Views Expressed Podcast

This post is a little different. First, this week marks my one-year anniversary on Substack. This is, in fact, weekly post number 52! Second, my book came out this week! Humanity by Proxy: Essays at The Intersection of Philosophy and AI is a collection of essays drawn from this very Substack newsletter. The paperback, hard cover, and eBook are all available now. The audiobook should be out in a co...

At a budget hotel in Lexington, Massachusetts, my team of Air Force reserve officers and government civilians working on AI policy gathered around the bar. We had just finished our annual Department of the Air Force Data and AI Conference and everyone wanted to blow off a little steam. I had prearranged dinner plans with some good friends in Newton and told the team I’d catch up with them later. B...

Network Rail chose to delay several freight and passenger trains in Lancashire, England recently because of damage to a rail bridge. Following minor tremors, someone posted a photo showing severe damage to the bridge. Based on that photo, rail authorities acted from caution and halted the trains—as any reasonable person might do. Here’s the thing, though: There was no damage to the bridge. The ima...

A brief note before I begin: as you may have noticed, I took two weeks off from publishing here. I appreciate your patience. When I decided last January to publish these newsletters every Thursday, I didn’t anticipate that Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years would all fall on Thursdays. My two weeks off were enjoyable, but, like Frank Costanza , “I’m back, baby!” There’s a story—probably an apo...

Many years ago, we stood up a new M-1B Predator squadron—the 20th Reconnaissance Squadron. The last time the squadron had been activated was during the Vietnam War, when US Air Force pilots flew O-1s, O-2s, and the mighty OV-10 Bronco in the 20th Tactical Air Support Squadron. For the squadron stand-up event, we tracked down as many veterans of the original Vietnam-era squadron as we could. Thirte...

You probably don’t remember 110 film. It doesn’t come in a cylindrical can like 35mm film. It comes preloaded on a roll that looks a little like an old phone receiver—two small, black cylinders connected by a long piece of hollow plastic. Back in the era of film cameras—110 or otherwise—every shot had to count. I had, I think, 24 photos on my roll of 110 film, a long, skinny container of film plac...

I got bit by the publishing bug in 2013. I was applying to graduate schools and I didn’t have a writing sample from my undergraduate days that I was happy with. So, I decided to write a new paper. With the help of a philosopher from the US Air Force Academy (Dr. Leonard Kahan, in whose debt I remain), I wrote an academic paper on the ethics of remotely piloted aircraft. As a matter of procedure, I...

Glen Powell hosted SNL last weekend. It was one of the best episodes I’ve seen in awhile. (Beware, spoilers). In Powell’s opening monologue, he tells the story of the first time he was supposed to host the venerated sketch comedy show. When he received the phone call inviting him to host back then, there happened to be a UPS delivery guy named mitch delivering a package just as the family was on t...

It’s easy to be vindictive, to be to be selfish. It’s easier to burn bridges than it is to mend them. The quotation that keeps coming to mind is from Julius Campbell in Boaz Yakin’s 2000 classic, Remember The Titans . In response to injustice, and prejudice, and racism, and hate, Campbell insists, “I’m suppose to wear myself out for the team? What team!? No, no. What I’m gonna do is, I’m gonna loo...

I was writing something this week that caused me to look up what movie contains the line, “I’m gonna look out for myself, and I’m gonna get mine.” (Do you know the movie?). I consulted Google search and the Gemini answer helpfully came back with text explaining that the quotation comes from Remember The Titans . Then it gave me the context, the name of the character who said it, and the name of th...

Note: This excerpt is part of a longer, unpublished project on language and artificial intelligence. “Fine,” my dad said. “Take the medicine if you want. If you don’t want to take it, that’s fine, too!” We three were in the kitchen of our little house in Palo Alto, California. My mom poured the thick amoxicillin suspension into the plastic thimble of a medicine cup. I was not yet two years old and...

I was at Google’s headquarters (The “Googleplex”) in Mountain View, California last month for the Imagination in Action conference. There is plenty I could write about—a Distinguished Researcher at DeepMind who talked about how we’ll learn to use agents over time; a leader from the non-profit sector saying that she’s done hearing pitches from companies that wrapped a piece of software around an LL...

When I was young, I used to build those plastic model airplanes you can find at hobby stores. When they were finished, instead of putting them on a shelf, my dad helped me to hang them from the ceiling; so, it looked like a dogfight between an A-10 and a P-47 in the corner of my room. One morning, I woke up to the sound of my dad’s voice saying, “Joey, Joey! Get up! There’s an earthquake!” Los Ang...

I couldn’t sign a PDF. I don’t know why I couldn’t sign it. I could sign other PDFs, just not this one. I finally joined a Teams call with an IT technician. He took control of my computer and checked and rechecked settings. Everything looked like it was set up properly. He couldn’t figure it out either. Ultimately, he told me to have the author of the document rebuild the PDF to see if a new versi...

When I was about 8 years old, my family and a bunch of other families from my church participated in a jog-a-thon. We asked friends and neighbors to support us by pledging a certain number of dollars per lap that would ultimately go to the designated charity. Then, on the big day, we kids would run as many laps as our little legs would carry us. Then, our friends and neighbors were on the hook to...

My Grandpa used to do a magic trick with his dog, Halley. He’d tell gullible audiences (usually us kids) that Halley knew how to count. Then he’d hold out a milkbone and tell Halley, “count to eight.” Halley barked at the milkbone exactly eight times—then my Grandpa would gave the dog the bone. She stopped counting at eight… magic. I enjoyed this trick several (ok, many ) times before I realized t...

The global AI phenomenon we are all living through began in 2022 when OpenAI launched ChatGPT, a chatbot based on a large language model called GPT-3. Within months, ChatGPT had gained 100 million users, making it the fastest-adopted technology in human history. But why did ChatGPT see such wide adoption so fast? What is it about ChatGPT that resonated so strongly with us human users? ChatGPT wasn...

When I was 22 years old, I fell in young love with a girl named Megan. I had packed all of my worldly possessions into the back of my used Toyota Rav4 and stopped in Pennsylvania both to pick Megan up for the epic road trip to my first assignment in Las Vegas and to meet her family. I slept in her little brother’s room. My first morning in that new and unfamiliar place, I woke up to the sound of s...

There’s a line in C. S. Lewis’s space trilogy that sticks with me. In Out of The Silent Planet, the first book in the series, the protagonist, Dr. Ransom, is speaking to the villain, Professor Weston. Weston is a world-renowned physicist who has solved human interplanetary travel. Weston as brought Ransom on the journey against his will. When Ransom awakes in the spaceship, he realize what has hap...

I pushed the throttles up slightly, increasing power and I banked ever so slightly to the left and then back to the right. This put a little extra lateral space between me and the lead aircraft. As I passed him—another T-38 student pilot named Drew—I gave an exaggerated head nod, throwing my chin all the way down to my chest to make sure Drew could see it from his jet. With that head nod, I had ta...

We sat in the orchestra section, row W. My 10-year-old had the seat next to the aisle. I saw The Lion King in Las Vegas decades ago. I don’t remember everything, but I remember the animal costumes being my favorite part. Sitting there up against the aisle, he got to be up close and personal when the dove ladies came by. We could see the kites being twirled from long poles above us in the mezzanine...

“Hi Mrs. Banning, I’m from the office,” Ron the assistant shouts over the crowd of cheering parents. “Which one’s your son?” Ron raises the 1990s-era camcorder to his eye and zooms in on Jack Banning in the batter’s box just in time to catch the look of devastation on his face. Jack’s dad, Peter Banning, a workaholic lawyer, couldn’t make it to the game, so he sent an assistant. The scene from Spi...

Greetings, Views Expressed readers. We’re having company! I’m doing something a little different this week and I’m very excited about it. Today, Views Expressed is featuring its first guest author ! Last year, when I was teaching at the Marine Command and Staff College, I brought in a couple of friends to provide lectures. One of my colleagues said to me afterword, “you’ve got some pretty interest...

Sweaty and young, we sang “What Would You Say” along with Dave Matthews at the top of our lungs in the cheap seats at Boston’s FleetCenter. CJ and I spent probably more than we should have on those tickets. They weren’t great seats, but it didn’t matter. We wanted to experience the band live. About half-way through the show, a very large security guard walked down the long staircase to our row. We...

I don’t want to write about the Coldplay concert. Everyone involved is, no doubt, now entering a very difficult time relationally, emotionally, and professionally. So, I’m going to write about something else. When I was somewhere between the ages of eight and eleven, my sister, some friends, and I rode our bikes to the Wegmans in Henrietta, New York. This was a big deal because we had to cross a h...