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The Most Human Human

In 1991, at a museum in Boston, judges sat at keyboards and typed back and forth with strangers. Some of them people, some of them machines, trying to tell which was which. A prize went to the computer that seemed most convincingly human. But there was a second prize given that night, and it’s the one worth remembering: an award for the human being who most convinced the judges they were, in fact, human. They called it the Most Human Human. Thirty years later, only one of those contests is still being run, and it’s being run by the entire technology industry. Because there’s a school of thought at the center of Silicon Valley that isn’t interested in passing as human. It looks at the human mind and body, and sees a rough draft. In the seventh episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, an exploration of the ideologies driving the race to build god-like AI, we map a worldview that goes by an unlovely acronym: TESCREAL. Going letter by letter: Transhumanism, Extropianism, Singularitarianism, Cosmism, Rationalism, Effective Altruism, and Longtermism — we ask where these beliefs came from, what they promise, and who they leave behind.  Our guide is philosopher Émile Torres, who coined the term with computer scientist Timnit Gebru, and who was once a true believer, until something broke the spell. Joined by scholar Ed Simon discussing why the singularity is a technological rapture with a calculated arrival date; AI researcher Dan Faggella, a self-described cosmist whose definition of value reaches clean past our own species; and eschatologist Judith Wolfe on why the oldest apocalyptic tradition in the West looked at the fragile human body and called it good.  Also with us: psychoanalyst Dr. Amy Levy, who argues the transhumanists may be the honest ones; author Dorian Lynskey, who follows effective altruism from mosquito nets to a philosophy that can justify almost anything; and political theorists Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray, returning from our episodes on prepping to connect the doomsday bunker to the rocket to Mars. Along the way: a rationalist thought experiment so disturbing its own forum banned it for years, an alleged cult with six deaths behind it, and the strangest celebrity origin story in modern technology. The Most Human Human is the seventh episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us, or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon — hear complete conversations with Dan Faggella, Émile Torres, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia  https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia [https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia]  https://agoricmedia.substack.com/  [https://www.agoricmedia.com/] www.agoricmedia.com [https://www.agoricmedia.com/] Wondermind  https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/  https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady  https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/  https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests:  Émile Torres - Philosopher - https://www.realtimetechpocalypse.com/ Ed Simon - Carnegie Mellon University - The Dove and the Dragon: A Cultural History of the Apocalypse - https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb [https://amzn.to/4dVMYQb] Dan Faggella - Founder and Head of Research, Emerj Artificial Intelligence Research — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-trajectory/id1739255954  Judith Wolfe - Professor of Philosophical Theology, University of St Andrews —  https://amzn.to/4uzEbcw [https://amzn.to/4uzEbcw] Dr. Amy Levy - Psychoanalyst / Co-Chair, American Psychoanalytic Association’s Council on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 [https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5] Dorian Lynskey - Journalist and Author of Everything Must Go: The Stories We Tell About the End of the World - https://amzn.to/42ISDD1 [https://amzn.to/42ISDD1] Robert Kirsch - Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB  Emily Ray - Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Other works and things mentioned in this episode:  Suspicious Minds: AI and Psychosis — https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000732288102 Brian Christian - The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us About What It Means to Be Alive — https://amzn.to/4hnq1Yj [https://amzn.to/4hnq1Yj] Ray Kurzweil - The Singularity Is Near / The Singularity Is Nearer — https://amzn.to/4vN9aBZ [https://amzn.to/4vN9aBZ]  Hans Moravec - Mind Children: The Future of Robot and Human Intelligence — https://amzn.to/4h9fakX [https://amzn.to/4h9fakX] William MacAskill - What We Owe the Future — https://amzn.to/4fqeepB [https://amzn.to/4fqeepB] Amanda Askell — Anthropic’s in-house philosopher, who helps shape Claude’s character — https://askell.io/  PANTHEON (2022, animated series) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pantheon_(TV_series)  Roko’s Basilisk / LessWrong — the thought experiment its own forum banned — https://www.lesswrong.com/tag/rokos-basilisk  The Zizians — reporting on the group and the deaths linked to it — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zizians  Neuralink — https://neuralink.com/  Fredric Jameson — Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism – https://amzn.to/4fuHyLC [https://amzn.to/4fuHyLC] As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shammami Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan, Garrett Schultz Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Mike Mulliniks, Edward Broughton, Backlot Studios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Decameron Days (Part Two)

It’s a story we all know. A man hears a warning no one else can hear: the rain is coming, enough rain to end the world. So he builds a boat. His neighbors laugh at him — right up until it starts raining and doesn’t stop. Until that moment, Noah is just a madman with a boat. Last fall, in the Minnesota wilderness, we stood on 240 acres and watched a man dig a lake around an island, with a shelter beneath it built to survive a nuclear blast a mile away. He lies awake at night asking whether he’s today’s Noah. But the flood he fears isn’t rain. It’s a power outage that never ends. That’s where we begin. In the sixth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse — the conclusion of our two-part exploration of doomsday prepping — we ask what the modern ark actually is, what it costs, and what building one does to the person holding the shovel. Joined by Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: Building for the End Times, who came out of writing the definitive book on bunkers a changed man — he left the city, bought five acres in the Mojave, and joined a community of preppers who share water, equipment, and bonfires. And by Al Corbi, who spent more than two decades designing security for the Department of Justice and now builds fortified estates for the ultra-wealthy — including a compound with a defensive lake, autonomous water cannons, and a tunnel that talks to intruders before it stops being polite. One of the first real-world adaptations of AI security, in a shelter built against the fear of AI. Also with us: Casey Kelly, author of Apocalypse Man, on why prepping is tangled up with modern masculinity, nostalgia, and Freud’s death drive; and psychiatrist Dr. Joel Gold, who asks the question at the center of the episode — where does being wisely protective end, and paranoia begin? Political theorists Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray return from Part One to answer whether AI will end the world (and what ten gallons of water has to do with it). Decameron Days (Part Two) is the sixth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that’s already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com NEW: Our full long-form expert interviews are now available ad-free on Patreon — hear complete conversations with Dr. Amy Levy, Timothy Morton, the Gold brothers, and more: https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia [https://www.patreon.com/cw/AgoricMedia] A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: Bradley Garrett - Honorary Fellow, University of Sydney School of Geosciences / Author, Bunker: Building for the End Times — https://amzn.to/4awl3V2 [https://amzn.to/4awl3V2] Al Corbi - Founder and President, SAFE (Strategic Armored & Fortified Environments) — https://safe-us.com/ [https://safe-us.com/] Casey Kelly - Professor of Rhetoric and Public Culture, University of Nebraska / Author, Apocalypse Man — https://amzn.to/43fA8Gr [https://amzn.to/43fA8Gr] Dr. Joel Gold - Psychiatrist / Co-author, Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness — https://amzn.to/4upyA8U [https://amzn.to/4upyA8U] Robert Kirsch - Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB Emily Ray - Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB And our anonymous island builder — whose identity (and voice) we’ve protected. Other works and things mentioned in this episode: Decameron Days (Part One) — the first half of this story: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000775151032 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000775151032] Garrett M. Graff - Raven Rock: The Story of the U.S. Government’s Secret Plan to Save Itself — https://amzn.to/4fa7MTG [https://amzn.to/4fa7MTG] James William Gibson - Warrior Dreams: Paramilitary Culture in Post-Vietnam America — https://amzn.to/4vfWCCJ [https://amzn.to/4vfWCCJ] Take Shelter (2011, dir. Jeff Nichols) — https://amzn.to/4f53bSq [https://amzn.to/4f53bSq] Fallout — the game series and TV show (Vault-Tec is real, it’s in Kansas) — https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki [https://fallout.wiki/wiki/Fallout_Wiki] The Carrington Event of 1859 — the solar storm that set telegraphs on fire: https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/space-weather/what-was-the-carrington-event [https://www.nesdis.noaa.gov/about/k-12-education/space-weather/what-was-the-carrington-event] FPV kamikaze drones in Ukraine — the video referenced in the episode: https://youtu.be/IO4_fzKiycA?si=htL7A5d7PssZ8x-F Sam Altman on bunkers — This Past Weekend with Theo Von: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kVYLArmg8A [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4kVYLArmg8A] Sigmund Freud -The Death Drive, from our earlier episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097] As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests’ books through these links, you’re supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Sound and Camera: Mike Mulliniks, Elliot Uriah See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Decameron Days (Part One)

In 1350, as the bubonic plague burned through Florence, the writer Giovanni Boccaccio imagined ten young people retreating to a villa outside the city. For ten days, they told each other stories — not to escape the world, but to make sense of a world that had stopped making sense. He called it The Decameron. Back then, people understood that the way you survived a calamity was to gather together, hold tight, and not lose the thread. The people in this episode are doing something different. They're building bunkers. That's where we begin. In the fifth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we ask a question that turns out not to have an obvious answer: what does it mean to prepare for the end of the world? We start underground. Two thousand years ago, the people of Cappadocia in modern-day Turkey excavated a city eighteen levels deep into the earth, capable of sheltering twenty thousand people, sealed from the inside by rolling stones the size of millstones. They built it because invasions — Persian, Arab, Roman — were a recurring feature of life there for centuries. The apocalypse wasn't a thought experiment to them. It was Tuesday. Joined by Bradley Garrett, author of Bunker: Building for the End Times and honorary fellow at the University of Sydney, who has spent years researching the people building for catastrophe around the world. What he found surprised him. Also with us: Robert Kirsch and Emily Ray, political theorists and co-authors of Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States, who trace the long, strange arc of American prepping — from westward expansion and the Boy Scout movement's anxiety about a vanishing frontier, through the Cold War Gaither Report, a secret government study that concluded most Americans would die in a nuclear exchange, that Congress would have blast shelters, and that everyone else could shop their way to safety. Neoliberalism, it turns out, didn't just shape the economy. It shaped who we think deserves to survive. And Dr. Michael Ferguson, director of the Harvard Neurospirituality Lab, who draws the precise distinction the AI debate desperately needs: the difference between mind, consciousness, and intelligence. Three words that get used interchangeably — and shouldn't. When Emily Ray argues that AI has none of the above, we ask a neuroscientist. His answer might surprise you. Decameron Days (Part One) is the fifth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that's already happening inside us. Decameron Days (Part Two) drops next week. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials: Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ www.agoricmedia.com Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ https://www.wondermind.com/ Host and Creator: Sean King O'Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ Guests: * Bradley Garrett - Honorary Fellow, University of Sydney School of Geosciences / Author, Bunker: Building for the End Times — https://amzn.to/4awl3V2 [https://amzn.to/4awl3V2] * Robert Kirsch - assistant professor in the School of Applied Professional Studies at Arizona State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB [https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB] * Emily Ray - associate professor of political science at Sonoma State University / Co-author, Be Prepared: Doomsday Prepping in the United States — https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB [https://amzn.to/3SzUnwB] * Dr. Michael Ferguson - Director, Harvard Neurospirituality Lab: https://neuromichael.com/ [https://neuromichael.com/] Other works mentioned in this episode: * Giovanni Boccaccio - The Decameron — https://amzn.to/4eFwcW7 [https://amzn.to/4eFwcW7] * Robert Macfarlane - Underland — https://amzn.to/4eZwtlF [https://amzn.to/4eZwtlF] * Toby Ord - The Precipice — https://amzn.to/44CDW5g [https://amzn.to/44CDW5g] * Adam Smith - The Wealth of Nations — https://amzn.to/4p40LbE [https://amzn.to/4p40LbE] * "The Californian Ideology" — essay — https://monoskop.org/images/d/dc/Barbrook_Richard_Cameron_Andy_1996_The_Californian_Ideology.pdf [https://monoskop.org/images/d/dc/Barbrook_Richard_Cameron_Andy_1996_The_Californian_Ideology.pdf] * The Gaither Report: Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age (1957) — declassified 1973 — https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB139/nitze02.pdf [https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB139/nitze02.pdf] * Justin Sinclair / Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — Towards a Bang or a Whimper: Associations between the Doomsday Clock and Trust in US Institutions — https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-67474-001 [https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2027-67474-001] * Andrew Szasz - "Shop Your Way to Safety" — referenced by Robert Kirsch — https://amzn.to/3QOtUea [https://amzn.to/3QOtUea] * JFK civil defense speech (1961) — https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-urgent-national-needs [https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/special-message-the-congress-urgent-national-needs] As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Mike Regan Graphics: Semi:Formal Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Elliot Uriah See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

Lotus Eaters

In Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus's men ate the lotus flower, they forgot everything — who they were, where they'd come from, why any of it mattered. There was no pain, no urgency, no desire to leave. Just the soft obliteration of the self through ease. Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships by force. The lotus is no longer a flower. It's in your pocket. That's where we begin. In the fourth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we ask the question no one wants to ask: what if the most dangerous thing AI is doing isn't some future robot war — what if it's the quiet, ongoing rot of our attention, our capacity for meaning, and our ability to notice anything at all? The brain rot apocalypse is not coming. It may already be here. Joined by Nate Sharadin of the Center for AI Safety, who argues AI is poised to create a cognitive "bifurcation" in humanity — leaving many of us enfeebled in WALL-E chairs while a smaller group retains the skills to author their own lives, and Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus, who explains that our attention hasn't simply deteriorated — it's been systematically stolen, by design, by ten thousand engineers paid to undermine our self-control. Also with us: Dr. Amy Levy, chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association's AI commission, who asks whether a more docile, collectively minded humanity might actually be Freud's concept of Eros in action, and Sameer Gupta of EvenPlay, who argues that AI is not being trained on our best intentions — it's being trained on slot machines, gambling, and the shadow self we don't like admitting to. Lotus Eaters is the fourth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that's already happening inside us. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com [https://agoricmedia.substack.com/] A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ [https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/] https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia [https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia] https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia [https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia] https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ [https://agoricmedia.substack.com/] www.agoricmedia.com [http://www.agoricmedia.com/] Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ [https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/] https://www.wondermind.com/ [https://www.wondermind.com/] Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ [https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/] https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ [https://seankingogrady.substack.com/] Guests: - Nate Sharadin - Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety - https://sharadin.com/ [https://sharadin.com/] - Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV [https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV] - Dr. Amy Levy - Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5 [https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5] - Sameer Gupta - Co-Founder, EvenPlay - https://www.evenplay.com/ [https://www.evenplay.com/] Other works mentioned in this episode:  Homer’s The Odyssey - https://amzn.to/3StWemv [https://amzn.to/3StWemv] Max Tegmark - Life 3.0 - https://amzn.to/4uTOI1C [https://amzn.to/4uTOI1C] Alan Watts - Eastern Philosophy Lecture Series -  https://amzn.to/4g4MJEe [https://amzn.to/4g4MJEe] Wall-E - https://amzn.to/4eCl0tr [https://amzn.to/4eCl0tr] Elizier Yudkowski -  “There is no fire alarm for artificial intelligence” -  https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/ [https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/] Oxford Word of the Year - https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/ [https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/] And here's our own episode where we talk about Freud's Death Drive: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097 [https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097] As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Marc LaRochelle Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Mike Mulliniks, James Goldman See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].

The Opera Game

In 1858, chess prodigy Paul Morphy played the most famous game in history, in an opera box in Paris, mid-performance. He announced his victory to the crowd before anyone could see how he'd win. Because he could see the board in a way no one else could, he knew for certain he'd already won just a few moves into the game. That unknowability is the worst fear of AI doomers: that we're building something that has already won, and we'll never know how. This episode was supposed to be about the literal mechanics of AI killing us. It turned out to be about something stranger: why the people building this technology appear to genuinely believe it might destroy the world — and why that belief hasn't stopped a single one of them. Justin Sinclair writes for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists — the group who calibrates the Doomsday Clock, currently set at 85 seconds to midnight, the closest it's ever been to the apocalypse. Malo Bourgon is CEO of MIRI, the organization that coined the term "AI alignment." Ted Tremper spent two and a half years making a documentary about this, interviewing over 140 people — including three of the five frontier model AI CEOs. Their collective verdict on whether AI will actually cause the apocalypse: maybe. And somehow, that's the most terrifying answer they could have given. The Opera Game is the third episode of an investigation into humanity's oldest fear, and whether artificial intelligence has finally given us reason to take it seriously. We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com [https://agoricmedia.substack.com/] A Wondermind and Agoric Media Production Socials:  Agoric Media https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/ [https://www.instagram.com/agoricmedia/] https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia [https://www.youtube.com/@agoricmedia] https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia [https://www.tiktok.com/@agoricmedia] https://agoricmedia.substack.com/ [https://agoricmedia.substack.com/] www.agoricmedia.com [http://www.agoricmedia.com/] Wondermind https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/ [https://www.instagram.com/officialwondermind/] https://www.wondermind.com/ [https://www.wondermind.com/] Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/ [https://www.instagram.com/seankingogrady/] https://seankingogrady.substack.com/ [https://seankingogrady.substack.com/] Guests: - Ian Gold, PhD - Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Professor of Psychiatry, McGill and co-author of Suspicious Minds: How Culture Shapes Madness: https://amzn.to/4upyA8U [https://amzn.to/4upyA8U] - Malo Bourgon - CEO, Machine Intelligence Research Institute - https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/ [https://intelligence.org/team/malo-bourgon/] - Justin Sinclair, PhD - Clinical Psychologist, Writer for the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists - https://www.drjustinsinclair.com/background.html [https://www.drjustinsinclair.com/background.html] - Ted Tremper - Film Producer - https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist [https://www.focusfeatures.com/the-ai-doc-or-how-i-became-an-apocaloptimist] - Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV [https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV] Other works mentioned in this episode:  Empire of AI by Karen Hao: https://amzn.to/4uKwekf [https://amzn.to/4uKwekf] If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies by Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares: https://amzn.to/49gpPW1 [https://amzn.to/49gpPW1] The Techno Optimist Manifesto by Marc Andreessen: https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/ [https://a16z.com/the-techno-optimist-manifesto/] The Doomsday Clock: thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock [https://thebulletin.org/doomsday-clock] The Opera Game: https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1233404 [https://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1233404] The Paperclip Maximizer by Nick Bostrom: https://aicorespot.io/the-paperclip-maximiser/ [https://aicorespot.io/the-paperclip-maximiser/] As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too. This episode was made by: Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi Produced by: Jesse Ford Editor: David Justin Martin  Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford Sound Mix: Scott Loudon Graphics: Semi:Formal  Film/TV PR: Emma Griffiths PR Podcast PR: Tink Media (Wil Williams and Shreya Sharma) Wondermind Chief of Staff: Emma Wright Additional Camera and Audio: Archetype Studios See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy [https://art19.com/privacy] and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info [https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info].