Jaron Lanier on The AI future where humans get paid to be creative

Most AI futures give us two options: mass unemployment, or a government handout to soften the blow. But what if there’s a third option, one centered on completely new categories of creative work that don’t yet exist, where people get paid for contributing to AI rather than replaced by it?

In this episode, we talk with Jaron Lanier, pioneer of virtual reality and scientist at Microsoft Research. He proposes a radically different way of thinking about AI, and unpacks its consequences from AI safety to the future of the economy.

We touch on:

• The case for thinking of AI not as an alien intelligence, but rather as a collaboration of human data
• How this reframe helps you understand the failures of current AI systems, and why so many of the industry’s most powerful figures seem to be losing their grip on reality
• A practical approach to AI safety inspired by multi-factor authentication in cybersecurity
• Why universal basic income is unstable, and why a creativity economy (where people earn from their contributions to AI) could be a better way of distributing the benefits of AI
• How to be an optimist about technological progress while acknowledging the risks and being critical of certain developments
• Why history gives us the most rational grounds for optimism about our future with AI