Technological Futures: A Conversation - Notes - e-flux

This is a conversation between Agnieszka Kurant and Ted Chiang on technological futures, covering AI, labor, energy and culture. Chiang argues that large language models trained on their own output will likely prove a technological dead end, and that the bigger risk is that they degrade the web as a usable source of information. On AI and actors, Chiang says the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA won significant restrictions on generative AI, and that actors must grant permission before their likeness is used in a digital performance. On consciousness, Chiang suspects actual intelligence requires consciousness, and that living things experiencing blocked avoidance of negative stimuli is reasonably called suffering.