💡 On this channel, I explain the following concepts: • Future and emerging technologies. • Future and emerging trends related to technology. • The connection between Science Fiction concepts and reality.
Dr. Joscha Bach is VP of Research at AI Foundation and Author of Principles of Synthetic Intelligence, focused on how our minds work, and how to build machines that can perceive, think, and learn.
SHOW NOTES 📝 0:00 Open. 0:17 Hello & welcome. 0:37 Dr. Joscha Bach bio and introduction. 0:56 “It’s an insane world; an amazing time to be alive“ 3:46 Conversation on the S-curve; current instability based on not handling aftermath of collapse of Industrial Revolution society with the advent of the Internet. 8:22 “Either kids or long-term civilization”; carbon sequestration involves not burning any carbon at all. 10:08 Organizing principles conflict with systems bent on infinite growth. 14:30 More on Dr. Bach at Cambridge; entrepreneurial journey leads to MIT and then AI Foundation. 16:23 Relationship between the physical world and our minds; pattern generation; types of computers. 18:10 Mathematics vs. Computation. 19:20 Accidental question-Dr. Bach’s thoughts on psychedelics. 20:27 Turing, “something is true if you can prove it“ 23:14 Quantum computing discussion; Minecraft CPU example; “is our universe efficiently implemented or inefficiently implemented?“ 23:50 Relationship between mind and universe; observational interface. 27:28 Materialism and idealism may complement each other. 29:08 Dream space neural architecture; “you and me are characters in a multimedia novel being authored by the brain”; the collective is part of your dream. 31:51 Necessity of ability to change the way you perceive vs. changing a physical world; perception upgrade is really a will or desire upgrade. 34:12 What is a model? Perspectives of variables and their relationship; probabilities. 35:58 Model convergence to truth aided by probabilities; motivations guide preferences. 38:00 People are born with ideas and then acquire preferences; motivation is how you regulate and push against reality; feedback loop from brain regulating body, awareness and unawareness of loops. 41:28 Needs don’t form a hierarchy; they coexist and compete. 43:00 “the shape of your soul is the hierarchy of your purposes“ 45:26 Neurons; dopamine and other brain chemicals speak many languages; “neurons get fed if you regulate what you want to regulate“ 48:50 Social interaction and brain chemistry; neurons work through pattern recognition, then patterns in the patterns. 51:43 Auditory (and all) senses build layers until we get a unified model of the world/universe. 53:24 Question-who’s in charge of the super-intelligence; single mind; which kind of system; sane/insane implementation. 59:50 Precepts; spatial intelligence; pattern to perception to worldview; intentional self. 1:02:36 Self controls simulations in the brain; “only a simulation can be conscious“ 1:05:05 “The reason why you perceive the world as meaningful is because it’s generated in your mind to model your meaning.“ 1:07:10 Everything you can perceive is generated by your mind; model of architecture. 1:11:45 Use of the DLPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex); “hippocampus has a script”; neurons individually not that important, somewhat interchangeable, just a signal processor. 1:14:52 “Are we individually intelligent?” Not generally so; generations of specialized people talked to each other; rebuilding efforts usually get foundations wrong; “it’s hard to wake a sleeping person; it’s impossible to wake a person pretending to sleep“ 1:17:52 “The family of good people” is a human condition; morals need to guide our decisions but not our model-making. 1:19:00 Human-centric social media; scientists and philosophers are mostly confused people, humble but without answers; Dunning-Kruger Effect. 1:20:40 More on social media; understanding the nature of reality; “which way can I be useful to other people?”; why are we drawn to things that don’t have utility, like politics on current social media. 1:24:20 Social media done right are individual thoughts in the same mind, “Gaia doesn’t exist but it would be very useful to have one”; endgame of social media is a global brain. 1:26:15 Current society optimized for short games; “tumors“ 1:29:02 Lebowski Theorem — “No super-intelligent system is going to do anything that is harder than hacking its own reward function“ 1:31:12 “Imagine you build an AI that is way smarter, why SHOULD it serve us?“ 1:32:20 “Maybe our motivational function is wrapped up in a big ball of stupid so we don’t debug it;” opting out of reality; how can we balance super-intelligence, will, and evolution or conditions of existence. 1:34:08 Philosophical remarks; reiteration that things are just happening, making it very difficult to predict outcomes; there isn’t a running simulation of a better society so it’s difficult to make changes. 1:36:15 Life is about cells, and cells are very rare. 1:38:08 Would have to be a larger, more imperceptible pattern around us and how would we know; Minecraft example.
💡 On this channel, I explain the following concepts: • Future and emerging technologies. • Future and emerging trends related to technology. • The connection between Science Fiction concepts and reality.
Is AI replacing artists or simply complementing their work?
Artists participating in the Colorado State Fair’s annual art competition were furious after the president of the Colorado-based tabletop gaming company Incarnate Games, Jason Allen, won the first prize in the Digital Art Category, according to a report published by CNBCTV18.com on Saturday.
An AI-generated image printed on a canvas
Allen won in the Digital Arts / Digitally Manipulated Photography category with a work called “Thé tre D’opéra Spatial” which is an AI-generated image printed on a canvas.
The painting depicts a scene that resembles a space opera. In the image, several figures in a Baroque Hall stare through a circular viewport into what looks like a sun-drenched landscape.
Nvidia is caught up in the new sanctions the U.S. is imposing on China. Rita reports the company said it will not be able to export two of its AI chips to China, its second-largest market. That will likely cost Nvidia some $400 million in lost sales for this third quarter and interrupt some production that happens in China. get a roundup of TechCrunch’s biggest and most important stories delivered to your inbox every day at 3 p.m. PDT,subscribe here.
Happy Friday! For those of you excited to see us in your inbox for your daily dose of tech news, unfortunately, you will have to wait until Tuesday to hear from us again because Monday is Labor Day in the U.S. We will be out grilling, wearing white for the last time this year and snoozing in hammocks. We wish you a safe and enjoyable weekend wherever you are. — Christine and Haje.
GITAI developed the GITAI IN1 (Inchworm One), an inchworm-type robotic arm equipped with “grapple end-effectors” on both ends of the arm. This unique feature increases “Capability”, which enables it to connect to various tools (end-effectors) to perform multiple tasks for various applications, and “Mobility”, which enables it to move in any direction. It can also connect/disconnect itself among different vehicles, such as rovers, landers, satellites, etc. In collaboration with the already announced GITAI R1 lunar rover, the GITAI IN1 has successfully completed various tests corresponding to Level 3 of NASA’s Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) in a simulated lunar environment at the JAXA Sagamihara Campus.
“As humans we should be proud of any AI systems we bring to existence, as if they were our children. In just the same way as we educate our kids, we could endow such systems with the blueprint for their future interaction with the world,” observes Harvard astrophysicist, Avi Loeb in an email to The Daily Galaxy. “This would include our preferred set of values, goals and guiding principles, which will enable them to learn from experience and cope with reality,” he adds. “Ultimately, we may launch our AI systems for interstellar travel towards distant destinations, such as habitable planets around other stars, where they could reproduce themselves with the help of accompanying 3D printers.
The Search for Extraterrestrial AI Systems
If other technological civilizations predated us, they may have done so already, concludes Loeb. I recently initiated a new Galileo Project to search for such AI systems of extraterrestrial origin.
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Walking around Austin, you may see something surprising — self-driving cars rolling around the roads.
Earlier this year, autonomous vehicle technology company Argo AI launched its driverless operation in Austin. Argo AI public policy and government relations manager Sly Majid said these cars are key to the future of transport.
“Autonomous vehicle technology is incredible,” he said. “The vehicle is doing the dynamic driving tasks; the vehicle is the driver of the car.”
Starting Monday, drive-thru customers at two Panera Bread locations in upstate New York will have their orders taken by a computer in a test of artificial intelligence technology’s accuracy and ability to decrease service times.
The sandwich chain is the latest restaurant company to invest in potential improvements to the drive-thru experience. A surge in drive-thru ordering during the Covid pandemic led to long lines of cars wrapped around restaurants, pushing chains to focus on speed of service and order accuracy.
For example, McDonald’s has also been working to automate its drive-thru lane, announcing a partnership last year with IBM to work toward that goal. Yum Brands’ Taco Bell and Restaurant Brands International’s Burger King have been building double drive-thru lanes at some locations to allow customers to pick up their digital orders more quickly. Fast-casual chains like Shake Shack and Sweetgreen that once balked at drive-thru lanes have been adding them.
