Episode description

It’s all about the T.

“T” as in the T at the end of ChatGPT. That T stands for Transformer. And it’s already transforming many aspects of your life. Novelist and essayist Stephen Marche recently investigated that T for the New Yorker magazine. He came away from the experience saying that it is the most important story he’s ever written.  His piece details what he calls the Manhattan Project of our time. He also calls it, simply, magic, and he then goes on to define  magic as “the word we use for things that are hugely powerful but we don't understand why.”

Marche joins Jesse Brown to tackle the questions: why was Toronto a hotbed for A.I. (as marked by last week’s awarding of the Nobel Prize to U of T prof Geoffrey Hinton for his pioneering work in the field)? Why is the Japanese punk band Transformer at the very heart of this whole story? And why exactly does Marche equate T with magic?

Host: Jesse Brown

Credits: Tristan Capacchione (Audio Editor and Technical Producer), Bruce Thorson (Senior Producer), max collins (Production Manager), Jesse Brown (Editor and Publisher), Caleb Thompson (additional production assistance)

Featured guests: Stephen Marche

Additional music by Audio Network

Further reading:

• Was Linguistic A.I. Created by Accident? — The New Yorker

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