Episode 45: A few weeks ago, a Google engineer was placed on administrative leave after he said a chatbot created by his employer had achieved sentience. The company said its systems imitated conversational exchanges but did not have consciousness. It also said the employee violated its confidentiality policy.

The question about whether computers have a soul is still open to debate, but what’s clear is that they’re getting better each year and processing large amounts of data. Rick Kyte and Scott Rada discus how worried should we be about the future of artificial intelligence.

Links to stories discussed during the podcast:

A.I. is mastering language. Should we trust what it says?, by Steven Johnson, New York Times Magazine

Stephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind, by Rory Cellan-Jones, BBC

AI could defeat all of us combined, by Holden Karnofsky

Are we living in a computer simulation? I don’t know. Probably., by Sean Illing, Vox

About the hosts: Scott Rada is social media manager with Lee Enterprises, and Richard Kyte is the director of the D.B. Reinhart Institute for Ethics in Leadership at Viterbo University in La Crosse, Wis.

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