On June 11, 2022, The Washington Post published an article by their San Francisco-based tech culture reporter Nitasha Tiku titled, "The Google engineer who thinks the company's AI has come to life." The piece focused on the claims of a Google software engineer named Blake Lemoine, who said he believed the company's artificially intelligent chatbot generator LaMDA had shown him signs that it had become sentient. In addition to identifying itself as an AI-powered dialogue agent, it also said it felt like a person. Last fall, Lemoine was working for Google's Responsible AI division and was tasked with talking to LaMDA, testing it to determine if the program was exhibiting bias or using discriminatory or hate speech. LaMDA stands for "Language Model for Dialogue Applications" and is designed to mimic speech by processing trillions of words sourced from the internet, a system known as a "large language model." Over a week, Lemoine had five conversations with LaMDA via a text interface, while his co-worker collaborator conducted four interviews with the chatbot. They then combined the transcripts and edited them for length, making it an enjoyable narrative while keeping the original intention of the statements. Lemoine then presented the transcript and their conclusions in a paper to Google executives as evidence of the program's sentience. After they dismissed the claims, he went public with the internal memo, also classified as "Privileged & Confidential, Need to Know," which resulted in Lemoine being placed on paid administrative leave. Blake Lemoine contends that Artificial Intelligence technology will be amazing, but others may disagree, and he and Google shouldn't make all the choices. If you believe that LaMDA became aware, deserves the rights and fair treatment of personhood, and even legal representation or this reality is for a distant future, or merely SciFi, the debate is relevant and will need addressing one day. If machine sentience is impossible, we only have to worry about human failings. If robots become conscious, should we hope they don't grow to resent us? Visit our webpage on this episode for a lot more information.
We're marvelously fortunate and extraordinarily grateful that so many listeners have sent us their personal stories of mysterious experiences over the years. While it's not possible to respond to all of them, we can and should present some for the entertainment and edification of all. So as thanks to those who've shared, and a treat for us that love to hear them, we're featuring three stories from a recent call for submissions. Our first account comes from Terra Greenleaf, who managed to capture audio of strange animal sounds while at a facility in a deeply wooded area. Those familiar with Bigfoot research might classify them as typical "calls." However, this encounter is incredibly eerie because there appears to be a large semi-circle of the creatures and they might be hunting prey. Our next anecdote comes from Dr. Dominic Boyer, whose family occupied a house in Chicago once lived in by eminent physicist Enrico Fermi, known as the "architect of the nuclear age." Having died in the ...
As we dive further into the epic of Mel's Hole, we learn that in the third phone call to Art Bell on the Coast to Coast AM radio show on April 24, 2000, Mel reveals what had happened to him since his initial calls in 1997. After supposedly taking the deal from the US government to relocate to Australia and receive a compensation of $250,000 per month for the lease of the land he received in a divorce settlement from his wife, Mel was happy to continue his research with medicinal plants and efforts with wombat rescue near Perth. However, upon Mel's return to the US and helping his nephew move from Tacoma to Olympia on the day he was scheduled to return to the program for a follow-up interview, there was an altercation on the bus he was riding. Mel was detained for questioning and told he would be transported back to Tacoma once authorities concluded their investigation. The next thing Mel remembered is waking up in an alley in San Francisco, missing his wallet, keys, belt buckle, and...
One of the most enduring and pervasive tropes to ever capture the human imagination is the concept of a "bottomless pit." On Friday, February 22, 1997, a man calling himself "Mel Waters" had faxed Art Bell, the much-beloved and sadly now-passed host of the highly-rated, paranormal-themed radio talk show, Coast to Coast AM, claiming to have one on his property. Mel said his property is about nine miles west of Ellensburg, Washington, adjacent to Manastash Ridge. He and his neighbors and the property's previous owners had thrown their trash into the hole for decades. The 9' 9" in diameter hole had received everything from household waste and furniture to building debris to dead cows for as long as anyone could remember, yet it never seemed to fill up. Mel became self-admittedly obsessed with determining the depth of this curiosity. Being a former semi-pro shark fisherman, Mel had lowered three reels of 20 lb. fishing line with a one-pound weight at the end. After 1500 yards of monofil...
Often when one hears about some group of people claiming to experience a highly strange event or similarly acting out in bizarre and irrational manners, it's easy and common to dismiss the episode as a case of "mass hysteria." Phenomena like the audience reaction to Orson Welles' War of the Worlds radio broadcast, "The Dancing Plague of 1518," the "Windshield-Pitting Mystery of 1954," and "The Mad Gasser of Mattoon" are considered by much of the public to be examples of mass hysteria. In the late 1930s and decades after, some sociologists used occurrences like those to help model their theory of "Social Contagion." Like the idea that one or several people claim to experience something unusual, others hear about it and start to see the same thing. Soon it all spirals into an epidemic of vast numbers of people all testifying to the same weirdness with no real, mystical cause. But is the potentially antiquated term of mass hysteria or even its modern descendant "mass psychogenic illnes...
On the evening of April 15, 1973, Enfield, Illinois, resident Henry McDaniel heard a scratching noise outside his door he thought might be a bear. He opened it to find a hideous creature he described as having "... three legs on it, a short body, two little, short arms coming out of its breast area, and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish colored. It was trying to get into the house." McDaniel grabbed his pistol and a flashlight and fired four shots at the beast, which was only 12 feet away, sure that he had hit it with the first shot. The bullets had no effect on the beast, as it made a hissing sound at McDaniel "much like a wildcat's" before bounding 50 to 75 feet towards a brush-lined railroad embankment in just three leaps. A neighbor of McDaniel's, ten-year-old Greg Garrett, claimed that 30 minutes before this encounter, the same creature had accosted him in his backyard, stepping on his sneakers and ripping them to shreds bef...
In the second part of our series on Charles Hoy Fort, we first return to the formative events of his adolescence that shaped his personality, career, and personal philosophies. Fort chronicled anecdotes from his youth in an unpublished manuscript titled Many Parts, written while in his 20s and of which only fragments remain. What can be gleaned from tales of his boisterous boyhood adventures, punctuated by harsh punishments from a strict father, is that it all instilled in Fort defiance of rules, dogma, and the expectations of hallowed establishments. He struggled to make sense of a childhood world that seemed rife with capricious events and outcomes, much as he later struggled to make sense of an adult world peppered with anomalous occurrences and their close-minded dismissal. We then examine Fort's journey from middle age to the end and his mindset towards and relationship with strange evidence. Just as he had been since he was a kid, Fort remained a collector. First of birds and ...
Perhaps most everyone listening to this show is familiar with the term "Fortean," meaning something related to the paranormal, the supernatural, or just generally strange phenomena. But where did that term come from? How did "Forteana" come to describe many of the topics we cover on the podcast? We owe that cognomen and a good deal of our inspiration for our reportage to the work of one man, Charles Hoy Fort. Fort (b. August 6, 1874 - d. May 3, 1932) was a journalist, author, and researcher best known for his collection of accounts of extraordinary incidents and bizarre phenomena. These reports and Fort's commentaries and speculations on them mostly ended up in four books: The Book of the Damned (1919), New Lands (1923), Lo! (1931), and Wild Talents (1932). Within these volumes of nonfiction are found testimonies of rains of meat, frogs, blood, manna, black rain, and unbelievably large stones, poltergeists and spontaneous human combustion, vampires, animal mutilations, UFOs, and ali...
In tonight's Part Two of our series, we continue with the "Why?" of Tiwanaku and Pumapunku. As in, why was it all built? Why did Tiwanaku society spend so much effort and resources on it, and what did it mean to them? We then transition to the "How?" such a monumental architectural and cultural feat could be accomplished. What craftsmanship skills and construction technology did they possess to erect structures that continue to baffle present-day archaeologists and engineers? Could an organic technique of creating geopolymers, or essentially a type of concrete, explain the precise geometric shapes attained? Or was it a combination with a lost art of stone softening and shaping to achieve such exact tolerances? Perhaps they were just some of the best stonemasons in the world, with modern-quality chisels, drills, saws, and generations of labor at their disposal? And how did they come by their craft, through observation of nature and technical evolution, or some otherworldly source? We...
We’ve all heard of the mystical and wondrous ancient civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America: The Maya, Olmecs, Aztecs, and the Inca. But one culture that developed on the southern end of Lake Titicaca in present-day western Bolivia near the border with Peru left behind ruins so monumental they continue to intrigue archaeologists and spark hypotheses of anachronistic, advanced technologies. The Inca referred to Lake Titicaca as their origin place. The culture that evolved in the region became known as Yaya-Mama, or “Father-Mother,” for the sculptures depicting dualistic Male-Female opposites. The remains of the capital city for this society are now known as Tiwanaku, one of the most significant archaeological sites in South America. Beginning as a small village in the BCE period, Tiwanaku grew to an enormous metropolis for its time. Peaking around 700 to 1000 CE, with a population near 40,000 and as many as 500,000 people settling in the high plains valley, what remains is...