A Dose of Engineering Realism Over AI Hype

Intelligent Design the Future

Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture

Society & Culture, Philosophy, Life Sciences, Astronomy, Science

4.3 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 4 June 2026

⏱️ 248 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

ID The Future listeners now get to enjoy two episodes each month from our sister podcast Mind Matters News, a production of the Discovery Institute’s Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence. The Mind Matters News podcast brings you insight from computer scientists, engineers, inventors, neurosurgeons, and other experts who bring sanity to the conversation about natural and artificial intelligence, going beyond the hype to explore the undercurrents of these important ideas. And although the Mind Matters News podcast will not often explicitly discuss intelligent design, it regularly explores the nature of intelligence, the origin of information, and the things that make us uniquely human, all concepts that are central to the theory of intelligent design. Enjoy today’s offering of Mind Matters News! The hype around AI is reaching fever pitch these days. But never mind predictions of future AI potential. What can it actually do and not do today? On this episode of the Mind Matters News podcast, host Robert J. Marks welcomes Dr. Donald C. Wunsch II to the show for a long-form, wide-ranging conversation about what AI can actually do today—and the very real risks and responsibilities that come with it. Source

Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to ID the Future. I'm Andrew McDermott.
0:03.5	Today's episode comes to us from our sister podcast, Mind Matters News, a production of the Discovery Institute's Walter Bradley Center for Natural and Artificial Intelligence.
0:14.0	You can learn more about the show and access other episodes at mindmatters.a.I.
0:24.3	Greetings. other episodes at mind matters.a.ai. Greetings and welcome to Mind Matters News. I'm your real intelligent host, Robert J. Marks.
0:30.9	Our guest today is Dr. Donald C. Wanch the second. I'm Robert J. Marks the second.
0:36.2	They named me the second because they didn't want to
0:38.1	name me junior. I had an uncle named junior, and we called him Uncle Junior until he died when
0:43.0	he was 90 years old. So they still called him junior. Anyway, Dr. Wunch is an endowed professor
0:48.9	of electrical and computer engineering at Missouri University of Science and Technology, where he is the director
0:55.6	of the Comer Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Autonomous Systems.
1:00.9	He has a long title.
1:02.7	Okay, you ready?
1:03.5	Take a deep breath.
1:04.5	He is the Mary Kay Finley, Missouri Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
1:12.9	Don is a widely respected voice in artificial intelligence and computational intelligence. Dr. Wancher spent decades working on the
1:18.5	intersection of engineering, AI, and real world systems with research spanning neural networks,
1:24.5	adaptive systems, machine learning, and AI engineering. He is a fellow of the ICCLE,
1:30.7	which is pretty impressive since IEE only admits fellows, I think it's 0.1% of its membership
1:36.8	every year. So it's a very high bar to reach, very prestigious title. What sets Don apart
1:43.1	is its insistence on engineering realism over hype. Well, much of today's
1:48.2	AI conversation centers on speculative futures and artificial general intelligence or AGI. His work
1:55.7	focuses on what AI can actually do today and the very real risks and responsibilities that come with it.
	...

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