Articles mentioned in this episode: China Isn’t Buying Silicon Valley’s Call for an AI Slowdown Washington Won’t Be Regulating AI Anytime Soon Why So Many AI Researchers Think the Machines Could Kill Everyone OpenAI Wants to Know if an AI Industry Slowdown Would Even Be Legal You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Leah Feiger on Bluesky at @leahfeiger. Write to us at [email protected]. How to Listen You can always listen to this week's podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here's how: If you're on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link.
You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Zoë Schiffer: Welcome to WIRED's Uncanny Valley.
I'm Zoë Schiffer, contributing editor. Brian Barrett: I'm Brian Barrett, executive editor. Leah Feiger: And I'm Leah Feiger, director of politics and science.
Zoë Schiffer: Today on the show, we're diving into the debate about whether AI is going to kill us all. And instead of just adding to the pile of hot takes that already exist, we're going to walk you through real specific scenarios to the best of our ability about how AI would actually do this, and why the tech CEOs and politicians cannot seem to agree on the way forward. OK, guys, so the debate about AI safety has officially escaped containment.
Brian Barrett: Zoë, I see what you did there. Zoë Schiffer: You see what I did there? That's the thing that's really spread uncontrollably.
AI researcher Jacob Coxon resigned from Anthropic and posted on X that, "The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade." Anthropic's CEO Dario Amodei has called for a slowdown. They call this, "pacing the frontier." And Sam Altman and Elon Musk have actually signed on, a rare moment of agreement. But honestly, with all of this talk about AI wiping out humanity, I have been left with a very basic question, which is, how exactly does this happen?
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