Artificial intelligence is evolving at an unprecedented pace—what does that mean for the future of technology, venture capital, business, and even our understanding of ourselves? Award-winning journalist and writer Anil Ananthaswamy joins us for our latest episode to discuss his latest book Why Machines Learn: The Elegant Math Behind Modern AI . Anil helps us explore the journey and many breakthroughs that have propelled machine learning from simple perceptrons to the sophisticated algorithms shaping today’s AI revolution, powering GPT and other models. The discussion aims to demystify some of the underlying mathematical concepts that power modern machine learning, to help everyone grasp this technology impacting our lives–even if your last math class was in high school. Anil walks us through the power of scaling laws, the shift from training to inference optimization, and the debate among AI’s pioneers about the road to AGI—should we be concerned, or are we still missing key pieces of the puzzle? The conversation also delves into AI’s philosophical implications—could understanding how machines learn help us better understand ourselves? And what challenges remain before AI systems can truly operate with agency? If you enjoy this episode, please subscribe and leave us a review on your favorite podcast platform. Sign up for our newsletter at techsurgepodcast.com for exclusive insights and updates on upcoming TechSurge Live Summits. Links: Read Why Machines Learn, Anil’s latest book on the math behind AI https://www.amazon.com/Why-Machines-Learn-Elegant-Behind/dp/0593185749 Learn more about Anil Ananthaswamy’s work and writing https://anilananthaswamy.com/ Watch Anil Ananthaswamy’s TED Talk on AI and intelligence https://www.ted.com/speakers/anil_ananthaswamy Discover the MIT Knight Science Journalism Fellowship that shaped Anil’s AI research https://ksj.mit.edu/ Understand the Perceptron, the foundation of neural networks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron Read about the Perceptron Convergence Theorem and its significance https://www.nature.com/articles/323533a0…
Rodney Jacobs of Stinson Lumber in Oregon joined the show. He’s responsible for selecting the tree that is placed in downtown Portland every year. And there’s a lot more that goes into it than you’d think.
Rodney Jacobs of Stinson Lumber in Oregon joined the show. He’s responsible for selecting the tree that is placed in downtown Portland every year. And there’s a lot more that goes into it than you’d think.
Chris and Lauren discuss four weird news stories: the Old Testament-esque tale of a kayaker being spit out by a whale, smelly flowers in Australia, an ambitious ocean voyage that departed from Philly and a weird Walmart car wash project.
This week, people around the world have a change to see a “planetary parade” – you can read about it here. Back in 2023, “Something Offbeat” investigated why people love looking into the sky. We reached out to two experts: Dartmouth researcher Nathan H. Heller, who specializes in pareidolia – hearing or seeing a specific sound or image in a seemingly random auditory or visual stimulus – as well as well-known astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo, host of “Ghost of a Podcast”.…
Instead of harvesting long-lost DNA like they do in in the “Jurassic Park” film franchise, a company called Colossal is planning to take living species and genetically engineer traits of the extinct animals such as the woolly mammoth, Tasmanian tiger and the dodo bird into them. The company employs around 170 scientists and plans are moving forward… faster than you might think. Faye Flam, a science journalist who is researching the topic for Bloomberg, joined the show to discuss the project.…
Stories about stolen eggs, Taylor Swift’s Super Bowl experience, people getting stuck on theme park rides and the possible end of the penny all reminded us of “Something Offbeat” tales from the past.
A coin from ancient Rome featuring a depiction of Brutus -- yes, the Brutus who killed Julius Caesar -- sold at auction for $2 million. It got us wondering, in 2,000 years, could a penny be worth just as much? And what's the future of physical currency look like anyway? To find out, we talked to Aaron Klein, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, about what our money could look like in the future.…
George Musser, a contributing editor at Scientific American, contributing writer at Quanta as well as the author of Putting Ourselves Back in the Equation (2023) and Spooky Action at a Distance (2015) joined “Something Offbeat” to help us get a better understanding of the multiverse and what it has to do with computers.…
Camp Century was a US military base that was used for less than a decade in the 1960s. Now? It’s all but a memory. William Colgan, a glacier and climate change researcher, currently in Copenhagen, Denmark, as part of the Camp Century Climate Monitoring Program, joins the show to discuss it.
Today we’re talking about one of the most notorious, long-enduring real-life mysteries out there. The tale of one of the most infamous skyjackers of all time – DB Cooper. Researcher Eric Ulis joins the show to explain the decades-old enigma and help us unpack the latest theories about who Cooper might be.…
Rodney Jacobs of Stinson Lumber in Oregon joined the show. He’s responsible for selecting the tree that is placed in downtown Portland every year. And there’s a lot more that goes into it than you’d think.
Anthony Clarke, a researcher from Curtin University, joined the show to discuss new findings about Stonehenge that have revealed yet another mystery related to the ancient landmark: how did one of the stones travel all the way from Scotland to reach the Salisbury Plain?
This week Mike spoke with Oriene Shin with Consumer Reports. She tells us how to keep kids safe with the toys we get them over the holidays and answers the age old question… can you eat Play-doh?
Sam Benson Smith, digital managing editor at Audacy’s KNX, brought us a story about insurance fraudsters who slipped up by using a bad bear suit. We’ll tell you all about it.
In this episode of Offbites, Chris and Lauren offer some side dishes of weird news before Thanksgiving, including snake yoga, a bad development for wired headphones, cruel AI and volcanoes on the moon.
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