Webb Keane and Scott J. Shapiro

Webb Keane is a professor of anthropology at the University of Michigan. Scott J. Shapiro is a professor of law and philosophy at Yale Law School and the founding director of Yale Cybersecurity Lab.

Thursday

Webb Keane and Scott J. Shapiro

Bankrolled: Labour’s new paymasters

From our UK edition

36 min listen

In this week’s cover story, The Spectator’s political editor Katy Balls writes about Labour’s new paymasters – Keir Starmer’s party now receives more money from private donors than it does from trade unions. What do the new donors want, and what does Starmer want from them? Katy joins Will and Lara alongside the writer and Labour supporter Paul Mason. (01:00) Next up, Webb Keane, from the University of Michigan, and Scott Shapiro, from Yale, write in the magazine this week about the dawn of the godbots – you can now chat online to an artificial intelligence that pretends it’s god. Might people soon start outsourcing their ethics to a chatbot? We're joined by Webb and The Spectator’s commissioning editor Mary Wakefield.

Wednesday

Webb Keane and Scott J. Shapiro

Deus ex machina: the dangers of AI godbots

From our UK edition

Something weird is happening in the world of AI. On Jesus-ai.com, you can pose questions to an artificially intelligent Jesus: ‘Ask Jesus AI about any verses in the Bible, law, love, life, truth!’ The app Delphi, named after the Greek oracle, claims to solve your ethical dilemmas. Several bots take on the identity of Krishna to answer your questions about what a good Hindu should do. Meanwhile, a church in Nuremberg recently used ChatGPT in its liturgy – the bot, represented by the avatar of a bearded man, preached that worshippers should not fear death.  Elon Musk put his finger on it: AI is starting to look ‘godlike’. The historian Yuval Noah Harari seems to agree, warning that AI will create new religions.