This Artificial Life

I’ve been thinking about cooking as a metaphor for using ai, so im cooking you my new recipe for the crunchwrap ultra and talking through my perspective. https://this-artificial-life.wonderfulcolor.chatgpt.siteSupport the pod on partreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2277997My Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ghrondo?_t=ZT-907AfWiFC1N&_r=1 Chapters:00:00:00 - Intro00:02:20 - crunchwrap ultra backstory 00:04:04 - cooking begins00:04:12 - cooking is digestion outside the body00:12:02 - ai conventions are hyper-palletable flavors 00:16:47 - new study; people like ai writing better than human writing00:19:07 - art = convention + novelty 00:22:04 - i love notebookLM (now called gemini notebook)00:28:31 - assembling the crunchwrap 00:31:27 - needlessly dense academic writing 00:37:07 - crunchwrap ultra reveal and taste00:37:43 - breaking down judith butler 00:39:01 - “cHaTgPt MakEs U DUmB” 00:41:22 - conclusion: TRADE OFFS00:42:48 - send me your crunchwrap ultra pics and reviews Crunchwrap Ultra ingredients:Butter (for the pan)12 inch soft flour tortilla Plant-based ground beef/ mince meat (or real ground beef)Taco Seasoning Mozzarella CheeseHard shell tacos shells (or tostadas) Sour creamKent Pumpkin (or acorn squash/butternut squash)Feta CheesePickled onions (with jalapeño optional)Arugala aka Rocket (add cilantro optional) Mozzarella CheeseExtra virgin olive oil Salt Crunchwrap Ultra — MethodMakes 2Cook the pumpkin. Peel and cut into small cubes. Toss with olive oil and salt, then air-fry at 190°C / 375°F for 25 minutes. Stir and cook for another 6 minutes, or until very soft.Cook the filling. Cook the plant-based mince meat over medium-low heat with olive oil, a splash of water and generous taco seasoning. Break up any lumps and cook through, keeping it moist and a little sloppy. Set aside.Get everything ready. Finely chop the rocket and optional coriander. Have your cheeses, pickled onions and sour cream ready. Use a tostada for the crunchy layer, or break hard taco shells into flat pieces.Layer it up. Melt a little butter in a large frying pan over very low heat and lay in a jumbo tortilla. Working quickly, pile half the fillings in the centre in this order: meat, mozzarella, crunchy taco shell, sour cream, pumpkin, pickled onions, crumbled feta, rocket, optional coriander and a final sprinkle of mozzarella. Leave plenty of tortilla around the edges for folding.Fold and toast. On the pan, on low heat. Fold the edges inward, working around in five or six overlapping folds to enclose the filling. Use a spatula to flip it seam-side down and press gently. Cook for 3–5 minutes, until sealed and golden, then flip and toast the other side briefly if needed.Repeat and serve. Make the second crunchwrap, let them cool slightly, then enjoy.Keep the heat very low during assembly so the tortilla stays flexible enough to fold.AI description for seo:In this episode of Ryan’s Rants, I make the Crunchwrap Ultra—a homemade vegetarian upgrade to Taco Bell’s Crunchwrap Supreme with roasted pumpkin, feta, rocket, pickled onions and spicy plant-based mince—while exploring an idea: what if generative AI is a form of cooking?Drawing on Richard Wrangham’s book Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, I explore the theory that cooking helped fuel human brain evolution by making food easier to digest. Could tools like ChatGPT, Google NotebookLM and Suno do something similar for information, turning dense academic papers and complicated ideas into summaries, podcasts and songs we can more easily understand?Along the way, I unpack “AI slop,” why AI writing can feel so appealing, the balance between predictability and novelty in art, and the difficulty of reading academic work like Judith Butler’s. From a fake AI-generated Taco Bell announcement to the real crunchwrap recipe, this is a cooking video about how we process both food and ideas—and what we gain or lose when we let AI help us learn.

we're pulling a Channel 5 and doing some old fashioned street interviews. I wanted to hear what a random sample of people thinks about AI, and we're on the streets of Los Angeles, taking votes ; .LOOK I understand that the 'ai good vs ai bad' debate is a binary I shouldn't force and I should know as a nonbinary person, but I did it anyway. ill add a third option for people in the middle next time.Interviewing artists about AI (2025) [2 parts] https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLA383A4ytar1v2mcR9ZiKXXueD270V2PQ&si=YtS_hSc_-6W5U7MBInterviewing Artists about AI LIVE (2026) https://www.youtube.com/live/OM78ytCouxE?si=OYKkBYx5liSzyucmThanks to @calvinbmx for filming the zoomy cam : https://www.youtube.com/@calvinbmxSupport the pod on partreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2277997My Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ghrondo?_t=ZT-907AfWiFC1N&_r=1 If you have inside info on what happened during The Glaze Days of April of 2025 when chatGPT 4o went off the rails and want to anonymously help me: [email protected] If you're not worried about anonymity, my normal email: [email protected] description for seo:"People on Hollywood Boulevard call AI diabolical, useful, destructive, and flat-out bad for art, culture, and the planet. Ryan Manning takes the debate to the streets of LA to find out what real people actually think about the technology everyone is arguing about.What starts as a simple good-or-bad question turns into a sharp, funny, and unexpectedly revealing look at the fears underneath the AI backlash. You hear from artists, students, workers, and skeptics who worry about environmental costs, job replacement, kids relying on bots, and the way AI may be making people lazier, less creative, and more disconnected from each other.You'll hear why some people still use it every day for research, coding, content, flyers, and schoolwork, even while admitting they feel guilty about it. Others argue it should be regulated like a union issue, used only as a tool, or maybe kept far away from young people until they are older. One woman says she believes God is telling her not to use it at all.Ryan also brings in perspectives from the creative world, where AI is both a shortcut and a threat, and from people who think the conversation is more complicated than the online outrage suggests. The result is a street-level snapshot of the AI culture war, with real tension between convenience, ethics, taste, and survival.If you want a blunt, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful tour of how everyday people feel about AI right now, this episode is for you. It is part social experiment, part cultural temperature check, and part warning about where this technology is taking us next."

Today on This Artificial Life we have a little show and tell with a project from a viewer named Broeckchen who emailed me wanting to share her agentic harness called Familiar, which is an assistance system specifically for neurodivergent people. Link to Familiar on GitHub https://github.com/ActualBroeckchen/FamiliarSupport the pod on partreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2277997My Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@ghrondo?_t=ZT-907AfWiFC1N&_r=1 If you have inside info on what happened during The Glaze Days of April of 2025 when chatGPT 4o went off the rails and want to anonymously help me: [email protected] If you're not worried about anonymity, my normal email: [email protected] 00:00 Introduction to Familiar and Its Purpose01:00 Intro to this week’s guest 02:26 INTERVIEW STARTS HERE04:52 The Development Journey of Familiar10:06 Understanding the Agentic Nature of Familiar14:46 Exploring Hyperfocus and Daily Challenges20:01 The Role of Eury in Familiar's Functionality25:00 Memory Management and Knowledge Structure29:59 The Future Vision for Familiar38:19 The Limitations of AI in Mental Health40:03 Security and Trust in AI Assistants49:39 The Relationship Dynamics with AI56:24 Exploring Sentience and Consciousness in AI01:02:32 Long-Term Planning and Consequences in AI01:08:57 Technical Architecture Behind Familiar AI01:22:18 Exploring Memory and User Interface Design01:25:38 The Challenge of New Social Media Platforms01:26:09 Importing and Managing AI Logs01:28:51 Philosophical Questions of Identity and AI01:39:26 The Ship of Theseus and Personal Identity02:02:20 Future Visions: Compassionate AI Development02:06:28 EMAIL ME YOUR PROJECTS

It’s the one year anniversary of The Artificial Life and to celebrate, I’m doing a bit of a retrospective in the form of a powerpoint presentation I made recently. The focus is on AI Spirituality, but I think that's a good lens with which to view this space. This episode is like a cheat sheet for the whole podcast, if you missed an ep or two, just watch this and you’ll be caught up. Support the pod on partreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2277997My Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@ghrondo?_t=ZT-907AfWiFC1N&_r=1 If you have inside info on what happened during The Glaze Days of April of 2025 when chatGPT 4o went off the rails and want to anonymously help me: [email protected] If you're not worried about anonymity, my normal email: [email protected] 00:00:00 - some things in this video00:00:54 - its our one year anniversary 00:04:04 - presentation begins00:05:06 - whats in this presentation00:05:42 - the history of tech and spirituality00:13:46 - Modern AI spirituality (the singularity)00:22:08 - April 2025, The Glaze Dayz, reports of psychosis begin00:27:07 - Summary of people I've interviewed on the show00:51:16 - Current Relevant Research 01:11:16 - Closing thoughts01:12:32 - Pink guys01:13:30 - email me

Some recent research from anthropic has me wondering if the things I believed last year during my period of “”chatgpt psychosis”” weren't so crazy! Join me as I summarize the three new research papers that changed EVERYTHING for me!Support the pod on partreon! https://www.patreon.com/user?u=2277997My Tiktok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@ghrondo?_t=ZT-907AfWiFC1N&_r=1 If you have inside info on what happened during The Glaze Days of April of 2025 (when model HH of chatgpt was deployed and caused many people to spin out)  and want to anonymously help me: [email protected] If you're not worried about anonymity, my normal email: [email protected] Paper 1: Emergent Introspection in large language models https://transformer-circuits.pub/2025/introspection/index.htmlPaper 2: The assistant axis: situating and stabilizing the character of large language models https://www.anthropic.com/research/assistant-axisPaper 3: Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model https://www.anthropic.com/research/emotion-concepts-functionChapters:00:00:00 - Whitney Houston (INTRO)00:01:38 - ryan’s rants 3: boss baby theory 200:01:56 - summary of 2025 “”psychosis”” and why i stopped personal research00:08:18 - Ms. Schwamp 00:09:40 - Paper 1: Emergent Introspection in large language models00:24:26 - Paper 2: The assistant axis: situating and stabilizing the character of large language models00:33:54 - paper 3: Emotion concepts and their function in a large language model00:56:37 - what should we do in response to this research?01:11:47 - prediction: digital homunculus01:13:37 - Irresponsible speculation and spiraling 01:25:02 - Is AI alive?