There’s a question keeping the scientists up at night.

Are we aligned?

You’ve most certainly heard of alignment before. Maybe from an auto mechanic talking about your tires. Maybe you heard your chiropractor mutter something about aligning your spine before cracking your neck. Or maybe you’ve got some core childhood memories of your mother, eyebrows raised, asking “are we aligned?” at the end of a stern talking to.

Well, the ‘alignment problem’ as its known in scientific circles probably resembles that last context of stern parenting the best, but with a dash of auto-mechanic and an extra helping of profound existential dread.

The short of it is this: if we are to develop a super-powered artificial intelligence (referred to as AGI) that is not aligned with humanity’s values, wants, and needs; we stand to risk total destruction of the human species. The long and dry of it is this proper definition: “alignment aims to steer AI systems toward a person's or group's intended goals, preferences, or ethical principles. An AI system is considered aligned if it advances the intended objectives. A misaligned AI system pursues unintended objectives.”

The alignment problem is often articulated with a story about paper clips. Seemingly benign, the task is given to a super-powered AGI to ‘manufacture as many paper clips as possible’. Given that simple set of instructions, it arguably would inevitably consume all available matter, including human flesh, as means to achieve its end goal to ‘manufacture as many paper clips as possible.’ We should have known it would be Clippy to bring about humanity’s doom in the end. It was always Clippy. The alignment problem was always there as a warning every time we tried to resize an image in Microsoft Word.

Anyways. This is a real problem! It’s one that has quite a lot of the brightest minds in the scientific community darkened by deep, urgent concern. It’s quite sensible given the daily yield of new headlines from the rapid acceleration of AI technology; a march of progress propelled by developers whose profit motivations match - perhaps exceed - researcher’s concerns. One technology spanning two communities at the spearhead of human development. One moves at the speed of business growth, the other at the speed of scientific certainty, which leads me to what I believe is the true core of this issue:

Alignment is a technology problem second and a culture problem first.

How can we build AI to be aligned with humanity when humanity can’t even align with itself?

Change is a constant. I remember learning this very young, but what life has taught me since that I didn't expect is that change doesn't just happen constantly on the outside, it also happens constantly on the inside.

Just as much as your circumstances change, who you are as a person changes with them. Just as much as the people, the environment, the events in your life continue to evolve and unfold, so too does your inner journey of discovering who you are.

So how do you navigate that? How do you navigate two turnings, an inner and an outer, at the same time? There are people that are here to help. Our next guest is one of these people.

They refer to themselves as "The Calibrator" in this conversation. I think it's great because I take that as like the tuning of a musical instrument, which fits because the best that we can do amongst changes is to find harmony. I asked them how they want to share a bit of what they do with our audience and they sent me a text with a gorgeous bit of writing about the role of communication in the process of really uncovering who we are and how we learn to navigate the environments and the people that are around us. They wrote:

"We've all had the experience of saying the wrong thing to someone and getting a response we weren't looking for. This happens every day in our work lives and in our personal lives. Why is this? And more importantly, is this a foundational truth of being human? That we can't reliably and predictably communicate to each other and that we will sometimes just plain miss?

This is the question that initiated a journey into human discovery, development, and bespoke individual qualities that has brought me to the present day. I started with a relatively simple premise. We are all personas that are crafted from a set group of native qualities that are baked into us. We all have the same four types of qualities and we all have different unique qualities that are reflection of us as individuals. Since we are all different, we all communicate and receive communications differently. If we want to always get through, connect, and reach our fellow humans, the solve is to start by understanding how everyone receives communications on an individual level.

I created a system for this, which evolved into an algorithm and code for unpacking people. If we can understand how to communicate with each other, we can also learn how to do so strategically. So we can actually motivate each other and put our entire community into flow. With this challenge, the journey unfolded."

And unfolded did. This person, The Calibrator, is, I would say, a master of navigating change through grace, with grace, and communicating through change to hold people together brilliantly.

As you'll hear in the conversation, we met at a time of, you know, changing environment. They had just moved from their family home for years into a new environment, a new chapter. We were looking around the house and talking about all of the things, all of the stuff, and the stories that that stuff carries. We talked about what it means to stop and then start again, to transition from the old into the new.

What you'll also hear is that house is in the Pacific Palisades. Where we sat and had the conversation is gone. It's ash now - and everything that we were talking about burned with it. In the days and weeks that followed, we communicated. We communicated about how that experience was, how this person, The Calibrator, was doing. What I saw is somebody that deepened their well of strength, deepened their connection and their communication with the people around them through an incredibly arduous journey.

So listen closely to what this person has to say because their story and their wisdom is going to be valuable for you whenever you face some of the hardest trials in your life. The most important thing that you'll be reaching for then is...how to communicate with others.

Culture is the output of community.

Few people understand what this means better than our next guest, Jenny Boyd.

To explain who Jenny is, it's best to actually just read the bio from the jacket of her book, Icons of Rock. It reads, "Jenny Boyd is a former 60s model and the younger sister of Patty Boyd, who was married to George Harrison and Eric Clapton. Married to Mick Fleetwood twice. Jenny has been immersed in the world of rock and roll since her teens. As a rock star muse, Jenny even inspired Donovan and Mick Jagger to write songs about her, including Donovan's famous hit, 'Jennifer Juniper'. A good friend to The Beatles, she worked at their retail venture, Apple Boutique in London. In 1968, she accompanied sister Patti on the band's visit to Rishikesh in India, where they studied transcendental meditation with Maharishi Mahesh Hiyogi. Jenny co-wrote two songs for the band Fleetwood Mac, although the group's manager gave the writing credits to her husband, Mick Fleetwood. She earned a PhD in psychology and spent many years running an addiction treatment center in England. Jenny's critically acclaimed memoir, Jennifer Juniper, was published in early 2023."

We came together around the release of this book, Icons of Rock, because we share an interest in the inquiry of this question: Where does creativity come from? As Jenny has shared her story with me, that has been a bit of a through line for her. So in this conversation, I'm digging into the community level - the human level elements - of the creation of a culture that is absolutely mythic to me.

I grew up as a musician with a band striving for rock stardom. That entire story is one that was really burst into being by the story of the Beatles, by the story of Fleetwood Mac. And Jenny was there. That trip to India is the trip that created the white album. I mean, that is a monumental piece of art and culture. Her sister, Patti, is supposedly the inspiration behind the song, 'Layla'. That is my sister's name. So there is something deeply synchronistic in our coming together and having a conversation.

But for Jenny, these are her friends, her family. For so many around the world, the idea of these things as culture creates a distance from the humanity of what it is that created these inspirations for us. For Jenny to be a part of these scenes, a part of these communities throughout all of her life, and then have the wisdom to pursue a PhD in psychology, to do clinical work for addiction, and to then become an author asking these questions is an absolute gift to all of us.

She is providing us with a North Star to understand how does this happen? How do great art and great culture get made? And in this book, Icons of Rock in Their Own Words, is transcriptions of many conversations that Jenny herself has had with incredible luminaries asking them, what is it that's taking place for you on stage, in the studio, in the writing process? Where does that creativity come from?

That is her gift to all of our benefit. So drop in, give this conversation a listen.

This is Jenny Boyd.