067 Is Artificial Intelligence the End of the Human Era? | James Barrat, author of Our Final Invention
Curiosityness
Travis DeRose
4.8 • 566 Ratings
🗓️ 28 August 2019
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Until now, human intelligence has had no rival. Can we coexist with beings whose intelligence dwarfs our own? And will they allow us to?
In as little as a decade, AI could match and then surpass human intelligence. Corporations and government agencies are pouring billions into achieving AI's Holy Grail―human-level intelligence. Once AI has attained it, scientists argue, it will have survival drives much like our own. We may be forced to compete with a rival more cunning, more powerful, and more alien than we can imagine.
Grab your copy of James' book, Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era, on Amazon at https://amzn.to/33Tbewm
Visit http://www.jamesbarrat.com to learn more and connect with James
Learn about and support AI advocacy at https://futureoflife.org and https://www.fhi.ox.ac.uk and https://intelligence.org
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | A spontaneous and unrehearsed interview. |
| 0:07.5 | Welcome to episode 67 of Curiosityness, the podcast. |
| 0:15.3 | I'm your host, Travis DeRose, and this episode is talking about AI. I have on James Barrett, one of my favorite subjects |
| 0:23.8 | and one of the most fun things to talk about. So James is the author of a book called Our Final |
| 0:30.1 | Invention, Artificial Intelligence, and the End of the Human Era. So James is very cautionary of AI. And, you know, he talks about he loves |
| 0:41.8 | artificial intelligence. It's exciting like we all do. But he tells the story of why we should |
| 0:46.9 | be cautious and proceed with, you know, probably some regulations on it like we really need to, and we only have one chance. |
| 0:56.2 | This isn't like everything else. So it's a really fun conversation, something that even I think |
| 1:01.7 | everybody should be educated on, even if you're not super technical and into artificial |
| 1:07.2 | intelligence, but it's an important subject that's really going to affect all of us |
| 1:11.7 | in possibly the near future. So without further ado, here is James Barrett now. |
| 1:22.1 | Hey, what's up, James? How are you doing? Hey there, Travis. Good to be here. be here yeah man happy to have you on |
| 1:27.8 | uh stoke to talk this is fun stuff to talk about |
| 1:30.9 | love this |
| 1:31.6 | dude and and I mean how long have you been in |
| 1:34.9 | this you know |
| 1:35.9 | AI world game thinking about this stuff |
| 1:38.9 | I've been thinking about since around |
| 1:41.2 | 2006 or seven actually maybe before that I interviewed Arthur C. Clark for a film about AI way back in around 2001. |
| 1:52.8 | Yeah, Arthur C. Clark was a science fiction writer, one of the greats. |
| 1:58.2 | And I interviewed Ray Kurzweil, and I interviewed Rodney Brooks. Wow. And all for this |
| 2:04.7 | film. And I used to, and Kurzweil and Brooks were sort of casually optimistic about the way things |
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