Weirdness and Predictability

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Could we put millions of people out of work? Could it help terrorists or antagonistic states develop lethal weapons and crippling cyber attacks? These systems will already offer guidance on building biological weapons or nuclear weapons. The more inhuman these systems get, the more human they come to seem to us. That is the weirdest thing about what we are building. It's utterly inhuman. But we have trained it to present as deeply human.

This is something a bit different: Not an interview, but a commentary of my own.

We’ve done a lot of shows on A.I. of late, and there are more to come. On Tuesday, GPT-4 was released, and its capabilities are stunning, and in some cases, chilling. More on that in Tuesday’s episode. But I wanted to take a moment to talk through my own views on A.I. and how I’ve arrived at them. I’ve come to believe that we’re in a potentially brief interregnum before the pace of change accelerates to a rate that is far faster than is safe for society. Here’s why.

Column:

“This Changes Everything” by Ezra Klein

Episode Recommendations:

Sam Altman on the A.I. revolution

Brian Christian on the alignment problem

Gary Marcus on the case for A.I. skepticism

Ted Chiang on what humans really fear about A.I.

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

“The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Fact-checking by Rollin Hu. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Original music by Isaac Jones and Pat McCusker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser.