logo
episode-header-image
Apr 2024
1h 45m

An AI... Utopia? (Nick Bostrom, Oxford)

MICHAEL SHERMER
About this episode

Nick Bostrom's previous book, Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, changed the global conversation on AI and became a New York Times bestseller. It focused on what might happen if AI development goes wrong.

But what if things go right?

Bostrom and Shermer discuss: An AI Utopia and Protopia • Trekonomics, post-scarcity economics • the hedonic treadmill and positional wealth values • colonizing the galaxy • The Fermi paradox: Where is everyone? • mind uploading and immortality • Google's Gemini AI debacle • LLMs, ChatGPT, and beyond • How would we know if an AI system was sentient?

Nick Bostrom is a Professor at Oxford University, where he is the founding director of the Future of Humanity Institute. Bostrom is the world's most cited philosopher aged 50 or under.

Up next
Mar 14
DOGE, Government Fraud, and AI Audits
Jeremy Jones joins Michael Shermer to talk about DOGE AI, government fraud, and the strange reality that some of the biggest problems in public life are both widely known and somehow never fixed. Jones explains how his team uses AI to sort through enormous government datasets, is ... Show More
1h 28m
Mar 12
Heretics: The Scientists Who Were Mocked But Later Proven Right
Why do some world-changing ideas get ignored, attacked, or buried for years before anyone takes them seriously? Michael Shermer sits down with The Economist science correspondent Matt Kaplan to discuss the scientists who got there first and paid the price. They talk about why ins ... Show More
1h 2m
Mar 8
Shermer Says 7: Responding to Fan Mail … "Who Was Jesus?"
Michael Shermer responds to a remarkable letter from a group of eighth graders at a Christian school in Texas who say they've been praying for him and want to talk about Christianity, Jesus, and the Bible. 
52m 36s
Recommended Episodes
Nov 2018
Artificial Intelligence
An artificial intelligence capable of improving itself runs the risk of growing intelligent beyond any human capacity and outside of our control. Josh explains why a superintelligent AI that we haven’t planned for would be extremely bad for humankind. (Original score by Point Lob ... Show More
41m 52s
Jul 2024
How to Think About AI Consciousness With Anil Seth
Will AI ever start to think by itself? If it did, how would we know, and what would it mean?In this episode, Dr. Anil Seth and Aza discuss the science, ethics, and incentives of artificial consciousness. Seth is Professor of Cognitive and Computational Neuroscience at the Univers ... Show More
47m 58s
Jun 2023
AI Won’t Wipe Out Humanity (Yet)
<p>The idea that machine intelligence will one day take over the world has long been a staple of science fiction. But given the rapid advances in consumer-level artificial intelligence tools, the fear has felt closer to reality these past few months than it ever has before. The g ... Show More
29m 51s
Nov 2023
How I is AI?
Brian and Robin (the real ones) are joined by mathematician Prof Hannah Fry, compute scientist Dr Kate Devlin and comedian Rufus Hound to discuss the pros and cons of AI. Just how intelligent is the most intelligent AI? Will our phones soon be smarter than us – will we fail a Tur ... Show More
42m 57s
Feb 2023
The bot Cicero can collaborate, scheme and build trust with humans. What does this mean for the next frontier of AI? With Noam Brown, Research Scientist at Meta
AGI can beat top players in chess, poker, and, now, Diplomacy. In November 2022, a bot named Cicero demonstrated mastery in this game, which requires natural language negotiation and cooperation with humans. In short, Cicero can lie, scheme, build trust, pass as human, and ally w ... Show More
58m 40s
Sep 2023
Will AI's Become “I”s? with Max Riesenhuber
Rebecca McLaughlin is joined by Max Riesenhuber to have a conversation about the ethics and morality of artificial intelligence.Questions Covered in This Episode:<ul><li>What first interested you about neuroscience?</li><li>Can you talk about recent advancement in AI and where we ... Show More
27m 22s
May 2023
#116 — AI: Racing Toward the Brink
Sam Harris speaks with Eliezer Yudkowsky about the nature of intelligence, different types of AI, the “alignment problem,” IS vs OUGHT, the possibility that future AI might deceive us, the AI arms race, conscious AI, coordination problems, and other topics. Eliezer Yudkowsky is a ... Show More
48m 19s
Jun 2023
Ethan Mollick — How AI Changes Everything (EP.165)
<p>Ethan Mollick is an Associate Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he studies and teaches innovation and entrepreneurship. He also leads Wharton Interactive, an effort to democratize education using games, simulations, and AI.<br /> <br /> W ... Show More
53m 47s
Nov 2023
#151 — Will We Destroy the Future?
Sam Harris speaks with Nick Bostrom about the problem of existential risk. They discuss public goods, moral illusions, the asymmetry between happiness and suffering, utilitarianism, “the vulnerable world hypothesis,” the history of nuclear deterrence, the possible need for “turnk ... Show More
1h 33m
Dec 2023
The case for AI optimism
AI doomerism and calls to regulate the emerging technology is at a fever pitch but today’s guest, Reid Hoffman is a vocal AI optimist who views slowing down innovation as anti-humanistic. Reid needs no introduction, he’s the co-founder of PayPal, Linkedin, and most recently Infle ... Show More
47m 13s