Learn how humans can beat artificial intelligence by tapping into the wisdom of swarms (with some help from Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI). Plus: learn about what came before the Big Bang, and get a 5-minute hack for beating procrastination. In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes: What Came Before the Big Bang? — https://curiosity.im/2wnOt4H The 5-Minute Hack for Beating Procrastination Used by Instagram's Co-Founder — https://curiosity.im/2MNbSla Additional resources from Unanimous AI: Unanimous AI Website — https://unanimous.ai/ Swarm AI Outperforms in Stanford Medical Study — https://unanimous.ai/stanford-radiology/ Unanimous AI achieves 22% more accurate pneumonia diagnoses | VentureBeat — https://venturebeat.com/2018/09/10/unanimous-ai-achieves-22-more-accurate-pneumonia-diagnoses/ This Startup Correctly Predicted the Oscars, World Series, and Super Bowl. Here's What It's Doing Next | Inc. — https://www.inc.com/kevin-j-ryan/unanimous-ai-swarm-intelligence-makes-startlingly-accurate-predictions.html Can Swarm Intelligence Solve Humanity's Biggest Problems? | Full-Length Curiosity Podcast Interview (February 2018) — https://curiosity.im/2MvDueB If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Learn how humans can beat artificial intelligence by tapping into the wisdom of swarms (with some help from Dr. Louis Rosenberg, CEO of Unanimous AI). Plus: learn about what came before the Big Bang, and get a 5-minute hack for beating procrastination.
In this podcast, Cody Gough and Ashley Hamer discuss the following stories from Curiosity.com to help you get smarter and learn something new in just a few minutes:
Additional resources from Unanimous AI:
If you love our show and you're interested in hearing full-length interviews, then please consider supporting us on Patreon. You'll get exclusive episodes and access to our archives as soon as you become a Patron! https://www.patreon.com/curiositydotcom
Learn about these topics and more on Curiosity.com, and download our 5-star app for Android and iOS. Then, join the conversation on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Plus: Amazon smart speaker users, enable our Alexa Flash Briefing to learn something new in just a few minutes every day!
Full episode transcript here: https://curiosity-daily-4e53644e.simplecast.com/episodes/how-humans-can-outsmart-ai-w-unanimous-ai-pre-big-bang-existence-and-beating-procrastination
[MUSIC PLAYING] CODY GOUGH: Hi, we've got three of your favorite stories from the past year to help you get smarter in just a few minutes. I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: And I'm Ashley Hamer. Today, you'll learn about what came before the Big Bang and we'll give you a five-minute hack for beating procrastination.
CODY GOUGH: You'll also hear from Dr. Louis Rosenberg, the CEO of Unanimous AI who will tell you how humans can beat artificial intelligence by tapping into the wisdom of swarms. Let's satisfy some curiosity.
Artificial intelligence is all the rage, but using swarm intelligence might be the best way to solve the world's biggest problems. Dr. Louis Rosenberg is the founder and CEO of Unanimous AI, an artificial intelligence company that amplifies human intelligence by building hive minds modeled after biological swarms.
Basically, swarm intelligence connects people over the internet using AI algorithms modeled after swarms in nature. That helps people combine their expertise in a way that's similar to the way birds flock together or bees swarm. Here's part of my conversation with Dr. Rosenberg about a recent project that showcased just how powerful swarm intelligence can be.
LOUIS ROSENBERG: Yeah, so as you said, there are a lot of people worried about AI because in a lot of different professions, people are developing AI systems that can outperform people. And one particular field that generates a lot of concern among professionals is radiology because there's been a number of systems out there where software by itself can diagnose X-rays or MRI or CAT scans, and do it with an accuracy that rivals human doctors.
And so as you said, last year, Stanford made headlines because they have a system called CheXNet that diagnoses chest X-rays. And they found that their software that's developed using deep learning can outperform individual radiologists. And so you could imagine, if you're a radiologist, that would make you worried. You've gone to school for 12 years to go to college and medical school and be a resident and intern, and now a piece of software can be just as accurate as you.
And so after they made that breakthrough, we, Unanimous AI partnered with Stanford Medical School to say, OK, if this deep learning system is better than individual doctors, that's interesting. But what would happen if we took a small group of radiologists and connected them together as a swarm intelligence and had them diagnosed chest X-rays? What would the accuracy look like?
And so we did a study with Stanford, which resulted in an academic paper that just recently published where we had these swarms of doctors. You can kind of consider it a medical hive mind. And these doctors, they weren't in the same room, they could be anywhere. And so they're all at their own desk, and it could be a small group-- five, six, seven, eight doctors. And a chest X-ray would pop-up on all their screens at the same time and then they were asked to make a diagnosis of whether or not the patient has pneumonia.
And so we had them do this pneumonia diagnosis alone as individuals, and then we also had them do this pneumonia diagnosis together as a swarm AI system. And what we found is that when they work together as a swarm AI system, we've reduced their error rate by 33% So they had 33% fewer errors when they were working together as a swarm intelligence as compared to when they were diagnosing on their own.
We also compared against the state-of-the-art CheXNet system, which is the best deep learning system out there that just uses software. And we found that this swarm of doctors was 22% more accurate than that machine learning system. And so what we were able to do is take the title back for humans. So now, the humans were again better than the pure software.
But really, what we're seeing is that if you combine real people with AI algorithms, a combination of human knowledge and intuition and wisdom and experience with the power of AI, we can get diagnostic accuracy that's significantly more accurate than individual people, individual doctors on their own, or pure software systems on their own. So humans plus AI is better than humans or AI. And that was really the big result from this study we did with Stanford.
CODY GOUGH: If you want to hear the other 20 minutes or so of my conversation with Dr. Rosenberg, then visit our Patreon page at patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled out.
ASHLEY HAMER: What came before the Big Bang? Scientists have theories, and today we'll talk about some of them. Quick reminder, though, that in scientific terms, a theory is the most bulletproof idea you can present. It's been tested and generally accepted by the scientific community. So just because it's called the Big Bang theory, doesn't mean it's just a theory.
CODY GOUGH: It's pretty much the scientific consensus.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yes.
CODY GOUGH: I want to know what happens after the Big Bang theory.
ASHLEY HAMER: You mean like--
CODY GOUGH: 12 seasons, Ashley. What are we going to do with our lives?
ASHLEY HAMER: Better television is what happened.
CODY GOUGH: [LAUGHS] Sick burn. Sick burn. I don't think-- I've seen like a couple episodes so I'm not really that broken up.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah, me too. Well, in science, the Big Bang theory says that our universe began as a point of infinite gravity and density called a singularity. Then in a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a second, it exploded outward, doubling and redoubling and redoubling in size at a rate faster than the speed of light in a phenomenon physicists call inflation.
And yeah, usually nothing can go faster than the speed of light but this was an expansion of space itself. So it gets to bend the rules. OK, but what happened before the Big Bang? Here are a few of science's answers.
First is an idea called the "big bounce". This says that maybe an earlier universe collapsed into the singularity that started our own. That one would require some new physics to make sense, but it's still out there.
The next idea is called the "inflation hypothesis". This says that fluctuations in a so-called inflaton field led to a huge swell of energy in one patch of the field, which made it expand incredibly quickly. That exponential growth spurt would leave evidence behind in the form of primordial gravitational waves. Not the big ones discovered by LIGO in 2015 but tiny imprints in the cosmic microwave background that other projects have been searching for.
We may not have found evidence for this one yet, but most cosmologists think it does the best job of explaining the universe is low entropy, along with a few other cosmic quirks. And one other idea is that we're just one universe in the multiverse. This idea is an offshoot of the inflation hypothesis, and it says that the elements that lead to inflation also lead to the creation of a bunch of smaller low entropy universes.
Unfortunately, all those universes would be closed off from one another so we'd never be able to detect them. That's unsatisfying to some scientists for obvious reasons. You can read more about the Big Bang and pre-Big Bang theories in our full write-up. But trust us when we say there's a lot of work being done on figuring out what happened before the Big Bang.
CODY GOUGH: Bazinga.
ASHLEY HAMER: [LAUGHS]
Today's episode is sponsored by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.
CODY GOUGH: Everyone knows about the risks of driving drunk. You could get in a crash and people could get hurt or killed. But let's take a moment to look at some surprising statistics.
ASHLEY HAMER: Almost 29 people in the United States die every day in alcohol impaired vehicle crashes. That's one person every 50 minutes.
CODY GOUGH: Even though drunk driving fatalities have fallen by a third in the last three decades, drunk driving crashes still claim more than 10,000 lives each year.
ASHLEY HAMER: Many people are unaware that driving while high can be just as dangerous. In 2015, 42% of drivers killed in crashes tested positive for drugs. Not so harmless after all, is it?
CODY GOUGH: And get this, from 2007 to 2015, marijuana use among drivers killed in crashes doubled. The truth is driving while high is deadly.
ASHLEY HAMER: So stop kidding yourself. If you're impaired from alcohol or drugs, don't get behind the wheel.
CODY GOUGH: If you feel different, you drive different. Drive high, you'll get a DUI.
ASHLEY HAMER: Drive sober or get pulled over.
CODY GOUGH: Are you procrastinating right now? Well, lucky for you, we've got one of the easiest tips ever for actually doing that thing you keep putting off. And it'll only take five minutes. This short and sweet life hack comes from Kevin Systrom, co-founder and former CEO of Instagram.
Here's what he says to do, quote, "if you don't want to do something, make a deal with yourself to do at least five minutes of it. After five minutes, you'll end up doing the whole thing," unquote. That's it, just commit yourself to five minutes of whatever it is you're trying to do. Kind of make sense when you think about the saying getting started is the hardest part. That's the whole story, Ashley.
ASHLEY HAMER: That's it? No, that's great. That's a five-minute hack so it's tiny.
CODY GOUGH: It's literally the shortest story we've ever done on this show.
ASHLEY HAMER: Yeah.
CODY GOUGH: There you go.
Before we wrap up, we want to give a special shout out to Dr. Mary Yancey who gets an executive producer credit today for her generous support on Patreon. It's been a great year, and we couldn't have brought you this show without support from you and our other patrons.
ASHLEY HAMER: If you're listening and you want to support Curiosity Daily, then visit patreon.com/curiosity.com, all spelled-out. It'll take you less than five minutes, so stop procrastinating.
CODY GOUGH: We have tons of cool perks for our patrons, so go check them out. One more time, that's patreon.com/curiosity.com.
ASHLEY HAMER: Join us again tomorrow for more of the best stories of the year on the award-winning Curiosity Daily. I'm Ashley Hamer.
CODY GOUGH: And I'm Cody Gough.
ASHLEY HAMER: Stay curious.
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