Hello and welcome to another episode of To The Unknown Pod, a TGFB podcast. My name is
Jordan Bush. I'm the executive director of TGFB Media, which exists to help Christians
understand and use Bitcoin for the glory of God and good of people everywhere. I am joined
by two-thirds of the Iowan boys. We may be joined by the third-third of the Iowan boys
here momentarily. Ryan, go ahead and introduce yourself.
The fourth, fourth.
The fourth.
I'm not an island boy.
I don't count myself.
Yeah, hey, I'm Ryan Finley, father of six.
I'm still working on projects with my children, businesses.
And, yeah, my son uses AI all day long for his software development.
And, yeah, I do as well.
Ryan, jump in the shark here.
We're not talking about the episode title yet.
My goodness.
Sorry.
Matt, introduce yourself.
Go for it.
Yeah, I'm a pastor in Hawaii and where these other island boys used to be, hence the name.
And I've also been a serial entrepreneur and have just kind of walked that road of business as mission, business as activism, even, I like to say.
And also a father of six, just made 18 years married.
Woo woo.
Let's go.
Yes, Ryan, actually one of the inventors of Frosted Mini Wheats.
Oh, no, that's a different cereal.
Okay.
All right. We are moving on. So today, as Ryan mentioned, so today is an AI, I wouldn't say the AI episode, but partially, I guess it'll be in some ways, the AI episode that we've done so far.
And so we're calling this Bitcoin and the rehumanizing effects of AI.
Obviously, in some circles, and especially I think even more in Christian circles, we've seen discussion about the dehumanizing effects of AI, the scary effects of AI.
And there are lots of those.
But there's also in lots of surprising ways in which that we're going to talk about in which we think AI has a ton of potential to rehumanize a lot of places in a lot of areas of our life that have been to this point, have gotten to the point just given what the existing tech stack and the existing world that we live in, it's been really dehumanizing.
And so, again, everyone acknowledges that AI is tremendously beneficial in some ways, but it's those edge cases that people are rightfully afraid of or at least unsure about.
So we want to kind of address some of this and some of the ways that we have, some of the ways that we're seeing in our own lives and experimenting with in ways that we think will, again, be beneficial to you guys out there.
So before we launch into that, though, I do want to mention a couple of things.
So as you can see over my right and left shoulders, we have the full stable of TGFB books.
Over here, we have Thank Out for Bitcoin.
The second edition is going to be coming out very soon.
We're basically Amazon is ruining our lives.
We are working on getting it uploaded there.
So you can order the second edition with a much better type setting, much more professional, much more professional looking cover as well.
So we are thrilled to have those.
There's been a couple pre-orders at store.tgfb.com.
So you can go over and pre-order those right now.
We also have our kids book on offer.
We finally, just the other day, I think I posted a picture on Twitter.
We got, this is the paperback version.
Very pretty, very great.
We also have a hardcover version.
We ended up, yeah, man, these are just great quality versions.
We just kind of decided to pony up and do these things right with the first iteration
at the very least.
Um, and so again, they're not going to be bad in future generations, but these are,
these are just fantastic quality, very good quality, better than you're going to find
with most kids books, um, especially the hard cover.
So you can run over to store.tgfb.com and scoop those up.
Those are not pre-orders anymore.
I need to, I need to take the words.
I think I might've taken the words off.
I can't remember, but I'm going to take off the words pre-order because they are fully
ready to order.
I have several thousand of them sitting on the other side of the screen in my office.
So please go order those.
we actually have some really cool things that we're going to be announcing relative to that
in the next few days in relation to things that might motivate many of you to go out and order
a bunch of them for friends and family. So we'll be looking out for more of those. Over the shoulder,
we have the gospel according to Bitcoin. We might have some news about that in the next few weeks
as well. That's to help Jesus pill your Bitcoin friends. Again, a very niche book, a very specific
use case, but either for your own edification and ways that you can more truly and more fully
give thanks for, thank God for Bitcoin. That's a great resource. So go scoop those up. We also have
tickets for our TGFB event in Fort Worth, April 9th. We're going to be doing this the day before
Bitblock Boom. So if you're going to be in the area or you want to be in the area for that,
go grab your tickets for that you can scoop them up right now you can you can either get
let's see here you can either get the just a regular ticket let me share this so you guys
can see what I'm talking about here you can either just get a normal ticket for yourself
or you can get there we are get a normal ticket or you can get a ticket with a merch bundle
so we're going to be ordering some this is going to have like a specific TGFB hat that's relative
or that's designed only for this event.
It'll only be available there.
It's gonna look great.
And then we'll also have a custom t-shirt.
And so you can order those right now.
The tickets are only gonna go up over time to the event.
So go grab those right now.
We will offer discounts for pastors,
missionaries and things like that.
So if you want to invite members of your leadership team
at your church or NGO, that would be,
we'd love to have them.
So go get those today.
Beyond that, guys,
Let's get back to the topic for today.
Let's see here.
So, yes, so we're going to talk about AI.
So I guess let's kind of talk about given our different relationship with technology.
Ryan, you have a son who's a programmer.
You have another son who's making some of the most groundbreaking and revolutionary AI videos out there.
So shout out to Elijah.
He's also doing a bang-up job with doing some video clips for TGFP.
So, you know, in my opinion, the much more important work that he's doing.
So you have two sons who are leveraging AI as much as they can.
So let's just start with Ryan.
Ryan, where are you, you know, in terms of your boys and then you as well, where are you guys, how are you thinking about AI in ways that maybe aren't as, in a way that you see it as not so doomsday as maybe some others might?
Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean, I guess you could probably call me a little bit like maybe a techno optimist.
I don't approach things like this with like a bent towards being afraid of it.
I, you know, maybe it's just my age and generation, but I've lived through pre-computer and pre-internet.
And so I've seen the world before all those things and I've seen it afterwards.
and obviously there's pros and cons.
But yeah, the reality is,
is we can't live in the past.
Obviously there's things that have changed
about our culture that aren't good
because of technology,
but that doesn't mean that we can just
call technology bad and just give up in a sense.
Like it is the new reality in a sense in this world.
And like, so I think when you view it as a tool, you use it to the glory of God and use it to do your job the best you can.
You use it to add as much value to other people's lives as you can.
And at the same time as Christians, like using wisdom at the same time.
So all that said, several years ago, I was very optimistic about, like, I thought I was going to have a pretty big impact on culture or on our society.
It's going to have, like, 10 times more of an impact than I even first imagined.
And I was, like, way on the bullish side of things.
I'll start off with my oldest son.
He's a software developer.
he went from not using it at all to me badgering him and my good you need to get on this like you
need to you need to be starting to use all these tools as much as you can just to stay up on them
fast forward to today this is literally just in the last two years i was started really badgering
him on it um he uses ai software development tools and he's also i would say he's an expert
in software development he's spent he's over 10 years learning like so he was pre-ai completely
So he learned the entire trade or the, um, yeah, the, the entire profession has completely
just been revolutionized.
And, and now software developers are using AI nonstop all day, every day.
And like, what is that looking like?
Tools that used to be prohibitively expensive for a normal person because they didn't have
unlimited capital to build are now buildable within a couple of days. It's so mind boggling.
We can easily bring him on and talk a whole episode just on what he's seen. But all that to
say, it's going to lower the barrier to entry for people wanting to build good things or tools that
just weren't profitable enough to build or to justify the capital expense to build so um yeah
i'm excited about that it's going to add enormous amounts of value so like and um what does that
mean for christians it means they're going to be able to build like you're going to it's going to
be um yeah it's just going to be easier to build products that help people's lives um so
yeah and as far as yeah the same thing with elijah i mean the reality is is they're both
um i thank god that they're as young as they are because like the pace of change in in a lot of
these industries is so fast it's like it's head spinning and the first uh ai native you know we
were uh our i'm 46 we were i remember the first home computers like you said ryan so i'm the first
generation in history of home computing native, you know, maybe even a little not native. Cause
I remember my childhood before, you know, then you had the internet natives cause the computer
didn't mean internet. Then you had, uh, social media natives. And if you notice the social media
native kids, uh, they're not, I guess they're not kids anymore. They're in their twenties,
but the social media kids don't have like a lot of public social media. They learned,
you know, they actually know how to use social media better than boomers.
of them. And, uh, and then now it's, now it's the AI natives and it's just amazing to think about,
you know? Um, yeah, go ahead, Jordan. Yeah, no. So, I mean, this is, I mean,
I can just kind of speak to my own thing. Like I am not a programmer at all. I am not. And so like
my, I'm hearing, you know, Jimmy's song, I'm hearing other people say like, this is one of
the most revolutionary things you've ever seen. Uh, you know, just like the, the pace of change,
Obviously, there's tons of money that's just in a way that's very reminiscent of the dot-com bubble.
Anything you just put AI on, you're selling it.
People are throwing money at you just because they're seeing dollar signs.
So again, there's going to be a ton of misallocated capital just by scam artists and by people who probably have good intentions but who just aren't going to generate anything of value.
Um, and yet at the same time, I mean, it, it, like, I will say Google has been all but eliminated from my daily usage just by virtue of, of AI.
Now, again, there's a bunch of different companies.
There's, um, you know, there's, there's, there's companies that, I mean, somebody like, uh, open AI, like I just, they seem like awful actors.
Uh, and so I, I try to minimize my usage of them, but I, I kind of already built them into my,
into like my, my daily routine to where I use them more than, than I want to. Um, but like,
even then, like there's other, so like I, I prioritize using like Grok over chat GBT on
like ideological reasons. Um, also because again, you're the reality is whichever site you're using,
you're breathing life into this, you're breathing and you're like, you're, you're breathing life
into them, you're also exhaling out your own life in terms of the products you're using,
the cars you're using, like all of this stuff, you're giving it data on you. And so there are,
you know, so we can talk about a number of these different products. I'm also a subscriber to
Maple AI, which is like a private AI. It's like self locally hosted. And so I do use that,
but it's still, it's like, it's not as, I'm not finding it as helpful as some of these other
things. And so I, it's like, I have to purposefully intentionally remember that it exists and then try
to use it. So like I use that for stuff. If I'm going to use, if I'm going to be working with,
um, like personal data, like if I'm going to be giving away something, or if I have questions
about something more specific, I go to the, I go and I use that. I don't plug that just into
chat QBT. I don't, I'm less likely to definitely way less likely to plug it into chat QBT. I don't
give it like personal uh you know like identifying information um i made a post i want to just throw
in there i made a post like a couple months ago and i had to renew my grok or my whole uh x profile
because the prices went up steep you know yeah and i posted like wow i can't afford these i said
i couldn't afford the x premium anymore so i canceled my chat gpt membership yeah yeah yeah
it's like your, your dollars a vote. And I'm like, you know, there, and by the way,
Chad GBT did certain things the best. I love how they could, I love how they could export,
export PDFs, export, uh, those are things that the other ones aren't doing. So there's certain
things that they still do the best, but yeah, I'm, uh, if my dollar, I can still get some of it free.
And if my dollars a vote, I'm going to vote for, uh, the thing I believe in more, you know?
Yeah. And so, I mean, so, I mean, that's kind of, I guess the, the biggest way,
you know the biggest way that I'm currently using it is I mean again it'll be like a google it'll be
a google plus type thing where I'm like all right you know I'm looking for this or I have these
questions and I'll just throw it in there the thing that kills me is the like you still can't
like it'll still get rid of your stuff over time that's something that I didn't factor in so like
there's chats that I searched for three months ago four months ago that aren't there anymore
and and I'm just like oh no because I had like all this really cool stuff that I had developed
that is now just not there anymore. So I'm like, now I have to go back and, and redo it. And then
I'm like, okay, now I know that I need to download this information. I need to, you know, do whatever
with it. Um, so again, there's just things that you're, there's limitations, there's things to
learn. Um, I mean, one of the areas, and let's just kind of talk through some of the other usages.
One of the things is in ways that we think this is going to rehumanize, right? Like I understand
this is a potentially a controversial opinion. I will fully acknowledge that some of this,
it is difficult to calculate, to like put a number on, all right, where are we going to be in terms of
beneficial versus potentially harmful, right? It's like, are you guys picking up nickels?
There's a potential, are we just picking up nickels in front of the steamroller? We're like,
oh, look, here's this nickel and look at this cool little, this little shiny bobble that this
thing can do. And meanwhile, like we're walking into a panopticon, like I fully recognize the
danger of that happening. You know, but at the same time, you're like, all right, like what do
we actually, I mean, there is some of that that's like, what do we actually do about this?
Is this just something that is going to happen?
Um, you know, regardless, and we just kind of have to deal with it.
Um with that being said I mean one of the places that I I found myself using this a lot uh is in relation to auto care So I am not full disclosure Uh this is going to surprise probably a lot of our of our audience
Um, I know nothing about cars.
I, uh, I am not an engineer, uh, in terms of just temperament.
And at the same time, I just find it fascinating.
You just find it just fascinating to find and try to understand the underlying logic or to realize that there is an underlying logic, that this isn't just completely haphazard by the way that my car works or the way that computers work.
There is an underlying logic.
These things do make sense.
There are systems that make sense that you can follow, that once you have a basic understanding, you can figure all this out.
And so one of the places that I've used AI is in relation to auto care.
So I was driving probably four months ago. I was driving a car four or five months ago. I was driving this car that I have, and the check engine light starts flashing. I'm thinking to myself, oh, no, I know that this is a good way to blow up your cars if you drive with the check engine light flashing.
so I you know pull over uh just I start telling JGBT I think it was uh these are the symptoms
and it basically says hey the overwhelmingly more likely most likely thing that's wrong with your
car is either a spark plug or the ignition coil that the the spark plug I found out is housed in
and and so they're like so again it was helpful it got me it's like hey the overwhelming majority
of the cases this is what's likely very likely wrong and yet that got me to the point where I
I was like, okay, I still need to go to an expert.
I still need to go to the auto parts store to a guy who has a computer that he can plug
in and confirm that this is what the problem is.
So I did that, ended up going, the guy's like, yep, it's a spark plug.
So all you got to do is just take this.
And I asked him, I was like, I'm not, I'm not handy at all.
Is this something that I can do myself?
And he goes, yeah, you can do this.
So I just proceeded to go home.
I proceeded to take pictures, plug those into ChatGPT.
and just, it might've been Grock, one of the two,
and just kind of said what was happening,
said that, told the issue I was having.
And it just systematically walked me right through.
I replaced it, you know, replaced the spark plug
and the car worked like new.
It's worked like new.
And I just remember just walking away from that
and just being blown away.
Just blown away that, and again,
the more information you give it,
the more helpful it was.
Same thing about two weeks ago,
I was with my kids. My kids like to skateboard. So we were at a skate park. I'm parked out there
working on my computer. Uh, and after two hours of sitting there, just idling the car, the, the
ignition or the check engine light starts flashing again. And so I look at this and I'm like, Oh no.
And I, again, I didn't think about the previous time that this had happened with my other car.
And so I ended up turning the car off thinking like, Oh, that's going to magically do anything.
It obviously didn't. I turned it back on, the light flashes on. And so I proceed to start to
open up either, I think it was Grok and start to just outline the problems. Hey,
I was sitting here for two hours. The check engine light is flashing. And I gave it as much
information as I could think about. And it was like, it just basically said to me, oh, that's
super helpful. So given the parameters, given the information that you gave, and if there's anything
else that comes to mind, just let me know. It's very likely that it's either the spark plug or
the ignition coil. And I was like, okay, you know, but again, still had the same problem of
yes, but I don't have a way to close that gap between it's 99% most likely this, but how do I
bridge that 1% gap of certainty without, you know, risking blowing up a card. And so, yeah. And so
like it was helpful, got it. And I had a buddy who was there with his kids. I went over to him
and just basically I called AAA. They were going to come just, you know, tow me somewhere. And the
buddy who I talked to has like the same van that I do, but one year newer. And he just basically
said, Hey man, based on what you're describing, uh, I do think it is the, the spark plug or the
ignition coil. And if you want me to like, I'll just, my wife is bringing my tools right now.
I'm happy to help you. And so within an hour, we had gone and bought the parts, we'd replaced them.
We had found something else that was wrong with the van. I had like my, uh, like the air,
there's like some sort of uh air tube or whatever that air intake tube or something like that that
had this giant crack in it that i just hadn't seen vacuum line yeah and so i just basically got that
got that part and within an hour we had replaced everything and the car was looking like new
and so so really what i you know we were talking before you have done the call like what i realized
is okay so what i need to do is i in order to close that 99% gap or 95% this is in 95% of the
cases, this is the problem. The one thing that I need to do to be more able to solve this problem
is I just need one of those computers. I just need one of the computers for my car. And then again,
I can just diagnose it right away with that. And those aren't very expensive at all. And so,
so between those two things, again, the biggest thing that I lacked was not even information.
It's just confidence that I understood the system well enough to be fine on my own without needing
to go out and spend, literally it would have been a thousand dollars at least to between parts and
labor and time, whatever, not to mention the time that I wouldn't have had the vehicle, not to
mention the inconvenience of all these other things, all the other things that would compound,
you know, AI and, you know, these other things ended up AI and good friends. Like we're still
in a world where we need both of them. They're not sufficient in on their own. And so, yeah,
There's a couple examples where I just have found this very helpful.
Now, again, could I have done the same thing with YouTube or with Google or YouTube?
To a degree, it would have taken way longer, right?
Like I could have looked and found a video of somebody doing this.
It's possible.
I've got a good follow-up to that, Jordan.
And I know we should talk about fixing cars the whole time because I could.
But it's perfect.
I think it's a good other side, right?
How do you balance it with local experts and friends?
And it's a perfect example because I had on my truck and actually yesterday I repaired on my Escalade a tie rod end for the first time in my life.
And it made my steering on my wife's vehicle.
That's actually a safety issue.
Made the steering better and I diagnosed one other problem.
But this one was on my F-150 and it blew a transmission line.
And so I was searching on AI for so long.
It's so hard to find this thing because it's like a long steel piece that goes back like
six feet and you have to wiggle it all through.
And somewhere in my human intuition, I'm like, there's got to be a simpler thing than this.
You know, and I'm trying to look up like, is this line pressurized?
Is there, are there any ways people, and sometimes I'll say, search Reddit.
Are there anything people do to like temporarily fix it?
Finally, I probably spent two hours, you know, cause I'm trying to get this thing.
My truck is down.
I can't use it.
Got to haul trash, everything like that.
finally, I had this intuition, like, I'll bet you I can just put a hose in there.
You know, I go into the old timey shop. It's not even, it's called Pahoa Auto Parts.
You know, my town is like owned by one guy, his house is in the back.
His, you know, that's the kind of guy he is. And I'm like, Hey, I got this thing.
You know, I think, can I just swap a tube on here? He's like, Oh yeah.
You just need a, you just need a fuel line. You know, he's like DOT.
They want you to have the steel lines, but as long as you're not,
it's not hitting a fan or something, you're good. And I'm like, I knew it.
I knew it, but all I needed, but all I needed was 10 seconds with this guy.
I'd already spent two hours on AI and that's a perfect reversal where I'm like, I think,
and so what I've learned to do, and I just repaired, actually, let me share my screen.
I just repaired something yesterday that I tested before this call and it's a solar panel.
So my solar panel stopped working.
this runs a water pump at a farm if our church and I pump punched in the numbers and um it said
oh when that happens you know it's this diode and it won't allow the power to come through and you
know I think it was like eight dollars for 20 of these or something like that and last night you
know I just soldered this on here and tested today and it's working and that is not my specialty
whatsoever, you know? So, so the human, the human part, I I've kind of learned, especially on
important things, because I have had AI lie to me too. It lied to me about my timing chain.
So if, so if I do a little AI lesson, as I understand it here, LLMs are super powerful
for certain things and other things they're not as powerful for. And so vehicles to the point of
vehicles, F-150s, there's like 50 million of them or something. You know, I made that number up,
but there's like millions and millions and millions of them.
Your car, whatever your car is,
most cars have like three to five things
that typically go out.
That's a problem.
Yep.
And oftentimes there's like an upgrade that fixes it, you know?
So LLMs are so good at that
because this problem has happened hundreds of thousands of times.
So LLM stands for large language model.
That means they can go out and scrape the info
and bring you back the information back.
and I don't know if that's a lesson for anybody out there because part of what I think the
humanizing part we're trying to talk about, my brother-in-law asked me this about music because
he's a musician. One of the things I said, AI creeps us out because it seems like it's a person.
That's why it's creepy. But it isn't a person. It is just another tech. It's just another form
of tech. And I think thinking about it biblically, thinking about it philosophically, there's really
no tech that people should be ultimately afraid of because a discovery of something new is just
a discovery of more truth in the world, if that makes sense. Tech in a certain sense is truth.
So we humans didn't invent electricity. We discovered it. We humans didn't invent anything
that really matters. We discovered air conditioning, right? We discovered that if
something goes from compressed and it goes from something that's compressed to decompressed,
it causes coldness here and hotness here, right? That happens with storms. That happens with
whoever. We took that and we made refrigeration. We took that and we made air conditioning.
There's probably a thousand cities in the world that wouldn't exist if there wasn't air
conditioning without even joking. I've heard someone talk about that. Atlanta wouldn't exist.
Atlanta wouldn't exist. Las Vegas wouldn't exist, period. That city's not there
except for this invention. So those are not really like humans invented it. Those are like,
we discovered a principle of the universe. And trying to bring that to AI is a little more
challenging because AI is built upon huge data sets, which came from other technology,
which came from like being able to have huge data sets due to like data storage technology
and high levels of computation. And you took high levels of computation and huge data sets.
And someone said, you know, together as a community, as a world community, we go, wow,
what if we could figure out with the computation, how to really access what we need in the data sets.
And essentially, you guys can correct me if you think I went off anywhere, but essentially that's
LLMs. That's LLMs. It's not, it's not a person. It seems like a person because it sounds kind of
like that and it interfaces with you in that way. But, um, it's not, even if you feel like it's
creepy, you have to understand it's not even a matter of, do I like having this in the world or
not? It's here. Yeah. And it, and it isn't something we invented. It's something that was
there to discover in a certain way. Yeah. And this, man, this really is, this is a,
it's something that I think about a lot. I do think it's, it's, there's a ton of things I,
we should have make a, we should make a running list. This should be something, a gag that we do
over and over again is just keeping track of things that have been presented. Oh, this is just
the future. This is the future. You know, it's going to be just like this. There, you know,
there's no way you can get around this. And then there's those things that then just disappear.
like there's been a lot of things that people have been like, Oh,
it's going to be the future. No, this is going to be it.
And then it's just gone because a lot,
it just all these things were based on faulty understandings of either reality
or faulty understandings of people or faulty understandings of overestimating,
you know, the, you know, certain things. And yeah,
I do think that we, we don't have a good understanding of technology.
This has been something that we've, we've done more work. The,
the Thank God for Noster podcast is on a, is on a extended hiatus right now.
And so, but that's something that we, over the, you know, year and a half that we were,
you know, for the first year and a half, we, we talked a ton about philosophy of technology
and just trying to think about like, how do we rightly think about this?
Because there's people who go, oh, well, technology, you know, technology is neutral.
And it's like, there's, it depends on the technology.
Like there are neutral technologies, you know, like there are things that are, there are tools, but at the same time, there are tools that shape the way that you see the world in ways that are not neutral.
And so, for example, like one of the, one of the things that there's a guy named Alistair Roberts, who's a theologian and just friend, he's a, he's a good dude.
But one of the things that he talks about is like the most damaging thing that ever happened for church membership was the, it was the creation of the automobile.
because whereas in the past, basically travel was much more difficult and costly for time,
the automobile allowed you to travel and move away from communities in ways that were much more
difficult, that there was a cost to using them. And so something like church discipline, right?
Like church discipline, which if you're in a good church and church discipline is practiced,
Uh, this is something where if somebody goes off the rails, again, the church tries to,
tries to, you know, reach out to them and minister to them to, to convince them to abandon their
harmful, you know, pattern of life. Uh, but in the age of the automobile, uh, you can basically,
you can disappear from, you know, going to a church in your local town. You can drive to another
church that's in your town. That's, that's could be up to an hour away. So you could be 60, 70
miles. It allows you to access towns at distances where nobody knows you. Nobody knows what you've
been involved with. And so then you could potentially, or whoever this person is, could
be harmful to that spiritual community. And so we can acknowledge that technology can be neutral,
but there's also a limit to that understanding because it can shape, it can present a different
world, it can alter and shape and affect the way that we see and live in the world in ways that are
very anti-human and in ways that are at odds with how, you know, God intended us to live.
And so, yeah, I just think there's, I mean, yeah, there's other ways you can think about this too,
right? It's, I mean, you can think about electricity, which, you know, God created us
to need sleep. He created, you know, he put a light in the sky and it's up for a certain amount
of time per day for the majority of us, depending on where we live, it's up for a certain period of
time and then it's gone. And that's instructive. That's a good gift from the Lord. And so something
like electricity can fundamentally shape the world that we live in, right? Our experience of
the world by enabling us to, if we wanted to, live in perpetual sunshine for all day long.
and there's been all kinds of studies done to how, you know, that, that affects our circadian
rhythms and affects all kinds of other things. So again, I do think that we're still trying to
reconcile and figure out, you know, the, the effect and how to think about AI in this, in this context.
There's always going to be, yeah, go ahead. If I could stand up for the neutrality position,
and I'm not even saying that's my position, but just to, just to stand in place of that.
Yeah. It's like the example you gave is a great example of community,
and church membership and stuff.
And I actually walked to my church.
And some other people do too.
There was this, my car broke down at the grocery store.
I see Carl from church.
He drives me home.
Then now his car is broken down.
He walked to church because he close enough And after church I like you want to ride home Anyway the point is I wanted to make is it kind of like all tech is a force multiplier you know So it multiplies in a sense what in your heart and gives you more power where that person who doesn want to hear that he done anything wrong wanted to leave anyway but he didn want to suffer the social cost of like just being like I don go to church anymore Why Because you said that I not perfect right
Uh, and, uh, and so, or I asked you for money and you said, what do you need it for?
I don't have to take this.
I'm going somewhere else.
You know what I mean?
I'm going to ask for money over there, which happens all the time, by the way, as a pastor,
I've had, I've had the conversation both ways.
Like, Hey, I heard so-and-so might be going to your church.
Just so you know, they might be asking you for money soon and I'll, you know, leave it
up to you what you should do about that.
And, um, that's, that's the modern world if you have healthy inter-church relationships.
But yeah, that person would have probably stayed on the threat of not spiritual things, but of like these social things. But now they have the power to just like disappear and make up a new story and, you know, blah, blah, blah. And in the same way, you know, guns from arrows and everything else just multiplies it to a higher level. That's kind of, I think that's kind of the neutrality argument. And it goes along with what really is tech.
You know, now that we have guns, unless every single person on earth is wiped out, the knowledge of how to do it exists.
It can never, we can never go back.
It's because it isn't, it isn't the steel.
It isn't the machines.
It's the knowledge.
Yeah.
I have a, I wanted to just talk about a positive change that I see happening and I don't, I'm not sure that it's very commonly seen.
And so as we've been talking about how AI is helping us interact with the real world more often now.
So it's like we're constantly coming across problems every day.
When you have instant access to almost any information, it does enable it.
It encourages you to take on the car project, the appliance project, the home project,
like a million different things that maybe you don't have someone that was an expert
that you actually had really quick, like you had access to.
But for better, I mean, at the end of the day, AI tools are helping push us forward
in the sense that like, I'm doing more things with my car now.
I'm taking on more car projects, more home projects, more like I'm actually getting back into the appliance trade.
So it's like it's causing me to branch out and repair different types of appliances, brands that I didn't use to deal with before.
And that's a good development.
And it's happening to millions of people.
and one again back to what i was originally starting with um people have no idea how disruptive
ai is going to be to most white well i'll say most jobs period but i'll especially i'm going
to start with white collar like information related desk jobs like we're about over the
next 10 years we're gonna there's going to be the biggest shift in employment like i mean probably
easily back to like the industrial revolution it's going to be absolutely massive like how capable
um the ai tools are right now are again they're they're a hundred times more advanced than people
understand uh it we're literally in this weird uh catch-up phase where business owners they just
literally don't most of them don't have a clue but they're going to very quickly because their
competitors are going to. And anyways, I don't think that that's necessarily a bad thing. There's
a lot of people that are going to be changing careers and a lot of jobs that are going to go
away. But if you look out across the United States, for example, there's a lot. And I would say what?
There's an enormous amount of jobs that I would say are a net negative for our society.
uh and again a much longer discussion uh money printing has enabled the misallocation of resources
at a scale like we've never seen before in the history of the world and ai ironically is going
to be a big giant bubble burster when it comes to a lot of those like worthless jobs they're just
not going to be necessary and as companies have to be they're going to be forced into becoming more
efficient and not wasteful um all those jobs are going away i'll just say that straight up
and it's going to be a lot faster than people recognize so and i don't say i don't think that's
a bad thing and then at the same time um i see well so younger generation i think they are they're
getting they're wisening up and they're getting back into the trades more than ever so they're
actually um they're going back into physically making things building things repairing things
which is ultimately what the world and our society has needed as, again, it's misallocated resources.
Humans are the most valuable resources we have.
And when you take them and you put them into jobs that are completely meaningless, completely worthless,
just that's not an improvement to the world, even though they technically got a salary.
It's like, that's not doing the job that an automaton could do.
Yep.
You know, and can I throw, yeah.
I just want to say a philosophical thing and we can leave it be or go into it.
But I think, imagine you had all power, you know, technology gave you all power.
Now you're kind of God, right?
Like God's eye of you.
The real question that AI can't answer for us is like, what's good for humans?
right what's good for humans and on another sense in the market sense what do humans want what do
humans need you know that's more of a market part and that's where all humans but especially
we fellow christians uh should be saying technology should be used including ai for things which are
help human flourishing and those things are 10 000 different things but knowing what those are
there's going to be an edge in business. There's going to be an edge in entertainment and media.
There's going to be an edge in, you know, imagine, I love the thoughts of solving the simplest things,
water in places no one has drinking water. It's like the simplest thing you can imagine.
They don't have drinking water. Now they have water. Now their death at childbirth is reduced
by like 500%. You know what I mean? So even things like that, and I don't want to go on and on,
But the point being, humans have to direct what is good, what do we want, what do we need, and what is good for humanity?
And those are questions that can't be answered in an LLM other than comparing and contrasting like comparative religion, comparative philosophy.
Yeah, somebody, Nick Carter posted, like it was like last week, was like, it was something about, it's never been a better time to be an ideas guy.
he's like because like i like it's like up to this point the limitation for an ideas guy which
is what i'm like i'm an ideas guy like the the limitation for me was i don't know how to build
anything like i i'm just not a programmer i'm not a developer and he just basically like that's just
gone out the window like now if you have ideas and again it takes time to learn all these things
but like if you have ideas and and like a basic you spend some basic time just to understand these
tools, you can, you can create things that would have been, that would have taken, you know, a
dozen people and tens of thousands, if not more of dollars. Um, and so like that, that kind of
thing is, I mean, just that reality is, is going to be really good. Now, again, the, the problem is
we're at, um, if we're going to go as much as we've said, this is going to be the, the, the
rehumanizing thing, uh, re rehumanizing effective AI. It does, as I say that the, the verse that
comes to mind is, uh, you know, the, the scariest, one of the scariest things in the scriptures,
which is God's evaluation of the tower of Babel. Now, nothing that they want to do will be impossible
for them. Right. Like when God says that one, yeah. Like when God says that nothing they will
want to do, he he's not meaning that as a compliment he's, but he's saying like, and again,
he's not saying like anything, anything, but like the, like human, human collaboration,
Exactly. Like human collaboration can be a terrifying thing when it allows them to deny certain fundamental realities of, you know, whether they're biological realities or spiritual realities or whatever.
um but i do think i do think that you know like one again to bring this full circle to bitcoin
one of the things that is so revolutionary about bitcoin is just the bringing it brings up the
reality that everything is grounded in energy and and energy is is grounded in reality like it's
this real thing at the end of the day energy costs are the most basic uh you know the most basic uh
level most basic need of all businesses whether they're individuals whether they're yeah you can't
fake it. You, you know, you can't fake it. You can try to shortcut it so you can drink your monster
energy drink and, you know, like over the short term, you can get a short term benefit, but then
you're going to crash. You're going to pay the piper, um, you know, physically or, you know,
mentally, whatever it is. And so, um, so I just think like a world, a world where we, again,
with the world goes like this, we cycle through, you know, things where we acknowledge and we,
you know, acknowledge the reality, physical reality, spiritual reality, whatever. And then,
by virtue of benefiting, we benefit by acknowledging those realities. And then technology can allow us
to kind of, it can lengthen the gap between when we feel the effects of a denial of reality.
And so money printing is the way that this happens. Money printing has allowed all kinds of
anti-human, anti-real reality technologies, whatever it is, ideologies, it's allowed them
to exist because we can create money out of thin air in a world where money printed out of thin air
goes the way of the dinosaur, right? Like where people, nobody wants to accept it.
Isn't it interesting that a new technology is the thing that's checking that?
Yeah. Yeah.
Satoshi releasing Bitcoin into the world was like an atomic bomb going off in a war against
fiat currency and their unlimited money printing. And it's like, do you see?
Like, so like I do like the roller coaster of like, oh, I was, I was, I remember being back.
It was like 2012 or 13, 14, something right there.
This is after Bitcoin had been released.
I had barely been on my radar.
I was like in despair because I'm like, oh, our one chance to become fiscally responsible.
And they bailed out all the banks again.
The whole thing from the great financial crash, 2008.
They didn't learn their lessons, punting again, screwing everyone over again.
and it's like, dude, what?
I was like, how in the world
are we ever going to fight back against this?
Literally nobody even,
like nobody's even paying attention,
which is one of the biggest issues.
And all of a sudden Satoshi sneaks on the scene,
just quietly releases some code.
But it's literally, it was like a bomb going off.
So we have to be careful about,
again, it's like, it's so easy to demonize technology.
And it's like, no, God uses technology.
He also uses it to check the wickedness in the world.
And I do actually, even though there's going to be wickedness that's going to come from AI, I actually see some of the advances that AI is going to, that it's happening.
It is going to check some of the worthless debauchery that is going on in our culture in the work world, in the misallocation of resources.
And yeah, anyways.
I can see a paradigm like, I'm sorry, go ahead, Jordan, if you had something.
No, go ahead, Ryan, you're good.
You mean that? Yeah. I'm so sorry, Matt.
I was going to say, here's a paradigm. 20 years ago, I would have said, I don't want cars being driven by robots. I don't want robot cars. They're already talking about it 20 years ago. That's creepy. Who's going to be responsible in the case of an accident? All the same arguments you hear today.
and then I drove around people for a while so you don't like you don't want to have robot cars
have you ever tried driving around people they're the worst people are a hundred times worse um and
so I'll take one in 10 million but yeah but the problem is like see this is where I'm gonna
disagree with you we know we don't get enough disagreement on this podcast so let's do it
Like the problem is, it's like, it's one thing to say.
I mean, I don't think humans are 100% worse.
I think humans with phones are 100% worse.
Like that's the thing.
I've almost died in the last three weeks because of people who I think were on their phones.
Like, and so it's like.
I had one time when I was.
Humans without self.
I had a time when I was hitchhiking, you guys.
Just, it was kind of for fun.
I wasn't that broke, but my car was broken down.
And I'm like, I'm going to hitchhike like some of the people around here do, which they do here.
and I got picked up by pretty much like 75% people drinking beers, you know? So it's like,
there's way more people out there drinking and driving than you even think about, you know? And
I'm talking about like a 30 cans on the seat and they're the ones picking me up for hitchhiking.
Anyway, so, and I guess what I'm trying to say is in a way, this was always the best is to not
make the driving the thing that we do, but the thing we do is why are we driving there for a
meeting? Why are we driving there to see our family? And I think if we can switch it, so driving
is one of those things and I'm fine with the disagreement. So other things like art we talked
about, okay, art, media, et cetera. People think, well, this is creepy. Now you're going to be
seeing all AI art. Well, guess what? None of it's going to be compelling unless it's put together
by a very creative mind, period. It's not going to be compelling. You might be able to get some
stuff that will entice your two-year-old to watch for four hours long because it's just like
dinosaurs bumping around the screen or something like that with a dumb plot. But no, it's not going
to become the next big thing unless a person directs it and makes it good. And I've been
watching recently like the three, four minutes PSYOP anime group. I don't know if you've seen
that yet, but it's pretty incredible. Yes. It's insane. But guess what? Those guys are all anime
guys. Those guys are guys who worked on physical anime. I don't know if all of them did. That's why
it's so good. And I looked up on both details on what they did. It's a combination between AI
and then they're cutting it and they're putting in the audio themselves. That's why it's so good.
That's why it's not slop. And I'm not saying it will get better. It will get even more powerful
where you can do the cuts and everything. I'm not saying it won't change, but in the end,
to be that person, let's say you want to be that person. You're an amazing creator. You have amazing
idea is amazing storyteller 30 years ago. Now you have to start off when you're like 17,
making like $4 an hour in like a manga studio, drawing trees or something like that. And you
have to work your way from this and you have to work it. And, and this is true in music. This is
true in movies. And, you know, talk about the pipeline being filthy in Hollywood. You want,
you wanted to get into Hollywood and make movies. Talk about the filth you have to go through and
the parties you have to attend and the people you have to impress and all this other stuff you
have to go through. And that goes back to my, oh, you don't like working with computers? Try
working with people. Try working with the people in those industries. And even the church community,
I knew a guy who had been in multiple churches, the lead worship leader for like 3,000, 5,000,
Ryan knows him too. And the stuff he told me about back scenes over there, horrible, horrible.
Because of that position, there's so much bad that goes on even within the Christian community.
Because once something is attractive in a worldly sense it attracts the wrong kind of people as well as the right people So now you have this tool and AI is such an interesting cousin of Bitcoin in a way We could talk about that too but AI Now you have this tool where if you have a good idea and like 300 bucks you could make an epic three minute compelling video which will get you noticed get you on the scene And in the past that would have had to be part of it Luck part of its skill part of it like a decade of work
and gatekeepers all along the way who they might not like you because you didn't do drugs with them.
They might be like, this guy's judgmental because he wouldn't do cocaine when I laid it out for him.
Now he's not going to get the position, right? That's the kind of stuff that's happened all this
time. So to me, there's a parallel with the driving thing. It was always terrible. And one
more thing on that that I'd love to bring up, deep fakes. People were like, no one's going to
believe what they see. And you can't tell if it's deep fake. I'm like, you never should have
believed what you saw in the first place. That's the lesson. You should have seen the news and be
like, I don't know about that. It doesn't matter that there was no deep fakes. It was already fake.
It was already fake. You shouldn't have believed it. I mean, you should have tested it. I'm not
saying absolute. I'm saying- I don't, but here's the problem though. The problem is there's only
so much time in the day like that's where like there's always going to be ways for scammers to
win in the short term but like what you're because like you there's only so much time that you have
it there's only so much attention that you have all these things are actually scarce like scarcity
is actually built into the way that the world operates and we we still like we're getting to
the point where we're more offended by people wasting our time and wasting our but like we're
still nowhere near as offended as we should be. Like we're still nowhere near as, as frustrated
as we ought to be. Uh, and so, but again, I still think as, as the margin that, I mean, again,
I feel like people around the world get are, are, are less tolerant of it because they have less
margin. One of the reasons why, like one of the things that's waking people up in the, in the
United States finally is like the lack of margin that they're having. And so like when their lives
were destroyed because of lies about COVID or their lives were destroyed because of, you know,
you know, vaccine, whatever, all these kinds of things. Like it's, it's when you get to the point
where it actually costs you something that it can, that you are moved to actually care and actually
act. And so I think that's part of the problem is we've been so fat and comfortable and people
were just like, I just don't want to lose my job or I don't want to do this, but you're getting,
like, there's a tipping point where it actually, you realize, oh, I've already lost my job because
I, you know, I got canceled because of whatever, whatever I did, or, you know, I, I got, um,
you know, in the UK or something, Oh, I, I lost my job because I posted on Twitter.
Like it's stuff like that, that it's like that level of, of overreach and insanity is
paradoxically.
And ironically, the thing that will actually move people to act with, with like reckless
abandon, right?
Like you have people, one of the, I can't remember what they call it.
like they're not blade runners but it's people who are going around and they they smash the little
uh the cameras that are uh like the these like surveillance that are in the uk camera it's not
blade runner they send automatic tickets and stuff like that yes exactly and so there's people going
around they they like dress up and then they go and they smash these things or they take like a
saw and they like you know like a reciprocating saw and like cut down these cut down these things
And it's just like, you wouldn't, you wouldn't do this unless like, there's like 25 insane
steps that had to happen for the, for the, for anyone to get to the point where they're
just like, I'm willing to risk whatever comes with this to, to take this out.
And so again, all of these things, like the worst, like the worst abuses, they're, they're
only going to have a limited shelf life.
Right.
And so that, that can, that ought to be encouraging.
But the problem is even like that shelf life can still be catastrophic, AKA, you know, some
of the things that happened in Nazi Germany, some of the things that happened in China today,
like it, like the fact that there was a shelf life, like Christians can be way too dismissive
of like, well, God's on the throne, brother, God's on the throne. Like it's like, yes,
he can still be on the throne. And, and that's, that ought not to be something that just motivates
you to inaction or just to, you know, just to, to, you know, marginalize or minimize the damage
that can be done. So I think that like, you know, that one of the things that I see is just again,
to your point, to the point that we talked about, like AI can be great. Some of the greatest harm
that can be done is because of centralized AI. And so like, there ought to be, there ought to be
people taking that seriously and then investing in companies, you know, investing in supporting
companies like a Maple AI, uh, or there's a number of other ones. I think Jameson Lopp has one that
he supports that's a, or he's invested in or something that's a, you know, a private AI where
It's locally hosted AI is what it is.
But again, all of these things, it takes time to use them.
It takes time to understand them.
And so there's going to be learning curves.
I think there's a lurking point that is underneath some of what you were saying, Jordan, and maybe even Ryan, where the word reputation.
And so like what I said, you should have never trusted them, right?
I'm using that as an extreme case.
But you trusted them because they had a reputation and they built a reputation on, we make sure our journalism is correct and we double check it, we fact check it.
And this one newscaster has been on for like 20 years.
He's not going to risk his career for a lie, right?
And little by little, that started deteriorating until now, no one trusts the MSM practically, the mainstream media.
And one of the things that tech, not only AI, but also just social media and all that kind of stuff, in a weird way, it's, and I think we see this with college degrees.
I'm trying to lump all these together.
College degrees, you know, Elon's like, don't even go for getting a degree.
You know, a lot of people, same thing.
What were those degrees for in the first place?
And my way of thinking about it is those are a proxy for your reputation.
In other words, if I built 20 homes and people can go look at my homes and my community and go, Matt builds good homes, right?
now I have a reputation, I'm going to have unlimited work, but that's on a local scale.
So we say as a country, you need to be a contractor. So everyone knows you've gone
through this much schooling, you've done this much hours of work and you're certified and you're
insured. But all of those things are like large scale proxies for just having a good personal
reputation. What I think I see happening in this day and age is we are, I'm not saying you shouldn't
be a contractor. I'm just saying we are now being able to go back to the personal reputation
because people are out there. A lot of people are there with their real names online on X and stuff
like that. This is me. You can choose to trust me or not trust me, but I'm going to build my
reputation on telling the truth, on admitting it when I made a mistake, on the work that I'm doing.
And I think that's a really, really good thing because the personal reputation
was the real thing and the certification was like a second best proxy and that's one of the
positives about the modern era with ai and bitcoin and everything is we can rebuild personal um
reputations even if we have certifications and degrees and stuff like that they they injected
themselves into the equation like credit card companies just to extract yep to to be the
arbiters of credentialism and it wasn't necessary. And yeah, it's, it's interesting. Like I want to
say one, I want to jump back into that, the, the, the car thing, um, strictly from a human flourishing
perspective, like self-driving cars in 10 or 15 years, even five years, they're going to save so
many hundreds of thousands of lives per year. Like it's literally going to blow people's minds.
and obviously there's going to be there'll be some privacy trade-offs and all that kind of stuff
but at the end of the day I I have a really really hard time seeing it being a net negative and it's
also one of the hardest jobs in the world okay if you just literally consider the the well-being
and the flourishing of a family fathers who are long-haul truck drivers like that's a really
really hard job on a family, right?
The dad has to drive so far,
he's just gone for a long time.
It's like, and it's a dangerous job.
Like, that would be incredible
if there's long haul.
Yeah.
Dude.
There's prostitutes at truck stops.
Like there's lots of things.
Yeah, yeah.
And so prices will come down.
It'll be better for those families.
Why?
Because it's not like,
oh, my dad's never going to have a job again.
No, he'll just like,
if he's willing to work hard,
there's like a hundred other things he can do
So it's going to reshuffle around labor like we've never seen it before.
Like the self-driving stuff is going to completely be – dude, Moses went to Texas.
But wrong city in Texas.
Up $50 Uber fee just to go to the airport to his hotel.
And it's like, dude, give it two years.
and the Tesla self-driving taxis are going to be there
and it'll be $4 or $5 or something like that.
And it's just like perfectly drive.
Like it's just stuff I get.
It's just extraction, you know, and all that like.
It is.
It is so hard though.
Because you're just like, all right.
So for example, the truck driving example,
you're like, okay, so now it's,
I mean, again, you just,
the problem is like with all of these things,
you're trying to weigh,
you're just trying to weigh the cost because you're like okay so on the and let's say let's
say 99 of the time right like 99 of the time it's going to be fantastic right to have a self-driving
car okay it's going to be great there's obviously still going to be accidents there's still going
to be things where the where the car computer gets confused or whatever like so but like let's
say 99 of the time but the problem is the one percent of the time we're like the one you know
the 0.1% of the time is a situation like Jason,
the guy who works for Ocean, right?
Who he, he on his spare time,
he was like Bitcoin or 2010.
Like the guy's been in Bitcoin forever.
He doesn't need to work,
but he just does it for the love of the game.
And he, and one of the things he likes to do
in his spare time is do bug bounties for Teslas.
And so he ended up finding a bug
that gave him owner,
like gave him control over Tesla's entire fleet.
so he got like passed up the up the chain of command at tesla to like the third in command guy
and said to this guy are you near a tesla the guy said yes he said give me the last three or four of
the vin the guy after asking him some question gave it to him and he turned the car on remotely
and moved it and the guy was abjectly terrified and says who is this who are you because like he
just recognized this guy one guy had the power to turn on every like access to every tesla car
crash them all send them off cliffs like everyone could be destroyed at one time and so just like
that reality it's like okay this is very convenient and yet like the edge case of this like the worst
case scenario is worse than any situation that we've ever been like that's more damage than
nuclear warfare. That's like, potentially like it's, it's crazy. Like the, the, the edge case,
like the worst case scenario in some of these things. Now, again, you can, this has been the
case with nukes. I guess it's not as bad as nukes. You could, if everyone nuked at the same time,
we'd all be wiped out. And, um, yeah, this would only wipe out people who had Teslas and then
people who are in their immediate vicinity. Um, but like just this type of that level of, um,
Yeah, I just think we're not prepared. There's people who are only thinking about the best case scenarios for these things. And they're primarily thinking about the best case scenarios because those best case scenarios can make them a lot of money.
or again the companies that are the i companies are only present they're incentivized to only
present the rosiest picture because of the amount of money that they can make in the short term
while you know while putting off the the worst case scenarios and like downplaying them or
whatever and so that's where again even though we're trying to present a sunnier picture i i just
still you know it still is one of these things where it's like this is just a very poor decision
making process, anti-human decision making process to just be like, oh, look at all the
cool stuff we can do while still, you know, not putting as much emphasis on the real risks that
I think, I mean, just the existential risks that I think are still there.
And I wonder if it's a temporary thing until it matures, but yeah, your point of
centralization and control is definitely. Yeah. Centralization is always, it's always going to be,
you know, a problem. It's, it's, but again, so I, again, what we're saying is there are
decentralized ways to, you know, to use AI. Uh, but again, all of these things just create huge
honeypots, right? So Tesla is going to be like, let's say Tesla continues to grow. Let's say
Tesla's end up being, I mean, there's all kinds of news about China's, uh, China's electric car
thing being like a house of cards, like their, their businesses are crashing and all kinds of
stuff um so let's say like tesla continues to get market share it ends up where one of every four
cars on the road is a tesla uh you know you get to a thing it's a giant honeypot it's just a giant
honeypot for a nation state actor who actually has the resources to hack i mean again jason this guy
from motion he's one dude he's just one dude just surfing surfing the internet just he figures this
out on his own owns the entire fleet so like what could happen if you have if you have like nation
states that put meaningful resources into doing something like this like it's just did you guys
ever see minority report oh yeah did you ever see minority report so like that's a great example of
his he's trying to escape and all the cars are automated and they're all on the highway and that's
the highway goes like vertical and he has to like dive out of the car yeah yeah and so but but the
cars are controlled they're all like you know robot controlled cars and so the traffic there's
like again in the future maybe we only need 25 of the cars that exist now the traffic will be twice
as fast la traffic in in the middle of the rush hour will just be going 55 you know yeah three
feet away from each other like perfectly synchronized so that part of it is nice and then
but then in that case he's uh he's trying to escape like uh you know false thing and and the
cops or if he if he gets in a car it's going to be controlled immediately by the police and just
stop you know anyway it's a it's a great visual of what you're describing it is it's just like
efficiency is this double-edged sword it it really is this double-edged sword somebody i can't remember
if it was um chesterton or somebody like one of the worst he basically said something to the
effect that one of the worst things that could happen is for there to be an efficient government
and it's like because like if you if you had an efficient government like and obviously there's
gradations to this but like they're like the people wouldn't want to dismantle it well no not
even that but it's just like an efficient government could do an atrocities that we've
never even imagined right like if you could i mean like this is already true we're we're already on
list somewhere bro like the fact that we're discussing these things like we're we're on
list somewhere of like all right you know i mean just think about it like right now it has never
been easier in human history to systematically eliminate the quote-unquote problematic people
right like you could just eliminate that because you have we're talking online we're doing all
these things you could systematically find the people who are talking about i mean what let's
just try to do this what subjects would you need to talk about all right if you're talking about
um sovereignty if you're talking about government overreach if you're talking about uh 3d printed
things if you're talking about uh you know bitcoin so money outside the state basically if you there's
like a you could probably take like 20 different topics and if somebody has overlap in their search
history on like three of them the government could just pretty safely go like an oppressive
government could pretty safely just go all right we're just going to preemptively wipe those guys
out just preemptively now again what percentage of the population would that be no it wouldn't
have to be big like let's say small yeah like it's it's like let's say it's let's say it's like
a quarter of a percent like that could be catastrophic and it's never been easier it's
never been easier to do. And that could eliminate so many problems. Again, that's probably not going
to happen in the United States, but- Well, can I, can I give an anecdote real quick?
Can I give an anecdote? Sorry, Ryan, this is so fits into what you're saying. So the picture
behind me is Afghanistan when I traveled in 2018 and I went to Afghanistan, Tajikistan, and, um,
Turkey. And in all three cases, one of my big takeaways was all three countries,
they're super duper aware of their phones. They are aware of their phones like it's
literally the government listening. And so when I was in Tajikistan, we were not allowed to say
the word Afghanistan. There was like a code word if we wanted to refer to, oh yeah, we just came
from, and I think it was 5.1 because that was its danger scale, something like that. So we don't say
the word Afghanistan. When I was in Afghanistan, we don't say the word mission among others,
because there's a bunch of missionaries there, but mission is like military too,
a military term, right? So we don't say the word mission. And if you look in the skies,
in Kabul, there's like blimps and those blimps are there. And I don't know the details. I think
it's mostly similar to how it is with us. It's mostly through the internet, right? But the blimps
are also there and they're there for signals. They're like picking up, they're like little
small blimps and they're like electronic thingies. So if you say the word mission,
they may not come and arrest you, but it's like, boop. Now keep in mind, this is 2018. This is not
2026. This is 2018. In Turkey, my friend was telling me about the revolution. He takes his
phone, he turns it off, he puts it under his leg while we're driving the car. So he can tell me
about the revolution that was happening two years before. So 2016. Because even then,
those nations who will use it for against you will flag you. And if it, and, and, and, and using,
and speaking as a Christian, every single Christian in like, um, Istanbul is pretty much
being monitored. And it's not that they're being all captured and tortured, but there's a, it's a
small enough number. 100% of them are being monitored. And I mean, people on the phone,
listening to their conversations. Yeah. So, and he, but he, and here's what I'm trying to say
is in like 20 years ago, right. So like we knew, we knew nine 11 was going to happen,
right right we knew it like they the fbi knew it was going to happen knew there were guys who were
preparing but there was so much information it was like there they didn't have a way to filter
like the information fast enough and quickly enough to basically to make use of all the
information they had with ai you now can do that yeah and so like what you just pointed out like
you just said um they they use these code words right they use it well now once you know the code
word you can retroactively go back and just like plug it it's like all right here we're gonna filter
through now some anytime you see this word the cover for no i was gonna yeah exactly but no but
like seriously and so like that's the thing what i'm talking about is like again this is gonna be
it's like it's this is where i don't have a i don't feel like i have a good grasp on whether or
not even this kind of an episode where we're trying to talk about the benefits of it is this just
picking up nickels in front of a steamroller like is this just so is this just so obviously going to
go awfully yeah we should just cast it into the fire just yeah i think we have to remember that
um yeah there is a spiritual war going on and there are people that are using the technology
to bring things into the light and i'll use just one example from this last week so it's easy and
I 100% agree with you. There's a lot of negative things, negative ways that this technology can be
used. But think about Nick Shirley, for example. He ended Tim Walz's political career. This is the
almost vice president of the United States he's ended in. And so this is a single individual
that did more work than like Pulitzer Prize journalists in the past, more work than our
huge news networks and totally blew up his career and it deserved to be blown up.
So like individuals now have the power to like bring things into the light that like
never would have seen the light in the past So it like technology that used for evil technology that used for righteousness and justice
Perfect example.
So it just, like, I think as believers,
we can't get, like, we can't,
we can't get dejected and defeated in the sense of,
especially because we have, we actually have hope.
And we do, I know it sounds super cheesy,
but we do know the ending.
Like, we do know the ending.
And so I think we need to remain optimistic.
Also, one more thing about the – I think a lot of the critics – this has just been an observation of mine.
I do – I'm not ignoring all the potential perils of AI.
From my observation, some of the biggest, loudest critics of AI and how bad it's going to be for humanity have been coming from those who are obviously being –
they're having their jobs, professions, crafts disrupted the first.
It's like the artist is shaking his fist.
I spent 30 years learning how to water color,
and this AI is going to steal all my stuff,
and it's just like, chill out.
Like, there's going to be disruptions.
It's not going to destroy your craft.
Yeah.
And, yeah, so anyways, all I have to say, it's emotional both ways.
and where is it actually going to land?
It's going to be somewhere in the middle, like it always does,
because in a sense it's a tool that can be used for good, used for evil.
And Trump commuted someone's sentence too, right, just recently.
Like someone said, what was the samurai wallet guy?
I don't think he's done it yet, but they're trying to get him.
Yeah, they're trying to.
But anyway, the pressure for that, like this guy could just be in a dark hole for eternity
if it was 30 years later.
you would never know about him.
But the pressure for that is...
Well, and think about, I mean, just to that point,
think about the reason why, like, why is Ross free?
Yeah.
And maybe this is where we can close this,
we can bring this episode,
because we've been going for about an hour and a half
or hour and a quarter here.
Like, why is Ross free?
Because Bitcoin, because like combination of Bitcoin
gave money and political sway
to people who never would have had it otherwise
and then that got like that money and that influence got them got really good people access
to Trump and access to his people and so like I was in when I was in New York City the uh Angela
McArdle or I think I think it's her name uh who basically was the one working behind the scenes
to get Ross Free who I think is actually a Christian um she spoke at the at PubKey when I
was there and she it was wild hearing her talk and she just basically said yeah like Trump he you
know, he appreciated the Bitcoin people and like the support that they gave him. And so that bought
credibility and he was in, like, he just was like, all right, what can I do? And he was willing to do
whatever, you know, whatever it took. And, um, and again, like that was a pretty low, low bar
actually, you know, because the risk reward was pretty, pretty low. Uh, but again, it's one of
these things where like Bitcoin really does matter. Like it really, it really does change
the incentives. It really does, uh, you know, be even beyond the immediate short-term stuff like
that that even that's just a low bar like low hanging fruit like there's much bigger um you
know much bigger higher level yeah things that it reorganizes and incentivizes incentives that it
changes uh that again we're just going to see more and more fleshing out over time yeah and it also
it's also united a group of people around the truth around because bitcoin represents uh
true money and honest money.
And again so it like when it came to the injustice the Bitcoin community who loves truth absolutely rallied around that cause And I think that a beautiful thing I mean I think obviously Christians should be doing the same thing
But yeah, and so again, I think we're going to see it.
And it's happening with Nostra.
It's happening with decentralized communications.
Again, because you have a huge community that actually cares about truth.
And yeah, so this is another side benefit.
But yeah, it's going to allow individual creators and small, you know, it says about in the Bible calls the little people, meaning just people without power, people without prestige, people that aren't connected to be able to do things that they never could have done.
And Nick Shirley is such a great example of like, it's like he is an investigative journalist, period.
Why? Because he investigatively journalized something. That's it, right?
but he didn't have the
but he didn't have a degree
from Harvard Matt
surely he can't be
considered a journalist
right
so that
and that's
that's the
they ended on the
positive humanization
part
yeah
try to
try to find some dirt on him
you know
maybe he has some
but the point is like
you can't find
you can't find a problem
he's up to infinite scrutiny
and it's just clear
that what he found is true
the
the Daniel
modern day Daniel
dude it's the same thing
that's happened with the
Oregon vote by mail
that was another big story
that happened today
yeah
Well, it's like, wait a minute.
How did that happen?
Again, it's just random individuals who are able to like sleuth stuff up now, obviously using technology and then the bullhorn of technology to like, dude, like we have a huge tight governor race coming up in Oregon.
And Republican barely lost to the Democrat last time.
We've been under Democrat rule in Oregon for 45 years or something like that, like my entire life.
Oh, now they have to scrape 800,000 voters off the rolls in Oregon they just announced.
It's like, oh, what's that going to do?
Who knows?
Yeah.
That can shift the election.
Which represents like 30%.
We're going to go just came to Texas, baby.
Let's go.
Anyways, like if that ends up flipping the state and so that it goes back to a Republican
government and a whole bunch of nonsense in Oregon gets flipped back.
Again, I would submit that is, you know, article A of like, dude, that is unbelievable.
That's like if that, I mean, I'm not saying it's going to happen, but my entire life we've been under Democrat rule and it's been terrible in Oregon.
And then it's to flip just for the sake of like there needs to be a contrast and not unlimited power.
I will say again, to combat some of what I've been saying, like, I do think that one of the things you can, you can doom and gloom and catastrophize some of these things, you know, and look about, think about, only think about the worst case scenario and miss a lot of the good that can be done.
and yeah, I do think that, I do think that's one of these examples of what you're talking about.
So like there is no, to put it another way, there is no substitute. There's no escaping
the need to trust the Lord with your life and just with, with things like it'd be easy to say,
oh, but you just get rid of AI, then everything would be fixed. It's like, no, we've lived that
life. Uh, it actually got pretty horrible and there's nothing that we could, you know, very
limited things that we could do about it. Um, and so, yeah, I do think that's a valuable,
a valuable takeaway is, you know, whether, no matter what's going on externally, whether things
look great or they look poor, uh, they look dire, like we still need to trust the Lord. We need to,
um, you know, just give ourselves to him and, uh, you know, just try to, you know, carry out what he
would have us to do, uh, prioritize what he prioritizes and, and just trust him in the in-between
gaps of what could or, you know, what might happen. Um, and maybe to the general general public,
like learn a little bit about what LLMs actually are. Not that you have to become an expert,
but you need to understand it just it just a computer doing stuff It isn a person So um you know if you learn what it is you be better at it You be less creeped out and you might have good ideas
for how it can be used
for righteousness sake.
Well, I think that's
a pretty good place to stop.
Again, Oshawa,
love you too, bro.
He didn't come meet us.
Oh, Ryan,
were you going to add something?
I was going to let Scott Adams
have the last word.
Do it.
The very end of his final writing
where he was just challenging everyone to be helpful.
And it's like, yeah.
He also, yeah.
He also professed belief in Christ
or at least kind of in his final words.
We'll talk more about that next episode.
I think that's a great episode.
It'd be a great food for thought.
Let me just put this in the public chat
just as we close.
Again, thank you guys for your support.
If you are not a subscriber to the podcast on Apple, Spotify, or Fountain, which is,
we appreciate those guys.
That's where we host our podcast.
Or if you're not a subscriber on YouTube, please go do that.
It is a huge way to help us.
We are up to 1,140, I think, something like that, subscribers.
That's, again, we've been growing slowly.
We want to get bigger.
We'd love to get to the point.
We'd love to have 10,000 subscribers by the end of this year.
So if this is something that you're benefiting from, go right now.
Share this link.
Share it with maybe three people from church.
Three people that you appreciate.
We would love to get to 10,000 subscribers.
I'm trying to think.
We'll have to figure out something we can do.
If we get to 10,000 subscribers by the end of the year, we'll give away a certain amount of Bitcoin or something like this.
Maybe we'll try to set it.
We'll host a podcast from Hawaii.
Okay.
Well, see, this is something we're actually going to be doing more of is live and in-person events.
maybe here's what we'll do
we'll have to plan this better never mind we'll have a conversation
about this we will reward
those the person
if we could figure out somebody if we could figure out some way
to quantify
who shared the most we could figure out how to do
a live episode in the
town closest to
whoever this person is
so we'll see what we can do to
figure that out referral system
something like that use AI to build it
exactly okay yeah
Yeah, bring it full circle.
Way to go, Ryan.
I will say, let's see, let me share this real quick.
Again, for all of you, go support us.
Go grab the books, the Orange Umbrella books specifically.
We've got tons of those.
Help me to clear out my office of all these books.
We also have here, I put it in the chat,
link to where you can actually buy
and receive like an actual ticket for the event
that you can interact with your ticket app
on your iPhone or wherever it is
I'm putting it in the chat over here on the YouTube link.
It might be, I don't know if it's going to go into the chat on like Twitter and stuff like that,
but you can find that there.
Go grab your tickets.
We would love to see you there, meet up with you, and have more of these type of conversations.
Again, we'll also be doing much more specific Bitcoin conversations at that point or at that event.
We're going to do a lot more hands-on stuff than we've done in the past,
So at least for part of the day, specifically how to do transactions in, you know, just how to handle wallets, how to do that kind of stuff.
So it's going to be very hands on for more, a larger percentage than it's been to this point.
So we would love to see you.
We'd love to have your support in those ways to help us continue to help people understand you use Bitcoin for the glory of God and the good of people everywhere.
We will see you later this week on another episode of the Thank God for Bitcoin podcast.
It's probably going to be a Thank God for Bitcoin podcast and not a To the End on Pod.
So we'll get you more info on that in the next couple of days.
We'll chat soon.