215 - Guest: John Danaher, Law Professor in AI Ethics, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Is work heading for utopia? My guest today is John Danaher, senior lecturer in law at the University of Galway and author of the 2019 book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work, which is an amazingly broad discourse on the future of work ranging from today’s immediate issues to the different kinds of utopia – or dystopia, depending on your viewpoint – ultimately possible when automation becomes capable of replicating everything that humans do.  John has published over 40 papers on topics including the risks of advanced AI, the meaning of life in the future of work, the ethics of human enhancement, the intersection of law and neuroscience, the utility of brain-based lie detection, and the philosophy of religion. He is co-editor of Robot Sex: Social And Ethical Implications from MIT Press, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, and The Philosopher’s Magazine. In the first part of the interview we talk about how much jobs may be automated and the methodology behind studies of that, the impact of automation on job satisfaction, what’s happening in academia, and much more. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.