Can humans build artificial intelligence?
In 2010 Hank thought AI would need brain software we don't understand; in 2023 he changed course, expecting a living computer within his lifetime, and in 2026 said humans may not stay the only thinking entity. Since 2022 John has held that computers are nothing like human minds.
Axis: humans can and will build it ... it is far harder than believed or impossible
Positions by date: 9 records in 9 videos. shift and revise mean the position moved; tension — disagreement with the other speaker.
John
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2022-12-06 | first on record | John's biggest worry: computers are nothing like us (we are far more like kangaroos), and as AI improves we may see human consciousness and cognition as digital rather than organic, a big mistake. | AI tells me if AI will write novels. 00:02:55 |
| 2024-08-27 | restate | John calls that a nonsense analogy: computers doing what corporations instruct is fundamentally different from humans doing intellectual labor, though he concedes the point is arguable. | How The Internet Is Rigged 00:00:29 |
Hank
| date | how | position | video |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2010-04-05 | first on record | Hank thinks artificial intelligence would require writing the software that runs our brains, whose complexity we dramatically underestimate and whose workings we don't understand. | Google in your Brain 00:02:10 |
| 2021-08-20 | restate | Hank says the AI's answer on where to start eating a bicycle feels very uncanny valley: it seems to think it knows what being a person is like but doesn't. | Question Tuesday Except I'm an AI 00:02:24 |
| 2023-01-06 | shift | Hank says it seems humans will make a living computer sometime in his lifetime. | After 12 hours in LA I'm a stand-up comic doing ASMR with a side gig as a music promoter 00:02:35 |
| 2023-03-31 | refine | Hank says human history has never had 'counterfeit humans': entities that cannot do everything humans can but seem human, and can pursue goals in unpredictable ways. | The Coming AI Invasion 00:02:05 |
| 2023-04-04 | restate | Hank says an ecological metaphor lets us look ahead: things unlike anything before will travel through society, feeling human but not human and unable to do everything humans can. | April 4, 2023 00:00:00 |
| 2024-08-02 | restate | Hank predicts artificial minds will be a huge part of daily life; he does not know what the relationships will look like, but people will find them normal. | My Letter to the Future 00:02:51 |
| 2026-06-05 | restate | Hank says humans might eventually not be the only thinking entity on the planet, nor the only source of strength or intelligence. | The Things We Don't Discuss 00:10:56 |