Computing Up

Dec 01 2024 76 ep. 46 mins 70

Computing Up Podcast artwork

Conversations about computation writ large, with Michael Littman and Dave Ackley.

Technology Society & Culture

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Collecting Cognition with Steve Sloman - 75th Conversation

Dec 01 2024 48 mins

Cognitive scientist and psychologist Professor Steve Sloman of Brown University (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a fun romp through connectionism, collective cognition, the illusion of understanding, and much more. Also, Dave illustrates his illusion of understanding of a bicycle in a true back of the envelope sketch -- [Episode cover based on image used courtesy of S

Manon Revel: Is Democracy a Comma in History? - 74th Conversation

Jun 23 2024 61 mins

Manon Revel (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an Employee Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, joins Michael and Dave for a conversation about the past, present, and future of democracy, and ways to understand it in both computational and practical terms. [Thumbnail based on image provided courtesy of Manon Revel]

Martha White: Sparse is Rich - 73rd Conversation

Mar 02 2024 56 mins

Martha White, associate professor of Computing Science at University of Alberta (🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation about AI, system prediction and control, the power of sparse representations, and many aspects of machine learning from new mathematical theory to the absolutely practical control of a real water treatment plant. [Thumbnail based on image used courte

Rich Sutton Brings Reinforcements - 72nd Conversation

Dec 31 2023 54 mins

Computer scientist Rich Sutton, FRS (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), a quiet giant of machine learning, joins Michael and Dave in a sprawling conversation touching on reinforcement learning, a hopeful view of AI, the importance of ideas, and a host of other topics. [Thumbnail image used courtesy of Rich Sutton]

The Living Computation Theory of Everything - 71st Conversation

Nov 28 2023 79 mins

Michael interviews Dave about his recent video (YouTube) on a 'theory of everything'. The conversation begins with Michael praising Dave for finally doing some theory, and descends from there.

Oren Etzioni All Over - 70th Conversation

Oct 22 2023 53 mins

Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at University of Washington, (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation that ranges all over, from AI hype and language models to alignment and existential risk and ethics and morality to information pollution and cryptography and politics and mo

Beautiful Messiness with Jonathan Frankle - 69th Conversation

Sep 02 2023 58 mins

Jonathan Frankle, the new Chief Scientist - Neural Networks at Databricks (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), joins Michael and Dave in a fast conversation about topics ranging from AI risks and fairness to the problems of Computer Science education to the beautiful messiness of modern deep learning. [Thumbnail based on image courtesy of Jonathan Frankle]

Love Hate Writing - 68th Conversation

Jul 02 2023 60 mins

Michael and Dave talk about their love and hate relationships with writing, in the context of Dave's foray into publishing "Companionate Caring" and Michael's upcoming MIT Press book "Code to Joy". (This conversation is Part 2 of Where The Hell Have Michael & Dave Been?)

Busy Busy / Let's Blame AI - 67th Conversation

Jun 08 2023 63 mins

Michael and Dave catch up on where the hell they've been for the last couple months. (Mostly it's about busy, but Dave wants to blame everything on AI.)

Michael Levin TAMEs Life - 66th Conversation

Mar 05 2023 63 mins

Michael Levin (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) is the director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts University, and Distinguished Professor of Biology and Vannevar Bush Chair, among several other roles. In this episode he talks with Michael and Dave about computing writ very large indeed, with topics ranging from the meaning of life and agency to the problems of computability theory to the way