Lab Life – Episode 77: Chatting with Einstein
Dr. Alex Alaniz joins the podcast to discuss the buzz around Chat GPT, the creation of his own Albert Einstein chatbot and his thoughts on artificial intelligence and wargaming.
CHATTING WITH EINSTEIN
By Justin Hayward, Air Force Research Laboratory Public Affairs
Dr. Alex Alaniz guest starred on the Lab Life podcast to discuss Chat GPT, his Albert Einstein chatbot, wargaming, and his thoughts on artificial intelligence.
The Lab Life podcast, hosted by Michele Miller and Kenneth McNulty, focuses on bringing its audience behind the scenes with the Air Force and Space Force scientists, engineers and professionals who are developing tomorrow’s technology today.
Alaniz currently serves as technical advisor for the Air Force Research Laboratory, or AFRL’s Directed Energy Directorate’s Wargaming and Simulation Branch located at Kirkland Air Force Base, New Mexico.
Growing up, Alaniz always had a fascination with finding connections within the world, especially the way humans process information and use it to reach new heights of achievement in the world around them. Alaniz’s search for knowledge led him to create his Chat Bot focused on Einstein’s life, creating an artificial avatar that could respond with known information about Einstein.
Alaniz states that the reason for choosing Einstein was due to the extensive knowledge recorded by the physicist himself including personal interests, scientific research and more—all starting at the age of 13.
“I spent 2.5 years, roughly creating 101 chatbots. Each one, an expert at one slice of Einstein’s life. For example, his thoughts on various topics including A-bombs, the future of humanity, relativity, the future of physics, his favorite foods, whether he liked cats or dogs, and his personal life,” said Alaniz.
Alaniz states that much of known information about Einstein’s professional life was easily documented but found that he needed to spend longer amounts of time researching the various personal views and confirming them to complete his program.
Alaniz’s Einstein chat program focuses on trying to connect the known data of its subject through a natural connection, to better simulate how humans connect information. His various chatbots compile all the known information about Einstein to give the user a “shadow of what history left behind in the insights of Albert Einstein.”
Listen to the full Lab Life podcast episode to learn more about Dr. Alex Alaniz and the Wargaming and Simulation branch or get inspired by watching TEDX style talk from Inspire 2023 titled “Helen Keller, ChatGPT, and Einstein.”