TRANSCRIPT
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The Rabbi Daniel Lapin Podcast
Episode: When Will Artificial Intelligence Destroy Us All?
Date: 03/31/23 Length: 33:42
Daniel Lapin 0:00
Welcome every one of you happy warriors. Welcome to the Rabbi Daniel Lapin show where I, your rabbi, reveal how the world really works. Yes, each and every one of you happy warriors, you, and you. And also you. Each and every one of you is a welcome part of our community of happy warriors. Did I say happy? Well, yeah, because you are someone who has already come to understand that happiness is not a reaction. It's a decision. You don't need outside factors to make you happy. You have decided that your default condition for happiness and success is a reasoned, determined, deliberate decision to be happy. And you are also a warrior. Because you understand that joyful success in life comes from struggling against the natural resistance, that in the nature of the world tends to obstruct and resist and combat every step you make in the direction of self-improvement. You've heard me call it spiritual gravity. And that's what it is, you try to get airborne, and it tries to keep you Earthbound. In every effort that you make to improve any one or all of your five F's, it throws up obstacles and temptations. And if you do not know what the five F saw, then you are a new listener to the show. And you will catch on pretty quickly. But as a happy warrior, you know that every single victory you win, no matter how small, brings other victories in its wake. And every defeat you endure, unfortunately, brings other defeats in its wake. And so if you've endured a defeat, you have to exert yourself even harder to transform it into a victory. So as that you can have other victories following in its wake. So that's why we're not just warriors. And we're not just happy-go-lucky years. But we are happy warriors. And one of the things that happy warriors realize is that our ability to progress, our success and our happiness depends upon our ability to impose our own limits are our own freedom. That's right, being able to step off the slippery slide, by which I mean that seductive, raw ride of freedom, and imposing upon ourselves restraints, and restrictions and regulation. That is the direction in which happiness and success lie. Because so many people confuse license with freedom. Licentiousness is doing whatever your feelings drag you towards. Freedom, on the other hand, is what you have when you are capable of imposing limits and restraints upon your feelings, and your emotions and your actions. And why that is so particularly important is when you are being carried along by an avalanche of emotions. You see, there have been many times in American history, when there has been an avalanche of emotions, that just carries people, huge numbers of people, large parts of the population carries them along. Really no better example of that than the COVID at the beginning of 2020 and into 2021 where people were swept along by fear, which is an emotion it's a very dangerous emotion. And they were persuaded that any extra-constitutional impositions that were enacted by various governments, cities, counties, states federal that these were all justified Because huge numbers of people were just swept along in this tidal wave of fear. And that became the calamity of the COVID years. There are many other similar avalanches of emotion. There been a lot of them. You may remember, this is going back a time but the whole country in the 1980s was swept along on an avalanche of emotions about sexual abuse being perpetrated on little children in preschools, and it ended up with two massive caricatures of justice one because one at the McMartin preschool trial in Los Angeles, and another one was the Fells acres daycare trial in Massachusetts. Huge miscarriages of justice. You know, in classrooms where there was a lot of traffic, people walking by the open windows, teachers were accused of undressing 20 children and inflicting the most hideous tortures upon them. Now, anybody knows that undressing or dressing one child is a huge battle. I don't even have to go into it. But the fact is that in hindsight now, in retrospect, these are recognized as dreadful trials, these were tyrannical prosecutions that destroyed lives of these two families. But everyone was being swept along on what I call an avalanche of emotions. And people just accepted it. It you know, if you ever worried about the Salem witch trials that took place in colonial Massachusetts, between 1692 and 1693, they ended up accusing 200 People of practicing witchcraft, they executed 20 people. Don't be in any way surprised. Don't dismiss that, as primitivism. Don't dismiss it as ancient thinking that in those days, they believed in witches, because it's no different than what has happened many, many times since then. The French Revolution was a case of national hysteria. And in France was destroyed. It's unbelievable when you stop to think of what actually happened in France during the years of terror, in the name of what, and people were swept along on this avalanche of emotions. Climate change right now. Climate change -avalanche of emotions. You know, and you see some of the hysteria in, in that young Scandinavian girl who would scream out? How dare you do this? How dare you do this? It's just a hysteria. It's just unreasonable. But we human beings are subject to it. And the reason I tell you this right now is because just recently, a few days before I taped this show, some luminaries of the world of high tech, people like Elon Musk. Steve Wozniak, was a co-founder of Apple with Jobs. And many, many other tech leaders and scientific and tech experts are all warning of the dreadful dangers of the new artificial intelligence systems. And they're all convinced that these things pose massive threat to society. They ask for an immediate pause for at least six months in the developing of AI systems. I mean, there have to be independent international overseers. Perhaps they want the United Nations to do it. But they are essentially drumming up terror and mass hysteria about the dangers of artificial intelligence. And so I thought it was worthwhile devoting just a short show, to making absolutely clear for every happy warrior, that this is one thing you do not have to worry about.
Daniel Lapin 9:59
There may be all kinds of other things you have to worry about. You got to worry about your five F's, you got to worry about making sure you are progressing every single day. Moving forwards with your faith and your finance, with your friendship and your families and your fitness There you go there, the five F's and those things you should worry about. But you really don't have to worry that Chak GPT or any of its variations, or any of the more sophisticated areas of artificial intelligence that are being developed in the military and in medicine, you really don't have to worry that they're going to go crazy. And they're going to all of a sudden, take over humanity. And, and, and place us all, in the role of subservient slaves to these magnificently powerful and highly intelligent machines. Don't worry about it. All right. There's all kinds of things to worry about happy warriors, but that is not one of them. And I'm going to explain why. But as usual, I want to urge you to make sure that you have become part of our community of happy warriors. It's, it's helpful to us, and it is helpful to you. So just make sure that you visit the website, www Rabbi Daniel Lapin.com. Join the Happy Warrior site, become a happy warrior. It's very inexpensive. And the benefits you get from being part of an entire community of people who just like you are trying to build up their families and their finances, and build up their faith and their, their fitness, and build up their friendships and their social lives. To become part of that team, part of that family part of that community. So is that we can all encourage one another, and help one another along and answer questions to one another. So please go ahead and join me, each one of us will feel a lot less lonely, when we realize that there's a growing huge, exciting community of happy warriors, or working on trying to do the same things. I'll also ask you to subscribe to the thought to to the podcast if you would, so that you know exactly when a new one is released. They get released virtually every, you know, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, somewhere during those days, or when they come out every week. But that way you will know if you subscribe on whatever platform you like listening, please do that and do join us. So visit WWW dot Rabbi Daniel Lapin.com. Rabbi Daniel Lapin.com. And do go ahead, you can also communicate with us you can ask a question, we have a wonderful Ask the Rabbi page where you can search questions that have been asked. There are bound to be questions that are very similar to some of the questions you have because we've been doing this for six or seven years. And so there's been a lot of questions during that time, you will see questions that are very likely to be on topics you want to know you can search the Ask the Rabbi question at Rabbi Daniel Lapin.com. So go ahead and please do visit with us there. And and I must tell you I personally, I find it very encouraging, as does Susan Lapin to hear from you, and to see your activity on the Happy Warriors page. So on the Happy Warrior site, I should say. So yeah, please go ahead and do that.
Daniel Lapin 14:08
And why artificial intelligence is not going to destroy humanity, nothing you really need to worry about. Look. I'm not claiming that everything is simplistic and that you and I can just audibly understand everything. But I do want to make sure that every happy warrior understands that everything should be basically within your grasp. I'm not saying that you should be able to understand how to perform neurosurgery, or that you should necessarily understand the gravitational anomalies that throw down to uncertain parts of Einstein. I in relativity equations. I'm not saying that.
Daniel Lapin 15:04
But I am saying that having a basic ability to follow an argument and also to recognize when an argument is most likely false. That's within each and every one of our abilities. It really is, it's important to, to realize that, because you think about it, every happy warrior, every one of you is a basically competent person who is able to understand things and, and recognize how processes work. And, you know, again, I'm not saying you necessarily will understand how an electric current is induced in a coil by a magnetic field. I'm not saying that. But you ought to be able to listen to somebody making the argument about how important it is to wear masks, you know, and say to yourself, you know what, that doesn't sound right doesn't make sense. You should be able to listen to somebody insisting that quote, the most serious existential threat facing humanity is climate change, as by the way, a leader in the United States military recently claimed, you should be able to listen to that and say, You know what? I don't think so. He's wrong. And you should develop a very healthy skepticism about self-anointed experts, you should always be very suspicious when people invoke the high priest method of preserving their own status and their own authority. In other words, when they say that, you're not smart enough to understand you're not credentialed. You know, what, what degrees did you get? That's one of the usual one, what degrees do you have to entitle you to speak on this topic? You know, yeah, I don't think so. You shouldn't be intimidated by that. You shouldn't need the degree to be able to tell whether somebody is talking complete and utter nonsense. That's all. In fact, I would go as far as to say that if you are unable to follow the argument being articulated by a so-called expert, they're wrong. It's as simple as that. And so
Daniel Lapin 17:33
let's talk about artificial intelligence. First of all, I can tell you in just a few sentences, why you don't have to worry about it. You might remember, years back, there was talk of cloning human beings. And we're going to end up with zombies real live zombies, and we're going to end up with real-life clones, and it's going to be terrifying and frightening. And on a podcast at the time, I explained that we already have clones, they are called identical twins, you have two brothers or two sisters, they are clones of one another. But what you have to understand is that what makes a person an individual is their soul. It's the spiritual makeup, not the bodily makeup. Because you can actually have two people who have the identical bodily makeup, not surprisingly, they look exactly the same. Not surprisingly, they've got the same DNA, but they have different fingerprints, because fingerprints have to do with the uniqueness of each and every human being. And that is a function of you know, I speak about the five apps, one of them is faith. And that means that we do have to understand the spiritual nature of a human being. We do have to understand that.
Daniel Lapin 19:04
And, you know, you might say, Well, why does you know, Why does anybody have to include in the five Fs? The question of faith. And I'll just give you an example. Because most of the most significant, happy-inducing activities you can do require an act of faith, deciding to commit to somebody in the covenant of marriage. That's anxiety-provoking because you can't tell what the future brings. But if you happen to have faith, now, what is faith mean? One specific example of faith is faith in God. But faith in general, is the ability to see operate with manipulate work with things that are not yet visible. So, the idea of being able to start a business, there's nothing there yet. There's just an idea. That's all it is. But if you have faith, for whatever reason, and from whatever source, but if you have faith, you're already at an enormous advantage. So faith is very much like a muscle. Okay? I think everybody knows that. If you set yourself the task of running a mile a day, the first day is going to be torment, is going to be painful torture, second day a little bit easier. By the time you've been doing it five days, it's just beginning maybe just a little bit to start feeling energizing and uplifting. By the time you've already been running a mile every day for two weeks. It's easy, it's exciting, it's a necessary part of your day. In other words, as muscles become used to something, they're able to do it more easily, you follow? Now, it's also true that if you go to a gym and workout, and somebody else doesn't. And now the two people, each independently come across the scene of an accident, where, because of this accident, a victim is pinned under some of the wreckage, one of those people is going to pick up the wreckage and help the victim become free. The other one won't be able to, you might then go up to them and say, Hey, have you been lifting cause of accident victims for long instead? I've never done it before? Well, how did you do it now, because I built up my muscles by going to the gym three times a week and doing weight training. So now when it came to my needing that strength to lift a call of a victim, I had the strength I was able to use it. Well, spiritual muscles are very much like physical muscles. When you use a spiritual muscle regularly, it becomes easier and easier to do. Let's say you have to go on a diet, let's say you've been eating whatever your life for a long time. And now you've had a scare, and you've decided to go on a diet, and you are going to feel the most powerful, irresistible pangs of hunger, you're going to want to really go and grab that chocolate creamy clear that you usually have with your coffee every day at 11. And again, it's three. And if you yield, and you surrender, well, then it's going to be even harder to try and start the diet tomorrow. But if you resist tomorrow, you'll still feel a little irresistible pang. But not as strong as yesterday. And if you resist it, By the third day, you're actually able to overcome it without too much concentration. And by the time you've been on your diet diligently for 567 days, it's getting easier and easier.
Daniel Lapin 23:16
In other words, the spiritual muscle of self-discipline behaves just like our physical muscles. And in the same way that you can train your physical muscles, you can also train your spiritual muscles. And one of the ways you can train your faith muscle is through. Every time you pray. Every time you pray to God, you're actually doing two things. You're praying to God, but you're also training your faith muscle. Every time you attend church, every time you follow a religious dictate, instead of following your will. Every time you follow your head. Instead of following your heart, you're building up your faith every single time. And so it's not an accident, that people who have faith are better able to get married. And people who have faith are better able to decide to have a child. And people who have faith are better able to start a business. And people who have faith are better able to save and invest because they have training in being able to see that which doesn't yet exist. And to be able to act as if that which doesn't yet exist is quite real in front of me. Because if you can do that, things like saving instead of spending become ever so much easier. And so it's just important that everybody really gets clear on this point. So that is why I'm explaining that the difference between twin a and twin B is not the DNA, it's not the body, the difference is spiritual, it has to do with the soul. And that is something which cannot be cloned. Now you can see where we're heading with AI. The reason that the people who are drumming up this mass hysteria about how artificial intelligence is going to take over the world and enslave human beings, and how frightened humans be, to such an extent that they are bright, intelligent, smart people, not wise, but bright, intelligent and smart, who say that artificial intelligence is the most serious threat to humanity. But we already heard them say that about climate change. And we already heard them say 4050 years ago, that overpopulation was the biggest threat facing humanity. Look, if you hear anybody saying the biggest threat facing humanity, relax, you can really relax Please don't worry. Just take it easy. The biggest red phase are you met? Alright, just take it easy smile. And, and so for people who think that human beings are entirely materialistic, that there is no such thing as a soul or the spirit. For those people who think that a human being is literally nothing more than $10 worth of ordinary chemicals? Well, then it's easy to understand why they are terrified of artificial intelligence. Because since we are nothing but mechanistic machines, created by the accident of random mutation.
Daniel Lapin 27:00
Why would it be hard to understand that another machine, in this case created by intelligent human beings should end up being even more powerful than human beings? Because human beings are nothing more than the result of accidental random mutation? Whereas an artificial intelligence machine is created by 1000s of highly intelligent, hard-working human beings? Why shouldn't one material machine be more powerful than another material machine? And so it is essentially a proclamation of secular faith. To say that artificial intelligence poses a threat to humanity. For heaven's sake, boys and girls, if you don't like what the computer is doing, unplug it, really disconnect the battery. It's like, have you seen these Roomba, floor cleaners, these things at a certain time every day detach themselves from a little wall doc, and they go rolling around the room, cleaning up any crumbs or any dirt on the floor, and then they go park themselves back again in their recharging dock, you may as well say maybe that thing is going to come in the middle of the night and consume me it's going to crawl over me and sweep me up into it's frightening in odds. It's really not. But if it ever does go to control, just pull out the battery. You're a human being you can do that part. And so friends, please do not worry about artificial intelligence. Use it just the way you use autocorrect on your word processor, just the way you use your camera or your phone. All of these are employed variations of artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligence is just a fancy name for advancing technology. That's all it is. It's no more than that. And in the same way that a conventional mobile telephone that you are so familiar with, would look like sheer magic to your great-grandfather, sheer magic.
Daniel Lapin 29:23
In the same way. advanced artificial intelligence looks like magic to me because I haven't spent a lot of time looking it over. But every time somebody shows me a ChatGPT piece that is written that shows political correctness or refuses to acknowledge the insanity of women being beaten in sports by men. Because it's politically incorrect. I laugh because it's one more piece of evidence that artificial intelligence is just a mirror of the people who made it and who programmed it. It is no more than that; it never was anything more. And it never will be anything more. Because what makes the human being unique, what makes a human being capable of limitless creativity is not our DNA. It's not the carbon molecules in our body. It's our soul. And that's all it is. And no matter how smart it is, artificial intelligence does not and will not have a soul. Its ability to ultimately have a will of its own simply isn't there. Now, it may be programmed to act in ways that make it look as if it has a will. But this is why it's important every now and then, to go to a magic show. And watch a good illusionist, do something, and you will swear that it is absolutely impossible, what he has done. It's impossible. And I'm an enthusiast of magic shows. And I've seen a lot of them. And even so, every now and then I see something and I shake my head and I say can't be done. I just don't know how he does it. I don't even begin to have a clue. Well, it's easy to feel that way about artificial intelligence. But in the same way that ultimately, my intelligence, my own intelligence, my head tells me, You know what, there's no such thing as magic. This is an illusion. It's a very clever illusion. But it's an illusion, nonetheless, anytime you start thinking that artificial intelligence is actual intelligence, and that it has a will of its own, and it has dreams and desires and ambitions to conquer humanity, and that it has a desire to create, and the ability to exert its own will just remember, it's an illusion. That's all it is. Because you have a soul, and no machine does. That's really the only thing you have to remember. And so, what you're looking at now is mass hysteria, that even afflicts highly intelligent people like Elon Musk, and many others, who speak of artificial intelligence as a huge and frightening threat. Mass hysteria, coupled with a secular view of the world. And that's one of the reasons that I explained that faith is one of the important five F's because a secular view of the world a view of the world, which is 100% materialistic is so evidently false, that you can't possibly get a full understanding of how the world really works, if that's your outlook. And so, I wish you a wonderful week ahead. I wish you a week of genuine growth, moving onwards and upwards in your faith, in your family, in your friendship, in your fitness, and in your finances. I'm Rabbi Daniel Lapin. God bless.
