I’m joining the redoubtable Sarah Wilson on her podcast Wild Live! I’ll be talking about AI, Big Tech, existential risk, etc.
Tune-in live (or catch it later) on Sarah’s Substack, This is Precious:
My last post summed up some recent writing about how AI could go wrong. Most sceptics simply shout down the doom-sayers, without offering arguments (a sure sign of wishful thinking). So I also gathered the sanest voices I could find who offer some reasonable case for doubting the worst case scenarios.
And I explained why the revealed ideology of Big Tech is actually a kind of fascism. Even if you think their forecasts of rogue AI are science fiction, they don’t — so it means they work hard every day on a technology they think will one day murder their own children with odds of one in ten. No one elected them. They’re happy to bet others’ lives on their high-risk quest for world-changing glory. That is fascism.
Sarah has recently been exploring civilisational collapse from various angles on her Substack, as a serialisation of a book on the topic. I’m sure we don’t agree on everything, but I’m impressed any time someone takes the social cost of talking about something people would prefer not to think about. The Stark Way’s ethos is to avoid wishful thinking. So we agree on that.
Her previous guest was the philosopher A.C. Grayling! So I’m flattered to be invited. Check it out if you want to see me ranting.