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
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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?
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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,
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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?
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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.
Bill Kirst: 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
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don't forget to follow, subscribe, rate and review so
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Keep edge walking, keep challenging the way things have
always been done, and keep making magic at work. You.