Serge Belongie | On AI as ordinary technology, and the bias of anthropomorphisms | Episode #75

What this episode covers

In this episode of The Only Constant, Lasse Rindom sits down with Serge Belongie, Director of the Pioneer Centre for AI and one of Europe’s leading AI thinkers, for a conversation that cuts through the noise of hype and panic to reach something far more enduring. Together, they explore: Why AI isn’t a revolution but a continuation of the march of automation How the “idiot wind” of hype always blows through history and major technological changes Why spreadsheets once terrified CEOs the same way large language models now do The problem of “data washing” and how a biased baby monitor reveals the limits of clean datasets Why AI should be treated as statistics and software - ordinary technology - until proven otherwise The dangers of anthropomorphizing chatbots and why friction can be a democratic safeguard Belongie’s blend of historical analogy, dry humor, and academic precision makes this conversation one of the most illuminating yet and a standout episode of The Only Constant. Do you want to know more about Serge Belongie? Serge Belongie is a professor of Computer Science at the University of Copenhagen, where he also serves as the head of the Pioneer Centre for Artificial Intelligence (P1). Previously, he was a professor of Computer Science at Cornell University, an Associate Dean at Cornell Tech, a member of the Visiting Faculty program at Google, and a professor of Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego. His research interests include Computer Vision, Machine Learning, Augmented Reality, and Human-in-the-Loop Computing. He is also a co-founder of several companies including Digital Persona and Anchovi Labs. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, the MIT Technology Review “Innovators Under 35” Award, the Stibitz-Wilson Award, the Helmholtz Prize, the Everingham Prize, and the Koenderink Prize for fundamental contributions to the Computer Vision community. He is a member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and serves on the board of the European Laboratory for Learning and Intelligent Systems (ELLIS).