It’s a confusing moment in AI. Depending on who you ask, we’re either on the fast track to AI that’s smarter than most humans, or the technology is about to hit a wall. Gary Marcus is in the latter camp. He’s a cognitive psychologist and computer scientist who built his own successful AI start-up. But he’s also been called AI’s loudest critic.

On Your Undivided Attention this week, Gary sits down with CHT Executive Director Daniel Barcay to defend his skepticism of generative AI and to discuss what we need to do as a society to get the rollout of this technology right… which is the focus of his new book, Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us.

The bottom line: No matter how quickly AI progresses, Gary argues that our society is woefully unprepared for the risks that will come from the AI we already have.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Link to Gary’s book: Taming Silicon Valley: How We Can Ensure That AI Works for Us

Further reading on the deepfake of the CEO of India's National Stock Exchange

Further reading on the deepfake of of an explosion near the Pentagon.

The study Gary cited on AI and false memories.

Footage from Gary and Sam Altman’s Senate testimony.

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Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn

Taylor Swift is Not Alone: The Deepfake Nightmare Sweeping the Internet

No One is Immune to AI Harms with Dr. Joy Buolamwini

Correction: Gary mistakenly listed the reliability of GPS systems as 98%. The federal government’s standard for GPS reliability is 95%.

AI is moving fast. And as companies race to rollout newer, more capable models–with little regard for safety–the downstream risks of those models become harder and harder to counter. On this week’s episode of Your Undivided Attention, CHT’s policy director Casey Mock comes on the show to discuss a new legal framework to incentivize better AI, one that holds AI companies liable for the harms of their products. 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The CHT Framework for Incentivizing Responsible AI Development

Further Reading on Air Canada’s Chatbot Fiasco 

Further Reading on the Elon Musk Deep Fake Scams 

The Full Text of SB1047, California’s AI Regulation Bill 

Further reading on SB1047 

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Former OpenAI Engineer William Saunders on Silence, Safety, and the Right to Warn

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake

A First Step Toward AI Regulation with Tom Wheeler

Correction: Casey incorrectly stated the year that the US banned child labor as 1937. It was banned in 1938.

[This episode originally aired on August 17, 2023] For all the talk about AI, we rarely hear about how it will change our relationships. As we swipe to find love and consult chatbot therapists, acclaimed psychotherapist and relationship expert Esther Perel warns that there’s another harmful “AI” on the rise — Artificial Intimacy — and how it is depriving us of real connection. Tristan and Esther discuss how depending on algorithms can fuel alienation, and then imagine how we might design technology to strengthen our social bonds.

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

Mating in Captivity by Esther Perel

Esther's debut work on the intricacies behind modern relationships, and the dichotomy of domesticity and sexual desire

The State of Affairs by Esther Perel

Esther takes a look at modern relationships through the lens of infidelity

Where Should We Begin? with Esther Perel

Listen in as real couples in search of help bare the raw and profound details of their stories

How’s Work? with Esther Perel

Esther’s podcast that focuses on the hard conversations we're afraid to have at work 

Lars and the Real Girl (2007)

A young man strikes up an unconventional relationship with a doll he finds on the internet

Her (2013)

In a near future, a lonely writer develops an unlikely relationship with an operating system designed to meet his every need

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Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss

The AI Dilemma

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

Digital Democracy is Within Reach with Audrey Tang

CORRECTION: Esther refers to the 2007 film Lars and the Real Doll. The title of the film is Lars and the Real Girl.
 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Today, the tech industry is  the second-biggest lobbying power in Washington, DC, but that wasn’t true as recently as ten years ago. How did we get to this moment? And where could we be going next? On this episode of Your Undivided Attention, Tristan and Daniel sit down with historian Margaret O’Mara and journalist Brody Mullins to discuss how Silicon Valley has changed the nature of American lobbying. 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The Wolves of K Street: The Secret History of How Big Money Took Over Big Government - Brody’s book on the history of lobbying.

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America - Margaret’s book on the historical relationship between Silicon Valley and Capitol Hill

More information on the Google antitrust ruling

More Information on KOSPA

More information on the SOPA/PIPA internet blackout

Detailed breakdown of Internet lobbying from Open Secrets

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U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake
The Race to Cooperation with David Sloan Wilson

CORRECTION: Brody Mullins refers to AT&T as having a “hundred million dollar” lobbying budget in 2006 and 2007. While we couldn’t verify the size of their budget for lobbying, their actual lobbying spend was much less than this: $27.4m in 2006 and $16.5m in 2007, according to OpenSecrets.

The views expressed by guests appearing on Center for Humane Technology’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CHT. CHT does not support or oppose any candidate or party for election to public office

It’s been a year and half since Tristan and Aza laid out their vision and concerns for the future of artificial intelligence in The AI Dilemma. In this Spotlight episode, the guys discuss what’s happened since then–as funding, research, and public interest in AI has exploded–and where we could be headed next. Plus, some major updates on social media reform, including the passage of the Kids Online Safety and Privacy Act in the Senate. 

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The AI Dilemma: Tristan and Aza’s talk on the catastrophic risks posed by AI.

Info Sheet on KOSPA: More information on KOSPA from FairPlay.

Situational Awareness by Leopold Aschenbrenner: A widely cited blog from a former OpenAI employee, predicting the rapid arrival of AGI.

AI for Good: More information on the AI for Good summit that was held earlier this year in Geneva. 

Using AlphaFold in the Fight Against Plastic Pollution: More information on Google’s use of AlphaFold to create an enzyme to break down plastics. 

Swiss Call For Trust and Transparency in AI: More information on the initiatives mentioned by Katharina Frey.

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War is a Laboratory for AI with Paul Scharre

Jonathan Haidt On How to Solve the Teen Mental Health Crisis

Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake 

The Three Rules of Humane Tech

The AI Dilemma

Clarification: Swiss diplomat Nina Frey’s full name is Katharina Frey.

The views expressed by guests appearing on Center for Humane Technology’s podcast, Your Undivided Attention, are their own, and do not necessarily reflect the views of CHT. CHT does not support or oppose any candidate or party for election to public office

AI has been a powerful accelerant for biological research, rapidly opening up new frontiers in medicine and public health. But that progress can also make it easier for bad actors to manufacture new biological threats. In this episode, Tristan and Daniel sit down with biologist Kevin Esvelt to discuss why AI has been such a boon for biologists and how we can safeguard society against the threats that AIxBio poses.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Sculpting Evolution: Information on Esvelt’s lab at MIT.

SecureDNA: Esvelt’s free platform to provide safeguards for DNA synthesis.

The Framework for Nucleic Acid Synthesis Screening: The Biden admin’s suggested guidelines for DNA synthesis regulation.

Senate Hearing on Regulating AI Technology: C-SPAN footage of Dario Amodei’s testimony to Congress.

The AlphaFold Protein Structure Database

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

U.S. Senators Grilled Social Media CEOs. Will Anything Change?

Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss

The AI Dilemma

Clarification: President Biden’s executive order only applies to labs that receive funding from the federal government, not state governments.

Will AI ever start to think by itself? If it did, how would we know, and what would it mean?

In this episode, Dr. Anil Seth and Aza discuss the science, ethics, and incentives of artificial consciousness. Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the University of Sussex and the author of Being You: A New Science of Consciousness.

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

A free, plain text version of the Shelley’s classic of gothic literature.

OpenAI’s GPT4o Demo

A video from OpenAI demonstrating GPT4o’s remarkable ability to mimic human sentience.

You Can Have the Blue Pill or the Red Pill, and We’re Out of Blue Pills

The NYT op-ed from last year by Tristan, Aza, and Yuval Noah Harari outlining the AI dilemma. 

What It’s Like to Be a Bat

Thomas Nagel’s essay on the nature of consciousness.

Are You Living in a Computer Simulation?

Philosopher Nick Bostrom’s essay on the simulation hypothesis.

Anthropic’s Golden Gate Claude

A blog post about Anthropic’s recent discovery of millions of distinct concepts within their LLM, a major development in the field of AI interpretability.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

Esther Perel on Artificial Intimacy

Talking With Animals... Using AI

Synthetic Humanity: AI & What’s At Stake

Climate change, political instability, hunger. These are just some of the forces behind an unprecedented refugee crisis that’s expected to include over a billion people by 2050. In response to this growing crisis, wealthy governments like the US and the EU are employing novel AI and surveillance technologies to slow the influx of migrants at their borders. But will this rollout stop at the border?

In this episode, Tristan and Aza sit down with Petra Molnar to discuss how borders have become a proving ground for the sharpest edges of technology, and especially AI. Petra is an immigration lawyer and co-creator of the Migration and Technology Monitor. Her new book is “The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.”

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence

Petra’s newly published book on the rollout of high risk tech at the border.

Bots at the Gate

A report co-authored by Petra about Canada’s use of AI technology in their immigration process.

Technological Testing Grounds

A report authored by Petra about the use of experimental technology in EU border enforcement.

Startup Pitched Tasing Migrants from Drones, Video Reveals

An article from The Intercept, containing the demo for Brinc’s taser drone pilot program.

The UNHCR

Information about the global refugee crisis from the UN.

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War is a Laboratory for AI with Paul Scharre

No One is Immune to AI Harms with Dr. Joy Buolamwini

Can We Govern AI? With Marietje Schaake

CLARIFICATION:

The iBorderCtrl project referenced in this episode was a pilot project that was discontinued in 2019

This week, a group of current and former employees from OpenAI and Google DeepMind penned an open letter accusing the industry’s leading companies of prioritizing profits over safety. This comes after a spate of high profile departures from OpenAI, including co-founder Ilya Sutskever and senior researcher Jan Leike, as well as reports that OpenAI has gone to great lengths to silence would-be whistleblowers. 

The writers of the open letter argue that researchers have a “right to warn” the public about AI risks and laid out a series of principles that would protect that right. In this episode, we sit down with one of those writers: William Saunders, who left his job as a research engineer at OpenAI in February. William is now breaking the silence on what he saw at OpenAI that compelled him to leave the company and to put his name to this letter. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA 

The Right to Warn Open Letter

My Perspective On "A Right to Warn about Advanced Artificial Intelligence": A follow-up from William about the letter

Leaked OpenAI documents reveal aggressive tactics toward former employees: An investigation by Vox into OpenAI’s policy of non-disparagement.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

1. A First Step Toward AI Regulation with Tom Wheeler
2. Spotlight on AI: What Would It Take For This to Go Well?
3. Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss
4. Can We Govern AI? With Marietje Schaake

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_

Right now, militaries around the globe are investing heavily in the use of AI weapons and drones.  From Ukraine to Gaza, weapons systems with increasing levels of autonomy are being used to kill people and destroy infrastructure and the development of fully autonomous weapons shows little signs of slowing down. What does this mean for the future of warfare? What safeguards can we put up around these systems? And is this runaway trend toward autonomous warfare inevitable or will nations come together and choose a different path? In this episode, Tristan and Daniel sit down with Paul Scharre to try to answer some of these questions. Paul is a former Army Ranger, the author of two books on autonomous weapons and he helped the Department of Defense write a lot of its policy on the use of AI in weaponry. 

RECOMMENDED MEDIA

Four Battlegrounds: Power in the Age of Artificial Intelligence: Paul’s book on the future of AI in war, which came out in 2023.

Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War: Paul’s 2018 book documenting and predicting the rise of autonomous and semi-autonomous weapons as part of modern warfare.

The Perilous Coming Age of AI Warfare: How to Limit the Threat of Autonomous Warfare: Paul’s article in Foreign Affairs based on his recent trip to the battlefield in Ukraine.

The night the world almost almost ended: A BBC documentary about Stanislav Petrov’s decision not to start nuclear war.

AlphaDogfight Trials Final Event: The full simulated dogfight between an AI and human pilot. The AI pilot swept, 5-0.

‘Lavender’: The AI machine directing Israel’s bombing spree in Gaza: An investigation into the use of AI targeting systems by the IDF.

RECOMMENDED YUA EPISODES

1. The AI ‘Race’: China vs. the US with Jeffrey Ding and Karen Hao
2. Can We Govern AI? with Marietje Schaake
3. Big Food, Big Tech and Big AI with Michael Moss
4. The Invisible Cyber-War with Nicole Perlroth

Your Undivided Attention is produced by the Center for Humane Technology. Follow us on Twitter: @HumaneTech_