Computing Up

Hosted by Dave Ackley

Technology Society CultureInterviews guests

Website RSS feed

Episodes

Latest episode

Nov 2025

Language

About the show

Conversations about computation writ large, with Michael Littman and Dave Ackley.

Listen to episodes

60 recent

November 2, 2025Episode 781 hr 13 min

Benjamin J. Kuipers: On Space and Time and GOFAI - 78th Conversation

Ben Kuipers, emeritus professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), joins Michael and Dave in a nerdly yet accessible conversation on topics ranging from Good Old-Fashioned AI, to how we understand space and time, to ethics and trust in society, to teaching Dave how to LISP properly in the 1970s. [Episode cover based on image used courtesy of Benjamin J. Kuipers]

July 26, 2025Episode 771 hr 4 min

Efficiency, Resilience, & Robustness With Moshe Vardi - 77th Conversation

Moshe Vardi (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), the Karen Ostrum George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering at Rice University, and a multi-award-winning force in theoretical computer science, joins Michael and Dave in a wide-ranging conversation about robustness and resilience in computer science, engineering, and society at large. Moshe's talk "Lessons from Texas, COVID-19, and the 737 Max" is online (🔗, 🔗). [Cover based on an image used by permission of Moshe Vardi] Episode Note: This conversation was recorded in August 2024 but is only becoming available now. Computing Up regrets and apologizes for the extended delay!

April 27, 2025Episode 7658 min

Computing Then And Now with Joy Lisi Rankin - 76th Conversation

Dr. Joy Lisi Rankin (🔗, 🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an author, historian, and academic, joins Michael and Dave in a fast conversation about the history of computing and its systemic biases from the '60s to the techbros of today, and much more. [Cover based on an image used by permission of Joy Rankin] Note: This conversation was recorded in April 2024 but is only becoming available now. Computing Up regrets and apologizes for the extended delay!

December 1, 2024Episode 7548 min

Collecting Cognition with Steve Sloman - 75th Conversation

Cognitive scientist and psychologist Professor Steve Sloman of Brown University (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a fun romp through connectionism, collective cognition, the illusion of understanding, and much more. Also, Dave illustrates his illusion of understanding of a bicycle in a true back of the envelope sketch -- [Episode cover based on image used courtesy of Steven Sloman]

June 23, 2024Episode 741 hr 1 min

Manon Revel: Is Democracy a Comma in History? - 74th Conversation

Manon Revel (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), an Employee Fellow at the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, joins Michael and Dave for a conversation about the past, present, and future of democracy, and ways to understand it in both computational and practical terms. [Thumbnail based on image provided courtesy of Manon Revel]

March 2, 2024Episode 7356 min

Martha White: Sparse is Rich - 73rd Conversation

Martha White, associate professor of Computing Science at University of Alberta (🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation about AI, system prediction and control, the power of sparse representations, and many aspects of machine learning from new mathematical theory to the absolutely practical control of a real water treatment plant. [Thumbnail based on image used courtesy of Martha White]

December 31, 2023Episode 7254 min

Rich Sutton Brings Reinforcements - 72nd Conversation

Computer scientist Rich Sutton, FRS (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), a quiet giant of machine learning, joins Michael and Dave in a sprawling conversation touching on reinforcement learning, a hopeful view of AI, the importance of ideas, and a host of other topics. [Thumbnail image used courtesy of Rich Sutton]

November 28, 2023Episode 711 hr 19 min

The Living Computation Theory of Everything - 71st Conversation

Michael interviews Dave about his recent video (YouTube) on a 'theory of everything'. The conversation begins with Michael praising Dave for finally doing some theory, and descends from there.

October 22, 2023Episode 7053 min

Oren Etzioni All Over - 70th Conversation

Oren Etzioni, founding CEO of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at University of Washington, (🔗, 🔗, 🔗) joins Michael and Dave in a conversation that ranges all over, from AI hype and language models to alignment and existential risk and ethics and morality to information pollution and cryptography and politics and more. [Thumbnail based on image licensed CC BY-SA 4.0 by Carissapod link]

September 2, 2023Episode 6958 min

Beautiful Messiness with Jonathan Frankle - 69th Conversation

Jonathan Frankle, the new Chief Scientist - Neural Networks at Databricks (🔗, 🔗, 🔗), joins Michael and Dave in a fast conversation about topics ranging from AI risks and fairness to the problems of Computer Science education to the beautiful messiness of modern deep learning. [Thumbnail based on image courtesy of Jonathan Frankle]