Today’s disagreement is on Artificial Intelligence and Existential Risk. In this episode, we ask the most consequential question we’ve asked so far on this show: Do rapidly advancing AI systems pose an existential threat to humanity?

To have this conversation, we’ve brought together two experts: a world class computer scientist and a Silicon Valley AI entrepreneur.

Roman Yampolskiy is an associate professor of Computer Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Louisville. His most recent book is: AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable.

Alan Cowen is the Chief Executive Officer of Hume AI, a startup developing “emotionally intelligent AI.” His company recently raised $50M from top-tier venture capitalists to pursue the first fully empathic AI – an AI that can both understand our emotional states and replicate them. Alan has a PhD in computational psychology from Berkeley and previously worked at Google in the DeepMind AI lab.

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