Reading the GPT Leaves

If you could go back in time and had the power to stop the social media revolution in its tracks, what would you do? Would you let things proceed exactly as they did? Or would you try to warn people? We’re at a similar fork in the road right now with artificial intelligence, and the recent advent of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. It’s fun to play around with, but when you do, it becomes clear that the horizons have changed. And if AI like ChatGPT becomes as ubiquitous as smartphones and earbuds and the Internet of Things, it’s going to change the world. A lot. How can we impose order or mitigate the risks around artificial intelligence? Can these early stage innovations generally do more harm than good in the near-term—that is, before the machines get smart enough to build weapons and enslave us? New York Times technology reporter and host of the Hard Fork podcast Kevin Roose joins Brian Beutler to talk about what upheavals AI might bring, including the amazing ones, the scary ones, and the robot apocalypse ones.