The Jim Rutt Show

Author Pamela McCorduck talks with Jim about themes of her latest book, This Could Be Important: My Life and Times with the Artificial Intelligentsia. They talk about C.P. Snow’s Two Cultures thesis that explores the divide between the humanities & sciences, Pamela’s professional & personal friendships with AI pioneers (Julian Feldman, Allen Newell, Marvin Minsky, Ed Feigenbaum, Raj Reddy & Herb Simon), how language is related to AI, symbolic vs. deep learning, drinking sherry with Herb Simon, how her writings on AI were perceived by publishers, scientists & creatives, Arno Penzias’ strong views on AI, potential risks & rewards of future AI, computational art, and the progress of feminism in academia & culture at large.

This conversation with Jim and John Robb–author, inventor, entrepreneur, technology analyst, astro engineer, and military pilot–starts by covering the impact of the recent drone attack on a Saudi fuel processing center, and the current US political situation. They then go on to talk about how John compares resistance and the insurgency networks, the dynamics of tribes, institutions & markets in this internet age, the role open-source dynamics play, coherence vs. corruption, how Extinction Rebellion & Game B fit in this picture, the neo-fascism of China & its impact on corporations, the Honk Kong protests, unleashing intelligence agencies on domestic terrorism, how autonomous robotics could impact future military engagements, and much more.

Professor, MacArthur Fellow and author Stuart Kauffman talks with Jim about the major themes of his career: complexity, auto-catalytic chemical sets, protocells and the origins of life, the problem of the error catastrophe, human evolution, social and technical evolution, the Fermi Paradox and much more. Stuart also introduces his new T.A.P. equation and his view that it drives creativity and complexity across many scales.

Bonnitta Roy, author of Our Future at Work and editor at Integral Review, talks with Jim Rutt about process thinking, complexity, evolution, and Game B. The discussion begins with a description of Roy's "insight practice," process thinking, complexity science, reification, and model building. It continues with a discussion of consciousness, causality, complexity, chaos and emergence. That is followed by a discussion of the temporal vs. the spatial, ending in a Buddhist boat. The evolution of the universe is the next topic, including panspermea and the big bang. Then there's a standoff on language that ends in an agreement on the benefits of good poop. Finally, as the world goes to poop, Bonnitta and Jim take up Plan B and the creation of a recomposable life form in an optimally decentralized array.

Anaconda CTO Peter Wang talks with Jim Rutt about the latest Python tools, deep fakes, nonrivalrous economics, and the distributed Internet. The discussion begins with a slew of new Python tools, including Numba, Dask, PyTorch, Chainer, CuPy, and PyData. That's followed by a long discussion about deep fakes, authentication, curation, and the ability to tell what's real from what isn't. The two IT pioneers then take on building a better Facebook, building a better economy, and finally building a better Internet with tools like Dat Projects and the Beaker Browser.

Author and futurist David Brin talks with Jim Rutt about optimism, ritualized combat, The Transparent Society, and the search for life in the universe. Beginning with the case for optimism, Brin takes on "Star Wars" and talks up "Star Trek" before dropping back to Adam Smith and Karl Popper. They provided the intellectual framework for an "intensely regulated" capitalism that brought tremendous wealth increases for the middle class. He's wary that it could all be lost if people cling to righteous, divisive politics. The winner of both the Hugo Award and Nebula Award, an acclaimed futurist, Brin advocates for compromise, cooperation and transparency that allows people to assess the data, participate in the discussion, and participate in the process for sustaining order. If that doesn't work, there's always outer space! Brin and Rutt end the interview with a discussion of SETI and the search for life in the universe.

Astrophysicist Jill Tarter talks with host Jim Rutt about the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI), technosignatures + related projects. Starting with the Fermi Paradox and the Drake Equation, they discuss the hunt for life in the universe. While discussing the SETI protocol for determining when a credible signal has been received, Jill Tarter describes the "false positive" incident in 1998 that nearly lead to the announcement that Earth had been contacted by aliens. The two scientists then discuss the state of the art in astrophysics, including extremophiles, exoplanets, Breakthrough Listen, PANOSETI and Laser SETI -- a camera array in 12 locations with 8 cameras per location that should be able to observe the entire sky 100% of the time!

Trent McConaghy, of Ocean Protocol, talks with host Jim Rutt about blockchain, AI, and DAOs. Beginning with a discussion of Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and public utility networks, the conversation explores the DCS Triangle, the Interplanetary File System (IPFS), Decentralized Autonomous Organizations or DAOs, BigChainDB, AI, Ocean Protocol, the Data Economy, MOBI, and Token Engineering.

Brian Nosek, cofounder of the Center for Open Science, and host Jim Rutt discuss the cutting edge in science governance including the reproducibility crisis, the Open Science Framework, OSF Preprints, peer review journals, Registered Reports, Transparency and Openness Promotion (TOP) Guidelines, Open Source software and Open Source science, implicit bias, the Implicit Association Test, Project Implicit, experimental design, and replication.

Dave Snowden is Founder and Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge. He has pioneered a science-based approach to organizations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience, and complex adaptive systems theory. In this podcast, Dave Snowden and Jim Rutt discuss decision-making tools, assessment tools, business management systems, complexity, causality, artificial intelligence, and some of Dave Snowden's best-known projects: Cognitive Edge, Cynefin and SenseMaker. You'll hear how complex decision-making tools are used in counterterrorism, business management, the health sciences, and other fields to make better decisions based on "coherent heterogeneity."