EP.30 : ALGORITHMS AND AGENCY: KARTIK HOSANAGAR ON LEARNING TO LIVE WITH LEARNING MACHINES

Bounce! Conversations with Larry Weeks

"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 ...

• Why algos matter and the risks associated with decisions
• Issues with data and data brokers
• Algorithmic bias

• On the evolution of A.I.

• A.I. similarities in human nature

• Black box problems - when we cannot know why a machine takes an action it takes

• The predictability-resilience paradox

• How to take control, the importance of agency

• 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