World Brain: No Experts

Matt Brandabur, Yuri Marder

Taking the HG Wells essay collection as a departure point, this podcast asks the following questions of a range of people: What has been awakened? Rough beast? Benevolent angel? Boring super-appliance?Could we be less wrong about AI than those considered to be experts?Why "No Experts"? Is it possible that there really are any experts on this subject?Could a few relatively smart outsiders be less wrong about AI - what it is, what changes it's going to make to our lives - than the glory-drunk founders and their whorish enablers, or the terrifying doomsayers?Could we be any less wrong, for that matter, than Wells, who in 1938 brought out a collection of essays that imagined that a global encyclopedia would help bring about a permanent state of world peace?Finally, can an unstructured discussion between humans meaningfully enrich our understanding of the boundaries between us and what we've created?

Episodes

  1. 9 HRS AGO

    Ep 5: Beyond the Book - AI and Technical Documentation with Tom Johson and Floyd Jones

    Three tech writers and a photographer walk into a bar. The writers are mostly not writing for human readers directly anymore. How is this funny? Tom Johnson, a technical writer at Google and a publishes thoughts on trends in his work at idratherbewriting.com. Tom sat down with Yuri, Matt, and another tech writer, Floyd Jones, to talk about how AI has altered the work Tech Writers do. Notes and episodes: worldbrainnoexperts.substack.com

    1h 38m

  2. 6 DAYS AGO

    Ep 4: Tuning AI Systems to Summon the Apocalypse

    Chris Fregly, author of O'Reilly book "AI Systems Performance Engineering" joins Matt and Yuri to discuss as much of the concepts in his book as he is able to get to: Codesign - Considering the hardware, software, and the algorithms all at once while learning how AI systems are constructed, maintained, and optimized. https://open.substack.com/pub/worldbrainnoexperts/p/tuning-ai-systems-to-summon-the-apocalypse?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Subscribe to find out about new episodes: https://worldbrainnoexperts.substack.com/

    1h 49m

  3. 17 JAN

    Ep 3: Can AI Understand Meaning? (with Jobst Landgrebe)

    Jobst Landgrebe, co-author (with Barry Smith) of Why Machines Will Never Rule the World: Artificial Intelligence Without Fear, joins Matt and Yuri for a wide-ranging argument about what AI can and cannot do. Landgrebe claims that minds and living systems are complex systems shaped by history and irreversibility, and that LLMs can imitate language without understanding meaning in open contexts. Yuri pushes back with an “approximation” critique—planes don’t fly like birds, yet they outperform birds—asking why AI couldn’t surpass humans in many domains without “real” understanding. The conversation moves from philosophy and neuroscience to economics, scaling narratives, and the political risks of AI-enabled surveillance and propaganda. Show notes Substack

    1h 54m

  4. 17/12/2025

    Ep 1: Are There Any AI Experts? (Wells, Consciousness, and the End of Shared Truth)

    In the first episode of World Brain: No Experts, Matt Brandabur and Yuri Marder use H. G. Wells’ 1938 World Brain essays as a starting point for an argument about artificial intelligence, expertise, and human identity. Yuri sees AI as a transformative force on the scale of language itself—while Matt insists that machines cannot reproduce the lived quality of biological consciousness. The conversation ranges across creativity, shared truth, and what it means to understand anything at all. Show notes Substack

    1h 15m

  5. 08/12/2025

    Ep 2: AI as a Rorschach Test (Tool, Mirror, or Mass Delusion?)

    In this episode, Matt and Yuri treat AI less as a single “thing” and more as a cultural mirror—an unsettling Rorschach test that reveals what humans and institutions fear, desire, and project. Matt argues that the current frenzy resembles a mass hallucination driven by investor fantasies of automation, while Yuri counters with a grounded case: in his daily work, AI has become an indispensable collaborator that removes bottlenecks and accelerates real output. Show notes Substack

    56 min
  • 5 Episodes

About

Taking the HG Wells essay collection as a departure point, this podcast asks the following questions of a range of people: What has been awakened? Rough beast? Benevolent angel? Boring super-appliance?Could we be less wrong about AI than those considered to be experts?Why "No Experts"? Is it possible that there really are any experts on this subject?Could a few relatively smart outsiders be less wrong about AI - what it is, what changes it's going to make to our lives - than the glory-drunk founders and their whorish enablers, or the terrifying doomsayers?Could we be any less wrong, for that matter, than Wells, who in 1938 brought out a collection of essays that imagined that a global encyclopedia would help bring about a permanent state of world peace?Finally, can an unstructured discussion between humans meaningfully enrich our understanding of the boundaries between us and what we've created?

Information

  • Creator
    Matt Brandabur, Yuri Marder
  • Years Active
    2025 - 2026
  • Episodes
    5
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © 2025 Matt Brandabur, Yuri Marder
  • Show Website
    World Brain: No Experts