Saima Fancy, a privacy specialist, returns to the show for a discussion on the emerging concept and benefits of designing technological processes that keep the “Human in the Loop.” Now, when the complexities of algorithms are multiplying with every new feature and every new interface, it’s critical for good and safe outcomes that humans are able to oversee and, if necessary, override automated processes. Saima calls for a global discussion that focuses specifically on Human in the Loop, and it’s a call that’s especially crucial now, when AI agents, LLMs, and other technological processes are rapidly gaining control of our daily living. The list of functions that we cede to AI grows by the day, and now includes reading, writing, shopping, social calendaring, delivery ordering, and control of household appliances. In this episode, we outline the emerging issues and opportunities that make today the best time to begin figuring out how we remain in our own technological loop.

2024 was a record-setting year for elections, with nearly half the world’s voters eligible to cast ballots in over 60 nations and the European Union. In some cases, social media and other technological tools have been used to enable bad actors, misinformation, and other challenges to the fairness and transparency of democratic processes. This increases the importance of election monitoring, pioneered by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter who established the Carter Center in 1982. Dr. Ian Batista, who holds a PhD in political science and has worked with the Carter Center in monitoring three elections on two continents, speaks about differences in voting processes and technologies, the importance of voters maintaining trust in the mechanisms, and the ways that technology is being used sometimes to hinder and sometimes to help the exercise of democracy.

Adio Dinika is a political scientist and researcher for DAIR, the Distributed AI Research Institute that was founded in 2021 by Timnit Gebru after her termination as technical co-lead of the company’s Ethical Artificial Intelligence Team. Adio takes us behind the scene to give us a sense of the working conditions of many thousands of people, mainly in the lower-wage areas of the global south, whose task it is to filter massive data sets for machine learning and software applications that we use every day, by labelling images and flagging harmful content. Adio discusses the sometimes desperate challenges that these people face, and the work that DAIR is doing to bring the issues to public awareness and advocate for fair treatment of the humans who make AI possible.

Dr. Federico Carollo is a researcher at the University of Tübingen who is exploring a new, dynamic phase of matter called time crystals. First theorized by Nobel Prize laureate Frank Wilczek a dozen years ago, time crystals are quickly becoming practical reality. Federico explains how they operate, the different varieties of time crystals, and their potential uses for sensing, measurement, and other applications as a new platform for probing physics. Although time crystals aren’t perpetual motion machines, as the analogy is sometimes applied, we consider some of the technologies that could emerge and the exciting future as the science of time crystals evolves.

Twesh Upadhyaha takes us on a tour of the science of thermodynamics as it has developed over two centuries, exploring the latest discoveries in the changes of energy and its various forms of heat and work at the smallest quantum level of atoms and molecules. Twesh is a PhD candidate at the University of Maryland, where he's a researcher in the Quantum Steampunk Laboratory. Join Twesh in exploring the frontiers of thermodynamics in the hidden world of energy at the microscopic level, the fascinating connection of quantum thermodynamics with information theory, the discovery of what he calls “an entire family of constraints” within the second law of thermodynamics at the quantum level, and the open question: “What does entropy even mean at the quantum level?”

Joe DeMartini is the first recipient of the Schweickart Prize, awarded by the B612 Foundation for his innovative proposal to detect and track asteroids during twilight hours. Joe’s proposal could significantly enhance planetary defence by locating asteroids in the large section of the sky that’s difficult for telescopes to observe because of the sun’s light. Joe talks about the details of his proposal, about meeting Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart who founded the B612 Foundation, and about the asteroid Apophis which will pass between Earth and the moon in just under 5 years, on April 13, 2029.

Arushi Nath is a high school student who developed a passion for asteroid research when she attended the biennial Planetary Defense Conference in 2021. Since then, Arushi has been applying her coding skills in hunting for asteroids and contributing many new findings to the objects that astronomers are tracking as potential hazards to our planet. Arushi explains her work around NASA's DART mission, which successfully tested the ability of a probe to impact and redirect a moonlet orbiting a faraway asteroid, and she discusses the national and international conferences she has attended. Those interested in the asteroid collision simulation that Arushi mentions can find it on NASA's website at https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc23/. Arushi is looking forward to the next Planetary Defense Conference in 2025, and we're looking forward to hearing more from this extraordinary young citizen scientist who offers a very bright and hopeful voice for the future.

Why do animals communicate, and why and how did their many different methods of communication evolve? It's fascinating to learn from Dr. Arik Kershenbaum about such a crucial part of everyday living in the animal kingdom that we humans tend to overlook in our daily lives. A zoologist at the University of Cambridge, Arik studies vocal communications in animals, including wolves, dolphins, and gibbons. Arik speaks with us about his new book, Why Animals Talk, coming out this August, and we discuss his 2021 book, The Zoologist’s Guide to the Galaxy, which takes us on a journey through the incredible variety of animals and their communication here on Earth and quite possibly beyond. As Arik says, animals are “not just automata, but living species with communicative intelligence not unlike our own,” and he introduces us to the vast and fascinating array of information that animals are exchanging all around us.