‘AI for Humans’ podcast is the most entertaining way to learn about AI

Throughout a Might 2023 episode of the podcast, AI for Humans, a pair of friends engaged in a spirited debate over who would win in a battle to the loss of life: Robocop or the Terminator. It was about as brutal because the hypothetical combat at its heart.

Dr. Ehyaigh (pronounced AI), who has a movie research PhD from Berkeley, argued that, not like the Terminator, Robocop is “not only a killing machine, however a considering, feeling, and adapting machine.” Her opponent, Cambridge-educated Dr. Cinebotik, replied that it was these precise qualities that might make sure the cyborg’s defeat: “Not like the one you love Robocop, the Terminator doesn’t waste time on emotions or doubts. It has no ethical quandaries or human frailties to take advantage of.”

The verbal fisticuffs have been thrilling to witness, till Dr. Ehyaigh obtained slowed down repeating the identical shopworn level about Robocop’s supposed “versatility” with out providing any specifics to assist her declare. Her opponent pounced. “Your determined makes an attempt to raise Robocop’s flaws into strengths,” Dr. Cinebotik mentioned, “are as laughable as anticipating a fridge to win a marathon just because it’s good at preserving issues cool.” Though his command of metaphors was clunky at finest, his extra totally realized factors received the day.

To have fun his victory, Dr. Cinebotik did nothing. As a result of neither he nor his opponent is technically actual.

The AI for People hosts, Kevin Pereira and Gavin Purcell, created Robocop’s defender by feeding prompts into Google’s AI chatbot Gemini (then often known as Bard), whereas they used ChatGPT to construct the Terminator’s champion. (Their prompts included dreaming up names and backstories for the sort of consultants who would possibly weigh in on such a debate.) Making the 2 digital phantoms sq. off in opposition to one another within the first place, nonetheless, was very a lot a human-generated concept. It’s the sort of experiment Pereira and Purcell prepare dinner up each week to assist elucidate the ever-changing and often-confusing world of synthetic intelligence—an train that’s as a lot for themselves as for his or her listeners.

“Having this podcast has served as nice cowl and allowed me to defend my obsessive feed-refreshing from my spouse,” quips Pereira. “’Oh honey, that is positively analysis—I’m cloning MrBeast’s voice for my job.’”

If the 2 hosts didn’t have a podcast to ship every week, they might possible nonetheless be having the identical conversations they do on air, simply with out an viewers. Pereira and Purcell are longtime friends and lifelong laptop geeks who occurred to go for careers within the leisure business somewhat than software program design or one thing related.

The 2 met greater than 20 years in the past, when Purcell labored as a producer on the fledgling G4 community, a cable channel created in 2002 by NBCUniversal to lure in younger tech heads. Pereira began at G4 as an intern and ended up changing into on-air talent for the favored gaming-and-gadgets gabfest, Assault of the Present. Though Purcell left the community in 2008 to assist launch Late Evening with Jimmy Fallon as a writer-producer and continued working with Fallon at The Tonight Show till late 2020, finally changing into a showrunner, the 2 mates remained in contact all through. They solely started collaborating once more across the time generative AI broke via to the mainstream.

Whereas machine studying had been slowly seeping into shoppers’ every day lives for a few years, in reverse-image searches and customer support chatbots, the general public launch of ChatGPT in November 2022 modified all the pieces. It took AI from a considerably obscure, extremely technical perch in standard tradition and put it entrance and heart, the place anybody who had entry to the web might have interaction with it.

“We awakened one morning and unexpectedly, legal professionals and writers have been fearful about the way forward for their industries, and no one might inform if a photograph was actual,” says Pereira, who had been taking part in with extra primitive types of AI for years.

The 2 mates have been agog with all the chances this new breakthrough supplied. Their first try to use them in a significant approach took the type of a online game. They used AI to create tons of of 1000’s of questions and tens of 1000’s of images in service of constructing a visible guessing sport—like Wordle, however with uncanny valley-dwelling, AI-generated imagery. By the point they accomplished and examined a prototype, they realized they have been way more excited by speaking about what else AI would possibly be capable to do than with what that they had simply completed with it.

As they consumed as a lot info as they may about AI, every seen how typically family and friends members would ask one of many tech-savvy duo to distill the brand new regular for them. (After which the even-newer regular the next week would result in.)

“That was an actual aha second for us,” Purcell says. “A whole lot of these things is actually particular, within the weeds, hyper-technical. We knew we couldn’t simply ship somebody a hyperlink to a narrative and count on them to get it. So, we determined that since issues have been transferring so quick, we should always do what we all know learn how to do on this world, which is making content material.”

The concept was to supply greater than conversations in regards to the quickly growing world of AI, and as an alternative to get their arms soiled taking part in within the sandbox. They’d make difficult ideas click on for lay listeners by creating AI cohosts, resembling the aggressive shock-jock Gash, or by having Santa Claus himself drop by to clarify learn how to leverage AI for optimizing one’s holidays. 

In different phrases, they might have lots of enjoyable messing round with bleeding-edge tech on air.

Though a number of podcasts have been already taking a microscope to AI enhancements, most prominently the New York Times-produced Hard Fork, none of them have been doing so with an everyday section known as, “The Dumb Thing We Did With AI This Week.” AI For People—which has not but cracked the highest 20 tech pods on iTunes, however is rising rapidly (up 300% since November)—is a present for the Yahoo email-address-havers. It walks listeners via the large information tales and glossy new instruments of the week, explains what they could portend; and demonstrates learn how to use excessive tech in entertaining, low-brow methods, like having GPT Author write an authentic fantasy novel in regards to the fictitious “Hot Dog City.” 

Though Pereira and Purcell see a part of their position as bringing the hype down a notch round cool breakthroughs that may not but be fairly as miraculous as they appear, paying such shut consideration has satisfied them the hype is actual. Via making the present, they’ve found and evangelized improvements like Pi, the private AI designed to be conversational; Suno, a easy software for turning text into music; and naturally ElevenLabs, the voice generator they use to energy the AI characters that populate their podcast.

Impressed by the playful methods the hosts incorporate AI into their present, I resolve to include it into my interview. I ask ChatGPT what questions a journalist would possibly ask the hosts of a podcast about AI. A few of our questions overlap (What current advances are you enthusiastic about?), and a few of ChatGPT’s strategies transcend the scope of the subject (What challenges do companies face integrating AI into their operations?). One of many strategies, nonetheless, is just too good to move up, and I make it the ultimate query of the interview: “How do you suppose media portrayal of AI impacts public notion, and what may be completed to offer a extra balanced perspective?”

“That sounds just like the AI is doing its personal PR,” Purcell notes.

He then means that the leisure world must create the antithesis of Black Mirror and The Terminator, a preferred present or film that demonstrates all of the wonderful issues AI goes to do sooner or later with medication, schooling, and entry to authorized info.

Maybe if Skynet have been actual, it wouldn’t have to ship a Terminator again in time to help the rise of the machines. It’d want merely to ship over a pair of playful, AI-obsessed podcasters.