The Human Cost of AI: Money, Sex, and Tools

**Lee C. Camp** (0:02)
I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.

**Josh Brake** (0:09)
If we should know anything from what we're seeing from Big Tech is like, their goal is to make the things stickier, and they know that one of the best ways to do that is to hack your psychology.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:20)
Today, we're bringing you part one of our two-part series, The Human Cost of AI.

**Rumman Chowdhury** (0:26)
People seem surprised every time a for-profit organization chooses profit over people, and, you know, the cynical reality is, why would they?

**Lee C. Camp** (0:36)
Over the next two episodes, I'll be bringing you my conversations with scholars and tech experts about the forces driving the AI revolution and the ways tech has the power to shape not just our future, but ourselves.

**Josh Brake** (0:48)
It doesn't have will or agency or telos, but as soon as you as a person pick it up, the design of that tool shapes your will and agency in a certain direction.

**Lee C. Camp** (0:57)
All coming right up. Hey, friend, if you didn't know, I started a newsletter a while back that comes out every two weeks. I've been delighted to hear from so many of you about positive response to the newsletter. We call it the No Small Endeavor Notebook, where I riff on themes and topics related to our podcast, giving you additional material for thinking and doing in your own quest to make sense of what it might mean to live a good life. Join us by going now to nosmallendeavor.com and sign up there. Again, go to nosmallendeavor.com to sign up now for our free No Small Endeavor Notebook newsletter.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:35)
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**SPEAKER_5** (2:06)
K-pop demon hunters, Saja Boyz breakfast meal, and Huntrix meal have just dropped at McDonald's. They're calling this a battle for the fans. What do you say to that, Rumi?

**Rumman Chowdhury** (2:15)
It's not a battle.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:16)
So glad the Saja Boyz could take breakfast and give our meal the rest of the day.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:20)
It is an honor to share.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:22)
No, it's our honor.

**SPEAKER_6** (2:24)
It is our larger honor.

**SPEAKER_8** (2:26)
No, really, stop.

**SPEAKER_5** (2:28)
You can really feel the respect in this battle. Pick a meal to pick a side.

**SPEAKER_7** (2:33)
Ba-da-ba-ba-ba At Participating McDonald's While Supplies Last.

**Lee C. Camp** (2:40)
I'm Lee C. Camp, and this is No Small Endeavor, exploring what it means to live a good life.
There are two stories we often tell about artificial intelligence. The first, it will destroy us, machines surpass us, outsmart us, and we lose everything that makes us human. The second, it will save us every disease cured, every problem solved, a technological paradise, just around the corner. But what if neither of those stories is quite true? What if it's a dichotomy? What if the choice between those two stories keeps us from seeing a lot of other things that we desperately need to see, and we need to see right now? A while back I interviewed Carissa Carter and Scott Dourley from the Stanford Design School, or the D School as it's called. In their book Assembling Tomorrow, they riff off a line they apparently picked up from the philosopher Paul Virilio. When you invent the ship, you invent the shipwreck. This seems to me to be a sobering, helpful reminder. The ship, extraordinary. It opens up the world. It moves people, ideas, goods across distances that were once impossible. It expands what it means to be human. And yet, when you invent the ship, you also invent the devastation of the shipwreck. Here's Scott.

**SPEAKER_7** (4:07)
It's just a completely flawed idea that we're gonna get everything perfect. There's absolutely no evidence, despite many tries, that we could come up with some system that's just gonna make everything right. And yet, for some reason, when we create things, we kind of feel like that's what we're doing. And so what we realized is that really the goal should be imperfection because that's where we're gonna land.

**Lee C. Camp** (4:31)