Episode description

Hosts Becky Buckman and Keyana Corliss host U.K-based Bloomberg Opinion columnist Parmy Olson in an eye-opening discussion of her new book, "Supremacy AI: ChatGPT and the Race that Will Change the World." Parmy explains the history of the intense rivalry between Sam Altman of OpenAI and Demis Hassabis of DeepMind—two of the earliest AI innovators—as they compete to shape the future of artificial intelligence and our world as we know it. This episode offers a thought-provoking look at the intersection of technology, ethics, and regulation, with Parmy urging listeners to consider both the potential and the pitfalls of AI in our society.

The conversation also explores some of the ethical challenges with AI, including how OpenAI and DeepMind's alignment with tech giants like Microsoft and Google, respectively, has compromised their original nonprofit ideals. Parmy explains the dominance of big tech companies in AI research and development, and the challenges this poses for smaller startups and independent academic research. She also emphasizes the critical need for unbiased data in AI models and advocates for stronger regulations to guide AI's development, highlighting the significant influence of big tech on this rapidly evolving field.

“That's where I see generative AI going is that, maybe it won't displace as many people as we think. It will just create a lot more noise in our information ecosystem. We're just going to have to get better at filtering it out.” —Parmy Olson

Join technology comms pros Becky Buckman and Keyana Corliss as they cut to the heart of today’s tech-news cycle and the general craziness that is high-tech corporate communications right now. With a short, not-too-serious take on the industry - with plenty of humor and irony thrown in - they’ll bring you the best in the biz, across comms and media together, for one-of-a-kind insights and perspectives you won’t hear anywhere else!

About Parmy Olson:

Parmy Olson is a technology columnist with Bloomberg covering artificial intelligence, social media and technology regulation. She’s been writing about the growth of AI systems since around 2016, when she worked in Silicon Valley as a reporter for Forbes and covered the early rise of chatbot technology. She continued covering AI as a tech reporter at the Wall Street Journal, publishing multiple exclusive stories and investigations on surveillance, facial recognition and Google’s AI work, including an investigation into how Google stifled DeepMind’s secret efforts to spin out as a non-profit organization to protect its AI from corporate interests.

Parmy has received two honourable mentions for the SABEW business journalism awards for her reporting on Facebook and WhatsApp, and was the first recipient of the Palo Alto Networks Cyber Security Cannon Awards for her book “We Are Anonymous.” She was also named by Business Insider as one the "Top 100 People in UK Tech" in 2019 and was described as “tech journalism’s deep diver.” Parmy was recently nominated as Digital Journalist of the Year 2023 by PRCA, the world’s largest PR professional body.

Resources:

• We Are Anonymous by Parmy Olson
• Supremacy: AI, Chat GPT, and the Race that Will Change the World by Parmy Olson
• Chat GPT
• Google DeepMind

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Contact Rebecca Buckman and Keyana Corliss: