Are You a Robotic Maniac?

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Bob Greene: As robots and other things get better at skills that humans do now, humans will succeed by their ability to do things that robots can't do. He says it would be wise for people to not focus on being like everybody else because that will soon have a little or no value. Greene: Your voice is now really the most valuable thing about you. And I think it has a lot of implications for how we educate our children going forward.

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.