What is this
Skynet Today is a site dedicated to providing accessible and informed coverage of the latest AI news and trends. We offer a platform for people with expertise in AI to share their knowledge and perspectives with a broader audience. Regardless of how much you understand the inner workings of computers and today’s AI algorithms, as long as you are interested in being informed about the state of AI – without the hype and misinformation – our articles are meant for you.
Why are you doing this
Our core beliefs are that:
- There exist many real and important dangers as well as prospects for present day AI, and it is important to distinguish between fact and fiction.
- Therefore, AI researchers and experts have a responsibility to promote understanding of their field within the general public with accessible writing.
- There are not sufficient efforts by AI researchers and experts to do this sort of writing, and having a platform such as ours is useful to make this happen more.
Why ‘Skynet Today’
We think it’s a fun name! Part of our mission is to point out the discrepancy between the perception and reality of AI today. Often, minor improvements are covered as if they are a portent of the mythical ‘Skynet’ AI takeover, despite them being nothing of the sort. So, we named ourselves ‘Skynet Today’ to reflect the idea of covering such fears, and of how (un)realistic Skynet really is Today. We admit it’s a slightly unexpected name given our opposition to needless hype around AI, but trust readers to look beyond the name and see our work for what it is.
Who are you
The site is currently co-run by two people:
- Andrey Kurenkov: the site’s creator, lead editor, and occasional contributor of news coverage and editorials. Andrey has BS Computer Science and Electrical Engineering degrees from Georgia Tech, and is currently a graduate student at Stanford where he studies and is doing research in AI. He likes writing blog posts about miscellaneous topics and has written several long-form educational posts about AI.
- Jacky Liang: co-site runner and lead editor, and contributing author of news coverage and editorials. He has a BS degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from UC Berkeley. Currently a PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University’s Robotics Institute, Jacky studies how to make robots more useful and reliable by combining methods in model-based planning and experience-based learning.
We also have several regular contributors:
- Daniel Bashir: a contributing author of news coverage and editorials. A third year undergraduate at Harvey Mudd College majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics. Working in the AMISTAD lab on theoretical machine learning, and serving as Diversity Director on the ASHMC Executive Board. Interests include application of techniques from math, data science, and machine learning.
- Julia Gong: a contributing author of news coverage and editorials. A concurrent undergraduate in Mathematical and Computational Science and Master’s student in Computer Science at Stanford University working in the Stanford MARVL Lab on medical image segmentation. Her research interests include biomedical computer vision, generative models for creative content generation, and machine learning. She moonlights as a pun comic artist for her series “Once a Pun a Time”.
We have been fortunate to have many contributing authors, which you can see on our authors page. We would also like to thank the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute for its support.
How Can I Help
Subscribe! Spread the word! Check out our newsletter! And if you have any ideas for improving the site, definitely let us know. If you want to contribute more actively, see our call for collaborators and submissions or just click on the “Contribute” button below.
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