On todays episode, Andrew Keen talks with Brian Christian about his new book, The Alignment Problem, and the question at the intersection of computer science, ethics, and the law that determines whether a statistical tool can be fair.
Brian Christian is the author of The Most Human Human, which was named a Wall Street Journal bestseller, a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and a New Yorker favorite book of the year. He is the author, with Tom Griffiths, of Algorithms to Live By, a #1 Audible bestseller, Amazon best science book of the year and MIT Technology Review best book of the year.
His third book, The Alignment Problem, has just been published in the US and is forthcoming in the UK and in translation in 2021.
Christian’s writing has been translated into nineteen languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Wired, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, The Paris Review, and in scientific journals such as Cognitive Science. Christian has been featured on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Radiolab, and The Charlie Rose Show, and has lectured at Google, Facebook, Microsoft, the Santa Fe Institute, and the London School of Economics. His work has won several awards, including fellowships at Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony, publication in Best American Science & Nature Writing, and an award from the Academy of American Poets.
Brian Christian: Does Proposition 25 Symbolize the Great Ethical Questions of the Future?