S1E82 - Mike Elgan - A Cosmopolitan Bon Vivant on being a Gastronomad and Artificial Intelligence

Journalist, blogger, columnist, podcaster, and technology writer Mike Elgan joined us live from Venice to talk about being a temporary local and AI. The dialogue began with Mike explaining the life he lives and wrote about in Gastronomad, a life of constant travel and absorbing different cultures while remote work allows for a livable income and stories are gathered. We moved on to talk about nineteenth century historian Thomas Carlyle’s notion of the mechanical age and how we are presently in it as well as a hierarchical structure based on machinery use. Mike spoke of the use of avatars and Apple Vision Pros and digital twins, all imminent, and he expressed his concern that society is not ready for the adoptions ahead. He spoke of the two sides of AI -- hope in matters of health and communications and the thousands of other ways it can help us as well as skepticism about sci fi created dangers and tons of problems AI will never solve. Mike urged for AI to be seen as non-human and emphasized the need to realize we will never replace the human mind. He touched on prosthetic memory, artificial knowledge, multimodal AI, Meta Ray-Bans, the video mode in AI and digital influencers as well as dangers of artificial and AI generated people. A unique episode brimming with thoughts and ideas!

Biography

Mike Elgan is a journalist, opinion columnist and author who specializes in technology and our changing world. He publishes the newsletter "Machine Society" on Substack, a weekly opinion column for "Computerworld" and also contributes to a variety of other publications. Elgan also wrote the book "Gastronomad: The Art of Living Everywhere and Eating Everything!"

elgan.com
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Conversation recorded on May 17, 2024.