230- Safeguarding Democracy in the Age of AI

Can artificial intelligence ever truly capture the essence of human experience? Join us on Politically High as we embark on a fascinating journey with Evan Jaqua, an AI expert who brings a unique perspective with his multicultural background and advanced studies in Japan. Together, we break down the complex world of AI, making it understandable and engaging for everyone. From the fundamentals of neural networks to the intricacies of parallel processing, Evan simplifies these technical marvels while sharing his diverse, global experiences.

We then navigate the emotional landscape, highlighting the irreplaceable value of personal relationships and human consciousness. Evan underscores AI's role as a tool, not a substitute for human decision-making and creativity. Through an exploration of AI's potential in art and therapy, we emphasize the limitations of AI in capturing the subtleties of human interactions. This discussion reveals the dual nature of AI—its extraordinary capabilities and significant constraints—offering a balanced view of its place in our lives.

As we move towards more societal implications, we delve into the importance of journalistic integrity and the potential misuse of AI by powerful entities. Evan shares innovative ideas on certifying journalists and ensuring judicial independence, advocating for measures that strengthen democracy and prevent the concentration of power. From the dangers of AI-generated misinformation to the necessity of political term limits, we address the pressing issues of our time. Finally, we celebrate the unique human traits that AI can never replicate, leaving our listeners with a renewed appreciation for human creativity and experience. Don't forget to like, subscribe, and share this episode to stay informed and inspired.

Follow Evan Jaqua at ...

https://www.solutionsparty.org/

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Chapters

• 0:14 Explaining Neural Networks and Artificial Intelligence
• 7:14 AI and Human Experience Comparison
• 21:48 The Role of AI in Creativity
• 27:12 The Limitations of AI in Communication
• 31:11 Certifying Journalists and Judicial Diversity
• 37:03 Media Certification and Unbiased Journalism
• 50:54 AI Misuse and Political Power
• 58:33 Human Superiority Over AI

Transcript

Elias Marty: 0:14

Welcome everyone to Politically High, except with the old stymies. I was stealing your current guest here. Why do I say that? Because it's the thing of the same season. It's not the first time it happened. I'm sure, thinking of this as a, I'm sure I'm going to butcher his name.

Evan Jaqua: 0:34

Kyle.

Elias Marty: 0:34

Luch, michael Luch, you want to put a little label string into it. It's too German for me. I know you might feel offended, but I don't think my thumbs up for the German language. I'm sure English is difficult for me as it is a Germanic group there. So there you go.

Elias Marty: 0:52

I don't hate yous people. Just be a little critical of the night. Okay, you're a lovely people. Okay, you're reading my shop. The Nazi is also as lovely as my. Just leave it at that. Before I derail this, which I tend to do sometimes, I have a great guest here. Yeah, let me go back to the tree space a little bit. Got to see his novel and politics. You don't start a studio but you can spend time for an AI that goes with it.

Elias Marty: 1:24

True focuses I love the focuses on spirituality or that, or just human development. I'm sure he does some emancipatory flexes for himself. I don't mind that. Hey, look, we human beings are interesting. I could just show up versus this box and just stay in that box, because that's sterilizing and that's that's messed up. Christmas is good at more than one thing. Let them shine in more than one area. Okay, and it's gonna bring jealousy sometimes, yeah, but deal with it. Jack Butler, it improved.

Elias Marty: 1:57

There's a lot of ways to learn Rice, I'll stop playing you. If you could feed your whole song. You could feed your skills and talents more, okay, instead of just going? Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

Elias Marty: 2:20

Ethan Chow, I'm sure I'm paraphrasing it. You run over us. Okay, it's not worth all the pain. I'm sure we got a lot of us out here on YouTube Focus on that, focus on support Too busy focusing on all that. And do rate us on social media, because the main show we're going to talk about today is AI and we'll see how it goes there.

Elias Marty: 2:40

To be honest, I don't care much. So this may be all, but still a very, very strange discussion. So are we all going to have to do this pretty? I always say blinded, but yeah, it's still a mystery. So we're going to see how it goes from here and I'm sure it's going to be great. So ask only faith. I have enough faith to know that it's going to be a great discussion. So, for once, the mystery is not certainly at all here. Very rare, only ball crap. But I really got to care for I got to care for that ABC right on the spot. So let's welcome back out of Dallas Englishway. My eyes roll. Hey, evan Jack, wow okay. Hey Evan Jack, wow Okay. You know he's a multicultural person, he knows what we're getting at here. He's French, he's a little child, he's a fan and stuff. Which country it was? Peru, mainly Peru, peru. Ah, the mountains.

Evan Jaqua: 3:46

Oh, yes, oh yeah, oh again.

Elias Marty: 3:49

Anyway. So it's multicultural. Okay, you don't have to prove that. I'm not sure if it's too soon, right? So what else do you want the audience to know about you?

Evan Jaqua: 3:59

Well, you know, as you mentioned, I lived in Japan many years and tying it into our subject of AI, my field actually, I actually got my master's degree in Japan in a field called parallel processing, which is a branch of computer science which sounds pretty sophisticated, but it's really not. Parallel processing means that instead of just having one processor, you have many processors attacking a given problem. That's what supercomputers are. Basically, your laptop is one processor. Well, a supercomputer can have millions, or well, maybe not millions, but thousands and thousands of processors, and they use that to take on very, very computationally difficult problems, very computationally difficult problems. Now, one of the things I did right out of graduate school is I went to work for a company that specialized. It made a special parallel processor, which again is just a computer with a lot of processors, specifically for a branch of computer science called neural networks. Now, neural networks form the basis of artificial intelligence. Now, what are neural networks? That sounds really fancy and I'm going to explain it in a very basic way. It's not even critical that you understand everything that I'm about to say, but basically, neural networks is a way to organize your ones and zeros, because all computers are just basically manipulators of ones and zeros. In fact, all you ever need to know about computers is one and zero. That's all they do. They just manipulate ones and zeros. They store huge amounts of ones and zeros and they manipulate huge amounts of ones and zeros, and they can do very useful things. Well, neural networks are just a way of organizing your ones and zeros in memory in such a way that you can actually train the neural network to learn. And how do you do that? Well, you give it an example of what it's supposed to recognize, suppose the letter A. Then you put in an example of a letter A and it outputs some garbage. And then what you do is you adjust the values of the ones and zeros in the neural network and then you put the A back in. And as you do that, you do a reiterative process. The neural network, eventually, the values change so that it can actually recognize the letter A. So basically, what you're doing is you're training it, and that just means you're giving it an example. You're doing is you're training it, and that just means you're giving it an example. You're giving it some data that it's supposed to recognize and you adjust the values until the neural network can start recognizing what you want it to recognize, and so that's basically all neural networks do. They're just a way of organizing your ones and zeros so that you can adjust those values of ones and zeros so that it starts to recognize what you want it to recognize, whether it be written language, verbal language, visual data, you name it. So it's really that Now, since I was in the field, it's advanced greatly, and the reason why it's advanced is because, for a number of reasons, the computational power that we have now computers are far, far, probably millions of times, more powerful than they were when I was working in the field.

Evan Jaqua: 7:14

Also, they've become very sophisticated. They've made progress in terms of optimizing the training. Something that's also very important is just pre-processing the data. You have to actually have the data in a format that the neural network can recognize in order for it to train it. You can't just throw any garbage in there. It has to be in a format that it's going to recognize, and so it's much more sophisticated now.

Evan Jaqua: 7:38

But I think what we you know, when you hear people saying that you know, well, gosh, it's got consciousness, it's you know, it's just like a human and all this stuff. What we really need to do and this is the most important thing I'm going to say today is we need to step back and ask ourselves what does it mean to be human? And this is the most important thing I'm going to say, and this is what I really want to emphasize. All of us, we humans, we're a combination of, let's say, three things Our genetics, our experiences and our relationships. But I'm going to focus on those last two Experiences and relationships.

Evan Jaqua: 8:14

Now, experiences start the second you're born the experience of being born, the experience of learning to crawl, the experience of learning to walk, the experience of learning to add, the experience of learning to add to learning to play the game, the experiences of getting angry, the experiences of falling in love, the experiences of knowing disappointment, the experience of being robbed or having a great success that test score. Experiences are one of the things that define us as humans, and the other thing are our relationships and the relationship you have, from the minute you're born, with the doctors and the nurses in the delivery room, your mother, your father, your siblings, your playmates, your classmates, your workmates, your teammates, even the guy who sells you the hot dog when you're walking through Central Park. Our relationships, even the very, very superficial ones also go to defining us as a person. I mean, like I say, maybe that guy who gave you his seat in the subway when he could see that you were limping, even though it was just an instantaneous interaction, goes to actually influencing you as a person. Or the guy who cut you off in traffic. You know you're never going to see him again, but those experiences and even the relationships you have traffic, you know you're never going to see him again, but those experiences and those, even the relationships you have, no matter how superficial, define us as people.

Evan Jaqua: 9:32

Now, what is so important here is that a neural network doesn't have either of those. It doesn't have any experiences. It's never experienced hate, it's never experienced disappointment, it's never experienced love, it's never experienced that feeling of you know well that guy charged me too much for the hot dog, or that guy was really nice, he lent me his cell phone when my battery died. It never is going to have any experiences like that. It's never going to have a relationship. It's never. It doesn't have any bonding with its mother or its father or its siblings. It's never going to experience anything like that. And so to compare a neural network to human is absolutely ridiculous, and I think that what we must keep in mind is that it comes down to this From my point of view and I know experts, you know, phds and neural networks might disagree with me, phds and neural networks might disagree with me, but when it all comes down to it, artificial intelligence is basically just a fancy party trick with a lot of, admittedly, useful applications, but we should not ever think that this is something that is approaching what it's like or anything that has consciousness and it's you know, it's going to replace us as humans.

Evan Jaqua: 10:47

Ai, just like any technology, can be used to supplement, to complement us, but it should never be used to replace us.

Evan Jaqua: 10:55

It should never be used to make critical decisions involving lots of people. It can help, but it should not be relied on 100%, because it doesn't have base of experiences and it doesn't have those bonds of relationships that help us, as humans, develop a sense of how to behave in certain situations. And so that's point number one. Now, point number two is that, yes, ai has a lot of very useful applications. Number two is that, yes, ai has a lot of very useful applications, but, just like any technology, technology has always been a double-edged sword, because people can use it for good, or people can use it for bad, just like. Let's look at nuclear power. You know it can be used for lots of good things, like generating electricity, but it can also be used to create nuclear bombs. And AI also has the potential to be used for very good applications or very bad applications. And before I go off into that, let me just go ahead and see if there's anything you want to add or have any questions.

Elias Marty: 12:02

Just not to say you brought a lot of good points to me. Ai is not going to be like us essentially, after you're saying well, love relationships or how to behave, experiences.

Elias Marty: 12:11

AI is just all, ai is just going to do various programs. It's going to do great photos. It's going to do great photos, right. It's not going to learn how to flirt with a girl, for example, unless you make a hat for that, unless you make an AI application for that, which people have made already. Shocker Uh, people are weird like that. They start to project on me and say I was being honest Like the whole, oh okay, gay, I, girlfriend, boyfriend, and it starts Say romantic, I'm just a little mad, but it's only for that. If you want to act professional, well, you could create an awkward situation with your job and you might be fine. So these AI applications, to this point, what we do is we're multifaceted. In our experiences, ai is, for the most part, or just special, to just do it at certain situations, and that's that and that's true. I think the only one that tried to gain sense and attempt it let's just say it was one of Google's shut down. It got shut down pretty quickly. I think that's the only move you're ever out. Ai's supposed to be gaining sense. I don't know how true that is, because all the documentation to the org of your fear is happening.

Elias Marty: 13:30

There was a lot of mischief in that article, and it's just you know the less so to your point. Ai, for the most part, is just a compliment. It's going to take me with the boring stuff we ate, like doing math or generating words. I'm going to do that. I'm going to do more creative things. I'm going to do things that are involved in elements that I think are useful for AI, since it's been a long time. The setting along the five minutes yeah, they're very good.

Elias Marty: 14:04

Public pictures for AI experts to person and, of course, blog researchers podcasts. One of them said that it's very good. It's excellent at doing tasks, but it's poor at doing the job. What does that mean? Job has multiple tasks. Again, if you want to AI app that also creates pictures and videos, it's going to do that with one tool. Why else would we want a pro presentation For the love of that? You're going to need a video adaptation or you're going to need someone who's actually good. So there is a brain vault and that's good at Species.

Elias Marty: 14:47

So he was a so very needed to your point and we have to be just Wipe away. Yeah, he's saying no, I was from the Terminator and I will walk in there, as a lot of people think that you're gonna take us. They take over and then I wipe us out. Look, I think those fears, the most part, are probably 10%. True, I think if that's what each other is, I could give them 10%. They can keep being irresponsible with it, yeah, but for the most part I think we're being pretty responsible for it. And all that. How many incidents are being already on the interception from the ad? It's sad. It's sadly.

Elias Marty: 15:25

This has made a tough decision to my primary key and ARC chocolate from. Well, actually, let me just frame this more precisely AI and SQL shouts right, it's just the losses want to be cheap and fire them. Alright, they want to save money. That's where it is right. And they had to retire and also speak back because they realized they need that human element of critical thinking, because you know, just because you tell AI to do it fast doesn't mean you see them do it perfectly.

Elias Marty: 15:54

You've got to pay attention to the tonality, you've got to pay attention to the words and it's not certain names wrong. I can say I myself for this podcast. I cannot correct named wrong. I can say I myself for this podcast. I cannot correct certain things. I can't say Leon, do it Disgusting, send it. No, I mean, my basic sound must have been that you have to make sure to hear out on the stage. Or, if you're going to do the same test, make sure you can make it clear with the box. That's the sound I'm speaking with. That's specific and clear. Okay, when I project a creative feature, I'll create the smart scene with Wi-Fi lanes, towers or something like that, or specific and clear, the better. If you get a room to be ridiculous. Well, it's told with some weird things and I'm not gonna repeat the story that I made a mistake with.

Elias Marty: 16:52

But I'm not the person to pray. You know, instead of the turkey, what I got instead was a dead turkey praying, which was hilarious. I kept it for comedic purposes. That's the reason why I kept it Otherwise purposes. As a result, I kept it, otherwise I would just leave. Like it was so funny that I decided to keep it. You know, because I was a given clearance.

Elias Marty: 17:12

I put people praying on the table. I should cook Turkey. I just ate turkey. I said keep praying with turkey. Well, the guy just put all that ketchup. That's a little thing.

Elias Marty: 17:24

I'm not bad at emotions. I don't make sure it's about you. You make it a lot. You made a great point. It actually calmed me.

Elias Marty: 17:32

A lot of the fears are on the erratic perspectives. I'm going to call the journalists again Peace commodity, terminating the style that I will bond by, since that sucks, just sucks. You're just putting out this sort of fear. You know also part of the problem why fear and even protests against AI is going up. And they're using unions, because unions, based on my experience, is just anecdotal. So I'm not going to. I'm going to finish that I got the objective, clear perspective on all unions. Some of them are against AI because they see it as a too-less-messy-challenge-away, a state of war between human interactions between humans, obsolete air.

Elias Marty: 18:19

So that's, you know, here was a subject we needed. Okay, even some AI speakers have said it. Humans are still the ones we need. There's a relationship part that you will list yourself, for example. You need it, you know, and you can't have a lot of students and dick. They can do baseline, they sure get the right descriptions. And AI, you know, the more of itself, the more simple. Let's go to the screen. That'd be one thing. The AI can take that part of the job If we steal humanity so they don't be relevant to the house. That's one thing. Anything else you want to add?

Evan Jaqua: 18:54

Well, I think that there are a couple of things that I think are important here. Now let's talk about art. Now, one of the things that we're talking about unions, and you know we're talking about Hollywood writers and actors, and you know art, again, is something that is a result of our experiences and our relationships. People write songs about their relationships, their experiences. People paint paintings, people write stories, and an AI program doesn't have any of that. So when AI creates art, all it's doing is taking what's already been created, maybe mixing it together and churning out some combination of what's already been created, but it's not. That is not art. Art has to be. It's the most essential of all human endeavors and it comes again from our relationships and our experiences through life, and AI doesn't have that. So it's very important.

Evan Jaqua: 19:50

I think that you know I mean AI. You know it's kind of fun to see what an AI program will produce, but we should never confuse that with. You know that humans create. I mean comparing that to what humans can be. It's like comparing a player piano, an automated player piano, to a real piano player. I mean, yeah, maybe the mechanical piano can play the thing perfectly, but is it really communicating? Is it really playing in a way that gets that emotion across, that gets that pain and that joy across? It does not. It's just churning out a tune. And so I think that, when it comes to AI and art, we should make a very clear distinction between that. Ai will never be a generator of art, because it does not have the inspires art, which is experiences, which are experiences and relationships. So that's point number one, and then I was going to go on to some other applications of AI, but I don't want to go on without giving you a chance to comment on that. I'm not over it.

Elias Marty: 20:56

Well, I think, yeah, r is, I think, a whole little piece of AI, because it has to come out of human experience.

Evan Jaqua: 21:05

Exactly. I just cannot do this on its own Unless we transfer it and train it?

Elias Marty: 21:12

Even if we do train it, how are people just really paying attention? They say, yeah, they look perfect, but is it really capturing the human experience that feels, like you said, the joy or sadness, the anger? Well, I've realized that's a danger to human bullshit, exactly. I mean, actually I heard, but I could tell it's. Yeah, it's hard because it's going by 80. This is going to sound weird, I have no other way to put it. For me here, it's like javelin data of established art styles just slapped together to make something that's concrete. It's very concrete, and some of it has its own robotic designs, and so it has to be. Some people love it. It People have to experience it. Some people love it, some hate it. Trust me, they're not going to get the Academy Awards for art. Well, it's artificial.

Evan Jaqua: 22:15

It's artificial. Let's just say it. It's artificial art, it's not genuine human creativity-driven art, and that's something that we really have to keep in mind. I think that maybe the Hollywood producers they think, yeah, we can save a lot of money getting rid of all these writers and the people, the creators, and just have the AIs just basically churn out new versions, or what I should say mixed up versions or blended together versions of what's already been created. But I think that's very hollow. That's very hollow. We want art. I think we want art to reflect genuine human experience and relationships. That's the inspiration.

Elias Marty: 22:58

If anything, I'll just take your words because I'm lazy mentally. It's an artificial version of humanity, at best, that's all.

Evan Jaqua: 23:08

Well, that's why they call it artificial intelligence. It's artificial, it is artificial. We have to always remember that it's not some magic and it's limited. It's going to make mistakes, because you can't perfectly. There's no such thing as a perfectly trained network and we've got to keep it on a short leash and keep it in perspective.

Elias Marty: 23:33

I mean, I would like to keep it on a short leash. And there's one expert I had not that long ago who would say ah, try, keeping it on a short leash, it's such a fool's errand. Yeah, it might be, but do you really want to run wild and just fight out the hard way?

Elias Marty: 23:50

I mean, anyone with the same brain would agree with me there. I don't want that to happen. Just let it run wild. Okay, yeah, you could do this. Okay, it could create artificial body parts. Someone's gonna to keep it as clean as possible. You use your gutted mind to fill that blank. I'm not going to do that for you. I'm not going to let your mind participate. That listeners. So far Evan here. He's above that. I'm just going to say that for him. Yeah. So let me get back to the whole, to the, to the, to your point. Yeah, as great as AI is and I still consider it a great tool it needs to get inspiration projected through a human being. Okay, a wall is just never going to create anything. It's just going to be a good data processor and, trust me, we humans don the one to be dealing with that point. We want to talk to people, make things interesting, or, you know, call a higher level of thought, creativity, work, whatever, whatever. Maybe you know ai back then I'll just use this historical example.

Elias Marty: 24:59

That's very disgusting, people had to manually clean the sewers of the castle. You know how disgusting that was and that you know we had a sewage system that got rid of most of that work. So AI could get rid of a lot of that dull work that we have to do, like data entry. But I put this person's name, name, whatever information they put in there, let AI take care of that. So here, here's a set of its file and create the data for you. It's going to get rid of more of the mundane and simple tasks. I think that's it. That's what AI is already doing.

Elias Marty: 25:40

But if your work is too complicated, if it deals with a lot of human relationships, you're safe, and therapists are at one occupation I already said it that I think is gonna be safe is therapy. Therapy is very human. What ai is gonna do, uh, the most, like I said, just data entry. That's it. That's this role. Okay, this person got this mental condition whatever, I'm not going to give an example, or schizophrenia, or depression. Okay, probably just you'd use ai just for data entry storage. That's it. In terms of talking to a human being, it's been proven that you can do only entry level work, like just basic screens. Have you take your medication anything that's based on facts and stuff, but there's anything that is too ambiguous, too dynamic. Ai is not ready for that and that's been proven time and time again. Even one customer service expert who's trying to implement AI, it says very difficult. The human has to intervene because AI is not processing some of these requests correctly. So you know, it's very simple If it's just one task thing.

Elias Marty: 26:52

Yeah, I got it, but it's multifaceted. Oh, human judgment and involvement is needed, you know. So that's all. That's all I'm going to say about that, and I'll kind of jump from art to therapy. Well, art could be used for therapy Maybe draw, I don't know, an ocean or something to copy it down, or just look at a picture. But therapists are realizing that they'll need to fear AI is what they initially thought.

Evan Jaqua: 27:19

Because of that. Well, I totally agree. Yes, I totally agree with that, because you know, let's think about human interaction. You know, when you and I are interacting, we have multiple ways to interpret what the other person is thinking or feeling. We have the body language, we have the tone of voice, we have the facial expressions and we even have the subtle please and word choice.

Evan Jaqua: 27:40

Now, as an AI program, I mean, have you ever texted somebody and you said something you thought was innocent, but they completely misinterpreted it? And it's because it's just a one-dimensional form of communication. Like, for example, if I write in text, if I say hey, alias, that can be interpreted as hey alias, or it could be interpreted as hey alias. You know, it's just without the context, like I said, the body language, the tone of voice, the facial expressions, the subtleties of language and movement, you have much less certainty what the other person really means. And an AI program is just not going to be able to ever pick up on those subtleties of human communication, and I don't think it ever will. What are you going to do? You're going to put a camera? You're going to put microphones? You're going to? I think the AI program is not a processor of environment, and that's what we humans are. We process information from our environment and we're interacting with somebody. That environment includes those very human things of facial expression, tone of voice, body language, subtleties in word choice and all those sorts of things that we as humans, because we have that huge base of experiences, we have that huge history of relationships, we can better judge what the other person means to say, which is critical in therapy, as you're saying, and in therapy the therapist has to look for those subtleties in communication to really assess what is going on in that person's mind and what that person is really feeling in their heart. And that's just something that is way beyond what a machine that basically manipulates ones and zeros can do, because that's what it is Again, a computer is simply a machine that manipulates ones and zeros, and to try to capture all of the subtleties of human culture and human behavior in ones and zeros is, I think, it's like trying to put a square peg into a round hole. It just doesn't work. Computers are very good at computations and storing information in computation. That's it, and I wanted to go on into a little bit about the applications of AI, both good and bad.

Evan Jaqua: 29:59

Okay, well, in my blog, solutionspartyorg, I've proposed a number of different ideas to help try to strengthen our democracy, our society, and one of the most important ones, I think, is certifying journalists. We have to have, we have in our news sources, because, you know, as I've said in the last podcast, if you believe that the pen is mightier than the sword, than I do, then we have to absolutely have in our country a reliable, we have to have reliable sources of information, we have to have the public believing in a certain set of common facts. And one of the ways that we could do that is, as I say, to not only certify journalists and news organizations but to give them grades, you know, based on certain criteria like how objective are their articles, how well written are their articles, how relevant are their articles, how frequent are their articles. We could give a certified journalist a grade in addition to certification. Now, if they are obviously continuously biased or if their articles are just generally false, their grade goes down, and if it goes below a certain point, they lose their certification.

Evan Jaqua: 31:11

So we want to have two things, I think, to certify our journalists and news organizations. We want to have something equivalent to the AMA, the American Medical Association or the, but what's it for lawyers? I'm getting a blank here. The Bar Association? I guess they certify lawyers, you know. We certify our engineers, we certify truck drivers, we certify dentists. We ought to certify our journalists. And why is this important? Because if I make a deep fake video using AI of you, alias, you know, robbing a jewelry store and I publish it online and say well, alias is really a criminal, look at it, look what he did. Okay, the question that we would ask is that video on a certified news site or not? If it's not on a certified news site, then it's obvious. You know, we're not going to take it seriously.

Evan Jaqua: 32:00

And this is critical because one of the bad applications of AI is to create false videos, false voices of people saying things, even false articles, and we want to have a way to get that stuff out, because the enemies of democracy are going to use misinformation and lies to weaken our democracy. They want to destroy our democracy. They want to destroy our democracy, and one of the ways we can fight back is to have number one news organizations that people believe in, because we have to have a certain, just like in the 60s when Walter Cronkite said and that's the way it is. You know, 95% of Americans believed it. We believed in the facts that we were being told and that strengthened us as a country Because based on a common set of acknowledged facts, we can make decisions how to move forward. But if we lose that, if we lose that, then we become paralyzed because nobody really knows what are the facts and what are the lies.

Evan Jaqua: 32:57

So the way to get around that is to certify our journalists. Now AI can play a role in that. We want to have a society of professional journalists organization that will certify a journalist. If you get your degree in journalism or if you've got years of being experienced as a credible journalist and based on the quality of your articles, the objectiveness of your articles they're not just political propaganda You'll get graded. Now AI can help with that. We want to automate a lot of this because there's going to be a lot, a lot of articles being written and we want to have a way to automate that AI. You could have multiple AI programs independently developed. They analyze these articles, a given article, and they produce a grade. Then you take an average of the grade. So if one AI program gives it a C, another one gives it an A, another one gives it a B, then you can say, okay, this article gets a B grade and it's by a certified journalist, so we can have some confidence that this is real news, and so this is one way that AI can help to help in our certifying of our news organizations and our journalists to keep them honest. But we don't want to just rely 100% on AI and we want to have multiple AI programs doing it, not just one. But this could be a very useful application of that.

Evan Jaqua: 34:19

Another idea that I have is you know, right now our judiciary is in crisis because our hyper-partisan politicians have basically crafted the judiciary to be an extension of the political parties. You know the Supreme Court. I mean, they're just nakedly partisan. It's not even funny anymore, and we don't want that. We want to have a judiciary that people have confidence in, is independent of politics, independent of political parties, and the way we can do that is by emphasizing diversity. We want diversity in the judicial philosophies of our judges, so that the Supreme Court, yes, it has somebody like Sam Alito, but it also has people like Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and it has a variety of judges from different backgrounds and different judicial philosophies.

Evan Jaqua: 35:10

Ai could help make recommendations about how do you increase the judicial diversity of our judiciary, which is what we want.

Evan Jaqua: 35:19

We want that, when the Supreme Court makes a decision, we want to feel like, okay, this was based on on facts, not on the partisan preferences of these judges or the other, which is what we don't have.

Evan Jaqua: 35:32

Now it's become, you know, when the democrats are in power, they get democrat leaning judges, and when the republic and we don't want that all of our politicians should be concentrating on making the judiciary as independent from politics as possible, and AI could play a role in that. So those are two examples where AI could really help make our society better in terms of certifying our journalists. And two, making our judiciary independent of politics, which is critical, by the way, if our judiciary are just extensions of our political party, then it's no better than what they do in Venezuela. It's no better than what they do in Iran. It's no better than what they do in China. It's no better than what they do in North Korea. Our judiciary has to be independent of politics and, again, I could play a role in that. Now, there's some other very useful applications of AI that I proposed, but maybe I'll let you jump in in case you have any comments regarding what I just talked about.

Elias Marty: 36:27

Yes, yes, oh man, you wonder why does guest return quickly? I get it. If you don't, that's OK, I spare you. I don't want to embarrass you and don't admit it at the comments section either. You're opening yourself to be roasted, but anyways, let me just get back to the more serious ideas they put out Certifying journalists. Let me wear the adversarial, negative, contrarian cap for a second.

Evan Jaqua: 37:00

Perfect, let's go, let's do this.

Elias Marty: 37:03

Critics will say this is an attack on their First Amendment. I'm for. We do need better journalists, personally. But someone's going to say this is an attack on their First Amendment because they've got a point of futility to express. But they're journalists, they've got to report on facts. That's why I see it and the way it's going yeah, the way it's going, you know, we got some of that defense. Democrats are going to defend Republicans. Yeah, I know you should say so. Go right ahead.

Evan Jaqua: 37:35

Well, I was just going to say I don't agree that it infringes on First Amendment rights at all. You can still start your own website, you know. Get your laptop, set up a website and you can publish whatever you want. We still want opinions, but we're not. We don't want to muffle voice, but we want the opinions to be principled. Now I talk about principles on the blog. What does principles mean? Principles mean that you apply the same rules to people regardless of their political party, regardless of their race, regardless of their religion, which is what we don't have now.

Evan Jaqua: 38:11

For example, all you need to do, when you listen to Fox News or you listen to MSNBC and they're talking about how horrible this politician is or how great this politician is, all you need to do is ask yourself if I just switch the names of the politicians, would their opinions completely change? I mean, for example, there are a lot of people who will say that the attack on the Capitol of January 6th was no big deal. It was just people expressing their opinion. Okay, let's switch the names. Suppose Hillary Clinton had been president, had done that, would you still feel the same way? I kind of doubt it. You know what if Hillary Clinton had been the one who tried to blackmail Ukraine into digging up dirt on Donald Trump, would you have thought that would be a nothing burger? I think you probably wouldn't.

Evan Jaqua: 38:57

The thing is is that it comes down to this principle of equality under the law, this equality under the law. For example and I know I made this example before, but let's look at Jim Crow South If a white man raped a black woman, that was just boys being boys, just boys out having some fun. But black man raped a white woman man, that's lynching time. Same crime. The only difference was the color of the perpetrator and the victim changed. Okay, that principle equality in the law focuses on the act that was committed, not on the characteristics of the people who committed them. That is a critical foundation of civilization, because if you get away from that, then laws can be weaponized and will be weaponized by one group of people against another. And this is what we have in our politics now. Our politicians are completely unprincipled. Our news organizations are completely unprincipled.

Evan Jaqua: 39:54

They say you know, if you just switch the names of the parties and the people involved, their take on things completely changes. And it shouldn't be that way. If somebody does something wrong, if, for example, if Hillary Clinton had paid a porn star to you know to shut up, you know? Would you know? You consider that to be a nothing burger? You know things that? Or if Bill Clinton had been Republican if Bill Clinton had been Republican, the Democrats would have voted to impeach him for what he did. It shouldn't be that way.

Evan Jaqua: 40:25

The question needs to be what was the act committed and is there a potential crime here? Regardless of the characteristics of the political party, the racial makeup, the religion, their national origin all of that should be out of the picture. All of that should be out of the picture. Now, this, so you know. So a journalist, a certified journalist or opinion columnist, is not going to be the sort of person who completely changes their opinion. If you just switch the names around and that could how the AI program judges, does this person say the same thing, criticize people equally regardless of political party, or is he or she always minimizing the problems of one party and going after with both barrels the other party? If they do something similar, now that's certified, but that does not prevent somebody from publishing their opinion. They just won't be on a certified news site If they want to say it's okay for Donald Trump to send the mob to the Capitol, but if Hillary Clinton does it, it's terrible. If they want to write that, that's fine. That's not impinging on their First Amendment. They're just not going to be certified.

Evan Jaqua: 41:33

So that's why I say you know, this idea of certifying journalists is not in any way a contradiction to the First Amendment rights. I mean, if I want to practice medicine, yeah, I can practice medicine. I'm not going to be certified. Though, and you really want to come to me to help me and help you with your health problems, I can say whatever I want. I can say hey, alias, I've got this miracle cure, I'm going to fix it all. Your first question is question is well, do you have a certification to do this? And I say no, but who needs a certification? And you're going to say well, you know, I don't really feel very comfortable going to a guy who doesn't have any medical, you know, any authority to be doing this stuff, and I mean it's not a perfect analogy, but it's you but you get what I'm trying to say.

Elias Marty: 42:22

I get what you're saying. It's well thought out. The reason why I had to put that out there, because that's what some people are going to say. That's the first amendment, at least some people. I actually agree with that, because journalism Look, all these journalists should change their jobs to political commentators, and I'm fine with that, because they're supposed to be biased, they're supposed to defend their party. If there were political commentators, that's different, because they got their take. They can spin it, maintain their bias, and then I'll be fine with that. However, in terms of certified journalism, I agree with it, because journalism is essentially dead. It's all partisan narratives being shoved down on people's throats. Msnbc favors Democrats on regularly and Fox favors Republicans on regularly, but you know exception. And I also want to point out the hosts. Well, their hosts, their opinion hosts, once you say your opinion hosts that's already an honest way of saying I'm going to be biased.

Elias Marty: 43:21

I have my take. I have my reason why. Donald Trump good. Well, who's the current Democrat? Kamala Harris is bad, or vice versa? Kamala is awesome and Donald Trump is a turd. Whatever, if you're just an opinion person or a political commentary, I'm fine with that. Mix that up to the point that it ruins their credibility, rightfully so they should take away. I like this idea. I personally like this idea because a lot of them are just pushing. Some of them know that they're pushing biases. I think some of them don't know better because they've been taught one way in the college. So that's another issue.

Evan Jaqua: 44:06

Yeah, the thing is, you can have your political opinions are great, we need political opinions, but they should be based on principles, based on you. Don't change your opinion if you just switch the names of people around. Right, you know you base your opinions on ideas and vision for the country and, regardless of you know who's pushing those ideas. You see, we've got to get out of our politics and out of our journalism. By the way, this you know journalism in our country, unfortunately because the traditional news model has broken down, because anybody can start a news site now, and so the traditional model people make money now in journalism is by things like clickbait, you know, putting things on there that they know are going to get a lot of clicks but necessarily aren't factually accurate. They're making money by manipulating people's emotions rather than by giving facts that people need to know.

Evan Jaqua: 45:04

And in fact, I mean, if you ask yourself this, which military commander is going to be more successful, the one who just hears what he wants to believe or the one who listens to what he needs to know?

Evan Jaqua: 45:13

And unfortunately, in a democracy, the people are the commanders. And if the people are just hearing what they want to believe, what sort of democracy can you expect to have. We have to have a system where people are listening to what they need to know to get the emotions and the lack of principle out of our journalism, out of our opinion columnists. Have our opinion columnists base their opinions on ideas and vision and have our journalists basing their articles on facts, not on making articles that are just going to get a lot of attention whether or not they're accurate or not. So AI can play a role in this, and I think it should play a role and, just like I say, also for the judiciary, it can help us diversify our judiciary, which is what we want. We don't want our judiciary to be an extension of the political parties. So those are two.

Elias Marty: 46:05

Then there's some others that I proposed. Well, I want to talk about the more courts now, because that's why they get to touch on. I think it's a wonderful idea to have multiple philosophies examine different court cases so people won't feel left out Because, just like you said, all these judges are an extension of the political party. They're not going to use those terms, but we all know Exactly.

Elias Marty: 46:29

We all know, like Kentucky Jackson Brown is an extension of the Democrat Party, Sam Alito is an extension of the Republican Party. You know, and you could put that, you could put a lot of judges' names and put what the extension of, especially by the person, or mostly the president, that puts them up for that nomination. Okay, Most of the time you know. Once you do that, you'll find out which political party they're really representing, which ideologies they're pushing and which ones they are trying to suppress or debunk in their rulings and deliberations, whatever legal process they have to go through.

Elias Marty: 47:08

So I actually agree, deliberations, whatever legal process they have to go through. So I actually agree. If they were to do this, I think vast majority of Americans could easily restore their faith and trust in these courts. They say, okay, this one was appointed by Obama. Okay, this one's going to be pro-LGBTQ, pro-gun control, pro-abortion. Oh, this one's appointed by Trump, your abortion rights is threatened. The immigrants have to be sent back. Oh, this will allow you to carry a gun even when you're taking care of babies. So you know a little hyperbolic, but you get my point on this that they're just pushing their agenda through the political orientation of whatever they believe, especially whoever appointed them. They can't just be appointed, for the most part, because they do need the Senate confirmation as well. And this is for the federal level, the state. They got the state. A local government's got their own processes for that, but that but that problem either. That probably is irrelevant to those lower-level courts as well.

Evan Jaqua: 48:14

But you know, actually, you know, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Anthony Scalia were approved by overwhelming majorities in the Senate. Now that's unheard of. Now it's 51-49. Yeah, and it's just, it's become ridiculous. And so that's why I think that we have to have, for one thing, we have to put term limits on judges, because right now these lifetime appointments make the Supreme Court and other federal courts, you know, akin to nuclear weapons in the culture war and we don't want that, you know. And we want to have the judges, you know, have term limits. They serve the time.

Evan Jaqua: 48:52

And I think we also want to rotate the judges. You know they've been on the Supreme Court for a certain number of years. Then we rotate them into the appeals court and vice versa, so that we're kind of we don't like the Ninth Circuit in San Francisco, which is always liberal, and the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana. I and the Fifth Circuit in Louisiana I think it's the fifth which is always conservative. We want to have the judges being rotated so that we get away from this group of judges always being the ones that Republicans turn to when they want a favorable decision, this group of judges going for the Democrats.

Evan Jaqua: 49:22

We don't want that. We want to have faith that the judges are coming to decisions irrespective of politics. And, again, AI can play a role in that. We want to have a diversity. We don't want to have just a bunch of Ivy League graduates who belong to the Federalist Society packing the Supreme Court. We want to have people who've graduated from different universities, who've got different judicial philosophies, who are qualified but who bring a variety, Because the American people are better served when the judges are debating amongst themselves.

Evan Jaqua: 49:51

You don't want to have six clones of Clarence Thomas. You don't want to have six clones of Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the court. That's ridiculous. I wouldn't want that, you know, regardless of my political orientation. I want to have the Supreme Court and other courts, you know be ones that we can believe in, that are not, you know, just towing the line of one political party or the other. So again, that's, I think, a useful, potentially useful application of AI to help us increase the diversity and the credibility of our judiciary, which is absolutely critical to strengthening our democracy. So that's, those are a couple of good applications. I wanted to talk a little bit about the dark side of AI.

Elias Marty: 50:31

Well, it's already over two, but I want to hear about the more bad side. If you have time, that's good. I could extend my time because I really want to hear your take on this.

Evan Jaqua: 50:42

Okay, Well, I'll be real brief. I'll be real brief. I will just say this just like any technology, technology has always been a double-edged sword it can be used for good or it can be used for bad. The potential bad uses of AI are particularly frightening. For example, what are they doing in China now? They're having all conversations, all emails, all texts, monitored full-time by AI programs that are looking for any any hint of, you know, an anti-communist party. You know communication, and this can really be used to implement something like in the book 1984 by George Orwell.

Evan Jaqua: 51:24

And this is something we've got to be very, very careful of where AI is being used for nefarious purposes, which specifically, very specifically being used by the powerful to stay in power and to keep a stranglehold on power, a permanent stranglehold on power. We never want that. This is one of the reasons why I propose getting re-election. This is one of the reasons why I put a 12-year limit on political parties. This is another reason why I say we have to break up. You can never have power concentrated, and AI can be used nefariously to do that, and so this is one of the reasons why AI, just like any technology, will be used by the powerful to stay in power if they can, and this is one thing that we've got to be aware of, and we've got to take measures to keep that from happening.

Elias Marty: 52:19

Yeah, that's yeah, I mean my proposed thing and I set this to one guess, but sadly that record had to be deleted. This is my proposed limit, especially for Congress and Senate. I put 12 years. That means that's a two-term limit for the Senator and a six-term limit for the House of Representatives. I think that's a good start if you want to think about numbers and specifics in terms of term limits, because we have the same people for freaking 30 years with ideas that were good a couple of decades ago, and people who are just like to your point, just want to preserve and cling to power as much as possible.

Elias Marty: 53:10

Well, sadly, that's the american version of that you already talked about the chinese version, which they're using ai extensively to monitor, make sure everybody is compliant with the ccp. They see, think that's exactly negative credit score. Can't do this, you can't do that, uh yeah, yeah.

Evan Jaqua: 53:27

So you, you write, you write a text message that can even be mildly interpreted as being against the ccp, and you could have the secret police knocking on your door at two in the morning. People don't like to live like that. By the way, nobody likes to live like that. Now, the thing is is about well, maybe we can have another discussion about uh term limits.

Evan Jaqua: 53:49

But I I just feel you know, uh, being in politics is not about ideas and vision anymore. It's about staying in power. And that's what the problem is with our politicians and the fact that our incumbents have like a 93% or 95% chance of being reelected. It's just ridiculous and it shouldn't be that way. And what are our politicians good at? Well, they're good at being politicians. Are they really there to get ideas implemented, to help the country progress? No, they're in there to satisfy their addiction to power, because power is extremely addictive, as history has shown, and that's why I think I propose extremely severe term limits, specifically one term, because if you have more than one term, getting reelected inevitably becomes the priority. And that's not what our politicians, I believe, should be in office for to get reelected. They should be concentrating on ideas, on the vision and on working for their constituents and on reaching compromise, because democracy is about compromise. It's not about my way or the highway, it's not about tribalism. It's about discussing ideas, taking the best ideas and moving forward.

Elias Marty: 55:02

Yeah and to your point, with AI. Ai could preserve power, if it's being used for the various purposes, for sure. There's no denying that. Let's go back to DeFink me robbing a jewelry store. Let's use a. Okay, let's just say, if ever it's right for a political party, right, just give me an ad of him saying I'm just giving you a hint what that word is. It rhymes with Hick Anti-Hispanic slur so that he could lose a lot of votes in the heavily hispanic district, which is a deep ai fake. But they will use that in political acts. Let's be honest, it's you know.

Elias Marty: 55:37

And yeah, joe by has been exactly you know, joe by has been already, uh, a mild victim of that. It wasn't, it wasn't for a trump campaign, but, um, you know, or maybe it is, I don't know, but the thing is yeah, they're gonna be people.

Evan Jaqua: 55:50

But you know, or maybe it is, I don't know, but the thing is, yeah, there are going to be people who believe it, you know either because they just simply believe it or because they want to believe it. People will believe what they want to believe. If people want to believe that the purple leprechauns from Mars are running the world, they're going to believe it.

Elias Marty: 56:03

And they can believe. I don't know, gray pigs can swim whatever.

Evan Jaqua: 56:12

Exactly to swim whatever Exactly.

Elias Marty: 56:14

So you know, like if I see this, you know we can't be responsible for every single person's stupidity. Let's just be honest.

Evan Jaqua: 56:16

This is going to happen, yeah, but the thing is, is that if they're seeing this stuff on a non-certified news site or non-certified something, that's not a non-certified news site or some website somewhere? I mean, the first question is is you know, okay, is this real or not? If it's not on a certified news site, then you know you should ignore it.

Elias Marty: 56:37

simple as I mean, we'll use it for your comedy piece. Go right ahead, be creative with it. But uh, in terms of accepting, it as real news, well, that's a problem and you're just, you're just part of the misinformation agents. It's just spreading nonsense and getting more people confused. I'd say like that, but some people do not have that media literacy, even critical thinking, just to decipher what's real, what's I'm thinking and if we let ai go on, wow, that's gonna get even more difficult to point that.

Elias Marty: 57:07

Even highly intelligent people just gonna fall for it, and skeptical people. So yeah, that's all I'm going to say about that. As much as me and Evan could talk for hours on this. We've both got to go, but he will return at some point because I got a long list of political guests that I got to attend to as well, and it's good to be a demand. And then there's a curse of that because the people I really like, I can't pay attention to them as much, just being transparent here.

Elias Marty: 57:39

We're going to definitely talk again, so it was great having them again. I'm not surprised. This was an awesome conversation and enlightening one as well. Learned some things as well From this conversation. And one more thing I want to say before I wrap this up. This is the second episode, so the first one I'm going to put a link for you two. I'm going to put the card up. Check episode 217. Where it goes very political, attacking both parties. The way I'm going to word it is Partisan power versus strong solutions. Partisan power versus wherever it goes very political, attacking both parties. The way I'm going to word it is partisan power versus strong solutions, partisan power versus strong solutions, that's the best way to summarize it.

Elias Marty: 58:18

Because, justin, I'll regurgitate that we don't got that kind of time. Go to episode 270. It's going to be linked in the description and for YouTube only, it's going to be a card on the top right-hand corner. Okay, so that's all I want to say about that. So, for where? At? Well, actually, before I say that, like, subscribe, if you enjoyed this. You made it to the end, congratulations, you survived. Your brain can't compete against AI and computation and intelligence and, of course, the one that's rigged on behalf of the human being, your experience, your creativity. You beat the AI on that. So it's rigged for human benefit, right there. So it's like subscribe, share this with someone who you think could benefit from this. Okay, and donate one time, if you want, and then, if you want to be recurring, there's an option for that as well. If you want to be recurring, there's an option for that as well. So, from wherever, whenever you're listening to this podcast you have a blessed day, afternoon or night you.