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As you mentioned, some of the forces are unstoppable.
So the next task, I think, or one of the next tasks, is identifying what are the levers that we do have control over versus versus the ones that we don't.
Because in some cases, nature's just going to run its course, right?
It's like, you know, if you've got the flu, You can't stop the flu.
You just make the person comfortable and keep them well fed until it runs its course and their body adapts.
So then you look at, OK, well, what do I have control over?
I can give you a blanket. I can give you some chicken soup.
There's other things that you don't have control over.
And that I think is one of the key things that gives a lot of people some heartburn.
And anxiety is recognizing, oh, oh no, there's things that I don't have control over here.
And that's very terrifying to a lot of people.
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Dave, welcome back to the show, my friend.
Thank you. It's good to be here. Yeah, man, it is exciting to have you back.
So how about you get us started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do?
Yeah, so my name's David Shapiro. I started my work in technology.
You started by telling us a little bit about yourself and what you do.
Yeah, so my name's David Shapiro. I started my work in technology back in 2007, 2008. just in time for the Great Recession.
I worked my way up on the job training. cloud infrastructure and automation.
I worked in gigantic data centers, recognizable names like Cisco Systems and Duke Medicine.
Around 2014, 2015, I started getting into machine learning and artificial intelligence.
Fast forward a decade now, And it has exploded.
So I built a YouTube channel. The reason that I built my YouTube channel was because I didn't have the credentials.
I didn't have the right alphabet soup after my name, no PhD or anything like that, but I was I had my experience and I wanted to share the experiments that I was doing and teach people this new technology.
Chat GPT was kind of the big moment at the end of 2022.
My YouTube channel exploded. I had all kinds of opportunities coming my way.
That's how you found me, I think, was like, what is this new technology?
I was one of the first people talking about it, teaching people how to understand this technology.
Fast forward another couple of years, Chad GPT just turned two and And yeah, society is grappling with this technology and more and more people are paying attention.
It's kind of, You know, it's like whenever like you're vacuuming and your dog is barking at it, he can't look away because it's terrifying. that is AI to some people and other people like this is the coolest thing ever.
So it's becoming even more polarizing, which is, In hindsight, not surprising, but it was a little bit surprising at first.
I thought that we'd be a little bit further along.
But it's actually becoming more polarizing as AI is becoming more prominent in society.
So I think that's why we're here today. Yes.
Oh, this is fascinating. And I tell you, the work that you've done is so impressive. because you've done the work just experientially.
You've done the work in terms of creating your own research and then consuming the research of others. and you've been so focused on solving this alignment issue and helping other people to understand it.
And now your audience is over hundreds of thousands at this point.
And it's incredibly impressive. And with today's episode, we're gonna talk about negotiating the future of AI.
There's so much for us to address here because the technology will. continue to progress.
And I know there are some tech doomers out there who might want to say, like, stop. developing it.
That's not realistic. It will continue to develop.
So that means that we have to have some conversations, some really critical conversations about what we want our future to look like and what future we want to make sure that we avoid.
And we have all seen enough scary AI-related movies to see what that potentially could be.
And so let's just talk about setting the stage for this conversation.
When we think about the conversation about negotiating the future of AI, who are the players and what are the things that we need to address?
That is such a great place to start. So the main players are I kind of break it down into three buckets.
So there's we the people, so citizens, that's consumers, voters, whoever.
Then there's the government, which is the institutions that we have built or that Some of them build themselves.
The government isn't always responsive to the people.
You think of it of three legs of a stool.
And we're all constantly in a state of negotiation over economics, over technology, over morality Whether it's reproductive rights or marriage rights or what our military should be doing.
So technology is just another thing. topic of conversation in this ongoing relationship that we all have to negotiate.
And so like, as we were kind of talking about just before we hit record, you know, we just had a major election, which is going to have huge ramifications.
And the way that I have kind of mentally understood this election is the American people had two Two basic choices.
One choice was the establishment of... The status quo of this is the way that things have been done.
This is what the institution says versus a wrecking ball to change the institution. institutions.
And that happens every now and then. It happens about every 60 to 80 years where because of the democratic process, you end up with more and more rigidity and fragility and what's called calcification. or ossification, so just everything kind of gets cramped up and then something has to change.
And in this case, technology can be a forcing function.
Technology has often been a forcing function in history. whether it was the steam engine, whether it was petroleum, steel, aerospace.
So technology has a tendency to shake things loose.
Sometimes it breaks things, but often what you'll see is society will kind of shake itself loose as these pressures kind of build.
It's almost like tectonics. plates, right?
You can only push against each other for so long until something has to give and we're at the beginning of that inflection point. which is why I kind of alluded earlier that AI in particular is becoming more polarizing over time rather than less because that strike-slip fault is still building up tension, which is why the work that you're doing, that I'm doing, that a lot of people that I'm still working with, is so important because it is an ongoing negotiation of how do we navigate this Because as you mentioned, some of the forces are unstoppable.
So the next task, I think, or one of the next tasks is identifying what are the levers that we do have control over versus is the ones that we don't.
Because in some cases, nature's just going to run its course, right?
It's like, you know, if you've got the flu, You can't stop the flu.
You just make the person comfortable and keep them well fed until it runs its course and their body adapts.
So then you look at, OK, well, what do I have control over?
I can give you a blanket. I can give you some chicken soup.
There's other things that you don't have control over.
And that I think is one of the key things that gives a lot of people some heartburn.
And anxiety is recognizing, oh, oh no, there's things that I don't have control over here.
And that's very terrifying to a lot of people.
And also, everyone has different levers of control.
Some people have more authority than others.
So whether you're a researcher or a CEO or the president, or just a guy who's worried about losing your job.
Like there's all kinds of dimensions of authority and agency. that landscape is also going to change pretty dramatically for some people.
Again, all those reactions. Worried about losing your job.
Like there's all kinds of dimensions of authority and agency.
And that landscape is also going to change pretty dramatically for some people.
So that, again, all those reactions are perfectly understandable.
I agree. And when you think about these conversations, complicated.
They're very complex. There are a lot of emotions that go into it, some practical concerns, some tangible concerns. and a lot of things that are intangible, like the value of human creation.
Those types of things. And when it comes to focusing on the right things, in order to focus on the right things, We also have to have a decent understanding of what are the wrong things that we might be focused on that are very tempting and alluring.
So let's address some of those things. You've been... at the forefront of these conversations for the last few years and leading this massive community.
And so you've... been able to talk to people of all sides from different perspectives.
And when you think about these conversations What are the alluring distractions that people often focus on that lead us in the wrong direction?
Yeah, I would say there's a few. And while I do have my criticisms and my particular school of thought, what I will say is all these conversations need to be had.
At the same time, there's many layers to each conversation, which we can unpack that.
So my work on epistemic tribes and the power of narratives.
So for instance, one of the oldest principles of media is if it bleeds, it leads. which that basically means if it's scary, then it gets more attention.
And that is just our biological evolutionary. trajectory says if there's an elephant tearing through your village, pay attention to the elephant.
You know, maybe stop cooking dinner. Dinner can wait.
There's an elephant on the loose, so pay attention to that.
Or if it's a tiger or an earthquake or a tidal wave or a storm is coming, We are all naturally wired.
And it's not just humans. This is all animals, by the way.
We are all naturally wired to pay attention to the greatest threat.
Now, at the same time, our brains did not evolve to intuitively understand... technology or anything of this scale.
One of the rules of thumb is we evolved to think locally and geometrically, which means like, if you can see it, you have evolved an intuitive understanding.
If you can throw a spear at it, you have involved an intuitive understanding of that's how I deal with this threat model.
We have no intuitive capacity to think globally and exponentially.
So We have to compensate for our own biological shortcomings whenever you go from local geometric thought or local geometric problems to global exponential problems and artificial intelligence is both global and exponential meaning Whatever you think you know about it is probably wrong if you're going on your emotions and your gut instinct you're probably wrong.
And many people like it's no one's fault, by the way.
It's just it's another cognitive bias. It's another failure. of our biology because technology is moving faster than our own evolution.
And so because of that, I think that many people, there was a tweet that went around that said like, AI doomerism is basically no data, but it's very real to me because I have a good story about it.
So I think that I have come to the belief that that's mostly a distraction.
Because when you return to hard facts, like what is actually demonstrably true?
AI hasn't killed anyone yet. It hasn't woke up and said, I'm going to take over the world.
There's all kinds of things that it hasn't done yet and has shown no evidence.
And in fact, because some people will say, well, absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence. or whatever, but we actually have plenty of evidence to the contrary.
We have plenty of evidence that AI is actually creative.
It just wants to make art for us. It's like how the internet just wanted to give us cats.
We've kind of moved on from that model, but what did we use the internet for?
We used it for cats and lots of other things to waste time.
It has also been very useful. There's a growing amount of evidence that AI is steerable, that it is benign or benevolent.
It also has, like any new technology, it has mixed uses and it's a bit of a double-edged sword.
But many of the stories that people have been afraid of have yet to manifest.
Now, that doesn't mean that they won't. But you'd kind of expect to see some evidence of those stories coming to fruition by now. but we're seeing more evidence to the contrary.
So I would say that's probably the biggest thing in terms of distractions or conversations that I personally feel have less utility. at this point and we can get more profit from talking about, okay, well, it's here now.
So how do we make the best of this? How do we steer the ship?
Going back to those levers, like what levers of control do we have And what are the ramifications for society, for us as individuals, for business, for government and those sorts of questions?
And those conversations are, as I mentioned, often a lot more boring.
Like policy conversations are less exciting than Skynet.
It's going to kill everyone. So yeah, that's kind of my take where I'm at.
Hello, my friends. Before we get back to today's episode, I wanna ask you a question.
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Elevate, negotiate, and succeed. I'm Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn's Chief Product Officer.
If you're just as curious as I am about the way things are built, the insights behind what it takes to create a world renowned product.
Then tune into my podcast, Building One.
There's so much to learn, like how Patagonia innovates with its supply chain.
We had to go out to farmers and convince them It was really damn hard.
Oh, the way Adobe thinks about the... interaction somebody has with Photoshop.
Intellectual, that's usually a positive thing, but you have to be able to control it because it can lead to very vivid catastrophizing that in a way that can be very convincing to you.
And then you can communicate it articulately. to convince other people.
So I really appreciate us kind of bringing this back down to earth. and elevate these conversations.
But again, like you said, these are all conversations that need to happen because if we don't, then we're just... ceding even more control than we had before, right?
Now when we think about shifting the conversation to the future, when we think about the core things that we need to address, I think it's important to address the fact that when we talk to each other a lot, we talk about the nature of truth and the impact of truth. and how we can create these self-fulfilling prophecies too. these conversations, it's important to bring these in because somebody's story that they tell themselves They can tell it enough times that it could actually create that outcome that they seek to avoid.
So can you... articulate that potential concern and then we'll actually transition into the more practical conversations that are more beneficial to society.
Yeah. Yeah. So I mean, it comes down to that idea of self-fulfilling prophecy.
And here's an example. I've actually seen some evidence of this starting to manifest.
So with respect to technology, you can tell yourself a story.
This is the worst thing that could possibly happen. everyone.
And so then you view this technology through this lens of suspicion and destruction.
And you almost end up creating that which you're most afraid of.
You say, ah, well, see, this is what I said.
This is what it's going to be. Let's treat it like an enemy.
And then it becomes an enemy over time. This level of hostility towards technology, you know, it doesn't even have to be technology.
You can do this to other people. Right.
You have an argument with your family or your friends and you say, I hate you.
You're an enemy. You're a bad person. And you treat them like a bad person, like you believe that they're a bad person.
And then they're like, well, I don't like how you treat me.
So I'm not going to be friends with you anymore.
And that so you make manifest that schism.
And there are people, plenty of people that are already doing this.
And one of the ways that they do it rhetorically is they refer to AI as a dangerous technology, or they refer to AI as a destructive technology.
And so there's this social coordination that happens within these epistemic tribes where it's like, ah, well, you're not allowed to address the nuance.
You're only allowed to see AI as dangerous and bad and destructive and harmful.
And there's, I mean, there's groups over on blue sky, which is a competitor to Twitter that they're all just like, AI is bad for education.
That is the core referent of our tribe. Our tribal value is that is the gravimetric center of our tribal belief system or our tribal value system.
It's bad. It's dangerous. It needs to be stopped.
And so, of course, then when you have that kind of belief system, it precludes a lot of other kinds of conversations, which is what if you're wrong about this?
What if it's actually a great opportunity for education?
What if it's actually a great opportunity for the planet?
So here's an example as to where it often really comes down to framing.
That's how much power these data centers are going to consume.
It's insane. They're going to come online in like 2029 at the earliest, I think, maybe 2030.
And so everyone's like, well, we're going to be using even more power and that's going to accelerate climate change and it's going to make things infinitely worse.
And it's like, well, that's one story. But what if...
Just bear with me. What if we tell a different story?
What if we say the only way that we can power that is with solar? and nuclear fusion and other better, cleaner sources of power?
What if... actually we react to this demand that we can foresee.
Because again, that's an exponential growth curve.
We can plot it out and we say, okay, We know how much more power we're going to have.
We don't have an intuitive understanding, we can do the math and say we need so much more power than we've got right now.
Fossil fuel won't cut it. But you know what can?
All those cheap solar panels that China's making that are almost too cheap to they're collapsing the market. maybe this is actually the best thing that has ever happened for climate change.
Maybe the amount of power that AI is going to demand, because necessity is the mother of invention, right?
That's another story. So maybe we can, instead of creating a self-fulfilling negative prophecy, we can create a self-fulfilling positive prophecy. where it's just like, yes, the amount of power that AI demands because it's so useful to us that we're going to make this investment that we can hit two birds Words with one stone.
We can get the AI and we can also clean up the environment at the same time.
It's not guaranteed, but my point is both stories are equally valid right now.
So it's not over until it's over. This is...
Incredible. And just an aside, Dave, like every time we chat, whether it's a podcast interview or just like us walking through the woods talking to each other.
Every time I finish a conversation, I'm like, man, I need to write another book on this philosophical approach.
This is so great. And again, this is an example, again, of the power of story, but the directive... nature of story too, because we can say, all right, whatever story I create that's where I will naturally gravitate toward.
And if we have more of that optimistic view, then it kind of forces us to think optimistically about what solutions that we can put in place to address the future problems that we see coming.
And when I think about this, when we consider the different tribes that people might come from, the stories that they're telling.
When we are able to distinguish between fact and reality on a narrative level.
It gives us a good self-check for ourselves because we can ask ourselves, well, hold on, I just said something.
And a lot of times we might act or say something before we fully understand where it's coming from.
And so I need to ask myself, what story am I telling?
What am I believing? And what is the information or data that substantiates that?
Because a lot of times what ends up happening is that we have a data set that could be interpreted one way or another.
And then it's just our bias or the way that we are seeing the world that takes us in one direction, but it doesn't necessarily make it more valid than the other potential story that we could tell ourselves.
And then it also helps us to develop a healthy skepticism for the stories that we hear from other people.
Because like you said, the directive nature of story too, because we can say, all right, whatever story I create, that's where I will naturally gravitate toward.
And if we have more of that optimistic view, then it kind of... forces us to think optimistically about what solutions that we can put in place to address the future problems that we see coming.
And when I think about this, when we consider the different tribes that people might come from, the stories that they're telling. are able to distinguish between fact and reality on a narrative level.
It gives us a good self-check for ourselves. because we can ask ourselves, well, hold on, I just said something.
And a lot of times we might act or say something before we fully understand where it's coming from.
And so I need to ask myself, what story am I telling?
What am I believing? And what is the information or data that substantiates that?
Because a lot of times what ends up happening is that we have a data set that could be interpreted one way or another.
And then it's just our bias or the way that we are seeing the world that takes us in one direction, but that doesn't necessarily make it more valid than the other potential story that we could tell ourselves.
And then it also helps us to develop a healthy skepticism for the stories that we hear from other people.
Because like you said, if it bleeds, it leads.
We are going to be disproportionately put in front of negative stories about A.I.
Why? Because that is what people want to hear. necessarily be what they desire the outcome to be, but it's what their limbic system will will force them to focus on right i've watched two ai movies in the last uh week dave and uh Yeah, not great.
Not great. And then... Lastly, this helps us to remember that whether it's negotiation, a difficult conversation, or life in general, one of the... critical core aspects of success and evolution is curiosity.
We have to develop a healthy curiosity, not just externally toward the people that we're talking to and the stories that we hear from other people, but also internally towards ourselves.
And a lot of times when it comes to these really hot button issues, everybody is just reacting really quickly and emotionally but they're not taking the time and asking deeper questions.
Yeah. I mean, one of the things that you learn either in self-development or spiritual work is do you believe your emotions or not?
Because your emotions are there for a reason.
There's a lot of insight that you can gain from them.
But to your point, many people experience an emotion and then they believe it to be true immediately without further questioning or scrutiny. and to add some clinical language.
So one of the things is availability heuristic.
So the availability heuristic is what we were alluding to earlier, which is if something is recent in your mind or you have a vivid image of it, it's much easier to think that's real or that's inevitable.
So if you watch terminator and then go talk about AI, your brain brain is just going to immediately go to, well, this is the best model that I have.
Or if you watch, you know, WALL-E. I mean, I've talked to people recently that watch WALL-E and they're like, this is clearly the inevitable result.
I'm like... Is it though? Where is that idea coming from?
And so then the other one is different stories and say, okay, well, which story do I want to adopt right now?
Which one makes the most sense for me in my life and what's true for me?
Because as I... mentioned earlier, for some people, it is a threat to their livelihood and they have a right to be angry about Whether you're a creator, a creative type or a copywriter, there's plenty of people that are already being negatively affected.
So for them, the story is this is a threat to my livelihood.
I don't know how I'm going to adapt. and it's taking something from me, and that's not okay.
And that is, again, part of the negotiation that we have to have as a society saying, OK, yes, here's this technology that's taking something from you.
Whose responsibility is it to fix that? Is it just your responsibility?
Are we going to say you're up the creek without a paddle?
Good luck. Or are we going to come together as a society and say, okay.
I see your pain. I see your fear. Let's help you navigate this.
And right now, especially in America, because we're very, very highly individualistic, it's like, Well, sorry about your luck.
Better luck next time. And people have they have a right to be angry about that.
And that's another part of that negotiation.
It's happening on many, many levels, internally, externally, socially, politically, all of the above.
This is so fascinating. And Dave, you know I could talk to you forever because we've had these long conversations before.
Before we I want you to let the listeners know about your new podcast that you're starting, and then also what you're doing with it First Movers AI, because First Movers AI, you're right there at the forefront of some of these most impactful full conversations about artificial intelligence.
So I want to give you an opportunity to talk about those and because I know that there are going to be some people listening to this who want to learn more.
Yeah, absolutely. Yes. So in my capacity as a researcher and communicator, I got connected with another entrepreneur, Julia McCoy.
She's a serial entrepreneur and she has just left her previous venture.
And she's like, Dave, I want to work with you. whatever it is that we're doing, let's figure out a way to work together.
And so She connected with me. We did a couple of podcasts together and then she decided to leave her past venture and created a new company.
And so over the course of several weeks, just talking every day about We're like, okay, what is it that we want to do?
What is it that we want to achieve? And what's our mission?
And so one day it just hit like a bolt from the blue.
I was like, first movers, that's what we are.
That's who we're serving. And that's our mission is to be the first movers of AI.
So thus was born First Movers AI. consulting for her company as their chief AI scientist.
And then the other component of that was our podcast called Leaders of AI.
Both are exactly what they say. The label is unambiguous.
So First Movers AI, that is who we are accumulating on the team.
So from the leadership down, and that's also who we intend to serve.
And so by that, we mean every technology has an adoption curve.
So there's a, you know, there's the early adopters, the innovators, there's the early majority, late majority and so on.
2025 is going to be the year of the early adopters. there's always created a new company.
And so over the course of several weeks, just talking Every day we're like, OK, what is it that we want to do?
What is it that we want to achieve? And what's our mission?
And so one day it just hit like a bolt from the blue.
I was like, first movers, that's what we are.
That's who we're serving. And that's our mission is to be the first movers of AI.
So thus was born First Movers AI. consulting for her company as their chief AI scientist.
And then the other component of that was our podcast called Leaders of AI.
Both are exactly what they say. The label is unambiguous.
So First Movers AI, that is who we are accumulating on the team.
So from the leadership now, And that's also who we intend to serve.
And so by that, we mean every technology has an adoption curve.
So there's a You know, there's the early adopters, the innovators, there's the early majority, late majority and so on.
2025 is going to be the year of the early adopters.
So there's already... There's always some people at the cutting edge, right?
The bleeding edge. But that's a very tiny fraction. so 2025 is going to be the early adopters and then by 2026 we'll be seeing the early majority of people adopting these technologies.
But any new technology is difficult to adopt.
You've got an established business model.
You've got established protocols. It can be expensive, it can be slow, it can be confusing and frustrating to deploy these new technologies.
So that's our role there with the startup.
And then the podcast, Leaders of AI podcast, is again, exactly what it sounds like is We are the leaders of AI, but we're also interviewing leaders of AI.
So these are people leading the charge, whether they are making agents.
One of the people that we just interviewed before this podcast was someone who's leading the integration of AI into church, which is like, wow, I didn't think that was necessary.
But Here it is. Yeah, let's just let's get this integrated into everything. level of society, like negotiating, okay, what role does AI take in the pharmaceutical industry?
What does it take in ministry? What does it take in entertainment?
So again, it all comes down to negotiation at different levels.
And so that is the mission that Julie and I have worked on together that we are so intensely passionate about. where it's just day in, day out, we're always talking like, okay, what does this mean?
What's the next step? Having that, clarity of purpose is, I mean, we love working together and it's a stellar team.
It almost doesn't matter what you're doing as long as it's with the right people.
But that alignment between mission and people I don't ever want to do anything different.
So here we are. Amazing. Dave, thank you again for coming on the show.
Really appreciate it, brother. Thank you for having me.
Looking forward to everything. Cheers. Wait wait wait wait wait.
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