Artificiality: Minds Meeting Machines

In this remarkable conversation, Michael Levin (Tufts University) and Blaise Agüera y Arcas (Google) examine what happens when biology and computation collide at their foundations. Their recent papers—arriving simultaneously yet from distinct intellectual traditions—illuminate how simple rules generate complex behaviors that challenge our understanding of life, intelligence, and agency.

Michael’s "Self-Sorting Algorithm" r...

In this episode, we welcome Maggie Jackson, whose latest book, Uncertain, has become essential reading for navigating today’s complex world. Known for her groundbreaking work on attention and distraction, Maggie now turns her focus to uncertainty—not as a problem to be solved, but as a skill to be cultivated.

Note: Uncertain won an Artificiality Book Award in 2024—check out our review here: https://www.artificiality.world/artificia...

In this episode, we talk with Greg Epstein—humanist chaplain at Harvard and MIT, bestselling author, and a leading voice on the intersection of technology, ethics, and belief systems. Greg’s latest book, Tech Agnostic, offers a provocative argument: Silicon Valley isn’t just a powerful industry—it has become the dominant religion of our time. Note: Tech Agnostic won an Artificality Book Award in 2024—check out our review here. In t...

In this episode, we sit down with the ever-innovative Chris Messina—creator of the hashtag, top product hunter on Product Hunt, and trusted advisor to startups navigating product development and market strategy.

Recording from Ciel Media’s new studio in Berkeley, we explore the evolving landscape of generative AI and the widening gap between its immense potential and real-world usability. Chris introduces a compelling framework, dis...

D. Graham Burnett will tell you his day job is as a professor of science history at Princeton University. He is also co-founder of the Strother School of Radical Attention and has been associated with the Friends of Attention since 2018. But none of those positions adequately describe Graham.

His bio says that he “works at the intersection of historical inquiry and artistic practice.” He writes, he performs, he makes things. He desc...

At the Artificiality Summit 2024, Michael Levin, distinguished professor of biology at Tufts University and associate at Harvard's Wyss Institute, gave a lecture about the emerging field of diverse intelligence and his frameworks for recognizing and communicating with the unconventional intelligence of cells, tissues, and biological robots. This work has led to new approaches to regenerative medicine, cancer, and bioengineering...

First:

- Apologies for the audio! We had a production error…

What’s new:

- DeepSeek has created breakthroughs in both: How AI systems are trained (making it much more affordable) and how they run in real-world use (making them faster and more efficient)

Details

- FP8 Training: Working With Less Precise Numbers

- Traditional AI training requires extremely precise numbers

- DeepSeek found you can use less precise numbers (like ro...

We’re excited to welcome writers and directors Hans Block and Moritz Riesewieck to the podcast. Their debut film, ‘The Cleaners,’ about the shadow industry of digital censorship premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2018 and has since won numerous international awards and been screened at more than 70 international film festivals.

We invited Hans and Moritz to the podcast to talk about their latest film, Eternal You, which exa...

Briefing: How AI Affects Critical Thinking and Cognitive Offloading

What This Paper Highlights

- The study explores the growing reliance on AI tools and its effects on critical thinking, specifically through cognitive offloading—delegating mental tasks to AI systems.

- Key finding: Frequent AI tool use is strongly associated with reduced critical thinking abilities, especially among younger users, as they increasingly rely on AI fo...

We’re excited to welcome Craig Wheeler to the podcast. Craig is an astrophysicist and Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Over his career, he has made significant contributions to our understanding of supernovae, black holes, and the nature of the universe itself.

Craig’s new book, The Path to Singularity: How Technology Will Challenge the Future of Humanity, offers an exploration of how exponential technological change...

Science Briefing: What AI Agents Tell Us About the Future of Human Experience * What These Papers Highlight - AI agents are improving but far from capable of replacing human tasks. Even the best models fail at simple things humans find intuitive, like handling social interactions or navigating pop-ups. - One paper benchmarks agent performance in workplace-like tasks, showing just 24% success on even simple tasks. The other argues ...

We’re excited to welcome Doyne Farmer to the podcast. Doyne is a pioneering complexity scientist and a leading thinker on economic systems, technological change, and the future of society. Doyne is a Professor of Complex Systems at the University of Oxford, an external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, and Chief Scientist at Macrocosm.

Doyne’s work spans an extraordinary range of topics, from agent-based modeling of financial ma...

We're excited to welcome Jamie Boyle to the podcast. Jamie is a law professor and author of the thought-provoking book The Line: AI and the Future of Personhood.

In The Line, Jamie challenges our assumptions about personhood and humanity, arguing that these boundaries are more fluid than traditionally believed. He explores diverse contexts like animal rights, corporate personhood, and AI development to illustrate how debates around...

We're excited to welcome to the podcast Shannon Vallor, professor of ethics and technology at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of The AI Mirror.

In her book, Shannon invites us to rethink AI—not as a futuristic force propelling us forward, but as a reflection of our past, capturing both our human triumphs and flaws in ways that shape our present reality.

In The AI Mirror, Shannon uses the powerful metaphor of a mirror to...

We're excited to welcome to the podcast Matt Beane, Assistant Professor at UC Santa Barbara and the author of the book "The Skill Code: How to Save Human Ability in an Age of Intelligent Machines."

Matt’s research investigates how AI is changing the traditional apprenticeship model, creating a tension between short-term performance gains and long-term skill development. His work has particularly focused on the relationship between ...

We're excited to welcome to the podcast Emily M. Bender, professor of computational linguistics at the University of Washington.

As our listeners know, we enjoy tapping expertise in fields adjacent to the intersection of humans and AI. We find Emily’s expertise in linguistics to be particularly important when understanding the capabilities and limitations of large language models—and that’s why we were eager to talk with her.

Emily...

We're excited to welcome to the podcast John Havens, a multifaceted thinker at the intersection of technology, ethics, and sustainability. John's journey has taken him from professional acting to becoming a thought leader in AI ethics and human wellbeing.

In his 2016 book, "Heartificial Intelligence: Embracing Our Humanity to Maximize Machines," John presents a thought-provoking examination of humanity's relationship with AI. He in...

We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Leslie Valiant, a pioneering computer scientist and Turing Award winner renowned for his groundbreaking work in machine learning and computational learning theory. In his seminal 1983 paper, Leslie introduced the concept of Probably Approximately Correct or PAC learning, kick-starting a new era of research into what machines can learn.

Now, in his latest book, The Importance of Being Educable...