From the Tom Woods Letter:
Try this world on for size:
Terrifying images of atrocities start coming in from Country X. Country X has been slaughtering people of Nationality Y. We have all kinds of photographs, video clips, different camera angles, and so on.
It’s all so horrifying that Country Y decides to declare war on Country X.
And yet:
The whole thing is fake.
The video footage, the photographs, all of it, is a mere phantom generated by AI.
Will we be able to trust anything coming to us online, or indeed even in video and audio, when AI can mimic not just our voices but also our mannerisms and other idiosyncracies?
That world is coming, and much faster than we think.
And yet there are obvious benefits — quite extraordinary ones, if we’re being honest — of AI.
For instance, after returning from my February trip to Spain, I opened up ChatGPT and described to it certain situations that had occurred and what I had said in response to them in Spanish. I know I had been understood, but I wanted to be sure my Spanish had been perfect, and I also wanted to evaluate ChatGPT as a potential tool in foreign-language learning.
In each case, ChatGPT told me my Spanish had been correct, but also offered very subtle improvements. It told me, for instance, that in one case I had used a more formal verb than people normally use in spoken conversation.
I can now get that level of one-on-one instruction and guidance at any time of day or night.
My brilliant friend Steve Patterson said it will be possible before we know it to speak documentaries into existence. You and I don’t have the money or the skills or the time necessary to make documentaries — but what if we could simply describe what we want to see, and it’s created for us?
There are so many considerations here. What about job losses? Are there privacy concerns? Could AI in fact destroy mankind, as a handful of people are genuinely warning?
The subject fascinates me, and one of the benefits of having a podcast is that you can talk about things that fascinate you.
This genie isn’t going back inside the lamp, my friend, so we need to understand what’s coming.
I hope you enjoy my discussion on episode #2324 of the Tom Woods Show:
https://tomwoods.com/ep-2324-artificial-intelligence-promise-and-perils/
