Large language models like ChatGPT and Bing’s chatbot can tell stories. They can analyze the effects of agricultural AI on American and Chinese farms. They can pass medical licensing exams, summarize 1,000-page documents, and score a 147 on an IQ test. That’s the 99.9th percentile. They’re also liars. They don't know what year it is. They recommend books that don’t exist. They write nonsense on request. Today's guest, New York Times journalist Kevin Roose, spent a few hours last week talking to Bing. The conversation quickly went off the rails in the strangest of ways.
I am convinced that AI is going to be one of the most important stories of the decade. We are looking at something almost like the discovery of an alien intelligence. Except, because these technologies are trained on us, they aren’t extraterrestrial at all. If anything, they’re intra-terrestrial. We’ve taken the entire history of human culture—all our texts, all our images, maybe all of our music and art too—and fed it to a machine that we’ve built. Now it’s talking back to us. Isn't that fascinating? Isn't it kind of scary?
Host: Derek Thompson
Guest: Kevin Roose
Producer: Devon Manze
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