Listen as Megan McArdle and EconTalk's Russ Roberts use Google's new AI entrant Gemini as the starting point for a discussion about the future of our culture in the shadow of AI bias. They also discuss the tension between rules and discretion in Western society and why the ultimate answer to AI bias can't be found in technology.
Welcome to Econ talk conversations for the curious part of the Library of Economics and Liberty.
I'm your host, Russ Roberts of Shalem College in Jerusalem and Stanford University's Hoover Institution.
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Today is February 26, 2024, and my guest is Megan McArdleigh.
This is Megan's 8th appearance on Econ Talk.
She was last here in March of 2023, talking about the Oedipus trap.
Megan, welcome back to Econ Talk.
Thanks so much for having me.
Our topic for today is where we're headed as a culture vis a vis the Internet, using some of the latest developments in AI as a jumping off point, I want to mention to listeners that back in 2017, which it's like the ice age or neanderthal man was walking the earth in 2017, we had a unfortunately prescient conversation about outrage and shaming online, which at the time seemed very fresh and a novelty item.
And right now, what people are talking about and anxious about is not the topic that we spent numerous episodes here on Econ Talk talking about, which is AI safety.
That's the question of whether we're all going to be turned into paperclips or kidneys extracted by dangerous robots, but rather what are the latest tools of the Internet and artificial intelligence going to do to us as human beings and as a culture?
And that seems in many ways a little more relevant, at least today.
Megan, why don't you, why don't you start us off?
Oh, wow.
That is a big topic.