Ethical Machines

Today I’m talking with Elisha Wiesel, chair of the Elie Wiesel Foundation and former CIO of Goldman Sachs. We talk about why the foundation won’t use AI to recreate his father (Nobel Prizer winner and author of "Night," which recounts his experience in Auschwitz), why he refuses to say what his father would have thought about today’s politics, whether LLMs should show where their ideas come from and whether anyone would care if they did, what the Talmud can teach us about preserving minority opinions and saying “I don’t know,” and what financial models and LLMs get wrong in the same ways.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

I roll my eyes at talk of "AI welfare," the idea that we should take seriously the notion that AI has interests or a well-being that we should take seriously. My guests, Geoff Keeling and Winnie Street, both Fellows at the Institute of Philosophy at University of London and co-authors of “Emerging Questions in AI Welfare," don't think that anything like today's AI models are conscious or have a welfare we need to concern ourselves with. But they do want to take seriously questions about whether they could ever have a welfare, what that would take, how morally costly it would be if we failed to attribute well-being to entities that have one and how costly it would be if we attribute well-being to entities that have none. Buckle up - it's a complex and fascinating discussion.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

We often think of AI companions as bad, or at least suspect. Giada Pistilli, formerly Principal Ethicist at Hugging Face and now at Mistral, wants to test that assumption, and she's done a lot of research to back up her view. In her new book, The Essential Guide to AI Companions, she looks at people who form emotional relationships with chatbots as partners, as therapists, and as stand-ins for parents who have died. We talk about how people end up in these relationships, why most of them weren't looking for one, whether attachment to a chatbot is a problem in itself, and whether chatbot memory should be off by default.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

My guest today is Christian B. Miller, professor of philosophy and author of The Honesty Crisis. Christian's central claim is that technology (AI, social media, etc.) has created conditions where dishonesty is increasingly incentivized and easier to get away with. When you put those two together, you get an honesty crisis.We discuss, as some examples of growing dishonesty, students using LLMs to write papers and passing off the work as their own, romantic relationships with AI and whether having one could constitute cheating, celebrity and influencer culture's relationship to bullshit and self-deception, and the surprising problem of pastors plagiarizing sermons with AI. While the conversation was about an alleged and plausible crisis, it turned out to be a very fun one.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands

Season four kicks off with Paula Goldman, author of the new book, “Manage the Machine: How to Harness Human AI Collaboration at Work,” Paula is also Salesforce’s Chief Ethical and Humane Use Officer. We talk about the expertise pipeline problem, why humans should be "at the help" instead of "in the loop," and the ways responsibility gets murky when dealing with teams comprised of people and AI agents.Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands