The Orthogonal Bet Dave Jilk on AI, Poetry, and the Future of AGI
In this episode, host Samuel Arbesman speaks with Dave Jilk. Dave is a tech entrepreneur and writer. He’s done a ton: started multiple companies, including in AI, published works of poetry, and written scientific papers. And he’s now written a new book that is an epic poem about the origins of Artificial General Intelligence, told from the perspective of the first such entity. It’s titled Epoch: A Poetic Psy-Phi Saga and is a deeply thoughtful humanistic take on artificial intelligence, chock-full of literary allusions.
Sam wanted to speak with Dave to learn more about the origins of Epoch as well as how he thinks about AI more broadly. They discussed the history of AI, how we might think about raising AI, the Great Filter, post-AGI futures and their nature, and whether asking if we should build AGI is even a good question. They even finished this fun conversation with a bit of science fiction recommendations.
Produced by Christopher Gates
Music by Suno