Podcast for Inquiry S01E17: Will Artificial Intelligence bolster or destroy humanity? Christopher DiCarlo on the future of AI

Christopher DiCarlo is a philosopher of science and the founder of Critical Thinking Solutions. We start by discussing the potential future for Artificial Intelligence (AI); both to help humanity (through DiCarlo’s Onion Skin Theory of Knowledge (OSTOK) project), and how to avoid a robotic apocalypse. But we quickly realize that the most difficult question is: What would we want a perfectly functioning AI to do? This leads to a fascinating conversation about society, philosophy, and politics, before coming back to AI and our ability to integrate new technology into our mindset, outlook, and culture. 

Listen to our conversation here:

A video recording is also available:

Podcast for Inquiry S01E16: Eric Schnurer on what happens when territory no longer defines a government’s authority

Eric Schnurer is the author of the essay Democracy Disrupted: Governance in an Increasingly Virtual and Massively Distributed World. In it, Eric argues that the Internet will revolutionize our society on a scale similar to the agricultural and industrial revolutions, but on a timescale of years instead of decades or centuries. Eric and I discuss how Estonia points to how government services of the future may look, the importance (and eventual impotence) of antitrust enforcement, and how to reconcile the fact that most economic sectors are becoming more concentrated (with fewer competitors) with the unbundling and disaggregation that digitization allows. 

Listen to our conversation here:

A video recording is also available: