Dean Ball on AI regulation, "hard tech," and the philosophy of Michael Oakeshott

In the inaugural episode of the cleverly named Virginia’s Podcast, which complements the cleverly named Virginia’s Newsletter, I talk with Dean Ball. Dean writes the excellent Hyperdimensional on Substack and is a research fellow in the Artificial Intelligence and Progress Project at George Mason University’s Mercatus Center. It’s a wide-ranging conversation and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.

Check out the show notes for an outline of the conversation and links to some of the things we mention. There’s also a transcript, thanks to Substack’s AI, which is astoundingly good at making a transcript. In the future, I plan to make transcripts a paid feature but I’m including everyone initially.

I welcome your comments and ideas for the podcast.Show Notes:When I created the podcast, Substack showed the show notes in a sidebar, along with the transcript. But I don’t see where they might be so I’m adding them after the fact.Writing by Dean Ball:

“California’s Effort to Strangle AI”:

“How to Regulate Artificial Intelligence” National Affairs:

“Learning to Love the Inscrutable” (review of How Life Works):

Other references:

SB 1047: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202320240SB1047

Virginia’s review of Elon Musk by Walter Isaacson:

Fei-Fei Li’s Stanford page

The Worlds I See: Curiosity, Exploration, and Discovery at the Dawn of AI by Fei-Fei Li:

The Constitution of Liberty by Friedrich Hayek

The Road to Serfdom by Friedrich Hayek

Rationalism in Politics by Michael Oakeshott

Triumph of the City by Edward Glaeser

Virginia’s article on materials libraries

Brian Potter, Construction Physics:

Patrick McKenzie, patio11

How Life Works by Philip Ball

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