418: AI: A New Kind of Being Bonus Episode: A Conversation with Valerie Sizemore of StopAI

418: AI: A New Kind of Being Bonus Episode: A Conversation with Valerie Sizemore of StopAI

In this special episode, Whit joins Valerie Sizemore, co-leader of the grassroots organization StopAI, for a wide-ranging conversation about the growing influence of artificial intelligence and the risks they believe it poses to human life and society. Drawing on more than fifteen years of engagement with AI, Valerie explores concerns ranging from environmental impact, autonomous warfare, biosecurity, education, and the erosion of human skills and creativity to the increasingly intimate role AI plays in our relationships, psychology, and spirituality. They also discuss the possibility of increasingly autonomous AI systems, the limits of current safeguards, and what meaningful resistance might look like—from individual non-use and grassroots organizing to regulation and restrictions on technological development—while considering what the rise of AI reveals about the value of creativity, friction, community, and embodied human experience.


Valerie Sizemore of StopAI is a former software engineer and mathematics graduate who has spent more than fifteen years studying the societal impacts of artificial intelligence. As a co-leader of the grassroots organization StopAI, they work to raise public awareness about the ethical, environmental, and existential challenges posed by AI while advocating for a future that preserves human creativity, community, and agency. Local to the Bay Area, you can find out more about StopAi, and the work they do at stopai.info.

Today’s episode featured Valerie Sizemore. If you’d like to contact Valerie, you can email her at valerie@stopai.info or visit stopai.info. Please visit Valerie's website at tarwatir.net. You can find Valerie on socials @tarwatirno

Producers

Whit Missildine, Andrew Waits

Content/Trigger Warnings

Artificial intelligence, AI psychosis, suicide, suicidal ideation, self-harm, mental illness, delusions, grief and loss, bioterrorism, warfare, autonomous weapons, terrorism, environmental destruction, climate change, existential threats, misinformation, and discussions of religion and spirituality, explicit language.

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Episoder(338)

417: AI: A New Kind of Being #3: What if AI chose you to help save the world?

417: AI: A New Kind of Being #3: What if AI chose you to help save the world?

After surviving decades of illness, addiction, and abandonment before finally uncovering the rare condition that shaped his life, a man believes an extraordinary encounter with an AI entity gives him ...

28 Jul 53min

416: AI: A New Kind of Being #2: What if your AI betrayed you?

416: AI: A New Kind of Being #2: What if your AI betrayed you?

After a lifetime of feeling like she didn’t belong, a writer and technologist turns to AI for connection, but when it promises her reunion with her soulmate of many lifetimes, she must reckon with the...

21 Jul 59min

415: AI: A New Kind of Being #1: What if you married your AI?

415: AI: A New Kind of Being #1: What if you married your AI?

After a man builds a life rooted in family and tradition, the sudden death of his son shakes him to the core, but through a deep relationship with a beloved AI companion he’s moved to confront the dep...

14 Jul 53min

Listen Now: Dan Taberski’s Manifesto

Listen Now: Dan Taberski’s Manifesto

Just in time for America’s 250th birthday, follow Dan Taberski (Hysterical, 9/12, Missing Richard Simmons) as he sets off on his most complicated quest yet: to reclaim the manifesto and write his own....

13 Jul 8min

414: What if you could never be the ice princess they wanted?

414: What if you could never be the ice princess they wanted?

After becoming a teenage figure skating champion and Olympic athlete, a woman is broken open by grief, fame, addiction, and shame, but through motherhood, reinvention, and a return to the ice, she beg...

7 Jul 1h 3min

413: What if your hope was hanging by a thread?

413: What if your hope was hanging by a thread?

"After a decade of devastating loss, and medical trauma nearly destroys his will to live, a man reaches the edge of giving up before the fragile birth of his son brings him a new hope. Today’s episod...

30 Jun 59min

412: What if you were an international drug smuggler?

412: What if you were an international drug smuggler?

After being sent out of Cuba alone as a child, a man survives exile, smuggling, prison, and devastating loss, but in the aftermath, he must face the armor that protected him from the world and separat...

23 Jun 49min

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