AI has become a Rorschach test of sorts; you can tell a lot about a person from their general thoughts and stance on the topic. As with, e.g., social media, it is a complex and complicated thing to grasp, developing and changing constantly, impossible to pin down as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’. Both AI and SoMe are multidimensional issues, and both can accelerate, distort, and enhance all things that were already in the world, good and bad. But it is clear that the outer extremes for AI are much more radical compared to the effects of SoMe, from ‘existential threat’ on one side to ‘work-free abundant nirvana’ on the other. Some people use AI to become dumber at an alarming rate; other people that were already smart seem to use AI almost as a newfound superpower (although we are still waiting for the first one-person billion-dollar company to arrive, I think?). And the smartest people I know have very different takes on where AI is going. No one knows. But I would warmly recommend listening to ‘The Last Invention podcast’ for nuanced and insightful takes on AI and where we are headed; I have been through all the episodes; it’s really good. (Find it on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts).
Liv Boeree acts it out..
Also, check out ‘The Thinking Game,’ an award-winning documentary about the rapid rise of AI and the possible road towards AGI, featuring DeepMind and the company’s co-founder Demis Hassabis, who I think is fair to call a genius. His first computer was a ZX Spectrum (Yay!), and he grew up with games and gaming (he worked as a game designer at a young age; this article tells that story and more). The movie documents the journey from early attempts to play simple Atari video games on to AlphaGo, AlphaFold, and beyond. One interesting point from the movie: Hassabis insisted that the company should stay in London as he saw a lot of untapped European AI talent. The obvious thing to do would be to relocate to Silicon Valley, but no. The movie presents a somewhat one-sided and probably too positive outlook (no mention of Geoffrey Hinton, OpenAI, and all that took place in parallel to DeepMind’s work). But well worth a watch, and you can do that right here:
... 