Most AI futures give us two options: mass unemployment, or a government handout to soften the blow. But what if there's a third option, one centered on completely new categories of creative work that don't yet exist, where people get paid for contributing to AI rather than replaced by it?

In this episode, we talk with Jaron Lanier, pioneer of virtual reality and scientist at Microsoft Research. He proposes a radically different way of thinking about AI, and unpacks its consequences from AI safety to the future of the economy.

We touch on:

• The case for thinking of AI not as an alien intelligence, but rather as a collaboration of human data
• How this reframe helps you understand the failures of current AI systems, and why so many of the industry's most powerful figures seem to be losing their grip on reality
• A practical approach to AI safety inspired by multi-factor authentication in cybersecurity
• Why universal basic income is unstable, and why a creativity economy (where people earn from their contributions to AI) could be a better way of distributing the benefits of AI
• How to be an optimist about technological progress while acknowledging the risks and being critical of certain developments
• Why history gives us the most rational grounds for optimism about our future with AI

Timestamps:

0:00 Cold open

0:50 40 years in Silicon Valley: how tech became a pseudo world government

4:19 Self-driving cars, Tesla, and the moral paradox of tech progress

7:13 Why "artificial intelligence" is a marketing term, and how you should think about it instead

15:16 AI as human collaboration: what it makes possible and how it makes you a better user

21:37 From the Turing test to the truth crisis: how science shifted from seeking truth to performing it

25:36 Data dignity: going back to the people to solve AI's biggest safety failures

32:55 The alternate future worth building, and challenging the AI orthodoxy

38:41 Why UBI won't work and why a creativity-based economy is more stable

45:20 How to be an optimist about technological progress while acknowledging the risks

On the Existential Hope Podcast hosts Allison Duettmann and Beatrice Erkers from the Foresight Institute invite scientists, founders, and philosophers for in-depth conversations on positive, high-tech futures.

Full transcript, listed resources, and more: https://www.existentialhope.com/podcasts

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