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The Science Pawdcast
The Science Pawdcast breaks down the latest science happening in the human world AND the pet world.
Each episode will also bring you a guest to enthral you with their area of knowledge.
You'll learn, be captivated, and laugh along with host Jason Zackowski.
Pets and Science, it's the pawfect mix.
You'll also get episodes of PetChat which are the live shows from social audio.
PetChat is a live community gathering updates about the animals in our life, but also the animals in the wonderful community that supports us!
Heart and Hope.
Science and Shenanigans.
The Science Pawdcast
Season 5 Episode 30: Exploring Gut Bacteria, Cat Behavior, and the Profound Impact of AI on Human Evolution with Expert JJ Jerome
Get ready to be intrigued as we journey through the fascinating world of gut bacteria and its profound impact on health, cats and their stress-induced behaviors, artificial intelligence's influence on human evolution and more. We've got a real treat for you as our expert guest, JJ Jerome, unveils mind-blowing insights from his new book 'Evolution Ended'.
Pouring over a captivating study, we unlock the potential of human microbiome in tackling insulin resistance and type two diabetes. The mystery behind stress-induced behaviors in cats that often get confused with illness also gets debunked. Subsequently, we explore the deep bond between humans and dogs, and how their distinct brain structures have influenced our evolution and interactions. The conversation takes a thrilling turn as we dissect the revolutionary impact of technology on society and the exciting rise of artificial intelligence and generative AI.
Finally, we glance into the future, contemplating the transformative potential of AI. We discuss how AI might revolutionize our perception of evolution, and potentially be harnessed for constructive purposes like creating virtual realities for loved ones. But amidst this optimism, we also acknowledge the potential for disaster and the need for regulations. JJ Jerome gives us a peek into his new book and emphasizes the importance of education in this new era. Wrapping it up, we express our heartfelt gratitude to our community and highlight JJ Jerome's website. Buckle up for this informative ride, you won't want to miss it!
JJ's Website (with a link to his book!)
https://www.jjjerome.com/
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Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Hello everybody, welcome back to the Science Podcast. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. To any of the families with kids in school, we hope you're having a great startup. And to any of the teachers or academic folks who are teaching listening, we hope you are also having a great startup. Chris and I are neck deep in teaching, so it's busy, it's exciting, it's fun and I've snuck away to record the Science Podcast.
Speaker 2:This week in Science News we're going to look at poop bacteria and how it could maybe change the course of diabetes. It's kind of a wild story. And in pet science we're going to be looking at some common cat behaviors that may make you think they're sick, when really they could be stressed out. Our guest and ask an expert is author JJ Jerome, who has written an amazing book about artificial intelligence and where it's leaving human evolution to. It's a fascinating discussion. Okay, the bad joke why do computers make such bad boxers? Well, their bark is worse than their bite. Okay, I'm on with the show because there's no time like science time.
Speaker 2:This week in Science News, we're going to be taking a look at a study that is promising for things like type two diabetes. Type two diabetes, of course, is when your body just can't absorb all of the sugar because you are insulin resistant. It's not really well understood what causes insulin resistance. There are contributing factors to lifestyle and this study was looking at to perhaps help those who have insulin resistance or obesity, which are factors for type two diabetes. This comes from the Reichen Center for Integrative Medical Sciences by lead researcher Hiroshi Ono. The research team dove kind of deep into the genetic and metabolic realms of human poop, specifically human fecal microbiomes. So, yes, the gut was their final frontier. They were looking at insulin resistance and that's something that prevents your insulin from doing its job of regulating blood sugar. As I mentioned, that leads to obesity, type two diabetes and a bunch of other elements.
Speaker 2:What we're finding in science right now is really fascinating. Like our gut plays a big role, it's a host to an army of bacteria, and these bacteria break down stuff that our body really can't digest on its own. We need their help. Some of the things they break down includes stuff, things like carbohydrates, and those carbohydrates can shape our metabolism, and the study and the researchers looked at the metabolites in the feces of over 300 people and they found a clue. They found a connection between specific fecal carbohydrates and higher insulin resistance. They found a link.
Speaker 2:All right, so the first bacteria has a long name called lachno spireae, and that is dominant with insulin resistance and a lot of excess monosaccharides that were found in people who are obese. On the other side of the story, another bacteria or bacteria family called bacteria iodales. Those are associated with lower insulin resistance and more balanced monosaccharide levels. In the lab, the researchers took a specific strain of that, those bacteria iodales, and fed them carbohydrates, monosaccharides actually those ones that are linked to obesity and type 2 diabetes and that strain consumed it. They ate it. And in mice, who are a strain of mice that have high blood sugar levels, that strain of bacteria brought down their blood sugar levels, they reduced their insulin resistance and they kept their carbohydrates in check. So this one specific strain of bacteria was scooping up and eating these sugars, making their sugar levels more normal in the mice. So what does this mean? Well, on the scale of microflora in our body, perhaps this bacteria that doesn't do a good job of munching on monosaccharides, called lachno spireae it could perhaps be a point of research to look for it for folks that are maybe pre-diabetic. And the other strain, the bacteria iodales, could be a candidate for treatment of glucose intolerance. Now, with caution, the study said hold off on just deciding to eat this stuff over the counter. This occurred in mice, which is promising. There's a promising link there in the lab, but they're waiting for clinical trials to test if it's effective in battling insulin resistance.
Speaker 2:There are hundreds of thousands of people that suffer from type 2 diabetes and, as a precursor to that, obesity, so any kind of help in that area is welcome. I've mentioned before that in the last years of my grandpa's life, because of his type 2 diabetes, he went blind and it was really hard on him and his world really shrunk. So I'm just excited for any research that tries to help people that may have this disorder. That's Science News for this week. This week in Pet Science we're going to look at cats puking up hairballs. I've mentioned before that having a cat is new.
Speaker 2:My family never had cats. I never grew up with cats. All of a sudden we have ginger. I love this cat to death. She's super cool. It is shocking when a cat throws up a hairball for the first time and I thought she was going to die. It sounded like she was on her deathbed but Chris was just like, oh, she's just like, she's going to be okay, she's just hocking up a hairball. And, boy, were the dogs worried about the cat, beaker especially, which is really funny because beaker and ginger have like this love hate relationship. But when ginger was having trouble, beaker was right there, like right beside her, like looking at her, looking at us, looking at her, looking at us, like do you see what's going on? Is this creature okay, okay?
Speaker 2:So this study was conducted at the Ohio State University and it found something interesting about sickness behaviors Okay, sickness behaviors and it found that chronically ill cats with feline interstitial cysts or IC had the same sickness behaviors as a cat. That's stressed out because of its routine. I really don't know anything about cat issues so I had to look it up and it's a urinary tract disease. Chronic means it happens all the time they really just have an inflammation of their urinary tract, like perhaps their bladder. They have trouble peeing or they pee too much, they don't make it to their litter box. So we they don't really know what causes it, but that's what it is. That's what this disorder is A cat that's vomiting up hairballs or refusing to eat similar symptoms to this IC, this IC chronically ill thing that cats get and maybe you're like, oh, that's just typical cat behavior.
Speaker 2:But it also could be because the cat is like super stressed out behaviors and cats that you should be worried about, like not wanting to eat, a constant vomiting or not using their litter box that, dad, those are pretty good signals that your cat is sick. But the study from the Ohio State University found that environmental conditions should be first considered before you start diagnosing health problems and cats, and there's an emphasis on their environment. In the study. Cats with IC had their environment enriched, which may, which means that they just had more litter boxes, they had more places to go hide, they had quiet areas of the house. They found that by changing the environmental conditions that cats with IC had their symptoms drastically improved.
Speaker 2:Then they were like wait a second, what about healthy cats that were looking like they're sick and through surveys they found that when unusual external events occurred like all of a sudden there's a new person in the house, all of a sudden you're changing when they get fed, there's new cats, new dogs, you've changed their, you've changed your house around We'll start to show the same symptoms as cats with that are really sick. With this feline interstitial cysts. The study pointed out that if your cat is always vomiting up hairballs or if your cat's just vomiting lots, that is actually not normal and you should look at the stress levels in your cat first. Have you changed anything? As anything drastically out of the order? And if it is, obviously take your cat to the vet if you're concerned. But if it is drastically out of order, your cats could just be reacting to that. The study did mention that if you're at all concerned, a vet will be more than happy to see your cat. But it did make the case that healthy cats can appear sick and sick cats can have left symptoms if they have lots of enrichment in their environment Clean litter boxes, clean areas, lots of toys playing with them, having places for them to hide that kind of stuff For Ginger it's pretty uncommon for her to do that like puking motion or like hawk up a hairball in the time we've had or maybe it's happened six times, although I do love that Beaker is so concerned about our little cat friend.
Speaker 2:That's PetScience for this week. Hey everybody, before we get to the interview section, here's a couple ways you can help the science podcast out. Number one if you're on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating. Tell your friends and share it with people who love science and pets, like teachers. Number two think about signing up as a member of the Paw Pack. It allows you to connect with people who love our show and it's a way to keep the show free. Number three check out our merch store. We have the Bunsen Stuffie 2.0. There's still some Beaker stuffies left that they're adorable as well Warm, cuddly clothes and adorable drinkware. The link is in the show notes. Now on to the interview. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and I am excited to welcome author JJ Jerome, who you have a new book Evolution Ended Out and welcome to the Science Podcast, thank you when are you calling into the show?
Speaker 3:Well, I'm outside of Washington DC, have you?
Speaker 2:lived there your whole life. Like have you ping-ponged around the world, or is that your home state?
Speaker 3:Well, that's my home state. I have ping-ponged around the world, but just on vacations and work trips and things like that, but this is pretty much the area I've lived in my whole life.
Speaker 2:And before we get into some of your book stuff, I have a question I usually ask guests about, and you've written this book. When you were young, were you big into reading.
Speaker 3:Did you write? Actually, I was the worst writer you can imagine.
Speaker 4:Okay.
Speaker 3:When I got my first job they said oh, you're a great engineer, you're a terrible writer. And they asked me to take a community college course in writing, which I actually didn't do. But I was writing a memoir or about my son when he was born, sort of a diary, just to keep track of it, and somehow my writing improved.
Speaker 2:Okay, practice makes perfect. Exactly, that's like most things, though. That's like most things, though I think there are some things that, no matter how much I practice, I don't know if I'll ever become perfect at like drawing. I just cannot draw freehand anything. It just everything looks like a Simpsons cartoon.
Speaker 3:Well, I can't either, and my writing has improved a lot, so I don't want potential readers to think I'm a terrible writer. It's a lot better now.
Speaker 2:Okay, well, let's get to your writing Now. Normally we ask this question near the end of the podcast and it's our super fact question. It's something that you know that when you tell people it kind of blows their mind a bit, but it fits so perfect at the front for a conversation. What is your super fact, jj?
Speaker 3:Well, I think everyone's been reading in the news about artificial intelligence and how worried people like Elon Musk are about it, and actually a lot of the people who've developed it are concerned about it. So my super fact is how long have people been concerned about AI? How long, and it turns out it's been over 70 years, and in 1950, two great science individuals came out with things about artificial intelligence. One was Alan Turing, who developed a Turing test to decide if artificial intelligence was actually thinking, and the other was the great science fiction writer, isaac Asimov, who came out with three rules to keep us safe from robots. But it wasn't the robot part, it was the intelligence part of the robot that he was concerned with. So this is not really a new issue.
Speaker 2:That is wild to think people so long ago were worried about it. But I have heard of the Turing test and I remember as a kid reading books that Isaac Asimov wrote, and didn't he have some rules about robots or something like that? I swear he was thinking about this as well.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. He came up with three laws of robotics which are classic. They were in the collection iRobot, which actually he started in the 1940s. Do you want me to tell you what the three laws?
Speaker 2:are? I don't know them. Off the top of my head, I would probably get at least one of them wrong. But if you got, you go for it.
Speaker 3:The first one is that a robot may not injure a human being or, through its inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 3:The second one is a robot must obey orders given it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the first law. And the third one is that a robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second laws. Those are decent rules actually A long time ago. People have been thinking about this for a long time.
Speaker 2:I love that. That's a great super fact because that leads into your book Evolution Ended. What is it about? What's your book about?
Speaker 3:Well, in short, Evolution Ended is really about the fact that our technology has really changed our society tremendously. In fact, we're in a new phase. We're in a transition based on technology that's really going to change everything about the way we live, work and play and change all the rules of survival of the fittest evolution that we've had since the beginning.
Speaker 2:Well, we're going to get into the sum of that right away. I just have a question Did the idea to write this come about because of events transpiring in the last year, or has this been on your mind for a while?
Speaker 3:Well, it's been on my mind for a while and my background is biomedical engineering and electrical engineering and it's kind of the intersection the old Venn diagram between biology and electronics and digital technology in particular, and as we've grown into digital technology it has made a tremendous difference. Also medical technology, which I studied, and together it's really changed the paradigm for what humanity is becoming and what it's going to be, and we're already seeing the effects even today.
Speaker 2:Now to bridge us to some of the concepts in your book. This is the science podcast, where we mix in animals with science. I think there's a good couple of bridging questions to get us there. So the first one is from your perspective, this may seem like this is out of left field, but why, in the whole aspect of evolution with humans and dogs, why do we care about each other so much? Why do humans and dogs have such a good bond?
Speaker 3:Well, there's been a lot published about this and I'm sure you've had a lot on your program. I've actually heard some of it. I'm going to give it a little bit different perspective. You know, the theory is that people fed dogs and people were useful to dogs and such, and they eventually bonded. But the real question in my mind is why do humans and dogs have such a natural love for each other? And what's interesting is, if you look at a picture of a dog's brain and a human brain, they look a lot different. But if you take a cross section and you look at it, the mid brain, the middle of the brain, looks almost identical. And the mid brain is what developed when we were mammals.
Speaker 3:Dogs are mammals and we're mammals, and it's the seat of our emotions, it's the seat of hormones, it's the seat of chemical feeling good or feeling bad, and in humans and dogs it's almost identical.
Speaker 3:So they have basically a similar hormone structure to what we have and that enabled mammals to communicate nonverbally, to do things for dogs like hunting, impacts and things like that, and able to read each other's emotions.
Speaker 3:Well, the cues that dogs provide us and we provide them the same cues, or things like body language, making sounds you know if it's a bark or if it's a nice cooing sound and eye contact. And these are actually the same cues we respond to in human babies and interestingly, there's been some lab studies one was done in Japan, I don't remember the year that shows that things like eye contact which you know dogs and humans are famous for that actually produces the hormone oxytocin. It's known as the love hormone, and the same was some of the sounds that we share and some of the touching things. You know, petting a dog makes both the dog and the human feel good because it emits the kinds of hormones from that midbrain that make us both feel good. So dogs and humans truly love each other in the chemical sense, which is really the sense that we all perceive.
Speaker 2:Wow, I love that. What a great explanation. So, from the dog brain to the human brain, how do human brains differ?
Speaker 3:Well, the dog brain and the human brain, the midbrains are very similar and there's a hind brain which developed when we were all reptiles, which controls things like eating and finding mates and things like that, mostly through smell. It regulates heartbeat, breathing and that sort of thing. So that's very automatic. The emotional midbrains very similar in dogs and humans. And then the thing that made humans humans really is the development of the cerebral cortex and that wraps around the midbrain and that's the part of the brain that we all see in the pictures. It's got all those ridges that are called Sulkai, s-u-l-c-i and that's the part of the brain associated with sort of purely human activities. So you can logic and reason and language processing and all those great things. So think about Star Trek.
Speaker 3:If you've ever seen Star Trek, the hind brain is controlled by Scotty the engineer. It keeps everything running. The midbrain is that emotional but very motivational, captain Kirk right. And the cortex, the front or the rabber amp part, is Mr Spot. That's the logical, the reasoning part, and we can see in our own lives that often the reasoning part and the emotional part are sometimes at odds and there's conflicts. So that's how our brain is structured. So the cortex gives us the ability to communicate in structured languages, both verbal and written. It allows us to visualize things. It allows us to make plans, to draw things. It allows us, especially the front part, to simulate what things would be like in the future, for example, to think about what our life would be like if we decided to attend college or not attend college. It allows us to have a very good feel for time, which actually dogs are a little time challenged, at least in our perception. So it gives us all these great things which allow us to develop both civilization and technology.
Speaker 2:Right, that's the missing piece. That's why dogs aren't sending rockets to space and us as evolved apes are.
Speaker 3:Right, exactly.
Speaker 2:Planning, execution, trial and error, yeah.
Speaker 3:Exactly and remember civilization. This is part of what we're trying to get through in the book civilization. If you're in a survival of the fittest world, it's pretty tough to survive out there on your own. So first we developed tribes, which was a very convenient and workable unit for survival. There were enough people there to do all the things that needed to be done and that communication helped tribes to work. And it was a small enough unit that any changes in DNA could be propagated pretty easily and the tribe could continue to move forward in that way. So we have tribes that have very different physical characteristics. For example, in Africa we have the Maasai warriors, who are very, very tall, and also in Africa we have tribes of pygmies, because the tribe was a small enough unit to maintain any changes in DNA and basically that helped our evolution.
Speaker 2:So that brings us to some of the crux of your book. How does, or how did, technology affect evolution?
Speaker 3:Well, the first thing is that technology allowed us to develop some of the things that in early civilizations for example, the ability to build a walled city, you know is a great defensive advantage against other tribes or other people who have raided you.
Speaker 3:The ability to develop weapons that again would defend you or help you to kill food if you were out there. A bow and arrow was very useful for bringing game back when you go hunting Things like the wheel. So if you had the wheel you could transport things because you could have carts and so you could bring things back and forth. You could start to develop things like an economy and you could develop technology that would allow rivers to power mills and windmills to power various things. And so this technology was tremendous survival advantage for humans and eventually became more important. The group survival through this became more important than the individual characteristics. So you may be the world's greatest hunter, but if you had no weapons you might not be able to get game. That technology allowed people to be, to succeed at things like hunting, agriculture, economy, trading, all these things. So the technology enabled the group to survive and became more important than the individual's characteristics.
Speaker 2:So the all-stars of the tribe mattered less than the technology, because the technology leveled the playing field. You could be Joe Average and still feed your family with, you know, a rifle, for example, or a bow and arrow.
Speaker 3:Exactly, and this started right, this started the whole thing of leveling the playing field through technology.
Speaker 3:Now, if you fast forward to modern times and right, yeah, in my book I started actually in the 1950s and 60s, which was the actually the golden age of when our technology really started to take off, and you start with things like the development of antibiotics, the development of vaccines, all these various technologies surgery through blood transfusions that allowed real surgeries to take place.
Speaker 3:Almost anybody in modern times can survive if they're in a first world country like the US or Canada, because there's tremendous medical technology that lets everybody get to reproductive age. There's actually reproductive technology that can enhance your ability to reproduce. There's technology to help you meet mates online. You don't have to necessarily do it through the old fashioned ways. There's technologies to allow us to, rather than being a great hunter, to go to the food store in our car and transport the game or whatever back, or the wheat or whatever back to our own homes. We have technology that keeps us warm at night and cool during the day in our homes. We're sheltered, and so, again, the playing field is being level as far as actual old style survival, the fittest evolution goes.
Speaker 2:I tell you, though, when I go to the grocery store when my kids were little and I brought back like tater tots, I think they cheer just as much as when ancient dad came home with kangaroo or something like that.
Speaker 3:I cheer for tater tots myself. Actually, I love these things.
Speaker 2:That's cool. So, okay, leveling the playing field has that's like on the individual stage almost. How has it affected our society, Like you spoke about tribes and community In your book, have you talked about that?
Speaker 3:Yes, and you know, think about the news that we see every day. And the basic unit for humans for most of their history was tribal in nature and then graduated eventually to communities and close knit communities. It may have been communities of immigrants who came over and kind of settled together, or it might have been communities that worked at the steel mill and lived together, but nonetheless we had these relatively large social groups. They cared about each other. They'd interacted with each other. Many times. They didn't lock their doors, neighbors just popped in on each other. They looked after each other's kids.
Speaker 3:They also enforced a set of values and if you go back to the tribal days, a lot of what the tribes did was made sure that the people in the tribe behaved in certain ways that helped to promote the survival of the tribe. They also made sure their members were productive. So if someone didn't want to work in the tribe, they wouldn't let them be homeless, they would put them to work. And if you were in a community, if somebody didn't want to work, they'd get Uncle Jake to give them a job, they wouldn't let them sit around and they'd all interact with these big groups. They have common values.
Speaker 3:Some people call them sacred values. The tribes would tell stories about how they came to be and how people should act, but it was social coherence. And unfortunately, these days and fortunately to some extent because it's progress people don't necessarily live in their communities anymore. They venture out on their own. They don't have the surrounding of a community to help make them feel loved and keep them in line, and a lot of people are socially isolated these days and unfortunately or fortunately, depending on how you look at it Facebook is their new tribe. They're Facebook friends.
Speaker 2:Right the friends upon social media, so that's the new community for many, and there's some truth to that, myself included with our Bunsen and Beaker account. We have thousands of people that follow us, and we've built a community of people, like-minded people, and I know a lot of our followers on a first name basis, even though I've never met them in person. I can imagine if you didn't have that, though, and you didn't have that living where you live, yeah, that would be extremely isolating and awful.
Speaker 3:Right. Think about what we talked about with dogs and humans just being in each other's presence. Eye contact, sounds and things like that evoke those, those hormones that make you feel good, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, all right, so let's get to the elephant in the room. Why is AI such a big topic right now? We've been talking about how the technology is impacting everything I can. Every day, something is going on with AI and it just came for me, like personally, jj, it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, ai was everywhere, like everywhere. Is that why? Or what's the why is it so big right now?
Speaker 3:Well, you know, ai, as I mentioned earlier, really isn't anything new, but probably about 15 or 20 years ago it started to become real and I've actually worked with a lot of this and it became something called machine learning. And the difference between regular programming and AI is basically, very basically, that regular programming, someone sits down and tells the machine, step by step, exactly what to do under any circumstance. Artificial intelligence uses machine learning to learn how things would work out in the world. So a number of years ago we used it, for example, to predict how much electricity a business would use in the future, so that we could make the power grid adequate for those types of things. And that was based on the machine learning what the business had done in the past. Right, okay, you know. There's many other applications, like machine vision, where your iPhone knows what your face looks like because it's learned what facial characteristics are important and which ones to look for. So that was machine learning, and everybody was pretty quiet about that, except the developer community who was working with these things.
Speaker 3:But what we have now is something called generative AI. Yeah, and it's different in the sense that, rather than just learning patterns, it's producing significant output, and the output it's producing is language that people can understand very easily. It's producing, it's able to understand our language, regardless of what our language is very well and know exactly what we mean. It's able to produce artwork that is very similar to what we would produce. So these are things that people can see and hear, and there's no mystery about the output. They can see it and it looks actually intelligent, and, in many cases, ai is now getting the capability to actually logic and reason its way and solve problems sort of autonomously, and so this is looking a lot like human capabilities, and so it's very scary. And remember what we were saying that the thing that differentiates humans was their ability to communicate with language and conceive of things. And here's a machine doing this. So to look at it, it's very scary and there is some reason to be concerned, right?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I thank you for articulating that, because I ponder that sometimes there was nothing and then there was something and obviously the programmers working on this have been bubbling in the background, as you said and then, like chat GPT came out of nowhere and I started to fool around with it and I was like oh my goodness, and I opened my mouth at a staff meeting. I'm a high school teacher and all of a sudden I became the district's AI specialist on chat GPT because I tried to explain it and I was like oh my goodness, but you mentioned that the parts of the human brain that humans have that make us human is AI getting there?
Speaker 3:Is AI thinking like humans, like Well, interestingly yeah yeah, and and, and that's a really good question. And in 1950 Alan Turing, who is a legendary mathematician and one of the fathers of computer science, developed a test for this and it's called the Turing test. And the test was as follows and at the time computers were digital, computers barely existed. I'm not sure they actually even did at the time he came up with this, but the test is this that if you have a computer that can fool two human beings into thinking it's a human, after you know a half hour conversation and this isn't the voice this can be done through text. But if it can fool two humans into thinking it's actually a human, then Alan Turing postulated that you can say the machine was actually thinking and remember this conversation could involve back and forth questions and answers, asking the machine to explain things and things like that.
Speaker 3:Well, it turns out that the Turing test has probably not officially been passed yet, but most people think within the next year or two it will be passed. And that creates an issue about if the machine is actually thinking. Was Turing right? His theory was if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck, it's probably a duck, and so his theory was if it talks like a human and acts like a human. Why isn't it thinking like a human? And so this creates many conundrums, and I'll give you one, and that is if it can be said to be thinking and some people would call that sentience it will have legal rights Once the lawyers get a hold of this. This is going to be considered a living thing, and it may become illegal to terminate its existence.
Speaker 2:So where does it exist, like on a server? Well, it exists in a machine in a computer somewhere, in a server, somewhere. Right, yeah, okay.
Speaker 3:Right, but it's in a computer. But the question is, if this is considered a living thing legally, can you turn it off? And in fact in my book I modified Asimov's laws to sort of take this into account, because these are some of the things we have to think about. And so I humbly made some changes, because Asimov was incredible.
Speaker 2:And if you want, I can describe that to you. I would love to. I'm just fascinated by this conversation, jj, this is amazing.
Speaker 3:Well, asimov, I didn't want to modify much because really he was such a visionary, they didn't need it. So I will tell you. I read his laws earlier. I'll tell you what the modified ones are, and the first one is very similar to his, but it's AI may not injure a natural living entity or, through its inaction, allow natural living entities to come to harm. So that would also include animals, and such. Number two becomes a little more interesting, and that is AI must obey human instructions which Asimov also said, and then I include and not initiate new tasks without human direction. So one thing we don't want AI doing is initiating its own tasks, because one thing can lead to another and form a chain of events that we can't necessarily escape from.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it gets bored and starts making more AI within the AI.
Speaker 3:Right, and already AI has been teaching other AI to do things Okay. So we want to limit what it can do intentionally and not let it have free reign to go do whatever it wants. And the third law actually involves two parts a little bit of what we just spoke about and that is that the AI must self-identify as a non-living entity and therefore may be paused or terminated at will. So we draw the line between living natural entities and any intelligence that was artificially and created it, and feel like they don't actually have the same rights, because one's a natural and one's a creation of man. And, of course, self-identification. They just had a big conference. The Biden administration gathered together all the big tech companies, and one of the rules that they're going to enforce is finding a way for AI to watermark its output in some fashion that people will be able to realize that it's AI and not humans.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and put this out Well. That would certainly help teachers.
Speaker 4:Yes, it would.
Speaker 2:For my conversations with my colleagues. Being the de facto AI guy for the school, I warned them about all this and told them how easy it was to use, and they were just beside themselves by the end of the year, because things happen so fast.
Speaker 3:Oh, my God.
Speaker 2:It changed everything with essay writing right. So yeah, that's cool. That's cool and I love the thinking about how the future is bright and how AI has made my life easier, Like as a podcast host, I can take a scientific article and the AI can break it down into bullet points and make my life so much easier and faster. Do you see beyond, outside the rules? This might be a tough question. Do you see some potential disastrous things in the future with AI if we don't get a handle on some of this not making rules for it?
Speaker 3:I think it's possible, and I think we do need to make rules for it, but every significant new technology has both an upside and a downside. One of the technologies that had the most potential, but potentially the most downside, turned out in my mind to be social media. If it's used for good, it can be tremendous, but we've all seen in the news a lot of the things that it can lead to, and so we definitely need some rules and over time. Most of the time, new technologies are very beneficial. My personal view is that AI is going to be tremendously beneficial to humanity.
Speaker 3:There may be a few things that aren't, but for the most parts, it's going to be a boon to everybody, and it's going to continue the demise of survival, of the fittest evolution and part of the reason we talked about the fact that the individual capabilities are becoming less important. The group capabilities are becoming more important. Well, with the aid of AI, all of us can write a book, all of us can do artwork, all of us can solve certain problems that we may not have been able to solve on our own, and so it's less dependent on individual capabilities and more dependent on the capabilities of the technology. The upshot of this is in the future we may have our own avatars In fact I'm sure we will that will be able to represent us at school.
Speaker 3:For example, you might have your avatar teach a class if you're under the weather, and the avatar will be trained to think like you and act like you and speak like you. And then another avatar may be off keeping an eye on the kids, for example Like multiplicity Exactly. And you know, grandpa or grandma may live forever through their avatar and their grandchildren might be able to punch them up on the computer anytime and say, hey, what was it like when you were a kid and had you meet grandma and you know, was my dad or my mom good as a child? And there's so many things that it will be able to do. But again, our individual characteristics are not going to be pushing evolution forward between that and medical technology. It's going to be our characteristics as a civilization that allow us to survive and prosper in the future.
Speaker 2:So that is very cool, the whole AI avatar future thing. Are you familiar with the TV show Black Mirror? Have you heard of that show?
Speaker 3:Yes.
Speaker 2:So there's one episode that affected me the most out of all of them, and it's like this it's basically a love story, but the characters in it die in the real world and then live forever in a alternative, like as bits and bytes in like a virtual reality, and that there's something very romantic about that. There's something very cool about that, something that may help with grief potentially, which is really tough for people.
Speaker 3:I agree, and there's just this incredible potential for good, and we'll all have to work less hard Again. What I say is that the future for this, because we'll all have so much capability that may not be native to our DNA. In the past, our lives to a large extent were about what DNA we inherited. Were we big and strong, were we the alpha in the group, and that depended on who we mated with and had children with and how we survived and how well we ate and all these other things. But I think with all this technology, first of all, our DNA may stop acquiring what we would consider stronger characteristics. It may just sort of languish, but the good news is I think in the future our lives won't be defined by our DNA, but we'll be able to define them by our own dreams.
Speaker 2:I like that. I don't think I'll make the NBA in the future, though, but maybe my Virtually you might. My avatar might.
Speaker 3:that's right, exactly exactly.
Speaker 2:So, jj, before we wrap up this section about your book, where can people find it? I apologize, is it out yet?
Speaker 3:It's out. You can get it from Barnes, noble, you can get it from Amazon, you can ask your book store to order it and it's out, and it's available and so far the reaction's been really good.
Speaker 2:Well, ok, we'll make sure We'll put some links in the show notes, everybody. So if you're like whoa, I want to get my hands on this book, evolution Ended, we'll make sure there's some links for you in our show notes. Thank you, yeah, as we kind of close out the chat here, jj, one of the questions that I usually ask guests is you've done such an amazing job of inspiring us and educating us about AI and technology. We ask our guests to share a hobby or cause that they're passionate about, something that, outside of maybe your work with this book to kind of Does everybody get to know you a little bit better. Sure, do you have a hobby or cause you're passionate about?
Speaker 3:Well, one cause that I'm passionate about. I'm the chairman of the advisory committee for STEM education in my area, and so that's something probably pretty close to your heart as well.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that we're doing is promoting education for this really new era. So normally we teach the usual subjects, but we've even managed to get a law pass to start thinking about life skills Skills in communication, skills in presentation, skills, in negotiation, how to properly format an email, how an organization works all these things that you don't necessarily learn in school, which you'll need in your life, right, yes, and so what we're trying to do is change the curriculum and make it broader, so that when the kids go out into the workforce, it's not a completely foreign concept to them and they have the skills to take conflict resolution skills, all these things that are kind of they used to call them soft skills, but we call them life skills, and so that's one of the causes that I'm passionate about.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's important. Covid kind of paused all that stuff. It was really hard to. When the kids came back from that, they lost a bit from COVID for sure. I had to teach online and because the kids were online they're not interacting with each other and they lost all of those life skills of conflict resolution for sure.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely, and I think we need them as a society. If you read the news, we need some of these skills.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. Hmm. Well, jj, this has been an amazing chat. Thank you for giving up your time to talk to our audience about your book. I so appreciate it.
Speaker 3:Thank you very much for having me. I love your podcast and I'm thrilled to be able to talk to people about it, and I'd love to come back if you want to have me sometime.
Speaker 2:I could talk to you about AI and your opinions on it for hours, so I will take you up on that offer. You bet.
Speaker 3:Feel free to contact me through the website. Thank you very much and again I appreciate you having me.
Speaker 2:We are proud to have Bark and Beyond Supplycom now as an official sponsor of the Science Podcast. Bark and Beyond Supplycom is a small, family-owned company that started off making joint supplements for dogs, but now they sell toys and treats and a whole bunch of other goodies. Skip the big box stores and check out the amazing deals and awesome stuff at Barkandbeyondsupplycom. You'll see a link in our show notes and use the coupon code BUNSEN B-U-N-S-E-N for 10% off at Barkandbeyondsupplycom. Click the link. Skip the big box stores. How about?
Speaker 1:the little guy. Ok, it is time for Storytime with me. If you don't know what Storytime is, Storytime is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. Dad, do you have a story?
Speaker 2:I do a bit. It's a bit I don't know if it'll make people sad I'm just missing the pets. We had the summer. Chris mentioned this last week. Today I was so busy. I got home and I had to record the podcast. So I got home and I just took some time to just be with the pets. We went on a really nice walk with Bunsen and Beaker. I think the beavers are still working down there, so that's all great, but just leaving them in the morning is very sad.
Speaker 2:I'm used to having I call it the lazy morning. I think I've mentioned this to Chris before. I just so enjoy my lazy morning, like on weekends in the summer, and lazy morning is for me like I get. I still get up at six o'clock or sometimes earlier, and I make coffee and I make myself some breakfast, but I have time just to like sit, sit with my coffee, usually on the couch and beaker cuddles with me and Bunsen is at my feet, and then Ginger comes to say hi, I just like watching Ginger move around the house.
Speaker 2:She's very cool to just watch move. She's a neat creature and everything's rushed now it's just a lot faster. So that's what I'm missing and I think that just shows you how special your time with pets are, cherish them and like when I came home, I sat down with Beaker and she was like looking at me and smiling, and I just rubbed her chest and I just I just told her how special she was. I don't know if she understood it, but I hope they do and that's my pet story, I may or may not have a story.
Speaker 1:I've been trying to think of one, but I've been busy with college. You know what? I kind of have a story. I kind of have like a few small stories, so I'll say all of them. Beaker is always very excited whenever anyone is at the door, but she gets extra excited if I, if like anyone is like coming home and she hasn't seen them all day, and what she'll do is she will jump. When she's excited, she'll jump up. She'll jump up at you and it's different than like, than regular jumping up, because she's like a gopher. She can, like stand on her back legs for a little bit. Oh, and she started jumping onto the counter and putting her paws on the counter and looking up, like our, like our old dog Callan used to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's bad. We have to stop that. I heard that Give over it and I moved her out of there.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, but yeah, beaker will jump. And then not only will she jump, she'll stand on her back legs for a little bit and then she'll go at you. And it's really funny because she makes really funny sounds. Bunsen, with midnight snacks or like late night, moving around the house because I'm hungry or thirsty, he blends in and I've almost stepped on him about every single time that it's been dark in the house and I've been like moving around. Bunsen just blends in and it's terrible because I don't know where he is and I just kind of have to like feel out with my foot, I have to like shuffle forward, so then I don't step on him. I've stepped on him before and it's terrible because he thinks it's his fault. But yeah, bunsen blends in in the dark and I don't want to step on him because it's getting to the point where nighttime is getting closer and closer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that is true, it is getting dark sooner, rapidly.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like next month, it's going to get dark around like 6pm, which is terrible.
Speaker 2:I hate it, I hate it, and you wake up and it's dark. It's just dark all the time.
Speaker 1:Yeah, which is stupid, because it should be getting lighter sooner, but no, it just stays dark. Three little ones. Mom, do you have a story?
Speaker 4:I sure do. My story has to do with beaker and ginger, so what has happened is Jason has been at home. Hello.
Speaker 2:I'm just laughing because I think I know where this is going.
Speaker 4:Oh, okay. So Jason has been doing the podcast at home, which allows me to control when the dogs bark. And this is practically impossible because if someone drives up they'll bark, and we've gotten a few deliveries and they've barked, and also they will bark at nothing. So sometimes it's hard to predict when the dogs will bark, and Bunsen barks very, very loudly. Anyway, I have them under control, they're not barking. Jason's working on his podcast downstairs.
Speaker 4:All of a sudden ginger is on a chair. This is normal, she's a cat, she rules the roost here at home. But she decided to flip herself onto her back and she stuck her paw out of, I guess you would say, the back of the chair, where there's a bit of a hole, and she stuck her paw out. Beaker did not like this. Beaker looked at her and said no and started barking and would not stop barking. And ginger was just then starting to stretch and she stretched her paw out a little bit more, out of the back of the chair. Beaker was having none of it. She'd started to bark and bark and bark. And I'm trying to control the barking because Jason is working on his podcast.
Speaker 4:I have no idea why Beaker was irritated with ginger, that she was laying on her back and stretching out her paw, so it came out of the chair. But it was something that Beaker was intolerant of and was barking about. So I said come on over here. And by the time I moved and the dog moved. Then ginger moved too and the moment was over. But I have no idea why that irritated Beaker so much. And that's my story.
Speaker 2:It's such a passive, aggressive move by the cat.
Speaker 1:Beaker gets irritated by all the little things that the cat does. The cat doesn't do it on purpose, but then once the cat knows that Beaker's mad about it, she does it on purpose. But yeah, that was story time. Thank you everyone for listening to my section of the podcast and sticking it through to the end. I hope to see you all on the next one.
Speaker 2:Bye-bye. That's it for this week's podcast episode. Sorry for the audio at the front to a different audio. I had to record some audio at my school. This week has been bananas, so I used a lesser quality podcast mic at the start. Special thanks to our amazing guest this week, jj Jerome, who blew our minds talking about his new book. You will find a link to his website in the show notes and from there you can find places to grab that Nido complete oh book. We'd also like to give a shout out to all of our top dogs in the Paw Pack plus the P three. That's our paid community that supports our content and the science podcast. Without your support we wouldn't be able to do what we do, and we really mean that. Let's hear those names.
Speaker 4:Alicia Stanley, the herd, wendy, diane Mason and Luke, linda, sherry, tracy Halberg, carol McDonnell, tell and chin. Elizabeth bourgeois, peggy McKeel, mary the Magna writer, holly Birch, sandy Breimer, brenda Clark, andrew Lynn, mary Ann McNally, catherine G, jordan, tracy Domingu, diane Allen, julie Smith, terry Adam, shelley Smith, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, tracy line, bob Courtney Provin, fun, lisa Brianne Haas, bianca Hyde, debbie Anderson and you cheetah, donna Craig, amy C, susan Wagner, kathy Zercher, liz Button and Ben Rathart for science, empathy and cuteness.