All posts tagged: uncanny valley podcast

‘Fallout’ Producer Jonathan Nolan on AI: ‘We’re in Such a Frothy Moment’

‘Fallout’ Producer Jonathan Nolan on AI: ‘We’re in Such a Frothy Moment’

Published by skeptic

Jonathan Nolan saw this coming. As a screenwriter, he’s worked on several of his brother Christopher Nolan’s films, from Interstellar to the Dark Knight movies. Partnered with his wife Lisa Joy, he created HBO’s Westworld and executive produced Amazon Prime’s Fallout. But before that, he cut his TV teeth creating Person of Interest, a CBS procedural about a solitary tech billionaire who creates a piece of surveillance software aimed at stopping crime before it happens. It was fiction, but it’s hard not to feel its prescience. With Fallout, now in its second season, Nolan also has his sights on the future. Based on the video game series of the same name, it’s about a postapocalyptic America where everyone must survive in any way they can. It’s also wickedly funny and full of 1950s-era retrofuturism. So, what does Nolan see happening in the coming decades? A lot. For one, he doesn’t think AI is going to replace human filmmakers. In fact, he thinks it could help aspiring directors get a foot in the door. (Though, he …

Silicon Valley Tech Workers Are Campaigning to Get ICE Out of US Cities

Silicon Valley Tech Workers Are Campaigning to Get ICE Out of US Cities

Published by skeptic

The first Trump administration, and the tech industry that stood up to it, are both looking quainter by the day. Here’s one example: In 2017, when President Trump issued a series of executive orders instituting a travel ban on foreigners from certain countries (predominantly Muslim-majority ones), people from across the United States vigorously protested the policy. They included some of tech’s most elite: Google cofounder Sergey Brin, who joined a demonstration at the San Francisco airport; Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who wrote a company-wide email outlining “legal options” that Amazon was considering to fight the ban; and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who took to Instagram to describe his own family’s immigrant roots. How times have changed. On Saturday, hours after federal agents shot and killed ICU nurse Alex Pretti in the streets of Minneapolis, several prominent tech executives attended a private White House screening of Melania, a documentary being released by (of course) Amazon MGM Studios. The timing was not lost on the group of Silicon Valley workers who recently launched ICEout.tech, essentially an open …

‘Uncanny Valley’: Minneapolis Misinformation, TikTok’s New Owners, and Moltbot Hype

‘Uncanny Valley’: Minneapolis Misinformation, TikTok’s New Owners, and Moltbot Hype

Published by skeptic

In today’s episode, hosts Brian Barrett and Zoë Schiffer are joined by Tim Marchman, WIRED’s director of science, politics, and security, to discuss the news of the week—including how far-right influencers spread misinformation in Minneapolis, and why TikTok’s US version is off to a rocky start. Plus, we dive into why some people are currently obsessed with the AI assistant Moltbot. Articles mentioned in this episode: You can follow Brian Barrett on Bluesky at @brbarrett, Zoë Schiffer on Bluesky at @zoeschiffer, and Tim Marchman on Bluesky at @timmarchman. Write to us at uncannyvalley@wired.com. How to Listen You can always listen to this week’s podcast through the audio player on this page, but if you want to subscribe for free to get every episode, here’s how: If you’re on an iPhone or iPad, open the app called Podcasts, or just tap this link. You can also download an app like Overcast or Pocket Casts and search for “uncanny valley.” We’re on Spotify too. Transcript Note: This is an automated transcript, which may contain errors. Brian Barrett: …

‘Uncanny Valley’: Donald Trump’s Davos Drama, AI Midterms, and ChatGPT’s Last Resort

‘Uncanny Valley’: Donald Trump’s Davos Drama, AI Midterms, and ChatGPT’s Last Resort

Published by skeptic

Brian Barrett: Zoë, can you add Chatham House Rules to your list of words that you want to get out of here too? Zoë Schiffer: Yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. In fact, I can. The number of frameworks that people were using to assess certain ideas, and then when I asked what said framework was, you would get a whole other explanation that was based on a different framework. Leah Feiger: Awful. Zoë Schiffer: It was a lot. And I think WIRED is short declarative sentences, which is also the best writing advice I have ever received, shout out to Casey Newton. And I would posit that it’s also good speaking advice. I think if you could say something in a more straightforward way, it will not make you sound dumb. In fact, it may make you sound smart. I think you could probably use the word distinct or independent in place of orthogonal a lot of the time and it would have positive implications on your social life, or at the very least, …

Jimmy Wales Will Never Edit Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Page: He ‘Makes Me Insane’

Jimmy Wales Will Never Edit Donald Trump’s Wikipedia Page: He ‘Makes Me Insane’

Published by skeptic

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales has been called the last decent tech baron. It’s sounds like a flattering label, although one I usually associate more with yacht-dwelling meatheads who feed their herds of cattle homegrown macadamia nuts; the kind of person who can most recently be found wining and dining with the President of the United States and his coterie of MAGA sycophants. Wales, on the other hand, keeps things relatively low-key. Even as the site he founded, Wikipedia, turns 25 years old this month, he seems more interested in fixing his home Wi-Fi than joining the tech elite’s performative power games. He has also spent the past few months promoting a new book, The Seven Rules of Trust, that uses Wikipedia’s overarching strategy and unlikely rise to articulate Wales’ playbook for fixing much of what’s broken in today’s deeply polarized and antagonistic society. On this week’s episode of The Big Interview, Wales and I discussed what it means to build something used by billions of people that’s not optimized for growth at all costs. During our …

Reid Hoffman Wants Silicon Valley to ‘Stand Up’ Against the Trump Administration

Reid Hoffman Wants Silicon Valley to ‘Stand Up’ Against the Trump Administration

Published by skeptic

Reid Hoffman doesn’t do much in half measures. He cofounded LinkedIn, of course, and helped bankroll companies including Meta and Airbnb in their startup days. He has also fashioned himself, via books, podcasts, and other public appearances, as something of a public intellectual—a pro-capitalist philosopher who still insists that tech can be a force for good. Most recently, Hoffman has emerged as one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent defenders of artificial intelligence. His newest book, 2025’s Superagency, makes the case that AI won’t diminish human capacity but will instead amplify it. In our conversation for this week’s episode of The Big Interview, Hoffman readily riffed on AI’s utility for pretty much everything, whether you’re looking for a research assistant or a second opinion on your blood work. Hoffman even relied on AI to make one of the most unconventional—and perhaps uncomfortable, depending on your view of AI-generated creativity—Christmas gifts I’ve heard of lately. (And no, he didn’t get me one.) Whatever you think of Hoffman’s utopian views on AI, credit where due: He’s also a …

Margaret Atwood on Doomscrolling: ‘I Want to Keep Up With the Latest Doom’

Margaret Atwood on Doomscrolling: ‘I Want to Keep Up With the Latest Doom’

Published by skeptic

Well, yes, they can participate in Jordan Peterson discussion groups. But that’s not a very stable platform. But if society is not taking the voices of young men seriously and we are increasingly suppressing the voices and the success of women, I would argue… Yes. Whose voices do you think are being taken seriously? Exactly. Well, I think you’re probably better placed to answer that question than I am. But every time Elon Musk opens his mouth, people take that seriously. So I would say tech bro billionaires are taken seriously. Who else? I don’t know. Are we gonna count, quote, “influencers”? I think a lot of podcasters have pretty devoted followings. But again, it’s very fractured. I think you just nailed it, though, and I’m actually working through this while we talk. Everyone takes someone’s voice seriously. But it is a fractured ecosystem. So we are all looking to a different source of truth. Yeah, that’s true. And that happened at the end of the 19th century with the literary community, which had been …