Ashlee Vance and Speaker A discuss AI as computing's final frontier. Vance notes the paradox of AI pioneers who fear what they fund, comparing it to being drawn to a dangerous object you can't control. Speaker A argues Elon Musk's Neuralink won't give humans control over machines, and warns the line between human and machine is disappearing.
every turn of the crank, computing would reach more of the human population. And the last turn of the crank was the smartphone. And that meant that about half of the human population is connected. And now it seems that, you know, generative AI is the final, you know, the final frontier. Now computing is ubiquitous amongst humanity. The thing I worry about more, I mean, this is where I think the most hypocritical part of Elon's various hypocrisies is his notion in setting up Neuralink Neuralink, that somehow by binding humans more tightly, coupling them more tightly to the machine, that was going to allow us to control the machines. Did he not watch Star Trek? He not ever see the Borg? Does he not know what resistance is futile? You will be assimilated. I think the most important thing in developing this technology, you can be able to take the glasses off, right? That there be a bright line between what is human and what is machine. Because I think that we're moving up against that boundary.
Well, and obviously Elon is always— he's been afraid of AI, but then funding multiple AI projects at the same time, although he's not like unique in that. I mean, it's kind of the craziest thing I found reporting this book. You know, I'm just in room after room with people who are working on this stuff, who might be the most concerned about where it's heading, some of them, and then are just uniquely compelled to keep advancing it as fast as they can. I feel like I'm always sitting with like Bilbo Baggins with the the ring in his pocket, and it's like he wants to touch the ring and feel it every now and then, but wants to be able to take it off. And he knows he can't wear it all the time or something really bad happens, but yet is compelled to live his entire life around this object. And having covered technology for a long time, I've definitely never felt anything like this. Strikes me as such a bizarre job to go in day after day and just sit at your desk and be in this existential, you know, conundrum.
