The Gradient: Perspectives on AI

Thomas Mullaney, a Professor of Chinese typewriter history, discusses destabilizing technology understandings, balancing meaningful work, and personal research aspects. The podcast delves into the evolution of communication, taxonomy in the digital age, and the power of writing gaps. Mullaney also explores the horror of unseen phenomena and reflects on Chinese language exclusion in historical narratives.

Professor Seth Lazar delves into managing near-term vs long-term risks in AI, axioms in political philosophy, coordination problems in AI development. He discusses attention allocation as a moral skill, the balance in metaphysical economy, reflections on social movement impacts, and navigating current and future AI risks including ethical considerations and safety research

Suhail Doshi discusses challenges in aligning benchmarks with AI advancements, enabling creative expression in music using AI, and the development of a unified computer vision model for enhancing image quality. He highlights the importance of personalized models and benchmarks, the limitations of text-to-image generation, and the focus on image-based tools in computer vision models.

Entrepreneur and technology analyst Azeem Azhar discusses the speed of progress in AI, historical context for tech terminology, and envisioning our future. Topics include Moore's Law, investment in scaling, uses of AGI, and cultural affordances in AI systems.

David Thorstad, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Vanderbilt University, discusses bounded rationality, interdisciplinary challenges in academia, and the evolution of fields. He critiques the standard view of rationality, explores epistemic norms, decision-making trade-offs, and ethical dilemmas. Thorstad challenges traditional views, introduces terms like pangolosianism and mealyerism, and debates the recognition heuristic in decision-making processes.

Ryan Tibshirani, a Professor in the Department of Statistics at UC Berkeley, discusses differences between ML and statistics communities, trend filtering, and conformal prediction. They delve into nonparametric regression, divided differences, discrete splines, and probabilistic guarantees in conformal prediction, offering insights into synthesis frameworks and neural networks.

Sasha Luccioni, AI and Climate Lead, discusses the environmental impact of AI systems, quantifying emissions, efficient hardware, power-hungry processing, and biases in AI models. The podcast explores the challenges of mitigating carbon footprint in AI experimentation, hardware utilization, energy consumption, and lifecycle assessment of AI models, as well as the difficulties in measuring AI ethics and societal impacts.

Professor Michael Sipser, a distinguished mathematician and computer scientist, discusses the essence of theoretical computer science, including the complexities of the P vs. NP problem, challenges in automata theory, and the role of academia in shaping future researchers. He highlights the satisfaction found in tackling unsolvable algorithmic challenges and emphasizes the importance of balancing humanistic values with scientific pursuits.

Andrew Lee, Co-founder and CEO of Shortwave, discusses leveraging AI for email user experience. Topics include AI system as a black box, Google's lack of email innovation, Shortwave's product vision, AI features for email, and strategies for fast product iteration and deployment.

Joss Fong, expert in videomaking, AI, and science communication, discusses engaging journalism, clarity in information, ML research communication, evolution of videos, explaining AI, meeting viewers halfway, and incentives in media creation.