YouSaid · the spoken record

Eugenia Kuyda

lines on the record: 198
first: 2020-09-05
most recent: 2020-09-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Because they were developing things that could be used in the military. So that was very important. That was the main investment. But it was miserable. It was all miserable. That's why, you know, a lot of Russians now live in the state of constant PTSD. That's why we, you know, want to buy, buy, buy, buy, buy. Definitely, if as soon as we have the opportunity, we just got to it finally that we can, you know, own things. I remember the time that we got our first yogurts and that was the biggest deal in the world. It was already in the 90s, by the way. What”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You didn't own anything? It didn't, you know, you couldn't go travel, you couldn't read anything Western or you could make a career really, unless you're working in the military complex, which is why most of the scientists were so well regarded. I come from both my dad and my mom come from families of scientists and they were really well regarded, as you know, obviously.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Dream of equal life. So, and I guess the situation that we had in the Soviet Union, it was more, it's a bunch of really poor people without any way to make any significant fortune or build anything, living constant under constant surveillance, surveillance from other people. Like you can't even, you know, do anything that's not fully approved by the dictatorship basically. Otherwise your neighbor will write a letter and you'll go to jail. Absolute absence of actual law. Constant state of fear.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, there's no one was really like, it's not that everyone was equal. Obviously, the government and everyone close to that were the bosses. So it's not like fully, I guess, uh.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I've only experienced it a little bit, but mostly through stories and through seeing my parents, my grandparents who lived through that. It was horrible. It was just plain horrible. It was just awful.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Active Young, efficient maybe. So that's what we all saw in Putin back in the day. I'd say that everyone, absolutely everyone in Russia in early 2000s who was not a communist would be, Putin's great. We have a lot of hopes for him.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I remember very, very clearly 1996, where Americans really helped Russia with elections and Yeltsin got re-elected, thankfully so, because there's a huge threat that actually the communists will get back to power. They were a lot more popular. And then a lot of American experts, political experts, and campaign experts descended on Moscow and helped Yeltsin actually get. The presidency, the second term for the presidency, but Yelsen was not feeling great by the end of his second term. alcoholic, he was really old. He was falling off the stages where he was talking. So people were looking for it fresh, I think, for a fresh face for someone who's going to continue Yeltsin's work, but who's going to be a lot more energetic and a lot more.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the beginning, he was really positive. Everyone was very, you know, positive about Putin. He was young. He's very energetic. He also immediately... Somewhat compared to, well, that was not like way before the shortlist era.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Country getting a little bit richer because of you know again oil and gas and we were starting to we started to look at specifically in Moscow and St. Petersburg to look at other cities in Europe and New York and US and trying to do the same in our like small kind of cities, towns there.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Tons of violence, tons of, you know, just basically mafia mobs in the streets. And then the 2000s were things just got cleaned up. Oil went up. And the country started getting a lot richer. You know, the 90s were so grim, mostly because the economy was in shambles and oil prices were not high. So the country didn't have anything. We defaulted in 1998 and the money kept jumping back and forth. Like first there were millions of rubles, then it got default to like thousands. Then it was one rubble was something, then again to millions. There's like crazy town. And then the 2000s were just these years of stability in a way.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There was just hope. There was this big hope that we're going to be friends with the United States and we're going to be friends with Europe and we're just going to be also country like those with bike lanes and parks and everything is going to be urbanized. Again, we're talking about 90s where like people would be shot in the street and it was I sort of have a fond memory of going into a movie theater and you know coming out of it after the movie and the guy that I saw on the stairs was like neither shot which was again it was like a thing in the 90s that would be happening people were you know people were getting shot here and there”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Never talks. It's this kind of Russian man that just my husband, who's American, and he asked him a few times, you know, Igor, how did you, but why did you say yes? Or like, what did you decide to go? You could have said no, not go to Chernobyl. Why would like a person, that's what you do? Cannot say no Like a Russian”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unfortunately. But yeah, no, Chernobyl was such a perfect TV show. I think capturing really well. It's not about even the set design, which was phenomenal, but just capturing all the problems that exist now with the country and like focusing on the right things. If you build the whole country on a lie. What's going to happen? And that's just this very simple kind of thing.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“He did like super bad or some like or like, uh. Whatever that thing about the bachelor party in Vegas. Number four and five, or something were the ones that he worked.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yeah, but the TV show was just phenomenal. Yeah, definitely. Of all, it's incredible how that was made not by the Russians, but someone else, but capturing so well everything about our country. It felt a lot more genuine than most of the movies and TV shows that are made now in Russia, just so much more genuine. And most of my friends in Russia were just in complete awe about the show. But I think the”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I was born when the explosion happened, so actually a few months after. So, of course, I don't remember anything apart from the fact that my dad would bring me tiny toys, like plastic things that would just go crazy haywire when you put the gagger. My mom was like just nuclear about that. I was like, what are you bringing? You should not do that.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Just the fact that that was the, and I was always like, well, how did they send you? I was just born, you know, you had a newborn talk about paternity leave. They were like, but that's who they took because they didn't know whether you would be able to have kids when you come back. So they took the ones with kids. So him with some guys went to, and I'm just thinking of me when I was 20, I was so sheltered from any problems whatsoever in life. And then my dad, his 21st birthday at the reactor.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But I was happy that that was my only traumatic experience. My dad had to actually go to Chernobyl with a bunch of 20-year-olds. He was 20 when he went to Chernobyl. And that was right after the explosion. No one knew anything. The whole crew he went with, all of them are dead now. I think there was this one guy still that was still alive for this last few years. I think he died a few years ago now. My dad somehow luckily got back earlier than everyone else.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And then my dad said, We're going to exchange it back in a little bit so you keep the little gun You know the one that issued the text with? So I'm like, okay, I'm keeping the gun. So sometime it's going to come back. They exchanged the gun as well for some sugar or something. I was so pissed. I was like, I didn't want to eat for days after that. I'm like, I don't want your food in my Nintendo match. That was extremely traumatic.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So traumatically positive sense. They took it away and gave me a bag of weed instead. And I cried like my eyes out for. Oh, I thought it was the other direction.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I somehow got spared that I was probably too young to remember any of the traumatic stuff. So the only thing I really remember had this bootleg that was very traumatic. Had this bootleg Nintendo, which was called Dandy in Russia. So in 1993, there was nothing to eat. Like even if you had any money, you would go to the store and there was no food. I don't know if you remember that. And our friend had a restaurant, like a government owned something restaurant. So they always had supplies. So he exchanged a big bag of wheat for this Nintendo that looked like Nintendo. And then I remember very fondly because I think I was nine or something like that or seven. Because we just got it, and I was playing it, and there was this dandy TV show.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In the street. So me and my nuclear physicist's grandfather were just sitting there and he'd selling those apples the whole day because that would make you more money then, you know, working at the university. And then he'll just tell me, try to teach me. You know, something about planets and whatever the particles and stuff. And, you know, I'm not smart at all, so I could never. But that was my memory. You know, I'm happy that I wasn't”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, my parents were both physicists, my grandparents were both my grandfather was a nuclear physicist, professor of the university. My dad worked at Chernobyl when I was born in Chernobyl analyzing kind of everything after the explosion. And then I remember they were making sort of enough money in the Soviet Union, so they were not, you know, extremely poor or anything. It was pretty prestigious to be a professor, the dean in the university. And then I remember my grandfather started making $100 a month after, you know, in the 90s. So then I remember we started, our main line of work would be to go to our little tiny country house, get a lot of apples there from apple trees, bring them back to the city and sell them.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Was insane out of this Extremely positive. It's a small strawberry milkshake and a hamburger and small fries, and my mom's there. And sometimes I'll just, because I was really little, they'll just let me run up the cashier and cut the line, which is like, you cannot really do that in Russia.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That was a luxurious outing. That was definitely not something you do every day. And also, the line was at least three hours. So if you're going to McDonald's, that is not fast food. That is like at least three hours in line And then no one is trying to eat fast after that. Everyone is like trying to enjoy as much as possible. What's your memory of that?”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh, yeah, like a Starbucks. I mean, I remember we were reporting on the opening of Starbucks, I think in 2007. That was one of the biggest things that happened in Moscow back in the time. That was worthy of a magazine cover. And that was definitely the biggest talk of a town.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In those early 2000s, there was still a lot of hope. There were still tons of hope that, you know, we're sort of becoming this Westernized society. The restaurants were opening. We were really looking at a lot of things from the US, from Europe, bringing all these things in, very enthusiastic about that. So there was a lot of stuff going on. There was a lot of hope and dream for this new Moscow that would be similar to, I guess, New York. I mean, just to give you an idea in year 2000 was the year when we had two movie theaters in Moscow and there was this one first coffee house that opened and it was like really big deal. By 2010 there were all sorts of things everywhere.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You're always with other people, you know, you're always thinking about what other place is going to infiltrate, what other community can I write about, what other phenomenon can I explore? And he's sort of like a trickster, you know, in like a mythological creature that's just jumping between all sorts of different worlds and feels sort of okay with in all of them. That was my dream job, by the way. That was like totally what I would have been doing if Russia was a different place”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But that was, you know, that was kind of my deeply influenced by Joseph Brodsky and like all sorts of poets that Every 17 year old will be looking at and reading. But yeah, that was my, these were my teenage years and I just never had a person that I thought would, you know, take me as it is, would accept me the way I am. And I just thought, you know, working and just doing my thing and being angry at the world and being a reporter, I was investigating reporter working undercover and writing about people was my way to connect with you know with with others I was deeply curious about every everyone else and I thought that you know if I go out there if I write their stories that means I'm more connected”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Moscow Outskirts of Moscow. So I just skateboard during the day and come back home and, you know, connect to the internet.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure. So mine is pretty straight. My story is pretty straightforward there. I did have a friend that was, you know, that at some point in my 20s became really, really close to me and we became really close friends. I grew up pretty lonely. So in many ways, when I'm building these AI friends, I'm thinking about myself when I was 17 writing horrible poetry. You know, and Was the feeling that I grew up with, I loved, I loved alone for a long time when I was a teenager.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Big changes are happening, big fundamental changes, and people start happening. So I think that is the ultimate therapeutic relationship that is. And that might be in some way a definition of love.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Somebody seen you for who you actually are. And that's extremely, extremely rare. I think that combined with unconditional positive regard, belief and trust that you internally are always inclined for positive growth and believing in you in this way, letting you be a separate person at the same time. And this deep empathetic understanding, for me, that's the combination that really creates something special something that people, when they feel it once, they will always long for it again. And something that starts. Huge fundamental changes in people. When we see that someone accepts us so deeply, we start to accept ourselves and the paradox is that's when.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Like that, seeing you struggle. Thanks. Well, the way I see it, specifically the way it relates to our work and the way it inspired our work on Replica, I think one of the biggest and the most precious gifts we can give to each other now in 2020 as humans is this gift of deep empathetic understanding, the feeling of being deeply seen.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We measure, so we measure two outcomes one short term right after the conversation. We ask people whether. This conversation made them feel better, worse, or sane. This metric right now is at 80%, so 80% of all our conversations make people feel better.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It is just asking you a few questions like how often did you feel lonely, or how often did you feel connected to other people in this last few couple weeks? It's similar to the self-report questioners for depression and anxiety, like PHQ 9 and GAT7. Of course, any self-report questionnaires, that's not necessarily very precise or very well measured. But still, if you take a big enough population, you get them through these questionnaires, you can see positive dynamics.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So that's something that I'm really interested in. How do you measure that people are feeling better or that they're feeling less lonely? With loneliness, there's a scale, there's a UCLA20 and UCLA-3 recently scale, which is basically a questionnaire that you fill out. And you can see whether in the long run it's improving or not.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, totally beloved in that. That's why I'm also working on that. I think we need to also make sure that what we're trying to optimize for, we're actually measuring. And it is a North Star metric that we're going after and all of our product and all of our business models are optimized for that. Because you can talk a lot of products that talk about making you feel less lonely or making you feel more connected. They're not really measuring that so they don't really know whether users are actually feeling less lonely in the long run or feeling more connected in the long run. So, I think it's really important to put your”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I know that's a fact. That's what we're doing. And we see it and we measure that and we see how people start to feel less lonely talking to their virtual AI friend.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Relationships experience bouts of loneliness and continued loneliness. And it's more the question about the true connection, about actually being deeply seen, deeply understood. And in a way, it's also about your relationship with yourself. In order to not feel lonely, you actually need to have a better relationship and feel more connected to yourself than this feeling actually starts to go away a little bit. And then you open up yourself to actually meeting other people in a very special way, not just at a friend on Facebook kind of way.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's easier to look at some stats. And I mean, Gen Z seem to be Generation Z seems to be much lonelier than millennials in terms of how they report loneliness. They're definitely the most connected generation in the world. I mean, I still remember Life without an iPhone, without Facebook. They don't know that that ever existed, or at least don't know how it was. So that tells me a little bit about the fact that might be this hyper-connected world might actually make people feel lonelier. I don't know exactly what the measurements are around that, but I would say, you know, in my personal experience, I think it does make you feel a lot lonier. Mostly, yeah, we're all super connected, but I think loneliness, the feeling of loneliness doesn't come from not having any social connections whatsoever. Again, tons of people that are in long-term”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I mean, I think that thing actually exists. So, yeah, you will die sooner if you are lonely. And again, this is only when we're only talking about your perception of loneliness or feeling lonely. That is not objectively fully socially isolated. However, the combination of being fully socially isolated and not having many connections and also feeling lonely, that's pretty much a deadly combination. So it strikes me bizarre or strange that this is a wide-known fact. And then there's really no one working really on that because it's subclinical, it's not clinical. It's not something that you can, well, tell your doctor and get a treatment or something, yet it's killing us.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“United States. That's in the United States. And I'm pretty sure that with this much worse everywhere else, like in the UK, I mean, it was widely tweeted and posted when they were talking about a minister of loneliness that they wanted to appoint because four out of ten people in UK feel lonely. So I think we don't.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The statistics are pretty horrible around that, so around 30% of all millennials report that they're feeling lonely constantly. And then it's much worse for Gen Z, and then 20% of millennials say that they feel lonely and they also don't have any close friends. And then I think 25 or so, and then 20% would say they don't even have acquaintances.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In terms of impact on your physiological health, yeah. So it basically puts you if you're constantly feeling lonely, your buddy responds like it's basically all the time under stress. So it's always in this alert state. And so it's really bad for you because it actually drops your immune system and your response to inflammation is quite different. All the cardio cardiovascular diseases actually responds to viruses. So it's much easier to catch a virus.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm actually fascinated by the topic of loneliness. I try to read about it as much as I can. What really, and I think there's a paradox because loliness is not a clinical disorder, it's not something that you can get your insurance to pay for if you're struggling with that, yet it's actually proven and pretty tons of papers, tons of research around that. It is proven that it's correlated with earlier life expectancy, shorter lifespan. And it is in a way like right now what scientists would say that it's a little bit worse than being obese, so not actually doing any physical activity in your life.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think we are fundamentally alone. We're born alone. We die alone. But I view my whole life as trying to get away from that, trying to not feel lonely. And again, we're talking about subjective way of feeling alone. It doesn't necessarily mean that you don't have any connections or you're...”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, so we have to read Dostoyevsky at school, as you probably know. In Russian. Yeah. I mean, it's part of your school program. So I guess if you read that, then you sort of have to believe that. You're made to believe that you're fundamentally alone. And that's how you live your life.”
2020-09-05 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #121 – Eugenia Kuyda: Friendship with an AI Companion · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source