#2076 - Aza Raskin & Tristan Harris

Joe Rogan (0:04)

The Joe Rogan Experience. Trained by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

What's going on?

Tristan Harris (0:15)

All right.

Joe Rogan (0:16)

A little apprehensive. There's a little tension in the air.

Well, the subject is... So let's get into it. What's the latest?

Tristan Harris (0:26)

Let's see. The first time I saw you, Joe, was in 2020, like a month after The Social Dilemma came out. And so that was, you know, we think of that as kind of first contact between humanity and AI. Before I say that, I should introduce Aza is the co-founder of the Center for Humane Technology. We did The Social Dilemma together. We're both in The Social Dilemma.

And Aza also has a project that is using AI to translate animal communication called Earth Species Project.

Joe Rogan (0:59)

I was just reading something about whales yesterday. Is that regarding that?

Aza Raskin (1:03)

Yeah, I mean, we work across a number of different species, dolphins, whales, orangutans, crows. And I think the reason why Tristan is bringing it up is because we're like this conversation, we're just going to sort of dive into like, which way is AI taking us as a species, as a civilization?

And it can be easy to hear just critiques is coming from critics. But we've both been builders, and I've been working on AI since, you know, really thinking about it since 2013, but like buildings in 2017

Joe Rogan (1:35)

So this thing that I was reading about with whales, that there's some new scientific breakthrough where they're understanding patterns in the whales language. And what they were saying was the next step would be to have AI work on this and try to break it down and break it down into pronouns, nouns, verbs, or whatever they are using and decipher some sort of language out of it.

Aza Raskin (2:01)

Yeah, that's exactly right. And what most people don't realize is the amount that we actually already know. So dolphins, for instance, have names that they call each other by.

Parrots, turns out, also have names that they're, like the mother will like whisper in each different child's ear and like teach them their name to go back and forth until the child gets it.

Joe Rogan (2:21)

Oh.

Aza Raskin (2:24)

One of my favorite examples is actually off the coast of Norway every year, there's a group of killer whales that speak one way and a group of dolphins that speak another way. And they come together in a superpot and hunt, and when they do, they speak a third different thing.

Joe Rogan (2:41)

Whoa.

Tristan Harris (2:42)

The whales and the dolphins.

Aza Raskin (2:43)

The whales and the dolphins. So they have a kind of like interlingua or lingua franca.

Joe Rogan (2:47)

What is a killer whale?

Aza Raskin (2:48)

It's a sort of a messed up name, but it's just a species related to killer whales. They look sort of like killer whales, but a little different.

Joe Rogan (2:56)

So it's like an in the dolphin genus. Okay, I've seen those before.

Tristan Harris (3:03)

It's like a fool's gold type thing. It looks like gold, but it's gold.

Joe Rogan (3:07)

Wow, how cool are they? God, look at that thing.

That's amazing. And so they hunt together and use a third language.

Aza Raskin (3:16)

Yeah, they speak a third different way.

Joe Rogan (3:18)

Is it limited?

Aza Raskin (3:20)

Well, here's the thing, we just don't know yet.

Joe Rogan (3:23)

Did you ever read any of Lilly's work, John Lilly?

He was a wildest one. That guy was convinced that he could take acid and use a sensory deprivation tank to communicate with dolphins.

Tristan Harris (3:36)

I did not know that.

Joe Rogan (3:36)

Yeah, he was out there.

Aza Raskin (3:38)

Yeah, he had some really good early work, and then he went down the acid route.

Joe Rogan (3:42)

Well, yeah, he went down the ketamine route, too. Well, his thing was the sensory deprivation tank. You know, that was his invention.

And he did it specifically.

Tristan Harris (3:50)

Oh, he invented the sensory deprivation tank.

Joe Rogan (3:52)

We had a bunch of different models. The one that we use now, the one that we have out here, is just 1,000 pounds of epsom salts into 94-degree water, and you float in it, and you close the door, total silence, total darkness. His original one was like a scuba helmet, and you were just kind of suspended by straps, and you were just in water. And he had it so he could defecate and urinate, and he had like a diaper system or some sort of a pipe connected to him. So he would stay in there for days.