moraldilemmas

In recent months, we’ve witnessed the rise of chatbots that can pass law and business school exams, artificial companions who’ve become best friends and lovers and music generators that produce remarkably humanlike songs. It’s hard to know how to process it all. But if there’s one thing that’s certain, it’s this: The future — shaped by technologies like artificial intelligence — is going to be profoundly weird. It’s going to look, feel and function differently from the world we have grown to recognize.

How do we learn to navigate — even embrace — the weirdness of the world we’re entering into?

Erik Davis is the author of the books “High Weirdness: Drugs, Esoterica and Visionary Experience in the Seventies” and “TechGnosis: Myth, Magic and Mysticism in the Age of Information” and writes the newsletter “Burning Shore.” For Davis, “weirdness” isn’t just a quality of things that don’t make sense to us, it’s an interpretive framework that helps us better understand the cultures and technologies that will shape our wondrous, wild future.

We discuss how Silicon Valley’s particularly weird culture has altered the trajectory of A.I. development, why programs like ChatGPT can profoundly unsettle our sense of reality and our own humanity, how the behaviors of A.I. systems reveal far more about humanity than we like to admit, why we might be in a “sorcerer’s apprentice moment” for artificial intelligence, why we often turn to myth and science fiction to explain technologies whose implications we don’t yet grasp, why A.I. developers are willing to keep designing technologies that they think may destroy humanity and more.

This episode contains strong language.

Mentioned:
Pharmako-AI by K Allado-McDowell

“AI EEEEEEE!!!” by Erik Davis

“The Merge” by Sam Altman

“The Weird and the Banal” by Erik Davis

“There Is No A.I.” by Jaron Lanier

Book Recommendations:

God, Human, Animal, Machine by Meghan O’Gieblyn

Psychonauts by Mike Jay

Weird Studies (podcast)

Thoughts? Guest suggestions? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com.

You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of “The Ezra Klein Show” at nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.

This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” is produced by Annie Galvin. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. The show’s production team is Emefa Agawu, Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld, Roge Karma and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. Special thanks to Sonia Herrero and Kristina Samulewski.

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Today on the Matt Walsh Show, we are suffering from a crisis of masculinity in our culture and it's only getting worse as anyone who tries to speak up for men inevitably gets silenced. We'll talk about all of this and how it relates to the Andrew Tate phenomenon today. Also, the Kevin McCarthy saga enters another day. But does any of this really matter? Students at a university complain about my "dangerous" presence in bias incident reports that have been made public. And they're wonderful. And the media has spent all week denouncing football for its violence, but I'll explain why violent sports are actually a good and necessary part of society. 

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Kirk, Maddy, and Jason grab their passports and get ready for a trip to Arztotska, the setting of Lucas Pope's brilliant 2013 game Papers, Please, which just came out for phones. They talk about the game's brilliant design, the moral questions it poses, and what it's ultimately trying to say. Who would've thought that being a border inspector could be so fun?

One More Thing: 

Kirk: The Rehearsal

Maddy: Not Okay (2022)

Jason: Long snappers

Links:

The famous “Aaron Burr” Milk commercial from 1993: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znGJf1ZKnTU

The Papers, Please theme by Lucas Pope

Caitlin Dickenson’s 2022 Atlantic expose on the U.S. child separation policy: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2022/09/trump-administration-family-separation-policy-immigration/670604/

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Comedian W. Kamau Bell discusses his docuseries "We Need to Talk About Cosby" and the struggle to reconcile Bill Cosby's creative legacy with revelations of his horrific sex crimes.

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This week's chapters from Robert's fiction podcast, "After the Revolution."

Podcast Feed: https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1119-after-the-revolution-82966686/

Book Website: https://atrbook.com/

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Roleplaying games and the Marvel universe may be fictional, but they can also teach us a lot about morality in the real world. Christopher Robichaud is a Lecturer in Ethics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. In this episode, he shares ways we can explore important, everyday issues in fun, safe, and unexpected ways. Christopher has made a career out of teaching ethics and philosophy using pop culture, dissecting moral questions using anything from zombie apocalypse simulations to superhero narratives. He received his doctorate in philosophy from MIT. In 2015 he won the Innovation in Teaching Award at the Harvard Kennedy School for creating a day-long simulation--using design elements from old school tabletop roleplaying games like D&D--where policy students wielded their leadership skills and confronted ethical dilemmas to deal with a zombie pandemic. To learn more about "How to Be a Better Human," host Chris Duffy, or find footnotes and additional resources, please visit: go.ted.com/betterhuman

Set Your House in Order is a 12 Rules for Life lecture from Jordan B. Peterson. Recorded Nov. 1, 2018 in Cambridge UK. Thanks to our sponsors: Helix: https://helixsleep.com/jordan Try Basis: http://trybasis.com/jordan/

The Left went fishing during the Cohen hearing and came up empty. But they will keep trying until they find a way to rid themselves of President Trump. This is a very dangerous precedent they are setting. We'll talk about where it might lead. Also, a Democratic presidential candidate is accused of being abusive to her staff. But feminists say she’s only being criticized because she’s a woman. That's absurd, of course, and we'll discuss why. Date: 02-28-2019

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