Reboot Podcast Episode #182 – What AI Therapy Misses: The Power of Human Presence – with Dr. Judson Brewer

Memorable Quotes:

“So when we get excited, “Oh, somebody just said something nice to me.” That causes default network activity. And when somebody says something mean or frustrates us, when we get frustrated, when we get anxious, that also activates our default mode network.” – Jud Brewer

“You’ve got this very dangerous situation that is true for humans being scaled up massively and without really any supervision kind of guardrails being put in place.” – Jerry Colonna

“You know, there’s something I often say that’s Promethean about this technology. You know, if you remember the myth, Prometheus was condemned to be tortured forever and ever because he stole fire from the gods. And that fire was of such service to the humans. There is a bit of stealing fire here, isn’t there? This is profoundly important technology. You know, we are not Luddites here. But what you’re talking about is a deeply responsible approach to using this fire stolen from the gods in a way that is in service to and not a replacement for the human-to-human interaction.” – Jerry Colonna

“To me, the most valuable thing, full stop, is being of service. And so, I just can’t do anything else. Once you taste that, it’s about how can we take whatever’s in front of us and use that to help people. What I’m saying is that what else is there that’s more meaningful than being of service?” – Judson Brewer

“But there’s something even more fundamental that I think you’re, you may be pointing to, which is there’s just something about being with other people and having a genuine human connection that is not simply predicting the next character in a sequence.” – Judson Brewer

“The con man is gonna have share tendencies with a sycophant because they’re gonna tell you what you wanna hear. So I would put that in the unearned trust category because you can’t trust that as far as you can throw it. Whereas earned trust is when someone’s helping you.” – Judson Brewer

“What is this new realm that we’re all entering? How do we bring forward intuition and trust and the transpersonal relationship? What some might say is presence and connection. How do we bring that forward while taking advantage of these technologies’ enormous capacity to remember stuff and to make links between things?” – Jerry Colonna