The Birth of AI: Inside the Carnegie Mellon Van - - Dr. Craig Kaplan

A van stuffed floor-to-ceiling with IBM 286 computers, all the seats ripped out, video cameras bolted on. Top speed: a couple inches an hour. Stop. Stare at a leaf. Ponder for 30 minutes whether it's a leaf or a person. Move another inch.That was Carnegie Mellon's self-driving car in the 1980s. Craig Kaplan used to jog past it. The exact same algorithms running on today's hardware? 180 miles an hour.In this 10-minute conversation, Craig shares:• Why applying to undergrad was harder than getting into Carnegie Mellon grad school• Choosing Carnegie Mellon to work with Herbert Simon — the inventor of AI• AI in the 1980s as a "tiny little niche only a few really geeky people knew about"• DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis on why all problems collapse into one: build intelligence• The 1980s CMU van with 286 PCs that drove 2 inches an hour — same algorithms, today, would hit 180 mph• Geoff Hinton, the "godfather of AI," and the office mate who spent 5 years teaching a network the letter A• Craig's central claim: "we have company now — we created entities almost as smart as us"—Four Fs Podcast: 10-Minute Wins delivers a daily short clip from in-depth conversations with founders, veterans, executives, and world-class experts you won't hear on every other show — on leadership, entrepreneurship, failure, and personal reinvention.Full episodes available on the Four Fs Podcast feed on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and YouTube.Chapters:0:00 Intro: The AI Revolution0:30 The 80s Van: AI’s Humble Start2:15 The Evolution of Machine Learning5:00 Defining Superintelligence8:30 The Future: What’s Next for Humanity?11:30 Closing Thoughts