We are living through a time when machines are learning to see, speak, remember—and perhaps even care. But what does that mean for us? For our agency? For our inner lives?
In this episode of Code and Council, Jerry and Rachel take you on a sweeping journey through the intellectual and technical evolution of artificial intelligence. We begin with Alan Turing and the foundational question—Can machines think?—then move through the early neuro-inspired models and symbolic logic programs that defined the field’s birth. From the cybernetic optimism of the 1950s to the crushing skepticism of the AI Winters, we trace the cycles of ambition, failure, and reinvention that gave AI its shape.
Then, we zoom in on the story of Jim Simons and Renaissance Technologies—a hedge fund run not by instincts or traders, but by machine learning. What does it mean when a machine can out predict a human not just in games, but in markets?
Finally, we arrive in the present: large language models, image generators, robotic agents. We meet the researchers and founders racing to define AI’s future—while grappling with the systems they’ve already built.
What happens when machines don’t just serve us, but anticipate us? Will they become our collaborators—or our constraints? And what happens to our sense of meaning when prediction replaces understanding?
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