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Best-selling author John Green tells the story of a young TB patient in Sierra Leone

and systems of injustice fueling the world's deadliest infectious disease.

Available where books and audiobooks are sold.

This is Fresh Air. I'm Dave Davies.

For decades, scientists have dreamed of computers so sophisticated they could think like humans and worried what might happen if those machines

began to act independently. Those fears and aspirations accelerated in 2022 when a company called

OpenAI released its artificial intelligence chat bot called

ChatGPT. Our guest, veteran investigative reporter Gary Rivlin, has burrowed deep into the

AI world to understand the plans and motivations of those pushing artificial intelligence

and what impact they could have for good or ill.

In this new book, Rivlin writes that in March of 2003, there were more than 3,000 startup companies in the U.S.

working on artificial intelligence, with new ones popping up at a rate of 30 per day.

While AI is already in use in some fields, such as medical diagnosis, many believe the field is on the verge of a new breakthrough,

achieving artificial general intelligence, systems that truly match or approximate human cognitive abilities.

Some believe it could be as transformational to human society as the Industrial Revolution.

But many fear where it may take us.

A poll of AI researchers in 2022 found that half of them believe there's at least a one in 10 chance that humanity will go extinct due to our inability to control AI.

In 2023, President Joe Biden issued an executive order imposing some regulatory

safeguards on AI development, but President Trump quickly repealed that order upon taking office,

saying Biden's dangerous approach imposed unnecessary government control on AI innovation.

We've invited Gary Rivlin here to help us understand all these issues and developments.

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