Artificiality: Minds Meeting Machines Helen and Dave Edwards

We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Susannah Fox, a renowned researcher who has spent over 20 years studying how patients and caregivers use the internet to gather information and support each other. Susannah has collected countless stories from the frontlines of healthcare and has keen insights into how patients are stepping into their power to drive change.

Susannah recently published a book called "Rebel Health: A Field Guide to the Patient-Led Revolution in Medical Care." In it, she introduces four key personas that represent different ways patients and caregivers are shaking up the status quo in healthcare: seekers, networkers, solvers, and champions.

The book aims to bridge the divide between the leaders at the top of the healthcare system and the patients, survivors, and caregivers on the ground who often have crucial information and ideas that go unnoticed. By profiling examples of patient-led innovation, Susannah hopes to inspire healthcare to become more participatory.

In our conversation, we dive into the insights from Susannah's decades of research, hear some compelling stories of patients, and discuss how medicine can evolve to embrace the power of peer-to-peer healthcare. As you’ll hear, this is a highly personal episode as Susannah’s work resonates with both of us and our individual and shared health experiences.

Let’s dive into our conversation with Susannah Fox.



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Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

We’re excited to welcome to the podcast Dr. Angel Acosta, an expert on healing-centered education and leadership. Angel runs the Acosta Institute which helps communities process trauma and build environments for people to thrive.

He also facilitates leadership programs at the Garrison Institute that support the next generation of contemplative leaders. With his background in social sciences, curriculum design, and adult education, Angel has been thinking deeply about how artificial intelligence intersects with mindfulness, social justice and education.

In our conversation, we explore how AI can help or hinder our capacity for contemplation and healing. For example, does offloading cognitive tasks to AI tools like GPT create more mental space for mindfulness? How do we ensure these technologies don’t increase anxiety and threaten our sense of self?

We also discuss the promise and perils of AI for transforming education. What roles might AI assistants play in helping educators be more present with students? How can we design assignments that account for AI without compromising learning? What would a decolonized curriculum enabled by AI look like?

And we envision more grounded, humanistic uses of rapidly evolving AI—from thinking of it as "ecological technology" interdependent with the natural world, to leveraging its pattern recognition in service of collective healing and wisdom. What guiding principles do we need for AI that enhances both efficiency and humanity? How can we consciously harness it to create the conditions for people and communities to thrive holistically?

We’d like to thank our friends at the House of Beautiful Business for sparking our relationship with Angel—we highly recommend you check out their events and join their community.

Let’s dive into our conversation with Angel Acosta.





If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

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Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

We're excited to welcome Doug Belshaw to the show today. Doug is a founding member of the We Are Open Co-op which helps organizations with sensemaking and digital transformation.

Doug coined the term "serendipity surface" to describe cultivating an attitude of curiosity and increasing the chance encounters we have by putting ourselves out there. We adopted the term quite some time ago and were eager to talk with Doug about how he thinks about serendipity surfaces in the age of generative AI.

As former Head of Web Literacy at Mozilla and now currently pursuing a master's degree in systems thinking, Doug has a wealth of knowledge on topics spanning education, technology, productivity and more. In our conversation today, we'll explore concepts like productive ambiguity, cognitive ease, and rewilding your attention. Doug shares perspectives from his unique career journey as well as personal stories and projects exemplifying the creative potential of AI. We think you’ll find this a thought-provoking discussion on human-AI collaboration, lifelong learning, digital literacy, ambiguity, and the future of work. Let’s dive into our conversation with Doug Belshaw.

Key points:


Doug coined the term Serendipity Surface to describe cultivating curiosity, increasing random encounters and possibilities by putting ourselves out there. He sees it as the opposite of reducing "attack surface" in security; it's about expanding opportunities.
Doug shares an example of prompting ChatGPT extensively over 24 hours with a flood risk report, personas and perspectives to decide on a complex house purchase. This shows the creative potential of using AI tools to augment human thinking and decisions.
Doug discusses the sweet spot of productive ambiguity where concepts resonate with a common meaning yet leave room for interpretation by individuals based on their contexts. It encourages engagement and spreading of ideas.
As an educator, Doug advocates thoughtfully adopting emerging tech to develop engaged, literate and curious learners rather than reactively banning tools. Friction facilitates learning.
Ultimately, Doug sees potential for AI collaboration that brings our humanity, empathy, creativity and curiosity to the forefront if we prompt and apply these tools judiciously.

Links for Doug Belshaw:


Dr Doug Belshaw
We Are Open Cooperative
Thought Shrapnel
Open Thinkering
Ambiguiti.es

If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email

Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon

Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

We’re excited to welcome Richard Kerris, Vice President of Developer Relations and GM of Media & Entertainment at NVIDIA, to the show today. Richard has had an extensive career working with creators and developers across film, music, gaming, and more. He offers valuable insights into how AI and machine learning are transforming creative tools and workflows.

In particular, Richard shares his perspective on how these advanced technologies are democratizing access to high-end capabilities, putting more power into the hands of a broader range of storytellers. He discusses the implications of this for the media industry—will it displace roles or expand opportunities? And we explore Richard's vision for what the future may look like in 5-10 years in terms of applications being auto-generated to meet specialized user needs.

We think you’ll find the wide-ranging conversation fascinating as we explore topics from AI-enhanced content creation to digital twins and AI assistants. Let’s dive into our discussion with Richard Kerris .

Key Points:


Democratization of creative tools is enabling more people to produce high-quality media content. This expands opportunities, rather than displacing roles.
Future apps may be auto-generated via AI to meet specialized user needs, rather than created as generic solutions.
Industrial metaverse allows manufacturers to optimize workflows through virtual prototyping.
Open USD provides a common language for 3D tools to communicate, improving collaboration.
AI agents will become commonplace assistants customized to individual interests and needs.
Computing power growth is enabling complex digital twins like the human body to improve health outcomes.
Generative AI introduces new considerations around rights of trained content and output.
Education benefits from AI’s ability to showcase different artistic styles and techniques.



If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

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Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon

Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

We're excited to welcome Tyler Marghetis, Assistant Professor of Cognitive & Information Sciences at the University of California, Merced, to the show today. Tyler studies what he calls the "lulls and leaps" or "ruts and ruptures" of human imagination and experience.

He's fascinated by how we as humans can get stuck in certain patterns of thinking and acting, but then also occasionally experience radical transformations in our perspectives. In our conversation, Tyler shares with us some of his lab's fascinating research into understanding and even predicting these creative breakthroughs and paradigm shifts. You'll hear about how he's using AI tools to analyze patterns in things like Picasso's entire body of work over his career. Tyler explains why he believes isolation and slowness are actually key ingredients for enabling many of history's greatest creative leaps. And he shares with us how his backgrounds in high-performance sports and in the LGBTQ community shape his inclusive approach to running his university research lab.

It's a wide-ranging and insightful discussion about the complexity of human creativity and innovation. Let's dive in to our interview with Tyler Marghetis.



If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds.

Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email

Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon

Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music

Why is scientific progress slowing down? That's a question that's been on the minds of many. But before we dive into that, let's ponder this—how do we even know that scientific progress is decelerating? And in an era where machines are capable of understanding complexities that sometimes surpass human cognition, how should we approach the future of knowledge?

Joining us in this exploration is Professor James Evans from the University of Chicago. As the director of the Knowledge Lab at UChicago, Professor Evans is at the forefront of integrating machine learning into the scientific process. His work is revolutionizing how new ideas are conceived, shared, and developed, not just in science but in all knowledge and creative processes.

Our conversation today is a journey through various intriguing landscapes. We'll delve into questions like:


Why has the pace of scientific discovery slowed, and can AI be the catalyst to reaccelerate it?
How does the deluge of information and the battle for attention affect the evolution of ideas?
What are the predictive factors for disruption and novelty in the idea landscape?
How should teams be structured to foster disruptive innovation?
What risks do homogeneity in thinking and AI model concentration pose?
How can we redefine diversity in the context of both human and AI collaboration?
What does the evolving nature of knowledge mean for the next generation of scientists?
Can tools like ChatGPT enhance diversity and innovative capabilities in research?
Is it time to debunk the myth of the lone genius and focus instead on the collective intelligence of humans and AI?

We're also thrilled to discuss Professor Evans' upcoming book, "Knowing," which promises to be a groundbreaking addition to our understanding of these topics.

So, whether you're a scientist, a creative, a business leader, a data scientist or just someone fascinated by the interplay of human intelligence and artificial technology, this episode is sure to offer fresh perspectives and insights.