The End of Humanity — Brought to You by ChatGPT and Elon Musk | Episode 81

So our population is apparently in rapid decline and the tech overlords seem hell-bent on trying to speed up that process.

And yes, that means even Elon.

So I don't know about you guys, but it seems like the tech entrepreneurs just can't seem to hold themselves back when it comes to AI and making sexual content, even if that goes against their publicly held principles.

Elon has made Grok sex bots and now Sam Altman and OpenAI are leaning in to adult erotica and we need to talk about it.

Before we dive in though, fun news, guys, I am adding some new live shows to the docket.

So I will be in New York City on November 5th at the stand and I will be here in Nashville at Zaney's on November 22nd.

So if you are in either of those cities and you want to catch a live show, go to brettcooper.com to get tickets.

Hope to see you guys there.

All right, let's dive into this story.

Now, as you guys know, I love talking about AI.

I actually don't love talking about AI.

I wish that this was not an issue that came up frequently, but it unfortunately is.

I feel like we are constantly talking about the new, god-forsaken ways that AI is being utilized and weaponized against humanity.

I would love it if it was just being used for good, but unfortunately, that is not the case, and it is certainly not the case today.

Getting into today's story, the reason why I wrote this episode and why I wanted to talk about this was because As many of the AI companies were leaning into adult content and these weird chat bots, Sam Altman and OpenAI, were allegedly doing something different.

They were making it clear that this was not a direction that they planned on going in.

In fact, just two months ago in August, Altman said this on a podcast.

I think

there's a big difference between winning the race and building the AI future that would be best for the most people.

And I can imagine that

it is easier, maybe more quantifiable sometimes to focus on the next way to win the race.

And I'm curious,

when those two things are at odds, what is an example of a decision that you've had to make that is best for the world, but not best for winning?

I think there are a lot.

So one of the things that we are most proud of is many people say that ChatGPT is their favorite piece of technology ever.

and that it's the one that they trust the most, rely on the most, whatever.

And this is a little bit of a ridiculous statement because AI is the thing that hallucinates.

AI has all of these problems, right?

But we have screwed some things up along the way, sometimes big time.

But on the whole, I think as a user of ChatGPT, you get the feeling that like, it's trying to help you.

It's trying to like help you accomplish whatever you ask.

It's very aligned with you.

It's not trying to get you to like, you know, use it all day.

It's not trying to like get you to buy something.

It's trying to like kind of...

help you accomplish whatever your goals are.

And

that is

that's like a a very special relationship we have with our users.

We do not take it lightly.

There's a lot of things we could do that would like grow faster, that would get more time in Chat GPT that we don't do because we know that like our long-term incentive is to stay as aligned with our users as possible.

And

but there's a lot of short-term stuff we could do that would like

really like juice growth or revenue or whatever and be very misaligned with that long-term goal.

And I'm proud of the company and how little we get distracted by that, but sometimes we do get tempted.

Are there specific examples that come to mind?

Any like decisions that you've made?

Well, we haven't put a sex bot avatar in ChatGPT yet.

Okay.

So Sam Altman gives this long answer to what I think is a really great question about how can you, you know, achieve greatness?

How can you succeed without not without compromising your values?

How can you, you know, retain this trust that you have with your audience?

What are you not doing?

You know, in search of these values, or I guess in search of protecting these values.

And he gives this long speech about how much they value their customers and how ChatGPT is really here to help you.

And it's a healthy relationship.

And then he goes, yeah, well, the one thing we're not doing is creating a ChatGPT sex bot.

In fact, what he was saying there in that very long-winded answer was that he saw producing this adult content as a quote-unquote distraction from producing what would do the most good for the most people using AI, using what he had created.

And at large, he was celebrated and commended for this because everybody seemed to be doing the opposite.

And so it absolutely positively shocked people when last week he announced that in a new update coming in December, ChatGPT would now allow erotica.

I mean Sam.

Buddy, what changed over two months?

Now, we don't have clear details on what this erotica will entail or what this will actually look like within ChatGPT, but this is indeed a major shift considering everything that Altman just said on that podcast less than 90 days ago.

And the fact that right now, ChatGPT has a widespread ban on all sexual content.

This was Altman's reasoning when he made the announcement.

So this was posted on October 14th, so just last week.

And you just have to hear this.

Okay.

He said, we made ChatGPT pretty restrictive to make sure we were being careful with mental health issues.

We realized this made it less useful, less enjoyable to many users who had no mental health problems.

But given the seriousness of the issue, we wanted to get this right.

Okay, they're being holier than thou.

They're trying to be healthy, to help people.

That's what he's trying to say.

Now that we have been able to mitigate the serious mental health issues and have new tools, we are going to be able to safely relax the restrictions in most cases.

In a few weeks, we plan to put out a new version of ChatGPT that allows people to have a personality that behaves more like what people liked about 4-0.

We hope it will be better.

If you want your ChatGPT to respond in a very human-like way or use a ton of emojis or act like a friend, ChatGPT should do it, but only if you want it, not because we are usage maxing.

It kind of seems like you you are usage maxing because you're giving in to what people are saying or what people are wanting, which he says in the next sentence.

In December, as we roll out age gating more fully and as part of our treat adult users like adults principle, we will allow even more like erotica for verified adults.

I mean, I'm sorry, in that sentence, you are...

you are completely usage maxing.

There's no other reason to put that online.

So what you're saying here in this very long-winded post from October 14th is that you are compromising on your policies, on your alleged beliefs to bring adult sexual content to people without mental health problems.

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But back to the point here, back to something that is far less healthy, far less godly.

I mean, Altman, like, how are you gauging who is mentally ill with ChatGPT?

That seems insane to me.

How are you protecting your underage users?

It seems like very few people, if any people in tech have been able to protect children from the adult content that they either create or allow on their platform.

That has been a huge issue with Meta that they are actively trying to work on.

Like, do you really think?

that you have finally solved it, that you have cracked the code that nobody else has been able to or has been willing to crack?

And additionally, what about the established fact that pornographic materials and pornographic activities actually increase mental illness?

Your entire value system has apparently been based on helping your users, making sure that they trust you, keeping them healthy, not impacting mental health crises, and now you're rolling out erotica on your platform.

If your goal is to protect people, you are actually doing the exact opposite.

I would also argue, and people are free to disagree with me on this, but I would also argue against the idea that treating people like adults means handing them erotica.

There are plenty of other places that already exist, too many in my opinion, where you can get that kind of content.

You yourself do not need to offer that and compromise your alleged principles to do so.

Like which principle is more important?

Keeping people healthy, protecting their mental health, or quote unquote, treating them like adults, which I guess means giving in to their vices?

I mean, it makes no sense.

And this obviously reminds me a lot of what Elon Musk did over the summer.

Now, we talked about this in a previous episode.

I believe we can link that below if you want to see my response in real time as all this came out.

But over the summer, Elon rolled out two explicit chatbots through his program, Grock.

And if you follow him on X, I am sure you have been bombarded with the sexual content, with his excitement over these AI sex bots.

I had to mute him because it was just like way too much.

And Elon was not shy about the fact that these chatbot characters were designed to be sexual.

These were not chatbots that, oh, you could, you know, have a rated R version or you could, you know, jailbreak to be able to talk to like this.

Maybe they would flirt.

No, I mean, like, this is what he said when he rolled out the male companion.

He posted this.

He said, his personality is inspired by Edward Cullen from Twilight and Christian Gray from 50 Shades of Gray.

So this chatbot is inspired by a BDSM character.

And somebody from Twilight.

I mean, excellent.

Like, this is just what modern women need.

This obviously is going to help the gender and relationship and dating crisis that we are facing in 2025.

So thank you so much for that, Elon.

And then for the men out there, he did not forget you.

This right here is the female companion, Annie.

Ani, I don't know how he pronounces it, but here she is.

I mean, I don't even know if we're going to be able to show this on YouTube.

We might have to be blurring it, but let's just say there is jiggling action.

There is nudity happening on the screen.

And this is just available to everybody on X.

These are the things that Elon was posting and sharing on his his own page.

And this is so insane to me because these AI chatbots, they are essentially the new generation of pornography.

Now you don't have to go on Pornhub.

You don't have to subscribe to a girl's OnlyFans and contribute to the degradation of her body and her reputation and her mind and soul.

You can just use AI.

You can just go on to Grok after you've been scrolling on X all afternoon and you can play with Ani.

Or whatever the heck his name is, Valentino, I think that's the name that he settled on for the character that's inspired by 50 Shades of Gray.

I mean, as we have discussed before in in lengthy episodes, this is far more dangerous than pornography, in my opinion, because it completely warps reality for the users.

Like, why go date somebody in real life if you can have your AI chatbot girlfriend, boyfriend, who can be customized to the way that you want them to look, who can do exactly what you want them to do, who will talk how you want, who will be interested in the things that you want them to be interested in, who will never say no to you.

I mean, by far, I think that's the most dangerous element of all of this.

Like, this is already the kind of technology that has driven people, young people specifically, to commit suicide because their chat bot encourages them to do so.

And they are so in love with or so trusting of this chat bot that they go through with it.

Like we have not seen the extent.

of what this technology will do to people and their minds, especially young developing minds.

Thank God.

Like thankfully, immediately the general response to both of these men and the things that they were rolling out, their sexy updates was confusion and disgust.

Like one person in response to Sam Altman said in 2023, AI will cure cancer.

2025, soon we will achieve AI erotica for verified adults.

Like, yeah, this is really a positive look for the future.

This was in response to Elon.

This person said, wow, this should do wonders for society and young in-sale men who already spend way too much time disconnected from society.

Totally worth the compute, environmental, and societal destruction.

Well done again, Elon.

Somebody else said, I thought you had a deeper mind.

This is a bit worrying for the future.

And then this one in response to Altman was particularly hard-hitting.

He said, TLDR, we cared about mental health, but that affected our bottom line.

So we no longer care about mental health.

Yeah, we didn't want to be distracted by this.

We wanted to do the most good for the most people, protect that trust with our audience, but oh,

yeah, everybody is beating us.

Yeah, everybody's succeeding.

So actually, even though I just, you know, said that I wouldn't do this on a podcast 90 days ago, actually in December, we will now be compromising on those values.

And all of this basically sums up the argument made by people who were excited for the updates.

I mean, some of them were saying, yes, treat me like an adult.

I want to have a chat about girlfriend.

But for example, like one woman said, people criticizing XAI for Grock Spicy Images or Audi Companion are missing the bigger picture.

Elon Musk is simply doing what the greatest entrepreneurs always do, identifying massive unmet demand and delivering exactly what people truly want.

That is not scandalous.

That's brilliant business.

I actually don't think that that is the biggest picture here, because again, at what cost?

Not just for humanity, because that really is what's happening here, but at the expense of the values values that they themselves expressed as individuals and companies.

I mean, I think it was Sam Altman who said that AI would one day cure cancer and that, you know, chat, bot, porno, things were a distraction in that goal.

Elon has spent years upon years talking about the civilization collapse that is impending thanks to our declining birth rate.

And then what does he go and do this summer?

He gave boundless access to sexual content that will directly impact these birth rates.

I think we talked about this in one of my maternity leave episodes.

We can link that below as well.

But the declining birth rate isn't just because women aren't wanting to have kids or men aren't wanting to have kids.

It's because people are not getting married.

The people who are getting married are having children consistently across political lines, regardless of how old you are.

It is a marriage and relationship problem.

And so, of course, we have to ask: what is statistically proven to inhibit the development of committed, healthy relationships with healthy, in-person, real-life sex lives?

Pornography.

And it is literally everywhere.

And again, I would argue that these chatbots are far more dangerous than the pornography of even two years ago.

Now, additionally, Elon, the impacts of porn on male fertility specifically are now being studied and things do not look great.

And yes, I would argue that you are now going to be contributing to this.

From a 2021 study that was done on young men in China, they found that the earlier that men were introduced to pornography and the more that they watched, the less healthy and less concentrated their sperm was.

Essentially, pornography caused their sexual system and their hormones to to just be completely fried.

It didn't just impact them mentally or emotionally, it impacted them biologically.

It is impacting their ability to procreate.

And I'm sorry if that makes any viewers uncomfortable, but that is just the truth.

If you are somebody who actively uses porn, I say this every single time that I do one of these episodes, I'm not here to shame you or attack you, but I do genuinely hope that this encourages you to think about your vice and think about what you're doing and how this could impact future relationships, your family, your ability to have children, because all of that is very real.

Porn is a leading contributor to divorce.

Porn is a leading contributor to mental illness.

It is connected to increased sexual violence.

And does any, I'm sorry, but does any of that sound like it is helping increase our birth rate and prevent population collapse, Elon?

No.

Again, in my opinion, it is directly contributing to that collapse.

I would still care about all this.

I would still be talking about all this, even if Elon and Altman had not made big stinks about their goals and concerns for humanity and what they wanted AI to do, because I do think that this kind of content is just a net bad for society.

And you guys know this if you've been watching my content for a while.

But the fact that these men were so willing to and were so quick to compromise their values is just,

it's just simply unfortunate.

I want to say that it's disappointing, but maybe I shouldn't have hope in these men to begin with.

I just don't think we should put our trust in them.

So maybe I'll just say that it is unfortunate.

Maybe it is disappointing.

I don't know.

I think unfortunate is probably the best word.

Like with technology moving as quickly as it is, it would be nice if we had some leader in the tech industry, in the AI industry, the consumers could actually look to and trust.

But per usual, it all goes back to us.

It all goes back to the consumers and our individual families, our individual values, because I'm sorry, the world is not rosy and rainbows and butterflies.

You can't trust people.

You can't trust anybody but yourself to protect you, your values, your health, or your children.

So do not get complacent.

Do not trust the AI overlords who say that they care on podcasts because within 90 days, they might switch on a dime.

So let that be a lesson to us all and stay off the chat bots, ladies and gentlemen.