Welcome to Econ Talk, Conversations for the Curious, part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.

I'm your host Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution. Go to Econ Talk. in to today's conversation. You'll also find our archives with every episode we've done

going back to 2006. Our email address is mail at econ talk.org we'd love to hear from you. I want to let listeners know that this week's episode gets into a number of adult themes may not be appropriate for young

children so adults listening with young or middle or even older children may want

to listen to this first.

Today is February 26, 2024, and my guest is Megan McCardall.

This is Megan's eighth appearance on Econ Talk. She was glassed here in March of 2023 talking about the edipus trap.

Megan, welcome back to Econ Talk.

Thanks so much for having me.

Our topic for today is where we're headed as a culture

uh... vis-à-vis the internet using some of the latest developments in AI as a

jumping off point. I want to mention to listeners that back in 2017, which it's like the Ice Age or Neanderthal man was walking the earth.

In 2017, we had a unfortunately prescient conversation about outrage and shaming online, which at the time seemed

very fresh and a novelty item.

And right now what people are talking about and anxious about is not the

topic that we spent numerous episodes here on econ talk talking about which is

AI safety that's the question of

whether we're all going to be turned into paper clips or kidneys extracted by

dangerous robots but rather what are the latest tools of the internet and artificial

intelligence going to do to us as human beings and as a culture? and that seems in many ways a little more relevant at least today.

Megan why don't you start us off?

Oh wow that is a big topic.

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