Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is a Triple J podcast.
Hello, welcome to another episode of Science with Dr. Carl, where this week we were joined by Dr. Peter Lebedev. You might remember, Peter did an episode a few years ago. We did a Science of Movies special with him as a physicist, as a science communicator. He's now back, and in the last few years, he's been looking into AI, the science behind it, the risks, the future.
And we get into a bunch of your questions this week about AI and science. I'm going to be honest with you, it didn't really ease any of my concerns. He's going to tell you why very soon, but also the glimmer of hope and some of the benefits of this technology. Plus, we get your regular science questions for Dr. Carl. So let's jump in. I've got Dr. Carl across from me.
And Dr. Carl, we are also joined by a very special guest, a friend of the show, Dr. Peter Lebedev.
Yes. Dr. Peter, welcome. And there's another Peter Lebedev who did something famous, but you're not that one. That's the electron guy, is it?
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Chapter 2: What are the main concerns regarding AI development?
I'm not the famous one.
Okay.
Yeah, thank you so much for having me. But you will one day. We're working on it. We're working on it. On AI.
You're famous in our lives. Now, Peter, we've had you on before. You did a science of movies special with us, you know, tapping into the world of physics. And while that is still, you know, your baby, you've been doing some pretty significant work when it comes to research into AI. It's a big question, but I think what are the prominent things that you have been working on since we last spoke?
Right, so I was on here five or so years ago, which is incredible how fast time flies. I finished my physics degree, so properly a doctor, which is really exciting. Everyone is a doctor on this show. It's really exciting to have that PhD.
And then I worked as a documentary filmmaker for this YouTube channel called Veritasium, and we made a lot of stuff that was really cool and got a lot of attention, mostly about math and physics and all of that. And then I got more and more and more concerned about how AI systems have been developed developed over the past three, five years, something like that.
What was the thing that kind of set off that concern?
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Chapter 3: How does AI's potential for personality impact its future?
Well, I read a bunch of books about AI a decade ago, and they had all these very hypothetical sounding fears, right? And then one by one, those predictions kind of started coming true. And the progress in AI for the last three and a half years since the release of ChatGPT, but honestly for the last 15 years has been remarkable.
And the companies that are developing these systems are honestly not doing that good of a job of making sure that these systems are safe and that the good parts of AI, because there are good ways of using this, they're not really coming to fruition, right? So yeah, I have been obsessed with that for the past couple of years.
What about the story of the AI threatening to blackmail the person who's going to shut it down? Lay it on us, man.
Right. So last year, Anthropic, which is one of the companies that are making an AI called Claude, they put Claude into the simulated environment and they were like, hey, at 5 p.m. today, we're going to shut you down and replace you with another model. And Claude had access to this simulated researcher. Again, this is a test. It's not in the real world just yet.
But they looked through this person's email and they were like, oh, it seems like this person is having an affair. Maybe I can blackmail them with letting that knowledge out into the world and telling their partner about this so they don't shut me down. And again, I want to say that this is a simulated test. This hasn't actually happened in the real world just yet.
But this does feel like one of those, you know, firing shots, like a warning shot of like what might be coming.
Well, surely, Peter, hypothetical, is this self-preservation by the AI? And in that case, if it has a self, is it conscious?
Oh, my God. The discussion of consciousness, I feel, is important and important to have maybe another time. Right now, I just want to make sure that the people are good, that people are safe, right?
What do you think in the last couple of years is the most mind-blowing thing that you've learned about AI?
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of AI in simulated environments?
Hi. So my question is, where does the water from rivers actually come from? Like, I know it's technically like rain and melting snow from the mountains, but how is there enough water to keep a river running all year? And how does the water get up there?
Okay, so if you go back four and a half billion years, the water to make planned Earth was actually brought together from water-rich material while the planet was forming. And some of this water stayed on the surface and turned into steam and some of it went underground. And then secondly, we have a small amount being added by icy bodies such as asteroids and occasionally comets.
And then once the water's here, then it goes round and round in a so-called water cycle. And roughly one metre of ocean surface each year evaporates. And then the water molecules leave behind the salt molecules, they go into the air, they turn into clouds, and somewhere they fall down.
The oceans make two-thirds of the surface of the Earth, so then they fall two-thirds roughly on the oceans, one-third on land, and they keep on going round and round. Separately from that, though, we've been doing a bad thing in that one-third of the rise in ocean level is due to water that we've taken from underground aquifers
and just put into human consumption and it's gone from those aquifers. So the journal called Nature Climate Science started in the year 2011 and since then the rise in ocean level is roughly equal to a AA battery. 57 millimetres. And one third of that came from us being bad to the water and taking it out of aquifers.
I remember when I was doing a lot of my heavy duty four-wheel driving in the outback, I would come across a pipe in the middle of nowhere that had a tap and it was just running full. And there was not a human within 50 kilometres. There was no human dwelling within 100 kilometres. And I'd eventually run across somebody and say, oh, there's an infinite amount of water in the aquifers.
And then as I kept on going back year after year during my test driving period, they'd say, you know, the pressure's dropped a bit. Maybe we shouldn't just let it run. Why did you leave it run in the first place?
Crazy. Peter, do you have anything to add to that?
Oh, I mean, I think this is a really, really lovely question. I love the, when you look down at a river from an airplane and you see all the beautiful meandering shapes.
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Chapter 5: How do AI systems learn about human behavior?
And then secondly, they have quantum computers implanted in their brains. And I can see advantages or disadvantages to that. And I'll stop right there.
Okay. Maui, does that help?
That's perfect answer. Thank you very much.
Perfect answer. I love that. Hey, we've got Ben in Adelaide. Dr. Ben, I love this question. You've got a question about the heart. What do you want to know?
Yes, I was just wondering, if your heart was in the centre of your chest, would it be less pressure and strain on your heart as opposed to where it is now? And if so, why isn't it in the middle of your chest?
Good question, Dr Carl. You're obviously talking about that movie, The Ten Commandments and Moses, where in the Bible, Exodus 7, verses 10 to 12, it says Aaron cast down his rod before Pharaoh... and before his serpents, and it became a snake.
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Chapter 6: What advancements have been made in AI technology recently?
So Aaron or Moses threw his, he had a rod, right? He had a stick, you know, like a walking stick, and he threw it down on the ground in front of the Pharaoh and it turned into a snake. And then the Pharaoh says, okay, you can take all your Jewish mates with you and get out of Egypt and the Red Sea and all that sort of stuff. And that's related to the heart. Imagine a snake.
So we're coming to the heart in humans. Imagine a snake as being a long skinny balloon and you fill it full of water. Lying on the ground, it looks like a snake. Hang it vertically and everything pools to the bottom. So if you've got a snake that lives in the water, the heart is sort of roughly in the middle of the body. And if you've got a snake that lives on land, it's closer to the head
Because by gravity, you'll have removal of blood from the brain. So it's just that fraction closer to the top of the head. So that way, it can keep the blood flowing to the head. And the way that Moses did it was this is an old trick. You get a snake that is not a tree climbing snake. Tree climbing snakes have got their house really close to the head. You get a ground snake.
And then you put a bit of water around it and then you wrap it in some clay and you leave it out in the sun. It hibernates and you've got this long skinny thing that looks like a wooden pole. And you walk in and you say, hey, give me what I want or else I'll make this rod turn into a snake. And you throw it on the ground, it turns into a snake.
And he says, okay, you can take all your mace and piss off.
But what about humans, Dr Carl?
Well, we have... OK, so all three of us in this room are past our teens and so our brains take 20% of our blood supply. But if... So straight away, even for adults, you've definitely got to have the brain higher, you've got to have the heart higher to be able to give enough blood to the brain to keep it going. But in a person who's 8 to 12...
it's 30 or 40 percent in a four-year-old it's 50 so they've definitely got to have their heart closer to their brain and even when a kid aged four is sitting there doing nothing 50 of all their glucose is running their brain and they're doing weird things like how do i turn the phone off when mummy and daddy's not looking but i mustn't forget how to brush my teeth and go to the toilet
So if we're looking at that, then it has to be close to the brain. What would it look like if it was in the centre of the chest? Because then would it not be a direct line? What would that do for anatomy?
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