CBS’ The Late Show host Stephen Colbert says he trusts big tech to program artificial intelligence (AI) with “compassion and vision,” adding, “I’m ready for the machines to tell us what to do.”
“A lot of people are worried. I’m not that worried about AI,” Colbert told author Yuval Noah Harari before discussing his new book, “Unstoppable Us: Why the World Isn’t Fair.”
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“It just doesn’t get my blood going to get worried about AI,” Colbert continued. “I think of some positive aspects of it. I mean, I have seen how humans have handled history, and not great.”
“And so, I’m ready for the big machines that make big decisions programmed by fellows with compassion and vision. I’m ready for the machines to tell us what to do,” the Late Show host added.
Colbert then asked Harari, “Are you?” to which the author of “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” replied, “Not really. It’s extremely dangerous.”
“Why is it so dangerous, though?” Colbert asked, to which Harari replied, “To give up power to something we don’t understand…”
The Late Show host then cut Harari off, bizarrely arguing, “But they’re just extensions of us,” after having just made the argument that humans are not capable of handling life on their own, given the way historical events have played out.
“No, they’re not,” Harari said, to which Colbert replied by insisting, “Yes, they are. We made them. They’re us.”
“We made them, but now they become potentially independent of us,” Harari explained. “The one thing to know about AI, the most important think to know about AI, it’s the first technology in history that can make decisions by itself and can create new ideas by itself.”
“People compare it to the printing press, to the atom bomb — no, it’s completely different,” the author added.
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