In their iconic song “Bohemian Rhapsody”, Queen asks a question that feels increasingly relevant in our digital age: “Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy?” As we navigate a world where virtual reality and information overload increasingly influence our perception of reality, this question becomes more than just a catchy lyric—it’s a philosophical conundrum at the heart of our modern existence.
In July 1990, President George H. W. Bush issued a presidential proclamation to mark the dawn of a new and exciting era of neuroscience. The ’90s, Bush said, would be the “decade of the brain”—a 10-year scientific blitz that promised to render the human brain, “one of the most magnificent—and mysterious—wonders of creation,” a bit less mysterious.
When it comes to our membership of different social groups, most of us switch between different versions of ourselves multiple times each day.
On a Monday morning in April, Sam Altman sat inside OpenAI’s San Francisco headquarters, telling me about a dangerous artificial intelligence that his company had built but would never release. His employees, he later said, often lose sleep worrying about the AIs they might one day release without fully appreciating their dangers.
