Antonio Torralba with Devi Parikh on Humans of AI: Stories, Not Stats

Call us! +1 (877) 751-1904

Credit counseling service

Antonio Torralba is the Thomas and Gerd Perkins Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, and the head of the artificial intelligence and decision-making (AI+D) faculty at MIT. Find out more about him at https://web.mit.edu/torralba/www/.

Humans of AI: Stories, Not Stats is an interview series with AI researchers to get to know them better as people. We don’t talk about AI or their work or the stats of their life like what college they went to. They share what they think about, what they are insecure about, what they get excited about. They share the stories of their day-to-day life.

All interviews in the series are available at http://humanstories.ai.

The host is Devi Parikh, an Associate Professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech and a Research Scientist at Facebook AI Research (FAIR). Find out more about her at https://www.cc.gatech.edu/~parikh/ or follow her on Twitter https://twitter.com/deviparikh.

This interview is available as a podcast episode at https://anchor.fm/humanstoriesai/episodes/Antonio-Torralba-with-Devi-Parikh-ek7rcp.

Timeline annotations thanks to Mukul Khanna https://mukulkhanna.github.io/about/.

00:00 Introduction
00:48 What were you doing just before the call?
01:00 What is your daily routine like?
01:30 What is your favourite part of your day?
02:09 What is your least favourite part of your day?
02:50 What one chore do you dislike the most and why is that?
03:28 Do you struggle with procrastination?
04:25 Do you struggle with time management?
05:30 Do you set an alarm in the morning?
05:46 How often do you hit the snooze button?
06:41 If I asked your friends, “What is Antonio like?”, what are 3 adjectives they’d use?
07:28 How much of that is true? Is anything exaggerated or missing?
07:50 Are you happy with the number of close friends you have?
09:00 What is one thing you’re worse at than people around you?
09:47 What is your single biggest strength?
10:22 What is a recurring moral conflict?
11:18 Is there a specific instance where you distinctly recall feeling privileged?
12:02 What are you insecure about?
13:24 Do you feel like an impostor?
13:58 What is something you’re trying out these days, and how is that going?
15:20 What is your favourite tool/trick/hack that makes your life more efficient or fun?
16:33 What do you tend to think about most when you’re not intentionally trying to think about something?
17:32 What is something surprising about you, that the rest of us might not guess?
19:29 What is one thing about the world that surprises you?
20:24 What is the most recent unexpected thing that happened?
21:26 What is one way in which you wish your life was different?
21:57 What are you looking forward to, tomorrow or next week?
22:48 Do you think you’re average, above average, or below average happy relative to people around you?
23:38 When was the last time you danced?
24:19 What was your most recent dream that you remember?
25:17 Are you more optimistic than people around you, or more pessimistic?
26:21 Do you think there’s a point to life or our existence?
27:16 What do you struggle with, in life?
27:52 How do you decide what to work on?
29:33 What are two common traits in some of the best collaborators/colleagues you’ve worked with?
31:05 Are you good at spotting these traits early?
32:23 Oceans or hills?
32:50 What is something that you love doing that you’re terrible at?
33:52 What is something you did recently that surprised people who believe they know you well?
37:01 When was the last time you felt like a kid in a candy store?
37:55 What is something you did not like at the time, but you are glad happened?
38:22 What do you easily get nostalgic about?
39:12 Describe something that made you smile today?
39:32 What is some of the best advice you’ve gotten or given?
41:28 Being as honest as possible, why did you agree to do this interview with me?
42:01 Is there anything you’d like to talk about in terms of who you are and what your life is like, that we haven’t covered?