Democracy, A.I., Election, Oh My!

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The latest Life With Machines is live

Why AI Is NOT The Manhattan Project

In the newest episode of Life With Machines, we ask if A.I. can save democracy or destroy it and whether comparisons to world-ending, catastrophic weapons like the atom bomb are doing more harm than good. The core message from our guest Verity Harding is that A.I. needs you! We’re all affected by this technology. It’s influencing all areas of life, and we’re all experts at living our lives, so let’s not cede the future to a narrow way of being and thinking. Verity was early at Google DeepMind, and came to tech from government. She shares some inside stories of the worldviews of A.I. developers and offers surprising historical examples of technologies we’ve managed to influence to serve our humanity, like… I.V.F.??? It’s very timely stuff. But also timeless.

And sign up for the Life With Machines newsletter which has my deeper thoughts, behind-the-scenes, A.I. experiments and more about our experience with the AI co-producer we made named Blair. This week I’ll be sharing how I used A.I. to help me navigate my ballot. Mostly it helped, mostly.

Election-Related

Some news… I’m having a reunion with Brian Williams… on Election Night… on Amazon Prime! Tune in starting 5pm ET as Brian holds America’s hands through the results. Literally my favorite moments on live television were with him when he hosted MSNBC’s 11th Hour. Now I get to join him again along with Jessica Yellin, my Puck colleague Tara Palmeri

If you haven’t been following my socials, I’m stepping up the posts and doing what I can to reach out to folks about this here election we got going on. Sunday I did a rapid post during the heinous Trump rally at Madison Square Garden and last night posted this comparison to the 1939 Nazi rally at that same venue.

baratunde

A post shared by @baratunde

On voting… please do it, and try to plan ahead. The state and local ballot measures and races can require some study, research, discussion, and advanced mathematics. Vote Save America is a resource I found very helpful.

If you have election-related news, angles, suggestions, action items, please share in reply to me, or better, as a comment on this post. And let me know what you think of the new show!