Show Notes
Technologists have feared (or prayed for) the singularity as a rapture-like inevitability for nearly 70 years. In an instant, they believed, our machine intelligence will overtake us and race ahead. Kevin Kelly says that moment has passed. Human intelligence is already receding to a speck in the rearview mirror of robots imbued with God-like powers. But we’re still here.
In this episode, Kelly puts the question of how to build moral AI in religious and spiritual terms. Kelly co-founded Wired and spent decades earning a reputation as a technological prophet. Now he calls himself a heretic, arguing that organized religion will be transformed, if not destroyed, by contact with a host of alien intelligences. If we want to survive this encounter, our understanding of God may matter more than any computer code.
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Mentioned in this Episode
Out of Control — Kevin Kelly (Book, 1994)
What Technology Wants — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2010)
The Inevitable — Kevin Kelly (Book, 2016)
God Is the Machine — Kevin Kelly (Essay, Wired, 2002)
The Coming Technological Singularity — Vernor Vinge (Essay, 1993)
Intelligence as a Planetary Scale Process — Adam Frank, David Grinspoon and Sara Walker (Paper, 2022)
Shoulda Been Dead — This American Life (Radio, episode 50)
Where to find Kevin Kelly:
kk.org: https://kk.org
Wired: https://www.wired.com
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Credits
Executive Producers: Nicolas Berggruen, Nathan Gardels, Nils Gilman, Dawn Nakagawa, & Jason Hoch
Producers: Grant Slater, Alex Gardels, & Nathalia Ramos
Associate Producer: Elissa Mardiney
Theme Music: Marcus Bagala
Audio Engineer: Kyle Scott Wilson
Futurology is a production of Studio B and Wavland for the Berggruen Institute in Los Angeles, California.
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