Unlearn16: Class is in Session - The One Where AI Destroys the Internet

00:00:00.000 class is in session hey everybody and welcome to unlearn 16 class is in session look i'm coming

00:00:09.560 from my office the veep's office right back there um i have a problem i think we need to sort of

00:00:16.900 work through something right now because i don't know how to manage it let me set the stage um

00:00:25.220 Sunday, I'm at the mall. I'm shopping at Yorkdale. I know I'm always shopping at Yorkdale.

00:00:32.300 Nonetheless, I'm shopping and I get text messages on my phone and it says RBC fraud alert and I

00:00:38.760 ignore it. I'm like, whatever, delete scammers. Cause that's what it is, right? It's always

00:00:44.340 fraud alerts. Always like the CRA is contacting you. It's always like somebody's contacting you

00:00:50.260 in order to scam. You just have to click this link and they'll take all your money is what

00:00:54.140 they're going to do. So I deleted it. So four text messages go by and I delete them all. And then

00:00:59.120 in between the text messages, I'm getting calls from an 855 number. Now, again, I ignore it.

00:01:05.520 Want to know why I ignore it? Because maybe two weeks ago, Stacey Green Living got a call

00:01:11.820 and it said RBC, Royal Bank of Canada that's calling. And she gets this call and she picks

00:01:21.320 it up and she assumes it's the Royal Bank. And she talks to them for a little bit about, and

00:01:27.080 they're telling her there's been fraud on her account. She's talking to them and she gets to

00:01:31.120 a point where they're asking her weird information. And she goes, thank God she's smart. Because if

00:01:36.660 this was me, that would have been that. Not anymore, because now I don't trust anything or

00:01:43.140 anybody. But at this point, she says, you know what? I'm just going to call the Royal Bank back

00:01:49.260 if you don't mind. I'm just going to hang up with you guys and call you guys back.

00:01:53.860 And these guys get all defensive. And she, sure enough, hangs up, calls the Royal Bank back.

00:02:00.860 It's nothing. It's fraud. It's a scam. They had cloned a number and put it up there. So it looked

00:02:08.900 like the RBC was calling her, but it wasn't. It was a scam. So guys, this is on the tail end of

00:02:17.420 me never believing any emails I get ever. I don't believe emails so much to the point where I have

00:02:24.940 almost missed very significant opportunities. I almost missed a TED Talk in Alberta. TikTok

00:02:31.600 themselves contacted me. TikTok had office in Canada for me to come to their house. I didn't

00:02:36.100 believe it was TikTok Canada. People have, like, I just ignore pretty much all sponsorships,

00:02:44.620 all of those things. Now, in all fairness, I'm not really doing those anyways, but guys,

00:02:49.300 like McDonald's could have contacted me by this point and I just ignored it. McDonald's, sure.

00:02:55.140 Delete, delete. You can't believe anything. Anna, not too long ago, was involved and it was almost,

00:03:04.260 it was so bad. She came this close to losing a boatload of money.

00:03:09.000 so my question is in this era of access in this era of of cell phones and email and phone calls

00:03:22.200 and all this high technology in order to prove who we are when we are where we are and and none of it

00:03:29.340 none of it assures any sort of like you know security at this point none of it so now what

00:03:41.680 do we do so do we go back I'm almost at the point where honest to god when tiktok invited me

00:03:47.820 I still didn't believe it was tiktok canada I didn't send them anything I didn't the woman

00:03:53.560 must have been like what's with this chick she's not even like telling us like when she's coming 1.00

00:03:58.140 down or she's not like signing into the security thing. I'm like, cause I don't believe you.

00:04:02.820 I didn't believe her until I was standing in TikTok. And even then I thought this could all

00:04:08.000 be a facade of a sham. Steal my TikTok account. I can't believe my email. That's really easy to

00:04:16.440 fake. I can't believe text messages on my phone. We can't believe phone calls. Do we just take the

00:04:22.340 mail seriously at this point? But let's be honest, the mail doesn't get to your house half the time.

00:04:26.520 and it's such a long period that if I wait for the mail to get to my house about a scam,

00:04:34.540 I mean, I've already been taken. What do we do? Marshall McLuhan, for those historians out there

00:04:43.280 and technological, Marshall McLuhan's a Canadian. He said, you'll always see technology bring back

00:04:50.140 to existence something that was previously thrown away. And the reality is we have all this digital

00:05:00.820 security and all of this digital access. And with this digital access and digital security and all

00:05:07.700 of the AI that exists on the internet, it's actually come full circle and started to demand

00:05:13.960 that real people go into real buildings to talk to other real people before being given any access

00:05:21.980 whatsoever. I also am sitting here thinking, so I can't trust anybody that's going to call,

00:05:30.200 email, or text me. And I'm also thinking this obviously applies to the internet as a whole.

00:05:35.940 So if you understand, if you think about it, we can't trust anything we see or hear anymore as it pertains to video.

00:05:48.820 You can't trust a news article.

00:05:51.520 You can't trust audio.

00:05:53.000 You can change people's voices.

00:05:54.540 I've heard full Justin Bieber songs written that I thought was Justin Bieber's on Justin Bieber's AI.

00:05:59.120 guy. There's a guy on TikTok right now that I would have put my life on was actually Tom Cruise.

00:06:07.960 And this is all because of how good AI and special effects and computer digitization

00:06:16.540 has gotten. So much so that, and I saw this happening to somebody in a live chat,

00:06:22.800 somebody was like in their comments constantly being a pain right and and the creator was like

00:06:30.820 oh it's just a bot and like oh yeah look this up so much so that this ai that this bot was able to

00:06:38.700 simultaneously speak to a creator in a live like texting kind of thing or did you know whatever

00:06:45.280 and at the same time was creating fake, fake newspaper articles,

00:06:52.940 fake birth certificates, fake credentials online.

00:06:57.800 So when people went to check it, they were actually there.

00:07:00.620 I think I saw that in Mission Impossible.

00:07:03.340 That's where we are.

00:07:06.680 So the only way at this point to be able to say

00:07:10.280 that you're talking to an actual person,

00:07:12.740 that the person exists, and that the person has whatever sort of connections or access to points

00:07:19.840 you need them to have, is if you're standing in real space in real time. We can't trust anything

00:07:26.700 anymore. I can do video conferences with people. Nobody's ever in an office. And who cares if

00:07:33.780 they're in an office? I'm in an office right now. This could all be a facade. All of it.

00:07:38.800 so you can't tell if anybody is who they are or connected to anything ever like my mom's not

00:07:48.680 allowed to answer the phone or check her text messages for anything i'm like you just ignore

00:07:52.280 all of it the only thing you can do is you hang up you get a text message from your bank or whatever

00:07:57.300 you call your bank ignore the text message you never click a link you just call your bank directly

00:08:02.800 and see is this legitimate but there's no secure there's there's no secure path it's like

00:08:08.440 every time they heighten security and heighten digitization, whoever is cracking into it

00:08:15.600 heightens their ability to get around it and then abuse it. And now it's kind of interesting

00:08:22.900 because as far as computers have gone, it's like, I keep thinking of the movie Catch Me If You Can

00:08:28.320 and how he like fake signatures and whatever, but that was just one guy.

00:08:32.420 That was just one guy impacting one thing at one time. But now you have people, because of the reach of the internet and the reach of this kind of digital framework, you have one person reaching hundreds, if not thousands of people and pushing them all into the same scam to commit just this massive act.

00:08:58.440 like every single place you go. And Neil deGrasse Tyson said it best, and I still

00:09:10.820 am terrified of these words. He said, AI is going to render the internet useless.

00:09:20.080 Let me say that again.

00:09:24.160 AI is going to render the internet useless because there's nothing you will be able to

00:09:32.160 trust.

00:09:33.200 There is no source you'll be able to read.

00:09:36.120 There is no video or audio you'll be able to watch or listen to that proves anything

00:09:41.700 because they all can be so easily manufactured and manipulated.

00:09:46.680 What?

00:09:47.120 What?

00:09:50.080 So we've created this beautiful access point for the world to be able to get smarter and connect with one another and gain insight to information.

00:10:01.520 But by the virtue of creating this web of information, we have also created AI aspects that can alter and manipulate and frame it to however we want, thus rendering the whole internet useless anyway.

00:10:24.600 I don't know what else to say.

00:10:27.820 Am I going to have to teach my students how to use microfiche?

00:10:30.380 are are we going to only say it was history if it happened and we were there

00:10:35.820 how are we ever going to be able to understand the the world in which we live in you only can

00:10:45.420 understand a protest or a or a political event or anything if you were actually occupying space

00:10:52.620 in that time in that particular event? Is that it? There'll never be sort of a distance between the

00:11:02.500 two? All of this gets pretty overwhelming. It's pretty overwhelming for a teacher.

00:11:10.160 It gets pretty overwhelming for students. It gets very overwhelming. And what it does,

00:11:18.780 And this is the really scary part, is it truly gives rise to individuals, political or otherwise, who want to take advantage of that system, who want to figure out a way to weaponize the lack of consistent knowledge and the lack of access to consistent knowledge in order to escalate fear

00:11:47.120 and to manufacture whatever it is they want to manufacture

00:11:50.740 in order to install them into power, gain, and magnify the impact

00:11:58.060 and the control that they have.

00:12:00.220 And that's what we're seeing happening in real time.

00:12:02.820 But how do we know we're seeing it happen in real time?

00:12:04.580 I don't know, because we don't know what's happening.

00:12:11.720 You know, you get a throwback to the book burnings

00:12:15.400 and how much of a manipulation that was and how much when that information was gone,

00:12:21.100 it was erased. We'll never get it back again. And you think to this day and everything that's

00:12:28.600 on the computer, but what AI is doing and what this manipulative sort of cyber hacking will do

00:12:35.920 is it'll, it'll, it'll destroy information. It'll destroy any weight that information

00:12:46.100 ever had, any sort of valid, significant piece. It'll, it'll evaporate that kind of, um, propriety.

00:12:56.500 So, so, oh my gosh. So if that happens, or as that is happening, we're watching it happen right now.

00:13:04.160 what's the next step? Because I've often said this, and this is the first rule of my history

00:13:13.700 class. I hand them the textbook and I say, this is a 400-page textbook of the last 300 years of,

00:13:21.860 let's say, Canadian history. What's the problem with it? And they'll put up their hand and they'll

00:13:26.360 say, oh, there's bias in the pages. And I'll say, okay, that's true. But you can fact check that

00:13:31.540 bias. We can go through that and really find out, are they right about this? What else is a problem?

00:13:38.880 And they'll say, well, it's written from one perspective. I'm like, absolutely. So there's

00:13:42.800 bias and then there's purpose to that bias, right? The winners get to write the history books. The

00:13:47.780 winners, people get to write the history that have the money, that have the power. Therefore,

00:13:51.200 it's from their perspective, even if they don't implicitly focus on bias. I go, but that's not the

00:13:56.500 most dangerous part. And I'll always have the kid put up their hand and they'll say,

00:13:59.400 How did they put 300 years of history into 400 pages? I'm like, there it is.

00:14:07.800 It doesn't scare me what's in a history book. The bias doesn't scare me because the bias can be

00:14:14.240 checked and we can do a lot of different things with the bias that's in the book, what information

00:14:19.760 they have. What scares me is what they omitted. What was never in the book, the stories that were

00:14:27.100 never told in the book at all. And that omission of information is terrifying because you don't

00:14:34.700 even know what you're supposed to be finding to fact check or to add if they've never even alluded

00:14:40.900 to it. Proof in point, I went to high school, I got three different university degrees and not

00:14:47.360 one time did anybody in those educational institutions ever speak about residential

00:14:51.500 schools. Never existed. So if that's the case, if what is omitted is the issue, think about it.

00:15:05.920 Just for a second, go with me. Omitting things from 400 pages is similarly damaging to inundating

00:15:16.340 everybody with 3,000 versions of the same event, some true, some manufactured, some partially

00:15:25.900 true, and then throwing it all at you as a user of the internet in order to search through it all

00:15:37.020 and find some sort of truth. Omission of information and tidal waves of information

00:15:44.760 will have the same impact. Where the hell do I find the truth? Where do I find elements

00:15:52.320 that we can agree on as fundamental building blocks for society, for a political system,

00:15:59.940 for an economic system? How do we do that if we can't agree on anything? And we're always saying,

00:16:05.440 yeah, but what about this? Yeah, but what about this? Well, I have this chart. Well,

00:16:08.660 I have this statistic. Well, I have this personal account. And you don't know what's been made up,

00:16:14.760 When it's been made up who made it up because when you go back and research it it has depths to the lies

00:16:21.600 Depths to the manipulation

00:16:25.380 Now what

00:16:28.260 Now what happens when your primary goal is to discredit anybody who's ever been considered an expert because one time they made an error or

00:16:38.400 Or or they might have an agenda

00:16:41.040 Probably do have an agenda

00:16:44.760 So, we're at an impasse. Little to no information, controlled information, book-burning, bias, the winner's right history, too. You can have all of the information.

00:16:57.580 But with all of the information comes every idea, every opinion, every perspective, regardless of validity, regardless of intelligent, sort of thoughtful debate, regardless of proof in any way, shape or form.

00:17:16.680 Because what's proof besides, what's proof of a historical event happening?

00:17:21.300 One person saying it happening and other people saying, yeah, I saw it happen.

00:17:25.880 What else is the proof?

00:17:28.300 So if I can get a bunch of people to say, this happened, I was there,

00:17:32.200 and 1,700 people to back them up and say, yeah, I saw that story, is that proof?

00:17:37.580 Is a photo proof? Well, we can doctor photos.

00:17:40.760 Is a video proof? We can manufacture those.

00:17:44.520 Guys, where do we lie right now?

00:17:49.180 And you have people telling me, oh my God, Joanna, the students need to get back to basics.

00:17:57.580 are you okay? Back to the basics of what? How in the hell do they go back? Number one,

00:18:05.100 they're too smart for that. Number two, they're too aware of reality for that. The basics were

00:18:14.100 just that, basic. They're no longer living in a basic world. They're looking at everything

00:18:20.720 from every angle. It is so incredibly complex and overwhelming, and you want them to what?

00:18:27.580 learn how to handwrite again, little calligraphy in their day. You think this has value?

00:18:34.480 These kids are coding computers and trying to figure out the differences between reality and

00:18:40.900 AI. And you want them to do what? Make sure that they know how to change a carburetor?

00:18:51.040 As a part of their... I'm not downplaying the need to figure out how to fix your car.

00:18:56.300 What I am saying is this, don't downplay the intelligence of this generation.

00:19:03.860 Don't downplay the skill sets they are having to learn.

00:19:07.160 Don't downplay the complex, overwhelming, increasingly manipulative and oppressive world

00:19:18.000 that they are living in, in order to what?

00:19:22.300 Sew their own shorts?

00:19:26.300 We need to start understanding the world we live in.

00:19:29.560 We need to start building curriculum to face the world we live in.

00:19:33.800 We need to stop telling our kids that they need to do anything,

00:19:37.040 but get better and smarter in the time that they're in.

00:19:40.880 And we, as adults, we're all going to have to play catch up.

00:19:45.940 Learn more, learn faster, and stop talking about what it was like

00:19:50.680 when you could ride your bike until the lights go down in an era.

00:19:54.340 in an era where kids can be pulled off the street,

00:20:00.040 trafficked to another country in about 3.2 minutes flat.

00:20:05.000 We live in a new time.

00:20:07.680 And it's exciting.

00:20:09.500 It's amazing.

00:20:11.120 But what this is all going to, it's all going to do this.

00:20:13.760 And I'm going to say this final thing.

00:20:15.200 And I really think it's important.

00:20:18.760 Everybody's been saying kids need to disconnect from the internet.

00:20:22.000 they need to touch grass, step into the real world, blah, blah, blah. Well, this is what's

00:20:26.000 happened. You have a rise of technology that is super important, super connective, super

00:20:31.380 attention grabbing, and sometimes addictive. And what's going to happen? These kids are

00:20:37.420 going to recognize the useless nature of the technology they then have and watch them put

00:20:44.520 it down. Watch them put it down in order to revolutionize the next step, in order to step

00:20:53.920 into the next thing that we will build ourself into. Because they almost don't believe anything

00:21:01.740 they see, read, or hear at this very moment. And if they don't believe it, what's the point of

00:21:09.000 interacting with it. And on that note, I'll see you next week. Same bat time, same bat channel.

00:21:16.640 Dismissed. 1.00

Unlearn16: Class is in Session - September 24, 2024

The One Where AI Destroys the Internet

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