Is artificial intelligence going to lead to the extinction of humanity? What would that even look like? Everyone’s got an opinion: mostly either “that sounds absolutely ridiculous” or “that sounds absolutely terrifying”.
In this episode of The Studies Show, Tom and Stuart do something slightly different. Stuart plays the role of an AI apocalypse sceptic, and grills Tom on all the arguments about the coming AI apocalypse. Happily, Tom has already written a whole book on the subject, so he knows all the answers.
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Show notes
Tom’s book, The Rationalist’s Guide to the Galaxy
Katja Grace’s survey of AI researchers
Timothy B. Lee’s Substack post about why he’s not worried about the existential risk of AI
Nature editorial arguing that the AI revolution hasn’t yet helped chemistry
Nature editorial arguing that worrying about AI doomsday is a distraction
Credits
The Studies Show is produced by Julian Mayers at Yada Yada Productions.
Episode 11: The AI apocalypse debate