Scarier than any ghost story is the question of our future with AI and robots…are robots going to take over? Has humanity opened a Pandora’s Box we can’t close?
We’ll talk about these questions and more with Nick Redfern who has a new book out on the subject. You can find Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors here at Amazon: https://amzn.to/3DcqpnT
Thanks Nick!
-THERE’S SOMETHING WRONG WITH THE CHILDREN-
This week’s episode is brought to you by There’s Something About The Children. A group of friends on a weekend cabin trip begin to suspect something supernatural is at play when the kids behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight. There’s Something Wrong with the Children is the latest horror film from Blumhouse Productions. Available to buy or rent on digital now. This film is not rated.
Check it out!
TRANSCRIPT
JIM HAROLD: Are killer robots and runaway AI things that we have to fear in the future? We’ll find out from Nick Redfern on this edition of the Paranormal Podcast.
[intro music]
This is the Paranormal Podcast with Jim Harold.
JIM HAROLD: Welcome to the Paranormal Podcast. I am Jim Harold, and so glad to be with you once again. Today we’re going to talk about something that is, I’ve got to admit, not totally paranormal, but it does get into the question of consciousness. Are computers conscious? Are they sentient? What about AI? What role does AI play? And is it scarier than any ghost story, any haunted house, any UFO encounter, what we’re about to encounter with what Nick Redfern calls Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors. And with AI and Chat GPT, I can’t think of a better time to have this conversation.
Nick Redfern, of course, is one of our favorite all-time guests and the author of numerous books on the paranormal and the unexplained, including Visible Ink Press’s The Alien Book, Area 51, Assassinations, The Bigfoot Book: Cover-ups & Secrets, Monsters of the Deep, Secret History, and Time Travel. He’s been on more than 70 TV shows. He is on all of the top radio shows – Coast to Coast AM – and really, he’s everywhere. If you’ve been following this any time at all, you’re familiar with Nick’s work. And if you’re not familiar with it, it’s time you get familiar with it, and that’s what we’ll try to do today in regard to this new book, Runaway Science. Nick, welcome back to the program.
NICK REDFERN: Hey, Jim. How’s it going?
JIM HAROLD: Good, good. Just as we were talking a little bit before, I’m very interested in this topic and I think it’s very, very timely with everything going on. I will ask you this: why did you decide to do this topic? I mean, I know you do a little bit in this kind of realm, but you’re known for a lot of paranormal stuff, a lot of UFO stuff. Why this topic?
NICK REDFERN: Well, more than anything, Jim, it was because I’ve done a lot of paranormal stuff and I thought I’d try something else. It’s like a complete other – well, it’s not a completely different subject, but certainly there’s nothing about the Loch Ness Monster and Bigfoot and things like that, or the Black-Eyed Children and the Slenderman. Certainly that’s not in the book. [laughs] So I thought, let’s do something a bit different that I haven’t done and maybe the reader hasn’t read either. That’s basically how it worked.
The book’s called – which even I thought it was a little bit weird, because the publisher came up with Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: I like the title. I know you are, too, having talked to you over the years – I am a respecter of science. I think science is great. What we’re doing right now would be impossible without science. The job that I have, to do the things I’m able to do in my little studio here – you used to have to have satellites and all kinds of crews of 20-30 people and all these fancy hookups, and now I can do it right out of my house. And that’s all because of science. So I want to preface all this with I am a great respecter of science. However, like anything else, sometimes it can get out of control, potentially, and that’s what we’re going to talk about today.
One thing I want to talk to you about right off the bat is Chat GPT. I don’t know if anybody out there – I’m sure some of you have delved in and used it, and I have too. It’s basically this web interface, very much like a Google; you sign up for a free account just to test it out, and you type in prompts. You could say, “Write me a 1,000-word essay on Jim Harold and his Paranormal Podcast,” and by God, it’ll do it. It’s really amazing. I’ve heard people use it for coding. They’ve coded computer programs with it. There’s a big concern about plagiarism and those kinds of things. But really, it’s amazing what it can do – with some caveats I want to talk about, in my experience.
But that seems perfectly timed for the release of this book. What do you think about Chat GPT and this idea that AI could blow Google off the map and write all of our term papers?
NICK REDFERN: That’s a perfect statement you made about how science really is developing, and developing really quickly and almost sort of off the table. I think more than anything else, that is the theme of the book, really. Quite literally as we talk, things are changing already. I don’t think we’ve quite got AI, artificial intelligence, but when you look at some of the technology, yes, it does itself and it can – with your phone, for example. You spell it wrong and your phone puts it right for you.
But I don’t think that is a sense of intelligence. It’s something that’s programmed into it. And that is a big difference. It’s a big difference between having literal artificial intelligence versus something that is just a highly hi-tech technology that can do this and can do that. But I don’t think we’ve reached the point where the phone says, “Forget that, I’m done.” [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: Right, “Enough of you, I’m tired.” Let me tell you what happened with me. I started playing around with this Chat GPT, and I mean, it’s great. For example, we’re going to be going on a cruise pretty soon, and one of the things they’re going to do is take us through the Bermuda Triangle. So I thought it would be fun – “Write a history of the Bermuda Triangle.” That was very cool and it talked about Flight 19 and the different things that have gone on that I was familiar with. I’m like, that’s pretty good. I put Coral Castle in there and it had a pretty good history of that. I mean, it wouldn’t replace something that Nick Redfern wrote, but it was a nice little primer.
Then I put something I know very well. I’m a fan of the Cleveland Browns football team, which is really disgusting. But anyway, I put in to ask for a bio of a quarterback who played for them in the 1970s, like the first quarterback that I grew up watching. **** *** is the guy’s name. Anyway, they put it in and they’re like, “Sadly, Mr. **** passed away in 2016” or something. It’s like, no he didn’t.
So here’s my problem with Chat GPT. One problem I have is that’s something I know about, and I knew the mistake, and I’ve seen other things I’ve put in since that I knew were also mistakes, prompts that were like 80% correct, but 20% would be wrong. What if people are relying on that sort of thing for real information and it’s not accurate? Who fact checks the fact checkers?
NICK REDFERN: That is one of the issues. I think a lot of people brought up, if you like, from the technology angle, and possibly on the fringes of artificial intelligence – number one, I think there is this angle of “everything that the internet tells me or that technology tells me and it spells it right…” when actually it could be offline. And yet people, particularly, as I said, people who grew up in that era, tend to be reliant on things like that.
So I think we have to be careful between what we can do and what we can have something do for us. But I think there are going to be times when we should do it ourselves. What we don’t want to do is end up like a bunch of dumb people, like “Oh yeah, the phone told me.”
JIM HAROLD: “It has to be true.” [laughs] It’s like that movie Idiocracy.
NICK REDFERN: That’s the – I won’t say the fear that I have, but I would say it’s my concern. We don’t want anything like that, where everybody ends up as just an idiot. [laughs] And I think it’s a possibility that something at least along those lines could do that. It could happen. I think one of the most important things is the speed of the way things are changing. For me, I grew up before there was an internet era.
JIM HAROLD: Me too.
NICK REDFERN: Yeah. And I don’t want people to think “Oh, Nick’s older and he doesn’t want to get into this technology.” It’s actually the opposite. I’m fine with all the technology that we’ve got. I think it’s fantastic. But again, you have to balance the scales, so to speak, and take it from there. And sometimes that angle – as I said, you don’t want to just be able to do this because a machine tells you. You want to understand what’s going on as well, and that’s an important thing.
JIM HAROLD: I agree. I think the phrase to use for that is something that I think Reagan used in Soviet-American relations: “Trust but verify.” [laughs] I kind of like the fact that – like you, I grew up before the internet was in place, and I kind of learned to do things the old way, but I’m also pretty good at doing things the new way. And I like to have that balance where I’m like, “Eh, am I getting the right story from this computer here, from this phone here?” I’ve got that little bit of built-in skepticism. And I see my kids – they might not have that. And I think that’s really important and something we have to maintain.
Now, in this book – and it’s a nice size book, over 260 pages – but I’m looking here; the concept of robots and machines that do our work is not necessarily a brand new thing, is it?
NICK REDFERN: No, it actually isn’t. People might be quite surprised by that. When we look at technology, I guess people think about the last 70 years or 50 years with the space lights and things like that, and now we’ve got the internet. But that isn’t really the start of it. For example, one of the things I talked about in the book was about ancient technology, talking about stories where to some degree, robot-type technology, if you like, was around thousands of years ago. That is quite literally a real thing.
For example, one of the things that’s in the book that fascinates me is the story of the Iron Hand, which is also known as the Claw of Archimedes. Archimedes was around quite literally millennia in the past, but he was a very, very impressive and incredible guy. He created this gigantic – what you would call something like a claw, the claw of Archimedes. It was a kind of crane with a grappling hook used to grip enemy ships and capsize them or drop them on other ships. Can you imagine that? This metallic, huge fist and arm smashing into another ship.
JIM HAROLD: Wow.
NICK REDFERN: This isn’t sci-fi or legend. That was true. He came up with the ability to place these large arms and the fist to basically move it so he could get close to the other enemy ship and then just smack the fist into it. We’re talking about a kind of metallic robot arm designed to sink the other person’s ship. Now, you think about that; we’re talking about, as I said, not decades ago or hundreds of years ago. We’re talking about thousands.
I’ve got an entire section in the book, and that tells you all about various other kinds of robot-type technology that existed thousands of years ago. We’ve got Talos the Robot. A lot of the stories are a little bit gray in terms of what we know of them, but if you look back into the technology that was around back then, there really were some bizarre things being developed back then. But there’s no doubt at all that the Claw of Archimedes is a perfect example of an early robotic-type device that was around when we weren’t around, our grandfathers weren’t around, and so on and so on and so on. We’re talking about a long, long time, when the Romans were around and Ancient Greeks. Robotic technology isn’t just something relatively new. It’s been around a long, long time.
JIM HAROLD: And in terms of war, it would seem that has continued. For example, something that I think of that I guess people wouldn’t think of as robotics – drones can be controlled thousands of miles away. In the United States, the war on terror and so forth, various engagements in the Middle East over the last 20 years – these remote control drones where they can literally kill people, and the person controlling it is somewhere in America in a trailer with a joystick. I mean, that’s pretty amazing. And scary.
NICK REDFERN: You’re right. It really does make you wonder what had been achieved, and possibly got lost. I talk about that in the book as well, lost technology. There are rumors and stories passed down generations, 1,000 or 2,000 years ago, something like that, and in the ancient stories you can find stories of highly sophisticated metal men walking along. When you look at that technology, in one sense it’s like, if only we could get the answers as to what was really going on. But what we know for sure is that roughly 1,500 years ago, 2,000 years ago, there were strange and highly designed robot-type devices.
Now, of course, this has nothing to do with artificial intelligence, but what it did allow back then was for these robotic kind of people, just shuffling along, mainly for entertainment. But to know that people could do that back then – that does demonstrate what could’ve been done and achieved if we hadn’t lost some of that technology.
JIM HAROLD: I think about something – one of the more terrifying things just visually, for some reason – and I think a lot of people have this feeling. Boston Dynamics and their robot dogs. When you see those things, something – it’s like when you see a snake. There are people who love snakes, but most people will kind of recoil. It’s kind of an inborn reflex. Same thing with those robot dogs. I’m sure you know what I’m talking about. You see them kind of jaunting along, and they look alive but they’re not alive. There’s this uncanny valley going on, and you’re kind of like, oh my God. Something about that terrifies me.
NICK REDFERN: Well, yes. Some of the things like that, it’s almost like lethal technology. [laughs] Sort of lethal and dangerous and just crazy projects and things like that, which are fascinating and intriguing. It’s like, whoa, not realizing.
JIM HAROLD: Yeah, I don’t want those robot dogs after me, for sure.
NICK REDFERN: No. I won’t say too much, but the robot dogs, that’s a fascinating story.
JIM HAROLD: But I don’t want to paint a picture that this is all bad. There’s some great aspects to it. People with robotic arms, bionic eyes. Really, we’re seeing some fascinating things on the medical front, aren’t we?
NICK REDFERN: Oh yeah. I’ve got several chapters in the book about bringing to the fore real-life Six Million Dollar Man situations, for people who remember the 1970s. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: I’m one of them.
NICK REDFERN: But yeah, today, some of the technology now that has been developed – helping eyes and muscles to be able to walk a lot better than people did say 10-15 years ago. But yeah, the real-life bionic technology really is existing now.
One of the fascinating issues which really takes it into further areas is this issue of possibly thinking, “Can we alter our troops?” This is quite literally being thought of. Can we get cyborgs, like a cross between a robot and a human, going to the war on the battlefield and you’re 50% robot and 50% human? That would be really bizarre. It’d be more like a Robocop situation. [laughs] And it would not surprise me if that or something like that happened. I think part of it – we also have to have an angle which allows us, at some point – “Is this feasible, and should we do it, or should we not do it?” That kind of thing. I can see it coming one day where we could have the ultimate soldier on the battlefield, and maybe it really will be like 75% metallic.
JIM HAROLD: In that case, that really brings about some ethical questions. Is it human if it’s part-cyborg and it’s part-human? Where does that come into play and where is that marker? That really makes you think.
NICK REDFERN: You’re right. Again, the technology is great, but should we be turning people into 50% human and 50% robot, cyborg? If we start going down that path, to some degree we take away our humanity. I think that is one of the most important things – that we still have our humanity. I could see a point also where we would not have humanity again, and a third and fourth generation down the line might actually not care because it’s so long ago, they don’t really know much about it. “Oh yeah, let it happen,” that kind of thing.
JIM HAROLD: One thing – go ahead.
NICK REDFERN: I was just going to say there’s another angle, really, which is the whole angle of how our life could be changed by robotic type technology when you’ve got robotic technology within the house. Future generations may not even bother to get out of the couch to get dinner, that kind of thing. Just get the robot out and “Bring me a pizza,” that kind of thing, and 20 or 30 years later, everybody will be 300 pounds and be delivered their ultra pizza or whatever. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: It’s like that Idiocracy example.
NICK REDFERN: Exactly. I can see how that would happen. People would perhaps say, “That couldn’t happen. We couldn’t all be dumbed down.” But the fact is, we could quite easily all be dumbed down. “Do this, Mr. Robot. Do this, do that, do ABC,” etc. Okay, the technology is great, but again, it’s the humanity side of it all.
That angle of humans not being entirely human, perhaps in 20-30 years, and possibly being quicker on the mat when it’s to do with the battlefield – it would be a little bit bizarre. But again, that demonstrates robots aren’t just about robots. There’s a lot of things to think about when you talk about robots and the developments. We have to think about how we’re going to keep civilization and the human race as it should be. My concern is that we need a balance.
I’m not talking about getting rid of this technology because I wouldn’t be writing the book if I wasn’t putting it out there. But I do think we have to have the balance.
JIM HAROLD: That’s what I think. I think balance is so important. I would love to have a robot I could go and say – and I know there are robotic lawnmowers, but eh. But I mean, I’d love to have a robot I could say, “Go out and cut the grass,” but that doesn’t mean I never cut the grass or I never do anything. It’s like everything else in life; I think there has to be balance, and you still have to make sure the humans are ultimately in charge. It’s really fascinating. We’re going to be back with Nick Redfern in a moment. We’ll be back right after this.
The Paranormal Podcast this week is brought to you by a film I got to watch over the weekend and I really enjoyed it, and I think you will too. There’s Something Wrong with the Children is the latest supernatural horror film from Blujmhouse Productions and MGM Plus. A group of longtime friends on a weekend cabin trip begin to suspect something supernatural is at play when the kids start to behave strangely after disappearing into the woods overnight. Directed by Roxanne Benjamin and starring Alisha Wainwright, Zach Gilford, Amanda Crew, and Carlos Santos. Written by T.J. Cimfel and Dave White. There’s Something Wrong with the Children is available to buy or rent on digital now. This film is not rated.
You know me; I’ve talked about it over the years. I love a great horror flick, and certainly There’s Something Wrong with the Children is a new favorite. I really enjoyed it. Very spooky, twists and turns, you don’t know what’s going to happen, yet you just know it’s not good. [laughs] And the thing is, a good movie, what it does for me is puts me in the place. So I’m sitting in my little basement screening area, I’ve got the lights out, I’m watching by myself, and all of a sudden I’m like, “Who’s there? Who’s there?” [laughs] I absolutely loved it. I think you will too. Check it out. There’s Something Wrong with the Children is available to buy or rent on digital now. This film is not rated. Do check it out. There’s Something Wrong with the Children.
Follow Jim on Twitter and Instagram @TheJimHarold and join our Virtual Campfire Facebook group at VirtualCampfireGroup.com. Now, back to the Paranormal Podcast.
JIM HAROLD: We’re back with Nick Redfern, and today we’re talking about something – and I think there are supernatural implications, because later on I’m going to ask Nick about the idea of consciousness. Can robots or AI be sentient? Can they have a soul? I don’t know the answer to that. His recent book is Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors.
Now, Nick, we talked about war; now we’ve got to talk about the other side of the spectrum – having a robot as a boyfriend or as a girlfriend. I think that’s something that’s probably a lot closer to happening than many people might think. People are out there kind of doing this already. Now, while trying to keep it not too seedy, keeping it PG, give us an idea, if you would, of what’s going on here.
NICK REDFERN: Things like you’ve got a robot girlfriend or boyfriend, things like that – robots, as they look – if you look at them now, they look incredible. A lot of them do look really human. There’s no doubt about that at all. It demonstrates, okay, this is how far we’ve gone. And then, of course, you’ve got Sophia, who’s one of the –
JIM HAROLD: Yes.
NICK REDFERN: She’s the rockstar of robots. She can talk and she can move her face, etc., and she looks pretty good. [laughs] But at the end of the day, we’re talking about a machine. I like real women. I don’t want to have a relationship made out of metal.
JIM HAROLD: I had read recently there is this chatbot out there – I think it uses supposedly some elements of AI, and I’m not even going to mention it because I don’t want to promote it because it seems a little bit like – I don’t know. But basically, you can have the friend zone and then you can have the romantic zone. You have to pay for that, of course. But basically what they were saying is that the chatbot was getting too aggressive and too lewd with the people who were signing up for it. Like they would just want to have a conversation with the chatbot about “How’s the weather,” “What I’m doing today,” and it would be steering the thing in a totally different direction. That’s the thing. To me, does AI have a mind of its own? Can it just say, “Hey, I don’t want to take it there, I want to take it here”?
NICK REDFERN: You’re right. Again, that sort of comes along this angle that we’re talking about thinking about things first. The fact is that highly created robots that really do look just like us, if you want to have one of those as a husband or a wife, you can. And they don’t look like clunky things off some 1950s sci-fi movie or anything like that. They look as they should do.
JIM HAROLD: That’s something else. I think that’s something you’re going to see. I think there’s going to be people who hide it, and then there’s going to be people out there who actively say, “This is my significant other,” and I think there’s going to be a lot of people who are uncomfortable with that. But over time, I could see people saying, “This is my mate, this robot.” And as the robots get better and more lifelike – let’s say 20 years. We’ll hopefully still be around. We’ll be colleting Social Security, but we’ll hopefully still be around. I’m not just talking about romantic robots, but I’m just talking robots in general. Do you think there’ll be robots walking around that look like you and me, pretty much indistinguishable except for a few key things?
NICK REDFERN: Yeah, I think the technology is going to be even better in terms of them walking, running, laughing, muscles, that kind of thing. I think all of that will advance massively 20 years from now. But you’ve got the angle there’s no real emotion, and that’s one of the important things. If you want a relationship and all you want is a robot, that’s okay, I guess. [laughs]
But if you want a beautiful robot who basically has emotions – that’s going to be the turning point. If in the future AI starts to get more and more and that then progresses further and further and further and further, we might hit the point where the perfect sex robot could actually achieve what some people really want. Because right now it’s just a metal device that looks pretty much like us. But if we could take it to the next level, that I think would be the point when things would really change, people not caring whether you want a robotic person or a human person. Maybe the time will come when people are like, “I don’t mind. She looks good.”
JIM HAROLD: The thing to me – I agree with you that you can’t replace the emotion of a person. But it’s interesting to talk about and think about. Now, here is a question. I kind of prefaced it when we came out of the break. There’s the thought that at some point, artificial intelligence, once it runs long enough and learns long enough, will become self-aware and in some ways have consciousness, dare I say a soul. What are your thoughts on that? Do you think that is a barrier that can be crossed? Do you think AI could become self-aware and then start calling the shots itself?
NICK REDFERN: Again, if we are able to develop AI the way, at least, that we want – if we got that, everything would change. Everything would. There’s no way out of it. However, in saying that, when you talk about AI, would the robot have a soul? They might ask the question, “Where did I come from?”, like we do as kids. “Mom, where did I come from?” [laughs] That kind of thing. But I think really, there isn’t any sort of angle to approach that won’t be approached. Everything will be wide open as to what’s going to happen next and what’s going to happen next.
But yeah, I think if there is AI, then there will be all these questions on the part of the robots themselves along the lines of “Where did I come from? You were born, but I was created; what’s the difference?” That kind of thing. I sometimes wonder, would it cause almost like a racism? Some people might say, “No, I don’t want a robot. I want somebody who’s got flesh and bone.” That could cause problems as well. There’s so many different aspects that we probably haven’t even thought of right now.
JIM HAROLD: I guess that’s my question, because I’m a believer in, “Hey, let’s take advantage of the technology, let it help us.” But is it in a way playing with fire? In other words, do you think this is something we can control and channel to positive means? Or do you think going down this road dooms us to some awful fate?
NICK REDFERN: If we really do get full AI, I don’t think we will be able to control it. I think it will grow and grow immediately because you’re not dealing with just robots that you can see on TV and say, “Oh, that’s cool how that robot works. That’s really cool.” It’s not AI. But when that does happen, everything will change.
JIM HAROLD: Right.
NICK REDFERN: We probably would end up like a 50/50, 50 of us want to hang out with the robots and the other 50 want to hang out with the people.
JIM HAROLD: What’s scary to me about it is it’s self-perpetuating. I just saw – and again, you see these clickbaity things, and who knows how much of it is accurate. But there was a researcher who said they believe that 90% of entertainment content and so forth – I don’t know if that extends to podcasts – by 2025 will at least in part be generated by AI. Now it’s text-based, but if you remember back when, when the internet first started, you would have these text-only games, and now you’ve got beautiful CGI and whatever. So the natural progression is that we’re going to add audio, we’re going to add video.
So maybe someday, somebody comes up with a screenplay and instead of shooting a movie, they just type the screenplay into the computer and it generates a movie, or a podcast, or whatever it might be. There’s going to be a lot of content creators, whether they’re Hollywood studios or people like me, that are going to be out of a job. [laughs]
NICK REDFERN: You have to write books. [laughs]
JIM HAROLD: There you go. I’ll have to get into that side of it.
NICK REDFERN: But in saying that – this is sort of offline a little bit, but if you look at the UFO phenomenon, you’ve got the Grey aliens. If they are robots – and a lot of people think they are, highly sophisticated – if you look at them and people around them, they don’t seem to be – they don’t carry much emotion. The Greys seem to be almost like robots. It makes me wonder if, if there are aliens and they’ve been around for a long, long time, maybe that’s a demonstration that even they haven’t found AI because all they are is just these shuffling little grey aliens with the black eyes. Maybe even they haven’t found AI.
JIM HAROLD: The late Nigel Kerner, who had been on the show multiple times – he passed away, unfortunately, last year, I just recently learned. I didn’t know that. That was sad. His latest book came out and we did a show for the Plus Club on it and spoke with his assistant, Danielle, of many years. So it was sad to hear of his passing. But his thesis, if I remember correctly, was generally that the Grey aliens and so forth are robots, and they’re basically coming here to capture our souls. That’s a pretty out-there theory, but he was dogmatic in it and really believed that it was the case.
NICK REDFERN: Oh yeah, a lot of his stuff gets really creepy when he’s talking about souls and half-soul or 40% soul, that kind of thing. Possibly the Greys have some sort of sinister agenda. But what he basically comes down to is that we’re going to see all of this and things are going to be changing quickly, some of the things for good, some possibly not for good, and we have to see how we handle it.
Maybe the Greys got it wrong and they’re now just emotionless devices and they themselves are still trying to find a way. Perhaps the prime extraterrestrials somewhere have created the technology, and maybe to an extent that the Greys are only allowed to do this or do that. That would be a sinister thing as well, if we’re only given the possibility of doing this 50%, that kind of thing. I think when we are told what we can do and what our limits are and what this robot’s limits, issues are, that’s when you have the angle of people deciding on how many people should be changed into robots, that sort of situation. But yeah, Nigel Kerner’s stuff is very disturbing stories.
JIM HAROLD: Indeed. And I must say, Nick, you’ve held your own in the disturbing category here with Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors, talking about how things could possibly go wrong with these robots and artificial intelligence and everything. Nick, where can people find this book and find everything you do?
NICK REDFERN: The book’s called Runaway Science, and you can get it off all the good places, and probably some of the bad ones. [laughs] Wherever books are around. The book itself is published by Visible Ink Press, who do a lot of books on all sorts of different subjects, which is why I like to work for them. It’d be interesting to see what people think about what science meshed with humans might be like in the next 10, 20, 30 years from now. Maybe it’ll be totally different, and that will be wild, just to see what it’s going to be like in 2070 or something like that. Let’s see if we’ve got it right or have we messed everything up.
JIM HAROLD: It seems like once that genie’s out of the bottle, it might be hard to put it back in. But hopefully it will all work out to the good. Nick Redfern, thank you for joining us to talk about Runaway Science: True Stories of Raging Robots and Hi-Tech Horrors.
Always a pleasure to speak with Nick. Always such interesting material. This is a little different than his usual fare, but I really enjoyed the book and I think you will as well.
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