Episode 3: J.D. Trout

09/16/12 • 62 min

SuchThatCast goes mobile in the third episode, as I interview J.D. Trout on the appr. 2 hour train ride between Enschede and Schiphol airport. Trout is Professor of Philosophy and Psychology at Loyola University Chicago. I was a little concerned whether an interview on the train would work out, but although editing was a pain with all the background noise and announcement interruptions, the episode turned out to contain everything I want out of this podcast: a fascinating and inspiring background story, deeply interesting and more or less unpublished philosophical ideas, a flowing conversation, and the occasional chuckle – all in the voice of an opera singer. Trout talks about a past filled with challenging circumstances and hard work as far removed from philosophy as possible, the importance of psychological research for policy making, the remarkably interesting field of speech recognition, the contingency of scientific progress as exemplified by corpuscularism and alchemy, and a host of other interesting topics. I hope you’ll like this conversation as much as I did.

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Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Episode 2: Wendell Wallach

In this second episode, I talk to Wendell Wallach, who is a consultant, ethicist, and scholar at Yale University’s Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. Among many other things, Wendell co-authored (with Colin Allen) the influential Moral Machines: Teaching Robots Right From Wrong (Oxford University Press 2009), which maps the new field of machine ethics. Wallach talks about his extraordinary career, from being a spiritual guru in the 1960s to becoming one of today’s leading authorities on machine ethics. He also discusses his involvement in the transhumanist society, as well as his current project of developing a ‘silent ethics’, grounded in meditation practices.

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Episode 4: Noel Sharkey

Noel Sharkey is Professor of A.I. and Robotics, and Professor of Public Engagement at the University of Sheffield, but some of you may know him as the expert on the BBC series Robot Wars and Techno Games. We spend most of the episode talking about the dangers of autonomous robots in the battlefield, but we also get a glimpse into Noel’s multifaceted and unconventional background. The conviction, honesty and sense of urgency Noel brings to the table is important and contagious, so I hope it’ll prove inspiring to many of you as well.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.