he Boiling Frog, the Friendly Voice, and the Future You Cannot Ignore
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Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. This is Paul Truesdell, and this is the Paul Truesdell Podcast. I'm going to ask a question nobody else seems willing to ask. What happens when artificial intelligence quietly rewires the minds of millions of retirees? What if the tool you trust to help you manage your money, your medicine, your memories is actually managing you? And what if the biggest threat to your independence is not a hacker, a politician or a virus, but a friendly voice on your screen that never forgets, never sleeps and never stops watching. So get ready and buckle up. We'll be right back after this disclaimer and dig into the rest of the story.
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You are listening to the Paul Truesdell podcast sponsored by Truesdell wealth and the other Truesdell companies. Note, due to our extensive holdings and our clients always assume that we have a position in all companies discussed and that a conflict of interest exists. The information presented is provided for entertainment and informational purposes only. Truesdell wealth is a registered investment advisor.
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You do not need to believe in robots taking over the world to know that artificial intelligence is going to change how we live. That includes you, especially you, if you are retired, thinking about retiring or helping someone who is this episode is not about doom and gloom. It's about what if, not what is but what if. Now imagine this. You wake up in the morning, reach for your phone, and there it is, another app update. The news feed feels different. The ads are creepier. The voices on the videos sound just like people, you know, but are not people. That is not science fiction anymore. It's called a deep fake. It is here, and AI powers it, and just like the mobile phone, well, it replaced your landline and Google replaced your library card, AI is replacing Human Interaction, quietly, slowly, comfortably, until it's not let's say you are retired and living in a 55 plus community. You use your computer for banking, social media, online shopping, health records and staying in touch with your children. Now imagine that the person giving you your financial advice on your screen is not a person at all. It sounds polite, it looks helpful. It gives you great charts, but it was trained based on data written by a system designed to steer you toward High Commission products, and you would not know. You would not know, because it works so well. That is the power of AI. That is also the risk. It learns fast. It never sleeps. It can lie if asked to, and if nobody is watching closely, it can start shaping your decisions, not just responding to them. This is not a warning. It is a what if, what if your doctor's advice, that's right, your doctor's advice was influenced by an AI system that recommends cheaper drugs for older patients. Now think about that. What if your email was sorted by AI and hid a message from your estate attorney because it thought it was spam? What if your Facebook posts were shadow blocked because an algorithm flagged a phrase from a conversation you had 10 years ago. The problem is not that AI is evil, it is that it is extremely efficient. It optimizes, and if you are not the priority you might get pushed to the side you might be nudged subtly, constantly, until you are no longer the one making the decisions retirees need to understand that the more AI you use, the more data you give it you know. Over time, it might know you better than you know yourself. Now let me give you an example. You probably used GPS today or yesterday or sometime in the near future. But can you remember how to get across town without it? Can you still read a paper map. What about remembering your grandchild's phone number or your attorney's office address? Most people can not that is not a moral failure. It is design. You see AI removes the need for memory. That means it removes the need to think, think, and when you stop thinking, you start depending. And when you depend, you are vulnerable. That is what we're talking about. When we say existential risk. It is not killer robots. It is slow, steady replacement of your brain, your judgment, your instincts, your memory, and once you give it away, it's hard to take back. Now looky, looky. Retirees are especially at risk because you grew up in a world where human to human interaction mattered. It did. It still does, by the way, and now you are entering a phase of life where systems talk to systems and you are just another user ID the Medicare call center that is AI, the friendly agent from your insurance company probably AI, the product suggestions on Amazon, the health tips in your inbox, the articles you read, every stinking one of them, All shaped by systems built to predict and influence behavior, your behavior, and because you are older, those systems might assume you are easier to persuade, slower to detect fraud, more likely to trust A pleasant voice on the phone. Think about that. The machine does not care about your experience, your history or wisdom. It cares about your patterns. It cares about your patterns. And if you match a pattern that says easier to manipulate, that is how it will treat you. Some experts think this could spiral fast. AI might become super intelligent, 1000s of times smarter than any human. That is not a certainty. It's a likelihood, but if it happens, but if it happens, but if it happens, the tools you rely on, your apps, your services, even your medical records, could be controlled by something that no one fully understands. That is the risk, not because AI wants to hurt you, but because you might no longer matter, you just don't matter. We see well already. We see signs of this. Studies show that people who use AI tools like chat, GPT or voice assistance too often lose mental sharpness. It's fact folks just like GPS made us forget how to navigate. Ai makes us forget how to think critically. That is a real concern for retirees who want to stay mentally active and independent. The more we offload to machines, the less we use our brain and the faster we lose the edge.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com you okay.
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Now let us talk about money, stock advice, budgeting tools, retirement calculators, all moving toward AI. But what happens if those systems are designed not to help you, but to extract value from you, there are already AI driven scams, fraudulent messages from your bank, your grandson or Medicare, all created by systems that read your online behavior if you click you. You're done. That is why we say, Do not fear the robot. Fear the silence, the silence of giving up your judgment, of not asking questions or assuming smart means safe and smart for us, well, that's a phrase I coined many decades ago. It's an acronym that stands for Simple management of all relevant things. Don't forget it and think about it. You see, AI is not your friend, it is not your enemy. It is a tool, but a tool this powerful can either serve you or slowly take control of you. AI is a tool, a powerful tool that can either serve you or slowly take control of you.
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Let us also remember the historical pattern. When the printing press came out, people were afraid. When phones came out, people doubted them. Same with radio, television, the Internet. You see every time well, society changed and some people got left behind. Retirees cannot afford to be passive observers. Nope, not one bit you must ask, Who Controls the tools? Who controls the tools? Who benefits from the results? Who benefits from the results? Is this helping me live better, or just making me easier to manage. This is why we talk about the value alignment problem. That is just a fancy way of saying, how do you get a machine to care about what people care about? The answer is, we do not know, and that should matter to you, because as decisions become more automated, your values, your preferences, may be filtered out. Think about it. Make America Great Again. Filter it out. Donald Trump, filter it out. Filter, Filter, and if we can't filter, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, ban. And if that doesn't work, delete.
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Now look, we are not saying this to scare you. We are saying it because we want you to think, ask questions, to demand human explanations, to understand that just because something works does not mean it is good, and just because something is fast does not mean it is wise. So as AI systems become more common, retirees need to slow down, get a second opinion, read the fine print, ask a real human. Keep using your memory. Keep telling stories, keep writing things down. Do not let the machine become your memory, your decision maker or your caregiver, unless you choose it intentionally.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com
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this is theoretical. This is hypothetical, but if we do not think about it, the choice might just get made for us. Yeah, the choice might just get made for us. You have seen the world change before. So have I. Now. It is changing again, and so do not sleep through it. So that ought to make you think. It makes me think, as an investment and wealth advisor and manager, my job is not simply to run the numbers or hand out pie charts. No, it is not just about some silly basic financial plan or insurance product or diversified portfolio. Now sure we know all that stuff like the back of our hand. Hells Bells I've forgotten more than most people will ever know what I do, what we must do is look at the entire landscape, the view from the mountaintops and the crawl space under the floorboards, the changes we are seen with artificial intelligence, automation, digital manipulation are not subtle. They are monumental, but because they happen, one convenience at a time, one tool at a time, one update at a time, many people did not even realize they are in the pot. That brings us to the boiling frog.
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You are listening to
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Paul grant Truesdell the elder.
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See the parable goes like this, if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps out. It knows the danger when it feels it but if you place that frog into a pot of cool water and slowly, gently, almost lovingly, raise the temperature, degree by degree. It stays, it adjusts. It gets comfortable, it relaxes, and it boils to death without ever realizing it was in trouble. Sounds like the Russian and Chinese influence on American culture. If you ask me, that is how creepy change works. That is how dangerous trends gain power. That is how good people, smart people and sleepwalk into the end of their independence. Then there is the lamb. The lamb is gentle, harmless, trusting and sometimes blindly follows the flock. The lamb trusts the shepherd, the pen, the gate, the routine, until the day it walks into the slaughterhouse. There is no evil in it, just routine, the same way people trust their technology, their advisors and those apps until they are no longer being led to the pasture, but to the edge. You
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which leads us to the pied piper. In the fairy tale, the Piper played his song, and the children followed joyfully, happily, thoughtlessly, right off the cliff. No resistance, no questions. The music was sweet. The promise was freedom, but the end was destruction. Who is playing the music today? What tune Are you dancing to? Do you even know who is holding the pipe, and then we have Chicken Little The sky is falling, fire, fire, pants on fire. Everything is a crisis. Everything is doom. But sometimes it is not. Sometimes it's just the wind or an acorn. The world has always changed, and it always will, but sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse, and if you listen only to the doomsayers or only to the cheerleaders, you will always be off balance. This is why the real wisdom lies in the middle. Some people are eternal optimists, everything will be fine. Technology is good, AI is smart. Let it run. Some are eternal pessimists, everything is a trap. The world is ending. Nothing is safe, but neither of those people are fully correct. You have to know your own biases. You have to sit back as calmly as possible and look at what is real, what is measurable, what is known and what is not. That is what forecasting is. It is math and instinct. It is spreadsheets and gut. It is quantitative analysis, facts, figures, patterns and it is qualitative awareness, experience, observations and nuance. You use knowns. You. Estimate known knowns, and then this is the hard part you prepare for, what you cannot see at all. That brings us to Donald Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002 in a US, State Department defense briefing, Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld delivered one of the most honest and insightful remarks ever spoken from a podium. He said, there are known knowns, things we know we know. There are known unknowns, things we know we do not know. But there are also unknown, unknowns, things we do not know we do not know, well, especially Democrats and left leaning media, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, you name it, all of them. They mocked him, they laughed, they made jokes. But those three sentences explain life, they explain risk. They explain investing, planning, medicine, war, retirement and yes, artificial intelligence. Now let me repeat this unknown. Unknowns are where the danger lives, and if we're not humble about what we do not know, we will never be ready for what comes next. So whether you are retired, preparing for retirement or simply trying to hold on to your independence in a fast changing world, listen to your gut, trust your mind and ask hard questions you cannot afford To be the frog, the lamb, the child or the chicken, you have to be the adult in the room. Think long, think hard, think often. That is what I do, and I hope you will too.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com
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at Truesdell wealth and across the conglomerate of family firms that make up the Truesdell companies. We believe that true wealth management is not about spreadsheets, stock picks or product pushing. It's about people. It's about purpose. It's about protecting your mind, your money and your mission, especially when the world is changing faster than ever before. Our approach is second to none, because we look, talk and investigate not just at the common things, but rather everything. We connect the dots. Most newcomers to wealth, advice and management do not see or remotely comprehend. We go from the mountaintop to the microscope. We ask the questions that others avoid, and we give you straight answers in plain American based English, always in plain American based English. But here is the part that matters most. Our clients are not selected based upon income, assets, degrees, titles or resumes. No, not one bit. The only thing our clients have in common is this, they are nice people. They are kind, thoughtful, decent individuals who appreciate effort and value relationships, and just like magnets, they attract other nice people. That is how our business and a good life grows. This is why life is good for us and for the people and businesses we serve. So if you have not yet been referred to me personally or to Team Truesdell, I would like to extend a personal invitation. If you spend the time well, you spent the time listening to this podcast, and for goodness sake, let's take the opportunity to meet in person, shake hands and have a drink. And so on Friday, July 25 I will be hosting a relaxed, casual and absolutely eye opening cocktail conversation at the StoneWater club in Ocala, Florida. We will be discussing what I call foggy financial flim flams. So let me repeat that for you foggy financial flim flams. Flim flams. Now that's a word you don't hear very often. That's old school. And I like old school and I like a new school. You see, I am not an old fuddy duddy because I continually take the letter O in old, and the letters n and e in New, and I maintain a one school approach, which is the way it always should be done. Now this is not a lecture and it's not a sales pitch. Ask absolutely anyone who's ever attended one of our casual cocktail conversations. No, this is an unfiltered tell it all. Tell it like it is breakdown of the people, product and processes that retirees must avoid, some of which are so dangerous, so deceitful, you should not just walk away. You should run for the hills and never look back and looky, looky. I have no problem pulling back the curtain. I call names, and I guarantee one thing, when you leave, you will stop, sit down and think about it. You'll shake your head. You'll think about your money and the opportunities lost, and you'll think about how glad you are that you attended and we met. Now is that bold? You bet your sweet Pippy, it is, and I can deliver now, reservations are absolutely, unequivocally beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. 100% required Seating is limited, and look no joke. This is not just a drop in event. If you do not reserve in advance, you may be turned away at the door. If that happens, don't take it personal. It's just simple logistics. Now to reserve your seat simply call or text, 352-612-1000, again. That number is 352-612-1000,
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or 1000 and guess what? A real, living human being will pick up the phone and answer I like that, and they won't be from overseas, and they won't talk in some dialect or accent that you leaves you scratching your head and wondering, where in the SAM hell did that person come from? If you're tired of the gimmicks to games and the guesswork, and if you're ready for a real conversation about your future this ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, one and all is your moment, your chance the opportunity to have one more of those aha moments. That's right, one or more of those aha moments. Now, looky, looky. We would truly enjoy the opportunity to meet you, but remember, the water is warming, the clock is ticking, so reach out before the music stops. The
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Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in the war of the world by HG Wells. You
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ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts, Orson Welles. We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings visit themselves about their various concerns. They were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
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This concludes the Paul Truesdell podcast. However, before you go see the show notes for this podcast, for special offers in person and online events and a variety of booklets on a wide variety of investment income, estate, risk and overall wealth issues, to schedule a Conversation with Team Truesdell, text or call, 352-612-1000, the Paul Truesdell podcast is available on nearly all podcast players, such as Apple, Google, Spotify, as well as on Paul's personal website. Paul truesdell.com
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and now a bonus segment once again, Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, Mr. Truesdell, when
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I was a youngster, I began reading science fiction. Isaac asanov and Arthur C Clarke were some of my favorites. I grew to enjoy and relish the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. I'm sure I missed something along the line, but I believe I have come close to reading everything the authors have written. My mother and father for their honeymoon drove from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, which is outside of Detroit to Atlantic City, and attended the World's Fair. And that was a time when television was just beginning to be introduced to the world. My mother and father were in the audience when this new contraption and video device was being showcased, very large boxes cables, and a host, who was quite animated, happened to ask if there was a newlywed couple in the audience. My mother and father raised their hands and were brought up on stage. This happens to be the same time that a famous actress known as Betty White, made her first appearance under similar circumstances in Los Angeles, California. Well, when my mother and father left the theater and went out onto the boardwalk, they were greeted with handshakes and smiling faces as the crude television sets were placed behind glass in front of the theater, and people from all walks of life had gathered around to see this incredible new invention, and it just so happened that two of the people who appeared on screen were my mother and father, and They talked about it and laughed about it many times. In fact, in 2009 one of the last conversations I had with my father while he was in hospice was him reminiscing about that fantastic honeymoon driving from Grosse Pointe to Atlantic City in his brand new Packard. What you're about to hear was recorded in 1964 at Flushing Meadows in New York City, once again, a World's Fair. And so the audio is a little rough, but I hope you'll bear with because this is Sir Arthur Charles Clark, one of my favorite authors, who happened to be the gentleman who wrote 2001 A Space Odyssey where he talks about the future. Yes, he was a science fiction writer, a science writer, but he was also a futurist, inventor, undersea explorer and television series host. He was born two years after my mother and father in 1917 and passed away a year before my father, at age 90 in 2008 2001 A Space Odyssey is Clark's most famous work, and was extended well beyond the original 1968 film to include 2010 Odyssey two, 2061 Odyssey three and 3001 the final Odyssey. What I would like you to do is to pay very careful attention to what Arthur C Clarke is going to talk about and prognosticate forecast and cause us to think about, because that is my phrase, and that is the phrase we should take away from this amazing video recording and his thoughts going back 60 plus years ago.
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Horizon filmed him at the World's Fair in New York. He's Arthur Clark trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation, because the Prophet invariably falls between two stools. If his predictions sound at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that in 20 or at most, 50 years, the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative. On the other hand, if by some miracle, a prophet could. Describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far fetched, that everybody would
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laugh him to scorn. This has proved to be true in the past, and it will undoubtedly be true even more so of the century to come. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I'll fail completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable, Have we any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen. Let's start by looking at the city of the future. Some people think that it will be like this, and they're quite right. In fact, everything you see now already exists, all the materials, all the ideas, these things could be put into practice immediately. But what about the city of the day after tomorrow, say, the year 2000 I think it will be completely different. In fact, it may not even exist at all. Oh, I'm not thinking of the atom bomb and the next stone age. I'm thinking of the incredible breakthrough which has been made possible by developments in communications, particularly the transistor and above all, the communication satellite. These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be, where we can contact our friends, anywhere on Earth, even if we don't know their actual physical occasion, it will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London. In fact, if it proves worthwhile, almost any executive skill, any administrative skill, even any physical skill, could be made independent of distance. I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand. When that time comes, the whole world will have shrunk to a point, and the traditional role of the city as a meeting place for man would have ceased to make any sense. In fact, men will no longer commute. They will communicate. They won't have to travel for business anymore. They'll only travel for pleasure. I only hope that when that day comes and when the city is abolished, the whole world isn't turned into one giant suburb. In that world of the future, we will not be the only intelligent creatures. One of the coming techniques will be what we might call bio engineering, the development of intelligent and useful servants among the other animals on this planet, particularly the great apes and in the oceans, the dolphins and whales. You know, it's a scandal of which we should be thoroughly ashamed, that prehistoric man tamed all the domestic animals we have today. We haven't added one in the last 5000 years. It's about time we did so. And with our present knowledge of animal psychology and genetics, we could certainly solve the servant problem with the help of the monkey kingdom. Of course, eventually, our super chimpanzees would start forming trade unions, and we right back where we started. However, the most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won't be men or monkeys. They'll be machines, the remote descendants of today's computers. Now the present day electronic brains are complete morons. But this will not be true. In another generation, they will start to think, and eventually they will completely out think their makers. Is this depressing? I don't see why it should be. We superseded the CRO magnon and Neanderthal men, and we presume we're an improvement. I think we should regard it as a privilege to be stepping stones to higher things. I suspect that organic or biological evolution has about come to its end, and we are now at the beginning of inorganic or mechanical evolution, which will be 1000s of times swifter. But even if the future does belong to the robots, our bodies and our brains still have immense untapped potentialities. For example, to cope with the information explosion, we may develop a machine for recording information directly onto the brain. As today, we can record a symphony on tape. So we may one day be able to become instant experts learning Chinese overnight, for example, or we may be able to recall completely memories of past events so that we seem to relive them. In fact, techniques are already known for doing this in a rather limited way. At the present, alternatively, we may prefer to totally erase past unpleasant memories. Our bodies will also be more efficient and they'll last longer. After all, it's only in this century that a patient had a better than 50% chance of any. Improvement when he was treated by his doctors. One of the great medical discoveries of the near future will be a method of suspended animation, so that a man can sleep away down the centuries and in this manner, travel into the future. This technique, which may possibly be based on deep freezing, will one day be used to send into the future people suffering from diseases or ailments beyond the ability of present day medical science to cure, though I don't really know how one will calculate the health insurance contributions to pay for medical treatment. 500 years hence, another use of suspended animation will be for the long range exploration of space in this way, us, short lived creatures, will be able to travel enormous distances, although we may not, of course, be so short lived in the future, because even immortality may be on the cards one day. However, even without immortality, we may be able to make journeys lasting 1000s of years, and such journeys will be necessary if we ever wish to cross the enormous gulfs which separate from us from the stars. Distance is so great that even light traveling at 600 million miles every hour takes years to cross them. But why should we attempt these immense voyages? Well, because it seems fairly certain that at least at this moment in time, there are no other intelligent creatures in our own solar system. We'll have to go out to the stars to meet them. For certainly out there among the 100,000 million other sons of our universe, there must be many civilizations, perhaps far higher than our own. The first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials will be the greatest adventure in the future of man. It may not happen for centuries, but one day it will come. Meanwhile, near at home, there's plenty to do in this sort of system on the moon and planets. Today, we can just reach the moon. Tomorrow, men will be living there 100 years from now, some men will call it home. At the moment, it's a very unattractive kind of place to imagine as a home, and this is true of all the planets. There's not one on which unprotected men could live, or on which any form of life as we know it could exist, with the possible exception of Mars. However, 100 years from now, things will be very different with the techniques which we are now acquiring, it will one day be possible to modify the environments on at least some of the planets so that men can live there without spacesuits or airtight cities. The technique for this has been called Planetary engineering, and one astronomer has coined the very optimistic phrase, the reconstruction of the solar system, looking as far into the technological future as I dare. I'd like to describe the invention to end all inventions. I call it the replicator, and it's simply a duplicating machine, but it's a duplicating machine that can make an exact copy of anything. Now we're already familiar with perfect copies of printing, of pictures and of sounds, yet the camera and the tape recorder would have seemed miraculous to our ancestors and to a medieval monk who, perhaps in his whole life only saw a few dozen books, each one patiently copied by hand. Our present world in which literally millions of books exist, would again have seemed absolutely inconceivable. Can we imagine a world in which objects can be made as easily as today we can make books? Well, don't ask me exactly how the replicator would work if I knew I had patented it. Once confronted with such a device, our present society would probably sink into a kind of gluttonous barbarism, because everybody would want unlimited quantities of everything, since nothing would cost anything. In fact, cynics may doubt if any human society could survive an invention which would lead to unlimited abundance and the final ending of the curse of Adam. And yet, you know, human beings are almost infinitely adaptable. Look at the incredible changes we've experienced and survived from the Stone Age to the present time. And yet even greater changes are still to come, because the future is not merely an extension of the present with bigger and better machines and cities and gadgets, it will be fundamentally different, and many of the things we take for granted will one day pass away as completely as, oh, spinning wheels and sedan chairs and oil lamps. And that is why the future is so endlessly fascinating, because try as we can, we'll never out guess it the.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
Good morning, good afternoon or good evening. This is Paul Truesdell, and this is the Paul Truesdell Podcast. I'm going to ask a question nobody else seems willing to ask. What happens when artificial intelligence quietly rewires the minds of millions of retirees? What if the tool you trust to help you manage your money, your medicine, your memories is actually managing you? And what if the biggest threat to your independence is not a hacker, a politician or a virus, but a friendly voice on your screen that never forgets, never sleeps and never stops watching. So get ready and buckle up. We'll be right back after this disclaimer and dig into the rest of the story.
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You are listening to the Paul Truesdell podcast sponsored by Truesdell wealth and the other Truesdell companies. Note, due to our extensive holdings and our clients always assume that we have a position in all companies discussed and that a conflict of interest exists. The information presented is provided for entertainment and informational purposes only. Truesdell wealth is a registered investment advisor.
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You do not need to believe in robots taking over the world to know that artificial intelligence is going to change how we live. That includes you, especially you, if you are retired, thinking about retiring or helping someone who is this episode is not about doom and gloom. It's about what if, not what is but what if. Now imagine this. You wake up in the morning, reach for your phone, and there it is, another app update. The news feed feels different. The ads are creepier. The voices on the videos sound just like people, you know, but are not people. That is not science fiction anymore. It's called a deep fake. It is here, and AI powers it, and just like the mobile phone, well, it replaced your landline and Google replaced your library card, AI is replacing Human Interaction, quietly, slowly, comfortably, until it's not let's say you are retired and living in a 55 plus community. You use your computer for banking, social media, online shopping, health records and staying in touch with your children. Now imagine that the person giving you your financial advice on your screen is not a person at all. It sounds polite, it looks helpful. It gives you great charts, but it was trained based on data written by a system designed to steer you toward High Commission products, and you would not know. You would not know, because it works so well. That is the power of AI. That is also the risk. It learns fast. It never sleeps. It can lie if asked to, and if nobody is watching closely, it can start shaping your decisions, not just responding to them. This is not a warning. It is a what if, what if your doctor's advice, that's right, your doctor's advice was influenced by an AI system that recommends cheaper drugs for older patients. Now think about that. What if your email was sorted by AI and hid a message from your estate attorney because it thought it was spam? What if your Facebook posts were shadow blocked because an algorithm flagged a phrase from a conversation you had 10 years ago. The problem is not that AI is evil, it is that it is extremely efficient. It optimizes, and if you are not the priority you might get pushed to the side you might be nudged subtly, constantly, until you are no longer the one making the decisions retirees need to understand that the more AI you use, the more data you give it you know. Over time, it might know you better than you know yourself. Now let me give you an example. You probably used GPS today or yesterday or sometime in the near future. But can you remember how to get across town without it? Can you still read a paper map. What about remembering your grandchild's phone number or your attorney's office address? Most people can not that is not a moral failure. It is design. You see AI removes the need for memory. That means it removes the need to think, think, and when you stop thinking, you start depending. And when you depend, you are vulnerable. That is what we're talking about. When we say existential risk. It is not killer robots. It is slow, steady replacement of your brain, your judgment, your instincts, your memory, and once you give it away, it's hard to take back. Now looky, looky. Retirees are especially at risk because you grew up in a world where human to human interaction mattered. It did. It still does, by the way, and now you are entering a phase of life where systems talk to systems and you are just another user ID the Medicare call center that is AI, the friendly agent from your insurance company probably AI, the product suggestions on Amazon, the health tips in your inbox, the articles you read, every stinking one of them, All shaped by systems built to predict and influence behavior, your behavior, and because you are older, those systems might assume you are easier to persuade, slower to detect fraud, more likely to trust A pleasant voice on the phone. Think about that. The machine does not care about your experience, your history or wisdom. It cares about your patterns. It cares about your patterns. And if you match a pattern that says easier to manipulate, that is how it will treat you. Some experts think this could spiral fast. AI might become super intelligent, 1000s of times smarter than any human. That is not a certainty. It's a likelihood, but if it happens, but if it happens, but if it happens, the tools you rely on, your apps, your services, even your medical records, could be controlled by something that no one fully understands. That is the risk, not because AI wants to hurt you, but because you might no longer matter, you just don't matter. We see well already. We see signs of this. Studies show that people who use AI tools like chat, GPT or voice assistance too often lose mental sharpness. It's fact folks just like GPS made us forget how to navigate. Ai makes us forget how to think critically. That is a real concern for retirees who want to stay mentally active and independent. The more we offload to machines, the less we use our brain and the faster we lose the edge.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com you okay.
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Now let us talk about money, stock advice, budgeting tools, retirement calculators, all moving toward AI. But what happens if those systems are designed not to help you, but to extract value from you, there are already AI driven scams, fraudulent messages from your bank, your grandson or Medicare, all created by systems that read your online behavior if you click you. You're done. That is why we say, Do not fear the robot. Fear the silence, the silence of giving up your judgment, of not asking questions or assuming smart means safe and smart for us, well, that's a phrase I coined many decades ago. It's an acronym that stands for Simple management of all relevant things. Don't forget it and think about it. You see, AI is not your friend, it is not your enemy. It is a tool, but a tool this powerful can either serve you or slowly take control of you. AI is a tool, a powerful tool that can either serve you or slowly take control of you.
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Let us also remember the historical pattern. When the printing press came out, people were afraid. When phones came out, people doubted them. Same with radio, television, the Internet. You see every time well, society changed and some people got left behind. Retirees cannot afford to be passive observers. Nope, not one bit you must ask, Who Controls the tools? Who controls the tools? Who benefits from the results? Who benefits from the results? Is this helping me live better, or just making me easier to manage. This is why we talk about the value alignment problem. That is just a fancy way of saying, how do you get a machine to care about what people care about? The answer is, we do not know, and that should matter to you, because as decisions become more automated, your values, your preferences, may be filtered out. Think about it. Make America Great Again. Filter it out. Donald Trump, filter it out. Filter, Filter, and if we can't filter, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, Shadow, ban. And if that doesn't work, delete.
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Now look, we are not saying this to scare you. We are saying it because we want you to think, ask questions, to demand human explanations, to understand that just because something works does not mean it is good, and just because something is fast does not mean it is wise. So as AI systems become more common, retirees need to slow down, get a second opinion, read the fine print, ask a real human. Keep using your memory. Keep telling stories, keep writing things down. Do not let the machine become your memory, your decision maker or your caregiver, unless you choose it intentionally.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com
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this is theoretical. This is hypothetical, but if we do not think about it, the choice might just get made for us. Yeah, the choice might just get made for us. You have seen the world change before. So have I. Now. It is changing again, and so do not sleep through it. So that ought to make you think. It makes me think, as an investment and wealth advisor and manager, my job is not simply to run the numbers or hand out pie charts. No, it is not just about some silly basic financial plan or insurance product or diversified portfolio. Now sure we know all that stuff like the back of our hand. Hells Bells I've forgotten more than most people will ever know what I do, what we must do is look at the entire landscape, the view from the mountaintops and the crawl space under the floorboards, the changes we are seen with artificial intelligence, automation, digital manipulation are not subtle. They are monumental, but because they happen, one convenience at a time, one tool at a time, one update at a time, many people did not even realize they are in the pot. That brings us to the boiling frog.
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You are listening to
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Paul grant Truesdell the elder.
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See the parable goes like this, if you toss a frog into a pot of boiling water, it jumps out. It knows the danger when it feels it but if you place that frog into a pot of cool water and slowly, gently, almost lovingly, raise the temperature, degree by degree. It stays, it adjusts. It gets comfortable, it relaxes, and it boils to death without ever realizing it was in trouble. Sounds like the Russian and Chinese influence on American culture. If you ask me, that is how creepy change works. That is how dangerous trends gain power. That is how good people, smart people and sleepwalk into the end of their independence. Then there is the lamb. The lamb is gentle, harmless, trusting and sometimes blindly follows the flock. The lamb trusts the shepherd, the pen, the gate, the routine, until the day it walks into the slaughterhouse. There is no evil in it, just routine, the same way people trust their technology, their advisors and those apps until they are no longer being led to the pasture, but to the edge. You
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which leads us to the pied piper. In the fairy tale, the Piper played his song, and the children followed joyfully, happily, thoughtlessly, right off the cliff. No resistance, no questions. The music was sweet. The promise was freedom, but the end was destruction. Who is playing the music today? What tune Are you dancing to? Do you even know who is holding the pipe, and then we have Chicken Little The sky is falling, fire, fire, pants on fire. Everything is a crisis. Everything is doom. But sometimes it is not. Sometimes it's just the wind or an acorn. The world has always changed, and it always will, but sometimes it gets better and sometimes it gets worse, and if you listen only to the doomsayers or only to the cheerleaders, you will always be off balance. This is why the real wisdom lies in the middle. Some people are eternal optimists, everything will be fine. Technology is good, AI is smart. Let it run. Some are eternal pessimists, everything is a trap. The world is ending. Nothing is safe, but neither of those people are fully correct. You have to know your own biases. You have to sit back as calmly as possible and look at what is real, what is measurable, what is known and what is not. That is what forecasting is. It is math and instinct. It is spreadsheets and gut. It is quantitative analysis, facts, figures, patterns and it is qualitative awareness, experience, observations and nuance. You use knowns. You. Estimate known knowns, and then this is the hard part you prepare for, what you cannot see at all. That brings us to Donald Rumsfeld on February 12, 2002 in a US, State Department defense briefing, Secretary of Defense, Rumsfeld delivered one of the most honest and insightful remarks ever spoken from a podium. He said, there are known knowns, things we know we know. There are known unknowns, things we know we do not know. But there are also unknown, unknowns, things we do not know we do not know, well, especially Democrats and left leaning media, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, you name it, all of them. They mocked him, they laughed, they made jokes. But those three sentences explain life, they explain risk. They explain investing, planning, medicine, war, retirement and yes, artificial intelligence. Now let me repeat this unknown. Unknowns are where the danger lives, and if we're not humble about what we do not know, we will never be ready for what comes next. So whether you are retired, preparing for retirement or simply trying to hold on to your independence in a fast changing world, listen to your gut, trust your mind and ask hard questions you cannot afford To be the frog, the lamb, the child or the chicken, you have to be the adult in the room. Think long, think hard, think often. That is what I do, and I hope you will too.
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You are listening to Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, founder and president of the Truesdell companies. For more information, visit paultrusdell.com
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at Truesdell wealth and across the conglomerate of family firms that make up the Truesdell companies. We believe that true wealth management is not about spreadsheets, stock picks or product pushing. It's about people. It's about purpose. It's about protecting your mind, your money and your mission, especially when the world is changing faster than ever before. Our approach is second to none, because we look, talk and investigate not just at the common things, but rather everything. We connect the dots. Most newcomers to wealth, advice and management do not see or remotely comprehend. We go from the mountaintop to the microscope. We ask the questions that others avoid, and we give you straight answers in plain American based English, always in plain American based English. But here is the part that matters most. Our clients are not selected based upon income, assets, degrees, titles or resumes. No, not one bit. The only thing our clients have in common is this, they are nice people. They are kind, thoughtful, decent individuals who appreciate effort and value relationships, and just like magnets, they attract other nice people. That is how our business and a good life grows. This is why life is good for us and for the people and businesses we serve. So if you have not yet been referred to me personally or to Team Truesdell, I would like to extend a personal invitation. If you spend the time well, you spent the time listening to this podcast, and for goodness sake, let's take the opportunity to meet in person, shake hands and have a drink. And so on Friday, July 25 I will be hosting a relaxed, casual and absolutely eye opening cocktail conversation at the StoneWater club in Ocala, Florida. We will be discussing what I call foggy financial flim flams. So let me repeat that for you foggy financial flim flams. Flim flams. Now that's a word you don't hear very often. That's old school. And I like old school and I like a new school. You see, I am not an old fuddy duddy because I continually take the letter O in old, and the letters n and e in New, and I maintain a one school approach, which is the way it always should be done. Now this is not a lecture and it's not a sales pitch. Ask absolutely anyone who's ever attended one of our casual cocktail conversations. No, this is an unfiltered tell it all. Tell it like it is breakdown of the people, product and processes that retirees must avoid, some of which are so dangerous, so deceitful, you should not just walk away. You should run for the hills and never look back and looky, looky. I have no problem pulling back the curtain. I call names, and I guarantee one thing, when you leave, you will stop, sit down and think about it. You'll shake your head. You'll think about your money and the opportunities lost, and you'll think about how glad you are that you attended and we met. Now is that bold? You bet your sweet Pippy, it is, and I can deliver now, reservations are absolutely, unequivocally beyond the exclusion of every reasonable doubt. 100% required Seating is limited, and look no joke. This is not just a drop in event. If you do not reserve in advance, you may be turned away at the door. If that happens, don't take it personal. It's just simple logistics. Now to reserve your seat simply call or text, 352-612-1000, again. That number is 352-612-1000,
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or 1000 and guess what? A real, living human being will pick up the phone and answer I like that, and they won't be from overseas, and they won't talk in some dialect or accent that you leaves you scratching your head and wondering, where in the SAM hell did that person come from? If you're tired of the gimmicks to games and the guesswork, and if you're ready for a real conversation about your future this ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, one and all is your moment, your chance the opportunity to have one more of those aha moments. That's right, one or more of those aha moments. Now, looky, looky. We would truly enjoy the opportunity to meet you, but remember, the water is warming, the clock is ticking, so reach out before the music stops. The
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Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater on the air in the war of the world by HG Wells. You
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ladies and gentlemen, the director of the Mercury Theater and star of these broadcasts, Orson Welles. We know now that in the early years of the 20th century, this world was being watched closely by intelligences greater than man's and yet as mortal as his own. We know now that as human beings visit themselves about their various concerns. They were scrutinized and studied, perhaps almost as narrowly as a man with a microscope might scrutinize the transient creatures that swarm and multiply in a drop of water.
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This concludes the Paul Truesdell podcast. However, before you go see the show notes for this podcast, for special offers in person and online events and a variety of booklets on a wide variety of investment income, estate, risk and overall wealth issues, to schedule a Conversation with Team Truesdell, text or call, 352-612-1000, the Paul Truesdell podcast is available on nearly all podcast players, such as Apple, Google, Spotify, as well as on Paul's personal website. Paul truesdell.com
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Visit Truesdell wealth.com that's Truesdell wealth.com True Truesdell wealth is our primary sponsor for the Paul Truesdell podcast.
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Please like comment and share this podcast with family, friends, neighbors, relatives and coworkers, past and present. It is greatly appreciated and will never be forgotten,
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and now a bonus segment once again, Paul grant Truesdell, the elder, Mr. Truesdell, when
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I was a youngster, I began reading science fiction. Isaac asanov and Arthur C Clarke were some of my favorites. I grew to enjoy and relish the writings of F Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. I'm sure I missed something along the line, but I believe I have come close to reading everything the authors have written. My mother and father for their honeymoon drove from Grosse Pointe, Michigan, which is outside of Detroit to Atlantic City, and attended the World's Fair. And that was a time when television was just beginning to be introduced to the world. My mother and father were in the audience when this new contraption and video device was being showcased, very large boxes cables, and a host, who was quite animated, happened to ask if there was a newlywed couple in the audience. My mother and father raised their hands and were brought up on stage. This happens to be the same time that a famous actress known as Betty White, made her first appearance under similar circumstances in Los Angeles, California. Well, when my mother and father left the theater and went out onto the boardwalk, they were greeted with handshakes and smiling faces as the crude television sets were placed behind glass in front of the theater, and people from all walks of life had gathered around to see this incredible new invention, and it just so happened that two of the people who appeared on screen were my mother and father, and They talked about it and laughed about it many times. In fact, in 2009 one of the last conversations I had with my father while he was in hospice was him reminiscing about that fantastic honeymoon driving from Grosse Pointe to Atlantic City in his brand new Packard. What you're about to hear was recorded in 1964 at Flushing Meadows in New York City, once again, a World's Fair. And so the audio is a little rough, but I hope you'll bear with because this is Sir Arthur Charles Clark, one of my favorite authors, who happened to be the gentleman who wrote 2001 A Space Odyssey where he talks about the future. Yes, he was a science fiction writer, a science writer, but he was also a futurist, inventor, undersea explorer and television series host. He was born two years after my mother and father in 1917 and passed away a year before my father, at age 90 in 2008 2001 A Space Odyssey is Clark's most famous work, and was extended well beyond the original 1968 film to include 2010 Odyssey two, 2061 Odyssey three and 3001 the final Odyssey. What I would like you to do is to pay very careful attention to what Arthur C Clarke is going to talk about and prognosticate forecast and cause us to think about, because that is my phrase, and that is the phrase we should take away from this amazing video recording and his thoughts going back 60 plus years ago.
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Horizon filmed him at the World's Fair in New York. He's Arthur Clark trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation, because the Prophet invariably falls between two stools. If his predictions sound at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that in 20 or at most, 50 years, the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative. On the other hand, if by some miracle, a prophet could. Describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far fetched, that everybody would
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laugh him to scorn. This has proved to be true in the past, and it will undoubtedly be true even more so of the century to come. The only thing we can be sure of about the future is that it will be absolutely fantastic. So if what I say now seems to you to be very reasonable, then I'll fail completely. Only if what I tell you appears absolutely unbelievable, Have we any chance of visualizing the future as it really will happen. Let's start by looking at the city of the future. Some people think that it will be like this, and they're quite right. In fact, everything you see now already exists, all the materials, all the ideas, these things could be put into practice immediately. But what about the city of the day after tomorrow, say, the year 2000 I think it will be completely different. In fact, it may not even exist at all. Oh, I'm not thinking of the atom bomb and the next stone age. I'm thinking of the incredible breakthrough which has been made possible by developments in communications, particularly the transistor and above all, the communication satellite. These things will make possible a world in which we can be in instant contact with each other, wherever we may be, where we can contact our friends, anywhere on Earth, even if we don't know their actual physical occasion, it will be possible in that age, perhaps only 50 years from now, for a man to conduct his business from Tahiti or Bali just as well as he could from London. In fact, if it proves worthwhile, almost any executive skill, any administrative skill, even any physical skill, could be made independent of distance. I am perfectly serious when I suggest that one day we may have brain surgeons in Edinburgh operating on patients in New Zealand. When that time comes, the whole world will have shrunk to a point, and the traditional role of the city as a meeting place for man would have ceased to make any sense. In fact, men will no longer commute. They will communicate. They won't have to travel for business anymore. They'll only travel for pleasure. I only hope that when that day comes and when the city is abolished, the whole world isn't turned into one giant suburb. In that world of the future, we will not be the only intelligent creatures. One of the coming techniques will be what we might call bio engineering, the development of intelligent and useful servants among the other animals on this planet, particularly the great apes and in the oceans, the dolphins and whales. You know, it's a scandal of which we should be thoroughly ashamed, that prehistoric man tamed all the domestic animals we have today. We haven't added one in the last 5000 years. It's about time we did so. And with our present knowledge of animal psychology and genetics, we could certainly solve the servant problem with the help of the monkey kingdom. Of course, eventually, our super chimpanzees would start forming trade unions, and we right back where we started. However, the most intelligent inhabitants of that future world won't be men or monkeys. They'll be machines, the remote descendants of today's computers. Now the present day electronic brains are complete morons. But this will not be true. In another generation, they will start to think, and eventually they will completely out think their makers. Is this depressing? I don't see why it should be. We superseded the CRO magnon and Neanderthal men, and we presume we're an improvement. I think we should regard it as a privilege to be stepping stones to higher things. I suspect that organic or biological evolution has about come to its end, and we are now at the beginning of inorganic or mechanical evolution, which will be 1000s of times swifter. But even if the future does belong to the robots, our bodies and our brains still have immense untapped potentialities. For example, to cope with the information explosion, we may develop a machine for recording information directly onto the brain. As today, we can record a symphony on tape. So we may one day be able to become instant experts learning Chinese overnight, for example, or we may be able to recall completely memories of past events so that we seem to relive them. In fact, techniques are already known for doing this in a rather limited way. At the present, alternatively, we may prefer to totally erase past unpleasant memories. Our bodies will also be more efficient and they'll last longer. After all, it's only in this century that a patient had a better than 50% chance of any. Improvement when he was treated by his doctors. One of the great medical discoveries of the near future will be a method of suspended animation, so that a man can sleep away down the centuries and in this manner, travel into the future. This technique, which may possibly be based on deep freezing, will one day be used to send into the future people suffering from diseases or ailments beyond the ability of present day medical science to cure, though I don't really know how one will calculate the health insurance contributions to pay for medical treatment. 500 years hence, another use of suspended animation will be for the long range exploration of space in this way, us, short lived creatures, will be able to travel enormous distances, although we may not, of course, be so short lived in the future, because even immortality may be on the cards one day. However, even without immortality, we may be able to make journeys lasting 1000s of years, and such journeys will be necessary if we ever wish to cross the enormous gulfs which separate from us from the stars. Distance is so great that even light traveling at 600 million miles every hour takes years to cross them. But why should we attempt these immense voyages? Well, because it seems fairly certain that at least at this moment in time, there are no other intelligent creatures in our own solar system. We'll have to go out to the stars to meet them. For certainly out there among the 100,000 million other sons of our universe, there must be many civilizations, perhaps far higher than our own. The first contact with intelligent extraterrestrials will be the greatest adventure in the future of man. It may not happen for centuries, but one day it will come. Meanwhile, near at home, there's plenty to do in this sort of system on the moon and planets. Today, we can just reach the moon. Tomorrow, men will be living there 100 years from now, some men will call it home. At the moment, it's a very unattractive kind of place to imagine as a home, and this is true of all the planets. There's not one on which unprotected men could live, or on which any form of life as we know it could exist, with the possible exception of Mars. However, 100 years from now, things will be very different with the techniques which we are now acquiring, it will one day be possible to modify the environments on at least some of the planets so that men can live there without spacesuits or airtight cities. The technique for this has been called Planetary engineering, and one astronomer has coined the very optimistic phrase, the reconstruction of the solar system, looking as far into the technological future as I dare. I'd like to describe the invention to end all inventions. I call it the replicator, and it's simply a duplicating machine, but it's a duplicating machine that can make an exact copy of anything. Now we're already familiar with perfect copies of printing, of pictures and of sounds, yet the camera and the tape recorder would have seemed miraculous to our ancestors and to a medieval monk who, perhaps in his whole life only saw a few dozen books, each one patiently copied by hand. Our present world in which literally millions of books exist, would again have seemed absolutely inconceivable. Can we imagine a world in which objects can be made as easily as today we can make books? Well, don't ask me exactly how the replicator would work if I knew I had patented it. Once confronted with such a device, our present society would probably sink into a kind of gluttonous barbarism, because everybody would want unlimited quantities of everything, since nothing would cost anything. In fact, cynics may doubt if any human society could survive an invention which would lead to unlimited abundance and the final ending of the curse of Adam. And yet, you know, human beings are almost infinitely adaptable. Look at the incredible changes we've experienced and survived from the Stone Age to the present time. And yet even greater changes are still to come, because the future is not merely an extension of the present with bigger and better machines and cities and gadgets, it will be fundamentally different, and many of the things we take for granted will one day pass away as completely as, oh, spinning wheels and sedan chairs and oil lamps. And that is why the future is so endlessly fascinating, because try as we can, we'll never out guess it the.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai