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The only thing inside an AI is people

On StarTalk, Jaron Lanier told Neil deGrasse Tyson that an AI model is a collaboration of people, and that the black box holds people.

Ellsworth Toohey
Aug 14, 2026
∙ Paid
Jaron Lanier — Jaron Lanier on stage. Photo by JD Lasica / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Jaron Lanier — Jaron Lanier on stage. Photo by JD Lasica / CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons

In a new StarTalk episode, Neil deGrasse Tyson and co-host Negin Farsad interviewed Jaron Lanier, the computer scientist who wrote the 2023 New Yorker piece, "There Is No AI."

Lanier thinks calling AI a "black box" where nobody knows what's inside these models is r…

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