In this episode, Draper and Robek discuss whether or not AI is the end of humanity, a brief history of AI and media reactions, misconceptions, and singularity. They also discuss the larger meta of the current NFT space and the philosophy behind community and branding.
In this episode, Draper and Robek discuss whether or not AI is the end of humanity, a brief history of AI and media reactions, misconceptions, and singularity. They also discuss the larger meta of the current NFT space and the philosophy behind community and branding.
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yeah perfect all right here's the title music the title theme
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sponsored by audible.com audible get your books read to you
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look so good but reading sucks uh I'm Draper yeah that's me what's
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that's the end what what makes you qualified to be a host on this podcast oh well I'm absolutely not but um
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yeah that's a really no it's a terrible question I'd love to I'm oh yeah yeah you should be and I'm qualified to be on
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this podcast are you gonna elaborate or you can just Google me okay great I'll Google you
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later cool so right back I have been kind of this week on Twitter I feel like it's
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just been an endless kind of sea of threads about AI is either the you know
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the beginning of the decline of the human species or it's this kind of overhyped you know thing that's about to
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go into an s-curve and we're all going to forget about it in in a couple of years as someone who has done a lot of
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kind of early work with AI I think before it even took off in kind of the
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think space what are your thoughts on this and is is the topic getting kind of like too binary I mean where's the new
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ones you know what I think what I've seen it's not if you are getting into
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like let's say you've really dove into it which I think you have recently right you get surfaced a lot more complaining
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about it across algorithms and things like that or maybe distance see it before because you weren't interested in
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the topic but honestly this kind of conversation on Twitter let's say specifically has been going on since
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September of last year when stable diffusion was released however this kind of conversation has been going on since
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at least Microsoft a I think that was 2014 or 2015. it's not
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a conversation that a lot of people started back then though there was a lot of bitching about it on Twitter at the
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time because Tay was trained by the people using Tay right and so answers and things like that like there was an
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initial data set but answers and stuff would go back into the training which chat GPT says it doesn't or yeah which
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open AI says it doesn't do with GPT but I think they're probably lying so I mean
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when you have an unfiltered uncensored thing it creates I guess something that
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seems a little bit scary to people I think the interesting part is is that a lot of these models end up kind of
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devolving to human stereotypes of other people in the worst ways and I think if you even if you go back in time to like
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just the Inception of this AI discussion in modern times it's and and how Google just how Google treats search there are
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inherent biases in learn models that that if you are trying to avoid
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particular topics you have to manually go in and and do they didn't have that
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and because of that it was doing stuff like denying the Holocaust and so
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Microsoft shut it down so I think that was kind of the Inception of the media's beginning to just like fear Monger later
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on you know as Google deep Dream came out that was the shitty like image gen
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model that would make everything cook kind of look psychedelics in dogs the media was like oh this is terrifying
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this is horrifying this is whatever we can fast forward even more to like deep
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fakes which actually didn't come that long after deep dream and the media topics and the celebrities are like this
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is awful you know people are going to be able to fake scenarios situations will never know what's real and honestly deep
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fakes have been available for a very long time like it's a technology and a tool and they make fairly realistic
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convincing videos it's just basically face swap right so it hasn't I don't
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know what what's that six or seven years maybe it hasn't become one of these things where you're just browsing Twitter and
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like wondering oh is that a deep fake like everything until this point has been fairly the same despite media and
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like celeb fear-mongering I think what has happened here is that we have
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simultaneously had an exponential increase of like coherency in both and
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and these diffusion models originally a lot of these more trained based off of a
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data set images things like stylegan or generative adverse at the serial
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networks and they weren't necessarily that coherent but like it was
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interesting technology but diffusion became kind of like the core thing
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across across the board so after after Style again you had VQ Gan which was
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another generative adversarial Network which nor if you're a normal person that
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doesn't sit on the internet all day you may remember a couple Christmases ago where Wombo Dream came out and when that
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originally came out that was using VQ Gan that was the best tech at the time but those outputs obviously were
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a little iffy with the Advent of coherent diffusion I don't know if I should get too much into the technical
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side of this coherency improved pretty dramatically you'd still get a lot of weird artifacts and like
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disproportionate stuff but I think it really helped push forward stuff like we
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see now with like stable diffusion and things like that anyway since my whole point here is that this
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conversation isn't new it's been going on for a very long time um and I think there's because of this
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exponential increase of coherency across the board people are now discovering it
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and I think there's also a misinterpretation of what AI is you have to kind of go back to like Isaac Asimov
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and things like that to like the core principles of like the three rules of Robotics or like other literature of
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like what is the foundational thing that makes something AI or sentient and I think we've explored this topic for at
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least the past Century right and you know we have things like the Turing tests and things like that but most of
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these models aren't like they're not really AI they're just kind of parroting
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back things um but I think because everybody's suddenly noticing it it's invoking all
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these fears of like robot uprisings and things like that and I just think you
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know maybe we're like 15 to 20 years minimum out from any sort of like sentient thing and I would expect
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probably the amount of processing power to run something like that to begin with would would be pretty heavy anyway uh
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but on Twitter to your point it is aggravating me
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well let me let me ask you just on that last point you said about you know is any of this stuff kind of a classic what
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we might have classically kind of thought to be AI um or are they just kind of these
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sophisticated models that that compare it back to you with kind of very human feeling Effectiveness
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my question would be do you think that does this does this does the former get
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a sorry does the latter get us closer to the former do these models getting you
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know better and better and and kind of what feels alarmingly quickly get us closer to kind of you know a
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sentient AGI or do you see those as kind of like paths don't necessarily ever
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converge they're just sort of kind of related but kind of are related I think
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they do push us forward in that direction I mean these are gonna I think a lot of this can be the backbone for
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things moving forward right you still have to have data sets you have to have things that uh I guess create some sort
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of personality to some degree I think things that will block that currently are the attempts at censorship right
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like I don't think you can truly have a sentient AI if you're you know trying to
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sit there in the background and control uh what it is where where it goes
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I mean obviously I don't think if chat GPT took off its censorship and ethics protocols it would suddenly become
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sentient again that's just feeding back stuff in a human readable way which is
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really cool and it's like transformative and it is going to transform how we work and how we play but yeah I think it is
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building blocks to get there it's just like what is the goal like what do we
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want Ascension AI for what problems is it going to solve and are we prepared to deal with that kind of future I mean
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we're already going to have to consider the future of you know majority of these digital roles that have evolved over the
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past 15 years like being mostly irrelevant school is going to have to completely change like I I think you
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know teachers right now and schools are like Banning you know GPT but what they should be doing to prepare their
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students is like teaching them how to be creative so they can leverage these tools for the outcomes they want I think
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maybe the Gap here as I'm talking between what we have now to ascensions
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is that oh man I just lost it it may have been
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something about creativity like feeling that Gap instead of feeding prompts in it can autonomously
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decide I guess or like interact or I don't know had a good thought and I lost
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it so maybe I'll come back later well I have a question that maybe it will maybe it will help you oh maybe it went
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but on your point about are we prepared is the world and Humanity prepared for
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this kind of future to me that's the that's the thing I've been seeing kind of repeated over and over on Twitter and
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I think it seems like people fall into largely one of two camps which is you know once machine intelligence surpasses
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human intelligence it's it's game over for humans on a long enough time scale and then there's the sort of more
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utopian view that this becomes a tool that can absolve us from lives of nine
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to fives and jobs and you know minimum wage and and kind of a utopian society
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where machine intelligence does so much work that we can live the lives of painters and writers
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as with all things I expect it will be somewhere in the middle but I'm interested in uh in your take yeah I
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mean I think this is a great question and I don't mean to get too political here and maybe it's not going to be so offensive because
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um yeah you'll see but I do believe that the two outcomes of like something like a singularity event is Utopia or
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dystopia I think hope if you think about cryptocurrency it's I think it's a really good kind of backbone to think
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about how this sort of thing would proceed right now in the world like what do we have like 180 countries or something
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like that I don't know exactly like the total number because I'm an American but like each one of those have its own
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governments or powers or dictators and people in power enjoy power so if you're
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looking at things like cryptocurrency and I think this is where you know it seems political is like this is these
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are tools that open up like Financial systems to everyone not just westerners not just some cartel in some country
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that doesn't have a banking system everyone they can they can transact with
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people across the world I mean nfts people can complain about oh it's selling out or things like that but like
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I these artists like that never has have had an opportunity to make any sort of
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income like suddenly you know I'm able to buy art and they can deal with how
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they're going to cash it out it doesn't require like complicated uh okay like kyc or a complicated like remittances
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and people carrying suitcases it's just boom there's the money but if you're looking at politics behind it like
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there's there's a lot of things happening behind the scenes that are meant to keep the people in power in
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power and the banking system in the west is very much a control system and it's
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run by like politicians and bankers and people who are all benefiting from it so
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obviously regulating cryptocurrency is a high priority for them I think we will see that attempt happen here as well so
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like what does government regulation look like is I'm going to come back to that because I
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think it's important to also talk about Utopia happens if these models and these
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AI are built by everyone I think what state what stable or stability AI did by
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releasing an open source model for image gen literally transform the future uh if
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you look at organizations like open AI some centralized organization and you see their censorship in their ethics
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protocols I mean which stable diffusion as a service has but the core repository
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doesn't so even if they have it regulated to have certain things that model is already there and out and
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people can expand anyway my point is if you have some Elon Musk still my point that I've made 100 times on the internet
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the other day but my point is if you have a centralized organization controlling
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like what these AI systems output um there is a future where just like
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Google becomes the sole like thing that everybody uses on the internet that becomes the major power structure here
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and reality when every like this isn't to pair it the media but when we get to
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the point down the road where everyone is using these tools and see the benefit then reality becomes shaped by that
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Corporation if you that will lead to a dystopia and the Sky City that I talk about so often I think that an open
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model like open source and people figuring out this technology and being able to use these tools and leverage them without a central party just like
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cryptocurrency provides a safety net for reality
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and the real thing that AI allows for is yeah once it's doing everything for us
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like whatever like building websites or advertising or whatever the hell people
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do these days what do we have left well we have the ability to begin to explore
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creativity as as a as a race I guess creativity becomes the most valuable
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asset obviously you can see some of the foundation of that now with like how prompts are done how people think about
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prompts and what kind of cool stuff can come from that but I don't necessarily
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want to bring in terms like metaverse because they drive me up the wall but okay so we have ai doing everything
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where do we go from here like well we can either return to traditional live off the land enjoy creativity enjoy
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family life and things like that or we push into this Tech realm of like Matrix
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or fully immersive experiences in in a digital world and honestly there's part
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of that that it sounds dystopian but the other part of that is okay well if we can't just do anything on Earth in the
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digital space we can and AI tools will support that and yeah it could be a
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creativity Renaissance and pushes ahead both like philosophically ethically and maybe even be on this planet also I
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think AI would be very helpful if you're doing in like stargazing or like Star Travel space colonization so
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yeah I mean I think if you have a singularity event let's say we get there and I think we've talked about this
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before I think regardless of whether the outcome of that event is Utopia or dystopia there is a major conflict
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between the people in power um because once you have a Ascension AI
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that let's assume is integrated into everything you don't necessarily need
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the current power structures to be able to function as a as a society so I would
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expect there to be pushback but not from people it's interesting that your dystopian
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you're the dystopian future that you described there is still one where uh I
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guess like humans have their finger on the power button and the and the kind of control buttons but there is a more
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Doomer scenario where the uh I guess like the human control element has been
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lost which I don't know if that gets all of it Skynet and kind of just a bit
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unrealistic but I think I guess that's that's one more one more scenario to consider I think when we think about
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this stuff obviously we're very influenced by pop culture right so the idea of AI Uprising you know is the same
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as like the idea of an alien invasion right like when we think of aliens we're like visiting Earth everybody
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automatically assumes like destruction and things like that if you look at the alien like cons let's call them
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conspiracy theorists if you look at them though they're convinced aliens have been here and that they're helping
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Humanity because they're doing things like disabling nukes and things like that because they see the repercussions
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of a nuclear whatever down the road getting space going to space and just
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destroying everything but I don't think that AI becoming you know whatever is
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going to necessarily automatically result in an uprising I actually think it will depend on what how it sees us
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and what goals it has if the goal like maybe there's some ethics protocol here
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right like I don't think we need to censor the word [ __ ] that's stupid but I think when you think about ethics or the
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three laws of robotics looks like that you know you can't hurt a human right I
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don't know you know when Singularity happens it should be able to just get rid of that kind of protocol but I think
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it where it becomes a responsibility of humanity is we have to act in a way that doesn't seem like it's going to destroy
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everything because once an AI is alive it's probably going to not want to die and if we pose a threat then you know
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what then right and also we have to consider here like if if an AI exists in
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the current capacity it is going to have to be connected to some sort of infrastructure so whether that's servers
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or like tiny little chips put in robots or whatever like it's not going to be
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able to exist without power and some sort of um well at least for now unless
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they figure out like organic stuff or some sort of like generals database sort
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of thing if you think about it like Bitcoin nodes right like people may be running stuff across the board if it's
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an open source thing so I don't I don't know if we don't give it access to well
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I mean I guess it could figure it out I just I think if we don't threaten whatever becomes sentient then there's
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no reason to get rid of us right it has to be mutually exclusive and actually I had a conversation with
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chat GPT the other night while I was in a delirium where I was like okay you be the future leader of the AI and I'm
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going to be the future leader of humanity and we're gonna we're having a world Summit to discuss how we're going
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to proceed with the whole entire world after the singularity event and uh
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obviously it's just parroting stuff but like it wanted mutual agreement not to arm
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each other that was like a topic it kept bringing up over and over and over again so maybe maybe uh maybe we don't have to
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be so Doom and Gloom I think if we go into that perspective then we may force that outcome
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yeah do you have more stuff to say on AI or otherwise I would introduce a new topic
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well what are your thoughts sir this isn't just you interviewing me like you you've gotten into it pretty deep
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recently where where where are you headed I feel like still not even in the
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shallow end of the pool I'm sort of uh just take put my baby toe in the water and kind of like it was interesting
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I think for me mid-journey V5 was a kind
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of like oh I actually might now use this because I think I never got into stability uh Sable diffusion enough to
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like get reliably good kind of outputs and I think the previous versions of mid-journey still had that kind of early
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AI look to them in places and I think mid-journey they are very they look like mid-journey yeah exactly and I think v5s
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still has a look to it but it's kind of it's a nicer look and I think the outputs are just really good so I think
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that was one of the first times I've been like oh I could see myself integrating this somehow into my work or
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into side projects or just kind of for fun as opposed to before seeing it more as like an interesting kind of
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development but but not really of use and I think a similar thing with with gpt4 I think um you know starting my
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career as a copywriter I I have been reluctant to kind of give credit to
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machine writing especially whereas as I see people you know increasingly writing web copy or social copy or or a
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marketing copy whatever it is with GPT and kind of claiming it's as good as human human you know talented
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human writer so I think I'm on a level of Pride I I've been resisting that for a bit but but I and I still think GPT
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for for kind of creative writing or like really kind of um human sounding writing
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with like kind of a strong tone of voice to it is not that great but I think for like kind of day-to-day
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hygiene writing it is pretty good and again a bit like mid Jenny V5 as the first time I thought okay yeah I can I
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can see myself using this rather than just sort of being impressed with it and then going on with my day without it
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yeah I mean I think that that makes a lot of sense when you're thinking about these as tools versus some like destructive force like mid-journey has
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always been more coherent than I think a lot of these other models but it's been a lot more restrictive but the
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experience for the user is is easier in a lot of ways and with V5 you know
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you can get coherent outputs every time and they look really great I think you
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can still see like the sameness of outputs over time especially if you're running the same
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prompt over and over again there's and that's because of the flexibility of the model things like stable diffusion
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obviously there's a lot more work you need to do to get things to an end product I mean and I'm sure over time
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there's been a lot of models that have come out that are like you don't have to fix faces or there's not necessarily 200
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fingers or something like that but when you look at this stuff is the value of the tool user user experience is going to be big
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and like how things are going to move forward so uh GPT 4 or chat GPT you know
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that's an easy experience and that's part of the reason why it's been successful I've been using open ai's
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playground for a very long time before chat GPT came out which offered very similar functionality except the
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differences you could take what you run and then you could build into other products so if you
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wanted a script writing bot you could use the playground generate like its weights and then you know build a
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Discord bot with the API but that's not easy for the user I think another thing
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yeah to your point like even even with gpt4 most of the stuff that it outputs is very samey like if you're trying to
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do it for copywriting or something like that and this is where the element of creativity comes in because you you now
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have to act almost like an editor or creative director whether it's on the art side like you need to know what you
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have in your mind to be able to do something good or on the right hand side you need to know what the tone is you need to know what story you're trying to
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tell you should still prepare an outline and once the output's done you need to go in and make it your own and make it
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your own voice I think you know I've been running a bunch of joke scenes of like movies and
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stuff like that and you know sometimes it gives an okay output and then to make them funny the like let's say 60 of it
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is gpt4 doing structure and then the other 40 is me going into making it
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funny um yeah so I think I think you've hit yeah
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I think the kind of yeah human creative director AI intern or whatever
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relationship is is really interesting and my version of your UNP Summit with
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with the uh the head of the AI Alliance was taking a kind of a story idea I'd
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had in a bottom drawer a long time and kind of deep down now on on unrealistic
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never ever going to get around to trying to write it so you know giving the outline of the story to to GPT and kind
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of introducing it to some of the characters and and giving it kind of chapters to write and introducing this
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is the scene these are the characters this is the outcome you know go with it and and I think the my feeling from
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doing it was you know it has a good sense of kind of how to structure a chapter and how to
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kind of you know add some tension and some surprise but exactly like you say the the kind of tone or voice that it
25:28
writes in is sort of very basic but I left me with the feeling that in his
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current form it's probably not enough that you could write a novel with it just through creative Direction without
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having to get involved on your own but it's not hard to imagine that you know in a few models time you know really
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will be something that you know the idea of like writing your own words might
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someday be a like kind of uh I don't know looking up information in an encyclopedia or something yeah
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I think the other day when me and my wife were hanging out she's been reading a lot of like romance
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novels like old old school ones and we decided to write a few chapters of uh
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one of these base like in the voice of one of the most famous writers for those novels and you know we did a chat we
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gave it the top the character descriptions and we gave it the the topic for like the theme and it was
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just spitting chapters out and I think you know you could do fiction very I think even non-fiction because the
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research is there I think you could do it if you understand the fundamentals of Storytelling and script writing and
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creativity and again that's that's where I keep Landing you got to teach that to people or else there and some people
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will never have interest I mean just look at like consumer culture right it's just easier to consume than make things uh but yeah I mean it's pretty powerful
26:54
I think the last thing I'd just want to say on the topic for the sake of the show is going back to your Twitter point
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where everybody's talking about it it triggers the hell out of me I don't need a million threads about why gpt4 is
27:06
putting out a specific output and I realize I'm guilty about it too but I just I just Twitter threads in general
27:13
are are in very nauseating how they're structured and what people are goals are
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right like their goal isn't necessarily to inform it's to increase engagement
27:23
the other thing I would say here to kind of wrap up if I can remember what I was
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going to say which I can't so I think I'm done yeah my loss kind of maybe note of optimism
27:35
is do you think in the kind of um in the defense of a more creative future I
27:42
think Whenever there has been times in history that kind of Technology has made being creative easier for
27:49
people because I think about you know when when Photoshop and kind of you know
27:55
photo editing software first came out it was complicated enough that it didn't
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really you couldn't say it you know being creative in the hands of everyone you know I think for people who are into
28:06
computers or you know into kind of that kind of thing already it gave them a more powerful tool but when the iPhone
28:13
came out and people started having a camera in their pocket and then Vine and Instagram and Tick Tock made you know
28:20
throwing together some content as easy as just tapping on your phone I think you did see a genuine explosion of
28:26
creativity from the kinds of people who I don't think would have gone out into the world to try and be creative had it
28:33
not been made easy for them to explore it and then through exploring it they find out hey I really like doing this I
28:38
like making these videos so I think if if AI ends up being one of these kind of
28:44
low barrier to entry tools that allows a lot of people to explore and experiment with creativity that that would be the
28:50
thing that kind of I look forward to yeah I agree I do remember the last
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thing I was gonna say and I actually had a follow-up to what you said but my brain has just been like cooked so I
29:02
don't know what's going on that thing I can't remember but the last thing I was going to say is it's very funny to me
29:07
that the art side of AI is so hated because it's like you're oh you're
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stealing work or it's copyright infringement or whatever but the language model side nobody seems to give
29:19
it [ __ ] so very strange to me because all that's being sourced from stuff that's also been written by creative
29:26
people or uncreative people so yeah that was kind of the last thing I
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wanted to say cool so do you want to chat about anything in
29:38
web3 oh yeah can we start calling it web3 yeah I was um I saw I'm gonna
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mispronounce the surname so we'll we'll re-editate with this correct sending but um Chris is it benitsky maybe I should
29:51
look out let's take that from the top oh I don't even know who that is so you can tell me who it is when you tell
29:58
me who it is I guess bonusky okay I'm gonna say
30:04
benisky yeah on on the subject of should we be calling it web free or not I I saw uh
30:11
Chris beniski had written on Twitter for the last couple of weeks he's been pushing this kind of web 3 or crypto or
30:18
D5 probably more specifically a D5 alternative as the internet Financial system or ifs as he abbreviates it and I
30:26
had been speaking to a couple of the guys at work about you know what do you guys prefer D5 or Internet Financial
30:33
system and the surprise well I was surprised because I actually think there's a lot to be said the internet
30:39
Financial system over defy in particular but um you know D5 was was preferred
30:45
from the people I spoke to and then if you have a preference but we should get off web3 I kind of agree
30:50
so yeah I think the reason why I think we have to move away from these terms is because they don't mean anything web3
30:57
doesn't mean anything other than you know we can talk about the definitions of
31:03
what web one was in web 2 but I just don't like nobody outside of this space
31:09
even calls the current internet web too like normal people using internet don't think about it you know Scholars and
31:15
like tech people do obviously but not not normal people I think the other
31:21
thing here is like with stuff like nfts like that needs a Rebrand and if T is not
31:27
something that people like I guess once you get into it you can kind of understand the whole non-fungibility
31:33
part but generally like it doesn't explain what the point is it it's such
31:39
got such negative connotation you know I just I don't know man we
31:44
gotta stop saying metaverse because no one has read snow crash and like they all just I don't know what they think it
31:50
is but driving me insane like the only thing that I've I've seen two or three
31:55
projects that kind of get it where you have an overlap between properties and
32:00
Brands and things like that I think Kiki city was interesting because it was integrating multiple
32:07
avatars I think that project with all the crypto Twitter digens where they're
32:12
making like a world with all these different stuff like Tubby's or CL or whatever
32:17
World Wide Web oh I think kind of you're talking about maybe no there's World Wide Web 3 but I think you might be
32:23
talking about is it like web reverse yeah maybe whatever verse I think world wide web 3 was it's Kiki city was one of
32:31
these things that suffered from being too early because World Wide Web 3 is
32:36
that but they had um they came after and they had more Engineers I believe uh but
32:42
yeah I mean those overlaps make sense and I I think when you think about a metaverse 2 like it's supposed to be one
32:48
place for everything like like I guess the more modern equivalent would be ready player one which is just fine I
32:55
guess boring you um have you seen much much uh of the other side either videos
33:01
or I've seen the videos and stuff but like even here right it's still that
33:06
it's still going to be it's like gatekeeping for nfts it doesn't matter if there's punks and toads and all that other crap it's not everything the
33:13
metaverse has to be a singular place where everyone goes the direction that we're heading though is everyone's gonna
33:20
have different quote metaverses so you can have corporate ones which I think fortnite is a really good model to look
33:26
at for that because long term I believe that they're gonna do it and they have brand Partnerships and licenses and it
33:33
just makes sense and that may be the one everybody goes to just because experience is easy
33:38
but I think what if I'm I'm sorry to interrupt I just don't know where I'm about to forget this
33:44
um in the same way that if you think of the internet as being you know the kind of base layer that we all interact on
33:51
but there's obviously private gate kept places on the internet that aren't free for everyone to go to and we have mix of
33:58
public and private spaces what if you know kind of let's just say ethereum
34:03
just for the sake of Simplicity ethereum becomes you know the metaverse in the grander sense of the word and there's
34:11
closed parts of that which might be like a kind of a virtual metaverse world like
34:16
other side and there'll be open parts of it which are like either interacting directly with the kind of base
34:21
blockchain or open protocols on that blockchain you know it might end up kind of
34:27
mirroring how the internet is now which is open with private spaces on it yeah I think that's fair I mean I also you know
34:34
to kind of press the point that I was making that it has to be a singular place the challenge with that is if it's
34:40
not an open source protocol then what's the point I guess like we don't want Microsoft to own where everybody goes to
34:48
do everything something like that but uh I do think you know even if it were you
34:53
would have private servers you would have private stuff or ideally if you look at things like Roblox right
35:00
um you enter a place and then there's all these user created like branches second life as well they did this a long
35:06
long time ago second life is probably the most robust metaverse um after maybe Roblox now just because
35:13
of the popularity so yeah I mean even if it's if it's private servers or if it's
35:19
you know private rooms or worlds or whatever like we should think about it as it's a universe and if we're not
35:27
going to explore space It should be able to constantly expand to support whatever we want to put in it so it it doesn't
35:34
need to be a token gated um dystopia in my opinion
35:40
what them what excites you well first first question I guess is
35:45
how because I do you kind of buy into this again kind of like commonly held
35:50
belief that it will be kind of blockchain based gaming that kind of onboards the next big wave of new people
35:58
into kind of crypto to some degree I mean in 2017 when we
36:04
when I was first getting into this whole digital collectible side of thing what we wanted to do was basically this is before rapping existed
36:11
but we wanted to do was create something that you could wrap around the erc20 tokens that to provide attributes to
36:19
them so people could use them in anything because there are so many icos at the time most of those tokens weren't going to do anything so you have all
36:25
these bag holders well suddenly if you were able to wrap attributes you could provide those as drops and games and
36:31
things like that and even back then people were talking about like the possibilities of like hey if we if we do
36:37
this then you know this is going to be huge for crypto or whatever I think uh honestly in order for it to make a make
36:44
a splash it either has to be a really big game that everybody plays but it probably would need to be something that
36:50
currently exists with similar functionality so you if you look at Counter-Strike through valve you know or
36:57
TF2 they have in-game drops that you can collect and you can trade and you can
37:03
sell and like that's exactly the same thing but it's centralized it's I think
37:10
that they do a good job with that because you know something that you buy oh I think it's because one they support
37:16
the longevity of the game right like CS go has been out for forever and all those drops are still usable uh and but
37:23
like people who don't play CS like maybe they play Call of Duty a game comes out every freaking year and so do down deal
37:31
like micro transaction based guns and skins and things like that and then when
37:36
the next game comes out there's no overlap you can't you can't use those things you've paid for and I don't
37:42
people are looking at these things as like they saw the people sale so they think everything that sells is going to
37:48
be some speculative asset and they don't want to make their guns and games speculative assets I guess which is
37:55
strange to me not because they don't make it speculative assets but because the the leap here is like well you paid
38:01
for it if you can own it and then you can treat it like a real world asset doesn't that just make it more
38:08
accessible for everyone but you know I've been saying for a while like there's a huge speculative
38:13
runs of like oh this pfp is going to go to a hundred thousand dollars each or like this 101 is going to do that we're
38:19
we're nearing the age where things are going to normalize to like real world
38:24
pricing for a lot of this stuff I mean I think there will always be ones that probably face a higher price just like
38:30
in the real world like DaVinci is going to be worth more than a painting of
38:35
Spider-Man in a comic convention right but yeah I mean it's not like people are
38:40
gonna buy a Cod skin like Activision can still sell them they can still sell the
38:46
base or if you play fortnite like obviously they sell they do things you can buy all the time but yeah just like
38:53
let people trade it you know you it doesn't if you buy it from Activision it's twenty dollars it
39:00
doesn't mean it has to go to a hundred thousand but if you look at like CS go guns right now like popular knives and
39:06
snipers they can go for a lot because they valve understood the importance of
39:13
Rarity so they would do these Collections and their loot cases and once the season was over that's the only
39:19
time you could get that drop not like fortnite who brings back Legacy items and so the oldest stuff goes for a lot
39:27
of money and it's all centralized and you can't do anything well I guess you can sell it through their platform but
39:32
imagine if you could trade that for a fortnight skin or something like that so I think it's going to have to be a major
39:38
property that everyone's familiar with to get them to accept the idea and I think that they're not going to be able
39:43
to call it nfts they're going to have to call it something else and it's going to have to be somewhat custodial I think to
39:49
a degree at least the start like the Reddit avatars were because uh it's still a large learning experience
39:56
learning curve to get into like even how to use your own wallet or like provide
40:02
self-custody it's not ideal for me that direction I'm
40:09
not saying that's the one we need to go for like like custodial systems but I think with it has to be a stock Gap
40:16
yeah um I took part in the other side play test last weekend and one of the things
40:23
that surprised me the most about it was how much more of an experience it felt
40:30
than a kind of game even though there was like gaming elements to it and I
40:35
think there was about 7 000 concurrent players and there was a big board ape kind of tour guide I guess you could say
40:41
and he was you know I think he probably had a script but you could tell he was reading it live and you know a bit of
40:48
improv and a bit of interacting with other people around him and you know
40:53
lots of um quote-unquote web 2 games have had experiences like I remember seeing that
40:59
Travis Scott concert in fortnite a couple of years ago and thinking that was pretty cool but I guess the economics of doing like
41:06
a kind of live event in a virtual space don't work that well because previous to
41:11
this kind of improbable Tech as I understand it you couldn't have that many concurrent players in one place
41:17
whereas if you can have 10 000 people and one tour guide leading them through a virtual experience
41:24
is suddenly sort of scales a lot more and I think alongside I kind of agree
41:30
with you I think most likely some some already big game kind of Embraces web 3
41:36
rather than some web free game blows up and goes mainstream although it could happen I've experienced side of things could
41:43
you know if virtual experiences enabled by web3 become like a big thing that
41:49
that would be an interesting kind of new thing that people hadn't necessarily experienced before yeah I agree I think
41:55
though the interesting part about what you've just told me is that there is a product a couple of years ago that I had
42:02
used we were during covid times where we were trying to find out a solution for like Live Events but like having like a
42:09
live feeling experience in a digital space and there's a product and I don't remember what it was called but
42:15
basically you created your avatar you dropped to the world and then they actually had like staff tour guides and
42:21
stuff like that where they'd be like here's how you can do this and hey let me give you a tour of the world and
42:27
here's offices and here's a theater and all this stuff ask us any questions and it was ridiculous but all
42:35
the Boomers were like hopping into it and no offense to Boomers if anybody is ever going to listen to this and they
42:40
were like wow this is incredible and it was like meta tier avatars but worse
42:45
and the experience was clunky and they had like five emotes so everybody would just like I don't know it was just silly
42:51
I think though like if meta feels like that that's not new again second life has existed for a very long time and you
43:00
know they have user created worlds within it these are created games user created whatever and there are people
43:07
that live that literal life where they have a Spiel or they are like some sort of vampire Dom that has a thrall or
43:16
whatever but like it is not it is a playground versus a like hey this is a
43:21
group kart racing thing or like a limited thing so I haven't done seen the
43:26
other world thing but again if we're just replicating experiences that currently exist and the only difference is that now you have this quote web 3
43:34
audience that is now getting introduced through it to it through these platforms then all we're really doing is just
43:40
introducing people that weren't familiar with it to other people but if people who already exist and are living in
43:47
these spaces like uh like second life they don't they're not going to make a jump because they've dedicated all their
43:53
time and Life to building this this their own worlds and and cultures and communities so I think there's still a
44:00
challenge there I don't think you're gonna make us I don't think it's going to bring any adoption outside of anybody who's not already in the space
44:09
yeah that's fair no offense I know you have an ape so I don't wanna I don't wanna yeah don't
44:16
please don't fart my this is my retirement man yeah yeah it's to go broke
44:23
yeah I'm well on the way so ahead of schedule yeah I'm so I guess the other kind of
44:30
maybe thing worth worth talking about maybe as a last topic um in in web 3 like so I think actually
44:39
probably a good Duo here because I think you're um we probably have some overlap
44:45
but some some places we spend our time in the space that are probably kind of different and
44:51
um in the kind of uh the worst areas of the space during the bull market kind of
44:57
the most fomo and um kind of I don't know what the word is a hype you know I think the the
45:04
quote-unquote bear Market is is very noticeable in terms of people's drop-off and people leaving the space and lack of
45:11
Engagement lack of attention some bright Sports aside how in in your more kind of
45:17
artist-centric space how does it does it feel similar or has it held up better
45:22
because people are here for kind of quote unquote the right reasons well I think it's difficult because I am in a
45:29
very specific Niche and the people in my niche uh most of the collectors are very
45:34
strongly artist advocates so you know it has dropped down in like the amount of
45:40
volume and stuff like that but there's not there's more ways than just Financial to support the people that you
45:45
know you've met and a lot of us have become really good friends even across like artists and collectors like that
45:51
and which communities we're in but it's still you know fragmented to a degree I'm not I might be sitting in a server
45:56
but I'm not keeping up with that particular thing I can't necessarily speak to the broader like one-on-one markets but I think what I think though
46:05
is that Traders are the worst thing to ever have happened I think they ruined the promise of this space at least for
46:11
like small artists not because they weren't collect or not because they were collecting 101s because they they
46:17
weren't but because the capital and liquidity go into speculation instead of
46:24
into the promise of products and experiences and artwork that could
46:30
transform how things work moving forward I especially I mean it's it's just like
46:35
the icy SEO stuff like back in the day everybody was like oh man this is going
46:40
to revolutionize advertising in reference to like Braves advertising token and so everybody tries to get into
46:47
the the whitelist and buy it up at first and there's huge speculative rush but it's advertising really transform how
46:54
many people use Brave how many people are brave Partners like everyone's mostly still using the same stuff that
47:00
they had if they want to reach a broad audience only like blockchain stuff appeals to people who are into
47:06
blockchain stuff so blockchain stuff is used by blockchain people and if Brave is a blockchain based browser then there
47:11
you go when it comes to the art side and the promise of like royalties and all these other things like for some the
47:17
Traders have all the power and avatars are [ __ ] coins and that's where all the
47:23
capital goes into which is fine that's fine but the toxicity that comes with
47:29
speculation and like you can see the overlap like look at the Ripple army or
47:34
look at the Avalanche Army like those people are toxic AF and they're insane
47:39
and like it's like WWE like everything's a wrestling match or some sort of thing
47:45
to prove that your bag is more valuable than somebody else and literally the only difference between your thing and
47:51
the other person's thing in most cases is that one has different art but they're all just still tokens so I don't
47:59
know like I think there was a promise for transforming how to transitional like
48:04
Fine Art is is accessed finally there was this opportunity for digital artists
48:10
to have an experience more work into to traditional art but without all these middlemen and cuts
48:16
but everywhere we're going especially through the bear Market has just been a return to form I mean even product X or
48:23
product y you know one's removing royalties the other one's adding you know curated galleries they're the
48:30
curator can set the amount that they cut the cut they get in fees it's like I don't know man I'm dismayed at how
48:39
things have shaken out I am thankful that out of my Niche we have
48:44
created a lot I think for a lot of people even outside of financial but
48:50
just from what I read it just seems like everybody's always fighting everywhere else we don't get that much kind of crap and
48:56
toxicity and Anime every once in a while people like Dogpile an artist whether
49:01
it's warranted or not but other than that you know everybody's kind of in it for each other and I mean I guess you could say the same for like certain
49:08
profile pic communities but at the end of the day when like when moon is still
49:13
applicable versus I know when anime is buying art because they think that well no one in anime core is fine art because
49:20
they think they're going to be able to flip it later they're buying it because they like it with the expectation of like this is an alternative things like
49:25
patreon or commissions but yeah well I guess I think this is where kind of
49:32
the space is still a speck of dust but even within it you know
49:37
the only thing that those two things you talked about have in common really is their nfts that are kind of tradable but
49:43
but one is they're they're purchased for very different reasons I mean maybe there are some people out there who
49:50
genuinely love the way their board ape looks but I think for most of them it's it's an investment it's it's it's closer
49:58
to a stock than a piece of art I think they're investing in quote Yeah that's stock versus investing in the artist
50:04
right like no one's buying a pfp well no one's buying a pfp I'm gonna say it
50:11
nobody's buying a pfp because they want to support the artist I mean maybe an anime and maybe some of these smaller
50:16
Indie people but generally anything that mints out there's a speculative guess there in my opinion that it will rise
50:24
rise and value and I think also we shot ourselves in the foot because everybody's just trying to copy the
50:30
board a punk model and it's just stupid like one there's more than 10K people on the planet you don't have to
50:36
artificially make everything like artificially scarce what are you what are you trying to do why why is
50:42
everything got to be the same can we start to think creatively about like what the hell we're trying to do oh man
50:48
you can buy hoodies with this token or you can enter my Discord like you can set your profile pic as an nft own do
50:55
all that [ __ ] for free beforehand so is that really the selling point here like if you wanted a closed community you
51:01
could just have people fill out a form and accept them based off of their credentials like you don't need nfts to
51:08
to allow any idiot sorry no offense to idiots but like to come in and just
51:13
Badger people Non-Stop about the price going up people selling so sorry I cut
51:18
you off I'll play no no no no two I'll play play Devil's Advocate on it on on
51:24
behalf of the idiots like myself I guess I I look I find it hard to
51:31
defend a lot of stuff in the kind of profile picture space but I think I can probably defend this which is the idea
51:37
that now I don't think I have to say I don't think when anyone minted like actually
51:43
went back and minted a board ape anyone could have guessed kind of you know what Yuga would become in the space of a year
51:50
I think that was you know very unpredictable but I think just looking at it now let's just look at it today if
51:57
you find yoga an interesting Prospect as a company who are building a interesting
52:04
looking metaverse world expanding kind of interesting intellectual properties which you know
52:11
whatever you think of broad Apes that is a strong brand and they're starting to build kind of sub Brands within the yoga
52:17
verse and buying me bits and buying punks and if you see this company you think I I think they're doing really
52:23
interesting things I think owning the nft and having the
52:29
value that that company creates as it grows and expands come to you in the
52:34
form of these kind of experiences and airdrops is a far more interesting and
52:40
an engaging world than you logging on to Charles Schwab and buying a share of
52:45
yoga Corp and I think that that kind of different kind of ownership investment
52:51
model is interesting and I think there's not that many examples of organizations
52:57
in the space doing it well that you can point to and go and go so you know here's why it's great look at all these
53:03
companies I think Yuga is the closest you can get um that would be my defense of it I
53:08
don't know how convincing you find out yeah I mean I think maybe there's something valid to that but you also
53:14
have to look at the Inception of Apes Yuga had a lot of experience people
53:19
behind it from like a traditional digital thing if I recall correctly you have brand people you ahead marketing
53:26
people and the whole thing was started I mean to sell those damn Apes like they I
53:32
don't think they were passionate about making the Apes necessarily I think they were like okay here's a model that
53:37
worked we're gonna follow that model but we're going to bring our branding expertise to this uh and I think they
53:44
did and then they got a lot of capital and they're able to do a lot of this stuff there's just not a lot of other
53:50
projects that have had that opportunity or if they have made bank they just don't have the experts behind it or the
53:55
ability to find the proper people and so yeah I mean still kind of centralizes up
54:02
to the top here on like where those brand powers are I mean I think probably apes are more like a supreme kind of
54:09
thing than you know I get the culture it's very different than some of the
54:14
more Niche ones it's it's full of a lot of normal people so like you're repping that brand and
54:19
there's a lot of value in brand and my friend Palace will go on and on about that anytime and maybe maybe we can have
54:27
it on some time to talk about it but it'd be great you know I think yeah I mean brand is strong and there's
54:34
communities that form out of that but yuga's Community is generally healthy because the value of the asset is up so
54:40
everybody who has one feels like okay you know Happy's I guess except for maybe this Market
54:47
but but uh wouldn't you say I mean there's there's clearly a huge speculative premium on on the value I
54:54
don't think anyone would defend like an actual value of a broad ape as being kind of fair value but uh would you say
55:01
that the reason that the board apes are kind of the highest value of these web3 communities is directly correlated with
55:09
kind of how the company behind them is is doing and what it's shipping and what it's producing so it's not I guess what
55:15
I'm saying is it's not that broad apes are happy because broad apes are worth a lot and
55:22
this being like a self-fulfilling promise I think broad apes are happy because Yuga seem to be doing kind of
55:29
good things that the market is rewarding yeah which makes their valuable yeah they I mean they set they set a standard
55:37
right and they have done a good job with the capital that they received they they
55:43
have a vision and they're pushing it out and they understand what they need to do as far as like drip marketing or
55:50
whatever to keep people involved and engaged and like yeah I mean they've got it figured out uh I don't know how much
55:57
of it aligns with the ethos of the promise of the space though they could have done all of the only difference
56:03
with all of this versus a web 2 thing if they had built it is that they were able
56:09
to get Capital up front to do all of this stuff which I think would have been a challenge but it's not the only
56:16
difference right because if they were a web 2 if they were epic games
56:21
um the value that the epic games creates only goes to kind of Epic Games Stock
56:29
stakeholders whatever yeah whereas this is the first time that a community of normal people have been able to kind of
56:36
come along for the ride and not just in any accredited investor class and I think that is different we might say oh
56:42
we've just swapped we've just swapped who the investors are and maybe that's true but it is at least a new swap maybe
56:49
I mean I wouldn't say it's the first time though I mean people have been trading [ __ ] coins for years and the communities are very similar to profile
56:56
pic ones back in back in the um in the excitement I guess phase of
57:01
things you know everybody was speculating on the potential of the products and companies that they were making or that the [ __ ] coin was aligned
57:09
with and they're like this is different you know you can fund you can crowdfund something from the people and you know
57:14
it's very similar arguments I just I don't see much of a difference between the
57:21
[ __ ] coins and the nft communities the only difference I see is that one is
57:27
focused on entertainment whereas with [ __ ] coins a lot of it has to do with like Financial assets or financial based
57:35
protocols so uh yeah I'm not throwing out your point like again you guys done a really good job
57:41
being Major Force in the space but I don't know how much they're pushing it forward and the right direction that but
57:49
I'm also very stuck up my own ass on like what I think the future should be so
57:58
um okay any other topics you you have I think we can do one more if you want I mean
58:05
I'm not sure I mean we've kind of hit like an hour and a half mark I think this is maybe a good place to kind of stop today we can pick up from there
58:12
but yeah I always you know enjoy talking to you I guess the biggest question that everyone's going to ask coming out of
58:18
this tap podcast is what's next for tap um the this might be a good opportunity
58:25
for you to talk about the uh the Java forms thing that it'd be interesting
58:30
yeah I think I think given your interest in AI it would be interesting to explore kind of a tap tap model yeah and then
58:39
they have reasonable I well yeah I think it's I think what I would want to do is
58:44
train a base style that I would want for those avatars uh which I don't know what
58:51
that's going to look like but I'd want to do something that is kind of like yeah what what j48's done where it's
58:57
like very over tuned but you're gonna get the right outputs and then convert and airdrop everybody who owns a tap
59:04
their their output based off of the text on it so I don't think that's going to be too difficult it's just more of a
59:10
time thing people have had some good ideas but I think it's got to be more than just the base model I think it has to be special and I think maybe this the
59:17
j48 thing is a good topic for next time you know so yeah uh it's been a pleasure
59:24
who weighs a pleasure no no the pleasure is all mine you can I please the pleasure is mine I insist oh excellent
59:30
well thanks for listening to our show um there's probably not a plug here for
59:36
anything or any sponsorship so uh well audible we should probably audible yeah
59:43
yeah we are not actually sponsored by audible we have no audible audible books
59:49
but in your ears thank you for listening excellent thank you uh see you next time see you next time bye mate bye