Episode description

Hello from a sci-fi future!

Tammy’s on a reporting trip this week, so it’s just Jay talking to our guest Ben Recht, a professor of computer science and electrical engineering at UC Berkeley. We talk about the history of artificial intelligence, the new bots from Open AI (ChatGPT) and Microsoft (Bing A.I.), and share some of the reasons why they are both skeptical but also kinda impressed. 

In this episode, we ask:

Well, what really is A.I., and how does it differ from machine learning?

Is this Silicon Valley hype cycle any more believable than those we were sold on crypto, Web3, and the metaverse?

What is the actual technology behind ChatGPT? What’s so special about it?

Where do we get our doomsday fantasies from, and how worried should we really be?

Is the remedy for bad AI takes just better science fiction? 

How is A.I. Doomerism like Scientology? 

To read more, see: 

* Ted Chiang on super intelligence and capitalism 

* Maciej Ceglowski with a funny and comprehensive breakdown of why people talk about A.I. in the way they do. As well as the case for better science fiction. 

* A compelling history of A.I. by Stephanie Dick 

* James Vincent on the idea of A.I. as a mirror

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