I could nerd out and talk to you about autonomous vehicles all day. We won’t, but I'm just curious, do you think cars are gonna be driving themselves one hundred percent? And if so, how long is it going to be until that's happening? 

People ask me this all the time and I tell them that, you know, human beings have a millions of years of evolutionary-head start over depth perception — computing multiple different situational things at the same time. And computers, they're very good at sensing things (you can [connect] a ton of different sensors), but when it comes to making complex decisions — you know, if a pedestrian is standing on the sidewalk, understanding intent… because we're human beings, we look at the eyes, we look at the body language, if the line is covered in snow, we know where the lines should be based on contextual cues — so all that stuff is very hard for an algorithm to get right.

I think we’ll have partially-autonomous very quickly — I think five to ten years. But fully-autonomous, where you can like just sit back, relax and drive around The Loop, for instance, I think that's very far [away] — I think ten to fifteen years. And then the biggest [challenge] for autonomous vehicles is actually insurance. Only then [once insurance becomes readily available] does it become prevalent.

So kind of on the same topic: I started this project in part because of being annoyed and terrified of Ai. So I like to ask people about it. Do you think Ai will be a complete game-changer for society, like the next Industrial Revolution, or just another tool?

I’m going to let him take this one because I've literally never used Chat GPT! It's a lot of photography right now that I'm seeing — everyone's like: why do I want Ai that can do all the art? I want to be able to do art! I want [Ai] to do the mundane things.

I've worked in Ai, machine learning, for the last eight years — including my academics, like 14 years in this field. I always tell people that human beings drive value. There's no way Ai can replace some of the things we do.

If you look at just this photo shoot, for instance: Ai could look at what you did and copy it. Probably better than you did. But they'll never be able to do it for the first time. You asking me about my child, or my blog, or what I had for breakfast today — that human connection, I think, that's something Ai is probably not gonna be able to do.

Ai is really bad at aesthetic imperfection. And then human beings, we are so good at that. You know, Van Gogh paintings are imperfect! Picasso, for instance. You spend your whole life learning how to draw, and then you spend another part of your life learning how to draw like a child. Ai could never do things like that. And so that level of imperfection that we find so valuable, so aesthetic, and artistic, I think, Ai is probably never going to do that.

But yeah, having said that, a lot of the stuff that human beings don't want to do: we don't want to drive six hours from here to Michigan, so yeah, I'd like my car to do that. I’d like Ai to give me my medicine. I’d like Ai to serve me coffee. I don't want it to do any of the stuff that makes living fun, you know?

I’m quite old fashioned. I actually use surprisingly little Ai. 

All right, one or two quick ones and then I'll let you guys get out of here. You mentioned your blog, tell me bout it.

My blog is [here]. If you code, you know what GitHub is. (Laughs) I spend a lot of time on GitHub.

My blog started because a lot of people used to ask me how to implement certain algorithms from scratch because, you know, sometimes you go on tutorials and they they tell you how to do everything — but I do everything from scratch. Small example: if you really wanna understand Ai, you know, really wanna open up the engine and look at the parts and stuff like that, that’s what my blog is for… And then really popular on LinkedIn too for some nerds who are like, “Hey, my audio-visual algorithms aren't working. How do I get those to work? Give me some advice.” And I'm like, “Go to my blog, check it out.”  So that's what the blog's about, it's very nerdy.

[Also,] I’ve got some essays about my opinions on politics… some of my opinions on RFK; I recently read Steinbeck, so I wrote a review on East of Eden. 

Last question, a favorite place you two have been before and/or a dream destination?

I don't think it's anything crazy. We wanna go to London, but it keeps getting put off because we had planned it for our honeymoon, but then I was pregnant and couldn't fly, and so we keep delaying. I’m eager to go! He lived there for a little while…

Watch some football!

Do you have a team you follow?

I love Arsenal, but I like all the teams in London: Queens Park Rangers, Crystal Palace — not Tottenham or Chelsea, though, but some of the smallest teams, yeah. 

Anything you want to end on? Last thought?

Last thought: this was awesome. I actually am leaving right now feeling jealous. I have to come back and do this for myself. I think something about your set up kind of [lets you] feel a little looser.

I can definitely see myself doing this again and it has energized me and I’m really pumped for the rest of the day, so thank you so much.

Cool, thank you both. I appreciate it.