AI is still a bit disappointing but at least it uses a lot of energy. A talk with Karen Hao and Ben Recht

Hello!

Today, we talk to two people who have been thinking about reporting about AI for quite a long time: Repeat guest Ben Recht, a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Berkeley and Karen Hao, a journalist who has written an excellent series of pieces for the Atlantic. We talk to Ben about SORA, OpenAI’s video generator that only exists in trailer form so far and what might happen if it’s actually good. (We don’t think it’ll be good. At least yet.) And then we talk some philosophy.

There’s also a surprise at the start of the show.

And then we talk to Karen about the massive amount of water and energy that AI might consume in the near future and why everyone seems to want massive, cumbersome and expense-heavy giant tools and not the smaller, more streamlined tools that might actually create something of use.

Links:

SORA announcement

Karen’s articles on AI for the MIT Technology Review (really good)

…and her more recent (also really good) work for the Atlantic.

thank you!