UC Berkeley (Audio)

Kate Crawford, author of "Atlas AI: Power, Politics and Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence," is a leading international scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. This program looks at the intersection of art, activism and artificial intelligence. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 37967]

The last decade has seen a dramatic capture of digital material for machine learning production. This data is the basis for sense-making in AI, not as classical representations of the world with individual meaning, but as mass collections: ground truth for machine abstractions and operations. What happens when data is seen as an aggregate, stripped of context, meaning, and specificity? In what ways does training data limit what and how machine learning systems interpret the world? And most importantly, what forms of power do these approaches enhance and enable? Professor Kate Crawford is a leading international scholar of the social and political implications of artificial intelligence. In this lecture, Crawford shares new work that reflects on what’s at stake in the architecture and contents of training sets, and how they are increasingly part of our urban, legal, logistical, and commercial infrastructures. Series: "Tanner Lectures on Human Values" [Humanities] [Science] [Show ID: 37729]

The International System of Units (the SI), the modern metric system, has recently undergone its most revolutionary change since its origins during the French Revolution. The nature of this revolution is that all of the base units of the SI are now defined by fixing values of natural constants. Our measurement system is now, both philosophically and practically, strongly quantum. Nobel Prize recipient William Phillips, Ph.D., a Distinguished University and College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, talks about why this reform was needed and how it is done. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 37728]

Tilden Park’s Jewel Lake is home to a community of Western pond turtles, a species that is struggling to survive the combined threats of climate change, habitat loss and competition from red-eared slider turtles. Former UC Berkeley postdoctoral scholar Max Lambert is part of a team of wildlife experts who spent much of the pandemic checking in on the health of the Bay Area’s Western pond turtles, including those at Jewel Lake. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Agriculture] [Show ID: 37841]

At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed the way we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe. Nobel Prize recipient William Phillips, Ph.D., a Distinguished University and College Park Professor of Physics at the University of Maryland, talks about laser cooling and ultracold atoms and how they relate to time.

Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the Global Positioning System (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms. Series: "UC Berkeley Graduate Lectures" [Science] [Show ID: 37727]

UC Berkeley’s Kroeber Hall became the fourth building on campus to be stripped of its name in a year’s time. The decision by Berkeley officials capped a formal review process and was made, in large part, because the building’s namesake - Alfred Louis Kroeber, born in 1876 and the founder of the study of anthropology in the American West - is a powerful symbol that continues to evoke exclusion and erasure for Native Americans. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Humanities] [Show ID: 37827]

The DIY air purifier is the latest project of the Common Humanity Collective, a Bay Area mutual aid organization which was launched in March 2020, near the start of the COVID-19 crisis. UC Berkeley graduate student Abrar Abidi and campus research assistant Yvonne Hao started the project to help make life safer for those most at risk in the pandemic. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Health and Medicine] [Show ID: 37828]

UC Berkeley Assistant Professor, Jack Tseng, explains his research on juvenile T. rexes and what the findings tell us about the lifestyle of the teenage tyrannosaur. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Humanities] [Show ID: 37829]

UC Berkeley’s Ting Xu and her students have come up with one solution for the global problem of single-use plastics: embed enzymes in the plastic, so that once the bag or cup is no longer wanted, it will self-destruct with a little heat and water. Series: "UC Berkeley News" [Science] [Show ID: 37840]

Join Secretary Janet Napolitano and Senator Mark Warner for a discussion about the risks and opportunities of emergent technologies for voting, political engagement, and more. Must innovation and security always be at odds? Is there a way to find a balance between the two? Tune in for a fascinating conversation between two national security experts and lifelong public servants. Series: "The Goldman School - Berkeley Public Policy" [Public Affairs] [Show ID: 37661]