Machines Like Us

Nitasha Tiku, a tech culture reporter at the Washington Post, anchors the conversation alongside Charlie Warzel from The Atlantic and bestselling author Charles Duhigg. They discuss how Silicon Valley has evolved into a political powerhouse, with crypto donations swaying elections. The trio examines Elon Musk's controversial role in shaping narratives and the rising threat of misinformation, especially regarding AI's impact on politics. They also ponder the implications for democracy, as the tech landscape shifts under the weight of growing right-wing influence.

What kind of future are we building for ourselves? In some ways, that’s the central question of this show.It’s also a central question of speculative fiction. And one that few people have tried to answer as thoughtfully – and as poetically – as Emily St. John Mandel.Mandel is one of Canada’s great writers. She’s the author of six award winning novels, the most recent of which is Sea of Tranquility – a story about a future where we have moon colonies and time travelling detectives. But Mandel might be best known for Station Eleven, which was made into a big HBO miniseries in 2021. In Station Eleven, Mandel envisioned a very different future. One where a pandemic has wiped out nearly everyone on the planet, and the world has returned to a pre industrial state. In other words, a world without technology.I think speculative fiction carries tremendous power. In fact, I think that AI is ultimately an act of speculation. The AI we have chosen to build, and our visions of what AI could become, have been shaped by acts of imagination.So I wanted to speak to someone who has made a career imagining other worlds, and thinking about how humans will fit into them.Mentioned:“Last Night in Montreal” by Emily St. John Mandel“Station Eleven” by Emily St. John MandelThe Nobel Prize in Literature 2014 – Lecture by Patrick Modiano“The Glass Hotel” by Emily St. John Mandel“Sea of Tranquility” by Emily St. John MandelSummary of the 2023 WGA MBA, Writers Guild of AmericaHer (2013)“The Handmaid’s Tale” by Margaret Atwood“Shell Game” by Evan RatliffReplikaFurther Reading:“Can AI Companions Cure Loneliness?,” Machines Like Us“Yoshua Bengio Doesn’t Think We’re Ready for Superhuman AI. We’re Building it Anyway.,” Machines Like Us“The Road” by Cormac McCarthy Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

A couple of weeks ago, I was at this splashy AI conference in Montreal called All In. It was – how should I say this – a bit over the top. There were smoke machines, thumping dance music, food trucks. It was a far cry from the quiet research labs where AI was developed. While I remain skeptical of the promise of artificial intelligence, this conference made it clear that the industry is, well, all in. The stage was filled with startup founders promising that AI was going to revolutionize the way we work, and government officials saying AI was going to supercharge the economy. And then there was Yoshua Bengio. Bengio is one of AI’s pioneering figures. In 2018, he and two colleagues won the Turing Award – the closest thing computer science has to a Nobel Prize – for their work on deep learning. In 2022, he was the most cited computer scientist in the world. It wouldn’t be hyperbolic to suggest that AI as we know it today might not exist without Yoshua Bengio. But in the last couple of years, Bengio has had an epiphany of sorts. And he now believes that, left unchecked, AI has the potential to wipe out humanity. So these days, he’s dedicated himself to AI safety. He’s a professor at the University of Montreal and the founder of MILA - the Quebec Artificial Intelligence Institute.  And he was at this big AI conference too, amidst all these Silicon Valley types, pleading with the industry to slow down before it’s too late. Mentioned:“Personal and Psychological Dimensions of AI Researchers Confronting AI Catastrophic Risks” by Yoshua Bengio“Deep Learning” by Yann LeCun, Yoshua Bengio, Geoffrey Hinton“Computing Machinery and Intelligence” by Alan Turing“International Scientific Report on the Safety of Advanced AI” “Safetywashing: Do AI Safety Benchmarks Actually Measure Safety Progress?” by R. Ren et al.“SB 1047: Safe and Secure Innovation for Frontier Artificial Intelligence Models Act”Further reading:“‘Deep Learning’ Guru Reveals the Future of AI” by Cade Metz“Montréal Declaration for a Responsible Development of Artificial Intelligence” “This A.I. Subculture’s Motto: Go, Go, Go” By Kevin Roose“Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously” by Yoshua Bengio Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In 2015, 195 countries gathered in Paris to discuss how to address the climate crisis. Although there was plenty they couldn’t agree on, there was one point of near-absolute consensus: if the planet becomes 2°C hotter than it was before industrialization, the effects will be catastrophic. Despite that consensus, we have continued barrelling toward that 2°C threshold. And while the world is finally paying attention to climate change, the pace of our action is radically out of step with the severity of the problem. What is becoming increasingly clear is that just cutting our emissions – by switching to clean energy or driving electric cars – will not be sufficient. We will also need some bold technological solutions if we want to maintain some semblance of life as we know it.Luckily, everything is on the table. Grinding entire mountains into powder and dumping them into oceans. Sucking carbon directly out of the air and burying it underground. Spraying millions of tons of sulphur dioxide directly into the atmosphere.Gwynne Dyer has spent the past four years interviewing the world’s leading climate scientists about the moonshots that could save the planet. Dyer is a journalist and historian who has written a dozen books over his career, and has become one of Canada’s most trusted commentators on war and geopolitics.But his latest book, Intervention Earth, is about the battle to save the planet.Like any reporting on the climate, it’s inevitably a little depressing. But with this book Dyer has also given us a different way of thinking about the climate crisis – and maybe even a road map for how technology could help us avoid our own destruction.Mentioned:“Intervention Earth: Life-Saving Ideas from the World’s Climate Engineers” by Gwynne Dyer“Scientists warn Earth warming faster than expected – due to reduction in ship pollution” by Nicole Mortillaro“Global warming in the pipeline” by James Hansen, et al.“Albedo Enhancement by Stratospheric Sulfur Injections: A Contribution to Resolve a Policy Dilemma?” by Paul CrutzenFurther Reading:Interview with Hans Joachim Schellnhuber and Gwynne Dyer Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

For nearly a year now, the world has been transfixed – and horrified – by what’s happening in the Gaza Strip. Yet for all the media coverage, there seems to be far less known about how this war is actually being fought. And the how of this conflict, and its enormous human toll, might end up being its most enduring legacy.In April, the Israeli magazine +972 published a story describing how Israel was using an AI system called Lavender to target potential enemies for air strikes, sometimes with a margin of error as high as 10 per cent.I remember reading that story back in the spring and being shocked, not that such tools existed, but that they were already being used at this scale on the battlefield. P.W. Singer was less surprised. Singer is one of the world’s foremost experts on the future of warfare. He’s a strategist at the think tank New America, a professor of practice at Arizona State University, and a consultant for everyone from the US military to the FBI.So if anyone can help us understand the black box of autonomous weaponry and AI warfare, it’s P.W. Singer.Mentioned:“‘The Gospel’: how Israel uses AI to select bombing targets in Gaza” by Harry Davies, Bethan McKernan, and Dan Sabbagh“‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza” by Yuval Abraham“Ghost Fleet: A Novel of the Next World War” by P. W. Singer and August ColeFurther Reading:“Burn-In: A Novel of the Real Robotic Revolution” by P. W. Singer and August Cole“The AI revolution is already here” by P. W. Singer“Humans must be held responsible for decisions AI weapons make” in The Asahi Shimbun“Useful Fiction” Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Things do not look good for journalism right now. This year, Bell Media, VICE, and the CBC all announced significant layoffs. In the US, there were cuts at the Washington Post, the LA Times, Vox and NPR – to name just a few. A recent study from Northwestern University found that an average of two and a half American newspapers closed down every single week in 2023 (up from two a week the year before).One of the central reasons for this is that the advertising model that has supported journalism for more than a century has collapsed. Simply put, Google and Meta have built a better advertising machine, and they’ve crippled journalism’s business model in the process.It wasn’t always obvious this was going to happen. Fifteen or twenty years ago, a lot of publishers were actually making deals with social media companies, thinking they were going to lead to bigger audiences and more clicks.But these turned out to be faustian bargains. The journalism industry took a nosedive, while Google and Meta became two of the most profitable companies in the world.And now we might be doing it all over again with a new wave of tech companies like OpenAI. Over the past several years, OpenAI, operating in a kind of legal grey area, has trained its models on news content it hasn’t paid for. While some news outlets, like the New York Times, have chosen to sue OpenAI for copyright infringement, many publishers (including The Atlantic, the Financial Times, and NewsCorp) have elected to sign deals with OpenAI instead.Julia Angwin has been worried about the thorny relationship between big tech and journalism for years. She’s written a book about MySpace, documented the rise of big tech, and won a Pulitzer for her tech reporting with the Wall Street Journal.She was also one of the few people warning publishers the first time around that making deals with social media companies maybe wasn’t the best idea.Now, she’s ringing the alarm again, this time as a New York Times contributing opinion writer and the CEO of a journalism startup called Proof News that is preoccupied with the question of how to get people reliable information in the age of AI.Mentions:“Stealing MySpace: The Battle to Control the Most Popular Website in America,” by Julia Angwin“What They Know” WSJ series by Julia Angwin“The Bad News About the News” by Robert G. Kaiser“The Times Sues OpenAI and Microsoft Over A.I. Use of Copyrighted Work” by By Michael M. Grynbaum and Ryan Mac“Seeking Reliable Election Information? Don’t Trust AI” by Julia Angwin, Alondra Nelson, Rina PaltaFurther Reading:“Dragnet Nation: A Quest for Privacy, Security, and Freedom in a World of Relentless Surveillance” by Julia Angwin“A Letter From Our Founder” by Julia Angwin Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Marc Andreesen, a venture capitalist known for his tech optimism, and Peter Thiel, a billionaire entrepreneur with libertarian views, discuss the radical shift in technology's role in democracy. They explore Taiwan's innovative use of digital platforms, like Polis, to foster dialogue and unity. The conversation highlights how immersive technologies can enhance public engagement and empathy in policymaking. They're also keen on tackling disinformation through community efforts and advocate for inclusive AI development, emphasizing the need for collaborative governance.

If you listened to our last couple of episodes, you’ll have heard some pretty skeptical takes on AI. But if you look at the stock market right now, you won’t see any trace of that skepticism. Since the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022, the chip company NVIDIA, whose chips are used in the majority of AI systems, has seen their stock shoot up by 700%. A month ago, that briefly made them the most valuable company in the world, with a market cap of more than $3.3 trillion.And it’s not just chip companies. The S&P 500 (the index that tracks the 500 largest companies in the U.S.) is at an all-time high this year, in no small part because of the sheen of AI. And here in Canada, a new report from Microsoft claims that generative AI will add $187 billion to the domestic economy by 2030. As wild as these numbers are, they may just be the tip of the iceberg. Some researchers argue that AI will completely revolutionize our economy, leading to per capita growth rates of 30%. In case those numbers mean absolutely nothing to you, 25 years of 30% growth means we’d be a thousand times richer than we are now. It’s hard to imagine what that world would like – or how the average person fits into it. Luckily, Rana Foroohar has given this some thought. Foroohar is a global business columnist and an associate editor at The Financial Times. I wanted to have her on the show to help me work through what these wild predictions really mean and, most importantly, whether or not she thinks they’ll come to fruition.Mentioned:“Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity” by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson (2023)“Manias, Panics, and Crashes: A History of Financial Crises” by Charles P. Kindleberger (1978)“Irrational Exuberance” by Robert J. Shiller (2016)“Gen AI: Too much spend, too little benefit?” by Goldman Sachs Research (2024)“Workers could be the ones to regulate AI” by Rana Foroohar (Financial Times, 2023)“The Financial Times and OpenAI strike content licensing deal” (Financial Times, 2024)“Is AI about to kill what’s left of journalism?” by Rana Foroohar (Financial Times, 2024)“Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism” by Anne Case and Angus Deaton (2020)“The China Shock: Learning from Labor Market Adjustment to Large Changes in Trade” by David H. Autor, David Dorn & Gordon H. Hanson (2016)Further Reading:“Beware AI euphoria” by Rana Foroohar (Financial Times, 2024)“AlphaGo” by Google DeepMind (2020) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Renowned media theorist Douglas Rushkoff explores AI's impact on society, discussing its similarities to past communication technologies. He questions AI's ability to create art and delves into the influence of the 'California ideology.' Rushkoff emphasizes the importance of technology enabling human flourishing rather than eroding it.

Kate Crawford, co-founder of the AI Now Institute and author of Atlas of AI, dives into the complex realities of artificial intelligence. She debunks the myth that AI is immaterial, exposing its vast physical and environmental footprint. Crawford discusses the hidden human labor behind AI systems and the significant biases encoded in massive datasets. She emphasizes the urgency of addressing the planetary costs of AI and advocates for moral restraint in its expansion. Collective action, she argues, is key to shaping AI's future responsibly.