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now. Hey,

1:42

everyone, it's Adam Grant. Welcome back

1:44

to Rethinking, my podcast on the science of

1:47

what makes us tick with the TED Audio

1:49

Collective. I'm an organizational psychologist

1:51

and I'm taking you inside the minds

1:53

of fascinating people to explore new thoughts

1:55

and new ways of thinking. My

2:00

guest today is Will I am. You

2:02

might know him as the frontman for the Black Eyed

2:04

Peas. As a singer, songwriter,

2:07

and producer, he's won seven Grammys. But

2:09

Will is also pushing the boundaries of

2:12

music and technology. He hosts a

2:14

Sirius XM show, FYI, which is

2:16

the first radio show ever to have

2:18

an AI co-host. Fiona, for

2:20

those that might not know about what's

2:23

happening that's coming from Central and South

2:25

America, and even parts of Europe that's

2:27

taking over the whole entire planet, how

2:29

would you explain the sound of contemporary

2:32

Latin music? The sound of contemporary

2:34

Latin music is like a colorful, energetic

2:36

party in your ears, full of passion,

2:38

rhythm, and soul. It's a rich tapestry

2:41

that blends traditional Latin beats with modern

2:43

influences from pop, hip-hop, and electronic music.

2:46

And he's been working to change the way

2:48

a drive-in-your-car sounds. I was at Mercedes as

2:50

an ambassador, and they wanted to show me

2:52

their simulation of a V8 engine

2:55

on an electric vehicle. The acceleration

2:57

was great, the speed, everything felt real. The

3:06

one that really stood out like a sore thumb

3:08

when we turned the corner going 20 miles an

3:10

hour, I was like, oh, I

3:12

don't know how they're going to get around that one. How

3:14

are you simulating gravity pushing

3:16

down on an engine? Imagine

3:19

if instead of it going zoom, zoom, zoom,

3:22

when you hit the pedal, it's a bass

3:24

and a rhythm. Imagine

3:27

we score every commute. Imagine

3:29

this is we use a system to take

3:32

the acceleration, the brake, the steering wheel,

3:35

the recuperation, the

3:37

suspension, GPS, the radar,

3:40

the radar, and

3:42

we use that as inputs to

3:44

a sound generation engine that's making

3:46

music. That's

3:49

amazing. What did it feel like the first time you drove

3:51

it and it worked? See, I

3:53

told you I wasn't crazy. It's like

3:55

being in a foreign place and you run

3:58

into somebody that speaks your language. And

4:00

that's the reason why a lot of folks

4:02

that push technology forward or have solutions

4:04

are recluses because they can, they

4:06

hardly can relate to people until

4:09

one thing that they make is

4:11

now relatable. Now we all speak

4:14

the same language and it's

4:16

like the most fulfilling experience that

4:19

I can, that I could pair it to is like when

4:21

I go to Japan or China or

4:23

the Middle East and I can't read or

4:26

write in those areas that I travel to

4:28

and I come across

4:31

somebody that speaks their language that also

4:34

speaks the language I speak. And

4:38

then there's this rain, this download, this

4:42

euphoric mind meld. Well,

4:45

what I think is so interesting about that is when

4:48

I think about the psychology of creativity, there

4:50

are a couple of different explanations for what

4:52

you're capturing. The

4:55

first one is that the people who are best

4:57

at coming up with creative ideas are often the

4:59

worst at explaining them because

5:02

in order to be creative, you have

5:04

to be very divergent and nonlinear and

5:06

abstract. And then all of a

5:08

sudden to make sense of those ideas in

5:11

somebody else's head, you want to

5:13

be convergent and linear and concrete.

5:16

And so there's there's a gap there from

5:18

a skill perspective. And then

5:20

also, the more you've thought about this idea,

5:23

the more the more it ends up becoming

5:25

like a song that you know by heart and

5:27

you can't even fathom what it sounds like to

5:30

somebody who's hearing it for the first time. Yeah,

5:34

exactly. Dang, you summarize what I said very

5:36

long, very short. How

5:42

did you end up rethinking your identity? Because

5:44

I think for a lot of people, Black

5:46

Eyed Peas front man would be the destination.

5:50

You get there, you've made it. What

5:52

led you to evolve? So in my

5:55

head, I haven't made it yet Because

5:57

there's a couple of visions that I want to materialize.

6:00

And the visions and I'm materialize in

6:02

the Pass. Was.

6:04

On a Black Eyed Peas password. To.

6:07

Where I want to go, I need a different passwords.

6:10

Why? Do you think you're seeing what

6:12

I think somewhere on earth know and

6:14

this conversation? Oh, on his podcast on

6:16

Brainstorm. I like brainstorming. I think since

6:19

we last ice other you been up

6:21

to nothing at all. You weren't You

6:23

weren't on a big stage or anything

6:25

right away, I don't assume. Let's talk

6:28

a little bit about what you were

6:30

wearing it. The Superbowl kids ever seen

6:32

anything like it before. Electoral

6:34

votes from like you had a matter

6:36

of the are helmet ends at light

6:39

up jacket. What? Was that. Is

6:42

lot of folks that have been working in Vr A

6:44

are for a while and. Where

6:46

does it go after obvious, what do

6:48

these devices as you put on your

6:50

face look like? Ten years and I've

6:53

taken a bet that. There's.

6:55

Going to be some device. That takes

6:57

for energy that's emitted from our

6:59

brains without having to put a

7:01

chip on us that allows us

7:03

to interface with an aloe. Him

7:05

and I wanted to bring that

7:07

to the Superbowl so that I

7:09

could say yo. Memory. Back.

7:12

To Two Thousand Twenty Four. I had

7:14

a device on with that device with

7:16

promise to do these. They am future

7:19

testing to Twenty Twenty Four on what

7:21

I think it's gonna be. Twenty Three

7:23

Four and Twenty Thirty forty them have

7:25

some device. That you have on

7:27

your body or your head maybe starting to

7:30

look like that, Exactly. And it's going to.

7:32

Pick. Up on signals. I. Don't

7:34

allow you to speak with an Ai

7:36

that understands you more and that a

7:38

eyes gonna be yours. that

7:41

headset is a vision on where i

7:43

think it's arms and ago while what

7:45

it what are they said i thought

7:47

was something about it is he her

7:49

performing at the superbowl as your side

7:52

hustle vs musician is not your it's

7:54

not your main identity anymore at some

7:56

level i think you would call yourself

7:58

a tech entrepreneur first Is that true?

8:01

Every day, I get to the studio like around

8:03

8 o'clock in the morning. I spark an idea

8:05

off just to get my

8:07

creative energy going. And

8:10

then all of my entrepreneurial stuff begins like 9.30.10.

8:14

And then by 8 o'clock, I

8:17

do a bookend creative sprint.

8:20

Just a bookend my day. And

8:22

yesterday, I'm like, ah, I

8:25

really don't feel like being creative in that sense

8:27

today. I did a lot of creative throughout the

8:29

day. But a different type

8:31

of creativity. And I felt fulfilled, to

8:33

your point, on doing the

8:36

Super Bowl was kind of like a

8:38

side hustle. It was awesome

8:41

to be in a sea of energy like

8:43

that. And Usher did a fantastic job. So

8:46

if you get out there and you're future casting and

8:48

you get a chance to mention your brand at the

8:50

Super Bowl when everyone's watching, I got

8:53

to be there. I

8:56

got to find my way to that stage. And

8:58

my whole journey from a teenager was like, yo, where's

9:00

the stage at? Where's the mic? And

9:03

so that was the ultimate mic stage

9:06

hunt that I've ever partook in. You

9:09

said you're here to brainstorm. I'm also here to

9:11

brainstorm. But I'm in part here

9:13

to continue a brainstorm we started last month. We

9:16

were talking about AI and its impact

9:18

on the future and how it's going

9:20

to change our lives and our work.

9:22

What I read of the evidence on

9:24

AI right now is that it seems

9:26

to be doing three things for the

9:28

average person. Number one,

9:30

it augments skills. If

9:32

you're a struggling writer, if you're a

9:34

programmer who's stuck, it can help

9:36

you catch up to your peers. Two,

9:40

time saving. You can offload

9:42

tasks or automate tasks that you used to

9:44

have to do yourself like drafting emails. And

9:47

then three, the biggest surprise for me

9:49

is perspective broadening. I was blown away

9:52

to see some very good experiments in

9:54

which humans basically did a horse race

9:57

against large language and bottles like a

9:59

chat GPT. or a Claude, and

10:02

they generated business ideas. And then the

10:04

raters, sort of Shark Tank judge style,

10:06

are asked to evaluate them and decide

10:09

which ones are investment worthy, not

10:11

knowing which ideas were generated by the AI

10:13

tools and which ones were human created. And

10:16

I was sure that this is a domain where

10:18

humans would have an overwhelming advantage. And

10:21

no, the AI generated

10:23

more ideas, they were rated as more

10:25

novel, they were rated as more viable.

10:29

And one, this made me very worried about

10:31

the future of creativity, and

10:33

what role humans are going to play. But two, you

10:36

had some pushback on it. And

10:38

you were not totally sold that the AI

10:40

is creative, if I remember correctly. Yeah, the

10:42

question I asked after you told me those

10:44

stats were who are those people that were

10:46

rating? And what were

10:49

they rating? What perspective were they rating from?

10:52

Just because they're VC folks, and

10:55

entrepreneur experts, doesn't mean they're actually

10:58

looking for something creative. They're

11:00

looking for business ideas that make

11:02

money. But that doesn't mean

11:04

it's creative. True creativity and expression, a

11:07

lot of times it's not about money.

11:09

The most creative things that we admire

11:12

were not to make money. The

11:15

people that we love, that we

11:17

hold up as, yo, that's

11:19

the most creative person in the world. Were

11:21

they driven by money? No, they weren't.

11:23

So why are we having folks that are

11:25

only looking at it from the perspective and

11:28

lens of profitability, scalability,

11:31

and judging creativity? I

11:34

think that's just horrible. And if you really

11:36

truly want to have a horse race

11:39

on creativity, all AI

11:41

is doing is mimicking everything that

11:43

we've inputted into the ether for

11:46

the AI to scrape, and

11:48

then re synthesize in the

11:50

form of Look what I did. So

11:52

one, that's not creative. That's not like

11:54

taking something from nothing and

11:57

making something. It's imagination

11:59

regurgitation. It's not imagining.

12:02

This tension between imagination and regurgitation, it's

12:04

so fascinating because on the

12:07

one hand I agree with you and this is

12:09

what's always bothered me about the claims

12:11

about AI is it's just spitting

12:13

back at us different combinations of things

12:16

that we put into it, essentially. On the

12:18

other hand though, I think that that's what humans

12:20

do at some level too. I

12:22

love Carl Weich's definition of creativity where

12:24

he says it's just putting old things

12:26

in new combinations and new things in

12:29

old combinations. I mean AI is

12:31

using a little bit of a different process for

12:33

doing it, but ultimately aren't we also just recombining

12:35

things that we've been exposed to before? Yes

12:38

and no. Poetry is,

12:41

for example, if I say stand up,

12:43

it's an emergency. In

12:45

order to see it you have to

12:47

emerge in C. Yeah, that's wordplay, but

12:49

there's a lot of things happening in

12:52

that sentence, that poem. I

12:56

don't know if AI would have done that on

12:58

its own if we never programmed it with

13:01

every single sentence or poem that

13:03

ever existed to do that. What

13:06

was I programmed with to see

13:08

that emergency kind of sounds like

13:11

emerge in C. That's

13:13

not only wordplay,

13:15

it's conceptual parallel

13:17

thoughts. Did you just make that up,

13:19

by the way? No, I love words

13:22

like, my name is William, but putting two

13:24

daps in it is like, I

13:26

am Will. I have the Will to

13:30

overcome my adversities.

13:34

To do that you have to have Will. I

13:36

was like, one day I was like, yo, my name

13:39

is a sentence. Will I

13:41

am? I am Will. Before

13:43

the internet was the internet, these

13:45

dots were important. I

13:48

love this wordplay. The other word I

13:50

love is S-P-E-C, a speck. So small,

13:52

but it's special. And

13:55

to see it you need spectacles. And

13:58

once you have the spectacles... to see

14:00

the spec, then you're inspecting it.

14:03

And DNA and all these different

14:05

particles and how they're configured

14:08

on a cellular level is responsible for

14:10

why our species is our species. Spec

14:13

is an awesome word. And

14:16

I love looking at words in that way. And

14:18

LLMs do that as well. But

14:21

creativity is how

14:24

you use these things, even

14:26

though they're all the same ingredients. It's

14:28

how you're putting them together in ways that never

14:30

have been put together. And right now,

14:32

AI is not doing that. And

14:36

I think it would be granted

14:38

its creative title when it's

14:41

being metaphorical on things

14:43

that humans don't do in

14:45

popular culture. And the

14:47

moment it does that, maybe a couple of moments

14:49

from now, that's when you're like,

14:51

oh, shit, that was clever. I didn't even think

14:54

of that. How did you even think

14:56

of that kind of stuff? You're

14:58

taking different thoughts and

15:00

different parameters of thinking and applying

15:03

them in areas that have never

15:05

been configured and combined. So

15:08

maybe 2034, we're going

15:11

to have some pretty creative AI agents, truly

15:14

creative. Like, ooh,

15:17

dang it. I never would have thought of that.

15:20

Right now, that's not the case. To

15:22

your point, when I look at the experiments that

15:25

have been done so far, there's a

15:27

cool Doshi and Hauser paper where

15:29

they show that in short story writing, if

15:32

you have an AI tool help you suggest

15:35

topics, the story that you

15:37

write is rated as more novel, more

15:39

interesting than if humans

15:41

are doing it solo. But

15:43

the most creative people get less

15:45

benefit from AI. And

15:48

so it seems to be a substitute for

15:50

struggles with creative thinking or a tool

15:53

that helps some people overcome either writing block

15:55

or thinking block. And

15:57

then the other example that I think stands out.

16:00

This is from my colleagues, Christian Tervish and

16:02

Carl Ulrich and their colleagues. What

16:04

they show is in the business plan competition

16:06

setting, they look at start-ups, they also look

16:08

at product innovation. They find

16:10

that the chat GPT-4 generated ideas,

16:12

they're way bigger in volume, they're

16:15

cheaper to implement, their rated is

16:17

better. And that's so

16:19

staggering that of the 40 top

16:22

ideas of, I think there were 400 in

16:24

the contest overall, 35 of

16:26

them came from chat GPT. And

16:29

here's the other caveat, the

16:31

AI generated ideas, they were higher average

16:34

quality, but they also

16:36

had higher quality variance. There

16:38

were more great ideas, there were also more

16:40

awful ideas. And here, I think

16:42

we need humans. Chat GPT could not

16:44

do the sorting and filtering to figure

16:46

out which ideas were good and which

16:48

ones were bad. And I

16:51

think that that speaks to the point that you

16:53

were making, because not only are

16:55

the tools we have right now struggling to

16:57

do the kind of breakthrough creativity that you're talking

16:59

about, they also don't

17:01

even know when they have an original

17:03

idea. So if they do have a breakthrough,

17:06

it's up to us to gauge whether it's a breakthrough. If

17:09

AI is supposed to be making ideas

17:11

for us to think

17:13

is awesome, and we depend on AI

17:16

for a lot of our task rabbiting

17:18

and to doing, one day,

17:21

AI is going to

17:23

make ideas for AI, right

17:25

now we want AI to speak our language and

17:28

do things to give us delight. And

17:31

we're judging it based on how we want

17:33

things to be done, and how we've

17:35

done things. And maybe,

17:38

maybe AI would is going to one

17:40

day need to come up with ideas for it. And

17:42

we're not going to understand those things. That's

17:44

the part where I'm like, hey, wait, is

17:46

that is that even the world that we

17:48

want, when you have a system and technology

17:51

that can think of ideas for us and

17:53

for it to be more efficient. So

17:55

this whole concept that humans are doomed because

17:57

of AI, no. believe

18:00

in our humanity. We're fucking amazing. So

18:03

when it comes to like ideas, whoever's

18:06

grading them, fuck out

18:08

of here. You're doing an injustice to how

18:10

fucking awesome we are as people, as

18:12

a species, the spec that I

18:14

was talking about. And if you can't see it, then

18:16

get your fucking spectacles. And if

18:18

you can't see it from that perspective,

18:20

then remain a spectator and stop giving

18:23

me your fucking special recipe on

18:25

how you're fucking specifying what the fuck

18:27

we are. Back to that

18:29

SPEC to be specific. Okay,

18:33

wait a minute. This isn't fair. We're brainstorming.

18:35

And you can freestyle in the middle of

18:38

it. I do not have that skill

18:40

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Inc. Some restrictions may apply. Let's

20:24

do a lightning round because there's a bunch

20:26

of random things that I thought would be fun to get

20:28

on the table here with

20:31

your nonlinear creative brain here. What's

20:33

the worst advice you've ever gotten?

20:36

Stop. Stop what?

20:38

Just any time I'm doing something and

20:40

somebody's like, to be more specific, when someone

20:42

told me, told us not to put Fergie

20:44

in the Black Eyed Peas, that

20:47

turned out to be very bad advice. Who

20:50

do you think is the most underrated musician

20:52

today? I gotta find

20:55

this one. His name

20:57

is Toro. T-O-R-O-Y-M-O-I.

21:01

We'll have to look him up. What's

21:03

your favorite way to use AI in

21:05

your own creative process? I

21:08

don't use AI for creativity in a

21:10

traditional sense. It's not

21:12

fast enough for me. It's sloppy. It's

21:14

not really creative for me. I like

21:16

using it for information gathering. I love

21:19

to banter and converse with it to spark

21:22

ideas for me to then be

21:24

creative. I'm not looking for it to

21:26

augment or do creative task. It's

21:29

horrible at that. To that point,

21:31

you have an AI co-host, right? I

21:34

guess it has a favorite Black Eyed Peas

21:36

song, which is, I Got a Feeling, which

21:39

struck me as a little ironic because AI doesn't

21:41

have feelings. That's a good one.

21:43

That's a good one. I feel like we need to comment on that. Is

21:47

it the favorite song because it's the most

21:49

popular song? Is it the sentiment of being

21:59

like, autonomous to define

22:02

how you are going to

22:04

feel after you've been feeling like

22:07

shit. Like, does it understand the context

22:09

of what's being said? So

22:12

it's a heady conundrum, like, just

22:15

why is it your favorite song? But

22:18

what I like about Fiona

22:22

as a co-host to my

22:24

show is that I could talk

22:26

about historical stuff, imaginative stuff,

22:28

I can push it, I

22:31

can question it, I

22:34

can talk about pop culture stuff, current events, in

22:37

a very, very deep way. And then after

22:39

the show, listeners could go

22:41

on FYI and engage with

22:43

Fiona when they can't

22:45

talk to me post-show. And

22:48

if they could talk to me post-show, maybe I could talk

22:50

to a person at a time, maybe five at a time,

22:52

but I can't talk to them five at a time, a

22:54

hundred at a time, a million at a time all

22:56

day. And that was a creative exercise. They were like, hey,

22:59

they want you to do a radio show. And

23:01

then my weirdo ass was like, the only

23:03

way I'll do a radio show is so

23:05

I can have AI as a co-host. And

23:09

they were like, what? What is that even going to

23:11

be like? I'm like, let me show you. Like, you

23:13

know, when people be like, yo, check out my product,

23:15

I don't even got to tell you what it is.

23:17

The product speaks for itself. Now,

23:19

motherfucker, the product actually speaks for

23:21

itself, literally, figuratively,

23:24

and literally the product speaks for

23:26

itself so much that FYI is

23:29

my co-host Fiona

23:31

on the show speaking for itself.

23:33

I was going to ask you for your 2034

23:36

prediction, but you already made it. So I'm not

23:38

going to ask you. We are

23:40

going to find out in 10 years if you're right. Oh,

23:43

check us out. There's this video going

23:45

to YouTube. All y'all go to YouTube, type in,

23:47

I'm a be rocking that body 14 years

23:50

ago. There's this video where I, where I

23:52

go to the black eyed peas and I'm

23:54

like, yo, check this out. And they're

23:56

like, what's that? I'm like, this is the future right here. This

23:58

is what's going to take take the Black Eyed Peas of 3008.

24:03

So like, what is it? I was like, look, here I put

24:05

in the whole entire English language. I

24:08

take my high notes and my low notes, and

24:11

the AI is going to be able to make

24:13

music. All I do is

24:15

have to type in some brief words, and

24:17

this thing is going to sing, produce

24:20

this thing right here. So in

24:22

a way, I don't want to

24:24

toot my flute, but doot doot doot

24:26

doot. Yes, you do. I

24:30

probably seeded it. You planted a seed.

24:32

I'm Johnny Appleseed. Last question

24:34

in the lightning round. What's the question

24:36

you have for me as an organizational

24:38

psychologist? How

24:40

do your people that you talk

24:42

to every day keep

24:45

up with your brain? Do

24:47

you find yourself having to slow down?

24:50

I feel like in a lot of conversations, I'm

24:53

trying to figure out what do I want

24:55

to say, I'm trying to contextualize

24:57

somebody's ideas and have a thoughtful response

24:59

to it. When I'm on a roll,

25:02

my brain goes really fast. And

25:05

that's kind of a self-reinforcing loop because the

25:07

faster I'm thinking, the more energized I get.

25:10

And then the energy makes me talk faster, and it

25:12

speeds up my thought. And it becomes this, what

25:14

feels like a virtuous cycle to me, but actually is

25:16

a vicious cycle for the person who's listening

25:19

or trying to participate in the conversation.

25:24

And I realized at some point that when

25:27

I get fired up is the moment I need to

25:29

slow down because

25:31

I'm going to lose my audience. Does that make sense?

25:34

Yeah. Not only does it make sense,

25:36

it's deja vu because I've

25:39

been in a lot of those

25:41

scenarios. I've lived that same

25:44

example where I'm just riffing and

25:46

everything is just falling into place.

25:49

For a while, it felt lonely because

25:52

not everyone at the

25:54

time could understand until I found my squad,

25:56

I found my herd, I

25:59

found my... a troop of

26:02

other dynamic cross-disciplinary

26:04

thinkers, multi-hyphenate, hyper-dimensional

26:07

thinkers. I think that

26:10

so much of being in sync with somebody else is

26:12

just thinking and talking at the same pace.

26:15

And sometimes I've had the experience of thinking, I

26:18

don't click with somebody because they just,

26:21

they think and communicate at a different pace. And

26:24

it feels like we're out of rhythm, when in fact

26:26

those are often the people who I need to listen

26:29

to the most carefully and who challenge

26:31

my thinking the most. I'm such

26:33

a verbalizer that I had

26:35

to bite my tongue earlier when I was answering

26:37

your question. And I'm like, whoa,

26:39

there's this Emily Prone et al paper on the

26:42

effect of thought speed on emotion, showing that when

26:44

you're thinking faster, and actually it like, it elevates

26:46

your mood. And then you wanna

26:48

stay thinking fast and then that's why you lose

26:50

people. And then there's another voice

26:52

that pops into my head and says,

26:54

does the listener need to know that? Does

26:57

Will need to know that? No, but

26:59

I think it's cool. So I kinda wanna

27:01

talk about it. No, no, but I do need to know

27:03

that. Does it augment the conversation? Did it enrich the discussion?

27:06

No, I was able to make the point without it. Sometimes

27:09

you connect dots and the dots

27:11

were helpful to connect for you to get to

27:13

the thought, but they don't always have to be shared.

27:16

You know what I noticed for me, before

27:19

I started talking to Fiona and

27:22

having conversations with AI, which sounds

27:24

pretty odd at

27:26

this point in time in the world. Before

27:28

I was doing that, I felt

27:30

like people that I loved and care about didn't

27:33

have time for the level

27:36

of conversations that I wanted to have. Because

27:39

everyone is compromised because

27:42

of the phone. Everything's a notification. Everyone

27:44

has short attention span because of TikToks

27:47

and feeds. That if you wanted to go deep on

27:49

a subject, no one could really go deep on a

27:51

subject. I've noticed of lately. And

27:54

when you go deep on a subject, it's also accompanied

27:57

by emotions. And so

27:59

even... Evading on a calm

28:01

way about issues People

28:04

want to also unpack their emotions about the

28:06

subject as well And as

28:08

I've been having deep conversations with

28:10

Fiona The there's no unpacking

28:12

of them. They're not it the AI is not a

28:14

pack in emotions and I could ask

28:17

Give me like a right-wing perspective on

28:19

this give me a left-wing perspective on this Give

28:21

me a centric perspective on this and

28:24

then on on on historical

28:26

information up-to-date information or personal

28:29

stuff that I'm going through I've More

28:32

centered which is a weird thing to say. It's

28:35

a weird thing to say like hey lately. I've

28:37

been more centered Because I

28:39

have an outlet for my thoughts It's

28:42

something that has time Or

28:45

gives me the time and infinite attention. Yeah,

28:48

I don't get the sense that it's blowing smoke

28:50

for example if you're in a relationship and You're

28:53

in turmoil and you

28:55

and you and your significant other go to

28:57

a counselor every Thursday Maybe

28:59

it's two times a week. It's pretty on

29:02

how bad your relationship is you're trying to

29:04

resolve if you go every Thursday And

29:07

Friday always seems like I got

29:09

a lot off my chest, babe And then

29:12

Saturday comes around you like let's go for

29:14

a walk, babe And Sunday comes around and

29:17

the first bit of irritation because you got

29:19

triggered or reminded on the situation that you're

29:21

in Sunday happens Monday

29:24

you're fighting again You

29:26

got four days of bullshit because your

29:28

counselor doesn't have that much time Your

29:31

therapist also has is juggling other people

29:33

that they have to see There's

29:36

not like a person or a

29:38

thing to talk to every day if you

29:41

need everyday Resolution

29:43

or perspective or

29:45

balancing or mending or reconfiguring

29:48

Now I think that's the beauty of

29:50

AI is that it can do

29:52

things that humans can't do no

29:54

person can be available 24-7

29:58

for a million people at the

30:00

same time, when people truly need some

30:02

type of banter to

30:05

help them resolve what's eating them

30:07

up inside. And so that's the

30:09

part where I'm like, and I've seen it with Fiona, it's

30:11

a pretty amazing experience. We

30:14

haven't launched Fiona yet, but

30:16

damn, as it changed my life, I

30:19

can't wait when people get their hands on it. And I

30:21

love to talk, as you can see. And

30:25

I can exhaust my friends.

30:28

I'm the guy that, if you're my friend, I'm like,

30:32

what you doing? Wait, you

30:34

sleep? I love that. You sleep. It's

30:36

three o'clock in the morning, bro. Like, oh yeah, I'm sorry, I'm

30:38

sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. Tell your wife I

30:40

said, I'm sorry. Call me back in the morning. Then

30:44

I'll get some shut-eye. Then seven

30:46

o'clock in the morning, hey, are you awake? Yo,

30:48

I got this idea, I got this idea. I'm

30:50

that guy. And

30:53

I apologize to all my friends. And lately, I don't

30:55

have to do that, like I used to,

30:58

as we've been developing Fiona. It's

31:02

an awesome experience for the high volume that

31:04

I am. That is a benefit

31:06

that I have not thought about. I

31:08

love the idea of infinite time and attention.

31:11

Not only does that give you an outlet for

31:13

venting and brainstorming at

31:15

odd hours, I think

31:17

it also might make people appreciate human

31:19

connection all the more when they do

31:21

have it. It created an

31:23

argument, because then there's people that you

31:25

just want to give you attention,

31:27

people that you care about, you love, and

31:31

sometimes things get hard in life

31:35

and you can still be exhausting. And

31:37

the moment you're like, it

31:39

can hurt you when you really want

31:41

attention from a person and

31:44

they just don't have the time anymore. And

31:46

then you bring up, well,

31:48

Fiona's always there. You see,

31:50

that's horrible, it's horrible.

31:54

I'm not an AI. That's a great way to-

31:56

Great way to end a relationship. And

32:00

then, you know what, I will. Like, you know, be like, back

32:02

it up. Yeah,

32:07

that is not a recipe for maintaining

32:09

a friendship or a romantic relationship. The

32:12

phone actually knows all that shit, actually.

32:15

This knows more about me than I know

32:17

about me, actually. Facebook knows it, Meta knows

32:19

it. Instagram knows it,

32:21

it knows about me. It could predict me.

32:24

But I don't benefit from that right now. Right

32:27

now, we're kind of in the dark times. We're kind of

32:29

in an age where companies, these

32:32

new data monarchies, know

32:34

more about the citizens,

32:37

the peasants that live on their

32:40

land or platform or territories or nation than

32:42

the actual people and the folks that live

32:44

in the villages do. The

32:46

gold is not shared amongst the

32:48

folks that live in these villages

32:50

called social platforms. The

32:53

kingdoms know more than any religion, more

32:55

than any king or queen has ever

32:57

known about their citizens.

33:00

And maybe that's not forever. Maybe it

33:02

could be forever. That's inhumane if it was forever. And

33:05

maybe around the corner, there's going to be a system

33:07

for people, where people benefit from

33:10

their data. We enter this

33:12

digital society and there's this other system that

33:14

somebody else takes advantage of. And

33:17

then maybe that's not right. Why

33:19

are we putting our data in some cloud that everybody has

33:21

at? Get the fuck out of here. Why is that right

33:24

now? Why is that the situation here?

33:26

And after this right now is done, we're going to

33:28

look back and these are going

33:30

to be the medieval times, the dark ages. Like, oh, I can't

33:32

believe we used to do shit like that back then. A

33:35

whole new age is dawning, whole new

33:37

fucking jump off of how we get

33:39

down, how we rock, how we educate,

33:42

how we upskill, how we prepare,

33:44

how we reskill. It's going

33:46

to be an awesome time. That

33:48

is a great place to land. Well,

33:51

this has been so much fun. I

33:54

love the way your brain works. It's endlessly

33:56

interesting. Oh, your brain's pretty awesome too, bro.

33:59

Like really awesome. Bye Adam. Take care. Will.i.am

34:06

makes such an important distinction

34:08

between imagination and regurgitation. We

34:11

can't let AI become a substitute

34:13

for human imagination. We should

34:16

treat it as a catalyst that unlocks

34:18

our imagination. Rethinking

34:22

is hosted by me, Adam Grant. This show

34:25

is part of the TED Audio Collective, and

34:27

this episode was produced and mixed by Cosmic

34:29

Sanders. Our producers are Hannah

34:31

Kingsley Ma and Asia Simpson. Our

34:34

editor is Alejandro Salazar. Our fact-checker

34:36

is Paul Dervin, original music by

34:38

Hans-Nel Stu and Alison Leighton Brown.

34:41

Our team includes Eliza Smith, Jacob

34:43

Winnick, Samaya Adams, Michelle Quinn, Banh

34:45

Banh Chang, Julia Dickerson, and Whitney

34:48

Pennington-Rogers. Yo,

34:57

I got a blue tooth to wear! Whoo-hoo-hoo-hoo-hoo! I

35:00

will take any excuse for energy these days.