SFG Ep 2 Nicholas Amoroso with noise reduction

Nick Amoroso, a research scientist, defines goodness as using talents to make a positive impact. He focuses on using scientific research to develop treatments for diseases and injuries. He believes in starting local and growing global to help as many people as possible. Regarding climate change, he recommends investing in renewable energy and nuclear power to reduce carbon emissions. He also mentions the potential of carbon capture technology. He acknowledges the concerns about AI taking jobs but suggests learning to use AI as a powerful tool for positive impact. He emphasizes the importance of caring and working together to make a difference in the world. We gotta live our lives alone I tell you what, mathematically, I haven't I wanna live my life alone Yeah, I am, I am Yeah, I am, I am Yeah, I am, I am What is searching for goodness? Searching for goodness is all about doing a good deed And if you're bad, I will burn you to death This is Lucy and Armen. Nick, you were introduced to us by Matt, who is our talent manager. Thanks for him. Can you tell us a little bit about yourself? You introduced me to you saying you're a scientist, so if you can tell us what you do. As our documentary is called Searching for Goodness, we'd like to know how you would define what you do is goodness and how it's related in terms of science. My name is Nick Amoroso, and I'm a research scientist focused on the fields of tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. My current position is manager of the analytical methods development department at Cook-Myo-Site in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. So what is goodness? I say goodness is using your talents to make the most positive impact in the world that you can. In my career, I'm pretty good at science, so I've dedicated my life and my career to helping people. Using scientific research, using my career, I'm focusing on treatments for disease, treatments for injury, treatments for all sorts of illness. Anything that I can to make an overall positive impact on the quality of life of my fellow humans. My personal life, same thing. I want to make everyone around me as happy as I can, I'd say. You've got to start local and grow global when you can. So in my career, I'm trying to start local in a local company, trying to help that company grow globally and help as many people as possible. My personal life, starting local. Friends, family, as I can. I want to try to help the community. Maybe vote for the people that I think will help the world. See what I can do. At the end of the day, I am just one person, but at the end of the day, everybody is just one person. But if we all work together for people, we can do a lot. I'd say global warming is a serious threat. Global warming is likely going to be seen as the defining threat of our time. All of the carbon emissions that have been released in the last hundred years. I mean, carbon release that has been going on since the Industrial Revolution. It's accumulated in our atmosphere and all of the climate models that we have agree that it is contributing significantly to the climate change that we are beginning to actually realize in the last decade. As a scientist, what do you recommend people can do as individuals about this coming climate change global warming threat? What can we do and what can we pressure corporations and governments to do? Personally, I don't think that we should shut off any potential solution. Let's look at everything that we can do to minimize the impact. Yes, absolutely, we should be focusing on renewable energy. Wind, solar, geothermal when we can. Water power when we can, of course. I think personally that nuclear power is an excellent option because it's carbon free. If we can invest in nuclear power, that would help us meet our power demands. And help us meet our power demands primarily without adding as much as little carbon as we can. The key is that we need to reduce our carbon output and potentially, if the technology can be harnessed in a way that is effective, look into carbon capture technology. We should also look into carbon capture technology in my opinion. It's an exciting field of research. Currently, the technology isn't there to make a significant impact in the carbon content of our atmosphere in the near term. But a megabyte used to be a lot of memory. Technology improves. Maybe we can actually make an impact to the world through carbon capture technology. And if we attack the problem from many directions as possible, we can make the world a better place. And we can help to prevent some of the most severe consequences of global warming. All the climate models that I've read about, that I've seen, have predicted the extreme weather events would become more frequent. And they predict that the extreme weather events will continue to get more frequent as we continue to experience warming of our climate. Why is that? Because you introduce more energy into the system. You see that if there's more energy, if you're boiling a pot of water, the more energy that you introduce to the pot, the more that the water circulates, even well before the boiling point. That's a very extreme example, but that's a similar concept. The more energy that's in the system, the more energy that can be used, that will be applied to the weather events. His name is Wally. After all these years, he's developed one little glitch. A personality. He's extremely curious. And just a little bit lonely. But all that is about to change. Unless they bring the universal income, and AI keeps taking people's jobs, I don't know what's going to happen. I mean, from a capitalist point of view, you know, for instance, I heard of background actors. They can scan a person. And one guy did that without understanding what he was doing. Then he was killed in a computer game for years. Then he finds out. He didn't know what he was signing up for. But I think they do that for all the background actors. They get the image, now they can dress, make up, put those images anywhere they want. Or even after that person dies, you know, they can keep using it. They can. They don't have to feed these people. They don't have to pay these people. So, you know, that's like going to really affect people who are making a living out of that. And same for any industry. Like anytime AI is able to do a better job or good enough, that's going to affect people. So not everyone has a house. Some of us still have to pay rent and bills. You know, paycheck to paycheck. So that's really a big concern of mine for society. Climate change. Coming up AI technology. I think, you know, politically, we should really be concerned about the whole universal income thing more than ever. Because everyone is going to need that basic income. If jobs are fixed, like Corona, you know, we need it on money. And I don't know how much it helps people if that's all they got. Probably not. I couldn't. I wouldn't be able to. It is a legitimate concern. AI has certainly gotten a lot of attention in the last few years, especially in the last few months, regarding the potential impact to the world, to the job market. And frankly, it may deserve that amount of attention that it has gotten. AI can be a powerful tool. And it's here whether you know it or not. You can find AI already in your smartphones with particularly camera filters. Camera filter that, you know, Snapchat or a similar program might put silly glasses or dog face over your face. Well, that face detection, that open mouth detection, that's AI. It's currently being developed in biomedical applications as well. It's being shown to be able to detect early stages of cancer, of other disease in labs, in histology that humans may not even be able to detect yet. But jury's still out. One thing that has to be kept in mind is that AI, the way that AI works, is that AI is a self-learning program. It's designed to learn patterns. It's a pattern recognition engine, first and foremost. So the researcher, the developer, will feed it a number of example images, example anything, really. And then the AI will read thousands of those images, of those examples, and detect patterns. Patterns that sometimes humans understand, sometimes they don't. And that's one of the keys. AI needs to be validated before it's really, truly useful. Because right now, I don't know how that AI is recognizing that pattern. I can know that it seems to be recognizing a pattern, but it's not conscious. It's not alive. It doesn't actually think about what that pattern is. If I show it 10,000 images of cars, maybe it's looking at the wheels. Maybe it's looking at the windshield. Maybe it's looking at the windshield wipers. I don't know. So what needs to happen is what's called validation. You test it against real-world examples that it hasn't been trained against, and see how well it performs. I think it's important to understand that, at least in the near to moderate term, AI is being developed as a limited-focus tool. Dedicated to each application that the AI has been developed for. So you, or anyone, can use it as a tool. Use it creatively to really do the best work and make the biggest impact to the world that you can. Throughout history, every example of a disruptive technology, a truly disruptive technology that has been useful, if it has been useful, it hasn't gone away, not least until it was replaced by something more useful. So with that in mind, AI, for better or for worse, isn't going away anytime soon. So what should people do? Learn to use it. AI is a powerful tool. It can be used for really good things, really great things. It can be used to discover patterns that humans would never think of. Drug discovery, for example. And the individual who can use AI, who knows how to use AI, will be at a better place and a better position for their career and to make an impact into the world than the person who doesn't know how to use it. I think this is a great start. I think if we can get enough people who are smart, who are dedicated in all sorts of fields, science, spirituality, film industry, people who care. That's the number one thing that I look for when I'm hiring somebody. That's the number one thing that I look for when I'm meeting people and making friends and connections with everybody. I like people who care. People who really want to make a positive change. So if you get enough people who care and care about what they do and want to make a positive change, they can all use their skills together and really reach as many people as we can and really try to make an impact in the world. People trying to do their best to improve the world, you said, for searching for goodness. How do you think you do that yourself? Do what you're good at and do it with purpose. Someone in film can reach people further and better than I ever could. They can make arguments more persuasive than I ever could. Someone in politics can influence policy more than others. Someone in religion can help to engage the masses, to engage the community and inspire people. Take your skills and combine them with like-minded people and try to make the world a better place. I am a scientist. We gotta live on science alone now. Religiously, I'm speaking on the science guns. We gotta live on science alone now. I tell you what, mathematically, I'm having it. I wanna live on science alone now.