There are certain podcasts that will stop you in your tracks. I listened to two of them yesterday.
Both of them caused me to rewind, re-listen and dig deeper.
I'm a big fan of Derek Thompson and his "Plain English" podcast. I've been listening to it since it launched and it's made me smarter and more in tune with where our culture is heading. His latest episode is an interview with Tim Urban and it turned my brain inside out in a refreshing way.
You can listen to it here and/or read highlights of the interview.
Next up was Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin and their dope, brilliant podcast "Your Undivided Attention." Their latest episode helped further frame the future reality of generative AI and it's atom-splitting potential and danger.
Listen and review here.
Remember The Day After? The movie’s release in 1983 created meaningful citizen dialogue in both camps of the cold war era. Not only did US citizens get to watch and discuss it, but it was also translated into Russian and watched in the Soviet Union. It served as a waypoint to understand the potential of nuclear destruction. Citizens helped sway the directional path we chose to travel down.
We need a similar opportunity with Generative AI for citizens to interrupt the never-ending “progress” of efficiency and profit. It’s creating a rush for first mover advantage without understanding the true consequences of decisions being made in a Silicon Valley vacuum.
As Harris and Raskin point out:
Guardrails you may assume exist actually don’t. AI companies are quickly deploying their work to the public instead of testing it safely over time. AI chatbots have been added to platforms children use, like Snapchat. Safety researchers are in short supply, and most of the research that’s happening is driven by for-profit interests instead of academia.
All of this is creating very real fantasy worlds that mirror a future beyond Aldous Huxley.
Let's all consider what is on page 1001.