An Interview With the Herald of the Apocalypse

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

Is artificial intelligence about to take your job? According to Daniel Kokotajlo, the executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, that should be the least of your worries. Kokotajlo was once a researcher for OpenAI, but left after losing confidence in the company’s commitment to A.I. safety. This week, he joins Ross to talk about “AI 2027,” a series of predictions and warnings about the risks A.I. poses to humanity in the coming years, from radically transforming the economy to developing armies of robots.

• 03:59 - What effect could AI have on jobs?
• 06:45 - But wait, how does this make society richer?
• 10:08 - Robot plumbers and electricians
• 14:53 - The geopolitical stakes
• 18:58 - AI’s honesty problem
• 22:43 - The fork in the road
• 27:55 - The best case scenario
• 29:38 - The power structure in an AI-dominated world
• 32:32 - What AI leaders think about this power structure
• 38:30 - AI's hallucinations and limitations
• 43:45 - Theories of AI consciousness
• 47:05 - Is AI consciousness inevitable?
• 50:59 - Humanity in an AI-dominated world

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

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