Is artificial intelligence about to take your job? According to Daniel Kokotajlo, the executive director of the A.I. Futures Project, that should be the least of your worries. Kokotajlo was once a researcher for OpenAI, but left after losing confidence in the company’s commitment to A.I. safety. This week, he joins Ross to talk about “AI 2027,” a series of predictions and warnings about the risks A.I. poses to humanity in the coming years, from radically transforming the economy to developing armies of robots.

03:59 - What effect could AI have on jobs?
06:45 - But wait, how does this make society richer?
10:08 - Robot plumbers and electricians
14:53 - The geopolitical stakes
18:58 - AI’s honesty problem
22:43 - The fork in the road
27:55 - The best case scenario
29:38 - The power structure in an AI-dominated world
32:32 - What AI leaders think about this power structure
38:30 - AI's hallucinations and limitations
43:45 - Theories of AI consciousness
47:05 - Is AI consciousness inevitable?
50:59 - Humanity in an AI-dominated world

(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.)

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An Interview With the Herald of the Apocalypse

Interesting Times with Ross Douthat

An Interview With the Herald of the Apocalypse