This is the best episode of TrueAnon since the The Game series, and the best interview relating to "AI" in its current form you'll find on any podcast.
They interview Douglas Rushkoff "to discuss what's real and what's fake about the AI publicity push, the next phase of the internet, and human connection in the oppressive techno-future."
Rushkoff is the perfect guest for this topic on this show. Brace and Liz are incredibly insightful on the issue.
Go listen to it. If someone has a non-patreon'd link, please do share.
I specifically can't get over Rushkoff's point about how "AI" as it's being used is - instead of allowing us to see the humanity behind the machine - is instead conforming us the actual people to be more machine-like, through things like auto-correct and auto-complete algorithms, we are being nudged and incentivized and prodded into thinking less, relying on the AI more, for the sake of endless efficiency, at the cost of creativity and any language beyond the most default efficient way of speaking or thinking.
"AI" isn't intelligent, or sentient, or sapient, but it may as well be, for how it only exists to - as a technology and concept - get human beings to shave themselves down for the sake of the AI's ease.
Every time we use it, we help it far more than it helps us, and it's not even really helping us...
GO LISTEN TO THE EPISODE, IT'S INCREDIBLE
Great episode. I have a lot of respect for Rushkoff and how he thinks about these issues. He has come full circle from internet guru to silicon valley critic, and he has not lost his credibility or heart in any of it. I wonder what the moment was for him where he realized “we’ve lost the internet, shit is getting worse, the baddies are winning, and the baddies want me to speak at their conferences not because they welcome my critique, because they want to debrief the opposition”.
I also feel a weird kinship that both Rushkoff and I listen to TrueAnon while in bed with the phone under the pillow.