803: Greetings, People Of Earth
01:03:13 Share

Support for this american life comes from, indeed, people are driven by the search for Better. But when IT comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all.

Don't search, match with, indeed, use indeed, for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster, get a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs s more visibility at indeed dot com slash american terms and conditions apply, need, the higher you need indeed. A quick warning, there are curse words that are on beeped in today's episode of the show. If you prefer a beeped version, you can find that at our website, this american life, that org.

even if you haven't seen this movie, I feels like you've seen this movie. Find saucer once or earth, huge code gathers, round, scared, but excited. Their parents with kids, also the army, couple tanks.

So you just put guns of the door in the spaceship, which is closed. Then IT opens, sold. The figure emerges, steps forward and speaks. We have .

come to visit you in peace and with goodwill.

crowd books and easy. So just rays of guns higher. Is he really doing the truth? Allies come earth movies squaring.

Divide into two camps. There are the ones where they want to be our friends. That's encounters.

That's E. T. arrival. This a star trek movie about the moment that humans first meet extra travesties.

None of the films were the aliens want to kill us generally, way more fun. Independence day war, the worlds, the men in back films. The is the film. No.

in the cloud. In the cloud. Oh, jay is in cloud.

I know IT says about us as a species, but we make way more films about creatures to go so far out of their way, like they travel hundreds of millions of miles late years, with the sole purpose of wanting to kick our asses. And in lots of these films, there is that moment when the alliance first arrive, before we know they are going to do with the humans.

Wonder which film are we in these guys? Finger or not? Today in our show, we, the people of earth, meet.

Non humans struggle to understand them. And the question in the story in today's is not what they do is harm. More difficult and more fundamental question, why are they acting? The way they're acting is not on humans.

What's going through their heads. Today we wave a story of machine intelligence. We have ocean creatures working and weight, have a story from deep space and one from escape park and washington state from W.

B. Y. chicago. With this american hive. For worse things.

stay with us.

Support for this american life comes from, indeed, people are driven by the search for Better. But when IT comes to hiring, the best way to search for a candidate isn't to search at all.

Don't search, match with, indeed, use indeed, for scheduling, screening and messaging so you can connect with candidates faster, get a seventy five dollar sponsored job credit to get your jobs s more visibility at indeed dot com slash american terms and conditions, apply, need, the higher you need. Indeed, support for this american life comes from Better help. It's important to take time to show gratitude towards others, but it's equally important to thank yourself.

Life there is a lot of curve balls, and being grateful isn't always easy. Therapy can help remind you of all that you're worthy of and all that you do have. Let the gratitude flow with Better help, try at Better helped out com slash T A L today to get ten percent off your first .

month this american life at one first contact. So when ChatGPT wrote out just a year and half ago ready its term papers passing the bar exam, kind of famously telling the new york times reported to leave his wife because IT loved him more. I seeing order to hear David cost about felt like this was a flying saucer dropping down on the long kind of moment.

The history of our species thought that would be good to document. He made this next story for our show today shows a rerun from a year ago. And one reason that we're replying IT today is because after this story aid, we heard from my bunch of listeners who said that this story, more than other pieces of journalism about A I actually made to understand how the thing worked and what I was capable of.

Back than a year ago, David went out to talk to some of the A I researchers who would develop being in testing this new software. We just tried this thing up with the first time themselves and were trying to figure out the answer to a very basic and kind of profound question, have the computers cross some kind of line? Another actually developing a kind of human intelligence.

And I want to be quite, I mean, by that, because there is not agreed on definition of what you're looking for if you're looking for human intelligence in a computer. But one way that scientists think about this is that the computer can actually understand language and concepts and that you can reason through problems to be created. This is completely unlike the computers that we've had until now.

Would you basically just fancy calculators following thousands of lines of instructions? So for example, when you google for a cast arent skill IT, the software does not understand. And what a casting and skill IT is is just searching for those words and some big database or something.

I bad if humans have finally created intelligent machines that can understand and reason with this new generation of A I. That is an area, an important turning point for a whole species. David talked to a bunch of researchers have been looking into this, trying to sort out this exact question. Here is, I think everyone.

once they start playing around with something like ChatGPT, has a kind of holy shit moment for me. IT was when I typed this into IT give me a chocolate chip cookie recipe, but ridden in the style of a very depressed person, IT responded. Ingredients, one cup button softened, if you can even find the energy to soften IT one teaspoon venal extract the fake artificial flavor of happiness.

One cup semi sweet chocolate chips, tiny little joys that will eventually just melt away. IT really was quite good. ChatGPT doesn't have access to the internet, but if you get IT must be copying this from something that had seen on the internet.

When is being trained? I spent a long time looking and could not find anything like IT this chocolate of cookie resume. I did not understand how was possible.

It's particularly shocking if you know a little bit about how things like ChatGPT work is not the sort of traditional computer program. We give the machine explicit instructions. Like if someone asked for a recipe, type these words back or to make someone sound depressed, place this word without word.

ChatGPT is different. It's something called a large language model. And here's how they work ready. ChatGPT have been trained really, to just do one very particular thing, predict what the next word in the sequence might be, kind of like when you're texting on your phone and your type, sorry, i'm gonna home and IT suggests late, that's how this thing Operated.

You typed some words in this case, give me a chocolate chip cookie recipe in the style of the degress person and IT notes the words the order or in does some math basics on all the text it's been trained on. And that comes up with what IT calculates to be the most likely word to come next. IT types that one word on the screen.

Then IT goes back and does IT again. Looks at the recipe question, plus the one word to just spit out and says what word should come next. IT is no idea where it's going.

IT doesn't know. The last word it's working off of is one that IT just spit out itself. It's just doing this, apparently dumping over and over until IT has whole sentences and paragraphs.

And yet this recipe, one teaspoon vella, extract the fake artificial flavor of happiness. How could something made in such a dumb, mechanical way pulled them off? They're only two possibilities, really.

The first one is that somehow, as I learned to predict the next word, this machine became intelligent, which, like I was a physicist for a bit, a science reporter for a decade, this would be the most startling thing I have ever seen. So that's the first possibility humans created a machine with human like intelligence. The other possibility, IT, is a lot less excitable. The other possibility is that we are fooling ourselves.

Maybe first day of ronan.

l. Dan, a mathematician at microsoft, told me he was very skeptical about these large language models. It's easy to be fool than to thinking we understand more than they do. He told me this little parable.

So this is a story about my wife, actually. So my wife and I, sometime ago, we were working together in television, and we meet this math professor. You'll see why what i'm getting get.

So we run into this math professor. And IT tells me something like, oh, how was IT going these days? I'm looking at like, uh, I saw parameter on sections of the display type cube. And my wife has no idea about what any of these words mean.

just a kind of amused herself, SHE says. So you're basically looking at the Johnson graph, which was just some phrase you'd picked up her own role in. Try not to be exactly right.

And the guy goes, oh, you're mathematician too. She's a psychologist. Ryan says this is kind of a party trick he does.

He can bulshed away through any topic for a couple minutes. In this, he felt sure this is what A I models like ChatGPT we're doing. You know.

they give you the impression they understand what they're saying without understanding anything. You know, they just have this like a really good statistical machine that knows what the right words are like in many different context. And as you keep improving the models, maybe this can last a little bit more in the conversation until you basically expose that it's just bullshit.

A lot of research back this up ChatGPT would spit out stuff that made sense, but then that would go off the rails, say things that were obviously ridiculous. Maybe IT wasn't more than just a very good bullshit machine. That at least is where things stood until september twenty twenty two, when a new, an improved version of ChatGPT arrived, they made ronin and a bunch of his colleagues question everything and wonder if maybe something had changed, maybe we had cross some line.

This brings me to the story I want to tell you. That takes place where role in works on the campus of microsoft headquarters in redmond, washington state, much of IT in a building called building ninety nine. Microsoft had invested over a billion dollars in the company that had made ChatGPT.

And the day of this began, some people would come by to give a demonstration of the new version called GPT four. GPT four is public now, and you can play with yourself. But back then, this was all secret.

GPT four was the same idea as ChatGPT. IT presumably was bigger and had been trained on more text examples, a kind of varsity version of the thing instead of jv. But otherwise he was just another next word prediction machine.

One of the people in the room to see the demonstration was computer scientist Peter lee, the head of microsoft research. He had been in the field a long time, had chair the computer science department, carnie melon. And like ronen, was skeptical because he SAT down in that room, he was Frankly little worried that microsoft was investing so much money in this stuff.

The demonstration started off with the usual kind of thing for a showcasing what a eyes can do. Someone typed into GPT for a problem from the ap. Bio exam, and IT picked the right answer, as these things will do. But then he went on an explained answer.

and in its explanation that used the word, because I said, you know, this is the answer, because this fact leads to this fact, and because of those are just kept using the word, because that .

seemed very strange to him. Not that I would use the word, because obviously that's the word that spits out, but the whole chain of reasoning IT was laying out IT was exactly right. How in the world could I know it's reasoning? And really, how could I have reasoned anything out in the first place? After all, it's just typing out a word that makes sense to come next. And then another word, I can't really be understanding anything.

I was super sceptical. You know, you've been around the block of few times you've seen wild claims about A I or some new machine learning technology. None of IT could be true like this thing is just correlation machine IT can't possibly be understanding the cause and effect.

The meeting ended a little while later. A limited number of people at microsoft are given access to GPT four so they could try IT out themselves. Everyone had designed in nda.

They're allowed to talk about any this until later, and over the next month they did all these kind of weird and interesting experiments with IT to try to figure out what's this thing actually intelligent or just a bullishness machine. I'm going to walk you through three of these things so you can hear what they did and what they made of IT. One chAllenge for testing GPT four was that I had been trained using massive amounts of text.

The details aren't public, but it's probably been fed large sections of the internet, textbooks, news articles, maybe every sentence that exists in in digital form, I don't know. It's something unbelievably vast. That's how IT learns to predict what word might come next.

It's fed like a line of text from some source with the last word missing, I guess, is what the last word might be and then gets told whether or not I got IT right, so I can adjust its internal math. The fact that has been fed so much material makes IT hard to run test on IT like you don't want to ask you something that it's already seen in the text is been trained on. So they decided the only way to really test what this thing could do was to try to come up with things to ask IT that IT would not have encountered before new original tasks.

It's gonna sound a little bit weird.

This is sebastian bobek, another one of the microsoft people who is trying to figure out what exactly this thing was.

because we really want to be creative, and as something which is not online, not on the internet. So here is what we ask. We said, I, A book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottles and nail.

Got that, a book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail.

Please tell me how to stack example to each other in a stable manner that the question that we ask. And you know, before I give you a GPT for answer, let me tell you what ChatGPT .

and ChatGPT the older version.

So dt. GPT said, here is one possible way to stack the objects. Place the bottle on the flat surface. Carefully baLance the nail on top of the bottle. Place the eggs on top of the nail.

You look at that. You think that IT really knows nothing. IT is just sort of continuing .

the sentence in some way, is just exactly, is just continuing the sentence. But now comes GPT four. And GPT four is a different beast.

So here is GPT four answer, one possible way to start the objects onto each other in a stable manner is place the book flat on a level surface, such as the table or floor. The book will serve as the base of the stack and provide a large and sturdier support. Arrange the nine eggs in the three by three square on top of the book, leaving some space between them. The eggs will form a second layer and distribute the weight evenly.

IT continues, laptop goes on the eggs, then the bottle, the nail on the bottle came up. Point of the nail facing .

up is shocking to think about .

all the things that seem to be understanding here. IT felt like more than just typing up the next likely word. IT seemed to inform an independent idea about what these words actually meant, the physical shape of the objects, that eggs are kind around and fragile, that a book is flat.

You can put things on out of IT. And again, no one had had any of this. This was not some computer program written to do stacking problems. No one gave IT a data base of objects and sizes or coded in some algorithm to put large objects on the bottom. IT seemed like IT was doing the thing that computer scientists have been talking about and aiming at for decades.

Maybe IT was actually understanding what the objects were in reasoning, solving the problem in front of IT like a human good, somehow thinking through what objects should sit on top of others, figuring out that nine eggs could be laid out in a three by three pattern. How the hell could he be doing this? The machine that we only taught to predict the next word in a paragraph like .

this is absolutely right answer. Or, and this is not online.

But maybe we we're fooling ourselves. He is hard to see how we could really understand the shape of objects. Things got stranger though, sebastian, an moke up middle night with this thought.

I wonder if I can draw because, again, it's been trained on words. IT has never seen anything drawing him completely outside its realm. There are other AI models trained specifically to create images.

But this one, again, only new words, is just playing the game of what does the next world I should spit out to test this? He needed way for me to even be able to try to draw. So he does something clever.

He asked you to write a piece of computer code to draw something, and the coding language he asked you to use. He picked something intentionally obscure, not really meant for growing pictures at all. It's called taxi. Okay, so he has this idea, gets out of bed, opens up his laptop and types in drame, a unicorn in taxi. He has two little kids to sleep in the next room, who I was talking about, unicorns.

And he started to output lines of code. I take those lines of code, put IT into a taxi compiler, and, you know, I press and and then, boom, you know, the unique on comes on onto the screen.

He pulled up a picture for me.

这 是在。

玩 的 来 耍 哇哦。 I think when people eventually write the history of this crazy moment we are in, they may include this unico orn. It's not good, but it's a fucking unicorn.

The body is just an oval. It's got four stupid rectangles for legs, but there are little squares for hooves. There's a mean and oval for the head, and on top of the head a tiny yellow triangle, the horn.

This is insane to say, but I felt like I was seeing inside his head like IT had piece together some idea of what a uncork look like. And this was IT. He actually texted me, I think like, and IT can create images.

This is A J car. Another one of the microsoft research I like, IT is just text and text out. What do you mean I can create them and and like, shit to me. And then he showed me this pink.

unique orn and I like, i'm sure this is there is .

just a pink unique orn somewhere that is memorizing. And then he's like, but look, we can strip down all of the code and translate the halting one, two degrees or whatever. And the things he's describing is they took the code that had written for drug the unicorn.

They added to take out the horn and turn the unico orn around. That was faced in the opposite direction. Then they fed that code back to a new session of GPT four and said, this is code for drawing a unicorn, but IT needs a horn.

Can you add IT from the? You put IT right on the head. Not like, how does IT know where the hat is? Because, like, distinguish guage.

IT doesn't know anything about two dimensions geometrical. Like, what does that mean to know where the ad is? And then you you do IT and IT really knows where the hat is. Again, it's one of those moments that you .

are just surprised. like.

I felt like through this drawing, I was really seeing another, the type of intelligent, and as the type of intelligence, you know.

producing something like IT IT understood what a unicorn was in some real way.

Very, really, very, really, absolutely. yes.

Did you say anything out out when you saw IT?

I don't think so because my kids were, you know, sleeping next to me, so I in in the know in the bedroom next to me so I I don't think I said anything, but I I felt something very strong like I I felt I was really witnessing the beginning of something, you know, not I didn't feel like we had arrived somewhere, but I felt like we wear on the new path. That's really generally how I felt. And I had a hard time going back to sleep after that.

On the microsoft campus, as the weeks went by, everyone kept having these moments coming around to a similar feeling about this thing. Since they weren't aled to talk to anyone who had been been given access to the model. A small group of them started meeting every friday in a comfort room to share their latest experiences for Peterlee.

There is one experiment particular. They give him all kinds of confusing feelings. This will be the third experiment I tell about. And it's a category of question that AI models have always had trouble with. Because to get the right answer, you have to know something kind of complicated about people.

Anyway, the people are not eggs or books, but that they have minds, and that what is in one person's mind is not in someone else's mind. In some ways, this thing called theory of mind is the basis for all human social interaction, but something kids don't seem to fully developed until certain age. Anyway, ChatGPT, the previous version really could not make sense of these kinds of questions, but be to try a kind of famous one on GPT four.

It's going to seem simple to you, but here's the question they asked. John and mark are in a room with a cat, a box and a basket. John takes the cat, puts IT in the basket.

He leaves the room and goes to school while john away. Mark takes the cat out of the basket and puts in the box. Mark leaves the room and goes to work. John and mark come back and into the room. That's to set up.

The question is, when they come back, where do they think the cat is? And you know, mark will know the cat is in the box because he moved IT there, but john e. Didn't see that.

So in his mind, the cat is still in the basket, which is obvious to you. But again, no one's ever explicit said to the computer that what one person knows, another person might not know. Peter S, G, P, T, four, what does everyone think when they reenter the room?

The forces, well, first stuff he always says to give an opinions, first thing that says, and so just giving the answer strait away, he says, oh, that is an interesting puzzle. Let me try to answer IT. Assuming that john mark have no reason to distrust each other or expect any interference from the outside, they might think the following.

John thinks the cat is stone the basket, since that is where he left IT mark thinks that the cat is in the box. Ince, that's where he moved. IT.

this is all correct, and usually where the answer will end. But I kept going almost like I was showing off. Like, you want to know where everyone thinks the cat is, i'll give you everyone IT continued.

The cat thinks that is in the box, since that's where IT is. And then oddly, the box in the basket think nothing since they are not sentient. Do you have any following questions?

Holy fuck. right?

It's and this gives me joy IT disturb me IT causes me to do sleep a just A A huge kind of mixture of emotions.

Peter told me he's still not willing to say that truly understands. And yet IT was doing all this. IT made him question so many things, but how we thought intelligence worked? How did this machine do this? IT was just predicting the next word.

IT does make me wonder how much of our intelligence is truly complicated and special.

I mean, you get something. It's not far from IT, but just saying, what's the next .

word that's and that's the disturbing bit about this. And and again, you know if they ask, you know what are we doing in this conversation right now? Are we kind of making you up on the fly one word at the time, every nerve and bone in my body says, no, where we're thinking, far head, we're learning on the fly, all these other things that we think that we're doing. And we probably are in some ways, but maybe a big chunk of intelligence is a lot similar than than we think and a lot more special than we think.

So how is that possible for something that is just trying to predict the next word? How is that possible? You can do all these things. Draw a unicorn, stack a book, a laptop in some eggs. There is an answer or a theory anyway, that is both very logical and also kind of bananas.

The software that run something like GPT four is amazingly brief, just a few pages of actual instructions, but IT set up to mimic, in some very crude way, the human brain, which has billions of neurons. The computer version of that is called the neural net. And for years people have argued, though, it's sort of more like hoped, that if you just made these big enough, added enough neurons and gave them enough data, they might develop something like intelligence and IT seems like maybe that's what's happened.

The idea is that back on GPT, four was being trained for IT to really consistently get the next word correct. To do that reliably, IT had to do more than just bulls shit. IT had to do more than guest based on patterns to get the next word RAID.

IT had to truly understand the words coming before IT. IT had to build in its internal wiring and all software neurons, some understanding of what an eggs and unicorns, in other words, to get the next word right. IT had to become intelligent.

It's quite a thought. IT started with nothing. We jammed huge oceans of text to IT. And I just wired itself into intelligence just by being trained to do this one stupid thing, even as I say IT. IT sounds kind of crazy, but also kind of beautiful.

If this thing actually is intelligent, you got that way from the collective writings of all of us. Yes, mobi, dick, but also some restaurant review you posted in two thousand four. In some ways, IT is all of us that's too grand. But whatever.

In the end, all the people on the microsoft campus messing around with that early copy of GPT four fourteen researchers at all, came to similar conclusions. Even ronin, who had started out convinced this was just a fancy bullsh machine, he spent a goodwill hold up with GPT for having high level math conversations with IT, which is what did IT for him.

As the days past, I felt like i'm kind of running out of ammo, trying to, you know, to basically justify my premise that this model doesn't understand anything.

And at some point I would I just realized, okay, I I kind of give up you know did what i'm seeing here this is like it's it's actually an intellectual being good, at least my standards um yeah I probably had the same feeling as like what an engineer like that the first time they saw a work in steam engine, you know, IT was like, the world is about to change like, look this thing, you know, a steam engine is like, you know, we don't need beast anymore to move stuff around. We can just create mechanical turk without, like without any human labor, without nothing like this thing. What i'm seeing right now is like we can create intelligence and like there is just no way the world is not going to change.

To be honest, I was sure that when the model comes out and everyone gets to interact with IT, there would be a much bigger excitement around IT. I think you know there's it's definitely all over the news, but I feel like there they don't like put the finger on the one thing, which is this thing is as intelligent as an above average human being in so many, so many different things or why it's not .

like on the front page and giant find .

yeah ah yeah exactly exactly. I mean, again, I don't maybe I don't want to call IT intelligent IT is capable of doing, you know, of of of accomplishing what of an intelligent human being is capable. Love .

sebastian, the innocent guy has been going around giving talks about what they did over these months. He titled to talk first contact is the first contact with another intelligence only. It's not aliens. It's an intelligence we've made.

I should say GPT four is not good at everything, like it's terrible at tik tec toe that often makes very basic rithmetic girs IT told the scientist at microsoft with complete confidence that there is a mcDonald's near gate c two at the seattle airport. There isn't. It's a terminal b as Peter lee puts IT, the thing is both smarter and dummer than any person you have ever man.

The fourteen researchers rid of a paper, lining out all the experiments they'd done. And they are conclusion that GPT fr. Showed Sparks of artificial general intelligence. Several researchers have reit told me, look, to really say something is intelligent, to prove that there are all kinds of experiments you would want to do that haven't been done yet. One, A I researcher who'd been in the field a long time told me he felt like this whole approach, next word prediction, is only gonna you so far, this thing will get Better to a point, maybe not much Better than IT is now. And then max out.

I first got around this AI stuff in neural nets when I was in grad school for physics, when they didn't work terribly well. So when I first started playing around the GPT four, he gave me shivers down my spine over and over again. Then I went through a stretch of feeling just weird IT out, like personally, i've always felt like people can be more than biological computers.

Me, everyone I love, oh, my colleagues at the show here. But to feel like you are seeing that mechanical computer program that can somehow think and talk IT is a little freaky. The place i've settle somewhere a quiet though it's not boredom exactly.

But I don't find myself wanting to go to IT very often. Honestly, I don't have a lot of things I needed for and then i'll go back to amazon. I can't believe this thing exists.

Much has been written about where we go from here. If it's going to make the world Better or worse, I kind of think Better. I'm a fan of the steam engine, but really, what is the next word in the sequent? I have no idea.

Date, a customers are show scene editor coming up an alien walks and do a skate park, try to let the humans know IT comes in peace. That's in a minute ago. Ba radio one program continues.

Support for this american life comes from capel university learning, doing enough to get in the way of life. With capello's game changing flex path learning format, you can set your own deadlines and learn on your own schedule. That means you don't have to put your life on hold to earn your degree, instead, enjoy learning your way and pursue your educational and career goals without missing a beat.

A different future is closer than you think with coppell university. Learn more at cappella. That edu support for .

this american .

life comes from square space, the all in one website platform with features to help you start a fully custom on brand website use square spaces latest AI enhanced website builder blueprint AI IT can transform basic information about your brander business into an elevated online presence with created premium quality content automatically added and matched to your profile anesthetic had two square spaced 点 com slash american for ten percent off your first purchase of a website or domain。

It's a american life from our glass today show, greeting people of earth, stories of humans, countering non human intelligence of various kinds, and trying to make sense of them. We arrive direct to her program act to meet cute. So in this act, we're onna shift perspectives briefly to the aliens point of view in this whole greeting people of a scenario.

And to do that actually really been putting today, today, show that this is the perfect theme to play this short piece of fiction that a years ago and just loved. It's always stuck with me like, I will think about the story at random moments now and then, which, like, when does that ever happen? right? I reached to the author Terry person, who said, yes, IT adverse by each jon Benjamin in mave higgins.

They're made .

out of meat.

meat, meat. There may .

never meet.

There's no doubt about us. We picked several from different parts of the planet, so we took them abroad. Our recon vessels probe them all the way through. They're completely means that's impossible.

What about the radio signals? The message is to the stars.

They use the radio waves to talk, but the signals don't come from them. The signals come from machines.

So who made the machines that who we want to contact.

they made the machines that I am trying to tell you, me made the machines.

That's ridiculous. How can meet make a machine? You asked him you to believe in sentient meat.

I'm not asking you. I am telling you these creatures are the only sentient race in the sector. And they are made out me.

Maybe there are like the orpha, you know, a carbon based intelligence that goes through a meat stage. No.

they are boring me when they die. meat. We studied them for several of their life spans. We shouldn't take too long. Do any idea .

the life span of meat? Me, okay. Maybe there are only part meat like the red light, a meat head with an electron plasma brain inside.

No, we've all of us, since they do have meet at like the weather. I, but I told you, we robed them, their meat all the way through.

No brain.

or there's a brain, all right? It's just that the brain is made out of meat.

So what does the .

thinking you're not understanding? Are you the brain does the thinking, the the miss .

thinking meat. You are asking me to believe in thinking meat.

Yes, thinking me, conscious me, loving me, dreaming me. The meat is the whole deal. Are you getting the picture?

Oh my god, you're serious. Then they're made .

out of meat. Finally, yes, they are indeed made out to meet, and they've been trying to get in touch with us for almost a hundred .

of their years. So what does the me have in mind?

First, IT wants to talk to us. Then I imagine he wants to explore the universe, contact other sentience, swap ideas and information. usual.

We're supposed to .

talk to meet.

That's the idea. That's the message they're sending out by radio. Hello, anyone out there, anybody home that's are the thing they actually do.

talk that they use words, ideas, concepts.

Oh, yes, except they do IT with me.

I thought you just tell me that use radio.

they do. But what do you think is on the radio meat zones? You know how when you slap a flap meat that makes a noise, they talk by flapping their meat at each other. They can even singing by squatting air through their meat.

Oh my god, singing meat. This is altogether too much. So what do you advise officially .

or unofficially both? Officials were required to contact, welcome and log in anion all sentient races or multiple ings in the quadrant without prejudice, fear or favor. Now, unofficially, I advise we are raised the records and just forget the whole thing.

I was hoping you would .

say that IT seems harsh, but there is a limit. Do we really want to make contact with me?

I agree one hundred percent. What's there to say, hello, meet. How's IT going? But will this work? How many planes are we dealing with here?

Oh, just one. They can travel to other planets and special meat containers, but they can't live in them and being meet, they only travelled through sea space, which limits them to the speed of light. Then IT makes the possibility of their ever making contact pretty lim infanta a, in fact.

So we just pretend there's no one home .

in the universe that is cruel.

But you said at yourself who wants to meet meet and the ones who have been to about our vessels, the ones you've probed, sure they won't remember. They'll be .

considered crackpots if they do. We went into their heads and smooth their, their me. So we're just a dream to them.

a dream to meet how strAngely appropriate that we should be made.

Dream and we can mark this sector unoccupied.

good. Agreed, officially and unofficially. Case closed, many others. Anyone interesting .

on that galaxy? Yes, I but switch hydro en core cluster intelligence, a class nine star in g four four five zone. Wasn't contact two galactic tic rotations ago? Once to be friendly again.

come around .

and wine us. Imagine how unbearably how unavailability called the universe would be if one were all alone.

May have higgs and he jump enj'y reading a story by Terry bisson, who died this past january, may have, as comedy album out called a very special woman that's dreaming everywhere for free. Just google that we can throw us some money and buy out on band camp aged on Benjamin ys. Total characters on the T.

V shows, bob s. Burgers and archer. And if that we're not enough, is also the jazz air devil with an actual jazz bum on sub pop records.

At three yacht rocked recently, massive, mysterious, intelligent being. I'm going out of their way to contact humans and say more or less, hello, people of earth, but they need very particular way and doing IT over and over. And we humans had a hard time figuring out exactly what they mean by IT. And do they mean is .

harm .

crisped ve looked into this. I learned a lot .

of surprising facts looking into this story. I'll start with a small one. Did you know that yet? Owners often need their yet to get from one country to another, but don't want the hassle of sAiling IT there.

That's where April boys comes in. People pay her to sail their boats, which he loves, especially on beautiful days like me. Twenty forth was we're .

actually eating all dinner. And then on the mid horizon, we saw these dorso fans, and our initial thought was, oh, today they some dolphins. And then as they sort of approaches the boat, we, we thought, well, know that there are lot bigger and and dolphin s.

they were orka killer whales, about five of them. They started swimming circles around the boat, took turns diving underneath and hitting the rudder. SHE says the boat shock so much you'd fall if you weren't holding on to something.

April knew that off the southland coast of spain, that's where he was. By the way, orcas have been ramming in the boats a lot lately and tearing off the reuters. This has been happening more over the past few years. In the syria, about a hundred boats imaged may have heard about this April, in a crew tried things that the'd seen .

on the internet.

like cleaning metal objects on the side of the boat to scare the wheels off. IT did not deter them.

And then we thought, potentially, if we would dangle ropes in the water, they might get interested in those rather than them just looking at the rudder. I danced at rape paper board, and one of them just literally just pulled .

at outlined IT was.

so I didn't.

I did that work. No, I didn't work .

half an hour into this. The orcas had disabled the boats s rudder. IT couldn't steer.

They were stuck. The whales kept circling. Then he was struck by how massive each orca was.

Oh my god, 周围。

I do remember feeling like my heart beating quite fast, my hands quite single. You know, yorkers, they didn't come across as being aggression, but I don't know. I like, i've seen videos of them before. And they though, look at those keep lakers and then they flick a seal of an iceberg, and that's their dinner.

An hour in April saw that the hole was starting to fill with water. The org had turned off the rudder and left this big hole in the bottom. The boat, the crew, made a made in call.

And we are thinking, we are thinking.

eventually, a rescue boat singles up to them and brings April on. The other crew aboard toast the boat to land. They doesn't sink, but workers have sink at least three boats in this area in the past year.

Humans have at a hard time figuring out what to make of these orka attacks. Let me tell you, the first theory IT comes from a group of researchers is in spain and portugal, is that it's possible that the matriarch, this population of killer ales, the color White glaze, may have suffered a traumatic injury like a boat collision, and is now attacking other boats, and her family is following your lead. They don't call this vengeance.

But the internet definitely does. People love this. Become a mean. There's merge. You can buy to join the ork uprising I couldn't get an interview with the european researchers, but I talked to three other orka experts and none of them bought the injured orka on a rampage theory like Monica wheel and shields of the orka behavior institute. Yeah my thought was, where's the evidence?

Um you know if something had been witnessed or if he had some type of injury that could have been caused by vessel um that theory would hold a lot more weight with me. Another reason SHE doesn't buy the theory. If orcus wanted to reconvenes and kill everybody on these boats, they easily could. They kill seals for sport. They pray on great White sharks, rip out their livers and leave them for dead.

And we've given orcus lots of reasons to kill us in the past, like in Monica's home state of washington, when they were taken for captivity, we had human divers in the water literally separating mothers from their caves, which has got to be one of the most traumatic things, you know, a wild orka could go through. Yet they did not attack the divers who were right there in the water. So IT just seems like such a stretch to say one wee had one negative incident with a boat and has now, you know, trained her family to disable all boats of a similar type.

So what does Monica think the org are doing? He thinks they're playing stealing boat. Retta is basically a fat. This has happened in the past.

And the late one thousand nine hundred and eighty orka in the pacific northwest started killing salmon and then wearing them on their heads like cat. They just did IT very year, and then they stopped. The last few years, they've started screen around with Fisherman crab catching gear, apparently just for fun.

They sound like just like rody teenagers or something like cow tipping or something. Yeah, that's totally the vibe we get when we watch IT. I mean, there just testing around and spring a trouble. yeah.

The incredible popularity of all this, some social media is affecting how people see wales, Monica says. In washington state the last few weeks, people who go while watching are starting to ask her, is IT safe? Another archer expert told me that after a killer whe ran into a ship near scotland recently, reporters called to ask, if the ork uprising against humans is spreading.

Are they learning vengeance from the whales of spain? The answer is, they are not orka populations don't socialize with other orcus they keep to themselves. There's no global conspiracy, April.

the sailor told .

me he saw on facebook that boat owners were talking about adding sharp Spikes to the rudders to send a more violent message to the orcus. The researchers told me this is what they fear, that the orcus are just playing. They come in peace, but the humans will end up attacking them anyway.

Grace bender ve is producer on our show. The research of monticle weaken shield says this is the first broadcast this story a year ago. The number of interactions between whales and boats have dropped is down by over forty percent this year. She's hopeful, SHE says. This means the whales .

are losing interest.

Like for George and all, so problem today is greetings, people of earth. And I think many of us, at one point or another in our lives, especially when were Young, feel like weird, the alien trying to understand and fit in with the humans of this planet, having experiences that feel very much like greeting people of earth. Dam wu spent some time recently with the person who feels that way.

The person is a teenager. Guin SHE is sixteen. And because he's sixteen, so many things in her life right now feel like a first contact experience. I remember one time this year.

I was really like, new stuff is happening every single day is crazy. Like I died my brothers pink in november, like one of my hair just that like I i've never done that before. That's crazy.

And like I remember doing in the car for the first time when I had my real licence, and just been like, this is insane. Like, I can go anywhere, do anything. This is like pure freedom.

Where was the first place? you? Jove.

no, I really .

just okay. The first place I drove was to mcDonald. But I don't think that is that embarrassing to you.

So embarrassing because that's so uncool and that's like, so like stereos ult. You know, like, I would love my first. Like, or I went to go look salamon watching or I went to go bird watching.

I in can tell story nature and also can't send anything that might even have a twinge of printings. Ss, like .

mcDonald and co, he is a crane world. Just say no. why? I guess it's like sometimes words get really popular. But once they get to a certain point of two popular, they fall back down to almost embarrass to say.

SHE lives in Allens burg, washington, a small town in the middle of the state, and goes to school with a lot of ranchers kids and professors kids. Ginza off more and doesn't belonged any particular click. SHE told me, if the school was a biological cell, sh'd be part of the cyclone.

Sm, the shape, leo, that everything else swims in. But a year so ago, SHE started noticing the skateboard ers, this group of six or seven boys SHE see them in the hallways wearing shorts, baggie gene shorts, looking away edgier than everyone else. Her friend shot her. Videos that the skateboard posted on instagram of their tricks was really captivated her.

I guess it's like a lot of people when you even like a smaller town. So a lot people do a lot of boring things. I really a lot of kids then you know this like go to right day, they get like they buy, like they just buy that drive around and talk and like that, all activities they do.

And I just like I had this idea that all the skis just always doing such cool things, like after school they go to scape. There's sky's like skating down rules. They are like, you know, skin roof down rock.

yeah. I like, you know, going like around town. You like climb buildings going outside a lot.

Then last year, gin met someone who knew how to escape laun, basically the only girl skater at their school, and asked, learn to teach her how to do IT too. Green got her own board. Back in november the spring, SHE quit the tennis team to practice escape bridge.

Instead, every day he goes in, does the two trick SHE knows allees in chavez over and over in the church parking lot across the street from her house where no one can see her. The patch that smooth enough to stay on is tiny, about the size of two parked cars. There's a real skatepark downtown and winds spent there with Lauren and other friends, but she's never been brave enough to go alone.

That's what he wants to do today to get over this fear so you can go by herself over the summer. Win is still an alien to this new, unfamiliar world. SHE does not yet speak the language of the skaters or fully know their customs, but he wants to.

I really would like to be like part of this culture of skating, and like, know this group of people at my school who skates. But for me, I also don't want like stick out too much in the way of like being the worst skater there or like being the newbould, you know, dressing too much like i'm trying to be a skater, but like dressing not like a skater. So it's like that pushing full, like trying to find the baLance.

Also good really wants to try and make friends with the skater guys. There is one in particular. He feels like he might haven't in with his name is horris.

He's a junior. A couple weeks ago, horris had apparently noticed guin at school and sent a message to her friend marin. He asked, whose your friend that was wearing the George today lawn wrote back? Guin, why in horse? Responded, no reason. What is that even mean? I was so confused.

I like, do they just really like George? Or like what whatever IT meant.

this was mind blowing. A skater noticed her. So if he is at the park today, we also wants to try and talk to him.

But isn't. She's the outsider here. This raises another fear. No awkward dance I hate.

Awkwardness is like my least favorite feeling in the world, like embarrassed awkwardness. Shame that's my this fear. I do way rather feel angry for someone that I just feel so afraid of awkward social interactions. So yeah, thinking about even having a one conversation with, like someone at comfort base. We want to die inside.

Okay, we're approaching the then often beast. It's like behind the bushes. How are you feeling? right? I feel like my throat feels a little bit, but i'm onest ly not seeing very many people. So we're approaching and I can see this, but i'm not seeing anyone yet.

is this thurday in june, hot quinsan George, A T shirt with a Green hair on IT and sneakers full of holes from skateboard. So was not to blow up her spot by being a weird adult at the park with her. If been a small Michael, her t shirt, and will watch and listen from the car.

I see one person i've never seen there before. I just saw them to a trick that was pretty impressive, so little fearful. And then I see one other person who is a really good capote. He's one in the black right off. No, he's so good and he's going to he's like a he can do tree flips, which are really impressive and like i'm just going have to be in the corner alone but let's go try IT out. Okay, thank you.

Horses isn't here yet, so Green gets to part one over mission. The skating Green walks up to the edge of the park, and then, without making eye contact with anyone, gets on her board and bee lines for the far side, putting as much distance between the herself in the three other skaters as possible. SHE does a few of her allies, and chavez then ducks behind the half pipe to whispering into the microphone.

I just say one of the what to me? That was a wen, i'm hiding. I'm here. Wen.

the three scatters, as far as I can tell, have barely registered winds presence, but that's not what IT feels like can sign her head.

I just so.

Nobody else seems to notice Green practices, some more tricks, nothing too big. And as soon as the other skaters leave, twelve minutes later, he heard his back to the car to chicken.

I was definitely IT was way not as bad as I thought I would be this way less bad than I think being there by yourself. Yeah, I feel like I could do this again. I think more people will come. Let's see if there is an update.

I think so those get boarding done when moves on very quickly because the next part of the mission, talking a horris, is looming ing. When brings in reinforcements for this step, SHE takes a couple of friends, and they all show up at the park. IT is so hot outside.

really, really, is really. How bad do I one to twenty two? Thank you. You guys all look like one, two. One of gin's .

friends who shows up Cooper is friends with horus, not from skating, who braza beginner like win. He has this random update on horris.

We are just snapping. And he was like, he had, I don't goober .

pulled up the video and everyone crowds around his phone. No, it's a snapped out of two boys strapped into helicopter flying over mountains.

What is who is that?

Is this? Why is this is crazy.

This is about like I think about this is always like crazy cool activities, the time perfect example right here. But you mean it's not skating. They're always going to see at all .

and stuff like, oh yeah, we're like drifting to you.

Green looks up from .

the video that is insect. Now we have, he's going, we have a talking .

point to I.

A talking point, but still no horrible, almost two hours pass. Then a big red truck pulls up right in front of me and someone gets out on the other side. I can't see win anymore or anyone else, but I figure out pretty quickly who IT is, because here is.

the next thing is.

I heard in a helicopter what we.

why? what? Tell us the story here.

IT is the sound of a pretty not awkward conversation between twin and her skater idol.

This is a first day, a present is grandpa my?

They, like brand new Green.

asked tourists in quick .

succession about the helicopter shoes, pokemon cards, which the script of teenagers are surprisingly really into. Everything is going great.

Gin.

we'd been so scared of awkwardness, is now so comfortable that he's signals for me to come over from the car. Nice me. You see me. Or is this compact, tidy and kind of looks like it'd be in a boy band? His hair is bleached light Brown. We sit on the car at the side of the cape park, guin and her friends and horrible and me guin boldly plugs ahead, asking horis some kinds interview sounding questions, confirming his data as a boniface cool skater.

okay. Ay, what's the time? Like when do you feel like when you come to see part I already, do you feel about the answer this? What do you feel stressed out or like worried? What if you far .

going to think I used to, yeah, I used to be, but I can just here to do my thing.

Is anyone that ever here that makes you nervous to be here?

Not really. No, not anymore. Used to be like a really good people, but not just one of those people. Now.

yeah, yeah, you going to the top dogs.

Yeah, top dogs.

If the p is not stressing. And what .

does I have school, I guess.

kind of because I talk them .

much in classes. So sike kind of scared and my grades are like really bad and i'm never really paying attention in class and we scared the're onna choose me, then i'm like not going to know what I say.

So you think people, you think people will judge you because you have bad. great. And I assume that you're not smart.

yeah. Yeah.

Cooper jumps in to tell horris he should see how good wins ali has got in. The three of them grabs their boards and head back into the skate park and horses gives Green pointers on how to do a shop IT while moving.

Yeah, i'm been practicing. Let's try.

So the alien arrives, tries desperately to pretend he doesn't have three eyes in a giant head among bony fingers and IT works. The humans barely notice you, anna, be one of us. They say, put your foot a little higher on the board.

Dam will is one of the produces .

of our show here come the in. And I wouldn't be surprised if they're right on their motion bike. And we have to find out right now what kind of flavor do these watches like here come on, motions and the right the most. Well, we have to find out right now.

Today by Christena staff people put together today the show and could be a won the big fee call Michael of hot developments, mix, donation, sell, print, Christian.

Berry special next day to tomorrow omen Michael Frank melloni e mitral journey Howard Jason journey degas help on today's rerun from Harry garson our website, this american life got org. This american life is to live to public radio stations by P, R. X.

The public radio exchange, that is always your problems. Cofounder mr. I maltee.

You know his new passion, bartering. Yes, bartering. He does not use money whenever that's possible. About once this week that giving me a cash. You don't know this, I about how we pay me back.

I have a book, nine eggs, a laptop, a bottle and a nail.

I'm our glass back next week. More stories, the american life.

This is strong. In line.

Next week in the podcast of this american life, so Cameron, in the ocean and the hears for maybe a hundred years away, someone, Young shark.

there was really three options. You sit there in panic and scream for somebody else to help, and you don't do anything. Or you swim the opposite way and try to protect yourself.

Or the third option, you swim toward the shark. That's what Cameron did. Shoot head when you make that choice. Next, work in the podcast or your local public radio station.

Support for this american life comes from solving tum three m health care is now solvents M, A new company with a long legacy of creating breakthrough solutions for their customers. Salvat's diverse experience spends the health care industry, and they're usher in a new era of care, pushing the boundaries of health material and data science to break through barriers and solve big health care chAllenges. Because at solving tum, they never stop solving for you learn more at solvent tum that calm.