The Promise and Terror of Artificial Intelligence

CYBER

VICE

Tech News, News & Politics, Technology, News

4 • 645 Ratings

🗓️ 3 December 2021

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Cyber’s intro music has clips from various movies. The first is from WarGames, a 1983 film where a hacker squares off against an artificial intelligence that’s in control of the nukes. Almost forty years later and AI is beating people at Starcraft 2, which is not quite the organization of a nuclear war but can still feel scary.

But how smart are these systems really? Is AI, or “machine learning” as practitioners prefer to call it, the next big thing or just another in a series of promises about the future that hasn’t quite materialized? What are the actual dangers of these systems?

Here to help us answer this question is Os Keyes. Keyes is PhD student at the University of Washington’s Department of Human Centred Design & Engineering and an occasional Motherboard contributor. Their area of expertise is, broadly, how technology constructs the world we live in.

It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers everything from Henry Kissinger to Human Centipede and the hard limits of artificial intelligence.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Tann, it's got the code it's going to launch.
0:13.2	It's a unit system. I know this.
0:17.5	It's how all the files of the whole park. It tells her everything.
0:21.4	Sir, he's uploading the virus.
0:24.2	Eagle One.
0:24.9	The package is being delivered.
0:27.6	Hello out there in cyberspace.
0:29.6	You know, our intro music has clips from various movies.
0:32.7	The first is from War Games, a 1983 film where a hacker squares off against an artificial intelligence that's in control of nukes.
0:42.9	Almost 40 years later, an AI is beating people at Starcraft 2, which is not quite the organization of a nuclear war, but can still feel pretty scary to some.
0:52.1	But how smart are these systems, really? Is AI the next big
0:56.3	thing or just another in a series of promises about the future that hasn't quite
0:59.9	materialized? And are there drawbacks here? What are the actual dangers of these systems?
1:07.3	Well, here to help us answer this question is Oz Keyes. Keys is a PhD student at the University of Washington's Department of Human-Centered Design and Engineering and an occasional motherboard contributor.
1:18.9	Their area of expertise is broadly how technology constructs the world we live in.
1:24.3	I'm Matthew Gall.
1:25.7	And this is Cyber.
1:28.7	Oz, thank you so much for coming on to the show and walking us through this today.
1:34.2	Thank you for having me.
1:35.6	I have to confess, I've still never seen war games.
1:39.1	I think there's a lot of people that have never seen war games.
1:43.3	It's, you know, it's not that I'm going to get pilloried for saying this.
	...

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