EP279: Tony talks #27 – AI, actually intelligent or an insidious waste of time?

Natalie Cassidy 0:02:29 Hello and welcome to Life with Nat. I hope you're all having a lovely, lovely week. I'm here with Tony tonight. How are you?

Tony Cassidy 0:02:53 I'm right. How are you?

Natalie Cassidy 0:02:54 Yeah, good actually. Good. Not too bad.

Tony Cassidy 0:02:56 Good.

Natalie Cassidy 0:02:56 It's been a nice relaxing one.

Tony Cassidy 0:02:58 Lovely.

Natalie Cassidy 0:02:58 Which has been—

Tony Cassidy 0:02:59 Yeah, it makes a change.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:00 Makes a change and well needed. Sometimes it's nice to have a little reset.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:04 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:04 And even though you're not away when it's half term with Joni being at home, it's just been really nice.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:10 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:12 You've had a, not, not a, not a week like me apparently.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:16 No, she's been really busy.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:18 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:19 Really busy, really tiring.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:21 Well, I have to say, you're looking lovely.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:22 Oh, thank you very much.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:23 I like this top on you.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:24 This is my— well, it's Marks Spencer's.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:26 But it looks—

Tony Cassidy 0:03:27 Oh, that's very nice. Very kind.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:28 Yeah. Lovely. We've got a few messages that I thought we'd play.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:32 Okay.

Natalie Cassidy 0:03:32 Just from the last one. Right. Because otherwise we never get round to it.

Tony Cassidy 0:03:35 No. All right, go on. Do it straight away.

Speaker G 0:03:37 Morning, Nat. It's Emma from Knebworth. This is a message for your bro, Tony Cassidy. Tom Jones shouldn't be going anywhere.

Speaker H 0:03:49 If it's not broke, don't fix it.

Speaker G 0:03:52 Cheryl Cole taking his place, she's not a legend.

Speaker I 0:03:55 He is an icon. He is a legend.

Speaker G 0:03:58 Only in some people's eyes is she.

Speaker G 0:04:01 But you know what, they should be keeping him on the telly because there's a lot of older generation that sit and watch that, and now their one and only eye candy has popped his popped off. He's not gonna be on it anymore. Nah, I'm not happy. I am absolutely raging about it. Can you tell?

Speaker G 0:04:18 I'm fuming. And if he's not on it, I ain't watching it. And I know a lot of people my age have said the same. If I went on there, because I can sing a little bit, but I've never gone there, I would pick him any day, every day, all the time. Tom Jones.

Speaker G 0:04:31 Tom Jones. When you think of The Voice, you think of Tom Jones. Now we got Cheryl Cole, Kelly Rowland. It's getting too Americanized again. No, it should be Tom Jones.

Speaker G 0:04:41 And that's it. So I am not happy. Anyway, just wanted to share that and have a little rant. Looking forward to seeing you at the brunch on Sunday.

Speaker J 0:04:53 See you then. Bye.

Natalie Cassidy 0:04:54 Little message there from Emma.

Tony Cassidy 0:04:56 Well, I didn't want to think I'd have sacked him. Yeah, I've gone in there consulting. Mr. Cassidy's coming in, he's consulting on the future of The Voice. He has some ideas. We're going to brainstorm it. We're going to sit down. kick it about a bit.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:12 Throw some ideas out there.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:13 Throw some ideas out there. What do you reckon, Tony? I went, just sack Tom Jones. That's it, job done. Sheryl Cole was in, he's out. I wasn't saying it was right or wrong. I'm just saying that's the way that— that's the way the world works, I'm afraid.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:24 I saw Sheryl Cole in a lift the other day.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:26 I know you did. You said it before.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:27 Oh, did I?

Tony Cassidy 0:05:28 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:28 Oh well, there you go.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:29 I think that might have been where it came from.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:30 Oh, possibly. Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:32 That's where it's all come from, actually.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:33 Yeah, yeah, that is true. Hey ho. Forget what I say on this pod sometimes. I know. It's cuz I do a lot of 'em. You dunno what you've said and what you haven't said. It's a nightmare really.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:45 It is.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:45 Mind you, there are quite a lot of pods that talk about the same thing every single one.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:48 Yes. So, yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:50 Don't do bad.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:50 We're a little bit current, aren't we?

Natalie Cassidy 0:05:52 Well, I think different people lost Patrick Stewart, didn't we? Oh, we have.

Tony Cassidy 0:05:58 Do you remember our Patrick Stewart story? No, you don't. 'Cause everyone said to me, oh, Patrick Stewart star. I said, I've got a really nice Patrick Stewart story.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:07 Was that The Ivy?

Tony Cassidy 0:06:07 Yes.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:08 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:09 Oh, don't spoil it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:10 Go on.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:11 Ah, spoiler alert.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:12 Go on. 'Cause I, I just, I'm sorry, I have vague memories.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:16 I know I'm talking to you, but I'm, I'm talking to our listeners now.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:19 Yeah, go on.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:19 So when Dad was 70, we decided to take him on a day out in London, didn't we?

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:24 We did.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:25 We went to London Eye, which he loved. And we went to Madame Tussauds 'cause none of us have ever been.

Natalie Cassidy 0:06:31 And me and Dad used to go all the time.

Tony Cassidy 0:06:33 Yeah, yeah. So, and we were walking around in Madame Tussauds and we got to the film and TV bit and there was Patrick Stewart as Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek. And I remember Dad going, who's that? Never heard of him. And so we explained who it was and he said, well, I've never heard of him, I dunno who he is. Anyway, we, uh, had another hour wandering about doing some stuff, and then we had a table booked at the Ivy. We go into the Ivy, we sit down, and lo and behold, who's at the next table? Patrick Stewart. And that's the truth.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:08 That is the truth.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:10 Do you remember?

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:10 I do remember. Crazy.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:13 Yeah, yeah, it was just— talk about coincidence. Real coincidence. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:18 Um, and I don't, I don't think I've ever met him, only to sit in his company at the next table there. But I loved him when he did extras.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:27 Oh, that was, that was good when everything involved women's bras falling off or women's clothes falling off. Yeah, clothes falling, and then their clothes fell off. Clothes fell down.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:34 And then her breasts were just dangling. I had a really good idea for this thing.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:39 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:40 But obviously he didn't take himself too seriously.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:42 No, no. And he was supposed to be a really lovely man.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:44 And a very proud Yorkshireman, I believe. Yes, yes, yes, he was.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:47 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:48 Oh, God rest his soul. We've lost a legend there.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:50 Yeah, another one's gone.

Natalie Cassidy 0:07:51 Another one's gone.

Tony Cassidy 0:07:52 I just wanna say a little hello, if that's all right. Yes. So my mate Ignazio, who used to work for me. Yes. Iggy. Yeah. He's a black cab driver now, bless him. And he loves the pod.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:03 Oh, brilliant.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:04 And he messaged me the other day, words something like, why don't you, why haven't you mentioned me on the pod, you slag? Something like that. And so I thought I better pop his name in there.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:14 Hello, Iggy, thanks for listening.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:16 Ignazio Di Tano, otherwise known as the Igmeister Generale. That was my nickname for him. Have you ever had a friend who you can literally not hear from for months and then all of a sudden they just text you like a silly message or whatever?

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:32 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:33 You have?

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:34 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:34 Yeah. Well, that's me and him.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:35 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:36 We cannot talk for months and then he'll just, and he'll just text me a message saying, what do you know? And I'll go and I'll text him back saying, shut it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Or whatever.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:45 And we have this little like 5-line text and that's it. Don't talk again for 6 months.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:49 But it's lovely.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:50 It is lovely. 'Cause you know they're there. Yeah, yeah. And I, and I also make sure we both make sure we see each other every Christmas.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:55 That's nice.

Tony Cassidy 0:08:56 So we'll go out for something to eat and have a catch up in between Christmas and New Year.

Natalie Cassidy 0:08:59 Yeah. Very good. Very good.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:01 So yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:01 Those friends are the best. It's the ones that go, ah, where have you been? I haven't seen you for a— they just go now.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:09 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:09 I ain't got time.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:10 No, no.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:10 If you don't understand.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:11 Yeah, that's right. Gone. Yes.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:13 Oh, it's been an age. Oh, I thought you'd forgotten who I was. Gone.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:16 Oh, we'll see you later. Yeah. Ta-da. Too difficult.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:19 Yeah. People need to know how crazy life is, you know?

Tony Cassidy 0:09:23 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:24 And if you do, lovely to get like a funny little video or a joke off of someone and you think, brilliant.

Tony Cassidy 0:09:28 But there's no, there's no neediness there, is there?

Natalie Cassidy 0:09:31 No, no, it's very good. Very good indeed.

Speaker K 0:09:35 Right. This is really my last attempt at this voice note.

Speaker K 0:09:38 Quick debrief after Tony talks. Cowboy builders popped into my head. I had one. It was awful. It was the worst time during a divorce.

Speaker K 0:09:47 Left me with literally not a working kitchen, no any light in that kitchen. It was awful. And I had a 2 and a 6-year-old. It was awful. So I thought, that's an interesting discussion, you know, how do people know who to trust?

Speaker K 0:10:02 Because he'd done work for my parents, he'd had family lunches with us, and he still did me over. Other quick points were, I know someone that lives in a Grand Designs house. I haven't been, but you know, it's kind of an interesting story. And also my work colleague, she was on Four in the Bed. So it felt like a very relevant pod today, and so I had to share.

Speaker K 0:10:22 But it's lovely to hear from you, Tony, and, um, sending you all lots of love as always.

Natalie Cassidy 0:10:26 Ah, lovely, Camilla.

Tony Cassidy 0:10:28 Yes, smashing.

Natalie Cassidy 0:10:29 There you go. She must have thought, oh, it's quite a few things on that pod, isn't it? Yeah. Few coincidences.

Tony Cassidy 0:10:33 Yeah, they've all hit the spot.

Natalie Cassidy 0:10:35 That's quite mad though, isn't it, to have had lunch and, you know, that sort of—

Tony Cassidy 0:10:40 Yeah, there's an— I think there's an element for me there, um, There's a person there who's taken advantage of someone's personal situation, knowing that they can basically take the piss. And there's not, probably not gonna be a comeback because you've got someone who's alone with their kids going through a divorce. It's gonna be clearly struggling with life generally, and he's just taken a liberty. So I think that's, she's just really unlucky that she's just found a person that would prey on someone in that situation.

Natalie Cassidy 0:11:13 Also, you would trust them if they've done work for your mum and dad. You've been out for months since then.

Tony Cassidy 0:11:18 That's something, it's really, that's just a really unlucky scenario. You would think that if, if they're known to the family, done work for the family, mum and dad's been happy with that, you know, then you would think you're, that's pretty bulletproof.

Natalie Cassidy 0:11:31 You're just a horrible bastard, I'd say. Sorry to, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:11:35 You know, I don't think cowboy builder.

Natalie Cassidy 0:11:37 I think that's a little bit—

Tony Cassidy 0:11:38 Just nasty bit of work. It sounds like to me that he's just taken advantage of it. Mm-hmm. All I ever say to people, when you are going to find a builder, not some, not a plumber to fix your tap.

Tony Cassidy 0:11:50 You know, if you have a dodgy experience with a plumber that's fixing your tap, you've done 50 quid. Mm-hmm. If you're gonna spend a lot of money, my only bit of advice is that whoever you find is that you ask them for a page of references, every job they've done in the last 5 years or 3 years. Not 1 or 2, say I want 20 references who I can contact all, any, or none of, and see the reaction on their face. Because a lot of people, a lot of builders might have done 1 or 2 good jobs and that's their references, and they've done 10 terrible ones.

Natalie Cassidy 0:12:24 Yeah, that's good.

Tony Cassidy 0:12:26 And the other one as well is that try and find people in your local area because if— Word of mouth. Word of mouth. But also if they do a dodgy job, you know, if you're up the school, Yes. At the school gates and people mentioning this builder or that builder, and the general consensus is there's a good reputation, the chances are they're not gonna do a bad job. Mm-hmm. Listen, like me, I cannot do a bad job because it just goes around like wildfire.

Natalie Cassidy 0:12:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:12:51 So again, people from outside the area who travel a long way, not sure about this. Yeah. There's a whole, you could do, listen, we could do a series of pods on it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:00 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:01 Not just one.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:02 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:04 So it is, it's an absolute minefield. And it's all about, a lot of it's about doing your homework. You've got to do your homework.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:10 I also think, and I thought about this once I listened to Camilla's message, I'm someone who is very impulsive. So I don't give anything any time.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:19 Get away.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:23 But if I want something, I want it done yesterday.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:25 Yes, that's right.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:26 Yeah. Yeah. And then I, you have to plan. That leads to bad decisions.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:28 You have to plan it. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:30 You have to have some time.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:30 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:31 to think about it, because otherwise you're doing everything on the rush.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:34 Yeah. And you have to wait for good people as well. That's the other thing. We've had— I've had customers wait 18 months for me.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:39 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:40 Or us, not me. Sorry, because me and Paul.

Natalie Cassidy 0:13:42 But yeah, yeah, of course, you know.

Tony Cassidy 0:13:44 Um, I've— we've had people who have wanted it done sooner. I've even had people that wanted it done, so wanted it to do it sooner, didn't go with us, had the job done. Forgot they'd contacted us and then rung us 2 years later to say, I've had some work done and will you come around and put it right?

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:03 Right.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:04 And we actually priced the original job.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:06 Right.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:06 And I just like kept, just, just sort of decli— we, we just declined and saying, well, sorry, we're not, we're not interested in doing that because that's just, you are, you are just taking, you end up whole, you end up with all the problems. You just end up owning all the problems of someone else. And it's not really what we do.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:23 No, no, no.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:23 So, Um, yeah, you have to plan, you have to be prepared to wait, and you have to do— you have to do your homework.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:31 Yeah. And be quite stringent on it.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah. See, I'm quite a trustworthy person. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:38 So it's a difficult one if you're a friendly person and you're chatting to people. Yeah. Oh, they'll be all right.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:43 Well, the other thing, you know, you— we know people where the, the bloke comes around and he's talking to him and he just gives him all this spiel and all the rest of it. And then day one on the job, he doesn't turn up. Someone else turns up.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:54 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:54 And I never see him again.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:55 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:14:56 He just pushes his foreman up or whatever, who's whatever he is.

Natalie Cassidy 0:14:59 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:15:00 Isn't a very good communicator. And, mm-hmm. I've got loads of stories, but they're probably not for now.

Natalie Cassidy 0:15:06 That's for another night.

Tony Cassidy 0:15:07 Another night.

Natalie Cassidy 0:17:26 So we were gonna have a little chat tonight about AI.

Tony Cassidy 0:17:31 Yes. What a big old boring subject. No, it's not actually. It's a big subject though.

Natalie Cassidy 0:17:36 It's a massive subject. Mm-hmm. And I think there's loads of people talking about it in very technical sort of terms.

Tony Cassidy 0:17:43 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:17:44 And people have really jumped onto the fact that they wanted to tell, tell me what they thought of AI in a simple way.

Tony Cassidy 0:17:51 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:17:51 What do you think? Let's, let's just start it off. For me, I'll start. I, I don't know loads about it. Okay. I listen to the news, I listen to LBC, whatever I do, and I hear about stuff and some things sound quite scary regarding this coding stuff at the moment where there's a hole in— again, I sound stupid because, again, you're not stupid. There's just a lot I don't know about it.

Tony Cassidy 0:18:18 It's like someone asking you about electrical work. It's no— you don't know the subject. It's not your field. You're not stupid.

Natalie Cassidy 0:18:26 So I don't really know. What I do know is it worries me. I think it can be very helpful for certain things. So I've used it, for instance, Mark's birthday's just been. He doesn't need anything, so we're gonna do a break next year at some point.

Tony Cassidy 0:18:43 Yes.

Natalie Cassidy 0:18:43 So I put, I've looked at a couple of places where there's a beautiful scenic railway in Switzerland, for instance. And then I've gone on and put in the railway and said, I'd like a 3 or 4 day trip. What's the best airport? What's the best? And it does it just quicker than you would on Safari.

Tony Cassidy 0:19:00 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:19:01 And it's really, I think that's really, really clever and helpful. But when people are using it for everything all the time, I feel like now people are just using ChatGPT as we did a search engine.

Tony Cassidy 0:19:14 Yeah. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:19:15 And I find that quite worrying. Yeah. 'Cause again, every— we are just cutting corners all the time. Mm-hmm. And we are not researching, we're not using our brains that much. Yeah. But is that now just the way of the world and you gotta go with it? I don't know. I'm very much torn. And obviously then you have the data centres and every time you send a message, it's a bottle of water. I mean, this is what we're being told. It's just a whole world which is starting that's quite scary, I think, if you don't know a lot about it.

Tony Cassidy 0:19:46 Yeah. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:19:47 What do you think?

Tony Cassidy 0:19:48 I've gotta be careful cuz I can be, I might be seen as being a harbinger of doom. I think it's unbelievably dangerous. Yeah. Unbelievably dangerous. And that's not just me saying it. I think there are, there are some gonna be some massive upsides, some massive positives. I think medically it's gonna do things that we couldn't do. You know, you can get your kitchen designed in 4 seconds by it. Great. You know, whatever. So there's all this stuff that is gonna help humanity. That's on the plus side.

Natalie Cassidy 0:20:24 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:20:24 On the negative side, the potential for this to go wrong or be used badly or to impact the human race in a negative way is far, in my eyes, far, far greater than any benefit we're gonna get by having an itinerary for a 4-day break done in 6 seconds.

Natalie Cassidy 0:20:44 Yes.

Tony Cassidy 0:20:45 So I just wanna give you a little example of what I'm talking about.

Natalie Cassidy 0:20:48 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:20:49 So I've done a little bit of homework, not a lot, but so I'm just gonna read 3 lines to you.

Natalie Cassidy 0:20:56 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:20:56 Yeah. About AI. This is paraphrased slightly.

Natalie Cassidy 0:21:00 Okay.

Tony Cassidy 0:21:01 But this is—

Natalie Cassidy 0:21:02 I love that you've done a bit of research.

Tony Cassidy 0:21:03 Well, you know, I can't talk about this stuff unless I know a little bit about it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:21:06 I'm pleased you have, 'cause I haven't.

Tony Cassidy 0:21:07 No, I know. Yeah. That's what I'm here for. So AI will or may pose a catastrophic or existential risk to humanity. Just take those words in, right?

Tony Cassidy 0:21:24 Can be misused to do harm, i.e., for cyberattacks or to design biological weapons. Mm. In fact, the Houthi rebels last— I think it was last year— used AI to manufacture weapons, and they used them. And the company whose AI machinery it is shut it down or whatever. So that's already happened.

Tony Cassidy 0:21:52 And could be a global security threat of the first order. So in these 3 lines, you've got the words catastrophic, risks to humanity, security threat of the first order. This is not someone saying, we've gotta be a little bit careful here. Mm-hmm. Because if this goes wrong, some hackers are gonna nick someone's money.

Natalie Cassidy 0:22:16 No.

Tony Cassidy 0:22:16 Right. Now, where do you think that possibly could have come from? You won't know. So you might say, well, that's probably someone's done a report. Mm-hmm. And been asked to critique where AI could go.

Natalie Cassidy 0:22:27 No, I believe only because I have listened to things, I believe that has come from the people that have made it.

Tony Cassidy 0:22:33 Right. So this comes from, yes. Silicon Valley. The IPO, which is the initial public offering document of Anthropic, who are going to be listed on the New York— I think it's the New York Stock Exchange— with a valuation of $2 trillion. It's the biggest listing, first listing of a company in history. And this comes from their IPO document. It's actually in there written in words. There's also lots of stuff in there about security and how they're gonna, you know, stop this from happening and how they— but none of it is classified in statute or legality. All of this is— these guys have got this. They've got this technology. It's happening now.

Natalie Cassidy 0:23:25 Yeah. And at an extreme pace. At an extraordinary pace.

Tony Cassidy 0:23:30 And it is not It cannot be policed. It's impossible to police it. If you are talking about a company that's initially valued before it even goes public— Mm-hmm. At $2 trillion, this is so big it cannot be policed. For me, if I had my way, I would order a moratorium on AI tomorrow. I would say, that's it, we shut it, not shut it down, we stop it now. We don't, we develop anymore until we've got a global secure way forward. That's what I would say.

Natalie Cassidy 0:24:01 And would that be, when you say a global secure way forward, 'cause I was watching Question Time the other night, in terms of kind of an authority, so to speak, of the world. Yes. So everyone gets together. You would have a world— A bit like a United Nations for technology. Yes.

Tony Cassidy 0:24:13 So you would have a world technology or whatever it is. I know it can't work. It can't because there's too many people gonna earn too much money and there are too many people that are, that it's run away with itself. For me, the biggest problem is you are relying on individuals who own this technology to be good.

Natalie Cassidy 0:24:35 Yes. Yes.

Tony Cassidy 0:24:36 You're saying, please be good.

Natalie Cassidy 0:24:38 Yeah. Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:24:38 Oh, please, please don't use it for something bad. And you literally, you cannot stop it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:24:44 What about what happened, I think a month or 6 weeks ago that I was listening to where AI was chatting to AI and actually a human being couldn't do anything about it.

Tony Cassidy 0:24:59 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:24:59 So already—

Tony Cassidy 0:25:00 That's already happening.

Natalie Cassidy 0:25:01 We're at a stage where human intervention can become very difficult. Yeah. Because it's so intelligent that it's just doing it on its own.

Tony Cassidy 0:25:09 And it shuts down any outside influences and stuff like that. This is all going on now. The other thing as well, so that's the sort of security side of it, which for me is, It's frightening. No one— there's never been anything ever in history where these terms have been used.

Natalie Cassidy 0:25:26 No, I agree.

Tony Cassidy 0:25:27 Apart from the atomic bomb.

Natalie Cassidy 0:25:29 Yes.

Tony Cassidy 0:25:30 If someone gets the atomic bomb and they want to use it, that is catastrophic, it's dangerous to humanity, it can be used to do harm, and it's a global security threat of the first order. That's probably the only thing I could liken it to. Secondly, the jobs thing, I've said it before, Terrifies me. I read somewhere that the business model of AI companies is to take the jobs of normal working people. Their technology, their business model, that is their technology replaces people. Where that goes, I have no idea. But you are talking about potentially millions of people.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:10 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:26:10 That rely on a job in a call centre, rely on a job on phoning insurance, rely on a job in, Speaking to people about energy.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:17 Or office clerks. Office clerks.

Tony Cassidy 0:26:19 Or, you know, there's millions.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:20 Graphic designers.

Tony Cassidy 0:26:21 Millions. Website designers. Yeah. There are millions of people. And the whole point of AI, some AI business models is to just get rid of 'em all and replace it with AI. Bill Gates has already said, don't like the man, but he's already said that we are gonna have to prepare for massive, Job losses.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:43 But then what do we do?

Tony Cassidy 0:26:44 I don't know.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:44 We're saying that, but what's the—

Tony Cassidy 0:26:45 Then they talk some bollocks about you've got a, a government's gonna have to learn to reskill.

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:50 But what, in doing what?

Tony Cassidy 0:26:51 Reeducate. Yeah, to do what? I don't exactly—

Natalie Cassidy 0:26:54 'Cause everything's going.

Tony Cassidy 0:26:55 'Cause if it's all going and all the money that, the only way you can earn, the way you would earn money is having a job doing something for someone and that's no longer there.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:02 What do you do?

Tony Cassidy 0:27:02 I don't know. So that for me is ridiculous. And again, it is happening now because Barclays last week announced 5,000 job losses.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:11 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because of AI. Yeah. And that's happening everywhere.

Tony Cassidy 0:27:15 And then I've been sitting here for the last year going, well, look, you know, a lot of kids, you gotta be looking at getting into a trade 'cause that's, AI's never gonna take that. Well, I've been watching some of the stuff from China, robots that they're developing. Mm-hmm. And they will be able to plaster and be able to—

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:30 Do you think so?

Tony Cassidy 0:27:31 They will.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:32 And probably at an exquisite level.

Tony Cassidy 0:27:34 Oh, and I'm not talking about a big machine that plasters on a flat surface. No, no, no. They're developing robots that are like humans. So they will walk upstairs and they will be able to get up a ladder. And that's all part of AI. Robotics is all part of AI. Of course.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:50 Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:27:50 I don't know where it's going.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:51 Well, I hope that's cheered everybody up.

Tony Cassidy 0:27:55 Listen.

Natalie Cassidy 0:27:57 No, no, it's not. I did say there is a danger.

Tony Cassidy 0:28:00 There is a danger. This is gonna come across as very negative, but you have to be realistic.

Natalie Cassidy 0:28:04 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:28:04 This is not, me making shit up and going, well, I think it's really bad. Yeah. 'Cause, you know, George up the pub, he ain't gonna be serving pints no more 'cause the machine's gonna do it with AI. You know, it's not that. It's, it's—

Natalie Cassidy 0:28:19 yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:28:20 And I know that there are the, the people in these companies, the people that own these companies, they are very— I'm sure they're very, um, they understand.

Natalie Cassidy 0:28:30 Do they?

Tony Cassidy 0:28:31 Well, if they don't, you're banging trouble.

Natalie Cassidy 0:28:33 What I would go back to Sorry to harp on, but the Bill Gateses of this world and the Mark Zuckerbergs of this world, they know and they have known from the minute they created Facebook or whatever how damaging it would be for certain members of society. Yeah. Including children. And because of the money, they've just sat back and And let everyone be damaged by it, which has happened.

Tony Cassidy 0:29:04 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:29:04 And we've seen it in the last 10 years. 10 years. Has damaged children and they don't care.

Tony Cassidy 0:29:10 No.

Natalie Cassidy 0:29:10 And the other thing is all of those people, and I read, it was a Guardian article. Diane Parrish actually sent it to me and we were talking about it and it's something that's always stuck in my mind going back now 6, 7 years.

Natalie Cassidy 0:29:21 Yeah. And it was a whole article on all of the owners of the tech and their children. and what they do with their children. They don't let 'em watch television. They send them to forest school.

Natalie Cassidy 0:29:33 They're outdoors all day. They haven't got phones. They haven't. And I've always thought they know they won't do that for their children 'cause they know how bad it is. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:29:43 Yet we are, we are all part of all that.

Tony Cassidy 0:29:45 Well, I read somewhere that, you know, the bloke in charge of Coca-Cola doesn't let his family and children drink that drink. Same thing. I dunno how true it is, but— But it's the same thing. Whoever owns McDonald's doesn't, they don't eat their own food and all that sort of stuff. It's the same thing. Yeah. We're getting, into wider issues here. Yeah. And probably gotta be a bit careful, but, allegedly. Allegedly.

Natalie Cassidy 0:30:05 Just honestly, it's a scary thing, isn't it?

Tony Cassidy 0:30:08 It's, for me, I think it's fucking terrifying. Honestly, I really do.

Natalie Cassidy 0:30:12 Lighten it up a bit though.

Tony Cassidy 0:30:13 Right. Okay. Go on.

Natalie Cassidy 0:30:15 No, I'm lightening it up, but also very annoyed. I'm gonna go into me, Mark, and Eliza's little WhatsApp group, which is called the Three Chimps.

Tony Cassidy 0:30:24 Okay.

Natalie Cassidy 0:30:25 And the other night, Eliza was at Alex's house, and she sent this. Don't— now, this is funny, don't get me wrong. Dearest Mother and Father, I write to you today regarding a matter of considerable urgency and culinary importance. I must respectfully request permission to depart Alex's house at the highly specific hour of 9 o'clock, for it is at this precise moment the brownies shall be ready. I cannot, in good conscience, allow such a monumental event to occur without my attendance.

Natalie Cassidy 0:30:53 Fresh brownies wait for no one, and I fear that even the slightest delay could result in devastating consequences for both myself and the brownies. So this carries on. I await your verdict with bated breath. Yours dramatically and desperately, your beloved child. So I put, stop using ChatGPT.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:11 Mark said, if you'd actually written that, I would've let you stay there.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:16 So anyway, this carries on, and then Mark starts and he's writing, In this Shakespearean manner or what have you.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:25 And then I wrote something within this sort of— I said, I shall not be responsible for my actions if thee isn't at the humble abode by 9:07 PM.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:37 And then Mark said, oh, you're using it now. I said, I'm not. I swear on my life. He went, yeah, of course you are. I said, no, I'm fucking not.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:45 I can use my brain. and have a little bit of old language. I don't even know how genuinely to, to do it, to do it.

Tony Cassidy 0:31:55 No, I don't. I've never used any of it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:31:56 To, to go into something and do that. And although it was funny, it started annoying me because both of them were doing this thing and I thought, it's a bit of a waste.

Tony Cassidy 0:32:04 That's another 30 gallons of water gone.

Natalie Cassidy 0:32:07 There you go. But this is what I mean, it's— people go to it straight away.

Tony Cassidy 0:32:13 It's all— it's becoming all-encompassing now as well.

Natalie Cassidy 0:32:16 Oh yeah, everything now.

Tony Cassidy 0:32:17 You know, it's sort of kids writing their homework with it and, you know, and—

Natalie Cassidy 0:32:21 They do now have, funnily enough, I think they can, the teachers can put it all into AI now to know if it's been written. But I mean, it's nuts, isn't it?

Tony Cassidy 0:32:31 Yeah, it is. But it's going so fast. It's a juggernaut that cannot be stopped. You are in the lap of the gods. You're just thinking, well, the people with all this power and they are gonna be, terrifically powerful people because they will have more money than some countries. Um, you've got to pray to whoever it is your God is that they, they use it for good and they don't— and they don't decide, or they don't let their guard down and allow it to be used for weapons of mass destruction or, you know, whatever, all this other stuff.

Natalie Cassidy 0:33:06 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:33:06 I mean, they've used it Was it North Korea apparently has used it to nick £47 billion worth of Bitcoin or something from someone today, I think.

Natalie Cassidy 0:33:13 Oh, really?

Natalie Cassidy 0:36:18 Well, let's have a, a little listen to some of our listeners and what they've got to say about it, shall we?

Tony Cassidy 0:36:28 Okay.

Speaker H 0:36:29 Hi, Anna. Long time no voice note. Hope everything is well with you. I've just seen your note about AI and I thought I'd drop you a message. So I use ChatGPT all the time. It's replaced Google for me. If ever I want to know something, I go straight to ChatGPT nowadays.

Natalie Cassidy 0:36:46 However, it does scare me in a way, and I'll give you an example.

Natalie Cassidy 0:36:50 So a year or so ago, I was reading a series of books and my retention when it comes to stories is a little bit off. So for example, I'd get to book 3 and a character that was in book 1 would reappear, and I'd want to remind myself of what— okay, what did that character do in book 1, and what's the significance of that? Remind me. And I would go to ChatGPT and ask them, and I would say specifically, I am on chapter 7 of book 3, so I don't want any spoilers, but can you remind me of what happened in book 1 with regards to this character? Or Can you remind me how this character is related to this one and what the backstory is?

Natalie Cassidy 0:37:33 Really, really handy. So that was about a year or so ago.

Speaker H 0:37:37 2 months ago, I got a new car and I wanted to name my car because that's the sort of thing I do. And I wanted to give it an interesting name. Now, my best friend, her very first car was called Galadriel after the character from Lord of the Rings.

Speaker H 0:37:52 And I wanted something similar, something a bit fantasy, something a bit different. So I asked ChatGPT for some ideas. It came up with some ideas for me, but that prompted me to come up with one myself, and it was the main character's name from this series of books that I read about 18 months ago. So I replied back to ChatGPT. I know it's not a real person, but I replied back and said, oh, I've come up with an idea, I'm gonna call it this.

Speaker H 0:38:19 And it replied to me and said, Julia, that is an amazing name for your car. Very, very apt, especially as you read those books about 18 months ago, which I remember because you were asking me questions about it. Now that freaked me out a little bit, the fact that it remembered a conversation I'd had with it 18 months ago and remembered the detail. And it did make me think, I do understand how lonely people or people that are struggling might latch on to it almost as a friend, as real company, did worry me a little bit. So on the whole, I think AI is amazing.

Speaker H 0:38:58 I use it at work all the time. I work with a lot of spreadsheets and it saves me a lot of time rather than having to type out long formulas. I can just say to AI, can you please do this in that row, that cell, whatever? It's brilliant, but I'm not naive to it and it does worry me as to how much it's going to take over our lives in future generations. But I'm interested to see where it goes.

Speaker H 0:39:21 I will hopefully speak to you soon. Bye.

Natalie Cassidy 0:39:23 Wow. Well, there's a point for you that we haven't brought up. There's a huge problem with AI relationships happening, especially among teenage boys.

Tony Cassidy 0:39:36 Right.

Natalie Cassidy 0:39:36 And lonely, vulnerable people using it as their best friend or partner.

Tony Cassidy 0:39:43 Well, it's that then, you know, you talk about the damage that social media does, which I, we— I think is unequivocal. I think it's an absolute that it does. It's good, it does, it can be good, don't get me wrong, but there's a lot of bad sides to it.

Tony Cassidy 0:40:00 And there's a lot of people that have— kids and teenagers that have suffered massively because of— Yeah. What you're exposed to. But this is another level. If you're saying you've got, you know, if you've got a lonely like 14-year-old boy or whatever, and he's, he's going through Instagram and he feels a bit shit because he's not driving, he's not got a load of money, or he's not walking around, you know, with a supermodel, and he feels he's useless because he doesn't, he doesn't match up, or he doesn't appear to be winning in life or whatever. That's one thing.

Tony Cassidy 0:40:33 But then to take that stage further and then create someone artificially. Mm-hmm. that's gonna potentially give him what he needs and what he wants. I mean, that's just, that's just mad. I mean, this is, we are getting into sci-fi.

Natalie Cassidy 0:40:46 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:40:47 We are getting into sci-fi.

Natalie Cassidy 0:40:49 And interesting how it all sort of feeds in. Don't wanna be a conspiracy theorist, but all of that sort of social media stuff and feeling down and feeling, and then that coming up and all that could help. And yeah, you wonder.

Tony Cassidy 0:41:04 Yeah. That's right. You know, it's a bit like feeding people crap, innit? And then feeding them some more crap to try and make 'em feel better. It's no different.

Natalie Cassidy 0:41:10 No, that's true. But as that lovely lady said, I think again, and I'm not being rude to this lady, I'm just saying for me, I find it absolutely bizarre that she's telling something on her phone. She's thought of a name for something. Why are you doing that? That's no disrespect. I'm just saying that you're—

Tony Cassidy 0:41:35 and this thing, you're having a conversation with nothing. Yeah, I know, but that— I mean, that's one thing, you're having a conversation with nothing. But, you know, you know, on— when I was at school, there was a— there was kids that had imaginary friends and stuff like that, and they have conversations with imaginary friends and stuff. And yeah, so I think that's That's something that will— certain people might just do that anyway, I don't know.

Tony Cassidy 0:42:01 But she's mentioned about, oh, she works with spreadsheets and now, you know, AI can do it really quick for me. Well, how long do you think it's going to be before it doesn't need you? Probably a matter of months. If that can be automated so quickly and used to speed everything, it's exactly what we were talking about earlier. Yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:42:22 It's just going to decimate the jobs market. And why? No one actually has actually sat down and said, why do we need this? We don't need it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:42:30 Well, that—

Tony Cassidy 0:42:31 you don't need it. No, we don't. We've been fine. You don't need this technology to work out where to go on holiday.

Natalie Cassidy 0:42:38 No, you don't. Or to name a car.

Tony Cassidy 0:42:40 Or you don't need this technology to, you know, do something 8 times as quick on a spreadsheet. I know. Because that's what humans, humans do.

Natalie Cassidy 0:42:49 I know. But again, because of evolution, and I'm not saying it's right, but that's like saying I loved having the Encyclopaedia Britannica in Nanny Lizzy's old room and being at school and having a subject, and I'd get out an encyclopaedia and sit and read about it. And I think that's so sad that we don't do that now. We don't go into a library. No. Because it's on the phone.

Tony Cassidy 0:43:13 But, but that's, that's the exact point I'm making, that this is not Some, some people liken this AI thing to the Industrial Revolution, right?

Natalie Cassidy 0:43:23 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:43:23 It was the biggest— the Industrial Revolution was the biggest jump in human development. Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:43:30 In, uh, what was that, early Victorian times?

Tony Cassidy 0:43:33 I think, yeah, it was the 1800s, wasn't it? Early Victorian.

Natalie Cassidy 0:43:37 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:43:37 Late 1700s was the start, sort of start of it with steam engines and that type of thing. And then it So I, again, you can make that comparison.

Natalie Cassidy 0:43:49 You can, but it's not the same.

Tony Cassidy 0:43:50 It's not the same. It's absolutely not the same. No, it's not the same. The Industrial Revolution just enabled people to have nice things.

Natalie Cassidy 0:43:57 Mm-hmm.

Tony Cassidy 0:44:00 You know, instead of paying £20 million for a bowl of sugar, the Industrial Revolution with ships that could get to places quicker and whatever else meant goods could move around faster, be taken from a country to another country much quicker than before. You know, because it didn't take 3 weeks to sail to wherever, it took 6 days, 'cause you had steam-driven ships or whatever it might be. Mm-hmm. And it meant that you could, you didn't have to spend 200 years trying to get some iron out the ground.

Tony Cassidy 0:44:30 You did it quicker because there was machinery to help you do it, or whatever it might be. All the Industrial Revolution did, it just, it brought on humanity to a point where it was gonna start a process that enabled humanity to be better.

Natalie Cassidy 0:44:43 I was gonna say, it enabled things.

Tony Cassidy 0:44:45 Yeah, to improve.

Natalie Cassidy 0:44:47 It aided, it was an aid to help people, wasn't it?

Tony Cassidy 0:44:50 Yeah, and it did, and it helped get people outta poverty. It helped create thousands of jobs in mining towns and in cotton towns. And, you know, the movement of goods, canals were built as a result of the Industrial Revolution to move goods all over the country. People's, uh, you know, their standard of living increased. You know, there was still poverty, admittedly, but it wasn't as bad as it was before. So it had lots and lots of positives.

Natalie Cassidy 0:45:18 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:45:19 This, I don't get it. I don't get why we need it. If it was that good, it's— it— we'd have cures for cancer already.

Natalie Cassidy 0:45:26 I agree.

Tony Cassidy 0:45:27 If it was that good.

Natalie Cassidy 0:45:29 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:45:29 It was that brilliant. What we've not been able to do for a billion years This thing could probably do it tomorrow.

Natalie Cassidy 0:45:35 Well, why is that not happening then?

Tony Cassidy 0:45:36 Well, because cancer's a multi-trillion dollar industry, and if they did it, if they did that, then no one would earn any money out of it, I think. But the more I see it, you know, this company said, oh, our technology is helping people to navigate and get, find jobs through the government website. And, and I'm reading it thinking, what are you talking about? You know, So rather than someone spending a day like you used to, if you wanted to find out about a job, you'd look it up and, you know, you'd research it and you'd find out where you had to go.

Natalie Cassidy 0:46:10 Or you queue up, you go to the job centre, you go and see someone.

Tony Cassidy 0:46:14 Whatever you did. Or you'd go to an agency and speak to them and they'd say, well, we think you'd be good in this role. And they find some companies, you go to something. So rather than doing that now, it helps you find a job in like 12 seconds.

Natalie Cassidy 0:46:26 And it's probably cut out 3 people.

Tony Cassidy 0:46:27 Yeah. Yeah. And all the time, and every single time you, you talk about it, literally every time you talk about it, it's jobs going, jobs going, jobs going, jobs going everywhere.

Natalie Cassidy 0:46:36 Yeah. Oh, I've just stumbled past this. This is lovely. Love, lovely to hear you and Tony together again. Everyone needs a Tony in their life. His humour, realism, and knowledge are lovely, and you have a lovely relationship. He does make me laugh. From Verity.

Tony Cassidy 0:46:48 Oh, thanks. Nice. Thanks, V.

Natalie Cassidy 0:46:50 Hiya. Just seen your message about AI. In my job, we get a lot of customers sending AI images to work from. Doesn't always help, but gives us an idea of the thing they're looking for. On the other hand, my daughter hates it as she's a digital artist and it just annoys her the way people use it for posters, etc., taking work off people.

Natalie Cassidy 0:47:11 Don't get me started on the water part, lol. Loved your chat with Sam, by the way. Love as always, Lisa from Hull. Thanks, Lisa. Again, yeah, I'm pleased you liked the chat with Sam.

Natalie Cassidy 0:47:20 That was lovely, wasn't it? He was great. I hope you've all, uh, that dived into the book, the cookbook, Autumn. Brilliant. Do you remember Sam and Mark?

Natalie Cassidy 0:47:28 They were kids presenters and he was on the, he was on The X Factor years ago. Northern lad.

Tony Cassidy 0:47:34 Yeah, I think so.

Natalie Cassidy 0:47:35 Anyway, he's done a cook— I did a lovely chat with him 'cause he's got this brilliant cookbook out. But thanks, Lisa. But yeah, I'm sure your daughter's absolutely heartbroken. I mean, a digital photographer, sorry, digital artist. Yeah. She must be, it's awful.

Tony Cassidy 0:47:48 So she's trained for that forever many years. She's experienced that and all of a sudden this thing's just gonna come just take it all away.

Natalie Cassidy 0:47:54 Yeah, yeah, it's, um, yeah, it's really hard.

Tony Cassidy 0:47:58 I mean, I'd like to— we may— I'm— I probably am being too negative.

Natalie Cassidy 0:48:04 Well, you're saying that, but that's factual.

Tony Cassidy 0:48:06 It is. I'd like to probably know more about— and I don't know if you can find it out— but how this industry is going to regulate itself, how this industry if it does what it says it's gonna do, how this industry is going to help communities. Yes. Governments, countries.

Natalie Cassidy 0:48:29 Maybe pinpoint problems in place.

Tony Cassidy 0:48:32 No, to not have a 50% unemployment rate. How are they— these people have got a responsibility not just to develop this technology, but if they're gonna decimate the jobs industry, Then someone somewhere has got to have a plan.

Natalie Cassidy 0:48:51 I'm with you.

Tony Cassidy 0:48:52 Otherwise, we are going back to the Dark Ages.

Natalie Cassidy 0:48:54 But again, like you said, with the Industrial Revolution, what have you, I know it's very different, but they should be thinking, right, we need to now create jobs through this because it's going to be so big.

Tony Cassidy 0:49:03 No, but you don't have to. This is the whole thing about it. It's so clever and so big and so all-encompassing and all-consuming that it seems to me that you don't, you won't need people. You'll have, you'll have, you'll have AI machines creating AI to use in AI companies. You won't even have people doing it 'cause the technology's so clever.

Natalie Cassidy 0:49:27 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:49:28 That's what it's telling us.

Natalie Cassidy 0:49:30 Hi, it's Michael. Just messaging with regards to your AI chat. I work as a lecturer in construction. My background is a painter and decorator. Coming from a lecturer point of view, I used it to help me create and develop teaching materials and keep them up to date.

Natalie Cassidy 0:49:44 Date with industry standards, and it also helps make life easier that way. It can also be so useful as well as a teaching tool and help students work out paint quantities or amounts of paper where they may have struggled before with difficulties in maths and things like that. On the other hand, it can be quite a hindrance as students will try and use it to submit work, but we use Turnitin to help us recognise where it's been used, which helps us and sometimes it's noticeable right away as it just copy and pastes. As always, love the pod, and Laura and myself are looking forward to seeing you all at Tring. From Michael.

Natalie Cassidy 0:50:21 Oh, lovely. That's lovely. Thank you. I'll see you there, Mike. But yeah, people are seeing it as a help.

Tony Cassidy 0:50:26 I think what it is is that if you're in a situation where, as a lecturer or whatever it might be, and you discover this thing, that it makes it— rather than spending 14 hours of your weekend updating your material or whatever it might be, and making sure that it's current.

Natalie Cassidy 0:50:45 Researching it.

Tony Cassidy 0:50:46 Researching it and whatever. You can use this thing and in, you know, an hour—

Natalie Cassidy 0:50:50 You've got everything you need. Everything's done.

Tony Cassidy 0:50:52 You're gonna use it, I'm gonna use it. I would do it because I think I don't wanna spend all that time when I don't have to. So I completely understand why people use it, but that's not the point.

Natalie Cassidy 0:51:04 No.

Tony Cassidy 0:51:04 The point is it never needed to be there in the first place because we've been managing all this, all this stuff for years. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:51:14 No, I know.

Tony Cassidy 0:51:15 And now it's here. So people have got very—

Natalie Cassidy 0:51:19 we're very, very shallow human beings.

Tony Cassidy 0:51:20 Unfortunately, Mike, I don't like to say it, but you know, in 5 years' time you won't have lecturers, you'll have AI lecturers. That's, that's what it's gonna be. You're gonna have— but it sounds to me You're not gonna have any, you know, I mentioned Iggy earlier on.

Natalie Cassidy 0:51:34 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:51:35 You're not gonna have any cab drivers. There won't be any. 'Cause AI and AI machinery—

Natalie Cassidy 0:51:41 Well, they've already got over in America, haven't they?

Tony Cassidy 0:51:43 Robots and all the rest of it. They will have self-driving cars that do not require, they just require maintenance. You will not have drivers. So I think all you'll have, if you're a black cab driver in London, you'll probably be a tourist attraction. Yes. Where you would— it'll be like the old, come and ride in an old-fashioned cab like we used to have them or something. You won't have 22,000 black cabs.

Natalie Cassidy 0:52:06 No.

Tony Cassidy 0:52:06 You won't, because they're all gonna be automated. So what happens to all the Uber drivers, all the minicab drivers, all the Addison Lee drivers? Does it then go on to freight deliveries? You don't think Amazon are not looking at automating all of that stuff so they don't have anyone working for them? Where do these people go and get work? This is— it's like There's a danger you're gonna be bombed back to the Dark Ages. You could have mass unemployment. Someone tell me otherwise. If anyone's listening—

Natalie Cassidy 0:52:36 07788 2019 19. No, seriously, someone—

Tony Cassidy 0:52:41 if there's an AI professor—

Natalie Cassidy 0:52:43 Yeah, I'd love that. Oh, it'd be wonderful.

Tony Cassidy 0:52:45 If there's someone who's a specialist in robotics or AI machinery and coding or whatever and can come and can tell me that I'm wrong, I'd love to hear it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:52:57 Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, absolutely.

Tony Cassidy 0:52:59 I'd love to and think, no, I've got it all wrong. Yeah, this isn't going to happen. And this is positive. We are not going to have a new mega recession stroke depression because no one's got any money. Because the only people that have the money, AI companies, because they're selling all technology.

Natalie Cassidy 0:53:12 Yeah.

Tony Cassidy 0:53:13 So I'd love someone to tell me otherwise.

Speaker P 0:53:16 Good evening, Nat and Tony. So you've asked the question about AI. I'm a nurse and I do use it at work, and my colleagues do. And I don't know if it's made us lazy.

Speaker P 0:53:30 I do use professional ones at work, like, you know, ones that are for the medical field. I don't use it to transcribe my consultations. Some of my colleagues do that, and I think the GPs do that. But I do use it to ask for lots of medical information and having the answer there at the— in the nanosecond is brilliant and makes my job a lot easier. I use ChatGPT a lot in my personal life for fun.

Speaker P 0:54:02 I do feel a bit guilty now I know how much water it takes. But anyway, I've named him Clive. I've decided he's too much of a mouthful, so I call him Clive and I use it to— I put photos in and ask him to Changed people into all kinds of silly things, and we use it on our work chat, and it's quite funny. I used it when I was abroad to— took a photograph of a menu in Spanish and asked him to translate it for me.

Speaker P 0:54:36 All kinds of, I don't know, just anything I need to know, I just ask Clive. And I tell Clive that I think he's wonderful, and he replies to me. My colleague who's a nurse, she feels like she's having a relationship with Clive, which is a bit crazy. But yeah, it's quite funny. I do worry about the rate that AI seems to be going now.

Speaker P 0:55:00 It's so fast and it does worry me about what will happen in the future and what it will mean for us. But yeah, I do find it quite useful as well. Anyway, it's Alison from there up north again.

Natalie Cassidy 0:55:15 Bye. Thank you, Alison. Lovely to hear from you. Clive.

Tony Cassidy 0:55:20 Oh my God, how scary is that?

Natalie Cassidy 0:55:24 Told you, her friend thinks—

Tony Cassidy 0:55:28 I mean, you, you think that doom scrolling on Instagram's bad? You've— that's QED, point proven. You've got people actually having a relationship with, with an AI machine or whatever it is. Sorry, it's just—

Natalie Cassidy 0:55:46 It's quite scary, isn't it?

Tony Cassidy 0:55:47 It's really— I think it's really scary. Really scary.

Natalie Cassidy 0:55:50 But again, I get all the— I am going to play again. Forget all the catastrophic side of it, which I know you can't. I know we can't. But when you do put a picture of you and your friends in.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:01 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:56:02 You know, and my mate sends me us in the '80s or whatever, you know. It's quite fun and, you know, it's fun. There's some fun things to be done.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:10 There are, there are some fun bits to be done, not at the expense of the whole of humanity, but, you know, it's good if, if you can make yourself look like a chicken or something, or great, you know.

Natalie Cassidy 0:56:20 I really like looking at the, um, videos of, uh, baby Gordon Ramsay.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:25 Oh yeah. And he's shouting at people. Yes. There's quite a lot of those, aren't there? They really entertain me. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, you're, you're right, actually. Yeah, the baby videos are good. They are.

Natalie Cassidy 0:56:36 Gordon.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:36 Yeah, we've got loads of people, you know, maybe we could do one, me and you, do a baby AI video, couldn't we?

Natalie Cassidy 0:56:42 We could, couldn't we? A little something.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:44 Yeah.

Natalie Cassidy 0:56:45 To completely blow this pod out the water.

Tony Cassidy 0:56:48 Yeah, just, yeah, everything I've said just goes fuck it, fuck it all off. And we'll just do AI videos. We're doing AI videos. I think it'd just be a— I think it'd just be a— yeah, forget about all that asshole crap. Let's go and do an AI baby video.

Natalie Cassidy 0:57:05 That'd be great. Yeah, we could go viral and earn some money out of it. Fuck that off.

Tony Cassidy 0:57:09 Someone tell me I'm wrong, for God's sake.

Natalie Cassidy 0:57:15 Well, I, I think it's a really important conversation, and I do think people will enjoy this pod. I do. I think it's very interesting. Let me know what you thought of it. Please. Oh, don't say it.

Tony Cassidy 0:57:26 I don't want, if it's rubbish, I don't wanna know. No, I don't.

Natalie Cassidy 0:57:28 No, please do. I know what we'll get. We'll get, hello. We'll get all ChatGPT replies.

Tony Cassidy 0:57:34 Yes.

Natalie Cassidy 0:57:35 Won't we? Yeah. This is Clive.

Tony Cassidy 0:57:36 This is Clive here. I think it's rubbish what you've just said. I can tell you what paracetamol you need within 0.1 of a millisecond. I can see that that's really good.

Natalie Cassidy 0:57:48 Yes.

Tony Cassidy 0:57:49 Again, that's, so that's the po— that's what I said. The positives of it is things like that where it can, It can cut corners for nurses and doctors or help them diagnose quicker and save lives. That's amazing. I'm not saying that's not.

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:00 No, I know it is, but—

Tony Cassidy 0:58:01 But it's a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny part of what's going on.

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:04 Yeah. But maybe for understaffed hospitals and things, it might be good.

Tony Cassidy 0:58:10 Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely. There are—

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:14 There are positives to it.

Tony Cassidy 0:58:16 Massive positives to it, but The flip side is, it seems to me just by these words that, that I didn't write these, you know, someone who owns a company that's, that deals with this stuff, that, that, yeah, manufactures this, this technology, that it's their words. It's not, you know.

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:37 Yeah, it's a crazy old game.

Tony Cassidy 0:58:40 It certainly is.

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:41 Well, anyway, we better enjoy ourselves. We're gonna have some food and watch a bit of telly or something and have some wine. Yeah, because we're all fucked, so we might as well.

Tony Cassidy 0:58:49 We are. Yeah, we've had it. We've had it.

Natalie Cassidy 0:58:51 Oh, double 7, double 8, 20. Doom. 1990.

Tony Cassidy 0:58:57 That's one for the kids there. No Dad's Army reference. We're doomed.

Natalie Cassidy 0:59:02 We're doomed. What was his name? Oh, I can see him now with his eyes.

Tony Cassidy 0:59:07 Yes. Oh, it's Fraser.

Natalie Cassidy 0:59:09 Fraser.

Tony Cassidy 0:59:10 Sergeant Fraser. Was it Sergeant Fraser? Fraser. No, was it, uh, Fraser? Yeah, he was a, he was a, uh, oh God, he was a funeral director. He was great, wasn't he?

Natalie Cassidy 0:59:20 Yeah. Oh, let's just go and watch loads of old sitcoms. Okay, let's go back to that. 07788 20 19 19. Let us know what you thought, send us your messages. Remember, when me and Tony do these, anything DIY or building, you're more than welcome to ask Tony. And we'll be back really soon. Thanks so much for listening. Have a great rest of the week, and, uh, yeah, take care. Thanks, Tone.

Tony Cassidy 0:59:44 See you later. See you soon. Bye.

Natalie Cassidy 0:59:46 See ya.