HS 440 - The End of Life As We Know It with Michael Guillen

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Welcome to the show. This is Jason Hartman, your host. Every 10th episode we do something kind.

Of special, kind of different.

What we do is we go off topic. So regardless of which show it is on the Hartman Media Network, whether it be one of the financial shows, economics, real estate, investing, travel, longevity, all of.

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So that's what we're going to do today.

And let's go ahead and get to our guest with a special 10th episode show. And of course on the next episode we'll be back to our regular programming. Here we go.

It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Michael Gillen.

He is a three time Emmy Award.

Winner while serving as ABC News Science Editor. He's a New York Times best selling author of Amazing Truths, How Science and the Bible Agree. And his new book, the End of Life as We Know It. Ominous news from the frontiers of science. This will be a fascinating discussion. Michael, welcome. How are you?

Oh, very well, Jason. Really looking forward to our conversation. Thank you so much for inviting me.

Well, me too. This, this new book is absolutely fascinating. You cover four primary areas as I, as I see it, on how we are facing the end of life as we know it. But you know, pardon the pun, but we've got a surveillance society, we've got artificial intelligence, we've got genetic engineering, we've got the Internet. Those are the four, right?

Yeah, those are pretty much the four. And I wrote it not to scare people. And you know, I could have written a really scary book, Jason, that would have been titled the End of Life, period. But it's the end of life as we know it in the sense that I wanted people's eyes to be open to what's going on, the good, the bad, and the ugly, because there's a lot of good. This is not a gloom and doom book. But, you know, the better then for people to reap the benefits of the good stuff that's coming down the line. And also then to protect themselves from the kind of the creepy stuff and the outright bad stuff, the dangerous stuff that's also coming down the line. People need to be aware of this.

Sure. Yeah, definitely. Well, take whichever of the four areas you want to start with and tell us what's coming down the line.

Well, let's start with the final section, which is genetic engineering, because I think there. There's some really dramatic stuff on the good Stu. We do have now techniques that help infertile couples conceive babies. And that's not a bad thing. And so that technique is becoming more and more perfected. But here's an example of, I think, where we all just have to kind of hit the pause button. There are three groups of scientists in California and in Minnesota that are doing experiments to create pig, human, and sheep. Human chimeras. Now, that's spelled C H I M E R A. This is not your grandfather's selective breeding. This is not like, you know, putting a horse together with another animal and getting a hybrid. No, this is something where they take human DNA and they knit it together with sheep DNA or pig DNA. Now, why are they doing this? Well, it appears for a noble purpose. These animals will have human vital organs. They'll have human kidneys, human livers, lungs. And of course, as you know, people are in great need of these vital organs. I had a friend who just died of a kidney disease, and he was never able to get a replacement kidney. So I get that this is a very noble thing. It's a very important thing. But here's the problem, and I discuss all of this in the book. If you get the amount of human DNA just wrong, if you put a little bit too much human DNA into the recipe, as it were, then you are at risk of creating an animal that can have a human brain capable of human thoughts. So think about that for a minute, Jason. Let that sink. You'd be creating an animal, first of all. It's never walked the face of the earth before that would be capable of human thought. But trapped inside of a sheep's body or pig's body. This is not science fiction, folks. This is happening. And what I also find significant. One other thing that I think is significant is that these researchers are doing this against the wishes of the nih, the National Institutes of Health, which normally funds this kind of research, because even the NIH recognizes, you know what, maybe you're crossing a line that we ought not to. And these researchers were able to do it basically to thumb their nose at the NIH and found private funding. And this is also a problem. A lot of billionaires today, people like Bezos and Musk and others who have the wherewithal now, they have the funding clout to fund their kind of pet projects. And in this case, I think they see profit. You can sell human organs to people in need of them. So this gets a little icky and I think that this is an example of just one. I mean, this book is chock full of stuff. It's got more than a thousand footnotes, it's very heavily researched. Not my opinion of what's happening or going to happen. This is what is happening. So this is one example of where you have to scratch your head and say, is this really what we want to do?

Regardless of what the large organizations and we'll call it the mainstream does or doesn't do in this world, isn't it going to happen anyway? I mean, we've all seen the movies of the, you know, the Frankenstein type, cloning and, you know, this, that and.

The island of Dr. Moreau. Yeah, the island of Dr. Moreau.

Yeah, all of them. You know, I mean, it's, it's going to happen. You know, George Soros can just, you know, open up his own lab and nobody can stop him, right?

I mean, yeah, to some extent, yes. I mean, and I talk about that in this book too. There's this guy who is really hell bent on creating designer babies. He's very upfront about it. He's a Chinese gentleman, is a Chinese researcher and he's actually been reprimanded by the EPA and the fda and yet he has managed to skirt a lot of the United States regulations against research of this sort is very kind of delicate kind of research, very sketchy research by going to Mexico, going to China. Yeah, Russia, Italy. There's one guy who has been making noises now for many years and he's really getting very close to performing a full head transplant.

Oh yeah, I know, I've been, I've been following that story and that's pretty amazing. And the volunteer, there were many applicants that wanted to have the head transplant and, and the one who got it, I think was like a 31 year old Russian guy. Who had. Who had what's called locked in syndrome, I believe, where he's basically trapped. His body won't work, but he can totally think, you know. So are you against that? Should he be denied? Should that be denied?

You know, that's a tough one. I think that, you know, when you're faced with a situation where you have that. That young man who is locked inside his body, and it reminds me of the. Remember the novel Sea Wolf?

Vaguely.

The Captain, as I recall. Now, maybe getting it wrong, it's been years ago since I read it, but it's that example of a guy who finds himself increasingly trapped inside of a debilitating body. You know, increasingly debilitated body. And in the end, you know, his mind is alive, but he's literally a captive inside this hopeless body.

So let's move faster. The answer to that one is it's a tough one, but to the other things, it sounds like pretty scary on your view of it, right?

The Chimera. Yeah, I think that we need to stop and think about that. That is in my book. That's not research I think we should be doing right now. I think we should push the pause button and actually discuss that, because there are real dangers there. I mean, to bring into existence an animal like that capable of human thought, trapped inside of a sheep or pig body, I think is something we need to stop and think about.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So genetic engineering. Anything else? We got three more to cover, so I want to make sure we get time. Do you want to mention anything else about the genetic engineering component?

Well, probably not. I mean, we could spend an entire hour on that.

Oh, I know. We could spend a day on.

Yeah, we could. I think that that gives people a flavor of the good and the bad and the ugly. I think that. And by the way, I don't set myself up as some big. Know it all, you know, has all the answers. Again, my purpose for writing this book, Jason, is to open people's eyes. And my hope is that it's a call to arms, that people will assert themselves and assert their own opinion, whatever it might be.

Sure.

Whether it's for or against, everybody has. Is entitled to their opinion. But you can't have intelligent opinion unless you know what's going on. So you've got to inform yourself first and foremost. And that's what this book is all about.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Okay, good. Let's take one of the other three remaining areas.

Yeah. So let's take the Internet. Let's take the World Wide Web, which is the first section I tackle in this book. Okay, sure. Each section, by the way, starts with a chapter called Memory Lane. Because I want people to see how we came to be where we are right now in each of those four sections. So in the case of the World Wide Webinar, you know, I talk about how in 1989, this obscure scientist, this British scientist named Tim Berners Lee, had an idea which led to the World Wide Web. And he had an important decision to make, Jason, and that is when he conceived it and when he figured out how to execute it. He could have kept it for himself. He could have owned it. Can you imagine how wealthy that guy would be now?

It'd be unbelievable. Yeah.

Oh, my gosh.

Right?

I mean, he'd be more rich than Bezos.

Oh, sure.

So, I mean, being the owner of the World Wide Web is pretty amazing.

That'd be a pretty big deal. And he's. He's concerned about it in the big tech companies now. I just recently read an article.

That's what I'm driving at. That's what I'm driving at, that he made the decision to give it away to the world. Why? And I talk about. I tell the whole story in the book. It's fascinating because he actually noodled over different possible names. I don't want to give it away. I want people to buy the book and read it. It's a fascinating story. We don't have time to really do it justice. But he gave it away because he said, look, no one person should own this thing and no one person should control it. It's too powerful. So he gave it to the world. Well, now this many years later, he is publicly lamenting what has happened to his baby.

And I can't say I blame Worldwide because we've got these duopolies that are almost monopolies of these abusive tech companies that are just maybe the scariest thing on earth outside of the genetic engineering so far. But go ahead.

Listen, Jason, I tend to agree with you, and again, I deal with it in the book. I deal with Zuckerberg and Facebook. I deal with the Instagram people. I deal with the guy who invented the, like button. I mean, there are a lot of stories, really fascinating stories in the book, but here's the bottom line, starting with Tim Berners Lee. And now he's. By the way, he's been knighted by the queen. So he's. Sir Tim Berners Lee is actually working on a second iteration of the World Wide Web. He is so disgusted with what's happened to the current one that he's working on, what you might call the World Wide Web 2.0 and really expecting it to be unveiled sometime soon. But he is totally disgusted.

Well, tell us more about why he's discussed it. Just elaborate on that a little bit.

Well, okay, let. Let's take social media. Okay. Social media. When you looked at the ipo, Zuckerberg took Facebook public, okay. He wrote a message to people. It was very optimistic, very bright eyed, very idyllic. That said, Facebook is going to capture the power of the Internet in order to bring people together, because Jason is going to be able to experience the world through Michael's eyes. And Michael's going to be experiencing the world through Jason's eyes because they're going to be posting their experiences and that's going to bring us all together and make a happy world. I mean, seriously, that's what he said in his opening statement.

Well, I mean, he can make a case for that way. I get that. That's partially.

Oh, yeah, I could get. And that's what Tim Berners Lee was expecting. But is that what we have now? No, we have people now who are at each other's throats on the Internet. And I talk about that. I mean, you have now Facebook Live. When he launched Facebook Live, for example, again, it was with these, the soaring rhetoric. It's going to bring us together with somebody halfway across the world. Will be able to show you something going on as it's happening. Well, now we have what, suicides being posted live online. We have those teenagers who were torturing that poor handicapped kid on live. We have shootings online. Is any wonder that Tim Berners Lee is disgusted?

Right.

But you know, this is not what we expected.

Isn't the Internet just a magnifying glass? I mean, it just sort of magnifies and scales all this stuff. I mean, is that. Yeah, you know, is that.

Yeah.

And I hate to sound like I'm defending Facebook because I definitely have a lot of problems with Facebook and even more of you.

Jason, you're on the right track. In my chapter Memory Lane, a World Wide Web, I start off with the unaided, naked human voice. And I talk about what is the reach of the human voice and who has the world record for reaching the largest crowd with the unaided voice. I tell fascinating stories and then I say, what was the first innovation? What was the first technical innovation that amplified the human voice? Can you guess?

Well, I think religion. And then. And then maybe Gutenberg. Gutenberg, the printing press. And then radio.

No, it was it was. No, I'm talking about. It was the megaphone. The megaphone. Then came. Then later on came the, the printing press, the telegraph, the telephone, television. And all I tell, it's a continuous story right up to the World Wide Web. So you're right. Agree with you that you can't blame the technology. Right? But the technology has not turned out the way we'd hope to do that. It would, because you're right. The technology by itself is neutral, just like a gun is neutral. Yeah, sure, gun is harmless until some maniac decides to pick it up and start shooting.

But it's also. But a gun is also very useful and it levels the playing field. I mean, you know, if you want equal rights, then give the little old lady walking down the street a gun and guess what? She has equality with the big giant gang bangers that might assault her. Okay?

That's equal rights.

That's equality.

Okay, So I happen to agree with you. I happen to agree with you. But now let's stick with the World Wide Web. Same thing could be said there, because look at what the World Wide Web is doing to charities. Charities are now able to raise money, huge amounts of money, without having to spend all the money on stamps and envelopes. Remember all the old mass mailing?

Sure, yeah.

If you were a charity and you wanted to raise, you know, boku bucks across the board, you'd have to have this massive mailing.

And.

And the best you could hope for is like a 1% return. Well, now all you got to do is open a webpage and boom. So that's a wonderful thing. There are a lot of wonderful. I talk about the Friday of Wrath, remember the Friday of Wrath that overthrew Mubarak in Egypt.

Oh, yeah.

Social media was right, right? Social media guy burning himself for rousing the masses against Mubarak. So listen, it does.

It does a lot of good. It did a lot of good in Iran when their government was oppressing them. Too bad they didn't have guns. The country would be free now. Yeah, I know, but what's coming next? I mean, look at. We all know this stuff. Maybe we don't think about it every day, but what's coming? Tell us what's coming.

Okay, here's what's coming. Okay, here's what's coming. Well, the book is full of what's coming, but here's one example, okay? Elon Musk is heavily investing in driverless cars. Okay? This is something that's coming now. And everybody just. I don't think people understand why are we doing this? First of all, you have to ask just the basic question. Why are we doing driverless cars? The standard response is, well, you know, most accidents are due to human error. You remove human error and boom, all of a sudden, you're saving lives on the roads. Okay, fine, let's buy into that for a moment. Let's buy into that. So I talk about an interview of one of the big executives that's involved in driverless technology, right? Big Maca. And the reporter asks him, okay, let me give you a scenario. Tell me what the driverless car would do in that scenario. So suppose there's a mother with a child waiting.

It has to make a moral decision as to who's gonna.

Right?

Right.

Yeah, but listen to this. So mother and child are waiting by the side of the road for a school bus, and then there's an oncoming truck. So now all of a sudden, that something happens that the driverless car has to make a decision. So the reporter asked this guy, so what is the algorithm? What's, what's the moral decision? That. So he says, oh, this is easy. You just go for the smallest thing. Think about that. Yeah, yeah, seriously. So that's what's coming, okay? That's in your future. Another thing, neural nets. Picture like a fisherman's net, but much finer fabric. And it's electrical cables, not just ropes. Okay? This stuff is being done on rats right now where they're. Think about taking that net, squeezing it in your hands, compacting it, putting into a syringe. And then what they're doing is they're inserting this through a hypodermic needle into the cranium of rats. Crania of rats. Okay, why? So what happens when you squirt that into the cranium? It's almost like a fisherman tossing the net out to the sea. The net unfurls, wraps itself around the brain inside the cranial cavity and integrates itself into the brain tissue over time. Okay, so suddenly the brain tissue just kind of. Oh, okay, I'm going to just grow through this net. If that electrical net becomes part of the rats brain. Now, you have leads. Yeah, you have leads. Now follow me. Yeah. Again, this is not science fiction. This is what's coming. You asked me what's coming. This is an example of what's coming. Okay? Musk is now investing very heavily in this technology as well. And his vision is, we'll do this with humans. In other words, you can get this neural net injected into your own brain. So now suddenly, your brain can be wired up to a transmitter, a wireless transmitter. And so now you can surf the net with your thoughts, with your mind. You don't need to be in front of a keyboard because you will have a wireless connection between your brain and the Internet.

Pretty, pretty handy. But that could be misused, obviously.

Yeah, of course, of course. And there's mind reading technology right now where scientists are actually identifying thoughts and matching thoughts to the eeg. Yeah, and you don't even need an eg.

Just use a functional MRI and FMRI will read your mind, basically.

Well, that too, yeah. But what they're doing is they're building a dictionary. So now say, oh, I've got old Jason's brain wired up. And, oh, look, there's the eeg. Well, let me look at the translating dictionary. The dictionary translates that signal into, oh, my goodness, look at what Jason's thinking about. I mean, again, this is not. I'm not making this up. This is. This is in the book. There are scientists doing this right now.

We believe you. We gotta wrap it up. But there are two more areas we didn't discuss. Just give us one thing from each about the future, what's coming.

Okay.

Surveillance.

We didn't cover surveillance technology. Okay, here's the big thing, because I just wrote an op ed that was published in the Washington examiner, okay, where a US Congressional committee has discovered that the Chinese government is already exploiting these things called the Internet of Things. I talk about it in the book, the IoT Internet of Things. What are these? Okay, these are all the smart devices, the smart TVs, the voice activated assistance, the home security system, the smart toys, the smart sex toys. We got it. Smart lawnmowers, etcetera, Right?

Light bulbs, everything. Thermostats.

We're finding Jason, we're spending big bucks to bring these things into our homes. They have microphones that are listening to it. They have little cameras that are watching us. All for good purposes, by the way. You know, so that maybe you can sit in the couch and you can just tell the tv, hey, turn it to the football game. And you don't have to hold a remote. That's how lazy we hate.

Hey, just. Just what Americans need, another way to get less exercise.

Seriously.

Seriously.

Right. So there are now 8. Now listen to this. There are 8 billion with a B. Internet of things devices. Get these widgets, these smart widgets already in existence. Eight billion. And by 2020, they're going to be 20 billion. Okay, so let me give you an example that I give in the book. There was A hacker that I can't get into the details, but he hacked into some home cameras, security cameras, okay? And it was not hard to do. And splash the video feeds on the Internet. And these included cameras in kids bedrooms because people, parents buy these video monitors, right? To watch their kids, make sure they're safe and sound. Well, guess what? Yeah. That makes it possible for you to be at the office and check in with your smartphone and say, okay, little Johnny and little Janie, they're safe in their bed. But guess what? This hacker was able to do the same thing and splash little Johnny and Jamie video feeds all over the Internet along along with personal information and geographical location. Okay? So this is the kind of world we're, we're getting into. We could talk endlessly about what's going on with spike surveillance, but that just gives you a flavor. Artificial intelligence. Let's wrap it up. Artificial intelligence robots. Look at, there have been four industrial revolutions, okay? The first one was steam power. It targeted horses, alright? Replaced horses. The second one was electricity. It replaced basically hand crank devices and gas lamps and stuff like that. The third one was computers. It targeted typewriters and everything related to typewriters. This fourth industrial revolution, the artificial intelligence robot revolution, is specifically designed to target us, you and me, okay? Not horses, not the crank, crank, nut type, you and me. So this is a horse of a different color. Now, the computer revolution destroyed 3 million jobs, but it created 20 million jobs. So the guessing game is now on. Will this latest industrial revolution that targets us, will it net new jobs or not? My money is that it will not. I don't know if we have the time to get into it. All the signs right now are that this is going to. And it is already destroying, on average, every time you employ a Robot, you replace 5.6 human beings.

Yeah. And guess what else? They don't sue you for anything. They don't sue you for unlawful termination, sexual harassment, and they don't ask for a higher minimum wage and they don't vote for Bernie Sanders.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. In fact, this big Swiss company that makes industrial robots just opened a multimillion dollar factory in China. And guess what? The factory that is making robots is entirely manned by robots. And you know why? They said precisely what you just said, Jason. They don't have to worry about workman's comp. Sure. They don't have to worry about people, you know, complaining about work hours. This is the future and this is what we need to prepare.

It just got even more crazy in that world. The Chinese now have an AI newscaster. It's a robot that does the news.

Yes, yes, that's right. It just came out. But also radiologists, for example. Listen, this is not just about replacing blue collar jobs. Be aware. This is about replacing pink collar, white collar. Doctors, lawyers, accountants, insurance. I talk about it in the book.

It's about replacing creative jobs. Songwriters, poets, writers of every type. Yeah, absolutely.

I talk about that. I talk about computers, composing music, and actually doing a better job as judged by the judges who don't know which is human and which is computer artwork too. I tell about a story where the artwork is just phenomenal coming from computers. So strap in your seatbelt, buddy. I mean, it's crazy.

That's true. Okay. Hey, give out your website.

So if you want to know more about me and the book, it's michaelgillen.com It's G U I L L E N michaelgillen.com youm can get the book the End of Life as We Know it on Amazon and anywhere else. It's actually a bestseller right now and people are catching on. But I wrote the book not to scare you. There's a lot of good stuff. But to prepare you for the good stuff and to protect you from the bad stuff, Think of it as a survival for the 21st century. That's it in a nutshell.

Good stuff. Michael, thank you so much for joining us. Appreciate it.

My pleasure. Anytime. Jason.

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