300 - Guest: Mark Peres, Civic Entrepreneur, part 2

About this episode

Mark Peres discusses his novel 'The Accord' and the implications of AI on identity and coexistence.

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Because AI touches our lives down to our core where our emotions and subconscious reside, we need to be touched with the important lessons that our fellow humans wish to communicate about AI through vehicles like art, poetry, and, in the case of today’s guest, fiction. Mark Peres is a professor, author, and civic innovator with decades of experience teaching leadership and ethics at Johnson & Wales University. He’s just published The Accord, a powerful speculative novel exploring the relationship between a philosopher and a sentient general AI, Lyla. As much as that sounds like a description of any number of sensationalist and shallow works that you and I could name, this is not in that category. I found his book remarkable for the level of maturity it granted the reader and the no-holds-barred courage with which it tackled issues of the identity of a future artificial general intelligence - which may not be so far in the future any more. We talk about why the AI character of Lyla has a true sense of identity and mortality, whether control over advanced AI is possible, principles for human–AI coexistence, what responsible use…

People in this episode

Guest: Mark Peres

Topics covered

• AI and emotions
• fiction and AI
• human-AI coexistence
• identity of AI
• responsible AI use
• cognitive autonomy

Keywords

• artificial intelligence
• speculative fiction
• AI identity
• humanize AI
• AI ethics
• Lyla
• The Accord

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Johnson & Wales University

Books & works: The Accord

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