Why A.I. Might Not Take Your Job or Supercharge the Economy

The Ezra Klein Show

New York Times Opinion

Society & Culture, Government, News

4.6 • 11K Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2023

⏱️ 63 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Typically when we put out a call for audience questions, there’s no single topic that dominates. This time was different. The questions we received were overwhelmingly focused on artificial intelligence: Do A.I. systems pose an existential threat to humanity? Will robots take our jobs? How could these machines potentially make our lives — and the lives of our children — better? So I asked the show’s senior editor, Roge Karma, to join me to talk through them. We also discuss my mixed feelings about the calls to “pause” A.I. development, why I’m less worried about rogue A.I. systems than the incentives of the companies and countries developing A.I., the need for a “public vision” for A.I. development, whether A.I. companions can help address widespread loneliness, why I’m skeptical that A.I. advances will lead to skyrocketing economic productivity, the possibility that A.I. advances will lead to a post-work utopia, why I think of A.I. less as a normal technology and more as a “hyper object,” what A.I. systems are unveiling about what it means to be human and more. Mentioned: “Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans” by Dan Hendrycks “2022 Expert Survey on Progress in AI” God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn “Resisting dehumanization in the age of A.I.” with Emily Bender “The Moral Economy of High-Tech Modernism” by Henry Farrell and Marion Fourcade Recommendations: “Some of Us Are Brave” by Danielle Ponder “In Memory of a Honeybee” by Felix Rösch “Clouds” by Felix Rösch and Laura Masotto “Driven” by Felix Rösch Mabe Fratti Trance Frendz by Ólafur Arnalds and Nils Frahm Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at [email protected]. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs. This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Roge Karma, Kristin Lin and Jeff Geld. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I'm Ezra Klein. This is the Ezra Conchell.
0:23.6	Welcome to the Ask Me Anything episode. I am your guest Ezra Klein here with Régette
0:29.1	Karma, our senior editor, who is going to be asking me questions and proving that we are
0:34.2	not in fact the same person as has sometimes been suspected.
0:39.2	But, Régette, thank you for being here. It's great to be here. I appreciate you giving
0:43.0	us the opportunity to prove once and for all we are indeed two different people.
0:47.4	So what you got for me?
0:49.4	So this AMA was a little bit unique in that we usually get a very wide range of questions
0:54.8	without any particular subject dominating. But this time we got absolutely flooded with
0:59.5	questions on AI. You know, questions about existential risk and labor markets and utopias.
1:04.7	And we're going to get to all of that. But given how fast all of this is moving, I just
1:08.9	wanted to start by checking in on where your head is right now. So a couple questions.
1:13.6	First, how are you thinking about AI at the moment? And then second, what is your approach
1:17.6	been to covering AI both in your writing and on the show?
1:21.5	I think as we go through questions, people are going to get a sense of how I'm thinking
1:25.2	about it. But I guess I'll say in the approach bucket, I am trying to remain open to how much
1:34.2	I do not know and cannot predict. Look, I enjoy covering things and have typically
1:39.8	covered things where I think there is usually a body of empirical evidence where you can
1:44.2	absorb enough of it to have a relatively solid view on where things are going. And I don't
1:50.2	think that is at all true with AI right now. So here my thinking is evolving and changing
1:56.9	faster than it normally does. I am entertaining the simultaneous possibility of a more radical
2:04.3	set of perspectives, everything from the existential risk perspectives of, and we can talk about
	...

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