New Scientist

[instrumental music] You're listening to Change Your Mind with New Scientist.

[instrumental music] Good morning, Helen.

Good morning.

Well, we will get into, um, different mental health conditions and what happens to those during adolescence through this interview.

But perhaps now would be a good time to introduce our guest for today.

So I first came across Lucy Foulkes actually when she pitched a comment piece to New Scientist, which I thought was very controversial and I wasn't particularly keen on, and this was the idea that mental health awareness campaigns can actually have unintended negative consequences.

I later was asked to host an event with Lucy, a live event, and hearing her speak and actually get into her ideas, I was blown away.

She was so fascinating, and, um, since then I've interviewed her about her latest book, which is about teenagers and kind of the rules of being a teenager and all the experiences that we have as teenagers.

One tip for beginning creatives, uh, always save your contracts, you know.

Because I wanted to look at pieces that I did in '03 or '04 from the New Scientist, for instance.

Uh, but, you know, those lawyers are long gone.

Uh, and I wasn't able to get anybody to send me a note about, you know, what the terms of those-

Right.

Ooh, so there was even more.

I mean, all of the stuff that I did for Wired, all the stuff I did for The New York Times, all the stuff I did for New Scientist, uh, it's not in there.

So, you know, they don't have lawyers ready to answer questions from freelancers from 20 years ago.

really funny because we were talking about reading on a plane.

And so I've got a little routine where when I fly, I always buy myself a New Scientist magazine.

Yeah.

And I love it.

Yeah, yeah.

But actually it's like my – and they're very expensive buying hard copy magazines now, right? But it's like my little treat when I fly.

I'm like, oh, no, I'm going to buy a new scientist.

Yeah, it's

Hmm.

So I've, I've got a couple, like, half-baked ideas like that, but mostly I'm focused on my work at New Scientist, where people can read me all day, every day.

You're not gonna get beautiful metaphors about cats in boxes.

[laughs]

We love biodiversity, where everything has a reference.

[laughs]

Um, people can find me in New Scientist, where I write for basically all sections of the magazine.

Mostly I write news in the physics section, but I also write features and, uh, book reviews and all sorts of things.

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OK, so we're going to unpick and examine in particular those three points.

How will AI compete with humans? How it could all go wrong? And what is the alignment problem and how do we solve it? From New Scientist, this is the World Universe and Us.

I'm Dr Rowan Hooper.

And I'm Dr Penny Sashay.