Exploring AI Matters
Our mission is to help the policy community understand the breadth and richness of AI and the potential for such technologies, wisely applied, to augment all sorts of human endeavors.
Some AI tools are able to assist humans in performing tasks faster, more accurately, or more efficiently. Some, however, are inaccurate and unreliable. Who or what we hold accountable for these flaws, and what incentives we do or do not create for their correction will influence AI’s hand in how we work.
In this series we will refine, sharpen, and clarify your understanding of AI.
Episodes
26 episodes
Episode 26 - AI Only Fakes Empathy
In 2023 New York Times journalist Kevin Roose reported that a chatbot had declared love for him and urged him to divorce his wife. Since then stories abound of vulnerable people harming themselves after lengthy exchanges with GenAI chatbo...
Episode 25 - Privacy in the Time of AI
Once upon a time we thought we had privacy. Then came credit cards, which captured the card owner's location and activity with each transaction. Then came the Internet, which made connecting all the dots easy and cheap, and the erosion of priva...
Episode 24 - Lost in Translation
The public has been fascinated by the experience of interacting with large language models, or LLMs, like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini. Inaccuracies, called hallucinations, continue to appear in LLM output. Some lawyers, amo...
Episode 23 - Challenges for Humans in the Loop
Welcome to the second of two episodes with MIT Professor David Mindell. In these conversations we are exploring the detailed realities of "human in the loop" systems. In the first session we learned about the Apollo Program's lunar ...
Episode 22 - Human and Machine in Spaceflight
In this episode of Exploring AI Matters, #22, and the following one, #23 we are going to do something unusual. We will explore the adoption of sophisticated control automation and look for lessons that may apply to the adoption of AI-augm...
Episode 21 - Hollywood Adventures in GenAI
The entertainment industry in the US, with revenues in 2022 of about 8.5 billion dollars, is only three hundredths of one percent of the 23.3 trillion dollar US economy. However, entertainment is far more important to society as a whole t...
Episode 20 - Is AI the end of Intellectual Property?
AI is increasingly viewed as a potential co-creator of text, images, videos, music, and audio. However, in March of 2023 the US Copyright Office expressed the view that ‘copyright can protect only material that is the product of human cre...
Episode 19 - The Intersection of Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence
This episode of the ABA-funded podcast Exploring AI Matters was recorded at a Continuing Legal Education session. Our subject is, "The Intersection of Cybersecurity and Artificial Intelligence."Our two guests, Candace Jones and Jo...
Episode 18 - A Visit to Model Land
From ancient times what we now call mathematical models have been used to predict the arrival of seasons, comet returns, and eclipses. With sophisticated mathematics, good data gathering, and modern computers we can now predict things lik...
Episode 17 - Military intelligence and operations - It’s All About Scale
In this episode of Exploring AI Matters we have two guests from the most senior ranks of the Royal Air force, Air Marshals Philip Osborn and Edward Stringer. Both men joined the UK’s Royal Air Force in 1982. Air Marshal Stringer ser...
Episode 16 - Improving Colonoscopy with AI
Colorectal cancer is one of the leading causes of death in adults worldwide. The most important diagnostic and therapeutic technique for colorectal cancer is the colonoscopy. Gastrointestinal doctors are working with computer scient...
Episode 15 - Whither the Weather Wherever
In this episode of Exploring AI Matters we discuss US Air Force funded weather research at MIT with Major (now Lieutenant Colonel) Andrew Bowne, the chief legal counsel of the Air Force-MIT AI Accelerator. Major Bowne is a Judge Advocate ...
Episode 14 - Adding a Dog to the Cockpit
In this episode of Exploring AI Matters we talk with an accomplished leader in national security. Air Marshal John Blackburn retired from the Royal Australian Air Force in 2008 as the Deputy Chief of the Air Force following a career as a ...
Episode 13 - Game of Drones
In this episode of Exploring AI Matters we discuss swarm behavior in social organisms like bees, termites and ants. These emergent behaviors point the way toward possible military applications for swarms of drones or other robots....
Episode 12 - Nothing About Us Without Us
We all agree that new technologies are cool, but unintended consequences can be very hard to reverse. Today we will be talking with Dr Christina Colclough, a political economist with a PhD in Sociology from the University of Copenhagen.&n...
Episode 11 - AI's Invisible Hand on the Scales of Justice
Judge Katherine Forrest, a former federal court judge and our guest in this episode, observes that machine learning systems build models from historical behavior that can reflect structural bias or discrimination. She notes that the inclu...
Episode 10 - Above All, Do No Harm
Today we are speaking with Dr Rohan Shad of Stanford University Medical Center, now an Integrated Cardiothoracic Surgery Resident at the University of Pennsylvania. He has been exploring the application of AI techniques to help surgeons a...
Episode 9 - Too Many Stars! Too Many Galaxies! How to choose what to look at?
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, located high in the Andes in Chile, is expected to be operational near the end of 2023. The Rubin’s wide-field reflecting telescope will scan the entire southern sky every few nights. In this episode o...
Episode 8 - “STAT” AI Helps Stroke Specialists Speed Response
Strokes are one of the most frightening of maladies, striking as they do at the brain, the center of personhood. In this episode of Exploring AI Matters we talk with the founder and leader of one of the leading stroke centers, Dr Stanley ...
Episode 7 - AI as Artist’s Assistant.
In this episode of Mind the Gap we talk with the President of Harvey Mudd College, Dr. Maria Klawe, who has had a distinguished career as a theoretical computer scientist, scholar, and college administrator. Dr. Klawe is also a gifted pai...
Episode 6 - AI or Human: Which is the Inventor?
From self-driving cars to voice automation in homes, inventors are developing ambitious AI technologies that will continue to impact the ways in which we learn, work, communicate, and travel. According to the United States Patent and Trademark ...
Episode 5 - Can AI Uncover the Origins of the Biggest Black Holes?
A supermassive black hole is estimated to be a million or a billion times bigger than the Sun, but no one truly yet understands the origins of these massive phenomena. In this episode of Exploring AI Matters, Dr. Becky Smethurst, an astrophysic...
Episode 4 - The Story of How AI Reconstructed a Rembrandt Masterpiece
In the early-eighteenth century, Rembrandt’s largest and most famous painting, The Night Watch, was cut down on all sides to fit on a wall in Amsterdam’s City Hall. The removed pieces were never recovered. In this episode of Expl...
Episode 3 - The Future of AI in Lending Decisions
Good credit impacts whether you can rent an apartment, take out a mortgage or car loan, or in some instances, receive a job offer. Financial institutions are increasingly utilizing AI to analyze non-traditional data sources, such as standardize...