Ideas / Past Present Future: a listening list
AI: Can the Machines Really Think?
David Runciman with Gary Marcus and John Lanchester
A philosopher, a novelist, and a political thinker test what the word 'thinking' contributes to our understanding of machines.
The conversation separates fluent performance from understanding, then asks how much that distinction matters in practice. It is a useful opening because the language we choose for machines soon becomes the language institutions use to trust them.