Artificial Intelligence For Dummies (Or At Least Normies): John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne on Mentoring The Machines.

The Unspeakable Podcast

Meghan Daum

Society & Culture

4.8 • 784 Ratings

🗓️ 5 February 2024

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Paid subscribers get full access to my interview with John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne.

The first half of this episode is available to all listeners. To hear the entire conversation, become a paying subscriber here.

Meghan has been threatening to do an episode on artificial intelligence, and finally she makes good. This week, she welcomes two guests: the philosopher, neuroscientist, and popular YouTuber John Vervaeke and the editor and publishing entrepreneur Shawn Coyne. They have collaborated on Mentoring The Machines, a series of short books–technically, it’s one book in four parts–about artificial intelligence. Their aim is to offer a clear understanding of the implications of AI and to invite readers to think about their own participation in its development and how their own choices can move that development in a positive or negative direction. In this conversation, they explain what drew them to this subject, how they came to work together, and how worried we should be about computers destroying civilization.

GUEST BIOS

John Vervaeke is an award-winning professor at the University of Toronto in the departments of psychology, cognitive science, and Buddhist psychology. He is the author and presenter of the YouTube series, “Awakening from the Meaning Crisis,” “After Socrates” and the host of “Voices with Vervaeke.”

Sean Coyne is a writer, editor, and the founder of Story Grid.

Learn about Mentoring The Machines.

Want to hear the whole conversation? Upgrade your subscription here.

HOUSEKEEPING

📖 🌵Come see me in Austin, TX on February 29 at Moontower Verses, talking about my book, The Unspeakable, and other literary matters.

✏️ Apply for Meghan’s co-ed Personal Essay and Memoir class.

✈️ Unspeakeasy Retreats: See where we’re going to be in 2024!

🥂 Join The Unspeakeasy, my community for freethinking women.

🔥 Follow my other podcast, A Special Place in Hell.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	There's a lot of forces, people use the term Molokian forces at work, that want to warp this in all kinds of heinous ways.
0:11.4	And we are not naive about this. This can go wrong in a lot of ways. We are trying to say there is a way in which this can go well, but it takes all of us being committed and really challenging these Molokian forces.
0:24.2	I look towards the stories and try and create a better story,
0:28.7	a story that can make more sense to people.
0:32.5	No, everything isn't the worst and everything isn't the best.
0:35.5	It's going to be, when you open up that door,
0:38.5	it's going to be wonderful and awful simultaneously. And managing the wonder and the awe is the
0:46.4	project that John and I set out to do. Welcome to the Unspeakable Podcast. I'm your host, Megan Dom. My guests whose voices you've just heard are John Verbeki and Sean Coyne. We're going to talk about artificial intelligence, a subject about which I'm more intelligent now than I was before I spoke with them, although I'm still very much in the
1:11.0	learning stage. But before we get to that, a couple of things. If you are hearing this right now,
1:17.2	that means you are not yet a paying subscriber to this podcast. Now, I know we are constantly
1:23.8	being asked to subscribe to things, especially lately.
1:28.3	There's always a paywall going up when we're reading something.
1:31.8	There's always another podcaster or YouTuber or substacker interrupting the content.
1:38.7	Ask if you consider paying for it.
1:41.1	I don't like it any more than you do.
1:42.7	I especially don't like doing it myself,
1:46.0	but this is where we are. I have been doing this podcast for more than three years and releasing
1:52.9	just about everything for free. There is, by my estimation, some 400 hours of free content out there. And it's good. I don't release anything
2:04.0	if it's not good. Starting this year, free subscribers are able to hear about half of the interview.
2:10.8	And that's often a sizable chunk, but you're going to need to become a paying subscriber
2:15.8	to hear the whole thing. I'm just going to lay my cards out on the table here.
2:19.9	I have got about eight different jobs right now.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -421 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Meghan Daum, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Meghan Daum and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.