Inside AI’s Black Box: A Conversation With Anil Ananthaswamy

Desciption

In his latest book, “Why Machines Learn,” award-winning science writer Anil Ananthaswamy tells the story of the rise of modern artificial intelligence — and the mathematical ideas that underpin it. Getting under that “mathematical skin,” he writes, “is crucial to our understanding of not just the power of the technology, but also its limitations.” In a conversation with the Knight Science Journalism Program’s Ashley Smart, Ananthaswamy discusses what drove him to that topic, what he learned in the process of writing the book, and the lessons it offers to journalists who want to report on artificial intelligence with greater savvy and sophistication — or even harness the technology’s power in their own work.