Can Humans Stay Smart in the Age of AI? (David Krakauer, President of the Santa Fe Institute)

Speaker A: You've spoken before about your sort of concern that LLMs act as such a tempting mental prosthetic for people that if we're not careful, and perhaps even if we are careful, can't help but allow it to atrophy our own cognition. Speaker B: I think it's really much more dangerous than people realize. You just have to look at the opioid crisis or the sugar crisis. These are all essentially about easy access to either long-term non-nutritive sources of foods or materials that are addictive. I'm concerned that LLMs in their current incarnation are like sugar cocaine.

Speaker A: The optimistic part of me hopes that we're gonna see people find ways to use LLMs and AI in more complementary way. What is a thinking person's best course of action? Hey, I'm Mario, and this is The Generalist Podcast. Speaker C: As the saying goes, the future is already here. Speaker A: It's just not evenly distributed. Speaker C: Each week I sit down with the founders, investors, researchers, and visionaries who are living in the future to help you see what's coming next and understand it more clearly. Speaker A: Today I'm speaking with David Krakauer, a leading complex systems researcher and the president of the Santa Fe Institute.

David leads one of the world's most unique institutions. Speaker B: Institutions. Speaker A: It's home to a dizzying interdisciplinary collection of scientists, artists, and thinkers united by the mandate to search for order in the complexity of evolving worlds. Speaker B: Institutions. Speaker A: It's home to a dizzying interdisciplinary collection of scientists, artists, and thinkers united by the mandate to search for order in the complexity of evolving worlds. Speaker C: In our conversation, we explore why large language models may not be intelligent at all, the risks of AI usage destroying our cognitive capabilities, the surprising qualities of great minds, and what David's friendship with legendary novelist Cormac McCarthy, taught him about the single-minded pursuit of excellence and the cultivation of unconscious creativity.