Can Artificial Intelligence Make Us More Real?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:03)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:16)
Hello and welcome to the show. I'm Stephen Sakach and we have Tullio Siragusa and Ash Maher with us in today's episode. We're really gonna be one part tech conference and one part existential coffee house debate as we embark on a quest to uncover whether something artificial can make us more authentic.
Today we ask the question, can artificial intelligence make us more real?
The world is changing fast. AI is about to take everything to a new level. Real quick, Tullio and Ash, are people ready for it? Tullio, yes, no, maybe.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:52)
You know, it's kinda like that play, that game, you know, when we played hide and seek and the person was like, ready or not, here I come. That's kinda the way it is.

**Ash Maher** (1:01)
You know, I'd say partially ready.
And the reason why I say that is like the pace of change is unprecedented. So it's, and while there's excitement, there's also a significant need for adaptation understanding. So we're getting there, but when I say that's where the partial comes in, but no, I think a lot of people still like a deal with headlights.

**Stephen Sakach** (1:21)
Yeah, and I don't think people are really feeling it quite yet. Last year, there were 4,200 job reductions.
That said, AI was the reason for the job reduction. Ultimately, that's not a lot yet.
And people are able to quickly find new jobs because we're reinvesting a lot of money in AI as well. And so there's a lot of growth opportunities going on, but there are breakthroughs, I think, every week. And some of these are really mind blowing. So what if I told you the listener that I'm not real?
That I'm an artificial intelligence bot? What if I told you that Tullio and Ash weren't real? They've been AI bots the whole time. For some of you might be saying, yeah, that actually explains a lot, but they are real and they're not bots. I'm real. I'm not an artificial intelligence bot either. But at some point real soon, the fact is you just won't be able to really tell the difference. Right now there are our podcasts being done by AI. There are video spokesperson software that's done by AI already. That's very realistic and just very hard to tell. I have a book app that I listen to for book summaries and it uses AI and they switched it at some point over and you listen to the whole thing and then they tell you it's AI. You just could not tell.
So it would have been something, yeah, if we were doing a podcast that talks a lot about authenticity and we've not been real, but it's happening all around the world, all around us. And as a listener, embrace our mistakes and flaws. You're getting 100% human content here and we'll probably continue to show you that as we make more mistakes. But anyway, the world's changing and it's changing fast with AI.
Before we get to the topic question, I kind of wanna honor some of the dark nights of the soul that people are going through and will go through. And if you're listening to this, say 10 years from now, they probably have gone through on scale. So who are we talking about that's going through that dark night of the soul with AI or may in the future? I tend to think of artists, ask who comes up in your mind?

**Ash Maher** (3:36)
Well, I'm thinking of a broad spectrum of individuals. You have the workers and industries facing automation to ethicists grappling with the moral implications of AI decisions.
It's particularly challenging for those whose identities and livelihoods are intertwined with traditional processes that AI is rapidly transforming. So to add to that, individuals with limited access to technology education may feel alienated or left behind. So I think that's a little bit of what's forming. Tullio, what do you think?

**Tullio Siragusa** (4:04)
I think it's impacting. I've seen it impact even the people around my life.
I had a ghost rider to help me with my blog for years and since Jennifer Pai came around, I didn't have a need for that anymore. I had an editor who I've hired to work on previous books and if I had to put something out now, I wouldn't need that. So there's definitely impact for mostly people in the creative works or even the knowledge work, writers, artists.
I used to get content from pictures through Pexel, for example, which are contributed by individuals. And then it's completely supported through donation, but I get my images now through dollies. So there's so much that has changed, that has transformed, that has definitely impacted real people.