I've been fascinated by human consciousness and attempts to replicate it. Any set of assumptions we have about how and when a much more powerful version of these technologies would emerge is really speculative. There's a chorus of people who believe that we should collectively agree not to pursue AGI. I think the dye has cast on this, unfortunately.
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. š"
The transcript of this conversation set the internet ablaze. And it left many wondering: āIs Sydney ā¦ sentient?ā 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.