Uncanny Valley | WIRED

The AI race has been framed as a zero-sum game: either the U.S or China will win at the end. But as concerns pile up around the increasing capabilities of AI models — especially AI agents — researchers across state lines are trying to team up to work on AI safety. This week, Zoë speaks with WIRED’s Will Knight about what he saw and heard on the ground when he visited China this summer — and why the two countries might actually need to start working together to avoid a major AI catastrophe.

This is our second episode from our summer break series. We’ll be back next week with our usual roundtable.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

I Met With China’s Top AI Experts. They’re Freaking Out, Too | WIRED

AI Hacks Are Bad. AI Worms and Viruses Will Be Worse | WIRED

The Humanoid Robot of the Future Is a 6-Foot-Tall Beefcake With a Chinese Body and an American Brain | WIRED

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Katie sits down with the Westworld showrunner, Jonah Nolan for a wide ranging conversation about what keeps him coming back to sci-fi storytelling about technology and human nature. After decades of writing about Ai, Nolan explains why Ai may be good for burgeoning filmmakers, but won’t replace Hollywood as we know it.

Nolan’s past work includes Memento, The Prestige, The Dark Knight, Interstellar and Westworld.

This is a summer re-air! We are on a short vacation but back with fresh episodes very soon.

Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from Alexis Ohanian's newest tech venture to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.
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Earlier this year, insurance executives gathered in a Times Square conference room to play out a scenario — a Chinese cyberattack that knocks out 5,000 US water utilities at once. If you think that’s a far-fetched scenario, think again. WIRED's Andy Greenberg got rare access to the closed-door war game, and walked away with some disturbing conclusions. This week, Brian sits down to talk with Andy about Volt Typhoon, the Chinese state-sponsored hacking group that's spent the past three years pre-positioning itself inside American infrastructure.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

What Happens if China Hacks the US Water Supply? I Went to a Secret War Game to Find Out | WIRED

Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from the newest ventures to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.

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Andy Yen is co-founder of Proton, a Geneva-based company that operates a suite of privacy focused products like email, calendars, password managers and more. A former physicist and economist, Yen is a champion of encryption for everyone. So why is he going all in on un-encryptable AI? WIRED senior writer and author Andy Greenberg sat down with Yen to talk about how privacy can survive in a world of pervasive, AI-obsessed surveillance capitalism and creeping authoritarianism.
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This week, the team breaks down Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg's 6,500-word AI manifesto and why it ultimately rings hollow. Plus — why job seekers are scheduling bot-run interviews at 1 AM, and WIRED's Andy Greenberg joins to unpack Black Hat and DEF CON's best findings, from a hacked kids' smartwatch to a coin-sized device that can hijack a Boeing 737.

Articles mentioned in this episode:

The Rise of the 1 am Job Interview | WIRED

Hackers Stalked Me by Hijacking a Smartwatch for Kids | WIRED

This Coin-Sized Device Can Hack a Boeing 737 | WIRED

McDonald’s Built a 515-Page Dossier on Me. It Says I’ll Never Stop Eating There | WIRED

Join WIRED’s best and brightest on Uncanny Valley as they dissect the collision of tech, politics, finance, and business, from the newest ventures to the effects of inaccurate information from artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots on social protests.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices