Artificial Intelligence and You

We get at this AI thing from many different angles: it changes us in so many ways that we're not going to understand it through just a technical discussion. So today we look at what it means to be human in the AI age through the eyes of Dagan Shani, an independent filmmaker who has focused on the risks associated with AI through movies that evoke our emotions. His documentary Don't Look Up - The Documentary: The Case for AI as an Existential Threat was described by Max Tegmark as “the most important film of the year.” Shani’s short documentary from 2024, Moloch - AI and the Deadly Force Driving Us to the Brink, and his latest film, Obsolete - Human Work in the Age of AI, both raise pressing questions about the rapid advancement of AI and its far-reaching implications.

In part 2, we talk about Universal Basic Income, more about Moloch, and the Studio Ghibli incident and the future of AI-generated visual media. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

We get at this AI thing from many different angles: it changes us in so many ways that we're not going to understand it through just a technical discussion. So today we look at what it means to be human in the AI age through the eyes of Dagan Shani, an independent filmmaker who has focused on the risks associated with AI through movies that evoke our emotions. His documentary Don't Look Up - The Documentary: The Case for AI as an Existential Threat was described by Max Tegmark as “the most important film of the year.” Shani’s latest film, Obsolete - Human Work in the Age of AI, raises pressing questions about the rapid advancement of AI. 

We talk about Moloch, which is the legendary personification of competition that drives us to be our worst selves, and the subject of Shani’s short documentary from 2024, Moloch - AI and the Deadly Force Driving Us to the Brink. We also talk about game theory, AI hype, impact on jobs, and AI in movie making.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

How do you deal personally, and organizationally, with exponential change? That’s the subject of a new book, Super Shifts: Transforming How We Live, Learn, And Work In The Age Of Intelligence, and both of its authors are here. Dr. Ja-Naé Duane is a behavioral scientist who has worked with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, AIG, and Deloitte. She is a member of the Loomis Council at the Stimson Center, collaborator with the National Institute of Health, and holds appointments at Brown University and MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. Steve Fisher co-founded the Futures Practice at McKinsey & Company and is the Managing Partner of the consultancy Revolution Factory. At FTI Consulting, he led the adoption of Generative AI for business model transformation, and is Chief Futurist at the Human Frontier Institute. Together, they have previously authored the bestseller The Startup Equation.

In the conclusion of the interview, we’re going to talk about Asimov’s Laws of Robotics, AI’s future enhancements to our lives, the different new species of humans that will emerge, and how the educational system needs to evolve.

Steve and Ja-Naé have extended a special offer to the listeners of this show, to get two chapters of their book free via this link.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

How do you deal personally, and organizationally, with exponential change? That’s the subject of a new book, Super Shifts: Transforming How We Live, Learn, And Work In The Age Of Intelligence, and both of its authors are here. Dr. Ja-Naé Duane is a behavioral scientist who has worked with companies such as PWC, Saudi Aramco, AIG, and Deloitte. She is a member of the Loomis Council at the Stimson Center, collaborator with the National Institute of Health, and holds appointments at Brown University and MIT’s Center for Information Systems Research. Steve Fisher co-founded the Futures Practice at McKinsey & Company and is the Managing Partner of the consultancy Revolution Factory. At FTI Consulting, he led the adoption of Generative AI for business model transformation, and is Chief Futurist at the Human Frontier Institute. Together, they have previously authored the bestseller The Startup Equation.

This week, we’re going to talk about what shaped their careers in this work, the definition of a super shift and how people react to them over different timescales, human patterns of change, how a family might be dealing with all this in 15 years, and… opera.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

What does the ideal integration of humans and technology look like in business in the future? Nada Sanders calls that a “Humachine.” She is a thought leader and expert in forecasting and human-technology integration, has an MBA and a PhD in supply chain management, and is an expert in digital transformation. She is author of seven books, including The Humachine: Humankind, Machines, and the Future of Enterprise, and is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. In 2022 she was awarded the prestigious Robert D. Klein Lecturer Award by Northeastern University.

In part 2, we talk about intentionality, integration, implementation, and indication, what to digitize in digital transformation, KPIs and other indicators of success in an AI-first business, and how culture needs to shift in the enterprise.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

What does the ideal integration of humans and technology look like in business in the future? Nada Sanders calls that a “Humachine.” She is a thought leader and expert in forecasting and human-technology integration, has an MBA and a PhD in supply chain management, and is an expert in digital transformation. She is author of seven books, including The Humachine: Humankind, Machines, and the Future of Enterprise, and is a Fellow of the Decision Sciences Institute. In 2022 she was awarded the prestigious Robert D. Klein Lecturer Award by Northeastern University.

In part 1, Nada defines the Humachine, and we talk about the ideal relationship between humans and AI, Kasparov’s Law, what skills have atrophied in the younger workforce, how software jobs are changing, and where to set the boundary between AI assistants and human assistants.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

I am talking with Drs. Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of the upcoming book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, and also co-hosts of the live podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000.

Emily is well known for coining the term “stochastic parrots” in a 2021 paper as a label for generative AI. She is a linguistics professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington and was among the inaugural Time AI 100. Alex is a sociologist who looks at how the data that fuels AI technologies exacerbates racial, gender, and class inequality. She is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.

In part 2, we talk about the dangers of uncritical naming, anthropomorphizing, Luddites and bespoke crafting, the effects of synthetic content on interpersonal communications, capitalism, and collective action strategies. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

When people take a unipolar position that AI is going to be wonderful, or terrible, or inconsequential, they end up painting themselves into a corner where that’s the only story they can allow themselves to express, and that obscures the truth. So for us to do our due diligence in exploring the dimensions of AI, today I am talking with Drs. Emily Bender and Alex Hanna, authors of the upcoming book, The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, and also co-hosts of the live podcast Mystery AI Hype Theater 3000.

Emily is well known for coining the term “stochastic parrots” in a 2021 paper as a label for generative AI. She is a linguistics professor and director of the Computational Linguistics Laboratory at the University of Washington and was among the inaugural Time AI 100. Alex is a sociologist who looks at how the data that fuels AI technologies exacerbates racial, gender, and class inequality. She is Director of Research at the Distributed AI Research Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Center for Applied Transgender Studies.

In part 1, we talk about their intentions with the book, cycles of hype and the effects of hype, the dangers of uncritical use of LLMs, “Slow Science”, and academic institutional culture. 

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.