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John Burn-Murdoch

👤 Speaker
242 total appearances

Appearances Over Time

Podcast Appearances

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

All right, I would even say both.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

As in, sure, specifically, it doesn't tend to be emphasizing go do your team sport.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

It's more about personal improvement.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

But I think often a huge amount of wellness is not even about the physical at all.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

It's the focus on the mental, which as you've shown in your reporting,

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

ignoring or at least de-emphasizing the physical when we know how dramatic the positive impacts of that can be, I think is quite striking.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

Yeah, I mean, that's exactly the framing I've been thinking about as well.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

So I saw someone, I think, talking about how GPT, LLMs in general could be like, you could have this Socratic dialogue where you're constantly being pushed and guided through the topic, the academic topic that you're working on.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

you're the boundaries of your knowledge are constantly being pushed and you've you've got this sort of it it's like you know like a strenuous workout for your brain um where you're with a personal trainer that you're really being pushed to do your best and i can totally you can instantly see the types of people either of their own volitional because of being pushed in that direction by their parents who would end up using llms like that

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

And then at the other end of the spectrum, and I think this is probably a much larger slice of the population, you've got people who were asked to write an essay about the book that they supposedly read, but they haven't because they were distracted by TikTok.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

Well, why not just get the LLM to write that essay and remove the em dashes?

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

But that's the thing.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

And we don't want to get ahead of ourselves.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

This isn't happening, or there's no evidence that this is happening yet.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

But it does feel like a tool which can simultaneously or could equally be used

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

to enhance your knowledge or to sidestep the need to acquire knowledge.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

That is just a sort of conscientiousness multiplier that could really widen the inequalities and outcomes between high and low conscientious people.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

Sure.

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

So I'll say there's two parts to this as well, right?

Plain English with Derek Thompson
Plain English BEST OF: The Modern World Is Changing America’s Personality for the Worse

So I think one is the sort of anxiety, mental health, well-being bit.