About this episode

Robert Wright discusses the evolution of AI and its implications with Geoffrey Hinton, exploring both its potential benefits and dangers.

Description Written By Fable/Max: Robert Wright interviewed Geoffrey Hinton in 1983 and, by his own account, got the story 180 degrees wrong. Forty years later Hinton is the "Godfather of AI," two of the three godfathers are frightened of their own creation, and Wright has written The God Test to figure out what he missed and what's coming. We talk about how these machines evolved rather than being programmed - nobody fully understands them, including the people who build them - why "fancy autocomplete" was always wrong, the best case (an AI caught a radiologist's error in his cancer MRI), the worst case (a bioweapon that incubates silently for six weeks), why racing China to superintelligence may cause the war it's meant to prevent, and whether unplugging a machine could ever be murder. Plus an experiment of my own: I put a legal dispute in front of the AI and handed the laptop to the other side. 0:00 Intro - Robert Wright and The God Test 2:13 A 27-ton computer and a buried headline 4:11 Interviewing the Godfather of AI in 1983 - and missing it 10:15 Not programmed - evolved 17:27 The "fancy autocomplete" myth 24:17 Dukakis, Reagan, and how minds file words 35:49 Best case…

People in this episode

Host: Robert Wright

Guest: Geoffrey Hinton

Topics covered

• AI evolution
• bioweapons
• China race
• sentience
• medical applications
• ethical implications

Keywords

• AI
• Geoffrey Hinton
• bioweapons
• China
• The God Test
• medical AI
• sentience
• ethical dilemmas

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: China, Nazis, Hamas

Books & works: The God Test

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