Computing Up

Dave tries to explain his "We are coders" approach to cognition to Michael, as part of developing the second lecture in the "Introduction to Classical Hyperspace" series.

First lecture

Computer scientists Emma Brunskill of Stanford and Phil Thomas of UMass Amherst join Michael and Dave in a four-way discussion of safety and fairness in AI and machine learning.

[The primary paper discussed, Preventing undesirable behavior of intelligent machines, is by Philip S. Thomas, Bruno Castro da Silva, Andrew G. Barto, Stephen Giguere, Yuriy Brun, and Emma Brunskill, and can be accessed for free via paper in Science ]

Michael and Dave talk with UC Berkeley sociologist Jenna Burrell about topics ranging from algorithmic fairness and transparency, to anthropology and epistemology, to viral tweets and why small is beautiful.

[Title image courtesy of Jenna Burrell]

Dave hates theory. Michael disagrees.

Michael and Dave talk with mathematician, computer scientist, and puzzle maker Peter Winkler, about topics ranging from randomness to free will, and combinatorics to Sleeping Beauty, and John Horton Conway to Erdős number 1. And don't miss the bonus puzzle!

Conway's (first) Princeton Lecture

[Title photo courtesy of Peter Winkler]

Michael and Dave talk about pandemic models and simulation journalism, programming languages, and what people really want.

Washington Post's simulator is here

Michael and Dave talk to Brown University neuroscientist Michael J Frank about topics from brains and minds, to engineering and machine learning, to dopamine and Parkinson's disease and New Age woo.

Computer scientist and biologist Melanie Moses joins Michael and Dave in a conversation ranging from biology nerds vs computing nerds to the future of justice in the United States, with a whole lot of scaling along the way.

Michael Carbin, Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at MIT, joins Michael and Dave to discuss neural net lottery tickets, computing with uncertainty and more.

[Cover photo courtesy of Michael Carbin]

Zander Furnas helps Dave get a clue about political science, in theory and in practice -- from authoritarianism to democracy, and from Congressional staffer's incentives to Elizabeth Warren's plan for lobbyists, and whether there's hope for society after all.

[Background image by www.GAUPERphoto.com used by permission of Zander Furnas]