Welcome to Current Affairs. My name is Nathan Robinson. I am the editor in Chief of Current Affairs Magazine.

My guest today is Eric J. Larson.

He is a computer scientist.

He is the author of the book, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence, Why Computers

Can't Think the way we do.

Available from Harvard University Press, Eric J. Larson, thank you so much for joining us on

Current Affairs.

Thank you.

Okay, so your book is the myth of artificial intelligence, but there are a lot of people today who warn us that artificial

intelligence is making such great and unanticipated progress that not only will it in coming

decades transform society in unpredictable ways,

but it may in fact pose what is called an existential risk to the future of the species.

The predictions range in what could happen from artificial intelligence.

But here's a quote from Stuart Russell, who is one of the leading prophets on AI,

who says most active researchers expect human-level AI to arrive around the middle of this century.

And in a popular book, Super Intelligence by the Oxford philosopher Nick Bostrom,

Bostrom warns that once human-level artificial intelligence is developed,

it may be only a short amount of time before we develop a form of super-intelligence. artificial intelligence is developed.

It may be only a short amount of time before we develop a form of super intelligence.

Artificial intelligence that is far smarter than we are ourselves.

And could therefore, and this is taken quite seriously in some circles,

could therefore take over the world.

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