Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with Sam Altman. Listen wher

Transcript: Ezra Klein Interviews Sam Altman

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2021-06-14 19:00:10

Every Tuesday and Friday, Ezra Klein invites you into a conversation about something that matters, like today’s episode with Sam Altman. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

So a few months ago, I came across this really fascinating essay by Sam Altman called “Moore’s Law for Everything.” Altman is the C.E.O. of OpenAI, which is one of the biggest and most interesting of the companies trying to create general purpose artificial intelligence. So an A.I. that can improve itself and learn and actually do all sorts of things in the economy and in the world.

I’ve met him a few times. And he is a believer. He sees a world coming. He believes he is bringing a world into existence that is really, really different than the one you and I know and that it’s going to happen fast. And who knows, maybe he’s right. But what caught my eye about this essay, “Moore’s Law for Everything,” is Altman’s effort to try and imagine the political consequences of true artificial intelligence and the policies that could decide whether it ushers in utopia or dystopia.

So Moore’s law is the observation that the number of transistors on microchips doubles every two years. Or to put it more simply, that computer power has been growing exponentially for decades now. But prices have actually been falling. That’s not been the case for housing, or health care, or higher education. But what if it was? Altman’s argument is that true A.I. could get us closer to Moore’s law for everything. It can make everything better, even as it makes everything cheaper.

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