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

Apr 27, 2025

Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin (🔗, 🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an author, historian, and academic, joins Michael and Dave in a fast conversation about the history of computing and its systemic biases from the '60s to the techbros of today, and much more. 

[Cover based on an image used by permission of Joy Rankin]

Note: This conversation...


Dec 1, 2024

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...


Jun 23, 2024

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...


Mar 2, 2024

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...


Dec 31, 2023

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...