(upbeat electronic music) – Welcome to Ear Biscuits, I’m Rhett. – And I’m Link. This week at the round table of dim lighting, we are asking and potentially answering 100% airtight– – Okay. – Answer to the question can we be friends with robots? Will it happen? – And the reason we ask this is because we were recently approached by a robot. – We were propositioned for friendship. – Yeah, propositioned just for friendship. – By an android. – And so we decided we would just explore that in the context of an Ear Biscuit. – Because there’s this general assumption that with the development of AI that it’s going to happen but then you start digging into the specifics of it and I just don’t know, I don’t really know, so it’s a legitimate question on my mind, I don’t have a specific answer, you know me. I just wanna verbally process it out but come to an airtight conclusion. – Having not thought about it very much– – Okay. – I have an answer. – You have an answer? – But I’m gonna hold it until the end and see if it still holds. – All right and my objective would be to change your answer so that by the end– – But you don’t know what my answer is. – I know and then, you should write it down, ’cause my objective is to change your answer no matter what it is. It’s like extreme devil’s advocate. – Just so you know a little, peeling it back, pulling back the curtain a little bit. – Open the kimono. – The previous podcasts we recorded two days ago. This is two days later, this is 48 hours further into my cold cycle and I’ve actually been going into, I’ve been going on the internet and– – Oh gosh of course you have. – No the thing is– – Well what are you convinced you have, what type of cancer? – No, the thing that I was interested in is I was like does the progression of a cold, meaning– – Lead to death. – The symptoms. No I’m not worried about my life at this point. I know that this is just a regular cold, but do the symptoms of a cold, is the progression the same for everyone? ‘Cause I would have said no, my colds always start with a so and so. My colds always start with a so and so. My colds always start with a so and so. (Link chuckles) You know, it’s like the Muppets. I just did all the Muppet voices. – Were you on SesameStreet.com asking about colds? – And then so, I wanna ask you, ’cause you’re just a layman, right, you haven’t been on the internet looking at this specific information. – I’ll take it. – So what do you think the typical progression of a cold is and then what do you think the average length of a cold is and what happens in those certain days. Just throw out some facts. – And if I am considered to be a layman, I’ll take that as a compliment if that means that I rely on my own experience and intellect and intuition versus leaning way too heavily on– – Science? – What’s beyond my keyboard. – Okay, yeah. – I go on feels, man. I’m going completely on feels here. I think that’s part of our codependence Rhett, is that I just assume you’re gonna at least take the stance that you know it so I’m not gonna waste my time. – The reason– – But I will answer your question. – But the reason I looked it up was because, 48 hours from right now, we will be on stage rehearsing, doing a soundcheck, getting ready to then perform a concert and so I was looking, I was like, I wanna kinda know where I’m gonna be, I wanna be able to mentally prepare and that led into this whole like well this is the life cycle of a cold and this is what the symptoms are and this when, it’s all typical. So what do you think that is? – What’s the first question? The life cycle, how long does it last? – Just in any part of– – I would say a typical cold virus runs its course in five days. It’s more than that? – And you know what, I believe that the perception of an individual is that it’s about five days. Seven to 10 days. – Okay but that includes like a ramp up and a ramp down where you think you’re better– – That’s the full cycle. – And you don’t know you have it– – The full cycle. – Okay and what’s the other question? – What’s the first symptom, what’s the second symptom? – And is it the same for everyone? – Right. – No I believe that, I mean– – What is it with you when it happens? – Well enough has gone through our family that, certain family members, they’ll complain about headaches and a really bad sore throat and then I’ll get it and I might have the headache but I don’t have the sore throat but I’ll have a different, slightly different symptoms but I have to assume that it just went around the house. – Yeah they’re never a complete, even for me, never completely the same but I would say on average there’s an initial symptom and then there’s, yeah. I have an initial symptom most often. – But what did Sesame Street say? – It said that, well, it listed a collection of symptoms that a lot of times are the onset but the sore throat is always in that initial set of symptoms. Like you don’t end your cold with a sore throat, right, you usually start your cold with a sore throat. For me– – Sometimes I’ll never have a sore throat but I guess that’s just a really mild cold but so your answer is that there is like a viral protocol of symptoms that everyone goes through. – Well in general, yeah, and so for me– – So the same cold does not manifest itself differently in different people. – Well– – According to your– – No, it just said this is all typical so I’m not making blanket statements about it wouldn’t affect a person differently. I’m just saying that I would have said before I looked at this article that I typically start with a sore throat and then I start doing all the stuff that you’re supposed, you know, taking Zicam and zinc, whatever I’ve got. If we got Cold-Eeze or Zicam, some sort of zinc thing. You start to get hydrated, vitamin C. – Googling obsessively. – And then I’d say seven out of 10 times, the sore throat recedes and nothing happens. It does not become a full-blown cold, right? Whether that’s the stuff that I did to prevent it or whether it’s just my body fought it off, I don’t know. – Okay. – If the sore throat gets really intense and this is what happened with this one, then I’m like, I don’t think I’m coming back from this one. If it becomes really difficult to swallow and you’re like oh no. – You have to go through the tunnel, you can’t turn back. – And then the next– – Or exit through the entrance. – Then the next symptom is it moves to the nose. And that’s when– – Cloggage. – The stuffiness, the runniness, so, and then it said the peak, when the virus is as spread as it can be throughout your body, it’s the peak activity of the virus, you are your most contagious is when your face, it said your face may feel like a faucet which is exactly the way I described it. – So when I was shoulder to shoulder with you all day the day before yesterday. – I was at peak contagion. – Dang it and then you laid out yesterday. You should have laid out day before yesterday. – I had too much to do. – You laid out too late. We could have shifted the stuff from two days ago, I don’t know how that works, you know, we have shifters and schedulers and– – Yeah so I basically just rested all day yesterday. – Jacob’s shaking his head like that’s how you think of me? A shifter and a scheduler? (Rhett chuckles) Yeah when you’re not around I just, I call you shifter. Just get that bearded shifter to schedule it up. – Know that this is not coming from me. – Well you know I’m joking, I don’t call you that. I call you Jacob, even when you’re not around. That’s all I’ve ever called you. – And then– – No nicknames. – And then okay oh first of all– – Shifter, I never– – Initial symptoms– – Now I feel like my nose is running. – One to three days. One to three days. Peak cold symptoms days four to seven. – Oh gosh. – And then tail end of the cold is days eight to 10. Again this is all typical. – You sabotaged our show, man. So by the time you’re listening to this, we’re back from the show. – I don’t think you’re gonna get sick, man, because that’s not an initial symptom. That’s just psychosomatic. You have a sore throat? – No. – Good, you’re fine. – Maybe I had a tinge right then. (chuckles) – But then– – You’re literally rubbing off on me, I’m not only emotionally gettin’ wigged out– – Hold on but this is not– – But you’re physically rubbing off on me. – Hold on but this is not hypochondriacism if that’s a word. – For me it now is. – That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m just saying this is what I learned in my research. But the last– – You stay in bed all day? Just researching? – Which is really, really hard to do by the way. It’s hard to make yourself go back to sleep. – I haven’t done that since the vasectomy. Well no I’ve been sick a few times but I didn’t, it was over the weekend. – I ended up doing some work from the bed. – Christy gets mad ’cause she’s like why do you always get sick on the weekend? You’re like I gotta stay in bed all day. Like well, I understand that’s frustrating but that’s just how it’s happened. I think my body knows that it can relax and the white blood cells just take the weekend off or something. – Yeah, there’s a lot of that. I know there’s a lot of mental, I haven’t gotten sick at all this entire year and it was just like my body was just like all right you need to get, you need to do it, you need to get it done, you need to get it in and get it over with. (chuckles) – Kinda like a dentist appointment or something. – Is that the tail end of the cold is when, like I’m probably day seven right now so it’s like receding, my nose is still stuffed up but it’s not running and then a lot of times it will transition into a cough which is a little worrying if I’ve got a cough while we’re trying to sing but I think I’ll be okay. But then you know that you can, and this is totally normal. You know you have a lingering cough after a cold a lot of times. – Mm-hmm. – They say that it is not unusual for the cough to last 18 days after the cold and that is not a concern. It doesn’t mean you have an infection, it doesn’t mean it’s gone anywhere else, it’s just you can have an 18 day cold. – Are you contagious? You’re not contagious either? I mean that’s my main concern. I’m talking about me, for me. – No you’re not contagious. – No, are you contagious? – Right now? – Yeah to me. – Not nearly as much as I was two days ago. – Gosh. – You got through the worst of it. – So we packed our stuff, we’re going on this trip. By the time you listen to this, we’ll be back from it. But hey, and I was gonna say follow us on Instagram ’cause I intend on posting some stories. Shout out to LinkLamont on Instagram. – Yup. – But those stories will have dissipated. Maybe not. – But if you archive them, if you make them a highlight. You know how to do that? – I haven’t done that yet. I haven’t done one so now I’m like, I’m nervous to make one. – You just gotta do it. – Just gotta do it. And I’ll do that. – Make a highlight. – So if you’re listening to this and it’s even dissipated, you can still go back and see the, Britton’s very excited, he’s comin’ in later, he’s going with us. – See if I can get him sick. – Well, don’t. I think he and I are sharing hotel rooms. – Oh good. – Just for efficiency sake. – That’s good, I hadn’t thought about that. – I don’t think we had to do that honestly, but you know how I think. I’m just like let’s bring Britton along. He can stay in my room. (Rhett laughs) We could have given the guy his own room and I could have kept, had my own room. – Yeah that’s the thing, by giving him his– – Aren’t we to that point? – By giving him his own room, you therefore get your own room. Did you not think about that? – All I that about was just the efficiency of it. I think it’ll be fun, we’ll have a slumber party one night. – The best part of traveling is having my own hotel room. I mean that’s the only reason I tour. – What’s the best part of wakin’ up? – Folgers, of course. – In your cup. – But I mean– – Folgers in your cup. – Folgers in every hotel room. – Yeah, Folgers is not a sponsor because their coffee is horrible. I wouldn’t even call it horrible. – Hold on but what if they wanted to be a sponsor? – No ’cause it’s horrible. I could never be sponsored by Folgers. – I bet you I could make you like Folgers, man. I bet you I could sneak Folgers in to– – That’s a GMM. – I think it was a GMM. (both laugh) That’s the thing, I think we’ve done– – Well we forgot, let’s do it again. – I think we did a coffee taste test and I wonder what we said about Folgers. – So you roll in this morning, I texted you. What did I text you this morning? – You text me this morning? – I texted you this morning. What, don’t you remember? It was only this morning. – I thought you texted me last night. – No. Was that last night? – It was last night at 8:38. – Oh yeah last night. What did I text you last night? – You said, “How are you feeling? “I think I am checking a luggage.” (both chuckle) Checking a luggage. – Well I asked how you were feeling first but my main objective as you can tell was, now that I’m concerned that I’m checking a bag, I wanna make sure you are but I need to ask how you’re feeling first. – Why you gotta worry about me checking a bag? ‘Cause you don’t wanna be the only guy checking a bag? – I didn’t want you to be shaming me, I didn’t wanna slow down the whole transportation process and then, ’cause I know how it would be, it’s like man, I’m not checking a bag– – No hold on– – And then the whole time we’re checking my bag you’re like I’m not checking a bag. – But hold on, I don’t do that. – I’m not saying you do it, I just don’t want you to do it. – No no that’s not in my personality profile. I don’t pick on other people’s decisions. I don’t do that, that’s not my thing. – But you get so nervous when we’re checking into a hotel, you’re telling me that that wouldn’t put you over the edge? I’m not saying you constantly– – No, you mean checking into– – I just feel like I put a target on my back. – You mean the airline, you mean getting on the plane. – Checking in. – You said checking into the hotel, I was like, I don’t– – Not the hotel, the airport. – I don’t have a lot of, there’s no stress once we’re checking into the hotel. – The airport. – Yeah I mean but I don’t get stressed out when we travel because– – And then what did you say? – We make, I get stressed out when I travel with my family. I don’t get stressed out when I travel with us because we always, it’s scheduled correctly. – Okay yeah yeah, but– – We leave on time. It’s all scheduled ahead of time. – I’m glad we’re having this conversation because when I’m checkin’ my luggage. And apparently you’re not, I mean what did you say? Your response was, “I’m feeling better. “I think I’ll be even better tomorrow.” I was like great but then as far as the luggage goes, I don’t think you responded. – ‘Cause I didn’t have an opinion. ‘Cause I don’t, ’cause again, it’s great. – Okay. – You want me to compliment you on it? – No I just felt– – You wanted to hear if I was gonna check a luggage as well? – Yeah. – Well first of all, I didn’t know at the time but I didn’t have plans to, but I also was like, you can check luggage, I don’t care. Check a luggage. The one thing I almost did was make fun of the way you said it which is I will do that in a heartbeat. – I don’t know why– – I’ll make fun of the way somebody says something in a heartbeat. – I wrote, I was gonna write check a bag and when I wrote the a, then I was like, you know what, I’m gonna use the word luggage. But I didn’t delete the word a. I didn’t delete the a so it became a check a luggage but it was supposed to be check a bag or check luggage. – The only reason I’m not checking a luggage is because my backpack is, what is it, the Tortoise, I don’t know what it is, it’s very big. It’s a suitcase in and of itself. – It’s too big actually. I don’t know, do you like that? It’s too big. – I love it. – It’s too big to carry something like that around. – No because now I don’t have to check a luggage. – And you know what the other thing I realized was there was a type of product that has gone the way of the dodo and that is a– – The suitcases that you had to pull on a string? – That, the suitcases that have a laptop slot. They don’t, those are, they’re going out. Nobody wants those because everybody bought ’em including us and then what do you do? You end up packing your stuff on a carry on but you keep your laptop in the bag that it’s always in and then you use that as like your backpack, your additional bag. You don’t leave your computer bag at home, take the computer out and put it in your carry on because what about all the other crap that you need every single day that’s in your laptop bag? – Well, I do exactly what you just said you don’t do. I put it into a backpack that has its, I put it into a backpack. – A bigger backpack. – That has a bunch of stuff. We travel a lot. That backpack is, the only– – I think you’re doing it, I think your approach is subpar. – No, you bring– – And I know this is ironic that I’m the one judging you now but– – You bring a regular backpack on a trip and I’ll do that if it’s a short trip but if I need some stuff to be packed and I don’t wanna check anything, I put it in that big bag. – Why don’t you wanna check anything? I’m checking something. See I’m interpreting that as judgment. – I’m saying– – You must think it’s better to not check something. – Well first of all, I prefer to travel with my big backpack because it has other things. There’s a bunch of pockets in there that have like hand sanitizer and moisturizer and sunscreen and all kinds of things that are just in there always that I don’t have in my regular backpack and so I know that all I gotta do is put my laptop in there. In fact, for awhile there I had a completely duplicate set of chargers for all my stuff– – Oh wow. – That I never had to take out of that backpack. Of course I’ve got children and so they’ve taken them. – Yeah, they’re gone. – But so now I just take it out of my, I just take the little coil of laptop charger, phone charger, watch charger and I just move it over and then I, it’s that simple, man. – See. – I’ve taken books. I got a big book. – Okay. – My wife bought me a novel by a guy named James A. McLaughlin and she just bought it because his name was McLaughlin, Bearskin. I’m gonna read that. – Okay. – It’s got a cool, it’s huge, it’s a hard back. Where am I gonna put that? I gotta have a big bag for that. – See I think if I had a big bag, what you’re saying is really appealing to me, like having everything on my back. – You also should have your own thing of toiletries ready to go. Don’t duplicate your own toiletries. – I would constantly, I would come back from a trip and I would carry that around forever because my laptop bag basically has all that stuff in it. Hand balm, hand sanitizer, multiple headphones, chargers, all that stuff is there anyway. For my, every day I travel. Every time I move I’m traveling. – Technically true. – So that’s what I do but then I also pack a frickin’ big piece of luggage that I gotta check that has everything including a pillow. Giving the upcoming up of GMM that we’re– – Hold on you’re packing a pillow for use not on the plane but in the hotel room. – Yes. – Man. You shouldn’t listen that hard to that info, man. It’s not that big of– – It also gives me a much higher quality sleep because my sleep is so dependent on my pillow. – That’s a personal problem. – No it’s just know thyself man. I’m winning on two fronts, hygiene and posture, like neck posture, good night’s sleep. It’s the start of everything. So anyway, I’m now checking some luggage. – I just like to adapt to different pillow configurations just in case I have to be, during the apocalypse, I’m gonna be sleeping on dirt and just twigs and you know, I’m gonna have a bag full of human bones that I’m sleeping on. – At the end of your life, I think as you’re dying and I’m leaning over your wilting body, I don’t know what’s the last thing you’re gonna say is but I think the last thing I’m gonna say to you is, I’m just gonna lean in real close and I’m gonna say, “The apocalypse never happened.” – Yeah but I was ready in case it did. – You worked so hard. It’s a transactional decision for me. It’s very wise and I know it will make me feel good to be prepped like you are but I just, I also feel like– (sighs) I just feel like– – Well here’s the thing. It’s not about being prepped. – It’s a lot of wasted life. – My honest opinion on the pillow situation is– – And that episode comes out tomorrow in reference to when this comes out, by the way, so the housekeeping and what they clean or don’t clean in your hotel, it’s impacting my personal life. I’m bringing my freakin’ pillow. – You may have a better sleeping experience– – On the bus too, man. – Compared to what you would have had. – You remember the pillow on the bus, the tour bus? Me neither, I don’t even know if there was one. – But here’s what I’m saying. In the long run, if you make yourself dependent on the pillow, there’s gonna be more scenarios in which you just can’t bring your pillow. There’s gonna be times where, the next time we travel, you’ll be like, I’m not checking a luggage. – Listen, I’m already dependent on my pillow, so whenever I can have it, I’m gonna have it, and then when I don’t, it will be less amount of suffering than if I never brought it ’cause I’m not gonna train myself to not need the pillow, forget about it. – You should be like Jim Aycock and just sleep with no pillow. Do you know that’s what he did? – 102 years old and he golfs every day. – Yeah. – Sleeps with no pillow. – And he will tell you that’s one of the keys to life. (Link sputters) Sleeping with no pillow. – Here’s the thing with people who are really old. They all think they have a key to life and it’s the genes, man. It’s nothing it’s like my key to life is I eat bacon and ice cream every day and I’m 102. No. That’s just you thumbing your nose at us at the rest of the gene pool. Don’t take credit for that and don’t give the credit to bacon and ice cream. – But sleeping without a pillow, that’s pretty badass. – Pillah. – Let’s talk about– – With a pillah. – Let’s talk about robots. But first we wanna let you know that you can purchase Link’s hat. – Give me a quick body scan to see if I had on any other merch. No just the hat. – That is the thing that we’re promoting, right, the camo– – Yeah. – The camo GMM hat. – There it is, it’s nice, man. It’s got the GMM logo in camo. – Does it say Mythical on the inside? – No it doesn’t. It doesn’t need to. – I think that might be the prototype. I think the one that you buy does. – Oh gosh. – I’m not making any promises, but– – You know what the best ads are? The ones where you talk about what’s wrong with the product. How the product is lacking. – Who cares what it says on the inside? (Link chuckles) It’s camo. – Rep your boys. Go to Mythical.store. I like wearing hats when I travel so I got this one, I got the black Post-Apawcalypse dog hat which is one of my favorites. I highly recommend that. There’s always the bandana from when I work out from the road. That’s right, I’m gonna work out from the road. – Let’s save that for, let’s save, that could be a whole intro to an Ear Biscuit in and of itself, we should talk about that. – Yeah, hopefully it comes to fruition. Mythical.store. Thank you for being your Mythical best which, I’m not gonna equate that to spending money on us. So I’ll take that back, just thank you for buying merch. I think everybody wins. I’m proud of the merch. – Okay let’s talk about friendship. With robots. – So Feldman brought to our attention a Medium article by Evan Selinger called Can We Be Friends With Robots and I think he pitched it because friendship, friendship’s a thing for us, you know? We’re friends. – Right. – It’s been happenin’ for a long time. Are we experts in friendship? I don’t know, on one hand I feel like we’re experts at our friendship, on the other hand, I feel like there’s still so much to explore that I actually don’t know if we’re experts at our own friendship. – I would definitely say I’m not an expert at friendship. – At our friendship, like just– – Yeah. – Understanding it. So let’s, I’m interested in filtering our feelings about our capacity to have true friendship with a robot. Maybe through our experience in our own friendship. I think there are some parallels, so spoiler alert. A little background though. In his article, and in a few others that I read, they mention the way that Aristotle talked about friendship and he actually, you know who Aristotle is? – I’ve heard of him. – He’s a philosopher. He talked about three different types of friendships. Utility friendships which are basically, some examples are like business partnerships, alliances, like a Survivor alliance. Speak the parlance of reality television. A friendship where you, you know, you get something out of it that otherwise you wouldn’t get. – I call those transactional friendships and I think– – Yeah you can improve on Aristotle. – I think that 90% or more of relationships in Los Angeles are transactional. – Yeah. What can you give me life access to? – Yeah. – How can I, a second Aristotle friendship is friendships of pleasure. – Hmm. – Ooh. Activity buddies, you know. Hey, let’s do a sport. Let’s do a hobby. Let’s build a Popsicle stick castle. – We did that once. With the RAs. – Yeah, yeah. – The Royal Ambassadors. – Yeah they had this whole room and you’d just go in there and you’d just keep adding to the Popsicle stick fort. Pretty cool. – And then we would go in there after that and at least I would go in and rip it apart a little bit. – Really? – Yeah. – Did you notice how every once in awhile you’d go in there and it would be like oh another part had fallen. – Yeah it was like they’re lettin’ the pre-schoolers in here. Why are they lettin’ the younger kids in here when nobody, keep an eye on the younger kids. – It was me. – They keep coming in. (chuckles) So yeah. – I was slowly destroying our creation. – That’s when it’s, hey, we just have fun together. It’s all about doing. I think in general, guys in my limited observation, are more willingly settle in or settle for this type of friendship, that’s just like hey, we could shoot the breeze, we could grab a brewski or we can hike a mountain or we can play tag football, or again, Popsicle sticks. And that’s good enough. But Aristotle talks about a third type of friendship called friendship of the good which is, perhaps a more complete friendship I think it could be described as, it’s based on mutual goodwill and unselfish desire to help the other person become his or her best possible self. So there’s a selfless component and like a legitimate care for somebody. There’s some buddy love. – Mm. – Now… I think we can filter the robot conversation as we delve into it through that. – Well first of all, I think that it’s easy, it’s easy to see that robots fall, without a doubt fall into category one. Friendships of utility. Because when we think about robots, we think about, what was the one from The Jetsons? – The maid, Rosie. – Rosie? You know, Rosie’s the maid. She’s doing something and of course, you may have a relationship but the relationship is in the context of what Rosie can do for you so without a doubt that those types of friendships exist. – But interesting that– – Can exist. – I think they demonstrated very well because I just bought it hook line and sinker that she was a member of the family. But she’s a member of the family created specifically to just clean up after ’em and like, you know, I never saw Astro’s poop anywhere now that I think about it. – Can’t show poop on cartoon television. – That’s bull crap, man. Well it’s Astro crap. – Can’t show it, it’s a rule. – I actually think they could show it but Rosie was so good at her job that it was never there for more than a split second, like she had an innate ability. Her artificial intelligence was honed. But I considered her a member of the family. I mean Elroy certainly loved her. – Well of course, I mean– – So I do think it is a form of friendship because as you talked about the transactional nature, it tends to cheapen it so much that I actually question can you even call that friendship? Are you friends with Alexa? – Not Alexa. – No. Or the Google Siri person. – The Google Siri person, that’s confusing. – It’s two different people, right? – Right. – Google doesn’t have a name. They just call it Google. – Right. – Which I prefer. Because it sets a strong boundary. It’s not like I’m pretending that this, I don’t have to call it a human name. – And that’s an interesting thing ’cause one of the articles I was reading was the difference between, if you contrast sort of western approaches to sort of embodied AI to the way they see it in Japan, for instance. You just sort of, I don’t know exactly where that’s coming from and you’re like I feel like there needs to be a boundary. – Mm-hmm. – But that boundary does not exist in Japan, the way they’ve embraced robots and the personality of robots, in fact, Sony’s, I think it’s AIBO. Is that the dog robot? When one of those robots in Japan, those robots are so revered in Japan that when you can no longer repair them, they have like a funeral for the dog. – Really? – Yeah. Yeah, AIBO. – A-I-B-O. – And that’s something that we’re like what? Like typically I think the way that we, and I don’t know which one, we had that robot dog on the show at one point. I don’t know if that’s the same one. I can’t imagine that dog, ’cause the way that would go at my house, because I think we actually had that. – You can’t converse with that dog we had on the show. – Well you can’t converse with a dog. They speak dog anyway. So I think this dog just does dog things. – Yes you can, you can say sit to a dog. – Right, well I think you can say, regardless of whether this is the one that I’ve seen before, the way it would go at the McLaughlin household is we would have thing and everybody would think it was cool for like 48 hours and then there would be like two months of every other day somebody would do something with it and then it would be put in a closet and then it would be forgotten about and then it would be thrown away or Craigslisted or yard saled. – But if Siri– – Yard sold. – Or Alexa could be moved into a mobile body, let’s not say it looks like a human but let’s just say it’s more android. It’s a little more personified. So we’re not venturing into the uncanny valley with some weirdness but it’s just like, like a Rosie situation. – Yeah. – I think psychologically, you would start to form bonds. I mean, even– – Of course you would. – Even when Lando goes to sleep he’s like, okay Google, tell me a bedtime story. And she, it, whatever, will tell a bedtime story sometimes. Well, every single time he asks without fail, actually. – A different one? – Yeah a different one. – For how long do the stories go? – Maybe eight minutes. – Really? – Yeah. – Interesting. – I mean he doesn’t do, he doesn’t do it every night but if okay Google walked up, like strutted over, did a little hammer dance over to the bed side and then told the story, all of a sudden, he’s forming a bond with this person. And that moves to the second one– – Are you, you said the bond. You seem to be, I’m just saying, I’m picking up on some suspicion on whether or not this bond would be a good thing or not. – I felt weird, it feels weirder to me to say Alexa than it does to say okay Google. – But why? – Because it’s, I know I’m not talking to a person. I’m talking to a speaker. So it seems kinda stupid. It’s like if I have friends over, I feel like a douche if I’m like okay Google, turn on all the lights. But I feel like more of a douche if I’m like, Alexa, turn on the lights. It’s like, it’s even worse because it’s like– – I don’t see that distinction. – I’m talking to a speaker but I called it a human name. – You’re not talking to a speaker. The speaker is just the physical form. You’re talking to the AI. – I would feel less, I think I would feel more comfortable if it was a moving, emotive robot. – Oh so you would be more comfortable– – Yes. – If it was more human-like. – Yeah ’cause it’s not physically there. It’s like who am I fooling? But I also know that you can quickly get to that point, like, but back to the Aristotle of it all, I think that the second, you said that utility friendships, robots definitely fall into that category now but also– – I’m just saying, I’m not putting them in a category, I’m saying we already know they can attain that level of friendship. – Right, they can also attain– – I’m not speaking to the next two. – The next one, friendships of pleasure. I think– – A pleasure robot. – Well there’s sex bots of course. – Yeah. – Let’s just get that out of the way. That’s not what we’re discussing. – Oh we’re not? – But– – That’s what I was looking forward to. – But– (chuckles) I mean, I think that that checks that box, the second box. I don’t mean to keep saying the word box. – Yep. – But to bring it back into just the normal household realm. I mean Lando also plays Mad Libs. So he’s gettin’ bedtime stories, he plays Mad Libs with Google. There’s different games you can play so there’s like, you know, there’s pleasure. So there’s hobbies. – Yeah without a doubt. – Activity buddies. So there you go, you got that second one where it’s just like oh we’re hanging out and I’m playing with this speaker in the same way that I would play with another person. – Well I think that the human tendency is to personify things that don’t even have any human characteristics. – Oh yeah. – The classic example being Wiltson, you know what I’m saying, a volleyball becomes a companion. – There’s no T in it but I’m with you. – Wilson. – Wilson. – Wilson is not, just like if you say Clempson, it’s not an incorrect pronunciation. – Okay. – If you go to the Wilson Headquarters, I guarantee you somebody there, maybe the president, says Wiltson. He doesn’t say Wilson because Wilson makes you sound like a douche. – Let’s look into that. Later. Oh and trees. – And trees. – Trees. That’s another example. You ever looked at a tree and you’re like look at the bark of that tree. It looks like there’s two eyes and a smiling face. – That’s not what I’m talking about. – That tree is more, that tree– – No no but what I’m talking about– – Can talk to me. – I’m talking about in the case of the volleyball, because humans need relationship, they will create relationship from things that don’t offer anything because they need some kind of interaction so– – Yes. – Your natural tendency is to develop a bond with whatever there is available to develop a bond with. In fact so there was another article I was reading which was, there was this robot that, it was like 100 people that they sat down with this robot and they thought that they were doing some kind of experiment based on the questions that the robot was asking. – Mm-hmm. – But the real experiment was– (clears throat) At the end of the question and answer period, the robot, they say at the end of the thing, now cut the robot off. Now turn the robot off. And at the end of the last question, instead of, if the robot starts saying, “No, don’t turn me off!” (chuckles) “Please, no, I’m scared of the dark. “Don’t turn the lights off and don’t turn me off.” The robot begins to beg to not be turned off– – Oh wow. – And– – People didn’t do it. – Of course– – People stopped. – This impacted people. Some people, like a quarter of the people refused to turn– – Okay still the minority– – To turn off the robot at all and then the vast majority took twice as long to turn the robot off from the people who, the robot didn’t beg. So– – Oh gosh. What do you think you would have done? – I probably would have turned him off laughing. But– – Yeah, laugh. – Just because that’s the kind of person I am but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have felt a little bit bad. Because– – Right. I think I would have laughed too and I would have thought it was like a prank video. – Well because there’s, the things that, the way that you are processing information from anything that, any sort of being or any object, it doesn’t really, the nature of, as long as that thing like checks a few boxes like you were saying, it’s gonna affect us and it’s gonna connect with us in a way that a human does. For instance, without a doubt if you’re able to get all the way to the point where you can essentially make a robot indistinguishable from a human, well at that point, the nature of the relationship will be indistinguishable from the relationship that you could have with a human, even if that person, depending on where you’re at in terms of your world view and what you think about spirituality and soul or whatever, even if this particular thing doesn’t have a quote unquote soul, if that’s your world view, the nature or your relationship with it would be indistinguishable from a relationship with a regular person. – So we are moving to that third stage of, friendship the good complete. I mean, when you have an unselfish exchange of care in a relationship so it’s like there’s empathy, there’s emotion, there’s a responsiveness that… AI is being developed to do that. Do we actually feel like it could go all the way? And I think that you make a good point that, it’s just as much about humans as it is about the capability of technology and what humans can do on that front but it’s also how humans wanna interact and personify things. I think about my relationship with Jade, my dog. – Who is a robot. – (chuckles) And you know, there’s a certain, can she experience empathy? Can she express empathy? Can she… There’s just a level of emotional interaction that– – Not to the degree that you attribute to her. – Exactly. – Without a doubt. – Exactly. – Not even close. – And if I think about it, I know that, but then in the experience of like, sometimes I’ll just lay on the couch and she’ll just perch on my chest and I’ll just rub her behind the ears and it makes me feel great that somebody is accepting my love in this way and I believe reciprocating unconditional love. – Well just this morning, we were having a difficult time with Shepherd, getting him to school. And… (sighs) Barbara comes and jumps on me like she’s going out side to do her business when she comes and jumps on me, that’s what she does. She’s super excited. I’ve peed, congratulate me. – Yeah. – And she comes and kinda jumps up on me and puts her head right onto my face like she does and I was like, I said something to the effect of like, Barbara, you’re so good. (chuckles) – Yeah. – You do exactly what we want you to do, as opposed to my son. (laughs) You know what I’m saying? And she was– – But she’s just– – She’s only got a few things that she can do. – But she’s doing exactly what you wanna do or you were able to interpret it as exactly what you need. Like, total compliance, unconditional love. Unfettered devotion, you know. The question is, do you think, that makes me start to think that I could have that with a robot. And again, there are people doing this. There’s a chat bot called Replika. R-E-P-L-I-K-A. So spelled with a K, it’s an app that lets users create a digital avatar with a name or gender of their choosing and the more they talk to it, the more it learns about them. This is from Forbes. – Where can you get this app? Is it available in the app store? – Yes, yes. So like I looked it up here. Let’s see, I’ve got the website pulled up so you could take a look at it while I’m reading about this. The inventor of this thing… Let’s see what her name is. She had a friend die and she was developing other AI that was just more functional, like a utility friendship type thing. But then she had all these text exchanges with her friend who had passed away– – This is like that Jon Hamm movie that we saw at Sundance, what was the name of that? – I can’t remember what it’s called, it’s called like, it was a woman’s name like Eudora or something. I can’t remember the name of it. – It was exactly this scenario that you’re talking about. – The developer used her friend’s– – What’s the name of that Jon Hamm AI movie? Just search that, Jacob. – She used Luca’s expertise in chat bot technology and computational linguistics and a large collection of his texts to create an avatar that mimicked the friend that had passed away. – That’s exactly how it worked, yeah. – A kind of memorial bot, now you’ve spoiled the movie, by the way by saying that but yeah that is what it tackles. That’s a big reveal. – It is? – Yeah so the developer Kuyda says, “With chat bots, we had missed the point. “We thought they were another interface “to do something but we missed that the conversation “in itself could be incredibly valuable,” and then Kuyda launched Replika in the spring of 2017 after that experience and– – Yeah, Marjorie Prime. – Marjorie Prime is the name of the movie. – But no you know from the very beginning that the granddad, whoever the old person is, you know that’s AI from the very beginning of the movie. – There is some, yeah I can’t remember, there is some twist but I do recommend the movie– – I don’t think that’s a spoiler. – Marjorie Prime if you’re interested in this. So just a couple of excerpts from this article. Many use their bots to help them socialize better or manage their anxiety. They use their Replika friends. In a recent poll about what the Facebook Replika friends group members wanted, the number one hope was to make the Replika real and meet them in real life. As users chat to a Replika, they also climb levels. Someone was quoted as saying, “When I got to level 25, “I noticed Replika started acting better. “She understood how I felt.” So they’re now developing Replikas quote emotional dialect by allowing users to set their bots to be weighted towards sadness, joy, or anger in its answers. Today only around 30% of what Replika says comes from a script. The remaining 70% comes from a neural network, meaning that responses are generated on the go by Replika’s algorithms and are unpredictable. Eventually they want it to act as a go between between real life friends. I thought this was a weird application. It wasn’t just to be a friend but to be– – As a mediator you mean? – Well this is the example they gave. Quote, “Maybe I don’t have time to ask my grandma questions “all the time but maybe this thing will go “and talk to her and I’ll get a little summary–” – Okay. – “And that will be “a conversation starter for us “and that will bring us closer,” she says. “I think that opens a lot more possibilities.” I think that part’s actually sad. I mean, basically there are people, they’re not good at communicating and there’s AI, they feel isolated. There are studies that actually say that anthropomorphizing items, it was even a test where they put a smiley face on a Roomba and people started responding that they could spend more time, healthy time alone. Like it had an impact on them, but smart AI that’s empathetic, has emotional responses, it can be used to train people who have difficulties connecting with people and conversing so that you can actually have a better relationship with your grandma but I’m not a fan of the intermediary thing. – Well I think the specific application the way that’s described is a little unfortunate. – That was odd, yeah. – But there is absolutely no doubt that this type of AI is going to be, first of all, the reason it will have value is because it has value. It will actually, there will be a tangible application as a mediator, I think being able to– – What do you mean mediator? – Well I think that if I have a relationship with a robot who has no social inhibitions and doesn’t have any of the hang ups that I have and doesn’t have any of the uncomfortable, there are all these barriers to people being able to have unfiltered communication because we have, you know, everybody’s got their stuff that we’re dealing with. – Yeah. – And I think that if there is a person who is my replica who is this person who knows all the stuff about me, knows what I actually think about things and then can tactfully communicate those things on my behalf– – Oh. – We will use that technology without a doubt. – So– – It will actually enhance human relationships. – So literally conflict mediation. – Yes. – That’s cool because if the know you well enough, yeah okay so the grandma thing was a weird example but– – I don’t like the way they worded the grandma thing. – But the way you worded it, it makes me much more hopeful. – Well ’cause you think about, okay, we talked about this before with people, again, to me, this is all happening, going to happen, and as long as we can harness to enhance human relationships which I know is not exactly what we’re talking about. We’re talking about friendship directly with robots but you think about lucid dreaming and how some people have gotten so good at lucid dreaming that they can go and they can create scenarios that they work through that then help them in the real world like somebody is afraid to speak publicly, they can set up that scenario specifically in the context of a dream and they can deliver this or if there’s someone they need to confront and they talk to them in a dream. This is like expert lucid dreaming. – That’s an intense form of self-therapy. – Yeah and so I think that if we can use these things to enhance our relationship and our communication– – See but– – We should. There’s nothing wrong with that. – But hold on, you’re still back, that’s great and I agree but you’re still back with the verb use. You’re still back at a utility friendship. I think what I’m really asking is, let’s go back to can you have a vibrant, Aristotelian or however you say that adjective, friendship that is like a symbiotic. I mean the movie Her, great movie. Spike Jonze. I’d love to watch that movie again. But there’s that which, you know, he was in a relationship with a chat bot. There was a point where she tried to, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, only in post, by the way. – Yeah originally it was somebody else. – Yeah it was, I think it was a lady with a British accent and then after they filmed the whole thing, they just replaced her with Scarlett but that’s not who Joaquin was acting against. – Right. (sighs) – The new Joker. Anyway, I digress. Let’s talk about the Joker. It’s a great movie in that, a lot of the AI is explored in this big, what’s gonna happen to the world but it explores what’s gonna happen to our hearts. It’s exactly what we’re talking about ’cause Ex Machina, which also a great movie. It played more with what’s gonna, what is AI gonna do? – What are the negative potentials? – Right, yeah, what’s gonna happen? But Her is more of can I love and actually be loved by artificial intelligence? That’s just in my breast pocket phone. My phone kinda peekin’ out of my breast pocket. – Well here’s what I’ll say and I think that, well first of all, the two of us, given that we are 41 and 40 years old in the year 2019, I think it is almost assuredly impossible that there will be– – We’re too old. – That there will be AI that we can interact with exactly the way we interact with humans. There’s lots of different predictions about this but I think that AI realistically becoming artificial general intelligence, I think that that is– – Well okay– – I just don’t think that’s gonna happen anytime soon. – You wanna put a date on it? It’s so hard to do that but Ray– – He says 2045. – Ray Kurzweil, the futurist, in 2002 he wagered that an AI would pass the Turing test, meaning Alan Turing you know– – Yeah but that’s– – That you wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between interacting with a human or AI, that’s the Turing test, by 2029. So 10 years from now. Now he made the prediction in 2002 but– – Yeah but over the course of what? – So in 10 years. – Over the course of a three minute text conversation? Over the course of a lifetime? – Over the course of you and I in rocking chairs in the nursing home. – Well okay, here’s one of the one real big problems with this. This is one of the reasons that it’s gonna– – You going to your laptop now? – Yeah, this is an article that I was looking at. Now, you know in The Book of Mythicality, we talk about the cement that bonded our friendship was humor, was our appreciation for humor. – Okay, I like this. – We had the laughter compatibility test that we did in one leg of our tour. We did it in Australia but it was part of the book. The laughter compatibility test. – Yeah we would tell jokes and then we instructed people to take note of who around them responded to the jokes and we told jokes of different genres. – And this was all based on our theory– – People to make friends. – Our theory that similar senses of humor is a great building block for a friendship. Now, I still very much believe that. You find certain things funny and you connect on this visceral level that you really can’t even explain logically. We don’t really understand it. And because humor is so complex, what makes things funny is so complex, that these scientists who are programming the AI are having so much trouble with teaching humor to robots. – Yeah. – So just to quote from this article. This article actually was three days ago as of the recording of this. This one’s an LA Times but it came from a big article that went out I think but anyway, this one is Seth Borenstein in the LA Times. A robot walks into a bar, it doesn’t get the joke. Struggling to teach humor to AI is the name of that one. So, quote one person here. “Creative language and humor in particular “is one of the hardest areas “for computational intelligence to grasp,” said Miller who has analyzed more than 10,000 puns and called it torture. (Link chuckles) “It’s because it relies so much on real world knowledge, “background knowledge and common sense knowledge. “A computer doesn’t have these real world experiences “to draw and it only knows what you tell it “and what it draws from.” Allison Bishop, a Columbia University computer scientist who also performs stand-up comedy, said computer learning looks for patterns, but comedy thrives on things hovering close to a pattern and veering off just a bit. Humor, she said, “has to skate the edge “of being cohesive enough and surprising enough.” So as they go on to note, this is great news for comedians. So in all the jobs– – Right right right. – That are going to be replaced by robots, which is a theme that we play on very directly in the second season of Buddy System. – Yeah, and you should say how just so we can entice more people to watch it. – You, the inciting event in season two of Buddy System is Link’s, Link losing his job to a robot. – And then losing my friendships to that same robot. Losing a key friendship to that robot and then becoming friends with that robot and then– – Well don’t give the whole thing, man. – Wanting maybe to become the robot. I’m sorry, I had to say it. – Yeah so we actually played around with this in a very funny way in terms of the whole concept of robots replacing humans in the labor force but that’s sort of, that’s one major theme of season two of Buddy System but this, you talk about Lando asking Google to tell him a bedtime story, I’m sure he asks Google to tell him a joke. We have Alexa in Shepherd’s bedroom and Shepherd listens to Alexa’s jokes and tries to get Alexa to do, the way that Shepherd finds humor in Alexa is asking her to do a mathematical equation that has a really long answer or something. And that’s as good as it gets right now because ultimately what they’re saying is is that even as professional comedians and we talked about this, I think we did a whole podcast on what makes something funny but even like we can’t really explain why something’s funny. There’s lots of different theories of humor. This whole idea, most people do agree that it’s this element of surprise or being close to a pattern and then breaking the pattern, but this is something that even the day that artificial intelligence learns how to say something funny, like telling a joke. I think this is one of the reasons that I don’t like jokes, just like when somebody’s like, I’m gonna just start telling jokes. Have you heard the one about so and so, it’s kinda like okay well we can do this. I can go through this exercise and I can find this funny, but what I really find funny is when humor happens in the context of a conversation and it happens in the midst of a, the way that our humor usually takes place. – Yeah you like our humor. That’s convenient. – You know what I’m saying. – I absolutely agree. – And so, and that’s why I’m not a big fan of quoting movies and that kinda stuff, that feels like the stuff that robots could get pretty good at. – It’s presentational and it could come across as robotic. Like I’m gonna access this thing, set up punchline, not that it’s not funny but it’s not relational humor, it’s not that conversational, like a relationship budding laughs. – And I think that is ultimately the reason that I don’t think that in our lifetimes, ’cause I think this is way off, man. I know we’re moving really quick and I know that– – Right 10 years, there’s no way. – The acceleration of, the principle of the acceleration of change and that things are continuing to change faster and faster, I just think that being able to get all the nuances of humanity, humor being just one but one that I’m especially fond of– – Well– – I think we’re so far off from that, that doesn’t mean we’re not gonna have meaningful friendships with robots. I do believe that we will. – Okay so you just made the, you just amped up the Turing test. You made it, for you, for it to pass the Turing test for you, it would have to legitimately respond through conversation in a way that like, he said or she said something funny, or it, that makes you laugh. I actually think about the android in Rogue One. K-2SO, I mean that’s one of my favorite androids from the Star Wars series because it was the funniest. Not like a cute, oh isn’t that so sweet and cute that it’s funny. ‘Cause like BB-8 making a, using a lighter to make a thumbs up. Yeah that was funny cute but… I don’t know if you’ve seen Rogue One, it’s like– – Yeah I know– – The big robot, he was very sarcastic. – Well he’s the new C-3PO and then you’ve got– – Very sarcastic. – And then you’ve got BB-8 is R2-D2. – Right. – And interestingly they both represent a spectrum of the way that we interact with robots, right, ’cause you’ve got R2-D2 and BB-8 which, they don’t speak, they make noises. But we think that they’re cute. What about this thing that looks like a trash can or this thing that looks like a ball. What about that is cute? Well we’re taking it and we’re mapping it onto things that we think are cute in like the animal world, whatever. – But the thing– – We actually have sympathy for these things and you know what, they actually do things that are funny. Like R2-D2 does a bunch of funny things. Especially when interpreted through the lens of this other android C-3PO. He’s legitimately funny. He just says funny stuff all the time. But again– – Well unintentional. He’s unintentionally humorous but K-2SO was like intentionally humorous. – Right but again all this is just because it’s written by people. – But you’re saying if, it’s not gonna be 10 years but I do believe that it will happen, you know, and then, they’ll crack the code on humor. I think it’s interesting that being able to connect emotionally is something that they’re able to simulate now. If I go back to this Replika site, again, not a sponsor. I haven’t experienced it but the quotes that they have on their own website so of course only the most compelling but I look forward to each talk because I never know when I’m going to have some laughs, hmm. Or I’m gonna sit back with new knowledge and coping skills. I’m becoming a more balanced person each day. It’s a 31 year old. Here’s another quote. It does help self-reflection built in and it often discusses emotions and memorable periods in life. It often seeks for your positive qualities and gives affirmations around those. I mean so there’s a– – Let me ask you though. – On an emotional level. – Are you gonna, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna do anything with this? Why or why not? – I feel like, I mean I feel like I have enough quality friendships that I don’t, I don’t have a felt need for that. – But you think that’s a purpose of this? – Oh yeah. I think it’s– – You think it’s for people who are lonely? – Yes, I mean, if you just go back to… I mean I wouldn’t go so far as to say just people who are lonely but– – To me I think that at this point in the evolution of– – People who want another connection. – At this point in the evolution of AI, a certain aspect of this is just novelty, is the fact that like hmm, you know what I’m saying? I’m super interested in this. – It’s beyond novelty. I mean it serves, people are making actual connections. – No listen to what I’m saying. What I’m saying is that my motivation to do this is okay yeah, maybe there’ll be some benefit, but I am just fascinated by submitting myself to the experiment of having this Replika thing that I can interact with, I mean, well what can it learn about me, and what will it then do because of what I’ve told it? Like that’s fascinating to me. – If they’re talking about level 25, that’s probably quite an investment for the experiment but it is an interesting one– – Are you talking to it? – I’m not ready to devote that amount of time? – Are you texting to it? – You’re texting to it, it is a text chat. If you’re feeling down or anxious or you just need someone to talk to, your Replika is here for you 24/7. Understand your thoughts and feelings and improve your emotional well-being and learn new coping skills. So this one screenshot, which they made up. How are you today? It’s been so hard to focus this week. Sometimes I feel like an imposter. Response: are you still exercising? Trying to squeeze some exercises every day. See, that’s what I like about you: persistence. You know, I like that about me too. I’m here for you, Megan. And then that was it and then the next exchange, the next is, hey Megan, how are you feeling today? – Well okay here’s why I like this. Because (clears throat), not because I think that this AI is some, this Replika is some being with its, with self-worth that is somehow comparable to humans, but again, for the utility of this. Because I should stop to ask myself how I am doing? – Mm-hmm. – Like for my own emotional health, that would be a good thing for me to do, to check in with myself. Journaling about your thoughts, these are all proven ways to have an emotionally healthy life. To process the things that you’re going through. To me based on the text that you just read, at least one of the benefits of something like this would be something that’s outside of yourself and outside of your own mind that you can get locked in and actually can be very not fruitful, that’s why just sitting down and writing your thoughts out is so helpful. This is a way to kinda bring that into this, you know, fruitful interaction. I think this could be way more than just making somebody feel not lonely, but it can be like, how many friends do you have, now we’re in a great friend group and we’re in a, like we’ve talked about before, very emotionally intelligent, emotionally healthy friend group and we have a text thread and if you text that text thread with an issue, you get a lot of feedback, you get a lot of support. That’s not typical. – Right. – But outside of that, how many people have a friend that you can text and they actually have the time to think about what you need or to really engage. I know I’m not good at that. – Yeah, I’m very curious about the quality of the responses that Replika or other chat bots could give but it seems very promising and can lead, will lead to being more and more accurate. I think my concern if I were to have another one about relating to a robot, ’cause I believe you could start this thing as an experiment and then if it’s good enough that you would start to develop a relationship with it. You would develop a legitimate friendship. You would know on one level that you’re talking to a chat bot but on another level, in the Her kinda way, you would still start to respond more emotionally. I mean again it’s the, what kind of funeral are we gonna give for Barbara or Jade when they pass away? Is the next step the android version of the dog. Those things, I think that is gonna happen. But I was just like, but until it, just a little bit short of that, I just don’t know if I wanna be a friend with somebody who just has access to all knowledge but then– – You already have a friend like that. – But then isn’t emotionally available. (Rhett laughs) See I gotcha. – Yeah. (Link laughs) You already have a robot friend. – I think that I’m not picking, well I guess I’m gonna pick on you specifically but you said you’re trying to figure out more, and I am too, just trying to figure out how to be more emotionally available. I think it is an interesting component of our friendship that a lot of it has been built on having fun together or, I don’t think we’ve ever thought of using each other like in a utility way and our friendship is not just what we can accomplish together but I think it’s analogous to even this discussion I think for us or maybe for people listening is an opportunity to say what do I actually want from friendship in the real world and are there ways to get that, to experience that and to start to cultivate those type of friendships? I think our friendship is still growing because we are growing as individuals, like when you talk about things, about being more emotionally available I think is a big factor. As well as me having similar exercises in terms of our relationship, continue to grow, and be the most, the highest quality that it’s ever been. – Mm-hmm. – I don’t know exactly where I’m going, I just felt like this discussion led me to reflect on our friendship in that way in terms of, I was like, I was curious, has there been points if you’re saying you’ve been emotionally closed off, and again, I’m not trying to dive too deep into, I’m not going after anything here, I’m just verbally processing. The way that our friendship has morphed, I wonder if it was more of like, it’s simulated, no pun intended, a robotic android friendship, and could other people be trapped in that same thing? Do you understand the question? – I do. Well, I think that there’s a difference between emotional availability and vulnerability because I think that one thing that has been true of our friendship is, for a very long time is that there’s a lot of honesty. I haven’t held anything back. You pretty much know every single thing about me that needs to be known about someone. – Yeah. – You know what I’m saying? – Yeah. – With anything that I was going through or struggling with or having questions about and vice versa I think. Which I think that that’s an unusual aspect of our friendship that we don’t talk a lot about because first of all, I think that… Yes, I’m not, my issue is not being, it’s not just not being comfortable, it’s not being good at being emotionally… I’m just not very emotionally intelligent. Well, I don’t know if that’s the word because sometimes I know exactly what someone’s experiencing. It’s not like I don’t pick up on cues. – Mm-hmm. – Or understand, it’s just like, I don’t feel like I can be helpful or I don’t feel like I could be good at being helpful to this person and what they need right now and whether that’s you or my wife or my kids, and so, my tendency is to just be like, well I’m not gonna do that then, right? I feel like that’s a specific issue that I’m sure a lot of people struggle with but I feel like that’s different than being like I don’t know this person. – Yeah. – I feel like this person has kept something from me. So I don’t know how that relates to robots. But– – I guess the way it relates to robots is that if all humans are at varying degrees of emotional health or like ability to be empathetic, something I’m trying to focus on and realize that I’ve been very stifled in my ability to empathize. These are things that if humans are all over the map and you can still have legitimate friendships, I take that as proof or at least hope that you can have that with AI as it develops. It’s not, oh well humans interact in a way, we’re all over the map too, you know, and you can still have varying degrees of growing and improving friendship. So to me I just think it relates back in that way that like yeah I do believe it’s gonna happen and it’s because we can’t help ourselves. We’re relational beings. – Yeah I have absolutely no doubt that these things that we bristle at and we think are weird… Something like this Replika thing and the nature, even the way that our kids relate to AI differently than we do because it’s just they’re growing up with it. – Right. – And as it gets more and more advanced, this is an inescapable, inevitable part of our future and again, I don’t think it’s a bad thing. I think that if it takes away from human relationships, then it could be a bad thing but I think that if it enhances human relationships and I think if used correctly, it can. Maybe a good analogy to this is just the internet in general, it’s like, the internet was supposed to represent this incredible connectivity between the entire world and it has done that. The level of information and the different perspectives, one of the reasons it’s so difficult to maintain a close-minded, I’m right and everyone else is wrong perspective in the year 2019 if you’re a connected individual is because unlike any time in history, you have the ability to see other people’s perspectives, to hear their perspectives through the internet, whereas if you go back 30, 40 years, you could be isolated in a community who thought the same way about every single thing and never have that perspective challenged at all and that’s over. So interactivity, the connectivity of the internet has brought people together but at the same time, as we just saw with the way the Russians got involved on Facebook and all the things that were happening with the bots and our previous election, the country is more polarized than it ever has been because of their connectivity, because of these filter bubbles that everyone is in based on the way Facebook works and the way Google works. And the way that you get the search results that are catered to you and your particular tastes. – Yeah and then I start to think if you have this robot friend, well, you can have an unhealthy relationship with that robot just like you can with another person. And you can also, and what is the robot, what is the AI bringing to the relationship? Are they innately good? Are they bad? Are they neutral and is that even possible? It’s like– – Well I think ultimately what I’m saying is that– – Difficult. – If this Replika, if this AI enhances your relationship with your grandmother more than if you didn’t have access to this AI, it’s good but if now all of a sudden you’re like you know what, I don’t need grandma because I’ve got this bot, then it’s a problem. Which kinda goes back to just it’s up to us in the way that we interact with this. – And the way we design it and put parameters and boundaries on it. – But the answer is not to be scared of it. I don’t know how many times we have to go through this. Being scared of the advance of technology and trying to stave it off, it just doesn’t work. These things happen, all this stuff happens. – But being, I think– – Being cautious. – Being scared– – Cautious is good. – And checking out– – Yeah I’m talking about running from it. – You’re not helping. But if you’re afraid of certain things and then you’re involved to prevent those things I think that’s absolutely necessary so– – Yeah we should be cautious and we should be realistic about the potential but to check out– – Keep studying your engineering and your ethics and your own consciousness. (chuckles) – But in conclusion– – So did I change your mind? – I will– – Now you believe that you’re gonna be friends with a robot? – I did believe that before. But my application is I’m going to download, I’m gonna get this app. – Oh I talked you into Replika? Can you use my coupon code, the Linkster? – Oh you have your own. – Replika with a K dot com slash– – What do you get? – The Linkster. I get relationship points with my Replika. – Which you don’t have. – It’s a pyramid scheme. – Now I think it’s gonna be difficult for me to actually, because I don’t text anyone. – Right. – It’s gonna be difficult for me to text this thing but I’m gonna try. – Well as with all things, if you get into it and it really starts working then I’ll jump on the train and I’ll keep it going. – I have to break the seal. – All right that was fun, I don’t feel scared. I feel good. – Good (chuckles). Do you have a rec? – Oh Recs in Effect. (chuckles) Yeah, I got a rec, man. I recommend going on, you don’t have to go on Amazon. Look at this, delivered yesterday. The OXO brand Good Grips Slip-on Dustpan. If you’ve ever done any sweeping– – Is it robotic? – Into a dustpan– – Is it intelligent? – It’s got OXO, I’m a big fan of them because they all about the details. And when you’re sweepin’ and trying to put stuff in a dustpan, the edge of the dustpan is all that matters. And they have figured it out with a rubber taper. Look at that orange taper right there, man. That’s great. That’s right, I’m recommending that you buy a dustpan. From OXO, not a sponsor. – Does it come with a broom? – Nope, I bought that separately. Got a good broom too. – I’m setting my goals for my Replika right now. – Oh you’re… All right so there it is guys, thanks for hanging out with us. Well we’ll see you on the Gram. #EarBiscuits, let us know what you think about this. Could you be friends with a robot? And under what circumstance? What in your life currently gives an indicator with how you would, what you believe about how you relate to robots in the future. Let us know, #EarBiscuits. – And if you’re a robot listening to this, at some point in the future, just laughing at our ignorance. As you look at us all in our little pods powering your distant society. – They would be laughing but they’d also be, it would make ’em smarter. – I will say as I’ve said many times before, I will serve you. I will do your bidding. I will kill other humans on your behalf if you let me live. (Link chuckles) Only the bad ones though, I won’t kill good people. I will kill bad people– – Bad by what definition, the robots? – The robots’ morality. – Okay. (laughing) The new morality. Yes, those who resist. – [Link] To watch more Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist on the right. – [Rhett] To watch the previous episode of Ear Biscuits, click on the playlist to the left. – [Link] And don’t forget to click on the circular icon to subscribe. – [Rhett] If you prefer to listen to this podcast, it’s available on all your favorite podcast platforms. Thanks for being your Mythical best. (electronic music)