8 episodes

At some point in the past few years, humanity collided with a new kind of intelligence. And things are getting strange. People are being accused of crimes by algorithms; falling in love with digital beings; pioneering new ways to fight old diseases; turning to machines for comfort in their worst moments, and using artificial intelligence to commit - and hide from - terrible crimes. The Guardian’s Michael Safi investigates the story of a technology so complex that its own creators have no idea what it is thinking, and captures a snapshot of the era when people first made contact with AI

Black Box The Guardian

    • News
    • 5.0 • 5 Ratings

At some point in the past few years, humanity collided with a new kind of intelligence. And things are getting strange. People are being accused of crimes by algorithms; falling in love with digital beings; pioneering new ways to fight old diseases; turning to machines for comfort in their worst moments, and using artificial intelligence to commit - and hide from - terrible crimes. The Guardian’s Michael Safi investigates the story of a technology so complex that its own creators have no idea what it is thinking, and captures a snapshot of the era when people first made contact with AI

    Episode 1 – The connectionists

    Episode 1 – The connectionists

    This is the story of Geoffrey Hinton, a man who set out to understand the brain and ended up working with a group of researchers who invented a technology so powerful that even they don’t truly understand how it works. This is about a collision between two mysterious intelligences – two black boxes – human and artificial. And it’s already having profound consequences

    • 39 min
    Episode 2 – The hunt for ClothOff: the deepfake porn app

    Episode 2 – The hunt for ClothOff: the deepfake porn app

    For the past six months, Guardian journalist Michael Safi has been trying to find out who is behind an AI company that creates deepfakes. Deepfakes that are causing havoc around the world, with police and lawmakers baffled about how to deal with them. And in trying to answer one question, he has been left with a bigger one: is AI going to make it impossible to sort fact from fiction?

    • 45 min
    Episode 3 – Repocalypse now

    Episode 3 – Repocalypse now

    When Eugenia Kuyda created Replika, the AI companion app, she had no idea it would be downloaded millions of times all around the world. The results were more powerful than she could ever have predicted. But so was the backlash

    • 34 min
    Episode 4 – Bing and I

    Episode 4 – Bing and I

    Two stories about the way AI could – in fact, already is – making the world better. In Montana, when Lee Johnson discovered his wife, Yokie, had cancer, he turned to AI – and was surprised by the answers he got. Meanwhile, in Massachusetts Prof Regina Barzilay’s experience with cancer has led her to build an AI system that can detect the disease years before a human

    • 42 min
    Episode 5 – The white mask

    Episode 5 – The white mask

    In January 2020, Robert Williams was arrested by Detroit police for a crime he had not committed. The officers were acting on a tip not from a witness or informant. In fact, not from a person at all

    • 36 min
    Episode 6 – Shut it down?

    Episode 6 – Shut it down?

    For decades, Eliezer Yudkowsky has been trying to warn the world about the dangers of AI. And now people are finally listening to him. But is it too late?

    • 41 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
5 Ratings

5 Ratings

schalkneethling ,

Well worth a listen

This was a great listen. The show looked at all sides of the coin and presented, what felt like, a pretty unbiased view of the good and bad concerning AI.

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