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In the midst of the AI hype bubble, how do we spot real AI capabilities and snake oil marketing? Many AI companies promise that they will help us predict the future. Is this true? Can AI really predict the future? Turns out, in this capacity at least, it might be more snake oil than success. 

In this episode, I sit down with Arvind Narayanan, a Princeton Computer Scientist and co-author of AI Snake Oil. We discuss how to spot snake oil as well as how to prepare for a workplace of integrated AI. What skills should young people like me be investing in? And how do we plan for our futures?

Topics:

• Predictive AI vs. generative AI
• Why algorithms struggle to predict human behavior
• The risks of using AI in healthcare, hiring, education, and criminal justice
• How generative AI is changing programming and other professions
• Will AI replace jobs or transform them?
• The future of entry-level work and professional training
• What students should learn in an AI-shaped economy
• Artificial general intelligence and the future of work
• How to separate genuine expertise from AI hype
• “What books have had the most impact on you?”
• “What advice do you have for teenagers?”

Bio:

Arvind Narayanan is a professor of computer science at Princeton University and the director of the Center for Information Technology Policy. He is a co-author of the book AI Snake Oil, the essay AI as Normal Technology, and a newsletter of the same name which is read by over 75,000 researchers, policy makers, journalists, and AI enthusiasts. He previously co-authored two widely used computer science textbooks: Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency Technologies and Fairness in Machine Learning. Narayanan led the Princeton Web Transparency and Accountability Project to uncover how companies collect and use our personal information. His work was among the first to show how machine learning reflects cultural stereotypes. Narayanan was one of TIME's inaugural list of 100 most influential people in AI. He is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

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This interview is a bit different from other episodes. I sit down with Dr. Jennifer A. Frey, the former Dean of the University of Tulsa’s Honors College. If you’ve been following the Lessons for Interesting People podcast on Substack, you will know I wrote an article about Tulsa’s honors college recently. I committed to UTulsa because the university seemed to have accomplished the impossible: combine a computer science college filled with research opportunities with an Honors College whose mission was to analyze and debate the great works of the Western tradition in a vibrant community of professors and peers.

That’s why I was distressed, when seven weeks before school was set to begin, UTulsa decided to “restructure their program” without any clear information on what exactly this meant. 

In this interview, Dr. Frey discusses the purpose of higher education. 

Is it simply to equip you for the workplace? Or, is it to teach you the habits of mind to think freely? Then, we dive into the truth about why programs like UTulsa’s Honors College are not being supported by their universities. According to Dr. Frey, it’s not the cost. 

Topics:

• The State of Higher Education: What is the Purpose of the University?
• What is a Liberal Education?
• The Honors College of the University of Tulsa: the Dream, its Present, and its Precarious Future
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Bio:

Dr. Jennifer A. Frey is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Tulsa. She previously served as the inaugural Dean of the Honors College at the University of Tulsa. Before coming to the University of Tulsa, she was an Associate Professor of philosophy at the University of South Carolina, where she was also a Peter and Bonnie McCausland Faculty Fellow in the College of Arts and Sciences. Prior to her tenure at Carolina, she was a Collegiate Assistant Professor the Humanities at the University of Chicago, and a junior fellow of the Society for the Liberal Arts

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What happens when your world crumbles? When all the things you hold dear are snatched away from you? Most of us would give up and despair. And, yet, though he awaited an unjust execution, Roman senator and philosopher Boethius penned these hopeful words:

“The world in constant change maintains a harmony. And elements keep peace whose nature is to war.”

Faced with his coming death, Boethius reflected upon his life of contemplation and philosophy, writing one of the greatest works of the medieval age on facing suffering: The Consolation of Philosophy. 

In this episode, I sit down with Dr. Thomas Ward to discuss Boethius’ magnum opus and Dr. Ward’s latest book, After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher. Dr. Ward and I examine what Boethius’ Consolation of Philosophy can tell us about how to approach life in the midst of suffering. 

Topics:

• Who Was Boethius and Why He Matters
• Why The Consolation of Philosophy Endured
• Lady Fortune, The Wheel, and Approachability
• Boethius’ Illness and Philosophy’s Diagnosis
• Forgetting Who We Are
• Modern Stoicism’s Appeal and Limits
• After Stoicism: Hope, God, and Joy
• Love as the Order of the Cosmos
• Eros and Caritas: What Love Means
• Daily Practices for Recollection
• How to Live Like Boethius: Suffering, Virtue, and a Transcendent Order
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Bio:

Thomas M. Ward is Associate Professor of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin, in the School of Civic Leadership. He is the author of After Stoicism: Last Words of the Last Roman Philosopher (Word on Fire, 2024), which won the Catholic Media Association Book Award for History (First Place). He studied philosophy at Biola University (BA 2004) and UCLA (PhD, 2011) and theology at Oxford University (M.Phil 2006).

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With the development of artificial intelligence on the rise, we are at a crossroads. How will we continue our innovations and regulations of this new technology? But, this is more than a technological question. As my guest, Verity Harding states, “AI needs you.”

In this episode, I sit down with Verity Harding to discuss her book, AI Needs You: How We Can Change AI’s Future and Save Our Own. 

How we apply AI is a multi-disciplinary issue. We need everyone, from tech people to teachers, to students, to nurses and doctors, and to everyone else.  

Topics:

• Why AI Needs Everyone
• Technology's Shadow Self
• The Socio-Technical Approach to AI
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?

Bio:

One of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People in AI, Verity Harding is director of the AI & Geopolitics Project at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge and founder of Formation Advisory, a consultancy firm that advises on the future of technology and society. She worked for many years as Global Head of Policy for Google DeepMind and as a political adviser to Britain’s deputy prime minister.

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What's the meaning of life? Why is there pain and suffering? How do you balance justice and love? These "accursed questions" have haunted humanity for centuries. Fyodor Dostoevsky sought to answer these questions through his characters' lives. His answers are prophetic for our time.

In this episode, I sit down with Northwestern University professor of Russian literature Gary Saul Morson. We discuss what Dostoevsky reveals about developing intellectual honesty, how to deal with suffering and brokenness, as well as his arguments for and against God. 

His latest book, Wonder Confronts Certainty: Russian Writers on the Timeless Questions and Why Their Answers Matter, sets the stage for this interview.

Topics:

• The "Accursed Questions" of Russian Literature
• Dostoevsky's Intellectual Honesty with Faith
• Battle-Testing Worldviews through Fiction
• The Dangers of Abstracting Individuals
• Notes from Underground: Human Freedom vs Determinism
• The Core of Ethics: Human Surprisingness
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?

Bio:

Gary Saul Morson is Lawrence B. Dumas Professor of the Arts and Humanities and Professor of Russian Literature at Northwestern University.   His 21 authored or edited volumes and 300 shorter publications have examined major Russian writers, the philosophy of time, the role of quotations in culture, great aphorisms, and the ultimate questions about life taken seriously in Russian literature. His classes on Russian writers in translation have enrolled over 500 students, and he is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards. Morson writes regularly for numerous national publications, including The New York Review of Books, The Wall Street Journal, Commentary, First Things, Mosaic, and several others.  He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1995

Prof. Morson on the best Dostoevsky translations:

“The best translations of Dostoevsky are by Constance Garnett or revisions of Garnett.  For Notes from Underground, use Garnett revised by Ralph Matlaw;  for The Brothers Karamazov, Garnett revised by Susan McReynolds;  and for The Possessed (Demons)be sure to use the Modern Library version of the Garnett translation with appendixes containing versions of a chapter he was not allowed to publish.”

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As we enter a world of artificial intelligence, the question of what should be automated looms before us. Models need clear, objective metrics to train on. But, can jobs really be distilled to data points?  In her book, The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World, Prof. Allison Pugh asserts many jobs have a relational component that can’t be caught in the metrics. In this episode, Prof. Pugh warns that devaluing connective labor leads to automation that overlooks the core issues and leaves us more isolated.

Topics:

• Connective Labor
• Undervaluation of Connective Labor
• Automation of Connective Labor
• Role of Data in Education
• Educational Inequality and Standardized Testing
• Artificial Intelligence and Relationships
• Growing Demand for Connection
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?

Bio:
Allison Pugh is a Research Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, and the author of four books, most recently The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World (Princeton 2024). The 2024-5 Vice President of the American Sociological Association, Pugh was faculty at the University of Virginia for 17 years before moving to Hopkins this summer. She is a former journalist, and her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The New Republic, and other outlets. She served as a US diplomat in Honduras, cofounded a charter school in Oakland, waited on tables at the US Tennis Open, packed salmon roe in Alaska, and was an intern at Ms. Magazine.  

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When we think of history of books, we often neglect the people who created them. We think of history as a figment of facts, connected together by time and advances in technology. But sometimes we overlook the humanity, the souls, the fingerprints in the ink-stained margins of long-forgotten tomes. In this episode, I sit down with Oxford's Prof. Adam Smyth to discuss his The Book-Makers: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives. How a book was made tells us about the people who created it, as well as what the culture valued about books. The way a book was formed changes how we interact with it.

Topics:

• Humanizing the history of the book - the forgotten lives of the book-makers
• The book - a blend of prose and production
• How culture influenced the design of books
• How hand-printing influences your view of writing
• Do you think the abstract nature and accessibility of text have changed how we view it?
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?

Bio:
Adam Smyth is professor of English literature and the history of the book at Balliol College, University of Oxford. He is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the TLS. He also runs the 39 Steps Press, a small printing press, which he keeps in a barn in Oxfordshire, England. 

Affiliate book links: (Support the show by buying through these links :D)

• The Book-Maker: A History of the Book in Eighteen Lives
• Books of impact: Short stories of Borges

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For the past few centuries, we have philosophically operated under Newtonian physics where questions of experience and of the soul were seen as subjective, with no connection to the numerical certainty of science. However, then came quantum physics.

In his new book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith, classicist Dr. Spencer Klavan retells the history of science and highlights the philosophical implications of each era. He argues that quantum mechanics, with its exploration of uncertainty and consciousness, has not only returned physics to the question of the soul. But, also, has provided an incredible argument for the Genesis account of creation.

You may recognize Dr. Klavan from his appearance in episode 104 - Modern Problems, Ancient Solutions - Applying the Wisdom of the Classics to the Cultural Conflicts of Today

Topics:

• The purpose of this book
• Music of the Spheres & the Medieval View of the world - the World as Beauty + Order
• Philosophical implications of "ghost in the machine" philosophy
• AI and the mechanical view of the universe
• Genesis, Consciousness, and Quantum Mechanics
• Worldviews and Science
• A clash of cultures: Scientism and Skepticism in America
• Confusing spiritual truths and scientific truths
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Bio:
Dr. Spencer Klavan is an associate editor at the Claremont Review of Books and a podcaster on the great works of the West. Dr. Klavan is a scholar, writer, and podcast host of Young Heretics, with a lifelong devotion to the great works and principles of the West. After studying Greek and Latin at Yale University as an undergrad, he spent five years at Oxford University completing his doctorate in ancient Greek literature. Check out his latest book, Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith.

Resources mentioned:

• Light of the Mind, Light of the World: Illuminating Science Through Faith
• Books of impact:
  • In high school: Bible
  • During grad school: Owen Barfield's Poetic Diction and Saving Appearances
  • Since his last appearance: Thomas Traherne's Centuries of Meditations

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A multifaceted understanding of wisdom is essential for a functioning society.  Only with this broad understanding can we humbly dialogue with those who disagree with us and piece by piece build a culture of conversation. In this episode, I sit down with geneticist and physician Dr. Francis Collins to discuss his latest book, The Road to Wisdom. Dr. Collins argues that we must return to the four core sources of judgment and clear thinking: truth, science, faith, and trust.

A Quick Note:

Aiming for the Moon has a diverse audience. I strongly believe that developing your perspective comes from speaking with people who you both agree with and disagree with. Iron sharpens iron. That’s why this podcast is a platform that hosts interesting and successful people from a variety of worldviews. Gen. Z has the opportunity to trailblaze a culture of conversation. So, let’s go.

Topic:

• Four Anchors of Knowledge: Truth, Science, Faith, and Trust
• Cynicism and Nihilism in Public Discourse 
• The Importance of Humility in Dialogue
• "How has being attacked by those 'on your side?' changed how you communicate?"
• Harmonizing Faith and Science
• Iron sharpens Iron: How going outside your bubble helps expand your perspective
• Navigating Polarized Issues in a Multicultural Society
• Practical Steps: So, how should we then live?
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Bio:
Dr. Francis S. Collins is a physician and geneticist. His groundbreaking work has led to the discovery of the cause of cystic fibrosis, among other diseases.  In 1993 he was appointed director of the international Human Genome Project, which successfully sequenced all 3 billion letters of our DNA. He went on to serve three Presidents as the Director of the National Institutes of Health.

Resources mentioned:

• The Road to Wisdom
• Taylor's Substack: The Dangers of Abstracting Individuals in a Divided Society
• Ep. 80. The Perception of Political Polarization and How to Fix It: Dr. Chris Bail
• The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt
• Books of impact:
  • Bible
  • Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis
  • The Constitution of Knowledge by Jonathan Rauch

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In his book, The Socrates Express: In Search of Life Lessons from Dead Philosophers, award-winning journalist Eric Weiner describes how to live well. He argues that our technologically advanced societies have mistaken knowledge for wisdom. In this episode, we discuss how philosophy affects our every action, whether we recognize it or not. Philosophy allows us to make sense of our lives, to find our place in world, and to see the beauty within it. Listen in to this wonderful conversation about this overlooked art. 

Topics:

• Our Wisdom-hungry Society - Mistaking Knowledge for Wisdom.
• How Philosophy Teaches Us How to Live
• The Philosophy of the Modern World
• The Metaverse and Plato
• The Hidden Influence of Philosophy on Our Daily Lives
• Happiness - Ancient Greeks vs Us
• "What books have had an impact on you?"
• "What advice do you have for teenagers?"

Bio:
Eric Weiner is an award-winning journalist, bestselling author, and speaker. His books include The Geography of Bliss, The Geography of Genius, Man Seeks God, and The Socrates Express. His latest book, Ben & Me, will be published by Avid Reader Press in June 2024. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages. Eric is a former foreign correspondent for NPR, and reporter for The New York Times. He is a regular contributor to The Washington Post, BBC Travel, and AFAR, among other publications. He lives in the Washington, D.C. area.

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