Bonus: The Promise and Pitfalls of AI

05/28/21 • 52 min

1 Listener

This is an episode of another WHYY podcast called The Pulse. In a lot of ways, artificial intelligence acts as our personal butlers — it filters our email, manages the temperature in our homes, finds the best commute, shapes our social media, runs our search engines, even flies our planes. But as AI gets involved in more and more aspects of our lives, there are nagging fears. Will AI replace us? Make humans irrelevant? Make some kind of terrible mistake, or even take over the world? On this episode, we hear from scientists and thinkers who argue that we should look at AI not as a threat or competition, but as an extension of our minds and abilities. They explain what AI is good at, and where humans have the upper hand. We look at AI in three different settings: medicine, work, and warfare, asking how it affects our present — and how it could shape our future.

Previous Episode

Ep 5. Echo Chambers

We examine AI’s role in polarizing America, from online echo chambers to the virulent spread of misinformation on social media. How did AI influence the attack on the Capitol? How do social media algorithms work, and what’s their goal? We’ll talk with a reporter who witnessed the violent effects of misinformation first-hand; talk to a reporter and researcher who’s created tools to crack open the black boxes of social media algorithms, and hear from an author who explains how Facebook groups are particularly polarizing.

(Read the transcript for this episode.)