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.
https://braininspired.co/series/brain-inspired/
BI 181 Max Bennett: A Brief History of Intelligence
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By day, Max Bennett is an entrepreneur. He has cofounded and CEO'd multiple AI and technology companies. By many other countless hours, he has studied brain related sciences. Those long hours of research have payed off in the form of this book, A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains.
Three lines of research formed the basis for how Max synthesized knowledge into the ideas in his current book: findings from comparative psychology (comparing brains and minds of different species), evolutionary neuroscience (how brains have evolved), and artificial intelligence, especially the algorithms developed to carry out functions. We go through I think all five of the breakthroughs in some capacity. A recurring theme is that each breakthrough may explain multiple new abilities. For example, the evolution of the neocortex may have endowed early mammals with the ability to simulate or imagine what isn't immediately present, and this ability might further explain mammals' capacity to engage in vicarious trial and error (imagining possible actions before trying them out), the capacity to engage in counterfactual learning (what would have happened if things went differently than they did), and the capacity for episodic memory and imagination.
The book is filled with unifying accounts like that, and it makes for a great read. Strap in, because Max gives a sort of masterclass about many of the ideas in his book.
- Twitter:
- @maxsbennett
- Book:
- A Brief History of Intelligence: Evolution, AI, and the Five Breakthroughs That Made Our Brains.
0:00 - Intro 5:26 - Why evolution is important 7:22 - Maclean's triune brain 14:59 - Breakthrough 1: Steering 29:06 - Fish intelligence 40:38 - Breakthrough 3: Mentalizing 52:44 - How could we improve the human brain? 1:00:44 - What is intelligence? 1:13:50 - Breakthrough 5: Speaking