such that we know we are interacting with a chatbot and not a person, and it encourages us to go out and have real human relationships. host: what is their touring test? guest: it is a test that alan turing, an early computer scientists, affectation, came up with. that was the idea that the test of intelligence or a machine, you could have an observer who would read dialogue taking place between a human and machine but not be able to know which is which, and if they could read the dialogue from the two discussions in the conversation, that the human who was supposed to judge this would not be able to tell which comments were written by the human and which were written by the machine so that is the turing test. i write in the book about the

negative impact it has had on the framing of ai because that has become one of the big tests their intervening decades. and couldn't observer not know that the dialogue was written by a machine? with chatgtp, we are there now, and with the latest models from other companies, as well, like google. or from meta, all with powerful models, that you could read a lot of what the right and not be able to tell it was written by ai software. but the problem is it sets up a scenario, and there are two problems, one, is scenario where we are always framing this as an verses machine, and it is when a machine can do exactly what the human can do, mimic what the human can do, and it frames

everything as a machine and exact substitute or software for the human. again, i think a lot of the problems with the technology come from that framing. if we can think of this as a compliment to humans as a copilot, and aid, an assistant, we will be in a lot better shape and we can actually sidestep the risks the technology presents today just by the reframing, but it immediately puts you in the framework where the machine can substitute directly for the person because it can mimic what the person can do so well. around the idea of mimicry, there is also the idea of deception, so the turing test is a sound deceiving the perceiver, and i think there is something ethically challenging about putting deception at the core of what we are saying in the test of intelligence. i think that is a mistake, and i

think computer scientists are better off and we all are, if that test went away. if we did not have the idea of deception at the core of how we are judging intelligence in software. host: the book, “mastering ai: a survival guide to our superpowered future," the author, jeremy kahn, joining us from oxford, england. dave, new york. good morning. caller: good morning. great topic and discussion. my main question is about the applications, but you guys write me off track with this science-fiction discussion. i think one of the terms was coined by a science-fiction author, and you had guys like gibson who came up. they used terms like cyberspace and predicted the internet, so science-fiction is interesting. it definitely has led to interesting ideas, but to get

back to the question, i think that the ai technology is not that far, but we are far away from this being a big problem in society. it is definitely heading that way. the bottleneck with ai i think is processing, so when you get the processing power, tings will change a lot, but i don't think we're that close. my main concern is military application because if you look at the military, the space program, it is funded at military, and i guarantee ai and surveillance is funded by the military. these are the things that were me the most. and for sure china has definitely enabled a lot of energy and resources into developing ai and military applications.

to be honest, we are in an arms race right now with china in ai. i'm curious what you have to say. thank you and bye. guest: there are concerning military applications of ai. and there are worrying concerns around surveillance and how ai can empower a surveillance state and empower authoritarian regimes that would like to do my surveillance. china has a very effective system of mass surveillance in place across the country, and that would not be possible without some ai models. that does not mean they have anything like artificial intelligence. some of the ai models effective at surveillance are fairly small ai models compared to like the language -- large leg which models that power chatgtp because they only have to recognize faces and video

images, and they are good at that, and they can track people across a network of cctv cameras, and that is a use of ai that is here today that we should be concerned about. where i'm concerned about military applications, there are several. one is i think we should be concerned about small drones with thomas targeted capability, where they could be assassination bots because that is very potentially destabilizing. which i think we are getting close to being able to do, but you could modify commercial drone with software that could recognize individual basis and target individual people, the ultimate terry west robin -- terrorist weapon. i think we should have some kind of limits on this technology and the proliferation of this technology. what has happened so far is there has been an attempt by the un to get an absolute ban on

these systems of any size with autonomous targeting capabilities. the problem is that states, including the united states, have locked progress so far on any sort of ban. and what i say in the book is i think it may be time to move away from an absolute ban and start using an arms-control mindset and thinking about are there certain kinds of these ai systems that we can get all the great powers to agree to place limits around? at some of these smaller systems that could be used as a fascination bot might be one where china, u.s., and the other p5 nations can see it in their interest to limit the spread of such technology because it would be destabilizing to all the powers, and that is a case where you might be able to make progress on arms-control. i think there might be others on larger weapon platforms where

the u.s., china, and russia could agree to have some imitations put in place for mutual benefit, but, yeah, the other area where ai has been used, and those are on decision-support, recommending strategies, or tactics down to the unit levels, there are strategies at the higher level, and i think there is great potential with everybody working on that. i think there is potentially some great consequences there if we do not get it right. we are already starting to see in ukraine and gaza where there have been targeting systems deployed that keep you in the loop, so the ai recommends the target to be struck, and human intelligence officers are supposed to review that and sign off, but some cases have reported, particularly out of israel, that where some israeli intelligence officers have told journalists anonymously that they have not only targeting

recommendations from ai, but for them to really do the checks, they get a recommendation but they don't have much idea about why the ai system recommended the target, and they felt they were in a position where they were rubberstamping with the ai system was turning out. i think that is potentially a dangerous situation. international law says that humanitarian law says military commanders must continue to exercise meaningful control over the weapon systems they deploy, and i think there is a big question there about what that means. lots of questions there. in the arms race with china, yes, we are pushing ahead on ai planning capabilities, but china has enacted a strict domestic regulation around consumer use of ai than the united states has. people often used china as a bogeyman for why the united states may not create ai

galatian or enact ai regulation -- regulation or enact it, and china actually has much stricter commercial ai regulation than the u.s. does. just because the u.s. might restrict commercial development from ai is not necessarily restrict the u.s. military from pushing ahead on certain capabilities. i think we need to separate out military and civilian uses and not allow what we feel our national security priorities to prevent us from enacting sensible civilian regulations. host: dee on x pass this question, write your companies are already abusin ai, using it to exploit drivers and riders. so what is your concern about bad commercial civilian actors like uber? guest: i'm very concerned about certain business models that might deployed by companies

developing ai systems, including chatbot's and personal assistance. i'm concerned we will go down a path that we might be seen with social media were some of the ai apps will use an engagement based business model, where they try to keep people on the app, using psychological tricks to do so, and i don't think that is the right model. i worry about that because one of the social chatbot's, people -- there will be a tendency to keep them on there as long as possible with the exclusion of real human contact. the other thing i worry about is in those business models is something around advertising business models where there might not be enough transparency about who has paid for you to be served a certain contact, and we are going to move quickly in the next two years to a world of ai assistance that will go out and do things for us on the internet

and use other software on our behalf, and it will do things like book are vacations and restaurant reservations, and shop for us, and when you have an ai agent act on your behalf, you would like it to do the things that would actually conform to your wishes, and your own preferences. you do not want -- for example, shoes, if i tell my ai agent that i wanted to buy a new hiking boots, i would like it to buy the pair that will be right for me and the style of hiking i do and the trip i take, i do not want them to recommend the nike hiking boots because nike paid openai a lot of money to recommend those services. or at the least, i would like complete transparency if the ai agent says i found a great pair of nike boots that it is recommending that pair because of nike paying something to have that recommended and not because that really is the best thing necessarily for my hiking style or where i'm going. i worry about that.

i think this is a case where the ftc could take action and really try to restrict the business models that the companies use or manage that there be transparency around any sort of pay for serving you some kind of content or recommendations. and i worry very much about those business models. host: we will take viewers who stick around on c-span over to a discussion with government officials from nasa, the commerce department, the faa about the commercialization of safe, what it means for the economy, and before we do that, jeremy kahn, what role do you see ai playing in those big issues? guest: well, ai is extremely important for space exploration, and we will not get to mars or the moon without ai systems helping guide there was space ships, but luckily, i think one

of the interests in the organization, i talk about this, but, they put a lot of thought into how humans interact with ai systems. and they have some interesting weapons on the best way to present information from an ai system to humans and really lessons that every business as they deploy ai should learn. i talk about some in the book. they include having explanations for why nai recommends certain things to the person -- why ai recommend certain things to the person because it increases trust and people are more likely to follow recommendations when they understand the rationale behind it. if you have a system that recommends with no explanation, that is difficult and people turn not to trust it and do not follow the recommendation in many cases. so there is lots of overlap. host: johnson in -- john has been waiting in new jersey, thank you. caller: interesting conversation. i have added your book to my to

purchase. guest: thank you. caller: at the top of my list. this is great. i can remember when the birth of virtual reality came out, starting the oculus rift and they were talking about the effects on the brain, people could not keep their glasses on for longer than five minutes without getting severe headaches. these are all large liquids models. that is basically what we are talking about, where the equality robot or whatever, it is about human manipulation in thought and action. i also read, professor, "physics of the future."

it was a flawed getting through the first 65 pages -- plod get into the first 65 pages of algorithms, but i noticed that it comes down to, well, it can come down to when it comes to science fiction that nobody is saying that those so-called this stupid futures -- this is toby and futures are out of the realm of possibility and that everything you said means we have to keep an eye on what we are doing. but once you start talking about monetization and profiting, it gets difficult. by the way, i listened to a show called "off the hook" on chatgtp, and these are old guys who work in variousthey proved .

they call it. there is so much to talk about. x: a lot there. guest: you product good points. certainly chatgpt can lie. all these large lang which model systems, they can do what they call hallucinate. it's when an ai system tells you something confidently that is not true. right now we have no real solution to this hallucination. we have to be careful how we use ai chatbot and ai systems. there are ways to curtail it to some degree. you may get the systems to work reasonably well. it's another reason why i think -- i'm optimistic about the deployment of ai and a lot of companies. -- in a lot of companies.

if you start thinking about some thing that is going to help people, you still need the human in the loop because the ai system is not yet good enough to give you a 100% accurate answer all the time. you need that person checking the answer. you avoid any scenarios of mass unemployment and you can reap the benefits of the technology. if we deploy this correctly with the right guardrails and think about the design of the systems, there is a chance to expand human potential and have a lot of positive transformational effects. if we don't do those things, i am worried. there are downside and risks and that's why we need to take action now to place guardrails around the technology, have sensible regulation, and think about design choices. if we can create a world will be keep humanity at the center of it and keep human empathy at the core of what we do and avoid some of the real risks of the

technology otherwise entails. host: "mastering ai: a survival guide to our superpowered future." ai editor at fortune magazine.

actor comedian rob schneider is with us to talk about his new book. you can do it. speak your mind, america mr. schneider, what are you doing it? freedom fest. first of all, the libertarian convention. i didn't think it would be necessary to have a freedom in the united states of america. i think there's itself. it would necessary, however it

does, the state of our politics, the state of the. the current administration and our culture does seem to necessitate a festival for freedom. i think that's a i think very telling free speech. have you been in with free speech with the issue of free speech? well, when segun in trouble. but i mean, i say people have problems with unfettered free speech and the whole idea of free speech going back to, you know, the free speech advocate in the those champions. it's free is you're either for all of it or you're for none of it. so you know, as noam chomsky said, you know, joseph goebbels and joseph stalin, they were all for free speech. if you agreed with them. so the free speech, the stuff that they don't like and, it has to be all of it. and it's messier. but, you know, once you start getting into people's feeling

that they you're protecting people who gets to decide what free speech is. so i think it's a pretty simple thing. it's all of it or none of it. and i'm for all of it. from your book in human history ability for humans to have free unfettered speech is remark doubly short rare and for very privileged few. that's true. i mean, if you look at the history of humanity, there's not been a as a real sustained time for this individual particular liberty. and there is there is a reason why founding fathers in the united states made it the first amendment. they could have made guns first, but they seemed to think they wanted to arm the citizenry with something that they could truly defend themselves. and that's with their ability to stand up against potential tyranny and actual tyranny from

own government. so that that's important. a i didn't ever think in my lifetime that that could be under attack, but it is i mean, thankfully for elon musk and great you know journalists actual matt taibbi and michael shellenberger that they were able to expose actual an infringement the first amendment rights of americans through the twitter files where the biden worked directly with google with youtube with. to and facebook to really undermine our first amendment and to censor those they disagree with. and so while people will say you know free doesn't come free from consequences. well it's it's true you know if you work for a company and they don't like what you say, they can fire you.

however, the government can't do it. and the government did do it. and there's been absolutely no consequences for this administration and that and the state of missouri went to the supreme. the supreme court did not defend free speech in its most recent in the united missouri versus the biden administration ruling came out two weeks ago. so i do think we're as free speech is certainly under attack in our own country the very best you write are holding up a mirror society and saying, quote, this is what's happening. let's talk this a little before we accept it as part of our culture. well, i think in the book, i to talk about comedy because i do think that if if something's happening in society that's crazy or you know we need to at least as it's moving so fast now, we need to at least look at this before just adopt it as

part of the culture. you know, before we, you know, whether it's men allowed in women's restrooms or whether it's, you know, limiting and deciding what can be quantified as free speech, we should at least discuss these things and comedians have a good way of doing it because the audience doesn't lie. they laugh or they don't laugh and. if they laugh, you're on to something and then you can maybe take it further. but i will say, like this joke, you know social justice fallacy is thomas sole talks about in his book the fallacy of social justice. it is it built on a house of cards. i mean, the it's a trojan horse term. it sounds good. who would be against justice. but the truth of the matter is it's just redressed form of tyranny that is kind it isn't a kind of it communism. it is control. and it is trying to rein in

people's individual. mr. shaw. mr. schneider. have you gotten in trouble with your comedy? well, i mean, you have to quantify trouble is and have you been shut down? have i been shut down? yeah. i mean, if they've tried to, i'm still here i'm still performing. but i think i comedians purpose and my purpose as a as i've become i mean, i didn't i didn't start out in show to become a disruptor against against news to say it's waves of of of oddness which i call it but yeah i, i can be an interrupter and a disrupter and a questioner, and, but it does come at some costs. i mean, it's not like i'm going to get a beer commercial any time soon. if you put your neck out there, i mean, when oprah decided to support barack obama for president, she knew it's going

to cost her money. when you anytime you put your toe into the political ring, it does. but i feel the higher cost is to not say something, just especially if you have kids and you want your kids to enjoy the same career opportunities, the same freedoms that that i've enjoyed. you've been pretty active social media, especially on x, and here's a recent x post. my family left california and moved to the free state of arizona because individual liberties were trampled in the guise of liberalism, etc., etc. well, they. yes, exactly right. i think that that i think that i know that that individual liberties are trampled on. if if if the government can shut down your business and say, we're protecting you, it's for health. i mean, it's always for health that or safety that they starts. and during the pandemic, i got out of california because i

realized it was time to go and. interestingly, you would think that after the pandemic, the destruction of businesses restaurants, we don't even know the trauma. we won't know for decades, the actual the trauma that children went through to mask two year olds and and knocking out of schools. you know me children out in front of starbucks trying to get trying to either get wi fi on their computer because they didn't have it at home for their schools. this is a pretty sad sign what was happening. so, yeah, i think it the legislatures in these have not done anything to rein in the emergency of the governor. no, i don't think any state has done that. so, in other words, we're set up to do this again. so unless people stand for their liberties and their freedoms and have freedoms. speech was trampled during the

pandemic and i was one of the ones that was silenced, you know, banned. and unless people up for freedom, they're not going to have it. i want to show this post as well. you endorsed robert f kennedy. yes. well, robert kennedy actually talking about issues that matter to people. we have we have two candidates, president former president trump and president biden, who really aren't talking about how the how is this new generation kids going to be able to afford a home? how are we going to bring the interest rates down? how are we going to rein in blackrock and vanguard and state street from buying up so many homes and causing the price of rent to rise in america? why do 54% of children in america children suffer from chronic? we need to get a handle on the fact that our agencies our governmental agencies whether