In this wide-ranging conversation, we explore the implications of planetary-scale computation with Benjamin Bratton , Director of the Antikythera program at the Berggruen Institute and Professor at UC San Diego. Benjamin describes his interdisciplinary work as appearing like a "platypus" to others—an odd creature combining seemingly incompatible parts that somehow works as a coherent whole. At the heart of our discussion is Benjamin's framework for understanding how computational technology lite...
Jun 07, 2025•1 hr 4 min
In this episode, we welcome David Wolpert , a Professor at the Santa Fe Institute renowned for his groundbreaking work across multiple disciplines—from physics and computer science to game theory and complexity. * Note: If you enjoy our podcast conversations, please join us for the Artificiality Summit on October 23-25 in Bend, Oregon for many more in person conversations like these! Learn more about the Summit at www.artificiality.world/summit. We reached out to David to explore the mathematics...
Apr 05, 2025•1 hr 16 min
In this remarkable conversation, Michael Levin (Tufts University) and Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Google) examine what happens when biology and computation collide at their foundations. Their recent papers—arriving simultaneously yet from distinct intellectual traditions—illuminate how simple rules generate complex behaviors that challenge our understanding of life, intelligence, and agency. Michael’s "Self-Sorting Algorithm" reveals how minimal computational models demonstrate unexpected problem-sol...
Mar 12, 2025•1 hr 10 min
In this episode, we welcome Maggie Jackson, whose latest book, Uncertain, has become essential reading for navigating today’s complex world. Known for her groundbreaking work on attention and distraction, Maggie now turns her focus to uncertainty—not as a problem to be solved, but as a skill to be cultivated. Note: Uncertain won an Artificiality Book Award in 2024—check out our review here: https://www.artificiality.world/artificiality-book-awards-2024/ In the interview, we explore the neuroscie...
Mar 07, 2025•1 hr
In this episode, we talk with Greg Epstein —humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, bestselling author, and a leading voice on the intersection of technology, ethics, and belief systems. Greg’s latest book, Tech Agnostic , offers a provocative argument: Silicon Valley isn’t just a powerful industry—it has become the dominant religion of our time. Note: Tech Agnostic won an Artificality Book Award in 2024—check out our review here . In this interview, we explore the deep parallels between big tech ...
Mar 06, 2025•59 min
In this episode, we sit down with the ever-innovative Chris Messina—creator of the hashtag, top product hunter on Product Hunt, and trusted advisor to startups navigating product development and market strategy. Recording from Ciel Media’s new studio in Berkeley, we explore the evolving landscape of generative AI and the widening gap between its immense potential and real-world usability. Chris introduces a compelling framework, distinguishing AI as a *tool* versus a *medium*, which helps explai...
Feb 28, 2025•53 min
D. Graham Burnett will tell you his day job is as a professor of science history at Princeton University. He is also co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention and has been associated with the Friends of Attention since 2018. But none of those positions adequately describe Graham. His bio says that he “works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice.” He writes, he performs, he makes things. He describes himself as an attention activist. Perhaps most importantly...
Feb 27, 2025•1 hr 12 min
At the Artificiality Summit 2024, Michael Levin, distinguished professor of biology at Tufts University and associate at Harvard's Wyss Institute, gave a lecture about the emerging field of diverse intelligence and his frameworks for recognizing and communicating with the unconventional intelligence of cells, tissues, and biological robots. This work has led to new approaches to regenerative medicine, cancer, and bioengineering, but also to new ways to understand evolution and embodied minds. He...
Feb 05, 2025•1 hr 18 min
Our opening keynote from the Imagining Summit held in October 2024 in Bend, Oregon. Join us for the next Artificiality Summit on October 23-25, 2025! Read about the 2024 Summit here: https://www.artificiality.world/the-imagining-summit-we-imagined-and-hoped-and-we-cant-wait-for-next-year-2/ And join us for the 2025 Summit here: https://www.artificiality.world/summit/
Jan 28, 2025•15 min
First: - Apologies for the audio! We had a production error… What’s new: - DeepSeek has created breakthroughs in both: How AI systems are trained (making it much more affordable) and how they run in real-world use (making them faster and more efficient) Details - FP8 Training: Working With Less Precise Numbers - Traditional AI training requires extremely precise numbers - DeepSeek found you can use less precise numbers (like rounding $10.857643 to $10.86) - Cut memory and computation needs signi...
Jan 28, 2025•26 min
We’re excited to welcome writers and directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck to the podcast. Their debut film, ‘The Cleaners,’ about the shadow industry of digital censorship premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and has since won numerous international awards and been screened at more than 70 international film festivals. We invited Hans and Moritz to the podcast to talk about their latest film, Eternal You, which examines the story of people who live on as digital replicants—and t...
Jan 25, 2025•45 min
Briefing: How AI Affects Critical Thinking and Cognitive Offloading What This Paper Highlights - The study explores the growing reliance on AI tools and its effects on critical thinking, specifically through cognitive offloading—delegating mental tasks to AI systems. - Key finding: Frequent AI tool use is strongly associated with reduced critical thinking abilities, especially among younger users, as they increasingly rely on AI for decision-making and problem-solving. - Cognitive offloading act...
Jan 25, 2025•31 min
We’re excited to welcome Craig Wheeler to the podcast. Craig is an astrophysicist and Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Over his career, he has made significant contributions to our understanding of supernovae, black holes, and the nature of the universe itself. Craig’s new book, The Path to Singularity: How Technology Will Challenge the Future of Humanity , offers an exploration of how exponential technological change could upend life as we know it. Drawing on his background as an...
Jan 19, 2025•51 min
Science Briefing: What AI Agents Tell Us About the Future of Human Experience * What These Papers Highlight - AI agents are improving but far from capable of replacing human tasks. Even the best models fail at simple things humans find intuitive, like handling social interactions or navigating pop-ups. - One paper benchmarks agent performance in workplace-like tasks, showing just 24% success on even simple tasks. The other argues that agents alone aren’t enough—we need a broader system to make t...
Jan 17, 2025•27 min
We’re excited to welcome Doyne Farmer to the podcast. Doyne is a pioneering complexity scientist and a leading thinker on economic systems, technological change, and the future of society. Doyne is a Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Oxford, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm. Doyne’s work spans an extraordinary range of topics, from agent-based modeling of financial markets to exploring how innovation shapes the long-term trajectory...
Dec 12, 2024•56 min
We're excited to welcome Jamie Boyle to the podcast. Jamie is a law professor and author of the thought-provoking book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood. In The Line, Jamie challenges our assumptions about personhood and humanity, arguing that these boundaries are more fluid than traditionally believed. He explores diverse contexts like animal rights, corporate personhood, and AI development to illustrate how debates around personhood permeate philosophy, law, art, and morality. Jamie us...
Sep 28, 2024•58 min
We're excited to welcome to the podcast Shannon Vallor, professor of ethics and technology at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of The AI Mirror . In her book, Shannon invites us to rethink AI—not as a futuristic force propelling us forward, but as a reflection of our past, capturing both our human triumphs and flaws in ways that shape our present reality. In The AI Mirror , Shannon uses the powerful metaphor of a mirror to illustrate the nature of AI. She argues that AI doesn’t repres...
Sep 13, 2024•57 min
We're excited to welcome to the podcast Matt Beane , Assistant Professor at UC Santa Barbara and the author of the book "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines." Matt’s research investigates how AI is changing the traditional apprenticeship model, creating a tension between short-term performance gains and long-term skill development. His work has particularly focused on the relationship between junior and senior surgeons in the operating theater. As he told ...
Aug 30, 2024•56 min
We're excited to welcome to the podcast Emily M. Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington. As our listeners know, we enjoy tapping expertise in fields adjacent to the intersection of humans and AI. We find Emily’s expertise in linguistics to be particularly important when understanding the capabilities and limitations of large language models—and that’s why we were eager to talk with her. Emily is perhaps best known in the AI community for coining the term "...
Aug 02, 2024•57 min
We're excited to welcome to the podcast John Havens, a multifaceted thinker at the intersection of technology, ethics, and sustainability. John's journey has taken him from professional acting to becoming a thought leader in AI ethics and human wellbeing. In his 2016 book, "Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines," John presents a thought-provoking examination of humanity's relationship with AI. He introduces the concept of "codifying our values" - our crucial need...
Jul 13, 2024•1 hr 2 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Leslie Valiant, a pioneering computer scientist and Turing Award winner renowned for his groundbreaking work in machine learning and computational learning theory. In his seminal 1983 paper, Leslie introduced the concept of Probably Approximately Correct or PAC learning, kick-starting a new era of research into what machines can learn. Now, in his latest book, The Importance of Being Educable: A New Theory of Human Uniqueness, Leslie builds upon his previo...
Jun 22, 2024•57 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Jonathan Feinstein , professor at the Yale School of Management and author of Creativity in Large-Scale Contexts: Guiding Creative Engagement and Exploration . Our interest in creativity is broader than the context of the creative professions like art, design, and music. We see creativity as the foundation of how we move ahead as a species including our culture, science, and innovation. We’re interested in the huge combinatorial space of creativity, linked...
Jun 08, 2024•54 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Karaitiana Taiuru. Dr Taiuru is a leading authority and a highly accomplished visionary Māori technology ethicist specialising in Māori rights with AI, Māori Data Sovereignty and Governance with emerging digital technologies and biological sciences. Karaitiana has been a champion for Māori cultural and intellectual property rights in the digital space since the late 1990s. With the recent emergence of AI into the mainstream, Karaitiana sees both opportunit...
May 25, 2024•48 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Omri Allouche, the VP of Research at Gong, an AI-driven revenue intelligence platform for B2B sales teams. Omri has had a fascinating career journey with a PhD in computational ecology before moving into the world of AI startups. At Gong, Omri leads research into how AI and machine learning can transform the way sales teams operate. In our conversation today, we'll explore Omri's perspective on managing AI research and innovation. We'll discuss Gong’s appr...
May 04, 2024•41 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Susannah Fox , a renowned researcher who has spent over 20 years studying how patients and caregivers use the internet to gather information and support each other. Susannah has collected countless stories from the frontlines of healthcare and has keen insights into how patients are stepping into their power to drive change. Susannah recently published a book called "Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care." In it, she int...
Apr 20, 2024•49 min
We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Dr. Angel Acosta , an expert on healing-centered education and leadership. Angel runs the Acosta Institute which helps communities process trauma and build environments for people to thrive. He also facilitates leadership programs at the Garrison Institute that support the next generation of contemplative leaders. With his background in social sciences, curriculum design, and adult education, Angel has been thinking deeply about how artificial intelligence...
Mar 02, 2024•43 min
We're excited to welcome Doug Belshaw to the show today. Doug is a founding member of the We Are Open Co-op which helps organizations with sensemaking and digital transformation. Doug coined the term "serendipity surface" to describe cultivating an attitude of curiosity and increasing the chance encounters we have by putting ourselves out there. We adopted the term quite some time ago and were eager to talk with Doug about how he thinks about serendipity surfaces in the age of generative AI. As ...
Feb 23, 2024•45 min
We’re excited to welcome Richard Kerris, Vice President of Developer Relations and GM of Media & Entertainment at NVIDIA, to the show today. Richard has had an extensive career working with creators and developers across film, music, gaming, and more. He offers valuable insights into how AI and machine learning are transforming creative tools and workflows. In particular, Richard shares his perspective on how these advanced technologies are democratizing access to high-end capabilities, putt...
Feb 17, 2024•50 min
We're excited to welcome Tyler Marghetis , Assistant Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced, to the show today. Tyler studies what he calls the "lulls and leaps" or "ruts and ruptures" of human imagination and experience. He's fascinated by how we as humans can get stuck in certain patterns of thinking and acting, but then also occasionally experience radical transformations in our perspectives. In our conversation, Tyler shares with us some of ...
Feb 06, 2024•51 min
Why is scientific progress slowing down? That's a question that's been on the minds of many. But before we dive into that, let's ponder this—how do we even know that scientific progress is decelerating? And in an era where machines are capable of understanding complexities that sometimes surpass human cognition, how should we approach the future of knowledge? Joining us in this exploration is Professor James Evans from the University of Chicago. As the director of the Knowledge Lab at UChicago, ...
Jan 30, 2024•1 hr 3 min
