Turing Award Winner: Early AI, LLM Predictions, Causality | Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl is a Turing Award winner and a pioneer in artificial intelligence and causal reasoning. We talked about how he got into science, his major breakthroughs and his predictions for AI today.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/FleTXB1fAcQ

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-early-ai-llm

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:54) How he got into AI

(11:17) Greatest scientist of all time

(20:15) What people thought of AI in the 80s

(26:23) Entering academia and researching AI

(34:52) The invention of Bayesian networks

(46:28) Pioneering work in causality

(55:38) The causal hierarchy

(59:34) LLMs and predictions

(01:20:12) A restless mind pays

(01:24:36) Advice for his younger self

(01:26:37) Outro

Where to find Judea:

• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/yudapearl

• Website: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• The Book of Why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why

• Bayesian networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network

• Alpha-beta pruning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning

• Pearl vortex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_vortex

• Graphoid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphoid

• Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(book)

• Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2025: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/COEXISTENCE/