George Zarkadakis

Sure, it's a terrifying thing to imagine.

And yet, we're fascinated by these stories.

Exploring that feeling, the tension between our love of AI and our fear of it, is what this episode is really about.

In a sense, decoding the humans behind the machines.

As an animal, we're a very weak creature.

The only thing that we have is our social structure and our collective and individual minds.

And those minds compel us to extend our capabilities.

And that is, I think, in many ways why, you know, people sort of imagined gods being just like them, only more powerful.

This is George Tsarkadakis.

I have a PhD in AI and I'm actively working in the field over many years.

He also wrote a book all about the history of artificial intelligence from ancient times to present day called In Our Own Image, Will AI Save Us or Destroy Us?

At the heart of this history are a few key questions.

Why do we want to create artificial intelligence?

What would it mean for a machine to become intelligent?

And how would that change our lives?

Most of the questions I don't think we'll be able to answer at this particular point in history.

But I don't think we can resist the temptation of asking them and trying to answer them.

Coming up, we begin at the very beginning, the Big Bang of the human mind.

What is a human?

What is a human?