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What is AI? How will it affect your life, your work, and your world?
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232 - Special Panel: Educators on AI, part 2

232 - Special Panel: Educators on AI, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We're extending the conversation about AI in education to the front lines in this episode, with four very experienced and credentialed educators discussing their experiences and insights into AI in schools. Jose Luis Navarro IV is the leading coach and consultant at the Navarro Group. He previously served as a Support Coordinator, leading innovative reforms in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Zack Kleypas is Superintendent of Schools in Thorndale, Texas, and named 2023 Texas Secondary Principal of the Year by the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals. Jeff Austin is a former high school teacher and principal who now works as a coach for Teacher Powered Schools and Los Angeles Education Partnership. And Jose Gonzalez, Chief Technology Officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and former Vice Mayor of the city of Cudahy near Los Angeles. In the conclusion, we talk about whether students need to read as much as they used to now they have AI, fact checking, some disturbing stories about the use of AI detectors in schools, where the panel sees these trends evolving to, what they’re doing to help students learn better in an AI world, and… Iron Man. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
35:2225/11/2024
231 - Special Panel: Educators on AI, part 1

231 - Special Panel: Educators on AI, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We're extending the conversation about AI in education to the front lines in this episode, with four very experienced and credentialed educators discussing their experiences and insights into AI in schools. Jose Luis Navarro IV is the leading coach and consultant at the Navarro Group. He previously served as a Support Coordinator, leading innovative reforms in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Zack Kleypas is Superintendent of Schools in Thorndale, Texas, and named 2023 Texas Secondary Principal of the Year by the Texas Association of Secondary School Principals. Jeff Austin is a former high school teacher and principal who now works as a coach for Teacher Powered Schools and Los Angeles Education Partnership. And Jose Gonzalez, Chief Technology Officer for the Los Angeles County Office of Education and former Vice Mayor of the city of Cudahy near Los Angeles. We talk about how much kids were using GenAI without our knowing, how to turn GenAI in schools from a threat to an opportunity, the issue of cheating with ChatGPT, the discrepancy between how many workers are using AI and how many teachers are using it, how rules get made, confirmation bias and AI, using tools versus gaining competencies, and whether teachers will quit. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:1318/11/2024
230 - Guest: Caroline Bassett, Digital Humanities Professor, part 2

230 - Guest: Caroline Bassett, Digital Humanities Professor, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Digital Humanities sounds at first blush like a contradiction of terms: the intersection of our digital, technology-centric culture, and the humanities, like arts, literature, and philosophy. Aren't those like oil and water? But my guest illustrates just how important this discipline is by illuminating both of those fields from viewpoints I found fascinating and very different from what we normally encounter. Professor Caroline Bassett is the first Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, an interdisciplinary research center in Cambridge University. She is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College and researches digital technologies and cultural change with a focus on AI. She co-founded the Sussex Humanities Lab and at Cambridge she inaugurated the Masters of Philosophy in Digital Humanities and last month launched the new doctoral programme in Digital Humanities. In the conclusion, we talk about how technology shapes our psychology, how it enables mass movements, science fiction, the role of big Silicon Valley companies, and much more. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
30:1811/11/2024
229 - Guest: Caroline Bassett, Digital Humanities Professor, part 1

229 - Guest: Caroline Bassett, Digital Humanities Professor, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Digital Humanities sounds at first blush like a contradiction of terms: the intersection of our digital, technology-centric culture, and the humanities, like arts, literature, and philosophy. Aren't those like oil and water? But my guest illustrates just how important this discipline is by illuminating both of those fields from viewpoints I found fascinating and very different from what we normally encounter. Professor Caroline Bassett is the first Director of Cambridge Digital Humanities, an interdisciplinary research center in Cambridge University. She is a Fellow of Corpus Christi College and researches digital technologies and cultural change with a focus on AI. She co-founded the Sussex Humanities Lab and at Cambridge she inaugurated the Masters of Philosophy in Digital Humanities and last month launched the new doctoral programme in Digital Humanities. In part 1 we talk about what digital humanities is, how it intersects with AI, what science and the humanities have to learn from each other, Joseph Weizenbaum and the reactions to his ELIZA chatbot, Luddites, and how passively or otherwise we accept new technology. Caroline really made me see in particular how what she calls "technocratic rationality," a way of thinking borne out of a technological culture accelerated by AI, reduces the novelty which we can experience in the world in a way we should certainly preserve. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
41:5104/11/2024
228 - Guest: John Laird, Cognitive architect, part 2

228 - Guest: John Laird, Cognitive architect, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Cognitive architecture deals in models of how the brain - or AI - does its magic. A challenging discipline to say the least, and we are lucky to have a foremost cognitive architect on the show in the person of John Laird. Is cognitive architecture the gateway to artificial general intelligence? John is Principal Cognitive Architect and co-director of the Center for Integrated Cognition. He received his PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985, working with famed early AI pioneer Allen Newell. He is the John L. Tishman Emeritus Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he was a faculty member for 36 years. He is a Fellow of AAAI, ACM, AAAS, and the Cognitive Science Society. In 2018, he was co-winner of the Herbert A. Simon Prize for Advances in Cognitive Systems. We talk about relationships between cognitive architectures and AGI, where explainability and transparency come in, Turing tests, where we could be in 10 years, how to recognize AGI, metacognition, and the SOAR architecture. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:5228/10/2024
227 - Guest: John Laird, Cognitive architect, part 1

227 - Guest: John Laird, Cognitive architect, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Cognitive architecture deals in models of how the brain - or AI - does its magic. A challenging discipline to say the least, and we are lucky to have a foremost cognitive architect on the show in the person of John Laird. Is cognitive architecture the gateway to artificial general intelligence? John is Principal Cognitive Architect and co-director of the Center for Integrated Cognition. He received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University in 1985, working with famed early AI pioneer Allen Newell. He is the John L. Tishman Emeritus Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan, where he was a faculty member for 36 years. He is a Fellow of AAAI, ACM, AAAS, and the Cognitive Science Society. In 2018, he was co-winner of the Herbert A. Simon Prize for Advances in Cognitive Systems. We talk about decision loops, models of the mind, symbolic versus neural models, and how large language models do reasoning. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
36:0321/10/2024
226 - Guest: Sir Anthony Seldon, Historian, Author, Educator

226 - Guest: Sir Anthony Seldon, Historian, Author, Educator

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . My guest today founded the United Kingdom's AI in Education initiative, but Sir Anthony Seldon is known to millions more there as the author of books about prime ministers, having just published one about Liz Truss. Sir Anthony is one of Britain’s leading contemporary historians, educationalists, commentators and political authors. For 20 years he was a transformative headmaster (“principal” in North American lingo) first at Brighton College and then Wellington College, one of the country’s leading independent schools. From 2015 to 2020 he served as Vice-Chancellor of the University of Buckingham. He is now head of Epsom College. He is the author or editor of over 35 books on contemporary history, including insider accounts on the last six prime ministers. In 2018 he wrote The Fourth Education Revolution, which anticipates stunning, unprecedented effects of AI on education. He was knighted in 2014 for services to education and modern political history.  Managing to avoid nearly all the potential Truss references, I talked with him about how teachers should think about the size of the impact of AI on education, the benefits of AI to students and teachers, what the AI in Education initiative is doing, and what the best role of teachers in the classroom is in the AI age. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
22:3914/10/2024
225 - Guest: Ravin Jesuthasan, Bestselling Futurist, part 2

225 - Guest: Ravin Jesuthasan, Bestselling Futurist, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . How is work shifting from jobs to skills, and how do companies and individuals adapt to this AI-fueled change? I talk with Ravin Jesuthasan, co-author with Tanuj Kapilashrami of the new book, The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to The Next Generation Enterprise, released on October 1. Ravin is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum's Future Skills Executive Board and of the Global Foresight Network. He is the author of the bestselling books Work without Jobs, as well as the books Transformative HR, Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs. He was featured on PBS’s documentary series “Future of Work,” has been recognized as one of the top 8 future of work influencers by Tech News, and as one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive. In the conclusion, we talk about how AI is reshaping HR functions, including hiring, staffing, and restructuring processes, the role of AI in mentoring and augmenting work, the relationship between the future of work and the future of education, the real value of a degree today, and how AI affects privilege and inequality in the new work environment. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
28:0007/10/2024
224 - Guest: Ravin Jesuthasan, Bestselling Futurist, part 1

224 - Guest: Ravin Jesuthasan, Bestselling Futurist, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . How is work shifting from jobs to skills, and how do companies and individuals adapt to this AI-fueled change? I talk with Ravin Jesuthasan, co-author with Tanuj Kapilashrami of the new book, The Skills-Powered Organization: The Journey to The Next Generation Enterprise, released on October 1. Ravin is a futurist and authority on the future of work, human capital, and AI, and is Senior Partner and Global Leader for Transformation Services at Mercer. He is a member of the World Economic Forum's Future Skills Executive Board and of the Global Foresight Network. He is the author of the Wall Street Journal bestseller Work without Jobs, as well as the books Transformative HR, Lead the Work, and Reinventing Jobs. Ravin was featured on PBS’s documentary series “Future of Work,” has been recognized as one of the top 8 future of work influencers by Tech News, and as one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive. In this first part, we talk about the impact of AI on work processes, the role of HR in adapting to these changes, and the evolving organizational models that focus on agility, flexibility, and skill-based work transitions. We also discuss AI's role in healthcare, and the importance of transferable skills in an AI-driven world. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines! Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:0730/09/2024
223 - Guest: Craig A. Kaplan, AGI Expert, part 2

223 - Guest: Craig A. Kaplan, AGI Expert, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Artificial General Intelligence - AGI - an AI system that’s as intelligent as an average human being in all the ways that human beings are usually intelligent. Helping us understand what it means and how we might get there is Craig A. Kaplan, founder of iQ Company, where he invents advanced intelligence systems. He also founded and ran PredictWallStreet, a financial services firm whose clients included NASDAQ, TD Ameritrade, Schwab, and other well-known financial institutions. In 2018, PredictWallStreet harnessed the collective intelligence of millions of retail investors to power a top 10 hedge fund performance, and we talk about it in this episode. Craig is a visiting professor in computer science at the University of California, and earned master’s and doctoral degrees from famed robotics hub Carnegie Mellon University, where he co-authored research with the Nobel-Prize-winning economist and AI pioneer Dr. Herbert A. Simon. In the conclusion of the interview, we talk about the details of the collective intelligence architecture of agents, why Craig says it’s safe, morality of superintelligence, the risks of bad actors, and leading indicators of AGI.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
35:5423/09/2024
222 - Guest: Craig A. Kaplan, AGI Expert, part 1

222 - Guest: Craig A. Kaplan, AGI Expert, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Artificial General Intelligence - AGI - an AI system that’s as intelligent as an average human being in all the ways that human beings are usually intelligent. Helping us understand what it means and how we might get there is Craig A. Kaplan, founder of iQ Company, where he invents advanced intelligence systems. He also founded and ran PredictWallStreet, a financial services firm whose clients included NASDAQ, TD Ameritrade, Schwab, and other well-known financial institutions. In 2018, PredictWallStreet harnessed the collective intelligence of millions of retail investors to power a top 10 hedge fund performance, and we talk about it in this episode. Craig is a visiting professor in computer science at the University of California, and earned master’s and doctoral degrees from famed robotics hub Carnegie Mellon University, where he co-authored research with the Nobel-Prize-winning economist and AI pioneer Dr. Herbert A. Simon. We talk about his work with Herb Simon, bounded rationality, connectionist vs symbolic architectures, jailbreaking large language models, collective intelligence architectures for AI, and a lot more! All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
43:1016/09/2024
221 - Guest: Markus Anderljung, AI Regulation Researcher, part 2

221 - Guest: Markus Anderljung, AI Regulation Researcher, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We are talking about international governance of AI again today, a field that is just growing and growing as governments across the globe grapple with the seemingly intractable idea of regulating something they don’t understand. Helping them understand that is Markus Anderljung, Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for the Governance of AI in the UK. He aims to produce rigorous recommendations for governments and AI companies, researching frontier AI regulation, responsible cutting-edge development, national security implications of AI, and compute governance. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a member of the OECD AI Policy Observatory’s Expert Group on AI Futures. He was previously seconded to the UK Cabinet Office as a Senior Policy Specialist. I know “governance” sounds really dry and a million miles away from the drama of existential threats, and jobs going away, and loss of privacy on a global scale; but governance is exactly the mechanism by which we can hope to do something about all of those things. Whenever you say, or you hear someone say, “Someone ought to do something about that,” governance is what answers that call. In the conclusion, we talk about verification processes, ingenious schemes to verify hardware platforms, the frontier AI safety commitments, and who should set safety standards for the industry. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
29:2809/09/2024
220 - Guest: Markus Anderljung, AI Regulation Researcher, part 1

220 - Guest: Markus Anderljung, AI Regulation Researcher, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . We are talking about international governance of AI again today, a field that is just growing and growing as governments across the globe grapple with the seemingly intractable idea of regulating something they don’t understand. Helping them understand that is Markus Anderljung, Director of Policy and Research at the Centre for the Governance of AI in the UK. He aims to produce rigorous recommendations for governments and AI companies, researching frontier AI regulation, responsible cutting-edge development, national security implications of AI, and compute governance. He is an Adjunct Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, and a member of the OECD AI Policy Observatory’s Expert Group on AI Futures. He was previously seconded to the UK Cabinet Office as a Senior Policy Specialist. I know “governance” sounds really dry and a million miles away from the drama of existential threats, and jobs going away, and loss of privacy on a global scale; but governance is exactly the mechanism by which we can hope to do something about all of those things. Whenever you say, or you hear someone say, “Someone ought to do something about that,” governance is what answers that call. We talk about just what the Centre is, what it does and how it does it, and definitions of artificial general intelligence insofar as they affect governance – just what is the difference between training a system with 1025 and 1026 flops, for instance? And also in this part Markus will talk about how monitoring and verification might specifically work. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
37:3802/09/2024
219 - Guest: Sophie Kleber, Human-AI Relationship Expert, part 2

219 - Guest: Sophie Kleber, Human-AI Relationship Expert, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Virtually everything that’s difficult about getting computers to do work for us is in getting them to understand our question or request and in our understanding their answer. How we interact with them is the problem. And that's where Sophie Kleber comes in. She is the UX – that’s User Experience – Director for the Future of Work at Google and an expert in ethical AI and future human-machine interaction. She deeply understands the emotional development of automated assistants, artificial intelligence, and physical spaces. Sophie develops technology that enables individuals to be their best selves. Before joining Google, Sophie held the Global Executive Creative Director role at Huge, collaborating with brands like IKEA and Thomson Reuters. She holds an MA in Communication Design and an MBA in Product Design, and is a Fulbright fellow.  In the conclusion of our interview, we talk about about how she got into the user experience field, the emergence of a third paradigm of user interfaces, the future of smart homes, privacy, large language models coming to consumer devices, and brain-computer interfaces. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
36:4026/08/2024
218 - Guest: Sophie Kleber, Human-AI Relationship Expert, part 1

218 - Guest: Sophie Kleber, Human-AI Relationship Expert, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Virtually everything that’s difficult about getting computers to do work for us is in getting them to understand our question or request and in our understanding their answer. How we interact with them is the problem. And that's where Sophie Kleber comes in. She is the UX – that’s User Experience – Director for the Future of Work at Google and an expert in ethical AI and future human-machine interaction. She deeply understands the emotional development of automated assistants, artificial intelligence, and physical spaces. Sophie develops technology that enables individuals to be their best selves. Before joining Google, Sophie held the Global Executive Creative Director role at Huge, collaborating with brands like IKEA and Thomson Reuters. She holds an MA in Communication Design and an MBA in Product Design, and is a Fulbright fellow.  We talk about the Uncanny Valley and how we relate to computers as though they were human or inhuman, and what if they looked like Bugs Bunny. We talk about the environments and situations where some people have intimate relationships with AIs, gender stereotyping in large language models, and where emotional interactions with computers help or hinder. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
35:1219/08/2024
217 - AI in Education

217 - AI in Education

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Teachers all over the world right now are having similar thoughts: Is AI going to take my job? How do I deal with homework that might have been done by ChatGPT? I know, because I've talked with many teachers, and these are universal concerns. So I'm visiting the topic of AI in education - not for the first time, not for the last. There are important and urgent issues to tackle; they become most acute at the high school level, but this episode will be useful for all levels. The reason it's so important for me to work with schools so much as an AI change management consultant is that there's no need for teachers to fear for their jobs. They are doing the most important job on the planet right now because they are literally educating the generation that is going to save the world. And generative AI has not created a learning problem: it's created learning opportunities. It's not created a teaching problem; it's created teaching opportunities. It has, however, created an assessment problem, and I'll talk about that. Kids need their human teachers more than ever before to model for them how to deal with disruption from technology, because change will never again happen as slowly as it does today, and all of their careers will be disrupted far more than anyone's is today. No student is going to remember something ChatGPT said for the rest of their life. The teacher’s job is to focus on the qualities that the AI cannot embody—the personal interactions that occur face to face when the teacher makes that lasting impression that inspires the student. Let's have honest, deep, and productive conversations about these issues now. A new school year is approaching and this is the time. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
27:2712/08/2024
216 - Guest: John Danaher, Law Professor in AI Ethics, part 2

216 - Guest: John Danaher, Law Professor in AI Ethics, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Is work heading for utopia? My guest today is John Danaher, senior lecturer in law at the University of Galway and author of the 2019 book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work, which is an amazingly broad discourse on the future of work ranging from today’s immediate issues to the different kinds of utopia – or dystopia, depending on your viewpoint – ultimately possible when automation becomes capable of replicating everything that humans do.  John has published over 40 papers on topics including the risks of advanced AI, the meaning of life in the future of work, the ethics of human enhancement, the intersection of law and neuroscience, the utility of brain-based lie detection, and the philosophy of religion. He is co-editor of Robot Sex: Social And Ethical Implications from MIT Press, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, and The Philosopher’s Magazine. In the conclusion of the interview we talk about generative AI extending our minds, the Luddite Fallacy and why this time things will be different, the effects of automation on class structure, and… Taylor Swift. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
37:4005/08/2024
215 - Guest: John Danaher, Law Professor in AI Ethics, part 1

215 - Guest: John Danaher, Law Professor in AI Ethics, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Is work heading for utopia? My guest today is John Danaher, senior lecturer in law at the University of Galway and author of the 2019 book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World without Work, which is an amazingly broad discourse on the future of work ranging from today’s immediate issues to the different kinds of utopia – or dystopia, depending on your viewpoint – ultimately possible when automation becomes capable of replicating everything that humans do.  John has published over 40 papers on topics including the risks of advanced AI, the meaning of life in the future of work, the ethics of human enhancement, the intersection of law and neuroscience, the utility of brain-based lie detection, and the philosophy of religion. He is co-editor of Robot Sex: Social And Ethical Implications from MIT Press, and his work has appeared in The Guardian, Aeon, and The Philosopher’s Magazine. In the first part of the interview we talk about how much jobs may be automated and the methodology behind studies of that, the impact of automation on job satisfaction, what’s happening in academia, and much more. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
31:5229/07/2024
214 - Guest: Lord Tim Clement-Jones, Government AI Advisory Chair, part 2

214 - Guest: Lord Tim Clement-Jones, Government AI Advisory Chair, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Helping the British Government understand AI since 2016 is our guest, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, co-founder and co-chair of Britain's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence since 2016. He is also former Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology and former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence which reported in 2018 with “AI in the UK: Ready Willing and Able?” and its follow-up report in 2020 “AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency.” His new book, "Living with the Algorithm: Servant or Master?: AI Governance and Policy for the Future" came out in the UK in March, with a North American release date of July 18. In the second half, we talk about elections, including the one just held in the UK, and disinformation, what AI and robots do to the flow of capital, the effects of AI upon education and enterprise culture, privacy and making AI accountable and trustworthy. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
31:1222/07/2024
213 - Guest: Lord Tim Clement-Jones, Government AI Advisory Chair, part 1

213 - Guest: Lord Tim Clement-Jones, Government AI Advisory Chair, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Helping the British Government understand AI since 2016 is our guest, Lord Tim Clement-Jones, co-founder and co-chair of Britain's All-Party Parliamentary Group on Artificial Intelligence since 2016. He is also former Liberal Democrat House of Lords spokesperson for Science, Innovation and Technology and former Chair of the House of Lords Select Committee on Artificial Intelligence which reported in 2018 with “AI in the UK: Ready Willing and Able?” and its follow-up report in 2020 “AI in the UK: No Room for Complacency.” His new book, "Living with the Algorithm: Servant or Master?: AI Governance and Policy for the Future" came out in the UK in March, with a North American release date of July 18. In this first part, Tim gives a big picture of how #AI regulation has been proceeding on the global stage since before large language models were a thing, giving us the context that took us from the Asilomar Principles to today’s Hiroshima principles and the EU AI Act and the new ISO standard 42001 for AI. And we talk about long-term planning, intellectual property rights, the effects of the open letters that called for a pause or moratorium on model training, and much more. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
38:2215/07/2024
212 - Guest: Antonina Burlachenko, AI Regulatory Consultant

212 - Guest: Antonina Burlachenko, AI Regulatory Consultant

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . As the European Union AI Act rolls out, there are so many questions about what it will mean to businesses trying to navigate the incredibly volatile and complex field of AI regulation. Here to answer those questions is Antonina Burlachenko, Head of Quality and Regulatory Consulting at Star Global Consulting, calling from Poland. She explains what the Act really means for businesses and consumers, comparing it with GDPR, and providing some technical information around standards and regulations and other aspects of what it’s like for businesses to engage with the Act at a practical level.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:1608/07/2024
211 - Guest: Matt Beane, Future of Work Author, part 2

211 - Guest: Matt Beane, Future of Work Author, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . To help us get new and valuable insights into the future of work is Matt Beane, Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has spent over a decade doing extensive field research on how workers, organizations and even AI defy norms and rules in the 21st century.  His new book: The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, was just published by Harper Business, and he has given you a special deal as a listener, to get a free copy of the first chapter, by going to http://aiandyou.theskillcodebook.com. The book lays out a plan for us to protect our skills and by extension the human connection between experts and novices (which is the foundation of skill-building) even as AI continues to take hold in our lives. In the conclusion, we talk more about what AIs do to the mentoring and learning pipelines in the workplace, and how education should pivot to deal with the changes to the future of work.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
39:2001/07/2024
210 - Guest: Matt Beane, Future of Work Author, part 1

210 - Guest: Matt Beane, Future of Work Author, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . To help us get new and valuable insights into the future of work is Matt Beane, Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He has spent over a decade doing extensive field research on how workers, organizations and even AI defy norms and rules in the 21st century.  His new book: The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines, was just published by Harper Business, and he has given you a special deal as a listener, to get a free copy of the first chapter, by going to http://aiandyou.theskillcodebook.com. The book lays out a plan for us to protect our skills and by extension the human connection between experts and novices (which is the foundation of skill-building) even as AI continues to take hold in our lives. In this first part, we talk about how Matt studied surgeons in operating rooms for his PhD thesis and saw the effects that the introduction of a robot surgical system had in stifling the time-honored process of mentoring new surgeons, and generalized this to other fields, and observed the rise of “shadow learning,” where people bend or break the rules to get the learning they need.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
33:0024/06/2024
209 - Guest: William A. Adams, Technologist

209 - Guest: William A. Adams, Technologist

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . My guest is William A. Adams, technologist, philanthropist, and recorded by the Computer History Museum as one of the first Black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He was the first technical advisor to Microsoft’s CTO Kevin Scott and has founded and overseen global initiatives at Microsoft from XML technologies as early as 1998, to DE&I initiatives in 2015. The Leap program, with a focus on diverse hiring, was named Microsoft’s D&I Program of the year in 2020. We talk about William’s experience creating the Leap program, its impact, the relationship between AI and diversity, equity, and inclusion programs like Leap, and creating personalized chatbots. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
36:3917/06/2024
208 - Guest: Oliver Burkeman, Philosophy Writer, part 2

208 - Guest: Oliver Burkeman, Philosophy Writer, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Our relationship with time is dysfunctional. Here to help us explore possibly the most critical effect of AI on the pace of life is Oliver Burkeman, author of the best-selling self-help book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and former author of the psychology column “This Column Will Change Your Life” in The Guardian. Most of us can attest to being severely overworked and with a shrinking amount of personal time left over. This is true despite the introduction into our lives of a huge amount of technology from the PC to the Internet. Why have tools like email, Google, and instant messaging not reduced our workload and stress? In fact, it’s not hard to believe that they are responsible for making those things worse. In which case, we must ask, what effect will unleashing AI – which accelerates everything it touches - have on our work life?  This is exactly the thought space that Oliver inhabits, and his work has made a major difference in my own life. Read Oliver's posts and subscribe to his newsletter at OliverBurkeman.com. In the conclusion of the interview, we talk about whether this is Luddism, the influence of the Silicon Valley billionaires’ pursuit of immortality, the appropriate use of AI to save us time, and what will remain constant throughout any amount of technological evolution.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
28:3310/06/2024
207 - Guest: Oliver Burkeman, Philosophy Writer, part 1

207 - Guest: Oliver Burkeman, Philosophy Writer, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Our relationship with time is dysfunctional. Here to help us explore possibly the most critical effect of AI on the pace of life is Oliver Burkeman, author of the best-selling self-help book Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals and former author of the psychology column “This Column Will Change Your Life” in The Guardian. Most of us can attest to being severely overworked and with a shrinking amount of personal time left over. This is true despite the introduction into our lives of a huge amount of technology from the PC to the Internet. Why have tools like email, Google, and instant messaging not reduced our workload and stress? In fact, it’s not hard to believe that they are responsible for making those things worse. In which case, we must ask, what effect will unleashing AI – which accelerates everything it touches - have on our work life?  This is exactly the thought space that Oliver inhabits, and his work has made a major difference in my own life. Read Oliver's posts and subscribe to his newsletter at OliverBurkeman.com. In this first half of the interview we talk about the parable of the rocks in the jar and how it’s a pernicious lie, the psychology of perceiving life as finite, and how technology has not changed our work stress and may be making it worse through induced demand.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
31:2503/06/2024
206 - Guest: Mounir Shita, AGI Researcher

206 - Guest: Mounir Shita, AGI Researcher

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . Mounir Shita, CEO of Kimera Systems, is author of the upcoming book The Science of Intelligence, which contains some interesting and thought-provoking explorations of intelligence that had me thinking about Pedro Domingos’ book The Master Algorithm. We talk about theories of AGI, free will, egg smashing, and Mounir's prototype smartphone app that learned how to silence itself in a movie theater! All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:0727/05/2024
205 - Guest: Gary Bolles, Future of Work author, part 2

205 - Guest: Gary Bolles, Future of Work author, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . There is, perhaps, no more burning topic at the moment than the future of work, and so I am particularly grateful to welcome to the show Gary Bolles, author of The Next Rules of Work and a co-founder of eParachute.com, helping job-hunters & career changers with programs inspired by the evergreen book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” written by his father. Gary's courses on LinkedIn Learning have over 1 million learners and he is a former Silicon Valley executive and a co-founder of SoCap, the world’s largest gathering of impact entrepreneurs and investors. Gary is adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for Singularity University, and as a partner in the consulting agency Charrette, he helps organizations, communities, educators and governments develop strategies for “what’s next.” In the conclusion of the interview, we talk about unbossing and holacracies, how AI will impact organizational structures, fear, FOMO, and agency, and the Singularity University. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
27:4520/05/2024
204 - Guest: Gary Bolles, Future of Work author, part 1

204 - Guest: Gary Bolles, Future of Work author, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . There is, perhaps, no more burning topic at the moment than the future of work, and so I am particularly grateful to welcome to the show Gary Bolles, author of The Next Rules of Work and a co-founder of eParachute.com, helping job-hunters & career changers with programs inspired by the evergreen book “What Color Is Your Parachute?” written by his father. Gary's courses on LinkedIn Learning have over 1 million learners and he is a former Silicon Valley executive and a co-founder of SoCap, the world’s largest gathering of impact entrepreneurs and investors. Gary is adjunct Chair for the Future of Work for Singularity University, and as a partner in the consulting agency Charrette, he helps organizations, communities, educators and governments develop strategies for “what’s next.” In the first half of the interview, we talk about the gig economy, the new rules of work, what ChatGPT did to the job market, and an interesting concept called the community operating system. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
32:3513/05/2024
203 - Guest: Eleanor Drage, AI and Feminism Researcher, part 2

203 - Guest: Eleanor Drage, AI and Feminism Researcher, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . My guest is the co-host of the Good Robot Podcast, "Where technology meets feminism." Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and was named in the Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics of 2022. She is also co-author of a recent book also called The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism.  In this conclusion of the interview, we talk about unconscious bias, hiring standards, stochastic parrots, science fiction, and the early participation of women in computing. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
35:3206/05/2024
202 - Guest: Eleanor Drage, AI and Feminism Researcher, part 1

202 - Guest: Eleanor Drage, AI and Feminism Researcher, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ . My guest is the co-host of the Good Robot Podcast, "Where technology meets feminism." Eleanor Drage is a Senior Research Fellow at The Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence at the University of Cambridge and was named in the Top 100 Brilliant Women in AI Ethics of 2022. She is also co-author of a recent book also called The Good Robot: Why Technology Needs Feminism.  We talk about about all that, plus some quantum mechanics, saunas, ham, lesbian bacteria, and… well it’ll all make more sense when you listen. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
26:4129/04/2024
201 - Guest: Fiona McEvoy, Tech Ethics Writer

201 - Guest: Fiona McEvoy, Tech Ethics Writer

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   My guest is a really good role model for how a young person can carve out an important niche in the AI space, especially for people who aren’t inclined to the computer science side of the field. Fiona McEvoy is author of the blog YouTheData.com, with a specific focus on the intersection of technology and society. She was named as one of “30 Influential Women Advancing AI in San Francisco” by RE•WORK, and in 2020 was honored in the inaugural Brilliant Women in AI Ethics Hall of Fame, established to recognize “Brilliant women who have made exceptional contributions to the space of AI Ethics and diversity.” We talk about her journey to becoming an influential communicator and the ways she carries that out, what it’s like for young people in this social cauldron being heated by AI, and some of the key issues affecting them.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:5122/04/2024
200 - Guest: Jerome C. Glenn, Futurist for AI governance, part 2

200 - Guest: Jerome C. Glenn, Futurist for AI governance, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   At the end of February there was a landmark conference in Panama City and online, the Beneficial AGI Summit. AGI of course standing for Artificial General Intelligence, the Holy Grail of AI. My guest is Jerome C. Glenn, one of the organizers and sponsors, and who has a long and storied history of pivotal leadership and contributions to addressing existential issues. He is the co-founder and CEO of The Millennium Project on global futures research, was contracted by the European Commission to write the AGI paper for their Horizon 2025-2027 program, was the Washington, DC representative for the United Nations University as executive director of their American Council, and was instrumental in naming the first Space Shuttle the Enterprise, banning the first space weapon (the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) in SALT II, and shared the 2022 Lifeboat Guardian Award with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has over 50 years of futures research experience working for governments, international organizations, and private industry in Science & Technology Policy, Environmental Security, Economics, Education, Defense, Space, and much more.  In this second half we talk about approaches for actually controlling the development of AGI that were developed at the conference, the AI arms race, and… why Jerome doesn’t like the term futurism.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
25:3015/04/2024
199 - Guest: Jerome C. Glenn, Futurist for AI governance, part 1

199 - Guest: Jerome C. Glenn, Futurist for AI governance, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   At the end of February there was a landmark conference in Panama City and online, the Beneficial AGI Summit. AGI of course standing for Artificial General Intelligence, the Holy Grail of AI. My guest is Jerome C. Glenn, one of the organizers and sponsors, and who has a long and storied history of pivotal leadership and contributions to addressing existential issues. He is the co-founder and CEO of The Millennium Project on global futures research, was contracted by the European Commission to write the AGI paper for their Horizon 2025-2027 program, was the Washington, DC representative for the United Nations University as executive director of their American Council, and was instrumental in naming the first Space Shuttle the Enterprise, banning the first space weapon (the Fractional Orbital Bombardment System) in SALT II, and shared the 2022 Lifeboat Guardian Award with Volodymyr Zelenskyy. He has over 50 years of futures research experience working for governments, international organizations, and private industry in Science & Technology Policy, Environmental Security, Economics, Education, Defense, Space, and much more.  In this first half we talk about his recent work with groups of the United Nations General Assembly, and his decentralized approach to grassroots empowerment in both implementing AGI and working together to regulate it. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
36:1308/04/2024
198 - Guest: Eve Herold, Science Writer on Robots, part 2

198 - Guest: Eve Herold, Science Writer on Robots, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   How is our relationship with bots - robots and chatbots - evolving and what does it mean? We're talking with Eve Herold, who has a new book, Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots. Eve is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical nonprofit space. She writes about issues at the crossroads of science and society, and has been featured in Vice, Medium, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Prevention, The Kiplinger Report, and The Washington Post and on MSNBC, NPR, and CNN. In this part we talk about how robots and AI can bring out the best and the worst in us, the responsibilities of roboticists, the difference between robots having emotions and our believing that they have emotions, and how this will evolve over the next decade or more. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
32:4901/04/2024
197 - Guest: Eve Herold, Science Writer on Robots, part 1

197 - Guest: Eve Herold, Science Writer on Robots, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   How is our relationship with bots - robots and chatbots - evolving and what does it mean? We're talking with Eve Herold, who has a new book, Robots and the People Who Love Them: Holding on to our Humanity in an Age of Social Robots. Eve is an award-winning science writer and consultant in the scientific and medical nonprofit space. She writes about issues at the crossroads of science and society, and has been featured in Vice, Medium, The Boston Globe, The Wall Street Journal, Prevention, The Kiplinger Report, and The Washington Post and on MSNBC, NPR, and CNN. In this part we talk about how people – including soldiers in combat - get attached to AIs and robots, we discuss ELIZA, Woebot, and Samantha from the movie Her, and the role of robots in helping take care of us physically and emotionally, among many other topics. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
31:3125/03/2024
196 - Guest: Roman Yampolskiy, AI Safety Professor, part 2

196 - Guest: Roman Yampolskiy, AI Safety Professor, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Returning as our first three-peat guest is Roman Yampolskiy, tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Louisville in Kentucky where he is also the director of the Cyber Security Laboratory. Roman is here to talk about his new book, AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable. Roman has been central in the field of warning about the Control Problem and Value Alignment Problems of AI from the very beginning, back when doing so earned people some scorn from practitioners, yet Roman is a professor of computer science and applies rigorous methods to his analyses of these problems. It’s those rigorous methods that we tap into in this interview, because Roman connects principles of computer science to the issue of existential risk from AI. In this part we talk about how we should respond to the problem of unsafe AI development and how Roman and his community are addressing it, what he would do with infinite resources, and… the threat Roman’s coffee cup poses to humanity.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
32:2318/03/2024
195 - Guest: Roman Yampolskiy, AI Safety Professor, part 1

195 - Guest: Roman Yampolskiy, AI Safety Professor, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Returning as our first three-peat guest is Roman Yampolskiy, tenured Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of Louisville in Kentucky where he is also the director of the Cyber Security Laboratory. Roman is here to talk about his new book, AI: Unexplainable, Unpredictable, Uncontrollable. Roman has been central in the field of warning about the Control Problem and Value Alignment Problems of AI from the very beginning, back when doing so earned people some scorn from practitioners, yet Roman is a professor of computer science and applies rigorous methods to his analyses of these problems. It’s those rigorous methods that we tap into in this interview, because Roman connects principles of computer science to the issue of existential risk from AI. In this part we talk about why this work is important to Roman, the dimensions of the elements of unexplainability, unpredictability, and uncontrollability, the level of urgency of the problems, and drill down into why today’s AI is not safe and why it’s getting worse. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
36:2811/03/2024
194 - Guest: Rachel St. Clair, AGI Scientist, part 2

194 - Guest: Rachel St. Clair, AGI Scientist, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Artificial General Intelligence: Once upon a time, this was considered a pipe dream, a fantasy of dreamers with no sense of the practical limitations of real AI. That was last year. Now, AGI is an explicit goal of many enterprises, notably among them Simuli. Their CEO, Rachel St. Clair, co-founded the company with Ben Goertzel, who has also been on this show. Rachel is a Fellow of the Center for Future Mind, with a doctorate in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences from Florida Atlantic University. She researches artificial general intelligence, focusing on complex systems and neuromorphic learning algorithms. Her goal is to “help create human-like, conscious, artificial, general intelligence to help humans solve the worst of our problems.”  In the conclusion, we talk about the role of sleep in human cognition, AGI and consciousness, and… penguins. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
37:3904/03/2024
193 - Guest: Rachel St. Clair, AGI Scientist, part 1

193 - Guest: Rachel St. Clair, AGI Scientist, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Artificial General Intelligence: Once upon a time, this was considered a pipe dream, a fantasy of dreamers with no sense of the practical limitations of real AI. That was last year. Now, AGI is an explicit goal of many enterprises, notably among them Simuli. Their CEO, Rachel St. Clair, co-founded the company with Ben Goertzel, who has also been on this show. Rachel is a Fellow of the Center for Future Mind, with a doctorate in Complex Systems and Brain Sciences from Florida Atlantic University. She researches artificial general intelligence, focusing on complex systems and neuromorphic learning algorithms. Her goal is to “help create human-like, conscious, artificial, general intelligence to help humans solve the worst of our problems.”  In part 1 we talk about markers for AGI, distinctions between it and narrow artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, robotics, and embodiment, and… disco balls. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
30:4226/02/2024
192 - Re-evaluating Existential Risk From AI

192 - Re-evaluating Existential Risk From AI

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Since I published my first book on AI in 2017, the public conversation and perception of the existential risk - risk to our existence - from AI has evolved and broadened. I talk about how that conversation has changed from Nick Bostrom's Superintelligence, the "hard take-off" and what that means, and through to the tossing about of cryptic signatures like p(doom) and e/acc, which I explain and critique. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
21:5219/02/2024
191 - Guest: Frank Sauer, AI arms control researcher, part 2

191 - Guest: Frank Sauer, AI arms control researcher, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Increasing AI in weapons: is this a good thing (more selective targeting, fewer innocents killed) or bad (risk of losing control in critical situations)? It's hard to decide where to stand, and many people can't help but think of Skynet and don't get further. Here to help us pick through those arguments, calling from Munich is my guest, Frank Sauer, head of research at the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight and a senior research fellow at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. He has a Ph.D. from Goethe University in Frankfurt and is an expert in the field of international politics with a focus on security. His research focuses on the military application of artificial intelligence and robotics. He is a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. He also serves on the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons and the Expert Commission on the responsible use of technologies in the European Future Combat Air System.  In part two we talk about psychology of combat decisions, AI and strategic defense, and nuclear conflict destabilization. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
28:1012/02/2024
190 - Guest: Frank Sauer, AI arms control researcher, part 1

190 - Guest: Frank Sauer, AI arms control researcher, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Increasing AI in weapons: is this a good thing (more selective targeting, fewer innocents killed) or bad (risk of losing control in critical situations)? It's hard to decide where to stand, and many people can't help but think of Skynet and don't get further. Here to help us pick through those arguments, calling from Munich is my guest, Frank Sauer, head of research at the Metis Institute for Strategy and Foresight and a senior research fellow at the Bundeswehr University in Munich. He has a Ph.D. from Goethe University in Frankfurt and is an expert in the field of international politics with a focus on security. His research focuses on the military application of artificial intelligence and robotics. He is a member of the International Committee for Robot Arms Control. He also serves on the International Panel on the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons and the Expert Commission on the responsible use of technologies in the European Future Combat Air System.  In this first part we talk about the ethics of autonomy in weapons systems and compare human to machine decision making in combat. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:0705/02/2024
189 - Guest: Peter Norvig, AI professor/author/researcher, part 2

189 - Guest: Peter Norvig, AI professor/author/researcher, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Literally writing the book on AI is my guest Peter Norvig, who is coauthor of the standard text, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, used in 135 countries and 1500+ universities. Peter is a Distinguished Education Fellow at Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute and a researcher at Google. He was head of NASA Ames's Computational Sciences Division and a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has taught at USC, Stanford, and Berkeley, from which he received a PhD in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006. He’s also the author of the world’s longest palindromic sentence.  In this second half of the interview, we talk about how the rise in prominence of AI in the general population has changed how he communicates about AI, his feelings about the calls for slowdown in model development, and his thinking about general intelligence in large language models; and AI Winters. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
30:1629/01/2024
188 - Guest: Peter Norvig, AI professor/author/researcher, part 1

188 - Guest: Peter Norvig, AI professor/author/researcher, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Literally writing the book on AI is my guest Peter Norvig, who is coauthor of the standard text, Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, used in 135 countries and 1500+ universities. (The other author, Stuart Russell, was on this show in episodes 86 and 87.) Peter is a Distinguished Education Fellow at Stanford's Human-Centered AI Institute and a researcher at Google. He was head of NASA Ames's Computational Sciences Division and a recipient of NASA's Exceptional Achievement Award in 2001. He has taught at the University of Southern California, Stanford University, and the University of California at Berkeley, from which he received a PhD in 1986 and the distinguished alumni award in 2006. He’s also the author of the world’s longest palindromic sentence.  In this first part of the interview, we talk about the evolution of AI from the symbolic processing paradigm to the connectionist paradigm, or neural networks, how they layer on each other in humans and AIs, and Peter’s experiences in blending the worlds of academic and business.  All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
26:2122/01/2024
187 - Guest: Michal Kosinski, Professor of Psychology, part 2

187 - Guest: Michal Kosinski, Professor of Psychology, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   The worlds of academia and political upheaval meet in my guest Michal Kosinski, who was behind the first press article warning against Cambridge Analytica, which was at the heart of a scandal involving the unauthorized acquisition of personal data from millions of Facebook users and impacting the 2016 Brexit and US Presidential election votes through the use of AI to microtarget people through modeling their preferences. Michal also co-authored Modern Psychometrics, a popular textbook, and has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers in prominent journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Scientific Reports and others that have been cited over 18,000 times. Michal has a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge, as well as master’s degrees in psychometrics and social psychology In the second half of the interview, we pivot to the Theory of Mind – which is the ability of a creature to understand that another has a mind – and research around whether AI has it. Michal has amazing new research in that respect. He also says, "Without a question, GPT-4 and similar models are the most competent language users on this planet." All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
32:1915/01/2024
186 - Guest: Michal Kosinski, Professor of Psychology, part 1

186 - Guest: Michal Kosinski, Professor of Psychology, part 1

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   The worlds of academia and political upheaval meet in my guest Michal Kosinski, who was behind the first press article warning against Cambridge Analytica, which was at the heart of a scandal involving the unauthorized acquisition of personal data from millions of Facebook users and impacting the 2016 Brexit and US Presidential election votes through the use of AI to microtarget people through modeling their preferences. Michal also co-authored Modern Psychometrics, a popular textbook, and has published over 90 peer-reviewed papers in prominent journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Nature Scientific Reports and others that have been cited over 18,000 times. Michal has a PhD in psychology from the University of Cambridge, as well as master’s degrees in psychometrics and social psychology, positioning him to speak to us with authority about how AI has and may shape the beliefs and behaviors of people en masse. In this first part of the interview, we delve into just that, plus the role of social media, and Michal's take on what privacy means today. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
34:2708/01/2024
185 - Special Panel: AI Predictions for 2024

185 - Special Panel: AI Predictions for 2024

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   In our now-traditional end-of-year episode, we look back on the year to date and forward to the year to be. I am joined by previous guest Calum Chace, co-host of the London Futurists podcast and author of The Economic Singularity, and Justin Grammens, founder of the AppliedAI conference and podcast. Together, we review what happened with AI in 2023 and make some predictions for 2024. We look back at the impact of large language models such as #ChatGPT and forward to how they will evolve and change the workplace, economy, and society. We also discuss the future of regulation, the EU AI Act, the 2024 US elections, disinformation, and the future of education. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
57:3101/01/2024
184 - Guest: Tabitha Swanson, Creative Technologist/Filmmaker

184 - Guest: Tabitha Swanson, Creative Technologist/Filmmaker

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   Making movies about AI with AI is Tabitha Swanson, who comes to tell us how that works - and what it was like exhibiting it at the Venice Film Festival during the writers'/actors' strikes. Tabitha is a Berlin-based multi-disciplinary designer, creative technologist, and filmmaker. Her practice includes 3D, animation, augmented reality, digital fashion, graphic design, and UX/UI. She has worked with brands including Vogue Germany, Nike, Highsnobiety, Reebok, and Origins, and has exhibited at Miami Art Basel, Fotografiska,  Transmediale, and Cadaf Arts among others.  Her part of the White Mirror project saw her doing everything from writing to cinematography with the latest AI tools like Runway Gen-2, ChatGPT, and Stable Diffusion, lowering typical animation costs from $10,000/second to $10,000 per minute. She explains what those tools are good at and where their limitations are, and helps us understand how they will evolve and impact the roles of humans in the movie industry. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
39:5225/12/2023
183 - Guest: Oren Etzioni, AI in Science, Professor Emeritus, part 2

183 - Guest: Oren Etzioni, AI in Science, Professor Emeritus, part 2

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .   At the intersection of scientific research and artificial intelligence lies our guest Oren Etzioni, professor emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Washington and most notably the founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) in Seattle, founded by the late Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft. His awards include AAAI Fellow and Seattle’s Geek of the Year.  Oren grew the institute to a team of over 200 researchers and created singularly important tools such as the Semantic Scholar, search engine that can understand scientific literature, and Mosaic, a knowledge base formed by extracting scientific knowledge from text. This is hugely important because of just how much the rate of research paper creation now outstrips the ability of researchers to read it. AI could transform the productivity of scientific research by unprecedented measures. In this conclusion of the interview we talk about AI2’s scientific assistance project called Aristo, Oren’s views on the concerns about AI and how to address them, and his Hippocratic Oath for AI practitioners. All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines. Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.          
30:3818/12/2023