Lunch Talk: Artificial Intelligence 65 years ago

Claude Shannon demonstrate an electro-mechanical mouse that navigates a labyrinth, computes and remembers the optimal path. (Bell Labs, 1950s)

tags: innovation, science, technology, lunchtalk, BUS239

Lunch Talk: Quantum Computing

a discussion of why now is the right time to be thinking about this new technology and some of the recent developments that have been made, laying the groundwork for the future of this computing model.

LunchTalk: Alan Burdick: "Why Time Flies" (at Google)

Alan Burdick is a staff writer and former senior editor at The New Yorker. His most recent book, "Why Time Flies: A Mostly Scientific Investigation," was published in January by Simon & Schuster.

“In his lucid, thoughtful, and beautifully written inquiry about time — what is it, really? Did we invent it, or does it invent us? - Burdick offers nothing less than a new way of reconsidering what it means to be human.” (Hanya Yanagihara, author of A Little Life and The People in the Trees)

Lunchtalk: TED - Why humans run the world

A TED talk by Yuval Harari, the author of The Sapiens. From the talk description:

Seventy thousand years ago, our human ancestors were insignificant animals, just minding their own business in a corner of Africa with all the other animals. But now, few would disagree that humans dominate planet Earth; we've spread to every continent, and our actions determine the fate of other animals (and possibly Earth itself). How did we get from there to here? Historian Yuval Noah Harari suggests a surprising reason for the rise of humanity.

Lunch Talk: Superintelligence

A panel discussion with leading AI experts and business leaders about the challenges and opportunities presented by Superintelligence.

Panelists: Bart Selman (Cornell), David Chalmers (NYU), Elon Musk (Tesla, SpaceX), Jaan Tallinn (CSER/FLI), Nick Bostrom (FHI), Ray Kurzweil (Google), Stuart Russell (Berkeley), Sam Harris, Demis Hassabis (DeepMind).

Overview:
00:00. Yes, No, It’s complicated
03:10. Timescale (Elon at 5:45)
07:07. How to slow it down
14:04. Risks and mitigations (Elon at 32:14)
37:00. Upsides (Elon at 51:18)
Q&A
52:44. Democracy 2.0
54:14. Bad guys
56:43. Democratising AI (Elon)

lunchtalk, intelligence, problem, system,

Lunch Talk: Counterintuitive approach to building startups (Stanford University)

This is Lecture 3 from a Stanford University course "How to start a startup". The speaker is Paul Graham; his transcript is here: http://tech.genius.com/Paul-graham-lecture-3-counterintuitive-parts-of-startups-and-how-to-have-ideas-annotated

tags: startup, stanford, entrepreneurship, innovation, lunchtalk,

Lunch Talk: Moral Tribes (Joshua Greene gives a talk at Google)

Note how his experiments show the relationship b/w physical distance and psychological distance. A similar effect happens when inventors are trying to explain their ideas to investors. I also like his analogy between Kahneman's System 1 vs System 2 on one the hand, and point-and-shoot and SLR cameras on the other: the former is set on automatic, while the latter on manual.

Lunch Talk: In 2003 Elon Musk gave a talk at Stanford about PayPal and Space X

From the Youtube blurb:

"Elon Musk, co-founder, CEO, and chairman of PayPal, shares his background: He was accepted into Stanford but deferred his admission to start an internet company in 1995. His company was zip2 which helped the media industry convert their content to electronic medium. Then, he sold the company for over $300 million and never came back to Stanford."

tags: youtube, lunchtalk, innovation, media, space

Lunch Talk: (Authors at Google) How New Ideas Emerge

Matt Ridley’s brilliant and ambitious new book in which he explores his considered belief that evolution—in biology, business, technology, and nearly every area of human culture—trumps deliberate and intelligent design.

tags: lunchtalk, creativity, innovation, evolution, scale

Lunch Talk: (Authors at Google) Learning how to learn math and sciece

In A Mind for Numbers, Dr. Oakley lets us in on the secrets to effectively learning math and science—secrets that even dedicated and successful students wish they’d known earlier. Contrary to popular belief, math requires creative, as well as analytical, thinking. Most people think that there’s only one way to do a problem, when in actuality, there are often a number of different solutions—you just need the creativity to see them. For example, there are more than three hundred different known proofs of the Pythagorean Theorem. In short, studying a problem in a laser-focused way until you reach a solution is not an effective way to learn math. Rather, it involves taking the time to step away from a problem and allow the more relaxed and creative part of the brain to take over.

The creative aspect of learning math and science is somewhat similar to elements of creativity necessary for developing user scenarios in hard-core technology solutions.

Lunch Talk: (Authors at Google - Leanne Brown) Eat Well on $4/Day

Good and Cheap is an NYT-bestselling cookbook [by Leanne Brown] for people with very tight budgets, particularly those on SNAP/Food Stamp benefits. The free PDF has been downloaded more than 800,000 times, and a Kickstarter campaign for an initial print run brought in over $144,000 (it remains the #1 cookbook ever on Kickstarter).

lunchtalk, health, culture

Lunch Talk: Nanotechnology at work

A 2015 Nova documentary shows science and tech advances that power applications of nanotechnology in electronics, healthcare, optics, energy, and other fields.

tags: lunchtalk, technology, materials

Lunch Talk: (at Stanford) What they don't teach you about entrepreneurship

Part of 2010 Conference on Entrepreneurship at Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Description: A group of entrepreneurs talk about what they learned in the trenches that they never could have learned in a classroom. The panelists will also share the courses that were most helpful to them in their entrepreneurial ventures, the courses that they wished they had taken, and the topics that business schools should be teaching to aspiring entrepreneurs.

Lunch Talk: TEDx, Neuroscience and Creativity

Professor Vincent Walsh is a cognitive neuroscientist who has worked extensively with artists and public engagement projects and has taken a special interest in music since 2001 when he organised a McDonnell Pew Music and Brain Symposium in Oxford.

As a scientist he has worked broadly on perception and awareness and has published 225 scientific papers on vision, awareness, time perception, music, synaesthesia and technical aspects of brain stimulation.

Lunch Talk: Getting stuck in the negatives (and how to get unstuck) | Alison Ledgerwood

Alison Ledgerwood joined the Department of Psychology at UC Davis in 2008 after completing her PhD in social psychology at New York University. She is interested in understanding how people think, and how they can think better. Her research, which is funded by the National Science Foundation, investigates how certain ways of thinking about an issue tend to stick in people's heads. Her classes on social psychology focus on understanding the way people think and behave in social situations, and how to harness that knowledge to potentially improve the social world in which we all live.


tags: lunchtalk, psychology, problem

Lunch Talk: Why Information and Diversity Grows (Cesar Hidalgo at TED)

MIT professor Cesar Hidalgo considers how to deal with diversity and complexity.

tags: lunchtalk, control, system, science, math, economics

Lunch Talk: Machines Of Ancient China

Lunch Talk: Conducting Effective Negotiations (Stanford GSB)

Negotiation is an inevitable aspect of starting a business. Joel Peterson talks about how to conduct a successful negotiation.

lunchtalk, business

Lunch Talk: Dorie Clark: "Stand Out" | Talks at Google

Dorie Clark visited Google's office in Cambridge, MA to discuss her book "Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It".

In the book, she explains how to identify the ideas that set you apart and promote them successfully. The key is to recognize your own value, cultivate your expertise, and put yourself out there.

Featuring vivid examples and drawing on interviews with thought leaders, Clark aims to teach readers how to develop a big idea, leverage existing affiliations, and build a community of followers.

Dorie Clark is a marketing strategy consultant, professional speaker, and frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, TIME, Entrepreneur, and the World Economic Forum blog. She is a corporate consultant and an adjunct professor of business administration at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business and a Visiting Professor for IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.


tags: lunchtalk, market, advertisment

Lunch Talk: Ron Johnson at Stanford GSB

Everyone thinks they innovate, but most of the time it's just improvement, shared former Apple Senior Vice President of Retail Operations Ron Johnson at his View From the Top talk at Stanford GSB. "To win in business, you have to let the imagination run." During his conversation with Stanford GSB student Amanda Facelle (MBA '14), Johnson also shared the biggest life lesson he learned from Steve Jobs: "You have to be willing to start again."