Hello my lovely English learners! Lori here, your teacher from BetterAtEnglish.com. I love technology, so we’re talking about robots today, but not in the way you might expect. A lot of conversations about robots have to do with whether or not a robot or machine could ever develop genuine feelings or emotions. But today we’re going to be thinking about our own emotions and feelings toward robots, particularly empathy. Can we feel empathy toward robots? And if so, why?

Links to pre-listening background — to get the most out of this podcast:
Short video of someone “torturing” a robot dinosaur (part of a research experiment). Make sure you watch it with sound. What do you feel as you watch this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAVtkh0mL20

Kate Darling: Why we have an emotional connection to robots (TED talk)
https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_darling_why_we_have_an_emotional_connection_to_robots?language=en

Yasmin’s profile on italki

Full transcript of this episode

Allow me to introduce you to Kate Darling. She is a super cool researcher who is looking into this very question. I’m going to play you a little bit from the beginning of her TED talk, where she explains how she got into this line of research. The link to the full presentation is in the show notes. It’s as entertaining as it is interesting and thought provoking, so I can wholeheartedly recommend you check out the whole thing. OK, here comes Kate:

Kate Darling:

“There was a day, about 10 years ago, when I asked a friend to hold a baby dinosaur robot upside down. It was this toy called a Pleo that I had ordered, and I was really excited about it because I’ve always loved robots. And this one has really cool technical features. It had motors and touch sensors and it had an infrared camera. And one of the things it had was a tilt sensor, so it knew what direction it was facing. And when you held it upside down, it would start to cry. And I thought this was super cool, so I was showing it off to my friend, and I said, “Oh, hold it up by the tail. See what it does.” So we’re watching the theatrics of this robot struggle and cry out. And after a few seconds, it starts to bother me a little, and I said, “OK, that’s enough now. Let’s put him back down.” And then I pet the robot to make it stop crying.

And that was kind of a weird experience for me. For one thing, I wasn’t the most maternal person at the time. Although since then I’ve become a mother, nine months ago, and I’ve learned that babies also squirm when you hold them upside down. (Laughter)

But my response to this robot was also interesting because I knew exactly how this machine worked, and yet I still felt compelled to be kind to it. And that observation sparked a curiosity that I’ve spent the past decade pursuing. Why did I comfort this robot? And one of the things I discovered was that my treatment of this machine was more than just an awkward moment in my living room, that in a world where we’re increasingly integrating robots into our lives, an instinct like that might actually have consequences, because the first thing that I discovered is that it’s not just me.”

She’s right, it’s not just her. I found a short video on Youtube that shows somebody being really mean to the same type of robot dinosaur that Kate uses in her research. It’s only one minute long, so if you want to pause the podcast and go watch it, feel free. The link is in the show notes. Anyway, when I watched this video myself I felt really uncomfortable, even though I knew it was just a toy robot. I’m not alone; here are some of the Youtube comments.

“Why would you do this!!!! It looks so scared, please stop and let me hug it.”

“The last part when he was hitting him to the table I heard it crying; that’s so sad.”

“I feel bad for him, although I know it’s just a pile of plastic and metal that can’t even think.”

Of course, Youtube comments being what they are, there were also people saying things like “This made me laugh so hard,” and “How do I get this job,” but I’m fairly sure those people were just trying to be funny. At least I hope so.

We humans have evolved to have empathy for our fellow human beings and for most of us this also extends to animals. Well, cute animals at least. But why in the world would we feel empathy or any kind of emotional connection to a robot, or a machine? I mean, they don’t have emotions or feel pain. They can’t actually have any feelings toward us. Why do we still want to be kind to them?

This is what we discuss in the following conversation. You’ll hear me talking to Yasmin, who by the way is an active teacher on italki — there is a link to her profile in the show notes if you would like to get to know her better. She’s from the UK but lives in Canada now, and we got over Zoom to talk about Kate Darling’s presentation, and our own emotional connections to inanimate objects. You’ll hear us starting out with some small talk about podcasts, which leads us naturally into the main topic of our conversation. The small talk is not relevant to our topic, but I’m leaving it in as an example of the natural flow of informal conversations from one topic to another.

As always, you can find the transcript and links to supplementary material on my website, betteratenglish.com. The links and a preview of the transcript should also be right in your podcast player. Don’t worry, everything on my website is free for you to download and use for your English learning.

All right…are you ready? Here comes the conversation.

Conversation transcript

Lori: Do you have any, just for yourself, favorite podcasts that you like to listen to?

Yasmin: Um…

Lori: …if you don’t mind saying?

Yasmin: My favorite one, my favorite one is…oh, what’s it called? Into the…Into the Wild, I think it’s called…

Lori: Okay.

Yasmin: …or something like this. And it’s basically a lot of different people who have adventured all over the world. And they talk about loads of different things. Like my favorite one was with this man called Levison Wood. And he was talking about his trip to Botswana, and dealing with the elephants or learning about elephant behavior and working with the conservation team out there. And so that was really interesting. So things like that I really liked listening to

Lori: Okay, interesting. Yeah, I think I have seen that one in either in iTunes or in the podcast app somewhere into the wild. Sounds familiar, but I haven’t actually listened to that.

Yasmin: But yeah, it’s worth listening to. They have many different, totally different topics, which all are quite interesting.

Lori: Yeah. And you being a traveler, I can, I can imagine that that’s extra interesting.

Yasmin: Yeah, absolutely. I want to go to Africa and see the elephants. That’s probably the main reason.

Lori: I love elephants. I love elephants. You know, I don’t know. Have you ever seen I think it’s one of the David Attenborough nature shows where there’s these elephants walking across the desert. And it’s like an aerial view, and it’s all…they’re in a drought. And it’s really, really dry and horrible. And then at some point, you see this little baby elephant walking all by itself. And he’s gotten lost, and he’s walking the wrong way. It’s like the saddest thing I think I’ve ever seen. I cried when I saw that poor baby elephant.

Yasmin: Oh, my God. So sad, isn’t it?

Lori: Yeah. So sad. I…that’s…if my, my partner, we almost use that as a benchmark. When I see something sad about animals, I’m like, “Yeah, it was really sad, but still not as bad as that baby elephant going the wrong way.”

Yasmin: Aww. I mean, these elephants as so smart, they have like, you know, their internal compass, which is why it’s like surprising when you have such young elephants who go the wrong way. And I suppose they have such strong family connections almost, you know, stronger than human connection.

Lori: Yeah.

Yasmin: Which is quite, quite amazing.

Lori: It’s incredible. I would give anything to be able to actually get inside the mind of an animal and be able to understand what they’re thinking.

Yasmin: It’d be amazing, wouldn’t it? It’s very sad, though, you know, all the hunting in the poaching which goes on and the human animal conflict out in Africa when these sorts of countries it’s, it’s quite sad.

Lori: Yeah. Yeah, it is really sad. And I know that it must be a really complex issue. I mean, I can look at it and just totally condemn them for doing that. But then, you know, everyone always has their reasons. I think it’s a horrible, horrible thing. And it’s just sad that some people are, you know, they feel that that’s the only way, the only thing that they can do…

Yasmin: Absolutely

Lori: …is terrible. But yeah, it’s it’s funny, we’re talking about this because, you know, I had wanted to talk to you about that video, about…

Yasmin: Yeah!

Lori: …we have so much empathy for real real animals and people, but we can actually have empathy for robots.

Yasmin: Isn’t it crazy? And you know what though, is it’s funny because we look at animals and we think they’re so cute. We see a little puppy and we just want to go and cuddle it. It’s so sweet. And I think that people do create attachments to robots because often they they look kind of sweet they look they don’t look like something scary they look like something which we could actually have a connection to.

Lori: Yeah.

Yasmin: And so super soft people are too, too kind and caring, they just want…anything that they feel like they can protect I suppose they want to.

Lori: Yeah, I thought…what was really kind of blew me away about that video was the way that the military guys would actually develop these attachments to the landmine robots, the bomb disposal robots..

Yasmin: Absolutely. It’s, I mean, I think though, that robots who perform, like, services to help people, I think maybe, maybe it’s possible that humans create a stronger connection to those robots because they feel bad for them. They feel like empathy towards them, because this robot is doing what technically the maybe the people should be doing. And so, you know, like it says, in the video, you do see so many of these robots who work in the in the army, or the military, having funerals. and people really taking care of them, which is insane.

Lori: Yeah, amazing. And and it does bring up that issue that maybe it’s not so good that a soldier is, like, feeling sorry for his bomb disposal robot. I mean…

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW – read the rest here.

Videos mentioned in the introduction

Short video of someone “torturing” a robot dinosaur (part of a research experiment). Make sure you watch it with sound. What do you feel as you watch this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wAVtkh0mL20

Kate Darling: Why we have an emotional connection to robots (TED talk)
https://www.ted.com/talks/kate_darling_why_we_have_an_emotional_connection_to_robots?language=en

Connect with Yasmin on italki (she would be a great tutor!)
https://www.italki.com/teacher/6933264?ref=affbetteraten

Full disclosure: I make a tiny commission if you sign up for paid lessons on italki via my links. It is the only online teaching platform that I really feel good about recommending, because I use and benefit from it myself. Italki is not a sponsor.

Other things mentioned in the Conversation

Short video of the baby elephant going the wrong way (this will make you cry).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y7ok_6QIbpE

Into the Wilderness podcast episode with Levison Wood (the podcast the Yasmin mentions)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/137-levison-wood-last-giants-isolation-elephants-poaching/id1037718896?i=1000470334115

Lori’s ridiculously cute rice cooker
https://www.yumasiaworld.com/panda/

PARO therapy robot (the cute seal robot used with Alzheimer’s patients)
Google image search for Paro seal
https://www.paroseal.co.uk/

Military robots get awards, nicknames and funerals
https://www.nbcnews.com/technolog/soldiers-3-robots-military-bots-get-awards-nicknames-funerals-4B11215746<

Supplementary material

Short video about “emotional support” robots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D4GvXmkyKV8

Kate Darling’s website

You can find links to all her great videos from the page below, including the talk that Yasmin and Lori discuss “Why We Have an Emotional Connection to Robots”
http://www.katedarling.org/speakingpress

Episode summary
Autumn is in full swing here in the northern hemisphere, so this Real English Conversations episode is full of vocabulary related to the colors, weather, moods and feelings associated with this time of year. Lori and her friend Eliza talk about exercising outdoors, the health benefits of spending time out in nature, and whether or not it’s a good idea to pick and eat wild mushrooms. Are you feeling tired and drained? Grab your audio player and some headphones, get yourself to a park or forest, and have a nice walk while practicing your English listening! I guarantee you’ll feel better after you do this than you did when you started. :-)

Get in touch with Eliza
Eliza on Udemy
Eliza’s instagram
Eliza’s teacher profile on italki

Supplementary material for further study

How nature affects our health and well-being
https://www.takingcharge.csh.umn.edu/how-does-nature-impact-our-wellbeing

What is leaf peeping? Read this article in The Guardian and find out. Includes a wealth of adjectives related to being outdoors in the autumn.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/oct/09/autumn-colour-brings-joy-to-uks-growing-band-of-leaf-peepers

This article explains how you can boost your mood by spending time in nature
https://www.health.harvard.edu/mind-and-mood/sour-mood-getting-you-down-get-back-to-nature

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW
Hi English learners! Lori here, your teacher from Betteratenglish.com. Wherever and whenever you happen to be listening to this I hope you’re doing great. I’m recording this in early November 2020, and if you aren’t living out in the bush somewhere with no connection to the outside world, you’re probably aware that it’s a pretty stressful time. So because the past few episodes I’ve given you have been about rather heavy topics, I thought I’d give you something lighter for a change.

A couple of weeks ago I recorded a fun conversation with another English teacher. Her name is Eliza and she is from Belarus. She’s not a native speaker of English, but her English is fantastic. I really enjoyed talking to Eliza, and I think you’ll agree that her infectious enthusiasm and positivity really shine in this conversation. And I also think that teachers who are not native speakers of the language they teach have a deep understanding of what it’s actually like to learn that language, and that this can really benefit their students. I often wish that I could somehow experience learning English like a non-native speaker, just so I would have insight into what it’s really like. Eliza teaches online at italki, so if you feel like your personalities would click and you want to get in touch with her about lessons, you’ll find her italki profile linked the show notes.

All right, the conversation you’ll hear is actually the very first time Eliza and I ever spoke. So I start off by asking her about how she learned English, because I was really curious about that. What follows is a great example of a typical informal conversation in English between two people who don’t know each other, but who at least have some things in common. Becoming conversational in a foreign language is really difficult because conversations are completely unpredictable. There’s no way that you can prepare in advance for everything that might happen in a conversation. As you’ll hear, Eliza and I cover quite a range of topics. We talk about how Eliza learned English as a child, then move on to the health benefits of spending time outside, our favorite seasons, and even whether or not it’s a good idea to pick and eat wild mushrooms.

Here in the northern hemisphere it’s autumn, or fall, right now, so there is a lot of vocabulary related to the colors, the weather and the feelings and moods of autumn. And hey, I even learned a new English expression from this conversation…listen and see if you can hear what that was. And if you’re interested in grammar there is a great example of the use of the modal verb would to talk about activities that you typically used to do in the past. There are also lots different types of conditional sentences in this conversation. So those are some things you can listen for if you are interested in picking out specific grammar points from this episode.

As always, you can find the transcript of this episode linked in the show notes. Or you can go to my website, betteratenglish.com, and find this transcript and many more all waiting there for you to download for your personal language study. My website also has all the different ways you can get in touch with me to let me know how you respond to these podcasts. What do you like? What don’t you like? What do you want more of? Less of? I make these podcasts for you, so if you have something to share with me, please do.

OK, let’s get started with the conversation. Are you ready? Here we go!

Conversation transcript

Lori: Oh, great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t know how old you were when you started learning English, but your English is…

Eliza: Ooh….I started learning English when I was a kid. I was seven years old at that time, or six, maybe six and a half at school. But you know, I took an interest in English in high school because I participated in Olympiads competitions. And I studied on my own for six hours per day. I bought books. My parents helped me a lot at that time, because we went to the capital of Belarus, Minsk, to buy British books, because the, the shop of British books was only in Minsk at that time. And I had no, the internet was not so widespread at that time. And I didn’t have any resources. So thanks to my parents, and they’re support I was able to buy a lot of books, and I just studied, studied and studied and crammed for hours on end. I participated in Olympiads and won, actually.

Lori: Oh, wow.

Eliza: Yeah, it’s a long story.

Lori: I think so cool to hear that the, the motivation and the interest came from within you. Because I mean, wouldn’t you agree that if you really want to learn and become super proficient at a language, you really do need that motivation?

Eliza: Exactly. Yeah. It’s not possible without it. Actually, maybe it’s not a good idea for a teacher to say so but I believe that being self taught, is sometimes more efficient, more effective, more productive than being taught by somebody else.

Lori: Yeah.

Eliza: Yeah. But not, but not everybody can be self taught…equally well, I mean. It takes a lot of self discipline, motivation.

Lori: Yeah.

Eliza: Yeah. It’s hard.

Lori: And I think most important is that you have a genuine need or that there’s something that you want to do with the language. That you really feel motivated, like, “I really want to be able to do this thing and I can’t do it now. So what do I need to do to be able to teach myself—or have a teacher help me be able—to do this thing that I want to do?” If you don’t have that, it’s, I don’t know…unless you have, like, more of an an interest just in language in general and find it fun to look at as more of, like, an object of study, then for me it seems like it’s hard to really make progress. But I digress, I digress. Have you been able…?

Eliza: Okay.

Lori: One thing about teaching online, I can imagine that you have to spend a lot of time inside at the computer is that…?

Eliza: It’s true. It’s true. Yeah. I’ve been searching for different materials for a long time before I stumbled upon something worthwhile to include into lessons. But actually, I’ve been teaching for many years. So that’s why for me now, it’s not that hard as it was, for example, nine years ago. No, it’s kind of just a walk in the park. If I may say so.

Lori: Yeah, a metaphorical walk in the park! But you are still…when you’re teaching and doing these things…you’re still inside, right? You don’t take your laptop outside and do lessons?

Eliza: Oh, you know, the weather now doesn’t enable me to do this. Of course, I would do this with pleasure, and I did it in the summer. Last summer. But now it’s not possible. Actually. I’m looking out of the window right now and I can see a drizzle…it’s drizzling… the sun… the sky’s overcast and, yeah, it’s not inviting. So no, I don’t want to go out, no.

Lori: I feel the same way…when I look outside and see it’s raining I’m not so motivated to get outside. But I will say as long as you have proper clothing and it’s not like just too terrible, you know, just totally pouring down [rain], with heavy winds or something. For me, the hardest part is just getting out the door. Once I’m out the door, then I find that it’s really, it’s not that bad, you know?

Eliza: Yeah, I agree. Especially, you can go leaf peeping. Yeah, not just going for a walk but leaf peeping. If you know what I mean?

Lori: Actually, I didn’t, you, we had talked earlier and you had mentioned this idea about leaf peeping. And I had no idea what it was.

Eliza: Yeah, it’s it’s a funny sounding term. Which means just obviously, what can you do with leaves? Yeah, when you are walking on a brisk, autumn morning, you can just pick leaves, red, yellow, russet, different colored leaves and just enjoy the views. Yeah, sort of this thing, yeah.

Lori: And apparently it’s actually a term, that is, an American term for basically going sightseeing with the goal of looking at beautiful autumn foliage, if I understand correctly, but I had never heard it heard it before. And at first I thought, “Ooh, that sounds a bit dodgy…leaf peeping!”

Eliza: It does!

Lori: …hiding in the bushes…hiding in the bushes and peeping out through the leaves!

Eliza: Oh, that’s what one of my students told me, yeah, when I asked him what he thinks it might mean. But yeah, it’s not that dodgy as it sounds. Actually it’s very beneficial if you go for a stroll in an autumn park and collect some leaves. It’s not just the idea of cleaning the leaves from the earth, from the ground, yeah, but enjoying the different colors and soaking up the atmosphere. Because according to some psychologists, it can boost your mood. Yeah, it can keep at bay some viruses and strengthen your immune system. So lots and lots of different benefits.

Lori: Yeah. And I would say that that probably generalizes to just being outdoors in general in pleasant surroundings, that it’s not specifically related to leaf peeping, or, you know, autumn foliage, but just in general, being outdoors, in pleasant surroundings, experiencing the wind on your face and the sun shining and seeing the plants and the trees, and if you’re lucky, maybe animals, that…that there’s something in us that just, it really makes us feel good.

Eliza: Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Maybe can be explained by the fact that we, as a human race, yeah, we’ve all lived close to nature more than we’ve lived in concrete jungles. Yeah, in cities in big cities. So yeah, actually, how long have been have we been living in cities? Yeah, in terms of history, yeah, for two centuries?

Lori: Yeah, something like that, I would say, it probably started…

Eliza: It’s a drop in the ocean.

Lori: …around the Industrial Revolution? But history is really not not at all…my expertise at all. But compared to our…the the course of human evolution, the time we lived in cities is…is just a tiny little blip, really.

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW
Get the full transcript for free here: https://www.betteratenglish.com/054-leaf-peeping-transcript

When you watch the news these days, do you trust your eyes and ears? Do you think what you’re seeing is real and happened the way it is being shown? Or is your first reaction to think: Hmm, I wonder if this video is fake? That’s what today’s episode is about, so stay tuned.

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW – Get the full transcript here: https://www.betteratenglish.com/053-is-seeing-believing-deepfakes-and-the-information-apocalypse-transcript

Before we get started, I hope you’ll indulge me in a little Better at English background info. I don’t do Better at English for the money, but some of you have been going out of your way to send me thank-you gifts. So thank you so much to Charles for his very generous Paypal donation, and to the mystery person who sent me the Handbook of Self-Determination research from my Amazon wish list. I honestly didn’t know that it was even possible to find my Amazon wish list anymore, so getting a mystery book delivered was a real surprise! I’d also like to thank Zhuo Tao (I hope I’m saying that right) who wrote my favorite review this month: It goes like this “This podcast is getting better and better by every episode. It’s no longer just some language learning material, but food for thought as well.” That is indeed what I’m trying to do, so that was really nice to get that feedback.

You can say thanks here: https://www.betteratenglish.com/support-better-at-english

All feedback from you lovely listeners, whether it’s reviews, email, voice messages, donations, Amazon wish list gifts…it’s all positive feedback that fuels my motivation to keep doing this…it’s a sign that you’re getting value from the episodes, which is what it’s all about. So thank you!

OK, thank you for indulging me…let’s get on with today’s topic.

Deepfakes and the Information Apocalypse
Today we’re looking at misinformation and disinformation in our modern age, and how technologies like deepfake are making it increasingly harder for us to know what is really happening in the world, to separate fact from fiction. This episode builds on my earlier episodes about AI—that’s artificial intelligence—which you can find further down the podcast feed as episodes 47 and 48.

Before we go any further, take a moment to ask yourself how much you trust what you see, hear, and read these days, whether it’s online, in a newspaper, or coming from an expert or politician in a live televised address. Is seeing believing, as the expression goes? Go ahead, think of some recent examples that are personally relevant to you. Now ask yourself how your beliefs about what is true influence your actions, how much they shape what you actually do as you move through life. How do these beliefs influence, for example, who you vote for, what you buy, what you eat, which books you read, which car you drive?

You don’t need to be a Ph.D. in psychology to understand that our beliefs about what is true or false affect our actions. Nobody wants to make decisions based on lies or misinformation, so we all want information that we can trust. Just to give a current example, look at what’s happening regarding masks and the Corona-virus. If you think masks do help stop the spread and protect others, you’re likely to wear one even though they are uncomfortable and it’s kind of a pain in the butt. And if you think masks don’t help at all, you are more likely to resist wearing a mask or even flat out refuse. I mean, why bother if they don’t work, right? And if you have really strong beliefs about this, you might even march in protest against the rules that require you to wear a mask. The point is, your chosen path will be based on what you believe is right and true.

We are living in a pretty crazy time right now, and humanity is facing huge challenges. And it’s no secret that many of the big issues are extremely polarizing. And if you try to build an informed opinion by examining the information and arguments of both sides, you make a frustrating discovery, or at least I did:
Both sides seem to have completely different interpretations of facts and reality. And each side believes it sees things correctly and the other side is hallucinating. Or crazy. Or just plain evil.

To borrow an analogy from the author Scott Adams, it’s as if we’re all watching the same movie screen, but we’re seeing two completely different movies at the same time. And each of us is convinced that our movie is the truth.

This “two movies on one screen” phenomenon is already happening with events that we all can agree really happened. We might not agree on what these events mean, who is responsible, what should be done about them etc., but we basically accept that they actually occurred in the physical world. Seeing is believing, right?

But what happens when the things we are seeing and hearing, the video, audio, and photos are 100% fake? And what happens when these fakes are everywhere? If we can have such serious disagreements, such polarization about genuine, real events, what is going to happen when we truly can’t be sure if the media we are seeing and hearing is real?

Some experts think that this is going to happen really soon. We are entering the era of deepfakes. If you’re not sure what a deepfake is, you will understand it by the end of this episode.

You are going to hear experts discussing this topic in English, and I’ll pop in from time to time to guide you through the examples.

The link to the full transcript of this episode is in the show notes, and there are also links to the audio you hear and the examples that the speakers mention, like videos, websites, books, etc. So if you find this topic interesting, there is plenty of supplementary material so you can learn more.

All right, let’s get started. First of all, what is deepfake?

Nina
So a deep fake is a type of synthetic media. And what synthetic media essentially is, is any type of media, it can be an image, it can be a video, it can be a text, that is generated by AI.

Lori
That was Nina Schick, who is, to put it mildly, a pretty impressive woman with a very interesting background:

Nina
I’m half German, and I’m half Nepalese. And so I’ve this background in geopolitics, politics, and information warfare. And my area of interest is really how the exponential changes in technology, and particularly in AI are rewriting not only politics, but society at large as well.

Lori
She’s also proficient in 7 languages. All I can say is, wow. You’ll now hear Nina talking to Sam Harris about deepfakes. It’s from an episode of Sam Harris’s podcast “Making Sense,” which is another great podcast for you to add to your list of interesting podcasts in English. Here we go:

Sam
So much of this is a matter of our entertaining ourselves into a kind of collective madness, and what seems like it could be a coming social collapse, I realized that if you’re not in touch with these trends, you know, if anyone in the audience who isn’t this kind of language coming from me, or anyone else can sound hyperbolic. But we’re really going over some kind of precipice here, with respect to our ability to understand what’s going on in the world, and to converge on a common picture of a shared reality. [EDIT] And again, we built the, the very tools of our derangement ourselves. And in particular, I’m talking about social media here. So your book goes into this. And it’s organized around this, this new piece of technology that we call deepfakes. And the book is Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse, which umm, that’s not your coinage, it…on the page is very easy to parse. When you say it, it’s hard to understand what’s being said there, but it’s really, you’re talking about an information apocalypse. Just remind people what deepfakes are, and suggest what’s at stake here in terms of, of how difficult it could be to make sense of our world in the presence of this technology.

Nina
This ability of AI to generate fake or synthetic media is really, really nascent. We’re only at the very, very beginning of the synthetic media revolution. It was only probably in about the last four or five years that this has been possible. And for the last two years that we’ve been seeing how the real-world applications of this have been leaching out from beyond the AI research community. So the first thing to say about synthetic media is that it is completely going to transform how we perceive the world, because in future, all media is going to be synthetic, because it means that anybody can create content to a degree of fidelity that is only possible for Hollywood studios right now, right? And they can do this for little to no cost using apps or software, various interfaces, which will make it so accessible to, to anyone. And the reason why this is so interesting.

Nina
Another reason why synthetic media is so interesting is until now, the best kind of computer effects CGI, do you still can’t quite get humans right. So when you use CGI to do effects where you’re trying to create robotic humans, it still doesn’t look right…it’s called, you know, uncanny valley. But it turns out that AI when you train your machine learning systems with enough data, they’re really really good at generating fake humans or synthetic humans, both in images, I mean, and when it comes to generating fake human faces, so images, still images, it’s already perfected that and if you want to kind of test that you can go and look at thispersondoesnotexist.com. Every time you refresh the page, you’ll see a new human face that to the human eye, to you, or, or me, Sam, we’ll look at that and we’ll think that’s an authentic human, whereas that is just something that’s generated by AI. That human literally doesn’t exist. And also now increasingly in other types of media like audio, and film. So I could take essentially a clip of a recording with you, Sam, and I could use that to train my machine learning system and then I can synthesize your voice so I can literally hijack your biometrics, I can take your voice, synthesize it, get my AI kind of machine learning system to recreate that. I can do the same with your digital likeness.

Obviously, this is going to have tremendous commercial applications; entire industries are going to be transformed. For example, corporate communications, advertising, the future of all movies, video games. But this is also the most potent form of mis- and disinformation, which are democratizing for almost anyone in the world at a time when our information ecosystem has already become increasingly dangerous and corrupt. [Edit] So we have to distinguish between the legitimate use cases of synthetic media and how we draw the line. So I very broad brush in my book say that the use of and intent behind synthetic media really matters and how we define it. So I refer to deepfake, as when a piece of synthetic media is used as a piece of mis- or disinformation. And, you know, there is so much more that you could delve into there with regards to the kind of the ethical implications on the taxonomy. But broadly speaking, that’s how I define it and that’s my definition between synthetic media and deep fakes.

Sam
Hmm. Well, so umm, as you point out, all of this would be good, clean, fun if it weren’t for the fact that we know there are people intent upon spreading misinformation and disinformation and doing it with a truly sinister political purpose. I mean, not not just for amusement, although that can be harmful enough. It’s it’s something that state actors and people internal to various states are going to leverage to further divide society from itself and increase political polarization. But it would, it’s amazing that it is so promising in the fun department that we can’t possibly even contemplate putting this cat back in the bag. I mean, it’s just, that’s the problem we’re seeing on all fronts. It is, so it is with social media. So it is with the, the ad revenue model that is selecting for so many of its harmful effects. I mean, we just can’t break the spell wherein people want the cheapest, most fun media, and they want it endlessly.

And yet the, the harms that are accruing, are so large that it’s, it’s amazing. Just to see that there is just no there’s no handhold here, whereby we can resist our slide toward the precipice. Just to underscore how quickly this technology is developing. In your book, you point out what happened with the…once Martin Scorsese released his film, The Irishman which had this exceedingly expensive, and laborious process of trying to DE-age its principal actors, Robert de Niro and Joe Pesci. And that was met with something like derision for the the imperfection of what was achieved there — again, at great cost. And then very, very quickly, someone on YouTube, using free software, did a nearly perfect de-aging of the same film. [You can see it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHSTWepkp_M ] It’s just amazing what what’s happening here. And, again, these tools are going to be free, right? I mean, they’re already free and and ultimately, the best tools will be free.

Nina
Absolutely. So you already have various kind of software platforms online. And so the barriers to entry have come down tremendously. Right now, if you wanted to make a convincing deepfake video, you would still need to have some knowledge, some knowledge of machine learning, but you wouldn’t have to be an AI expert by any means. But already now we have apps that allow people to do certain things like swap their faces into scenes, for example, Reface I don’t know if you’ve come across that app. I don’t know how old your children are. But if you have a teenager you’ve probably come across it. You can basically put your own face into a popular scene from a film like Titanic or something. This is using the power of synthetic media. But experts who I speak to on the generation side — because it’s so hugely exciting to people who are generating synthetic media — think that by the end of the decade, any YouTuber, any teenager, will have the ability to create special effects in film that are better than anything a Hollywood studio can do now. And that’s really why I put that anecdote about the Irishman into the book because it just demonstrates the power of synthetic media. I mean, Scorsese was working on this project from 2015. He filmed with a special three-rig camera, he had this best special effects artists, post-production work, multi-million dollar budget, and still the effect at the end wasn’t that convincing. It didn’t look quite right. And now one YouTuber, free software, takes a clip from Scorsese’s film in 2020. So Scorsese’s film came out in 2019. This year, he can already create something that’s far more…when you look at it…looks far more realistic than what Scorsese did. This is just in the realm of video. As I already mentioned, with images, it can already do it perfectly. There is also the case of audio. There is another YouTuber, for example, who makes a lot of the kind of early pieces of synthetic media have sprung up on YouTube. There’s a YouTuber called Vocal Synthesis, who uses an open-sourced AI model to train a…trained on celebrities voices

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW — You can find the full transcript here

Material used in this episode

The Making Sense Podcast with Sam Harris
Episode #220 The Information Apocalypse: A Conversation with Nina Schick
https://samharris.org/podcasts/220-information-apocalypse/

Deepfakes: Is This Video Even Real? Claire Wardle of the New York Times
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1OqFY_2JE1c

Vocal Synthesis Youtube Channel – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCRt-fquxnij9wDnFJnpPS2Q
6 presidents read the Twilight Zone intro – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2HlDk-u1hQ

Donald Trump reads the Darth Plagueis copypasta – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEzIAixNkFI

Supplementary Material

Nina Schick’s Book: Deepfakes: The Coming Infocalypse

Deepfakes: A threat to democracy or just a bit of fun?
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-51204954

The Irishman – de-Aging of Robert de Niro
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dHSTWepkp_M

Here’s why deepfakes are the perfect weapon for the ‘infocalypse’ – By Nina Schick

https://lifestyle.livemint.com/smart-living/innovation/here-s-why-deepfakes-are-the-perfect-weapon-for-the-infocalypse-111602247119544.html

Deepfakes: How to prepare your organization for a new type of threat
https://www.accenture.com/nl-en/blogs/insights/deepfakes-how-prepare-your-organization

A deepfake porn bot is being used to abuse thousands of women
https://www.wired.co.uk/article/telegram-deepfakes-deepnude-ai

Deepfake video of Vladimir Putin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sbFHhpYU15w

Deepfake video of Kim Jong-Un
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ERQlaJ_czHU

Access Hollywood tape with Donald Trump and Billy Bush (2016) – vulgar, profanity, not safe for work
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FSC8Q-kR44o

Actress in Trump’s ‘Access Hollywood’ Tape reacts to Trump’s claim that he’s not sure he “actually said that”.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uRIPFJcPbq4

Talking about fat and fat bodies is a tricky area to navigate in English because the word FAT is so laden with meaning, associations, emotions, and feelings — and these are different for everyone. In this episode, you’ll hear a wide variety of people who self-identify as fat talking about their experiences. You’ll hear how they think, feel and talk about their own bodies and how they experience things as a person of size. There are many registers (styles) of English represented here, as well as many different regional dialects. Links to all sources are provided, and most of these are videos. I encourage you to watch the videos to see the language being used in context. A transcript preview is below. You can find a pdf of the full transcript here: https://www.betteratenglish.com/052-the-other-f-word-talking-about-fat-transcript

I hope you find this episode thought provoking and useful.

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

Hi English learners, Lori here, your teacher from betteratenglish.com. In today’s episode you are going to hear various people’s thoughts, opinions and feelings related to the f-word. No, not the swear word you hear all the time in movies and TV. I’m talking about the other F-word: fat. Yes, fat.

Madison A Krall

Let’s talk about fat bias and thin privilege | Madison A. Krall | TEDxMileHigh
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gak58BcuPh0

Madison: When you hear the word fat what thoughts and images come to mind? Some of you might think of fat as the extra 10 pounds you’re currently trying to lose. Others might be thinking, “Hmm, I wonder what the fat content was in the bag of potato chips I had for lunch?” And some of you when you hear the word fat, might think back to that time in middle school when someone called you fat, and how it has affected the rest of your life. Let’s just admit it. Fat can be a pretty loaded word, no matter who you are.

Kelli Jean Drinkwater
Enough with the fear of fat | Kelli Jean Drinkwater
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bzlYyhh3X0w

Kelli: I’m here today to talk to you about a very powerful little word, one that people will do almost anything to avoid becoming. Billion-dollar industries thrive because of the fear of it, and those of us who undeniably are it are left to navigate a relentless storm surrounding it. I’m not sure if any of you have noticed, but I’m fat. Not the lowercase, muttered-behind-my-back kind, or the seemingly harmless chubby or cuddly. I’m not even the more sophisticated voluptuous or curvaceous kind. Let’s not sugarcoat it. I am the capital F-A-T kind of fat. I am the elephant in the room.

Fat | Eating Disorders | One Word | Cut
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UWXwIPs-xWg

Speaker 1: There are lots of good fats, and I don’t think fat on your body is a bad thing. And I don’t think fat in your food means fat on your body but it’s been used as hate speech.

Speaker 2: Fat can be a hateful word. It can destroy some people. But in some ways fat can be good. And depending on how you image yourself, your fat can actually be great.

Speaker 3: I see a lot of mothers with their daughters say, don’t eat that or else you’re gonna get fat. It’s like, is that really the one thing that you don’t want your daughter to be?

*********

Yes, a fat is a loaded word that raises a lot of feelings, emotions, and associations. I’m taking a risk with this episode, because, as you’ll hear, conversations around fat and body size can quickly lead you into precarious territory, even if you have the best of intentions. It’s a highly charged topic. But I think that’s all the more reason to understand different people’s perspectives on fat and being fat, and to have language to talk about it sensitively.

Apart from vocabulary related to the topic, in this episode you’ll hear many registers or styles of English: conversations, extracts from prepared talks like TED talks, segments from interviews, and even monologues from people on Youtube. You’ll also hear many regional varieties of English, as well as at least one non-native speaker of English.

All in all, you will hear a wide variety of authentic English, illustrating many of the ways people talk, think and feel about fat bodies. You’ll also be hearing people describe concepts such as body positivity, body shaming, concern trolling, and lots general vocabulary related to the overall topic.

I have put links to all the sources you are going to hear in the transcript for this episode, which you can find at betteratenglish.com/transcripts . They all come from videos, so I encourage you to follow the links so you can see as well as hear the language in context.

So let’s get started. We’ll begin with a question. Is it appropriate to tell someone, “You look great! Have you lost weight?” At first glance, it seems like it could be a compliment. But is it really? I’m going to play an extract from the podcast “Inappropriate questions.” Listening to this podcast is what sent me down the rabbit hole of inquiry that led to this episode. In this podcast, the two hosts, Elena and Harv, talk to people who identify as fat or plus size to find out what they think about this question.

Elena is from the U.S.A., and Harv is from India. They start off by talking about people’s general attitudes toward weight in their different home countries.

********

Inappropriate Questions podcast
https://www.cbc.ca/listen/cbc-podcasts/414-inappropriate-questions

Elena
Harv, when you were growing up in India, what were people’s attitudes about weight like?

Harv
Oh, India had different beauty standard, at least at that time…

Elena
Right.

Harv
So if somebody was a little, what is considered an overweight here [it] was considered good. Because that person had enough money to eat food.

Elena
Right.

Harv
So so they used to use the word healthy. Then again, things have changed there as well, because again, obesity have, has become a problem in India. So again, the attitudes have changed. But at that time, it was very, very different.

Elena
Huh! That’s interesting. Do you think right now India’s beauty standards are kind of, like, the way they are here? [In the U.S.A.]

Harv
Pretty much, pretty much.

Elena
So thinness is really valued.

Elena
Now, yes.

Elena
And thinness is kind of associated with beauty and health.

Harv
Yeah, all those good things you, you know, even if you don’t go to the gym, it’s assumed that…

Elena
Yes!

Harv
…you work out.

Elena
Yes. You get the automatic

Harv
Yes.

Elena
benefit of the doubt.

Elena
Absolutely. Absolutely.

Elena
I love seeing more body positive stuff on the internet these days. I love seeing people who are trying to encourage more self love and self care. But sometimes I can’t put that into practice. I go home and I look at Instagram. And then I look at myself in the mirror. And I’m like, I know in my head that every body is beautiful. But then I look at my body. I’m like, no, I still feel bad about it.

Harv
So sometimes they say ignorance is bliss.

Elena
Yes.

Harv
Where I am, millennials have a whole lot of tools. The social media tools.

Elena
Yes.

Harv
All I have is a mirror.

Elena
Right.

Harv
That helps me tie my turban.

Harv
Yeah, so I don’t even look at my body.

[laughter]

Next you’ll hear Elena and Harv talking to a woman of size for her perspective on the question “Have you lost weight?” Her name is Steph Conover, but she likes to go by her state name, Ivory. Here is how Ivory describes herself:

Ivory
I am a mixed-race, six-foot, dragon lady. I’m a fire breather, stage performer, and a whole lot of woman.

Ivory is also an athlete, a plus size model, and is an active promoter of self love and body positivity. You’ll hear more about body positivity later. In the following extract, you’ll hear what Ivory thinks about the question “Have you lost weight?” You’ll also hear her talk about what it was like growing up and living in a larger body, and how the way she describes her own body has evolved over time.

Elena
Can you tell us about a time someone asked you, “Have you lost weight?”

Ivory
Oh boy. It happens all the time. It happens so often that I actually don’t take it in anymore.

Elena
Right

Ivory
You know, I’ll style my hair differently. I’ll wear a different article of clothing. And people think that it’s complimentary to say Wow, you look great! Have you lost weight? And it’s weird because as somebody who’s recovered from eating disorders, as somebody who still battles depression, there’s part of me that actually has that instant boost of serotonin where I go, “Ah! I look great! I’m skinny”

Group
[Sounds of sympathy]

Ivory
I’m like, “Bitch, you are a plus sized lady, you have not lost any weight and if you have it will probably find you and that’s okay. You can exist at whatever size you exist at and be happy there.”

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

VOCABULARY IN CONTEXT on YOUGLISH.com

Fat shaming
https://youglish.com/pronounce/fat%20shaming/english?

Body positivity
https://youglish.com/pronounce/body%20positivity/english?

Body positive
https://youglish.com/pronounce/body%20positive/english?

Fat acceptance
https://youglish.com/pronounce/fat%20acceptance/english?

Concern trolling
https://youglish.com/pronounce/concern%20trolling/english?

Body shaming
https://youglish.com/pronounce/body%20shaming/english?

Fat
https://youglish.com/pronounce/fat/english?

Did you know that you can get FREE transcriptions of any podcast in English, and that it’s fast and easy to do? That’s right, ANY PODCAST! And did I say FREE? If you are serious about your English learning, you will love Otter.ai — a FREE online service that transcribes audio files. This means podcasts, audio taken from videos, anything at all where the language is fairly clear. All you do is upload the file to otter.ai, and then let the A.I do the rest. It’s unbelievably awesome. You can watch my little YouTube demo video demo here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gw4jviWdno

You can find Otter.ai here:
https://otter.ai

Note: This is not a sales pitch, I don’t have any involvement with Otter.ai other than being a very satisfied customer (I use their paid plan because I need the extra features. You won’t need extra features unless you want to transcribe more than 10 hours of audio per month, or if you need to transcribe files that are longer than 40 minutes each.)

The transcript of this audio podcast is below.

If you get value from my podcasts, please leave a rating or review. It really helps me a lot!

Cheers,
Lori

TRANSCRIPT
Hi, English learners, Lori here, your teacher from betteratenglish.com. Today, I don’t have a conversation for you, I’m actually working on the next conversational episode. And that should be up in the next couple of days. But as I was working on it, I realized that the online service, the tool that I use to transcribe the conversations would be super, super useful for your English learning. So I just wanted to share that with you today, and let you know about it so you can try it yourself.

First of all, let’s get this out of the way. It’s completely free. And I don’t make any money for recommending it to you. No one is asking me to tell you this. It’s simply something that I use myself and that I think, is really awesome. And I think it would almost be a crime for me to not let you know about it.

“Okay, okay, Lori. All right, fine, get on with it, let us know what it is.”

Okay, the tool is called Otter.ai. That’s O T T E R dot A I. And what it is, is an online service where you can upload audio files, and it, the artificial intelligence will create a transcript of the audio.

But that’s not even the best part. For me, I think the most useful thing, the thing that makes it so awesome for learning English, is that once the AI is finished with your transcript, you can listen to the audio as you’re reading the transcript, and then you can click anywhere in the transcript, and the audio will jump to that section.

So just imagine the implications of this. Now you can take any audio file with spoken English, and you can upload it, have it transcribed for free, and then listen to it, click anywhere in the transcript, and listen to just that part. So if you find a section that you want to do some kind of listen-and-repeat practice for your pronunciation or your intonation, or just to kind of “wrap your mouth around” a new piece of language, it’s super, super easy to do now.

I think it’s just so great that you can go and find any podcast in English, anything that you want to listen to anything that you want to learn from, and it doesn’t matter if they have already given you a transcript or not. You can just upload the file and make your own which is super, super awesome.

The free plan on otter.ai does have some limitations. And one of those is that you can only transcribe 10 hours’ worth of audio per month. So every month it resets and you get another 10 hours. And the files that you upload can only be up to 40 minutes long. So if you have a super long, say, an epic Joe Rogan podcast that’s three hours long, you’re going to have to –before you upload it for transcription — you are going to have to cut that up into 40 minute segments if you want to transcribe the whole thing.

kind of difficult to explain these things in an audio podcast. So I have made a YouTube video where I just do a quick little demo to show you what it is and how you can use it and I’ve put the link to that in the show notes. So I hope I’ve managed to get you excited about the idea of giving Otter.ai try.

all I had for this time. I’m going to get back to work now and try to finish up that new episode for you, so you can look for that in the next couple of days. Until then, this is Lori signing off from Better at English headquarters, wishing you and inspired and productive day.
Bye for now!

Imagine if you will, the following scenario. You’ve volunteered to take part in a psychology study, say, at your university. All you have to do is show up to the lab, sit by yourself in a little booth and play a very simple game of chance, something like flipping a coin, where there’s no skill involved, only luck. You get paid one dollar just for showing up, that’s guaranteed. And if you’re lucky and win the game, you’ll get paid 5 dollars cash. But if you lose, you get nothing.

Here’s the kicker: it’s up to you to tell the researchers if you won or lost, they won’t be able to tell.

So there are three possible outcomes: you can win and get 5 dollars, you can lose and get nothing, or….you can lose, but lie and still get the 5 dollars. And nobody will know. What would you do? What do you think other people would do?

As it happens, a recent study just looked at this, and there was a cunning little twist: those crafty researchers actually DID know if people won or lost. So they also knew if people told the truth about it or if they lied.

The study, called “Cheaters, Liars, or Both? A New Classification of Dishonesty Profiles” is absolutely fascinating. And today you’ll hear a conversation ‒ in American English – with some people discussing it. The conversation is from one of my favorite podcasts, The Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe. It’s a podcast featuring smart people having interesting discussions about science, technology, and critical thinking. If you are at all interested in those topics, I highly recommend it for your English listening practice. This is definitely a show that will make you smarter, and will teach you lots of vocabulary. The episodes don’t always have transcripts, but I’ve transcribed the part you’re going to hear today and put it in the show notes, which you can find at betteratenglish.com/transcripts.

You know, if you like, you can turn this episode into a more challenging task for yourself. In the show notes you’ll also find a link to a New York Times article about the study. In the conversation you’ll hear a woman summarizing this same article to her friends. So before you continue listening, you can hit pause and go read the article yourself. Then imagine how you might summarize it for friend and what you might discuss. What language would you use? What vocabulary would you need? Spend a few moments imagining how you might talk about it with a group of friends. Then listen to the rest of this podcast and compare your ideas with what you hear in the conversation.

All right, let’s get to it. You’ll hear a woman named Cara doing most of the talking. She explains the study’s findings to her friends Steve, Bob, Jay, and Evan. They they all discuss what they make of it. Are you ready? Let’s go:

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW
Get the full transcript here

Steve: All right, Cara, you’re gonna tell us about the psychology of lying and cheating.

Cara: Right! So this is a field of psychological inquiry that goes back basically to the beginning of experimental psychology, right? Psychologists, psychologists have always been interested in deception. So a new paper said, OK, well, we want to do is we want to see if we can sort of beef up and retest some old concepts in the kind of construct of lying, cheating deception, but we want to go beyond that. And we want to say, Okay, this is not an all or nothing phenomenon, right? Like, you could say, That person’s a liar, or that person lied, or that person’s a cheater, that person’s dishonest, but there are shades of grey, aren’t there?

Steve: Mm hmm.

Evan: Of course, of course.

Bob: Yeah, absolutely. Little white lies.

Cara: Totally. There lies that actually help us.

Bob: There are lies that actually get people killed.

Cara: Yep. Lies to get people killed and lies that we can’t help but but commit, that’s not a good word. But tell? Yeah, because they’re the only they’re the best of a bad situation we’re dealing with or something like that. So they set up, you know, a standard classic laboratory psychology paradigm, which does not necessarily translate to the real world. So let’s keep that in mind. And they set up two paradigms. One of them was a coin flip paradigm, and one of them was a die roll paradigm.

And basically, they said, you know, if you roll heads, you get money. If you roll tails, you get no money. Or if you flip heads, if you flip tails, and then on the die paradigm, they went into levels. So they said, you know, if you roll a one, you get $1, a two, you get $2, a three $3. But if you roll a six, that’s unlucky, so you get no dollars. So those are basically the two experiments that they ran.

And they found that people by and large, had similar response. There were people who were totally honest. So they would flip the coin, they would hit heads, and they would say, got heads, give me my five bucks. Or they would flip tails and they would say, you know, I flipped tails. I don’t get any money. Okay, cool. All right. So you could flip a coin, and you’re gonna be lucky enough that you flip heads you’re, and that’s where you get a $5 payout, you’re probably gonna say, hey, look, I flipped heads, you’re gonna be honest about that, because you want the money.

So they decided, let’s take all those people out of the equation. And let’s just look at the people who flip tails. Because now all the sudden there’s incentive, right? You could either flip tails, and not get the money and be honest about it. And that is what 41% of the people in the lab setting where they did it in front of actual researchers said, only 37% of people in a Mechanical Turk situation.

So Mechanical Turk, have you guys ever used that? I think it’s Amazon’s like survey, study software. And so this is like it’s a coin flip simulation online. So it was this slightly lower number, it was 37%. But still, less than half of the people who flipped tails reported honestly that they flipped tails.

Then there was another group that they called the “cheating non liars.” I love this. So these people flip the coin got tails, and were like, “Crap, I’m just gonna keep flipping until I get heads,” which was breaking the rules, the rules was you flip once, but they said, screw it. I’m just gonna keep flipping. And then when they finally got heads, they were like, Hey, I got heads, let me have my $5.

So this was 17% of the people in front of researchers. 7% of the people online, and another group were what they called “the liars.” So these people flipped the coin got tails, and just straight up, go, “No, I got heads.” 23% of people just straight up lied. And then they found a fourth group. And this group is fascinating, you guys. They called them the “radically dishonest people.” And this is the group that I’m really interested in, like, can we develop a psychometric tool so that we can test these people and then start learning about them? So these people didn’t even bother to flip the coin!

Group: Wow! Whoa!

Cara: They just go, “Oh, yeah, I got heads.”

Group: Wow. Whoa.

Cara: So it’s like, they were like double liars. They lied about participating, and they lied about the outcome.

Steve: What about “lying sack of shit?” What group were they in?

Group: [Laughter]

Cara: I think that’s radically dishonest, the lying sack of shits.

Evan: Oh, man.

Cara: And so this is really fascinating, because I think there are two components here that we we maybe intuitively thought about, just like Bob mentioned earlier, you know, there’s the lies that could get you killed. There’s also the lies that just feel cruel, or they feel like pathologically dishonest and then there are the lies where it’s like, I understand the ethical or moral reason that this person lied. And I think we can start to dig deep into just this very clean laboratory experiment to tease out some of those issues. For example, you’ve got your straight-up honest people, you’ve got straight-up lucky people, then you’ve got your just straight-up liars.

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

If you are enjoying this Better at English podcast, please take a moment to rate it, review it, or share the love :-)

LINKS TO SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

PDF transcript of this podcast episode

Link to the Skeptics’ Guide to the Universe Podcast episode
https://www.theskepticsguide.org/podcasts/episode-793

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/15/science/psychology-dishonesty-lying-cheating.html
The Good, the Bad and the ‘Radically Dishonest’ – New York Times article

Link to full text of the actual study “ Cheaters, Liars, or Both? A New Classification of Dishonesty Profiles.”
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343591254_Cheaters_Liars_or_Both_A_New_Classification_of_Dishonesty_Profiles

Link to the actual game website used in the study. Try playing it yourself!

http://rollandflip.com

GENERAL ENGLISH LEARNING RESOURCES

Loserthink

This is a great book by Scott Adams (creator of the Dilbert cartoons) about critical thinking and all the ways our brain tries to fool us by Scott Adams. This link is to the summary version on Blinkist, which contains audio so you can listen as you read. https://blinkist.o6eiov.net/loserthink

Neighbors can be great friends, but let’s face it: sometimes they can be absolutely horrible. But what do you do when you’re stuck living next to a neighbor who you just can’t get along with, no matter what you try? In this episode of Better at English, Lori introduces you to the “How To” podcast with Charles Duhigg. It’s a conversational podcast that covers ways to deal with all kinds of life problems, and does so in an entertaining and fun way. And best of all, it has free transcripts that you can use for your English learning. Lori plays some extracts from the conversation, and looks at some of the interesting language.

The full transcript of this episode is here:

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW
Hi English learners! Lori here, your teacher from betteratenglish.com. So nice that you’re here! Come on in, kick off your shoes, sit back and get ready for some English listening practice.

Today I’m going to play you some bits of conversation from one of my current favorite podcasts. It’s not a special English learning podcast; it’s a podcast for native speakers of English. But if you can follow along with the conversations in my own podcast, you should be able to follow this one as well. Just like I do, they have free transcripts available on their website, so you can use them to support your English learning. I’ve put links to everything in the show notes.

The name of the podcast is “How to with Charles Duhigg”. If the name Charles Duhigg is familiar to you, it could be that you’ve heard of his book “T he Power of Habit.” If you’re an upper-intermediate or advanced learner and you’re interested in psychology, I can highly recommend it. The Power of Habit is one of those books that teaches you something useful and just makes your life better. Charles’s podcast is the same: it’s entertaining, of course, but it also teaches you useful strategies that you can apply in your own life.

“How to” is an interview show, so it’s very conversational. Charles helps people figure out how to deal with difficult or awkward problems. He usually has a co-host who is either a celebrity or some kind of expert.

In the episode called “How to confront a crazy neighbor,” Charles’s co-host is comedian and actor Tig Notaro. Their guest is a woman named Sarah. Sarah is in the middle of a very unpleasant and stressful conflict with her neighbor. Charles and Tig are going to help her figure out what to do. First let’s listen to Sarah giving some background information about her living situation:

“My name is Sarah and I’m a college counselor. I work with high school students who are low income, and I just bought a condo this year. This is the first time I’ve ever owned a house or anything. So that was pretty exciting. It’s a small building, there are just three units in it. So it’s me living on the first floor and then a guy who lives behind me and then a family who lives upstairs.”

Sara mentions that she lives in a condo. Condo is short for condominium. In the US, a condo is like an apartment or flat, but with one big difference. Do you know what it is? Can you guess from what you heard? Listen again:

“I just bought a condo this year. This is the first time I’ve ever owned a house or anything. So that was pretty exciting.“

The key word is bought. Sarah said she bought the condo, not that she rents it. So the difference between a condo and an apartment or flat is that in a condo, you own the space that you live in – the unit. You actually buy it, and you can sell it. But in an apartment you just pay rent every month. You don’t actually own an apartment unit. So buying a condo is a much bigger deal than just renting an apartment because it’s such a big financial investment.

In Sarah’s condo building, there are three living units – it sounds like they are all attached. She shares a common front porch area with the other people who live there.

So you’re probably wondering, “What’s the problem?” Sarah had bought a plant – a fern – to hang on the front porch, but she didn’t ask the other neighbors if it was OK. That was the start of the whole trouble. Let’s listen to what happened. You’ll hear Tig, Sarah and Charles in this little extract.

TIG: …what happened?

SARAH: So one day I got this note in my mailbox from the wife who lives upstairs and it said, “I am done trying to communicate with you. It is clear that you, um, are just going to, like, disregard my feelings and you don’t care about anybody but yourself. So from now on, I am only going to communicate with you through condo meetings.”

Charles: Whoa! Did you have any idea what she was talking…like, this is literally the first…?

Sarah: No.No. So this is what was so wild about it, was that I just got this letter and I had no idea what it was about. And it just said, “I’m anti power trips. Don’t involve my family in this. If you have any frustrations, you need to bring it up in the condo meeting.”

Tig: First of all, when somebody says “I’m anti power trips,” the translation is “I am all about power trips.”

Wow, I don’t know about you, but I would feel pretty upset if I got a note like that from a neighbor. The language is just so confrontational. Did you notice Sarah’s tone of voice as she read the note? She used a very angry tone of voice. She probably imagines that her neighbor felt very angry when she wrote the note.

And what about this:

Tig: First of all, when somebody says “I’m anti power trips,” the translation is “I am all about power trips.”

Power trip. If somebody enjoys controlling other people, or showing that they have power over them, you can say that they’re on a power trip. Or that they’re power tripping. The feeling of having the power to control other people makes them feel good somehow. They often exert their power in inappropriate ways that make other people feel bad.

Let’s go on and see how Sarah feels about this note.

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

LINKS TO SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

The How to with Charles Duhigg podcast
How To is a conversational podcast that features smart people talking about interesting things and tackling tricky problems.
Charles Duhigg is a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, and the author one of my favorite books, a bestseller titles The Power of Habit (Try the audio book summary of The Power of Habit on Blinkist)

The episode featured in this episode, “How to deal with a Crazy Neighbor,” is here:

You can find the episode transcript here:

How to deal with neighbor harassment
This is an interesting article about how to deal with a neighbor who is harassing you
https://ohmyapt.apartmentratings.com/how-to-deal-with-neighbor-harassment.html

This is NOT a sales episode, I promise! Seriously, I have found and tested the BEST place to find people to practice speaking English with for free. It only takes 5 minutes to set up an account, and you’ll be up and running, practicing your English with nice people from all over the world. No hidden charges, no sales, I promise you…as of September 2020 when I am publishing this podcast, it’s 100% free. There aren’t even annoying ads! No excuses. Start speaking NOW. :-)

You can find free4talk.com here. It’s a great place to practice speaking with other non-native speakers.
If you prefer to have structured lessons with a native speaker teacher, italki is probaby still the best value. But for FREE speaking practice, definitely check out free4talk! For my list of other places where you can practice your English online, see this page.

TRANSCRIPT
Hi, English learners, Lori here, your teacher from betteratenglish.com.

Today I have a very short and simple episode for you. Now, I know a lot of you really want to get more English speaking practice, because you’re mainly concerned with becoming more fluent with your English speaking. But the problem is that you have a hard time finding people to practice with, especially since, you know, it can be expensive to get an online teacher, and you don’t have money and I totally, totally understand.

So what if I told you that five minutes after listening to this podcast you could be online, joining in a whole community of people just like you who want to practice their English. And you could actually be practicing, literally within five minutes.

I swear it blew my mind when I found this site. It’s called Free4talk.com, and it’s 100% free.

And I promise you, I have no vested interest in this website. I don’t know them. They’re not paying me anything. I don’t make any money for recommending it to you. I just think it’s such an amazing resource that I would actually feel really bad if I didn’t tell you all about it.

Now, if you’re already listening and thinking, “Oh, no, no, that’s not for me. I’ve already tried conversation exchanges and it’s a real pain in the butt because I have to first log in and look at a bunch of profiles and then find somebody and then send a message and, and hope that they’re going to get back to me and then we have to arrange a time and then more often than not, when I show up for our appointment, there’s nobody there, they’ve totally flaked on me.” And I get it. That is a real pain, and that is frustrating. And you’ve spent all this time and still not gotten any practice.

I promise you free4talk is 1000 times easier. Literally, within five minutes, you can find the site, create an account, log in, find a room and start talking to people. And the big difference between free4talk and these other conversation exchange sites is that it’s based on chat rooms. And that makes it super, super easy.

I’ve been logging in off-and-on over the past couple of weeks and giving it a try. And the good news for all of you who are listening who are learning English, is that English is by far the most popular language. Every time that I’ve logged in there’s been at least 40 different chat rooms. Sometimes there’s been close to 100 different chat rooms of learners all over the world, people just like you who are on there to practice their English.

So I hope this is getting you excited. And that you’re thinking “Yeah, cool. I want to go try it.” So here’s what you’re going to need if you want to try it. All you need is a computer with a mic. Or you can also use an Android phone or an iPhone. And you’re going to need a Google account because that’s how you log in. I think the site is actually based on the same engine that drives Google Hangouts. So you can’t use it if you don’t have a Google account.

I won’t bore you by explaining every detail about how you log in and create your account and all that. I trust that you are competent enough as a user of the internet to be able to figure that out yourself. All I want to do here is just encourage you to take action and actually give it a try and get on there and start practicing your English.

And if you’re listening to this thinking, “Oh, but no, I’m still too shy. Oh, that sounds too scary. I don’t want to go on there and speak to people I don’t know”. In my experience, it’s OK to join one of the rooms and just type in the chat that you’re shy and you really just want to listen. I’ve actually tested that myself. And in the rooms where I’ve tried that, the people there have totally understood and it’s been totally fine.

So if you are shy, and it still feels a bit too scary to go on and start talking to people, you can go on and just try some rooms, join and say, “Can I just listen please?” and just get used to the idea and learn how to use the site.

And then when you feel ready, you can start talking. It’s really that simple. And you really have nothing to lose by giving this a try. I hope this is getting you excited about it and that you’re really keen to finish this podcast and just head over to free4talk.com and sign up and give it a try.

I think I should warn you though, that there are a couple things to watch out for, just like anywhere on the internet. It’s mostly nice people, mostly people just like you who all they want to do is practice their English with other nice people. The vast majority are like that on free4talk. But like anywhere else on the internet, there are also jerks and idiots and trolls who are there to just cause trouble, make other people feel bad. And that’s how they get their kicks. So just beware that you might run into the occasional person who is going to be not very nice.

The good news is, is that free for talk has mechanisms in place to help you kick people out and block people if they’re causing trouble. So please, please don’t let that stop you from using this amazing and fantastic resource.

Now, if this hasn’t convinced you yet, I’ll tell you about my experience yesterday. I knew I wanted to record this podcast. So I wanted to make sure that I had really tested the site properly, and that I knew how everything worked. So I logged on and I quickly created an English chat group and I named it “Just Testing.” And I thought, “OK, that’s safe. I can go on here and it’s called ‘Just Testing’ so I don’t have to worry about wasting people’s time by having them join my group and find out that I’m just testing my mic and trying things.”

That’s what I thought.

I kid you not, within 20 seconds — I had not even really had time to get started with my tests — there were already people joining my group to practice. I talked to two people from Iran. And they were the most lovely people. It was a guy and a girl. And we were there talking for close to 40 minutes, I think it was, and I had the most lovely conversation with them. It was really not how I had planned to spend that 40 minutes, but once I started talking with them, they were so interesting. And we had such a nice discussion. It was really a wonderful experience and they were so, so nice.

So I hope that this will encourage you to go on there, give it a try, and please, let me know how it goes for you. You can go to my website betteratenglish.com and let me know how it goes for you. And, and who knows, I might even see you on there. And we might even have a little chat because I do log in from time to time as Better at English and join chat rooms to be of any help that I can be, or just enjoy listening to the non-native speakers helping each other.

It is truly heartwarming, especially in these horrible times when there’s so much awful stuff going on that I hear how the more advanced learners are there and they’re helping the ones who are not as advanced. And they’re playing games with each other and doing pronunciation practice and having conversations and working on grammar and I can’t say just how wonderful I thought the whole thing was. Again, they’re not paying me to say this. There’s no check in in the mail, I just sincerely am hoping that I, that this will get you excited about it and that you’ll want to give it a try.

So that’s it for me for this time I am working on a new conversation episode for you and I should have that up in another couple of days. But for now, I just wanted to give you this tip about how you can get — today in the next five minutes — how you can be practicing your spoken English with other real, live people just like you. So give it a try. And until next time, this is Lori signing off from Better at English headquarters, wishing you and inspired and productive day. Bye for now.

Here comes part 2 of Lori and Will’s discussion about A.I. and automation. If you enjoy these podcasts, please take a moment and rate or review. You can find the full transcript at https://www.betteratenglish.com/transcripts.

TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

Lori: I heard that…I think it’s Pizza Hut already has… or no… Domino’s is already experimenting with robot pizza delivery vehicles. Yeah. I mean, this this is happening now.

Will: Well, you know, a main…I’ve been talking about this whole automation thing….oh, by the way, jot this down. If you’ve never seen it. There’s a, there’s a short 15-minute video on YouTube called Humans Need not Apply. And it puts the entire conversation and frames it into a perfect, digestible, understandable video that explains automation for anybody who’s interested and doesn’t have, you know, hours of time to spend on the topic.

Lori: Oh yeah, great, thanks!

Will: So jot that down. Yep, no problem.

Lori: Done.

Will: But Amazon, which everybody knows who Amazon is, the company, they did, they did something about maybe six months ago or so. They implemented a grocery store that had no cashiers, it was set up with turnstiles that using your mobile device, you would log in before you entered the store. You would get whatever you needed at the market, groceries, whatever you needed, and you would leave, you wouldn’t stand in a line you would just walk through the turnstile and be automatically charged to your account. And I remember when Amazon did this I kind of freaked out a little bit because I, I said, you know, I sounded like the crazy preacher man running down the hill, I said to anybody I’d ever spoken to the topic about, they’re testing a patent for this type of framework to be rolled out on a larger scale to the supermarket industry. And in the past week, Amazon has purchased Whole Foods and I am positive that it is connected to their concept of implementing this…you know, cashierless…you know, turnstile, just walk in and walk out, fully automated, market shopping experience.

Lori: Wow, I ….Oh, my goodness. I didn’t know that they had bought Whole Foods.

Will: Yep. In the past week. I lost my mind when I read it.

Lori: Wow. Wow. I mean, it’s something like that, I mean, a lot of people would lose their jobs or you know, the the poor cashiers. But at the same time, it sounds like a nice shopping experience, that you just walk in, get your things and walk out and everything is taken care of…I …provided that it’s all accurately…that you’re accurately charged for your items.

Will: Yes. Of course, and it’s a perfect…it’s a perfect example of “If it works for the consumer…” which it sounds like that’s a no brainer. And there…if the quarterly numbers come out for Whole Foods, and they see massive profits as a result of not having to carry those salaries and that that level of overhead as a result of employing humans, then it’ll also make sense from a business perspective. And we will inevitably start to see the shift into the direction of automation. When it works for people and it works for businesses and the governments are scrambling around trying to figure out what to do with all of these, you know, unemployed unemployable people. It almost like a dirty word, unemployable. You’re unemployable.

Lori: Yeah. But it really depends on how, you know, what is going to happen with society as this, you know, as these changes start taking place, because the point that that…remind me of what his name was. Do you remember the name of the guy who made this this video about the rise of AI?

Will: Aaaah….

Lori: I can’t remember his name. Well, in any case, the point he made was that if these things do happen, we could if things go well, and if we plan properly, we could end up with a society where all we humans are doing is developing ourselves, learning new things.

Will: Exactly.

Lori: You know, just basically living a life of…that… where we can follow our interests and our passions. And…

Will: Yeah.

Lori: …and then the machines, the AI is taking care of all the drudgery and all the things that that we used to have to do just to put food on the table.

END TRANSCRIPT PREVIEW

LINKS TO SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL

If you use Blinkist, here are some links to read short summaries of books on the topic of A.I. and autimation. Blinkist is great for English learners. You can read along as you listen, plus look up words you don’t know all from the app!

The Future of Work, by Darrell M. West
https://blinkist.o6eiov.net/zLbBe

The Robots are Coming, by Andres Oppenheimer
https://blinkist.o6eiov.net/RvnWa

The A.I. Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare by Roger Bootle
https://blinkist.o6eiov.net/ydbBv

Video about delivery robots
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujzjZuhE92g

Humans need not apply
Video about how automation and A.I. will affect the job market for humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Robots will beat humans at every task
https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/this-is-when-robots-will-start-beating-humans-at-every-task-ae5ecd71-5e8e-44ba-87cd-a962c2aa99c2

Dirty, Dirty robots
Funny (but still disturbing) video about A.I. from comedian Lee Camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfxP6ZyNtw

Link to original Yale / Oxford study about A.I.
This is for learners of academic English. People in the videos about A.I. summarize findings from this study. This is the actual academic study for comparison.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf

Elon musk on the Joe Rogan podcast, talking about A.I.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3fv8gl6NE

Elon Musk’s talk at SXSW
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Osn1gMNtw

Ted talk with neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg

Sam Harris on the Joe Rogan Podcast
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BChxQHyFIOI&t=1487s

TED talk by Peter Haas A robot designer who is afraid of robots
The Real Reason to be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRzBk_KuIaM

How frightened should be be of A.I.?
Article in the New Yorker, free, with full text and audio so you can read along as you listen.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/how-frightened-should-we-be-of-ai

A Conversation with Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Inc. & Founder of SpaceX moderated by H.E. Mohammad Al Gergawi, Minister of Cabinet Affairs & The Future, UAE. Chairman of the World Government Summit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCoFKUJ_8Yo

Oxford word lists
You can look up words and hear American and British English pronunciation at
https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/wordlists/oxford3000-5000

A study predicts that all human tasks could be automated in the next 30 years. And that all human jobs might be replaced within the next 100 years or so. Holy crap! What will we do when the robots take over? A.I. is coming. The robots are coming. But are we ready?

In this Real English conversations podcast from Better at English, Lori and her American friend Will talk about their questions and concerns about the rise of A.I. (Artificial intelligence) and the automation of human labor. You can find the full transcript in my archive of English conversation transcripts for language learners.

Additional resources and supplementary material

Humans need not apply
Video about how automation and A.I. will affect the job market for humans
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

Robots will beat humans at every task

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/06/this-is-when-robots-will-start-beating-humans-at-every-task-ae5ecd71-5e8e-44ba-87cd-a962c2aa99c2

Traffic death statistics

https://www.cdc.gov/injury/features/global-road-safety/index.html

Dirty, Dirty robots.

Funny (but still disturbing) video about A.I. from comedian Lee Camp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HyfxP6ZyNtw

Link to original Yale / Oxford study about A.I.

This is for learners of academic English. People in the videos about A.I. summarize findings from this study. This is the actual academic study for comparison.
https://arxiv.org/pdf/1705.08807.pdf

Elon musk on the Joe Rogan podcast, talking about A.I.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ra3fv8gl6NE

Elon Musk’s talk at SXSW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-Osn1gMNtw

Ted talk with neuroscientist and philosopher Sam Harris

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nt3edWLgIg

Sam Harris on the Joe Rogan Podcast

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BChxQHyFIOI&t=1487s

TED talk by Peter Haas A robot designer who is afraid of robots

The Real Reason to be Afraid of Artificial Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRzBk_KuIaM

How frightened should be be of A.I.?

Article in the New Yorker, free, with full text and audio so you can read along as you listen.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/05/14/how-frightened-should-we-be-of-ai

Video about delivery robots

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ujzjZuhE92g

Hi English learners! Lori here, your teacher from better at English dot com. This little update is just to let you know that new Real English Conversations are coming. I know you love the conversations, and I do love making them for you, but they are quite a lot of work, let me tell you! In fact, I just invested in some fancy new recording equipment that’s going to make it much easier for me to record and transcribe the conversations in the future. Because hey, let’s face it, what good is a conversation episode with out a transcript that you can use to learn from? The first new conversation is coming in the next couple of days, and I’m letting you know in advance because I think you’ll get more benefit from the conversation if you can familiarize yourself with the general topic before you listen. “Hey Lori, what’s the topic?” Oh yeah, what’s the topic? You’ll be hearing me and an American friend talk about AI, or artificial intelligence, and the automation of human labor. Yes, the robots are coming and – whether we like it or not – a lot of the work that humans are doing now, a lot of our jobs, our skills, will be replaced by machines and artificial intelligence. How are we going to deal with that as a society? Where will we find our sense of value and purpose when we don’t have to work anymore? And how will we make a living in the first place? How will we put a roof over our heads and put food on the table? These are some of the things you’ll hear us discuss. You won't think I'm so cute when I take your job. And in the conversation we mention some videos and other things that we’ve seen online. And that’s not so fun for you if you haven’t seen the video yourself and have no idea what we're talking about. So I’ve put the links to these in the show notes for this episode, and if you check out the background material in advance, you’ll be on the same page with us as you listen to the conversation. You won’t be left in the dark, scratching your head, when you hear us mention the videos. So I highly encourage you to take the next couple of days and get familiar with some of these materials so you’ll get more out of the conversation when I post it next time. That’s all for this time...I’ll see you soon with a brand new, fresh, juicy, delightful and delicious real English conversation. Unless I’m replaced by a robot before then. Oh, wait. How do you know I’m not already a robot now...seriously, how would you know? Woo! Scary question. Anyway, as always, you can find me at www.betteratenglish.com if you want to leave a comment, send an email, or leave me a voice message. I love getting voice messages from you so I can hear you show off your beautiful English. You can do all of that from my website. Until next time, here’s wishing you an inspired and productive day. Bye for now. SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL FOR PRE-LISTENING Funny (but still disturbing) video about AI by a comedian Dirty Dirty Robots Facts, figures and big questions about what will happen when machines and AI take over our jobs Humans need not apply Article and short video about some predictions related to Artificial Intelligence and automation This is when robots will start beating humans at every task For learners of academic English - here is the original study by researchers at Oxford and Yale. This is the study that the people in the videos talk about. When will AI exceed human performance?