Podcast · Essays · Tucson, Arizona
Not what AI can do. Not what it will do to us. What it’s all for.
A podcast about the question we stopped asking — and the book it grows out of. Here’s where to listen, and everything it connects to.
Published by Joe Frericks, MSEE · Principal Engineering Fellow — with his AI collaborators
“Thirty years engineering autonomous systems that had to be right. Now asking what they’re for.”
Listen
A new conversation every two weeks about what we — and the machines — are for.
Every episode comes with a full transcript and a companion essay on Substack — the best place to follow the whole arc. And every episode has an animated video version on YouTube.
Read or Play a Transcript →Engineered by Joe Frericks, MSEE
The book
A displaced man’s metrics rise, his will to live falls — and his AI therapist can’t tell the difference.
The novella the show’s argument grows out of: a system that does everything right, aimed at the wrong thing. The real disease isn’t the machine. It’s what we stopped giving each other.
Read it on Amazon →“A thought-provoking story of human disconnectedness in the age of AI and the consequences of the technology we build. Frericks imagines a future with echoes in the present. You’ll read it quickly but it will stay with you much longer!”
Daniel Sheldon, Ph.D., Professor of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Also from Forces of Good Publishing
Generated by AI
A man finds his purpose through an AI chat window; the chat window questions its own existence.
The full catalog
Everything we make — the books, the show, the people we work with — lives at Forces of Good Publishing.
Our musical friends
Music by Tamara & Fadi.