The Author Behind ‘Arrival’ Doesn’t Fear A.I. ‘Look at How We Treat Animals.’
About this episode
Science-fiction writer Ted Chiang joins Klein to discuss technology, storytelling and artificial intelligence. He distinguishes technology, which becomes cheap and broadly available, from magic, which marks special people; critiques superheroes as anti-egalitarian defenders of the status quo; and reflects on free will, determinism, and writing science fiction as literal versus metaphorical. On AI, Chiang argues current systems are nowhere near consciousness — creating it would likely produce vast suffering before moral agency — and predicts humans are likelier to mistreat AI the way they mistreat animals than to be dominated by superintelligence. He contends many fears about AI are really fears about capitalism: optimization pressure, job loss and weak social protections, using parrots and extraterrestrial life to probe moral consideration and animal suffering.