AI might take your job, harvest your data and possibly end civilisation as we know it. But have you seen how CUTE it is?

Big Tech has apparently decided that the best way to sell us artificial intelligence is to give it googly eyes, a fluffy body and a little French beret.

This week on Short Fuse, we look at the sudden invasion of adorable AI mascots from Meta, OpenAI and friends. Are they making AI more approachable, or are we being emotionally manipulated by glorified Tamagotchis with access to our bank accounts?

We discuss cuddly existential threats, the return of Clippy and why Ollie thinks one of OpenAI's mascots looks like a molar.

The end of humanity has never looked so huggable.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

AI might kill us all. That is increasingly the warning coming from the people building the most powerful models.

The awkward bit is that they are much less specific about how.

This week, we get into the latest wave of AI doom, why Anthropic and OpenAI keep talking about existential risk, whether self improving AI changes the equation, and why regulation may be doing more than keeping us safe. We also ask a fairly basic question: if the danger is as serious as they say, why are they still racing to build it?

Plus bioweapons, regulatory capture, recursive self improvement, dictatorships, Snowpiercer and the possibility that AI eventually lies to itself.

Cheerful stuff.

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