The AI in Business Podcast

Daniel Berleant is an expert in information science and artificial intelligence, and is the author of the book he Human Race to the Future: What Could Happen - and What to Do. In this interview, we discuss how robots and automation are already affecting industry, and how these impacts might shape not only the future landscape of our economy, but also our conception of what it means to work and earn a living.

Katherine Hayles is best known for her work as a postmodern social and literary critic. Now a professor at Duke University, Hayles joins TechEmergence for a discussion about the difference between consciousness and cognition, from the features that differentiate the two to the types of technologies that facilitate each. Hayles contributes her views on how the technologies of the future may impact human consciousness and the very role of human being

Could we one day upload ourselves into a computer or chip? Keith Wiley thinks that one day, we might be able to replicate consciousness within another entity. In this episode, Dr. Wiley speaks to us about why uploading human identity in a computer substrate might be possible in the coming decades, and the type of progress we're making today in the areas of computing and mapping the brain.

When should we care about robots? How quickly should and will that change? These are just some of the thought points addressed by Professor David Gunkel, whose work on the moral valuations of AI is some of the first of its kind. In this interview, we consider the extent to which our "moral weighing" of other entities is arbitrary, and ask what a biased process might imply when we create other aware entities.

We talk a lot about the future of technology on TechEmergence - the long-road potentials and ethical considerations that intersect the various paths of artificial intelligence. But keeping the conversation real and present necessitates looking through binoculars rather than a telescope from time to time. In this episode, Eyal Amir, Associate Professor of Computer Science at University of Illinois and Co-Founder of Parknav and AI Incube, Inc., gives his zoomed-in perspective of the types of technological progress that he believes will be relevant in the next 5 to 10 years.

Do you need a body to think? This is a worthwhile (and also a perplexing) question, and an ongoing debate amongst roboticists. Cognitive Roboticist Dr. Mark Bickhard is part of a field of belief that cognition and intelligence - and maybe consciousness itself - requires embodiment and direct interaction with the world. In this interview, he discusses the concept of normative function and self maintenance in entities, and why this matters when it comes to thinking.

Stephan Vladimir Bugaj is a modern visionary with extensive experience in screenwriting, technical artistry and directing in animation and games. He is the Creative Director at Hanson Robotics, where he specializes in robot personality and functional design. He is also a writer-director for WakingUp media and Visioneer studios, two screenwriting and production companies, and part of the story "brain trust" for Limitless VR. Stephan worked for over 10 years as a screenwriter and technical director with Pixar Animation Studios, and before that was a multimedia researcher at Bell Labs and artificial intelligence developer at Intelligenesis/Webmind. In this episode, Stephan draws on his robotics background to articulate what it takes to give a humanoid robot a "personality", and explains the differences between responses and propensities. Androids are already making news in the entertainment and retail industries, but we delve into why the health sector is next, and how culture might influence social acceptance.

Do lobsters really have something to teach us about developing AI and robotics? Dr. Joseph Ayers, a professor of Marine and Environmental Sciences at Northeastern University, has dedicated his research and work to the subject and has paved new directions for the future of AI and robotics in the domain of biomimetics. In this episode, Dr. Ayers provides a comprehensive overview of his development of autonomous underwater robots that help discover and destroy dangerous underwater land mines, and the potential for other animal-like robots to perform other "dull and dangerous" services for humankind. He provides a concluding perspective on two major obstacles facing robotics, one of which is the concept of autonomy, providing valuable insight in light of the current events around autonomous AI.

Dr. Bruce MacLennan is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Tennessee Knoxville (UTK), as well as past editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Nanotechnology and Molecular Computation. His research in natural computation has led to active, interdisciplinary involvement in the fields of neuroscience, cognitive science, and philosophy. In this episode, Bruce discusses how studying the mind has influenced, and will continue to influence, the development of artificial intelligence. In a largely digital world, he turns a clarifying light on the topic of digital versus analog computing, and articulates on how the latter may be making a slow comeback in the wake of discoveries in neural information processing.

Dr. Peter Boltuc has a PhD in Philosophy and is currently a Professor at University of Illinois Springfield. His background in Moral and Political Philosophy has leveraged his research into the subjectivity of moral experience and the moral implications of machine consciousness. In this episode, Peter discusses whether machines could ever be granted consciousness. He believes, hypothetically, that we could create such machines, and elaborates from an ethical perspective on why we may want to "curve moral space" in a way that values human-level sentience and moves us toward living harmoniously with such machines.