Robert Wright, author of the Nonzero newsletter and host of the Nonzero podcast, is a veteran journalist who interviewed Geoffrey Hinton about neural networks back in 1983. He joined the podcast to talk about his new book The God Test, which is due out on Tuesday, June 23.
Wright describes his own journey from AI skeptic to someone who no longer dismisses even “sci-fi doomer” scenarios. A key insight: nobody programmed meaning into LLMs—the machines discovered that meaning was a property of words simply by predicting the next token. In effect, LLMs reverse-engineered functions of the human mind without anyone understanding how the brain works.
We discuss the US-China chip-control consensus, with Wright arguing that export restrictions have increased the probability of a Chinese attack on Taiwan. Wright also makes the case that any serious effort to slow AI development—even a modest data-center tax—requires international coordination.
The conversation then takes a metaphysical turn. Wright is agnostic on whether LLMs are sentient, but he rejects Ted Chiang’s argument that role-playing machines can’t be conscious—after all, Wright notes, humans are always role-playing too. Wright even floats the idea that if a future superintelligence is conscious, its capacity for empathy might be what saves us.