What happens when a humanitarian, multilingual polymath city council campaigns on AI optimism... and it becomes an unexpected point of contention for constituents?

On this episode of Zoomed In, host Alexis sits down with Yakov Kronrod: linguist, organizer, mathematician, and AI expert. Born in the Soviet Union and driven by deep humanitarian values, Kronrod offers a uniquely humanist perspective on our most pressing technological evolution.

We explore why this issue created such friction, and he demystifies the misconceptions that fuel public skepticism. Moving beyond theory, we grapple with urgent questions: What does it mean when AI seeps into the fabric of our daily lives? How will we interact with it when it becomes a physical contributor in our homes? And perhaps most intriguingly, how does AI perceive its own role as a "useful tool" to humanity?

Join us for a profound discussion that reframes the AI debate from one of fear to one of informed, intentional stewardship. It's about the world we are actively building, and the human values we must program into its foundation.

Yakov Kronrod is a cognitive scientist, linguist, and community organizer (and erstwhile City Council candidate) who has also been a leader in the Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing space for over 10 years at places such as Amazon and Spotify. He recently left tech and is focused on advocating for safe AI practices and helping find ways to utilize AI for public good. He works remotely from his little plot of land in Florence, Ma, where he can often be found digging, building rock walls and patios, riding his motorcycle, or writing poetry late at night on the front porch of his bright orange and blue house on Rt. 66.