Artificial intelligence is fundamentally reshaping our relationship with knowledge. Since humans started standing upright and talking to each other, we’ve found our way to wisdom through disagreement and debate.
But in the age of AI, our sages are machines we program ourselves, models that spit out the information we already have, reflecting our biases and our blind spots. What happens to the truth when we no longer wrestle with it, and only receive it passively through ultra-intelligent machines?
Last Thursday, 900 people convened in San Francisco for a debate that asked: Will the truth survive artificial intelligence? Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas and AI “godmother” Fei-Fei Li argued that this technology will improve our understanding of the world. They faced off against computer scientist Jaron Lanier and author Nicholas Carr, who argued that it would do just the opposite. The Free Press’s founder, Bari Weiss, moderated. We’re proud to have partnered with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), the nation’s leading free speech defender, for this latest live debate.
Legendary comedian Colin Quinn kicked off the evening, shrugging off concerns about AI and noting that the internet has already long disrupted our relationship with the truth. “Google stole all the people in your life. Like that one friend you went to for legal advice. They weren’t a lawyer, they didn’t have any legal knowledge, but they’d give you a confident answer,” he quipped. “Before Waze and Google Maps, when you were lost, you’d sit in the back of the car and watch the disintegration of your parents’ marriage in real time.”
At the beginning of the debate, 68 percent of the live audience voted for AI optimism, affirming that the truth will survive artificial intelligence.
In her opening statement, Li emphasized that all life-changing technological innovations bear some risks, but that these risks are manageable: “Yes, [technology] has negative consequences, no matter how well-intended. Fires burn, cars have fatal crashes, printed books can spread lies, and medicine can have fatal side effects,” she said. “What AI does to the truth is up to us, not AI.”
Lanier agreed that it’s up to humans to protect the truth in the age of AI, but was less optimistic that we will do so: “The issue with AI is not the AI. It’s not the large language model. It’s the concentration of power and wealth around who owns it,” he said. “You have to look at the big system, including the people, the money, the business, the society, the psychology, the mythmaking, the politics.”
Throughout the night, the debaters dove into the weeds on Silicon Valley business models, AI’s effect on education and its potential to discourage deep learning, open-source as a way to ensure transparency, and much more. By the end of the night, Lanier and Carr were able to convince 23 percent of the audience to switch to their side, changing more minds than their opponents, and winning the night for the pessimists.
Josh Vann, 27, traveled up from Los Angeles with his fiancée for the debate. “I expected a battle of utopianism versus doomsaying,” he said. “But despite the debaters’ disagreements, it was a really nuanced conversation about AI and all of its complexities.”
For those of you who weren’t able to join us, you can listen to the debate here, or wherever you get your podcasts:
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