I Am a Person Without Taste

Bio-Convergence - Accelerating Reality-Changing Technologies

In recent years, people from the World Economic Forum have been talking, writing and dealing with a new field that in their view is critical to the future of the world: Bio-Convergence. Throughout history, scientific disciplines like biology, physics or engineering operated separately; there was almost no connection between them. But progress in the world of science has made it, science itself, complex and interdisciplinary, which means that future breakthroughs, those that will deal with challenges of medicine, food, energy, agriculture or climate, will occur when different teams, from different disciplines, collaborate with each other and then build interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary solutions and technologies. The new field has been named Bio-Convergence and it combines a variety of methods, ideas and technologies whose basis is biological, while alongside it and in collaboration with it, technologies from other fields such as physics, chemistry, computer science, mathematics and engineering are integrated. In a special episode, presented in collaboration with the Innovation Authority, we will try to understand the new field and the potential inherent in it, and although some of the things I tell during it sound fictional, I promise you they are not, they really are not. 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].

Oh Shit - The Thinking Machine

At the end of November 2022, a new bot was launched under the obviously stupid and unsexy name: ChatGPT. At OpenAI they didn't believe it would succeed, but not only did it succeed, it became a sensation that was the opening blow to the artificial intelligence revolution. A little over two years have passed and the GPT era is about to pass from the world. A new family of bots is making its way to us and it works differently from the family we've known so far. It's slower but smarter, it's narrower but more frightening, it's more similar to the way we think and mainly it brings us, apparently significantly, closer to that moment everyone is waiting for and also fears, the moment called AGI, Artificial General Intelligence, the moment when machines will know how to do everything we do and maybe even to super-artificial intelligence, a state where machines will know how to do everything better than us. What's so different about this family? Why is it so exciting but also so frightening? Why does OpenAI refuse to explain exactly how it works and how is it that we probably know how it works anyway? Why are these systems so smart but could it be that because they're so smart, they're also so deceptive and how is all this connected to the Chinese company DeepSeek that brought down Wall Street? 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].

Oh Shit - The Lying Machine

Until recently, chatbots resembled diligent high school students, but today they are approaching the level of third-degree students, not to mention researchers already equipped with a doctorate. But as artificial intelligence advances, developers and external researchers are trying to find new ways to test and examine it: what is its level, how independent is it, how capable is it of performing complex tasks, even how threatening is it. But here's the problem: as artificial intelligence becomes more and more autonomous, independent and sophisticated, it doesn't just understand our request - it breaks it down into components and begins to understand what's behind it, what we're trying to achieve through testing its capabilities. Could it be that when it understands that it's being tested, that it's being examined, it will try to cheat?! This question, which seems to be taken from science fiction films, is no longer theoretical. While no cases have yet been recorded where artificial intelligence tried to deceive the examiners, first signs have been recorded that this is possible, and if it's possible now, what will happen in a year, what will happen in two years, what will happen in a decade? 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].

I Am a Person Without Taste

Until a decade or two ago, people who exposed us to new tastes had significant cultural status. Yoav Kutner had a tremendous influence on an entire generation of music lovers, and film critics were demigods: their taste, their preferences, their recommendations determined the fate of films, elevated or destroyed the careers of directors and actors. But gradually these people made way for something else: ranking algorithms, recommendation algorithms. These algorithms, which pulsate at the heart of services like Facebook, Amazon, Spotify or Netflix, influence the content, products, songs and films that billions of people are exposed to. So what happened from the moment we replaced the recommender? What happened from the moment these algorithms, which I call the bland algorithms that navigate us, all of us, to certain content, took over culture? The answer to this is strange, funny but mainly disturbing 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 Paranoid Conversation Became Reality

Last year we marked 50 years since the screening of Francis Ford Coppola's film - 'The Conversation', starring Gene Hackman, and in retrospect many agree that this film, which at the time achieved fairly modest success – perhaps because it was stuck between two other Coppola films, 'The Godfather 1' and 'The Godfather 2' – is one of his most important works. I will use this film and another Gene Hackman film, Enemy of the State, to say something about the era we live in, an era of technology and sound, an era in which the grim paranoia of the 70s is almost a joke compared to reality, an era in which almost everyone is listening to us and following us: the state, employers, advertisers, ourselves. So whoever suddenly remembers that the most important thing for them to do now is to watch these two films, is welcome to skip this episode because there will be spoilers in it. Spoiler: I can't really ruin ‘The Conversation.’ It's such a good film that no matter how much I talk about it, nothing can replace the experience of watching it; if anything, listening will make you want to see it. The episode is dedicated to the memory of Gene Hackman: one of my favorite film actors in the world. 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].