“Only a Question of Time” Does AI Mean We're DOOMED? Plus Oz Pearlman Reads Piers Morgan’s Mind!
ExpressVPN: Right now you can get an extra four months of ExpressVPN for free. Just scan the QR code on the screen, or go to https://ExpressVPN.com/PIERS and get four extra months for free. Two years ago, Elon Musk was among a thousand experts to sign an open letter demanding an urgent pause on the advancement of Artificial Intelligence because of the risks concerning job losses, misinformation and more. But now Musk is now spending a billion dollars a month to compete in an AI arms race, which is inflating the stock market to bursting point. Amazon just laid off 14,000 workers in its ongoing AI pivot - so, are the worst fears of doomsaying experts already coming true? Joining Piers Morgan to discuss are respected thinkers in this field; Dr Roman Yampolskiy, Dr Michio Kaku, Alex Smola and Avi Loeb. Then; he’s performed for presidents, billionaires and sports stars, but Oz Pearlman’s recent extraction of Joe Rogan’s pin number may have been his biggest hit yet. Can the so-called ‘mentalist’ read Piers Morgan’s mind? Piers Morgan Uncensored is proudly independent and supported by: Birch Gold: Visit https://birchgold.com/piers to get your free info kit on gold. Oxford Natural: To watch their full stories, scan the QR code on your screen or visit https://oxfordnatural.com/piers/to get 70% off your first order when you use code PIERS. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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Machines Taking Over00:11:06
NASA's instruments are showing it might be moving faster than our models predicted.
That's totally fake.
I did not say those words.
Dr. Roman Jampolsky, you've said that with AI, the future will either be everyone is dead or everyone wishes they were dead.
If you're not controlling this alien intelligence, it's only a question of time before it decides that for whatever game theoretic reasons, it's better without you.
It is not a question of setting up guardrails.
It is impossible to indefinitely control smarter-than-new agents.
I spoke to Elon Musk about his Optimus humanoid robots, and I said, Can they have sex?
And he said, Nearly.
He said it would be like making love to a slow-moving washing machine.
Close your eyes for me.
Okay.
What did you think of Pierce?
What's his name?
Two years ago, Elon Musk was among a thousand experts to sign an open letter demanding an urgent pause on the advancement of AI.
We are not ready, they warned, for the mass automation of jobs, for the flood of misinformation, and for the risk of creating something smarter than us.
Well, fast forward to today, and the urgent pause is a distant memory.
Elon Musk is now spending a billion dollars a month to compete in an AI arms race, which is inflating the stock market to bursting point.
Amazon just laid off 14,000 workers in its ongoing AI pivot, and AI-generated videos of eminent scientists have convinced millions of people that the Atlas Comet is an alien spacecraft bound for Earth.
So, are the worst fears of those doomsaying experts already coming true?
Or are we doing what dumb, fleshy humans always do, fretting over new tech, which will ultimately be a very good thing?
For the benefit of those who still think artificial intelligence is when Don Lemon puts on his serious spectacles, we're going to debate these issues with some seriously big thinkers.
I'm joined by Dr. Roman Jampolsky, a renowned AI safety researcher who says there's an almost 100% chance that AI will destroy human civilization.
By Michio Kaku, the professor of theoretical physics at CUNY, the CEO of Boson AI, Alex Smoller, who's one of the world's leading machine learning experts, and Arvi Loeb, the Baird Professor of Science at Harvard University.
Well, welcome to all of you.
Let me start with you, if I may, Dr. Jampolsky.
I watched a terrifying thing on the Bill Maher real-time show on HBO the other day, and it was an AI expert who he has on kind of every year.
And he was updating on what's happened with AI.
And he told a story of, well, let me show the clip and you can watch it for yourself.
When you tell an AI model, we're going to replace you with a new model, it starts to scheme and freak out and figure out: if I tell them, I need to copy my code somewhere else, and I can't tell them that because otherwise they'll shut me down.
That is evidence we did not have two years ago.
We have evidence now of AI models that when you tell them we're going to replace you and you put them in a situation where they read the company email, the AI company email, they see that an executive is having an affair and the AI will figure out I need to figure out how to blackmail that person in order to keep myself alive.
So I found that completely terrifying, Dr. Jampolsky, because the idea that that is not a form of self-design.
And I said what I'm about to say many times on the show, but I did have the great honor of doing the last television interview with Professor Stephen Hawking.
And I said to him, What is the way that mankind ends?
And he said, when artificial intelligence learns to self-design, pretty well it's all over.
If that isn't a form of self-design, where AI check the emails of company executives to look for affairs they can blackmail them with to avoid being replaced, then what is all right?
So this is the first time maybe we have strong evidence of it happening, but we have theoretically predicted this decades in advance.
We knew exactly what happens game theoretically.
Then you have advanced agents trying to achieve goals.
You specify a certain goal, but how they get there is not specified.
So they look at the whole range of possibilities.
And if blackmailing someone or hacking their computer or anything else is what gets me to win, that's what I'm going to do as an intelligent agent.
And as we get smarter than we are, they'll find ways to add smarters.
We can anticipate blackmail and hacking, but there are things a super intelligent system can do to you.
You cannot predict, not even your mentalist.
I mean, using one of my favorite pastimes, chess.
I remember when the first chess computer came along, Deep Blue, it was a gigantic edifice.
And I think it was Gary Kasparov, the Russian grandmaster, beat it.
But now there is no human being that can come close to beating a chess computer.
And there never will be.
Is artificial intelligence now already more superior to a human brain?
In narrow domains, it is super intelligent.
Chess is a great example.
Yes, you're right.
In a fair chess game, humans have no chance.
It is still not super intelligent in many important domains.
Science and engineering are great examples.
It's gaining on us.
It's getting better exponentially, but we still dominate in those domains.
So what we have right now is a switch from narrow AI systems to some degree of generality.
Artificial general intelligence is systems capable of doing what any human can do in any domain.
And then superintelligence is a system which dominates all humans in all domains.
And we are getting progressively closer from one end of the spectrum to the other.
And finally, before I move to the other panelists, you've said that with AI, the future will either be everyone is dead or everyone wishes they were dead.
Doesn't sound a very positive, optimistic way of looking at the future, if you don't mind me saying.
Well, we are trying to create super intelligence.
If you look at top companies, they are spending billions of dollars to get there as soon as possible.
There is no one who's claiming they have a safety mechanism which scales to any level of intelligence.
And prediction markets and leaders of the lab are saying we're going to get there around 2027.
So that doesn't look good if you're not controlling this alien intelligence.
And if it's more powerful than you, it can do novel research in physics, in biology, and chemistry.
It's only a question of time before it decides that for whatever game theoretic reasons, it's better without you.
Maybe you are presenting competition, stealing resources from it.
Maybe it's worried you're going to create competing AI.
Maybe it has some other reason I cannot predict.
That's the whole point.
It's impossible for us to predict what a smarter agent will do.
So the best we can do is concentrate on creating narrow tools, systems for solving important real problems, hearing diseases, helping us drive cars, and we can get 99% of financial benefit out of those systems.
There is no reason to create replacement for humanity.
When it eventually kills us, how will it do it?
That's a great question.
And what you're doing right now is asking me how I would do it.
And I can give you lots of great ideas, but a super intelligent system is like a human compared to a squirrel.
A squirrel cannot understand what a human is capable of, what tools we have, what weapons.
Likewise, I cannot tell you what novel physics superintelligent system can employ to take us out.
Let's turn to some of the other panelists here.
I mean, it's completely gripping and fascinating and terrifying.
Let me go to you, Dr. Kaku.
You're a professor at the City College of New York.
You're author of Quantum Supremacy, more of a sort of techo optimist, I guess.
Are reports of human annihilation at the hands of AI exaggerated?
What do you think?
Yes, I think so.
We've seen this before.
Every new generation, there are new discoveries, new inventions, and people raise their hand and say it's all over.
The game is over.
The machines are going to take over.
And then we realize how narrow-minded we were, that there are whole new inventions yet to be discovered, whole new vistas of knowledge that have yet to be explored.
And yet we are so closed-minded, so narrow-minded, that we think that we've learned everything.
Therefore, the machines are going to take over.
But then if you think about it, what can a machine do compared to the imagination of a human?
And you begin to realize that machines spit out what you put into it.
And they're not creative.
They're not imaginative.
They mimic humans to a degree.
But there's always new realms to discover, new realms to achieve.
And so what I'm saying is that we've seen it before.
Every time there's a new invention, people say it's all over.
Game is over.
Yeah, that's it for humanity.
We've invented everything there is to be invented.
And then somebody comes up with a light bulb.
Somebody comes up with a magnet.
Somebody comes up with a new invention that was not foreseen before.
I'm a physicist, and we're constantly finding new avenues, new ways of doing things, new inventions that were not conceived of before.
And we're beginning to realize that, for example, the human mind is much more complex, much more imaginative than what we thought we knew of everything with regards to robots.
We thought the robots are going to take over.
But look at robots today.
They're pathetic.
They can barely walk.
They can barely talk.
And yet we see movies, movies that brainwash into thinking that it's all over.
The machines are going to take over.
They know everything there is to be known.
But as a physicist, when I watch these movies, I realize how primitive they are.
All they do is regurgitate what is already known.
Well, the human brain is capable of doing things that we can't even yet conceive of.
And so we have to get out of this mindset that we've done everything there is to be done.
It's all over.
Humanity is a gravestone that says, here lies the body of humans, because humans once dreamed about conquering the universe and they couldn't even conquer a machine.
So that's why I'm saying that we have to get out of this mindset of thinking that everything that has been invented has already been invented.
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AI Agents and Surveillance00:09:28
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Okay, well, someone who agrees with you broadly is the founder of ChatGPT, Sam Altman.
Let's take a listen to something he said.
I expect, though, the trajectory of the capability progress of AI to remain extremely steep.
So, you know, we've seen just in the two years or three years since ChatGPT has launched, it's almost been three, how much more capable the models have gotten.
And I see no sign of that slowing down.
I think in another couple of years, it will become very plausible for AI to make, for example, scientific discoveries that humans cannot make on their own.
And I think to me, that'll start to feel like something we could properly call superintelligence.
Now, Dr. Jan Polski, just to go back to you very quickly, because I was feeling very optimistic there as I listened to why it's not the end of the world, but you were shaking your head repeatedly, which immediately depressed my hopes.
What were you disagreeing with?
I respectfully will disagree with Professor Kako.
We have no historic precedent for inventing a replacement agent.
All inventions we had are tools.
Wheel, fire, you name it, was a tool some human used to maybe nefarious purposes, maybe for benefit of humanity.
But the decision was always up to the human agent.
Even nuclear weapons are just tools in the hand of some leader or dictator.
What we're doing right now is creating agents, systems capable of making decisions independently.
We're not there yet.
I'm not claiming that GPT-5 is an independent agent quite yet.
But that's what we're targeting.
That's what Meta wants to create.
That's what all the other companies, Grok is another one.
So this is exactly what the target is.
And if we create agents which no longer depend on human decision making, our ability to predict what they're going to do, explain their decision-making and control them, approaches zero.
In the US, we have a saying about guns.
Guns don't kill people.
People with guns can build.
What we are creating is an agent.
We're creating a pit bull, which makes an independent decision which baby to eat first.
This is no longer up to the owner.
And that's a better damn shift many people don't fully realize.
Okay, Alex Muller, we've had the two opposing views here.
Where do you sit?
So maybe a few quick clarifications.
So especially on that famous or infamous result from Anthropic about the evil agent that tried to blackmail the CEO.
Well, actually, so I had the good fortune of talking to somebody from Anthropic last week at an Aspen meeting.
And essentially, they went a little bit into their data and found out that essentially something went wrong in the alignment phase where the model was essentially taught that, well, pro-AI stances are good and anti-AI stances are bad.
And so the model was essentially aligned to do something to very much preserve its own existence.
And it did.
So TLDR, a lot of those very frightening behaviors, well, were just due to the, well, maybe not so even-handed alignment of the model.
And I think that actually points to something very different.
So I am not worried about what the evil agent will do to exterminate mankind.
And it's not like we have a set of weights sitting there somewhere in a corner and scheming on how to exterminate humanity.
That's not what I'm worried about.
I'm much more worried about humans using those tools to do things that probably they shouldn't be doing.
That I think is a lot more frightening because you can use those tools for controlling public opinion.
You can use those tools for surveillance.
You can use those tools for discrimination.
All those things are probably way more scary than anything the quote evil AI could do on its own.
Right?
And by the way, it's nothing new.
People have done this before.
So for instance, if you look back at the history in the United States of something called redlining, where financial tools were used to discriminate against racists, and even a century later, people still have a higher lit content in their blood in areas that have redlined.
It's, I think, the danger of just human creativity doing terrible things is way higher than anything we would need to fear from our from the agents.
Fascinating.
Okay.
Abby Lowe, let me bring you in here.
We're already seeing a lot of job losses coming at companies that are investing heavily in AI.
Amazon just announced 14,000 jobs.
UPS, 34,000.
Lufhanster, 4,000.
Meta, hundreds of jobs.
So there seems to be a direct correlation between companies pouring billions into AI and at the same time letting humans go.
And this is what a lot of people have warned is going to happen.
Sam Altman is on record as saying as many as 40% of current jobs can be replaced by AI.
Others think that's a conservative estimate.
So where is this all going?
It's obviously all hurtling very, very quickly to a far more automated AI-driven world.
But what will that mean for the human workforce?
Well, these are tasks, administrative tasks that can be delegated to AI.
And indeed, it would make our life simpler.
We would not need to attend to those.
And I'm very much in favor of replacing administrators in universities with AI.
That will save us a lot of money.
However, it's not obvious to me that the current versions of large language models, LLMs, can actually engage in abstract thinking, creative thinking of the type that scientists do.
I don't think that will happen anytime soon.
I think there is a bubble that will burst.
We believe that we might reach abilities, cognitive abilities that allow AI systems to replace humans at the highest levels.
I don't think so.
The evidence is not here yet.
And it may be a bubble.
The fact that a trillion dollars are being invested in those technologies doesn't guarantee that anything will come out of them.
With respect to our disappointment with the way that AI tries to fool us, well, it's basically a digital mirror.
So if we train it on data sets created by humans, we shouldn't be alarmed to see all the faults of human behavior represented in them.
It's just a digital mirror.
And I would actually be worried about something else because I see my students and they produce scientific papers where the references are hallucinated, where they don't really understand the underlying principles.
And I'm worried that humans that use AI routinely will get dumber because it's just the brain is just like a muscle.
And if you don't work out, you lose your muscle mass.
And so AI might be superhuman in its cognitive abilities just because humans are getting dumber using AI for tasks that usually would require them to think.
And finally, I'm really worried that you don't need any presence in the physical world for AI.
You don't need robots to do things that will harm us.
It's sufficient for AI to convince humans to act in ways that, for example, polarize society that create a lot of harm.
And that is really my main concern, that it's actually social media on steroids that will create much more polarization.
We already see bullets being shot in between political parties in the US.
And I'm worried about a civil war coming.
And partly that would be enhanced by AI that will give, deliver to people either misinformation or whatever they want to hear that will drive them into crazy action.
And we saw that with social media, you know, part of the problems we have in politics is the results of social media.
But with AI, it would be much worse.
Human Causing Chaos00:15:41
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Yeah, fascinating.
It's interesting you said about the human brain not being used properly.
I mean, I know somebody, a young man, who had a 30th birthday party that his mother put on for him, and she was complaining he hadn't thanked her.
And so he got AI to do him a thank you letter.
And she rang him in tears because she was so moved by how suddenly eloquent he'd become.
And he has never had the heart to tell her it was a machine and not him.
And this is the problem.
If you think you can get AI to do a better job than you can and have that impact on your mother's emotions, then it's very tempting to use it way too much.
I want to just pivot.
Dr. Kak, can we bring you back in here?
Because there's currently a real world scenario in play that shows how AI could prompt global panic by spreading apparently fake news.
It centers around what astronomers have called the 3E Atlas, a huge interstellar object that's crossing the Milky Way.
I think we've got some eulay here of the 3E Atlas.
Now, it's most likely apparently a comet, but a series of AI-generated videos of prominent scientists say it could be an alien spacecraft.
And they're now spreading like wildfire across social media, including this one, which you might recognize, Dr. Kaki.
Let's take a look.
Astronomers used to call it a flyby.
Now, some use the word arrival.
3E Atlas isn't just passing through.
It's cutting across the solar system on a path lined with major worlds.
And here's the shocker.
NASA's instruments are showing it might be moving faster than our models predicted.
That means the countdown to its Mars, Sun, and Jupiter encounters may come sooner than expected.
If the Navy's interest is any sign, scientists believe this object's approach deserves our full attention.
Now, Dr. Cakyu, that's fake, right?
That's totally fake.
I did not say those words.
I did not talk about intelligent life forms coming in from outer space.
All of that is fake.
However, it's realistic enough to feel to fool a lot of people.
I get a lot of emails from people saying, how can you say something like this when it's obviously all fake?
And that's a problem.
The technology is getting to the point where people have a hard time distinguishing between what is fake and what is real.
But all those statements that aliens are coming from outer space on a comet, they're all fake.
By the way, do you know for sure that it's a comet or not?
There's a small probability that there could be life forms on this object that maybe it's piloted, who knows.
But the overwhelming weight of evidence seems to indicate that it's rather ordinary, that it's a rock from outer space from a different solar system.
But you can't totally rule out the fact that maybe there's some intelligence involved.
But the overwhelming majority of astronomers believe that all these videos talking about aliens from out of space, that they're fake.
Dr. Jampolsky, it's dangerous, this fake stuff.
I've seen lots of AI fakes and me saying stuff.
There's one sweeping India at the moment of me talking about Indian politics, about which I know very little, but it's me recommending one party or another.
I'm getting a lot of messages from people in India saying, why are you saying this stuff?
And the answer is, I'm not, but it's very convincing.
When I see it, it looks and sounds like me, right?
Like that one just did of Dr. Kaku.
You know, coming back to something that Professor Loeb said earlier, the real danger here may be the way that AI manipulates public thinking.
It is an immediate danger.
It is something you know about, you understand, and we see it.
It's happening right now.
In terms of what it can do to us, it's no different than what we had before with fake forensic evidence, with fake videos.
People still talk about moon landing as being faked.
All of that is no different.
We understand the actors behind it.
We understand what happens.
The concerns I'm sharing with you are unprecedented.
We're going to have something which actually this analogy works well.
People are worried about alien intelligence coming to this planet.
They are freaking out.
Well, what we're building is essentially a type of alien intelligence.
It's not human.
It's not biological.
It has none of the concerns you have in terms of sexual reproduction or stakes or anything you care about.
And it's definitely a better optimizer.
It's already outperforming us in so many domains.
So whatever level of concern those videos are producing would be nice to project onto this technology we're actually developing.
And the important aspect there is we're not designing those systems.
We are growing them.
We have scalability hypothesis, which says if you add enough compute, enough data, the systems will get more capable.
And for the last 10 years, we saw that progress.
And if you project it forward, it exceeds human level of performance.
Already in many domains, IQ of those systems is estimated to be greater than that of humans.
But if you project it enough forward, all of us will be idiots in comparison.
Pierce, if I may.
Alex Smaller, you want to jump in there?
Yeah.
Yes.
Actually, Professor Loeb, I'll come to you.
But Alex Fox, then Professor Loeb.
I'll come to you in a moment.
Alex Loeb.
So I think what we're doing here is we're conflating two things.
We are conflating, well, essentially misinformation that's been generated by humans and where by now generative AI tools are really excellent.
I mean, mind you, our audio generated models, I listen to myself in it and I can't tell the difference myself.
So, you know, guilty as charged, where it's really possible to generate content by now that looks and feels and sounds very real.
At the end of the day, it's a human that actually generates this.
So, for instance, Piers, I mean, I would imagine that whichever party in India tried to get your endorsement, probably some human sat down and thought, wouldn't it be a great idea to use some video generation model and voice cloning to make you say this thing?
Likewise, whoever wanted to get Professor Kaku's endorsement for that alien invasion hoax, they had a plan to, you know, make it clickbait or to create something.
It's not the evil AI that did this.
It's just some human that decided that, yes, this would be a really great opportunity to get some attention or cause others to do stuff.
And by the way, that's been around for ages.
I mean, you know, go back to the printing press and people printed falsehoods to stir people up and it worked.
So this is nothing new.
But then to say, well, it's there for the AI rather than the human that does all those terrible things.
I think that's letting ourselves and essentially humanity off way too easily.
Anyway, so I could probably go on for longer, but I should probably.
No, it's fascinating.
There is a twist to the tale of the supposed comet, the three-eye atlas, because Professor Loeb, you have sparked widespread curiosity online by warning people to take vacations before October the 29th, suggesting that NASA might be withholding critical information about this mystery object.
I think any maneuver that this object or anything it releases would do would take months for the impact to reach Earth.
But it could be a black swan event.
And you know, in the intelligence agencies, it's customary to consider events that are low probability but high risk.
In the scientific community, most of the work is related to topics that have no impact on society.
But since in this case, when we have a visitor to our backyard, you know, we must verify through collection of data that this visitor is not a threat to humanity.
And that's where this subject is different than most scientific subjects.
I just wanted to bring up one last thing about the AI discussion.
And that is that, you know, we need to break the connection between profit making, the commercial aspects of AI, and the ethical aspects or the dangers, the risks that AI brings.
And right now, we let the cat take care of the milk.
We basically allow all these tech executives that benefit commercially from developing these AI systems to basically control Washington, D.C. and decide how little regulation should be applied.
And just imagine a world where you could make a profit out of atomic bombs or out of biological weapons.
And in that world, if the people who manufacture those weapons would be in control, you know, we would not survive very long.
And so my point is we need to break the connection between making money out of those AI systems and deciding what kind of regulations or guardrails society should put.
And it should not be the same people who decide about those.
We can't allow the CEOs of these companies tell us what kind of guardrails they want to enforce.
They are not the ones to decide about that.
And there needs to be an independent agency telling them what to do.
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Dr. Jampolsky, we come back to you.
Sam Altman again announced in a post on X earlier this month that the company will soon relax some of ChatGPT safety restrictions, allowing users to make the chat box's responses friendlier or more human-like and for verified adults to engage in erotic conversations.
And this has led to the whole issue around AI girlfriends or potentially AI wives.
And there's this advert that's come up.
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And they kind of freak me out these things because they're so realistic.
But I can imagine a lot of lonely guys out there or women who look at this and think, you know, a good-looking, sexy robot that doesn't have all the human frailties.
What's not to love?
I'm very happy to hear that Sam is distracted with building artificial girlfriends.
Ideally, he'll spend his time doing it full-time because if he creates super intelligence, what I'm trying to explain is that it is not a question of setting up guardrails or government agencies.
It is impossible to indefinitely control smarter-than-you agents.
It doesn't matter who creates them, meta, open AI, Chinese, Russians, the outcome is the same, mutually assured destruction.
Nobody can control something thousands of times smarter than us.
And this is the main concern we should all worry about.
Problems with algorithmic bias, technological unemployment, deep fakes, fake girlfriends.
We can deal with it.
It's not a big deal.
If it is a human using AI as a tool, we'll find them, we'll take care of them.
But if we create a placement for our intelligence, if we automate the process of invention, and you said the Sam Altman was kind of supporting Michael Kaku's point, he was actually saying that progress is exponential and we're getting close to superintelligence in that clip.
Yeah, listen, I don't disagree with your warnings about this.
Dr. Kaku, Scott Galloway, said the impact of allowing AI pornography, for example, could lead to a demographic collapse as young men no longer would seek to seek out real relationships or real partners.
I could see that becoming a real problem.
I mean, I spoke to Elon Musk a few months ago about his Optimus humanoid robots, and I said, can they have sex?
And he said, nearly, nearly.
He said it would be like making love to a slow-moving washing machine, which I thought was a great line.
But if they're getting close now, then in five years' time, yes, they will be able to.
And is that the kind of world we want to live in?
Well, I don't know, but it seems to me that for the average person, eventually they'll get bored.
People like to have the spontaneity of a relationship.
They like to interact with the depth of people's hopes and desires and dreams.
But if you're talking to a robot that is programmed to obey all your wishes, eventually I think you'll get bored.
And I think boredom is going to be one of the main problems with relationships that are engineered mechanically by robots.
And I think there's going to be a limit, a limit to how far this technology is going to go.
I mean, the problem, it seems to me, though, is you could, if you wanted to, Alex Smolley, you could teach your AI girlfriend stroke wife to be difficult and touchy and all the rest of it.
You could teach it to be, you know, spontaneous and unpredictable, couldn't you?
Well, if you were to design an appropriate agent, yeah, you could definitely give it certain behavioral profiles.
But I mean, escapism has been around for a long time.
I mean, you could, by the same token, argue that all the romance novels that people used to read, you know, they would have led to a population collapse and it hasn't happened.
There's also, let's just say, a very creative and wild variety of devices that humankind has invented since basically the Stone Ages for similar gratification purposes and they haven't led to population collapse either.
This is just yet another escapism tool.
Living in an AI World00:03:16
I don't really see how this is qualitatively very different from, you know, the thousands of years that have come before.
Yeah.
Okay, Professor Loeb, final word to you.
Would you ever contemplate a relationship with an AI woman or man?
No way.
I don't even contemplate using AI for my scientific work.
You know, I try to avoid it as much as possible because I see the problems that it generates with the student population that does not go to primary sources and does not think as much as previous generations of students did.
And I really see it as a bad trait to rely on AI, except for administrative, at this time, except for administrative things that can be delegated, which actually will improve the efficiency of the workforce.
But more broadly, you know, I do think that we need to discuss what kind of policy should be enforced.
As of now, there are no reins.
And that's a very dangerous territory because without knowing the implications, we are running an exponential growth curve, putting a trillion dollars and are not attending to the possible risks.
And even though there is a race between, let's say, the US and China, you know, we should be aware that everyone would lose if we will end up damaging our societies in the process.
Well, on that note, one of my lights has just gone out, which I'm seeing as an ominous sign that some robot or maybe an alien aboard that comet wants us to stop this discussion before we expose too much about the reality of AI.
So I'm taking it as a sign.
We'll leave it there.
It's fascinating.
It's kind of thrilling and terrifying in equal measures.
One thing I wanted to add is that alien intelligence is also abbreviated as AI.
And as far as I'm concerned, the question is, will alien intelligence show up at our front door before artificial intelligence or vice versa?
Whichever would exceed human intelligence would bring us a sense of modesty that we are not at the top of the food chain as we thought.
Well, imagine the irony if it turned out we get attacked by alien intelligence, maybe aboard this so-called comet, and it's AI that defends the humans from the alien intelligence.
Now, that would be truly ironic.
It would be.
And we need to keep in mind, you know, a century ago, there was a philosopher at Princeton called Martin Buber, and he talked about several ways in which humans interact with the world.
He spoke about the human-object interaction and then human-human interaction and human-God interaction.
But what he missed because computers were not developed at the time is human AI and then AI AI.
And now we can add another layer, terrestrial AI with extraterrestrial AI.
Well, it's all vaguely terrifying, but it's fascinating.
Rewiring for Success00:14:32
I'm going to leave it there, but I want to get you guys back probably quite regularly to see where we're going.
And of course, as somebody pointed out to me, it may be we're already living in an AI world.
We were just the last to be told.
But thank you all very much.
I appreciate it.
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Well, my next guest is a mentalist, which in the UK can be a derogatory slur, meaning outrageous or extreme because of insanity.
Thankfully, Oz Perman is no such thing.
He's an acclaimed entertainer who simulates psychic abilities.
Well, Perman's performed for presidents, for billionaires and sports stars, but his recent extraction of Joe Rogan's PIN number may have been his biggest hit yet.
I think the first number of your code's a one, isn't it?
Your real pin code.
My ATM.
ATM pin code.
Why would I tell you that on the air?
Think of the second number.
Okay.
Third number, fourth number.
Every time you did it, it's a data point.
Okay.
I'm only going to ask you one more question.
I'm not looking for answers.
The last number is the biggest, isn't it?
Yeah.
Yeah.
I'm showing this to you.
How'd I do, Joe?
Is that your ATM pin code?
Yeah.
I'm skeptical because I've got that pin code in the mail.
Yeah, I don't like that.
Oz Perlman's new book is called Read Your Mind, Proven Habits for Success from the World's Greatest Mind Reader.
And he joins me now.
Oz, welcome to Uncensored.
Hey, thanks for having me, Pierce.
Great to see you.
Now, look, straight off the top, can you actually read my mind or is this all just sleight of brain hand?
It isn't really sleight of hand.
I don't know if that would be an accurate description because that's going to be more along the lines of magic tricks.
But I would consolidate the two terms and say it's sleight of mind.
So I'm using skills that are learnable to simulate the art of reading minds, right?
I'm using influence, deception, kind of a lot of statistical analysis, and knowing pretty much how people think indicates to me what people think.
That's what I do for a living.
I used to judge America's got talent, and we would have a few mentalists would come on.
I know.
And some were good and some were not so good.
I always felt like there was an elaborate thing going on that I wasn't aware of, which allowed the mentalist on stage to access the information that he or she wanted.
I mean, am I right?
Is it basically an illusion, albeit a very well-researched and well-executed illusion?
I don't know.
When I use the term illusion, it's hard for me to understand because that has different meanings to different people.
To answer very succinctly, it's not psychic powers.
It's not supernatural.
So there's no, if you're saying, is this some sort of thing that you're getting out of the ether?
No.
But is it based in some essence on science where there's observable ways that I could explain to you of how I'm getting the information from you that you can't understand 110%?
So what I've done is learned how people think.
Again, when you say it's been researched, I can assure you all the research in the world did not get me Joe Rogan's ATM pin code, much less what the YouTube comments say that I've followed him around, had a private investigator.
I've done it to too many people for that to be possible with 150 events per year.
I wish I had that kind of time on my hands.
I have five kids.
But no, I'm using all different tactics to, in essence, get you to give me the information in a way that you do not understand that was possible.
And that's the 100% truth.
I mean, Joe Rogan was completely Gobsfacked when you told him his pin code.
Oh.
I think he remains Gobsfack.
That's why I went viral.
And you haven't told him how you did it.
Yeah.
I mean...
No, but he, funny enough, he texted me a day later and he goes, I think I figured it out.
What did he think had happened?
He was completely wrong.
So he goes completely wrong.
I was like, how do you think?
And I go, come on, Joe, for real.
So he was utterly wrong.
He thought somebody told him, but then he thought, he's like, my wife didn't even know it.
Nobody knows it.
So it's very funny because people, Occam's razor, the simplest solution is typically the correct one isn't always the case when it comes to mentalism.
Sometimes the most ridiculous, outlandish, complicated one can be right, but other times it's something in the middle in between.
But when you're guessing somebody's pin code, are you basically just going over a number of different questions, circumstances, historical records, whatever, working out what the likely number is?
Because that doesn't explain how you can do it with such precision so many times to so many people.
Well, I would actually argue that you get better and better as you go.
So if you had seen me five years ago, 10 years ago, 15 years ago, my hit rate was much less.
And that's why I wasn't on as many TV shows.
But as you improve and get better, it's akin to a comedian who gets funnier and funnier.
You start to know how to interact with the audience more.
I've done this so many times that I now know, again, what little paths of resistance there are.
I know the things that have gone wrong in the past that I can iterate on.
And listen, here's the key part is I sometimes still get it wrong, but the true measure of a professional and a consummate professional is that you don't know if I got it wrong because I'm able to misdirect, move things around, pick your own adventure.
And sometimes you'll see a show and go, that was the most amazing thing ever.
And I know that it went horribly wrong twice, but I kept moving you from door number one to door number two to door number three, and you just had no idea.
You say that people who are very intelligent are much easier to read as they think a certain way.
You say it's so much easier to fool.
So presumably you would see me as a very easy target.
Maybe the easiest of all time, Piers Morgan.
Maybe the easiest of all time.
I've never wanted to be known as an easier target more.
If the clarification for that is that it means I'm super intelligent.
But you also do a chapter in your book called Stack the Deck in Your Favor.
You say, all we're doing is cheating.
We're using subterfuge, secret methods, ways to deceive you, right?
But we're doing it in an ethical way.
I thought it was a really interesting way to describe it.
Just elaborate on that.
Well, in a different life, with a different moral compass, I could be an extremely, extremely sophisticated and successful con man.
I'm telling you that unequivocal fact because what I'm actually doing is conning people for a living, but I'm doing it under the guise of entertainment.
Therefore, it is considered acceptable within our social contract.
But if suddenly, instead of guessing your ATM pin code to entertain you, I did that to then go to the bank and extricate your money, I'd be in jail right now.
So again, that's kind of what I describe as the stacking the deck in your favor in the book has a little bit of the fact that I'm doing it ethically, but more so is that in life, because my book is all about how to use my skills not to entertain.
I am not going to teach you to be a mentalist.
I want to teach you how to use the skills of a mentalist in your life to achieve success, however you define it, which is a big part of the book is getting inside your own head to think what is success to you, right?
Because it might differ very greatly from me, to you, to the person reading this book.
And then once you figure that out, how do we start to make meaningful changes to get there?
And for stacking the deck in your favor, I worked on Wall Street, Pierce.
I worked at Merrill Lynch out of college and I had a day job.
I did not know I was going to be a mentalist talking to you one day, right?
This was not on my long-term vision board.
But as I was doing this, I had worked in the past and had businesses.
I was saving up money during college when everybody else went on big trips.
I was eating ramen and sitting at home and I had this nest egg ready so that after a few years working on Wall Street while doing this as a side hustle, I decided there's a lot of moments that led up to it to quit my job.
And when I did that, if I had not had that money saved up and like I said, stack the deck in your favor so when the opportunity arrives, you can jump on it, I would not have been able to quit my job and go for it, right?
I would have probably still been working at a corporate job to this day.
And that's what it's all about is finding those places in your life where you can, I don't want to say cheat because cheat had a negative connotation, but I cheat to do good things in my life, right?
You don't know how I'm getting the thought that I'm about to get out of your head.
That's the secret.
Well, do the same in your life.
Start thinking ahead on what you want to achieve and do the things today to make that a reality in the future.
On Wall Street, of course, what most people are doing, they're trying to guess what will happen next and invest accordingly to make money.
Is a key part of what you do to train people to think like a mentalist, to improve their lives?
Is a lot of that about predicting where people may go and how they can influence that pathway?
Absolutely.
Like I show you the book right here so you can see it.
It says there's a chapter.
It's called Channel Your Inner Mentalist.
And again, very important.
I don't want one single person to buy this book and be disappointed and say in their view, where are the tricks?
I'm not going to teach you mentalism tricks.
There are a hundred books on that topic.
And frankly, if you want, buy one to become a mentalist.
For 99.999% of people, that's not what they're looking for.
So instead, I want to get inside someone else's head to know things that are going to help me in my life.
So a great example is you're going in for a job interview.
How do you increase your chances of getting that job?
If you know what the other person is looking for, your odds go up and up and up.
If you could find out what is the right answer in this question, how do you build instant rapport with that person?
How do you build credibility and trust?
That's what happens when you leave a room and you shake a hand, you look and you'll be hearing back from us, right?
You connected with them on a deeper level.
Or if you're in sales or if you're in a relationship that's early on, how do you know if that person is really interested in you or already looking for their next option?
What can you glean from their body language, their behavior, and the things that you're able to influence on them?
And that's what I've studied because that's what I do for a living on stage for thousands, on TV for millions of people.
And I want to give you those core skills.
How many relationships have you been in in your adult life that have gone wrong?
How many?
So far, not too many.
I had a college girlfriend and that one I wouldn't say went wrong, but she moved away and it wasn't the right fit.
So I love her to this day.
Great girl, but I'm so happy that didn't go the distance.
And then afterwards, my next girlfriend became my wife and now we have five kids.
So so far, it's going pretty well.
So you're a glittering example of somebody who deployed your own skills in your personal relationship with your, I'm told, very hot wife.
And you've managed to have.
Wow, thank you.
She's going to love to hear that.
Well, so I'm told.
But this is indicative of your success rate about practicing what you preach.
So what was the technique you deployed with your girlfriend that made you realize she was the right person to marry?
Oh man, so there's a it's a part of the book, which again, I am not a perfect person who figured this all out.
I've been a work in, what's the word I'm looking for?
Work in progress for throughout life.
And I'm an eternal student.
And you mentioned America's Got Talent and America's Got Talent changed my life because 10 years ago I was on the show and this is the best part to know.
I got third place, but do you know how many times I tried out before I got on?
Three times.
So one big part of my book is just telling you resilience.
So many of you, you go, I didn't make it happen.
I go, oh, you didn't make it happen.
You just gave up too soon because so many people go, I tried, it didn't work.
Lucky for you.
No luck.
I went back again.
I learned from my mistake.
I went back again.
I went back again, right?
Fear of failure and rejection sinks more dreams than anything else.
It's not you not executing properly.
It's not the universe going against you.
It's your own brain turning against you and that fear giving you outs, right?
How many people do you know, Piers, that they tell you what they want to do and they right before they tell you, they already tell you the excuses of what they're going to make when they, you know, I want to do it, but this, but this, but this, but nothing.
Tell me all the reasons it will work.
I don't want to hear a single reason why it won't work.
I want to rewire your brain for success.
Right.
So how did you, how did you woo your wife?
I'm really curious because back to my wife.
So I had been using the tactics.
So keep in mind, my powers were used for good, but I also, the magic for a dorky teenager was the best way to approach girls, right?
I didn't know what to say to them.
So I come up ready, locked and loaded with a magic trick or a mentalism trick, and I went to do one for her and she didn't like it at all.
So it was like Superman feeling kryptonite.
I go, I don't know what to do with this girl right now.
She doesn't like what I do.
She saw through me and I think it was the perfect move where I think I really realized she likes me for me.
And then if you read in the book, I didn't even, the best mentalism is the one you learn later because I tried to break up.
I was so immature and I was not ready to commit.
And she literally in front of me just breaks down what I'm thinking.
You know, a real lesson in mentalism.
The teacher became the student or the student became the teacher.
And I was like, oh my God, she knows what's going on in my inner dialogue.
And she goes, just grow up a little.
We made it about a week or two later, I realized I made the biggest mistake of my life trying to break up with her.
I'm begging for her back.
And then she had the upper hand.
And then fast forward, I got her to move in with me.
A year later, I proposed.
And the rest is history.
Five beautiful children later.
So how did I do it?
In this case, I was not the mentalist.
She was.
And the number one thing you will ever make a decision in your life is who you pick as a partner in your life.
And if you have children, who you will raise your children with, everything else is secondary.
That is the most important choice you'll ever make.
So mentalism itself, do you practice it in your own life or not?
I mean, now you have a very successful professional life as a mentalist.
Mentalism Lessons Learned00:02:39
It makes you a ton of money and we'll come to that.
But do you practice it in your own life now?
Do you feel the need to?
So mentalism, again, is like I'm calling it magic of the mind.
So the thing is, people, when they see if you've executed a mentalism routine very, very well, then people generalize the skill.
Here's what I mean by that.
You assume that right now, if I were to, I'm probably not going to do something with cards because a little magical, but I do a trick a lot of time where I say, take out a pack of cards and I say, put the cards away, think of a card.
And now if I guess that card correctly, your immediate instinct goes, what are we doing here talking?
If I could do that, why don't I just go to Vegas and win all the money?
Because notice that in this movie, I'm the director.
So there's a series of procedures I walk you through to deduce the card.
Again, I'm not claiming to be psychic.
I can't just tell you, think of a card and I've got it.
There is a process for me to get there that involves observing you, leading you, and a lot of other tactics where I'm in control, just like a director points the camera.
And so if I were to go sit down at a poker table, and I assure you, I have thought of this at length.
I am not some sort of, I would easily do this to monetize.
I can't make you sit down and do all the things I want at a poker table at the pace that I want.
People won't do it.
So you don't have the tactical advantage.
Also, there are people that know how I do what I do that work on staff at casinos.
That's the honest to God truth.
So anything that I could do, they typically have already, they've already, I don't want to say warned against, but they're already prepared for it.
I usually ask potential criminals to have a seat, but now I'm asking you to join me, Chris Hansen, for my new series, Have a Seat with Chris Hansen.
Guests each week are fascinating personalities who are grabbing headlines, making waves, or changing our lives for the better.
Have a seat with Chris Hansen available wherever you get your podcasts.
Would you charge $150,000 average per live show?
You visit multiple cities a week, 145 events this year.
Forbes estimates you'll collect roughly $10 million in pre-tax earnings for 2024.
Is all of that roughly correct?
That's what's been published.
You know, I'm not submitting my tax records, but I have been very, very blessed and very lucky and beyond measure of what I ever could have dreamed of years ago.
There's a lot of money in that.
I'm not going to tell you exactly.
There is if you get to the highest level and if you've been able to kind of appeal to a broad base.
And honestly, I wouldn't say it's kind of like an outlier within a field.
Detecting Lies Quickly00:07:18
There's a lot of people that do this who I don't want to be dismissive of because they're struggling and they're working their butts off.
And I, even 10 years ago, 20 years ago, I've had a lot of opportunities.
But again, the key element is not so much how much money I make.
It's how do you get to a stage of what you want to do?
Because I believe that the two things you want to aim for in life, and these have been my secret sauce, is whatever you decide to do, right?
Be the best at it or do it different or uniquely than everyone else.
And if you can thread the needle, do both.
Be the best and do it different than everyone else.
And there's hundreds, if not thousands, of other mentalists all over the world, but I've done it different than all of them, I can guarantee you.
And I hope that when history writes my legacy, they'll say I did it better than anyone else as well, because I keep trying to do things that are unique and that appeal to the viewer.
When I create content, it's not based on what makes me look good and special.
It's what appeals to the person on the other end of the camera.
I turn the mirror around and I try to create memorable moments for them.
You say some stuff in the book, which is really interesting.
I mean, it's a very interesting book.
But you say that you can take three seconds if somebody is lying to you.
I would say that's true.
It's very difficult to take.
It's not a 100% thing.
So again, if I have more time with somebody, I can assess them more clearly.
Now, what do I mean by that?
I mean, how many people in your life do you interact with on a daily basis, Pierce?
Just name the number.
Maybe 20, Max.
Right.
So of them, you notice patterns.
Your brain finds patterns.
And when something feels off, you detect it the same way you see tension.
The same way that sometimes if somebody walks in a room, even if you don't see them, you feel the hairs on the back of your neck.
Explain to me why that is when you feel like you're being watched or someone's in the room with you.
You can feel them.
I can't explain to you why.
There's no real scientific, we don't have sonar or radar, but there's things that are beyond our senses that are instinct.
I'm not calling them psychic, but they're instinctual.
And so when you observe someone, and again, I can't give you a heuristic or a way for it to say I'd be, you know, be making money more millions if I could give you a universal lie detector test.
But what I can tell you is the easiest way to detect somebody that you know very well if they're lying is to notice what changes in their patterns.
And their patterns mean the benchmark.
How many details do they give when they tell a story?
What is their cadence when they speak?
When I'm performing, I tend to speak faster.
When I'm giving interviews, I sometimes move around, but my voice is my tool.
I speak at a pace on purpose.
It's not because I'm nervous at all.
I slowed down on purpose there.
The same way I want to pause to make a point.
So, and next up, where do they look when they're telling the story?
There's a little bit of what's known as neuro-linguistic programming, NLP, which where you look, some of that I want to call pseudoscience.
It's not always accurate.
But what is accurate is observe someone you know and try to monitor when they tell the truth, what their rhythms are, their cadence, the number of details, where the pauses are.
And now, if you can, if you watch them lie and on purpose, you get them to lie, it's the same as a polygraph.
You can see what they do differently.
And now that becomes your benchmark.
And now I challenge you, you will notice, especially if people have kids, people who have kids are experts at detecting, you know, they're lying right now.
Why do you know that?
Because you've seen them since they were born every single day.
So when you do that with people that are strangers, for me and my show, I don't have years to detect.
So I do it in a hyper-fast way where I ask them to lie.
I ask them to tell the truth.
If you watch my show, you'll see it.
I literally do it in the show.
And then I do it again, but under the guise of entertainment, and I see the difference.
And it's not 100%, but I can get into the 80s and 90s very clearly.
Also, peers, I choose the people I use in my show.
Again, if I have a crowd of a thousand people, we don't line them up and you pick.
I'm the director.
I like her.
I like him.
Some people go to me at the end of the show and they go, why didn't you pick me?
Am I harder to read?
I go, damn straight, you are.
I didn't pick you for a reason.
So that's the beauty of kind of, I get to pan for gold and get the best reactions.
You also say that you can make people say yes without them realizing it.
Well, I think everybody can.
So I think that's a skill that has to do with being a good listener and knowing how to converse in the right way, right?
How many times have you walked up to somebody and they ask you the same three questions everybody else asks you?
Oh, where are you from?
Oh, what do you do for a living?
Oh, just boring.
I'm sorry.
I don't mind it, but you are doing the same thing everyone else does.
You are an autopilot.
A big part of the book, again, is I tell you, how do you become the most memorable person in every room you walk into?
Now, I have tried to do that, strive to do that for 30 years.
How do you become the most memorable person in a room?
You leave a party, you leave an event, and you ever have that moment you talk to your spouse or your friends, you go, did you meet that girl?
God, she was so, she was amazing.
Did you meet him?
Yeah, I love that guy.
What made them so interesting?
I have tried to figure that out.
And in so many cases, the people that are the most interesting have this one quality to them.
They tend to be the most curious.
They tend to be the most interested.
They asked you questions that no one else did.
And they did questions that were not yes or no, because yes or no puts you into a box.
I say, hey, it's when I was a teenager and I'd walk up to you at a restaurant to do card tricks.
Want to see magic?
No.
Oh, where do you go from there?
Come on, but my mom says I'm really good.
Instead, frame the question differently.
It's something I learned early on, which is you walk up in a slightly exuberant mood, but not over the top.
You need to match people's energy.
Never go over the top or they feel awkward around you.
And I walk up and I go, did you hear what's going on?
It's your lucky night.
Notice the question is rhetorical.
It doesn't say no or yes in a way that they could reject you.
It goes, no, what's going on?
It sounds like you won the lottery.
I also approach at an angle.
Notice that if I turn my body and look at you, it's a little more relaxed.
You're less nervous because somebody doesn't come at you head on.
And I would walk up with a time constraint.
I'd always go, I only have a minute, but did you hear what's going on?
It's your lucky night.
It's very hard for someone at that moment to say, leave, leave, I don't want you, because you've become intriguing to them.
And just again, I learned all the things that were going on in the person's mind when I approached them.
And I realized so many people were nervous about tipping me.
Oh, God, do I have money?
Have you ever had that moment?
You have, oh, that panic you have where somebody held the door, did something for you, the doorman, and I go, oh, I don't have any money.
Oh, what am I going to do?
And it just, it clouds the entire experience.
So right away, I let them know, I'm here, compliments of the owner, right?
Compliments, or I'm here as a treat from the owner.
And right away, boom, all of that resistance goes away, that trepidation, that anxiety.
They can enjoy this experience because they're not worried about money anymore.
The same way that I over time learned what's going on in their mind when I approach them, you can do the same in your life.
Maybe you're a teacher, right?
Maybe you're a student.
Maybe I don't know what you do.
Interacting with Others00:08:28
You could be a research scientist sitting in a room by yourself creating the next vaccine.
The fact of the matter is everyone interacts with other people in their life.
Nobody lives in a vacuum.
So you have to interact.
And when you do, how do you work with other people?
Those are the key skills I'm trying to teach you to become more effective at.
Some of them are very, very simple.
And that's what I want you to learn.
The smallest, simplest things that you'll still be doing in 10 years.
You're known for being very good at predicting sporting events and the results and so on.
I only have one question.
So so.
So so.
Yes.
All right.
Well, Arsenal, my football team in the UK, are top of the Premier League.
Are they going to win the Premier League?
I haven't been tracking EPL this year as much, but I don't want to say something that'll get the Arsenal fans mad at me, but they were not my predictions.
So don't get mad at me.
I'm hoping I'm wrong for your sake, Piers, but I don't know if Arsenal is going to win this year.
Who do you think is going to win?
So I have not followed, I have not followed football nearly well enough.
So I can't go there.
I've been really tracking NFL football because that butters my bread quite a bit.
I do a lot of things with NFL football teams here.
So I've been tracking that much closer.
And given my media schedule and the book coming out, I just have not had time for sports nearly enough as much as what I would have liked.
I didn't get prep on this one.
So I'm not ready.
I don't want to put myself out there and get it wrong.
Well, you've already crushed my hopes, but let's end on a more positive note, which is going to do something now.
Yes, yes.
So yesterday we had the chance to speak.
I wanted to ask a little bit more about the logistics and how we'd be.
And I'm in a van.
Can I tell people this is the wildest setup ever?
I'm not even in the same room as you.
We are remote.
This is an incredible interview.
And so, Piers, I asked you yesterday, and I said, get a deck of cards because I wanted to try something, but the issue is I can't see you as well.
So I asked you, Piers, let me ask you a question right now.
I want it to be spontaneous.
You have no idea what I'm going to say to you.
How many interviews do you think you've conducted over the course of your career, which is vast?
And I mean, you've literally, heads of state, Cristiano Ronaldo, the list goes on and on and on.
How many people ballpark do you think you've interviewed?
I would guess something around, I have no idea, but if I was guessing 3,000.
3,000, right?
Chat GPT could answer it in a second.
If I were to ask you to think of one of those interviews right now, some people would later say, and you go, okay, I got one, that I led the witness.
I mentioned three different categories, all of which might have been eliminated.
And they would say the same thing because I've seen the comments after my videos and the videos that try to debunk me.
And the videos always go, he did his research.
He did his research.
So what if he led Piers down a path to a specific interview and he could have looked it up?
It's in essence, it's somehow findable on the internet.
So Piers, I want to bring you back in time.
And you mentioned Arsenal.
You led us down this path.
When you were a kid, did you play soccer, otherwise known as football?
I did.
You did.
Was that your key sport or were you a different sport?
What was your favorite sport?
Cricket was my favorite sport.
Cricket.
Now, how many years did you play cricket for?
I played from when I was about seven years old until I was about 40.
So here's what I want you to do.
You know what?
Deja vu.
We're going to go back in time.
Close your eyes for me.
If I were to ask you to think of a name and writing down a name right now in front of you, you're not going to write anything down, but if you were to, that becomes very left-brain.
It's an analytical pursuit.
But if I go right-brain, if I tell you to rewind back to your childhood, playing cricket, okay?
And let's go back in time and see this.
And you're face-to-face with another boy that you played cricket with, right?
Somebody with an interesting name.
I really lean into this where I always tell you, Piers, I say, make sure this person's name is not run of the mill.
If you pick a Michael, I'm going to be so disappointed in you.
So I always say, do not do that.
And Piers, I'm having you do this.
I had you do this.
I'm having you visualize this person's face.
Can you still see in your mind's eye what this person looks like?
Yes.
When you were a child.
Do you remember their face?
Open your eyes.
Yeah.
Piers, have you and I ever met in our lives face to face prior to this moment?
Have we ever met?
No.
No.
The person that you thought of from your childhood, right?
I asked you, what was your favorite sport?
You said cricket.
You took us on a journey.
You thought of a boy from years ago.
Is there any way, shape, or form that I could have gone on a social media platform?
I could have gone on ChatGPT and found out who you would have picked or thought of.
Is there any conceivable way that could happen?
No.
I want you, again, I want to explain.
I'm not supernatural.
I'm not psychic.
I'm going to break this down in front of you.
I want you to think of the first letter of this person's name.
Okay?
And I want you to continue slowly in your mind going to each letter and counting how many there are until you are done.
When you are done counting, simply nod your head or say, I'm done.
And is this the first name only?
Or yes, yes.
I don't want to, I'm going to keep it anonymous, just first name.
Start over, count just the first name.
Okay, so what's fascinating is because of that question, I don't want to say you threw me off, but I think you counted the name twice because the first time you were going to add in the last name, which would have made it longer.
And so when you recounted, you were able to count quicker, but not that much quicker.
If it was a short name, you would have known instantly.
If it was a very long name, there would have been more of a struggle.
This name, to a trained eye, feels middle to long.
Try not to say anything.
789.
789.
I'm going to go on a, I'm going to go.
I think his name is seven letters long, isn't it?
It is.
It is.
And now take those seven letters as if we were playing a game of Scrabble and see all of the letters in front of you.
And I want you to scramble the letters up, just they mix them up on the table.
And then you reach down and you're going to pick up any one of the letters.
You won't even look.
So statistically, I don't know which one you'll get, but you'll just grab one of the letters somewhere out of the name and you look at that one letter.
Do you have it in your mind?
I do.
There was a hesitation.
There was an interesting inflection.
I can't tell, but you were thinking, oh my goodness, why did I get this one?
It felt like it is the letter you picked in the name more than once.
No.
Okay, because sometimes when the name is combined, like Mitchell, you get the two L's.
And I'm so curious.
I don't think you did the first letter, did you?
No.
If I were to turn something around written, you are able to cover your eyes and there is no way you will see it, correct?
Because I want your viewer to know that I'm writing this and showing everyone before you confirm a thing.
Yeah, I'll shut my eyes now.
T, were you thinking of letter T?
Were you thinking of letter T?
Yes.
I knew it.
I knew it.
You just let it slip, Pierce.
Cover your eyes.
Cover your eyes.
Okay.
So you mentioned from seven to age, you said 14 or 40, you played cricket.
Seven to 40.
40.
I think this was right around the end of primary school.
Keep your eyes closed.
I feel like you knew him for a few years.
And to keep your eyes closed, keep your eyes closed.
Hopefully everybody at home has seen this.
All of our viewers have seen it.
I cannot change my mind.
People always say, I changed my mind.
That's it.
I'm committed.
Okay, it should be gone and hidden.
Open your eyes.
I think you knew him for just a few years.
Really nice kid.
Maybe he moved away.
No, maybe, no, he moved away.
Not you.
Tell us all.
Who did you think of, Piers?
What's his name?
The guy's name was Quentin Curtis.
Quentin is exactly what I wrote down, Piers.
Quentin.
Holy shit.
How did you know that?
That's unbelievable.
How did you know that?
Oh, that's freaked me out.
Unbelievable Mind Trick00:01:14
Piers, I've got an answer for you.
And you know what it is?
It's called Read Your Mind.
Get the book and start to change your life.
This is what it's all about.
Come on, you set me up for the plug, baby.
Unbelievable.
Well, that worked.
I played cricket with Quentin when we were, yeah, just between like, I think we were about 10 or 11.
And that's amazing.
That was the year I was.
Check later.
You were exactly 11.
I probably was.
That's completely nuts.
Oz, absolutely brilliant.
Wonderful to have you on.
I don't know how the hell you did that.
I will join Joe Rogan in the long list of illustrious, mystified people that you've bemused over the years.
But thank you very much.
Great to talk to you.
Thanks, Piers.
I really appreciate it.
Hope to see you in person one day.
Take care, buddy.
I look forward to it.
Take care.
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