Sainer: I found the New York Times transcript remarkably creepy and reading very much like a horror story science fiction script from a movie. The only reason it feels creepy is because I'm filling in as a human being, he says. Sainer: Some people strongly anthropomorphize these systems, and they think immediately that they're dealing with some sort of conscious mind. "It's just doing what it was told to do in a way that was not, as you say, algorithmically told to do it"
They operate according to rules we can never fully understand. They can be unreliable, uncontrollable, and misaligned with human values. They're fast becoming as intelligent as humans--and they're exclusively in the hands of profit-seeking tech companies. "They," of course, are the latest versions of AI, which herald, according to neuroscientist and writer Erik Hoel, a species-level threat to humanity. Listen as he tells EconTalk's Russ Roberts why we need to treat AI as an existential threat.