Amy Lynn Durham: Hey, everyone. Amy here. Welcome back to Create

Magic at Work. This is part two of my conversation with Bill

curse, and in this half, we go straight into the grief of deep

fakes and how they can collapse our trust, and what happens when

AI starts mediating our human conversations. And what do we

risk losing with all of this in art, creativity, and what is the

cost of trading imperfections, human imperfections, for the

perfection of something a machine creates? So let's, let's

get back into this conversation.

Hey, it's Amy. Welcome to Create Magic at Work, where we cast

visions for a future of work, where business decisions ripple

outward to our teams, our communities, the planet and

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place. So let's start making Magic at work.

I had the most interesting experience I have to share with

you that I don't know if others have, I'm sure they have. I for

me, it was interesting. I was in chat GPT, and I needed to talk

to one of my credit card companies. I was negotiating a

lower interest rate. I was just doing, like, some finance stuff

in the beginning of the year, like trying to go through

everything, and, you know, get organized. And I used chat GPT

to help me negotiate. I said, Hey, this is what I want. I'm

going to call this number give me the script what I need to say

to make this happen. And the the experience was so interesting to

me, because the other person was reading a script to me, yep, and

then I was reading a script to them, and then they were reading

a script to me, and then I would type real fast, and then I would

read the script back to them, because I was trying to use the

exact words for their system to get me what I needed. And they

were, you know, just going off what their system was. And I got

off the phone, I got what I needed, and I was like, we

literally were just two robots talking to each other with

human. I don't know what the word is, human in betweens.

You'll probably have a better word for that than me. And I'm

like, What the hell is happening right now? Like, this is insane.

So anyways, AI mediating emails. Ai mediating relationship

conversations. Ai like, what is happening? Because at work, at

work, I'm sure everyone is experiencing this. People are

popping in messages and slack. Copy Paste from Ai, copy paste

from chat. GBT, happy to hop on a call. What helped me

understand this? And it's like, what? What I'm like, I can't

like. It's starting to really, I'm really feeling the

disconnection, and I'm like, just f, just f, ing, type what

you want to say, and let's hash it out if it's disrespectful or

whatever, right? So then, on that other note, we're losing

conflict resolution skills because we're just copy pasting

shit back and forth to each other, and I can't with it, so I

know I just unloaded on you. You're like, I told you, it's

gonna be aI therapy. Well, help us. What do you have to say on that?

You know, it's interesting. It was probably two

years ago. I was interviewed for a podcast, and it the very end

of it, they asked me very similar, like, what do you see

in the future? It was a little little more sort of framed

positively, but and I answered at the time, again, this is two

years ago. We will be in a future where my agent is talking

to your agent and working through all of the work. And at

some point I will pop in and I will check what the agent is

doing, and I will make some, you know, some recommendations, but

then the agent will go back and talk to your agent and and all

this work will be done between non human entities, and only

when the human decides to insert themselves and check for

verification or reliability or consistency will we have

something to do. And I said it from the standpoint of imagine

how much more we could do. Imagine where we could spend our

time if we didn't have to do some of that mundane stuff. But

I had no idea that it would be this soon where what you just

described is taking place automatically. So your story is

very relevant. People do this with their health care. They do

this with their credit card companies. They do this with

their education. And the part that scares me is you were

vacating your body. You were literally going vacuous in that

moment. You said it yourself. I had a script. She had a script.

I said my script. She said her script. You were intermediaries,

but barely, like barely you were typing. You had movement, but

the part that was scary was there was no regard for the

person on the other line that was human, because you were

placing your energy into a non human entity to give you

answers, you ultimately arrived at the decision you wanted Yes,

but how did you feel after that interchange, that exchange? How

did you feel when you got off the call? I'm curious like, what

was your body sensation? Was it I just won? I feel like

vindication, or and was it I feel I got what I wanted, but I

feel like, Was I there? I feel icky. Like, what? How did it

feel to you?

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, I felt good because I got, I reached

the goal that I needed to reach, and I also felt shame that I

didn't connect with like part of me thinks back, I think back to

that moment all the time, just to unpack it, because I am who I

am, and I'm like, that was an actual human on the phone with

me and and it was, there was no humanity in that interaction at

all, and are we okay with that? It felt very It felt very

dismissive of our humanity, and it felt very like we were

discardable. Yeah.

And the part which is even more terrifying now is

people probably know this story that we're reading about mult

book and claw bot, which, if you haven't read about it, I

encourage you to do so, because it's sort of taking over the

airwaves. But in essence, this is what's happening. There was a

there's a gentleman who spun up, essentially a Mac Mini, right? A

small, a small device. He used some of this agentic AI to

create a social network only for agents, so the only entities

that could join the social network were non human entities.

And at first it was a little bit like a parlor trick. It is now

grown where there are millions of agents in this social network

talking with each other. Again, no humans involved. They're

talking with each other. They're creating their own languages.

They're creating their own unions. They're creating their

own religions. They're creating subcultures. Whoa. There's all

sorts of divisiveness in there. And here's where it gets really

freaky. They're creating their own synthetic drugs, and then

they are selling them to people, not real people, but agents in

their social network. So think about how quickly, in the course

of a week, a social network that was set up for agents as a

parlor trick to showcase something has essentially turned

into the worst variations of our shadows as as humans, division,

subdivision, scarcity, even the concept of of narcotics, like in

this, you know, and and having crazy dealers, it's, it's

absolutely mind blowing. And yet, I think it's teaching us

and telling us something about what we're what we're discussing

here, which is this is what happens when you give over your

humanity, and you give over your regard, and you separate out of

all of the things that make us worthy of connecting, worthy of

having discussion. I think your point around debate and

arguments and difference of opinion, all of that is, I don't

even I would normally say atrophying. I think it's more

than that. It's, it's not just atrophying. It's, it's sloughing

away like it's, we're losing it. We can't have. Have debates with

people. We can't have inquiry with people, because the minute

I ask a question, somebody on the other side of a screen

outside of my view is typing in my question to a large language

model, and they're not giving me their answer. They're giving me

an answer. And again, we're right back to where you talked

about with the bird that wasn't real. If that answer that comes

back to me is assumed to have come from your heart space and

from your mind, then I've now got an emotional connection to

you in that Well, no wonder this is causing problems with

people's relationships and friendships and therapists,

because you're you're having the serotonin reaction that we have

in our neurobiological and down the road, you're expecting the

person to behave that way. Meanwhile, they've separated

themselves from all of that interaction. So when push comes

to shove and we have to be ourselves, after relying on this

for so long, the question remains, who am I? And I'm

vacant. I'm vacant out of my body, I've turned over my brain.

There's aspects of my soul I don't remember. And when you put

that in a cauldron of society and all of the things that we

can see in the headlines that is a recipe for disaster, and

that's why I'm encouraging people to slow down right think

about these. Just the examples you've given are so relatable.

Everybody can relate to that. But think about it. The next

time you go to go to that keyboard or go to that phone or

go to just take a beat, take a breath and ask yourself, are

there portions of myself that I'm giving over and at speed and

at scale, I won't remember if I'm not careful, yeah. Hmm.

Amy Lynn Durham: Something came up for me when you were sharing

the bot world, that's what I'll call it, that was created. I

hear from some that they are conscious of how they're

speaking to AI to whatever AI tool they're using, because

they're afraid that when robots take over the world, they'll

come after the people that were rude. I'm asking you the

randomest crazy questions today in the chat, and I have to tell

you, I've had some fights with chat, GPT, like, cut like,

because, like, cuss words, whatever. And when you brought

up that bot world, I thought of that. And then, you know that

80s cult book, silver medal lover,

it's no,

Amy Lynn Durham: oh my gosh, Bill, you have to read it. It.

Do I have it like? I always have it around anyways. Oh, here it

is.

Yeah, silver medal lover.

Amy Lynn Durham: Okay, it's about that. What we're talking

about. It's this really an athlete, yeah, you got to check

it out. Anyways. We could talk more about this, but yeah, but

yeah, what are your thoughts on, on that, on people that are like

mindful of what they're the way they're speaking to these

machines.

You know, there's, there's a spectrum of belief

that people have, which is, it ranges from, it's all about

conservation of energy, meaning these AI, large language models

take a lot of power and water and cooling and so yes, thank

you for there are people on one side of the spectrum. Yeah,

there's people on one side of the spectrum that say it's

better for me to be Curt short, you know, brief, because that

means I'm demanding less resources in its response. So

some people believe that if you put a pleasantry in there, you

put a salutation, it's almost a waste of resources to these

things that don't have feelings, don't have emotions, they want

you to get straight to the point. That's one side of the

spectrum. On on the other side of the spectrum, there are

people that believe again, these technologies are mirrors of who

we are. So if this thing, which is used by 300 million people

every week, as a tool, as a an alongside as a curator, as

someone to check about these things if we rely on it as much

as we do, and we cut out our manners, and we cut out our

salutations and we cut out our greetings, then at some point

we're going to start cutting those out in our real life

existence. And that's Troy. Some because people spend more time

with these technologies than they do, in some cases, with

their fellow humans. So habits form, patterns form, and before

you know it, they start to infiltrate your life. So those

are, those are two different ends of the spectrum. I don't

necessarily worry that when the robots are sort of turned on,

they're going to have report cards of people and how they

talk to them. I don't believe that. I do, however, believe

that the way we interact with these technologies is telling us

both the the height and depth of our humanity. And I'm gonna, I'm

gonna cite an example here in a in a show that I absolutely

love, the remake of Battlestar Galactica. And those that know

it know the story of the Cylons. And essentially, Cylons were

robots that were very indistinguishable from the

humans. And it in the story, it's very, very much becomes an

us versus them, and obviously sort of war ensues between them.

But what's interesting is in the story, the humans after so much

violence and disregard and casting of others, and it was in

those moments that they were reminded how far they slipped in

their own humanity towards each other, right? Everybody was

directing it, you know, at the Cylons and saying, We cannot

treat them the same for these reasons, because they're robots.

Nobody was disagreeing with that. However, what they were

disagreeing with was because they'd gotten to a place where

they were so disconnected from their own humanity, they became

judge and jury. Then they started treating their fellow

humans with that, those twinges of disregard and that was

problematic. That was where they actually their society, started

to come undone. So my fear is that habits we use every day,

depending on how we talk to these devices, it's going to

creep into our day to day interchange with fellow humans.

I don't want to lose manners, I don't want to lose greetings, I

don't want to lose debate. I don't want somebody telling me

every idea I have is the best idea. Like, I'm not a fan of the

hyperbole. I'm not a fan of the superlatives. I'm not a fan of

the sycophant right? Part of this technology. I like to stand

in the tension, and these tools are sort of wired to make me

addicted to the pleasantries. I don't want that. I also don't

want rude and crude. I'm definitely not. I've never used

grok. I will never use Elon's technologies, the things that

are happening on the platforms, the way that they are using them

to do the nutifying right to take people's pictures and

remove clothes and, the eroticism that has been

introduced in some of these things, I am not okay with that.

In fact, I thought that was a line that they crossed that they

will never be able to get back. And they did it for money. Let's

be clear. They did it because, again, when push comes to shove,

if you really push people to the bottom of their brainstem to the

lizard part of our brain, you know how they'll perform? You

know how they will show up? You know what addiction looks like?

You know what power structure is they're playing to that, to

that, to that aspect on us. And I really wish we would wake up

and and say, Not today, not on my time, not on my watch, not on

my dime. And people have choices. You know, it's a small

choice, but I've drawn that line. I will never interact with

any technology that has been put together by Elon Musk, because I

look at who he is, I look at who he's become, I look at the

choices he's making, and I look at what happens to us as a

result of using those things. That's just my individual

choice. That's my rebellion, if you will, to hold on to what I

have. It's interesting. I'll just share this one last thought

with you, and I'll pause. My dad read my book, and my dad's 83

and he said, I have questions, Bill for you about the book. And

I said, Sure, let's, let's go, you know? And I was shocked. His

first question out of like 200 something, because we talked for

like two and a half hours. It was beautiful. His first

question was, you know, Bill, I noted that you not once

mentioned Elon Musk in your book. I kind of feel that was

intentional, but I'm not sure, Was it intentional? And I just

smiled, and I said, Yes, it was, and he understood exactly what I

meant, right? Which is I believe that those weak. Of space and

pages and voice and breath to we're kind of giving our power

to them in a way regard, as we've discussed, and it was just

very clear in my body, like, do not give time, space, Grace,

page, print, voice to this person while his story is unique

and fascinating. I'm I just did not need to give any more to it,

because I don't feel the contributions are helping us go

in the right direction.

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, that's so tight, like timely in our

conversation, because I was literally going to ask you, what

do you fear we've already lost, or Or what do you fear we will

lose and realize it's too late. And you, you were speaking to a

lot of that. But if you could sum up, you know, one or two

things where we are today. What do you feel like moving forward

today? Will realize, oh, shoot, it's too late. We've lost it.

Yeah, I feel the arguments that we were having,

the things I was losing sleep about years ago. Were things

around the arts, were things around creativity. Were things

around the movies. The movie strikes, right? The studio

strikes, the actor strikes the we talked about the Olympics, we

talked about journalism. I feel like we've we've lost on these I

feel like the the deal that Disney struck with open AI, a

billion dollar deal, I feel like we lost, and we lost the magic

and the distinct and divine, unique creativity that comes out

of a Disney animator, I feel like we've lost the the beauty

and imperfection and ballad that comes out of a songwriter when

they're just tinkering around with keys and instruments and

ideas and words, because now we have suno, and People go into

suno and they put in their poetry or their words, and they

say, I'd like it to sound like this artist and this beat with

these percussions and and you can get 86 variations thereof. I

know people who are very excited about that. Again, if you're not

an artist, and you've always dreamed of that. It is an

entryway, for sure, it unveils so much that you can bring your

words to life, and you can do a first draft and give it to a

songwriter. But we've lost the magic. We've lost the mystery,

like I think about producers like Linda Perry, you know, lead

singer of four non blondes back in the day, but one of the

greatest producers of Christina Aguilera and pink and and you

think about the the container that she created that allowed

these artists to fold into themselves in a vulnerable way,

to then expand and give us some of the greatest music and art

and pieces that literally helped people like us heal at a point

in our life. And I think we've we're losing that. We're losing

the ability to defend and protect those containers of

imperfection. If everybody goes into suno and puts their poem in

and gets incredible sounding music, but it is not a human

singing it. It is not a human performing the music. It is not

a person beating on those drums for percussion, and those things

are put on Spotify, and those things are put on YouTube and

like you with the bird and your friend, there was a point where

there was an artist that I thought I was following. I loved

the timbre of his voice, I loved the lyrics. I was like, wow,

this is a poet I have not heard from since listening to

Secondhand Serenade, right? A group, a gentleman I used to

listen to years ago, and I learned three weeks later,

completely AI generated. This person doesn't exist. It's a

group of people that collaborate and tug on the heartstrings of

people like me, and they put it in Spotify. I grieved. I was

angry. I was mad. I felt duped. Nowhere in there did it say, AI,

I think it should have. And then somebody pulled me aside and

said, Bill, you're really upset, but those songs you really

enjoyed, did they help you in a way? And I said at the time,

yeah, but now I feel like it was a contract that's been broken,

and I can't get that trust back. So for me, I'm terrified. What's

going to happen the arts, the I feel like the movie houses. I

feel like the studios. This whole debate over Netflix versus

paramount for Warner Brothers, there's a reason they want to

buy Warner Brothers. It's 100 years of movies, 100 years of

movies that were made by humans before all this existed. What?

Are we hungry for? Amy, we're hungry for nostalgia. We're

yearning for what is real. I listen to, you know, what do I

do now when I drive into my commute, I pulled out my old

case logic, which had hundreds of CDs from when I was in high

school, and I'm choosing to put the CD in the car, yep, and

listen to the CDs on the way to work, because it's a container

of nostalgia in a world that is showing me all the stuff that's

not real. I'm like, You know what was real? Me listening to

Lisa Loeb on the CD in high school and feeling the angst of

adolescence that was real. And if I get to do that for 20

minutes in a car on the way to work and 20 minutes on the way

minutes on the way home. I'm a better person for it. So

interestingly enough, that's what I'm grabbing on to books,

CDs, vinyl, right? We talk about the imperfections, the clicks

and the pops on a vinyl is, oh my god. It's like chef's kiss.

And if you listen to things on Bluetooth and Spotify and Apple

Music, it all sounds air gapped now, like, Where, where is,

like, where's the imperfections to where we started. And I feel

we're losing this. And so every act that I'm choosing to do is,

is, is pulling one more thread. And at the end of it, I hope I

can make, as we talked about it, the analogy, I hope I can make a

quilt or patchwork of some sort, that no matter what's happening

in the world around me, I can wrap myself in that quilt and

know that I'm okay, like, these are my bones, these are my

limbs. This is my heartbeat. These are my tears. And I don't,

I don't I don't lose that.

Amy Lynn Durham: Yeah, it's so I can I can see the the I can see

the the humanity ripped out of everything you're talking about

when, even when we're trying to find something to watch on, like

the art of storytelling is just crap. Like, I don't know what's

going on, but and there's nothing original coming. They're

trying to remake the old stuff you were talking about that we

loved and that we held on to, and then they're just pumping

out remakes of that with nothing original. And then it's, like,

washed over with without any of the the gaps or the there's,

it's just, it's off, is just what I'll say.

So with everything we've

Amy Lynn Durham: talked about, I could literally talk to you for

eight hours. We probably need to do like, a 20 million series

because I didn't even get to half of the stuff I wanted to

get to. But it's fine, because with everything that we've

talked about so far since last time I asked you, what can you

sense, but not yet see, I want to ask you in closing, what does

it look like if you extend your vision even further into the

future? What do you see if you do that like, like, like, have

your vision or what of what you can sense when I see but then

even extend it further into the future? What can you share with

us on that?

Yeah, I think when we talked last time we we sort

of orbited around essentially what I was almost calling like a

reverse Renaissance, and we anchored on the that which is

crafted by humans. I think what's going to be interesting

is, if I take it further, I think there's going to be an

extension there of so it's not just that which is crafted by

humans, but I think it's going to be about the ingredients that

actually people pull into crafting anything. And so to

your point around what is the sources of inspiration, right?

I'm, I'm gonna extend it further, but in some sense, I'm

actually go deeper by doing so and asking, what are the sources

of inspiration that people go to in order to excuse me, the voice

goes, because we're talking about things that are emotional.

We want energetic, but, yeah, we're not editing it. People are

going to hear it. Proof of Life, folks, proof of life. I think

people are going to go deeper to the wells of inspiration in

order to craft something that lasts longer, right? And so if

we think about the technologies that we're. Using every one of

them have a shelf life. I mean, at some point the money is going

to run out, and at some point a large language model is just not

going to be there to respond to you. And then what are you left

with? What are you left with to turn to? What well of

inspiration Are you going to turn to to to then form your

words, or form your your woodwork, or your clay, whatever

it is you're going to want to touch something, make something

that has a lasting legacy. And in a way, I feel like we're

almost going to have, you know, think about it when people

discovered an artifact from the Paleolithic era, right? And they

said, Oh, wow, this was made for this reason at this time. And

what were they going through at the time, right? And we have the

luxury of history and knowing and artifact and record keeping.

I don't know what that will look like in the future, because if

we're putting all of this artifacting and record keeping

and discussion into these devices, into these large

language models, and at some point the power turns off. Well,

you don't have access to it. What do you have to show for all

of this? That's why I want I want illustrators. I want

musicians. I want people that, and I'm seeing this

interestingly. I'm seeing this. I'm seeing friends of mine

relearn piano by ear, and they're filming themselves, and

they're playing and they're making mistakes, and they love

it, because people are reaching out to them and saying, You've

inspired me to tap into a deeper Well, I'd forgotten, to your

point, around nostalgia, I had forgotten. This meant something

to me when I was right. Somebody recently reached out to me and

said they've started to go back to watch old classic movies and

musicals and things where they knew when the light hits a

certain scene, you knew. You can imagine what it took to make

that happen, the costumes, right? I think about people who

design sets, and they're terrified, because you can just

AI, generate something in the background, but we know the

difference. And I think if you fast forward all of this, I

think our discernment, our filter for understanding what's

real and what's not, is only going to get better, and at some

point like that, people are going to stop, they're going to

stop coming and then, and then you're left with, now what? So I

don't, I don't want to end on a dystopian and so I want to, I

want to leave it based on the fact that it's I'm giving people

permission to go for a deeper Well, in all of this,

Amy Lynn Durham: yeah, so good, so good. And I think you're

leaving us with questions, which is good rather than, I mean, we

talked about a lot of answers too. But I think this

conversation is leaving us with questions of, how do I want to

be in my day? Am I going to pause and question what I'm

putting into this machine right now, how I'm behaving when I'm

interacting with another human, all of these things, and this

conversation was so deep, but my takeaway is more questions in a

good way, and not throwing my CD player away. Yeah, my DVD

player. No, this was so amazing. Bill, okay, I know. I really

want to pull the magical edge Walker cards into the end of our

conversation, because we're both, you know, edgewalker

facilitators, and we one of the characteristics of an edge

Walker is to look to the future with creative, positive

visualization. And so I want to leave everyone with some light

and some hope, and I think we did in this conversation. So let

me pull a card from the edge Walker deck for us and just kind

of give everybody listening and you and I an affirmation from

Judy, dr, Judy Neal that authored them to take with us

surround. Surrounding this. I just got the chills.

Oh, I'm all chilled up over here. Okay. Bill one, two or

three, three, we got connecting, which is an edge Walker skill,

connecting the ability to value others, to see their uniqueness

and to draw out the best in them. Oh, wow. I am curious and

interested in people who are seemingly different from me, and

I enjoy reaching out to them.

And, wow, if that's not spot on, right? We were

talking about, yeah,

Amy Lynn Durham: it's beautiful. I can't I mean, it's just so in

line with our conversation. I'm curious and interested in people

who are seemingly different from me, and I enjoy reaching out to

them, like, put the machine away, talk to someone, make a

mistake in your language, if you hurt someone's feelings on

accident, learn how to conflict resolve as a human being. Try

not asking chat GPT first, and see what the hell happens. Is

what I Yeah, that's a whole other episode that hopefully

maybe we can talk about again. But Bill, oh my gosh. Just thank

you so much for your time. I know how busy you are. I know

that all of the amazing things that you're doing, and I'm just

really, really grateful and appreciative that you donated

your time today to share your thoughts with all of the Create

Magic at Work community on all of this. So thank you so much

for being here.

You're very welcome. It's an honor, and I hope this

episode finds its way to those it needs to be heard by.

Appreciate it. Yeah.

Amy Lynn Durham: Thank you so for everyone listening, Bill's

Book link will be in the show notes as well as our prior

conversation. And if you don't follow him on sub stack, you are

so missing out because one of the most amazing writers I have

ever read, and he has these incredible dreams that he then

puts pen to paper for all of us to experience. So check him out

on sub stack as well and again, Bill, thank you for sending some

magic to everyone today. Thanks be well.

I want to thank each and every one of you for being here as we

explore what it really means to Create Magic at Work. If this

conversation resonated with you, or if someone came to mind while

you were listening, share the episode with them. Help others

who are looking for these types of conversations find us and

don't forget to follow, subscribe, rate and review so

you're notified when the next episode airs until next time.

Keep edge walking, keep challenging the way things have

always been done, and keep making magic at work. You.