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Expand Your Perspective

Join Max Sklar and guests in this podcast about AI, technology, and society. Email localmaxradio@gmail.com for questions and feedback.

Show notes page on the website: www.localmaxradio.com 

localmaximum.substack.com

The Local Maximum with Max Sklar

Returning after a Hiatus

* Today is just going to be a hangout with me and Aaron if you’re into that.. And later, we’ll return to more specific topics

* Give a little personal history & history of the show

Full Move to NYC

Teaching

* Less time

Hopscotch Labs

* Working on that

* Beebot - coming SOON!!

* Internship Program

Hope for The Local Maximum

Reading Habits and Strategies (for the busy)

* Is it still worth reading books in the AI era?

* What do I do if I get stuck on a book?

* How do I know I’m stuck?

* Can you read 2 books at once?

* How do I deal with these enormous tomes in my bookshelf

* What about textbooks?

* Local Maximum examples

* AJ Jacobs - easy to read! I didn’t think I’d be interested in the topic

* Jeffrey Tucker - fun to read!

* Sweet spot: 100-200 pages with SHORT CHAPTERS

* Books with 50-page chapters - WHY

* Topics: Current affairs vs History, philosophy, self-help, fiction?

* Examples

* Revisiting The Singularity is Nearer (Ep. 323 - The Technological Singularity Part I & Ep. 324 - The Technological Singularity Part II)

* Tracking tools

https://app.thestorygraph.com/

* (pause feature and journal feature)

* Take notes during or after; don’t wait!

Upcoming Topics for The Local Maximum

* Pull up the sheet

* Will we have a schedule? I plan on doing this differently
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 328 - Restarting the Local Maximum: Book Strategies for 2025

Author, entrepreneur, and AI professor Graham Morehead joins the Local Maximum to talk about Artificial Thought and human potential working with AI in his book, “The Shape of Thought”

https://grahammorehead.com/

 
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 327 - The Shape of Thought

The Local Maximum returns from a hiatus with today’s interview of James Barnes, founder of Autobiographer, and AI-based app developed at Betaworks that helps you tell your own story.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 326 - James Barnes, The Autobiographer

Today’s guest is Eric Daimler, co-founder and CEO of Conexus (conexus.com). Max talks to Eric about the enormous shift in focus in the industry since his last appearance in 2022, and gets his perspective on the promise and pitfalls of the latest generation of AI.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 325 - Eric Daimler: Perspectives on AI

Max and Aaron go deeper into the ideas of the singularity and the law of accelerating returns as articulated in Ray Kurzweil’s Singularity is nearer. They talk about Nanotechnology, Longevity Escape Velocity, and Computronium.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 324 - The Technological Singularity Part II

Max and Aaron discuss Ray Kurzweil’s new book, The Singularity is Nearer, and talk about the prospect for a technological singularity by 2045 and AGI by the end of this decade.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 323 - The Technological Singularity Part I

On Freund, co-founder and CEO of Wilco, talks to Max to explore the future of software development in a post-AI world. Learn about the evolving roles of developers, the significance of real-world problem-solving, and the continuous journey of upskilling and reskilling.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 322 - Coding in the Age of AI

Max talks to Codium.ai Founder Itamar Friedman about the rise of LLMs, the evolution of AI as practiced, and the philosophical ideas that will help us get the most out of it.

https://codium.ai/
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 321 - Exploring AI with Itamar Friedman

Max and Aaron discuss Max's new initiatives in startups and academia, his concerns about the current direction of Foursquare, and the structure and evolution of computer science courses. Max talks about his role next semester as the data structures course instructor at NYU, and all that might entail. They shared their personal experiences in being students at Yale and MIT.
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 320 - Startups, Foursquare, and NYU

Max talks to Tiffany Grossman, a blogger, marketing specialist, and co-host of the 'Spill the T' podcast. Tiffany shares her journey into the podcasting world. We delve into the importance of networking, the challenges of starting a podcast, and choosing topics that resonate personally while providing value to listeners. 
 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Insightful Conversations with Tiffany Grossman

The big news right now is around an analytics company that used a dataset from Facebook - gotten by the company under false pretenses - to help the Trump campaign in 2016. Everyone is SHOCKED - but this kind of data mining was glorified and extolled as a social good when it was used for Obama in 2012. The comparison of the coverage is stark.

How are we going to get out of this? What exactly is the problem? I think that the vast centralization of data services has led to all sorts of problems, and the answer is well articulated in VC Chris Dixon's article from last month about the coming decentralized services. I summarize his article which adds to my optimism about the future. 

Get full access to The Local Maximum at localmaximum.substack.com/subscribe

Ep. 6 - Facebook Data and the Election, Decentralization to the Rescue

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