EP 953 AI’s Coming Disruption Will Change More Than We Can Imagine
At the moment many of us see and use AI as a quicker and more comprehensive search engine. Truth is, it really is a game changer. So much so that our guest, Fred Voccola, author of “The Coming Disruption: How AI Will Force Organizations to Change Everything or Face Destruction,” says, (are you sitting down), AI is the single most important development in the history of our species. He posits that it will have more impact than the steam engine, electricity, penicillin, and the Internet itself. Recently, Elon Musk said that AI is good enough TODAY to replace half of white-collar jobs, and he argues that it’s ‘pointless’ to go to medical school except for social reasons. He suggests that robots will being doing surgery at scale within three years. Is all of this imaginable? Or remotely possible? And talk about societal dislocation. All this change based on something that doesn’t require huge investments in new infrastructure but simply changes in leadership and adoption of what is available to us. And it’s all coming at breakneck speed. Are you ready? Find out today on this podcast.
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Do you think very often, if at all, how it is that when you turn on a light switch in your home, instantly there is light. Given that there are so many factors upstream from your home–generating the power, transmitting it, distributing it and, finally, consuming it, the whole thing is pretty miraculous. And we’ve heard time and again that there is always a fragility to it. We have aging infrastructure, increasing demand (never more so than now with the oncoming data centers for AI), cybersecurity threats, climate change impacts and the integration of renewable energy sources. And it’s all driven by 11,000 power plants, 3,000 utilities, and more than 2 million miles of power lines. In 2016, a great book which I’ve kept on my shelf at home, came out. It was titled “The Grid: The Fraying Wires Between Americans and Our Energy Future” and was written by Gretchen Bakke, PhD, explaining the history and current (no pun intended) status of the grid. I interviewed her ten years ago on radio and thought it was time to update that important discussion. So here it is.
Have you ever started working on a puzzle and realized you had the whole picture wrong and needed to start over again? Well, our guest thinks that we’ve been so focused on ‘managing tons’ of emissions, with regulatory and accounting nightmares like offsets, that we’ve lost sight of the goal of developing a new economic system built on a different energy platform. Given the political muscle of the oil, now energy, companies, the desire to move incrementally into more green energy alternatives may be understandable. This moment, though, may be the time, with the numbers getting even worse, to jettison the old model of multilateral agreements and start putting green energy asset holders in the driver’s seat. It’s not an easy assignment, but Jessica Green, our guest, a Professor in the Department of Political Science and in the School of the Environment at the University of Toronto and the author of “Existential Politics: Why Global Climate Institutions are Failing and How to Fix Them,” explains why the transition in thinking is critical at this stage.
There was a time when our guest was a diversity skeptic. He actually believed that Justice Clarence Thomas’s thinking on the matter had some validity. Then he began to explore the history of the concept and became a true admirer of the benefits that diversity brings to academic settings, the workplace, science laboratories and all manner of activity. From that he began a thoughtful examination of the science behind the benefits of having previously excluded groups as part of the conversation and decision-making process. And while some argued that simply by using the Socratic Method of challenging convention you could get enough diverse opinions, he began to recognize, as other scholars like Wilhelm von Humboldt and John Stuart Mill did in the 19th century and Charles Eliot, Archibald Cox and Lewis Powell did in the 20th century, that you actually needed people with different backgrounds and life experiences to provide the rich diversity of thought that resulted in better scholarship and outcomes. America’s adaption of diversity in action over the last 50 years seemed to suggest we understood that, so now why the backsliding? We discuss this all today with Berkeley law professor, David Oppenheimer. He is the author of the new book, “The Diversity Principle: The Story of a Transformative Idea.”
Here’s a podcast subject I bet you’ve never thought about. It did briefly occur to me as I continue to get birthday reminders from Facebook about friends I know who have died. What happens to your digital life when you pass away? Unlike previous technologies to preserve the dead–cemeteries, archives, photo albums, home movies–the internet is no longer something you visit and leave. Many people will leave behind a daily account of who they were and what they were thinking. The vast necropolis is being built daily and the number of dead, say Facebook, accounts will over the next several decades outnumber social media accounts of the living. This fact poses previously unconsidered concerns: who owns this material? what policies dictate its use and maintenance? will an ad-sponsored service have as an interest in maintaining those accounts when they are the digital record of people who no longer can buy products? In 2019, then Twitter announced it would purge those accounts that had been inactive for more than six months. What followed was an outcry by grieving relatives and friends and the company rescinded the policy. Our guest, Carl Ohman, a digital ethicist at Uppsala University and the author of “The Afterlife of Data: What Happens to Your Information When You Die and Why You Should Care” joins us for a fascinating topic which goes beyond most checklists people have set up in preparation for death.
Step out your front door and feast on images of the natural world that when studied provide us with such great joy and wonder that our spirits rise and all of our self-doubts and social anxiety melt away. Yet, since the pandemic when we became inert and homebound and relied on our small screens for connection. The lag from that moment, coupled with the many choices for entertainment in-home and the fear of confrontation with others about our partisan divide, make the safe choice the one many of us choose. And, of course, that results in the loneliness epidemic that a past Surgeon General said was a major health problem in the country. How do we cure it? Referring to the opening sentence in this podcast description, step out your front door and watch and appreciate birds, smell the ocean air, lose yourself in the wonders that abound. Feel small. Lose a sense of time. Get the chills. To discuss all of this with us is Val Walker, author of her newest book, “Healing Through Wonder: How Aw Restores Us After Trauma and Loss.”
Social Security has been in the news lately because DOGE had a particular interest in finding waste, fraud and abuse in a system in which .05 percent of all funds are used to administer the program. It appears they found none, despite initial reports that 150- year -olds were still on the rolls. The more important news about Social Security is its inability to continue providing full benefits as of 2033, when absent Congressional action, those benefits would dip to 77 percent of what most recipients are now receiving. Politically speaking, it’s inconceivable that this will happen. However, given the fact that we have now three workers for every retiree, that ratio threatens the financial viability of the program, absent FICA tax increases, changes in vesting times, reducing benefits for future retirees or some combination thereof. To discuss all things Social Security with us is Martha Shedden, President of the National Association of Registered Social Security Analysts (narssa.org or rssa.com).
If you go back and look at the history of how Blacks in America have been limited in their pursuit of the American Dream by way of home ownership, the record is staggering. Historically there have been racial covenants, redlining, predatory mortgage lending, blockbusting, urban renewal and now we can add a new pernicious tool: property tax foreclosures. Our guest, Professor Bernadette Atuahene, the author of “Plundered: How Racist Policies Undermine Black Homeownership in America,” describes, chapter and verse, how this practice has been done in Detroit, the focus of the book’s case study. Yet, this tactic, along with the others listed above, have been commonplace throughout the nation. You will find in listening to this podcast that our guest is clear-eyed about the many machinations which have grown the wealth disparity in our nation. The transfer of wealth from one generation to another is a product of home ownership: thus, the vast differentials between races. She will acquaint you with terms like ‘structural injustice’, ‘predatory governance, ‘ and ‘acts of legal violence.’ Many practices we would all find objectionable in this age are hiding in plain sight. After listening to this podcast, you will be much better equipped to identify them. And like the scholar/activist our guest is, perhaps, you can do something in your community to remedy them.
I must admit that while I took a deep dive into Michael Shermer’s new book, “Truth: What It Is, How to Find It & Why It Still Matters,” I was not certain in what direction I would take the interview. It raised so many questions about this moment when many believe that you can’t believe anything you read or see in the media and that politicians feel the bigger the lie, the harder it is to refute. So how do you test for veracity, when you’re told there are such things as ‘alternative facts?’ It’s so confusing. However, his great personality and sharp intellect were on full display and off to the races we were discussing scientific truths and how they’re tested and a range of other truths from spiritual to political. Shermer, in addition to being the author of a fascinating new book about almost imponderable subject, is the publisher of ‘Skeptic’ magazine. So why not start by asking what differentiates a skeptic from a cynic and then, well, we were off and running.
You may have heard that there is a new food pyramid in town. In January of this year, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services released an updated version of the Dietary Guidelines for Americans. The 10-page document is a major change from the one published five years ago. The new emphasis is on boosting protein and healthy fats, like eggs, seafood, red meat, dairy, beans and nuts. It still wants us to load up on veggies and fruit and to choose whole grains. Pasta, white breads and other carbohydrates are further diminished on this pyramid in favor of more whole foods and fewer processed foods. Saturated fat, villainized in previous pyramids, has been resurrected in this one. To discuss the shifts is Gary Taubes, an accomplished science writer who has written books, including “Good Calories: Bad Calories”, “Why We Get Fat” and “The Case Against Sugar.” He knows his stuff as you can tell early on in this discussion.