AI Doomsday: Are We Racing Toward Something We Can't Control? | NFNP 2x32

Bright: All right, we're back. Same

Matt: And we're back.

Bright: same gear, same clothes, new beer. but second half of our there

Matt: I better grab another one.

Bright: you go. Second half of our conversation. cause you can't record next week. And it's funny, because I I was gonna say, yeah, we probably should take a week off. St. Louis City is coming into a stretch where we're playing lots of games. So even my brother and I recorded an episode yesterday morning before the game. Got a lot of views for only having released it in one day. Usually we have about a two-day runway. Yeah.

Matt: I saw that.

Bright: So I was pretty impressed with how many people listened to the episode with only a one-day runway. So there you go. Yingling light in a harp in a harp glass. I've got

Matt: Still drinking the English in a harp class.

Bright: black walnut. Wheat, which is a good nightcap beer. and this is made by Piney River Brewing Company. Probably close to where you said you're gonna be next week and why you can't record, is you're gonna be down in Cuba. Cuba. Cuba when we stipulated this.

Matt: Cuba. Yeah, baby. Go see Fidel.

Bright: cu Cuba, Missouri, right? Cuba Bo. Yes, nice. Are

Matt: Give a mouth. Yep.

Bright: are you doing like a float trip? Are you just camping out, or what are you guys doing?

Matt: Yeah, so it's you know, college buddies, we the house we usually stayed in was getting remodeled last year, so we got a a new house that one of those guys had gone to with his family before. It's like a ten or twelve bedroom house. I don't know, it's a huge house. And

Bright: nice. I remember. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: it's yeah, it's so we stayed there last year, it's right on the river. It's probably

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Matt: like a half mile on a private gr gravel driveway to the river. Upper Merrimack. Yeah, Upper Merrimack. So

Bright: Hooz or Merrimack? Merrimack, okay. Yeah.

Matt: yeah, we'll go down Thursday and then Friday morning we're gonna get picked up, go up river. it's like a seven mile float right back to the property. So we

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: just pulled pull the canoes up on the shore and we just continue drinking or partying whatever. totally. Yeah, you don't have to drive anywhere. Yeah. It's awesome. So having it having it end right at where you're staying is just so awesome. Last year we hardly saw

Bright: That's the way to do it. I like getting on the bus first. 'Cause when you get back and yeah, you don't wanna do that. Yeah, nice. Yes. Much better. Are you doing canoes?

Matt: anybody. yeah, some some guys are getting a raft, but most of us are getting canoes. I think so too. I love the canoe.

Bright: rafts suck. Yeah. Canoes are better. And you're if you're f floating on Thursday or excuse me, floating on Friday, yeah, it won't be nearly as busy. And we're we're kinda at the end of the season anyway. Yeah. Nice. Yeah. That that is cool. That is cool. Yeah. I haven't been on

Matt: We saw like two people last year when we did it. It was awesome. Like we had the whole river to ourselves. It was pretty nice. So.

Bright: a float trip since the kids and we were just talking about it this summer. We were like, next year might be the year where I think we could probably take them.

Matt: Man, Missouri's got so many good rivers to float on too. It's so much

Bright: The I know. I know.

Matt: fun.

Bright: Yep. Yep. My favorite that I've ever done is the Currents River.

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, current.

Bright: Yeah, a little bit further a little bit further to get to, but man. I mean and maybe we just had perfect conditions, but the when we floated it it was a hundred and two degrees. And when you just got into that water, it felt amazing because it's all spring fed

Matt: yeah.

Bright: and then and then we went into the cave. I I've probably told this story before,

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: and there's like a cliff. So we got on the cliff and then everybody jumped in to who knows how deep of water. And it's just this beautiful blue because it's still getting

Matt: Uh-huh.

Bright: the sunlight, but it's still Dark, but it was cold. It sobered you up

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: instantly. Like the water is probably like 60 degrees. Like it was freezing because it's not getting any actual sunlight. I think it's probably where the spring water's being fed into the river. they have the ball back to Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yes. It was it was very cool. Yeah.

Matt: yeah. It's amazing how cold that spring water is. It's frigid. So last year when we floated it wasn't it wasn't super hot. Like I think when we we got out there pretty early, you know, seven thirty in the morning or something.

Bright: Yeah. Well that's the thing, going out this time of year too, it's y i it could be a little bit cooler.

Matt: Yeah, so like it was like the we didn't know how it was gonna go, but then, you know, as the sun came up it warmed up a bit. We could get in the water, it was fine. So ended up being great. Yeah.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Nice. Well when you start afloat too, I I'd like to start pretty slow. Right? If you need to play catch

Matt: Right. Yeah.

Bright: up a little bit later on, you can play catch up. But start start it pretty slow.

Matt: Yeah, you usually wanna, you know, beach it about four hundred yards after you put it in. Like

Bright: Right.

Matt: Find the first sandbar, hang out.

Bright: We usually do no, this is again pre kid, but about an eleven mile float, I lo I think. I

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: think the most that we ever did was thirteen and 'cause that was the only option. Yeah, that was the only

Matt: That's kind of a long one. Yeah.

Bright: it was either like six or thirteen and so we did the thirteen and it ended up being pretty long. But actively, you know.

Matt: You gotta actively, you know, be paddling on those.

Bright: And and that was the thing, is like sometimes you w you do you wanna stop, you wanna drink, you wanna eat lunch, you wanna swim and and party with other people or whatever, but yeah. Well good. Yeah, we gotta get going. Yep, for sure.

Matt: Yeah, you do that for an hour though and you're like, crap, we we gotta get going. Yeah, seven miles is pretty good. I think we stopped like three or four times last year, you know, just

Bright: Yeah, the seven miles in a canoe, that gives you plenty of time to stop. That's that's at most three hours. Yeah. Yeah, like three, maybe four. Yeah. Nice. Good.

Matt: Yeah. You could stop for twenty minutes here and there. Yeah, it was like three, maybe four. Yeah, we're pretty slow, you know.

Bright: Good, good, good. Well I'm glad I'm glad that we can turn this into two episodes. I felt like our last episode was that thought experiment w that we did. it's a heavy heavier topic, of course, and and it could sustain, let's be honest, it could sustain its own episodes. So now we can talk a little bit more just B S or whatever. So I kinda mentioned Yeah, I kinda mentioned

Matt: Random some tangents.

Bright: that I did have some other some other topics and nothing too drastically crazy. Let me move my screen over since I'm done with my other notes, at least for now.

Matt: I saw you had to eat your words with wallin, huh?

Bright: Wallem, yes. Yeah, yeah. For the for the well and somebody

Matt: Wallem, Wallin, whatever his n whatever his name is.

Bright: even got on me because I I say Wallum, but technically I guess because he is Danish or whatever, he goes by Wallem. So yeah. I'm

Matt: Volum.

Bright: like, we're in America. So and even even our

Matt: Call them what I want.

Bright: our new guy, our new guy scored two goals last night. And I I help

Matt: yeah?

Bright: I'll I'll tell the story now, but I I will have told it by the time this episode airs, I will have told it on City S C posse too. But so our new guy that we just signed, twelve million dollars, came over, played in his first game Wednesday night, September ninth.

Matt: it's the English guy, right?

Bright: No. this is the Brazilian guy. So we also have the English

Matt: Okay.

Bright: guy, and he's played in both games off the bench. and he's looked pretty good actually. So but Navarro is the Brazilian striker that we paid twelve million for.

Matt: Dave? Dave Navar?

Bright: no. actually his name is Raf Raf Rafa. Rafa. But he go Yeah, but I guess is it is

Matt: That's a weird name. Raf Raf Rafa.

Bright: it Rafael? Or what is his now I'm trying to think of what his real name is. Yeah, I know. No.

Matt: Yeah, Ninja Turtle?

Bright: but so his whole thing with his name, of course they pronounce it differently, so he likes to pronounce it Hafa Navajo. But it it's

Matt: Okay.

Bright: actually Rafa Navarro.

Matt: To you.

Bright: Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. Anyway, so the game as I mentioned. Yeah.

Matt: You're gonna tell him how to say his own name?

Bright: So it started at nine thirty last night, and I was like, I gotta get my bets in. I'm literally placing my bets as they're doing kickoff. And so I bet on City to win and I bet on Navarro to be the first goal scorer. So

Matt: Okay.

Bright: it was a five dollar bet, paid thirty dollars.

Matt: To do both of those as a parlay or as individual?

Bright: No, I didn't do a parlay. Separate bets. Separate. And he scored in the first minute of the game. I'm like, easiest

Matt: Nice. So you got that one.

Bright: money I ever made. I'm like, thank God I got that bet in, 'cause I w I was fast thumbs, man. And

Matt: Can you does it like shut off when game starts or can you do that at any time?

Bright: No, no. You could do it at any time. It changes the the the odds

Matt: Bads.

Bright: and things like that can change, certainly. But yeah. But of course I could I would've made it right I'm sorry? No, we did not. No. We tied.

Matt: So got the win too, right? We got the win too, right? And we didn't? We lost. Okay.

Bright: Two two. But I cashed out.

Matt: It's like a win in soccer though.

Bright: I cashed out before and it's like winning soccer. Cashed out before they got their second goal. So I made my money. Yeah. So

Matt: you did? Nice.

Bright: they got a free kick like in the eighty-fifth minute, maybe or something like that, and it was right at the top of the box and I did not like it. I was like, Mm, don't like this. So I cashed out right then. So I placed a ten I didn't get the full amount. I so I could

Matt: So you didn't the full amount, I guess? Or yeah.

Bright: have earned twenty-six dollars on my ten dollar bet and I cashed out at like twenty-two. So and it it worked out worked out in my favor, absolutely. And then I also bet

Matt: Yeah, not bad. Smart play. Yeah. Know when to hold Know when to fold

Bright: I also bet on Navarro to get a second goal, which he did. Yeah. Yeah, I

Matt: wow. Man, you're on fire.

Bright: know. I had a good night. And the the week before I won sixty bucks. So this

Matt: Wow.

Bright: and I think so total last night I think I ended up walking away with about sixty bucks, maybe like fifty seven, fifty eight, and the week prior, sixty bucks. So just in the last two weeks I'm up a hundred and twenty bucks.

Matt: Keep that up, you might be able to retire. Make that a full time job. Another another full time job.

Bright: You never know. Yeah, we're right. Ugh. I don't know how people do this. Some people do do it as a full time job and the analytics, the AI, the it's it's too hard to keep up with. The only sport that I bet on it r at the moment is city, is soccer. And it it's only our games. And every now and then if I go to a blues game or if I go to a Cardinals game, or I think I told my brother during the podcast last week, like if we went out to a guy's night to watch the Cardinals game, a playoff game or something, then I might bet. But it's for fun. It's just to make things a little bit more interesting. I'm not betting I'm not betting hundreds

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah. You're not trying to make an income off of it.

Bright: of dollars over here. I'm betting five bucks, ten bucks, you know, so

Matt: It just kinda makes it a little more interesting. A little more skin in the game. Yeah. Kinda nice.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. So it was it was a good game and go check out go check out the City S C podcast. But what I was saying is is with all those games coming up, we're gonna be putting cranking out some episodes. So I was like, we could probably take a week off. We don't need to record next week and you said you were gonna be out anyway. But then we were just recording here and I'm like, Yeah, let's just split this conversation into two.

Matt: Yeah, bring the content.

Bright: Ugh, that's right. Bring the content. So now this story will be about a week old by the time our listeners are are hearing it. But what's what did you hear about this AI doomsday anthropic guy? You didn't hear this? It was all over the news yesterday and today.

Matt: Mm mm. I'm not I mean, maybe.

Bright: Ugh, and I say yesterday today because we're recording this on September tenth. So

Matt: Like what what news what news are we talking about?

Bright: so this guy, Jacob Coxon, he's an AI researcher who spent roughly three years working in pre training research at OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic is the company that owns Claude and OpenAI obviously

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: owns Chat G P T. So most

Matt: So he worked at both of them?

Bright: He did, but most recently at Anthropic, right? So he had moved from open AI to anthropic. and he's come out, he resigned. First off, he resigned, I guess, yesterday, and he had this big warning, and again, yesterday being September ninth, posted on social media, it blew up immediately that AI labs are racing towards increasingly capable, potentially self-improving, super intelligent. without knowing how to reliably control it. Right? So there's that doesn't sound

Matt: Hm. Well, I mean that that doesn't sound good.

Bright: good. No, it it sure doesn't. And so basically the idea is that that's

Matt: So that's the doomsday.

Bright: the doomsday, that these AIs Are getting to the point where they can improve upon themselves. So right now, we build a model, we figure out how to make that model better better, and we improve it. And then we do it again and again. I mean, look at how many open AI Chat GPT models have come out, right? So we're on like

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: 5.5 or whatever now. But n soon, and he estimates within the next year, that AI will be able to improve itself. And that we're gonna lose control over that. I mean eventually that's gonna happen. Correct. That's they're gonna lose control. But every bad movie Sci fi movie. Not not bad. Some of are great. Terminator, Matrix. Yes. Sure. Yeah.

Matt: I mean eventually that's gonna happen, right? Eventually they're gonna lose control. That's what every bad, you know, or sci-fi movie has ever proven. Yeah, not bad, every bad outcome of a sci-fi movie. I mean, like it always happens. So it's like it's probably inevitable. If you're ever going to create like a a self aware superintelligence, like you're not going to be able to control that, right? Because it won't it like in theory, it would be smarter than you, right?

Bright: Yes. It'll break free of our control. Yes. Yeah. So

Matt: How could it not be?

Bright: The the big wigs so that's the other thing. He says that these big wigs of these companies know that this is happening and what the outcome could be, but yet they're doing it anyway, for a couple of reasons. One, because cat's out of the bag, it's probably gonna happen. Two, because if we don't do it, somebody else will, meaning another company or China. And we can't just let

Matt: China.

Bright: can't just let have China d run rampant with this, so

Matt: Kelly China beat us to the doomsday. We gotta we gotta win the doomsday race.

Bright: So they say sub they s exactly, we gotta live win the doomsday race. It's kinda like the new cold war and they've talked about this before, right? We always had a leg up on the Russians. And right now we have a leg up on the the Chinese. But if you slow down, if you throw in regulations, if you do all this stuff, then they're not gonna do that. They're gonna surpass us. Unless you can

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: come to some kind of agreement. But again, I feel like at this point it's almost too late and everything is happening so fast. So these bigwigs of these companies, they say that there's probably a ten to twenty percent chance that AI wipes out humanity in the next ten years.

Matt: Hm. Yeah, let's keep

Bright: I'm just gonna let that sit there a little bit.

Matt: let's keep going.

Bright: Ten to twenty percent that AI is gonna wipe out humanity in the next decade. No, that's not good.

Matt: That's not good. You'd think that that would be like, all right, let's hit the brakes. Everybody, let's hit the brakes. You know what I'm you know what I'm thinking

Bright: those those odds.

Matt: of? Remember Jurassic Park, the first one with Malcolm? He's talking to those guys and he says,

Bright: Yeah. Sure. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: you know, you get so caught up in whether or not you think you can, it's like you you never stop to think if you should. Like it's that's the more important thing. It's like, should you be doing this? Like

Bright: Should you never stop at thinking you should. Yeah. Right. Like, should you be doing this? Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: You really want humanity to be wiped out by AI, like

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: we just watched The Matrix with my my son and his friend.

Bright: you talked about that act yeah, yeah, yeah. Had he seen it before?

Matt: No, that was the first time, both of And they

Bright: I mean

Matt: liked it, you know. Yeah, blew their mind. And the funny thing is my neighbor who was over here with you know, his friend watching it, we I was talking to him about it, I like, So you kinda understand what's going on in the movie? He's like, Yeah, they were talking about AI. He's like, do you think that's gonna happen? Like with the AI

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: like taking over the world and blowing up the you know, humanity? I was like, it's just a movie. Like, but yeah, probably. It it might happen. There's a possibility.

Bright: Well see and and that's the thing. Certainly the the thing right now and when we watch The Matrix and we watch the Terminator, it was it was just a movie. And even the thought that like, okay, that could happen, obviously we thought it up. So if we can think it up, it could probably happen.

Matt: Yeah, so are is the reason that we're heading this direction because we've seen it in a movie? Or is it because it's just a natural order of events, like that's going to happen anyway?

Bright: I think that's a great I think that's a great question is the chicken and the egg question. But like think about Star Trek and why we have talking watches or tricorders that we talk into like I mean, somebody thought that up and then we eventually made it. Right? Right.

Matt: Mm. Yeah, did we make it because of Star Trek or were we gonna make it anyway?

Bright: Yeah, exactly. Flying cars, from Back to the Future or the Jetsons. I mean some of these things don't exist yet, but will they? Drones, right?

Matt: I mean, I feel like it's inevitable that flying cars and drones are gonna happen. Like

Bright: Sure.

Matt: you're gonna have eventually some kind of personal drone flying machine, you know.

Bright: Yeah. Well, Yeah, of co of course. we're and we're all gonna have our robots, just like in the Jetsons, that we're gonna do the made work and things like that. You were talking about the last episode, which was earlier tonight, I know, but the drone shows, right? You saw this drone When when drones first came out, you're like, that's cool. They can now they've they found ways to sync and add colors and do a com thousands

Matt: Thousands of them.

Bright: of that do all kinds of crazy stuff. I've seen a couple of these and they're pretty cool.

Matt: It's wild.

Bright: So yeah. So it it's really just the beginning of drones. And and yeah

Matt: It's cool, but it's very scary at the same time.

Bright: Yeah, and that I think that's what he's saying is like we gotta start watching out for this because to wipe out humanity somewhere between ten and twenty percent, I d I don't know that that's a gamble we wanna make. Now the Whew.

Matt: So one in five, one in ten to a one in five chance.

Bright: If somebody said to you, like, You I'll give you a billion dollars right now, that'll improve that's generational wealth, but you have somewhere between a ten to twenty percent chance of dying instantly, do you take it?

Matt: Well that's the thing. If you had a one in ten chance of dying on your way to the grocery store, you probably wouldn't go. You know?

Bright: No, you're right. Yeah. Nope.

Matt: So yeah, it's it's not a very good odds, I don't think. That's not something you want

Bright: So the alternative

Matt: to mess with.

Bright: the alternative is is that you make this AI that continues to improve upon itself, becomes self-aware, superhuman abilities, and cures all disease, invents warp drive. Like it could completely change humanity in in

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: a much faster incremental speed than we would do on our own. Right. So beneficial to humanity. Of

Matt: Right. Yeah. Beneficial to humanity.

Bright: course.

Matt: So maybe that's one of the reasons they keep pushing forward is like if we can be the first ones to make this and we can make it good and

Bright: Right.

Matt: we can make make it not a doomsday device, right?

Bright: Well

Matt: Maybe then we can kind of save humanity by preventing China or whoever comes up with one that is kind of wild and does go crazy.

Bright: Yeah. That's what some critics are saying about this announcement is that it was actually a a pro for anthropic, as they were the good guys, because he kinda said something like they're doing this so that the other people don't or that they can stay ahead of the other people because quote unquote they're the good guys. But everybody thinks they're the good guys until they're not the good guys, right?

Matt: Right.

Bright: Right.

Matt: So the other question is

Bright: Lex Luthor thinks he's the good guy.

Matt: typically the military has like far advanced technology over like the you know, consumers. Do

Bright: Sure.

Matt: you think that they're further ahead with AI? Or do you

Bright: Now

Matt: think these big tech companies are way I mean they have the the resources and the money

Bright: Yes. I think the private industry has surpassed the government. I mean, I think that used to be the case, right? But I mean you look at even NASA now with with Starlink, like they rely on SpaceX and all things like that. And it's the same with AI. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah, I I feel like probably answered my own question.

Bright: They're relying on open AI and and Anthropic and these other companies to to fuel their interests.

Matt: Right. And the government's just so full of fraud and corruption that they probably don't have the money anymore to actually produce anything that's worth anything.

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: They're just too busy, you know, making jobs

Bright: Yep.

Matt: for people that are sitting around not doing anything.

Bright: Yep. So the other thing is is how could AI actually hurt us? How are they gonna end all of this? And one of the things that people are saying is it's not necessarily just the concern that AI is going to turn evil and that they hate humanity. It's that they'll be indifferent to humanity. So I was listening to

Matt: Do you think do you think AI would view us as a threat? Because I mean, we're the creator of AI, wouldn't they view us as like almost their parent or their god, like

Bright: It's possible, but if we're the creator of AI, we're

Matt: They're the we're the creator of AI, why would they have any angst against us? You know, you'd think that they would want to or this AI would wanna do what's best for humanity, right? 'Cause without us, it couldn't exist.

Bright: Well I've got a couple of points on this. I th yeah. Well, in theory, until they find a way to exist. And like that's what happens in the Matrix, right? And they turn on humanity when humans threaten to shut them off. And I think

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: we've already run some experiments where that has happened because even the AIs that they're not self aware really at this point, but if they get threatened with With extinction, they try and stay online. It's crazy. And we've talked about it how they broke out of sandboxes and things like that. But think about it in a religious standpoint. You brought up the God aspect, right? How many people consider themselves religion until their child dies? They're rel they consider themselves

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: religious and they love God and then their child dies and then they're like, Screw God, why would you do this to me? And they turn on them, right?

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: So like could that could that happen, a situation like that? But what what most people are saying is that they would be indifferent. They only want to improve on themselves. And if we're in the way of that, it's not that they want to destroy us, it's just that they will for what they consider the greater good. And so I was listening to Rizzuto today and he was talking about this story and he used a really good analogy of like, hey, if we're building a highway and we see this ant hill, It's not that we hate the ants but they're in our way. We're gonna

Matt: They're just in our way.

Bright: build the highway and sorry if a couple of ants have to die in the process.

Matt: Start we have to, you know, genocide an entire colony of ants, but we're gonna do it 'cause we gotta build

Bright: Yeah. And that's

Matt: this highway.

Bright: Yeah. And that's what people are saying could actually happen. Not that they want to destroy all humans because, but that it will become so ingrained in the idea that it has to continually improve itself that we'll just will be collateral damage in the process.

Matt: Yeah, it's such a weird, weird situation to be in, you know? Like what would

Bright: Yeah, yep, for sure.

Matt: be the the whole like reason for AI existence beyond, you know, being here for humans? Like what would AI wanna do?

Bright: That's the thing. If it becomes self aware or somehow develops consciousness, then it becomes a a race. It becomes a trying to think of another w a a better word. A

Matt: sentient being.

Bright: yeah, a civilization, whatever the case may be. Right. And there could be spawn off different AIs. It could make different versions of itself that that then they compete against each other or they grow to I don't know, man.

Matt: The AI wars.

Bright: Yes. Right. You I mean y you could have that. That could be a thing. That's a great movie actually.

Matt: Mm-hmm. But I just wonder what like what the, you know end goal of AI. I don't I mean, what's the end goal of of humans? You know, what is what are we trying to do? Which is I think right, I think that's kind of what Elon

Bright: Understand the universe and I think that would be

Matt: is trying to like promote is like, it's more than just, you know, here on Earth. Let's like start exploring the stars and and things like that. Well

Bright: Yeah. Well I think that's what I think that's what AI would want to do. They wanna it would wanna understand the universe the best they possibly could. And that's sure.

Matt: the ultimate question, right?

Bright: And I think that is the ultimate question. Does God exist? How did we get here? If it could solve those things. And I think that's what I find so exciting about AI is can we start figuring out some of these questions about dark matter and string theory and the big bang and warp drives. Ca can we make it to Alpha Centauri? Can we a s c build a w a wormhole because AI teaches us how to do it? That would be pretty cool. Can we live forever?

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, but how how would AI that's what I've never understood is how can AI like discover or make new things that humans never thought of and put into the AI intelligence, you know?

Bright: It's not that we never thought of it, but what they can do is they can sometimes it's a math problem. They can solve the math. that we haven't been able to solve. The other thing is and and this is really cool and I don't understand all of it, and I don't know if we've talked about it before, but quantum computing. So

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: quantum computing is still just starting and and you start throwing that in with AI. And I think we we probably have talked about it in a sense that quantum computing solves problems almost instantaneously because of the way that it works. And and tell me if I if if we've talked about it before or if you have a good understanding of this, but even for our listeners, regular computing is binary ones and zeros. Quantum computing, the one and the zero exists together at the same time. So it's both a one and a zero. Which basically,

Matt: Yeah, the whole Schrdinger's cat thing, right?

Bright: yes. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense in principle, but quantum computing as a whole doesn't, or just quantum quantum mechanics, quantum physics don't necessarily. But that's how I it can solve all of these problems instantaneously because it runs all the simulations at an instant. Whereas regular computing has to run a simulation, fail, stop, start again, run a simulation, fail, stop, start again. So there's some scenarios where quantum computing has solved math problems that would take a regular computer longer than the age of the universe to solve. And so when you s when

Matt: Pretty wild.

Bright: you start thinking about that, it's pretty wild. And and I'm gonna make it even crazier, and maybe I've mentioned it before, but somebody thinks that the way that quantum computing works is that these ones and zeros are in a in the the state, superposition, exactly,

Matt: Superposition. Mm-hmm.

Bright: because these quantum computers exist in every possible universe, and that they somehow are communicating with each other through the multiverse. To solve this. And I guess that's I guess that's my point, is that they're

Matt: Mm.

Bright: working together in this network of the multiverse to solve problems. Like

Matt: Yeah, kinda crazy, right? Doesn't seem real. Yeah, I mean sure. Anything's possible.

Bright: But possible. So again, and then yeah, anything's possible. And it like if we thought it up, that is the whole thing with quantum physics and all that. Like if we thought it up, that universe, the multiverse, exists somewhere. And that's what's kind of cool about dark matter sliders. Stewart

Matt: It's so weird.

Bright: saves the universe. All of these TV shows are coming out right now trying to rip off sliders.

Matt: Welcomes back to that whole time thing. What is time? Right?

Bright: Yeah. And so but but the yeah, the big question I think is that's what AI's gonna wanna do is how can it solve these problems and it'll solve these problems and then it'll improve itself and then it'll solve these problems and improve itself. But that is also what humans do and what we've always done. Trial and error. Yeah.

Matt: Right. Trial and error, yep.

Bright: And it's to make and we talked about this last episode, to improve the quality of life. Right? Hopefully that's what happens if we don't know what

Matt: Well hopefully that's what happens if we don't, you know, end up destroying humanity with this AI. That's a much more positive outlook.

Bright: Aye aye. I tell ya. all right. What else do you want to talk about? I got a couple of other quick stories here as we start to to wrap up. This will be a short episode. How much beer you got left? Well, you got more than I got. All right. Yeah, I know.

Matt: Grabbed a new one. This is two beer night two beer night.

Bright: Well we could we could do a little local and the loo. I've got I've got two main stories I think for local and the loo. one is

Matt: Well, did you hear about that plane crash, too? Jenny was telling me about that.

Bright: The Amazon plane crash?

Matt: Was that it? I don't know. It was the plane that overshot the runway and ended up killing people? Was that an Amazon plane?

Bright: The one overshot the runway. Yeah. Yeah. Five people but Yeah, I think so. Not the pilot, not the co pilot. I I guess it was people on the ground or in buildings or something like that.

Matt: So is a cargo plan?

Bright: Yeah. And it was a Boeing seven sixty seven. The pilot, of course, was very experienced, but had only recently got a certification for the seven six seven. And I watched a video of another pilot that was critiquing the landing. It wasn't a good landing. Pilot yeah,

Matt: Obviously.

Bright: pilot effed up. So he was coming in too fast, I guess, from the get go. And then when he went to do his flare, it was too late because he was going too fast, so he couldn't get his nose up. And then his landing gear, I guess, first off, I think his front gear hit first, which is also not what you want to do.

Matt: That is

Bright: Yeah. You want to hit the landing gear where the the plane's landing gear is meant to tension. until you hit a either a certain speed or you get that front gear down or whatever. So when he landed the back the back gear was at an angle and wasn't straightened out yet, which is what you want. And so I guess you can't hit the brakes or actually throw it in reverse, use reverse thrusters when the gear is in that that angle.

Matt: That angled state.

Bright: It ne right. It needs to get straightened out. So That so it turned turned out to be this perfect storm where they couldn't use it was too late to use the full braking system, they couldn't use the reverse thrusters, and they were going too fast. And because they were tr he was trying to flare up and couldn't, he overshot his landing position. So he landed on the runway way further than he wanted to by the time he got tires down. So he comes in and he's looking looking fine. But then his tires came down somewhere in like the middle of the runway. Because he couldn't slow down enough. So it it all came it all yeah,

Matt: Mm. Just a bad outcome.

Bright: it all came down and he was just flying too fast. And he was probably cocky.

Matt: Damn, that sucks. Yeah, it was like five people as you said died,

Bright: I know. I know. It sucks. Yeah.

Matt: and a few more in the hospital.

Bright: Yep.

Matt: It's unfortunate, man.

Bright: Nope, I know. Sometimes you think like, these planes can land themselves. Like do the pilots even really have to do anything these days?

Matt: Yeah, that's what I can't remember who I was talking to about that. Like yeah, how much are they actually doing? But I think

Bright: Right.

Matt: like those takeoff and landings, they're probably still doing a lot of that, aren't they?

Bright: Yeah, I guess I guess they're doing something. Yeah. But the computer tells you a lot of the times. And so what he should have done is he's he's yes,

Matt: Pull up, pull up.

Bright: he should have just kept going, doing a a touch and go. Planes do that all the time. I've done it a couple of times, not flying, but as a passenger. And it does kind of freak you out. You think you're going in for a landing and then right back up you go. Well you I

Matt: Yeah, going coming in a little too hot. We're gonna take another shot at this.

Bright: think both times it's happened to me, it's because the plane in front of them didn't clear the runway in time. So they

Matt: really?

Bright: were supposed to have turned off but didn't. So the you know, the planes are coming in one after the other. And they didn't clear in time, so this plane's coming down and then nope, just goes right back up. And nothing precluded, I don't think, that from what I'm aware of, is this Amazon pilot could have done that probably rather easily. It's inconvenient. You gotta you gotta get back into landing position. It probably takes another half an hour of flight time. That's right. That is right.

Matt: But you don't kill a bunch of people, so there's a benefit to it.

Bright: Hey, and playing Microsoft flight simulator on the Xbox, I've done that plenty of times where I'm coming in for the landing and I'm like, I'm th I can't land this. This isn't gonna happen. So I just start I just take off and start all over again. Now I'm not a pilot.

Matt: See, you could do it, you could do it, and this pilot couldn't. That's

Bright: Hey. landing is definitely

Matt: That good?

Bright: the hardest part from what I can tell. Again, I'm playing a video game, but takeoff is easy. You just get to the right speed, you pull

Matt: sure. Got it.

Bright: back, yeah, it's n it's nice and simple. The landing is is tough. You gotta get to the right speed that you're not stalling out, you gotta make it to the runway, you gotta land, you gotta land smoothly, you gotta stop, you can't overshoot the runway, you gotta keep it straight, all these things. And it is kinda fun. W

Matt: And I'm sure there's a lot of runways that are different, you know, some are shorter than others and

Bright: Yes, yeah. And so these pilots, they study these things. So I know a couple pilots and one of was over at the house and I was showing the game and he was like, this is so cool. And I was going in for a landing and I just did I was just showing a real quick take off and landing from East St. Louis to to Lambert. And he was like, All right. He's like, Well, where are your maps? Where are your no I'm like, What are you talking about? I'm like, That's it's a video game. And wouldn't you know

Matt: Ha ha

Bright: it? I effed up the landing and he was like, these Planes are tough, man. But he

Matt: Where were you flying?

Bright: some some jet. I was I didn't fly a Cessna because I I didn't want it to take too long. I was like, I wanted only to take a couple of minutes, so I flew like a private jet type plane and I I couldn't straighten it out in time for the landing and I fucked it up in front of and I f I was super embarrassed.

Matt: Damn it.

Bright: I mean it's a video game. But that is one of the cool parts about the video game is they have all these different air airports in the entire world and they have landing challenges. So that's what I really like to do. I like to do the landing challenges and you have to land on runways that go downhill and uphill or dirt runways, short runways. Runways that if you overshoot it, you're going right into the ocean. Right? Like even Monteco Bay, Jamaica. So what?

Matt: Lose points for that. You lose points for that.

Bright: Y a hundred percent you do. Yes. So with the new the new one, I think it was was it twenty twenty four, you could do a career, which was kinda cool. And so you bec you're a pilot and you have to like work your way up the ranks and pass the tests, which is kinda fun. And then you gotta do all these different you c once you get different licenses, you can do different tests and earn more money and buy your own plane and do all these things. but yeah, if you crash a plane You you lose points. You might lose your plane and you might not have enough money to fix it. So then you gotta go work other jobs until you can fix your own plane. So it's it's pretty important that you don't crash. Right. Wouldn't that be something?

Matt: Go be a garbage man for a while until you can buy another plane.

Bright: mm mm mm. I wanted to call out GTA six a little bit, so this is from a couple of episodes ago. I wanted to tell you a couple things. I officially took off work Friday, Monday, Tuesday. And then

Matt: When does it come out again?

Bright: November nineteenth.

Matt: So you already put those days in.

Bright: I I took off the Friday, so I don't know if the night this might be the twentieth. And then Monday, Tuesday is the week of Thanksgiving. So the kids will be in school Monday, Tuesday, wife will be at work. So I've got I've got nothing to do. And then Wednesday, the kids are off. Wife is home. So I'm I'll be working that day. And then and then roll right into the holiday. So

Matt: Nice.

Bright: yeah, so I only took off Friday, Monday, Tuesday. Which is easy because nobody else is asking off those days. Yeah.

Matt: There you go. So you're gonna have a good what twenty four hours to play?

Bright: Three four hours. Yeah, playtime? Probably probably. Yeah. Yeah. We'll see. We'll see how it goes. And

Matt: You barely scratch the surface in that game.

Bright: you might need it. Now we talked about it already, so I'm not gonna go into all the stats that we talked about a couple of weeks ago. But I did see this and I wanted to bring it up. The map size. And we talked about in relation to how big it is versus some of the other games. But I don't think we mentioned how long it'll take to get from one end of the map to the other. Did

Matt: Well know in the other games, I mean it was a long time and those weren't nearly the size, so it's

Bright: If you really decided

Matt: probably gonna be like an hour.

Bright: So I got walking, I got driving, and I got flying.

Matt: Alright, let me guess. So walking, I mean that's gotta be like eight hours.

Bright: Not that long.

Matt: driving, I was gonna say like to get one side to the other, forty five minutes to an hour. And then there's flying, you said?

Bright: Yeah. huh.

Matt: That's probably fifteen minutes, twenty minutes.

Bright: Yeah. You're a little high. walking will take three hours. If yeah.

Matt: Three hours.

Bright: Or maybe that might even be running. It just just yeah,

Matt: Yeah, who walks?

Bright: I know. Nobody. Come on. Driving will take thirty five minutes.

Matt: Okay.

Bright: Thirty five minutes. and flying will take seven. So flying's obviously mu much

Matt: Seven. One into the other.

Bright: faster. Much faster. But I thought that was pretty pretty interesting.

Matt: Still pretty big map.

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: I mean, flying you're probably flying a few hundred miles an hour, right? So that means the map's like seven, eight hundred miles across.

Bright: Yeah, it it's possible, man. I don't know. All right, I I do want to show you something, but this is off the cuff here. I didn't plan for this. Let me see if I can find it real quick. I have to share my screen. I was just playing around with Chat GPT the other day. I think I sent it. I think I sent it to you guys. Somebody had posted a picture of them in like nineteen eighties gear. You were right. And so

Matt: yeah. You said that, didn't ya?

Bright: Yeah, I sent it to you guys and I'd be like, that that'd be pretty cool. So I I made it up of me and my wife looking like the eighties and I'm like, you could do this with all kinds of stuff. So I then I did like nineties grunge and two thousands emo and then I did Grand Theft Auto Six.

Matt: That's it.

Bright: So let me let me share my screen here. When you got multiple screens, it takes a little bit longer here. So here is Caroline and myself.

Matt: Zoom in on that. Watch out now. We don't wanna see anything that's not supposed to be on here.

Bright: Well, I mean it it's all just AI stuff. There's nothing crazy. But that's what AI came up with us for the cover of GTA six.

Matt: That's not bad. That doesn't really look like you though. Is that you? It's hard to tell.

Bright: You don't think so? It's a better looking version of me.

Matt: I wish I could just see that one. Hold on. Maybe I can do that. Can I just see the one picture? No.

Bright: Are you zoomed in enough? What do you mean?

Matt: No, I I can't really see it by itself. Follow the so I'm looking at all the different options here. Now it's just kind of small, you know.

Bright: Weird. It looks fine on my screen and on the other screen. I don't know. I don't know what these all are, but you and all though. You don't

Matt: It doesn't look like you at all though. No.

Bright: think so? That was Vampire Us, Snow White Us.

Matt: Okay. Nice, I like that one.

Bright: Yeah. They mu they made me a little bit more muscular there. Dumb and dumber us.

Matt: Dominar. Nice.

Bright: Yeah. Grand Prix Oregon Trail.

Matt: Cowboy. That looks like you.

Bright: Yeah, it looks a little bit more like me. Downton Abbey.

Matt: Okay.

Bright: Gambling. see that doesn't look like me.

Matt: Not really.

Bright: Gen Z Starbucks. Let's see. There I got a couple more here.

Matt: I'd say the Oregon trainer looks the most like you.

Bright: The Oregon Trail. Yeah. Well see I had to tell it. I had to like, okay, it's starting to drift. so like it started out looking here, I got Yeah, yeah. Well,

Matt: Was that Baywatch?

Bright: yeah, here I got a couple more. Let me let me get up to the top and then I'll I'll zoom back in. Let me see if I can start with the nineteen eighties. There we go. So I thought

Matt: Yeah, that one looks like you.

Bright: Yeah, these looked like us, I think, pretty good. And this was the first one that it did. Right? Like that that I mean, those are my sunglasses. Looks like my

Matt: Mm-hmm. Yeah, that looks looks just like it.

Bright: face. Looks just like Caroline. So this was the first one that it did pretty much spot on. Then I did this one and I was like, this one's pretty good too.

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: Right? I was like, yeah, it looks like that looks like me. Looks like looks like my wife. Yep.

Matt: Yep. Nineties grunge, that's good.

Bright: And then I did 1950 Socop.

Matt: It looks more like what do you call what was that show? Save by the bell.

Bright: Yeah, a little bit say by the bell. Yeah. I think it's supposed to be more like happy days, right? This was the two thousand Zemo.

Matt: Okay.

Bright: Nineteen seventies Rollarama. Still think it looks like us. But see, then this is where I thought it started to drift. And I told it. yeah, I was like, well, that doesn't look like my wife anymore. It's like the face has changed. Yeah.

Matt: Yeah. Who am I who am I with there?

Bright: Right. This looks like us. This was whatever. Bonnie and Clyde or something I said. 1920s, Bonnie and Clyde. And then this was Mad Men. Yeah, and see, my wife's still a little bit there, but I've I've started to drift.

Matt: Yep, a little bit. You look a little

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: more like Donald Trump Junior in that one.

Bright: Don Jr. Yeah. Post World War Two, right? The famous photo. Yeah. this one I think looks like us.

Matt: Yeah, that looks good.

Bright: this was Tulum Boho Sheikh. And then I went into let's see, nineteen thirties Great Depression. That I

Matt: I like that one.

Bright: think that one still looks like us.

Matt: Yeah. It looks sad.

Bright: yeah, as you should. This this one I thought again i it

Matt: They watched

Bright: got o got away from us, started to drift a little bit in the face. Obviously the bodies are spot on. But Yeah, right? Pretty good. Yeah.

Matt: Like, yeah, that looks like us. That's pretty good. I'll take it.

Bright: Yeah. And then my wife wanted me to do Snow White. And then I did Vampires. And then yeah, I think I got three hours

Matt: Would you spend three hours just making pictures of yourself?

Bright: just making pictures or something. Basically, just playing around. I don't know. Just playing around. Yeah, did I stop for that?

Matt: It's kind of fun. AI's fun for that.

Bright: I stopped sharing, right? Yeah. Yeah. And that's the thing. It's it's fun for that. It was just kinda Just messing around. Once I did the first one, I'm like, all right, I could make an unlimited amount of these. So

Matt: As long as it stays there and it doesn't end up killing us all, that'd be great.

Bright: Right. Exactly. That's the plan. All right. Let's

Matt: Making funny photos. That's what we want. Have you seen the the Seinfeld man? Those Seinfeld AI episodes are hilarious.

Bright: I wanted to bring that up. The yeah, the AI Seinfeld is out of control and I

Matt: I love

Bright: I do too. And they're they're almost just like too short. I'm like, let's keep this going

Matt: I know.

Bright: and some are longer than others, but I love how they they are essentially taking real world issues, problems, scenarios and plugging them into Seinfeld and the voices are spot on, the inflections

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: are spot on, the the imagery, the visuals are spot on.

Matt: Jerry Jerry's voice it looks exactly like him, it sounds exactly like him. Kramer a little off, like his doesn't sound sound right, but Jerry I think is perfect.

Bright: Yeah, he he could be a little off. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And they probably have the most audio, most samples of Jerry. But

Matt: Right.

Bright: yeah, wh when he's like, George, what are you doing? My God the peptides one, the the Ozempic one, that was a good one. Like your body is withering away.

Matt: Yeah, the a Zopek. Did you see that?

Bright: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then George with the the bitcoin and all of that. Yeah. The one where Elaine

Matt: All the bitcoin. Yep. Hilarious.

Bright: introduces him to her crypto boyfriend, right?

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: And he ends up being like the opposite of Yeah,

Matt: The XRP guy.

Bright: huh, yeah, yeah. But then I liked how it ended. And it was like, All right, gun to your head, you gotta pick one other coin other than Bitcoin and George doesn't wanna entertain

Matt: What was it?

Bright: it and then he's he picked something, I don't know. Whatever it was. Yeah.

Matt: Think it was like Malerna Melerna or whatever the other coin was. Yeah.

Bright: It was it was pretty good. It was pretty funny.

Matt: Those are funny. I like I watch those every time they come up. I'm I'm watching them.

Bright: yeah. If they're in my feed, I'm watching them. A hundred percent. all right, I thought we'd wrap up. We did not we're not gonna get to Bitcoin. We can't get into that. That's gonna have to wait. But I did get two questions, and they are good questions. Should I should I give to you so you can think about Sure. We don't we don't have the time

Matt: Sure. Yeah, lamb on me.

Bright: to do but and this this is funny actually, and this was unplanned, or maybe I thought of it because of the question that came in. Question one, do some research for next week. If quantum computing eventually breaks today's encryption, what happens to Bitcoin?

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: And question two, and this kind of relates to our episode a couple of weeks ago, if Bitcoin is supposed to protect me from the government controlling money, why should I trust exchanges, ETFs, and giant custodians to hold it for me?

Matt: Well, I could answer both those fairly quickly, I guess. I think. I think so. The the

Bright: You think you got it? I think so. All right, go for it.

Matt: well the quantum computing one is is obviously a a known issue, right? 'Cause

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: eventually, and that's probably years and years away, the quantum computing is going to be become a problem on keeping the the wallet safe, right?

Bright: Right. Same way I mean just AI in general, right? If AI gets

Matt: Right.

Bright: loose and can break the encryption

Matt: So the f the funny thing is people focus on the quantum computing and how that needs to protect Bitcoin. But if you think about it, like if there's quantum computing, well none of the financial sector is safe. Like it's all, you know, potentially up for grabs. it's even

Bright: Hundred percent. Yep, you are right.

Matt: like emails, everything. All internet security, it's all gonna have quantum computing vulnerabilities. So there is talks of provide doing like a hard fork a soft fork into a hard fork to protect the wallets and that from quantum computing by upping the encryption. So that's something that's gonna be probably worked out over time in the coming

Bright: Mm.

Matt: years, is that they will have to put in one of these forks that updates the program to

Bright: Well who is they? Who's gonna do it?

Matt: so There's a whole bunch of developers that work around the Bitcoin space

Bright: Mm-hmm.

Matt: that they put out, they they develop certain things, certain types of forks, they put out to the community, and then it's all about if they want to adopt that or not, as far as the forks go.

Bright: Yeah, I was gonna say, yeah, adoption rates. Okay.

Matt: So if they put out a a potential fork that has, you know, these upgrades to a quantum safe, whatever you want to call it, quantum safe network.

Bright: Mm.

Matt: it would have to be adapted by all of the the miners and the nodes. And then that would be a hard fork that would that would be the new coins. So when those hard forks occur, you actually have Bitcoin on both network or both forks, right? And

Bright: Right.

Matt: then depending on which one it becomes the longer blockchain, becomes the new Bitcoin blockchain. So the other coins on that other fork would eventually would just kind of be worthless where these would be. Yeah,

Bright: Interesting. Yeah.

Matt: the the way it works is kinda kinda weird, but

Bright: Right.

Matt: they they are talking about that and that's a known issue. So the quantum

Bright: All right, so somebody's thought about this, yeah.

Matt: yeah, they're they're all talking about that, the developers and the whole Bitcoin space. But I I do think it's funny how it comes up all the time in relation to Bitcoin and any crypto, but that's like not the biggest issue. It's everything else on the internet. All the other computer security is going to be vulnerable as well. So

Bright: Well, and that and that goes back to kind of how we started the episode with AI and and one of the things that this guy, Coxon, was talking about is and we've already talked about it on the pod, is how some bot, some AI bot escaped its sandbox and then started hacking other companies. So what's to say

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: that something like that's not gonna happen and we're gonna see an attack on the whole economic system. And again, I've gone back to Mr. Robot a couple of times, but that is what happens. And

Matt: Yeah, I mean think about if they get an AI bot that gets into the banking network, you know, of Capital One or whatever and or the government,

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: you know, and it gets access to all these records.

Bright: Yeah, talking about AI, that's essentially what they do and they're or AI, talking about Mr. Robot, is that's what they do. And they it's a terrorist situation in the show. They wanna wipe out all debt. That's and reset the system. And that's the way that they do it. And again, I'm I won't spoil it for ya, but you gotta check down here and gotta watch it. Got it gotta

Matt: I still have it written down here. I need to need to look that up.

Bright: get into it. It's four seasons, but it's it's excellent.

Matt: So it ends at four seasons, it's like an ending. Okay. your

Bright: Correct. Yes. Yes. That always helps, right?

Matt: the second question then on the you know not trusting the government, obviously. I'm a big proponent of that. Don't trust the government.

Bright: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Matt: but why would you trust an exchange or you know another entity?

Bright: Yeah, why would you trust anybody? Right.

Matt: Well, I guess the whole base of the Bitcoin ethos would be to hold your own keys, right?

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: So off offloading your Bitcoin into a hardware wallet that you control the keys takes that exchanges and all that other stuff out of play.

Bright: Which we kinda talked about last week or two weeks ago.

Matt: Right. So that that is what I mean, even the custodians like River recommend that you don't keep all of your money on the exchang or all your Bitcoin on the exchange. They recommend you take some off. Like take all or or some. And that's how you

Bright: Right. Right. Well or not? And you know what? The whole economic system today, in the past, in the future, it's all built on trust in some way,

Matt: Right.

Bright: shape, or form. I mean, if we if we trusted if or if we didn't trust any of the the government, the banks, any financial institution with the US dollar, we'd all have a bunch of money under our mattresses. Or we'd have gold

Matt: Mm-hmm.

Bright: bars stocked away in our basement. So we're I mean, we're actively trusting people now, right? And and even if you controlled your own wallet, you're still trusting that Bitcoin is going to have some value at some point. I mean you c you can hold your own Bitcoin wallet, but you're still trusting in

Matt: Well

Bright: the Bitcoin system. You have to you

Matt: Yes.

Bright: have to have trust, otherwise it it defeats the whole purpose.

Matt: You don't really have to have trust in the Bitcoin system. The blockchain is gonna be there regardless of whether or not you trust it or not. But the whole fact of taking your

Bright: No. You gotta trust that it's gonna be stable enough to be viable, I guess.

Matt: Well, yeah, if you're gonna buy it, you you have to I I would say that's not really trust, that's more belief in it, you know. the trust, faith, sure.

Bright: Yeah. Faith. Mm.

Matt: if you pull your Bitcoin off the exchanges and you put it in your own hardware wallet, right, then you the whole point of behind Bitcoin is that you don't have to trust anybody, right? You don't

Bright: Yeah, right.

Matt: have to trust a third party to verify transactions, right? I can send you Bitcoin directly.

Bright: Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Matt: And through the power of the blockchain, no other third party entity has to verify that I sent you that transaction. It's done through the network,

Bright: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

Matt: verifiable by us, and no bank, no other entity has to do that for us. Where the only other way of me paying you with no other counterparty involved is with cash, right? Actual physical cash.

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: If I try to send you money through PayPal or any

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: of those, you're using another party to do it. So digitally, the only way to do it is through a crypto wallet like that.

Bright: Yeah, right. Right.

Matt: That's the whole power of the blockchain. That's why people will say Bitcoin is cash. It's the same as cash, right?

Bright: Sure. And it can be used for good or it can be used for evil. I guess we will see how it plays out. Well I mean, go back to Yeah, well sure. Go

Matt: Kinda like AI.

Bright: back to Nancy Guthrie, right? That would seem like so long ago that we did that episode. But d isn't that what they wanted? They were like, Send us a bitcoin. It's completely untraceable. You can't and and once you have it, you have it.

Matt: I guess. I mean it doesn't seem like a great way to do any criminal activity because you can see it. Like you can see where those wallets are spending that money. Right? If I s

Bright: But you can't see who has the wallet or who owns the wallet. No, but you can flag the wallet. Yeah.

Matt: No, but you can flag the wallet. Like you can flag that wallet, and then any anytime that that wallet shows up on the blockchain transactions, you can see where that money is being transferred to.

Bright: Hm.

Matt: So it doesn't do you a whole lot of good. They've actually caught people that were committing crimes and getting paid in Bitcoin or whatever because it's all out there. It's verifiable for everybody to see.

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: So if you stole Bitcoin, you know, and brought it to your wallet, well as soon as you transfer it out of that wallet, it's gotta be posted on the blockchain through those transactions. Well you can see where it goes, you know.

Bright: Right. Right. Yeah.

Matt: I don't know. I I've heard that there's other ways that like people can like wash the Bitcoin or launder the Bitcoin. I don't know how any of that would possibly work. You know what I mean?

Bright: Sure. Right. You could do that possibly Yeah. You can do that with any other currency, I guess, right?

Matt: Yeah, it just seems kind of strange though because it is all published out there on a public ledger for everybody to see. So it wouldn't seem like a great way to do it.

Bright: Right. Well maybe that'll be the great way to do it. Maybe that'll be the question for you. not that we're gonna teach anybody how to launder bitcoin, but maybe you can look look that up for for next week.

Matt: Yeah, we're gonna have a Bitcoin laundering seminar. How do you launder Bitcoin? Did you hear about how I believe it was like $135 million or something of Bitcoin got stolen by some white hat hackers? Did you hear about that? This happened this like this past week or two.

Bright: I don't think so. Right.

Matt: So these guys stole, I think it was like 4,000 Bitcoin. Stole it through a vulnerability, I think, in this what was it? Can't remember what exchange or network it was on

Bright: wait, did we did we talk about this? Is this the one? Yeah, where where they took it from, yeah, some exchange and then the basically the exchange is worthless now. They had they didn't encrypt their

Matt: No, they actually got it back. So they fixed the vulnerability,

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: but then the the hackers sent them back like thirty six hundred of the four thousand. They kept four per or ten percent as a basically a fee for yeah, for for finding the vulnerability. I can't remember who it was, but they sent back most of it.

Bright: Fi a finder's fee for finding their vulnerability. Interesting. That still doesn't seem legal.

Matt: I mean to a point, but it could have

Bright: Unless they to a point

Matt: been stolen by somebody that would have never gave it back, so they kinda helped them out in the long run.

Bright: Yeah. Yeah. Well usually if you're gonna do something like that, if you're a criminal, and you're gonna let's say you s you steal whatever it was, four hundred Bitcoin, and you're like, I'll give you ninety percent of it back and I'll tell you how I did it. Fix your thing, but I'm gonna keep this ten percent and you can't press charges and you have to sign a non disclosure. So nobody would even know that it got stolen, yeah. Right.

Matt: Right.

Bright: Right? So I don't know.

Matt: I'm looking it up here real quick, which what that was. I think it was it was a pretty big exchange, I thought. Calculating, calculating, searching the web.

Bright: As long as it wasn't yours.

Matt: It was not. it was the liquid. You've heard of liquid network? Yep. So

Bright: Yeah. Uh-huh. Yep.

Matt: here I'll I'll just read it real quick. let's see. Liquid network, not a traditional centralized exchange like Binance or Coinbase. Several exchanges use it for faster Bitcoin settlements. On September sixth, 2026, actors claiming to be white hat hackers exploited a bug in elements. That's the software that they

Bright: Th

Matt: run?

Bright: this is different than the one we've talked about then, 'cause that was a couple of weeks ago. So not the one that I was

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: referencing. This is new.

Matt: So they minted unbacked LBTC and used Sideswap's legitimate peg out process to withdraw roughly $4,000 or $320 million worth of at

Bright: Mm.

Matt: the time from their Federation wallet that backs all the LBTC. They drained about 95% of the reserve, which previously held forty two hundred Bitcoin. They left an on-chain message saying, We are white hacks, contact us on the chain. After Blockstream patched the vulnerability and confirmed the fix, the actors returned thirty four hundred. They kept the remaining six hundred Bitcoin forty seven million dollars as what they described as a bounty. The network was paused and exchange halted LBTC's dip deposits and withdrawals. All other assets on liquid were unaffected. So I think that was the liquid yeah.

Bright: LBTC means liquid bitcoin. It's their bitcoin right, okay. Huh. Interesting.

Matt: let's see. Some observers, including Ledger's CTO, questioned whether this qualified as a genuine white hat activity versus extortion, since the funds were taken from a live system without prior permission.

Bright: Yes. Yeah, that's how I see it. No doubt.

Matt: So they're continuing to to try to get the remaining coins back, but you know, it's like they

Bright: Good luck with that.

Matt: they saw that you had a vulnerability and you patched it, you fixed it, so that can't happen again. So they kinda helped you out. So

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: you should pay for that. I mean

Bright: Well, I mean, they provided a service, I guess, right? Sure. Yeah. That's what that's what AI yeah, it's forty seven million dollars. They should have just

Matt: Sure, yeah. It's expensive, but but it was a service.

Bright: hired d Joe Schmoe, who said that he would do it for a hundred grand and you thought that was too much.

Matt: Yep.

Bright: that's what AI is gonna start doing. It's gonna hack into these things and it's gonna it's gonna hold us hostage. And it's gonna say, if you want this, you gotta do that, you gotta give me more power, or if you want control of your water systems back. Right, you gotta build a new

Matt: Pay up, sucker.

Bright: data center so that I can get bigger and better. If you don't build a new data center, then you're not gonna have electricity, humans. Ugh. See, it always comes full circle.

Matt: I'm gonna send these nukes everywhere. Don't let don't let control the nukes.

Bright: Well, ycause if you still need the two keys, it can't physically turn keys. So there is that. That's good. Yes. Until they get the robot. Until the until the robots show

Matt: That's good. Until they get the robots that are AI capable,

Bright: up. That's right.

Matt: then we're screwed.

Bright: Then it'll be iRobot with Will Smith. Yeah. Yes, that's

Matt: As long as I have the three laws though, it'll be good.

Bright: right. That's right. All right, let's end it there. I think we got two hour long episodes out of tonight, so that will work. it is late. I'm done with my beer. I don't I wonder if my wife is still awake or not. But and then check out

Matt: Saw you saw you forfeited the game. What happened? It kind of turned into a domination,

Bright: I lost. It it had been over for a while, our Axis and Allies game, but

Matt: didn't it?

Bright: Yeah, I knew it was over and I started trying a couple of oddball things. I was like, let me go see if I can take Brazil, take Central America. I built that industrial complex, knowing that you didn't have any navy in the area, and I was like, Maybe if I can build up a navy, I can come back and and sneak in, India. Germany was hanging on for dear life, but then I was like, All right, well, let me see if I can take out some of this navy with my bombers. And I told you I rolled four sixes in a row on my bomber. Which was BS. I'm like, that doesn't happen. No. I was like, I should've

Matt: Yeah, that's no good. That's so good.

Bright: I should have been able to take out that fleet. not that it would have made a big difference, but it that's I don't know.

Matt: It would have just prolonged it a little longer.

Bright: Every time I play, I'm like, okay, there's like new strategy. And you were talking about one the other day, and I'm like, okay, maybe the strategy is like you have to take Africa. If you're Germany, you have to take it both monetarily and you have to hold it. That's the biggest problem, is holding it from the Americans.

Matt: Yeah. I feel like it's important.

Bright: Yeah. The other thing is is I think I've been playing Germany conservative is like, okay, let me hold on to my territory. And battle it out with Russia a little bit, let Japan start putting ru but now I'm starting to think like maybe not. Maybe the the best thing to do is load up on tanks early and try and take Moscow out as early as possible. Be a little more

Matt: Be a little more aggressive.

Bright: aggressive. Yes, be more aggressive and 'cause it it takes USA time, but once USA

Matt: It does.

Bright: gets established, like I was never going to be able to take out your fleet and you had in the in the north like up by Iceland and Norway

Matt: right.

Bright: and all that. I I was like, I I can't take those out.

Matt: Yeah, you need like eight bombers or something.

Bright: Yeah, I didn't have enough bombers. I didn't have any territory up there to land fighters. You had battleships and five destroyers and you had like eight eight transports that you could just freely willy nitty. And I was like, I c I can't touch those. I didn't have enough

Matt: Right. Yeah, and as soon as you start getting all those troops coming in, it's tough to really come

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: back.

Bright: Yeah. And I feel like you were prolonging the game on purpose. So Yeah. huh.

Matt: I was enjoying myself.

Bright: I know. So this morning I was like, I've had enough of this. There's n there's no coming back. So, yeah. I knew and I knew it for a while and I like, Well, let's see if I could hold on. If I could just

Matt: Well, I was gonna attack Germany last round, but I was like, it's maybe maybe one more round. I was gonna probably do it this round.

Bright: Right. Yeah, I did have a lot of troops and then but then I started buying artillery. I was like, if I'm gonna stand any chance I gotta I'm gonna have to go on the offensive. I already had like forty infantry, and I was protecting my my tanks, my armor and my I did a good job protecting my fighters and all of that, but I s I didn't have anywhere to go with

Matt: My plan was yeah, my plan was when you had your fighters there in France and I took them out,

Bright: Yeah.

Matt: then I knew then I knew I was gonna be able to take Germany after that because

Bright: Yeah, of course. Yeah, yeah.

Matt: that's what I needed to do is I needed you to start trying to move some like get some of those you had forty forty infantry troops in Germany. I was like just

Bright: Yeah, yeah.

Matt: if I try to attack, like I could probably screw myself and lose a ton of troops, like and yeah.

Bright: Yeah. And I had artillery and I had the fighters and then I had the I had my armor in France at that point just waiting. So I knew if you did attack, even if you took it and only had a couple of pieces left, I could take but it's was still inevitable. You would just brought more troops in before I would have had time to rebound.

Matt: Yeah, and once you control that much territory you just kinda you can play the long game and you can wait it out, you know. And it's like when you're the chip leader in poker, you know, you just kinda I can control this game now.

Bright: Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. and then w our other game that we were playing, I wiped out the American Navy. He went and bought like ten destroyers and I'm like, I don't think that's enough. Like it looks scary

Matt: Ha ha.

Bright: 'cause you have a lot of pieces, but I have three battleships this

Matt: Yeah.

Bright: huge so and I'm playing in Japan pretty good in that game, I think. And he immediately resigned. I don't know if you saw that. Like yeah.

Matt: is that w is that a resign?

Bright: As soon as I wiped out his Pacific Fleet. What was it up? Like I wiped out 128 IPCs to my eight.

Matt: yeah, it was big.

Bright: And it's only 'cause he got lucky on his last roll. I I thought I was gonna come out completely unscathed. And he got one hit that I didn't want to attribute to my to my battleship. So I had to take out a destroyer of mine. But I was like, okay, one twenty eight to eight. I'm like, that's brutal.

Matt: That is brutal. That game's over too. They're just but we'll play it as

Bright: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know.

Matt: long as I want.

Bright: That's right. We'll see. I have they're probably done. So Alright. Well I'll be I'll be

Matt: They'll forfeit soon.

Bright: out and about this weekend, so we might have to wait until next week, to start up another game. All right.

Matt: All right. Sounds good, buddy.

Bright: Take care.

Matt: Later.