#E39 Recreating Deceased Loved Ones Digitally With Charlotte Jee
About Charlotte Jee.
Charlotte Jee a technology journalist known for her extensive experience of the vital technology industry, trends and issues with a career spanning writing, editing, and journalism. She's made significant contributions at the intersection of technology, politics, and government. Presently, a news editor at MIT Technology Review, Charlotte remains a pivotal voice shaping the future of technology and diversity in the industry. Additionally, she founded the company Jeneo, to help recruit women and other underrepresented groups to speak at technology events.
Read the HYPERSCALE transcript.
(00:37) Briar: Welcome to Hyperscale, and welcome to the podcast Charlotte Jee. It's really great to have you here.
(01:40) Charlotte: Thank you. Thanks for having me.
(01:42) Briar: So, tell us a little bit about your background. You're obviously very present in the media as a journalist, and I'd love for you to talk to our listeners a little bit more about how you got into this technology space.
(01:55) Charlotte: Sure. So I've been working in tech journalism for about 13 years now, and I've done all kinds of roles. I've been a writer, a reporter, an editor which is what I am now. I'm news editor for MIT Technology Review. And I've covered, basically, if it's in tech, I've probably covered it, like pretty much every topic across a really broad range. And I'm particularly interested in where tech intersects with human behaviors and relationships. So I'm particularly interested in mental illness, mental health technology and stuff like for example yeah, whether we can preserve people and speak to them once they're gone using technology. So yeah, like a really broad sweep of tech topics. I'm fascinated by all of it.
(02:40) Briar: Yeah. So let's dive into that a little bit more. Something I've been very interested about is this concept of digital twins, mind uploading. So it was really fascinating to hear about the experiment you did with your parents and how you've been talking to them. If you could talk us through this a little bit more, that would be great.
(03:02) Charlotte: Of course. So basically the, the short version is that I've created a voice assistant version of my mom and dad, two separate bots that I can speak to. Now, obviously, I can just phone my parents and speak to them, and that's generally how I talk to them now. But the idea behind this is that once they are no longer with us, I will have a kind of, I wouldn't call it a replica, because it's such a kind of faint replica of who they are, but it's like a sort of virtual version of them that I can interact with and use to help process the feelings of grief, I guess. And it sounds really kooky.
A lot of people are really put off by this. They find it weird kind of macabre. But this came from the pandemic. And during the pandemic, I was a news reporter, and as you can imagine, that meant every day I was seeing, death, grief, mourning, loss. And so obviously we also went down into lockdown in the UK. I hadn't seen my parents for six months. I was really missing them, and I was terrified of, “what if I lost them?” So those were the kind of emotions and feelings that led to that project happening. And the way I did it was through a company called HereAfter AI, and they basically do loads of hours of interviews with the person who is being, digitally replicated if that's the right term. And then they stitch that together. It’s almost like they break it all apart and then they stitch it all back together in a form that fits into a voice assistant and you can access it through Alexa. So yeah. Now that process, I'm told they, they actually did a lot of these recordings with a person a nice woman called Meredith in the US. But now that process of doing the interviews is itself automated. The company's told me. So it's getting easier and easier to do what I did.
(05:05) Briar: Oh, very cool. And what kind of questions did they ask your parents?
(05:09) Charlotte: Oh my God. All kinds. Like they covered everything. What are your earliest memories? Do you know what, what are your biggest regrets? What kind of advice do you have for your children? And then down to just like, family stories, like remember the time when granny got locked in the garage, or, you know what I mean? Like stuff that only my family would know. So there's kind of a real mix of different things. And like I said, it's a pale imitation of, of my actual flesh and blood parents. But my thinking, the more that I worked on this story and the more I interviewed people, the more I realized even having that pale limitation is better than nothing at all. The people who were most unsure about this project and found it the most uncomfortable I found, tended to be the people who had experienced the least grief. People who had lost people tended to kind of get it pretty much straight away. So I think there's definitely a future for this kind of tech.
(06:06) Briar: I think it's interesting. I was actually thinking the other day about how I would have appreciated more stories from my great grandma. So she lived to 105, a super impressive lady, and she went from Ireland to New Zealand via boat and was one of the earlier sort of settlers if you will, coming from Ireland. And when I was younger I used to speak to her and hear her stories, but a lot of that is now forgotten. So I do think that I would've appreciated now at an older age having some more of these stories to listen to because yeah, it kind of has been forgotten. And I've talking to my family about it and things like this. And of course they provided me some information, but not necessarily on, on the scale that I guess I want.
(06:57) Charlotte: Also not straight from the source because, I think it also depends on like, on your age when, when people pass away, because, I would ask my grandmothers questions now that I might not have done when I was 18, or I might understand more complex things about relationships and okay, “so how come, how come you and granddad ended up splitting?” Or, like, difficult questions that you wouldn't ask when you're a kid. You wouldn't even know to ask when you're a kid. But I guess some people would say it's for the best that that stuff goes. But I think it's actually good to… it's good… And I think also healthy to actually have some things that we do hold onto. Now, you could debate where is the line? Where are you holding too tightly to the memory of someone? But I think that this kind of like voice assistant bot version, I don't think that crosses a line for me anyway.
(07:49) Briar: No, that's very interesting. And something that I've been thinking about as well is that whole concept of in the future we might have the possibility to upload our brain to the cloud. And some people have been arguing like, sure, that's great when you die to have these different digital versions of you and the cloud for your family to interact with and things like this. But it's not really the real version of you. Do you think that in the future this could be a possibility?
(08:21) Charlotte: It's difficult. It's such a mainstay of science fiction that we all want it to kind of exist. It's possible. I can't see the path to get there with technology that we have now, it would basically be my short answer. I think it would be really cool, but it would also raise a whole lot of ethical considerations and questions at the same time. Like, what if you could upload someone without their consent? Because that was one thing I kind of liked about this project that I did. And looking at the ways that people are preserving people now, it's all done pretty much always with their consent, with the consent of the person who's passed away. So, yeah, I don't know. It's a cool idea. I would love to see how that progresses, but I don't know like how we get from A to Z on that one just yet.
(09:11) Briar: Your company, Jeneo that is focused on increasing diversity and women participation at events, can you talk to us a little bit about this and, because I think it's interesting. The amount of events that I go to are often "manels" as I like to call them. So men on panels. And a few months ago, I went to a crypto event and I was literally one of two women in the room. And I felt very strange to be among the sea of men. So talk to us a little bit about this. It's obviously a problem.
(09:44) Charlotte: Yeah. Oh boy. Does that sound familiar? I've been like the woman among the sea of men so many times as a tech journalist. And I kind of admire you for being able to stand out. Cause I often did the opposite. I often put on a hoodie and just like, I don't really want anyone to see me. Maybe that's kind of a good move if you're trying to slip in unnoticed as a journalist, but it's good on you for standing out. But yeah, basically Jeneo was born out of Me Too in a funny way because, we were hearing so many stories that women had bottled up for decades. And in the tech sector there was a lot of scrutiny turning onto venture capital and onto some of the hoops that female founders were being forced to jump through, including, basically sexual harassment, sexual assault.
And I just got really frustrated and to be honest, just really angry. And I just thought, what can I do that will help to kind of alleviate this problem of not having enough women in tech not having enough visibility. And of course, it's such a huge problem. I can't fix that on my own. But the idea for Jeneo was to not allow companies to have excuses anymore for saying we don't have women at our event. Because I was saying to them, well, hire me and I will get women to speak at your event. So we pretty aggressively called people out who didn't have women speaking at their event. I mean, we did quite a lot of social media shaming, and just said to people what possible reason could you have for, for not having a single woman at this event that's like, say, got 40 speakers, not have a single woman. And I think, that was maybe a limited approach in some ways. But I do look at events now, and I would say it's definitely rarer than it was to see a completely male speaker line-up.
(11:33) Briar: Yeah. As, as you said earlier, it's always very interesting when I turn up and I'm wearing my sparkles and my dresses and six-inch heels and things like this. But I decided that I would not water myself down for these sorts of things. And I, I do think it's the work that you've done is really great because it's ridiculous how many "manels" there are. And you're right, it's completely unacceptable, especially when there are no women amongst a sea of 40 speakers. Like, please, there must be somebody out there. And I do think it is really important that we are giving visibility so that women are getting involved and people are also inviting women to be involved. What other things do you think that we could be doing to encourage more women in the technology space? Because sometimes I worry that because there are less than 25% of women in tech that the future is not going to be built without us in mind, and there's going to be bias.
(12:35) Charlotte: Yeah. I mean, and we see that happening right now. Like, look at AI, large language models, image models. I mean, they don't spit out images of a woman when you type in CEO. So yeah the problem is very real. And to be honest it's been such a vast problem for so long. And the irony is of course, that actually programming was originally seen as a woman's job. The original programmers the person who invented programming was a woman. But basically the more money came into the tech sector, the more women were edged out of those jobs, basically because they were very high paid. So yeah it's a problem that goes back, decades. But I guess my point is we used to have more women in tech, which means we can have more women in tech again, if we do the right things.
People talk a lot about getting girls into coding and stuff like that, and that's great. But I think one of the biggest things we need to focus on is actually retention, is keeping women in the tech sector once they join. Because it's very common for women who get into their thirties and forties to just leave. Because a lot of these companies have horrible cultures. They're run by founders who act as kind of petty dictators and a lot of women basically just don't, like there's not enough of an incentive for them to stay and arguing like, oh, you should stay to represent women in tech. I mean, we only get one life. You can't really blame people for choosing to be a bit happier. So yeah, I think we need to look at this problem all the way from getting more girls into tech, like studying tech subjects all the way through to keeping them there once they're there. And also having more visible role models. And like we're talking about being more visible as a woman that's part of that, making sure people can see there are women in tech and lots of different women who look different to each other and behave differently.
(14:24) Briar: So companies, technology companies, and the sorts of initiatives around egg freezing and stuff like this. Do you think this is a step in the right direction to help this retention?
(14:34) Charlotte: It's a difficult one because a lot of the solutions that are proposed basically are trying to fix the woman and not fix the company. So egg freezing, like sure, I mean, by all means that that's a good thing to do. And I'm not opposed to that because we have to be real, like we do live in a society where it is very tricky for women to, yeah, to deal with these issues at the right time. In an ideal world, sure people would have babies in their twenties, but that's when people are just getting started in their careers. So I support those kind of initiatives, but I don't really want to see them as a replacement for companies actually looking at their culture because things like, a lot of the perks that tech companies have I don't know, free lunches, massages, they're all designed to just keep you there and keep you working, keep you at your desk. We need a kind of mind-set shift, and I think the, maybe the pandemic may have helped with this to say it is okay to work flexibly. You are doing just as hard a job, even if you're working from home, even if you're doing, some fewer hours. So we just need to have that kind of, we'll work around you rather than you work around the company every single time. So yeah, I think I'd like to see better management, basically for us to keep more women in tech.
(15:50) Briar: And we spoke a little bit about encouraging younger generation of women to get involved or young women, what things can we be doing to encourage them?
(16:02) Charlotte: I mean, to be honest, like, arguably it should sell itself. Like why wouldn't you want to work in tech right now? It's where all the most exciting things are happening. People spontaneously talk to me about AI. That never happened to me before. I manage a slightly younger reporter and she's always saying to me like, oh, this is so overwhelming. And I'm like, or, it's really exciting. Because, sure it does feel overwhelming at times, but this is the most exciting time to be in tech, I think of the 13 years that I've worked in, in tech journalism. So I guess I would say like, you can play an outsize role in shaping what happens in future. And also like you can have a lot of fun. Tech is a fun thing to work in.
And there's such a wide range of different things you can do. You don't have to be a programmer, you can work in UX you can manage projects, you can do, I don't know design, like all kinds of different things. So I think that should help. And also, like, the pay is good, which okay, shouldn't be the only thing. But I think that the younger generation that's coming through are thinking a lot more like that. They're thinking a lot more like, I need to look out for myself. What am I going to get? And I think, yeah, there's a way to work in tech and do that.
(17:17) Briar: I think that it's good that the younger generation are thinking that, yeah, I sometimes get a bit worried about Generation Z and this crazy world that they live in, but not even just the crazy world. It's the fact that they're exposed to all of this information. And I think that in previous generations we, we kind of had our community and we heard about the problems in the community. Maybe we turned on the news or read the newspaper and we heard about the world and what was happening, but, now these kids are so smart and they're so switched on because they're just constantly bombarded with all sorts of information. So I think it's going to be very interesting to see once they're a little bit older, they're obviously very entrepreneurial, a lot of influencers… wanting to make their own luck, so to speak. But of course, they're also very concerned about the economy and whether they're going to be able to afford a house ever.
(18:15) Charlotte: Yeah, yeah. I know it, it is crazy. I think we're already starting some of that. Because obviously Gen Z is, is actually slightly older than sometimes we imagine. You know what I mean? There are people even in their, I think mid to late twenties in that generation. But we're seeing kind of people who have streamed themselves online 24/7 finally having--
(18:37) Briar: Sleeping, I saw someone sleeping, making millions from streaming, sleeping.
(18:41) Charlotte: Right? Yeah. So all kinds of ways. And I'm like, I'm not going to judge that because that's part of what the internet economy has rewarded and people are seeking rewards where they can find them. But I think we're starting to see the, and as I referred to earlier, I'm really interested in this side of things. We're starting to see the mental impact of that. People who don't know who they are unless they're in front of a camera. And I think that's something that we're going to have to grapple with because really what we're talking about is like, our brains are ancient. They're not equipped to cope with the level of information that we are kind of digesting every single day. And I think that there's gotta be a bit of a reckoning that's like, I can still continue to do these things, but maybe I'm just going to pull back a little bit, not give all of myself all of the time. So yeah, I think I do kind of slightly worry about that, but hey, they'll figure it out.
(19:31) Briar: I was reading that a lot of people are going to psychologists saying, I think I have ADHD. And when the psychologist talked a bit more about it and explored it further, they did not have these symptoms at childhood. They were able to concentrate and weren't jumping between tasks as crazily as what they do now. And I believe there's quite a newer phenomenon where people have attention deficit traits because of the way that we're interacting with technology in today's society.
(20:02) Charlotte: Yeah definitely, I mean, I notice it myself. Like I'll start reading something and, my mind will wander almost instantly. I think we all have that kind of like too many tabs syndrome, like too much stuff open. And social media is kind of terrible for this. I mean, I think maybe I've swung too far the other way. Cause I basically don't really go on social media anymore. Haven't for a year or so.
(20:25) Briar: Oh, wow.
(20:27) Charlotte: Yeah. I know I think I've reached a point where I was like that this is doing more harm than good. But I would find the thing that really did it for me is that I found myself thinking something and trying to formulate it into a tweet as I was thinking it. And I was like, this has really like, destroyed my brain. I'm thinking in tweets. So I kind of thought, right, it's time to step back. And I'm not saying social media's all bad. It's not. I definitely think that the time when I joined social media and we're talking about like Myspace, MSN Messenger,
(21:01) Briar: Oh, I remember that purple hue on my photo I had.
(21:06) Charlotte: Yeah, exactly like that point that social media was a lot of fun. And I wouldn't like throw it all away, but I think now people are having less fun than they were. Is at least my kind of take on it.
(21:17) Briar: I think there's also a lot of pressure these days. I think people have gotten so caught up in the Tik Toks, the twerking, the dancing, the stuff that, in my opinion does not matter. I believe in using social media for good. I run a personal branding agency. So I see a lot of power and a lot of great things that social media can bring media inquiries, speaking engagements, business opportunities. Like it's essentially your digital twin or perhaps what's starting out to be your digital twin. But I think the problem is that people are, they get so fixated on things such as filters and how things sound, and perhaps they care too much a bit about it. So I agree. I think you do have to take a step back. And I think what I've found very helpful for myself is having breaks from it. I don't care if I don't post for a week. I literally just do not care. I go out, I don't think about it. I take photos Sure. Cause I enjoy it. But I think some people get so like, I have to post every day and it becomes this like, really scary chore that like captures them.
(22:26) Charlotte: Yeah. I think it's kind of thinking to yourself like, is this bringing joy almost like Marie Kondo,like is this sparking joy? Like when I'm, because the thing that really did it to me was I tracked my mood before and after using social platforms, and it was just like a complete no brainer. It was making me stressed and anxious and nervous and kind of not doing anything. So now sure I will still go on social media and I share things on LinkedIn, which apparently everyone's loving these days, all of a sudden. But I'm trying to do so kind of a, just a bit more mindfully and with a bit more kind of care for myself and my own time and attention. And I think that's the thing. It's people setting up hurdles that they can't possibly jump over and then beating themselves up when they don't. I think just chill out a bit. Like it is meant to be fun. And if it's not, maybe step back.
(23:15) Briar: So we spoke a little bit about attention deficit disorder and things like this. And something that I've been thinking a lot about lately is distraction. I recently quit reality TV. I don't know how or why I even got sucked into this vortex, but I was watching Love is Blind. I was watching Love Island, I was watching The Kardashians. I was watching it all. Yeah. And I don't know when that happened, but suddenly I couldn't watch anything normal. I couldn't watch a movie. I would fall asleep. I found it really boring, but for some reason, this reality and the drama like sucked me in and it kept me wanting more and watching it. So I was like, you know what, I'm going to go cold turkey. Yeah. So similar to what you did with the social media aspect. And I just quit. I was like I can't ration myself on this I'm just going to quit cold turkey, yeah. And be done with it.
It really made me start thinking about attention and where we are all spending our attention as well. And these cheap dopamine hits that social media notifications give us, like, they give us this instant reward without us having to go to any effort to achieve it. And then it made me start thinking about long-term goals and about how people spend like more than three hours a day on social media on average, just wasting that time, watching Love is Blind, Love Island, and all of these things and getting these little cheap dopamine hits that they've done nothing for. And not being able to use that time towards a long-term goal that yes, it has later gratification. There's no instant gratification that comes with it, but it would be a real dopamine hit when you achieve it.
(25:00) Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. I kind of liken it to drinking salt water. You might briefly think that you're not thirsty anymore, but once you're done, it'll leave you thirstier than ever. I mean, it's funny you say this because I'm also a writer, I mean, as well as an editor. And I do some creative writing in my spare time. And that's what I do when-- the time that I would be spending on social media. I'm now spending writing, and although there's no instant hit for that, I don't get someone liking it doesn't reward me in any immediate way. But who knows, like next year maybe I'll submit something and it'll get published. So it's kind of trying to think of that mindset of something longer term. And also, I think that we're kind of realizing more and more that this version of connection that we've been sold through social media isn't really true connection.
I think possibly, again, that's something the pandemic may have taught us because there's no feeling quite like actually just spending an afternoon with your friends or with your family. That's the stuff that leaves your soul replenished. And social media just always, I don't know. To be clear, like there is nothing wrong with like just sitting there and scrolling for a bit. That's fine. Like whatever. So I'm not saying like, it's all terrible, but ultimately if you're going to that to get validation or contentment, you are going to be left cold.
(26:21) Briar: It's interesting you bring this up. After my experiment, I did where I spent 48 hours nonstop in the metaverse, one of the conclusions that I had drawn from it is that I felt a lot more connected being in these virtual spaces. They're immersive. I could see people's interaction, we could hear the crackle of the fire to the right of us. We could see the stars together. It was this shared experience. And I think that social media did start like that. We used to have those Facebook groups, which was like this Facebook group, if you sleep on your stomach, and everyone who slept on their stomach used to be part of this community. Whereas we don't see that anymore. People just like, people don't even comment as much anymore. Sometimes people just watch stories, Insta stories. I get hardly any engagement on my Instagram.
I just get a whole lot of what I call the crocodiles, people who poke their little lies up above the sea to see what you're doing. But they don't support or interact or anything like this. Yeah. And I don't care—crocodiles do what you want. But where I'm sort of going with this is that I agree with you. I think it has become very almost two-dimensional. And it'll be interesting to see once the younger generation, so I'm talking about, the kids these days and like 61 million kids are on Roblox or something stupid. Roblox has 61 million daily users, and a large portion of them are kids. It'll be interesting to see how things change when they get older, because these guys aren't going to be on Instagram or Facebook.
(28:01) Charlotte: Yeah, definitely. Definitely. And I completely take your point about immersive spaces having that more compelling community aspect. I mean, we ran a story in Tech Review about people who sleep beside each other in VR which sounds weird, but--
(28:14) Briar: I did that in my experience. Yeah. It was blim and weird. To be in a sleeping room. So everyone turns up in the sleeping room and yeah, you can hear the person like breathing next to you or snoring and things. It was so strange.
(28:29) Charlotte: That Does sound strange. And it mostly seems platonic, but like there are a couple people where you're like, I don't know if they're going in the sleeping room for the same reason as everyone else. But that to me is really interesting. And I think you're right. My hope is that these spaces will, will change. And I don't think that I am going to know what the next thing will be. I think that I'm too old to know what that will be. But I think like, great, okay, like let's stop trying to hold onto what social media used to be and kind of pave the way for something new. Because I have huge nostalgia for Twitter. Like, if it wasn't for Twitter, I wouldn't know. Like I, things like the Ferguson riots, like I came to understand like some social justice issues in the US and I'm old enough to remember when Woke was a compliment that I would never have been exposed to that as like a white English woman who lives in London. I wouldn't have seen a lot of this stuff from around the world. Different people's perspectives, understanding people who have different identities to me. And part of that is thanks to Twitter, so that's great. But I think, okay, whatever's next, I don't know what it'll be, but maybe there'll be more of that again. And there'll be more community and more understanding and less what there is now, which is just people shouting at each other. Like who's having fun doing that? Is anyone?
(29:42) Briar: Yeah. It always seems very divided on social media these days, which is interesting. It's the world that we live in is almost more connected, but more divided.
(29:53) Charlotte: Yeah. Exactly.
(29:56) Briar: Yeah. So when we're thinking about technology and the future and our future being built with us in mind and without bias, I was also reading an article last week, which was very disappointing to read that again, less than 2% of funding went to towards AI companies that are run by women. And I was like, here we go. Same old crap. Different year, different industry. How can we be, cause obviously one would argue that AI is probably one of the most exciting things, but potentially also the greatest threat to humanity. What do we need to be doing in order to ensure that our future is more utopian rather than dystopian?
(30:45) Charlotte: Yes. Yeah. For what it's worth look I'm not like an AI expert per se. I am a journalist who's written about AI. I think climate change will get us before AI does. But anyway, to answer your question. I'm definitely concerned about that. I am kind of horrified when I hear the statistics about venture capital and women, women just don't get money from venture capital basically. I mean, that may as well be true because it's so minimal. I think we desperately need a much wider pool of perspectives because you can see how like some of these tools that get designed and then put out into the world, it's possible that actually not a single woman has tested it. Like when you actually look at the teams that are building some of this stuff, and there are exceptions like OpenAI's chief tech officer, I believe is a woman. You can double check that.
These are kind of big news because they're so exceptional. And I think that's a real shame. But in terms of how, how we go about making sure that things are protected, I think we just need like a concerted effort to have a wider pool of people. There are plenty of young women in university who are studying technical subjects like you can't wait for them to come to you. You need to go out there and like aggressively push to hire more women. And that also means, it means more time putting, putting effort into it. It means putting more money into it. But I would just like to see some companies A), acknowledge that this is a real issue and B), do something about it. And I'm not just talking about women. I'm talking about all kinds of perspectives. I'm talking about queer people, people who aren't white, people just with completely different perspectives. So I would really like tech companies to understand that that isn't a nice thing to have. It's actually essential if you're going to build something that works for everyone, like it will make your products better. So just do it.
(32:48) Briar: Really interesting points that you bring up. When everyone was talking about ChatGPT and its hype, I actually wrote a letter to the government and sent it via Hedwig the owl from Harry Potter to them. And part of my argument as well is not only do we need diverse people, but we actually need diversity in industry as well, because they leave all of these decisions up to big tech. And look how great that has worked until this point. And I was saying that we need to get a group of people to come together, scientists, psychologists, philosophers, start-ups, big tech, all sorts of… a range of people. And lo and behold, like I think the next week or the week after, they just got five technology companies together to talk about it. The male CEOs. Like how is this like, okay?
(33:51) Charlotte: No, completely, it's actually worrying because AI is, if anything, actually concentrating the power of big tech companies because they're the only companies that have the computing power to run these massive models. So it's a big problem and it's actually getting worse rather than getting better. So I'm completely with you. I think that in reality, like politicians need to do something about this. They’ve been sitting debating it, hearing from the very people who they're going to regulate. And to be honest with you, a lot of it is that politicians are ignorant. Like they don't really understand what they're trying to regulate and they're lazy. They would like someone else to basically do the job for them. And the tech companies would love to do that for them. The big techs, they would love to write the regulations that they have to live by. And that is what they're in the process of doing right now. Like the UK is about to host this big AI summit in a couple of weeks. I guarantee you that what we'll see is the product of a huge amount of lobbying from the tech companies. I'll be amazed if we end up seeing genuine proposals for proper, like strict regulation. I'll be astonished. I really hope I'm wrong, but I don't think I will be
(35:01) Briar: You're not the first person to bring this up that I've spoken to. So many people are saying that they believe one of the, biggest barriers that we face is yeah, getting governments on board, getting governments to actually care and talk about this. And I think part of the reason is because old Joey down the street isn't listening to AI. Like they don't care, like to them it's just this thing that goes over their head. And obviously the way that government works is it's all, everyone's out for themselves. They want to win. So they just want to attract old Joey's vote and things like this. So how can we like, as a society start to really change this? Because it just seems like every single decade it's the same stuff. Like why do we not care about technology? Why aren't we thinking about the future? Thinking about how we can plan this amazing way forward or at least mitigate any potential things that could go wrong.
(35:57) Charlotte: Yeah. You're spot on. Politicians don't care about it because voters mostly don't care about it. I mean, I don’t know if you saw like, when Sam Altman was the OpenAI CEO was doing his tour around Europe, there was like a protest in London. Maybe there were two people there protesting about AI development. Because they're nervous about it, but I mean, it's like two people. So yeah it's not something that voters really tend to care about. I think it's difficult because, you look at China obviously, which doesn't have a democratic system and they're just forging ahead and creating guidelines and being muscular, which of course they can do because they don't have to worry so much about voters. I would just like to see, the west be a little bit more longer term about this. And I don't know how you make that happen, but I just think I would love to see us break out of these every 4 or 5 year cycles and actually think, what about 10 years, what about 20 years from now? And I would, I would vote for the politician who is doing that rather than the one that's just thinking about what, what can I announce today for this year?
(37:06) Briar: It's been very interesting living in Dubai the past 5 or 6 years and just to see how much a country can achieve when everybody is moving in the same direction. It fascinates me to look around at the buildings and think, oh my gosh, just 51 years ago, this was literally a fishing village and people were riding around on camels. And they have completely created a society that attracts talent, technology. They've built huge buildings and they've made Dubai a number one close to it. I think it's like top five holiday destination from being a city of oil. So it's really fascinating to see just how much people can achieve in, in 50 years. Yeah. When yeah. Everyone's kind of aligned and they're visionary and they're working towards a future rather than squabbling every four years.
(38:01) Charlotte: That's what I worry about because, I was like, staunchly defend democracy. I think it's, whatever the Churchill quote is the worst system, but the best that we've got. But I just would like to see a bit more long-term thinking. I guess I do think it's a real shame that we don't really seem to be capable of building things long-term anymore. I don't know why that is or how you fix it. I'm sure some political philosophers have studied this, but yeah, I think tech is part of that. Like we desperately need to get people thinking a bit more long term and also like, rather than who benefits, why don't we all benefit from this? Why don't we, invest in skills so that everyone can have a good job. I don’t know kind of, maybe I'm a bit of a like romantic dreamer, I'm not sure, but I would like some more like utopian visions and a bit less kind of like, oh, tech is terrible and it's going to kill us all. Maybe, but like we can influence the future. That's the thing that I find frustrating. Like, we're not helpless in the face of this.
(39:05) Briar: That's what I like about the transhumanism movement. So I discovered it probably about a year ago and I didn't even realize I was a transhumanist to be honest. I had a lot of values about technology. I was using technology. I was thinking about the future and how we could use technology guide, it for a better future rather than just sitting and letting life happen to us. And it was actually really interesting to discover it. And then someone, a transhumanist looked at me one day and he's like, you know you're a transhumanist. And I was like, am I, sort of thing, which I thought was really interesting. But I agree with you. I think that we do need to start creating a, a future with all of us in mind. But something that really does concern me is, again, it comes back to this whole attention thing. I don't think people are paying attention. I definitely don't think the younger generation are paying attention. They are on TikTok every day in America, they spend so much time on TikTok. Whereas it's very interesting in China, they've got the children learning educational stuff on TikTok.
(40:09) Charlotte: Yeah. Yeah. They've got very strict limits. I mean, the US like parents in the US must look at some of that. Like with so much jealousy, the ones that are even aware of what's going on, you look, people are exhausted. Like people often have very difficult lives. This stuff is at the bottom of the pile for a lot of people. And that's partly because, we are kind of allowing people to fall into this kind of, I don't know, just learned helplessness. That's just like, I can't do anything about my own future. I can't do anything about my country's future. I mean, in the UK it certainly feels that way. Like it feels very stagnant here at the moment. Hopefully that will change. But yeah I would just like to see people kind of taking a bit more control over what they do choose to consume, how they are spending their time.
I think it doesn't have to be the case that you're spending two hours a day on social media. Like I don't know. Makes me sound kind of old fashioned, but I'm like, maybe get outside, like getting outside's really good for you. There are really crazy things. Like for example, when you look at short-sightedness, the fact it's going up around the world, it is partly a product of the fact we are all looking at stuff that's right in front of our faces. And the solution to that is literally what I just said. Going outside and looking at stuff that's in the far distance. I mean, it sounds kind of wacky, but I'm like, that is the solution to a lot, lot of things we kind of need to prioritize a bit more. In London for example, more spaces for children that are outside that they can interact with each other, interact with things like, I think it's sad that we track people kind of inside so much and yeah, keep them there with phones, video games and gadgets. Like get out. That's how all the techs do it, all their kids are off social media. They're all getting outdoors and doing good activities.
(41:58) Briar: Interesting. Sometimes I look at the kids at my gym and they are just, they don't even say hi to every anyone. They walk around with their iPads and in front of them and they're so in on Roblox and one of my friends, I think it was her nephew or something like this on Halloween last year, he said to his parents, no, I don't need a real life trick or treating costume. I need one on Roblox. I need an NFT outfit because I'm going trick or treating and Roblox. So I think it’ll be very interesting to see when these children are older because Yeah, I remember playing outside, getting dusty, making little houses in the sand and things like this. And I don't think they do this as often.
(42:43) Charlotte: For me, like it's not all or nothing like Sure. I spend a lot of time indoors gaming. I grew up in a tiny village and there was no one really…
(42:49) Briar: Where did you grow up?
(42:51) Charlotte: I grew up in a village called Pleshey It's in Essex in England. And it's a village of about 300 people. So like sure. I did go outside. I played a lot. I played with my older sister. I played with like the one or two other kids in the village, but I did also spend a lot of time indoors gaming and playing like Unreal and Half-Life and stuff like that. The point is that it was not all of one or all of the other. It was a bit of a balance. And I guess that's kind of slightly what's, what feels like is missing now.
(43:21) Briar: Well thank you so much for coming on the show, Charlotte. It's been an absolute pleasure to speak with you and, learn about what we can be doing for the future so that it's built with us in mind and without bias for goodness sake.
(43:35) Charlotte: Please. That would be good. Yeah. Thank you for having me. I feel like we could talk for another like two hours.
