I Want Your, I Think You're Not an Avatar. I'm Actually in Leslie.

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Ross: Somebody sent me recently a Kenshak rap video written by chat GPT. He says the more of those we write and the cleverer they are, the more material AI has to rip us off. Ross: It's not so much that these technologies challenge us to be better than the machines; it's they remind us that they want reality.

When OpenAI launched its conversational chatbot this past November, author Ian Leslie was struck by the humanness of the computer's dialogue. Then he realized that he had it exactly backward: In an age that favors the formulaic and generic to the ambiguous, complex, and unexpected, it's no wonder that computers can sound eerily lifelike. Leslie tells EconTalk host Russ Roberts that we should worry less about the lifelike nature of AI and worry more that human beings are being more robotic and predictable. Leslie bolsters his argument with evidence from music and movies. The conversation includes a discussion of the role of education in wearing down the mind's rougher, but more interesting and more authentic, edges as well as how we might strive to be more human in the age of AI.