Summary: Jacob Ward is a tech journalist and Burggruen Fellow at Stanford; he’s writing a book about AI and behavioral science. In his research, he’s been concerned to note that people have been handing off critical decision-making processes to AI, which risks long-term damage to humans’ cognitive abilities. As far as ethics in AI development, Jacob shares his idea that people’s cognitive functionings should be treated as a finite natural resource, and companies should be responsible for their extractive models. Show notes Conversation with Jacob Ward, tech journalist (1:01) The Burggruen Fellowship (1:06) Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) (1:25) Daniel Kahneman, psychologist whose research involved decision-making and behavioral economics (1:41) Richard Thaler, economist and professor of behavioral science and economics (1:46) Jacob Ward’s portfolio of work includes Wired and Al-Jazeera (4:22) Mahzarin Banaji, psychologist whose work focuses on implicit bias (4:56) The “weak perfection” principle (12:44) The vaccine courts illustrate the “make an omelette, break a few eggs” idea (14:25) Learned Hand was a judge and philosopher who coined the “Hand rule” to calculate negligence (16:20) Survey: one-fourth of Americans have no emergency savings (18:53) How to define ethical AI (19:30) Artefact’s tarot cards of tech can help product founders anticipate the impact their product will have on society (20:35) “Eyeroll, please” (24:48) Why it’s a fallacy to tell founders, “Don’t raise too much money.” (25:37) Listener question From our subreddit, reddit.com/r/allturtles: With the pace of improvement seen from the likes of Boston Dynamics, when do you see the dexterity problem being solved in such a way that robots come out of the labs and niche applications and into everyday life? We want to hear from you Please send us your comments, suggested topics, and listener questions for future All Turtles Podcast episodes. Voicemail: +1 (310) 571-8448 Email: hello@all-turtles.com Twitter: @allturtlesco with hashtag #askAT For more from All Turtles, follow us on Twitter, and subscribe to our newsletter on our website.
