AI-Curious with Jeff Wilser

The health care system in the US is a mess. Few will argue this. Can AI make it better? That's the thesis of Rajeev (Raj) Ronanki, CEO of Lyric, which is working to build AI that will simplify and streamline the health care experience. What can AI make better? How will you, as a patient, have a dramatically different experience in the world of AI-assisted health care? And what are the challen...

Petra Molnar is a Harvard Faculty Associate, lawyer, human rights activist, and author of the just-released book The Walls Have Eyes: Surviving Migration in the Age of Artificial Intelligence. Publisher’s Weekly gave the book a glowing review and called it a “a grave wake-up call." To research this book, Petra spent *six years* studying what she called the “sharp edges” of surveillance tech,...

Before launching the AI-Curious podcast, I spent a bunch of years writing about bitcoin, blockchain, crypto, and web3, often for CoinDesk, the space’s main publication. I still write about it. So I’m in a relatively unique position to see the intersection of these two techs. Is there a connection? Can crypto really help develop better AI? There’s now an explosion of interest in “Decentralized AI,”...

I'm going to guess that most people listening to this podcast are not lawyers. Fair. I'm not either! But there are *massive* questions about how AI impacts the law -- new questions about IP, copyrights, patents -- and also how AI impacts the legal profession itself. Here to guide us through all these questions is Robert Plotkin, a 25-year-veteran patent attorney and the author of the 200...

Many have been worried about AI safety. But the stakes were just raised: OpenAI and Google just announced new capabilities that look likely to usher in the new era of “AI agents,” meaning tools that will automatically accomplish tasks for you like buying plane tickets or even how to invest your 401k. What could go wrong? It’s Bo Li’s job to figure out what could go wrong. Li is an Associate Profes...

Sherlock Bioscience is developing medical diagnostic tests that are dramatically faster, cheaper, and easier to distribute than traditional models. The impact? This could make health care more inclusive, slow the spread of STDs, and help us avoid future pandemics. Dr. Dechairo and I start with the current problems of traditional diagnostic tests, then get into how AI could help and how that could...

No tech is just about the tech. True adoption — or lack thereof — is often about issues of culture, which is why I’m thrilled to speak to today’s guest: Adam Bai, who’s an anthropologist as well as the Chief Strategy Officer of Glimpse, a company that leverages AI for market research solutions. Adam’s team has done extensive research on both AI adoption — and how this intersects with a company’s c...

How will AI impact education? One university isn't passively waiting to see how the dust settles, but is instead aggressively incorporating AI into its curriculum. That would be American University's Kogod School of Business, which has moved at warp-speed to modify its curriculum in 20 classes to incorporate AI this Fall. I'm delighted to be joined by the two key players in this ini...

Boston Dynamics just unveiled their new robot, "Atlas." The AI space was floored. Some were excited, some startled, some terrified, all fascinated. Whether we like it or not, thanks to the rapid acceleration of AI, robots -- specifically humanoid robots -- are closer than we think. Robots are now less science fiction and more a short-to-medium-term likelihood. So where are we now with ro...

We've all heard "AI will transform the world!!!" But how are AI experts *actually* using AI now, today, for reals, in their day-to-day lives? I've collected some wisdom and insights from prior guests of AI-Curious to give what is -- hopefully -- some super useful and concrete suggestions on how to incorporate AI into your own workflow.  From ChatGPT as "debate partner&quot...

Dmitry Shaprio has been in the space for decades; he was a product lead at Google and the CTO of MySpace.  Now he's the CEO of MindStudio, a company that helps companies create custom apps to integrate AI.   And a LOT of companies are using MindStudio.  34,000 apps have now been created using MindStudio, and this ranges from large corporations to solo-entrepenuaers to government agencies.  Th...

At a recent hackathon, Ian Laffey was part of a team that designed, created, 3D-printed, and assembled a drone in 24 hours... and for under $500. The drone's breakthrough: It doesn't need a signal for GPS, which means that it can be deployed off the grid, and can't be "jammed" in a war zone...like Ukraine. Laffey's drone is now a sensation in the world of defense-tech...

There are many AI doomsdayers. Kevin Surace is not one of them. Kevin has been in a pioneer in the AI space since the 1990s, went he helped develop the tech that would directly influence Siri and Alexa. He has since been named by CNBC as one of the "Innovators of the Decade" and is now a regular keynote speaker. We have a *wide-ranging* conversation on how AI will shape the future, cover...

If you need to get a puppy, what's the best way to go about it? Harnessing AI,  of course. I recently decided to get a puppy. I didn't know what to get or how to do it. (I've never owned a dog.) So I made liberal use of ChatGPT in research, analysis, and execution, and then turned to AI for help with puppy training. I doubt you're in the market for a new puppy, but I think this...

AI might change the world. But it can it help change you?  You could argue that AI coaching, fundamentally, might be the most important impact of the entire tech. In today’s world, professional career coaching is generally only available for the privileged. What if it was available for all? But what are the risks and concerns? Joining us to break this down is Dr. Friederike Redlbacher, Managing Di...

If AI gets super intelligent and super powerful, will it be benevolent? Or will it want to crush us like ants? Perhaps they’ll be benevolent. Maybe they’ll be “aligned” with our interests. But if not? What should we do? How can we prepare for this nightmarish scenario? Trent McConaghy has a plan. McConaghy has been working in AI for decades, both as an entrepreneur and as a researcher, and he’s wi...

The cover of this week’s TIME Magazine has a bold headline: “The First AI War.” The subtitle: “Palantir and other tech giants are building the future of battle in Ukraine.” The writer of this cover story is Vera Bergengruen, a senior correspondent at TIME. And Vera joins us today at AI-Curious. We cover: How Ukraine is using AI and what it’s accomplishing (3:00); how they’ve created a “war lab” th...

Confession: I don't really care about cars. But I *love* the idea of self-driving cars. So what's the status of this idea? There's now a fleet of self-driving cars in San Francisco.  How good are they? How safe? What are the limitations? And what are the technical challenges that still need to be overcome, and how does AI fit into all of this? To unpack all of this, I'm joined...

Eric Siegel is a longtime expert on machine learning, and is the author of the new book "The AI Playbook: Mastering the Rare Art of Machine Learning Deployment." Eric has been a professor at Columbia University, a longtime machine learning consultant, and he's the founder of the long-running "Machine Learning Week" conference series.  Eric's take? AI is over-hyped, bu...

Can AI make you rich? Or, more to the point, can AI make investment banks, hedge funds, and financial services companies even richer? Not so fast... Vasagi Kothandapani is an expert in helping financial services companies train, develop, and integrate AI. She's the Senior Vice President of AI Training at RWS, a tech-enabled content and language organization.  And she stops by the pod to help...

As our quick appetizer, a quick dispatch from the Sundance Film Festival, where AI was seemingly *everywhere*. For our entrée, we speak with Hilke Schellmann, author of the new book "The Algorithm: How AI Decides Who Gets Hired, Monitored, Promoted, and Fired and Why We Need to Fight Back Now." If you have a job, or will some day get a job, or know someone with a job, this is a topic rel...

What are the most important stories in AI right now? Today we chat with Sharon Goldman, Senior Writer at Venture Beat, who covers all things artificial intelligence. Sharon and I get into: Why the race for training data is so crucial in the future development of AI (2:30); why so much hinges on The New York Times vs. Open AI (12:40); the looming wars between Open AI and Anthropic and XAI and other...

We all know AI has tons of potential, but how do you *actually* use ChatGPT in your daily life? Sam Stevens is the cofounder of Catalist AI, an AI-powered project management assistant. She’s also the writer of the “Prompt and Circumstance” newsletter, where she shares hyper-pragmatic tips and tricks for how to get the most out of ChatGPT and other AI tools. So in this episode, we go deeeeeep into...

As deep fakes get easier and the truth gets murkier, how will AI impact the 2024 election? We’re joined by election expert David Becker, the founder and Executive Director of the non-partisan and non-profit Center for Election Innovation & Research. David is also the co-author of “The Big Truth: Upholding Democracy in the Age of The Big Lie.’” David breaks down the many aspects of AI and the 2...

Where is AI headed next year? I curated some of my favorite AI predictions -- and give a few of my own -- from some of the year-end AI roundups and prediction articles. We cover deep fakes, further AI integration into business, the 2024 election, AI going mobile, and much more. AI prediction articles referenced in the pod: The Economist: https://www.economist.com/the-world-ahead/2023/11/13/generat...