The Existential Crisis of the 20th Century, Right?

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I think the weirdness of all these hypotheticals along with, I would argue, the disorienting speed of just technological advancement in general. It feels to me like there is arguably a kind of second coming of an existential crisis that perhaps our culture is or will be reckoning with. We talk about possibilities of infinite universes and living in simulations. Could you survive an uploading process? What is the value of artificial intelligence? Is life in a virtual reality still a meaningful life? And we're going to have to figure out some of those things out.

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.