Welcome to the Concerning AI Podcast. I'm Ted. I'm Brandon. And this is episode zero.
It's a reboot after starting with Friendly AI. Why did we get started on this the first way? Why did you get started on this the first way instead? Well, I got started on this because for years I have been of the opinion that the March of Technology is going to bring us artificial intelligence automatically.
And I have been a polyanobot that. I've really been excited about it. I have thought that it's just obvious that we, as human beings, will then become immortal. Over the last few years, as I've reexamined that question, I've become Insert.
That my children, rather than maybe becoming immortal, they maybe went out with the rest of humanity. Like, AI could be a real problem. And I'd like to know whether it actually is a problem? Is this a valid concern?
Or not? And if it is a valid concern, what can we do about it? So that's my backstory of thinking that, ya know, the rapture, it's like the nerd rapture. People talk about this thing and they're even a nerd rapture.
That was me. And now I'm much more concerned. What about you, Brandon? How do you come to this question?
I fell into studying AI graduate school and I would have been for a long time in the camp of, it's not going to happen anytime soon. Definitely not in my lifetime, probably. Maybe not for thousands of years. And part of what had shaped that view in me was the difference between what you read in speculative fiction about AI and what the actual capabilities of AI were during the time I was studying it.
There was a huge disparity between the public perception of where we were with AI and where we actually were. I have not been studying AI and not working in the field for the last ten years. And suddenly I just started paying attention, I think basically because Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk, a couple of other people said, look out. And you passed a blog post in my way from week by way.
And suddenly I'm no longer just a single guy who's thinking about his own lifetime, glory, and academia, or whatever. I'm thinking about my kids and I'm thinking about the future of humanity. And I have a little more perspective in terms of seeing where things have gone. I'm really worried about it now.
So I'd say I am also concerned about it. Yeah. So as we begin this arc of the show, maybe it'd be interesting to talk about how we think the show might go. What are we going to talk about?
What are we going to talk about on the next show? What's our attention here? What's your attention for the show? I feel like I can talk about AI at a superficial level right now.
So I'd like to do some of that. Just see what questions come up, what reactions you and I and who guess have to particular ideas. And I'd also like to go deeper, have create some hooks to hang some of the concepts on and explore those concepts. For example, one of the slippery concepts is artificial intelligence, that phrase.
What does that even mean? And I think to understand that we have to start with intelligence. Yeah. As we even think about the question of what is intelligence, it's far from obvious what the answer is.
Or how are we even going to talk about that? I think it's really fascinating to me. So I'm really looking forward to learning with you, to getting curious with you, and then scratching that, you know, an accuracy and seeing what we can learn and really looking for a connection with others who are exploring these kinds of questions. Sounds like a show.
How about we have that VRR show one coming up? All right. So we'll see each other one. This is Brandon signing off for Concerning AI.