Computing Up

From evolution to proxy fitness to generalized drugs and back again.

[Title image combines a public domain CC0 book image plus a version of Ernst Haeckel's 'Tree of Life' drawing]

Dave finds out how Michael ended up doing two TEDx talks in a month and a half.

[Title image using screengrabs from Michael's talks at TEDx Providence and TEDx Boston]

Professor and author Melanie Mitchell discusses artificial intelligence with Dave.

[Title photograph courtesy of Melanie Mitchell]

The meaning of science, and engineering, and philosophy of science, and the ultimate physicality of all things including ideas.

[Title image based on Chalkboard in empty classroom licensed under CC-BY-2.0 by Thomas Galvez.]

Emotions and reinforcement learning. Partly inspired by Eric Barker's recent discussion of emotional intelligence.

[Title background image: Happy robot and sad robot created, and placed in the public domain, by Lola Kno.]

Randomness writ large. With discussion of Brendan Koerner's recent Wired article on hacking casino slot machines.

[Title background image: A photograph of Las Vegas slot machines, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license by Yamaguchi先生]

So how doomed are we?

[Title background image: An Atlas robot image, supplied as public information by DARPA, overlaid on a post-apocalyptic cityscape licensed under CC-BY-2.0 by Ty'Onah Gallman]

Let's just get this sorted out right now.

[Title background image: The Elakala Falls in West Virginia, from Wikipedia ]

How Michael Littman and Dave Ackley met, in the 1980's.

[Title image based on a street view from Oct 2016 (© 2017 Google) --- long after Bellcore had moved out --- of the 'Y building' in Morristown NJ, where Michael and Dave met.]

A forty second test clip