251 - Special: AI’s Existential Threat and Hope: Deconstructing TEDx

2025-04-07

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . What if… aliens came to visit the Earth? And what does that have to do with AI? I’ve deconstructed two of my TEDx talks on this show, but before both of those I did one in 2017, and here I take that one apart. Why didn’t I do this before? It seemed a bit… out there. Too sensationalist. Making claims that were too extravagant. But when I was looking at it again recently, I thought, we’ve actually caught up with what I was saying there, those ideas are...

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

What if… aliens came to visit the Earth? And what does that have to do with AI? I’ve deconstructed two of my TEDx talks on this show, but before both of those I did one in 2017, and here I take that one apart.

Why didn’t I do this before? It seemed a bit… out there. Too sensationalist. Making claims that were too extravagant.

But when I was looking at it again recently, I thought, we’ve actually caught up with what I was saying there, those ideas are more acceptable than they were in 2017. So I thought this was a good time to see how it’s aged and how on point it is. I’ll go through it, give a commentary.

I'll talk about the dichotomy of AI's existential promise vs peril, what it could mean for jobs, the motivations to create general AI, and the part we all play in establishing the values of what will become tomorrow's artificial superintelligences, and examine the interesting ways these narratives have changed in the last 8 years. Plus, aliens.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

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