The Digital Insider with Sinan Aral

Sinan is joined by Gary Marcus, scientist, best-selling author, and entrepreneur. Gary is Founder and CEO of Robust.AI, and was Founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, a machine learning company acquired by Uber in 2016.

The pair discuss topics ranging from artificial General Intelligence, GTP-3, neuroscience, genetics, linguistics, and more. Gary's newest book, co-authored with Ernest Davis, Rebooting AI: Building Machines We Can Trust aims to shake up the field of artificial intelligence -- and that is exactly what happens during this fascinating and timely conversation.

Visit ide.mit.edu/podcast for more.

Follow @sinanaral and @mit_ide on Twitter and @professorsinan and @mit_ideon Instagram.

Please remember to rate us and leave a review - the best way to support the podcast.

Sinan is joined by expert guests, Natalia Levina – Professor, New York University, Stern School of Business, Richard Stengel – Former Under Secretary of State for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs and Political Analyst, CNBC and Clint Watts – Distinguished Research Fellow, Foreign Policy Research Institute and national security contributor for NBC News and MSNBC, to discuss the information war in Ukraine. The historical sophistication of Russian influence operations through social media is well known. But today, in Ukraine, they are struggling to keep up with the modern information war raging over social and traditional media. Today, the information war in Ukraine is more intense, more tightly contested and arguably more important than ever because motivating volunteer fighters at home and encouraging foreign support aboard are critical to success. And this time, it seems, Russia is losing. President Zelenskyy is deftly outmaneuvering Putin in this information war. And this time around, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and Google are proactively engaged in the information war. Information campaigns are difficult to quantify during the fog of war. But while it is hard to pinpoint the extent to which the information war is contributing to the overwhelming international unity against Vladimir Putin’ aggression, one thing is clear: social media, mainstream media and the narrative framing of the Ukrainian invasion will undoubtedly play an important role in how this conflict ends. Now, vigilance and fortitude are not only needed on the battlefield, where lives and territory will be won and lost, but also online, where the hearts and minds of the world will be won or lost.

Visit ide.mit.edu/podcast for more
Follow @sinanaral and @mit_ide on Twitter and @professorsinan and @mit_ide on Instagram

On today’s episode Sinan sits down with friend and Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Maria Ressa, who shares her fascinating insights on her work as a fearless advocate of journalism and freedom of speech. The co-founder, CEO and executive editor of Rappler.com, an online news organization in the Philippines, Maria was one of the first reporters to expose the human rights abuses of President Rodrigo Duterte which culminated in her being awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize - the first Filipino recipient of the Prize.

Today you’ll hear two parts to Sinan's conversation with Maria, the first part from a live recording at MIT and a second part from just the other day where Maria updated Sinan on her life now after the recent historic election in the Philippines and as she awaits the verdict of her appeal for 10-counts of cyber-libel while out on bail.

Please be sure to subscribe, rate, and leave a review!

Follow us on social media and share today's episode:
Twitter - @mit_ide @sinanaral
Instagram - @mit_ide @professorsinan

Visit ide.mit.edu/podcast for more.

Get ready for the Digital Insider with Sinan Aral - Professor and Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, and author of "The Hype Machine". Sinan is joined by the worlds leading thinkers to explore the latest trends in digital business and society. But with the goal of taking deep dives under the hood of how the digital economy actually works -- from AI bias, to NFTs, fake news to two-sided markets, cryptocurrencies, to quantum computing, we want to try to make sense that the lightning fast changes taking place in the tech driven world --- but from a scientific perspective.