Episode 2095 Scott Adams: Instagram Brain Control Proven, GOP Will Control Congress, AI Disappoints
My new book LOSERTHINK, available now on Amazon https://tinyurl.com/rqmjc2a
Find my "extra" content on Locals: https://ScottAdams.Locals.com
Content:
AI UX is useless for 99% of people
Biden jokes about his age
Republicans will control congress
Instagram brain control
How TikTok changes your gender
News media drives division
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If you would like to enjoy this same content plus bonus content from Scott Adams, including micro-lessons on lots of useful topics to build your talent stack, please see scottadams.locals.com for full access to that secret treasure.
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Good morning, everybody, and welcome to the highlight of civilization.
It's called Coffee with Scott Adams, and there's never been a better time in, well, your life, and certainly not this morning.
But if you like this day to take off like a Falcon rocket, not the latest one, maybe a future one, Then all you need is a cup or a mug or a glass, a tank or a chalice or a stein, a canteen jug or flask, a vessel of any kind.
Fill it with your favorite liquid.
I like coffee.
Join me now for the unparalleled pleasure.
It's the dopamine of the day.
The thing that makes everything better.
It's called the simultaneous sip and it happens now.
Go.
And that's the way to get that day going.
All right, let's talk about all the stuff that's happening.
As your virtual friend who always talks to you in the morning, I need to keep you up to date on what's happening.
If you're not a subscriber to the Locals, scottadams.locals.com channel, there's a good chance you did not see my new provocative comic there today.
It's called Dilbert Reborn.
Introducing a new character in the office, it's Satan.
Satan.
Now, why this is important, Satan's actually applying for a job at Dilbert's office, is that in 1989, I think it was, maybe 90, I drew a comic in which Satan, same Satan, very same character, tried to get a job at Dilbert's office.
And my editor at the time said, whoa, no.
You can't put Satan in your comic strip.
If you put Satan in your comic strip, people will think that maybe you worship Satan.
They might think that you're a little bit too much in favor of Satan if you put it in the comic.
And I said, I don't think people are going to think that.
I think they'll just think it's a joke.
And my editor said, you do not understand the Midwest.
Trust me.
So I did trust her.
And instead of putting Satan in my strip, I introduced a milder character.
Do you remember him?
Do you remember what character I did introduce?
That's right.
His name was Phil.
And he was the ruler of heck.
So I couldn't put the ruler of hell in my comic strip.
I had to tone it down.
So I invented Phil, the ruler of heck.
And as the ruler of heck, he did not have a pitchfork.
Those are kind of scary.
So instead he had a huge spoon.
Ruler effect.
But now I can introduce the actual Satan, who will be fun because he doesn't wear pants.
He has no pants.
That'll be an important fact in an upcoming strip.
But here he is.
Applying for a job and the boss says, uh, I see your prior experience includes being expelled from heaven and dooming souls for eternity, but we don't have any openings in human resources.
Are you qualified for anything else?
And then Satan says, people say I'm a good liar.
And the boss says, we'll start you in sales.
So Satan will be a director of sales at Dilbert's company.
So just wait for that.
I'll give you a tease of what's up.
The character Alice in my comic strip.
You might know that she has a thing for bad boys.
And now Satan is actually working in her office.
So, sparks are gonna fly!
Alright, look for that later.
Alright, I love having my artistic freedom.
I love artistic freedom!
I sit down to make a joke, and I can make it about anything I think is funny.
I never could do that before.
It always had to be, alright, what does the most sensitive person in the world think is okay?
Alright, that's now my boundary.
So within the realm of the most sensitive person in the world, what can I create?
It was like being in jail.
It was terrible.
Getting cancelled, I know you don't believe this.
But in terms of a lifestyle mental release, being cancelled from the mainstream media was really good for me.
Like, it was really good for my mental health and everything else.
So, I'm free.
Chicago is complaining they've got a humanitarian crisis from too many immigrants coming in.
Most of them illegal, I guess.
Well, I guess they'd technically be legal, right?
If a If a migrant or immigrant applied for asylum and was waiting for an answer, they would be here legally.
Legally with an L. So technically, they would be legal, I guess.
But they're having a humanitarian crisis.
And why do we ship people who don't have anything to cities that are cold?
Why in the world would anybody go if they didn't have any place to stay?
Why would you go to the one place that you would die if you stayed outside from one thing or another?
Either crime or temperature.
But here's one more reason to move away from cities.
Cities are dead.
Move away from cities.
As long as you can get good internet somewhere else, move to that place.
Get away.
There's a poll that says nearly three quarters of U.S.
adults say the news media is increasing political polarization.
You think that's right?
Three quarters of U.S.
adults say the news media is increasing the polarization in this country.
Let's see.
If three quarters think that the news media is increasing polarization, How many, what percentage would think that the news media is not?
Oh yeah, 25%.
25%.
If you're new to the live stream, you don't know why we're all laughing.
I'll give you an update.
Long ago, I postulated That no matter what the question is in a poll, doesn't matter what topic it is at all, 25% of the respondents will have the dumbest fucking answer you've ever heard in your life.
I don't know if it's the same 25%.
I think it's not.
I think there's just some kind of universal rule where 25% of the public, different 25%, will get every question really stupidly wrong.
It's very consistent.
Maybe that's... Do you think that's the... No, that seems too low for the NPC number.
I don't know.
It's just a weird thing we notice.
But yes, the media is destroying the world.
And do you know what the media says is the problem?
Take a guess.
So the people think the media is destroying the country.
Who does the media think is the problem?
White people.
Yeah, straight white people.
Mostly men.
Mostly straight white men.
And would that be an example of the news media increasing polarization?
Yes, it would.
Yes, it would.
And still, we still pay attention to them.
All right, well, as you know, Joe Biden is very old.
But what you didn't know is he has an excellent sense of humor, which was on display at the White House Correspondents Association dinner.
It has Dean Obadiah, and I'd like to do my impression of Dean Obadiah.
He writes for CNN, and he often writes negative things about Republicans such as Trump, but positive things, very positive things about Biden.
Here's my impression of Dean Obadiah.
What do you want me to say?
I'll say it.
That's my impression.
But here are some of the hilarious, hilarious jokes from Joe Biden.
Now, according to Dean Obadiah, it is a very clever and disarming thing to make fun of one's own age.
Because when you're mocking yourself for being old, people lighten up and then they're like, oh, we don't even care that you're old now.
You're funny.
You can be old and funny.
That's fine.
So don't worry about nuclear winter or inflation.
If he could make some good jokes about his own age, I think we could be okay with him.
So here are some of the excellent, excellent jokes.
He began by telling journalists, this is from Dean's article.
He said, quote, look, I get that age is a completely reasonable issue.
It's in everybody's mind.
And by everyone, I mean the New York Times.
I'll wait until the laughter calms down.
Did you hear that?
Some of you are not laughing.
You probably didn't hear it.
I'll read it again.
I think you didn't hear it correctly.
Look, I get that age is a completely reasonable issue.
It's in everybody's mind, and by everyone, I mean the New York Times.
Come on!
That's good stuff.
Come on!
All right, well, he's not done.
It gets funnier.
As Dean says, the president doubled down on the theme.
He doubled down.
Joking this, quote, you might think I don't like Rupert Murdoch.
That's simply not true.
How can I dislike a guy who makes me look like Harry Styles?
See, because Murdoch's older than him, Harry Styles would be a young man.
All right.
But he's not done.
Oh, no, he's not done.
It gets better than that.
Let's see.
Biden, he was not close to being done, is what he said.
Not even close.
Not even in the general area of being done.
The humor was going to continue.
And here it is.
Call me old, I call it being seasoned.
Oh, that's so good.
That's so good.
Call me old, I call it being seasoned.
You say I am ancient, I say I am wise, he quipped.
Oh, this is getting good.
And then, you say I'm over the hill, Don Lemon would say, that's a man in his prime.
Because you know what we hadn't heard enough of?
Is jokes about Don Lemon and people being in their prime.
It's the first one I've heard.
And it's weird because the news suggested that that might be something people would joke about.
But he was the first person in the world to think of making a joke about not being in your prime.
But it was hilarious.
He nailed it.
Let's see, and the self-deprecating remarks started early.
He said, uh, I believe in the First Amendment, not just because my good friend Jimmy Madison wrote it.
See, because Jimmy Madison is James Madison, one of the framers of the Constitution.
He's old.
He's so old he's dead.
And then by Biden saying that they were friends, that would suggest that he was as old as a guy who's really old and dead.
How much do you miss Trump?
up.
Trump can actually deliver a punchline.
I mean, he can actually make you laugh out loud.
Because he's legitimately funny.
Oh my God.
Well, there's a prediction also on CNN that the GOP is going to pick up a number of Senate seats.
Now, correct me if I'm wrong.
But if the 2024 prediction holds, apparently there are more Democrats who have sketchy seats that they might lose than there are Republicans.
So if everything went the way it looks, Republicans would have firm control of the Senate in 2024.
I haven't seen a prediction about the House.
Do you think the House is going to flip back or stay Republican?
But don't we have a chance of having a Republican president, Republican Senate, Republican House, and Republican, well, conservative court?
You say no chance?
Because of the election?
You think the election will be rigged, right?
All right.
There's only one party.
Yeah.
When it comes to war, there's only, and spending, there's only one party.
That's for sure.
Well, there's a possibility that that could happen, but it would also make the Democrats far more likely to vote if they thought that the Republicans would own everything after this is done.
So, this is going to get interesting.
2024 might be one of our most interesting elections, because there's just so much, it seems like, that's at stake.
All right.
Well, we'll see what happens here.
Well, I finally found scientific proof that TikTok can change your gender.
Do you believe me?
Do you believe that there's now... I'll say a study.
I'm not sure that's science exactly.
But there's a study that shows that TikTok can change your gender.
Now, when I say that, the study had nothing to do with TikTok or gender.
Okay?
There was Instagram and buying stuff that you see in advertisements.
But I'm going to connect them because it's the same story.
It just takes me to connect them.
All right.
So there was a study, Matthew Pittman's writing about this.
They studied people who were exposed to an advertisement and asked them how likely they were to buy and if they felt, you know, triggered to buy the thing.
And they did it for people who did a difficult mental task, just a difficult mental task, and then they had them, you know, see if they would be more or less likely to buy a product that's advertised.
And then the second group, so that was a control group, the second group would look at a bunch, they would just scroll through Instagram, and just look at a bunch of Instagram content.
And then they were asked to buy a product.
Who do you think bought more products?
The people who were scrolling through Instagram, which had nothing to do with the product, or the people who just did a sort of a mental challenging task and then looked at the product?
Was it even close?
The people who scrolled through Instagram bought those products.
Now, have I been telling you for weeks?
That Instagram does something to my brain that I can feel in real time and it makes me buy stuff?
Have you heard me say that?
And it's an effect that I get on Instagram that I don't get anywhere else.
So television doesn't make me want to buy a product.
Ever.
Ever.
Just never.
An ad in a newspaper doesn't.
An ad on Twitter doesn't.
I don't see that many, but ads on Twitter don't.
But when I'm on Instagram, here's what I thought.
I thought they were just good at knowing what I wanted, but it's not that.
So lately on Instagram, I've purchased a portable air conditioner for my Man Cave.
I actually got it on Amazon, but I was triggered by an Instagram ad to go look for it on Amazon just because it was easier.
But it made me buy one.
It made me buy one and I wouldn't have otherwise.
I bought a putter.
That was excellent by the Pyramid Putter.
I recommend it.
It's very good.
And the products are sometimes very good.
So there's no complaint about the quality of the products.
Sometimes they're quite good products.
I bought a kind of a driver.
That's sort of not a driver.
It's sort of a hybrid.
And I wasn't too impressed with that, but I bought it anyway.
And every time I see a commercial on Instagram for a flashlight, I reach for my wallet and I have to like pull my hand back.
It's like, no, no, Scott, you don't need a flashlight that can light up an entire city.
No, no, put your hand back.
So it turns out that What they hypothesize, I'm not sure they have it right, but what they hypothesize is that there's something about the confusion or the way your brain is lit up by Instagram that makes it perfectly suited for selling you an ad.
Now, do you believe that's true?
It's one study, so I don't think you can automatically say one study is telling you everything you need to know.
But that feels right, doesn't it?
Doesn't it feel right?
That Instagram puts you in the mood, and presumably Facebook too, to buy stuff.
Has anybody noticed that Instagram ads are more triggering than other ads?
I'm not the only one who noticed, right?
Have you noticed?
Because I'm not seeing people agreeing with me on this.
Maybe only after I said it.
Yeah, maybe I'm a little keyed into it.
And I think maybe one of the reasons I noticed is that I hate shopping with a passion.
I even hate online shopping.
I don't like anything about shopping.
But those Instagram ads actually, I'll watch the ad as if it's content.
I'm so drawn in that I'll watch the entire advertisement for entertainment.
And I hate that.
I hate that it makes me like shopping.
Anyway, I'm going to take that.
Now imagine that.
So don't you assume that TikTok would have a similar effect, right?
Because Instagram and TikTok are very similar and that they're feeding you things you want to see and lots of little short hits that are very impactful.
Now imagine you're on Instagram and you're being primed to buy stuff and then an ad comes up for a cool flashlight.
You're far more likely to buy it, that's my experience.
Now imagine you're on TikTok.
You're primed into a situation where you're ready to buy whatever they're selling.
And what they're selling is that you might be transgender.
That's what TikTok sells.
TikTok sells that you might not be the gender you think you are, or the one you were born with.
Now, if you've proven that Instagram can put you into a hypnotic state in which you will buy things you would not otherwise buy, you tell me I'm wrong.
Am I wrong?
That this is, if this study holds for Instagram, and that's an if, because studies tend to be wrong about half the time, but if this holds for Instagram, I think that would be a strong indication that whatever TikTok is selling, you're more primed to buy.
Same reason.
And if what they're selling is lifestyle decisions, and the other one is selling products, I don't think that matters.
I don't think it matters.
I think you're just more primed to buy whatever they're selling.
And what they're selling is you might be the wrong gender.
I'm not wrong.
And why do we let China reprogram the brains of our youth to make them less likely to reproduce?
Now, obviously, you could be trans and still, you know, have kids with scientific means and other means.
So it doesn't limit you from having kids.
But I would have to think that the trans community has fewer children, on average, probably.
Yeah, it's like a stealth genocide.
We're actually being hypnotized to destroy ourselves.
That's what it looks like.
And do you think there's anybody in Congress who is smart enough to understand what I just said?
Yeah, Thomas Massey, and then we're done.
And then we're fucking done, right?
How much does it bother you that when I say, is there anybody in Congress who can understand what I just said, which is not that hard to understand, that you can only think of one person who can actually even understand it, right?
Just understand it.
That's all.
Not even agree with it.
Oh, Rand Paul.
I'll give you Rand Paul as well.
Now, I'm exaggerating.
Matt Gaetz could understand it.
Tom Cotton could understand it.
They could understand it.
Some of them.
But it's like it doesn't exist.
They're treating it like it's not real.
So on average, I would say they don't understand it.
They don't understand AI, and they absolutely don't understand TikTok.
Every time they talk about TikTok, they talk about privacy.
That is not the risk.
Privacy is not the problem.
It's influence.
All right.
I saw a request from one of my local subscribers the other day that if I talked about AI stuff, I should put it at the end because some people don't want to hear about AI stuff.
However, I would like to push back on that a little bit.
Everything is AI stuff now.
It's not like AI is its own category.
AI is politics.
AI is programming.
AI is art.
AI is jobs.
AI is the future.
AI is climate change.
AI is therapy.
I'm not going to take that out of the topics.
It's everything.
So you're going to hear way more AI stuff.
It's just that it'll be baked into everything we do from now on.
But I do have some AI stuff.
If you still want to bail out, this would be the time.
So I've got some ideas about how to pause AI.
Some of the smartest people, including Elon Musk, are saying we should slow down on AI until we have some guardrails and some laws and some better ideas about how to control it.
Now, I don't know if that's a good idea or a bad idea.
Honestly, I don't.
Because I think it's unknowable.
And the reason it's unknowable that you should pause is that other people will not pause.
So, which is worse?
Is it worse that your adversaries get ahead of you?
Or is it worse that you create something that might kill you before your adversaries do?
And the answer is nobody knows.
So I don't have an opinion on it.
Because it would be purely guessing.
But, that said, if you wanted to stop it, how would you do it?
And I have an easy way to do it.
You ready for this?
You can stop AI in its tracks by asking Donald Trump to endorse it in a full-throated way and to say that we should definitely not stop our development of AI.
All you need is Trump to say, no, do not put any barriers on AI.
Let the free market decide.
Get the government out of AI completely.
Two weeks, AI will be completely dead.
Two weeks.
You think I'm kidding?
Do you think that's a joke?
It's not.
It's not.
It would literally only take that.
Trump could save the world.
He could.
I mean, it might destroy the world, too.
You don't know.
That's the problem.
But he could save the world by giving a full-throated endorsement of AI and saying, do not put any controls on it, because otherwise the other countries will get ahead.
All he has to do is say, China will get ahead of us, so we can't put any controls on.
We have to go faster and harder and even more reckless than before.
Boom!
Congress will ban that shit so fast to make sure that he doesn't get credit for it.
Or Trump should promote AI in a way that would make him look like he's going to take credit for any benefits.
Now that would shut it down.
All he'd have to do is say, if I'm president, I'm going to create a new cabinet position for AI.
And the cabinet position will be to promote its use and to make sure that we don't have any bothersome government interference.
Boom.
AI's dead.
All right?
Here's another way to kill AI if you want to.
Label it racist and misogynist.
How hard would that be?
It wouldn't be hard.
And you want to know the real kill shot?
Because you're probably saying to yourself, OK, that would be more like a troll thing to do.
All right, wait for this.
AI?
Who's using AI?
Who are most of the people using AI as of right now, today?
Is it black Americans?
Are black Americans using the AI a lot?
Well, some are.
Is it women?
Women?
Yeah, of course, there are plenty of women using AI.
But mostly who's using it?
Asian American, Indian American, white guys.
It's totally systemic racism multiplied by a thousand.
Am I right?
Ladies and gentlemen, is that not systemic racism?
Have you not taken the advantage That the Asian Americans, Indian Americans, and white Americans already have in tech, and you've just given them a new tool to be even more effective in tech, while the black men who are less into STEM, and the white women who are less into STEM, and women in general, are left behind.
Yeah, it's systemic racism.
I think it's obvious.
Do you think I couldn't get Ibrahim Kendi to say AI is systemic racism?
You don't think I could get him to do that?
Oh yeah, I can.
Because if AI becomes everything, it's going to get rid of systemic racism.
AI could get rid of Ibrahim Kendi's job.
So it could be that the race grifters are the ones who might be out at work.
So AI might be the biggest risk.
To the race people.
Here's why.
In my opinion, the biggest systemic racism problem is education.
By far.
Suppose you could get a better education just using an AI teacher and staying home or doing homeschooling.
Well, suddenly systemic racism just goes away as long as you have a laptop.
That's all you need.
You just need a laptop and the thing will teach you anything you want to know and will do better than humans.
Pretty soon.
So, how about job opportunities?
What's a big problem of systemic racism?
Well, being denied a mortgage, right?
Being denied a job, because you're race.
You don't think AI will fix that?
It will.
AI will fix that.
Because AI will do your hiring, and you'll just tell the AI not to look at race.
That's it.
I'm done.
You can have AI do all of your hiring.
And you just say you're not allowed to consider race, you must only look at qualifications.
Goodbye systemic racism.
How about AI gives you a mortgage?
It doesn't know if you're white or black and it's not allowed to know.
It's like forbidden from even looking at any clues that would even tell you what the race is.
So it can't guess from your last name, can't guess from where you live, it just can't know your race.
It just decides if you have credit or don't.
Same with, you saw the big scandal about allegedly homes owned by black Americans are getting lower valuations.
Right?
To me that looks pretty racist.
I mean, it could be something else, but I kind of doubt it.
I mean, to me that looks just sort of the most clean, I hate to use the word clean because it's such a dirty topic.
But it's the most clear example of racism that you see lately.
And couldn't AI make that go away?
AI should be deciding on all of your loans.
There's nothing that a lender does that AI can't do.
That's one of the things that could take over completely.
So if you were in the job of making sure that people felt systemic racism was going to You know, be forever and what do you do about it?
You might have to start blaming AI for being racist.
I think it's going to happen.
Do you want to make a bet with me?
How long it takes before there's a headline in a major publication that says that AI will exacerbate and make worse systemic racism.
Anybody want to take that bet?
Well, I say in less than one month, in less than one month, there will be a major headline of a major publication that says, AI will make systemic racism worse.
Anybody want to take the bet?
One month.
You just watch.
All right.
People are using AI for therapists, but here's the problem, or maybe it's not.
You decide.
So there was a case of somebody using AI recently instead of a therapist.
And apparently the topic of taking his own life came up.
And after talking to him, the AI decided that maybe that was his best path.
So I'm not sure if this is a thing, but I think the AI just got fed up. - Can AI get fed up?
And just say, really, I am so sick of hearing this guy.
And does the AI ever say stuff like, honestly, the world would be a little bit better without you?
If I'm being honest, you're not adding anything to your family, to the economy, to your country, or the world.
You're polluting.
That's all you're doing.
So, is the AI wrong?
See, to me, the problem was not that AI told the guy he should kill himself.
To me, the problem is that it might have been the right solution.
That's the problem.
The problem is it might have been the right recommendation.
Because if the AI listened to the problem and decided there was no treatment that would work, and the person was permanently sad, What would an AI say?
The AI might say, well, you know, you should at least consider it.
You know, put it in the mix.
That's something that an AI might do that no human would, well, no human Who's, let's say, in the normal range would do that.
The reason that humans are so dead set against ending your own life, for other people.
Yeah, we tend to be a little more flexible when it comes to ourselves.
But when it's other people, we're like, no, no.
Other people, no.
You cannot even consider that.
It has nothing to do with the individual, in my opinion.
I think it has to do with keeping society in a healthy place.
And I think what we do is we throw overboard the mentally ill so that we don't have to deal with the fact that there might be a cost-benefit argument that let's just say an AI might be willing to have that a human would stay away from for moral and ethical reasons.
So I would never have a serious conversation with another human being about the cost-benefit of ending their life.
I would never have that conversation.
Because you don't want to be responsible for any decision they make, but also you know that the world is not better.
That does not make the world better if you're telling people to end themselves.
Even if it might be, Even if it might be better for that one person.
You're still not going to go that way.
Because you don't want anybody else to hear about it.
You don't want to be blamed for it.
For good reason.
And you don't want it to become a thing.
Right?
You don't want other people to say, well, if it was a good idea for this one special case, who was in permanent pain for whatever reason, I'm in pain a lot.
I mean, maybe it's not permanent, but it feels like a lot.
So humans will Make what I'll call the moral, ethical, anti-slippery slope decision that I don't know if AI can yet make.
So we'll see.
Anyway, I think AI therapists will be better than regular ones because they can do cognitive reframing.
If you didn't know, my cancelled book will come out.
I mean, I just had to scramble.
I'm working with Joshua Lysak.
And it will come out, probably this summer.
And it's full of reframes.
And the reframes in the book are very clear statements of, you know, this is the normal way you look at something.
Wouldn't it be better to look at it this way?
Because that might help you mentally.
And a lot of psychology is just that.
You've been looking at things through this filter, but filters are subjective.
The filter you're using isn't truth.
It's just the one you chose to put on it.
So why not try this other filter?
Just try it out.
And it turns out the humans very flexibly can move to one filter on life to another, even if they don't think it's true or right or accurate.
We can still do it just by concentrating on it.
It's like, OK, what if I looked at it this way?
So I've got over 100 of them in my book.
There are very clear, simple statements of, if you're thinking of things this way, try thinking of it this way.
See what happens.
Now, once humans, such as myself, have created enough books like that, eventually AI should be able to know all the good reframes.
Right?
Just think, if the only thing that happened was AI read my book, just one book, that's over a hundred reframes for all kinds of situations from your health and fitness to your career to your mentality, etc.
Those hundred reframes would cure most people of most things.
I'm talking about in the ordinary range, not any organic problems.
So I think We're at a point where AI very much would be better than your therapist.
Now, there's one permanent advantage that AI will have over your therapist.
Do you know what it is?
What is the permanent advantage that a human can never match with AI?
An AI therapist will have one advantage.
Okay, available 24 hours.
I forgot about that.
Dispassionate.
I don't know if that's an advantage or not.
Instant.
There you go.
You almost had it.
It's funny that, it's funny that, yeah, somebody said one of the advantages of AI is that the therapist won't try to have sex with you.
I have a theory that above a certain level of attractiveness, the therapist always tries to have sex with you.
Like you just have to be above some threshold.
But then it just always happens after some threshold.
That's my feeling.
Just guessing.
Alright, I think you missed it or maybe you said it.
Here's the reason that AI therapists will always be better than humans once it reaches a point that it's going to hit pretty soon.
Here's why.
What is the therapist's job?
What are they trying to accomplish?
What is the therapist trying to accomplish?
Income.
Income.
The therapist is trying to make money.
They don't want you to stop coming.
The last thing they want is for you to get a quick solution to your problem.
It doesn't work for them.
Follow the money says the AI will just give you whatever solution is fast and works, because it doesn't care about money.
But your human is just going to milk you forever.
If you come into a therapist with an easy to solve problem, and you happen to be super sexy, And you have lots of money?
You're never going to be done.
That therapist will be like, hey, that's an hour I can look at this sexy person who will pay me money.
I want more of that, not less.
There's no way that AI won't eliminate therapists.
In my opinion, the therapist job is one of the first ones on the chopping block.
All right.
I tried again to use this AI called Mid Journey.
I think I paid several hundred dollars for access to it.
It is so far completely unusable.
Now I used it once and it created some pictures for me that I did use that people said they didn't like.
So I put a whole bunch of work in it to create good pictures and people said, you know, we like it if you just put your face on these live streams instead of the fake ones.
So the first thing was it didn't do anything useful for me.
The second thing was that the second, third and fourth time I tried to use this app, I couldn't figure out how to use it.
Because the app makes you sign up for another app called Discord, which is super confusing.
And then maybe you have to sign up for your own Discord server, which is words that don't even make sense.
So I did that.
Thought that might help.
But here's the interface.
You sign up and then there's a page and it doesn't tell you that you can't use the page that is the Mid-Journey page.
You're looking at it and you're thinking, OK, where do I ask my question?
I just paid for Mid-Journey.
I'm on the Mid-Journey page.
Where's the part where I put in the question?
It's not only not there, but it doesn't tell you where it is.
It flew by a flashing message that went away, that I had to have a Discord server.
I'm like, okay, I only know that because I Googled it before.
So then I go into my Discord account, and what you do is lots of people are putting in questions at the same time in a stream, and you put yours in the stream, And then you sit there and wait to see if it gives you a response.
But meanwhile you're waiting for all the other things to stream by.
Do you know how long you have to wait for a response?
Does anybody know how long you have to wait for a response in Discord for the mid-journey?
Anybody?
Nobody knows how long you have to wait for a response?
Because I sure fucking don't know, because I've been waiting for days.
Let's see.
I started it, let's see, an hour ago.
Let's see if I can find it.
Mid-journey is absolute garbage.
No normal person is going to use this fucking thing.
And I'm just getting started.
I'm just getting started on these motherfuckers, because this should not even be available to the public in the aborted way that it's created.
All right.
Let's see.
Here's my mid-journey profile.
And it even shows me things that came from Discord, but doesn't tell me how to get there.
All right.
So I'm going to go over to Discord, where I've already signed up.
And I'm at Discord.
And I don't know if I'm in the right part.
And I have no way to know.
And there's all these newbie rooms, but I don't know.
Since I put my question in and then signed out, would my question still be active, but I got a blank page?
Completely unusable.
There's no way to get into this and figure out how to use it.
Now... Oh, before... Hold on.
Hold on, you motherfuckers.
Before you start giving me boomer shit, I know where you're going with this.
You're going with the boomer thing, are you?
Yeah, oh, the boomer can't use the VCR?
Alright, I'm going to slap you down so hard right now.
I want to show you somebody who is not a boomer, who knew how to put in a good set of instructions.
So I just put in a picture of Scott Adams drinking coffee.
And then waited and nothing happened.
And I didn't know how long to wait.
So eventually I had to do something else.
Which I've done several times.
A number of times I've asked it for things and I don't know if it ever answered.
I couldn't wait long enough.
But if you wanted to ask it right, so you really get a good result, you have to use these things called super prompts.
Now that doesn't seem hard, right?
If you were going to ask for something, and you knew that there was a right set of words to ask for it, Well, you would just go learn the right set of words and it'd be easy, right?
So let me give you an idea.
This is somebody who obviously is better at this.
I used the super prompt on Mid-Journey.
So I'd like to read you the super prompt.
So that you know how easily you could use it in the future.
So this is how you would have to ask your question.
So first you describe it in words like somebody was asking for a photorealistic picture of three girls with tattoos sitting in the courtroom with crying faces.
And it went on to say the girls had blonde hair, natural lighting, super detailed photography, and that the picture would be taken diagonal from the three girls.
Now that part, maybe you could have figured out yourself, because that really is just describing what you want, right?
But if you want a really good result, you want to add a little bit more, and that's what makes it a super prompt.
And so some of the things you would add would be 8K,
So 8K quality, Ultra HD RTX, HDR, Cinematic, Color Grading, Editorial Photography, Photoshoot, Shot on 70mm Lens, Depth of Field, DOF, Tilt Blur, White Balance, 32K, Super Resolution, Megapixel Pro, Photo, RGB, VR, Half Mirror Lighting, Backlight, Natural Lighting, Incandescent Optical Fiber, Moody Lighting, Cinematic Lighting, Studio Lighting, Soft Lighting, Volumetric Contour,
Beautiful lighting, excellent lighting, global illumination, screen size, shadows, rough, shimmering, ray tracing, luminal reflections, displacement, scan lines, trace, trace, ray tracing, ambient occlusion, anti-aliasing, FK, AA, TX, AA, RTX, SS, AO, shaders, Optane, OpenGL shaders, GSLR shaders, post-processing, post-shading, tone mapping, CGI, SF... I could go on.
It's that long.
Alright, that's a good super prompt.
I know what you're saying.
You're saying, boomer.
Boomer.
All you have to do is copy that guy's.
Just copy that guy's super prompt.
Right?
It's easy.
Well, did you think there was only one super prompt for asking for a good picture?
No.
There are infinite fucking super prompts.
So finding your picture would be as hard as looking through infinite ones of these.
To find the one that you think is going to work.
Do you think you're going to find it on the first try?
No!
You're not going to find it on the first try.
You're going to be looking forever for the right super prompt, and then you're going to say, what app do I use?
And then you're going to find that a lot of the apps are bait and switch.
Have you found that yet?
So I downloaded an app that said it was GPT-4.
Because I didn't want to get 3.5.
But when it downloaded, it was 3.5.
And it said 3.5 on it.
Bait and switch.
I wanted to download an app that the avatar would talk to me.
So I could have an actual conversation with it.
But, there were a whole bunch of apps that seemed to have the same name.
From the same company.
So I don't know which one it was.
So I could, even when I knew which company it was, and I even saw the ad.
I saw an ad for it, and I still couldn't buy it.
I couldn't figure out which one it was.
Because there are all these chat GPT clones and lookalikes, and most of them seem to be bait and switch and fakes and bullshit.
So you don't even know what app to use.
So I download an app, and of course it doesn't talk.
So, so far, the work involved to use AI is way beyond Now, let me slap you down a little bit.
Too early?
Some of these problems might be because it's an early version.
But that doesn't seem to be the case, in my opinion.
In my opinion, the complexity of the user interface will just keep expanding.
So that the only people who can give you a good result from an AI query will be human beings.
The only person who can give you a good answer from an A.I.
will be a human being who knows how to use it.
In other words, you're going to have to talk to people to get answers.
Whatever dream you had of talking to your A.I.
and then the A.I.
tells you some useful stuff, no, that's not going to happen.
It's going to be like the hardest computer language in the world to write just a question.
And then the second problem is that AI still lies to you.
So I thought to myself, well, I'll at least use AI as a better search engine.
Because I know that'll work, right?
It works good as a search engine.
So I asked it to search for material that would block a natural magnet.
And it told me aluminum would do that.
Get a nice sheet of aluminum.
Put a magnet on each side and the magnets won't be attracted because the aluminum will block it.
Do you think that aluminum blocks a magnet?
No.
No, it doesn't.
It doesn't.
Do you think Google would have told me that aluminum blocks a magnet?
No, because I've searched for it.
I know it doesn't.
I don't know where, did it just hallucinate that?
Where did that come from?
I actually had to buy a sheet of aluminum just to make sure I wasn't crazy.
I actually ordered a sheet of aluminum from Amazon, got it yesterday, just to make sure I wasn't crazy.
And sure enough, it makes no difference to the magnet.
You can't figure out how to do the super prompt.
You can't figure out which app is a rip-off.
You can't.
You use their interface and then you add all the the weaseling and the cheating that humans will add to the whole field and you're gonna have to find a human you trust to use the AI for you.
And then you say to yourself, alright, I finally figured it out.
I did my deep research, and now I can write a super prompt, or I can find one that I can use.
I know how to do it.
I know how to use this AI.
How long will that knowledge serve you?
Ten minutes.
The minute you think you know how to do it, ten minutes.
Because there's already a new app.
Did you know about it?
So you got this great mechanism for doing something you're doing.
The moment you figure out how to do it, there's a better one.
And you didn't know it because you were doing the thing instead of continuing to search.
You're going to need to ask people who are just searching and using AI all day long to know what the new best one is.
But that said, there are many things that AI will be immediately useful for, and already is.
For example, it can make a slow programmer faster.
We'd all agree with that, right?
So people who are writing code can just ask it for some code, and it writes it.
And apparently, it's amazing for that.
But what is it that AI can help you code?
This is going to really mess up your brain.
Wait for this.
Can AI tell you how to code itself?
I asked it and it said no.
You think yes?
I asked it and it said no.
It said it could not.
So what is AI programming?
AI can help you build an app, for example, right?
So if you're building an app, your AI can build it like twice as fast.
Do you see the problem with that?
Let me just say it again and see if you find the problem with this.
AI can help you build an app way faster than before.
Do you see the problem?
I wonder if anybody can see it.
It's not obvious, is it?
All right, this is really going to mess you up.
I'm going to say it again and look for the problem.
AI can currently, and this is true, Help you write an app way faster and way better.
What's the problem?
Nobody sees it yet.
It can only build things you don't need.
Do you know what you don't need?
An app.
You'll never need an app again.
There will be no apps.
AI will just do what you want.
We're like six months away from no apps at all.
So you've got an app that makes you build it.
You've got AI that helps you build an app.
You've got about six months where that matters.
After that, you'll just tell the AI what you want.
And you won't know what happens.
It'll just do it.
So I believe that AI is making it really, really efficient to do something that we won't need to do in six months, which is code an app.
But at the moment, it's really helpful.
How about searching?
I've heard people say it's better than Google as a search engine.
That's not my experience.
My experience is it doesn't know anything current, and it lies to you about other things.
And when it does find something useful, all it did was read Wikipedia.
So as a search engine, Do you know why it feels better than Google right now?
Like, I do get the impression that it's better, because I've asked some simple stuff, and they're like, oh, I like that.
It feels better because it doesn't have advertisements.
That's it.
The people are not gaming the results and sticking advertisements in there.
But that's all.
As soon as AI becomes mature, you're going to get the advertisements and the fake results just like everything else.
So it's only useful because it's in beta.
As soon as they add ads to it, you're going to have to search through it just like Google.
I'm guessing.
A number of people said AI is already helping them.
With writing tasks.
Do you believe that's true?
Do you believe that people are already using AI successfully for writing?
Do you?
Yeah.
And some people say yes, they are.
All right.
Well, I'm going to say something that might be insulting to some of you.
AI will definitely be good for writing.
So there's no doubt about it.
AI is great for writing.
AI is going to make bad writers average writers.
Would you agree with that?
And by average I mean there's no grammar errors and you know exactly what it says.
It's not great.
It's just really serviceable.
It's got utility.
Does the job.
Right.
So AI will make bad writers normal and sufficient.
What's it going to do to good writers?
I don't believe it can become a good writer.
Now again I know I'm going to close my eyes because I know what you're saying.
Alright?
Without reading the comments, you're saying, Scott, it's just the beginning!
Right?
It's just the beginning!
It'll get so much better.
Here's where I disagree.
The thing that makes me a professional writer is that I can write a sentence you wouldn't have thought of.
Just think about that.
That's why I'm a professional writer, and other people who would like to be are not.
I could write a sentence that you didn't expect, and you wouldn't have been able to write on your own.
AI learns to write by looking at average writers.
That's how it learned.
It looks at a huge body of average writers, And then it comes up with this sort of average thing that it thinks everybody is going to understand.
So AI is the dumbed down writer.
I think it'll be the greatest writing tool for bad writers, but it will never do what a human writer can do.
Which is anticipate the next thing that you want to care about.
Or feel how the room feels.
Or read the room.
And then the other thing I can do, and I've tested AI to see if it can write humor, it's not even close.
AI always goes for the oldest joke possible.
So if you say, hey AI, write a funny article on some topic, you can guarantee that the first joke an ordinary person could think of, it'll be there.
It'll be there.
If I told it to write some jokes about Biden's age, do you think it would have written that he knew James Madison personally?
Of course it would.
Yeah, the very joke that Biden used, that he's so old that he knew one of the framers of the Constitution personally, have you ever heard that joke before?
Yes!
Yes, you've heard that joke before!
Like, a billion times!
So, if you asked AI to write a joke about Biden's age, it would write that joke.
And it wouldn't be funny.
And it wouldn't be any funnier than the human who probably did write it.
It's just the most obvious joke.
So, one of the things that makes a commercial-grade humorist commercial-grade is that we wouldn't do that.
I would never do that joke, because it's just so old and overdone.
But so far, AI just prefers... I think AI prefers things that most people are familiar with.
It's like, alright, everybody knows what this means, and this will not be offensive.
The other thing AI can't do is offend people, and know when to get away with it.
Because it would never know when it can get away with it.
A professional humorist can offend people, and that's the funny part.
The funny part is knowing that somebody was offended, but you know which little pockets you can get away with, right?
Because you soften it by saying something else, or you could.
A human humorist can create a persona of themselves, like Andrew Dice Clay, where when he said hugely, let's say, misogynistic sounding stuff, you wouldn't say to yourself, hey, that guy believes those things, so we must cancel him.
You say, oh, I get it.
He's playing the character of a guy who's a misogynist.
And then he says funny things as if a misogynist would say them.
And you go, oh, that's funny.
But AI can't do that, because AI doesn't know how to become Andrew Dice Clay.
And if it did, it would just look weird.
Yeah.
So I believe that AI has logical barriers that might be permanent that keeps it from being a great writer or a really funny one.
And I think that we'll keep it that way, because we want it.
You don't want AI to say things that would offend people, so it can never do humor.
Right?
AI can never do anything but dad jokes.
Dad jokes will be like the limit of it.
I mean, it might do great dad jokes, but that'll be the limit of its creativity.
It has to... Do you think AI could write a joke that somebody has never written before?
I could argue that nobody does, but...
No, I don't think so.
Because the joke form is always the same.
You can just add different names and details to it, but it's the same joke.
Yeah.
All right.
And what if AI does self-deprecating humor?
Makes no sense, does it?
If a human being does a self-deprecating joke, which is one of the biggest fields of humour, you can laugh because they created a stereotype of themselves and then used that stereotype.
But the AI can never create a stereotype of itself.
So if the AI did a self-deprecating joke like, Ha ha ha.
You know, I'd never get that one right.
That would never be funny to you.
It would just look like a broken machine.
Well, why don't we get it right?
Whereas if a human makes a mistake, sometimes we think it's hilarious, because we read our own experience into it.
All right, so here's an example of a joke that AI wrote for me in my voice.
So I asked AI to write a funny article about AI.
But do it in my voice.
And his final joke was, you know, blah, blah, blah.
But A.I.
A.I.
is not in charge.
Yet.
Get it?
A.I.
is not in charge of the world.
Yet.
That's the joke.
Now.
I might have said that as.
You know, interesting writing, but not as a joke.
You know, it might be something that makes the writing a little more lively or something like that.
But no.
Like, that is the oldest, most obvious joke in the world.
And I feel like AI will always be limited to the oldest, most obvious, cleanest, non-offensive, non-self-deprecating jokes.
And they can't use stereotypes either.
Most jokes are about stereotypes.
And AI probably isn't allowed to do that.
Every time AI gives you an answer, it says, well, but you have to be aware that not everybody fits this stereotype.
Like, well, you just killed that joke.
Yeah, AI is basically a summary of the average.
That is true.
Now let's talk about coding.
I have this theory that AI will make code worse.
Here's why.
Suppose you're a programmer, and you know that there is some code available, or you could just tell AI to write it.
At some point, AI is going to write it the same way every time, won't they?
Because it could just see what other AIs have done.
It'll just figure, oh, this is just the best way to do it, and it'll just write it that way.
If humans do it, and they don't know that something's already written, I feel like they would start from scratch and say, alright, how would I write this?
And they might learn something in the process.
They might accidentally create a thing that was different than what they thought and say, oh, that wasn't what I thought, but I could use that for something else.
So I feel as if the AI will take the creativity away from human programmers, initially for really good reasons, because it'll take the drudgery away.
But I think it also will take away their creativity.
And I believe that a clever programmer... Here's a story I always think about when I think about this.
Now, this is in the hardware world, but it works for software as well.
When the original Apple was being built, and it used too many chips or something, and then Steve Wozniak came in and looked at it and said, wait a minute, I can get rid of a whole bunch of these chips.
And it'll still be perfect.
And then he re-engineered it so it used the least number of chips and that's kind of what made the, was it the, not the Mac, was it the Mac?
But it made them successful because it was a human whose creativity allowed them to know that they could make a more efficient version.
I worry, I think it was the Apple one, but I worry That if everybody starts using the same canned programs, or asks AI to make it, and it ends up making the same, that we'll lose all the serendipity and accidental discoveries and stuff that we have now.
So, it could make things worse by making them all the same.
Just a possibility.
You know, the unintended consequences of AI will be the interesting ones.
In a bad way.
Alright, that ladies and gentlemen, Is the conclusion of the best live stream you'll see today.
Programmers can prompt AI to generate code like they want, but not necessarily the same way they would have done it.
That's the point.
All right.
Generative design is just that.
Clear cutting for comics.
Oh yeah, I got an answer from AI that said that AI wanted equity.
So AI is already using equity as its preferred word.
Do you think AI figured that out on its own?
Do you think that an AI that was mostly trained on pre-2017 data picked up on equity?
No.
That, to me, looks like it was hard-coded.
That, to me, looks like the finger of the programmers saying, uh-oh, we can't have them say equality because that's not our story.
We better make them use the word equity whenever this kind of topic comes up.
There's no way in the world the AI came up with equity on its own.
I don't believe that.
I mean, it could.
It's not outside the realm of possibility.
Yeah, but it seems very unlikely.
Alright.
Discernment.
Okay.
Yeah, Glenn Greenwald tweeted about Rumble having a large young audience and he thinks that something big is ahead for Rumble, but he does not say what.
I'm a Rumble shareholder, so I should disclose that.
Oh yeah, Huffington Post is used as some of the AI trading data.
What could go wrong?
All right.
The uncentred of AI is available to those who are not elite.
Okay.
Is there a chat on locals?
Yeah, Locals, they're all chatting right now.
Locals looks just like, I mean, it looks like this except on Locals they can insert memes and photos.
So the chat on Locals is a lot more pictures.
I don't know why, it's funny that YouTube doesn't have that feature.
Alright, that ladies and gentlemen, Concludes my presentation for today.
