Joanna Stern is an Emmy Award-winning technology journalist and NBC/CNBC contributor who has spent the better part of two decades covering gadgets and apps, and helping people make smarter tech decisions. Since 2013, she’s been a personal technology columnist at The Wall Street Journal where her explanatory reporting — in both writing and video — has garnered numerous awards. Stern opens the Chautauqua Lecture Series week on “The AI Revolution” with an up-to-the-minute primer on how artificial intelligence has developed ever-more-rapidly, and considers where we may be headed as these remarkable and potentially dangerous technologies continue to evolve.

At The Wall Street Journal, Stern’s reporting on AI has included putting fast-food drive-thrus “staffed” by chatbots to the test and examining popular AI photo apps that distort reality. In April 2023, she penned a column about creating an AI version — or deepfake — of herself, highlighting the technology’s double-edged potential. Stern began her technology writing career at Laptop Magazine and then spent three years at Engadget. In 2011, she and several colleagues left Engadget to create the technology news website that would eventually come to be known as The Verge. Prior to joining The Wall Street Journal, Stern was the technology editor at ABC News.

In 2016, Stern received a Gerald Loeb Award for her Wall Street Journal videos, and a second Gerald Loeb Award in 2022 for a series about TikTok. Her documentary about death and technology, “E-Ternal: A Tech Quest to Live Forever,” won the 2021 Emmy in the category of outstanding science, technology or environmental coverage. Stern is a graduate of Union College.

Conrad Tucker is an Arthur Hamerschlag Career Development Professor of Mechanical Engineering and holds courtesy faculty appointments in machine learning, robotics, and biomedical engineering, and CyLab security and privacy at Carnegie Mellon University. His research focuses on employing machine learning and artificial intelligence techniques to predictively improve the design and output of engineered systems. He joins the Chautauqua Lecture Series to help us to understand, from an engineer’s perspective, the actual mechanics of AI and the large language models that drive it: how they were constructed, how they work, and what their potential is — both good and bad. He will also provide insight into the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s AI Commission on Competitiveness, Inclusion and Innovation, tracking policymakers’ ability to manage the impact of AI on the American economy and society.

Tucker explores applications of AI in domains including engineering design, healthcare, engineering education, and cybersecurity. He has served as PI/Co-PI on federally/non-federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Army Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research via the NSF Center for eDesign, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. In February 2016, he was invited by National Academy of Engineering President Dan Mote to serve as a member of the advisory committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium.

Tucker received his Ph.D., M.S. (industrial engineering), and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his B.S. in mechanical engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.

This Chautauqua Lecture Series program is presented in partnership with the African American Heritage House Lecture Series.