If there is one topic that has come to dominate this moment, it is artificial intelligence. Is it going to wipe us out? Will I lose my job? Is a data centre going up in my neighbourhood? Why are all these tech bros so incapable of sounding anything like a normal, sane, relatable person? Why do I have to hear so much about AI? Can’t I just have my connection and attention and identity back, please?

I’m an avowed cynic of the broad set of technologies AI represents, and I’ve been fortunate to learn from some of the best minds in the world on this show as to how these technologies are warping and distorting our relationship to ourselves, each other, work, identity, even reality itself. People like Emily M Bender and Nina Jankowicz have made clear the hazards and harms of a technology we seemingly have no innate capability to withstand - like the Wizard of Oz, it’s omniscient existence and self-proclaimed extraordinary potential has our society captured. Haven’t we seen this all before though? Weren’t there warnings about climate change in the 1960s we’ve ignored ever since? What’s that saying about power tending to corrupt, and absolute power corrupting absolutely? Aren’t we observing that with a tiny number of companies seemingly holding all the chips against us?

Yes, yes, I sound like a luddite. I’m obviously extraordinarily anti-progress, anti jobs and anti growth. Also a hypocrite too as I get to enjoy the quality of life I do today because of the evolution of technology over all of human history. Well, I’d love to believe AI could be helpful and valuable so I was very excited to invite Toby Walsh onto the show.

Just about all Australians probably recognise Toby now - he’s become not just a prolific author helping to make sense of this moment after decades working in and leading University of New South Wales’ AI Institute, but he’s featured regularly on traditional and digital media. He addressed the National Press Club earlier this year, was a featured expert in Channel Seven’s AI reporting, and is regularly popping up on the ABC, SBS the BBC, CNN, The Guardian, NPR and The New York Times.

If there is anyone in Australia to learn and hear from about not just the current world of AI, but also its history and heritage and where this all may be going, it’s Toby. His most recent book, God AI; Boom or Doom? What to expect when machines outsmart us examines the existential risk of AI. As we’ve heard repeatedly in recent weeks, some techbrogods are foreshadowing the end of all human life by the end of this decade! What does that even mean, how could it even be possible, and what other extinctions have occurred over the course of history that offer precedent to understand if these apocalyptic warnings are even credible.

We also get into much else - the history of AI to help understand this moment, the potential of ubiquitous intelligence, use cases where it is proving to be helpful, but also how humans are so ill-prepared to handle something so compelling and convenient and laden with potential - maybe the AI prompted to maximise paperclip production and ends up causing humanity’s extinction is all just a furphy, and we’ll end up degrading, eroding and eventually fracturing our ability to relate and cohere together in drastic and irreparable ways.

Some extra reading relevant to this episode from our friends at Altiorem.

Artificial intelligence and the future of finance: A framework for structural change

Modeling ghost GDP: Macro-financial risk and diversified portfolios in the age of artificial intelligence, automation, and populism

Artificial intelligence and human rights investor toolkit

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