Computing Up

Adam Safron (🔗, 🔗), a PhD. independent researcher with wide-ranging interests and multiple affiliations (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), joins Michael and Dave for a suitably all-over-the-map conversation - mostly about Artificial Intelligence, but also touching on psychedelics, sexuality, free will, and more.

[Note: This episode was recorded on January 8, 2026, and Computing Up sincerely regrets the extreme publication delay - especially how nine months feels like about nine years in today's fevered AI environment. But this conversation remains in many ways relevant; see what you think.]

[Cover image based on image used by permission of Adam Safron]

Ben Kuipers, emeritus professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), joins Michael and Dave in a nerdly yet accessible conversation on topics ranging from Good Old-Fashioned AI, to how we understand space and time, to ethics and trust in society, to teaching Dave how to LISP properly in the 1970s.

[Episode cover based on image used courtesy of Benjamin J. Kuipers]

Moshe Vardi (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, and a multi-award-winning force in theoretical computer science, joins Michael and Dave in a wide-ranging conversation about robustness and resilience in computer science, engineering, and society at large.

Moshe's talk "Lessons from Texas, COVID-19, and the 737 Max" is online (🔗, 🔗).

[Cover based on an image used by permission of Moshe Vardi]

Episode Note: This conversation was recorded in August 2024 but is only becoming available now. Computing Up regrets and apologizes for the extended delay!

Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin (🔗, 🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an author, historian, and academic, joins Michael and Dave in a fast conversation about the history of computing and its systemic biases from the '60s to the techbros of today, and much more.

[Cover based on an image used by permission of Joy Rankin]

Note: This conversation was recorded in April 2024 but is only becoming available now. Computing Up regrets and apologizes for the extended delay!

Cognitive scientist and psychologist Professor Steve Sloman of Brown University (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a fun romp through connectionism, collective cognition, the illusion of understanding, and much more.

Also, Dave illustrates his illusion of understanding of a bicycle in a true back of the envelope sketch --

[Episode cover based on image used courtesy of Steven Sloman]

Manon Revel (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an Employee Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, joins Michael and Dave for a conversation about the past, present, and future of democracy, and ways to understand it in both computational and practical terms.

[Thumbnail based on image provided courtesy of Manon Revel]

Martha White, associate professor of Computing Science at University of Alberta (🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation about AI, system prediction and control, the power of sparse representations, and many aspects of machine learning from new mathematical theory to the absolutely practical control of a real water treatment plant.

[Thumbnail based on image used courtesy of Martha White]

Computer scientist Rich Sutton, FRS (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), a quiet giant of machine learning, joins Michael and Dave in a sprawling conversation touching on reinforcement learning, a hopeful view of AI, the importance of ideas, and a host of other topics.

[Thumbnail image used courtesy of Rich Sutton]

Michael interviews Dave about his recent video (YouTube) on a 'theory of everything'. The conversation begins with Michael praising Dave for finally doing some theory, and descends from there.

Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at University of Washington, (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation that ranges all over, from AI hype and language models to alignment and existential risk and ethics and morality to information pollution and cryptography and politics and more.

[Thumbnail based on image licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Carissapod link]