The Jim Rutt Show

Jim talks to Melanie Mitchell about her recent paper, "Why AI is Harder Than We Think"... Melanie Mitchell & Jim talk about her recent paper, "Why AI is Harder Than We Think". They cover AI fantasies, self-driving cars, prediction failures, AI winters & summers, Melanie's four fallacies, common sense, theory of mind, defining understanding, embodied cognition, the role of emotions in intelligence, the future of AI, and more. Episode Transcript "Why AI is Harder Than We Think" JRS: EP33 Melanie Mitchell on the Elements of AI Complexity: A Guided Tour Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans JRS: EP25 Gary Marcus on Rebooting AI JRS: Currents 015: Jessica Flack & Melanie Mitchell on Complexity Melanie Mitchell is Professor of Computer Science at Portland State University, and External Professor and Co-Chair of the Science Board at the Santa Fe Institute. Mitchell has also held faculty or professional positions at the University of Michigan, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and the OGI School of Science and Engineering. She is the author or editor of seven books and numerous scholarly papers in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive science, and complex systems, including her latest, Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans.

Steve Barbour talks to Jim about his company, Upstream Data Inc. — a company that uses natural gas to mine bitcoin... Steve Barbour talks to Jim about his company, Upstream Data Inc. — a company that uses natural gas to mine bitcoin. They cover the dynamics of excess natural gas release, how methane is normally vented or burnt up, Upstream's environmental impact, mining hardware setup & efficiency, cost per kilowatt, customer RIO, bitcoin uses, monetary theory, 2nd & 3rd generation cryptocurrencies, inflationary currencies, zero-sum environmental thinking, and more. Episode Transcript Upstream Data Inc. Steve on Twitter Bitmain Steve Barbour is a mechanical engineer and owner of Upstream Data Inc., an oilfield services business focused on bitcoin mining and power generation for upstream oil and gas facilities. Steve is a strong advocate for bitcoin and believes it represents a paradigm shift in monetary technology. He was born and raised in St. John's, Newfoundland and currently resides in Calgary, Alberta with his lovely wife Morgan.

Robert Tercek has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about his book, Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World... Robert Tercek talks to Jim about his book, Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World. They cover the usefulness of the vapor metaphor, centralization vs decentralization, the impact of closed application ecosystems, value in intangible assets, hardware vs software profitability, the telling story of Tower Records, rapid consumer market changes, big tech bundling strategies, the birth of mobile games, Epic Games vs Apple, digital goods, race to the VR metaverse, digitized smart cities, future TV evolutions, interactive TV & Twitch, switchboards vs platforms vs markets vs ecosystems, and much more. Episode Transcript RobertTercek.com Vaporized: Solid Strategies for Success in a Dematerialized World CodeMiko Robert Tercek is an award-winning author and one of the world’s leading authorities on dematerialization and the virtual economy. He has supervised the launch of new digital services that are used by hundreds of millions of people every day, including the first streaming video on mobile phones, the largest live educational program on the web, and some of the earliest games on a variety of platforms, including PCs, the web, and mobile.

Britt Adkins & Jim on the space industry: prioritization, funding, misconceptions, meaning, cultural & political impact, policy, and much more... Britt Adkins has a wide-ranging talk with Jim about the space industry. They explore prioritizing space funding & common misconceptions, power of the overview effect, global vs celestial community, cultural & political impacts, public participation strategies, physical / psychological adaptation to space & other planets, scaling humanity, urban planning in space, orbital debris & waste, environmental design dynamics, cultural commons in space, policy challenges & the Outer Space Treaty, diversity in the space industry, Elon Musk worship, off-earth self sufficiency, and much more. Episode Transcript Britt on Twitter Celestial Citizen Celestial Citizen Podcast Podcast: The Habitat HI-SEAS Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men Britt is the first space urban planner and founder of Celestial Citizen. She is passionate about the intersection of urban planning, engineering, science, and social justice as humans look to build new societies in space. Britt also hosts the Celestial Citizen podcast where she looks to spark unique conversations about the human factors that will be essential to our long-term survival and evolution into a spacefaring civilization. She's currently dually-enrolled at the University of Southern California’s Price School of Public Policy pursuing a Master of Urban Planning, and at the Colorado School of Mines, where she will be receiving a Master of Science in Space Resources. She also graduated from the MIT-Wellesley Double Degree program where she received the S.B. in Urban Studies & Planning from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a B.A. from Wellesley College in Architecture.

Samo Burja, founder of Bismarck Analysis, dives into the Consilience Project, which aims to enhance public sensemaking and address cultural challenges. He discusses how digital media has transformed information flow, leading to memetic noise and the rise of populism, exemplified by Trump. Samo explores the importance of long-form dialogue for complex ideas, critiques societal norms impacting collective choices, and emphasizes innovative approaches to narrative construction. The conversation also touches on carbon accounting as a tool for societal coherence.

Jason Mauck talks to Jim about starting Constant Canopy and the dynamics, technologies & economics of innovative farming strategies... Jason Mauck talks to Jim about what lead him to farm, how & why he started Constant Canopy, agriculture innovation dynamics & economics, finding crop combinations, turning manure into methane, utilizing Biochar, acquiring a meat-packing business, building direct-to-consumer meat distribution & strategy, farm integration models (livestock, agro, food, entertainment...), robotic berry picking, and much more. Episode Transcript Jim's Mauck Me Episode Jason on Twitter Constant Canopy Mauck Me Podcast Jason is obsessed with narrowing the gaps of agriculture. An apostle of relay cropping, Mauck, is blazing a new path using cash and cover crops in unison. One middle at a time, the maverick grower is uncovering clues and running wide open toward greater farming efficiency. Jason works 3,000 acres of corn, soybeans and wheat, in addition to 25,000 hogs per year. His company, Constant Canopy, is developing cutting-edge farming methods and currently holds the Indiana state record for the highest yield per acre for soybeans and has developed scalable systems for corn yields that surpass most high-test plots.

Ken Stanley and Jim talk about his wide-ranging book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective... Ken Stanley and Jim talk about his wide-ranging book Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective. They cover the no free lunch theorem, exploitations vs exploration, the myth & issues of objectives, the room of all images & adjacent possible, the problems & dynamics of deception, the power of serendipity, gradients of interestingness, intuition & novelty search, social change & innovation, emergent education & AI insights, incrementalism, risk & reward, Ken's unique journal idea, and much more. Episode Transcript Ken's Site Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned: The Myth of the Objective JRS: EP25 Gary Marcus on Rebooting AI Ken Stanley leads a research team at OpenAI on the challenge of open-endedness. He was previously Charles Millican Professor of Computer Science at the University of Central Florida and was also a co-founder of Geometric Intelligence Inc., which was acquired by Uber to create Uber AI Labs, where he was head of Core AI research.  He received a B.S.E. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1997 and received a Ph.D. in 2004 from the University of Texas at Austin. He is an inventor of the Neuroevolution of Augmenting Topologies (NEAT), HyperNEAT, novelty search, and POET algorithms, as well as the CPPN representation, among many others.

Connor Leahy has a wide-ranging chat with Jim about the state & future of Deep Learning... Connor Leahy has a wide-ranging chat with Jim about the state & future of Deep Learning. They cover the history of EleutherAI, how GPT-3 works, the dynamics & power of scaling laws, ideal sampling rates & sizes for models, data sets, EleutherAI's opensource GTP-Neo & GTP-NeoX, PyTorch vs TensorFlow, TPU's vs GPU's, the challenge of benchmarking & evaluations, quadradic bottlenecks, broad GTP-3 applications, Connors thoughts on Jim's proposed GPT-3 research project, untapped GPT-3 potential, OpenAI's move away from opensource, alignment, AI safety, the unknown future, and much more. Episode Transcript Connor on Twitter Jared Kaplan The Pile CoreWeave Connor Leahy is an AI Researcher at German startup Aleph Alpha and founding member of the loose AI research collective EleutherAI. Eleuther is best known for their ongoing efforts to produce a full open source GPT-3 sized language model. Connor currently researches large, general purpose language models and how to align them to human values.

Stephanie Lepp & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on her two-time Webby Award winning video series, Deep Reckonings... Stephanie Lepp & Jim have a wide-ranging talk on her two-time Webby Award winning video series, Deep Reckonings. They start by covering the history & intentions of Deep Reckonings, deep fake technology, our post-truth crisis, and the pros & cons of irony. They then go on to talk about the Deep Reckonings videos: how she chose people to include, reflections on the Mark Zuckerberg video, the challenge of remaining in good faith, free speech & censorship, GameB, Joe Rogan & Alex Jones, reflections the Brett Kavanaugh video, analyzing Jim's own Robin DiAngelo deep reckoning script, capitalism, how the video scripts changed Stefanie, materialism, the role of conviviality in moving away from GameA, Potlatch, and more. Episode Transcript Stephanie's Site Reckonings Podcast Deep Reckonings JRS: EP52 Steven Levy on Facebook: The Inside Story Mark Zuckerberg Deep Reckoning Brett Kavanaugh Deep Reckoning Stephanie Lepp is a storyteller, producer, and strategist interested in exploring worldview transformation, the relationship between personal and social change, and sense-making in a post-truth world. She's a member of the Guild of Future Architects and two-time Webby Awards winner, and her work has been recognized by institutions such as the Mozilla Foundation and Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

Philosopher Forrest Landry and host Jim delve into the Incommensuration Theorem, discussing symmetry, continuity, domains, knowledge, measurement, quantum interpretations, and more. They explore relationships in mathematics, physics, coding languages, and cultural perceptions, emphasizing the interconnectedness of content, context, and epistemic processes.