Cal Newport· Host0:00
The last three years have been sort of exhausting for me. You know, as a computer scientist and a technology commentator, I was excited by ChatGPT when it was first released. I mean, the effectiveness of generative AI at both understanding and producing structured language was cool and unexpected. It was sort of like when you first saw that, that pinch-to-zoom feature on an early iPhone. So it seemed self-evident to me that, hey, with enough experimentation, we would for sure find some impressive applications for large language models, and I was curious to learn what they would be. But then almost immediately, the discourse surrounding AI became cloaked in a mantle of dread and hype. A few months after ChatGPT's launch, for example, Yuval Harari, Tristan Harris, and Azaraskia published an alarming New York Times op-ed about what the arrival of this tool foretold. Here's what they wrote: "AI's new mastery of language means it can now hack and manipulate the operating system of civilization. By gaining mastery of language, AI is seizing the master key to civilization from bank vaults to holy sepulchers." Um, later in the article, those authors predicted by twenty twenty-eight, the US presidential race might no longer be run by humans. And then perhaps most notably in their conclusion, the authors declared, "We have summoned an alien intelligence." Now, the-- at the time, I remember that, that seemed out of proportion with how large

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