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The New Yorker Radio Hour

Should We, and Can We, Put the Brakes on Artificial Intelligence?

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.25.5K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, which created ChatGPT, says that AI is a powerful tool that will streamline human work and quicken the pace of scientific advancement But ChatGPT has both enthralled and terrified us, and even some of AI’s pioneers are freaked out by it – by how quickly the technology has advanced. David Remnick talks with Altman, and with computer scientist Yoshua Bengio, who won the prestigious Turing Award for his work in 2018, but recently signed an open letter calling for a moratorium on some AI research until regulation can be implemented. The stakes, Bengio says, are high. “I believe there is a non-negligible risk that this kind of technology, in the short term, could disrupt democracies.”

Transcript

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0:00.0

This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNWC Studios and The New Yorker.

0:11.2

Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour, I'm David Remnick.

0:14.6

Every technological revolution has frightened people, particularly people who've got something

0:19.4

to lose.

0:20.9

When Gutenberg began printing with movable type, religious and political authorities wondered

0:26.4

how to confront a population that had new access to information and arguments to challenge

0:31.6

their authority.

0:33.3

So it's not surprising that artificial intelligence is now causing grave concerns because it

0:38.8

will affect every one of us.

0:41.2

Perhaps the biggest nightmare is the looming new industrial revolution, the displacement

0:47.2

of millions of workers, the loss of huge numbers of jobs.

0:53.1

Congress has a choice now.

0:55.0

We had the same choice when we faced social media.

0:57.9

We failed to seize that moment.

1:02.8

What is surprising is that some of the very same people who have been racing to develop

1:07.4

AI now seem deeply alarmed at how far they've come.

1:12.2

In March, not long after chat GPT began captivating and terrifying us all at once, over

1:18.8

a thousand technology experts signed an open letter calling for a six-month moratorium

1:24.1

on certain AI research.

1:26.2

And some of those experts say that unchecked AI could be as dangerous to our collective

1:31.3

future as nuclear weaponry or pandemics.

1:37.8

So we're going to talk today about AI.

...

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