Artificial Intelligence: The Future is Now

Here's The Thing with Alec Baldwin

iHeartPodcasts

Tv & Film, Music, Music Interviews, Arts, Performing Arts, Film Interviews

4.4 • 8.4K Ratings

🗓️ 16 May 2023

⏱️ 48 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There is an important conversation happening regarding the rapidly-changing world of artificial intelligence and how it will affect us. Alec speaks with two leaders in the tech community that have worked on the systems integral to today’s A.I. revolution. Blake Lemoine is a computer scientist and former senior software engineer at Google. He was working on their Responsible A.I. team when he went public with his claim that the A.I. was sentient. Lemoine was subsequently fired and now champions accountability and transparency in the tech sector. Jay LeBoeuf is an executive, entrepreneur, and educator in the music and creative technology industries. He is the Head Of Business & Corporate Development at Descript, an audio and video editing platform that uses “voice cloning” technology. Alec speaks with LeBoeuf and Lemoine about the many applications of A.I., what dangers we need to be aware of and what is to come next in this transformative space.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing, from I Heart Radio.
0:08.0	Modern-day society has been living in some form of the computer era for decades.
0:13.0	An entire genre of films has been dedicated to showing what human life may be like once computers become conscious.
0:20.0	My guest today, our two trailblazers in a field that many have speculated could potentially risk the end of human civilization as we know it.
0:29.0	That is, of course, the true birth of artificial intelligence, known simply as AI.
0:35.0	And if you think the world has become inundated with AI technology overnight, you are not alone.
0:41.0	AI-based products come in many different forms, such as chatbots, which can be used for everything from finding a list of local Italian restaurants to drafting legal documents and writing college essays.
0:53.0	AI can also be used to manipulate a person's likeness on video or the sound of their voice.
0:59.0	And if you're wondering just how good computers have become at mimicking humans, my narration thus far has been generated by text written into a program called Descript.
1:10.0	Okay, I can't let the machines take over just yet.
1:14.0	This is actually human, Alec Baldwin. Later in the program, I'll speak with Blake Lemoine, a software engineer, formerly employed at Google.
1:24.0	Lemoine was part of the team working on Lambda, or language model for dialogue applications, the technology behind chatbots.
1:33.0	He went public with claims that the AI he was working on was sentient and was fired shortly thereafter.
1:42.0	But first, I'm talking to Jay LeBuff, head of business and corporate development at Descript.
1:48.0	Descript is an editing program used by podcasters and vloggers.
1:53.0	It allows users to edit audio directly from an AI-generated transcript and can even use voice cloning technology to create new audio from text, just as we did in the opening of the show.
2:07.0	LeBuff has worked in technology his entire career. I was curious how long AI has really been utilized in his field.
2:16.0	The term has been around for a very long time, but there's this period that a lot of people call the AI Winter, where it was much hyped in the 80s and even going into the 90s.
2:27.0	And it just had never delivered. So I didn't really know anybody who's studying AI at that time.
2:33.0	Were you aware of it before you went to Cornell?
2:35.0	No, no.
2:36.0	You weren't. You were introduced to all this when you went to college.
	...

Transcript will be available on the free plan in -640 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.

Previous episode | Next episode

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

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