Jonathan Kitzen On The Future Of Artificial Intelligence
An Interview With Susan Johnston
Chatbots for Resurrected dead relatives — Feed in all your dead relatives’ cards, writings and the like and then the AI emulates their personality and perspective and you now talk with your dead mother, or younger self.
As part of our series about the future of Artificial Intelligence, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jonathan Kitzen.
Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur, flipping between film and tech work for the last 30 years. He is currently working on his 8th company exit in clean tech, reworking the NASA 025 mobile command center, building a home, a registered boat manufacturer, medical device maker, energy recovery system patent being filed, and finishing his feature film on the nature of evil, DEFINING EVIL. As the Buddha said, “The trouble is you think you have time.”
Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Can you share with us the ‘backstory” of how you decided to pursue this career path in AI?
AI is everywhere and a transformative technology. In reality most businesses have been touched by AI at this point — the finance sector, automotive, online chat bots, art , etc.- AI in some form (and to be clear some people do not accept machine learning as AI and the entire concept of intelligence is debatable) is pervasive. My interest in AI really has always been in the visual sciences and goes back to 2008 when I was working with Meduza systems in Irvine on 3D cameras with depth co-location. Understanding how a machine can emulate human vision took me down this rabbit hole that eventually led to the viewpoint that humans don’t really ever see the world in the same way a camera does — we see an interpreted and often edited version — so creating a machine to see and understand the world as a human does is perhaps never going to be possible. What fascinates me today about AI is that we have crossed the Rubicon and come to a place rather quickly where humans can no longer tell the difference between reality and machine created reality. This is huge. Less than a year ago when Dall-e came out I, along with some of my colleagues were not impressed. Then out came a slew of to CNN’s and tools such as Mid journey which created fast publicly accessible content which was mindbogglingly good. It went from a “cool idea” to a useful and powerful tool. I have used these tools to do concept art to guide projects cutting out days of work and also getting very novel results. When a product moves from a novelty (the Metaverse for example) to a thing you need and rely on to do your work that is a major event. AI is now part of our world
What lessons can others learn from your story?
In working on my feature DEFINING EVIL, I interviewed nearly 4 dozen people from soldiers, to lawyers, doctors, scientists, people living on the street, as nobody as the monopoly on “evil” and how it is defined. Within those interviews the scientists kept coming back to this fear that we are close, very close, to a moment when AI will upend society and in a not very good way. One interviewee pointed out that AI has already changed the news feed you get and that people are now having their fears and world views amplified and manipulated by AI on a day-to-day basis — that reality is no longer really in your control. It’s why we see the rise in greater extremist thoughts and groups — AI has a hand in that. The lesson here is that while you think AI isn’t in your world, it is, and it is in many ways ripping it apart and not for the better.
Can you tell our readers about the most interesting projects you are working on now?
I seem to have accumulated a lifetime of projects recently. I think they are all interesting for different reasons. The use of AI has mostly been limited to predictive applications for water management — that is “how much water are you going to use in the future and when are you going to run out”. This is for a mobile drop in water system my company makes that drops into an RV and gives you access to a closed-loop water system that has a sink and shower so you can live in the RV for a really long time. We are also dropping that into the revamped NASA 025 Mobile command center which also will hopefully involve a conversion of the original Chevy Big block motor to an all-electric drive train and some autonomous driving features and are still hunting or partners on that project.
What are the 5 things that most excite you about the AI industry? Why?
Chatbots for Resurrected dead relatives — Feed in all your dead relatives’ cards, writings and the like and then the AI emulates their personality and perspective and you now talk with your dead mother, or younger self.
Resurrected dead actors — Burt Lancaster will soon be selling cars online. This will blur the line between the concept of identity and image rights which is profoundly interesting
A world where you can choose anyone to do anything — Forget Revenge Porn, just wait until Donald Trump has sex with a Hobbit version of Putin because this reality has already been done.
Non-linear art creation for example combining HR. GIGER with Frank Gehry — Odd combinations that humans struggle with
Medical diagnosis — AI will prove once and for all time that essentially doctors as diagnosticians are obsolete. Doctors as tradespeople (a set of hands that can work on a body) will redefine medicine and make it a trade school craft — essentially a body plumber.
What are the 5 things that concern you about the AI industry? Why?
Manufactured news
Chatbots that will dominate and change online dating — Not only are the photos fake but the responses are too
AI applied to drones and targeted killing — we have the technology to do localized individual targeting today, so combine a DJI drone with a cheap ARM processor and a 12-gauge shotgun round in a metal pipe and you can kill without even being present. We are already here.
AI is not intelligent. AI is really an “idiot savant” lots of insight and no common sense. We are overselling it.
Constant tracking in real time everywhere has already arrived but it will eventually become faster and will be used to create the ultimate police state.
People will be “vanished” via prison or killed yet they will appear online constantly to reinforce the party view like in China and you will never really know it. The dissident will be recreated to spread and amplify the lie.
What is your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share a story of how that had relevance to your own life?
“The trouble is you think you have time,” I find funny and too true. People ask me all the time “how come you have so many projects?” and my answer is always the same, “this is the only life I have so I am trying to make the most of it.”
How can our readers further follow your work online?
www.WUB.ONE also will be launching a YouTube channel soon
What can be done to prevent such concerns from materializing? And what can be done to assure the public that there is nothing to be concerned about?
AI is ripping apart the USA by amplifying the idiots. I think there is plenty to be concerned about but the cure is to make it a crime to amplify “fake news” and that won’t be happening. Maybe we could make a law to make it a crime for people in public office to lie, but then again, those same people would have to pass it. AI is an idiot. It is not smart. It is not alive. It is not cognizant. It is a fool and happy to share the view of a fool if it meets the criteria of its programming. We have problems they are already changing the world, leading to people being killed, to the propagation of lies, oppression, etc. Should you be concerned? Too late.
This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!
About The Interviewer: Susan Johnston is a Media Futurist, Columnist as well as Founder and Director at New Media Film Festival®. The New Media Film Festival, honoring stories worth telling since 2009, is an Award-winning, inclusive, and boundary-pushing catalyst for storytelling and technology. Susan was knighted in Rome in 2017 for her work in Arts & Humanity.
