This is the post-webcast post of my invigorating and unnerving conversation with Andrew Maynard and Jeffrey Abbott, the authors of a “practical guide to thriving with AI while rediscovering yourself in the process.”

The curtain raiser post is here with more background:

The more I dive into the free downloadable (and AI-uploadable) version of AI and the Art of Being Human, the more I appreciate what they’re trying to do.

But the more we talked, the more, also, I became convinced that the ungovernability of the technology, and the norms of those shaping it, poses the most existential challenge of all. Here’s a key point from Maynard:

I think there’s another challenge here as well. And that is that so much of what we’re seeing is being driven by ideology. So it’s not just making money. If you look at the big tech companies, they’re driven by people who have a very, very specific vision of the future.

And I would say in many cases, it’s a very naive vision, a very flawed vision. But it’s this vision that drives them. This is what they’re trying to build. You look at someone like Dario Amodei or Elon Musk or others; it’s not the money. It’s creating the future that somehow has got locked in their heads.

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