The Next Big Idea9 Juni 2021

AI: The Extraordinary Story of the Tech That’s Changing the World

In 1958, a psychologist named Frank Rosenblatt took a five-ton computer, fed it a steady diet of punch cards, and taught it how to recognize the letter “A.” He called his creation the Perceptron, and his belief in its potential was like that of a deliriously proud parent. One day, he thought, the artificial intelligence he’d built would learn to recognize faces, speak like a human, translate languages, reproduce itself on an assembly line, and even fly to space — at which point, it would no longer be a computational marvel but a fully conscious being. The fact that you’ve never heard of the Perceptron tells you that none of Rosenblatt’s predictions came to pass — not in his lifetime, anyway. But a small band of brainy rebels never lost faith in the potential of AI to change the world. Thanks to their perseverance — along with dramatic improvements in computing power — they managed to make Rosenblatt’s prophecies a reality. The AI they built is what enables Facebook to recognize faces in the photos you upload. It’s the reason Siri and Alexa can (sometimes) understand what you’re saying, and Google can translate anything you write into 109 languages. Cade Metz has spent years chronicling the rise and rise of AI, first as a reporter at the New York Times and now in his new book, “Genius Makers.” In this forward-looking conversation, he tells Rufus what AI can do, where it’s headed, and whether we should be worried that supercomputers will wage war against humanity.

Det här avsnittet är hämtat från ett öppet RSS-flöde och publiceras inte av Podme. Det kan innehålla reklam.

Avsnitt(377)

Angela Duckworth Now Thinks "Grit" Wasn't the Whole Story

Ten years ago, Angela Duckworth became one of the world’s most influential psychologists by making the case for grit. Yes, talent matters, she argued, it’s passion and perseverance that turn potential...

28 Sep 1h 10min

AI Has Gone Rogue. Here’s What We Should Do About It.

"This Is Really Bad." That's the not-so-comforting headline of Stephen Witt's mega-viral New York Times essay about a dawning realization among Silicon Valley researchers that "AI may no longer be ent...

24 Sep 57min

You Don't Have Free Will. That's Good News. (NBI Vault)

Do we have free will? Do we have a choice in what we do? Philosophers and theologians have debated these questions for centuries; Robert Sapolsky answered them when he was 14. Free will, he concluded,...

21 Sep 1h 7min

The Art of Fighting

We’ve gotten very good at cutting people off. But have we forgotten how to work through our differences? In The Art of Fighting, bestselling author and conflict resolution expert Priya Parker challen...

17 Sep 1h 7min

Is America a ‘Country of Lords’?

America was founded on a radical promise: all people are created equal. But for 250 years, some of the country’s most powerful thinkers have been arguing the opposite. In Country of Lords, historian ...

14 Sep 53min

A Storytelling Masterclass with Will Storr (NBI Vault)

Will Storr is the author of the dazzling books The Science of Storytelling and A Story Is a Deal, and in this episode, he tells us everything he knows about humanity’s greatest invention: story. More ...

10 Sep 1h 34min

What Can Henry David Thoreau Teach Us About Work?

Henry David Thoreau was a philosopher, poet, and pencil-maker. He was a great resigner and, above all, a superb writer whose masterpiece, "Walden," is considered by many to be America's first environm...

7 Sep 45min

How French Philosophy Wired Modern Thinking

How did a group of notoriously difficult French philosophers become intellectual rock stars on American college campuses — and how much do their ideas matter today? In The Frenchmen, writer and edit...

3 Sep 1h 4min