Hannah Fry: ‘AI can do some superhuman things – but so can forklifts’
BBC/Curious Films/Rory Langdon The chances are that you think about artificial intelligence far more today than you did five years ago. Since ChatGPT was launched in November 2022, we have become accustomed to interacting with AIs in most spheres of life, from chatbots and smart home tech to banking and healthcare. But such rapid change brings unexpected problems – as mathematician and broadcaster Hannah Fry shows in AI Confidential With Hannah Fry, a new three-part BBC documentary in which she talks to people whose lives have been transformed by the technology. She spoke to New Scientist about how we should view AI, its role in modern mathematics – and why it will upend the global economy. Bethan Ackerley: In the show, you explore what AI is doing to our relationships and sense of reality. Some of this stems from “AI sycophancy” – the idea that these tools give us what we want to hear, not what we need to hear. How does this happen? Hannah Fry: Earlier models were extremely sycophantic. Everything you would write, …

