Charles Isbell: Computing, Interactive AI, and Race in America | Lex Fridman Podcast #135

The following is a conversation with Charles Isbell, Dean of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, a researcher, an educator in the field of artificial intelligence, and someone who deeply thinks about what exactly is the field of computing and how do we teach it. He also has a fascinatingly varied set of interests, including music, books, movies, sports, and history. They make him especially fun to talk with. When I first saw him speak, his charisma immediately took over the room and I had a stupid excited smile on my face and I knew I had to eventually talk to him on this podcast. Quick mention of each sponsor followed by some thoughts related to the episode. First is Neuro, the maker of functional sugar free gum and mints that I use to give my brain a quick caffeine boost. Second is Decoding Digital, a podcast on tech and entrepreneurship that I listen to and enjoy. Third is masterclass online courses that I watch from some of the most amazing humans in history. And finally, Cash App, the app I use to send money to friends for food and drinks. Please check out these sponsors in the description to get a discount and to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that I'm trying to make it so that the conversations with Charles and Eric Weinstein and Dan Carlin will be published before Americans vote for President on November 3rd. There's nothing explicitly political in these conversations, but they do touch on something in human nature that I hope can bring context to our difficult time and maybe for a moment allow us to empathize with people we disagree with. With Eric, we talk about the nature of evil. With Charles, besides AI and music, we talk a bit about race in America and how we can bring more love and empathy to our online communication. And with Dan Carlin? Well, we talk about Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Hitler, Stalin, and all the complicated parts of human history in between with a hopeful eye toward a brighter future for our humble little civilization here on Earth. The conversation with Dan will hopefully be posted Tomorrow on Monday, November 2nd. If you enjoy this thing, subscribe on YouTube, review it with 5 stars on Apple Podcast, follow on Spotify, support on Patreon, or connect with me on Twitter lexfriedman. And now, here's my conversation with Charles Isbell.

You've mentioned that you love movies and.

TV shows, so let's ask an easy.

Question, but you have to be definitively, objectively conclusive. What's your top three movies of all time?

So you're asking me to be definitive and to be conclusive? That's a little hard. I'm gonna tell you why it's very simple. It's because movies is too broad of a category. I gotta pick sub genres. But I will tell you that of those genres, I'll pick one or two from each of the genres and I'll get us to three. Except I'm gonna cheat. So my favorite comedy of all times, which probably my favorite movie of all time is His Girl Friday, which is probably a movie that you've not ever heard of, but it's based on a play called the Front Page from, I don't know, early 1900s. And the movie is a fantastic film.

What's the story? What's the independent film?

No, no, no.

What are we talking about?

This is one of the movies that would have been very popular. It's a screwball comedy. You ever seen Moonlighting, the TV show? You know what I'm talking about? So you've seen these shows where there's a man and a woman and they clearly are in love with one another and they're constantly fighting and always talking over each other. Banter, banter, banter, banter, banter. This was the movie that started all that. As far as I'm concerned. It's very much of its time. So it's. I don't know, it must have come out sometime between 1934 and 1939. I'm not sure exactly when the movie itself came out. It's black and white. It's just a fantastic film. It's hilarious.

So it's mostly conversation?

Not entirely, but mostly. Mostly, just a lot of back and forth. There's a story there. Someone's on death row, and they're newspaper men. Including her. They're all newspaper men. They were divorced. The editor, the publisher, I guess, and the reporter. They were divorced, but they clearly. He's thinking, trying to get back together. And there's this whole other thing that's going on, but none of that matters. The plot doesn't matter.

It's just a little play in conversation.

It's fantastic. And I just love everything about the conversation because at the end of the day, sort of narrative and conversation are the sort of things that drive me. And so I really like that movie for that reason. Similarly, I'm now going to cheat and I'm going to give you two movies as one. And they're Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Wick, both relatively modern. John Wick, of courses.

One, two or three.

One. It gets increasingly. I love them all for different reasons and increasingly more ridiculous. Kind of like loving Alien and Aliens, despite the fact they're two completely different movies. But the reason I put Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and John Wick together is because I actually think they're the same movie or what I like about them. The same movie, which is both of them create a world that you're coming in the middle of and they don't explain it to you, but the story is done so well that you pick it up. So anyone who's seen John Wick, you have these little coins and they're headed out and there are these rules. And apparently every single person in New York City is an assassin. There's like two people who come through who aren't, but otherwise they are. But there's this complicated world and everyone knows each other. They don't sit down and explain it to you, but you figure it out. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Drag is a lot like that. You get the feeling that this is chapter nine of a ten part story and you've missed the first eight chapters and they're not going to explain it to you, but there's this sort of rich world behind you.

You get pulled in anyway.

Like immediately you get pulled in anyway. So it's just excellent storytelling in both cases and very, very different.

And also, you like the outfit, I assume? The John Wick outfit.

Oh, yeah, of course, of course, yes. I think John W. And so that's. That's number two. And then.

But sorry to pause on that. Martial arts, you have a long list of hobbies. Like it scrolls off the page. But I didn't see martial arts as one of them.

I do not do martial arts, but I certainly watch martial arts. Oh, I appreciate it very much. Oh, we could talk about every Jackie Chan movie ever made.

Okay.

And I would be. I would be on board with that shower too.

Like that kind of the comedy of it. Cop.

Yes, yes, yes. By the way, my favorite Jackie Chan movie would be Drunken Master 2, known in the States usually as Legend of the Drunken Master. Actually Drunken Master, the first one is the first kung fu movie I ever saw, but I did not know that.

First Jackie Chan movie?

No, first one ever that I saw and remember, but I had no idea.

What is this? That.

That's what it was. And I didn't know that was Jackie Chan. That was like his first major movie. Yeah, I was a kid. It was done in the 70s. I only later rediscovered that. That it was actually.

And he creates his own martial art by. By drinking. Was he actually drinking? Or was. Or was he play. Drinking?

You mean as an actor or.

No, I'm sure as an Actor. No, he was 70s or whatever.

He was definitely drinking. And he. In the end, he drinks industrial grade alcohol. Yeah, yeah. And has a. One of the most fantastic fights ever in that. That subgenre. Anyway, that's my favorite one of his movies, but I'll tell you the last. There's actually a movie called Nothing But a Man, which is the 1960s. Starred Ivan Dixon, who you'll know from Hogan's Heroes, and Abby Lincoln. It's just a really small little drama. It's a beautiful story. But my favorite scenes. I'm cheating. My favorite. One of my favorite movies, just for the ending is the Godfather. I think the last scene of that is just fantastic. It's the whole movie all summarized in just eight, nine seconds.

Godfather, Part one.

Part one.

How does it end? I don't think you need to worry about spoilers if you haven't seen the Godfather, Spoiler alert.

It ends with the wife coming to Michael, and he says, just this once, I'll let you ask me my business. And she asks him if he did this terrible thing. And he looks her in the eye and he lies and he says, no. And she says, thank you. And she walks out the door. And you see him as she's going. You see him. You see her going out of the door. And all these people are coming in and they're kissing Michael's hands and Godfather. And then the camera switches perspective. So instead of looking at him, you're looking at her, and the door closes in her face. And that's the end of the movie. And that's the whole movie right there.

Do you see parallels between that and your position as Dean at Georgia Tech? Crow? I'm just kidding.

Trick question.

Sometimes, certainly the door gets closed on me every once in a while.

Okay, that was a rhetorical question. You've also mentioned that you, I think, enjoy all kinds of experiments, including on yourself. But I saw a video where you said you did an experiment where you tracked all kinds of information about yourself and a few others, sort of wiring up your home. And this little idea that you mentioned in that video, which is kind of interesting that you thought that two days worth of data is enough to capture majority of the behavior of the human being. First, can you describe what the heck you did to collect all the data? Because it's fascinating just like little details of how you collect that data and also what your intuition behind the two days is.

So first off, it has to be the right two days, but I was thinking of a very specific experiment. There's actually a suite of them that I've been a part of. And other people have done this, of course, I just sort of dabbled in that part of the world. But to be very clear, the specific thing that I was talking about about had to do with recording all the IR going on in my infrared going on in my house. So this is a long time ago. So everything's being curled by pressing buttons on remote controls as opposed to speaking to Alexa or Siri or someone like that. And I was just trying to figure out if you could get enough data on people to figure out what they were going to do with their TVs or their lights. My house was completely wired up at the time, but.