Welcome to the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

My name is Lex Friedman.

I'm a research scientist at MIT.

Today is a conversation with Stephen Pinker.

He's a professor at Harvard, and before that

was a professor at MIT.

He's the author of many books, some of which

had a big impact on the way I see the world for the better.

In particular, the better angels of our nature

and his latest book, Enlightenment Now,

have instilled in me a sense of optimism.

Optimism grounded in data, science, and reason.

I really enjoyed this conversation.

I hope you do as well.

You've studied the human mind, cognition, language, vision,

evolution, psychology from childhood

to adult from the level of individual

to the level of our entire civilization.

So I feel like I can start with a simple,

multiple choice question.

What is the meaning of life?

Is it A, to attain knowledge, as Plato said,

...