619. How to Poison the A.I. Machine

... of bad reviews, meager financing, or artificial intelligence. But he is worried that the world is full of sloppy thinkers who mistake facts for the truth. SOURCES: Werner Herzog, writer, filmmaker, and actor. RESOURCES: The Future of Truth, by Werner Herzog (2025). Every Man ...  Show more

Existing drugs can sometimes be repurposed to treat rare diseases. But making that match can be hard — and the financial incentives are weak. Guest host Steve Levitt tries to solve the puzzle. SOURCES: Chris Snyder, professor of economics at Dartmouth College. David Fajgenbaum, c ...  Show more

Benjamin Mann is a co-founder of Anthropic, an AI startup dedicated to building aligned, safety-first AI systems. Prior to Anthropic, Ben was one of the architects of GPT-3 at OpenAI. He left OpenAI driven by the mission to ensure that AI benefits humanity. In this episode, Ben o ...  Show more

What happens when machines become funnier, kinder, and more empathetic than humans? Do robot therapists save lives? And should Angela credit her virtual assistant as a co-author of her book?

Forget what sci-fi has told you about superintelligent robots that are uncannily human-like; the reality is more prosaic. Inside DeepMind’s robotics laboratory, Hannah explores what researchers call ‘embodied AI’: robot arms that are learning tasks like picking up plastic bricks, ...  Show more

We start with the world's first general purpose electronic computer, the ENIAC, built in 1946 by a team of female mathematicians including Kathleen Kay McNulty. We speak to Gini Mauchly Calcerano, daughter of Kathleen Kay McNulty, who developed ENIAC.

Then we hear about ...