Neuroscience and artificial intelligence work better together. Brain inspired is a celebration and exploration of the ideas driving our progress to understand intelligence. I interview experts about their work at the interface of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and more: the symbiosis of these overlapping fields, how they inform each other, where they differ, what the past brought us, and what the future brings. Topics include computational neuroscience, supervised machine learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, decision-making science, AI agents, backpropagation, credit assignment, neuroengineering, neuromorphics, emergence, philosophy of mind, consciousness, general AI, spiking neural networks, data science, and a lot more. The podcast is not produced for a general audience. Instead, it aims to educate, challenge, inspire, and hopefully entertain those interested in learning more about neuroscience and AI.
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Neuroscience and artificial intelligence work better together. Brain inspired is a celebration and exploration of the ideas driving our progress to understand intelligence. I interview experts about their work at the interface of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and more: the symbiosis of these overlapping fields, how they inform each other, where they differ, what the past brought us, and what the future brings. Topics include computational neuroscience, supervised machine learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, decision-making science, AI agents, backpropagation, credit assignment, neuroengineering, neuromorphics, emergence, philosophy of mind, consciousness, general AI, spiking neural networks, data science, and a lot more. The podcast is not produced for a general audience. Instead, it aims to educate, challenge, inspire, and hopefully entertain those interested in learning more about neuroscience and AI.
BI 217 Jennifer Prendki: Consciousness, Life, AI, and Quantum Physics
Brain Inspired
1 hour 48 minutes 53 seconds
3 weeks ago
BI 217 Jennifer Prendki: Consciousness, Life, AI, and Quantum Physics
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Do AI engineers need to emulate some processes and features found only in living organisms at the moment, like how brains are inextricably integrated with bodies? Is consciousness necessary for AI entities if we want them to play nice with us? Is quantum physics part of that story, or a key part, or the key part? Jennifer Prendki believes if we continue to scale AI, it will get us more of the same of what we have today, and that we should look to biology, life, and possibly consciousness to enhance AI. Jennifer is a former particle physicist turned entrepreneur and AI expert, focusing on curating the right kinds and forms of data to train AI, and in that vein she led those efforts at Deepmind on the foundation models ubiquitous in our lives now.
I was curious why someone with that background would come to the conclusion that AI needs inspiration from life, biology, and consciousness to move forward gracefully, and that it would be useful to better understand those processes in ourselves before trying to build what some people call AGI, whatever that is. Her perspective is a rarity among her cohorts, which we also discuss. And get this: she's interested in these topics because she cares about what happens to the planet and to us as a species. Perhaps also a rarity among those charging ahead to dominate profits and win the race
Jennifer's website: Quantum of Data.
The blog posts we discuss:
The Myth of Emergence
Embodiment & Sentience: Why the Body still Matters
The Architecture of Synthetic Consciousness
On Time and Consciousness
Superalignment and the Question of AI Personhood.
Read the transcript.
0:00 - Intro
3:25 - Jennifer's background
13:10 - Consciousness
16:38 - Life and consciousness
23:16 - Superalignment
40:11 - Quantum
1:04:45 - Wetware and biological mimicry
1:15:03 - Neural interfaces
1:16:48 - AI ethics
1:2:35 - AI models are not models
1:27:13 - What scaling will get us
1:39:53 - Current roadblocks
1:43:19 - Philosophy
Brain Inspired
Neuroscience and artificial intelligence work better together. Brain inspired is a celebration and exploration of the ideas driving our progress to understand intelligence. I interview experts about their work at the interface of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and more: the symbiosis of these overlapping fields, how they inform each other, where they differ, what the past brought us, and what the future brings. Topics include computational neuroscience, supervised machine learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, decision-making science, AI agents, backpropagation, credit assignment, neuroengineering, neuromorphics, emergence, philosophy of mind, consciousness, general AI, spiking neural networks, data science, and a lot more. The podcast is not produced for a general audience. Instead, it aims to educate, challenge, inspire, and hopefully entertain those interested in learning more about neuroscience and AI.
