José González is a self-professed humanist who, over the course of his career, has made deeply human music. With just his voice and a nylon-string guitar, González wrings emotion from songs such as "Heartbeats" and "Killing for Love." It all feels remarkably organic.
So when we learned that his new album was described as "an urgent call to preserve the light of humanity," we assumed the Swedish singer-songwriter was releasing a record condemning AI and the growing risks facing our species and planet.
But like González's music, it's not that simple.
Against the Dying of the Light is concerned with the fate of humanity and wrestles with the technology that brought us to this precipice. Will it be used to cure disease and build a better world? Or will it become humanity's downfall?
In today's conversation, the former molecular biologist discusses his decision to experiment with AI, including co-writing a song with ChatGPT. He also makes a compelling case for why that's relatively harmless compared with what could come next.
This episode of World Cafe was produced and edited by Miguel Perez. Our senior producer is Kimberly Junod and our engineer is Chris Williams. Our programming and booking coordinator is Chelsea Johnson and our line producer is Will Loftus.
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