Machine Intelligence

What makes machines intelligent — and how close are we to achieving it? Through interviews and explainers, this season probes the current state of AI, exploring both flashy applications and the deeper limitations of today’s models. From creative outputs to reasoning gaps, the focus is on evaluating how far machine intelligence has come, and what still separates algorithms from human cognition.

Episodes

AI Roundtable — Kyle is joined by friends and former guests Pramit Choudhary and Frank Bell to have an open discussion of the impacts LLMs and machine learning have had in the past year on industry, and where things
Uncontrollable AI Risks — We are joined by Darren McKee, a Policy Advisor and the host of Reality Check — a critical thinking podcast. Darren gave a background about himself and how he got into the AI space. Darren shared his
I LLM and You Can Too — It took a massive financial investment for the first large language models (LLMs) to be created. Did their corporate backers lock these tools away for all but the richest? No. They provided commodity
LLMs for Data Analysis — Amir Netz (Microsoft Technical Fellow and CTO of Microsoft Fabric) explains how Power BI and Microsoft Fabric fit into today’s business intelligence landscape, emphasizing Fabric’s end-to-end approach
AI Platforms — Our guest today is Eric Boyd, the Corporate Vice President of AI at Microsoft. Eric joins us to share how organizations can leverage AI for faster development. Eric shared the benefits of using natura
Deploying LLMs — We are excited to be joined by Aaron Reich and Priyanka Shah. Aaron is the CTO at Avanade, while Priyanka leads their AI/IoT offering for the SEA Region. Priyanka is also the MVP for Microsoft AI. The
A Survey Assessing Github Copilot — In this episode, we are joined by Jenny Liang, a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University, where she studies the usability of code generation tools. She discusses her recent survey on the usability o
Program Aided Language Models — We are joined by Aman Madaan and Shuyan Zhou. They are both PhD students at the Language Technology Institute at Carnegie Mellon University. They join us to discuss their latest published paper, PAL:
Which Programming Language is ChatGPT Best At — In this episode, we have Alessio Buscemi, a software engineer at Lifeware SA. Alessio was a post-doctoral researcher at the University of Luxembourg. He joins us to discuss his paper, A Comparative St
GraphText — On the show today, we are joined by Jianan Zhao, a Computer Science student at Mila and the University of Montreal. His research focus is on graph databases and natural language processing. He joins u
arXiv Publication Patterns — Today, we are joined by Rajiv Movva, a PhD student in Computer Science at Cornell Tech University. His research interest lies in the intersection of responsible AI and computational social science. He
Emergent Deception in LLMs — On today’s show, we are joined by Thilo Hagendorff, a Research Group Leader of Ethics of Generative AI at the University of Stuttgart. He joins us to discuss his research, [Deception Abilities Emerged
Agents with Theory of Mind Play Hanabi — Nieves Montes, a Ph.D. student at the Artificial Intelligence Research Institute in Barcelona, Spain, joins us. Her PhD research revolves around value-based reasoning in relation to norms. She shares
LLMs for Evil — We are joined by Maximilian Mozes, a PhD student at the University College, London. His PhD research focuses on Natural Language Processing (NLP), particularly the intersection of adversarial machine
The Defeat of the Winograd Schema Challenge — Our guest today is Vid Kocijan, a Machine Learning Engineer at Kumo AI. Vid has a Ph.D. in Computer Science at the University of Oxford. His research focused on common sense reasoning, pre-training in
LLMs in Social Science — Today, We are joined by Petter Törnberg, an Assistant Professor in Computational Social Science at the University of Amsterdam and a Senior Researcher at the University of Neuchatel. His research is c
LLMs in Music Composition — In this episode, we are joined by Carlos Hernández Oliván, a Ph.D. student at the University of Zaragoza. Carlos’s interest focuses on building new models for symbolic music generation. Carlos shared
Cuttlefish Model Tuning — Hongyi Wang, a Senior Researcher at the Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, joins us. His research is in the intersection of systems and machine learning. He discussed his resea
Which Professions Are Threatened by LLMs — On today’s episode, we have Daniel Rock, an Assistant Professor of Operations Information and Decisions at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Daniel’s research focuses on the econom
Why Prompting is Hard — We are excited to be joined by J.D. Zamfirescu-Pereira, a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley. He focuses on the intersection of human-computer interaction (HCI) and artificial intelligence (AI). He joins us
Automated Peer Review — In this episode, we are joined by Ryan Liu, a Computer Science graduate of Carnegie Mellon University. Ryan will begin his Ph.D. program at Princeton University this fall. His Ph.D. will focus on the
Prompt Refusal — The creators of large language models impose restrictions on some of the types of requests one might make of them. LLMs commonly refuse to give advice on committing crimes, producing adult content, or
A Long Way Till AGI — Our guest today is Maciej Świechowski. Maciej is affiliated with QED Software and QED Games. He has a Ph.D. in Systems Research from the Polish Academy of Sciences. Maciej joins us to discuss findings
Computable AGI — On today’s show, we are joined by Michael Timothy Bennett, a Ph.D. student at the Australian National University. Michael’s research is centered around Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), specifica
AGI Can Be Safe — We are joined by Koen Holtman, an independent AI researcher focusing on AI safety. Koen is the Founder of Holtman Systems Research, a research company based in the Netherlands. Koen started the conver
AI Fails on Theory of Mind Tasks — An assistant professor of Psychology at Harvard University, Tomer Ullman, joins us. Tomer discussed the theory of mind and whether machines can indeed pass it. Using variations of the Sally-Anne test
AI for Mathematics Education — The application of LLMs cuts across various industries. Today, we are joined by Steven Van Vaerenbergh, who discussed the application of AI in mathematics education. He discussed how AI tools have cha
Evaluating Jokes with LLMs — Fabricio Goes, a Lecturer in Creative Computing at the University of Leicester, joins us today. Fabricio discussed what creativity entails and how to evaluate jokes with LLMs. He specifically shared t
Why Machines Will Never Rule the World — Barry Smith and Jobst Landgrebe, authors of the book “Why Machines will never Rule the World,” join us today. They discussed the limitations of AI systems in today’s world. They also shared elaborate
A Psychopathological Approach to Safety in AGI — While the possibilities with AGI emergence seem great, it also calls for safety concerns. On the show, Vahid Behzadan, an Assistant Professor of Computer Science and Data Science, joins us to discuss