by Andrew Maynard | Aug 9, 2026 | Blog
If you’re interesed in exploring the work we’re doing in the ASU Future of Being Human initiative — including our vision, the ideas that are driving what we do, the scholarship it draws on, and more, we now have an extensive online knowledge based that is...
by Andrew Maynard | Aug 4, 2026 | Blog
What started as a test of a frontier agentic AI model became a browser-based video game that catalyzes learning through play As anyone who is following my articles on the Future of Being Human Substack will know, I’m spending a considerable amount of time...
by Andrew Maynard | May 15, 2026 | Blog
It’s surprisingly hard to find candid and comprehensive guides to what doing a PhD entails. So I created one. I’ve mentored and chaired PhD students for over 15 years. And over that time I’ve encountered so many different questions about the process,...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
In 2004, I was standing in a lab at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, measuring what happened when you opened a packet of carbon nanotubes. The question was deceptively simple: do these materials become airborne in ways that could harm people?...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
In July 2016, four years into running my Risk Bites YouTube channel, I drew some stick figures on a whiteboard in my office at Arizona State University, pointed a camera at them, and recorded a video explaining what nanotechnology is. It was, by any professional...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
In 2006, I sat in a Congressional hearing room and testified about nanotechnology safety for the first time. The questions from lawmakers were remarkably similar to the ones I hear about AI today: Is this technology dangerous? Are the people developing it acting...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
On the flight back from the book launch in Portugal in late 2025, I found myself unable to stop thinking about the size of a book. Not its length — its physical dimensions. During finalization, Jeff Abbott and I had printed mockups in different sizes, and there...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
In 2020, I published a book about the future. Not about AI specifically — about our relationship with the future itself. Sixty short essays tracing a thread from the Big Bang through evolution, intelligence, creativity, innovation, hubris, and responsibility. I...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
In the fall of 2023, I asked my undergraduate students at Arizona State University what they thought about ChatGPT. I expected widespread adoption. What I got was closer to a collective shrug. Only about a third of them used it regularly. One student put it plainly:...
by Andrew Maynard | Apr 12, 2026 | Blog
At a conference in Berlin in late 2025, I asked the audience a question that was meant to be a little playful, and to provoke discussion rather than make a definitive point: Is AI a cognitive Trojan Horse? The responses were polite, curious, a little uncertain. But...
