Cognitive scientist Molly Crockett joins the show to talk about what it's like to be known in the field as an "AI skeptic." We talk about where Molly is actually skeptical, but also what she thinks that label gets wrong. Along the way, we cover a bunch of other things too: Molly's research in social neuroscience, computational modeling, and moral psychology; Molly and Mickey's disagreements about empathic AI; and Molly's case for what she's calling "thick empathy." Finally, Molly makes a pitch for non-alcoholic beer, which sadly falls on deaf ears.

Special Guest: Molly Crockett.

Links:

• OSF | The pitfalls of pay-to-play morality
• AI Surrogates and illusions of generalizability in cognitive science: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
• Replication for Language Models
• GUIDE-LLM: Reporting checklist for studies with large language models in the behavioral and social sciences
• Do Artifacts Have Politics? on JSTOR
• CITP Seminar:Janet Vertesi - Where Fairness Fails: How to Confront Material Political Economy of AI - YouTube
• \Reckoning with the Political Economy of AI: Avoiding Decoys in Pursuit of Accountability
• UK quietly increases AI emissions forecast 100-fold – POLITICO
• The carbon and water footprints of data centers and what this could mean for artificial intelligence: Patterns
• Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Climate Change: Naomi Oreskes: Bloomsbury Publishing - Bloomsbury
• The Risks of Industry Influence in Tech Research
• More Everything Forever by Adam Becker | Hachette Book Group
• AI is ‘beating’ humans at empathy and creativity. But these games are rigged | MJ Crockett | The Guardian
• Empathy, Thick and Thin by M.J. Crockett
• In the Land of the Unreal: Virtual and Other Realities in Los Angeles
• The Last Human Job | Princeton University Press
• Artificial intelligence and illusions of understanding in scientific research | Nature
• Artificial intelligence tools expand scientists’ impact but contract science’s focus | Nature