There's a lot of potential for dystopia and VR just as there's lots of potential for utopia. There are amazing ways that, you know, societies could develop and experiences it could enable but there are a lot of ways in which it could go wrong. I'd hope we'll have the collective rationality to think about more than one thing at a time. It would be totally crazy to invest in virtual reality to the point of massively neglecting physical reality.
Last year, Rufus sat down with philosopher David Chalmers to talk about the allure of virtual reality, whether robots will ever achieve consciousness, and the likelihood that we’re living in a simulation (David thinks it’s about 25 percent). It was a fascinating, freewheeling conversation, and we left large chunks of it on the cutting room floor. Now, though, with ChatGPT and other generative AI platforms taking the world by storm, those unaired sections, many of which were about the ethics of artificial intelligence, feel super relevant. So today, we’re sharing our complete interview with David. Buckle up. It’s a wild ride.