The following is a conversation with Stephen Cotkin, a professor of history at Princeton University

and one of the great historians of our time, specializing in Russian and Soviet history.

He has written many books on Stalin and the Soviet Union, including the first two of a

three-volume work on Stalin, and he is currently working on volume three.

He may have noticed that I have been speaking with not just computer scientists, but physicists,

engineers, historians, neuroscientists, and soon much more.

To me, artificial intelligence is much bigger than deep learning, bigger than computing.

It is our civilization's journey into understanding the human mind and creating echoes of it in the machine.

To me, that journey must include a deep, historical, and psychological understanding of power.

Technology puts some of the greatest power in the history of our civilization

into the hands of engineers and computer scientists.

This power must not be abused.

And the best way to understand how such abuse can be avoided is to not be blind to the lessons of history.

As Stephen Cotkin brilliantly articulates, Stalin was arguably one of the most powerful humans in history.

I read many books on Joseph Stalin, Vladimir Putin, and the Wars of the 20th century.

I hope you understand the value of such knowledge to all of us,

especially to engineers and scientists who build the tools of power in the 21st century.

This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.

If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give us five stars and Apple podcasts,

follow us on Spotify, support on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter,

Alex Friedman spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N.

I recently started doing ads at the end of the introduction.

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