I have nothing against the honorable profession of writing blog posts on Sunday morning about the previous night’s episode. Saturday evening live. I’ve edited many such blog posts over the course of my life, while generally thinking, deep down, that watching SNL is generally not worth it.
However, if you’re someone following the AI saga, last night’s SNL segment on Dario Amodei with Jane Wickline as Amodei is worth watching. I would go so far as to say that the segment, which focuses on Amodei’s catastrophic comments, is good. At one point, reader, I laughed.
You can probably tell from my tone that I would have done things differently if I had been part of the editorial team of Saturday evening live (and there are many good reasons why I don’t). I can’t say I like the structure, in which Michael Che acts like a straight man, trying to get Amodei to express some common-sense benefits about AI. I also wouldn’t have opted for this conceit in which Amodei is conflicted like in the Gollum versus Smeagol scene in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. I kind of doubt he’s really conflicted.
Then again, I’m not funny, and seeing Amodei’s routine being poked and prodded by a genuinely funny person is calming. “AI is not a weapon. It is a tool. A tool for making weapons, and I urge you to urge me to stop,” is a good sentence, and it made me feel, for a brief moment, that there was a decline in common sense in the public conversation around AI.
Gn bussni
