The Alien in the Room
Radiolab12 Joulu 2025

The Alien in the Room

It’s faster than a speeding bullet. It’s smarter than a polymath genius. It’s everywhere but it’s invisible. It’s artificial intelligence. But what actually is it?

Today we ask this simple question and explore why it’s so damn hard to answer.

Special thanks to Stephanie Yin and the New York Institute of Go for teaching us the game. Mark, Daria and Levon Hoover Brauner for helping bring NETtalk to life.

And a huge thank you to Grant Sanderson for his unending patience explaining the math of neural nets to us. To learn more about how these 'thinking machines' actually think, we highly recommend his wonderful youtube channel 3Blue1Brown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aircAruvnKk).

EPISODE CREDITS:
Reported by - Simon Adler
Produced by - Simon Adler
Original music from - Simon Adler
Sound design contributed by - Simon Adler
Fact-checking by - Anna Pujol-Mazzini

Sign up for our newsletter!! It includes short essays, recommendations, and details about other ways to interact with the show. Signup (https://radiolab.org/newsletter)!

Radiolab is supported by listeners like you. Support Radiolab by becoming a member of The Lab (https://members.radiolab.org/) today.

Follow our show on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook @radiolab, and share your thoughts with us by emailing radiolab@wnyc.org.

Leadership support for Radiolab’s science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tämä jakso on lisätty Podme-palveluun avoimen RSS-syötteen kautta eikä se ole Podmen omaa tuotantoa. Siksi jakso saattaa sisältää mainontaa.

Jaksot(652)

Killer Empathy

Killer Empathy

In an episode first aired in 2012, Lulu Miller introduces us to Jeff Lockwood, a professor at the University of Wyoming, who spent a part of his career studying a particularly ferocious set of insects...

4 Huhti 202525min

Malthusian Swerve

Malthusian Swerve

Earth can sustain life for another 100 million years, but can we?In this episode, we partnered with the team at Planet Money to take stock of the essential raw materials that enable us to live as we d...

28 Maalis 202538min

Everybody's Got One

Everybody's Got One

We all think we know the story of pregnancy. Sperm meets egg, followed by nine months of nurturing, nesting, and quiet incubation. this story isn’t the nursery rhyme we think it is. In a way, it’s a s...

21 Maalis 202528min

Growth

Growth

It’s easy to take growth for granted, for it to seem expected, inevitable even. Every person starts out as a baby and grows up. Plants grow from seeds into food. The economy grows. That stack of mail ...

14 Maalis 202558min

More Perfect: Sex Appeal

More Perfect: Sex Appeal

In 2017 our sister show, More Perfect aired an episode all about RBG, In September of 2020, we lost Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg to the annals of history. She was 87. Given the atmosphere...

7 Maalis 20251h 5min

Revenge of the Miasma

Revenge of the Miasma

Today we uncover an invisible killer hidden, for over a hundred years, by reasonable disbelief. Science journalist extraordinaire Carl Zimmer tells us the story of a centuries-long battle of ideas tha...

28 Helmi 202535min

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks

Today, a story that starts small and private, with one woman alone in her bathroom, as she makes a quiet, startling discovery about her own body. But that small, private moment grows and grows, and pr...

21 Helmi 202534min

Quantum Birds

Quantum Birds

Annie McEwen went to a mountain in Pennsylvania to help catch some migratory owls. Then Scott Weidensaul peeled back the owl’s feathery face disc, so that she could look at the back of its eyeball. No...

14 Helmi 202534min

Suosittua kategoriassa Tiede

tiedekulma-podcast
rss-poliisin-mieli
docemilia
rss-mita-tulisi-tietaa
filocast-filosofian-perusteet
rss-lapsuuden-rakentajat-podcast
rss-tiedetta-vai-tarinaa
rss-lihavuudesta-podcast
sotataidon-ytimessa
radio-antro
menologeja-tutkimusmatka-vaihdevuosiin
rss-bios-podcast
rss-duodecim-lehti
rss-metsantuntijat-podcast
rss-luontopodi-samuel-glassar-tutkii-luonnon-ihmeita