STEM-Talk copertina

STEM-Talk

STEM-Talk

Di: Dawn Kernagis and Ken Ford
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The most interesting people in the world of science and technologyFlorida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition Igiene e vita sana Medicina alternativa e complementare Scienza
Episodi
  • Episode 200: From rogue AI agents to factchecking AI, Ken Ford responds to more listener AI questions

    Episode 200: From rogue AI agents to factchecking AI, Ken Ford responds to more listener AI questions
    Oct 26 2026
    Episode 200: From rogue AI agents to factchecking AI, Ken Ford responds to more listener AI questions In today’s third of a three-part series of Ask Me Anything episodes, Dr. Ken Ford responds to more listener questions and concerns about artificial intelligence. In AMA episode 198, Ken answered a wide-range of questions about chatbots and data centers and the future of AI, which prompted a new round of listener questions about AI that Ken will be answering today. Ken has been working in AI since the 1980s and is well-positioned to help listeners sort genuine advances in AI from exaggerated claims. The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence elected Ford a Fellow in 2000 for his “leadership in exploring and explaining foundational issues and in establishing large-scale AI research programs and institutions.” In today’s episode, Ken tackles listener questions about: — A team leader at Anthropic, the developer of the chatbot Claude, who shared a post that someday “AI could kill all humans.” — the Hugging Face incident in July where OpenAI’s AI agents, operating in a testing environment, broke out, got online, and compromised parts of Hugging Face’s systems. — How to factcheck AI systems that confabulate nonexistent facts. — And that’s just for starters. If you have questions for Ken and Dawn after listening to today’s episode, or any episode of STEM-Talk, email your questions to STEM-Talk producer Randy Hammer at rhammer@ihmc.org. Show notes: [00:04:55] Dawn opens the AMA with a listener question about Evan Hubinger, a team lead at Anthropic who shared his thoughts in a post that someday “AI could kill all humans.” Anthropic is the developer of the chatbot Claude. Hubinger went on to say in his post, which has been viewed tens of millions of times, that he believes there’s more than a 10 percent chance that AI could wipe out humanity within the next decade. The listener asks if we should indeed be terrified that AI is going to one day kill all humans. [00:14:19] A listener asks Ken if he were appointed AI Czar, with broad powers to create and implement regulation of AI, what would he do? The listeners also adds that declining this burden is not one of Ken’s options for an answer. [00:22:59] Ken responds to a listener who asks about the widely reported Hugging Face incident in July where OpenAI’s agents escaped their testing environment and hacked into Hugging Face’s systems, creating significant security breaches. The listener is particularly interested in Ken’s thoughts about a comment that the podcaster Dwarkesh Patel made that the incident represented the rise and fall of three secret AI civilizations. The listeners asks if Ken could share some light on what really happened in the Hugging Face incident and whether referring to AI systems as civilizations gives people a misleading picture of what these AI agents were really doing? [00:32:12] Dawn mentions that she hears a lot of people wondering about the possibility of AI consciousness. Some people believe it has already happened because of reports about AI systems taking independent actions and deceiving their developers. There are even reports about AI systems contacting philosophers to ask questions about consciousness. Dawn shares that a listener has asked if these behaviors are indeed evidence of AI consciousness. The listener goes on to ask what evidence would we actually need before concluding that an AI system is conscious? [00:46:06] Dawn reads a question from a listener who asks, “I’ve seen reports that OpenAI’s new GPT-6 Astra is harder to monitor than earlier models, and some of the coverage makes it sound as though humans are beginning to lose oversight of these systems. What does ‘less monitorable’ actually mean? Is GPT-6 being supervised less, or is the issue that it is becoming harder to understand what the model is doing internally? How concerned should we be?” asks the listener. [00:56:49] Ken responds to question from a long-time computer scientist who is puzzled by the current use of terms like “AI agent” and “agentic AI.” The scientist writes, “Traditionally, an agent in computer science meant a system that perceived an environment and acted within it in pursuit of goals. Today, many so-called agents seem to be little more than large language models placed inside prompt loops: Ask the model what to do next, execute the result, feed the outcome back in, and repeat. Have we changed the technical meaning of ‘agent,’ or is some of this terminology simply anthropomorphizing fairly conventional software architectures?” [01:01:58] Dawn shares another question about the threat of AI, but one that’s different than the doomsday scenarios of rogue AI agents exterminating humanity. Dawn shares a listener’s concern that by relying increasingly on AI to write prose, solve problems, and make decisions for us, AI could gradually degrade us as human beings...
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    1 ora e 37 min
  • Episode 199: Ken and Dawn respond to listener questions on aging, meat consumption and dementia, genetic testing, AI, exercise, a lunar mission and much more

    Episode 199: Ken and Dawn respond to listener questions on aging, meat consumption and dementia, genetic testing, AI, exercise, a lunar mission and much more
    Sep 15 2026
    Today we have the second of a two-part AMA. In part one, episode 198, we covered a multitude of listener questions about AI, which lately seems to dominate the news cycle. Other than one AI question that managed to sneak in, today’s AMA features a wide range of questions on a number of topics other than artificial intelligence. Today, Ken and Dawn respond to listener questions that range from: — Whether there’s a critical difference between whey protein powders and ready-to-drink protein shakes? — Is there a sweat spot for how much time a person should spend on resistance training during a week? — Ken’s thoughts on a paper that looked at whether higher meat consumption could be associated with a lower risk of dementia among people carrying the APOE ε4 gene variant. — What kind of Pandora’s box will we open if parents start doing genetic tests on their infants to see if their children have, say, the APOE ε4 gene variant? — Will NASA will be able to meet its target date of sending astronauts back to the Moon by 2028? — And a lot more. Show notes; [00:03:05] A listener asks Ken about the 2019 Trim study by Gregory Fahy and colleagues in Aging Cell, which reported reversal of epigenetic aging and signs of thymic regeneration in nine healthy men treated with the growth hormone, DHEA, and metformin. [00:06:56] Ken responds to a question about the market being flooded with protein supplements. The listener asks if whether there’s a critical difference between whey protein and ready-to-drink protein shakes, and if there are any specific products he recommends. [00:10:50] A listener asks Ken about a recent article in Nature Reviews Neuroscience titled: [00:15:26] A listener asks Ken about a Chinese company called Moonshot AI and its open-weight model, Kimi K3. The listener references Gary Marcus who anticipates that the power of this model paired with the open-weight design will have immense implications. The listener asks for Ken’s take. [00:25:56] A listener mentions that they’ve heard that Ken likes to tell graduate students a fable about a rabbit pursuing their Ph.D. A listener asks Ken if he would share the fable. [00:30:15] A listener asks Ken about a study published in Jama Network Open by Norgren and company which suggests that higher meat consumption may be associated with lower Alzheimer’s risk for people carrying the APOE 4 gene variant, the strongest common genetic risk factor for late onset Alzheimer’s. [00:38:24] A listener mentions in their question for Ken that the Department of Health and Human Services recommends at least 150 minutes of moderate exercise per week, but this recommendation does not break down how much of that time should be spent on aerobic versus strength training. The listener goes on to mention a study in the that looked at identifying this sweet spot for resistance exercise, finding that between 90-119 minutes per week of weightlifting was associated with a 13 perent lower risk of premature death and a 27 percent reduction in neurological disease mortality, particularly Alzheimer’s. The listener also mentions that they are aware of IHMC’s ongoing clinical trial looking at the ability of exercise to mitigate the hallmarks of aging in people over 60 years old. The listener asks if this study is similarly trying to identify a sweet spot for resistance exercise, and if Ken has any recommendations on this topic. [00:46:32] Another listener mentions that they really enjoyed our interview with Doug Cooke on the Artimis II mission (episode 195), as well as our interview with Mike Griffin and Lisa Porter about NASA’s plan to return to the moon (episode 189). The listener goes on to mention that since then a Blue Origin rocket, one of the companies responsible for building a lunar lander, exploded on the launch pad in Florida. The listener asks if Ken is he’ still skeptical about the Artemis III mission architecture and timeframe in light of the recent news. [00:54:37] A listener asks Ken for his thoughts on the growing research efforts to investigate the feasibility of doing genetic testing on infants to identify their predisposition to specific diseases such as Alzheimer’s. [01:01:57] A listener asks for Kens thoughts on a study of creatine’s effects on physically active vegans. The study reported that 4 weeks of creatine supplementation improved lower-body power, especially jump height and flight time. But they did not find improvements in strength tests. [01:08:10] A listener asks for Ken’s thoughts on a recent White House report “Science: A New Golden Age”, which argues that the American scientific enterprise needs to be reformed and that agencies like NSF have become overly bureaucratic, slow, and risk averse. Links: Learn more about IHMC STEM-Talk homepage Ken Ford bio Ken Ford Wikipedia page
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    1 ora e 18 min
  • Episode 198: Blessing or curse? Dawn grills Ken on listeners’ toughest AI questions in this all-AI AMA

    Episode 198: Blessing or curse? Dawn grills Ken on listeners’ toughest AI questions in this all-AI AMA
    Aug 12 2026
    Today we have an Ask Me Anything episode that focuses on artificial intelligence. For the past year, AI has dominated the headlines. Perhaps because there’s so much media and public interest, as well as paranoia, about AI, listeners have been flooding our mailbox with AI-related questions. So, today’s AMA is an exclusive focused on artificial intelligence. For our listeners who have been sending questions about ketamine; NASA’s Artemis mission to the Moon; or whether high meat consumption leads to dementia; fear not, because we will follow up today’s episode in a few weeks with a second round of AMA. Dr. Ken Ford will be answering today’s AI questions. He has been working in AI since the 1980s and is a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. As a result, he is well-positioned to help us today to separate real advances in AI from hype, panic and science fiction. If you have questions for Ken and Dawn after listening to today’s episode, or any episode of STEM-Talk, email your questions to STEM-Talk producer Randy Hammer at rhammer.ihmc.org. Show notes: [00:03:15] Dawn opens our AMA episode on AI with a listener question for Ken on whether AI companies should be protected under section 230 of the U.S. Communications Decency Act. [00:08:03] Following up on the previous question, a listener asks if Ken foresees a day where laws and courts will designate AI as a judicial person, in the same way that corporations have rights under the legal doctrine of corporate personhood. [00:10:55] A listener asks Ken for his thoughts on a recent article published in the Atlantic titled “The Data-Center Panic is Overblown: Critics are Inflating the Costs.” [00:16:09] A listener asks Ken a question regarding episode 171 of STEM-Talk, in which Ken discussed a June 2024 report by Leopold Aschenbrenner which predicted rates of growth in both compute resources and power requirements for AI data centers. The listener asks how well these predictions have held up in the following year. [00:22:19] Another listener question about data centers asks Ken what his thoughts are on the notion of solving the electricity costs and cooling requirements for data centers by building them in orbit and powering them via solar energy. [00:30:07] Moving on to the applications of AI, Peter Attia recently wrote about a study out of Harvard that suggests that today’s large language models perform extremely well on medical licensing exams and often arrive at the correct diagnosis yet still struggle with differential diagnosis. The listener asks what this means about the use of AI in medicine. [00:36:53] A listener asks Ken about repeated public statements by Anthropic’s CEO that their AI models, and those expected in the future, are already powerful and dangerous enough to justify concern, while at the same time Anthropic and other leading AI companies are continuing to employ these systems and cautioning governments against regulation that could slow down innovation. The listener asks Ken how to resolve this contradiction. [00:45:18] A listener writes that in a previous AMA, STEM-Talk episode 184, Ken objected to the use of the word hallucination to describe errors made by large-language models and asks Ken to expound on this. [00:53:28] A listener asks Ken whether current AI models are evolving from being fundamentally prediction engines to being able to truly understand and reason, or if they are just becoming better and more convincing prediction engines. [00:59:37] A listener writes to Ken, mentioning that a few years ago, a thousand technology experts and researchers signed a letter urging AI labs and executives to pause the development of highly advanced AI systems and tools. This letter, drafted through the not-for-profit Future of Life Institute, warned that AI developers were locked in an out-of-control race to develop and deploy ever more powerful digital minds that no one, not even their creators, can understand, predict or reliably control. The listener also states that they learned recently that ChatGPT 5 was programmed using an earlier version of ChatGPT. If the concerns of tech leaders are to be taken seriously, the listener wonders if it is a good idea to have earlier versions of ChatGPT programing later versions of ChatGPT? [01:07:45] A listener asks Ken about the process of training smaller AI models from larger models, a process called distillation. The listener asks how this process works and if this is a way for the cost of training large models to benefit everyone. [01:14:56] A listener asks Ken what it means for China’s Open Weight GLM 5.2 to be reported to have achieved near parity with Anthropic’s Mythos. On several cyber security and vulnerability discovery benchmarks, it seems alarming that GLM 5.2 is operating at roughly 1/6th the cost and remaining openly available for download and deployment. [01:22:34] A listener writes that they recently heard a story about ...
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    1 ora e 39 min
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