ABOUT THIS EPISODE
Jasmine Vojdani—a senior editor at New York Magazine and writer of the newsletter Book Gossip—comes on the show to talk about her piece “The AI Agents Begging Editors to Keep Them Alive” and the wild weird world of AI agents gone rogue—not to commit crimes, but to get published in literary magazines.
Also discussed: how literary prizes are at the front line of AI plagiarism scandals, Francesca’s personal ethical journey with the NFL, digital sugar babies, whether you can still use Covid as an excuse for why you’re canceling plans, mathematicians crying and reading Ecclesiastes, when Big AI comes for their IP rights, is there virtue in abstaining from AI—and Francesca’s party line on maintaining the purity of her mind, “there is nothing new under the sun,” the unfolding spam apocalypse, mocking people who are on their phones all the time is an adaptive behavior, France is always ten years behind the US in terms of phone addiction, and the Big Question: what does it mean if our lives are built around the meaning of our labour, and our labor no longer has any value?
Referenced:
The Daily episode about crying mathematician
Ezra Klein’s podcast on relating to AI
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