On the way to the grocery store today, I listened to a fragment of an NPR podcast about Artificial Intelligence (AI). Later in the afternoon, at home and sitting on the deck with Susan, I noticed that it was being rebroadcast on SXM’s NPR channel. We both listened to the hour-long podcast.
As I listened, I was transported back to 1970 when I was a Computer Science graduate student at The University of Texas at Austin. I recalled that my team leader at work and fellow CS graduate school student, Gordon Novak, had decided to pursue a PhD in artificial intelligence. He wound up at Standford to complete his research. Later, he would become the head of UT’s AI lab. We had dinner together a few years ago before the onset of the pandemic. It is time for me to invite my old friend and colleague to dinner, I think.
I recommend this podcast on AI to you, if you have an interest in the topic. It is an hour long, and it has many references to popular culture as regards the subject. I have to say that the podcast failed to highlight I Robot and the Kubrick/Spielberg movie A.I.
So it goes. 🙁