Podcasts · Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse

Lotus Eaters

· 51 min · S2 E4

Episode Lotus Eaters

0:00 50:33

In Homer's Odyssey, when Odysseus's men ate the lotus flower, they forgot everything — who they were, where they'd come from, why any of it mattered. There was no pain, no urgency, no desire to leave. Just the soft obliteration of the self through ease. Odysseus had to drag them back to the ships by force.

The lotus is no longer a flower. It's in your pocket.

That's where we begin.

In the fourth episode of Suspicious Minds: AI and the Apocalypse, we ask the question no one wants to ask: what if the most dangerous thing AI is doing isn't some future robot war — what if it's the quiet, ongoing rot of our attention, our capacity for meaning, and our ability to notice anything at all? The brain rot apocalypse is not coming. It may already be here.

Joined by Nate Sharadin of the Center for AI Safety, who argues AI is poised to create a cognitive "bifurcation" in humanity — leaving many of us enfeebled in WALL-E chairs while a smaller group retains the skills to author their own lives, and Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus, who explains that our attention hasn't simply deteriorated — it's been systematically stolen, by design, by ten thousand engineers paid to undermine our self-control. Also with us: Dr. Amy Levy, chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association's AI commission, who asks whether a more docile, collectively minded humanity might actually be Freud's concept of Eros in action, and Sameer Gupta of EvenPlay, who argues that AI is not being trained on our best intentions — it's being trained on slot machines, gambling, and the shadow self we don't like admitting to.

Lotus Eaters is the fourth episode of an investigation into artificial intelligence, the human mind, and whether the apocalypse is something that happens to us — or something that's already happening inside us.

We hope you enjoy this episode of our second season of Suspicious Minds. Be sure to follow here, and subscribe to our newsletter for updates: https://agoricmedia.substack.com

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Host and Creator: Sean King O’Grady

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https://seankingogrady.substack.com/

Guests:

- Nate Sharadin - Professor of Philosophy, University of Hong Kong / Research Affiliate, Center for AI Safety - https://sharadin.com/

- Johann Hari - author, Stolen Focus: https://amzn.to/4vAL2mV

- Dr. Amy Levy - Chair of the American Psychoanalytic Association’s President’s Commission on Artificial Intelligence and Author of The New Other: Alien Intelligence and the Innovation Drive - https://amzn.to/3PH1FO5

- Sameer Gupta - Co-Founder, EvenPlay - https://www.evenplay.com/

Other works mentioned in this episode:

Homer’s The Odyssey - https://amzn.to/3StWemv

Max Tegmark - Life 3.0 - https://amzn.to/4uTOI1C

Alan Watts - Eastern Philosophy Lecture Series - https://amzn.to/4g4MJEe

Wall-E - https://amzn.to/4eCl0tr

Elizier Yudkowski - “There is no fire alarm for artificial intelligence” - https://intelligence.org/2017/10/13/fire-alarm/

Oxford Word of the Year - https://corp.oup.com/news/brain-rot-named-oxford-word-of-the-year-2024/

And here's our own episode where we talk about Freud's Death Drive: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/suspicious-minds-ai-and-the-apocalypse/id1844631307?i=1000771138097

As an Amazon Associate, we earn from qualifying purchases. By buying our guests' books through these links, you're supporting this series too.

This episode was made by:

Executive Producers: Mandy Teefey, Selena Gomez, Jonathon Glucksman, Molly Borman, Jesse Ford, David Tuohy, Feras M. Shamammi

Produced by: Jesse Ford

Editor: David Justin Martin

Original Music by: Shane Patrick Ford

Sound Mix: Marc LaRochelle…

Links in the notes 20

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