Turing Award Winner: Early AI, LLM Predictions, Causality | Judea Pearl

Judea Pearl is a Turing Award winner and a pioneer in artificial intelligence and causal reasoning. We talked about how he got into science, his major breakthroughs and his predictions for AI today.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: read.compose.llc
• The Kickstarter page for it: kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose…

Podcast links:

• YouTube: youtu.be/FleTXB1fAcQ
• Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod…
• Transcript: developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-early-ai-…

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at workos.com

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:54) How he got into AI
(11:17) Greatest scientist of all time
(20:15) What people thought of AI in the 80s
(26:23) Entering academia and researching AI
(34:52) The invention of Bayesian networks
(46:28) Pioneering work in causality
(55:38) The causal hierarchy
(59:34) LLMs and predictions
(01:20:12) A restless mind pays
(01:24:36) Advice for his younger self
(01:26:37) Outro

Where to find Judea:

• X/Twitter: twitter.com/yudapearl
• Website: bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html
• Wikipedia: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: developing.dev
• X/Twitter: x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman
• Threads: threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• The Book of Why: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why
• Bayesian networks: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network
• Alpha-beta pruning: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning
• Pearl vortex: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_vortex
• Graphoid: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphoid
• Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(book)
• Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2025: bayes.cs.ucla.edu/COEXISTENCE