The CPX team freaks out about AI, explores stories of “efficiency” run amok, and probes our tech utopias.
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The apocalypse will be ... boring.
Or so says Charlie Warzel, tech journalist for The Atlantic. He means that AI won’t put you out of a job or take over the world, so much as overstuff your inbox and give you more mind-numbing tasks to complete.
Other people in the know about AI are less optimistic. Geoffrey Hinton, the “godfather” of AI who resigned from Google in May, Sam Altman, the CEO of the company behind ChatGPT, and others have sounded the alarm: AI is progressing too quickly, no one knows exactly how it works, and without careful regulation it will upend life as we know it.
There are a lot of unknowns where technology is concerned. One thing we do know, though, is it makes for great TV, and stories and books.
In this edition of Seen & Heard, the CPX team debriefs on what they’ve been watching and reading.
Natasha takes us through the twists and turns of Amazon Prime’s Mrs Davis, a “bonkers” show about a nun facing off against Mrs Davis, the all-knowing algorithm against whom she has a grudge.
Simon looks at the way George Saunders’ short story “Escape from Spiderhead” (and the Spiderhead film based on it) explores how “the greater good” is used to justify all kinds of evils.
Justine looks closer at the digital utopia on offer in Grace Chan’s speculative novel Every Version of You, and finds that its promise of agelessness, no death, no suffering, and no body is basically heaven without God.
Explore:
ABC article on Replika
Every Version of You by Grace Chan
Escape From Spiderhead by George Saunders (via The New Yorker)
Mrs Davis trailer
Her and a Disembodied Future by Mark Stephens
Andy Crouch’s Richard Johnson Lecture on why technology keeps disappointing us and Q&A
Charlie Warzel: Here’s how AI will come for your job
Miroslav Volf - ReThinking Talk 1: Faith and Violence
Life and Faith: Francis Spufford
Life and Faith: Katherine Leary Alsdorf
Life and Faith: Aboriginal Spirituality
Life and Faith: Lies, Love and Hitler
Life and Faith: Australia's Christian Heritage
Life and Faith: Divergent
Life and Faith: Noah
Life and Faith: Greg Lake
Life and Faith: 12 Years a Slave and the Wolf of Wall Street
Life and Faith: The Armstrong Lie
Life and Faith: Longing for Home
Life and Faith: Technopoly
Life and Faith: Any room for God at school?
Life and Faith: Christianity and Persecution
Life and Faith: Forgiveness
Life and Faith: The Great Bible Swindle
Life and Faith: Tim Winton
Life and Faith: Peter Hitchens Part II
Life and Faith: Peter Hitchens
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