Interesting Times

Dwarkesh Patel is one of the most important voices in the artificial intelligence world. Deeply embedded in San Francisco’s tech community, he has interviewed nearly every tech chief executive at length. This week’s guest host, Tyler Cowen, a professor of economics at George Mason University, sits down with Mr. Patel to discuss why researchers are resigning, whether A.I. could become conscious and if he’ll ever get an A.I. girlfriend. Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months. 00:00 Intro01:31 What Inspired the “Dwarkesh Podcast”02:47 Documenting Wild Human History04:18 What The Public Doesn’t Understand About A.I.06:25 The Mood in San Francisco06:51 Dwarkesh Didn’t See This Coming09:08 Should More A.I. Researchers Resign?11:09 Unreleased Frontier Models13:26 Pausing A.I. 15:45 A.I. Psychosis & Consciousness21:14 What Tech Bros Do for Fun 23:50 Bay Area Culture24:06 A.I. Boyfriends v. Girlfriends26:02 Are A.I. Therapists Good?26:54 What Dwarkesh Got Wrong27:44 What’s The Next Big Thing?29:13 Robot Predictions30:26 What Jobs Are Safe?35:21 The Speed of A.I. Adoption37:12 Milestones To Watch42:58 What If 2035 Looks Normal?44:39 Dwarkesh In 204546:27 Skepticism On A.I. Revenue48:01 How Podcasting Has Changed Dwarkesh(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Literacy is declining sharply across the West. In the era of vertical video, who has the time or concentration to read a long article — let alone a whole book? As we lose the ability to read long-form text, we might also be losing the capacity for democratic deliberation and self-governance. That’s the argument this week’s guest, the Times of London columnist James Marriott, makes in his recent book, “The New Dark Ages.” He sits down with guest host Mary Harrington to discuss our return to oral culture, the political consequences and what we can learn from the medieval era about storing information in a digital world. Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months. 00:00 Intro00:52 What Is Post-Literacy02:05 The Data Behind the Decline05:21 The Shift Toward Video09:44 Why Reading Is Hard10:45 Walter Ong on Oral vs. Literate Cultures14:27 Tribal Politics and Emotion18:21 The Reading Revolution21:14 Literacy as an Engine for Democracy25:15 Medieval Literary Culture27:27 What We Can Learn the Medieval Era30:13 Remembering Everything and Nothing33:49 How Bukele Communicates Visually37:04 Monarchy vs. Dictatorship41:38 Is Postliteracy a Right-Wing Phenomenon?43:29 Can We Resist the Slide?46:33 Closing(A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times.  Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Nick Bostrom rose to prominence for predicting artificial intelligence doom more than a decade ago — garnering support from figures like Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Bill Gates. But now he’s retreating from those warnings, focusing his attention on a more complex question: What if A.I. succeeds beyond humanity’s wildest imaginations? Will we be bored out of our minds? Are we too infantile to understand what’s coming? Guest host Spencer Klavan, the associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books, presses Bostrom on the potential uses and abuses of superintelligence, rationalist ethics and what makes us human. Note: As we work on relaunching “Interesting Times,” the show will feature a series of guest hosts in the coming months. 00:00 Intro01:07 What is P(doom)?04:44 Bostrom’s Doomsday Scenarios06:14 Vulnerable World Hypothesis08:27 The Best-Case Scenario of Superintelligence12:37 The Problems We Can’t Solve in Utopia14:47 Paths to Superintelligence17:02 What Kind of Utopia Do We Want to Live In?21:56 The Values Worth Keeping in Utopia32:42 Bostrom’s Influence on Effective Altruism38:04 Are Existential Warnings Helpful?43:52 The Trajectory of Humanity46:51 Why Bostrom Wants Utopia   (A full transcript of this episode is available on the Times website.) Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Please subscribe to our YouTube Channel, Interesting Times. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

There’s a saying that comes to mind these days: May you live in interesting times. It’s understood to be a curse, even though it sounds like a blessing. “Interesting Times With Ross Douthat” is a new weekly podcast from New York Times Opinion. Every Thursday, he will map the new world order through interviews and conversations. Answering questions like: What does our new political era really look like? What is the future of democracy around the world, with American empire in retreat? What happens to movies and books — all of culture — in our digital and A.I.-dominated age? Thoughts? Email us at [email protected]. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon Music. You can also subscribe via your favorite podcast app here https://www.nytimes.com/activate-access/audio?source=podcatcher. For more podcasts and narrated articles, download The New York Times app at nytimes.com/app. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.