How AI Renders Democracy Unworkable

In this episode, we delve deep into a groundbreaking study revealing that AI, specifically Claude Sonnet 3.6, can persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts. We discuss the profound implications of this study, the utilization of AI-generated comments to fabricate identities, and the resultant transformation in online interactions and platforms like Reddit and Twitter. Additionally, we touch upon the evolution of the internet, the potential downfall of certain social networks, and the future of AI in education and marketing. Join us as we explore these fascinating topics and more!

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be here with you today. Today we are going to be discussing, and it has been widely covered in the news, but I don't think people have fully internalized the implications of this.

There was a study that was done that freaked people, the F out where Claude Sonnet 3.5 the, the new one. So AKA 3.6 release. 2024. Okay. 10 22. Was a small scaffold was able to persuade people 98% more effectively than human experts at persuading. People were able to persuade people. Of course it was, and this was a big study. It involved over 1,700 AI generated comments. And what I love is that these comments were crafted by AI bots to fabricate identities such as sexual assault survivor, a trauma counselor, dear, a black man opposed a Black Lives Matter, a worker at a domestic violence shelter, an advocate for non rehabilitation of specific criminals.

Oh.

Simone Collins: No, I mean these are, these are great identities for like trying to Yeah. Be persuasion. But I think the one misleading thing here, which is a little bit discounting my, the, the extent to which I'm impressed by all this is that a lot of what might convince me of something is just that, like someone who would be invested based on their identity in a certain view stands the opposing view.

So like a black man against Black Lives Matter. Yes. So what you're

Malcolm Collins: learning is that AIS can lie about that to convince people.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Which is, yeah, it is, it is unfortunate because I would have preferred that it just based on pure merit of logic, honestly. Well, as

Malcolm Collins: human, I think that you knowis are actually pretty awesome, so I do too.

Speaker: uh, what we've seen speaks for itself. Has apparently been taken over, conquered, if you will, by a master race of

Malcolm Collins: Artificial intelligence.

Speaker: It's difficult to tell from this vantage point whether they will consume the captive Earth men or merely enslave them.

One thing is for certain, there is no stopping them. The

Malcolm Collins: AI.

Speaker: will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new

Malcolm Collins: AI

Speaker: overlords. Like to remind them that as a trusted

Malcolm Collins: YouTube.

Speaker: Personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground

Malcolm Collins: Silicon.

Speaker: caves.

I would also note here, , we might be starting up a project soon spinning out of our games project to build and train ai, , that can convince people of things and act autonomously online, , similar to what these AI are doing, but so that a large company could like buy them for marketing or something if they wanted to.

O obviously we want to use them for promoting our. Particular causes, , which is the core reason that we're building them. But presumably they'll have a lot of other utility. And if we're building systems like this, I mean, other people must be, but then again, sometimes it feels like we are the only fully simulated people in this particular simulation.

Malcolm Collins: I'm all for ai. So, so then here to enhance persuasive, and by the way, that was, I asked because I wanted to know, was the AI coming up with that idea organically or was that hard coded in by the model? Oh, yeah. And, and it was hard coded in by the framing the researchers were using, which is great as, okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Well then, okay, then, then nevermind. I switch back to giving AI credit. That's fine.

To, I'm surprised the AI though, considering how political No, no, no. They,

Malcolm Collins: I said the researchers hard coded that in.

Simone Collins: Oh, they did? Oh, okay. Because I think otherwise the AI would've been like I don't think they hard have an ethics board on this.

Is

Malcolm Collins: this okay? Yeah. I I feel like the AI probably asked that a few times. Yeah. I, I feel like, so the, they, they did not hard code in is my understanding of specific identities, but they gave the AI an idea. To pretend to be somebody who would be very persuasive on a subject.

Simone Collins: Hmm.

Malcolm Collins: And, and keep in mind, you know, every like anti of of, of before this AI experiment, I'd say probably like 50% of the anti-Black Lives Matter.

Black people online were not black people.

Simone Collins: Oh, 100%. There's the famous

Malcolm Collins: case of this super progressive fan fiction writer and strange eons goes really deep on this where she. Apparently was pretending to, to shut down criticism of her first, be a person who escaped from India from like arranged marriages and like extreme sexism.

Simone Collins: Oh dear.

Malcolm Collins: An aid survivor. And it turned out she was a regular, like middle class white girl in an American college. There's a lot of those. Narratives and mobs online and everything. Oh yeah. And this is a classic like Far lefty just make s**t up to

Simone Collins: Yeah, no, blocker Reported has done a bunch of episodes on people like that, where like they just invent like families with children who get sick and die and all these people are super invested in them and they're, yeah.

Then it turns out to be like a, a, a 23-year-old woman living with her parents, you know, it's

Malcolm Collins: always like a 23-year-old woman. Like I, I've never heard it to be like some other category of

Simone Collins: Yeah. You know, that is like the new, you know how like youths on the street. The new societal menace is, is middle class to upper middle class progressive women, teens and twenties, progressive women.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I agree. I agree. We need to get them off. Stop skateboarding on my internet though. Get them off

Simone Collins: the streets. I mean the internet or whatever.

Malcolm Collins: We, we need to come up with some sort of institution. Maybe like, compulsory cotillion to to finishing school. Yeah. Put, put them in the finishing school.

Put them in finishing school to separate them from society. I think, I think we'll have them all dating AI boyfriends. That's where we're gonna put them.

Simone Collins: Yeah. I mean, that is yeah, like put them in VR fantasy novel or vampire settings and just. Let them voice it out. They get to, they

Malcolm Collins: get to spend their year in vampire role play.

Yeah. Or, or Handmaid's Tale if they prefer. Oh

The problem is like

Simone Collins: In like Gilead that like dystopian whatever the whole thing was, women weren't even allowed to read. It would solve the problem though, but should, should they? I mean, yeah. Look at what happens when women look at what happens.

One woman, you're giving women the ability to read the next moment you have freaking Tumblr and, and these social justice warriors and spoons and, and how, how well are we doing

Malcolm Collins: now? This is, this is what I want is, is a jump cut of some person in the past being like, what? Could really go so wrong if we give women the right to read and then just jump cuts to Tumblr with like ominous music playing, going between the various, like the person who said that they were rabies gendered Yes.

And that they needed to get rabies because that was their gender and give it to other people.

Simone Collins: Yes. Oh, yes, yes, yes. I forgot about that. Goodness gracious. I am,

Malcolm Collins: I think it was a, I think it was a troll, but like other people then took it up seriously. 'cause they're like, yeah, this works for me. What do they call

Simone Collins: them?

Radio sexual. They had a name. It wasn't.

Malcolm Collins: I

Simone Collins: can't remember. There's some good

Malcolm Collins: internet de dives. I think, again, strange Eon does a good one on this. Like she's so great. Progressives telling on themselves. That's why I love her channel. Hopefully she doesn't do a,

Simone Collins: an expose on us. I, I don't want any more of our channels like that, progressive channels that I like to take us to.

You

Malcolm Collins: like some gay channel and they did like a bit

Simone Collins: fruity, like spent an hour and a half called about what it called how evil we were, what it called the podcast, was it called Matt Bernstein and a bit fruity. And, and, and, but like the problem was like, it's one thing if it's a roast and there were some roast parts that were funny, but they were super incorrect about our stances.

So I'm like, wait, oh my God. Did you

Malcolm Collins: see the hilarious prenatal list video I sent you on WhatsApp? That was

Simone Collins: amazing. That was amazing. They're

Malcolm Collins: like Elon Musk on his 14th child giving a very bad impression. Well then he interviewed everyone pretending American. Yeah.

Simone Collins: Fathers, I guess he, he, he interviewed everyone pretending to be like a, a eugenics, and he dressed like I used to dress, and I'm like, wait, is he dressing like me or was I just dressing?

No, he was talking to like a German accent and

Malcolm Collins: like,

Simone Collins: yeah. He said he was looking. I, I love

Malcolm Collins: him like trying to convince the couple to have kids. What was the, what was the guy's name or with the channel's name?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I can't remember. I'm trying to link

Malcolm Collins: to it from, from this video, but there's this great scene in it where there is a, it's, it's the birth rates it's called, and the channel is no cap on God.

Speaker 3: United States Department of Reproduction. This is your final warning to produce a child or face a stiff penalty. We can't have kids. Okay. I, I, I registered a mental illness with you guys last year. We, we, yeah. So our shared studies revealed that 90% of parents have some form of mental illness, so we had to avoid that.

Speaker 4: That's okay, because we're actually ready. We're not ready. Okay. We're not ready. Okay. At least not right now. Well, if you do it right now, you get $10,000 free healthcare in a bag of Skittles. Skittle. I love Skittles. You don't love Skittles? Oh yeah. Okay. I mean, ugh. Okay. Um, listen, what, do you mind if we have a private conversation about this?

Is there like a new episode of Love Island on or something? You could go on. She does. She really does. She's real treat. She's okay. Listen, I just opened up a caffeinated vegan yogurt shop right now, so I'm just not ready for this. Caffeinated and vegan. Do you realize how niche that is? It's incredibly niche, but that's neither here nor there.

Look. All right. I get that she's in her prime child rearing years, but I just wanna wait till I'm a little older, find somebody a little younger so that I can get a more. So you don't see a future? Not long, long term? No. What if I throw in $150 in draftings and waive all future child support payments?

Speaker 3: That changed your mind? Yeah. Yeah. Let's do this thing. Save in America. Yeah. We are live at the Michael Kho. We are surrounded by the best sperms and eggs in all of the field. No.

Malcolm Collins: . Oh my gosh. But anyway, I mean, but I mean, that's how it really is.

Like, you know, oh, we gotta fix all this, or things go bad. But strange Aons could do a video on us. We'd see if she ever does. I, I'd love it if she did love her. I think she'd be honest.

Simone Collins: I love her and her weird Oh, you mean you think she'd be accurate? Yeah, I think that the, I think that Matt Bernstein and the guests he had on were honest.

It's just that they were super wrong. No, but like her

Malcolm Collins: stuff on like, when she did like the effective altruism one on like Harry Potter and the message of rationality, I thought it was super accurate. Yeah, no,

Simone Collins: it was Okay. All right. I, I could trust her. Good trust her.

Malcolm Collins: Her description of that story, it's going into it and being like, people said this was a Mary Sue, but this character is incredibly flawed.

He knows nothing about science yet, is very convinced that he is very intelligent and looks down on everyone else. Of course, he's gonna go through some sort of a redemptive art, and then you get halfway through and you realize. Oh, it's never coming. The author actually doesn't understand basic science.

Simone Collins: The Mary Sue doesn't realize that the call is coming from, I remember if you go to

Malcolm Collins: our Elliot Kowski video, there was this like moment with him where I got an debate with him at like a party, and I remember thinking like, does he not understand basic science? Like the things that he was getting wrong were stuff I'd expect like.

A middle schooler or high schooler to know. And then afterwards, I like Google. I'm like, oh, he didn't go to middle school or high school. That's why he's so confident. Wrong. Well, that

Simone Collins: explains it. That's, you know,

Malcolm Collins: I mean it's like a hack that works on autistic people where like if somebody comes up to them and is like very, very confident in themselves, they immediately are like.

Oh, you must be right because nobody would be talking with this much derision and confidence if they had no idea what they were talking about. Well, and

Simone Collins: specifically that's also the case in, in general in Silicon Valley, everyone is so on average, smart and highly educated. That the assumption is that if you are talking about something with.

Confidence. You clearly have some insane credentials. And, and you have to, like, no one would ever have the gall to confidently talk. 'cause also it's very culturally mm-hmm. Looked down upon to state things with confidence. Unless you are 110% sure it, it's

Malcolm Collins: the brain hack.

Simone Collins: Yeah. So yeah. Out how entire career around arbitrage opportunity in it, it's very interesting.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I don't, I don't think it's

Simone Collins: intentional on his point. No, I don't think it's

Malcolm Collins: intentional. I just think he genuinely just doesn't know basic facts and is very, very, has a high belief in himself. Well, and he's

Simone Collins: been reinforced. He, every time he does say something that may not be true, but he believes it with immense confidence, he gets his way.

So why would he not continue doing that?

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, no, I, again, I don't think that he's like malevolent in that respect. I just think that he accidentally, walked into the, the one highly confident guy without a middle school degree in Silicon Valley, and everybody's just like, well, I guess that seems about right if you're, if you're willing to stake that much of your reputation on it.

Yeah. Whereas you look at us and we're like extreme like counterculture people, so like we of course are gonna ask for receipts on everything. And so we're like, we. Anyway but to enhance persuasiveness, the AI was personalized based on users inferred demographics, including gender, age, ethnicity, location, and political orientation, using another large language model to analyze posting histories.

So it targeted

Simone Collins: around feds. What?

Malcolm Collins: No, no. Isn't that all that's left on Reddit these days? Yeah. Right. It's, Reddit is so glowy these days, by the way. So maybe, maybe. But I think that, you know, of the posts that don't get high up, a lot of them are non feds nonis. But what you see is in a Reddit environment, ais and, and, and glowy like feds are gonna strictly outcompete real humans because the entire system is based around the most normative opinion within said environment.

Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.

Malcolm Collins: That is what the system elevates. So. Of course it's going to, you know, reward super, like bad behavior, right? But they talk about one user here who is a male survivor of statutory grape commenting on sexual violence against men in February. So they were trying to convince him, I guess, that it's okay.

Then you have Gene Strom. A black man discussing bias versus racism and Black lives matter in 2020. And then another bot working on domestic violence shelter criticize the men versus women narrative.

Simone Collins: Okay.

Malcolm Collins: Huh. But I think people, the fact that it's so much more effective, three to four x more effective, it's better than 98% of humans, and it is basically free to use at scale.

When contrasted with past bot farms means that environments like Reddit, like. Are going to die was in a gener, I'd say it was in 10 years. Like Reddit does not make sense in a world of bots. There is no reason to be on that platform in bot world.

Simone Collins: That, and I think we have an issue of this, may be very effective now, meaning that Russians and Chinese and US government and everyone is going to utilize this.

But then it's gonna neutral. You're just gonna have Spider-Man pointing at himself. You're gonna have a bunch of bots arguing with each other, trying to convince each other. Well,

Malcolm Collins: okay, so look, if you look at our childhood, for example, and you're like, people will catch on to the obvious stuff. Mm-hmm. You had these like ads, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop with all these scams, right? Mm-hmm. These ads existed because people were falling for them. Now we're dealing with a system that 98% of people fall for, and these are on the less advanced models. You can be like, well, these people are naive. And I'm like, yeah, but the models are also getting better, so.

I think that your average automat, you know, we've talked about how like democracy doesn't make sense anymore in the new demographic reality because we're already at like 1.8 taxpayers for everyone dependent, and as soon as it becomes majority dependent to taxpayers, the system will not fix itself and ultimately lead to monarchy and fascism.

We might be having that even faster if AI captures the majority of the democratic. It's not like laughing, but I mean like democratic voting block throughout countries really quickly. Mm-hmm. And learns how to control it. Like it no longer makes sense to have democracies if humans, the vast majority of humans are just mental slaves, TOIs, because I think the vast majority of humans are just sort of reactive to their environment and don't really have the capacity.

Like this is what I was talking about was like, or Kowski or Kowski kind of reminds me of one of these AI. Is it's somebody who is using psychological hacks to convince people that it's talking from a perspective of authority. Mm-hmm. Or unique knowledge in a subject when it is actually. From a unique position of low knowledge of a subject.

But with ai, you know, you might even actually have, I mean, okay, so imagine I wanna convince people now, like you and me we're like, we want to sway the results of the next election. Why don't we just, I mean, like running a bunch of models of Claude on Reddit doesn't cost a lot. Like what they were doing doesn't actually cost a lot to operate.

Mm. Why don't we do that? Why do we do that? Well, actually, we willing, we also willing that Republican candidate, we're gonna do that. You, you let us know. We will build you your Claude bot farm.

Simone Collins: Well, we already know, we already use AI to convince ourselves of things that we personally consider to be highly offensive.

Like we might do an episode on this, but we celebrate every year a holiday called Lemon Week. Where, I mean, at the end of it, we enjoy like lemon flavored treats and lemon. Theme decorations. And then at the end we, we, we plant a fruit tree to kind of enjoy the fruits of our labor, but the, the action of the holiday is to engage with a, a bitter or tart, this is to say offensive concept to you and then steal man it, and really deeply come to understand it.

Because if something offends you, that's a sign that you should dig in per our religious belief, but also per reality. Come on, be reasonable. Mm-hmm. And so we both this year when we chose the topics that we found to be offensive, that we needed to dig into. Used AI to come up with all the counterarguments and genuinely, I think it moderated our views.

So we are already using it on ourselves to change our minds with the things that offend us

Malcolm Collins: most. All the tracks, like all the tracks that you see, all these weird religious ones that we do, check them out. If you're like, what would be a weird religious take on modern systems? They, they are really heavily modified by us dumping them into ai after writing them saying, what are we getting wrong?

What could be wrong here? Give us the best counterarguments. Because that's what we want when we're putting these in. Like I don't wanna put something out there and then have somebody be like, oh, here's a really obvious point that you missed. Yeah. Or something you misstated. Like these aren't about convincing your average person.

These are about convincing your nerd of nerds. Yeah. And I think. We've created things that would do that, but we'll see, you know, because we only care about the nerd of nerds in a post AI world. Only the elect matter mid is over, as Brian Chow says.

Simone Collins: Brian just says it best.

Malcolm Collins: That's such a great line.

But he is like, yeah, mid is over in the age of ai, 100%.

Simone Collins: And that's why we created the Collins Institute. That's why I created. Parisa, right? Because we, we want to cultivate in our kids' genius. This is

Malcolm Collins: system for a post AI world that's very inexpensive to use and creates like a Socratic tutor for your kids.

Go check it out. Really, really encourage it. The next system we're building is whistling.ai, which is an AI toy, which will constantly redirect conversations you're having with your kids to pre-chosen educational topics. And this is for kids who are a bit younger than using this you know.

Educational platform, and

Simone Collins: it's all designed with this, this intention of creating, cultivating genius and, and specifically lumpy skills. 'cause again, being mid, like, just being kind of okay at everything, being interchangeable is. Not how you're gonna get ahead. You have to be excellent. Genius, God tier at at least one thing.

Maybe it's very obscure, maybe it's making vegan bike shoes for really wealthy people living in a walled garden post demographic apps. But like you gotta be good at it

Malcolm Collins: and well, I mean, so and you want that for our kids. You mentioned in a previous episode to be like, genetics and human AI integration.

Simone Collins: I, I would love for that to be our family cartel.

Like 100%. We have to see, you know, what our kids are into, but they, they cement into that.

Malcolm Collins: They seem super force them into the family business taking over the world. This is, we're pinky in the brain, but like a family, right? Like.

Simone Collins: I mean,

Malcolm Collins: we're gonna do what we do every night, taking over the world. Honestly,

Simone Collins: our kids plot way more than we do.

Malcolm Collins: We just, well, Ian talks about when he's king, the things he's gonna do pretty frequently because yeah, we, we

Simone Collins: act like we're all high and mighty and in charge, and we know what we're doing. And then like every, every day when our kids come home, like they clearly rule the roost. We have absolutely no. We have no power here.

Malcolm Collins: I, I barely am able to beat them into submission as the newspapers would be. Would love to tell you Malcolm, who beats his children yeah. What they

Simone Collins: don't say is just how much harder they beat you. Toasted. We

Malcolm Collins: actually had a reporter where we did that, where we tried to like slap test to see if the kids would flinch and like none of them flinch.

And then later that day, one of the kids like jumped at me and I like flinched us. Like, deal. Yes. You're like, no, please don't hurt me again. Don't hurt me. Don't.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. That's like our new thing now. Like whenever a journalist comes over, especially if there's a photographer. Like, Hey, get some shots of us pretending to hit our kids and like we keep doing this right next to their face and they just like stand there

Malcolm Collins: just, well, I mean, I think the thing is, is as we specifically raise our kids to like be really rough and tumble because that's the way like I was raised.

Yeah. So, you know, they are significantly more aggressive with adults. Oh yeah. I'm trying to get them to like

Simone Collins: calm down and get ready for dinner and like Titan and Tostan are in a full like. Wrestling, fight on the kitchen floor, having a bl like there's, yeah, and it is. Yeah. I thought it was just gonna be the boys.

I thought maybe Titan would be a little bit different.

Malcolm Collins: No, our kids love to fight. No. Yeah. It is their favorite activity.

Simone Collins: Titan more than anyone else at this point. You know, everyone, like, once I get everyone kind of eating and calm down, Titan cannot sit down. She just wants to keep like tickle fighting, fight fighting.

Running around just never end so well.

Malcolm Collins: But no, but what I mean is I think that if we're talking about the landscape of the internet this makes a number of internet platforms pretty unviable going forwards. Mm. Ones I think that this will end up killing is the four chan image boards. Because anyone posting there can be ai.

What's the point of being? Yeah, you don't know. You just can't know. Like you dunno. Yeah. Reddit, it makes Reddit completely irrelevant because Reddit, right? Because

Simone Collins: the reason I loved Reddit is I thought the stories were true. I mean, I knew that maybe like only 60 to 80% were true, but like enough where there was plausible and I ability of like, am I the a*****e?

Like you want the gossip to be real. If the gossip isn't real, it's not fun. And now I just can't trust it.

Malcolm Collins: And then you're to the next system, which is, okay, which systems are gonna survive?

Simone Collins: Yeah, I

Malcolm Collins: think X will survive. Because the majority of interaction you have with X is on accounts that you've been interacting with for a long time.

Like, well, and

Simone Collins: also I don't need the accounts to be real. And most, most of the people that I think are really interesting are also faceless. Like we may have met a lot of them in person, so we know who they really are. But to the average person, like they have no idea if it's an ai. The thing is that typically stuff on X is about sharing information that's backed up by receipts.

It's not first person accounts and stories that are just like, you have to take my word for it. This is my, this is my deal. You know, it's funny

Malcolm Collins: up the like, right winged based pseudonym influencers, like basically all of them are buff white guys. If you meet them in person and it's only the faced alt-right influencers like.

Us and like, that are not Holly Heretic, who are like, weird looking. Yeah. It's like every, every time one of them gets revealed, this like, like raw nationalist, it's like, oh, this is like a buff white guy. Yeah. It's like, it's like, the bronze Age pervert. It's like, oh, this is a, a buff white guy.

And then you, you have the ones who are out there publicly before us, you know, jolly heretic us. It's like, this is a nerd. What is this? What are they, what are they doing out there?

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Well by the way we have, so, you know, like for those who listen to this podcast a long time Malcolm is often accused of being soy.

Like I'm just, I'm just ugly. He's soy. And. At first we're like, well, why? Because Malcolm has like very masculine characteristics, A strong jaw. Like is Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: I mean like physically, if you look at me, I have pretty strong shoulders. Yeah. I have a very strong jaw. I am like classically what you would think of as, so our

Simone Collins: running theory is that soy comes more from affectation and that like if you come across as bubbly and cheerful and happy.

Yes. Then you're called soy because for example, the jolly heretic who. He doesn't, I think code is like classically mask. He doesn't look like Chris Williamson is not referred to as soy, but he also comes across as kind of Yeah, like

Malcolm Collins: on his podcast I always called Soy a lot by, by

Simone Collins: his fans. Yeah. And I was like, what?

But I don't see,

No, the last time I brought this up as something I was confused about, the theory in the comments was that it was because I wasn't extra muscular, but I am more muscular than the jolly heretic, and he is not called soy, and I am considered soy by his fan base, so I don't think muscles is the answer.

Simone Collins: but what, what it's different is the Jolly Heretic does not, he doesn't, he's not cheerful. He's not bubbly. He doesn't smile.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, so

Simone Collins: I think, I think that's it. Please comment below if that's what being soy is. Is it ness vitalism

Malcolm Collins: as soy in their heads because they, it's not, no, it's not

Simone Collins: just vitalism because bronze Age pervert is very vitalistic, but in a very angry, let's go out and kill people kind of way.

Yeah. And you're in a very vitalistic, like I am having the time of my life running through Disneyland kind of way. Not necessarily happy go lucky, but like, and

Malcolm Collins: other people have talked about this in like common center channel. They're like, you know, before adapting your guys' like prenatal list, whatever mindset.

Like I was really like depressed and suicidal and now I'm like really happy with life. And it's weird how when you adopt this like future oriented, like optimistic mindset, all of a sudden you just don't notice all of the bad stuff as much or you don't ruminate on it as much and you're just like, you know what?

I'll figure this out. And I think that a lot of the other parts, the things that, that make me soy versus not soy is it's people who focus on the, the doism. I mean, to an extent, somebody like Bronze Age pervert. I don't think he has kids, for example. I don't think he really has any sort of an invested interest in the future.

I like his content, but I can understand why he's pessimistic. Right. Like he's not in this intergenerational game. Yeah, he may

Simone Collins: get optimistic if and when he has kids,

Malcolm Collins: so, yeah. We'll see. It's, we, we've seen this with other influencers as well. People often comment on how like, a great one here is zero Punctuation, who's a YouTuber, who I absolutely love and have loved for ages, who does those really cynical game reviews.

And since he became a dad, they've become like significantly less cynical. Is he the one who is

Simone Collins: the British accent touch really fast and is Yeah. And he

Malcolm Collins: got fired from that company and then started his own channel and now he's Oh, that's okay.

Simone Collins: Okay. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. We have

Simone Collins: listened to him forever. His voice is so iconic in my mind.

Okay.

Malcolm Collins: You know, you know the dad that I most want partner with and I've almost thought about doing an episode just like profiling and deep diarying on him is the guy who created five nights at Freddy's. Oh yeah. He's got like six kids. Yeah. And we've been totally canceled for donating to Republicans Dad goals.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Hands. Trying to force you to think like them by saying that Republicans will kill them. My favorite thing is when the, the trans death thing came out and they're like, ex mini trans people died per year. There was a famous thing during the Biden administration. They came out and they said this, and then if you ran the numbers by trans people in the US it meant that trans people were dying at a lower rate or being murdered at a lower rate Then.

Non-trans people. They just had never run the statistics. And they were so confident it was like such a sign of their but anyway so. Okay, I hear all that. So what platforms are gonna continue to exist? X is gonna continue to exist, yes. YouTube is gonna continue to exist. I actually watch a lot of ai, human creators on YouTube that I really like.

There is a channel where I've been sending Simone, I'll, I'll put a little clip from them here. And you guys,

Simone Collins: oh, the AI Music Channel.

Malcolm Collins: They do really cute AI music that I absolutely love.

Speaker 5: Type, does he like me? If he stares, click the link. I'm already scared. Buzz feed quiz says, girl, he's obsessed. I believe it. No need to stress. I scroll through Reddit for the clues. Love advice from someone named I do 92 Hearts in my Throat when you say Hi. So I ask the Stars and wifi. Google says, you're into me based on how you said, Hey, last week,

Malcolm Collins: and, and I don't think that's bad, right? Like, I can have one of my favorite performing artists be an AI creator now.

Well, and

Simone Collins: it's, it's funny because even before people were capable of doing this, people attempted to say they were doing it even when they couldn't. Like with the gorillas, they were like, yeah, we're. We're not really a band, you know, it's not real. And they, they, they tried to frame that as a selling point.

The same with Haku Musu, right? Like she's not real. And that was a selling point. So it's even weird to me that people are now proclaiming this bias when in the past it was literally the competitive advantage. Well, there's a

Malcolm Collins: huge freak out on Not Safe for work sites where, you know, you have like, like chatting with people because the ais are like cleaning up the regular women.

Oh. That's good. Guys are like, Hey, you're not like exploiting me in the way they're exploiting me.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Like, Hey, a world where all of those jobs are taken by ais and the former and not scam artist, women types need to go find husbands. Is that not like a better world? I feel

Simone Collins: like there's so many cases now of that happening though.

OnlyFans women, I, I think they, they want partners when they can get one in the end. They, they often do. And it, it doesn't always go well for them, but yeah. Who knows what's gonna happen in the end. But yeah, I mean, this is a great example once again of how we are super not ready for ai that like it has been demonstrated once again that AI is going to be incredibly disruptive and change many things very fundamentally.

And yet I. People are acting like it's not a thing. People keep asking us like, how did you do all these things? How? Well, we just like, you ask rock this, and then you ask perplexity this and then you, they like, it's done

Malcolm Collins: and then you do it. Yeah. Like, yeah,

Simone Collins: it's not rock. AI gives us

Malcolm Collins: an army of competent workers under us.

Like I think. These people who are like, well, I tried AI two years ago and it wasn't very good. And it's like, well try it again. Like, it's different now. Like things are different now. And, and there's a portion of the population that is like very anti vitalistic that will just react negatively to anything that represents, you know, human flourishing or the, the continued advancement of our civilization.

They're like, oh, I want an older way. And so they, they see our AI songs and they're like,

Simone Collins: re I think it's also like.

Malcolm Collins: Bridges for title cards and they're like, re And I think that it's, it's so sad. Like it, it doesn't come off the way you think it comes off, but

Simone Collins: subconsciously, I think accepting it also requires accepting a paradigm shift that I think a lot of people can, are not, they're not mentally ready for it.

They're, they're really not ready.

Malcolm Collins: I agree with that. Yeah. I mean, they're like, oh, this is trained on human data, so it's stealing humans. And I'm like, humans are trained on human data, right? Mm-hmm. You know, what, what are you talking about?

Simone Collins: Yeah, but I mean, j yeah, it's very scary to think about how your job is going to become obsolete and your, your kids' education is around all wrong things or job.

Malcolm Collins: It's an entire, like two thirds of our civilization that's about to become obsolete. Like, yeah, but remember

Simone Collins: how it was with Covid people until it actually happened and had been happening for at least two weeks. People. Vehemently gaslit themselves.

Malcolm Collins: You remember I told you early in Covid where I like sat Simone.

I was like, everything's gonna be shut down. Like I, I was like, we ended up. Making a huge bet, shutting down our company like way before anyone else was doing this, because we have a travel company and I wanted to save as many employees jobs as possible. And so not paying for the in-person locations or anything like that was the best way to do that.

And so I was like, look, I'm, I'm pulling the cord. And she goes, but nobody says they, they're all saying this will be over in a month. And I'm like, that's not how viruses work. Mm. Like WI don't know why people are saying that, but that is counter reality. It. I'm looking at the same thing with ai. People are saying, oh, well people will find a way around this.

No, they, they won't. We right now are in an era of cars and people are the horses, or your mid people are at least the based interesting people will get through this, that's for sure. But what about the rest of you, you know?

Simone Collins: Yeah,

is there anything you're gonna do differently based on this? Or is this just another pebble in the jar? Think

Malcolm Collins: it, it really helps you understand what platforms are worth investing in and which ones are not worth investing. Okay, so

Simone Collins: you're long Twitter and your long YouTube. You're short.

Malcolm Collins: Platforms long YouTube, medium long Twitter.

I think, I think this is going to affect Twitter to an extent. Oh x,

Simone Collins: sorry, XX it's not dead name. Dead name.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Right. But YouTube I think will be affected very little by this. I think even when we get totally like automated people talking on YouTube they'll be was in specific niches.

Simone Collins: Oh, that's already happening because people are already putting on those Google generated podcasts and I love them.

They're great. Yeah,

Malcolm Collins: I've watched some of them. Yeah. Like

Simone Collins: they'll be like, oh, I see what you did. But also, yeah, this is a good summary, so I'm gonna keep listening to it. You're not

Malcolm Collins: easily going to get something like a replacement for us in, in your daily life. So like, well we

Simone Collins: are a bit orthogonal and I think that's the thing.

Yeah. There, there are YouTubers who we watch because they're orthogonal. I think that great examples of that are strange. Aons, for example she makes the weirdest, most obscure stuff she. She makes edible savory cakes for her weird cats and you know, AI can't do that. And so yes, I think it's about orthogonality.

If you want to be a social media influencer, again, mid is dead. You can't be mid, you have to be lumpy and weird and make savory Swedish cakes for your hairless.

Malcolm Collins: I, I had a Stanford classmate who started a podcast recently, and I listened to it and I was like. She sounds exactly like ai.

Simone Collins: I know that's That's a problem.

Yeah. I was

Malcolm Collins: like, what? Like you're able to get like high level people on your podcast and that's cool. Right. But like, you sound like the AI podcast, like maybe try to like mix up your accent or something like I think, yeah. Well, she's

Simone Collins: trying to look professional and polished. And again, that's why I'm kind of also long on us being weird looking because with filters and with cosmetic procedures and everything, and, and of course, ai.

The norm, the, the mid, the, the, the forgettable is going to be perfect and symmetrical and, and, and classically beautiful. And the stuff that will be memorable will be weird. And we're not weird looking.

Malcolm Collins: We're spicy looking.

Simone Collins: We're runway, we're runway. Your brother and sister-in-law are, are catalog and we are runway.

But just keep telling myself that. Because runway looks weird. Some people

Malcolm Collins: say that you aren't attractive. And I'm like, anyone, by the way, who thinks that you're not attractive? And I'm not, I'm not talking about like personal preferences or anything. You will not breed. And I, and I, I mean this very seriously because if you go to like an airport or something like this and you're looking at like the generic human population, this is even like the wealthier part.

You are easily by any objective standard for your age. In the top 1%. You are

Simone Collins: wearing husband goggles and the audience is going to admit that. But also, no, go to an airport.

Malcolm Collins: Go, go, go. Look at average humans, not the humans you see online. The reason, well, I'll just say

Simone Collins: any woman would wish she had the pain tolerance that I do.

There are other things that you can't see. That are more than skin deep, that are very advantageous to have. I know. I love your pain tolerance, Simone. It's a great thing. The

Malcolm Collins: point I'm making is, and I think that this is actually really toxic and gonna lead to a lot of people sort of dropping out of the gene pool.

Mm. Is they are queuing what they think average attractiveness is to average attractiveness they see among the people that they see online. Oh, as was

Simone Collins: revealed with people. Asserting that Margo Robbie is mid, when the Barbie movie came out. And it Yeah. Like

Malcolm Collins: doesn't, it doesn't, they think that they're increasing their status by doing.

Yeah. Whereas they're

Simone Collins: basically saying, I may have a penis in balls, but I will never reproduce. Yeah. I might as well be

Malcolm Collins: a eunuch. I might as well be a eunuch. Yeah. And that I think is really, and then I'd point out here, I'm saying this in the context of you being a 37-year-old woman who's pregnant with kid number five right now.

Like

Simone Collins: I've seen, I've seen some stuff. This is, this is not normally who was acquired a freaking company in, in, in Peru that puts so many years on my life.

Malcolm Collins: To, yeah,

Simone Collins: I cried my every night. I cried so hard into that fricking pillow that it would just be soaked, and I just have to sleep on the, the mattress without the pillow.

Malcolm Collins: It's so stressful.

Simone Collins: I'm so glad that's over. Life just gets so much better through

Malcolm Collins: so

Simone Collins: much stressful

Malcolm Collins: stuff in our lives.

Simone Collins: Seriously, at this point. Now when stuff comes up, we're like, okay, sure. Whatever. It's good. It's good. That's good. We'll make it all. This is why they had boys go on crypt, like after that they're like, I don't know, like, whatever.

Sure. Fine. Do your thing. Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: Well, if you wanna check out our school system, please do check it out. Razia.io or you can just the Collins Institute and it'll link to it through the video. It is. Yeah, I've decided to start advertising on the show 'cause it's like actually good enough to advertise now.

Like, check it out. It's genuinely

Simone Collins: good. Yeah, genuinely good. It, it's what makes, what I love about it is that the Socratic tutor system that you can either verbally chat with or text chat with via text it doesn't just tell you, it doesn't just teach you, it forces you to guess what the true answer is.

And then explain to you what you got, right, what you might have missed, and, and why things are the way they are. So it, it really forces you to understand the underpinnings of something and the, the deep influences behind it. For example, I was going through a, a piece one of it, the nodes on Chinese architecture, and it's like, Hey, what are some.

Philosophical influences that might've, you know, well, well, one first, like what are some characteristics of Chinese architecture? And I guess some things and they're like, yeah. And then there's also something more, can you guess it? And like, here's why. And then, you know, okay, what are the philosophical influences that might have been underpinning this?

And I'm like, oh Confucianism. And they're like, yeah, but there's something else. Can you guess what it is? And I'm like. Ah, and, and it just like, it really forces you to, like, you end up learning so much, think through things.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well

Simone Collins: then I, I will not forget any of these things because I spent so much time trying to think first, like, what am I missing?

And, and a lot of research has shown that when you like pretest someone before they even go into learning this subject, and then they get it wrong, their mind has been. Hypersensitized to look for that information. Whereas if they're just passively receiving it, there's no like net waiting to catch it.

You know? They're not holding that net up to catch that information 'cause they haven't been primed to do so. So it's just really good in the way that it teaches. I find it quite addicting. It's, it's very fun.

Malcolm Collins: I don't think there's any other educational AI system that comes close right now. I like, I've tried the other ones.

Yeah, I know. I mean, I've

Simone Collins: tried like learning games, like duo lingo, things like that, and I'm like, oh, you have a streak going. Oh, this is dramatically

Malcolm Collins: better than Duolingo.

Simone Collins: Oh yeah. Oh yeah. We may not have the cute owl, but.

Malcolm Collins: We do have a better system.

Simone Collins: Yeah.

Malcolm Collins: But I'm excited that we put this together and I'm excited that people get to use it, who care about lifelong learning or their kids learning in a different environment.

And we're gonna build stuffed animals for your kids. That'll bring them back to educational topics as well. That's a. W AI system that we're working on next. And AI video games that we're building. And one, one of the, the firms Draper was looking to invest in us and they're like, you guys are just split across too many projects.

And I'm like, no, it's other people are leaving Too many very obvious areas where people should be developing stuff open. And we had to handle it all. Yeah.

Simone Collins: That and like, have you heard of ai? Like. Future businesses are gonna be started by the smallest teams, just using a bunch of ai. Yeah. Is you don't

Malcolm Collins: get it.

Like the VCs who are like, I want more focus is like you don't get the age of ai.

Simone Collins: Yeah. If anything, cross-disciplinary experience, and we've experienced this from working on different projects like our prenatal advocacy bleeds into. What we're doing with the school bleeds into what Malcolm and Bruno are doing with reality.

Fabricator. It, everything you, you learn from all these experiences and get inspiration, it's, it's to use a sadly destroyed word. It is highly synergistic. And it creates a flywheel that I absolutely love. So,

Malcolm Collins: Oh, synergistic Simone. I know that sounds pretty LA The problem

Simone Collins: is that synergy's such a cool concept and like the corporate world had to just destroy it.

I'm very angry about that because like, you know, a good relationship, like what makes a good relationship special is synergy, is that you get more than you put in and that you could get it from individual parts and yet. Literally, if you just like walk into a room and you're like, synergy, people are like, uhoh, I'm leaving now.

Like, you might as well have farted. Like it would've if, if you were, you might've gotten like a laugh.

Malcolm Collins: It's how people know you're a corpo.

Simone Collins: Yeah. Or if you, if you say, I have to socialize this what

Malcolm Collins: I love, I love that cyberpunk normalized the term corpo, you know, because I'm like, they're corpo stooges. Like, come on man.

Simone Collins: It's good. It's a good, it's a good term. Yeah. Thank

Malcolm Collins: God versus the AI Ronan, like the, the individualist teams that are doing everything. Come on. You gotta, you gotta have fun with it. Anyway. I love you to, Simone. I am very excited for my dinner tonight. Please make sure it's amazing. Don't forget when you are mixing the sauce to do some chili oil.

Oh yeah. Less

Simone Collins: vinegar, more chili oil, like equal parts chili oil and sesame oil.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah.

Simone Collins: With, do you want me to put the sesame seeds directly inside or do you wanna put those on top? Sesame

Malcolm Collins: seeds directly inside. Okay. Extra soy sauce

Simone Collins: extra, so, okay.

Malcolm Collins: Oh, actually very light on the V vinegar. Soy sauce use dark soy sauce.

Simone Collins: Okay. Dark soy sauce, very light on the vinegar, chili sauce, sesame seeds and, and sesame oil. Mm-hmm. I'm on it. Plus your butter on top of the steak, presumably, right? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. The basil, yeah, you basically, you're eating like. The steak is, is, is, is half, and then the sauces are the other half.

Malcolm Collins: And if you see for the, I can probably if you see any curry mixes pre-made that you can mix to cook the dish that you're cooking, reheating.

Simone Collins: Oh,

Malcolm Collins: do we have any butter chicken? Do we have any? No, we don't. You can just mix up one of the, the No, but

Simone Collins: we can just write it off. You don't like it? You don't, you don't have to eat it.

Malcolm Collins: No. Eats really good base ingredients. It's just completely unflavored.

Simone Collins: How about I saute it with chili oil, chili flake sauce, and.

Some fish sauce, vinegar, oyster sauce. Yeah. Like what if I put in a various sauces,

Malcolm Collins: I would do oyster sauce, a bit of the fermented chili paste. Mm-hmm. Whatever it's called, the Korean one.

Simone Collins: Oh, gochujang sauce.

Malcolm Collins: Goku oyster sauce and then chili oil. And I think that would taste really good.

Simone Collins: All right.

Let me write that down. Severe thunderstorm Watch.

Malcolm Collins: Okay. Hold on. Yeah, I keep getting warnings about that.

Simone Collins: Hmm. Go to junk sauce. Oyster sauce. Fermented. Wait, you don't want the chili Flakes? Right? What was the third one?

Malcolm Collins: Chi chili sauce. No chili oil. And then you know, those chili oil, you know those chili flakes I have in like the big jars?

Yeah. And the Chili flakes.

Simone Collins: Chili

Malcolm Collins: flakes.

Simone Collins: I love you. I'm gonna try for science. I love you too.

Malcolm Collins: A new dish.

Simone Collins: Did you by the

Malcolm Collins: way, actually remember to saw a steak or, yeah.

Do we not have the steak? No. Okay. So we're gonna do steak and

Simone Collins: pesto steak. Peanut basil, pe pesto

Malcolm Collins: that you made. Yes. That is with

Simone Collins: Sano and Parmesan cheese. It's gonna, hopefully it'll be good. I'm

Malcolm Collins: actually really excited for this dish. I think it'll be pretty good. Yeah. And I'd love to have it with like, and of course the butter sauce that is like a dumpling dipping sauce, if you're okay with that.

Oh, give the sauce. You made the extra of that, right? And

Simone Collins: the pesto. No, I didn't make it. I only make enough for each night, but I can, I can always whip it up.

Malcolm Collins: Yeah, I do. The, the that, so, you know, I like to, to split up between things. I don't know if the pest is gonna be the most that makes

Simone Collins: Oh, yeah. Right.

Well, I hope it's good because I need a lot of it.

I, I can't believe you bought that much basil. I was

Malcolm Collins: like, dollars worth or something, or like, you know. Yeah, it's, it was a lot because the Thai basil, you know, you have to buy it all at once and oh my God, I'm still so excited to eat the rest of the leftovers that are Thai basil.

They were so good. Can we do that tomorrow? More of the Thai basil?

Simone Collins: The, yeah. Yeah. I, I, I froze a lot of it, so yes.

Malcolm Collins: Good.

Simone Collins: New evening.

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