Oprah is taking on the topic of artificial intelligence, and she'll be airing a prime-time special on ABC in September to ask the question "AI: What is it?" and other things your parents and grandparents have been asking.
"AI and the Future Of Us: An Oprah Winfrey Special" will air on Thursday, September 12 on ABC stations, and the next day on Hulu, and it features Oprah sitting down for conversations with Microsoft founder Bill Gates, OpenAI CEO and co-founder Sam Altman, and FBI Director Christopher Wray among others.
The special is likely to raise as many questions as it answers, but Oprah, like many boomers, just wants to know what-all people are talking about when it comes to AI, and to process the basics of what it is capable of right now.
"It might fascinate you, or it might scare you, or if you're like me, it may do both. So let's take a breath, and find out," Oprah says in the intro to the trailer.
Other guests include the co-founders of the Center for Humane Technology, Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin, and YouTube creator Marques Brownlee, aka MKBHD.
And Oprah will also be talking with a fellow senior citizen, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping, Gilead), about "the threat AI poses to human values and how we can resist the convenience of this powerful technology."
This feels like an early entry in a genre of TV program that we will be seeing a lot of in the coming year or two. And it may end up, in retrospect, sounding alot like all the mindless TV chatter about "the worldwide web" back in the 90s.
See Oprah's teaser below.