Tech

CYBER: Big Tech Wants You to Think AI Will Kill Us All

Dystopian hype around technology is just a sales pitch.
GettyImages-644613898
Devrimb via Getty.
Screen Shot 2021-02-24 at 3
Hacking. Disinformation. Surveillance. CYBER is Motherboard's podcast and reporting on the dark underbelly of the internet.

Did you know that AI is set to automate as many as a third of your tasks? In the future we’re all going to be saving a lot of time. That’s as long as no one invents artificial general intelligence that fires all the nukes or turns us all into paperclips. Which, some experts seem to think, will surely happen.

Advertisement

Today we’re gonna talk about hype. Not the exciting kind of hype, but Criti-Hype, a kind of techno doomerism we’re often fond of here at Motherboard. Social media, biogenetics, Artificial Intelligence. These things could ruin us all. At least … that’s what people tell you when they’re selling something.

Lee Vinsel is a professor of Science, Technology, and Society at Virginia Tech and the host of the People & Things podcast. His Medium post that caught our eye is: You’re Doing it Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype.

Stories discussed in this episode:

You’re Doing It Wrong: Notes on Criticism and Technology Hype

The Open Letter to Stop 'Dangerous' AI Race Is a Huge Mess

We’re recording CYBER live on Twitch. Watch live during the week. Follow us there to get alerts when we go live. We take questions from the audience and yours might just end up on the show. 

Subscribe to CYBER on Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen to your podcasts.