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

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

Politics, Arts, News, Wnyc, Books, David, Storytelling, Society & Culture, Yorker, New, Remnick

4.2 • 6.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2023

⏱️ 33 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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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 WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:10.7	Welcome to The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:14.2	Every technological revolution has frightened people, particularly people who've got something to lose.
0:20.7	When Gutenberg began printing with
0:22.3	movable type, religious and political authorities wondered how to confront a population that had
0:28.3	new access to information and arguments to challenge their authority. So it's not surprising
0:34.1	that artificial intelligence is now causing grave concerns because it will
0:38.9	affect every one of us.
0:41.1	Perhaps the biggest nightmare is the looming new industrial revolution, the displacement of
0:47.4	millions of workers, the loss of huge numbers of jobs. Congress has a choice now.
0:54.7	We had the same choice when we face social media.
0:57.7	We failed to seize that moment.
1:02.2	What is surprising is that some of the very same people
1:06.1	who have been racing to develop AI
1:07.9	now seem deeply alarmed at how far they've come.
1:11.8	In March, not long after ChatGPT began captivating and terrifying us all at once,
1:18.6	over a thousand technology experts signed an open letter, calling for a six-month moratorium
1:24.1	on certain AI research. And some of those experts say that unchecked AI could be
1:29.7	as dangerous to our collective future as nuclear weaponry or pandemics. So we're going to talk
1:38.4	today about AI. How could it change the world and how concerned should we be?
1:52.5	I'll start with Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, the company that's been releasing ever more sophisticated versions of ChatGPT.
2:01.8	Years ago when the Internet was in its earliest stages, we were surrounded, or at least I felt surrounded by a sense of internet euphoria.
	...

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