The Local Maximum

Today's guest is Ilana Yurkiewicz, author of Fragmented: A Doctor's Quest to Piece Together American Health Care. The conversation starts with our health data, but goes into practical advice for patients and doctors.

Max covers the dramatic conflict between the board of directors of OpenAI, and former CEO Sam Altman who they voted to remove over the weekend. Is this about AI Alignment? Personality clashes? Or oddball Corporate governance? localmaxradio.com/304

Max talks to Alexander Hool, author of Pharaoh: Biblical History, Egypt, and the Missing Millennium about alternative theories on the chronology of ancient Egypt as it relates to the Exodus and other biblical narratives. Max also talks about his further dives into ancient Egypt and what he's learned.

Max and Aaron talk about this year's retreat at Sturbridge Village, MA. They go over the best and worst of their predictions from previous retreats, and what predictions they make for the future.

Max and Aaron continue their conversation last week, this time covering the reaction to world events in Universities and cultural institutions; as well as the contradictions around calls for free speech. Max also reviews the movie "Dumb Money" which covers the Game Stop short squeeze and is an early narrative builder on the handling of the Covid pandemic.

Max and Aaron react to the terror attack in Israel earlier this month, and discuss both its geopolitical significance and dealing with the shock and grief.

Max talks to investor, founder, and podcaster Sam Kamani about Web 3.0, Crypto, AI, and Podcasting.

Max and Aaron discuss recent works at Local Maximum Labs, including feedback on the new Great Compromise constitution, and the programming language for newmap.ai

Max talks to Stephan Kinsella, a libertarian intellectual property lawyer who ardently challenges the very foundations of IP. Kinsella delves deep into the core arguments underpinning intellectual property and the inherent fallacies. They also discuss the impact of generative AI on the copyright landscape.

Todays guest is Adam Kovacevich of Chamber of Progress who brings us the latest in the suits that federal government agencies are bringing against Google and Amazon. Who is behind this, what is being alleged, why now, and what might be the consequences? localmaxradio.com/296

Max and Aaron talk about Max's newly-released research paper, Toward a New Great Compromise, which includes a refresh of the US Constitutional structure. Max shares what he learned about the founders of the country and why some of our institutions have been failing as of late. localmaxradio.com/295

Max describes "state chain" technology, which he believes could solve some of the problems associated with the previous crypto collapse. He also gives an update on the court cases around copyright infringement and whether you can copyright an AI-generated work that are currently make their way through the American judicial system.

Max and Aaron have a little fun in a late night record, and examine Twitter rants about the rise of late night snark comedy, and scrum. They talk about the nature of corporate fads, and end on going down a rabbit hole of continued fractions.

Max and Aaron do an August news update with discussion about the closure of Prosecraft, a small site dedicated to literary analysis which was shut down due to copyright and ownership concerns. Will these types of internet mobs and legal actions bring a chilling effect on innovation? Probability Distribution of the Week: Max's First Idea on Rational Distributions

Max discusses the legal troubles of the Internet Archive as it get pummeled by publishers and copyright lawyers. A new paper on Bertrand's Paradox claims to resolve it.

Max talks about how Strauss-Howe generational theory and the turnings interact with technology as he reviews the book "The First Turning: A Vision of America and a World at Peace" by Carol Engler. Distribution of the Week: The Wishart Distribution

Max interviews Melissa Luvisi from tab32 as they dissect the intersection of dentistry and technology. They explore the software deficits plaguing the medical field, how dentistry is lagging, and how it can take a quantum leap forward. Luvisi shares her insights on harnessing health data, addressing security and privacy issues, and the promising future of dental tech. localmaxradio.com/289

Max and Aaron discuss the arguments put forth by Eliezer Yudkowsky and some AI researchers about "existential threats" posed by the technology. They end with some predictions on the subject.

Today's guest is Peter C. Earle, economist at AIER. The topic is ESG: Environment, Social, and Governance regulations, and the theory behind it that says corporations should be run for the benefit of interests outside the shareholders. They explore the rise of ESG criteria in a low interest rate environment, and ask whether ESG on its way out.

Max talks about a bet that two academics made 25 years ago about the nature of consciousness that has recently been settled. He also talk about the idea of a "reverse Turing Test". We also get an update on the latest display tech, with reviews on foldable phones and color e-ink making a comeback.

Max and Aaron complete their discussion on Max's constitutional proposals, now focusing on the representative-ness of the house and electoral college as a counterbalance to the senate and executive council.

Max and Aaron continue their discussion on Max's constitutional proposals, this time focusing on the function of the senate and the possibility of an executive council.

Max woke up one day and decided to do a rewrite of the US constitution with a long amendment. Aaron discusses this with him over drinks outdoors in the dead of night.

Max talks to author and software engineer David Auerbach about his new book Meganets: How Digital Forces Beyond Our Control Commandeer Our Daily Lives and Inner Realities.

Max and Aaron discuss Apple's announcement of the Vision Pro at WWDC, and what it means for mixed reality, the metaverse, and emerging technology. Probability Distribution of the Week: Student's T-Distribution

Max responds to a recent account of high school debate judges and how the process of truth seeking is under attack. Probability Distribution of the Week: Cauchy Distribution

Max and Aaron discuss Neil Gorsuch's statement in a supreme court decision that emergency measures during Covid may have been the greatest peacetime intrusion on American civil liberties in history. Probability Distribution of the Week: Von Mises-Fisher Distribution and Circular Distributions in General

Max talks about Ethereum's move to proof of stake and what tradeoffs it brings to the crypto markets. He also discusses Google's plan to upgrade maps at their IO conference, and their new product Bard in relation to chatGPT.

Max talks to Homebrew creator Max Howell about open source software, package managers, and his new project tea.xyz.

Max and Aaron discuss and provide commentary for their 2002 high school film, The Dictator of Easton.

Aaron talks to Max about his move to Connecticut. They review Columbia University's data science day. A touch of Twitter news and a tweet we thought was interesting on rationality. Probability Distribution of the Week: Multivariate Gaussian Distribution (or Normal Distribution)

Today's discussion is all about Quantum Physics and Quantum Computing as Max talks to Ian who has a PhD in Physics and is actually a practitioner when it comes to quantum computing. localmaxradio.com/274

Max grumbles about the corporate and dry nature of MLConf and the talks from top companies, even as the world of AI and ML explodes in controversy, breakthroughs and new applications. - Should AI research be Paused for 6 months? - Are "X for Good" talks always evil? - Are engineers afraid to share any perspective slightly outside the mainstream?

Chris Wiggins and Matthew Jones dive into a new book called "How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms" with Max. We learn that we can reach back into data history and find stories that experienced scientists and engineers are will find surprising at present. Chris Wiggins is an associate professor of applied mathematics at Columbia University and the Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times. Matthew is the James R. Barker Professor of Contemporary Civilization at Columbia University. localmaxradio.com/272

Max interview's Adam Kane of ASML about the industrial processes which make hardware innovation possible. They cover extreme UV lithography, the law of accelerating returns, and implications for software engineers. www.localmaxradio.com/271

Todays news update starts on the lighter side with an article from the New York Times that seeks to denigrate podcasters by branding them as the "podcast bro". Then we get into the release of GPT4 just months after chatGPT shook the world of AI and tech, and the bank runs at Silicon Valley Bank and elsewhere. Probability distribution of the week: Exponential Distribution localmaxradio.com/270

Today's guest is Susan Conover, cofounder and CEO of Piction Health, which brings Image Recognition AI technology to the practice of dermatology. This Boston-based company has started to launch their product throughout New England. Susan talks to Max about how the technology could be used to help patience more effectively, and the challenges of bringing change to healthcare and being an entrepreneur. https://www.localmaxradio.com/269

Max discovers Pascal's Mugging, the counterpoint to Pascal's Wager. He speculates about the category of errors (and sometimes scams) made by doomsayers in every field including most recently general artificial intellgence. Probability Distribution of the Week: Gamma Distribution

Could the crisis in modern science be a result of fallacious probabilistic thinking? Mathematical researcher and writer Aubrey Clayton joins the Local Maximum to discuss his book Bernoulli's Fallacy: Statistical Illogic and the Crisis of Modern Science.

We are joined by Software Engineer, Data Scientist, and Author Joel Grus for a discussion that ranges from the latest NLP techniques to thoughts on how to think about complexity costs.

Max talks about the multi-armed bandit - an important concept in the Data Science world. The news of the day is Microsoft's plan to integrate generative text (from open AI) into it's Bing search engine, and whether Google can turn around from negative news stories and compete with this. Probability Distribution of the Week: Dirichlet Distribution localmaxradio.com/265

Max talks to Adam Kovacevich, the Founder and CEO of Chamber of Progress in DC, to talk about several issues that have caught to attention of policymakers. We discuss the concerns of the rise of Tik Tok as a potential arm of the Chinese government, and whether similar concerns about domestic services are warranted. Chamber of Progress: https://progresschamber.org/

Aaron talks to Max about his new pamphlet entitled "Relative Probability on Finite Outcome Spaces". arXiv Link: https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.14555 Probability Distribution of the Week: The Normal Distribution

Max describes category theory as a branch of mathematics, and asks whether it will become more important in the age of AI. We then discuss the issues of the day: - looks at John Stossel's Video on how governments responded to Covid, and where their decisions stand three years later - Google's Recent Moves in Response to ChatGPT as well as layoffs Probability Distribution of the Week: Beta Distribution

As Generative AI has captured the imagination, Max thinks about it from many different angles. How does it actually work under the hood? What does it mean for media creators, investors, and job seekers? And what does it mean for humans and their comparative advantage with respect to this new technology? All the big questions of our time!

Max and Aaron start off the New Year with a predictions show for the short, medium, and long term outlook for technical advances. Today's episode focuses on generative AI and self driving cars. Probability Distribution of the Week: Continuous Uniform Distribution

Max looks back at the previous New Year's episode, and was surprised by how right he was on the changes we saw in our channels of information online this year. He reviews the news of the year, particularly the innovations in AI that have come to the forefront, and comments on Clay Shirky's Twitter rant.

Max interviews SportsVisio CEO Jason Syversen about how artificial intelligence can be applied to sports video, including automated highlights, scoring, and refereeing. Jason also shares details about his startup's innovative product for basketball.

Gene Epstein, founder of the Soho Forum monthly debate series, comes on The Local Maximum to discuss and critique Max's recent debate performance on Democracy vs Monarchy. - Also: Max's 9 Things I learned from the Debate, Gene's debate with Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times. localmaxradio.com/257

Max talks about the breakage in both the crypto industry and the social media landscape in 2022, and the long term ways of thinking about it. Probability Distribution of the Week: Non-Homogeneous Poisson localmaxradio.com/256

Max and Aaron discuss the launch of the chatGPT product demo taking the internet by storm and the potential applications of this technology. The title of this episode doesn't make sense 100% - but it was generated by chatGPT when asked for an amusing title. Probability distribution of the week: Poisson Distribution