Best Of: Is A.I. the Problem? Or Are We?
This past year, we\u2019ve witnessed considerable progress in the development of artificial intelligence, from the release of the image generators like DALL-E 2 to chat bots like ChatGPT and Cicero to a flurry of self-driving cars. So this week, we\u2019re revisiting some of our favorite conversations about the rise of A.I. and what it means for the world. \n\nBrian Christian\u2019s \u201cThe Alignment Problem\u201d is the best book on the key technical and moral questions of A.I. that I\u2019ve read. At its center is the term from which the book gets its name. \u201cAlignment problem\u201d originated in economics as a way to describe the fact that the systems and incentives we create often fail to align with our goals. And that\u2019s a central worry with A.I., too: that we will create something to help us that will instead harm us, in part because we didn\u2019t understand how it really worked or what we had actually asked it to do.\n\nSo this conversation, originally recorded in June 2021 is about the various alignment problems associated with A.I. We discuss what machine learning is and how it works, how governments and corporations are using it right now, what it has taught us about human learning, the ethics of how humans should treat sentient robots, the all-important question of how A.I. developers plan to make profits, what kinds of regulatory structures are possible when we\u2019re dealing with algorithms we don\u2019t really understand, the way A.I. reflects and then supercharges the inequities that exist in our society, the saddest Super Mario Bros. game I\u2019ve ever heard of, why the problem of automation isn\u2019t so much job loss as dignity loss and much more.\n\nMentioned: \n\n\u201cHuman-level control through deep reinforcement learning\u201d\n\n\u201cSome Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation\u201d by Norbert Wiener\n\nRecommendations: \n\n"What to Expect When You're Expecting Robots"\xa0 by Julie Shah and Laura Major\n\n"Finite and Infinite Games" by James P. Carse \n\n"How to Do Nothing" by Jenny Odell\n\nThoughts? Email us at ezrakleinshow@nytimes.com. Guest suggestions? Fill out this form.\n\nYou can find transcripts (posted midday) and more episodes of \u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d at\xa0nytimes.com/ezra-klein-podcast, and you can find Ezra on Twitter @ezraklein. Book recommendations from all our guests are listed at\xa0https://www.nytimes.com/article/ezra-klein-show-book-recs.\n\n\u201cThe Ezra Klein Show\u201d is produced by Annie Galvin, Jeff Geld and Rog\xe9 Karma; fact-checking by Michelle Harris; original music by Isaac Jones; mixing by Jeff Geld; audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Special thanks to Kristin Lin.