The Meaning of Community Events

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The experience that you and your wife had at the performance you mentioned is not going to be available if people are sitting in their own cave-like homes watching this stuff on some screen. There's something deeply human about those bonds. And again, I'm concerned about the sort of disaggregation of communities. You know, like, let's say one thing about work and now more people are not going into work. We're losing the capacity to be face to face with other citizens.

In the early 1900s, the philosopher Henry Adams expressed concern about the rapid rate of social change ushered in by new technologies, from the railways to the telegraph and ultimately airplanes. If we transpose Adams's concerns onto the power of artificial intelligence--a power whose rate of acceleration would have exceeded his wildest dreams--you might feel a bit uneasy. Listen as philosopher Jacob Howland of UATX speaks with EconTalk's Russ Roberts about why too much leisure is at best a mixed blessing, and how technology can lead to intellectual atrophy. They also speak about the role of AI in education and its implications for that most human of traits: curiosity. Finally, they discuss Howland's biggest concern when it comes to outsourcing our tasks, and our thinking, to machines: that we'll ultimately end up surrendering our own liberty.