KCBS Radio In Depth

Cause for concern or celebration? What an AI takeover really means

AI is turning up everywhere and somehow, it’s finding its way into everything we own and use on a daily basis. But what is it, and why are so many people worried it’s going to take over? Ben Bajarin, CEO of Creative Strategies, answers those questions and more in this In Depth conversation with KCBS Radio reporter David Welch.

Duration:: 35m
Broadcast on:: 03 Jan 2025
Audio Format:: other

2025 is here! Woo-hoo! It's time for a fresh start with the sharpest rides. Introducing their new year new ride celebration. It's your chance to snag your dream whip during the end of the year clearance sale blowout. The sharpest ride is clearing space for new inventory, with incredible deals on over 900 sharp rides. Pre-owned luxury cars, SUVs, sporty to dance, and more. Whatever you're looking for, they've got it! Celebrate the new gear and your new whip with a champagne-worthy moment. You've earned it, but hurry, because these deals won't last long. Visit the SharpestRides.com to browse their unbeatable inventory or come see them in person at 2250 South Tea Home Street in Inglewood to experience their award-winning service. The sharpest ride is here to make your new ride happen. New year, new ride, new you! Start 2025 the sharpest way. With the sharpest rides, Denver's trusted name in pre-owned vehicles. The sharpest rides, affordable, sexy, sharp. Oh, it's such a clutch off-season pickup, Dave. I know, right? I was worried we'd bring back the same team. Oh, no, I meant those blackout motorized shades. MVP of the room. Lines.com made it crazy affordable to replace our old blinds. Hard to install? No, it was easy. Even you could do it. Nice. I installed these and they got some from my mom, too. You fly across the country to do the install? Nope. Blinds.com can do it all. All she had to do was pick what she wanted. She talked to a design consultant for free and scheduled a professional measure in install. Look at you, Hall of Fame's son. Oh, I just picked the winning team. They're the number one online retailer of custom window coverings in the world. Oh, blinds.com is the goat. The goat. ShopBlinds.com right now and get up to 40% off select styles, plus a free professional measure and a 100% satisfaction guarantee. Save up to 40% at Blinds.com. Blinds.com rules and restrictions may apply. This podcast is brought to you by Cleanix Lotion Tissues. You can't predict sick days, but with Cleanix Lotion Tissues, you can be better prepared for them while helping keep your skin healthy. Whether it's a surprise sneeze or a stuffy nose, it's always good to have something gentle on hand. Cleanix Lotion Tissues moisturize to help prevent skin irritation while you're battling those unwanted cold and flu symptoms. It's extra care when you need it most. I mean, why not have one less thing to worry about when you're not feeling your best? For whatever happens next, grab Cleanix. You're listening to KCBS in-depth. Really, in order to find quality care, you often have to be on a waitlist that's months long. The people places in issues the Bay Area is talking about. The aggressive advocates who are looking to overall row for so long, they really had no idea of the consequences they might be opening up. In this case, there very well may be charges that are appropriate. For example, trying to instruct an official proceeding of Congress, right? That is unlawful. This is KCBS in-depth. Artificial intelligence, or AI, is turning up everywhere. And somehow, it's finding its way into everything we own and use on a daily basis. But what is it? And why are so many people worried it's going to take over? Ben Behren, CEO of Creative Strategies, is someone that can answer both of those questions. And perhaps make us feel a little better about our deepest science fiction fears. But best of all, he has a refreshingly positive perspective on the technology. Ben Behren is our guest on this week's in-depth. Here's our conversation. So Ben, I think a great place to start is let's define AI. And I say that because the term is thrown around a lot recently. And I suspect sometimes it's accurate and I suspect sometimes it's not really AI. So perhaps we could get a working definition. Oh, sure. No, it's a great place to start. And it kind of feels like one of those philosophical discussions to start. Because you're right, there's a lot of ways to look at this. I think people who have been in this field for a long time look at some of the generative AI stuff that we have today, which is really just, I would say, some form of advanced to use a technical term matrix multiplication, which just means that if you put in a word, it's essentially going to try to predict the next word or just string together logic of sentence structure and a whole host of other things. And that's just simple math that's happening on our compute engines. Nobody would call that intelligence, right? Being able to say write me an essay on so-and-so topic. And it just goes to the internet and conforms something that looks readable. Again, it's automating a process. It's not really what we would call intelligent. So I think there's a gap today as to what this idea is of where we'll go, where something might be truly intelligent, maybe even able to do or come up with ideas, concepts, creative ideas that humans can't or on the level with humans. That is not where we're at today. But I think the way I would look at at least today is that it's more of an augmentation type of intelligence. So you're able to have it help you do things, help you write an email for you, write in your tone. Again, not intelligent, that's a useful feature, but that's essentially augmenting a function of a task that a human does with a computer. And we can go down this path of, well, is that the ultimate reality here, that it's more just an augmented type of intelligence designed to make humans more efficient? Or are we going down this path where something's going to be independently sentient, where you hear people talk about this idea of artificial general intelligence? So I don't know. I know a lot of people are chasing this sentient. I think that's a long, long, long, long way off. But the idea that this is now just augmenting us in helpful, quasi-useful ways, right? That's the world that we're at today with this quote unquote term artificial intelligence. With that, as our working definition, what you've described and omitting the sentient side, that seems to have been around for maybe a lot longer than the general public might realize. Is that correct? Yeah, I think what's happened is we were always compute constraint, right? There's been natural language engines that essentially, you know, you could kind of talk to a robot that could get information, right? You've seen some of this stuff with call centers, but they were very limited. And I think people very easily knew that this was a robot, right? This was a bot. But that was a compute, constrained, very specific type of use case. You know, people will say, look at Alexa, you know, Amazon's Alexa, look at what Google had with their, hey, Google, even Apple with Siri, you could kind of see shades of it. But there wasn't this breakthrough in transformers and deep learning that kind of opened up this ability to do, which is really just predictive stringing of text. So matrix multiplication in a way that's one fast, meaning that you could type a query and today can respond to you and give you, you know, a thousand words in just a couple of seconds, right? That would have not been possible. Mind some of these breakthroughs. But the fundamental technology to get us to where we have, yes, has been around for a while. And you've seen shades of natural language processing. It's just that we had some compute breakthroughs in algorithms, as well as more compute, thanks to NVIDIA, right in the cloud, to make these models, which make them feel much more conversational today than they really ever have. This is that lifelike quality. I think that you're speaking of and I think about, for instance, video games, the technology of video games. In some ways, let's say video games 15 years ago were perhaps using similar style technology. Is that a right way of thinking about it? Yeah, but again, just compute bound, meaning that they could only go so far, right? They were somewhat interactive, but there was a limit to call it what it could learn, right? So obviously, if you do with chat GPT or perplexity, you know, Google's Gemini, if you use any of these things, they've got a much larger data set that they can pull from to essentially converse with you, and I'm using a fairly simplistic term, right? But the idea that it could take that data orchestrated in a way that you can read, and then now you have a back and forth, they're just working with a much larger data set, thanks to a lot of these fundamental breakthroughs in compute and the math that goes along with that. So yeah, that fundamental concept was there, but it's now been 100x in its capabilities because of these sort of breakthroughs that's happened in the last 10 years. What role did the internet, and I'm thinking the amount of information that's available on the internet, what role did that play in this breakthrough? Yeah, I mean, I think in terms of the data itself, that was a pivotal part, right? Because you look at these models and they're essentially trained on the breadth and depth of the internet, which essentially means that if it's on the internet, it can generate an answer for you or a conversation based on a topic. So it's using that knowledge base. I think that's a fundamental piece of this, but again, to your point, right, the internet's been around for a really long time. It's not that that data wasn't there. It's just that we didn't have the compute, we didn't have the underlying algorithms and fundamental architectures to take the breadth and depth of the internet, like to use the pool of the worlds of information that exists online, and now you be able to have a query back and forth with an agent to learn about that, to discuss about that, to search about these things. So the fundamental knowledge base is essentially what exists digitally online. Our ability to query an index that is the fundamental breakthrough that generative AI has changed that impacts search, it impacts a whole host of the ways we use these things. But that knowledge base is the fundamental reason why we can have these, what feel like conversational formats with these technologies. What's ringing in my mind right now is this is almost Silicon Valley's legacy in a strange sort of way. A few generations ago, these things were developed to sort of pave the way. It's almost part of the Silicon Valley family tree. And I think it speaks to the type of innovation that has happened for many, many years in the area. I'm curious what you think of that. I mean, yes. I mean, I don't think we could hone that more to just technology than I would just. We like to isolate that to what goes on in the valley. And yes, there's a ton of AI startups. Google's played a real big part of this who's based in the valley. So I think there's a fundamental cornerstone of that process, which is really just chasing technology, chasing compute, chasing capabilities, what gives humans kind of the best technology at their fingertips to quote Steve Jobs or just use his idea, right? The computers are bicycles for the mind. If you just carry everything that he said there about just this idea of having this type of power at your fingertips, and then we layer the internet and now we layer a much more natural way to basically sift through data. Yeah, I think a lot of that hones in on what the valley has has strove for with innovation. But it's a much broader technology story that might emanate from the valley culture. But this is really a transformative moment that's going to impact technology, government, societies, countries, communities at fairly fundamental levels when we look back on this 10, 15 years from now. And you touched on something that I find interesting too is the way in which it is global now. For a while, their innovation was certainly isolated to a small group of places, one of which was Silicon Valley. I was reading a paper yesterday by a woman who does a lot of work in music generation with AI. And she's based out of France. This is a global phenomenon now. People across the globe are working with the same tools now and the same creativity. Yeah, and I would say there's another layer to this where I think a generative AI or everything that we're talking about here actually makes technology more accessible to people who maybe never used the full breadth and depth of the technical capabilities that a computer or a phone or any of these things give them. So I think there's a real interesting story about or narrative here just about that idea that again, I think a good example of this is like you said music creation, even video creation, video editing. There's a lot of people who just don't do that because it's really hard to use the tools that are out there. But if you could just type into a query box, help me edit this image, make the colors brighter, blur out the background, like that stuff that would take a designer used to take a graphic designer hours. And if a normal person can do that with just a text prompt, you know what I mean? Like you're letting more people do more with these tools where there might have been higher barriers to entry because of user interface. And I think, you know, another great example, you're seeing this today play out in real time. This is really only a phenomenon of the last, you know, maybe six to eight months where we actually have these agents, these AI systems that can go and generate code. So you have people writing software who never wrote software before, and making very good online software, apps, et cetera. Right. And prior to that, you had to know how to code. And now you just sort of need to know some basic frameworks and what to type into a generative AI prompt. And so I think that's what I mean about this idea that people who could never do these things before because of that, that skill barrier was so high, can now start to enter that field. Again, they may not be as good as a professional musician or a professional videographer. But you see what I mean? There's a way that someone can start going down that path with much less barrier to entry. And I think that's interesting from just letting this be more accessible for more people. Sort of the other side of that coin. And I ask this is someone who's based in the Bay Area. I'm proud of the innovation that sits just south of me. It's always been for all of my lifetime, the place where computing and just that's where the geniuses go. I remember my father telling me that Silicon Valley. That's where the geniuses go. And have we in some ways created the thing that's going to take away our unique area? I mean, I think that's a great part of this debate. You know, it was interesting. I saw a study come out from a range of physicians who do research or do like research that's part of kind of the broader medical community. And they actually found that while I'm going to blank on the stats, but there was a high percentage of them that found generative AI was useful in their field. They also almost unanimously said, it sometimes takes the joy out of some of that work. And so I think you could kind of see and you see people in music, people in Hollywood saying, you know, this is never going to replace humans. And there's a good possibility. I think you could argue that creativity, which is born out of human experience, like suffering, felt emotion lends itself to something. And I'm speaking particularly to the creative arts, for example, I don't know if this same idea applies to coding because there are people who love coding, but I don't know if it's like the vast majority of people who just want to sit there and write millions of lines of code. So if you can automate some of that, that's a net plus. But I think there are areas where there's still part of that humanity that that's going to have to play a part of this. I don't think that's at this point in time, I don't foresee a horizon where it replaces that again, maybe someday. I think there's people out there who believe that. But I do think there's something to the human experience, the human contribution to work that is going to be really hard to displace. You know, and that's why I keep coming back to what I started off with, which is that right now, if you look at the most successful areas where generative AI is producing a return on an investment and in particularly in enterprise environments, it's an automating things that are mundane, things that people don't love doing. It's not actually replacing the things that they love spending time on, even if that's creative arts, because they still enjoy that. They might use it to help. They're not just going write me a song, right, or make me a movie. They're still an inherent process in that where somebody with those skills is curating, editing, and a deeper part of that process than just fully automated, automating it away. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And I focused on AI in art specifically. And even more specific, my focus was I did a story about musicians using artificial intelligence. And one of the, I spoke to a vast majority of musicians, but also fine artists, graphic designers, so on. And one of the things that just was across the board consistent was they said that it's AI was wonderful because it took away the tedium, all those tasks, whatever whatever it was, it just took those out in many respects. But there was never going to be in their mind a way to replace, we'll call it a divine spark, a humanistic spark, the soul of the human in one person told me. But it was consistent among those who create artistic things. And I think that might be true for really all things, whether it's art or whether it's a program, coding, so on, there's still a part of whether it's collaboration or just a darn smart person that happens in the human mind. Looking for a financial institution that has fewer fees, better rates, and gives back to the local community. As one of Colorado's largest credit unions, Belco offers great rates on products like our free boost interest checking and lower rates on loans, including our home equity choice line. Bank virtually any time anywhere through our online banking and our mobile app. Becoming a member has never been easier. Visit belco.org or stop by any belco branch. Membership eligibility required, equal housing opportunity, all loans subject to approval and short by NCUA. Belco, banking for everyone. Hey, fidelity. How can I remember to invest every month? With the Fidelity app, you can choose a schedule and set up recurring investments in stocks and ETFs. Oh, that sounds easier than I thought. You got this. Yeah, I do. Now, where did I put my keys? You will find them where you left them. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss, fidelity brokerage services LLC member NYSE SIPC. When it comes to health care, you want an option that works for you. If your health insurance believes they know best, maybe you need an alternative that believes you should decide. Take charge of your health care with Christian health care ministries, with no provider network, and the flexibility to join any time you choose what works for you and your family. Whether you're navigating the diaper stage, getting your kids ready for school, or planning for early retirement, CHM's comprehensive programs grow and go with you through all life's seasons, and roll today by visiting chministries.org/total. Yeah, go ahead. Go ahead. No, I just say, I just, I totally agree with that point. And that's why, you know, my view is right now, there really isn't a horizon where I think we do replace what you just said. But, but I know there's people who are like, oh, sure, it's inevitable. We get there someday, but I don't think there's any consensus on that. It'll be a, it'll be a debate that we follow over the next decade. Plus, lastly, in looking to the future, a lot of people I've spoken with see two paths as they describe it. This incredible technical innovation that creates computing that we could never even imagine. And then the other path, and these are not mutually exclusive. These are paths that a lot of people believe AI will travel both of them simultaneously. This will also become a really good marketing tool for pretty much everything in our lives. I'm curious where you see it going. Yeah, I mean, again, right, it comes down to what are the, what are going to be the fundamental use cases that people use these things for? And I think every industry category, right, from medical to coding to industry to teaching, there's going to be a facet of this that's helpful. I think you look at the external opportunity, in this case, like you said, right, from just some marketing standpoints. And sure, you're seeing it augmentation in the creative marketing areas to come up with concepts to just brainstorm ideas, kind of get just the thought process going, right, the idea process going. But I think it's going to fundamentally impact so many different parts of work processes. We're just starting to scratch the very beginning of this from us from a surface level. But there are a couple of areas where you're just seeing people have success day one. And that's that category, certainly one of them. I know I said last, but I do have one, one last. I'm curious. You know a lot about not just AI, but technology in general. I'm curious. This probably doesn't happen very often. Has there been a moment recently where AI has done something that has made you say, wow, that's so cool. And specifically, maybe it's something in your daily life where you all of a sudden realize like, oh my goodness, I can't believe technology can do that. Is there an example that comes to mind? Yeah, for us, honestly, it's been this ability to do coding and create software. My company, we use a lot of third party software, but we've actually found that for some of our internal processes, whether that's part of our research flow, part of our data collection flow, we've actually been experimenting with just writing our own internal software. And it's things that I just were like, hey, it'd be great if we could do this, but I'm never going to pay $50,000 to $100,000 for somebody to go write me custom software. We can actually do in days now, with just generative AI. And that to me is mind-blowing, because like I said, we're not coders, we don't employ coders, but the tools are starting to exist now that you do a prompt, you slightly edit it, and it will get to your end result with software, for everything from Mac apps to iOS apps to cloud to software to service apps. It's pretty impressive. So that to me, and like I said, this is new, this is within the last six to eightish months where we've just sort of seen this, you don't need to know how to code to write software. And I believe that's a very, very disruptive idea to a lot of public companies, businesses, and even just the idea that large enterprises will just start writing their own software instead of buying it from others is such a big and disruptive idea. But in the most recent, that's been one of the most mind-blowing things to see happen, because it's just incredible to be able to within a day come up with your own software. Right, it's like, you know, I think of, you know, a construction model, a house builder, who instead of having to go get something custom made, they could just simply make their own, let's say, pipe fittings on their own to fit the project they're working on, whatever that is, and it really is, it opens so many other possibilities. And I think you touched on it, this is all fast. Everything goes so fast. Very, very fast. And just, you know, continue moving. You know, you look at this moment that was Jack TPT of a couple years ago, and we're in such a different place now, and we'll be in such a different place in another year. So it's incredible the amount of innovation that's happening, honestly. It's exciting. I know it freaks a lot of people out, but you know, this is one of those very big and disruptive moments, like I said, that we'll look back on in 10 years and see profound impacts from. Yeah, it's, I think you touched on the word is disruptive, and that's not a bad thing. I remember the Atari 2600 wasn't disruptive, but the fact that I could do it at my house was disruptive. Yes, right. And the disruptive, depending, there's any innovation involves this element of disrupting things, of just fundamentally changing the way we look at reality, and it's an amazing thing. I went into this story feeling scared of AI. I walk away from this story feeling excited about it, and thinking that a lot of these things that we in the media make out to be potential problems, yeah, there'll be problems, but not to the level that we think they are. The story that we tell, I think, is maybe not that accurate in terms of the way that the harm that could come from this. I'm sure a lot of harm could. However, I think we're going to figure that out as we keep going. Yeah, I agree. And I think it's good that everybody kind of chasing down this path has a philosophy of responsible AI. You hear it talked about, you hear it debated. They're trying to keep accountability, and you even just see some of the big companies putting very specific guardrails on some of these technologies in order to account for that safety. I think we're not being haphazard about it. Like you said, I agree. There is a lot of reasons to just be concerned and make sure it moves responsibly, but 100%. It is going to be one of the most disruptive, fundamental piece of technology as we've really ever seen. Thank you so much for taking time. This was just so much fun to think about again and again. It touches philosophy. It has these brass tacks. I can see it in real time. I'm building something, elements, and it's a really cool experience to live through. So I appreciate you putting in perspective. Thank you to Ben Beheron for being our guest on in-depth. You can listen to this in all past episodes of in-depth at kcbsradio.com and on the Odyssey app. Thank you for listening for KCBS and in-depth. I'm David Welch. You've been listening to KCBS in-depth. Get every episode by subscribing on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and other podcast platforms. Visit kcbsradio.com for more news and interviews. We are the Bay Area's news station, KCBS. Ksinging can help you remember things. So here's some tips for parents out there during these tough times. Make sure your kids wash their hands for 20 seconds after they've coughed or sneezed or been outside. Two virtual playdates. Social and physical distancing can help save lives. Tell them they're safe and show your love and pride. Yes, we'll get through this together. Find out more at coronavirus.gov, a message from the CDC and the Ad Council. I never considered myself to be a heavy drinker. At first, I only drank with friends, then to get through the day. I hit rock bottom when I realized I was choosing alcohol over my family. That's when I made the call. With my doctor's help, I was diagnosed with alcohol use disorder. Now, I'm getting to the root of my addiction and finding better ways to cope. Mental health care works when you make the call. Visit mentalhealthcareworks.org, a message from the American Psychiatric Association Foundation. When you're on the go and it's time to refresh your energy, grab an ice cold celsius, wear zero sugar, seven essential vitamins and proven ingredients, meats, pure refreshment. Unlike traditional energy drinks, each sip of celsius is a perfect balance of flavor and function. So, whether you're hitting the gym, the office or your next adventure, grab as celsius at your local retailer or visit celsius.com to learn more. Is your team at work feeling a little disconnected? Maybe the work flows not flowing? Try Confluence by Atlassian. Confluence is the connected workspace where teams can create, organize and deliver work like never before. In Confluence, teams can whiteboard their vision for any project, easily create or access the relevant pages and resources they need and discover important context they might not even know they need. Plus, AI helps teams jumpstart brainstorms, organize information and connect workflows. So, teams can move efficiently and create alignment with ease. In fact, with Confluence, teams can see 5.2% average boost in productivity in one year. So, if your team lacks confidence, try Confluence. The connected workspace where teams can do it all. Set knowledge free with Confluence. Learn more at Atlassian.com/confluence. That's A-T-L-A-S-S-I-A-N.com/C-O-N-F-L-U-E-N-C-E. The Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever. It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, whether you're running, swimming, or sleeping. And it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you 8 hours of charge in just 15 minutes. The Apple Watch Series 10, available for the first time in glossy jet-black aluminum. Compared to previous generations, iPhone XS are later required. Charge time and actual results will vary. OK, picture this. It's Friday afternoon when a thought hits you. I can spend another weekend doing the same old, whatever, or I can hop into my all-new Hyundai Santa Fe and hit the road. With available H-Track all-wheel drive and three-row seating, my whole family can head deep into the wild, conquer the weekend and the all-new Hyundai Santa Fe. Visit HyundaiUSA.com or call 562-314-4603 for more details. Hyundai, there's joy in every journey. From big upsets to game-winning drives, the NFL playoffs are better with FanDool. Because right now, new customers can bet $5 and get $200 in bonus bets guaranteed. That's $200 in bonus bets win or lose. The FanDool app gives you everything you need for live bets, same game parlays, and so much more. Plus, when you win, you'll get paid instantly. Just visit FanDool.com/sportsfan to join today and get started with $200 in bonus bets. That's FanDool.com/sportsfan. Make this playoff season unforgettable with FanDool, an official sports book partner of the NFL. Must be 21-plus in present in Colorado. First online real money weights are only $10 first deposit required. Bonus issue does now withdrawable bonus bets that expire seven days after receipt. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanDool.com. Gambling problem, call 1-800-522-4700.