The Ars Technicast

Adam and I open today’s installment discussing techniques that mad scientists like him can use thwack the brain (legally, and safely, of course), so as to increase its neuroplasticity. We then talk about the limits of medical imaging—and the lamentable fact that this technology isn’t rocketing down a Moore’s Law-like curve. In closing, we discuss some of the newer things Adam’s lab is exploring. There’s some intriguing work connected to meditation.

This week, we’re serializing another episode of the After On Podcast here on Ars. Our guest is UCSF neuroscientist Adam Gazzaley, who runs one of the largest academic neuroscience labs on the West Coast and researches tuning games to combat neurological aliments. At the heart of today’s conversation is Adam’s take on neuroplasticity. I’ve known this term for years, and long thought I understood it. But this interview brought me a far more nuanced comprehension of it.

UC Irvine quantitative psychologist Don Hoffman presents his wildly counterintuitive theory on the nature of reality. We kick off today talking about what’s widely referred to as "the hard problem of consciousness." Don takes a highly contrarian approach to it. Next we discuss the eerie results of several hundred brain-splitting surgeries, which were performed a few decades back. We close by discussing of "panpsychism."

Don and I open this episode by discussing his take on space-time. He refutes that the notion that space itself existed at all before consciousness. Don essentially believes that if you’re alone in a room and look at a chair, that chair ceases to exist when you look away from it. Almost inevitably, we get into quantum physics. But rest assured, Don isn’t some New Age guru citing spooky physics as part of a healing crystal sales pitch. He’s a serious thinker who understands this stuff cold.

Today’s guest is UC Irvine quantitative psychologist Don Hoffman. In today’s installment, he lays the foundation of this wildly contrarian worldview. An ardent Darwinist, Don argues that evolutionary forces will almost always favor perceptive systems that present a simplified, even dumbed-down take on reality. This is the start of a pretty wild ride, which I believe any curious mind will enjoy—even ones which fully reject Don’s perspective.

In today’s installment, Tim rejects the fashionable forecast that automation will eradicate all human jobs next week. Being closer than most of us to Jeff Bezos, he knows a thing or three about operations at Amazon, which presents a fascinating case in point. Then Tim goes a bit dark. With reference to Facebook and Google, he compares the world economy to an optimizing algorithm that’s gone off the rails. Tim closes with a nuanced take on our future.

Tim and I start off today talking about "The Whole Internet User’s Guide & Catalog," which he published in 1992. And yup—that’s a two at the end of that number. Jumping forward many years, Tim tells us about convening a small summit of tech honchos, which quite literally named open-source software. This launches a tour of Tim’s thoughts about platforms & tech ecosystems, and their abusers. This leads us to his very nuanced takes on Uber, AirBnB, and others—all of which surprised me on one or mor

Our guest is tech’s preeminent publisher and top prognosticator Tim O’Reilly. O’Reilly Media has published a huge share of our world’s top books for as long as I’ve been around – even as it led the charge with ebooks, digital training, and other disruptions to its ink-on-paper legacy. But Tim’s real mojo comes from being the industry’s convener-in-chief. 

Today, we build on the amazing results Google attained with its experimental eye scan study, and consider the unlikely things that might one day be meaningful early-warning markers for health problems. We close by talking about the Cancer X Prize, which Daniel is overseeing. It’s all about early detection. 

Our guest is pediatric oncologist and medical futurist Daniel Kraft. We begin today discussing Daniel’s background and Singularity University itself. We then delve into the world of advanced quantified-self devices, and how they’re finally starting to link into the caregiving world in ways that could truly saving lives. When I question navigability of the inevitable data glut, Daniel points to the taming potential of AI, by citing some astounding work recently done at Google.

Today we open with an heartening story about an infant who went through one of Robert’s studies, and may have picked up fifteen IQ points as a direct result (this is neither a metaphor nor an exaggeration)! We then talk about the vast potential of pre-conception genetic screening, and an early initiative in this area that has almost eradicated a genetic disease that long plagued the Ashkenazi Jewish population. We close by discussing an ambitious government initiative that’s called “All of Us.”

Today we present the second installment of my interview with medical geneticist Robert Green, about the promise and pitfalls that could lie in reading out your full genome. In this installment, we discuss why some medical researchers view personal genetic information as a literal toxin before moving on to discussing rare genetic diseases, and how incongruously common they are. 

My guest this week is a medical geneticist Robert Green, and our topic is the promise and peril that could come from reading your full genome. Whole-genome sequencing will soon become a mass phenomenon, because it will be better to know something than nothing in enough cases to justify the effort. But not in all cases!

Today we present the third and final installment of my interview British astronomer Stephen Webb on the subject of Fermi’s paradox. we open by talking about some of the amazing instruments and projects that are coming online in the coming decade – both to extend the search for extraterrestrial life, and to advance the much broader field of astrophysics. The episode concludes with a conversation between me and Tom Merritt, of the Daily Tech News Show. 

Today we present the second installment of my interview British astronomer Stephen Webb on the subject of Fermi’s paradox. We open by talking about the second category of solutions to the paradox. This is that intelligent aliens out there, but we just haven’t detected them yet. We then go on to the third category—which is that we are quite alone in our galaxy, and perhaps in the entire universe. Stephen then lays out the solution to Fermi’s paradox that he deems to be most plausible. No spoilers h

This week we ponder Fermi's Paradox with British astronomer Stephen Webb. This is the question of why can’t we detect any signs of intelligent alien life when we look to the skies. No signs of astro-engineering projects. No signatures of relativistic space travel. No obviously artificial electromagnetic waves, and so forth. And when you think of it, this is rather surprising. Or at least it was surprising to the ingenious physicist Enrico Fermi, who first drew attention to the matter. 

Today we open by talking about some astounding work of UC Berkeley neuroscientist Jack Gallant—in which he trained an AI system to infer what test subjects were viewing on a video screen just by watching their brains light up on an MRI. We then get to the truly speculative stuff. Could near-infrared light be used to excite, or trigger neurons? If so, could some creepy descendant of this technology be used to implant memories, or desires into people?

This week my guest is a holographer, a one-time academic, a former CTO of Oculus, and a present-day entrepreneur named Mary Lou Jepsen. We open today’s installment discussing the roots of Mary Lou’s new company. Like so many things, it all started with holography and a brain tumor.We then zip through Mary Lou’s career, and then comes the cool part: we start talking about near-infrared light.

We start today’s installment with the very cliffhanger sentence yesterday’s installment ended with: Rodney saying “Yeah, let’s talk about deep learning.” This leads to an argument similar to yesterday’s point about self-driving cars, which takes us to super AI risk, which Rodney believes is quiet overblown.

We start with the new robotic era that dawned when Rethink Robotics launched its Baxter robot. Baxter and its successor, Sawyer, shifted the industry. We then consider the ancient legacy equipment and standards that still plague so much factory automation. Next, we dive into society’s urgent need for robots to assist with elder care in the coming years. We close with Rodney’s fascinating take on how a poor understanding of a technology’s history distorts perspectives on its near-future prospects.