We Are Clueless About What’s Coming

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 interestingtimes@nytimes.com. 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.