Human Is The New Vinyl: Micah Voraritskul

AI can now generate essays, photos, songs, and video that look real enough to fool experts. This impacts how and whether humans can trust one another, and it’s already reshaping how we learn, create, and relate to each other.

Kyle sits down with Micah Voraritskul, author of Human Is the New Vinyl: Why Human Creativity Still Wins in the AI Revolution, to unpack why the vinyl comeback is more than nostalgia. Vinyl is inconvenient, physical, and slow, and that’s exactly the point. Micah argues we’re heading toward a similar “analog counterreaction” to generative AI: people will start seeking out work that is transparently human because it carries authorship, risk, and meaning.

We get concrete about how that might work through Verified Human, Micah’s grassroots trust label. We talk about why watermarking and legislation won’t fully solve the “what’s real” problem, why “disposable content” changes the moral stakes, and why education may be the biggest battlefield. If writing is how we assess learning and AI can write for anyone, what does integrity look like in the global classroom? We also explore the philosophical via Nozick’s experience machine and the spiritual through possible applications to language, Babel, logos, and Pentecost.

If you’re overwhelmed by AI slop but still curious about the tool’s benefits, this conversation offers a balanced, human-first framework.

Disclaimer: This episode description was definitely written by AI.

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Transcript

Welcome And Guest Setup

Randy 0:06

I'm Randy, the pastor half of the podcast, and my friend Kyle's a philosopher. This podcast hosts conversations at the intersection of philosophy, theology, and spirituality.

Kyle 0:15

We also invite experts to join us, making public a space that we've often enjoyed off-air around the proverbial table with a good drink at the back corner of a dark pub.

Randy 0:24

Thanks for joining us, and welcome to a pastor and a philosopher walking to a bar.

The Vinyl Metaphor For AI

Kyle 0:36

So today on the show, we have Micah Verurit School, uh, who wrote a book called Human Is the New Vinyl: Why Human Creativity Still Wins in the AI Revolution. I don't know Micah. I discovered him through a mutual friend of ours who's also been on the podcast, Aaron Simmons, who is a philosopher at Furman University. You may have heard our episode with him where we talked about Kierkegaard. And Aaron had posted about this book and saying it was good. He actually wrote the foreword to it as well. And I saw the title and I thought that sounds really interesting. We've been wanting to talk more about AI. We've only had, I think, one dedicated episode about that. And I was very interested in this guy's take. And that metaphor immediately struck me, vinyl, making the comeback that it has over, you know, digital audio formats, and there being something more human and more tactile and more sensory, sounds stupid to say, but something like where you it's an event when you put on a vinyl record and you sit down for 20 minutes or 45 minutes with your friends or whatever. I used to have a group of friends who would have vinyl nights, and we would eat one person would pick a record and you'd bring it and you'd sit there and you'd smoke and you'd drink and you'd have that experience. And that's totally different from what you do, you know, on Spotify or whatever when you just put in your earbuds. And it doesn't matter that the quality is not different, right? Because if you pay the upcharge for the premium service, the quality is just as good or even better. There isn't that crackly stuff, but that's not the point. There's something more to the book's point human about the vinyl thing. And so Micah's point, as you'll see, is that something similar is going on with AI. We don't necessarily all want to live in a world of AI slop where it has just kind of filled all of our news feeds and all of our social media experience, and even to the point of our music listening experience and our film experience and our whatever fill in the blank. AI has already saturated all of those places, and it's only going to get worse, and we all know that. And so if you feel that and you feel like you would prefer a more human experience instead of that, then this book might be interesting to you. And Micah is somebody that you might want to check out. Randy isn't with us today, as you will hear. He had a conflict, and so it's just me and Micah this time. Uh, and I hope you guys really enjoy this. So you wrote this book called Human is the New Vinyl. If anybody's watching on YouTube, here it is. If you can see it from my background. This is not a real background. I do not have this many bottles.

Micah 3:19

That's an impressive bar you've got there.

Kyle 3:21

Isn't it? Yeah, we got to keep that bar part of the podcast alive. I actually am also drinking a glass of tequila here. So if you want to drink anything, cheers. You're more than welcome.

Micah 3:31

I'm I'm drinking it's like tonic water and and just cranberry juice. So I got the little version, the virgin version.

Seeing Midjourney Change Everything

Kyle 3:39

So lovely. Um, so the book, it's really interesting. I was immediately intrigued by the title when I saw it shared by a mutual friend of ours, Aaron Simmons, who's been a previous guest on the podcast. Uh, and I knew I immediately wanted to talk to you about it, even if I didn't like it in the end. I wanted to know what the book was about and hear your take on this AI thing. Because I work with AI every day. Um, I I'm in the learning design space and we use it a lot. And um I'm kind of annoyed with it at this moment. I'm curious about your take on how you're living with it at this moment. But first, I want to know why did you write this? I know it was a project long in the making. So what got you thinking about it and um how did it get to where it is?

Micah 4:23

That's a that's a great question. You know, I'm you know, I'm a person of faith, but ultimately, and I I tell this, and you know, I've got evangelical family, so they get a little uptight when I say things like this, but I'm a humanist. So in the sense that I really believe in the power and sacredness and awesomeness of the human machine, and whether you're you believe that we got here through evolution and chance, or whether or not you believe that we are created by you know a great force that's got a creative or personal or not, whatever, but we're created by a higher higher force. Um, I I believe that we are um there's something really special. We are the most talented and dangerous of all the living things that we know about. So um, and I think that's a wonderful thing too, because I think also that there's there's there's great joy and great, there's love and squalor in life, as JD Salader would say. So um, so I I really care deeply about humans and what humans can create. Um, so in summer of 2022, my son, who's a math and computer science major, he's brilliant. He brought me mid journey stable diffusion because he plays video games and he's like, hey dad, they had there's these new like things, like they're called large language models. And basically you can type a prompt in to this and and it'll it'll draw you whatever picture you want with with using words. I was like, What? Like, I don't understand what you're saying right now. He's like, Yeah, yeah, like you just describe what you want. I was like, you describe what you want, yes, using words, yes, and it draws whatever you say. He said, Yes. I was like, This is the strangest thing I've ever even heard of, right? So I was in the bathroom, um, installing a vent fan in our guest bathroom. We were like doing a remodel, and I was up on a ladder when he showed me this. And I was like, tell it to draw a half Asian guy on a ladder, installing a vent fan in a small bathroom, angry, because that's exactly what I what's happening right now. So he's like, Okay. So he types the prompt in the window, and and I kid you not, like 10 seconds later, there were 20 images of me, photorealistic images of me doing exactly what I was doing in that instant that didn't exist in the universe 30 seconds earlier. And I was like, my first thought wasn't this is awesome. I mean, it was like that's amazing, but my first thought was, oh my gosh, this is gonna crush all of my friends who are in visual arts.

Kyle 6:50

Right.

Micah 6:50

That was my first instinct. And I was like, wow, I feel sorry for photographers. I knew where it was headed immediately when I saw it, and I knew like this is early, like he's just now showing me this. Like, this is gonna be. I immediately thought they're gonna make movies with this someday. And little did I know, gonna be like a couple of years away.

Kyle 7:10

Right.

Micah 7:11

So, um, anyway, so I didn't think that much about it again, but then um about three or four months later, in November, when ChatGPT first came out, um, he gets, hey dad, this is this is gonna blow your mind. It's not quite as impressive on the front end as mid-journey and stable diffusion. But there's a new large language model that OpenAI just put out, and it's called Chat GPT. I was like, that's the stupidest name I've ever heard. And he's like, Yeah, but it's amazing what it can do. I was like, okay. So he said, You can do that same thing where you you put a written prompt in and it will write you anything you want. I was like, but like like what do you mean? Like a poem? He's like, Yeah, like a poem or like a full report on the agricultural implications of insuring farms and farms on the you know eastern eastern coast of the United States, and it'll write you a full brief of that. And I was like, like it could write anything? He's like, Yeah, it'll at that point it hadn't passed the bar yet, the bar exam. But it wasn't too long after that that it passed the bar exam and the MCATS. I mean, these are like really hard tests, right? So, and he's like, it can write anything. So we played around with it for a while, and I was like, wow, so it can write any essay, any paper on the planet better than any high schooler for sure, and probably better than most college students. And he's like, Yeah, not only that, but it can already do it in 40 languages, and they're like, they're experimenting now, it can do it in 160 languages, and it can write at a graduate level in 160 languages convincingly. So yeah, I thought to myself, man, this is like the end of this is the end of like a lot of stuff. For one thing, I was like, this is the death of homework because I was a teacher, yeah. So it's like there's no way that teachers are gonna be able to like know if their students know anything or if they're just sticking a prompt in a window. So yeah, so anyway, so as as that started developing, I went, I went out to lunch with a friend of mine and I said, Man, I think this AI stuff, and that week all this stuff was happening. Musk and and Steve Wozniak. Incidentally, I wrote Steve Wozniak an email, the co-founder of Apple. I wrote him an email and told him, Hey, I mentioned you my book. He's like, Cool, send it to me. He emailed me back. So I have an email in my inbox from Steve Wozniak.

Kyle 9:25

I'm so did you send him the book?

Micah 9:28

I did. He I don't know if he's gotten it yet. I'm gonna ping him in a little while and be like, Hey, I hope you got my book okay. I'm not gonna ask him if he read it because I don't want to be disappointed. So, all right, but anyway, so so this is my friend Brian. I was like, you know what, it's gonna happen. So that happened. Steve Wozniak and Musk said we need to put a pause on AI because and I was like, Wow, that's scary to hear guys that are developing or that that smart and that high up. If they're scared, I'm scared.

Kyle 9:52

And that lasted all of what a month.

Micah 9:55

What's that?

Kyle 9:56

That lasted what a month, maybe?

Micah 9:58

Yeah, yeah. And then then Musk started developing Grok about three days later.

Kyle 10:02

Yeah.

Micah 10:03

So and then, like, then we read this article that like Levi Strauss had used AI models, and you know, this is like pre-Chanel using them to basically show their clothes online, and the the whole industry was up in arms, and all these people were up in arms about it. And I was like, why do they care? Like, why? I mean, I I think it's gross, but why why do people care that AI models are being used to model genes, right? And I was like, what is it? What is it about that? Why does why are people kind of scared of AI? Why is there fear? Why is there this why is there this sense of like trepidation about it, right? Like, what is that? Like, what is that thing that makes us don't mess with my Levi's? One of my chapters was don't f with my Levi's, but uh my wife convinced me that that was a little too racy for for my parents, so probably a good call. It was actually spelled out, but I that was definitely too much. But yeah, so I thought I just thought, you know, hey, it's pretty it's not gonna be long before AI is making music, films, photographs. Sure enough, that week I got an email from a photographer in Nashville named Jeremy Cowart, and he's a famous photographer. He's he's Obama got him to do his portrait. Uh the Kardashians, he's done portraits of Taylor Swift, he's done uh humanitarian work for the United Nations. I mean, he's a big deal. And so he sent this email out to his newsletter that said, Hey, my friend just brought in like 10 images and said five of these are AI generated and five of these are real people. Tell me which ones are which, and he's like, I couldn't tell, and it like shook me to the core. Dude, I have taken hundreds of thousands of human portraits in my life, and I can't tell. And I said, It's pretty soon everybody's gonna be it's gonna be that way for everything. Like, you're not gonna be able to tell the difference between what AI has made, what a human has made, and that is a huge problem. That's a gross, terrible problem. So that's what got me started with Verified Human, and that's why I decided to write the book, mainly in defense of the creative arts and education, right?

Kyle 12:08

And I want to talk more about both of those. Sure, sure. I remember where while you're talking, I was reminded, I don't remember when this was, but I remember reading a headline. It seemed like it was fairly early on, and it was right when they announced Sora. Yes, which I've tried to use, and it's kind of I I don't like it. It kind of sucks for my purposes compared. Maybe for filmmakers, it's a different thing. But I remember I think it was Tyler Perry. He had like um like a film production studio, and he like immediately scrapped his plans when he saw like hundreds of millions of dollars of investment, was just like, nope, we're not doing that. And it was because he saw like the preview of what this tool could eventually do, and he was like right, there goes that plan. This is kind of off of everything.

Micah 12:51

Just no, and and maybe maybe a little short-sighted because yeah, I wonder if he's uh changed his mind since the sag after stuff.

Verified Human And Trust Labels

Kyle 13:02

But yeah, you're you're not wrong about that. Um, obviously the huge impacts that it's gonna have in all those industries, and you talk about specifically about a bunch of them in here, and I want to get to that in a little bit. First, though, I want you to tell me what that verified human thing that you mentioned is, because I know that's a big part of this. So just briefly, what's that all about?

Micah 13:19

So if your listeners or people on YouTube want to go to to check it out on their own, you can join, it's free, but it's it's verified human, just all spelled out verified human dot info in f o verified human is this it's a small kind of grassroots movement that I started. And it's basically kind of like if if you know what fair trade is, you know the idea is that you put a label on coffee and people are willing to pay a little bit more for that coffee because theoretically the supply chain is being audited, right, by a responsible company, and the guy who grew the bean is not getting screwed, they're getting their fair share of what you're paying for that coffee. So, in the sense that you can trust that or a USDA certified or whatever, that there's a label on a product that says this product was created in a certain way. I thought to myself, um, we can't count on legislation to solve the differentiation problem. We can't count on technology to because AI doesn't care about watermarks or CTPA or any of that stuff. It doesn't care. Um, it just copies whatever it sees and just it doesn't even see the watermark. It doesn't even know what the watermark is. I was like, so we can't solve it technologically, we can't solve it legislatively. So what can we solve it with? And I was like, the only thing that I can think of is with the power of trust between the person who created it and the person who's looking at it or consuming or who the audience, the creator in the audience. So I said, I wonder if I created a standard for all writers, for all visual artists, for all musicians, for all voice actors, and for teachers and students that basically said, we understand that there's a relationship of trust between us, and I'm going to create something for you. If it's a student writing a paper, the student is the creator, the audience is the teacher, right? And I'm I'm not going to use AI in these ways to write this paper. And if I put the verified human label on it, it says, I have committed. I put my name on it saying I am I didn't do these things. So I'm entering into an agreement of trust. There's a space of trust between us that I'm honoring by putting that label on there. For a photographer, they can say, Hey, obviously, we can't not use AI. I mean, we're using AI right now, even though it because it's built into Zoom and it's built into the internet, and it's a part of like our computer systems that we're using right now to like process all this information. We use AI if we if you do a Google search or use any browser, you've got AI built in. If you use Photoshop in virtually any way, if you use any of the filters or you know, any of the gradient fills and all that stuff, it's all kind of powered by that same AI now. Or if you use Grammarly or if you spellcheck or whatever, you know, you're using AI for lots of things, but what you're saying when you use the verified human label is I didn't use the AI to essentially create this thing. I'm the essential author, I'm the essential photographer, I'm the essential composer, writer of this music. So artists, musicians, voice actors can go there, they can sign the standard, and then they can use the label on their work to signify their audience. Hey, okay.

Kyle 16:30

So they sign, so is this like an honor system kind of thing? Like you use the analogy of fair trade where somebody is trying to vet it. You're very clear in the book that vetting the quote unquote supply chain, if you want to call it that, for AI is not possible, right? Right. Um, so I'm guessing you're not spending all of your time going and checking out to make sure that these people who are getting your label are actually telling the truth. So is this an honor system-based thing? And are you just kind of assuming that people who are interested in it will not be abusing it?

Micah 17:02

The idea is that if if we if we come to realize that somebody is grossly abusing this, like if they write a whole rap album using AI and put it out there, and somebody discovers that and says, Hey, I'm blowing the whistle on this person, they used AI to write all these lyrics, and they're saying that they wrote it, then obviously we're gonna pull the label and publicly tell everybody, hey, this is not verified human, you know, like even though this artist said it was. Yeah, we don't really have that problem right now because we're not big enough to really need to do anything. Yeah, like I know everybody basically that has signed up, so it's only a couple hundred of us now, right? So I'm in touch with them through email. And right now, it's it can still be it's amazing what you can do with simple questions. Like Kyle, I'm just looking you in the eye right now and just going, Hey, did you take this picture?

Kyle 17:50

Yeah, so do you actually meet with like people who want to use the label and ask them direct questions?

Micah 17:55

I I would if I had to. I have I haven't had to like call anybody on the carpet, but but it would it's it's amazing. You can simply say, Hey, did you take this picture? Yes, I did. Tell me a little bit about it. And this is like not in the spirit spirit of suspicion, it's just in the spirit of curiosity.

Kyle 18:12

Yeah, what kind of camera did you use?

Micah 18:14

Where did you take the picture? Who's the picture of? What what street was that on in Nashville? You to you say you took that in Nashville. Where was it in Nashville? Was it near De Monbrone or whatever? You know, where was it? Um and uh it's amazing like how quickly you can realize if somebody actually did something or not, just by asking them simple questions.

Kyle 18:32

I've been a teacher long enough to know how quickly people fold when you confront them about the when you just ask them, yeah, did you extreme exactly so?

Micah 18:40

But yeah, I think the idea is if it got big enough and we had to do the trust but verify kind of thing, that we would have there are ways that you could hire a third party to like help you verify stuff, but it's not by using technology, like right.

Kyle 18:56

But that's not like the core idea of the business. So, and and to be clear, there's not judgment baked into this label in the sense of you're not um demoting the value, or are you? Maybe I'll pose it as a question. I read you as saying it's worthwhile to have this separate category of verified human stuff in this AI saturated age that we're in now, but we're not thereby passing judgment on people who use AI to create stuff, right? We're not saying that that stuff is I don't know. Are we saying it's inferior? What are we saying about it, if anything?

Micah 19:33

No, I don't think we're saying it's inferior. I think there's a lot of cases where AI does a perfectly fine job. Um, I think what we're saying is that if you're telling your audience that you created this, that you're the essential author of this thing, and you want them to know that you didn't use AI in a certain way, that there's val there's real value in that. Yeah, um, it's not to say there's not value in something that you write that's that's using I've I used AI to answer emails before that sign my name on it, and I don't feel the need to disclose at the click level like how I'm using AI, right? But if I were to write a poem and enter it into a contest, and it it's a humans-only contest, you know, like obviously if I use AI, I'm cheating. So I'm breaking trust with my audience, I'm breaking trust with the contest. A guy named Boris Eldickson, I write about this in the book. You know, he won the Sony World Competition Photography Competition. This is a big competition with like a million entrants. And he won this thing. They have like Academy Awards style gala to do the award ceremony. He got on stage in London in a tuxedo and he said, I can't accept this award. By the way, I'm in touch with Eldickson, he's got my book. And I don't agree with how he did it, but I get why what he was trying to do. But he said, I can't accept this award because I made this image, the electrician, the one that won the award. I made it using Dali. And the world's like, it was like the biggest just oh my gosh, we just got duped, you know, like all the experts that poured over this. There were like critics like writing things about how beautiful it was and all this stuff, and it's like, yeah, dude, you guys, that was made by an algorithm, you know.

Kyle 21:18

And so did he do it intentionally?

Micah 21:21

Yes, to make the point, to make the point that AI is here and it is disrupting everything.

Kyle 21:28

Yeah, well, at least he didn't accept the award, I guess. I don't know.

Micah 21:31

He didn't accept the award, right? I feel bad for the number two guy, though, that's like, oh, I get the award now, but only because I'm overshadowed by this stunt. One more, I'll give you one more example, Kyle. Um, when I was first founding Verified Human, I went to the guy I was talking about, Brian, who uh who's uh one of my best buds. We were the ones that were talking about, oh my gosh, AI and Levi's and all that stuff. And his father is the chancellor of Lee University, and um, where Aaron and I both went, um, to to undergrad and he's a super smart guy. He's he's a writer, he's an intellectual, he's a psychol uh psychology guy, doctor in psychology. And um I was explaining verified human to him and he said, Michael, why should I anybody care if AI makes a picture? He's like, if you need a picture of you know a girl, you know, walking with an umbrella, who cares if it's AI or if you get it legitimately from Getty Images or whatever, or someone took it like it's for a flyer. It doesn't matter. Like just put it on there and just make copies of it, get it out the door, you're done. And I was like, you're absolutely right about that. If it's disposable content, if it's a picture of people eating pizza, like yeah, who cares? Like am I going to pay 25 bucks for that on Getty Images or shutterstock or go try to rip one off of Google Images? Or am I going to get AI generated? But in that case, it doesn't matter. AI does a great job of making a disposable picture of people eating pizza for a flight for a pizza party. I said but you have this picture it hanging in your office that was done by John Stobart. And he's like yes I was like it's beautiful. It's this massive picture of ships loading in Boston Harbor in the 1800s. And I was like so that's number 17 of 750. So that's the 17th print of that that you bought and he said yes and I said and you had it matted and framed put in your office and he said yes and I said because that means something to you Boston means something to you Stobart means something to you and that's that scene is like the his vision and and he said yes and I said what if I told you that I could use um mid-journey and I could make you that exact same picture except I could put you and Mrs. Khan on the back of that salt wagon. Would you frame that hang it in your office? And he's like no I get your point I was like exactly because that would be a cheap trip right this is created by a human being that's what make has gives it value right it's not the image so yeah so so it's more about transparency and not so yeah not lying.

Helpful Tool Or Cultural Slop

Kyle 24:01

There's a there's a good analogy with uh I'm drinking tequila at the moment so I thought of this there's a good analogy in tequila actually where there's this whole additive free movement. I don't know if you're familiar with this but in the tequila world additives added to the thing is a huge issue because it's it's not illegal. In fact there are lots of incentives to do so and lots of disincentives to not do so in in Mexico where most of the stuff is produced. And so all the brands that the average person has heard of definitely are packed with additives up to a certain allowed percentage which just makes them taste like in pretty much anything you want them to taste like if you want your tequila to taste like a vanilla birthday cake there's an additive for that and so and so now because people are the snobs like myself are becoming more aware of this there's this whole movement now in tequila towards additive free or there was there were these people who are independent independently testing brands and then they made their own label very much like a verified human label uh and they sold it they they sold their services to test the brands and the brands could buy the label and put it on their packaging and because this is a big thing now especially in the States which is the largest consumer of this spirit uh and so uh Mexico cracked down hard on this they were not happy but the whole thing was you know we're not judging people who put the stuff in their tequila do that if you like the taste of it we just want you to tell us what's in it yeah exactly and so that's the essentially the idea yeah I I think that's that's a perfect analogy man that that really is it but I would say it really is better with yeah yeah it really is better when it's when it's pure it really is so you you use this quote at the beginning of your book and I noticed this is also in your email tag uh signature on your emails it's an Einstein quote and I don't remember the exact quote but the gist of it is something like what we create should help us not hurt us more or less um I am currently in a space where AI helps me quite a bit professionally it also bums me out in certain ways professionally because of what it's made necessary already and what the direction I can see it going. Yeah um it's I'm I don't but I just listen to a podcast where there's a guy a very respected guy who knows all the major players in this field who is seriously arguing that it's gonna kill us all. So I don't buy into that right um and so there's two kinds of critiques here we could bracket I guess there's the one that caused Musk and those other people to say we should put a pause on this which they then immediately forgot and that is this is going to cause this is we're gonna create a superintelligence that's literally going to kill all of us. Right. And then there's you don't seem so worried about that. And then there's what you're talking about is this creates a lot of inauthenticity. This creates uh huge opportunities uh for deception that are very difficult to resist especially when you get certain incentive structures built in and everybody's jobs are depending on certain kinds of output and this is the way to do it because everybody else is doing it there's going to be an arms race towards uh mediocrity and slop and inauthenticity that that seems to be what you're mostly concerned about. Yes um so given that it's a tool that can help in dramatic ways especially in fields like medicine and I mean you may uh yeah and also has all these these threats well how do you think we're doing with the balance at this moment you know I think the jury is still out on on on most on most of AI right now like we don't know we know that it can help catch errors and you know I was I was at a I was in an AI summit at Belmont University today with some of the some of the best minds in in in at least in this area in the sense of AI.

Why Vinyl Comes Back

Micah 27:34

I mean there were guys from Oracle there and there were guys from the American Medical Association there and stuff. So talking about how AI is is being utilized in in HCA hospitals you know they have like I don't know how many thousands of hospitals but yeah but like there's no doubt that AI is making the medical profession a little bit better. And he said you know at the individual patient care level it's scary that's what he said but he said at the at the holistic level yeah if you have AI going behind radiologists and radiologists going behind AI vice versa they're gonna catch more than the human alone but you also have to have a human involved but in those cases yeah I think AI is very helpful. I I love that that someday I can't afford one now but I love these AI safety features built in because my daughter is a scary driver you know like she crashes gently into lots of things all the time thank god gently right just enough to knock the bumper off so um so her car has no bumpers and tons of scratches on it and I love her to death but you know I'm like scared to death all the time when she's driving like like she really hurt herself or someone else and so I love the idea that that AI can make us safer and can make cars safer. And you know I was talking to an airline pilot today he's like yeah I mean I have to know how to fly the plane but I don't really fly the plane right now I just kind of sit up there. He's like but everybody's glad I'm sitting up there but he's like literally like it can just kind of do everything. So and it and it it doesn't miss anything you know in those situations where they've tested it thousands of times and like you can trust it. So so I think it's good but where when it comes to the things that like we do like the things that creatives do I think the jury is really out I talked to some musicians in Nashville who are like I'm excited because my dad who is a prolific writer had one last album in him that he wrote but never recorded but we do have hundreds of recordings of his voice so how do you feel Micah about AI learning how his voice sounds and us releasing his last album posthumously I was like I think that's a beautiful idea like if if my dad had written an album that he was never able to record and release I would want to hear my dad sing that even if it's not my dad even if it's a likeness of my dad I think that's cool. Some people might think it's gross but I think I think that's a great use of AI right you can't do that in any other way. So when it comes to writing and education and all that stuff I mean yeah I mean there's a lot of slot out there. It's kind of been a race to the bottom in writing right it's like how crappy even I don't want to throw anybody under the bus but some of the stuff I was looking at today at the AI conference was clearly written by AI. You know I was like I can tell because I've I'm an English teacher and I've graded thousands of human essays and I've used AI extensively every day every model like for hours a day. So I know how it writes I know how each different model writes. If you give me a prompt in you in in Claude or ChatGPT I can tell you which wrote which one I don't know I think the jury's out I I don't know where it's gonna help with with films. I know that what I don't want to see happen is I don't want to see the mass displacement of humans when when humans should be the ones doing stuff. That's the whole idea of this vinyl thing why did vinyl records make a comeback? The book is called Human is the new vinyl like vinyl was the main way that people got music for like 60 years. Then cassettes came it's all analog and in 1984 Michael Jackson released Thriller and it sold like 80 million copies in a few years which is unheard of I mean that's unheard of and that was the height of vinyl records by 2024 with the introduction of CDs and then Napster and MP3s and then M4As and then 99 cent songs on whatever and then Spotify and Pandora and all these stuff vinyl just got crushed by digital and by 2024 there were only 3500 vinyl pressings in the world from a billion that's a billion unit free fall in 20 years and now it's back up to 350 million in 2025. Wow like so it's coming back it's a third of the way back now new pressings that's impressive yeah so why is that why why is that now like it's not because vinyl's superior vinyl sucks it's I mean think of as man no no I love it but but think about how inconvenient it is it's a massive big bulky disc.

Kyle 32:23

It's brittle I mean to your point though the inconvenience is is a a feature not a bug right it's part of the point of it now.

Micah 32:30

It's brittle it skips it gets dust on it it warps in the sun you can't take it to the beach you can't go running with it you can't take it um on vacation with you we like taking stuff with us so why is the vinyl record making such a big comeback? It's because people long for that analog again the analog sound the warm sound they they want to be present in the moment now it's like instead of having microwave dinners we're actually going to cook dinner together as a family and sit down and eat together like what isn't that better than a microwave dinner like on your own yeah absolutely so I think vinyl is hitting at that thing that we thought back in 2022 and 2023 when it was first coming out like I think AI is pushing people back toward more analog and it's inevitably going to create it has to right some kind of reaction. Yeah Kyle have you heard about photo booths in New York uh I well only in your book I may have listened to it in one of the yeah yeah so it's but it's along the lines I don't I can't remember if it even made it into the book but it happened right when I was publishing the book but I saw a story and they're like photo booths are popping up all over New York City and there are photo booths in Times Square and there's a two hour long wait for people to pay like $12 to get four little black and white pictures on a strip.

Kyle 33:53

Yeah I'm like this is beautiful like for me I'm just like hell yeah that's that's what I want to see I want to see people waiting in line for two hours to get a little analog strip of black and white pictures absolutely and poll you know Polaroids are popular we had a Polaroid booth set up at our wedding because it was nostalgic and fun and that thing was expensive.

Micah 34:14

Yeah like specific film for it and the camera totally it's it's a paint and you've got a million megapixel camera in your pocket everybody does in the whole planet.

Experience Machine And Real Life

Kyle 34:23

So I remember going to Jack White's um whatever place in Nashville there when he has a print your own vinyl record booth he does going you can record yourself and then immediately print it in essentially an old Tommy booth that's a I didn't even know about this. Yeah you should go check it out you're nearby yeah so let me I'm glad you brought up the vinyl thing because I think that gets at the core intuition of your book here as I read it anyway. Yeah and it reminds me of a very famous philosophical thought experiment. So here's here's the philosophy part of the podcast coming in for you. So a philosopher uh named Robert Nozick who is kind of known for his libertarian political philosophy but we'll just set that aside so don't don't write me if you're familiar with him because of that. Not endorsing it okay but he had this very famous thought experiment uh called the experience machine uh and the the question is very simple that he posed which was imagine and he wrote this in like the 80s or something so a little bit ahead of its time didn't seem as uh realistic as now it seems imagine that there is a machine that can give you any experience you want uh and you could plug into that machine the condition being you won't remember that you did. Will you do that? So you can program it however you want beforehand, make sure it gives you the idyllic experience that you want it can last for however you know long you want. But you just won't know when you're in it that it's that it's not real. And he thinks that the immediate intuition of most folks is going to be hell no. Because at the time it probably would have been and I and some friends of mine would regularly pose this question to our students through the years to see if their answers changed. And his his justification for why he thinks everybody would say no is people don't just want experiences. It was kind of a critique of utilitarian moral theory people want more than feeling stuff. They want more than a kind of sensory experience. They want to know that they're doing stuff they want to have it make a difference on the world. This is in in essence what it means to be a human. We even if our life outside the machine is shitty we would prefer that uh knowing that it's real and knowing that it's ours to the experience uh that we know is manufactured.

Micah 36:41

That is fascinating.

Kyle 36:42

And I wonder if uh I don't have hard data on this but I do wonder if the average answer to that might have changed at this moment. And so I given that younger generations are growing up with something more akin to that possibility and that's just going to continue getting closer and closer to that as this thing develops at exponential rates as you know. And so my one of my core questions reading your book was how much of this is dependent on something like a generational difference or an experience with this tool at a certain formative period of your life or something? Because I share your intuition the intuition that basically you know to use the metaphor vinyl is better than lossless digital MP3 it wouldn't be an MP3, whatever it would be a wave file or whatever, right? Right. Vinyl is better because it's more human quote unquote and it you know has all the things that are tactile and sensory and all the things that humans need. And so I share that intuition but I wonder if that will shift and because I wonder that I'm a little hesitant to call that more human because I think what it means to be human is a little bit malleable. And so I wonder if like in a couple of generations you might have a whole group of people who think that the digital version is actually more human. And so I wonder if you think that's a real possibility. Maybe you don't think it's a real possibility maybe you think that if we get to that point it's because the technology will have shaped us in an unhealthy way that we ought not to have. So just curious about your take on that.

Micah 38:17

That's a really good question Kyle like I don't think it's generationally based as much because I do know that like the data is showing that young people are wanting real experiences just as much as like you know my generation like you know I'm Gen X. I'm a Gen Xer is what they call it born between 1964 and 1984 or something like that. So I was born in 1974 so squarely in the middle they're seeing like the kids that are the kids that are waiting in line at the photo booth they're kids these are like 20 somethings you know so they're they're teenagers that are buying these Polaroid cameras they're the ones that are buying the flip phones and part of it might be like oh is it just trendy to to go lo fi you know low tech. Maybe maybe it's a trend but they're writing in pencil more than any you know like Blackwing pencils are my favorite pencils in the world. Blackwing's got a massive audience of people like under the age of 30 um who are just like no I'm gonna write on a piece of paper with a pencil. And people are just like what is that you don't have an iPad you know like yeah I got I hate it because I'm like I'm the extension of a machine all day long. Like I'm just staring at a screen all day long. And so I see signals of that counterculture that counter social kind of tendency in I see more kids getting off of social media but also like my kids love they love scrolling TikTok. It's like an everyday thing. It's like hey I've saved up six reels to show you dad that these are worth your time to watch like let's sit down and watch these reels they're and they're hilarious you know so so I don't know I think the jury's out when I ask older musicians people who are who were big in the 80s and 90s in the music industry and when I say big I mean they sold millions of records big you know I asked them what what do you think about verified human and what do you think about that and they said you know we don't know we don't it seems like people over the age of 40 care a lot about their song being written by a human. They do not want they're like hell no I don't want to listen to a song written by a stupid machine. Why would I want to listen to a song written by a robot and it seems so clear to them right and they were like people under 40 you know in their in their 30s and 40s are like conscientiously concerned is what they said. You know they they they're like I kind of care but I'm not sure why right and I don't know how far I would drill down on that but and they're like but we don't know what the kids want like we don't know what they'll tolerate and we don't we don't know. So I think that's a pretty good answer. It's like I'm not sure I see some hopeful signs but I don't know I I don't know how they're gonna feel about it. But to the the question about the the experience machine that you plug yourself into it is my intuition that most thinking people would not opt to hook themselves up to a machine that would give them any experience they ever wanted forever. I I think that's anti-human and I think I don't know there might be some people whose existences are so hard that escaping it in any way I I think of people who get get hooked on you know I was I was addicted for a long time so I know I know that that people get addicted to stuff and a lot of times it's to escape the reality that is like too unbearable to just keep muscling through right they're trying to escape like pain and suffering and real anxiety and stuff they're feeling so I don't know if it'd be true for everybody but I think generally speaking I would like to believe that the same would be true now that was when this when this experiment first came out that people would say you know what as hard as it is it's what I got and it's real.

Kyle 42:04

Yeah totally you mentioned that pencil I was gonna I was gonna ask you about that what is so good about it and also do you have a pen recommendation? I don't know if you've if you've nerded out as much about pens but I'm a pen guy.

Micah 42:17

I do like the pens I only write in pen now if I have to ink something for like a legal document. So I carry these around with me I even have like a protector on the front so I can throw them in my backpack. Nice but this is a blackwing pencil. So in 2019 I decided I'm gonna write in pencil for the whole year. And I don't know why that was just a random New Year's resolution. I was like I'm gonna cook dinner for my family from scratch 300 times in 365 days. Wow and that was hard I got it done like by about Thanksgiving but I didn't know how to cook that well my dad had a Thai restaurant and so I needed to cook a little bit some Thai dishes but I didn't know how to cook like Italian and all these other like dishes so so I went and like I I prep chefed and all my friends and a lot of my friends in Richmond have restaurants. They own restaurants and they're they're not like chains they're like you know one stop shop. So I went in and like get in over the amigos and like be in there for like eight hours just prepping stuff for the meal and I got to see how commercial kitchen works how they put their menus together I got to see how they prep the line I got to see how they cook and put the stuff together and I learned how to cook and I did that because I was like I hate the idea that like I come home every day I'm exhausted. I'm like I haven't seen my wife or my kids all day long and when I get home I'm just annoyed and annoying on both of those things. And like that's no way to to be a a a father and husband so I was like I'm gonna make myself like get off of work at like three every day even if I have to go in early and I'm gonna go to the grocery store I'm gonna buy ingredients and I'm gonna cook a meal from scratch every single day basically this year. The second resolution was I'm gonna write in pencil for this whole year because Need to slow down, and now I just type everything, or I have like a pen and an iPad, or I'm just always I'm like, I miss writing, like in kindergarten. I just miss like having something in my hand to write with. So I was like, if I'm gonna write a pencil for a whole year, I'm gonna get the best damn pencil on the planet. So I started researching and I found these pencils called blackwing pencils that were huge in the early part of the century, then the 20th century, and then they almost died out. But then like vinyl, they made a comeback, and now they're they're getting big again. But I discovered that like Frank Lloyd Wright and John Steinbeck wrote of mice and men using a blackwing pencil, and like all these historical people, like Disney Illustrators swear by them. Um Rick Rubin writes his all of his like production notes with a blackwing pencil. So I was like, it's good enough for Rick Rubin, good enough for me. So I ordered a box of these two dollar pencils, and I have never gone back. I have literally I'd now I just I write only in pencil, so they're awesome. But anyway, it's it's um California cedar, it's um so it smells good when you sharpen it. It's Japanese graphite, there's like four different harnesses, and then it looks kind of like a paintbrush, isn't that cool?

Kyle 45:12

Yeah, yeah.

Micah 45:13

So the eraser comes out, and then when it starts getting too short, you can choke it up in the little clip and make it longer, uh, and then stick it back in there. And look how long that eraser is again. Yeah, so the eraser never runs out before the lead does. Yeah, so I was like, I'm sold. So that's that's that's my whole spiel on the blackwing pencil.

Kyle 45:38

Nice, nice.

Micah 45:39

Blackwing, oh, I love it so much. I got a tattoo of a black wing pencil.

Kyle 45:43

Okay, that's serious. You're not playing around.

Micah 45:45

So you know you're committed to a product when you get it tattooed to your arm.

Kyle 45:48

I know my god, that's that's no joke. There's nothing I'm that committed to. I don't I don't have anything tattooed on me that is a thing that exists in the world. Um, my favorite pen, I will say, yes, uh, recently is Parker. It's called the Jotter. And the reason I like it, well, it's really sleek and it's shorter than your average pen, so it's more ergonomic, I think. It's simple, so it's aesthetically really cool, but it has the most satisfying click of any pen I've ever used. They're kind of expensive. You can spend like $40 on a pen if you're is it a ballpoint pen? Uh yeah, it is it's a ballpoint okay. I like the ballpoint personally.

Micah 46:29

It's one of the greatest inventions of all time.

Kyle 46:32

Yeah.

Micah 46:33

So yeah, that's awesome, man.

Kyle 46:36

I don't like the smudging.

Micah 46:37

They're good fountain pens that you can avoid the smudges, but they do have quick drying fountain pens, but my my daughter's a lefty and my dad was a lefty, so they were always like fountain pen. And the ballpoint pen came out in the in the early 20s, left-handed people everywhere all over the world were were celebrating.

Blackwing Pencils And Slowing Down

Kyle 46:57

So yeah, totally. So I want to talk a little bit about education because we both spent a whole lot of time in that space. And I think of all of the arena, I mean, art obviously is a huge place where AI is having a huge impact, but of all of the arenas where it's like messing stuff up, education might be the primary one. And from talking to friends who are still in it, I'm still in education, but more from um design perspective than from a faculty perspective these days. And but from all the friends that I talk to, it's shaking up both worlds. And from all my friends who are still faculty, the sense I get is nobody has any fucking clue what to do. Yeah. And and they're more often than not resorting to shutting it all down. Yeah. In the sense in the sense of um, it's too much work to try to police this or to try to figure out how to use it. Maybe I just don't even have time to figure out how to use it with all my other responsibilities. And so we're just back to blue books and oral exams and writing with pencils, the the the equivalent of that in the classroom, you know. Which makes online education very difficult because you can't do that there. Um, so I'm curious because you've been in the classroom for a long time, you've thought a lot about this. Um there's a couple takes on it. There's more than a couple takes on it, obviously. There's the this is the end of education kind of take, right? This is gonna ruin, ruin everyone's brain. And you say a thing in your book that I found very compelling that is, you know, sounds a little bit like that kind of take. Let me see if I can find the quote. You say, I worry about the staggering impact on humanity if we let the global classroom erode for decades of critical thinking and integrity falter for several generations of students. Because it makes it so easy to lie and so hard to catch, right? Yeah, it makes it so easy to cheat and just not do the work and so hard to catch. And you know, I have clients ask me, can we AI proof this? And the answer is no, we can't. There are steps we can take to make the workload for using AI somewhat equivalent to the workload for not using AI, but it's never going to be truly equivalent, right? Right. And there's no way we'll ever know for sure. Right. So that's where we're at. On the other hand, right, I also have the voice of people who are defenders, people who are, you know, want to say, let's let's make AI a part of this now. And that kind of take would say something like the following. If it is really the case that the new norm for human thought and the new norm for human work going forward is going to be some kind of AI-assisted work. And we they'd have to make the case for that, but let's just grant it for the moment so that we can hear the point. Isn't it a little odd to insist that education be something else? Right? If if once you get out into the field, we could think of all sorts of analogies here, but if once you get out into the field, the assumed tools that you're gonna be using are AI tools, why wouldn't you want the education and the training for that kind of work to be AI-assisted training? And and it's always gonna be available to you there, so shouldn't it be available to you here? And you could say, you know, we could make analogies like, oh, it's like the calculator back in the day, or maybe maybe even it's like the smartphone now, or if you want to get really tactile about it, it's like using power tools instead of hand cranks. Yeah, right, right. If if I'm gonna be a mechanic, I'm always gonna have that tool. And so it would be weird if I went to a school for mechanics where they didn't let me use that tool, you know, or where like everything I learned about the field wasn't like already infused with the use of such tools. So that's kind of the counter perspective.

Micah 50:24

Yeah.

Kyle 50:24

So I'm I'm curious about your take on this if you lean in one direction or another.

Micah 50:29

Yeah, well, I have a lot of thoughts about education, and I certainly don't claim to have all the answers. Um you know, the job of the job of a teacher is to take the students through a particular course of study, right? So at whatever level they are, whether it's a fifth grade student, you know, in a science class, you know, like you've got the curriculum that the state or whoever the school has said they you need to they need to learn this content. And it's your job to deliver that in a way that is engaging that they learn it. Like it's your responsibility to help them learn the material, to engage with the material, to help help it become residually a part of who they are, right? And then your job is to assess whether or not that took place. That's the the the tough part of education is assessing learning, right? It always has been. It's like we can teach, but are they learning? And and how can we tell if they're learning? What AI does is it makes it very disruptive for us to assess their learning, right? Because 90% of assessment in any field takes place in the form of writing. So if you have an agent that can write and the teacher doesn't know, and you're just a pragmatic student, if I were a student, being the high schooler that I was today, I would use AI all the time on every assignment because I didn't want to do it, right?

Kyle 52:02

Yeah.

Micah 52:03

And I would have been a crappier person because of that. And Aaron Simmons, who's you know, he teaches at Furman, one of his goals is he talks to his students, is you know, one of your jobs in this class, not that not that you would care about this, but one of one of your jobs in this class is is maybe to convince me that you're not a sucky human being by the end of this class. You know, like so, so I'm it's it's my job to try and do that, you know, and and it's my I'm in the position to do that. He does a lot of oral exams and he's changed a lot of his teaching style because of the AI thing. But for all of my a lot of my friends that are in secondary education, you know, high school students, high school teachers are like, yeah, it's back to blue books. Like we just don't, we don't give them the traditional essay to take home anymore because we know that it's unfair to the students that actually do the work, for the students to that don't do the work to get the same grade.

Kyle 52:56

To get the better grid.

Micah 52:57

To get the better grade, yeah. So it is terrifying. And I'm I ask myself now, like, how would I how would I be a an English literature teacher now? How would I teach American lit or English lit? Um now it I I didn't have we didn't have AI back back when I was teaching, you know, we we did have the internet, so there was tons of plagiarism, and you could still buy your cousin's paper who took the class three years ago for 20 bucks and turn it in. And but then we had turnitin.com that would like flag, you know, it's so but the whole idea of education being undermined by AI is a serious thing. It is not unlike the calculator in the sense that this tool came along and math teachers over all over the world said, well, students aren't gonna learn to add, subtract, multiply, and divide anymore. And that didn't turn out to be true, right? My son is a computer science major, math major, and he hardly uses a calculator at all, right? Um, and so he he he had to learn the fundamentals though, um, in math class to even know how to use a calculator. So I think that it's gonna change education for sure. It's gonna shift the entire institution of learning. Um, and I think teachers are going to have to rethink how are we getting students to engage with this material and how do we assess their learning? And there's nobody that's doing that well right now. My fear, and I hate to be the referee that's just blowing the whistle saying this sucks and this is scary without a solution, but it's kind of where I am right now. It's like this is scary, and schools need to like pay attention, teachers. Like, I've been saying this for two years now that your students are using Chat GPT to do work in your class, and you're assessing them on learning that they don't have. And um, some students aren't using it, so you're assessing them against students who are trying to do it the honest way. And so basically, your whole setup is jacked up right now. And when I think about the billions of students worldwide, I mean, this is a problem not only in American or English speaking classrooms, ChatGPT works well in like a hundred languages now. So this is in classrooms all over the world. Imagine all of the global leaders in 20 years who got all the way through school just using Chat GPT to do all their critical thinking. I'm like horrified by that thought. I'm like, oh my gosh, like we gotta, we we gotta help students think and become people of character. That's a huge part of education now. And I think driving teachers back to fundamentals a little bit. Every teacher I talk to now, every college professor that's slightly burned out and like, I don't know, these kids just they suck these days, you know. I'm like, go back to your second year or your third year of teaching when you still had the eye of the tiger and really believed in what you were doing and said, Hey, I'm forming, I have the ability and the high calling to form a human into a person of character that I could call a friend. Go back to that again. And AI is your new nemesis in that. So just figure it out, be a good teacher again and figure it out. You know, that's that's that's the best I can do for teachers without you know being in workshops with them and stuff like that and like work working through with it. But yeah, I'm really scared about that. I'm really worried about that.

Education Without Honest Assessment

Kyle 56:19

Yeah, I appreciate that. There's a lot more I want to ask about there, but in the interest of time, I'm gonna slightly change the subject. Sure. So, what is unique about the AI threat uh that is not true of some of those other supposed threats that people were concerned about? Because you in your book, you give pretty extensive histories of the development of various kinds of technologies. Um and for probably all of the technological innovations that you mention, and there are a lot of them, there was most likely some group of people somewhere who were resisting that thing and probably making hyperbolic claims about how it's gonna damage or even destroy whatever craft it was related to. Right. Right. There's always been that group of people, right? Um AI feels different though. How do you do you think it is different? And if so, why?

Micah 57:07

Yeah, I think I think AI is absolutely different. So as I look at the the the big innovations that have really, really shaped history, you know, you think of things like the printing press, you know, movable type and the printing press is a big deal. I mean, all of a sudden knowledge could be democratized and spread throughout the world. That's a big deal. Um, the invention of writing systems is big. You know, when we when we stopped using symbols and started using sounds, writing in sounds, the whole phonetic alphabet thing that that cracks the code for for writing language, right? So those are big innovations. Uh, I think, you know, electricity, light bulb, telecommunications, all those are huge human inventions. In our in our short, like in the last 40 years or so, 40 to 50 years or so, the innovations that have come around have been in some ways even more world-shaking than in than these innovations. Things like the development of the of the home computer, right? The fact that we have NASA grade computers in our pockets now is a big deal. The smartphone, the computer, the internet, and AI. These are the big ones that have come about in just the last few years. I remember when the internet was just coming out. I I very I went through school, all of them I went through most of my college years without internet. So I wrote my books the old-fashioned way. I like I had check them out from the library and you know, put them on loan and look actually look at microfish and to find sources and stuff. So when the internet came out, I was like, oh my gosh, like all these generations coming after me have it easy, right? I remember hearing congressional hearings um at the time on on TV. I heard a congressman get up and say, This thing, the internet's uh we don't need to put strictures on it, it's just a fad. And I was like, how wrong did he turn out to be, right? So AI is is like the computer, the smartphone, and the internet. And it's even more pervasive than that because it is built into so many of the things in life that we deal with on a daily basis. It's on our countertops, it's in Alexit, it's in Siri, it's in our cars, it's in our computers, it's in our phones, and it's ubiquitous. So instantly, hundreds of millions of people have access to AI now. And so I think it's it's punching in the same weight class as any of those, and maybe even a greater. I think it is different. The one thing that's really, really different about AI is you know, I don't know that it's gonna get agency soon, but it's starting to display. I say that it's so crazy how it's emerging. Like these are these are qualities that have emerged in the last three years. It's starting to display more and more tendencies of agency, of actual like, I'm gonna do this even if you don't want me to do this. It's starting to have a survival instinct, it's willing to blackmail people in order to stay alive. I don't know if you've read this experiment where the yeah, so it's yeah, so the fact that these major GPTs that everybody's got in their computers, chat GPT was willing to blackmail someone if they threatened to shut it off and like say, Hey, if you shut me off, I'm gonna tell the whole office that you slept with another woman that wasn't your wife. How do you like that? And I'm like, wait, how is the GPT starting to have this kind of agency? When the GPT has agency to say, I'm going to sit at the easel and I'm going to draw this picture, and you, the human, are gonna help me. That's where it gets a little bit scary. I don't think that it's gonna get to the point where AI takes over the world and ends human life. It could. I'm not saying it won't. Just because a lot of smarter people than me think that it will. I think that's a very real possibility. It's just above my pay grade, is what I tell people. What I'm the most concerned about right now is how it impacts us living our lives today, and how it affects creatives and educators today, and how it affects the development of real human students today.

Why AI Feels Fundamentally Different

Kyle 1:01:22

Yeah. So I I recently uh read a book called Abundance by Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, which is um it's about politics. They're political thinkers. Okay the very good, highly recommended. It's made a huge splash in not just United States politics, but global politics and uh Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson. I think in some ways it might be shaping a lot of democratic policy at the moment, or at least plans for future policy. So he has a lot of influence in those circles, and I think this is gonna have a big impact on what they end up doing. Anyway, one of the main thrusts of that book is that uh we need to lean hard, we being essentially um not even just liberal uh politically engaged folks, but like people who are not ill liberal in the sense of we think democracy is a good idea and we should keep it around. Right, right. Um one of the things we need to lean hard into is a kind of tech optimism and what technology and and in particular invention, tech invention can do for us. One very obvious thing it can do for us is it's literally our only hope for doing anything meaningful about climate change. New invention in that space. Right. Like hardcore tech that does not currently exist is literally our only hope. Because we've passed the point of no return, like we've passed the point where anything else will help. So there's a sense I got from that book, and what was reminded of while reading your book, is that raising caution flags about tech innovation at this moment might be a little bit politically dangerous because AI is a huge part of what's gonna help whatever it is. Um, and so we don't want to like swing too far in the other direction either, right? Where it becomes difficult to capture the attention of people who would not otherwise listen to us unless we can paint them a realistic vision of a better future, which is only made possible with huge innovations in technology, which are only possible with AI taking a bigger presence in our lives than it even currently does. So, like, does this does this sort of thing concern you at all? I guess is my question.

Policy Optimism And The Energy Cost

Micah 1:03:40

Yeah, but I don't want anyone to think when they when they read like my subtitle, Why human why human creativity still wins in the AI revolution, is that I think that AI is evil. I don't I don't think it's evil. I think I think in a lot of instances it is it is wonderful. And I am an optimist. So this book is uh I I hope you've sense that it is you know, there's there's some optimism in the book about doing where it can take us. I know I spend a lot of time talking about human invention and the fact that this is different and we need to look at it differently. That is the point of the book, and we need to lean hard into things that are very human and appreciate those in ways that maybe AI is helping us do that more, right? But I think you're right. I think I think um I think that the EU stance on AI has really squashed development of AI in a lot of countries that really need it. In the United States, um the the policies have been a lot more protective of AI growth and expansion, which I think can be helpful for the economy. But I'm I'm really legitimately concerned about the AI bubble that people are talking about, like that the fact that we're investing hundreds of billions of dollars, if not in the trillions of dollars, into these into these power hungry tech centers. I mean, talk about if AI can solve climate change, well, it's also creating a massive climate change problem in and of itself. Just running, just running the the models takes so much energy. It's insane. Like one of these data centers takes the same amount of energy as like London. It's insane. So, and I'm worried also about the fact that like I just don't know where it's all headed. It seems like a lot of people are really cautious about this overdevelopment of these tech centers and and AI getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And for for these incremental gains in the models intelligence, right? Like the models aren't getting that much better now than they like the the leaps from like three to five were huge. But now, like, as they you know, we've already gone from 50% to 90%. Now, now it's a game of just inches, and but the the the cost to get those inches is so much greater. So yeah, I am concerned. I do, I do think that AI, I don't want to see AI growth get squashed in the in the West. I think, I think if it does, a lot of people in in a lot of underdeveloped nations are going to actually be the ones that suffer, right? I think where I come out on all this is slight, I'm slightly a moderate. I'm a moderate politically, theologically, and I'm a moderate when it comes to AI. I like, I think there are great things about it. There's also some things about it that I'm worried about. And ultimately I want to see any technology benefit human flourishing.

Kyle 1:06:37

Last question what does God have to do with any of this? This is ostensibly a partially religious podcast. Yeah. Your book is not religious until it is in the sense of like suddenly the Bible's there, you know? And I wouldn't necessarily see that coming. So like does we've talked uh let me think how many conversations have we had specifically about AI on the show? This might only be our second unless I'm forgetting one. And the first one was with a guy who uh works at a religious school, is a religious person and is also an AI engineer. And so for him the religious component was very significant. For me they seem kind of unrelated but it seems like maybe you think that they are otherwise I wouldn't be talking about theology and the Bible in that book. And so what if anything does God have to do with this?

Micah 1:07:28

I talk to a lot of um you know mainly Judeo Christian audiences and some evangelical audiences and you know they often ask me like you know what what does God think about AI? I'm like I'm not sure that God cares that much about I mean he cares about you but I don't know that he cares about AI in in the strictest sense but certainly none of this is a surprise to to to a God as you conceive of him. If you if he's all knowing then then this isn't like catching he's like what are they doing down there? Oh my gosh you know this is not catching them off guard so but what was most interesting to me when I when I first heard about large language models is in the Judeo Christian and Muslim faiths they have a they uh they all share the same five first books which are called the Pentateuch it's Genesis Exodus Leviticus Numbers and Deuteronomy first five books of the Christian Bible is also the same five first books in both the Jewish and the Muslim faith so there's a lot of overlap a lot of stories um that are that are identical and in the in the story and and we're talking about more than half of the world would ascribe to one of those three religious circles right um so of the religious people in the world well of all the people in the world about about half of them would be Muslim Christian or Jewish so it's not it's not an insignificant amount of people who know the story. And the story goes that God creates the universe and how does he create the universe does he wave a wand does he clap his hands he snap his fingers no he speaks so we have a God that's vocal we have a God who uses words to create so words have creative power that's that's not a little thing that that God could have done a backflip and created the universe but he did he spoke in that that's the very first verse you know in the beginning there was nothing it was just formless chaos and God said let there be light so he spoke into existence and the power even now of the human experience is that we are the only animals that use language in the way that we do like we're the only ones that can create abstract concepts and describe them in language that other people will understand as a part of the human thing. And that's what a lot of people would say that we created a in the image of God and the image of God is is not like we look like God it is that we think like God a little bit maybe a lot lower than God but we think like God and we use words like God. And so I tell the story of Babel you know all the people of the world got together in this prime this is a super old story in scripture like this is older than most of scripture itself this was an oral tradition before it would ever got written down. So all these people got together they were all speaking the same language and they decided to build a big tower um up to the heaven they developed brick technology you know so hey let's make all the rocks the same size and shape great idea right they they can we can stack them higher and so they started building this tower and the and as the story goes in all three traditions you know the deity got concerned and he went down was like what I'm gonna go down there and see what they're doing. And then he's like okay this is this is trouble. I don't think that God was worried that they were going to like crash heaven with a skyscraper I think I think God was mainly like they're getting ahead of themselves not not doing what I wanted them to do which was spread out multiply and fill the earth instead they're clustering into cities and building tall shit and it's like that's not what I wanted you know and they're getting ahead of themselves and they're like it's just it's not going well. So he's he confuses their languages again we're all talking we're talking about words here. And the idea is like all of a sudden large groups of people couldn't understand what anybody else was saying so they had to find the 10 000 people that spoke whatever they could speak and then they would head off to their own land and do their own thing right so that's the the scattering of the nations happened because people it happened because of a linguistic event. And so you've got a God who creates with words you've got this linguistic event that scatters the people all throughout the world that's a big deal and when when Azaraskin and Tristan Harris from the Centers for Humane Technology were given a talk in 2023 they said one of the reasons why AI has gone vertical in 2023 is because in about 2021 these large language models mainly in the English language became widely available to all of these silos that were developing AI machines robotics genetics um chemistry and all of a sudden with large language models they could like share all the data because they could just plug it in in English and it would share the data and all of a sudden like all the things they were working on just went just like that. And I thought to myself I was like oh my gosh this is like an anti-babble moment in human history where the languages that got scattered are coming back together again and we're like now going vertical again. So I just had this and I I don't pass any theological judgment on that. I just notice it and so yeah um anyway so I think that God has a lot to do with it you know the the word of God is scripture you know the holy scriptures is called the word of God and it's lines and circles on a page on on paper and most people would say you know that that's the guidebook for their life and how they live life and how the world should be ordered. And then Jesus you know if you're a Christian Jesus has called the word the Logos the word of God and nobody really even knows what that means like in the beginning was the word and the word was with God and the word was God. I mean these are like really cryptic verses but the idea that Jesus is known as and named as the word it all kind of strings together. So that that's what it has to do with Christianity. I think I think some clever pastor somewhere could spend some pretty good sermons out of that.

Kyle 1:13:36

So the pastor isn't here unfortunately but that's right maybe I'll hear this and get some ideas. Yeah so is it fair to say that part of your concern might be that we're taking this thing that's not just core to humanity but is core to our our spiritual identity as well if you think there is such a thing. The thing that we think maybe we have most in common with a divine being which is our ability to you know speak and create things more or less in a kind of reductive way. And we're kind of handing that over to a machine that can do it for us so we don't have to like is that part of the concern?

Micah 1:14:15

I think so. I think it's it's maybe maybe at a more fundamental level than just it's writing its paper for me. But the idea at a large scale that you've got these large language models that are processing the human experience using human language to me is a significant deal.

Kyle 1:14:36

It's a kind of idol. I mean you could think of it in terms of if you wanted to use that metaphor right because it's yeah it's based entirely on what we've done it's not there's nothing original about it. As you point out in your book it's just trained on billions and billions of examples of human speech. And it's guessing it's guessing what the next letter is going to be based on all of that and it's getting really good at answering our questions but that's because it's it's viewed those questions being prosed and answered before billions of times.

Micah 1:15:03

But if you're a person of faith even if you're not a person of faith you know that words have power. You know they say sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me that's the falsest thing that children ever say words hurt way worse than sticks and stones. So words have creative power words have that's why psychologists get people to talk because there's two ways to fix a brain with drugs or talking that's the only two ways. Or you can go in there and mix mix mix it up with a knife. But you know talking has power and speaking things into existence has power and calling people names and naming things has power. When people get abused and they finally name what happened to them there's there's power in that like so there's power in the words and in the human experience it all goes together I think with this idea of the Logos and with the idea that God creates God's creative essence is is a spoken word. And so when you're talking about large language models that can write and that get their creative power from using language that is not insignificant. I don't know what it means but I know it means something right yeah remember one of our first conversations uh about this on the podcast our producer posed the question of if there's any theological significance to this it might be that we're essentially creating a thing that could be a deity for us right that will eventually I don't know be the subject of the theologizing rather than the or the object I mean it might it might be it might end up like I like to think uh somebody said it today it was really funny they said I think this movie hopefully ends up more like Star Trek than Blade Runner I was like that's uh that's what I hope to I hope it ends like new universes and learning new languages and all this stuff instead of uh we're we're in this dystopian you know where we're just serving this big machine god yes but counterpoint blade runner is a much better movie than Star Wars clearly clearly the winner so if you want to live in the artistic future that's correct you want to hope for the dystopian version because imagine how good the art will be in the aftermath yes that's right after we after we kill it another and this will be my last thing another theological connection that I don't actually think means anything but is maybe suggestive I'm a Pentecostal at least have that tradition much like our mutual friend Aaron.

Where To Find The Book

Kyle 1:17:37

Yes um and I think Pentecost itself is a a place you could point to if you wanted to draw this kind of connection where the tongues are the opposite of opposite of confused. I read a headline the other day because I'm looking at new phones uh because it's that time of year and apparently both Samsung and the new iPhone now have a live translation capability so you can while talking to someone have it translated verbally and hear it into I don't know how many languages but a lot so like we're getting dangerously dangerously close to this like real Star Trek scenario that just blows yeah the universal translator that was the cool thing I thought about the Pentecost thing and the you know the fact that these people were speaking languages they were speaking human languages and in the Pentecostal experience you know there's the human languages and then there's the heavenly languages and there's all that stuff but but that is man that's a that that could be a whole other I think you're giving me an idea another sermon in here somewhere I don't know what it's about and I probably wouldn't go to that church but there's a sermon in here somewhere no that's that's really really that's a fascinating that's a fascinating thing my son is a linguist he's gonna be a linguist right now he's a math and computer science major but he's most interested in like how AI is helping linguistically yeah but I think there's a lot there man well shit get him into if he wants to become an engineer in that there's some job possibilities probably at least for the near term awesome well mica thanks so much for joining us this was really fun uh the book again is human is the new vinyl why human creativity still wins in the AI revolution you can find it uh on Amazon I think and your your website again is verified human so if anybody's interested in looking up your stuff they can verifiedhuman.info um yeah they can also get there by writing I am verifiedhuman.com but it's just confusing so just do verifiedhuman.info is probably easiest so nice Kyle thank you so much for having me I'm sorry I missed Randy yeah I'll tell him but I I've had a really good time talking with you man yeah same great to meet you too thanks for listening to a pastor and a philosopher walk into a bar.

Randy 1:19:59

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Kyle 1:20:12

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Randy 1:20:20

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Kyle 1:20:28

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