proven useful in situations like political unrest in Kazakhstan. The text also talks about Bastion Moby, a phone with a custom operating system that doesn’t track users and can’t be remotely controlled, offering more security and privacy.
âž¡ The text discusses the issue of privacy and control with smartphones, highlighting how they track users and can be remotely manipulated. It criticizes the acceptance of this lack of control and privacy, suggesting that people should demand more agency over their devices. The text introduces a new phone, Sebastian Mobi, which is designed to give users more control and privacy. It also criticizes the cultural attitude that discourages people from understanding and discussing these important technological issues.
âž¡ The text discusses Bastion, a platform with various apps including Mobi and Love Pod. A new app called Barteron, which supports a decentralized economy, has been launched on Bastion. Barteron allows transactions using different currencies and has seen significant growth in Eastern Europe. The speaker believes in the importance of decentralized economies and encourages people to use Barteron to sell or exchange items.
Transcript
But power of choice presupposes power of will. So training willpower. We have exactly the opposite in the society now think about what all the social media, a lot of the people are addicted to the degree they have never been addicted before. And addiction essentially erosion of willpower. So the, the only way to survive, and if you want your kids to survive in the society that is coming very, very soon. And by survive I mean that first of all, just like that they’re needed by somebody that they can like earn something for the, you know, very, very simple, let’s take a very low level that they can earn a living.
In order to do that they need to be human, they need to have skills to, to do things and, but they start with willpower. So, and I think a lot of the society now where people are just driven by impulses and emotions, they’re going to be swept away because they’re not going to, they’re not going to be able to say, you know what, I see that there’s a problem here. Let me make a conscious decision, a willful decision to pursue this and do something that, that’s different. Just pausing really quick to share this with you. This is the Love Pod.
It’s an amazing new product that’s available. It turns up to nine devices into satellite devices. But not just like a satellite phone where it only does text and calling and maybe does mostly just calling. This is a full blown Internet device where you can do web surfing and video and everything. But what makes it so remarkable isn’t just if the grid goes down and turns all your devices into satellite devices. It also takes the frequency and turns it into a frequency that harmonizes with your body. What does that mean? EMFs are everywhere and we’re in this toxic soup of danger is pollution.
It destroys or it hurts you at a cellular level. This changes that and makes the EMF harmonize with your body. So it’s frequencies that are not doing that that works. Well with your body, but it does even more. It’s also a VPN so all of your data is secure and nobody can access it. And the more people that use it, the faster it is because it works on a distributed mesh network. I know that sounds complicated but it’s not that bad. The more of these that are out there, the faster it gets. It’s only 200 dol plus a data package so you can have peace of mind knowing that all your devices will work even in a grid down situation.
And it’s private and it doesn’t hurt your body. So check it out. Makes a perfect Christmas gift. Welcome to business. Game changers. I’m Sarah Westall. I have Daniel Satchkoff coming to the program. He is the founder of Bastion but he’s also an expert at AI and we’ve been talking for years that we need to do an ongoing science program program. But I hope we end up doing it this time because before we just talked about it and ended up not doing it. We did a couple and then I just kind of. But we’re, we got to do it.
But we are going to talk about AI and how it’s being positioned and how he believes and I have my own opinions but how he believes that it’s not what people think it is. He has been thinking about this for, for a while and he’s done conference presentations, he’s worked in high finance on Wall street and things in behind the scenes with system thinking about this stuff at conferences with people and he’s sought after on this topic and he’s going to give you some different ways to think about it and how as a society, humanity, how we can move forward and prepare for it and have meaningful lives with a tool that’s so powerful.
And we’re going to talk about what it is, why it’s powerful, but what it is not and why maybe they’re talking about it the way it is. The other thing is we talk about distributed mesh networks. What this love pod is, he has a mobi phone which is a de googled phone so that you can have a privacy. It worked great with this, this which is amazing. I’ve been sharing this with people as far as it being a distributed mesh network. It also fixes the EMF problem because it changes the frequencies and so it doesn’t hurt you at the cellular level, it doesn’t coagulate your blood.
People need to learn about this. I’ll have the link below about this as well. It’s a, it’s a router it allows you to connect nine devices. It’s a distributed mesh network. It’s amazing. It’s only 200 plus a data package. It’s a satellite phone for a heck for nine devices, for a heck of a lot less money. I will have the link below for that. But he has a MOBI phone, which is part of the Bastion project that allows you to de Google your life. It’s all about privacy. Instead of having Google control you, you control you.
That’s the point of this. And you know what? We’re not looking to get rid of all these major companies. We’re asking them to start treating people like human beings and that they’re not there to be tyrants and to take away our free will and what makes us humans right, they, they’re trampling all over our basic human rights and we need to push back. And these kind of tools help us push back and tell them enough. You don’t get to tell us we’re not sovereign human beings. We have the right to have free will. We have the right to have privacy.
We have the right that everything our constitution put in God gave us these rights. You don’t have the right to take it away from us. That’s what these moves do. This is what we could. With enough of us do this, it’ll put them on notice and they’ll start changing and maybe there’ll be competition, which is such a great thing. So I’ll have the links below for all of that. The MOBI phone, the love pod. And I hope you really look into that and I hope you enjoyed this conversation with Daniel Satchkoff. He’s really, really smart. And maybe you’ll get another way to think about AI.
Okay, here’s my conversation with Daniel Satchkoff. Hi, Daniel. Welcome back to the program. Hi, Sarah. Thank you for having me. Well, I’m always happy to have you. You have an amazing brain. And we’re going to talk about, we’re going to talk about a lot of things, but I want to ask you about AI because you have an interesting perspective. You’re an expert at AI. You’ve had, you’ve done conferences and you’re, you’ve been sought after to talk about AI and your view of where things are going versus the propaganda media is completely different. Can you tell me what you think? You know, it’s powerful, but what really is it which I have my own opinions.
And what are they, what are they going to do? Yeah. So first of all, I should be clear that we will use the term AI because it’s kind of accepted, we lost that battle. But it is not intelligence. We have to be clear that it is not intelligence in any way, shape or form. Because to me, intelligence is something that is creative, essentially creative, right? That asks questions, that doesn’t just fulfill some kind of like task. And that’s what AI is. AI is something that will fulfill a task. Now it’s sometimes it’s uncanny and very powerful and scary, but it is not intelligent.
It doesn’t, it doesn’t make choices, it doesn’t choose to pursue anything. It really. And it doesn’t create anything anew, which I believe that humans can. That real creativity, you know, is only a human trait. It is not a trait of a machine. And the problem, right, and there are lots of problems this AI thing presents. One of the problems I will say at the outset is that many people, most people in the news in this current civilization have been taught to be non creative. It used to be, it used to be that paradoxically, right. I would say like, you know, 100 years ago, a couple hundred years ago, many people were creative in their own right.
If you actually, you know, think of like times couple hundred years ago, you had to be creative in, in your, in your food, in your culture because you didn’t have all the, not everybody listened to one artist. There was no way to distribute that. So every village had their own artists. Basically everything was a very human pursuit. But we’re living in a civilization where many people lost any kind of creativity. And now we will talk about that a little bit. But I think that’s, that’s the real threat is that people have been this, this civilization made people into machines so that now machines can truly replace people.
Now machines cannot replace creative people. But people that we have today, they have been trained today, they’re unfortunately, many of them are replaceable, very many, even more advanced people. Pursuits like a lot of the medical industry and some of this stuff because they’ve been so systematized versus being in algorithm, algorithm wherever human beings have been taught to work with the algorithm. And a lot of the schooling now if you go to school, you’re really just taught to follow algorithms. But what results is that? You, you are highly replaceable. And then when students use ChatGPT to write a paper and it gets a good grade, what they have to think about is like, well, why are you even needed? Why do you even need that degree? If a computer can do this job better than you at following an algorithm, which it definitely is, then what are you doing? Then you’re not doing the right thing.
So the problem we have today is I would say I don’t know what percentage, but 80, 90 to more percent of people are just not even doing what humans are supposed to be doing. So the whole civilization rerouted the resources that are learning and our attention and our effort into doing things that really are not worth human time. And then machines really replace people. Yeah, well, and in our whole education system, you made me think about something, is that we are, we put this, this reward, this social reward at going to school to learn how to follow an algorithm.
Whereas some things like building a house and some of these created. I’m like, you can’t automate those jobs, but we’ve somehow made the jobs that you can automate more prestigious than the ones you can’t. And there’s something backwards with this. Exactly. And that’s why for a longest time people thought that, hey, when AI comes, it will replace like the, the blue collar workers, but the office workers, the intellectual class is not going to be replaced. It’s actually exactly the opposite. It’s exactly the opposite because when you’re building a house, like you said, you are way more creative almost always versus somebody who does like marketing, you know.
And so people are shocked to learn that, hey, I thought I was like at the top of the ladder, but in fact AI is coming for those jobs first. We’re going to see brutal, just brutal changes. People will be left with, you know, out of a job, unemployable, probably because of their skill set very soon. And we will see this like in the next couple of years. People just don’t realize what these models are capable of. So when I’m saying they’re not intellect, don’t mistake that for me saying that, well, they cannot do anything. No, no, they’re incredibly powerful weapons.
I would say AI is like a weapon of mass destruction in the sense that it will destroy businesses. Right. And it’s, it’s immensely powerful. Obviously it’s a weapon of mass destruction in a real sense too, because all the wars will be fought with it. But it is not intelligent. It’s not intelligent. That’s where I think a lot of the people in the community of authors that sort of see through a lot of the lies, the whole. Let me get, let me get water. This is an important point. So many people who see through many of the lies, they fall, I believe, prey to this mystique of AI because it just sounds so cool and it’s such a scary kind of thing, like A fear porn, if you will, where this AI think it’s sentient, it’s alive, it’s demonic, and all this stuff.
And people really like to talk about it because it’s so mysterious. Now, I’m not gonna go into demonic. I’m not qualified to, like, you know, really judge about the spiritual world. But. But the point about it is that it’s an algorithm, a very powerful one. And my opinion has been for a long time that not only is it going to disrupt things, not only is going to change the, the economies and so on, it’s also being groomed to be kind of the fall guy, meaning that. Think about it this way, for years, you build up this AI in movies and everything, that it’s going to be smart, it’s going to take over the world, it’s going to destroy all of us and rule all of us because it’s 100 times smarter than a human.
And then let’s say that you need banks to stop working for some reason for a while. Wouldn’t it be convenient if it was rogue AI that went rogue? And then it’s such an easy scapegoat, and then we have to all come together and we have to really lock down and whatever, go in lockstep, you know what I mean? Like, we got to put our arms around each other. Yeah, well, and AI does. Unless you program it, if you give it the parameters that allows it to do something like that, then it could. But as long as you don’t tell it to go do stuff, it won’t.
That’s right. That, that is essentially right, because it doesn’t have a power of choice. That’s, that’s the point. It will have a power of choice only if you supply it with, you know, basically choices and training. It needs to be trained. It will not. All this mythology about how it’s sentient and how it will develop and it, it doesn’t want to be shut down. Right. The fact that it will express a. A feeling that it doesn’t want to be shut down is not really, you know, that that’s not meaningful because it could have probably acquired it in training.
Now when it learns skill from the scratch and it mass like, well, that’s what human beings do. That’s what intelligence is. I choose to go learn that to achieve that goal. So power of choice and power of setting goals is human. That’s creative. It doesn’t do that. But what I fear. What I fear is that a lot of people, we even see through a lot of the Lies on the banking side and so on, they fall prey to this, you know, mystique of AI. And I really want to warn people that just like with, you know, just like with aliens, it’s going to be.
It’s just such a perfect ruse to hide behind God. That is, and I mean it is, it can automate jobs and it’s an amazing tool actually if you use it. But, and it can automate jobs, but in a lot of ways it can free us to be more human, human oriented if we do this right. Because it frees, because it can’t be creative. Even marketing, like you say marketing, the more creative aspects of marketing and, and figuring out different ways that humans could evolve is not something it can automate. It’s true. And I think that, you know, if, if we change the way and this is a call to, I think to every parent, even to every adult who educates themselves.
You know, I, I educate myself all the time. I mean for years and years and years I always take new courses, I read new books. And specifically with the goal of learning something and getting better at what I think is for learning, we need to understand that much of what we are used to think of as schooling, as education is actually not worth it because computers will do it much, much better. And so we need to develop skills that are in particular, I think what we talked about is choice, power of choice. But power of choice presupposes power of will.
So training willpower. We have exactly the opposite in the society now. Think about what all the social media, a lot of the people are addicted to the degree they have never been addicted before. And addiction, essentially erosion of willpower. So the, the only way to survive and if you want your kids to survive in the society that is coming very, very soon. And by survive, I mean that first of all, just like that they’re needed by somebody that they can like earn something for the, you know, very, very simple, let’s take a very low level that they can earn a living.
In order to do that they need to be human, they need to have skills to, to do things and, but they start with willpower. So, and I think a lot of the society now where people are just driven by impulses and emotions, they’re going to be swept away because they’re not gonna, they’re not gonna be able to say, you know what? I see that there’s a problem here. Let me make a conscious decision, a willful decision to pursue this and, and do something that, that’s different. Most people cannot do that Right now they’re just. They’re already stuck in that rut.
And when they find that, you know, I don’t know what’s going to happen when they find out that they’re not needed. Well, they won’t know what to do. But that comes because we’ve been training people to think, like you said, in an algorithm or a rote. They’re doing mechanical type positions and a lot of people don’t realize they are. And paradoxically, the things that don’t seem mechanical at all, which is like a lot of the artists. That’s right. They actually are mostly mechanical. And you find out by. By, you know, basically AI taking over those positions.
That’s right. But building a home, the trades, all that stuff is. We can’t automate it. I mean, you can automate to a certain degree, but the creative aspect, like you can do printing out, you know, with the. The, what do you call it, the 3D printers and stuff, you can print, but they can’t really do it the way that you would want a custom house to be built. I mean, I’m just using that as an example. It’s very difficult. This could be anything. This could be things like, you know, you’re. You have a family and you grow food or you cook food for them.
That’s essentially. There’s so much there. There’s a creative, spiritual. That’s right. That is not really replaceable. A quick break to remind you that you need to protect your assets. We’re in a period of financial instability. The markets, the entire world is resetting. There is an attack on our dollar. We will be seeing change like we haven’t seen in maybe hundreds of years. The whole geopolitical chessboard is shifting around and you want to protect your assets with gold and silver. The central bankers are accumulating gold and silver like never before. The prices have been manipulated and suppressed.
It is never more important to secure your assets. Getting into gold and silver and I use Miles Franklin. Why? Because they are the best in the industry. They give you the best prices and they give you the best service. Many companies out there charge you premiums of over 10% and they do not give you anywhere near the service that you’re going to get for Miles Franklin. If you tell them Sarah sent you, you email them@infoiles franklin.com tell them that I sent you. Tell them Sarah sent you and they will give you a private price list. What you see on the Internet is not what you can get.
If you email them and tell them that I sent you. And you want access to their private price list because they can’t advertise these prices to the world because it’s their competitive advantage. Okay, make sure you send an email to info miles franklin.com and tell them that Sarah sent you and you want access to that private price list. Okay, let’s get back into the show. And it used to be that old people took pride in it. It was very important for families. Now it’s like, you know, get fast food or whatever. So they’re giving up that part of the humanity to go into this kind of automated world, the algorithm.
Algorithm world because what is fast food? It’s algorithm applied to food. Well, could we and that. Go ahead? Yeah. I mean you could automate the bill, you could automate the cooking of a creative dinner, but you still have to feed it in and things. I mean that could be our future. Yeah, but part of the creative dinner is that there’s a surprise and then there’s like a connection and then it’s thoughtfulness that you think about your family, who’s there and you actually change things around and you try to. It’s, it’s special. So it’s, this is what humanity is.
Also education. A lot of the education, you can automate the algorithmic part, but a lot of the person to person interaction because education we’ve been thinking about, okay, education is learning some skills, but that’s not a real education. That’s, that’s like, you know, job training. What you want is education. A lot of it is about teaching a person to have will, to have decision making power. Teaching a person to have control of their emotions. That’s the real education. Teaching a person to act in the face of uncertainty. Because that’s, that’s the real world, that’s the non algorithm world where humans can excel.
But then you take all that away from. And I wonder that, I mean, I don’t wonder. I know it was done on purpose. You take all that humanity away and then you become replaceable. Then you’re a slave. Then, then like, then you can do nothing. There’s nothing. And, and people think that. Well, just because I understand that they’re trying to, let’s say poison us or kill us, but that, you know that, that, that’s not enough. Okay, so you understand. But what are you gonna do when you’re out of a job and your kids are crying? You need food.
You’re gonna go to get the cbdc, you’re gonna go to get the stamp. You have no choice. You didn’t develop. You didn’t. You didn’t prepare. You didn’t develop the skills. Most people think of preparation as like storing food and ammo, which is great, I guess, but the main preparation is understanding the kind of world you’re in, developing the skills for you and, and, and your, your kids and so on. And I fear that’s what’s lost. And talk about AI, Everybody’s just fascinated. Oh look, you know, it’s like mesmerize, like a snake, you know, hyp. Hypnotizing you.
And yes, it’s very powerful. People forget first of all the massive limitations that the thing has, that AI has. But also they don’t understand that there, the people behind AI are really very cunning, smart people and they will use it, they will use it as a cover, as a cover to do almost anything. For example, you know, right now search engines are already rigged. But at the very least when you search you can say, oh, I see, it’s printed by this website. I don’t really trust them. Or you know, so you can, you have some power of choice left.
Imagine when people more and more switching to AI to ask questions. AI is like an oracle. It’s like God, it just tells you. It doesn’t tell you the sources, it doesn’t tell you competing points. It just tells you. And so if people accept that for convenience sake, then basically there’s one more barrier less that’s right. To enslave you. Because getting, you know, actually choosing to consume certain kinds of information, thinking about it, that’s a very powerful choice. Once you, in the name of efficiency, give that to AI, that’s one more thing where tomorrow he’ll tell you to go kill yourself.
You know, I’m just exaggerating. But that’s not. You’re not actually. Because I had Eric meter on and he actually had that some of the teenagers are getting some of them. Yes, he does that already. But, but did it will do much more things that are much less obvious. And I think that what we need to think about instead of being mesmerized. And also I really don’t believe in this thing where it’s like demonic and it’s got conscience and it’s evil and it’s like, you know, all this stuff because that just takes, takes us away from real problems.
The real problem is. I agree with that. Yeah, we’re coming into a world that is going to change so dramatically where it’s gonna make many people useless to the point where like people think about, well, it’s going to be totalitarian and we’re going to oppress. But like a person that is useless, you don’t even need to oppress them. Like why would you. They’re just useless. They, they have no bargaining power. They can do nothing. You don’t need to oppress. Well, that’s the sad part. Okay? They’re calling people who don’t have a skill that can provide, they’re calling them useless eaters.
That’s why I don’t like the term useless, but it’s. You’re using it in a different context. You’re saying this is not a good thing. Useless eaters is what Klaus Schwab and company called them. And that we need to get rid of the useless eaters. That’s the deep. That’s the whole point that I’m making, is that I know that’s why press upon us that we need to find uselessness in each one of us and you know, get rid of it so that we’re smarter, so that we’re more creative, so that we have decision making power, we have more will and so on.
And so when I say useless, I don’t speak about, well, I’m not useless, but that person is useless. I’m just saying together, right? And I, I’m guessing that all the people who are listening to your show, they’re already aware to these, about these problems. But what I’m saying is awareness itself is not enough. We can be aware to the highest degree, but if we’re not acting, if we’re not active, we’re saying, look, this is what they’re going to do. Well, let me do the opposite. Let me prepare the skills. Let me prepare. And the skills is not the right word because skills implies now like algorithmic training, the tools, kind of the toolkit, the human toolkit, that’s, you know, and the human toolkit is not just about feelings.
It’s also about willpower. It’s also about, you know, true creativity, discipline, setting a goal, you know, and if we had more people like that in the world, it would be infinitely harder for them to take it, take it over and also AI. Then, then people would see through the AI charade because right now they’re mesmerized by AI doing some algorithmic things like, you know, writing a business plan or something like that. But you know, when I did an mba, I later realized how useless all that, all that is. But that’s like not a human activity. I’m sorry, I’m sorry to all of you who studied me.
I Also did. And I tried very hard, but it’s not a highly human. I’m not saying it’s completely useless. Well, there’s creative elements of figuring out how to, you know, because I taught entrepreneurship and I’ve done all the same things you. Okay, so. But there’s a creative endeavor of figuring out what humans need. Where’s the future going, how do we best craft it for humanity, that blah, blah, blah. Then there’s this, the rote skills behind that. It’s a difference. Yeah, no, I’m not saying you don’t need the skills at all. What I’m saying is that we need to see what the world, the world that’s coming to is that we’re going to have these machines that will not only they will take over large parts of the economy, but they will dumb everything down.
And that’s more. That’s the thing. AI is not a demonic force that will take over the world. It’s actually quite the opposite. It’s this boring, dull sludge that will just dumb everything down. Now why are they going to dumb everything down? Because machines require creative human input to, to learn. They’re trained. They’re trained. And it’s not. Learning is not the right word. They don’t really learn anything. In neural networks, there’s an example, there’s something called adversarial examples. Have you heard of that? No. Explain what that. Adversarial examples is where you can take something that should be very obvious to a human and even a very sophisticated neural network will make a mistake.
Like you take a picture of a monkey and you just change some pixels imperceptibly and the neural network will say that, you know, it’s a cat. Even though the neural network is highly sophisticated, image recognition neural network, it’s got its weak spots. So that particular thing, adversarial examples, shows us that they don’t really learn anything. Because once a child learns what a monkey is, it’s not going to mistake a monkey for a cat if it’s obviously a monkey. But these models can, because they don’t learn anything. They had their mathematical structures to do things, so. That’s right.
You know, we have to understand that they have these like massive, kind of massive weaknesses and all this, all this scary stuff is really to. Basically a lot of it is like propaganda and submission by fear. Right? Well, they don’t learn things holistically. Hear them? Yeah. Well, what I want to say to get back to the monkey thing, they don’t learn it holistically, so they don’t understand like a child then looks at the bigger. The overall holistic learning is the only learning. Everything else is not learning. Yeah, well, but you know. Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.
It looks, it looks at the details until it. And so if there’s any details that are off, it just doesn’t look at it as a big picture. It just doesn’t know how to do that. It does not. These models do not learn. But they will take in input to train. Right. And what’s going to happen is as they took over more and more part of the society. Of course there’s a lot of mediocre work out there, but they’re also going to be people left behind that are brilliant, that produce content, that actually taught these models and these people are going to be displaced.
So what is the model going to learn? It’s going to multiply. Multiply mediocrity. Because it will produce mediocrity itself. It’s going to be, you know, that’s kind of fear like idiocracy. People think it’s going to be something that will develop into this demigod. No, no, it’s going to be quite the opposite. We’re going to have a sludge where sludge of. No, no idea. Content of mediocrity, of wort salad. You know, that we’re going to be stuck in mediocre. That’s going to be the night. To me that’s hell. Like you can never have excellence. You’re stuck with crap.
I know. The problem is that now imagine people, children being trained on that crap. So they’re, they’re going to lose ability to recognize beauty, to recognize original thinking because they’re just not. They haven’t seen it. It’s going to look alien to them. So our goal to as much possible now and for our kids to actually have, have original thinking to stay away more than ever, to stay away from algorithms more than ever, you know, more than ever to like, if you’re, if you’re learning math, don’t sit there and learn how to do calculations. You know, do creative stuff that by the way, these AI models, another very interesting fact that people don’t know large language models which are the most popular kind of AI now they’re horrible at math.
Like ChatGPT, which is a, you know, a massive. If you think of the number of parameters. I forgot how many billion parameters it has. Basically it’s like every time you ask a question, you know, it uses, you know, $100,000 of computing power. Or more. But they’re horrible at math. And I, I read a study, I forgot which university was. But they try to learn. They, they try to teach large language models to be good in math. Amazingly, the only way they were able to do that is by model. Millions of examples just for simple addition and subtraction.
They should be able to isolate. From a programming standpoint, they should be able to isolate that question and put it into a. Calculate. But anyways. But it’s not, it’s not a calculator. It’s a language. I know, I know. It’s a language model. But they should be able to do a hybrid. But anyways, keep going. And they will, they’re gonna, they are gonna do a hybrid. So in the end, what they’re gonna have is they’re, they’re gonna have very powerful AI. I’m not saying they will not, because they’ll have like an oracle will have a thing that will accept.
And they will say, okay, now I’m going to pass it to the calculator. This is a job for the calculator. That’s right. This is the job for this thing. But if you really think about it, that that is even a further step down because that’s. Now human, Human brain is holistic. We don’t have like section of our brain that does this. And let’s send it to the calculator. Let’s send it here. It’s actually holistic because that’s why, for example, math. Math is incredibly beautiful. It’s like poetry. There was a joke about one German mathematician. They asked him, remember, you had this promising student, you know, where did he go? He said, oh, he didn’t have enough imagination.
He became a poet, you know, so math, it can be very beautiful. It can, you know, it really requires a lot of imagination. A lot of artists, as accounting. Yeah. And then they’ve taken a lot of musicians. A lot of artists are mathematicians. Yeah. Music especially. Yeah. So my main thesis is that let’s, let’s really relax on this. AI is going to take over the world. Whatever they’re trying to push, because I really think that all it’s going to do is going to be the fall man for whatever, you know. Banks didn’t open today, Jose. I went rogue, you know.
Right. They can just blame it on, oh, the system crashed or the AI just wasn’t cooperating. So what can people do to understand this? Because that’s the disconnect is they’re getting all this information that is. It drives me nuts. What I’m hearing it’s like, oh, that’s just so wrong. So how can people, what can they do? I think that the first thing is you have to be critical. You have to remove this kind of awe that we have of these models. Yes, they’re powerful. Yes, they can do amazing things. But, you know, so can a bulldozer.
You know, a bulldozer can do things that humans cannot. And once upon a time it seemed amazing. And many people thought that those kinds of machines are, are going to be the answer to everything. It’s just a phase, right? Don’t fall for it. Remove the mystique from it. It’s an algorithm. Yes. You don’t understand it probably. I built many of these algorithms, I still don’t understand it. These neural network methods, it’s very spooky because it’s not very clear. You don’t actually write out the math. Just, you know, neural network just does a lot of learning, or not learning, but a lot of kind of iterations.
It’s just a massive computing power thrown at the problem. Yeah, but forget the mystique and then think about, okay, try to use your intelligence, true intelligence, to think about what’s going to happen tomorrow, what’s going to happen a year from now, what skills do you need? And develop those skills, but also develop the kind of the agency, the willpower to go ahead and say, you know what, I’m going to go in that direction, I’m going to learn it. And I will not be dissuaded by the fact that, you know, it’s hard or that machines can do it.
You have to basically identify areas where machines are helpless. And some of those areas are actually not, you know, not skills at all. They’re like empathy. You know, we need to have more connection, become a really good educator. I think people think that AI will be the, the teacher, but actually think good teachers will be in massive demand because people will aren’t learning already. They think that teaching is like showing skills, whereas teaching really is developing a person, developing willpower, creativity, emotional control. And people like that will be very, very rare. And you know what? Most people can develop these skills so you can learn it and you can teach it to others.
So there are plenty of things that you can think of that will give you something valuable in this world and will not be disrupted by AI. Okay, so you’re also, let’s pivot here. You’re also working on a phone that. It’s called Moby. Right? What does it do? Yeah, we have, I mean, first of all, so it’s part of the Bastion project that I’ve been working on for many years. It’s a bastion decentralized social network that has been growing a great deal. It’s basically a record activity. Now Bastion is a social network that is meant to have no central servers.
So we’re concerned with centralization of power and also vulnerability. Like if AI decides to be a hacker and disrupt some, you know, Internet communications just happens to want to do that so that people can exchange information. And, and we need some laws that will. With Internet, by ID or something. Right, whatever. There’ll be a lot of disruptions. Like obviously China is a model in that regard. We know that in China you can’t get access to a lot of the information because a lot of the things are banned and then block and so on. But we build Bastion to overcome that.
So there’s a Bastion application. I’ll send you a link, you can download it. That works even when Internet is disrupted because it doesn’t go through the HTTPs or even it doesn’t go through the old DNS system. It connects directly to the nodes around the world, and that’s the essence of the Bastion. And Bastion has over a million active users worldwide now. It’s been growing a lot. Yeah, I’m on Bastion. I get quite a bit of listeners on there and I follow you there. That’s awesome. So I hope everybody goes there and uses it. But you also had a country in Europe that went down and Bastion is how they were communicating.
Can you talk about that in Central Asia, Kazakhstan actually, incidentally, country where I’m from, they had these political events where Internet was shut down. They had like a revolution basically going on and Internet was not working. But unbeknownst to them, Internet was actually operational. What wasn’t working is a DNS system. They shut down the DNS system. Like Google people using Bastion app, they were able to watch all the videos, understand what’s going on in their city and in the country. Even though most of the neighbors had no information at all, they were just sitting there. I mean, they didn’t know who’s in power.
Is it the old power? Is it the new power? Because everything was cut off, but Bastion application was working. That’s, that is so awesome. And that’s what, you know, I was telling you about LovePod too, because it, it can work for folks, because I have a lot of people who are buying these. It can work. Moby and the Bastion app can all work over this. So yeah, I was amazed by the net mesh Networking as you told me, that part of the, the love pod, the mesh networking has been something, something we’ve been thinking about for a long time.
Because I believe it will come to that. Not because I think the, that it’s all doom and gloom and we’re going to be in Mad Max, you know two no, but, but I think that as the inevitable processing processes unfold in order to communicate more freely in certain cases you’ll really need mesh networks. You will will. And the grid down situation, you just won’t have those issues. That’s another one. And private net, you’ll have the private data, you won’t have the grid down. And then you’ll have phones and applications like yours. I mean we’re moving to a more secure, stable environment if we embrace this and if we’re free environment.
Yeah. And Bastion Moby is another outshoot of that project. It’s basically a de Googled phone which there are some out there. We take the phone, we found a really good producer of phones that we remove the operating system and add our own custom operating system. But it’s based on Lineage os. Most people who kind of think about the Google phones, they have heard of Lineage. It removes all the Google trackers and so on. The real, you know, the real question is like why do you need such a phone? Most people don’t understand, they think, well, because I’m, you know, I’m not going to be tracked.
And it’s true. On Bastion Mobi you will not be tracked while on the regular Android you will be. But tracking is actually not the main problem because there’s a lot of us and you know, I think that it’s very good to get away from the surveillance. Very good. But more importantly we have a lot of situations where provide creator of the film manufacturer of the phone or an operating system would remotely change some features. I’ll give you an example. In China during COVID there were massive protests. Just huge unheard of for China for a long time.
And because they shut down the Internet which is what they always do when they want to subdue the population, people would use iPhones and iPhones has this function which is called I forgot what it’s called. It’s basically a mesh network just like the device you showed me. Now iPhone has a built in mesh network so iPhones can connect among each other and it’s very effective. So protesters in China started using it very effectively. What happened was within days Apple remotely pushed an update to these phones and deactivated that feature. Only for China Well, China made them do that.
If you don’t do this, Apple, you can’t sell in our country. Well, I feel very, very, very, very, very little sympathy for them, but that’s what happened. I’m just saying. Yeah. You know, if they lost 10 out of like, you know, 12 zeros that they have, I know they’re the largest company in the world, not be poor, and they would be able to take at least a minimal stand. My sense, actually allow the people to protest. I. I think that you’re probably partially right, but I would go much further. I think that this kind of, you know, fighting between China and America, I think a lot of it is theater.
I really think that is not. Is the. You think that Chinese Communist Party had to really twist some arms at Cupertino to make them do that? I say no. I say they gladly did it. Maybe they even did it themselves preemptively, because they feel like they’re in the same boat. They’re all authoritarians. They’re coming. They’re bringing in the same system. Why would they allow that system to be toppled in China if they want to bring the same thing? I agree. Although I’m going to defend Apple just a tad bit. They’re the only mainstream platform that didn’t cut me off, didn’t, you know, deplatform me.
And they kept me on the whole time. Sure. And as. And they were pushing just because I know some people inside, they were pushing, we will stay utility based. So I’m like, wow, they actually are looking at just being a utility now. That’s. I’m not. That’s. They. They have a bigger feather in their cap than Google does. Google was like, all in. Now, that being said, I’m not super naive. You can also argue that Google’s operating. I mean, the fact that we’re able to create the Google phones also partially because Google, at least once upon a time, was more open than.
So, yeah, that’s right. I wasn’t even gonna. Naive, right? Yes. Yeah, I wasn’t gonna. It’s not about Apple. What I’m saying is that there are. There are plenty of situations where people buy a phone and then they find that some function doesn’t work more so it stops working at a critical time. And I know that in Russia, for example, many people bought expensive phones, and due to sanctions, China remotely turned off certain functions, like some phones, lost the ability to call. To call, to use phone calls. You pay $800 for a phone and you can’t call anymore because somebody remotely Decided that for whatever reason that you shouldn’t have that feature.
Now is that reasonable for you to pay hundred. Because people pay a lot of money. That’s right. That’s right. I get worried that they’re bringing those attitudes here and I think that China has factions too. Right. But we don’t want that brought here. That lack of fundamental human rights, we do not want that exported around the world. Exactly. And I think that the, the issue with ability. So you, you pay for a phone, it tracks you all day long, it geofencing and all that. We know that these phones do that. Right. If you’re whether using Apple or Android, they’re tracking your geolocation.
So if there was a situation where they needed to track you, that you came in contact with some person, maybe you need to be quarantined. If there was a hypothetical situation like that, that phone will provide the data for them. They will tell that you were there at a certain spot. The Google phone will not. But more importantly, beyond surveillance, you’re paying a bunch of money for the phone that will surveil you, but also can stop working at a certain critical time is that they did with the protesters. For a tool that doesn’t even belong to you.
Sebastian Moby is a phone that we created that removes all those things. It’s not possible for an owner of the operating system or Google to, to or manufacturer to do anything remotely. Well, and this is the concept. Well, hold on, I want you to hold your thought. The concept is, and this is what I think people lose track of, I have the right to control my own behavior. You don’t have the right to centrally control what I do. It’s a fundamental philosophical difference that most people in our country, in society glaze over and don’t realize. This is the issue.
They are controlling what you’re able to do. It’s a fundamental freedom. Right. And they don’t realize that they’re keeping that tether on you and they can’t, they don’t absorb what that means. Yeah, it’s part of the same conditioning we talked about in regards to so called AI. People are taught that, well, you need to have, you know, an Apple or Android phone and the fact that they surveil you, what are you going to do? There’s nothing you can do. The fact that they can change something remotely on your phone, well, you have to sort of submit to that.
But you know, I think that part of being a human, especially in this new age, is that hey, we have enough agency to decide, you know, What? I don’t want to do that. Why would I allow you to, why would I pay you money to let you do that to me? And I can see paying some money to upgrade the phone to fix a patch. You know, I, we have an air. We have a problem with the. We have to allow them to, we don’t have to. We can use an old version that has a bunch of bugs in it, but.
So we want the ability to fix bugs, but we don’t want them to take away functionality. Yeah, but the problem with fixing bugs is that you never know what bug they’re fixing. Maybe from their standpoint it’s a bug. From your standpoint, it’s a feature. That’s why you need to open operate, that’s why you need decentralized and open projects. And that’s what, you know, what I think is important that one of the things that I really focused on for the last eight years with a lot of like minded people is that we’re working on making decentralized technology as easy and intuitive to use, as centralized.
So that, you know, it used to be that, hey, decentralized, it must be clunky. It must be for tech geeks. No, no, it doesn’t have to be. It’s not a real choice. The choice is really whether you are just like go with the flow because you have no willpower and you don’t believe you have agency in this world. You just have to do what you’re told. You’re told to buy this phone or that phone or you’re gonna say, you know what, yeah, I think that I don’t like that. I’m gonna, you know, if I pay money, I’m gonna do that.
And that’s really, that’s why that phone exists. When you, when you, and we created a phone, by the way, Bastion Mobi is not that expensive. It’s under $500. Which you, considering the fact that you have to get a phone, you have to create an operating system and you have to change it and ship it and logistics, it’s not a whole lot. What we want is for people to have ability and then really start thinking about those things. Because it starts with a smartphone. Because smartphone, let’s face it, today it’s like part of you, right? It’s with you everywhere.
So if you, if you don’t start by having some agency and having some control over your smartphone, what will you control? You will control nothing. Because most of these things are closer, are further away from you. Right? The smartphone is a thing that’s now with you all the time that can, you know, potentially remotely do anything, turn off certain functions, you know, record or, and, and, or explode like in Lebanon, you know, sorry, I’m not laughing at that, but I’m just saying that people have to understand that it’s a tragedy, but the tragedy is that people also think about these devices and they don’t understand and hold on a second.
What do you think about the fact I’m often behind the scenes? People tell me that I’m gonna, I’m geeking out by having these conversations. I’m like, what do you mean geeking out? These are the, these are changing the world. And we are programming people to think that, to not talk about these topics because it’s nerdy or it’s geeky and they, it’s affecting their whole life. It’s changing the world. The top 10 companies in the world, except Saudi Arabia, Ramaco, are all big tech working in this direction. And the fact that our culture still teaches people that you are somehow not cool and you’re not to get involved in the most important things that are changing the world today.
What do you think about that cultural stupidity? Well, I think that again it’s part of the paralysis of will. We’ve been taught that education is learning skills that basically a news is consuming information. Basically your spoon fed, you know, whatever. Yep. That you know, basically you go with the flow and you do what you’re told. And the smart smartphone is just one of those things. Of course we launched it and we believe it’s important, but there are, there are many, many features that surround you. Like if you’re using, let’s say Facebook still. Why, why would you do that? Basically you’re admitting that you don’t have agency and capacity to decide in your world because they’re putting all these limits.
They, you know, it’s proven fact that they misinformed you about most important things, that they’re hiding information that is valuable that might be interesting to you and yet you still continue to use it. You’re just admitting like you’re basically saying, look, do with me whatever you want. And I think that it’s same thing with, you know, basically preparing yourself for the new age of this kind of AI takeover. It’s, it’s same thing with surveillance. I mean if you’re, if you’re worried about surveillance, where would you start? You start with your smartphone because that’s the thing you carry around with you all the time.
It can, you can listen. I mean there’s been many Proven situations where it can, you know, turn on certain functions remotely. And I’m not saying you are. People say, well, I’m not that important. Well, maybe you’re not and maybe I’m not. But I think it’s a statement where if you’re carrying with you something all the time that you don’t control, you don’t know what it does. I mean, think about it. It’s a machine that, that can do a lot of things and yet you don’t know what it does. You don’t know what its operating system is.
You don’t know what it does when it does it. It can turn on, turn off, do whatever, whatever it pleases, just because it doesn’t do that right now or it didn’t do it in an obvious way. I think that that’s part of the, the kind of new responsibility we have to grow up. We’ve been trained like, like children in a bad way, basically. That’s right. Just do what you’re told and don’t ask questions. And that’s what you’re talking about. It’s not, it’s not that people cannot. Don’t have the capacity to understand technology at a basic level.
I think part of it is, is that they’re told, you know, like this is the accepted norm and this is what you do also. Part of it is they’re scared that, well, this is, you know, way above your head. But in reality, most of these things are. Many things are very obvious. Yeah, it’s not that hard if you start diving into it. You don’t have to know, get really detailed to understand. Well, sometimes you do, but in general you don’t have to. You can understand this. I just really appreciate it. We’re going to have the link so that people can get to Bastion, join Bastion, download the software app.
They can use it online or as an application. We have the link for the Mobi app. They can get it on, you know, wherever, whatever platform you’re watching this on. Also at my website, at sarah westall.com under this episode. And I’ll have all the links for people to get the phone to get Bastion to start moving in a different direction. I also have links so they can use the Love Pod. The combination of Moby and the Love Pod is pretty cool. I mean, that really moves you in the direction. So. Thank you so much, Daniel. I always appreciate.
I have to. Have we talked before in the past that I’d have you on regular to talk about different science topics. We need to do that. Yeah, let’s do that. And also next time, I didn’t have a time to mention that on Bastion there was a new app launched called Barteron. It’s a decentralized economy app that allows people to transact for fiat or silver or crypto or pocket coin, which is the cryptocurrency of Bastion. And it’s, it’s seen amazing growth in Eastern Europe. Basically there are 50 to 60 new sellers coming every day even though the app is just launched.
So we’re looking, you know, maybe one day I’ll talk about it because I believe having decentralized economy is one of those things about having the kind of the agency ability to decide who we deal with rather than feeding those supermarket chains which essentially kind of poison us and take our money and then use that money to further poison us. So the decentralized economy is one thing we didn’t discuss, but we did build that app. It’s also decentralized. It’s non corporate, it doesn’t have any profits, there are no fees. It’s just like it’s there for people to use.
And I’ll put the link on that as well. You can go and check it out. Called Barteron Club. Okay. Start posting there, you know, selling your stuff, exchanging things. Because I will. I do believe that we’re coming to a world where these things didn’t seem to matter, but they will matter very quickly. That’s right. When we see disruptions, when we see extreme censorship, all of a sudden it will matter. It will suddenly matter. So thank you so much, Daniel. Really appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you. Sa Sa.
[tr:tra].
Author
