Best Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence Podcasts (2025)

1
86: Trump’s Mass Deportation Policy and the US Labor Market (Guest: Chloe East) 30:16

16d ago30:16

30:16

President Donald Trump has promised to carry out a mass deportation effort that would remove millions of immigrants residing illegally in the United States. Will the massive scale of deportations improve the U.S. economy and deliver greater job prospects for U.S.-born workers, as Trump has claimed? In early March, “México Centered” host Tony Payan …

1
85: Mexico’s Artificial Intelligence Future Pt. 2 (Guests: Laura Ripani & Alejandro Dabdoub) 18:32

1M ago18:32

18:32

On “México Centered,” host Tony Payan continued his conversation on the future of artificial intelligence (AI) in Mexico with Laura Ripani, Mexico’s country representative at the Inter-American Development Bank, and friend of the podcast Alejandro Dabdoub. They explored major questions about the future of work as AI advances: What implications does…

1
84: How Will Trump’s Tariffs Impact American Industry and Consumers? (Guests: John Diamond, Steven Lewis & Ken Medlock) 41:15

2M ago41:15

41:15

In February, “México Centered” host Tony Payan joined three other Baker Institute experts to explore President Donald Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on Mexican, Canadian, and Chinese goods and what they mean for U.S. industries and consumers — as well as our relationships with our largest trading partners. The conversation was moderated by John Di…

1
83: Mexico’s Artificial Intelligence Future Pt. 1 (Guests: Claudia del Pozo & Alejandro Dabdoub) 22:02

2M ago22:02

22:02

Mexico was once one of the biggest leaders in artificial intelligence (AI) globally, but progress has since stalled. Now, there’s renewed hope: President Claudia Sheinbaum, who took office in October 2024, has created an Agency for Digital Transformation and Telecommunications (ATDT), and the topic is also receiving attention from the Mexican Congr…

1
82: Mexico's Budget Proposal for 2025 (Guest: Mariana Campos) 36:19

3M ago36:19

36:19

On Nov. 15, 2024, the Mexican government released its budget proposal for Fiscal Year 2025, which runs from Jan. 1 through Dec. 31. The government pledged to narrow its fiscal deficit from around 6% in 2024 to around 3% in 2025, and according to the budget proposal, there will be no additional taxes, and the economy will grow between 2% and 3% next…

1
Episode 81 - Deportations, Tariffs, Fentanyl: What's next for the US MX Relation (Guest: The Honorable Christopher Landau) 24:14

5M ago24:14

24:14

On the campaign trail, Mexico was very much in Donald Trump’s cross-hairs. Now that he’s set to return to office, his pledges — including mass deportation of undocumented immigrants, a 25% tariff on Mexican goods and services, and a “war on drug cartels” — could indeed become reality. What could these policies look like in practice, and how will th…

1
Episode 80 - AI and the Binantional Relation (Guests: Chris Bronk and Alejandro Dabdoub) 24:36

6M ago24:36

24:36

The Center for the United States and Mexico at Rice University’s Baker Institute stays abreast of the many issues affecting the binational relationship–including some issues that are not as intuitive and are often not in the media. One of these is artificial intelligence. To explore what AI can do to the U.S.-Mexico relationship - in academia, secu…

1
Episode 79 - Mexico's Judicial Reform (Guests: Javier Martin Reyes and David Gantz) 37:07

6M ago37:07

37:07

Mexico’s sweeping overhaul of the country’s court system took effect last month, in the final weeks before President López Obrador handed the keys of the National Palace to his mentee and successor, President Claudia Sheinbaum. Mexico is now one of the few countries in the world that elects its judges, including at the Supreme Court level, by popul…

1
Episode 78: The USMCA Review and Other Trade Challenges (Guest: C.J. Mahoney) 23:16

7M ago23:16

23:16

International trade has flourished in recent decades. In the U.S., which is both the world’s largest importer and exporter of goods and services, trade has lowered the costs of everyday goods, raised the living standard, and fueled job growth. But it has also eliminated some jobs, mostly in manufacturing. As a result, support for free trade has dec…

1
Episode 77: Claudia Sheinbaum and AMLO’s Looming Shadow (Guest: Tony Payan) 30:42

7M ago30:42

30:42

Late last month, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador announced a “pause” in relations with the U.S. embassy. These latest tensions between the two countries came after U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar criticized López Obrador’s proposed judicial reforms, which include electing judges by popular vote. Salazar called this measure “a ma…

1
Episode 76: Voter Attitudes in Mexico and the US (Guest: Carlos Moreno Jaimes) 19:56

10M ago19:56

19:56

In this month's episode of Mexico Centered, Tony Payan sits down with Carlos Moreno Jaimes, professor and researcher at ITESO Universidad Jesuita de Guadalajara, about voter attitudes in the Mexican and U.S. electorates and a recent survey he conducted to look at this issue. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States a…

1
Episode 75: Mexico's Elections: The Results (Guest: Lorena Becerra) 20:16

11M ago20:16

20:16

Tony Payan sits down with Lorena Becerra, political analyst and CEO of Lorena Becerra Encuestas, to analyze the results of Mexico’s presidential election on June 2, 2024. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico visit our website, and follow us on X/Twitter and LinkedIn. To join our mailing list, please su…

1
Episode 74: Mexico's Post-Presidential Election Scenarios (Guest: Javier Martin Reyes) 25:22

12M ago25:22

25:22

In this episode we sit down with Javier Martin Reyes, researcher at the Institute for Legal Research at Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM) for a conversation on Mexico's post-presidential election scenarios and their possible legal consequences. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico visit ou…

1
Episode 73: Mexico's Presidential Elections, the Candidates, Continuity and the Binational Relation (Guest: Carlos Bravo Regidor) 22:18

1y ago22:18

22:18

As Mexico's current presidential administration approaches its final days, key questions about the country’s future arise. Some of the critical challenges facing Mexico range from political to democratic principles, such as the growing poverty rate, the state of public safety, and the U.S.–Mexico binational relationship. How will the next president…

1
Episode 72: The 2024 Presidential Elections in Mexico (Guests: Tony Payan, Ivan Rodriguez Sanchez; Edward M. Emmett) 23:24

1y ago23:24

23:24

We're back! After a hiatus of almost 2 years the Mexico Centered podcast returns...and just in time for Mexico's 2024 presidential elections. In this episode, a crossover with the Baker Institute's Baker Briefing podcast, host and Baker Institute fellow Edward M. Emmett sits down with Tony Payan, director, and Jose Ivan Rodriguez-Sanchez, scholar, …

1
Are LLMs safe? 42:15

1y ago42:15

42:15

Curious about the safety of LLMs? 🤔 Join us for an insightful new episode featuring Suchin Gururangan, Young Investigator at Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Engineer at Appuri. 🚀 Don't miss out on expert insights into the world of LLMs!By Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

1
"Imaginative AI" with Mohamed Elhoseiny 23:19

1+ y ago23:19

23:19

This podcast episode features Dr. Mohamed Elhoseiny, a true luminary in the realm of computer vision with over a decade of groundbreaking research. As an Assistant Professor at KAUST, Dr. Elhoseiny's work delves into the intersections of Computer Vision, Language & Vision, and Computational Creativity in Art, Fashion, and AI. Notably, he co-organiz…

1
142 - Science Of Science, with Kyle Lo 48:57

1+ y ago48:57

48:57

Our first guest with this new format is Kyle Lo, the most senior lead scientist in the Semantic Scholar team at Allen Institute for AI (AI2), who kindly agreed to share his perspective on #Science of #Science (#scisci) on our podcast. SciSci is concerned with studying how people do science, and includes developing methods and tools to help people c…

1
141 - Building an open source LM, with Iz Beltagy and Dirk Groeneveld 29:36

2y ago29:36

29:36

In this special episode of NLP Highlights, we discussed building and open sourcing language models. What is the usual recipe for building large language models? What does it mean to open source them? What new research questions can we answer by open sourcing them? We particularly focused on the ongoing Open Language Model (OLMo) project at AI2, and…

1
140 - Generative AI and Copyright, with Chris Callison-Burch 51:28

2y ago51:28

51:28

In this special episode, we chatted with Chris Callison-Burch about his testimony in the recent U.S. Congress Hearing on the Interoperability of AI and Copyright Law. We started by asking Chris about the purpose and the structure of this hearing. Then we talked about the ongoing discussion on how the copyright law is applicable to content generated…

1
139 - Coherent Long Story Generation, with Kevin Yang 45:18

2y ago45:18

45:18

How can we generate coherent long stories from language models? Ensuring that the generated story has long range consistency and that it conforms to a high level plan is typically challenging. In this episode, Kevin Yang describes their system that prompts language models to first generate an outline, and iteratively generate the story while follow…

1
138 - Compositional Generalization in Neural Networks, with Najoung Kim 48:22

2+ y ago48:22

48:22

Compositional generalization refers to the capability of models to generalize to out-of-distribution instances by composing information obtained from the training data. In this episode we chatted with Najoung Kim, on how to explicitly evaluate specific kinds of compositional generalization in neural network models of language. Najoung described COG…

1
137 - Nearest Neighbor Language Modeling and Machine Translation, with Urvashi Khandelwal 35:56

2+ y ago35:56

35:56

We invited Urvashi Khandelwal, a research scientist at Google Brain to talk about nearest neighbor language and machine translation models. These models interpolate parametric (conditional) language models with non-parametric distributions over the closest values in some data stores built from relevant data. Not only are these models shown to outpe…

1
Episode 71: Hosting Mexico Centered (Guests: Tony Payan and Enrique Quezada) 33:25

2+ y ago33:25

33:25

In his final episode as host, Enrique Quezada sits down with Tony Payan, director of the Baker Institute Center for the U.S. and Mexico, to look back at how the podcast started and the role it has played at the Center. Enrique talks about preparing for interviews and the behind-the-scenes work to produce Mexico Centered. For more information on the…

1
Episode 70: Trans-border Collaboration Across the Rio Grande (Guests: Bob Krumenaker, superintendent of Big Bend National Park, and Javier Ochoa, subdirector of the protected areas Maderas del Carmen and ... 41:44

3y ago41:44

41:44

Bob Krumenaker, superintendent of Big Bend National Park, and Javier Ochoa, subdirector of the protected areas Maderas del Carmen and Ocampo, talk about the different models of conservation the U.S. and Mexico have, their day-to-day activities, and the numerous ways in which they collaborate across the border to the benefit of the ecosystem they sh…

1
Episode 69: The Significance of Mexico's 2022 Local Elections (Guest: Alejandro Cruz, director of special studies at BGC Ulises Beltrán y Asociados) 33:35

3y ago33:35

33:35

Alejandro Cruz, director of special studies at BGC Ulises Beltrán y Asociados and an expert in local elections in Mexico, discusses the results of the June 2022 local elections in Mexico and their significance for the López Obrador administration and the president’s party. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States and…

1
136 - Including Signed Languages in NLP, with Kayo Yin and Malihe Alikhani 1:02:15

3y ago1:02:15

1:02:15

In this episode, we talk with Kayo Yin, an incoming PhD at Berkeley, and Malihe Alikhani, an assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, about opportunities for the NLP community to contribute to Sign Language Processing (SLP). We talked about history and misconceptions about sign languages, high-level similarities and differences between …

1
Episode 68: The Dream of a Binational Park (Guest: Francisco Cantú, writer, translator, and author) 32:48

3y ago32:48

32:48

Francisco Cantú, author of The Line Becomes a River, discusses his recent article for Audubon Magazine where he wrote about a grand dream for an international park encompassing Big Bend on the U.S side and Santa Elena and Maderas del Carmen on the Mexican side. Cantú talks about what he learned during his visit about the different approaches of the…

1
Episode 67: Mexico's National Guard and Public Safety (Guest: Richard Kilroy) 21:52

3y ago21:52

21:52

Richard J. Kilroy, nonresident scholar at the Center for the United States and Mexico and associate professor of politics at Coastal Carolina University, discusses the role of Mexico’s National Guard in President López Obrador’s public safety strategy. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico visit our web…

1
Episode 66: The Dangers of Being a Journalist in Mexico (Guest: Peniley Ramírez) 29:38

3y ago29:38

29:38

Peniley Ramírez, investigative journalist and columnist for the newspaper Reforma, talks about the dangers of being a journalist in Mexico, the mechanisms in place to protect journalists, and the relationship between Lopez Obrador and the media. For more information on the Baker Institute Center for the United States and Mexico visit our website, a…

Podcasts Worth a Listen

Allen Institute For Artificial Intelligence Podcasts

Podcasts Worth a Listen

1
Judy Ley Allen México Centered

Rice University’s Baker Institute for Public Policy

1
NLP Highlights

Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence

1
86: Trump’s Mass Deportation Policy and the US Labor Market (Guest: Chloe East) 30:16

1
85: Mexico’s Artificial Intelligence Future Pt. 2 (Guests: Laura Ripani & Alejandro Dabdoub) 18:32

1
84: How Will Trump’s Tariffs Impact American Industry and Consumers? (Guests: John Diamond, Steven Lewis & Ken Medlock) 41:15

1
83: Mexico’s Artificial Intelligence Future Pt. 1 (Guests: Claudia del Pozo & Alejandro Dabdoub) 22:02

1
82: Mexico's Budget Proposal for 2025 (Guest: Mariana Campos) 36:19

1
Episode 81 - Deportations, Tariffs, Fentanyl: What's next for the US MX Relation (Guest: The Honorable Christopher Landau) 24:14

1
Episode 80 - AI and the Binantional Relation (Guests: Chris Bronk and Alejandro Dabdoub) 24:36

1
Episode 79 - Mexico's Judicial Reform (Guests: Javier Martin Reyes and David Gantz) 37:07

1
Episode 78: The USMCA Review and Other Trade Challenges (Guest: C.J. Mahoney) 23:16

1
Episode 77: Claudia Sheinbaum and AMLO’s Looming Shadow (Guest: Tony Payan) 30:42

1
Episode 76: Voter Attitudes in Mexico and the US (Guest: Carlos Moreno Jaimes) 19:56

1
Episode 75: Mexico's Elections: The Results (Guest: Lorena Becerra) 20:16

1
Episode 74: Mexico's Post-Presidential Election Scenarios (Guest: Javier Martin Reyes) 25:22

1
Episode 73: Mexico's Presidential Elections, the Candidates, Continuity and the Binational Relation (Guest: Carlos Bravo Regidor) 22:18

1
Episode 72: The 2024 Presidential Elections in Mexico (Guests: Tony Payan, Ivan Rodriguez Sanchez; Edward M. Emmett) 23:24

1
Are LLMs safe? 42:15

1
"Imaginative AI" with Mohamed Elhoseiny 23:19

1
142 - Science Of Science, with Kyle Lo 48:57

1
141 - Building an open source LM, with Iz Beltagy and Dirk Groeneveld 29:36

1
140 - Generative AI and Copyright, with Chris Callison-Burch 51:28

1
139 - Coherent Long Story Generation, with Kevin Yang 45:18

1
138 - Compositional Generalization in Neural Networks, with Najoung Kim 48:22

1
137 - Nearest Neighbor Language Modeling and Machine Translation, with Urvashi Khandelwal 35:56

1
Episode 71: Hosting Mexico Centered (Guests: Tony Payan and Enrique Quezada) 33:25

1
Episode 70: Trans-border Collaboration Across the Rio Grande (Guests: Bob Krumenaker, superintendent of Big Bend National Park, and Javier Ochoa, subdirector of the protected areas Maderas del Carmen and ... 41:44

1
Episode 69: The Significance of Mexico's 2022 Local Elections (Guest: Alejandro Cruz, director of special studies at BGC Ulises Beltrán y Asociados) 33:35

1
136 - Including Signed Languages in NLP, with Kayo Yin and Malihe Alikhani 1:02:15

1
Episode 68: The Dream of a Binational Park (Guest: Francisco Cantú, writer, translator, and author) 32:48

1
Episode 67: Mexico's National Guard and Public Safety (Guest: Richard Kilroy) 21:52

1
Episode 66: The Dangers of Being a Journalist in Mexico (Guest: Peniley Ramírez) 29:38