Author of the series of "Gray Man" novels, Mark Greaney, has traveled to more than thirty-five countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement to research his works. In the first half, he discussed his books, the future of technology, AI, and military weaponization. For his latest "Gray Man" novel, "The Chaos Agent," he researched the ethics of AI, the potential for artificial general intelligence or super intelligence, and lethal autonomous weapons. The term "Gray Man" refers to someone who may be in the military, law enforcement, or a civilian military contractor but can blend into society without people realizing their profession, he explained. The "Gray Man" character in his books, Court Gentry, is a former CIA paramilitary operations officer whom the CIA was trying to kill in the first few books.
The computer hardware for AI has increased 10 billion percent since 2010, he marveled, and is continuing to double every six to nine months. Some of the deep neural networks that have been developed are even able to rewrite or improve their own code, he added. Regarding the ethics of AI, Greaney expressed concern that countries like China might abide by different principles than those practiced in the West and allow military decisions to be automated. But, he noted, "it's important for people to know that it's not nations that are building the sophisticated artificial intelligence," –-it's being developed by private enterprise that seeks to make money from it. Though he conceded a lot of good may come from AI, such as medical advances, the weaponizing of it is a daunting prospect.
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In the latter half, veteran outdoorsman and paranormal researcher Steve Stockton spoke about his lifelong fascination with the strange and anomalous and shared his personal experiences with the unexplained, as well as accounts he's collected. As a child, he had an anomalous encounter in a large forested area in Tennessee when he observed something moving in a ditch, causing the leaves to move and the ground to shake, which had a terrifying effect on him. Fifteen years later, the incident reoccurred, and subsequently, he teamed up with some people using a Ouija board and asked what it was he saw in the woods. The board spelled out WATER SPRITE, which he learned is a kind of elemental or nature spirit. In particular, the sprite may have been a Naiad, said to be a guardian spirit of water (the property contained seven natural springs), he noted.
Stockton also recalled the mysterious disappearance of 6-year-old Dennis Martin in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park. There has been no trace of the boy or closure after 40 years. He has investigated this case, along with other National Park mysteries, and theorized that there could be Bigfoot, or possibly feral people living in the parks, as they would have ample places to hide, shelter, and find food, and might be connected with some of the disappearances or crimes. Stockton, who now lives in New England, said he finds that Connecticut is one of the strangest and most haunted states, though he considers Las Vegas (where he lived for ten years) to be a hotbed for the paranormal, possibly related to dark energies and emotions that the gambling town has accumulated.
New segment guests: Lauren Weinstein, Steve Kates