Join Waseem and Rashed for an insightful conversation about artificial intelligence, its numerous possibilities, and the ethical challenges that come with its advancements. They explore how AI can transform fields such as linguistics, art, and even debate, all while considering the cultural and societal repercussions of this emerging technology. Waseem and Rashed emphasize the significance of treating AI with respect and mindfulness while recognizing its ability to bridge cultural divides and promote understanding among diverse populations. Don’t miss this captivating episode and be a part of the conversation surrounding AI and its influence on our future.
Episode Transcript:
Waseem: Welcome to another episode of Third Culture Combos. In today’s unique and slightly imaginative episode we’re gonna explore a fascinating hypothetical scenario, a great debate between two icons of sports history, the rock, and. Muhammad Ali, or as you like to call ’em, Muhammad Ali, on the ethics and moral implications of artificial intelligence.
Although they come from different backgrounds, their unique perspectives will spark a thought-provoking conversation on AI’s impact on third culture communities, the potential consequences on society and the responsibility we hold in shaping AI’s future. So buckle up. Join us in this enthralling debate as we delve into the complexities of AI ethics and its role in our ever-evolving world to keep things fresh, rash it I’ll be the rock.
I’m gonna sit across the table from you, okay? And you’re gonna be Muhammad Ali.
Rashed: Not Cassius Clay,
Waseem: Muhammad Ali. Yeah. Yeah. Not Muhammad Ali either. Muhammad Ali. Ali. I got a side note on that later. Because if he calls himself Muhammad Ali, is that his name or his shirt? His name be Muhammad Ali?
Yeah. Yeah.
Rashed: Okay. We’ll
Waseem: get to that later side note. We’ll figure that out. I don’t know. Side note. All right. The Rock. Finally, the Rock has come back to the podcast. I’m gonna spare you the voice. Ali, I think we can both agree that AI has the potential to revolutionize the world we live in, especially for third culture kids.
It can help us break down language barriers, provide instant access to diverse cultural information, and even create virtual environments where we can learn about other cultures in immersive ways.
Rashed: I hear you rock. But let’s not forget that with great power comes great responsibility. While AI can indeed bring about positive changes, we have to consider the ethical and moral crush questions that arise.
I’m also saving the voice cause I can’t do all these’s voice. For instance, how can we ensure that AI-driven technologies are unbiased and respect cultural diversity?
Waseem: Great point. Ali. It’s crucial to develop AI systems that are transparent and accountable so that we can address issues like bias and discrimination.
I believe that as long as we can strike the right balance between technological advancements and ethical considerations, we can harness AI’s potential for the betterment of third culture individuals.
Rashed: What about the issue of privacy and surveillance? With AI becoming more integrated into our lives, there’s the risk of an invasion of privacy, especially when it comes to collecting and analyzing data from different cultures.
How do we draw the line?
Waseem: Privacy is definitely a concern, Ali, but I believe that establishing strong data protection laws and guidelines can help us mitigate these risks. We need to create an environment where people feel secure in using AI driven technologies while also respecting their right to privacy.
All right,
Rashed: rock. Let’s talk about the impact of AI on employment. As AI becomes more advanced, it’s likely to replace many jobs, especially in an industries like translation, traveling, even cultural consulting. How do we ensure that the benefits of AI don’t come at the expense of people’s livelihoods?
Waseem: Don’t talk to me about jobs, you’ve hit the nail on the head. Ali. The key is to strike a balance between AI driven progress and human employment. We need to invest in re-skilling and upskilling programs to help people adapt to the changing job market. By doing so, we can create a future where AI and human workers coexist, complimenting each other’s
Rashed: strengths.
Rock. It seems we found some common ground. Let’s keep pushing for a future where AI serves to enrich the lives of third culture, kids and everyone else, while addressing the ethical and moral challenges that come along with it.
Waseem: Absolutely. Ali, in this together championing the cause for a better, more exclusive future.
Let’s make it happen. If you smell what the rock
Rashed: is cooking. My terrible attempt at boxing. Yeah. Shadow boxing swing. Sting
Waseem: what was it? Dance like a butterfly. Sting Like a bee.
Rashed: Yeah. Yeah. Float like a butterfly. Sting like a bee.
Waseem: Float. Float. Float. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. It seems like the rock in this debate was very was very for
Very pro ai.
While Ali, we brought up a lot of valid points. So where do you stand, RA? You gotta choose. You gotta choose.
Rashed: Obviously, I have to choose. I like the rock’s point about being able to break down barriers in learning different cultures and languages and societies and those type of things.
Because in reality you can go to one of these AI programs, type in tell me similarities between, I don’t know, Latin American culture and Japanese culture. Let’s just say something that you would think are completely different. And it will de develop and it will give you an entire narrative as to how they’re related and how possibly they have historical connections and historical ties, which actually it’s not that farfetched considering all the Japanese immigrants and even people from like Chinese immigrants that ended up in parts of South America.
So that part I’d like because it really does provide a simple way. For an individual who’s a third culture kid to basically learn about different connections that they never knew was possibly was possible existed. And really expand their mind as to interconnectedness and relationships between different cultures.
So that part I like, but I also like Ali’s hesitance and his concerns when it comes to privacy and surveillance. Cause all of this stuff is online. I guess we can get further into protection laws later, but when it comes to the protection laws, how do you even police that? Because the internet has no borders, it has no boundaries.
So laws that can do certain things in one country aren’t necessarily the same laws in other countries. But my initial My initial thought and my initial gut instinct really is to agree with the rock in terms of connecting the world, connecting different people, understanding different cultures together and languages and relationships and all those type of things.
Waseem: I so you choose a rock and I, and hon honestly, I agree with you on, on, so I’m I think I’m a hundred percent probably, this might actually come from a place of ignorance, but I’m a hundred percent in the. Rocks camp in the sense that okay I’m positively excited about what AI as a tool brings to the workplace.
And, okay. We’ll talk first about cultural understanding. So w one of the things that I find that AI is particularly helpful, it’s in. Prompting, even though you prompt ai it in turn prompts you with ideas and connections that you may not have so clearly seen straight away. So the, the key the new skill in ai I’m gathering.
Is, how can you properly prompt it? Like, how can you engineer your prompt so that the AI does what you what you would like it to do? And so what words do you use and what order do you use? What context do you provide and how much can it handle? In terms of all of the the comp, the complicated algorithm that is all that information, and then turn that around into a communication that you can, that will prompt new ideas for you.
One of the. So I’ve been using AI in one of the big the big, like probably the first thing that I found it being really helpful was, is, was in brainstorming different ideas. So if I need a new I want to think about a topic, I can say, Hey I. What are some of the facets that I can think about inside in this topic?
And then that will open up a whole bunch of other ideas and then I can explore it further. And I use the some, I heard someone describe it as a a universal personal intern, a u p I. So it’s it doesn’t solve it doesn’t do it better than I can in terms of the thinking, I would say.
But it does definitely help organize and keep and prompt me as a result of me prompting it. And where is that interesting? I think when it comes to cultural understanding is that it can prompt sort of new ideas and new things that, that you can explore. And I was like with Ali’s point about it, can it truly be because an algorithm is a creation like it’s a man-made creation, it’s still works within the parameters of its creation.
The point, one of the points when I was thinking about this idea that came up was like, how culturally diverse can the AI be if the people that make the AI. Design it to not be that like without that cult, that peace in mind, like like you, Holly for as an example, right?
Like Hollywood and, is in the last few years has been reckoning with its lack of diversity and representation and probably has been swinging into the other realm quite far to react to what it had originally been. And I think That in the same way we, but it’s harder to find when it comes to ai because of the, let’s say the sub, the subjective nature of this discussion.
Yeah. So I find that’s a, like a question mark, that’s a thing that I don’t necessarily have a answer to, but it’s a consideration that I, that. I think need needs to come up when you do talk about AI and ethics and morality. You can’t just ignore that part. Because the, even AI has been developed, there is a developer behind ai. It’s not entirely a sentient being
Rashed: just, it’s been coded as been coded by human, essentially. Yes. Yeah.
Waseem: Yeah. With their own biases. With their own. And they was, they found that with the, it’s like the, they’ve been playing, they were playing with Jack G P T and asking it to like you, a if you, I think if you ask it to make fun of.
Certain like political leaders or something, it won’t do it, but if you ask it to make fun of like Donald Trump, it goes nuts.
Rashed: Which makes sense considering the time period in which it’s been developed, obviously Exactly. Whoever codes it is gonna be like, yeah. Freaking free for all. They set
Waseem: the limits and then the limits are set from, and this is probably a problem that exist.
This is a problem that exists coming from the tech industry. Is that moral policing, and this is probably, I think where this debate becomes very important is that moral policing sits in the realm of the tech CEO’s office. And that’s not where it needs to be.
In my opinion, you’re not qualified to, to mor morally police anybody in that position. It’s a slippery slope. Like who, just cuz you think that’s brings back to the idea of Western privilege that we had talked about before. Yeah.
Rashed: Yeah. A couple of things that I wanted to break up.
So when it comes to the morals and the ethics part of it, but one thing that I, one of the first things that pops in my mind is the. Ethical issue of plagiarism within universities, for example, where there’s been in recent time when, these chat ai websites and such have been, and platforms have become more prevalent.
It’s the issue of plagiarism when university students have to write an essay or an assignment type of thing, and. For the most part, if you have been marking, certain students’ essays for long enough, you can start to recognize when they’re not writing in their own voice.
So that’s a part of the problem. Where, so I understand your point where we say, you can prompt. Chat, G B T for example, to give you brainstorming ideas about a certain topic that you have to write an essay on. But a lot of people, what they’re doing is they’re going in saying, this is the topic and they type it in and they just let it run and it gives you this entire narrative and go copy and paste and then submit it.
Next thing you know they get a zero. Cuz it’s like it’s plagiarized, I know it’s not yours. So that’s one issue really, cuz really university, university isn’t necessarily all about the marks. Obviously it is cuz you have to graduate unless you’ve wasted your time and get your diploma and degree and whatever.
But a lot of it is based on what type of relationships do you develop? What kind, what type of advancements do you make as an individual? And things like problem solving and group work, depending on which, depending on whatever major that you’re studying in type of thing, I think a lot of people forget that type of thing.
And you know what? I really didn’t realize the importance of that till after I graduated. I looked back and said I wasted a lot of time worrying too much about, the content of whatever essays that I was writing. But that’s definitely one issue that I find. And that goes, and then that’s related to protection laws in which you’re saying that, it shouldn’t be in this hands of the c e o or in the executive board’s hands.
So the question then comes when it comes to related to that is who has the moral authority to do that? We can say governments do, cuz really governments make are the ones that make laws in, in each country. But even still, we criticize government so much about their surveillance and privacy laws and censorship.
And so can you even trust different legislatures and different, bodies of government around the world in order i, in order to be able to police that. One person can say, have an international body like the un everyone still thinks the UN’s a joke, especially when it comes to certain conflicts that have been ongoing in the world for such a long time.
But even still, they’re not binding. So that’s the thing, like how do you, that’s what I don’t know how you get around that type of thing when it comes to things like plagiarism or privacy laws. A another example when it comes to plagiarism across borders, for example. So I ask people I that I’ve met over the years who have self-published books.
And I say how do you get around the copyright issue of you self-publish a book and it’s entirely an electronic book, for example, and they have it up on the Amazon store, whatever it is. And they have the copyright page there saying, all these rights are mine as the author, but if they’ve published it and their geographical location is the United States, someone in Germany can still take your words and run with them.
And because they’re not in the US you’re, what they do in Germany does not protect you in the United States. You know what I mean? So I, those are it’s not only like these type of issues, cross border issues are not, they’ve been around from from the days of print books as well.
Like it, so it’s expanding that debate now.
Waseem: That’s interesting that you say that. I, cuz I’m thinking like, especially when it comes to these sort of trans global issues, and especially with these types of like copyright law across, this is a unique piece. Four third culture, kids.
I think because it’s, it’s right in our home. It’s funny, our home turf it’s in our home turf. That, that we would think about how these sort of pla let’s say plagiarism issues or stuff exist across the, across borders, across international borders. I think one of the, when it comes to universities, for example, the issue.
With students, let’s say I don’t see the problem. I don’t see the problem. Not necessarily in just like using an AI tool to copy pa and then copy paste the words. I think you can see where there’s a lack of understanding, but maybe what ne what has to change within the university is the format of judging merit.
And that’s one of the things that university is suppo is supposed to do in its highest form. It’s, it’s not a social club. It’s not just a social club. We push up the social aspects and the networking and the relationship building that happens in universities.
But I’ll, I think. Even more it’s a judge of merit because it says that you ideally you graduate with a, with a bachelor of science or a bachelor of applied science. Then you are have a higher merit. You have demonstrated a higher merit and now are qualified.
To, begin practicing in a, B or c medical school as another example, right? You want your doctor to have gone through medical school in the sa and you trust the institutions of medical school so that the that the people come out are of the right quality to provide medical me medical help to you in your time of need, you and your loved ones.
And so it is a judge of merit. And so how. How we judge merit and understanding is the thing that. Let’s say, I think universities have to come to terms with, because with a lot of, in a lot of cultures in the world, right? Let’s say in let’s say the, in more of the eastern world or the global south there has been a, a lot of, we, I mean we’ve done this, we’ve criticized about like the memorization type of learning where it’s a lot of, like you, you just memorize and you regurgitate.
And then when you regurgitate, that’s, that is the, a measure of merit. And the better you can do that the higher you score. And then, you go to med school. And if you can’t do that like it doesn’t matter how much you understand it, there’s really no way for you to demonstrate your understanding.
And so I think with an AI tool or with just, with AI, instead of banning them, I think incorporating what they do well. As a, as an opportunity to reflect a better understanding of the topic, because even in even in writing, I f what I find it really helpful with is in, like first draft.
When you have, excuse me, when you have a first draft, it really helps you then, okay. What am I trying to explore here? What am I trying to say here? What am I trying to remove here? What am I trying? And so it actually facilitates your understanding of it even more. And then that can be your essay, but also your essay is not simply just regurgitating it or passing it over to the professor for grades and marking and marriage judging, but rather, alright, what are the interesting ideas in this paper?
What are the things that you have engaged with? Let’s seminar style it. Let’s sit down in a seminar and let’s say try to figure out like, let’s try to talk this idea through. And some of the best. Courses I’ve ever taken have been seminar style, 15 people sitting around a table trying, discussing an idea.
Being on the one side, on the other side, trying to figure it out and trying to figure out all the, like, how it, and learning from each other as well, and pe everyone else struggling with an idea, or opening up different doors in your minds. And so I think that with university, I’m not necessarily too entirely concerned about it in terms of learning because it’s if used properly or if, brought into the fold.
It’s an invaluable tool. It’s unbelievable what it can do for you to get you to, not necessarily judge Merit, but I’m judging thinking, right? I wanna make sure that you can critically think about a topic. And so it is, even if I ask it to make critical arguments and in point form in, in, for pros and cons, similar to how we just did about the idea of ethics and morality when it comes to ai.
It’s not enough to do that. It’s not, we have to sit and discuss the ideas. Like when we talked about diversity and inclusion in the algorithms of ai, it’s not simply a bullet point, right? It’s also thinking about how does that actually translate into real life and into the life in terms of this podcast of third culture kids who will see these differences? I think a bit more clearly.
Rashed: See, the thing is when it comes to at least when it comes to the university aspect I agree with you in the sense of it being it would be a useful tool to be incorporated into certain practices. So a good a, a good way, like you’re talking about brainstorming, for example.
When it comes to, let’s say, a seminar class that you’re gonna have and you’re the teaching assistant and you have to do this, and you’re exhausted, you’re tired you it’s a tough job to do. You have your own research that you’re doing in writing your own thesis, then you’re also doing all this work and you’re getting paid for it.
But still it’s still difficult work. And at some point you’re just like, I don’t even know what questions to like, ask these people anymore when it in our seminar courses, he could easily use. Chat, g p t as okay, give me brain, give me topic questions on, a whatever on labor the labor conflict in Uruguay, let’s say in 1945 or some, something like that, right?
And then you can go from there and it gives you all these questions, but there are certain things as well where it’s not really effective with when it comes to there are certain absolutes when it comes to, if you’re talking about the medical field or sciences or mathematics, like there are certain things that are absolutes.
That are really not discussable, you can say. But cuz really what ends up happening, and you can correct me if I’m wrong cause I didn’t do any type of science stream at all university or anything like that, but really oftentimes when you’re writing an essay or writing a report type of thing a lot of it is based on what of a lab work that you’ve done.
So then you write about your results. So that’s an absolute, like you did a certain. You went through certain process to, to do a certain thing type of thing. And then you basically come up with this result and you have to put it in, put it on paper and say, this is my argument based on what experiments that we did.
Whereas on the flip side, I’m more humanities based. You can make an argument for anything. Like you, you have a topic and you have to write a paper on a certain topic. You can make an argument if you have the right research and if you put it together properly in your paper, you can convince someone of something if you do it properly.
And so that’s where I say that’s where the harm is when it comes to chat. G P T, for example, where someone can just be like I want you to write an essay arguing that One particular figure in history while not name his name was actually not as evil as people make him sound to be, and he did wonderful things for his country and expanded his borders accordingly, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
You could potentially argue that, the certain person was not devil in human form. You know what I mean?
Waseem: I think, but I think also if anybody can argue it, then I think that’s not, it’s not that there’s more an obligation for the argument to, to occur, but there is, but ev every, like most, I, not every idea, maybe this is a big generalization, but idea, ideas have nuance.
And the, probably the challenge of our time is to. Except that there is nuance and that things are a bit more complicated and less cut and dry as they may seem when you, I’ve the thing is what, where does science and art both, what do they, both, and humanities.
What, like what are the, what do they all have in common when it comes to, let’s say paper writing? Is that you present a hypothesis? And your hypothesis and it, and you’re testing your hypothesis. And with the humanities, you test it through the rigorous process of ideas. And so you go, okay, I’m making my argument.
Here’s my hypothesis and here’s the evidence for my hypothesis. And so therefore, and therefore my conclusion is that my hypothesis true or it is false. And then you go back and you redo or you rejig the hypothesis. And the same thing in science. You make a hypothesis that you know, the the chemical A will burst when come into contact chemical B every time and under every condition.
And then you do the test where, okay, now I’m testing every condition. And does it burst at each of them? And if it does or, and then you find some surprising like things, and then you report back to the community and it’s a add infinity. Yeah. So you, that’s very, so I think that’s that, that process can definitely be sped up streamlined, helped out with the AI tool.
And it’s not necessarily something that you would just wanna throw away or just do to a fear of plagiarism or a fear of students trying to like skirt by without having the merit to get through. Because one of the things that like. Like that. I’m positive in terms of humanities that people, some people or what we hope is that people get better at detecting bullshit, right?
And so it can be just bullshit right? And like a bullshitter can only go so far before there people wise up to the bullshit. Or it’s a short term game being a sort of narcissistic con. Because then people will know, figure it out. You gotta do with one or two people, you burn them and you’re smiling.
But then but
Rashed: then, but in the world of TikTok and Instagram, You end up finding out just how many people agree with your bullshit and you end up having a million plus followers and Yeah. How you’re influencing a whole bunch of people and you’re giving voice to something that’s complete bullshit.
Exactly. That could be
Waseem: harmful to a lot of people. And that’s not a conversation about ai, that’s a convers conversation about social media. Yeah. Yeah. And so like that and and that is a separate conversation and it’s, but it, and it’s similar in the same thing, is that we don’t.
In those situations, we have left these, the tech CEOs to be the arbitrator arbitrators of that right. Discussion. And what I guess what I’m saying is that we need for both AI and for social media, a community led and community organized discussions around the. Ethics and morality and the limits that we would like to apply to these things.
And these are, and discussions are just as they are because it’s so nuanced. So even in government, what do we want? Gov government like at least democratically elected government, let’s say are representatives of the people. And so the whole idea is that they can handle that, but it’s not always necessarily the case.
And so there may be Different groups of of people of various professions and multidisciplinary groups that can discuss these where do we wanna put the limits of AI on In terms of the guidelines for who can use ai, how much can, no, not who can use AI so much as in like, where are going to be the limits of of this in multi-facets.
For example, one of the things I’m very excited about, When it comes to medicine even is I imagine an AI tool that is geared towards medicine where the or the medical community, because a lot of the times, let’s say a doctor graduates, like a doctor, graduates, and he starts his practice, and wouldn’t it be awesome, like right now if he’s sitting even real time with a thing, he’s you’re limited to what he knows about.
Any one topic to the symptoms that you show most often or not, it’s this combination of symptoms leads to this, and so the more experience the doctor gets, hopefully the better they are in terms of finding the patterns in the symptoms that you are, you were.
You are showing, asking the right questions to figure out your, to the correct medical history, and then being able to pr prescribe either a short-term or long-term solution to your, you’re
Rashed: basically describing house as an AI tool.
Waseem: Exactly. Exactly where how, where you can just say, okay, what drugs are there available?
For these types of of symptoms a person is presenting with this, what are some of the possibilities that they can have? And so even in the brainstorming, so I think right now, I mean in a lot of hospitals it’s a lot of good hospitals. There’s a meeting at the, on the floor every day with all with the representatives of every Team.
So the nurses, the doctors, the physios the labs, like everybody comes together and they go case by case to the people on the floor and they just discuss and just try to bring up all the ideas, put everything on the table so that we can talk about the care of this so that it’s not like just the doctor, dropping it.
Yeah.
Rashed: Dropping knowledge. And in that way you, you can discuss, possible. Connections between different cases that you never thought was possible.
Waseem: That’s a great thing to bring AI into the table and had to have for it to have a seat at the table to think about those, and to bring in things like that can go beyond because it can compute fast and it can source information really quickly and bring it to the, to, to the doctor and to the medical team that, To not use it, to have it and not ha use it.
Is almo like, it’s, it seems like there’s an ego thing, right? Like it’s No, I don’t need that either. Cuz I’m afraid. Cuz I don’t understand it. Or I didn’t do all the studying for nothing. But even in medicine and in the study of medicine it’s like they, what do they do, like half an hour on nutrition, right?
They do half an hour on exercise. And and every, almost every disease, right? The co-factors to it is lack of exercise, drinking too much alcohol smoking too much fats. Like all of these, like all these issues, right? That, that, like if you, the doctor will tell you to exercise more.
Okay. But what kind of exercise should I do? Like what, should I go up and down the stairs? Should I go like this? Like that type of work. Having a, an AI support in that realm. It’s in, it’s invaluable to like, to, to human health. And that’s where I’m, that’s why I’m so positive.
I’m actually very excited. And I think that before we, we shut it down and I know that there’s a lot of fear and alarm because it can go pretty far. But even in that, I’m a bit more tepid, trepid that in the sense that we are still it’s It’s creator, right? Like we are still the people that like are behind it.
And I’m not like here. Here’s the thing. Yeah. I think the upside is too up. The upside is too up for us to be like, no let’s regulate the shit out of it. Like we should regulate it. But there should be a balance between the regulations and the innovations that it’s creating.
Rashed: So here’s the thing.
So I think I, I think a lot of people who may not understand what AI is automatically go to these dystopian movies where this AI was developed and then all of a sudden it took control of all of the world systems and the background and it took over all of the banking systems and it took over all the surveillance systems and the matrix.
The matrix essentially, and all the military institutions and all that kind of stuff. And next thing you know, this massive war has started and AI is killing everybody. You really can’t do that with AI unless you somehow manage to program it where it can hack into all these different systems from the background and what, you know what some people are out there, it’s not some living in their yeah.
Someone living in their mom’s basement down somewhere in freaking Oklahoma somewhere who’s just not happy with anything and it’s just screw this shit. I’m gonna take Not just that
Waseem: even state sponsored, like it’s not just some random person. It could be like a state being like, okay, Korea, right?
This is this is weaponry, this is like modern day. What weaponry. Yeah, like it’s not crazy. It’d be crazy for that not to be on the table
Rashed: right now, like these points that you’re saying about how you can, if it, this hospital example where you use a the AI as a tool in your discussions, in your brainstorming sessions, in your gathering of information and your sharing of information, and that’s, and.
So then it relates to a part of the discussion between Ali and the Rock in terms of how do you protect jobs so you’re not taking anyone’s job away if you use it in that sense. Because you’re using it as complimenting a process that already exists that no one was doing anyways. It’s not like one person has been taken out of their seat.
Yes. But. What are some jobs that Yes, potentially that could be completely knocked out. Translation is the one big one. How many translators do we have in reality around the world? That happened before with Google Translate, even though sometimes you get Google translator and a translation comes out and it’s absolutely horrible.
It makes no sense in the destination language.
Waseem: And so you’d still need humans. To, to input, contextualize, to, not just to input, but to like contextualize,
Rashed: analyze it. Cause they have to fix it. They have to fix it at some point
Waseem: to it. Yeah, I mean it’s, I don’t like, will it ever I heard of things like in 20 years, what we call AI today.
I. Won’t we’d be like, what is this caveman business like? It’s, it won’t be considered like ai. And it can only learn and improve. But even, I the, I think the fear that it’ll just remove everyone’s job. This was a similar, there were similar fears all throughout history with every Technological innovation, that’s huge, right?
That okay, now we’re not, and then no one’s gonna have to, and then nobody can work. And then nobody and there is a subset of the population that like, that not will necessarily lose their jobs. And so I’m with the like retraining, re reusing, but it just always brings up further questions regards to our education systems and, where that are already like playing catch up, right? That are still built on older models of of of thinking and of society, right? Like it’s still very industrial and there’s a certain expectation, at least in the I’ll talk about in the global south, right?
So like of it following a particular kind of model to create a particular kind of human that is required for a particular kind of economy. And the. And so it works along that line. And so when you go back and you’re like, okay, now let’s try to adjust this. And this has been a challenge all over the place, right?
But there are places that ha that have done it and have contextualized their education systems to their local economies and to their local, the Nordic countries are an example of that. That, have just changed how they, how they deal with education and with young people in order to prepare them for an economy that has different requirements of its workforce.
And like AI is a big one, but it’s a big tool that will now, that forces us to step out of our. Safety shells in our safe, like little world and now explore new things and usually more open creative people can lead the way in this. And also, and that’s where I talk about now, like I’ll bring it back to the third culture cuz the third culture kids when it comes to.
The applications or to the communications between various countries and different places. You want more of that, like diversity of thinking and diversity of upbringing and that diversity in these rooms or these discussions when it comes to education on a global scale and how AI affects.
Education on a global scale. So you need these third culture kids in the room. So if you’re a third culture kid and you have anything to say about this, now’s your, I think now’s your time, right? Now’s your time to get into those rooms and to and bring your perspective so that the, instead of the instead of just bracing ourselves for a real hit, we could actually be more proactive and more excited and more positive about what the, what this can unlock in terms of human history like the development within human history?
No. Obviously
Rashed: as it’s being written. Yeah. I mean like some things that obviously when we’re talking about certain parts of the world that it would be beneficial. It’s for example, you could. There, there’s always social issues, there’s issues when it comes to poverty. There’s issues when it comes to education, obviously, or lack thereof in certain parts of the world.
When it comes to infrastructure, when it comes to sewage systems, all these type of things, definitely AI and these type of platforms can be very beneficial in order to use as a tool within. A think tank group, for example, to discuss how we can develop better social programs, how we can develop better infrastructure, how we can develop better sewage systems and like India is a country for example, where the number of people that have flushing toilets is very small compared to the population of the entire country where it’s a huge problem for them where not having flushable toilet it affects so many different things.
So yeah, it definitely is an opportunity for third culture kids living in these parts of the world to be able to create tangible solutions to real prevalent issues within their societies in order to better their situation essentially. But again, you need. You need the catalyst. And usually the catalyst is one organization or one person or one group saying, we have this thing being developed.
We have this group being developed and we need volunteers, or we need we need people to come in and be a part of it essentially. But, I think part of the question comes into then it’s are you gonna pay me for this? Because why am I gonna put in my time for something where I’m not gonna get any type of financial reward, for example, where I can actually do something else that’s gonna gimme financial reward?
Cuz in the end it comes down to if I’m putting my time into something, I wanna make money and not necessarily make millions and millions of dollars, but like I need money, for example, to be able to pay for my everyday things. So is there a way. To monetize these type of processes and procedures where and I, and that would come down to the fact that whoever starts, it has to be financially capable.
And
Waseem: I think there’s, there’s plenty of incentives, right? There’s plenty of incentives for this to be like both either government funded or, even really ideally, like the tech companies that are developing all these technologies, right? This is, the pro, one of the issues with funding, even grassroot funding, right?
Like we’re talking about something that is, is, changing like this impact is. Yeah, it’s hard to put it into words because it’s happening. It makes the, in like the way, it makes the internet look like child’s play, right? It’s like a dr.
It’s crazy how this feels. So it’s very exciting. One of the questions that came up on, on about this was can AI ever truly understand and navigate the complexities of human culture, emotions, and experiences?
It can provide an
Rashed: objective opinion,
Waseem: I think You think there’s anything as called objective? If there’s a, if there’s an a design behind the algorithm, can it be objective?
Rashed: Because whatever opinion it does provide is based on the subjective bias of the one individual or individuals or team of people that created the algorithm.
Now I think you’re getting into this whole discussion of is the AI tool providing you feedback based on, its obviously, it’s based on its own experiences. It is experiencing things it’s it like, let’s assume. A lot of these AI platforms they do their searches. You type in whatever it is, do this for me or whatever.
Okay, fine. And it gives you this information. Let’s also as assume, I don’t know for a fact that it has stored memory as well where it’s capable of storing certain information that it would like to into its memory banks, let’s just say. And then, All those different opinions and whatever it is that it’s stored is basically art.
Like us having experiences it can feed off that and that will affect how it gives you answers. So in a sense, it is being subjective based on its own personal experience. And based on its original programming. And what it thinks you wanna hear. It’s not feeling necessarily because, it’s not a physical being, which
Waseem: is a very I mean this, to add to that, this is part of the complexity of being a human being.
Rashed: See Hollywood’s touch on this a couple of times. So Westworld did this with physical robotic ais and they became sentient and. But the funny thing is you get into the point where like they were in the end programmed in order to feel like they, they are growing and developing and changing and so are they really doing it?
They’re just fulfilling their algorithm. And the same thing with Free Guy, for example. Again, it was hidden in guy’s code to to develop as an individual within the game and then influence the game and get to and So again, yeah, it is, they’re not living under free will in that sense.
Are they
Waseem: fascinating? Cuz that brings up the idea of, and this, humans in fact don’t agree on this one. On the idea of destiny. Yeah. And so if you have destiny, if you believe in destiny, if you believe that everything is written and you are going through motions, then what’s the point? Where Yeah.
And where free will. Yeah. And if you were destined to give up on the idea of destiny, like even within humanity, that nuance of destiny versus free will. And religions have dealt with this problem, right? Like they’re like with this issue. So like I, Islamically, the question is like you have destiny.
There is destiny, everything has been written before it happened. And there is free will. And he goes how then how can I have destiny and also have free will? And he goes there’s free will in the destiny, right? There’s a, you are practicing your free will within destiny, but you just don’t know what the answer is at the end of the thing.
And the only way to find it is to go through the process. And so that what you’re saying here brings up to me that question that. Is still open. It’s that’s a never closing question.
Rashed: Like it’s, that’s a huge discussion because there are so many different opinions when it comes to that, one of which and this is related to free guy for example.
So we’re gonna talk like the Islamic concept of this, like destiny and free will, it said, yeah, you have the ability to make your choices and ev and that’s gonna affect. Your judgment, quote unquote. Not to be somber, but there’s this concept where you have, there’s like the major path, and on this major path there are certain things that cannot be changed.
So the one, one thing is the beginning of your life, who you’re born from. And then later on in your life, who you born, basically who you have as children as well, and in between. And then eventually when it’s your time, To pass type of thing. And then in between, there’s all these events that happen.
Some could be pre-ordained, some are not necessarily pre-ordained. And that’s based on the fact that every time that you have a, every time that you make a free decision that kicks you off the path, then there’s this other linear path that develops. And so like you have all these branches, right? And that’s when and I say that’s related to free guy, cuz at one point they’re, they looked at his His algorithm and they saw all these divergent paths off of his main linear path.
But in the end it got back to the end of his final destiny, which was to basically defeat the game with the help of humans. And so that’s similar Islamically speaking, where every time you make a decision on free will, it kicks you off the main path. But then eventually something’s gonna happen where it’s gonna bump you back onto the main path, and then you’re gonna continue that path for a certain amount of time until you make another decision that bumps you off.
And then that whole thing now, now we’re going to go into Marvel briefly when he talked about parallel worlds and parallel universities and that kind of stuff. And it’s just like there’s so many different peoples of you that exist in these different parallel worlds. Hey, whatever, I just geeked out a bit.
But there’s all these different realities of you. So then,
Is it just you being a different, you going through boy, these different paths and everything like that. But it’s yeah it’s always it’s a big discussion. So it’s humans agree and disagree on free will or destiny. And if you’re just living this preordained path or none of it’s preordained and everything that you do is completely new.
But it’s different when it comes to the whole AI thing because yeah, again, it comes down to the fact that it is actually, for a fact this is being created by a different being. And then it goes, and then we start to go into the whole con discussion where people are afraid of AI’s becoming sentient and rebelling against their master.
I think this is, and I think that’s where a lot of the stuff when it comes to the surveillance laws and the privacy and what protections would we have against AI platforms and potential ai robotic beings being developed to, to, and that goes to jobs like developing robots that are AI that will take over jobs and what happens if they end up rebelling?
And I think
Waseem: also it’s not just the maybe robots, robots do to do the jobs now, right? And one of the things you, that you want to think about is not necessarily you don’t, I heard this today. Also, you don’t want like there’s not one ai. There are ai and you don’t want the AI that’s driving your car.
To do anything but drive your car. So you want it to be like, what is it like, like obedient and dumb, right? I I want it to like ob to listen to what I say and do exactly that I say, and nothing else. So I don’t want it to be calculating, my investment portfolio while it’s driving the car.
I want it to be driving the car. And so there will be beis that do different things, right? Like your medical assistant will, AI will be your medical assistant. And I, it does that really well. And Similar to like most things in life, there are trade-offs. So even the graphic ais and the illustrative and the imaginative ais like mid journey, they, there are limits you, they can do, they can imagine.
Unbelievable artwork, right? Like it’s just it’s amazing. But it can’t do letters. It can’t like it
Rashed: Letters become a gentleman John made for that. It’s not program to make letters.
Waseem: There’s a trade off. There’s a trade off. It can’t. It can’t deal with that type of stuff. And maybe humans have a nice little mix of that stuff that, that allow us to interact with it.
And so that’s where my sort of my response and my, my, my not lack of fear. Cause I still think we should approach these things with respect. Because of their power and their ability and what they can do for us. So I don’t think it’s a matter of being haphazard, hence the the having a discussion around it as opposed to just letting it move and being like, oh destiny, you know what you, yeah.
Rashed: You just sparked an idea in my brain about something that AI can be used for. And I’m gonna be a language nerd briefly here in, in the realm of linguistics. So they’re always they’re always piecing you, there’s the different language trade and the different language groups in the indu European languages and the somatic languages and all that kind of stuff.
And they hypothesize, they’re within this branch for a reason that. Within each major group of languages, there is a proto language that existed however, a million years ago, and then they started to diverge in into different paths and languages that we have today. But they can never fully 100% develop any proto language.
And they’re not a hundred percent as someti in some languages where the divergence happened and why it happened. But there’s still the relationships that exist between different languages. I can see this as becoming a thing where you have an AI platform made for the sole purpose of linguistic observation and linguistic research in the sense of we have all these languages.
Here’s, they input all of the grammatical tools and un everything, all the vocabulary they have, everything of this language, these different languages that are partners to each other. Stick it in there. And have it develop the proto language. That’d be pretty damn cool. That’d
Waseem: be cool. That’d be cool.
I me that, that’d be pretty freaking amazing. That’d be cool. And then, but the the question again, I think after like with the output is the applicability of it, right? And then you can just prompt it some more and you can do things. And so that, that’s what I’m saying. It’s like in the same way that, that a, that a.
Painter has a set of brushes and a set of tools in order to bring what is inside their head to life on whatever medium that they’re working on. The, it’s the same way the designer, the, isn’t that what they called like God? The, yeah. Like the designer is using all the tools at their disposal to.
To interact with their medium and create a a thing that, can solve, not necessarily solve problems, but either create beauty or it’s not necessarily, there isn’t necessarily a point to it. But that’s
Rashed: the, like, why don’t it be cool? Like they’ve done this a little bit where they were able to, they believe, develop The sound system of what they assume.
Ancient Egyptian would’ve sounded like, oh yeah. They, for example, did that this recently. They had a recording. Yeah. Yeah. They did this way before. All these AI stuff that we have now.
Waseem: Yeah. Yeah.
Rashed: And now it even in terms of what’s, in terms of what exists now and with AI platforms, that recording is ancient now.
Waseem: They just did it with, they, I think one of the pharaohs they did a, they recreated his vocal chords. Yeah. And his specific voice. They were able to, that there’s no way to verify, but No, that’s, it’s just cool, right? Like I d like my, I get my nerd on and yeah. And so I’m definitely more positive and and that’s me.
So I’m all about the positivity about this. I’m gonna have to. Wrap this conversation up because it’s led to a lot of other things. Thank you everybody for listening in, and I hope we enjoyed this unique and thought provoking episode. I hope you, you came away with something special imagining a great debate between the rock and.
on the ETH ethics of artificial intelligence. It’s been enlightening. I think we touched on some cool ideas and topics and things and how it might impact our culture, communities, and societies as a whole. Remember, our goal is to bridge cultural gaps and foster understanding between people from all walks of life, and we encourage you to join the discussion.
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