Duet with the Machine

In the offices of venture capital startup betaworks, philosopher David Chalmers, author Steven Johnson, and betaworks CEO John Borthwick speculated on the rapidly developing paths towards human-level artificial intelligence. Referencing Chalmers’s and Andy Clark’s extended mind thesis from 1998, Johnson advocated for creatives to embrace “working in a duet with the machine.” When asked about the links between virtual spaces and AI, Borthwick suggested that they are “the places [where] we are going to first meet other forms of intelligence.” Citing the earliest failed attempts at human flight, which analogically reproduced flapping wings, the group predicted that the technology that gives rise to an AI worthy of the name might not resemble the biological structures of human or animal intelligence. “It might be more simple than we thought,” mused moderator Rufus Griscom. But Chalmers tempered the enthusiasm of his co-panelists: “The things that excite me the most are the same things that scare me the most. I have infinite excitement and infinite fears. Everyone should concede there is a risk.”