Apr 19, 2019
"I'm focusing on making decisions through A.I. They're making so many choices for us, mostly in ways that allow us to be productive but the flip side is the extent to which we are fully in control of our decisions. It's not quite what it used to be. The algorithms are nudging us in different ways"
- Kartik Hosanagar
My guest on this episode is Kartik Hosanagar.
Kartik is a professor of marketing at the Wharton School of the
University of Pennsylvania, one of the world's top 40 business
professors under 40. He is a 10 time recipient of the MBA or
undergraduate teaching excellence awards at the Wharton and his
research has received several best paper awards. Kartik also co-founded and developed the core
IP for Yodel and is involved with many other startups as either an
investor or board member.
Kartik's new book, A
Human's Guide to Machine Intelligence: How Algorithms Are Shaping
Our Lives and How We Can Stay in Control, is the topic of
our discussion.
This episode is a look into the brains of all of your devices, at least the software that's running them, and how those brains are learning and influencing you.
You need very little technical knowledge to enjoy this episode. In fact the less you know technically the more it would behoove you to listen.
Kartik does a masterful job not only explaining how algorithms work but how advances in A.I. are impacting your life - and what we can do about it personally as well as collectively.
And if you're curious at all as to all the buzz about artificial
intelligence, Kartik provides a short history lesson on it's
origins and evolution from narrow automation to autonomous
learning.
There's also a great retelling of how the AlphaGo computer beat the
world's best *human* Go professional.
Some additional talking points in this episode ...
On the evolution of A.I.
Black box problems - when we cannot know why a machine takes an action it takes
The predictability-resilience paradox
His view of the future and how we can prepare for it
And much more.
Enjoy!
If you like this episode, I write about all my podcasts at larryweeks.com