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AI has us freaked out. It’s making videos, pictures and even beats (shout out to BBL Drizzy) but will it replace us? Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer and host of the podcast “Living with Machines,” and he’s here to discuss the ethical dilemmas around using AI, especially for creatives. Baratunde shares how AI fits into our history with new tech, how we can put guardrails around it, and how it can actually be useful without being appropriative. Plus, how AI could help us consumers fight back against shady business practices.

AI has us freaked out. It’s making videos, pictures and even beats (shout out to BBL Drizzy) but will it replace us? Baratunde Thurston is a comedian, writer and host of the podcast “Living with Machines,” and he’s here to discuss the ethical dilemmas around using AI, especially for creatives. Baratunde shares how AI fits into our history with new tech, how we can put guardrails around it, and how it can actually be useful without being appropriative. Plus, how AI could help us consumers fight back against shady business practices.

This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures, an early-stage global investment firm backing mission-driven entrepreneurs and industry influencers working toward a fair financial system for all. Learn more at flourishventures.com.

Stay up to date with us on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram at @LemonadaMedia.

You can find Baratunde @baratunde on Instagram and his podcast Life With Machines.

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Transcript

SPEAKERS

Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Baratunde Thurston, X Mayo

X Mayo  00:05

Welcome back to The Dough. I’m your host, an AI rendering of comedian and writer, X Mayo, voice say, y’all really thought we would do that though. Okay, it’s me. He should know me versus a bot, okay? And anybody who thought it was really a bot, I think that’s a testament to my skills, okay, as an impressionist. So you guys know, I’m a millennial, 87 babies, what’s up? So, you know, I can do Twitter, I can do Instagram, I can do Snapchat and Facebook when I need to see what my auntie is doing, okay, or what the uncles are up to because baby, I’m never over there, but some of this new tech is really going over my pay grade. And I’m talking about Tiktok. How do you stitch a video, guys, I’m trying to figure it out. Okay, listen, but we’re really okay. It’s not Tiktok. I love it Tiktok. But I’m actually talking about AI or artificial intelligence. People are saying all kinds of stuff about it, like how one day we’ll all be in self driving cars? Well, we’ve already started that in LA, okay, girl, we’re the trendsetters. What can we say? But I really wanted to get the inside scoop on this stuff, because there’s a lot to be worried about privacy for one example, plus facial recognition technology has been shown to be biased against darker skinned people. Now, why did y’all have to go and make robots racist? They don’t even know it exists. Do you see? Oh my God, Lord, what did you do when you made your people okay, whether we like it or not, AI is already in our lives, and I’m not talking about Alan Iverson, hello, okay, fortunately, I knew the perfect person to help us learn more about it. Our guest today is Baratunde Thurston. He helped relaunch the Daily Show with Trevor Noah as the supervising producer of digital content. Shout out to us daily show alums, Hello. He was formerly the Digital Director of The Onion, and today he hosts the podcast living with machines with the goal of demystifying AI, basically, he’s a comedian from the future Baratunde. Welcome to The Dough.

 

Baratunde Thurston  03:46

And you know, X Mayo, it’s so good to be here with you. That was a stellar introduction. That was a stellar introduction. I know you’re from LA.

 

X Mayo  03:54

Born and bred, yeah.

 

Baratunde Thurston  03:56

And so I just wanted to see how was, how are you? How are your people doing? You know, in the light of lucifiers.

 

X Mayo  04:03

I mean, I had to evacuate, right? I’m in Hollywood. I’m from South Central Inglewood area, so I had to evacuate. That was scary to walk out and see ash fall on my face, you know, like smell fire. Had some respiratory issues. Had to go to the ER, got inhaler. I don’t have any respiratory issues. I’ve never had asthma. So it was just insane, because the air is still being affected. When I evacuated to Inglewood, and like, my mom has ash all over her car. Um, there’s a lot of people, as you know, within our industry that are being affected, um, losing their homes. So when I say, I mean, people ask me how I’m doing. I do have some survivor’s guilt. I’m crying every day because I have so much empathy for the people who’ve lost everything. But I’m sitting here talking to you, I have a job in a home with all of my things, I won’t complain. Do you see like I won’t Yeah, obviously I’m very concerned about. Out the city of Altadena. A lot of people don’t know about Altadena. It’s like, it’s what Long Island is to Brooklyn. It’s Altadena to La it’s like, you got your bread, okay, then take your ass over there, like, you know, you live in a better life. And what people don’t realize about today is that people who buy houses in 89 that don’t mean they can afford a house in 2025.

 

Baratunde Thurston  05:18

No, just barely keeping up with the taxes. What’s also beautiful about Altadena, and I say black history, it’s just, it’s the land you know, holds stories, and that land post the original story of the original people who were here. You know, it became a welcoming place for the refugees of American racism. And, you know, black folk fleeing the terrorism of the South in the 50s and the 60s to find something better, and just like we are done putting up with this. So we know a lot. America knows the story of black people in Brooklyn and in Chicago and in Philly. It knows less those who migrated West and landed, you know, on the outskirts of LA, in a place called Altadena that did not do the redlining thing. They were like, no, no, come on through and and so, yeah, the loss there, and the fervor to rebuild, you know, is it hits a little different. It’s not just another place where people sleep.

 

X Mayo  06:17

Yeah, how are you doing? Bad attendee, because you are in LA as well, right?

 

Baratunde Thurston  06:21

I am just outside now. I’m in Palm Springs. I’ve been in LA for the past five years. I left New York in 2019 for Highland Park. I’m fine, the place that we have there with our friends, and they they fled for Ash and toxic air, but all the structures are intact, and it’ll be okay. And it’s beautiful to see people looking out for each other. There’s one neighbor, she’s like, tell everybody to turn off them. Leaf blowers. This is not this is not helpful. You want to hose it down and mop it up. And she’s sharing books and techniques and how to fire proof with your landscaping. And then Palm Springs has been the recipient of people seeking fresh air. Yeah, for my show, for the life with machine. Show, you alluded to it earlier this AI focus. Show, most of our team is in LA, our editor couldn’t edit for a minute. He was on the front lines digging trenches to try to help. You know he’s on the Altadena Pasadena border and trying to help his neighbors and friends, and I certainly know a number of people who have lost so much. One we might have some mutuals, and she’s been public about it. Monica Beletsky, she created the show manhunt on Apple TV, plus black woman who did this amazing series about the hunt for the assassin of Abe Lincoln, and that 12 day journey into the Confederacy, she lost, you know, everything she’s got kids, yeah, and then she wasn’t home. She was like, out when it happened. So there was no chance to, like, you know, grab stuff. And that’s a lot of people’s stories, too. So, you know, someone who has a hit TV show, it’s really sad to see the lack of empathy, you know, and the presumption of imperviousness to pain, because that’s a dehumanizing thing, like when you when you look at another human person going through a bad experience, and you assume they don’t feel it, you’re treating them as a non person. You’re treating them as an object. Is what this country has done to Native people, is what it’s done to us, is what it’s done to black women in particular, what the Tuskegee experiments were all about, when you can just relax, put a body through something, and presume it doesn’t matter because they’re less than so it’s a real slippery slope, and it is. It’s sad to see. But as you also pointed out, and I’m a optimist, despite evidence to the contrary in the world. And it’s just been really dope to see the mutual aid spreadsheets flying around, the donations and the hand holding and the offering of couches and the cooking and yeah. So I’m feeling uplifted by that. And just another, another data point in the climate, you know, crisis too. It was, you know, the camp fire recent years. It was the Bay Area. It’s floods in Vermont. It’s the whole state of Florida. It’s freezing over in Georgia, like there’s, there’s something for all of us, you know, in in the tensions and the pain ahead. So we just got to hold on to each other, thank you.

 

X Mayo  09:21

Yes, yeah, oh my god. And that’s a great way to end this podcast. Thank you.

 

Baratunde Thurston  09:29

Make sure to like and subscribe.

 

X Mayo  09:32

Finally, okay, so that was so beautiful. Thank you so much. I feel like no matter when this episode comes out, we have a lot of work to do. We’re going to be feeling this for a while. So I feel like this is evergreen, what we set up top. So I want to get into you know how you grew up, because you and I are very similar, and that we raised by mothers who’ve had a huge influence on our life, and we love to give mamas their flowers on the show. I mean, I’m a product of a single mama. Love My mama so much. She’s done everything for me and you described your mother as a renaissance woman because she was a computer programmer. Hello, artist, activist. And what does she teach you about money?

 

Baratunde Thurston  10:11

She taught the first thing that came to mind was, earn it. Go make some.

 

X Mayo  10:17

I know that’s right. And a black woman gonna tell you, go get money.

 

Baratunde Thurston  10:21

Truly, I have an older sister, Belinda. She’s nine years older than me, and so she took the brunt of my mom’s learning to be a parent. And so I came along, the second child, the male child, and I had things a bit easier. One of the things I remember is my older sister, my mom made her get a job so that she could help pay for the housing that she was getting as a child. She was like, I’m gonna need you to chip in on this mortgage.

 

X Mayo  10:51

You know what? Where’s Belinda? Justice for Belinda, because what we went through as older sisters, I had a job as 16 years old at Old Navy. Okay? She said, No, you need to go make some money.

 

Baratunde Thurston  11:01

No, my Belinda, she worked at KFC, then known as Kentucky Fried Chicken because they we said whole words back in the 80s. Nobody has attention anymore. Everything’s tick tock. She worked at a bookstore, B Dolson bookstore, and I just I was such a small person, I thought, Well, ain’t that something she gotta Am I gonna have to pay rent? I thought housing came free for the child because none of none of my friends had these stories of like them or their older siblings. If their older siblings had jobs, it was to buy sneakers, right? It was to have discretionary income to do fun things, but it wasn’t for survival. It wasn’t for, like, the bare minimum. So I clocked that, and I was like, That’s interesting, and and I was very entrepreneurial, and some of that will come in later, where my mother made it clear, like, we didn’t have the money for her to pay for college outright. And so another money lesson was, get these scholarships, figure out these loans. So it was my duty. She was like she was supportive. She was absolutely supportive. She clothed and fed me and gave me a lot of moral and spiritual lessons. And she was real about limitations. And so from a super early age. I saw how hard she worked. I saw my older sister working. My mother had to declare bankruptcy at a point when I was in early age. I was 10, maybe 11 years old. I can remember the house we were in the conversation. She showed me her checkbook and her balancing of the family budget, very simple. So when it came time for college, here’s where this is leading. I knew that she didn’t have the money. I didn’t have the money, but I had to go get the money. And so I, like, researched scholarships. I applied for everything. I made convincing pitches to admissions and financial aid people, even at school I was already at to, like, try to up my aid as a high school student. And so in hindsight, I feel like she there was some value of money, that she was, that she impressed upon me, that my, most of my friends, were not in that same situation of having to go earn it themselves or figure out, you know, their future with it.

 

X Mayo  13:16

Okay, so um, she’s a queen, clearly, absolutely, and the things that she taught you, the resilience in your ability to be self sufficient like led you to go to, I think you briefly mentioned, like the school that you were at, but it’s, ladies and gentlemen, it’s not just any school. It is a extremely prestigious prep school, Sidwell, right? So you know the Roosevelt C Obamas, right? Sasha and Malia, right? So I just would love to know about Anthony. What was it like being there at the school and you’re not a president kid and two, you are black, yeah, but I am a queen son hello yes, absolutely.

 

Baratunde Thurston  13:58

It was radically different. I grew up in Mount Pleasant in DC, in a predominantly black and Latin zone, there was a white part to the neighborhood, and as things go in America, it was a pretty integrated neighborhood, but our block in particular was just black and brown, and it was all public school kids and modest incomes to low incomes. So going to civil was culture shock. Not been around that many white people, nor that much money, and some of the black kids who were there, this is also my first encounter with of black people with money.

 

X Mayo  14:33

Okay, let’s get into it. Archive people from the suburbs.

 

Baratunde Thurston  14:38

Yeah, so you gotta you got a whole yard, huh? Look at you and black people who had been at a place like Sidwell, or Sidwell, specifically, their whole lives. So we had a lot in common because we were black, but then we had nothing in common because of the money and and then further, my mother was such a the word now is woke. You know, conscious. His eyes wide open about history, and she embedded that in me, with the name, right, with the cultural upbringing that I had. And so that wasn’t universally the experience at a place like Sidwell, amongst even the black students. So we blackened it up a little bit while we were there Mimi and my mother, I learned to adapt. There was, there was, you know, unequal treatment for discipline, you know, microcosms of America, stuff. I got very political there in terms of the Black Students Union and advocacy and writing reports and protesting and sit ins and like all that stuff that a lot of kids get in college. I got in like, middle school and high school, and as I mentioned, in terms of the money, I had a job, but we just got to a point where we couldn’t really afford to stay. I already have some position I don’t want to leave. And my mom was like, well, you got to figure out how we’re going to pay for it. And she did her part, and I did mine. She second mortgaged our house to come up with more cash so I could stay put. And she she drew a line in the sand. She’s like when it comes to college, that’s on you and and at Sidwell, I went to their financial aid people, and I just made a case, because I had been there three or four years at the time, and I made them look good. And so remember the summer, I remember walking into this little building. It’s called zartman house. Zartman house, and I, like, requested a meeting, and they didn’t really know what was up, but I had done panels for them. They liked me even as I was causing trouble. It wasn’t like violence trouble, it was just like holding you to your highest standard trouble. Like, like, we do good trouble. So so I roll into the office and I’m like, we have a problem. You know, I am not going to be able to stay at this school and because of money, and I don’t think you want that. I think my grades are great. I think I help your statistics. I think I’m a good story for you, and I think I’m going to be successful, and you’re going to want to be the ones to take credit for that, but if I leave here, it’s gonna get all diluted, you know, right? Who did what? So can you find some money to help me stay and let’s make a win, win. It’s bad for me. It’s bad for you. And they did, I don’t think they ever had a kid come into their own. There’s a lot of parents at a school like that with a lot of entitlement, you know, like do this and expect that. I don’t think they see a lot of kids, much less black kids, show up and just lay it out.

 

X Mayo  19:58

What was so important with what you said you walked and you said, we have a problem. Hello. That’s now, that’s a great salesman right there, because it’s like, I’m pulling you in, the issue is ours. Yeah, yeah. You know, like, it’s like, no, there’s an issue. And I think you have value, right? And I think like, you had to know that you know that you know that you believe in yourself, and you’re like, No, absolutely, I’m deserving of this opportunity. I’m deserving of you to listen to me. My voice has power, and even if it shakes, I have value, like I don’t give a fuck.

 

Baratunde Thurston  20:44

And you kind of have to, but yeah, when I do a lot of talks nowadays, schools bring me in, and I will say to these, there’s such a narrative. And we’re in a time right now where the pendulum is swinging hard, like the white supremacy is not masked anymore. The masculine dominant narrative is just out there, just balls out there, right? Just freak flag out there, and people like us are meant to feel shame like we don’t belong, like anything we got is because somebody took pity and it was a favor. Like We’re the lucky ones, you know? We’re the lucky ones to be in a school like this. We’re lucky to have the jobs that we’ve had. We’re lucky to be in this country, and it’s like the exact opposite, right? We’re the asset here, you, if anyone’s a liability, assists you, and we add a lot of value. And so when I talk to these kids in particular, because I know they’re hearing all this stuff, I’m like, just flip it around. They’re lucky to have you. They’re lucky that these kids are learning from you. These teachers are learning from you. So even if you’re not explicitly being compensated for that, internally, you know it may not show up on like a ledger right on your balance sheet, in your bank account, but you have to have an internal value that sees and feels and knows that you are wealthy, that you have value, and the system outside, which doesn’t always recognize that formally, that’s broken, not you.

 

X Mayo  22:18

Where do we send the Venmo pastor for that, for the what are we sitting for? You rendering that word, what do we what do we send it? Where do we send it Pastor?

 

Baratunde Thurston  22:27

You know, I’m, I’m baritone day on all the services.

 

X Mayo  22:31

I know that’s right, because we’ll get reparations by fire, by force. Okay, so by the day, obviously you’re very thoughtful, and you take initiative, and that applies to your show, which is topic that I am very angry about. It makes me very nervous. I know it’s something that I have to engage with, and that is a little thing called AI, i Yes, and that’s why you always say i Yes, absolutely, absolutely for our Latino brothers and sisters, and that some people feel about it. Hello. Okay, and so your podcast is called Life with machines, and it aims to demystify AI and show them a human side of this technology. So obviously, I’m an artist. I produce, act and write. I was a part of the strikes and everything. I’m in both unions of sag and WGA, and I guess you know for us, we were able to win that case against AI, but this is only good for three years, right? And so I’m concerned about that also, because capitalism is a raggedy bitch, and she wants, she is a white woman, I’m sure, and she wants the most money by as quick as possible, right? And I think my grievance with AI is I have been on the stage since I was eight. I started auditioning at 12 years old, and I’ve been writing and producing since I was 19. I now have 37 years. So you add all that up, you know, and 21 years of no’s, and I broke my first series regular role at 33 and I was auditioning since I was 12. So when somebody wants to come in and CO modify my life. I spent years on the UCB stage, failing, being bad, trying to figure out my comedic POV, my lens. I sucked at The Daily Show for a year a year, every day, eight to 10 hours a day. I never got a joke on that. I wrote by myself, never finally, it broke in 2020 top of 2020 I was able to get a joke on that I had no help with, right? And that is very difficult, you know, with writing or in writing rooms. So to know how hard I’ve worked to now with 2025 I’ve consistently been writing jokes and keeping that muscle strong that someone thinks that they could come in, you know, like we know a Chapelle joke, we know an Eddie Murphy joke, we know a Richard Pryor joke. So it makes me very angry, you know, and also that it is here, but I know that you are, you are doing the Lord’s work because I am too emotional to. Engage and interview these motherfuckers and talk about it, but that’s what we have. People like you that are smarter and more equipped and have the skill set to put their emotions aside and get to the lecture at hand. So I just want to applaud you for doing that. About it to that because I was very angry multiple times your podcast. I had to stop, I had to pause. I had to add to breathe, stretch, shake, let it go. Okay, so I would love to know off top, when did you decide to go all in with exploring AI, like, how did you know that this is not a passing fad? Like, this is not just, you know, here today, going tomorrow.

 

Baratunde Thurston  25:33

Yeah, can before I do that? Can you just share a moment that made you mad?

 

X Mayo  25:39

Oh, yes, there are many moments, absolutely, many moments for the BBL jersey. That’s the only one I watch, because I want to see the black guy. And I was like, oh, yeah, this is BBL jersey. Yeah, you get to want to be in this industry, and you get to want to put in the work. You don’t get to go in and get a Scorsese script, put it in that motherfucker, come out. And let’s just like, it’s good niggas. I’m not doing this right? That pissed me off. Let me be clear. The fact that this man has audacity is amazing. The fact that he has been able to commit to something and put work in it is admirable. I’m not I’m not saying that he is not an artist or that he shouldn’t work at his craft, but it just angers me that we can all just say these terms, and maybe I’m from a different generation, and maybe I’m entering Auntie status, because I’m just kind of like the amount of work I saw Janet why I wanted to perform, and now I’m pissed off I wanted to perform because I saw Jumping Jack Flash, death becomes her and Janet Jackson, and I said, that’s what the fuck I’m gonna do. I have danced. I have lived. I I didn’t have a fucking phone for two years in New York unless I was on Wi Fi, because I believe in my fucking gift and my purpose and my passion. So when you are like, when he’s like, Yeah, you know that. So that pissed me off there when he called himself a showrunner, which I guess technically, he is like, how people say, I’m famous. And if you look at the because people say, you know, improv is not a comedian, it’s like, oh, yeah, you have to do stand up. So I think it’s nuanced. So let me not say that he is a showrunner. He the showrunner. He did the show on clubhouse, and he did that. But the fact that these things are accessible can be a gift and a curse. Because I think you have some people that are just like, yeah, it can happen so quickly. And you know what, I can just do it. I do love the model when he said, like, you know what? Now I’m not worried about the studios. I think that is freeing. I think that is liberating. So I had a lot of conflicting emotions, and I am also happy that a black man has been able to enter into this fear. That made me excited. But there were other times where I felt conflicted because I was like, the work, what I believe right, which is not everybody that needs to be done before you can do it like, the fact that it feels so accessible, like I said, I’m holding two truths. It’s like a gift and a curse, because you get to just come in and do that. And when I see things like, I may destroy you, and love craft country and Atlanta and and, and the substance. And you think, Well, I’m just making my own version of the substance. It’s like, what he said, like, fucking Game of Thrones. He was like, What’s my Game of Thrones? Like, we have all these. It’s not Game of Thrones the remix. Motherfucker. This is not, this is the remix. This is not Missy misdemeanor Elliot, what are you talking about?

 

Baratunde Thurston  28:18

Oh, so where do I send my Venmo for your ample word.

 

X Mayo  28:26

Send it to the families of Altadena child, but I took it there, please. I’m serious, like I and I like and like I said. I don’t want to get I don’t want this to get clipped and and people to not have context. I am very happy that black and brown people, minorities like are able to enter the industry. I fact that, I think the fact that we have YouTube, Tiktok and other stuff, that is kind of level the playing field, but I believe that it can be a gift and a curse. And my thing is, go and make something original. My issue with the AI is like, that’s why I have one Tiktok battle, because I said I am not gonna put out anything. Also like to pay me for my jokes, bitch. But also like, you’re not gonna see. There’s also a digital black face. Hello, these white people like clipping and, you know, doing little to your you know, no and so that. But also like, I’m like, I feel like I’m helping AI take over, take my job, take my art by putting it out there. So I didn’t think I was I literally prayed. I was like, You’re not gonna go, you’re not gonna say anything. But I just was so passionate, because I have friends that have spent six years on a script, and it’s fucking Excellent. When I see severance, it’s excellent. Yeah, girls, it’s excellent. Thank you. It makes me angry about it today. If you didn’t notice.

 

Baratunde Thurston  29:42

No you, but I am glad to hear that, and more important, I’m glad to feel it. And I feel the passion, I feel the tension, I feel that like I’m happy for this person and their creative possibilities are really interesting, and I’m. Bad because it feels like a shortcut and it feels exploitative, or it feels like cheating or appropriative in some way. And it’s all that when I knew that I needed to sink into this was certainly, you know, in the probably the six months after chatgpt launched in December 22 and I had, you know, I have a you’ve mentioned it up top. I have a long history with tech, because my mom was a coder. I’ve always lived with these machines that were in my house before they were in most people’s houses. I was building websites. I was making flyers for my mom’s friends using graphic software and desktop publishing. A lot of my jobs have been tech. Even what I did at The Daily Show was heavily about the digital expansion of that show. What are we gonna do on social? How do we build apps? And I had done that at the onion as well. So how do you be funny with the code and with the machines? How do you be political with the machines? Like organizing online, the black political organizing that we did in the early 2000s and up through the Obama era, which then set the stage for things like Black Lives Matter that would come later from another generation. That is like collaborating with this new form of power and being critical of who controls it, of who is capturing the value of it and of what it does to our sense of humanity and connection. So this is a winding answer, but I think for me, the social media era is where the peak criticism first started for me, and I recognize we have all this connectivity, but so little connection that we are liking and messaging and presuming access to people and getting mad when they don’t like get back to us, and absolutely colonizing and destroying the word friend, thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, and really undermining deep human relationship. Well, if everybody I’ve ever met is just a friend, then what’s an actual friend? So there’s a whole season of that. And then I kind of stepped back from the tech stuff and went out to nature, this PBS series, America outdoors, and that helped me find a deeper earthly connection. And then these machines came back, and they’re like, we’re not done with you. You have been called and and so for me, it’s both sides of me. It is the justice seeking side that sees a new form of power that will be used against us. And us could be black people, could be just humans, right? There’s different scales of exploitation here, and so we need to, like, be at that table and shape this stuff, because it is happening. And there’s the side of me that’s kind of like the defensive side, right? There’s there’s a force rising in the east, like Sauron is coming. And then there’s the, like, co creative side of me, which is like, yo, this is kind of hot, like, this is exciting and it’s interesting. And a typewriter was interesting and Photoshop was interesting and YouTube was interesting. And each of these represents some widening of a gate and some changing of a guard and some lowering of a bar, right? And like, what YouTube did to the music industry is, like, fascinating. Like, anybody with a guitar and a video camera’s like, I’m a musician and you’re like, but I hustled in these clubs. What Tiktok and Vine did for comedy, I was, like, grinding away on open mics for years and years and years, and you just talking to your camera and you say, you’re a comedian, but there’s no people. What about the comets? So every era has its redefinition, but post chatgpt, reflecting on my history with tech, reflecting on my new connection with Earth. And lastly, I would say there’s this other project, this, how to citizen, you know, especially during COVID, working on like, what does actual democracy mean? What is it as a practice and not just a voting machine?

 

X Mayo  34:10

Child our president don’t even know […] He can know he can.

 

Baratunde Thurston  34:13

Even most of us, you know, both most of us, people who celebrate and talk about defending democracy, are not embodying it or not practicing it. Wouldn’t recognize it if it showed up in our front yards, in our churches. In fact, when we let when we express no empathy for a fire victim, we are deeply undemocratic, right? We are not in society. We’re not in community. We’re drawing these lines between people now, recognizing that it might be us someday, even out of selfishness. So all those things come to bear, and it’s like, Alright, I think I’m equipped to try to hold this and and to facilitate something, because I don’t think unplugging and these kind of Luddite matrix vibe where it’s like, there it’s all enemy territory. We have to. Shut it all down. I don’t think, one, I don’t think it’s practical. But two, I don’t think it’s actually useful. But I also know that like, the like, AI,  right there’s […] yeah, I right at the spectrum. And I don’t think the a non critical embrace is a surrender of too much. And I’m not. I’m not trying to be about surrendering our agency and our power and our humanity. So what’s, what’s the way? How do we live? And that’s why the show was life with machines. Yeah, I want, I don’t want machines. Despite my nerdiness and my geekiness, I don’t want technology. Like most people don’t want technology. They want money, they want love. They want belonging. They want fun. They want food and delicious things hitting their palate. They want a feeling of belonging. And will this, or how will this, help us achieve those things? That’s what I’m about and interested in.

 

X Mayo  35:59

Yes, and I think everyone should go subscribe to about a two nights podcast and also listen to the episode that I was referencing. And I think you asked a lot of critical questions that I really wanted asked, you know, and even there got to be a point where you were talking to King and was asking him, like, about, you know, you said, like, if somebody takes something that he did and they remake it, just let it be good. And then you were like, Well, what about like, the commodification of, like, what you’re doing and, like, the actual economic currency that you can get, like, from that? And he was just like, you know, if anybody came up to me and was like, you’re taking money at my mouth, I would, I would stop. And it’s like, one, I don’t know him, right, so I can’t say, but it’s just like, it would be very difficult for me to believe that you’re getting a honey meal and somebody, or even just being able to take care of yourself, and you’re just gonna tell someone, okay, like, Well, I’m gonna stop. I’m gonna do that. But it’s like you have no idea you’re taking my life.

 

Baratunde Thurston  37:05

He is. And this is, you know, King Wallonius.

 

X Mayo  37:09

Yeah, King Wallonius, sorry, yes.

 

Baratunde Thurston  37:11

you know, I’ve known this brother for almost 15 years. He’s put in so much work in multiple art forms, the songwriting and the comedy in particular, he’s done stand up forever. So he’s a human. He’s an actual artist, and he’s found this opportunity in this very strange moment, to advance and at what cost and to who and how do any of us measure the morality of our individual actions? And I, and I think we come across like his situation is not just about him. It’s about like, are we going to make these choices at the individual level? Are we going to build better systems that we all operate within? You know, every time I order takeout and generate more plastic waste every time I buy a new electronic device instead of getting a used one, I’m hurting someone, right? I’m hurting some kid who has to clean that up in a landfill or mine. It. I’m hurting the earth that I depend on to live and so we could all carry individualized guilt and optimized decision making choices, but that is, I think, a distraction. We need a system that allows us to live well, collectively, to have these choices, you know, have a positive or cool and not cost us. And so when No, I go to climate quickly, because that’s a big question around AI, but also all of our activities, the fires we’ve been talking about, and so yeah.

 

X Mayo  38:45

The snow in Atlanta, yeah. They got,they got […] in snowmans. There was, it was crazy, because people, like, actually need to evacuate. And they were like, need to go to New Orleans. I said, where there’s hurricane? They said you can go to Memphis and Atlanta. I said, Well, there’s snow. You said you can go to New York. And I said, where it’s so fucking cold, it’s five degrees, my titties gonna fall off. This is crazy. I’m not doing this. And I did my bid. I did New York for eight years. I paid my debt to society. God bless you. I deserve a purple heart for what I went through. Lord Jesus on that eight train at midnight, please. Okay, truly, yeah. I’m with you on the climate change element, and I do want to talk about because I don’t want to leave people with just, you know, my anger and rage, but I would love to know, like, I would love to talk to you about how I can or the people artists, because I’m having these conversations a lot. I’m surrounded by them, and they’re all happening online. And I would love to talk about how we can feel better about AI, you know, like, I would love to know, like, what is a tangible way to build guardrails around it? Because I don’t want my work to be exploited. Like, I can’t make someone, you know, go watch the blackening and take. My face and take stuff and go do stuff and do whatever, but it’s just kind of like, like that would make me feel at least a little better around it, to know, like, some ways that we can be protected.

 

Baratunde Thurston  40:11

Yeah, thank you for that, as individual and as collective ways, as with all these things individually. You know, read, it takes some time, but like, understand what you are signing up for. When you use any of these services, a lot of them, especially when you use them for free, they will take all of your inputs and re process them to make themselves stronger. They will feed off of you. If you’re not paying right? You’re the product. That’s that’s the classic thing, and that’s never more true than here. So if you’re going to experiment, and I do encourage experimentation to like, know exactly why you don’t like it particularly and tangibly, if that’s going to be the result or to find some positive use, just make sure that the code of conduct for who you’re partnering with on that is that they’re not going to take your stuff. I think there are things, if you run your own website, there’s code you can put on your site to prevent to send a signal to the web crawlers to not ingest your material. I think if you are posting to like x, for example, Elon has been very open, like all that’s his, right? He’s taking that and feeding all that into X AI. And if you’re not a fan of his worldview and what he might do with that, you shouldn’t be putting things you care about and departure yourself in that environment. He’s very explicit about it. You could ask the same questions of meta and Google and all the big ones. So those are some individualized guardrail type things. I also think you could talk with other people who you know about how they’re using these things, if they are at all, and just have a small group understanding there’s a big national conversation Congress should have, the state houses should have the ethicists and the academics, but we are in multiple circles of communities, and so I’d say, like, if you’re in a writers group, right? If you’ve got a Sunday brunch club, if you’ve got a group chat from your friends from high school or college, make it a topic of, okay, what do we what are we doing about this? What are our own lines. It’s not just explicit harm. There’s like ethical questions, am I gonna use this to help me write my college, you know, application, and am I gonna use this to write the letter recommendation that somebody asked who used to work for me? And then the fun part x is, like, all right, but how can I actually benefit from this is there some value within my own ethical range. So for me as a writer, I have found, you know, I make I pay for a service, I create a little enclave that’s just my stuff, and I train it up on me, and then I use it to judge me, and I’m just like, okay, you know what my high bar is. Here’s a draft of something I’m working on, okay, tear it apart and give give me constructive criticism on where this can be improved. And it comes […]

 

X Mayo  43:12

I know, but it’s still an original idea. But I thought that, yes, you’re still, you’re still an art like, you’re still, you know, like, and you’re using it in a way. I think that’s great, see, I’ve never heard of this. I didn’t know, yeah, I didn’t know that even existed.

 

Baratunde Thurston  43:28

The other, you know, I have run. We just had James Andrews as our most recent guest on life with machines, as at the time of you and me talking, he works with King Wallonius. He’s more in the business of music and entertainment. And he’s like, Yeah, I run, I run all my contracts through this now, right? And, like, I I’ve done that. I’ve gotten deal terms, and I’ve put it again in an enclave. I don’t want all of chat GPT training on my specific deal terms. You can get exercise caution. And, you know, this thing has sucked in a bunch of legal stuff, and it kind of can pattern match around it. And so I ran this thing through because my lawyer wasn’t available, and then I shared it with my lawyer, and I was like, how do you think this thing did? And he’s like, if my senior associate had produced that, I’d be like, You did a great job. And this wasn’t, it wasn’t like a low key threat. He works on percentages. It’s actually probably better for him if I use the robot sometimes, because it takes less of his hours, and so per hour he’s gonna make more. But there is a way. This is how Van Jones is approaching it, and others who are like, we’re at this new starting point with a relatively new form of power. How do we not get left behind. What are the value creating uses for traditionally excluded groups? How do we accommodate people who couldn’t be accommodated before, whether it’s through a disability of sight or sound or interpretation or being on a spectrum of some kind a language, you know, translation? Mm. Um, so, yeah, it’s, it’s not all good, but it’s certainly not all bad either. And I think that is like a constant human quest with any power.

 

X Mayo  45:10

No, but we could say the same thing about Instagram, Tiktok, Twitter, like, it can be used for good or be used for evil, for sure. And I think hearing you talk about the different ways, because I think, like, I know that I’m going to have to critically engage with it. I know, like, I see it with my mother, how, like, we she’s, like, sent Amazon to the wrong I said, Mama, what are you doing? You know, we really set her down. We said, Here is the tutorial on sale. You need to learn how to do it and set it up. You know, I don’t want to get left behind. I don’t want to be a dinosaur. I think, like, thinking about this and like, maybe, if you can think like, because at the end, I would love for you to share like, some other resources, books, articles and stuff that you have read about the ways that we can more engage with it in a way that is useful and helpful to us and making our art.

 

Julia Louis-Dreyfus  46:07

I would love to know, how do you think AI will change the way people spend their money?

 

Baratunde Thurston  47:04

Yeah, so I can’t believe how much time we’ve been together. This is so good. And I’m just like, oh my god, we got like, 10 minutes. Maybe I know on the money front. So I think it’s going to be it’s going to be good and it’s going to be bad. I got a degree, y’all, I spent four years at an institution. I mean, something good, it’s going to be bad, yeah? But sometimes it’s just that simple, yeah. I think, you know, the tools for analysis for an individual to be able to do an analysis of their spending. We’re already seeing that when you think about what mint.com did for people, what now rocket money is doing, where you feed it in your transaction history, your credit card account, your bank account, and it tells you, yo, you’re spending a bit much. Yo, you have this a lot of subscriptions. You could save money here, this service called trim, that I’ve been using for years, there’s AI in that, and so the ability to optimize can be directed at anything a company will use it as they have been. Here’s a fun fact, most of the deployment of AI to date has not been generative stuff, writing bad poems and ripped off scripts and shitty art. It’s been advertising. It’s been optimizing inventory management for ads online. It’s been optimizing delivery of those ads and the click performance and like you see this, and it’s been the algorithmic feeds on social media, which just feeds back to ads. That’s money, right? That is like, who’s spending? Like whether it’s what you buy or what a marketing department at a brand spends to get you to buy, but in terms of personal finance, apply that to our own lives in for our benefit, not as victims of someone else’s economic intent, but as agents of our own economic and financial intention. So I see spending optimization, budgetary review. I see my friend Ron J Williams, has this thing, the bionic consumer. This is a brother from Brooklyn, and so he comes. He has, like, elite educational background and some street stuff. And I just love those combinations in people at times. And he’s like, the when you if your business is predicated on taking advantage of people’s financial illiteracy or their lack of patience to fully understand the terms of the deal, if you make money when people lose money, predatory lending and excessive fees and junk fees and all that, this era is coming for you. I. Because I there is going to be like, we are getting arms. If we want to get like, militaristic about it, we’ve been outgunned. We’ve been out manned. And now there’s stuff that we can pick up and bring into this, this battle for our attention and this battle for our financial resources to try to level the playing field. Now it’s not in us in a vacuum. They’re also deploying this stuff against us, but we’ve got a better shot than I think we’ve had in the past to to defend so there’s a there’s a few things there, and then what  I don’t want to leave it on just the like, I know it’s the dough and it’s the money, but I also want to, like, think back to what I was saying about these kids and their sense of internal value. You know, if you’re in a unfamiliar place, that the worst version of this technology is it triples down on an extractive mindset, on a multi 100 year, multi century colonial project to suck life out of us, suck life out of this planet, to have this sort of cancerous growth in one dimension of finance at the expense of, like many species, and the quality of actual life and the air that we breathe, that so Many of us right now have a much harder time doing, and so we’ve got to reorient the whole ship, kind of shift the currents of the ocean, even if we want to elevate the metaphor. I don’t want these tools to like, have us all tripling down on that overall Fauci premise of what the goal of the society is. And if we’re just trying to, like, do shareholder value at these smaller stages, we’re going to just destroy the planet faster. You know, that’s not good. That’s not what I’m interested in signing up for. So there’s a there’s another possibility with these tools to help us see different ways of organizing ourselves that take this. GDP is bullshit. Gross Domestic Product, this, this measure of a society’s economic health is like, how many refrigerators and cars got like? It doesn’t we’re not happy. We’re not living longer. Our health outcomes are trash. Our family connections are afraid. Our spiritual life is devoid. We have no rituals. Like they’re running we’re running up the score that doesn’t matter. And so when all these tools serve that, even if it’s inclusive, it’s inclusive toward the wrong aim. So there is a bigger step back that I hope we can take, that we need to take, and we will the easy way or the hard way. If it all continues to burn down, we’ll take a different road, but we’ll lose a lot along the way that we didn’t have to. So can AI help us with that, not just getting more of us into a rigged game, but changing the game itself? That’s a bigger question, I hope the answer was yes, and I’m trying, with my little slice of power and attention to make it yes.

 

X Mayo  53:11

I do also thank you for that. I do also want to say that now that I’ve calmed down, I do [..]

 

Baratunde Thurston  53:20

Breathe, I should have led you through like a breathing .

 

X Mayo  53:22

I know. but today, this is my life. You know, it’s my life’s work. I do recognize my own privilege in talking about your interview that you had with King Willie wallonius, right? His name. I do as you were talking, I was thinking now that I think now I do think that my frustration about it and thinking like, How could someone do that? I have to recognize that I do come from a privileged place being a part of the 1% of people that are able to write for The Daily Show. Yeah, right. Let’s talk about that like, and I’m, I’m a black woman from South Central with no degree clock it, you know, just me and Trevor was only two motherfuckers in there with no degree. Yeah, right. And he’s Trevor Noah, right? So you either me or Trevor Noah, like the, you know, the metrics, please, you know. And shout out to juvenile. I owe him my life. He’s the reason why I was, oh, yeah, I did. I did improv with him at UCB. Had no idea he worked there. He pitched my name and changed my life. And I do recognize that I have, uh, you know, accumulated some mid sized level success. I’m by no means famous. I don’t want to be. I want to do my job and go home and pay my bills, you know. And just, you know, go to Turks and Caicos twice a year. That’s it, just a little something, you know, and get my Gu sures, you know, I don’t need much, yeah, so, but I have been able to be on TV, right? I have been able to be on network TV. And, you know, some people go on a glory being stand ins or background actors, you know, like I do. Have privilege in that. So I think I’ve, I haven’t been in a place where King molonius has been to be at this your whole life. And so who’s to say if I wouldn’t be flirting with it? Yeah, I think I’m in a very privileged place to also have community of people that are selling shows that, you know, send my names, put me in things. I’ve been blessed to be consistent in working since 2018 I’ve only paid my bills by my art.

 

Baratunde Thurston  55:33

I just, I gotta, just say I appreciate you so much. I think I do a lot of talking and podcasty things for my own shows, for many other people’s shows, you’ve demonstrated such humor, such passion, but also such like humility, like you’re arrogant, humble at the same time, amazing mix. It’s an amazing mix. And I just, I think.

 

X Mayo  56:00

I’m a layer cake, yeah.

 

Baratunde Thurston  56:02

Taking that pause, but that’s, but that’s all because.

 

X Mayo  56:05

I really love, I love black people. I love my people so much. I mean, also I want to thank you because of your expansion team, my company, who made the potato salad. We are a sketch comedy show, but we also our community resource hub. So in 2021 we did a day in the life of late night. We had a whole mock episode of Late Night done with all mentors from The Daily Show and amazing mentees. And from that, an amazing woman by the name of falake is a digital producer at The Daily Show. She’s been, she, I think she has a NAACP, she’s been Emmy nominated, and she’s wonderful. So because of what you have done, a black woman can now live her dream and pay her bills. So I just want to thank you.

 

Baratunde Thurston  56:49

Yhat’s actually we should. We got to talk offline about our relative Daily Show experiences., that’s very gratifying to hear.

 

X Mayo  56:56

No, for sure, yeah, and our social team is iconic.

 

Baratunde Thurston  57:01

To build something that’s still there.

 

X Mayo  57:03

Oh my god. And it’s so good. It’s so good. Like we would, the writers would write for social we would pitch stuff. It was great. But I yeah, when I think about it, I just would never want King Wallonia. I assume he might listen to it, because you’re his boy. So why wouldn’t he listen to it? Or maybe he wouldn’t, or it might get to him. I just want for context like my my issue is at the system, and I know he is just doing his the best that he can with what he has, with what’s available to him. And the system of Hollywood is very much so racist, even the black people who have positions they don’t have power. So I understand him wanting to create. Him wanting to make his art. This is a tool that’s available to him, and I think he’s wrestling with it and just trying to get his shit off and make his stuff the best way that he knows how. And I think I have this perspective on how he could do that, because where I’m at in my career, and I want to acknowledge that and see show that I might have some blind spots, I’m sure you know within that.

 

Baratunde Thurston  58:02

See, that’s you’re modeling the thing, and we’re not. Are we talking about AI? Are we talking about policing? Are we talking about educational access? Right? There is a model of this. There’s a version of this where it’s like one human upset with another human because of how they move in a system that really doesn’t serve either of them well. And so how do we shift enough of our attention and focus so that we all get health care?

 

X Mayo  58:33

Just want to get a pap smear. Please, look at my pussy, please.

 

Baratunde Thurston  58:37

And we have the tools to be able to appropriately credit people for the work that they’ve done that’s trained these systems and to compensate them for derivative work that comes out of it. It’s called copyright, like we invented a whole regime, and we have even better ways digitally to track than we did in the offline world. There’s no There’s fewer back alley sales, it’s just all in public. So we could build that system. We could build the system where Earth is not just a resource but a relationship. We could build a system where humans are all treated with dignity, or we can divide and conquer our way into Hell.

 

X Mayo  59:11

Yeah, I think you’re one of the smartest people. You’re the best. If you could just let us know where you’re all on socials, and then we’ll let you.

 

Baratunde Thurston  59:16

Yeah, thank you. So Life With Machines is the main project right now. It’s on my YouTube, youtube.com/baratunde, and wherever you you know are addicted to podcasts, you can find us there, video or audio. I’m Baratunde, B, A, R, A, T, U, N, D, E, on a declining number of services, I would say, because, you know, the the the broligarchy is really coming strong for us. So I have handles on x, but I don’t use them so much anymore. Zuckerberg is really trying to run me off of the meta properties with his recent embrace of all things horrible, but I’m on the blue skies and the dark sub stack. Yes. Thank you so much.

 

X Mayo  59:59

Um. And also I want to leave with your name. It’s Baratunde. Thank you so much for joining me. You are the best, and I look forward to talking to you ever again. It was an honor and truly a privilege, and keep doing the good work. Okay, y’all, you know, we went on an emotional journey. We did, we got upset, we got passionate, we came back around, we understood. We know everything is nuanced, everything is layered, you know, and we’re all just doing our best. Okay? I really appreciate how he leveled with me. There is a lot to be worried about with AI, right? But that doesn’t mean we should rule out the safeguards, and like baratundu said, AI could help us consumers fight back against shady business practices. I can get into that, but for now, you can be rest assured, you’re hearing the real X mile on this show. Just watch me fight off these robots with my mic. Okay, baby, because they scared, they nervous and trembling. You hear me?

 

CREDITS  1:01:04

The Dough is a Lemonada original. I’m your host X Mayo.  This series was created in partnership with Flourish Ventures.  This series is presented by the Margaret Casey Foundation. Our producers are Tiffany Bui, and Dani Matias. Kristen Lepore is our senior producer.  Mix and Sound Design by Bobby Woody. Original Music by Pat Mesiti Miller. Jackie Danziger is our Vice President of narrative content.  Executive Producers include me X Mayo, Stephanie Wittels Wachs and Jessica Cordova Kramer.  Help others find our show by leaving us a rating and writing a review.  You can follow me on IG  @80dollarsandasuitcase and Lemonada @lemonadamedia across all social platforms, follow The Dough wherever you get your podcast or listen ad free on Amazon music with your Prime membership, thanks so much for listening. See you next week, bye.