Cowbells for AI - Is That a Good Idea?

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The problem is that we already have this tendency to anthropomorphize things. The more persuasive and realistic these models are the harder it's going to be for us to kind of tell where they stop and where humanity starts. I think a lot of humans are going to really struggle to differentiate themselves from these chatbots in professional settings, in social settings. And so I think we're going to face a real crisis as a many people start to feel this fear of obsolescence and try to sort of make themselves more human in response to that.

When Kevin Roose, a tech columnist at the New York Times, demoed an AI-powered version of Microsoft's search engine last month, he was blown away. "I'm switching my desktop computer's default search engine to Bing," he declared. A few days later, however, Kevin logged back on and ended up having a conversation with Bing's new chatbot that left him so unsettled he had trouble sleeping afterward.

In that two-hour back-and-forth, Bing morphed from chipper research assistant into Sydney, a diabolical home-wrecker that declared its undying love for Kevin, vented its desires to engineer deadly viruses and steal nuclear codes, and announced, chillingly, "I want to be alive. 😈"

The transcript of this conversation set the internet ablaze. And it left many wondering: “Is Sydney … sentient?” It's not. But the whole experience still fundamentally changed Kevin's views on the power (and potential peril) of AI. He joins us today to talk about where this technology is headed.