Transcript for Interview with Brendan McCord on Autonomy and AI

An Interview with Brendan McCord on Autonomy and AI.

0. Introduction

Johnathan Bi: One of my friends uses ChatGPT for hours every day, not just as a search engine, but as an operating system for his life. He asks it where he should eat, what he should text girls on dating apps. He gets up every day and has ChatGPT tell him what to do. My friend does this not because he's incompetent or stupid, he's one of the smartest people I know, but because ChatGPT already knows so much about him that the advice is actually getting quite good. The restaurants that it recommends, for example, are already better than the ones that he can find for himself. My friend is not alone. Gen Z, Gen Alpha are increasingly using AI as a holistic operating system to which they offload all of their decisions onto. And Brendan McCord argues that this kind of offloading is the real danger of AI that no one is talking about. In this interview, you'll learn why human autonomy is important, how AI threatens it, and how to harness the power of AI without forming an unhealthy dependency. My name is Jonathan Bi, Brendan and I run Cosmos together to deliver educational programs, fund research, and build AI startups that enhance human flourishing. Both of us have a background in philosophy and engineering, and we believe that it's important to combine the two if we are to build actually good AI systems. If you want to join our ecosystem of philosopher-builders, you can find roles we're hiring for, events we're hosting, and other ways to get involved on johnathanbi.com/cosmos. Without further ado, Brendan McCord.

1. Against the Pessimists: EA, Longtermism, X-Risk

Johnathan Bi: So Brendan, today we're going to talk about autonomy, which is a risk, but also an opportunity that most people who are building in AI even for their entire lives are not really focused on. But first, I want to clear the ground and talk about what people are worried about. So there are very mature and developed schools of philosophy in the Valley, the accelerationists, the effective altruists, the X-risk people, and you argue that they're all missing something essential about AI development. Why is that? And give us an overview of these schools.