Artificial Intelligence and You

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder... and also in AI, when it's used by Chanuki Seresinhe to evaluate the aesthetic appeal of outdoor scenery. Amazing as it sounds, her PhD research trained AI to evaluate the beauty of Great Britain at a one-kilometer resolution, and she's only just getting started. I talk with Chanuki, now head of Data Science at Zoopla, about how she did that and what the applications and ramifications of her work are.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

David Danks is a professor at UC San Diego working at the intersection of philosophy, cognitive science, and machine learning, was previously the L.L. Thurstone Professor of Philosophy & Psychology at Carnegie Mellon University and has developed a visual architecture for cognition. He's very adept at explaining complex issues eloquently and approachably.

In this part we talk about how he got into AI from a start in philosophy, how machine learning, philosophy, and neuroscience intersect, and how we engage the public in meaningful efforts to make AI safe, ranging from regulation to psychology.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

This and all episodes at: https://aiandyou.net/ .

When you combine anthropologist, filmmaker, and geek, you get Beth Singler, Research Fellow in Artificial Intelligence at the University of Cambridge. Beth explores the social, ethical, philosophical and religious implications of advances in artificial intelligence and robotics and has produced some dramatic documentaries about our relationship with AI: Pain in the Machine and its sequels, Friend in the Machine, Good in the Machine, and Ghost in the Machine.

All this plus our usual look at today's AI headlines.

Transcript and URLs referenced at HumanCusp Blog.

What does one of the nations that has most successfully defended itself against the coronavirus have to teach us about AI? Plenty, when the architect of their digital response to COVID-19 is also a technology genius.

In this episode, I conclude my talk with Audrey Tang, Taiwan's Digital Information Minister. She's responsible for Taiwan's "Digital Democracy" and has a sky-high IQ. We talk about the impact of AI on jobs, how AI can be developed transparently, national and international strategies for safe AI advancement, and what Audrey foresees for the next 10 years.

What is the responsibility of government to its citizens as technology advances, if that advance may leave some behind? We get into that and much more in this episode.

For more on Audrey's "humor vs rumor" approach to combating information warfare, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ClmT6bZX5yE.

Image credit: Wikipedia.

Disruption happens when the future arrives faster than we anticipated. We've had plenty of that lately, but as far as the disruption from artificial intelligence is concerned, it's only warming up. Sink, swim, or surf: how do you want to handle the waves of change AI is bringing?

To help us stretch our imagination, this episode's mind-blowing guests are Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stevens, science fiction authors with numerous credits in science fiction and Hollywood for over thirty years, particularly in the Star Trek universe, writing novels such as Memory Prime and Prime Directive and with writer and producer credits on the series Star Trek Enterprise. They’ve helped NASA with visioning future goals through a Space Policy workshop, they’ve helped Disney design theme park rides, and they won the Constellation award for creating the series Primeval: New World.

In this episode, we talk about their experiences in the world of science fiction and how they've changed with the pandemic, adventures helping NASA, the aspirations of Star Trek, and their thoughts about what advanced AIs would really be like. All that and our customary look at today's headlines in AI.

Transcript at HumanCusp Blog.