The Ars Technicast

Join Ars Technica editors Sean Gallagher and Lee Hutchinson in this special AI-focused edition of the Ars Technicast, produced in cooperation with Darktrace. In this last of three episodes, we talk with ForAllSecure CEO David Brumley (who is also a professor at Carnegie Mellon) about adversarial AI—that is, using AI as both cyber weapon and cyber defense.

Join Ars Technica editors Sean Gallagher and Lee Hutchinson in this special AI-focused edition of the Ars Technicast, produced in cooperation with Darktrace. In this second of three episodes, we talk with Carnegie Mellon Director for the Center of Computational Analytics of Social and Organizational Systems Kathleen Carley on how AI is helping companies detect threats from inside their own walls.

Join Ars Technica editors Sean Gallagher and Lee Hutchinson in this special AI-focused edition of the Ars Technicast, produced in cooperation with Darktrace. In this first of three episodes, we talk with NTT's Senior Director of Global Advanced Technology for Sport Tim Wade about how machine learning analytics are changing the nature of competitive sports.

Today we’re presenting the fourth and final installment of my conversation with Naval Ravikant about existential risks. The theme of today’s installment: there’s hope. Yes, really! If there’s one thing that any religious, national or political mindset should agree on, it’s that we don't want some maniac wiping us all out. This creates an extreme good-guy-to-bad-guy ratio, which itself could be decisive—even if lone destructive actors become massively empowered.

Today we’re presenting the third installment of my conversation with Naval Ravikant about existential risks. In this segment, Naval and I move on from yesterday’s topic of AI risk to the dangers inherent in the rise of synthetic biology, or synbio.

Today we’re presenting the second installment of my conversation with Naval Ravikant about existential risks. Today, we focus on that time-honored Hollywood staple—super AI risk.

This week’s guest is Naval Ravikant. Naval is a renowned angel investor and entrepreneur. But our topic this week is something quite a bit darker than entrepreneurial finance. Specifically, it’s existential risk. This refers to a set of dangers which might, in a worst-case scenario, imperil humanity’s very existence.

Today we present the third and final installment of my interview with Sarah Parcak, a prominent founding figuring the emerging field of astroarchaeology. Most of today’s installment concerns a crowd-enabled detection project Sarah created with proceeds from the TED Prize. It’s called GlobalXplorer. Partly inspired by Galaxy Zoo, it let armies of “citizen scientists” scan twelve million quadrants of Peruvian satellite imagery for hints of archaeological remains.

Today we’re presenting the second installment of my interview with Sarah Parcak, a prominent founding figuring the emerging field of astroarchaeology. Sarah’s team may just have pinpointed a long-lost (and eagerly-sought) pharaonic capital. Satellite data helped them establish the Nile’s approximate course during the capital’s heyday—as well as the locations of settlement-friendly highlands. 

This week my guest is Sarah Parcak, a co-founder of the emerging field of astroarchaeology, which enlists satellite imagery to identify ancient, undiscovered sites on our home planet. Sarah’s work in this field won her the 2016 TED prize—which came with a million-dollar check to advance her work.

Today we present the third and final installment of my interview with Chris Anderson. Today’s episode starts in the greener pastures that Chris’s startup, 3DR, found after Chinese behemoth DJI annihilated its drone manufacturing business. 3DR is now all about construction. We then explore Chris’s nuanced take on China as a competitive force. He’s extremely fair-minded, and even generous toward the company that all but liquidated his startup.

Today we’re presenting the second installment of my wide-ranging interview with Chris Anderson. He was Wired magazine’s editor-in-chief for twelve years, and then started one of the most influential companies in the brief history of consumer drones: 3D Robotics. Chris all but invented both the term and the concept of open source hardware—and we have a fascinating discussion about it in today’s installment.

Our guest is Chris Anderson, who was the editor-in-chief of Wired magazine for twelve years—until he did something quite unusual for an editor and started a high-profile, venture-backed startup, 3D Robotics. Chris doesn’t have the background you might expect. For one thing, he dropped or failed out of multiple schools when he was young. For another, he played bass for R.E.M. (and there’s something of a twist to this fact—but you’ll need to hear to our conversation to find out what it is).

We open today’s conversation talking about bioterrorism. Because that’s not uplifting enough, we then move on the dangers a super AI could present in certain worst-case scenarios. The final part of the podcast is a conversation between me and podcasting superstar Tom Merritt. In it, Tom and I discuss my interview with Sam—as well as a chunk of the novel After On.

Today, we start off discussing Sam’s first bestselling book, The End of Faith. It was inspired by September 11th attacks. Having recently spent ten years on his own self-styled spiritual journey, “I immediately recognized the spiritual intensity of that enterprise,” he recalls. Of Osama Bin Laden, Sam says, “He was not faking his belief. He believed what he said he believed, and it was only rational to take his stated beliefs at face value.”