How AI is changing the world – WHYY

Artificial intelligence will ruin humanity — displacing jobs, further exacerbating wealth inequality, eroding privacy, and posing an existential risk to human values while consuming vast amounts of energy. 

Artificial intelligence will make humanity smarter, faster and more efficient — untapping our potential by freeing us of clerical burdens, giving us tools to solve problems at a rapid scale, and providing new opportunities for personalized education experiences that cater to individual needs.

Here in 2025 it seems both of these visions could come true. And the question behind this debate is: where are we in the trajectory of history? How fast is this all coming at us, and what do we need to do personally, and as a society, to prepare?

For this edition of “Studio 2: On the Road” we hosted a live event at the Princeton Public Library to unpack these questions. 

Guests:

Arvind Narayanan, Princeton University professor and co-author of “AI Snake Oil: What Artificial Intelligence Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference”

Tom Griffiths, Director of the Princeton University AI Lab