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Conversations about computation writ large,
with Michael Littman and Dave Ackley.

Dec 1, 2020

Fil Menczer, professor and director of the Observatory on Social Media at Indiana University, joined Michael and Dave on the day after the 2020 USA presidential election. Fil revealed how his 1990s Artificial Life research set the stage for his current work, focusing not just on the facts of disinformation and hoaxes...


Nov 1, 2020

Jeff Bigham, an Associate Professor at Carnegie-Mellon's Human-Computer Interaction Institute, joins Michael and Dave in a wide-ranging discussion of human-computer interactions, AI threats and opportunities, and systems and organizations made of both computers and humans.

[Episode transcript (PDF)]

[Cover photo...


Oct 6, 2020

Michael and Dave discuss the meaning of the reward function, and its consequences for AI and human society.


Sep 6, 2020

Dave tries to explain his "We are coders" approach to cognition to Michael, as part of developing the second lecture in the "Introduction to Classical Hyperspace" series.

First...


Aug 1, 2020

Computer scientists Emma Brunskill of Stanford and Phil Thomas of UMass Amherst join Michael and Dave in a four-way discussion of safety and fairness in AI and machine learning.

[The primary paper discussed, Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines, is by Philip S. Thomas, Bruno Castro da
Silva, Andrew G....