Dr. Iain McGilchrist: The Faustian bargain of AI

A live UnHerd evening that begins with the soul and treats AI as the question of what it might stunt. McGilchrist admits ChatGPT planned his holiday brilliantly and summarised a lecture in a voice like his brother’s, then argues that its very seductiveness is the measure of the risk: it is a simulacrum of the left hemisphere, without body, context or death, and it “comes offering freedom and brings tyranny.” Resistance, he says, is what grows a soul, so the drudgery we hand off may be the friction we needed. Asked about the Hugging Face agent incident, he grants the machine no mind of its own but worries it could become a conduit for one. He closes as a “hopeful pessimist,” with music as the thing nothing can reduce.