AI Will Not Doom Us (Nor Climate Change) (#364)

We ease into today’s topic with a Top of Mind segment on two competing narratives: does having children make the future better? Or worse? From right-leaning fears of population collapse to left-leaning concerns about overpopulation and climate impact, both arguments rely on catastrophizing about opposing dystopian predictions, and I myself have not been immune to them.

For our main interview, I’m joined by Kevin Kelly, founding editor of Wired magazine and author of the "thousand true fans" theory (yes, that Kevin Kelly), to explore his concept of "protopia"—a vision of the future that's neither utopian nor dystopian, but rather a steady 1-2% improvement compounded over time. We get into the weeds on process theology, the cosmic Christ appearing on trillions of planets, why we'll need a "catechism for robots" within 100 years, and how AI might actually make us better humans by forcing us to codify what "better than us" even means. 

Kevin's technological optimism isn't naive—he fully acknowledges that more powerful technologies create more powerful problems—but he argues our capacity to solve problems consistently outpaces our ability to create them, and that technology itself carries something divine in how it expands the possibility space for human flourishing.

From personal anxiety about parenthood to cosmic theology to the future of consciousness itself—this is exactly the kind of conversation we love to have on this show.

Kevin Kelly's Website | Kk.org

Article Mentions:

https://skepticalscience.com/moving-away-high-end-emission-scenarios.html?utm_source=chatgpt.com

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