949: Why AI Keeps Failing Society, with Stanford professor Alex “Sandy” Pentland

Alex “Sandy” Pentland, Toshiba Professor of Media Arts & Science at MIT and Fellow at Stanford, speaks to Jon Krohn about his new book, Shared Wisdom, why he attributes AI to the collapse of the Soviet Union, and why those risks to society could still be relevant today. We can only achieve better system performance, Alex says, when we build tools that keep step with the way that people make decisions. Listen to the episode to hear Alex talk about how he is helping make AI agents work for individuals rather than the companies that develop them, and his work in making sure that systems operate consistently and fairly across the world.

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In this episode you will learn:

• (02:19) About Alex Pentland’s new book, Shared Wisdom                    
• (16:00) About loyalagents.org
• (28:36) Why we need data unions
• (34:02) The governance of AI
• (41:24) How to measure the social impact of AI projects