If AI can replace some jobs, should we?

08/15/23 • 31 min

In this week’s episode, Chris talks with Missy Cummings, professor and the director of George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center.

Missy spent eleven years (1988–1999) as a naval officer and military pilot and was one of the United States Navy's first female fighter pilots, flying an F/A-18 Hornet.
In October 2021, the Biden administration named Cummings as a new senior advisor for safety at the National National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Her appointment to the NHTSA was met with criticism from Tesla's CEO Elon Musk and personal harassment and death threats from Tesla advocates in response to her previous statements critical of Tesla.
Missy’s research interests include artificial intelligence, human-robot interaction and the socio-ethical impact of technology. Cummings has written on the brittleness of machine learning and future applications for drones. In addition, she has spoken critically of the safety of Tesla's Full Self-Driving Capability surrounding its reliance on computer vision.

In this week’s episode, Chris talks with Missy Cummings, professor and the director of George Mason University's Autonomy and Robotics Center.

Previous Episode

Why do we get happier the older we get?

In this episode, Chris is joined by writer and comedian Monica Heisey where they cover Monica’s journey as a writer, the power of humor, gender, feminism, and the challenges of living in modern society. Monica was born in Toronto and moved to London in 2010 to study Early Modern Literature. Monica began her writing career in media, contributing to the Guardian, The New Yorker, The New York Times and Playboy. From 2015 to 2017 she was Editor-at-Large at Broadly, VICE magazine's women's website.
Her first book, ‘I Can't Believe It's Not Better', a collection of essays, short stories, awas published in 2015, and Lena Dunham said of it that it’s the “only humor book she ever wants to own.” 2015 was also the year of her first television job, sketch comedy series Baroness von Sketch Show. Since then she has worked on television projects including Netflix’s Schitt's Creek, Workin’ Moms and BBC’s The Cleaner, and Everything I Know About Love.
Monica’s writing offers a unique blend of humor and social commentary and her debut novel, Really Good, Actually, was published around the world in January 2023, and is currently in development for television. She is working on a second novel.

Next Episode

Why is AI not an authority on fairness?

In this week's episode, Chris is joined by the remarkable Hannah Fry. Hannah is a Professor in the Mathematics of Cities at University College London. She is a mathematician, a best-selling author, an award winning science presenter and the host of numerous popular podcasts and television shows. In her day job she uses mathematical models to study patterns in human behavior, and has worked with governments, police forces and health analysts.
Her TED talks have amassed millions of views and she has fronted television documentaries for the BBC, Bloomberg and PBS. She has also hosted podcasts for Google’s Deepmind and the BBC.
Hannah cares deeply about what data and math reveal to us about being human. A conversation not to be missed.