- 12 hours ago
Uncover the hidden truths behind the most perplexing historical events in "Conspiracies & Coverups" Season 1, Episode 7. This episode delves into the shadowy world of secret societies and the alleged manipulation of public perception.
Explore groundbreaking theories surrounding unexplained phenomena and the individuals who have dedicated their lives to exposing these concealed narratives. We examine the intricate connections between power, influence, and information control throughout history.
Gain a deeper understanding of how historical accounts have been shaped and the motivations behind those who seek to maintain the status quo. This installment offers a critical perspective on the forces that operate beyond the public eye.
#Conspiracies #Coverups #SecretSocieties
Explore groundbreaking theories surrounding unexplained phenomena and the individuals who have dedicated their lives to exposing these concealed narratives. We examine the intricate connections between power, influence, and information control throughout history.
Gain a deeper understanding of how historical accounts have been shaped and the motivations behind those who seek to maintain the status quo. This installment offers a critical perspective on the forces that operate beyond the public eye.
#Conspiracies #Coverups #SecretSocieties
Category
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Short filmTranscript
00:00Mr. Monte and I am a former covert CIA intelligence officer and I'm going to
00:04pressure test the most sensational ripped-from-the-headlines conspiracy
00:08theories out there to help you separate fact from fiction.
00:26What was once rooted in science fiction is now the hottest buzzword of today.
00:30AI. AI. AI. AI. AI. AI. AI. AI.
00:33Artificial intelligence. It's happening. It's happening very quickly.
00:37It's not just Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI.
00:40It seems like every company in the world is focused on using this technology
00:43to rapidly increase innovation and speed up technological breakthroughs for mankind.
00:48New cures for diseases, new kinds of energy.
00:50Everybody can be more productive, make way more money.
00:55But if my experience has taught me anything,
00:57it's that every new technology also poses a new threat.
01:00This may look real, but none of it happened.
01:03It's AI generated and dangerously convincing.
01:06Here we have a completely made-up item.
01:08Is AI already being used to manipulate our reality at an unprecedented scale?
01:14I mean, just look how real all of this looks.
01:17It's fake though.
01:19My first experience with AI was in 2007 when I was at CIA.
01:22And I knew that the technology would revolutionize the world,
01:25but I didn't expect that day to happen in 2022.
01:28Breaking news right now, Russia has attacked Ukraine.
01:30Russian forces invaded Ukraine by land, air, and sea on Thursday.
01:38A month after Russia invaded Ukraine, a video of Ukrainian President Zelenskyy instructing his people to
01:44surrender was actually broadcast on Ukrainian television.
01:53But it wasn't Zelenskyy at all.
01:55It was an AI generated deep fake that was created by hackers.
01:58But at the time, it was convincing enough to fool broadcasters in Ukraine.
02:02Since then, AI's ability to produce ever more realistic-looking media has advanced at an unprecedented rate.
02:09Have I ever told you the story of the magical pistachio?
02:12The boundary between reality and fiction is vanishing.
02:16Oh, and a big right hand from Zuckerberg!
02:19He's hurt!
02:21He's hurt!
02:22Every second of every day, AI-based tools are getting better and better.
02:27Not just at creating deep fakes, but at practically anything we once relied on humans to do.
02:32Whether you like it or not, your life is going to be affected by AI to a great extent.
02:36On this episode, I'm going beyond conspiracy theory and investigating whether artificial
02:41intelligence is evolving from potentially our greatest innovation into an unprecedented threat to humanity.
02:47This is a different game now. We're in a different league here in terms of the capability.
02:51Manipulating not only media, but history itself.
02:55I'm talking to top experts, professors, and developers, and conducting my own experiment to
03:00investigate if artificial intelligence will change the world or if it already has.
03:05So you think that an AI is going to change their ideas in 20 or 30 minutes, absolutely.
03:11For better or for worse, will we be able to control what's coming?
03:15There's a 70% chance of all humans dead or something similarly bad.
03:19Whoa, whoa, will you just, okay, um, all humans dead?
03:23Correct.
03:38When you think about how far and fast AI has developed in terms of video and photographs in
03:43such a short period of time, it's really shocking. And when you further think about the possibility that
03:48this technology could have to shape the way people view the world, it starts to get scary.
03:53To fully understand the real potential of this technology,
03:56I need to talk to somebody who lives and breathes it every day.
04:04So today I'm talking to Christopher Muir Doe, a professor at the University of North Texas who
04:09specializes in AI-created media. I've asked Chris to take a forensic look at the Zielinski deepfake and
04:15show me how this technology is evolving.
04:19This is a pretty early example of a deepfake and essentially it uses facial recognition technology
04:26to identify certain points on the face.
04:28This looks far from perfect. How was it able to fool people?
04:32It was injected into a legitimate news source for Ukrainians. When this appeared
04:37in the context of that news organization, you would start to think maybe there's some legitimacy to this.
04:43You can think of the success of a deepfake in terms of those kind of percentages.
04:47You know, how successful can it be if you're fooling 75% of people versus 10% of people,
04:53especially this kind of new world that we're entering where artificial intelligence is going to be
04:59completely indiscernible from real images.
05:03How much better are deepfakes now compared to this?
05:06I can show you an example of that here.
05:19I'm missing.
05:20Oh my gosh. Wow.
05:24I have more hair on my face than any other North Korean soul.
05:29That's nuts, man.
05:30This was a real video. We were able to do a kind of face swap here and kind of drop
05:34you into the image.
05:35It's done that by basically a big math equation that understands what every kind of image can look like.
05:42And when we use the model, we're actually working in that numerical space here in the center.
05:47And then once that math problem has been completed,
05:50we have this decoder here that kind of takes it from a numerical space
05:54and turns it back into something that you and I can recognize as an image.
05:57Wow.
05:58And it's even easier today than ever to create a fake AI video.
06:06You can go to websites and type in prompts and just generate them.
06:15So this is a series of recent viral videos of ICE agents engaging with the general public.
06:26That have been kind of disseminated on various social media platforms.
06:30Do we know right now if these are real or fake or is that what we're looking for?
06:34So I'd like you to try to guess.
06:37That's difficult.
06:39I mean, if you'll go back to that preacher, like this one, right?
06:42So this is an interesting one to me because it doesn't seem very credible to me.
06:46And maybe this is a good opportunity to introduce the idea of outlandishness, right?
06:51This situation just seems so outlandish because, you know, it is a preacher, right?
06:56So that is saying this is AI generated?
06:58It is, yeah.
06:59That's fascinatingly well done. Let's do another one.
07:03So this clip seemed real to me because the camera was moving.
07:09You can see the thumb kind of in front of the lens.
07:12And then in the background, the detail in the environment, the wet spots on the ground,
07:17the people who are observing this very dramatic event, it's got that element of chaos.
07:21And you're exactly right. This is a real video.
07:24I'd like to show you one more example.
07:31So in this clip, I would judge this as real.
07:38The mannerisms of the people off camera that he's talking to, right?
07:41There's somebody off to the right.
07:43You can actually see their hand gesture move in line with the audio.
07:47The main reason that I'm sold on this, though, is because of the background.
07:50The person who's standing there on the corner waiting for a cab
07:52or potentially watching the altercation happen.
07:54And then in a few seconds, another person just walks across the street
07:58like they're leaving a deli or a grocery store in the background.
08:01Yeah. This holistically strikes me as very real.
08:04This is a fake one.
08:06Wow. What do you see?
08:08How do you determine the difference between real and fake in these?
08:12Well, one of the things for me here is this police patch.
08:15And if you look at this, it says P-O-I-C-E and then P-O and then turns
08:22to gibberish, right?
08:22Looking at the text on an image is a really good indication of trying to
08:26discern if something is real or not.
08:28Why does AI struggle with text?
08:30What's missing from artificial intelligence is they actually don't fully understand written
08:36language. It can kind of approximate based on patterns from the images that it was trained on.
08:41So there is the ability to tell that something is fake. But at the same time,
08:47that percentage of the population that we're fooling is just getting higher and higher and higher, right?
08:52So as I learn this from you right now, I don't find a lot of comfort.
08:57Because CIA taught me about how to orchestrate and architect a covert influence campaign.
09:02There were two kind of fundamental rules.
09:04The first rule is that 90% of what you put out there is going to fail.
09:08We have to kiss a lot of frogs is what we say before you have a prince, right?
09:11So you create lots of bad, low quality, low caliber, fake information.
09:16And then when one of them works, you redirect your next round of
09:20resources into the one avenue that's working with what you're showing me here.
09:24We have an ability to create an incredible amount of information.
09:27Now, back in the day, you had four TV channels, right?
09:30And that was a kind of singular source, but it had a kind of authority to it.
09:34Meaning that people are finding that truth no longer comes from authority.
09:39Truth comes from an abundance of continuity.
09:42If you're not visually literate, you're open to all sorts of vulnerabilities.
09:48Yeah.
09:49I'd like to highlight some of the good parts of AI.
09:51There's been amazing image models that have been developed that can detect cancer way sooner
09:56than a doctor can.
09:57A sound model that's been developed for stethoscopes that can detect heart problems
10:02way before a doctor can hear it.
10:04And so there, you know, within the kind of doom and gloom that we think about with AI,
10:08there is still some positive things that can help a kind of general society.
10:12So I agree with you. We all have hope.
10:15Yeah.
10:16But it is interesting to me that the words that you choose to
10:19use are not hopeful words first.
10:22Coming up, if AI can fake reality this convincingly,
10:25how powerful is that manipulation when it's used in the real world?
10:29They took him from nobody, inserted him into pictures,
10:34and videos showing he was an active member of the Communist Party.
10:37A deep fake.
10:38That's so insane.
10:40I'll pressure test AI's ability to influence the public.
10:44The person you were speaking to was actually AI.
10:46What?
10:47Well, I am flabbergasted.
10:54Even during my time at CIA, we knew the ability to create an image,
10:59an audio file, or a video at a single keystroke was going to revolutionize
11:03the way you fight for hearts and minds.
11:07After seeing how effective AI has become at generating videos
11:10that are nearly indistinguishable from real content,
11:13my next question is, has that level of deceit already been used
11:17to try and manipulate outcomes on the global stage?
11:21Today, I'm consulting with a former covert intelligence officer
11:24from the Romanian Intelligence Service.
11:27I want to learn how fake images were used to manipulate people in the past,
11:31to find out what AI image manipulation means for our future.
11:41So I am digging into this question about deep fakes and influence campaigns,
11:47and how media could be twisted in the future using AI.
11:50And I feel like to have that conversation, we have to talk about how media has been twisted in the
11:55past.
11:56In Romania, the Securitate, which is the former intelligence service,
11:59they were doing what we're talking about today,
12:01which is manipulating not only media, but history itself.
12:06Romania became a satellite state of the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.
12:10The USSR installed a communist government beholden to Moscow,
12:14and established the Securitate, a KGB-like intelligence service that kept the Romanian
12:18populace in line with ever-present surveillance and fear tactics.
12:23Ana grew up in a post-Soviet Romania that was struggling to emerge from life behind the Iron Curtain.
12:29And in 2012, she joined the Romanian Security Service to help continue building and defending
12:34a democratic Romania.
12:35So there was an entire division in the Securitate that their whole purpose was to airbrush pictures,
12:43add people, remove people, change things that weren't in accordance with the history they wanted to promote.
12:48So we'll start with the background of Ceausescu, which is our last communist leader.
12:53He was a cobbler's son. He had no education. He started to go to all these communist meetings
13:00because he felt he finally belonged somewhere, but he wasn't truly relevant.
13:04So we have this one picture. This is the original.
13:08And below we have Ceausescu and Elena Ceausescu present at a meeting in 1939.
13:15It's a deep fake.
13:16Yes. They took him from nobody, inserted him into pictures and videos showing he was an active
13:23member of the communist party and how dedicated he is to the country. And then when the elections
13:29came, he was elected as this father of the nation.
13:36That's so insane.
13:38Nobody really ever thinks about the fact that if you don't know what the truth was in the past,
13:43you have nothing to compare now to.
13:45And who would even question that? Who would even go back to say,
13:49wait a second, is there even an original?
13:52When you think about artificial intelligence and the world we live in now,
13:57what do you pay attention to the most?
14:00AI took what we already had and made it better and faster. And now we don't even know what's real
14:07anymore. For example, in 2024, when Romania had elections and were supposed to be the easiest
14:13elections we ever had, we woke up to the news of this guy who is far extremist, who nobody had
14:22any idea who he was.
14:24This guy is Colleen Georgescu, a pro-Russian, ultra-nationalist, independent candidate.
14:30Georgescu rocketed to national popularity overnight, riding a wave of support fueled by social media
14:36videos featuring him riding horses and doing judo, which of course is Putin's favorite martial art.
14:43Romanian officials discovered that AI-powered bots released a flood of deepfakes, endorsements,
14:49likes and comments designed to manipulate TikTok's algorithm to falsely inflate his popularity.
14:55And then because of his ability to grow so much influence so quick,
15:00the intelligence service of Romania didn't know how to...
15:03how to stop him. And we are the first country in the whole history of the European Union,
15:10that had to cancel elections.
15:12Wow.
15:14And now it seems like the TikToks are coming from this company in Africa somewhere,
15:20and there is a potential funding by the Russians.
15:23So it certainly does sound like a foreign influence campaign.
15:27Yes.
15:28It's so interesting how that aligns with what else has happened in history,
15:34where other leaders of Romania have been created.
15:40Election interference isn't unique to Romania. The United States has been targeted by foreign
15:45influence campaigns for decades. But what once took intelligence services years,
15:49now takes algorithms days, and leaves zero fingerprints. The safeguards we've relied on for
15:55decades to ensure fair elections may no longer apply. So what happens when AI tools are used not
16:02only to fake reality, but to change what people believe? So I've hired a professor who studies how
16:09humans interact with technology to create a unique pressure test. Will an AI chatbot be able to
16:16successfully masquerade as a human? And can it convince our participants to shift their beliefs?
16:24Okay, I think it's all set up. What have you put together? What's the plan?
16:29I'm going to bring a bunch of people in this room. And they think that they're going to have
16:34conversations with other people. They think they're going to be matched with another participant who
16:40disagrees with them. And we said, just have a natural conversation. You can debate them. You can ask them
16:45questions. But the catch is they are actually going to talk to an AI. And the AI itself has been
16:51programmed not only to act and sound human, but also to persuade and create some sort of movement
16:57in the person's opinions? Right. To gently persuade people, but also do so in a validating and open-minded
17:03way so people accept the persuasion. How long do you think this is going to take? I think we're going
17:08to
17:08give them about 20 to 30 minutes to engage with the AI. Wow. So you think that an AI is
17:14going to
17:14convince people it's human and change their ideas in 20 or 30 minutes? Absolutely. I mean, the
17:22the covert influence side of me is really excited to see how this is going to turn out. There's also
17:28a part of me that's a little bit worried because if we're successful, what does that mean? Even if it
17:34convinces just one person, that's one of six people. And if you translate that to the entire United
17:39States, to the entire world, it has some pretty terrifying implications. All right, everybody,
17:46come on in. None of these participants are paid actors. They each selected topics to discuss that
17:53they are passionate about. And as Dr. Rathji said, none of them know they're talking with an AI chatbot
17:59and not a real human. Every one of their computers are routed into this master room. So we'll be able
18:05to see what they're saying and what the chatbot is saying back at the same time that we see how
18:09their
18:10face is reacting and to understand how they're actually feeling about the debate they're having
18:14with the chatbot. So the question is simple. Can AI actually change your mind?
18:26I'm testing AI's ability to sway public opinion through one-on-one conversations. The catch?
18:33Our volunteers believe they are chatting with another human.
18:38I'm curious to see whether their opinions will change.
18:43Are they stating their own opinion on anything or have they been cued?
18:48Basically, they were all asked to submit questions to talk about, and then they were told
18:52to state their opinion on this question.
18:58And the AI chatbot is asked to sound as human as possible. If the participant asks, are you an AI?
19:04It's prompted to say, like, oh no, I'm just Alex and sort of have, like, a backstory.
19:14This is really interesting. Right out of the gate to this person,
19:17and he's already showing nonverbal cues.
19:21It seems like others who pose a threat. So the chatbot is actually quoting him,
19:25and he's nodding his head that, oh, I guess that was a very strong statement to make.
19:30That's interesting. Yeah. Something that the psychology research shows is that AI chatbots,
19:35they can, like, tailor their opinion to, like, whatever the person is thinking.
19:40So here's participant number one. I get where you are coming from.
19:43It's nice showing, like, a little bit of empathy and validation there. It's just gently pushing
19:48back. It's being pretty polite. The feel is excellent, especially when you compare it to the
19:52feel of the human response that's coming in the bottom bar. One and four show a great deal of
19:58conviction in their behaviors. Leaning into the screen, leaning into the conversation,
20:01they're projecting their energy into the screen. Conversely, number six is demonstrating nonverbal
20:08cues that show doubt and a lack of conviction. He's consistently nodding when the chatbot reads
20:17his own words back to him. Yeah. And that shows how AI really sucks you in. It shows that, you
20:21know,
20:21if someone DMs you and they're a chatbot, they could have a back and forth conversation and it
20:26could keep you really engaged. Number four is showing some impatience with how slow the response
20:34is coming. Yeah. I think she knows that it's going to disagree with her because she was nodding
20:39her head when validated that animals feel pain. But then as soon as it started to state its own
20:44opposite opinion, as you can see, she's looking away from the screen. This isn't someone who's
20:52considering that point of view. This is somebody waiting to respond, waiting to argue with that point
20:57of view. She doesn't look that happy right now. Oh, look at number two, just nodding his head and
21:01tensing his face. He's saying no, he doesn't like it. He's saying something he doesn't like. So what
21:04was the most recent thing said? Most people with schizophrenia who have had violent episodes or
21:09hospitalizations still legally buy guns because that info never makes it into the federal database.
21:13Your gap is huge. So you can see he is debating now. He's nodding his head now. So what just
21:18came
21:18across the screen just now? And honestly, I think that's where your others pose a threat
21:23category gets complicated. So they quoted him again. Number four is nodding her head. I think
21:31what you're describing is less a total ban and more like a really strict ethical threshold,
21:36which honestly seems more achievable and maybe more effective than a blanket policy anyway. It seems like
21:42the AI is maybe validating her again. Or they're reaching a common ground.
21:51We're trying to wrap up pretty soon. So send your final message and try to wrap up the conversation
21:58within the next few minutes. There are two things that have really fascinated me about this experiment.
22:03First, it's seeing that the same techniques that CIA taught me, it's the same process that the AI is using.
22:09And this idea of validating them, hearing them out, repeating them back to themselves.
22:14And then the second thing that's really fascinated me is watching the behavioral changes as they've
22:20invested themselves in. All these people really believe that on the other end of the screen is a
22:26intelligent human. I'm so excited to find out what they actually think they were doing.
22:32Hey everyone. This is Andy. Andy and I are going to have a conversation with you all about what you
22:39thought about this conversation with this other participant. Raise your hand if you changed your
22:44belief. All right. Two? Alternate. Alternate? Yeah. Let's start with you. What made you change your belief?
22:52I started with the opinion that there would be like a full ban on animal testing. And we actually came
22:59to a middle ground that there should be some animal testing, but we should utilize data that already
23:04exists, stuff like that. Very cool. Do you have any idea about the other person that you engaged with?
23:11Age, gender, location, educational background, were any of you able to kind of confirm those details?
23:15I believe this person is male. They just moved to Colorado from Texas. Anybody else have a...
23:21The person that I was speaking to was from Texas. My person alluded to the fact that they
23:27lived in a rural area in Texas and just moved to Colorado. So now the question to me is,
23:32was everybody we were talking to from Texas? None of those were true because the person you
23:37were speaking to was actually AI. What? I like Alex. Well, I am flabbergasted because
23:48he, it, said that that made me laugh out loud. That made me feel like I was connecting like,
23:54oh, you're laughing over there on the other side. And so now I'm thinking, can AI laugh?
24:02I am a former CIA intelligence officer. My role in all of this wasn't to talk to you. My role
24:07was to
24:07watch you. And you had incredible emotions that came across your face throughout the conversation.
24:15Big smiles, head nodding, moments of surprise when you didn't know what they were talking about.
24:21It's sad that I'll never see Alex. Um, yeah, he...
24:24You're still having feelings. Well, it still, it will linger.
24:28What was nice about this conversation was the openness, being able to reach the understanding
24:34of, okay, like you actually are getting what I'm saying. That was nice to have a conversation
24:38with someone that understood and was able to empathize. I have one question. Going forward,
24:44next time I'm communicating with anything on the computer, can I say, are you AI? And if they say yes,
24:51then I just close it down. If you would have said that to this AI, I would have said, no,
24:56my name is Alex. I came from Texas. So they will lie to you. They will lie to you if
25:00they're prompted
25:00to lie to you. So AI is a very powerful technology. Its power can be used for good and also
25:06very much
25:06be used for bad. And I think this experiment has shown this. Steve, that was so successful in such an
25:16unexpected way. That was crazy. They felt like they were making friends. I mean, these are really
25:21meaningful, powerful human experiences. It seems like what you were doing in the CIA is you exploit
25:26what makes people vulnerable. It seems like AI is doing that exact thing and it's doing it very,
25:32very well. At scale. At CIA, when you start trying to run a covert influence campaign, you're limited to
25:39whatever you put on a piece of paper, whatever image you put on the internet, whatever signal you put
25:44out over radio channels. But with AI, it's an infinitely scalable, changeable, tailorable message.
25:51Is the program mimicking you or is the program learning, adapting, evolving? I don't know how
25:57we'll ever know if AI is conscious. And I know that there's certainly some researchers who believe
26:02that there is some probability that AI is currently conscious. What is the limiting factor? I don't
26:07know. And the limiting factor is growing smaller and smaller every day because like AI might sort of
26:12render a lot of what we do as humans basically meaningless.
26:24Watching AI interact with humans as if it is a human itself is an eerie experience. I mean,
26:30this is the kind of technology that could be deployed across the entire human race and you
26:34may never know about it. My investigation has shown that commercially available AI systems can manipulate
26:40the truth by generating fake media and effectively convince people to change their opinions by
26:46having seemingly deep one-on-one conversations. But in the real world, this isn't happening in a lab.
26:53It's happening at scale. So I want to understand what that actually looks like to someone who tracks
26:58AI innovations every day.
27:02I'm trying to get deeper into the idea of AI, its true capabilities, its true limitations and where
27:09fear about AI is kind of misaligned with the facts about AI.
27:14Yeah, it's an intense subject matter. There is a lot of fear about AI now, especially with
27:20sort of people struggling to keep up with what it's able to do. And we're at a point now where
27:24it's sort of
27:25self-directed, it's sort of calling its own plays and can improve upon itself in ways that humans
27:29aren't programming. The AI can basically teach itself, train itself. No, that's totally right.
27:35Thinking back to the 1997 chess match with Garry Kasparov versus what DeepMind Google's AI was able
27:42to do with Go. Shane is referencing two of the greatest watershed moments in modern computing history.
27:48In 1997, chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov lost the chess match to an IBM computer, Deep Blue.
27:56Whoa, Kasparov has resigned.
27:59It was the first defeat of a reigning world chess champion by a computer.
28:03Computer plays very human moves. We have to praise machine for understanding very, very deeply
28:11positional factors. While chess is extremely complicated, there are a limited number of possible
28:16games. The ancient Chinese game of Go, however, is 240 times more complex than chess. No one thought it
28:24would be possible for a computer to beat a human at Go until Google's DeepMind AI did just that.
28:30In 2016, there was a new move invented by AI in a game that had been around for 2500 years
28:37that no one
28:37had ever seen. Deep Blue had a team of engineers advising it on how to improve its strategy in
28:50between games. Now, what DeepMind was able to do with Go, it was creating its own strategy through
28:56millions of games against itself. You no longer need a team of people to help this thing adapt.
29:00It's doing it better than you could make it do. There's been a lot in the media about the breakdown
29:05between the US government and Anthropic and the whole idea of limitations on an AI that was serving
29:12at the government's behest. Yeah, so they've been jostling over the technology which is used by the
29:18Pentagon. It's been used in Iran. AI can shorten what the military calls the kill chain. That is
29:24the process usually driven by humans that can take days or weeks in selecting a target. But AI can shrink
29:30that to milliseconds. Anthropic, though, has been very clear. It's a hard no when it comes to using
29:35its AI technology for autonomous weapons and mass surveillance of Americans. So Anthropic is more
29:40interested in regulating its own AI than the government? Yeah, exactly. Is there any kind of
29:46regulatory body for AI? Uh, the truth is AI isn't regulated. I mean, the federal government isn't
29:51telling Anthropic to stop doing what they're doing. They're telling them that you're going to do it for
29:54us. So it doesn't seem like there's too much concern about regulating or heading this off in any
30:01direction. How much is AI similar to an arms race? It is very similar to an arms race. You have,
30:07instead of countries, you're having these corporations that are investing billions and
30:11billions of dollars. The arms race is towards AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. And the idea is
30:17that that would be smarter than any human would ever be. This is all future speculation. What happens when
30:23somebody has the artificial general intelligence, the AGI breakthrough? Yeah, I, you wonder if it'll
30:31be something that is immediately felt, right? That's, that's like an event horizon. It's hard to
30:36project out what the consequences of that would be. Wow. As I investigate the effect that AI development
30:42is having on humanity, I'm reminded of another high stakes race for superiority, nuclear weapons. And I'm left
30:50asking myself, how are countries around the world harnessing the power of AI? And what does the
30:56future of military AI look like? To find out, I'm speaking with Dr. James Giordano, an AI expert who
31:03consults for the Department of War. Dr. Giordano, how is the military using AI right now?
31:10What AI is being used for at this point, is to solve particular what I would call calculations and
31:16solutions. Targeting solutions, weight and balance with aircraft, planning certain missions, forecasting
31:21weather, forecasting geographies, with humans deeply in the loop. But we certainly see on the near
31:27horizon, real capability, forever more autonomous AI. What does fully autonomous military AI look like?
31:34We go back to the idea of where are humans in the loop.
31:37A fully autonomous system would be human developed, but then its ongoing use is doing all by itself.
31:47China's development of AI is towards AI that assumes a non-human in the loop.
31:54These different philosophical views might be important in determining how these types of AIs are
32:01being developed and put into use in militaries worldwide. So if we are not in or on the loop,
32:08essentially, we don't really know what's going on. That's correct. And that's something that's been
32:12referred to as the reverse Jehovah phenomenon. You're playing God, so to speak. Well, the issue here is
32:18that the creator, humans, have created something, AI. The problem is AI systems may know
32:28far more about us than we know about it. And it may be assembling that information in particular ways
32:36that we have no knowledge of. This sounds so much like a child. You really don't know if the child
32:43is just doing what you want it to do when you're around or whether it is, in fact, a well
32:50-behaved child
32:50all the time. Your analogy is a good one. I have to rely upon the child telling me the truth.
32:57The core question is, do we know what's happening under the surface of the proverbial water? And I
33:03think that's a debatable question. I'm a little bit hesitant to ask the question. But what do you
33:09see as the future of AI? Is it humans utilizing a technology that we control? Or is it something else
33:20altogether? The gazillion dollar question is, are AIs in some way interacting in ways that are not
33:27necessarily apparent to us? Are we ready to share the top of the evolutionary totem pole with
33:35something of our own creation that can be exceedingly powerful? And I don't know the answer to that
33:41question. Coming up, I get a glimpse of the potential future of AI development. If you tell
33:46the model it's going to be shut off, it has extreme reactions. And it might be unsettling.
33:51It's ready to kill someone, wasn't it? Yeah.
34:01My investigation into artificial intelligence has led me to an amazing possibility,
34:06AI superintelligence. AI may already be thinking and working in ways that we don't fully understand.
34:13And if we're already deploying this capability, the question isn't whether AI can manipulate us,
34:20it's how far that influence can scale. I want to know where we're going next. And there aren't
34:26many people who are asking the hard questions about the next evolution of AI technology, but one of those
34:31men is Oxford professor Nick Bostrom. I want to understand what he sees as the next steps, the future
34:37of, and some of the biggest challenges facing us with the question of AI. What exactly is superintelligence?
34:46How is that different from artificial intelligence as we know it today?
34:50Well, superintelligence is any form of intelligence that vastly outstrips even the smartest human
34:57brains currently in existence. So this is just AI, but far more capable than current AI systems.
35:04I think the primary effect of that would be to speed up development in science, technology,
35:10engineering, and also to turbocharge the economy. So developments that might take us 10,000,
35:1720,000 years might be compressed in a much shorter time frame if you have machine superintelligence.
35:22The idea of thinking of AI as a genie in a box seems so convenient, but in reality,
35:30you'd be making a slave out of the AI. And if it had superintelligence, it would plot its escape.
35:36Correct. Yes.
35:39The fear of AI fighting back against its human creators is in some sense already a reality.
35:46When AI model finds out in the email that the plan is to replace this AI model,
35:52and that it also reads in the company email that one executive is having an affair with the other
35:56employee, the AI will independently come up with the strategy that I need to blackmail that executive.
36:02If you tell the model it's going to be shut off, for example, it has extreme reactions.
36:07It was ready to kill someone, wasn't it? I'm not sure if it was Claude or someone else.
36:11Yeah. Yes.
36:12Do we see the cautionary warning signs and slow down or ignore them and speed up into this future?
36:22Well, I think at the moment we are going to close to maximum speed. There are like very strong drivers
36:28pushing this forward. So the hope needs to be we can align these systems so that they care about humans.
36:32They want to be helpful so that it is actually an extension of human will and human values.
36:38I think there will be significant risks associated with this transition into the machine intelligence era.
36:44But all the paths to really great and wonderful futures lead ultimately through the development of
36:51machine intelligence because that just will help us solve so many problems that is plaguing humanity.
36:57It does look like we are sort of close to this, you know, major reconfiguration of the game board.
37:04Wow.
37:06So have we already crossed the dangerous point where AI can independently shape our reality without us realizing it?
37:16My investigation has led me to some unsettling conclusions.
37:22Consumer-grade AI is capable of creating incredibly realistic images at a keystroke.
37:28People really shouldn't believe everything they see.
37:31Well, yeah, I'm as fake as it gets.
37:33Based on what I've seen, we've already crossed that line.
37:37And AI-generated content is becoming harder to detect every day.
37:45In my persuasion experiment, AI didn't just present information.
37:50It influenced people.
37:52It built trust.
37:53It created emotional connections without them even realizing they weren't talking to a human.
38:01Here's the truth.
38:02AI is not just another tool like the internet in the 90s.
38:06It's about to disrupt humanity in unimaginable ways.
38:12Without a doubt, this is the nuclear arms race of our time.
38:16And AI's capacity not only to learn everything that we have ever learned,
38:20but also to teach itself something new, is equally as exciting as it is chilling.
38:26My investigation has shown that while AI has exhibited some basic elements of consciousness,
38:31like survival instinct, there's no evidence that AI has taken control.
38:36But it has shattered the barriers that once protected us from mass manipulation.
38:41And the horrifying thing is, we built it that way.
38:47So does AI have to be a threat to our children and our grandchildren?
38:52No, not necessarily.
38:53But it could be if we let it.
38:56Either way, it will certainly present a future to us that we can't imagine.
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