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The most widely used machine learning algorithms were designed by humans and thus are hindered by our cognitive biases and limitations. Can we also construct meta-learning algorithms that can learn better learning algorithms so that our self-improving AIs have no limits other than those inherited from computability and physics? This question has been a main driver of my research since I wrote a thesis on it in 1987. In the past decade, it has become a driver of many other people’s research as well. Here I summarize our work starting in 1994 on meta-reinforcement learning with self-modifying policies in a single lifelong trial, and — since 2003 — mathematically optimal meta-learning through the self-referential Gödel Machine. This talk was previously presented at meta-learning workshops at ICML 2020 and NeurIPS 2021. Many additional publications on meta-learning can be found at https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/metalearning.html.

Jürgen Schmidhuber.
Director, AI Initiative, KAUST
Scientific Director of the Swiss AI Lab IDSIA
Co-Founder & Chief Scientist, NNAISENSE
http://www.idsia.ch/~juergen/blog.html.

This video discusses what it would mean to live forever or to have a greatly expanded lifespan. Would we inevitably grow bored with existence? Why do we even want to live longer?

We also discuss the philosophy of the Ship of Theseus as it applies to mind upload or body transfer. If you transfer your mind to a new body, are you still the same person? We conclude that the answer is yes if and only if you experience no discontinuities in consciousness.

Finally, we discuss a few different ways that new bodies might be formed as technology advances. Digital avatars and robotic bodies are just a few of the possibilities.

Can You Upload Your Mind & Live Forever?

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In 1980, Hamish Robertson was a tenured professor at Michigan State. He’d been there since his postdoc in 1971, and he was content. “I want to stress how valued and happy I felt there,” he says. “It was, and still is, an outstanding place.”

But he and his friend and colleague, Tom Bowles, had begun to hatch an idea that would take him far from MSU. They were devising a new experiment to measure the mass of the elusive and perplexingly light neutrino.

Neutrinos are the only fundamental particles whose mass we still don’t know. As their name implies, neutrinos are very, very small. But they outnumber the other fundamental particles by a factor of 10 billion.

An explanation of the Bundle Theory of Self, including the theories offered by Derek Parfit, and David Hume, and how these fit into the larger picture of personal identity, and the persistence problem. Special thanks to João Costa Neto for funding and supporting this video!

Sponsors: João Costa Neto, Dakota Jones, Joe Felix, Prince Otchere, Mike Samuel, Daniel Helland, Dennis Sexton, Yu Saburi, Mauricino Andrade, Will Roberts and √2. Thanks for your support!

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A first-of-its-kind football helmet will allow coaches at Gallaudet University, the school for deaf and hard of hearing students in Washington, D.C., to transmit plays to their quarterback via an augmented reality screen.

Players on Gallaudet’s football team, which competes in NCAA’s Division III, have long faced challenges against teams with hearing athletes, such as an inability to hear referees’ whistles that signal the end of a play.


The helmet, developed by AT&T and Gallaudet University, will debut at the school’s Saturday game. When a coach chooses a play on a tablet, it will then display on a small lens on the player’s helmet.

Lightweight materials with super strength and toughness are highly sought after. Spider silk, a sustainable material, meets these requirements but faces challenges in commercialization due to scientific understanding of its spinning mechanism, technical complexities in the process, and engineering hurdles in low-cost mass production. Here, drawing inspiration from nylon and Kevlar, we propose a theory on the nature of toughness and strength, unveiling the basic structure of silk fibers. Using these theories, we successfully produce the first “localized” full-length spider silk fiber via transgenic silkworms, showcasing high tensile strength (1,299 MPa) and exceptional toughness (319 MJ/m3). This breakthrough overcomes scientific, technical, and engineering obstacles, paving the way for spider silk’s commercialization as a sustainable substitute for synthetic fibers. Moreover, our theories provide essential guidance for developing super materials.


Developing sustainable materials with high strength and ultra-toughness is vital for ecological civilization. Using transgenic silkworms, we have successfully produced the first full-length spider silk, overcoming the scientific challenge of understanding the essence of toughness and strength. The resulting bionic spider silk exhibits high strength (1,299 MPa) and ultra-toughness (319 MJ/m3), offering a potentially sustainable substitute for synthetic commercial fibers. This breakthrough provides valuable insights for the development of super materials, including those for a space elevator, driving the advancement of civilization.