TechStuff

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Latest Episodes:

TechStuff x Part-Time Genius: Redefining ‘Luddite’ w/ Brian Merchant Feb 21, 2025

Show notes

This week, TechStuff teams up with Part-Time Genius for a special crossover episode. Oz and Mangesh Hattikudur, host of Part-Time Genius,discuss a largely misunderstood group of machine destroyers. The Luddites. Joining them is tech journalist Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, to dig into the history of humans fighting against job automation, why we equate Luddites with technophobes and what we can learn from these 19th century rebels in the age of AI.

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The Story: Liar, Liar, Deepfakes on Fire w/ Hany Farid Feb 19, 2025

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Hany Farid is a professor of electrical engineering and computer sciences at the University of California, Berkeley. He's been a leading voice on digital forensics for over two decades—pioneering ways to identify if an image, audio or video has been digitally altered. Since the rise of social media, Farid has kept busy helping news organizations, government agencies and law enforcement determine what is real and what is fake online. Farid sits down with Oz to talk about his initial interest in digital forensics, the effects of misinformation on society, and whether he wants an AI likeness of himself to live on after he dies.

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Week in Tech: Musk and Federal Money–A Love Story Feb 14, 2025

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What do the Brits want from Apple? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis explore how lithium-ion batteries and wildfires don’t mix, the UK government’s demand for a backdoor to iPhones and the James Webb Space Telescopeit rocks! On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Emanuel Maiberg, a new study finds that AI might affect our critical thinking skills. And finally, Oz digs into Elon Musk’s government contracts.

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The Story: Denial Isn’t the Answer w/ Geoffrey Hinton Feb 12, 2025

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Geoffrey Hinton is a computer scientist, cognitive psychologist, and winner of the Nobel Prize in Physics. His work on artificial neural networks earned him the title, ‘Godfather of AI,’ but in recent years, he’s warned that without adequate safeguards and regulation, there is an “existential threat that will arise when we create digital beings that are more intelligent than ourselves.” Hinton sits down with Oz to discuss his upbringing, research, time at Google and how his experience with grief informs how he thinks about the future of AI.

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Week in Tech: Are You There God? It’s Me, AI Feb 07, 2025

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Do smart fridges help business? This week in the News Roundup, Oz and producer Eliza Dennis unpack Walgreens’ refrigeration woes, the future of supersonic planes, and what the Vatican has to say about AI. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Joseph Cox, the FBI’s unique relationship to one encrypted phone company. And finally, Oz tests out Google’s virtual office assistant in When Did This Become a Thing?

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The Story: Ask Lots of Questions w/ Meredith Whittaker Feb 05, 2025

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Meredith Whittaker is the president of the Signal Foundation and serves on its board of directors. She is also the co-founder of NYU’s AI Now Institute. Whittaker got her start at Google, where she worked for 13 years until resigning in 2019 after she helped organize the Google Walkouts. She speaks with Oz about learning on the job, championing data privacy and being awarded the Helmut Schmidt Future Prize for “her commitment to the development of AI technology oriented towards the common good.”

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Week In Tech: DeepSeek Freak Out Jan 31, 2025

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Is China winning the AI race? This week in the News Roundup, the story that roiled US stock markets on Monday DeepSeek. Oz and producer Eliza Dennis unpack the hype. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, how human ingenuity continues to subvert tech. We hear how one coder has decided to entrap AI web crawlers. And finally, Oz digs into our love affair with personal data in When Did This Become a Thing?

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The Story: Mars, Asterisk w/ Nathaniel Rich Jan 29, 2025

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Nathaniel Rich is a novelist, essayist and writer-at-large for The New York Times Magazine. Rich sits down with Oz to talk about his essay, “Can Humans Endure the Psychological Torment of Mars?” The piece explores NASA's CHAPEA (“Crew Health and Performance Exploration Analog”) mission, a simulation meant to test a major challenge of Mars missions isolation.

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Smart Talks with IBM: How Infrastructure is Powering the Age of AI Jan 28, 2025

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In this episode of Smart Talks with IBM, Malcolm Gladwell speaks with Ric Lewis, IBM’s Senior Vice President of Infrastructure. They discuss how hardware capability has enabled the matrix math required to run large language models. Furthermore, they delve into some creative examples of how to put AI to work: from your bank to your local coffee shop. Ric underscores the importance of infrastructure in unlocking the potential of AI, helping businesses harness their data to drive transformative outcomes.

This is a paid advertisement from IBM. The conversations on this podcast don't necessarily represent IBM's positions, strategies or opinions.

Visit us at https://ibm.com/smarttalks

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Week in Tech: Broval Office Jan 24, 2025

Show notes

Is AI charging you different prices for groceries than your roommate? This week, Oz and Karah bring you a news roundup featuring a look at surveillance pricing and the rise of AI companies eager to work with the U.S. military. On TechSupport with 404 Media’s Jason Koebler, the hosts dive into last weekend's temporary TikTok ban and why Mark Zuckerberg didn’t want it to end. And finally we get to the bottom of why so many PayPal alumni are showing up on our newsfeeds this week in When Did This Become a Thing?

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