Duncan CJ

New episode with @pmddomingos: The Safest AI Is The Smartest AI The people warning you that AI is too smart have it exactly backwards. The real danger right now is that AI is too stupid, and you have already handed it the keys. Pedro Domingos is professor emeritus of computer science at the University of Washington @UW, winner of two of the highest awards in AI and data science, and author of The Master Algorithm, which sold over 300,000 copies, was called essential reading by @BillGates and was spotted on Xi Jinping's bookshelf. A decade later, while much of the AI world chases ever larger language models, Pedro argues that path will not deliver AGI. In this conversation he dismantles both the doomers and the boomers, explains why we should worry about who controls AI rather than AI itself, and makes the case that AI's true purpose is not to amplify your individual intelligence but to transform our collective intelligence as a species. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Cold open 00:09 - Introduction: The man who saw it coming 01:27 - Why incompetent AI is a bigger danger than super-intelligent AI 03:35 - The homunculus fallacy: why we anthropomorphise machines 07:15 - Domesticated wolves and why machine learning will not turn evil 09:01 - Why humans are vastly better at manipulation than AI 12:23 - Regulating AI is like regulating mathematics 18:19 - The doomers and the boomers: both are getting it wrong 22:06 - Every time, people say this time is different. Every time, they are wrong. 27:32 - ATMs and bank tellers: the lesson nobody learns 28:24 - Man with machine versus man without 31:17 - How deep into AI does a non-technical founder need to go? 35:07 - Why ‘copilot’ is the wrong analogy for AI 38:01 - The killer app of AI: amplifying collective intelligence, not individual 44:47 - Responding to the attention crisis 52:52 - Why mature fields have small textbooks again Look up Duncan CJ on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, etc. Enjoy!

🤖What if a robot that doesn't know it's trying to walk learns faster than one explicitly trained to walk? Our SVP of Open-Endedness @kenneth0stanley joined @DuncanCJ_ to discuss why objectives are the enemy of greatness, building Scientific Superintelligence at LILA, and the future of creativity. 🎧Watch the full episode⬇️

Conversation with @danariely on Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things. You probably have someone in your life who, seven years ago, you’d have said sees the world the way you do. Now you look at them and something has fundamentally shifted. The question is: what happened, and could it happen to you? Dan Ariely is a professor of psychology and behavioral economics at @DukeU and the author of multiple New York Times bestsellers including Predictably Irrational and The Honest Truth About Dishonesty. His latest book, Misbelief, was born from an extraordinary personal experience: becoming the target of conspiracy theorists who accused him of being a “chief consciousness architect” working to psychologically control the global population during COVID. Instead of retreating, he turned the experience into a deep investigation of how rational people fall into irrational belief systems, and what it reveals about all of us. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 – Cold open 00:55 – Introduction: The researcher who became the conspiracy 02:34 – The person in your life who changed: what happened to them? 03:28 – Stress as the gateway: why we reach for false stories 08:45 – Patternicity: why a story (any story) feels safer than chaos 12:14 – Why misbelief is becoming more common, not less 17:00 – Social media as active participation, not passive consumption 21:00 – Shibboleth: when speech becomes identity, not inquiry 25:23 – Why intelligence offers no protection against misbelief 34:46 – Cognitive dissonance: the deeper you invest, the harder it is to leave 41:39 – Can AI chatbots actually reduce conspiracy beliefs? 47:27 – Behavioural science weaponised by technology 48:37 – The most predictably irrational behaviour AI is supercharging 51:34 – Is Dan optimistic or pessimistic about humanity? Look up Duncan CJ on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, etc. Enjoy!

New episode with @mkonnikova on The Attention Crisis That Could End Human Progress. What if the biggest threat to your company isn’t competition, a down round, or a bad hire but the slow erosion of your ability to think clearly? Maria Konnikova is a psychologist, three-time New York Times bestselling author, and a World Series of Poker @WSOP bracelet winner who turned a zero-knowledge experiment at the poker table into over a million dollars in tournament winnings. She returns to Artificial Happiness to deliver a stark warning: we are raising a generation that may not know how to think, connect, or decide — and the implications for founders building in the AI age are profound. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction: Why decision quality is the real bottleneck 01:28 - What Maria has changed her mind about since 2020 03:35 - The attention crisis: what’s really at stake 07:44 - Banning technology in schools — a necessary intervention? 13:49 - Why writing by hand changes how you process risk 15:55 - Emotion in decision-making: feature, not bug 18:32 - Cognitive biases: when evolutionary shortcuts fail 22:39 - AI vs humans in poker — and what it means for the rest of us 26:18 - Skin in the game: why stakes accelerate learning 31:17 - Pick your spots: Eric Seidel’s career-defining advice 33:17 - The OODA loop: a military framework for founder decisions 37:55 - The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior Look up Duncan CJ on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, etc. Enjoy!

AI can explore possibilities for unexpected discoveries. Think of human civilization: individual goals drive invention, but collectively, these creations become foundations for future innovation over millennia. #AI #Innovation #Discovery

Progress isn't just optimization; it's collection. Each invention, like electricity leading to the light bulb, becomes a stepping stone. The more we collect, the more possibilities open up. The future is built on past discoveries. #Progress #Innovation #Discovery

Nature's creativity is unmatched. It doesn't plan; it experiments. Embrace that mindset: explore, follow your intuition, and seek out stepping stones. True growth lies in breadth, not just depth. #Creativity #Mindset #Innovation

Successful people often don't have a rigid plan. This isn't a flaw, but permission. Permission to follow curiosity, to embrace another way, and to feel empowered by less planning. Greatness is rarely planned. #followyourcuriosity #NoPlan #Greatness

Having a clear objective Vs. following 'interestingness' @kenneth0stanley #DecisionMaking #Curiosity #LifeLessons

Minimizing surprise is the core of self-organization. It's the gap between prediction and reality. This prediction error fuels learning and adaptation. #FreeEnergyPrinciple #Learning #AI

Children close their eyes when scared. Adults sometimes do the same with bad news. Ignoring difficult things makes the world feel more predictable and less upsetting. It's a fundamental coping mechanism. #Psychology #Coping

Making incorrect predictions fuels anxiety. It's like a weather app constantly forecasting storms that never arrive. Constant prediction errors create a faulty internal forecast. #MentalHealth #Anxiety #CognitiveBiases

It's paradoxical: a robot learning to walk by seeking novelty learned better than one rewarded for walking. An algorithm that doesn't know its goal outperformed one explicitly trained for it. @kenneth0stanley #AI #Robotics #Learning

"the robot that was seeking novelty learnt better how to walk than the robot that was being rewarded for walking better" #Innovation #Growth #NoveltySearch

Picbreeder lets you 'breed' images. Select a parent image, it has 'children' that resemble it but are not identical. Keep iterating through generations to evolve. #AIArt #GenerativeArt @kenneth0stanley

Following curiosity without a plan led to unexpectedly mapping out an entire city. This byproduct shows the power of open-ended exploration – it can lead to unforeseen discoveries. #Curiosity #Exploration #Discovery @kenneth0stanley

#DecisionMaking #Curiosity #LifeLessons @kenneth0stanley

@kenneth0stanley You can make intelligent decisions without knowing where you're going. You could go as far as definining creativity as the ability to make intelligent decisions without knowing where you're going. #DecisionMaking #Intuition #Creativity

New episode with @SebastianThrun on Building the Impossible: Moonshots, AI, and Zero to One What separates founders who dream from founders who build category-defining companies? How do you take something considered science fiction and make it inevitable? Dr. Sebastian Thrun is the founder of @Waymo, Google X @theteamatx, and @udacity, the architect behind self-driving cars, democratized education, and Google's moonshot culture. He's turned the impossible into reality repeatedly. From winning the @DARPA Grand Challenge with a robot that drove 140 miles through the desert autonomously, to building flying cars at Kitty Hawk, Sebastian operates at the intersection of audacious ambition and rigorous execution. Now focused on enterprise AI with @cresta and Sage AI Labs, he brings decades of experience turning zero-to-one ideas into billion-dollar realities. ⏰ Timestamps: 00:00 - Introduction: The Architect of the Impossible 02:19 - Google X Origins: Learning from Skunk Works 06:23 - Taking Zero Credit: The Coach Model of Leadership 07:50 - The Fictitious Grandmother Test for Startups 10:45 - Measuring Impact: Delta × Scale 11:28 - The Moment of Self-Awareness at 16 14:49 - Create Value AND Capture Value 20:25 - Clarity: Why Finishing a Month Early Changed Everything 24:34 - What He's Most Proud Of (Hint: It's Not Technology) 26:51 - The Common Thread: A Kid in a Candy Store 29:04 - AI as a Humanities Discipline 32:39 - Why He's an AI Optimist 36:49 - Why He Lost His Love of Hardware 39:05 - Museum Tour Guides and the Ethics of Automation 41:12 - Final Thoughts: The World's Going to Be Unpredictable and Fun Look up Duncan CJ on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, etc. Enjoy!