Demis Hassabis: DeepMind - AI, Superintelligence & the Future of Humanity (Lex Fridman Podcast #299)

By Wayne Brown

Here are some sensible ideas about AI from Demis Hassabis, a world-renowned expert. Demis created a program (Deep Mind) that became Go champion. In 1969, we were confident that such a thing would be impossible. 

Lex Fridman is one of my favorite nerds. He is deeply knowledgeable himself and always asks good questions. He is a living example of the value of good questions over clever "answers". The interview shows dozens of "cutting age" research projects where AI has become part of virtually everything.

Notes on the discussion:

  • The Turing Test was more of a thought experiment than a formal test;
  • Language ability will be the key to assessing cognitive ability. Our understanding of how language works has grown by leaps and bounds over the last 50 years;
  • Why GPU's are key ... matrix multiplication (key application in my 1969 thesis);
  • Why games became a critical AI research tool;
  • Impressed by how well the human does against the champion computer program - the fact that the person can be so good at chess AND everything else;
  • Hints at the mind of a chess master;
  • "Extrapolation" - original moves;
  • Could an AI design a game? True invention;
  • Is information the fundamental way to describe the universe? DH seems a bit vague on what the fundamentals actually are;
  • Is consciousness more than a computation (Roger Penrose)? DH has Ph.D. in neuroscience;
  • Current AI may be wriggling free of the Turing model. (For example, by embodying chaotic systems);
  • Good explanation of the Protein Folding Problem. Lex has a cool take on the issue of how proteins "figure out" how to be useful;
  • What are other "Alpha X" projects?
  • AI is an "engineering" science. What you are building doesn't exist in Nature;
  • The big wave of AI goes back to 2010!!
  • Scale is necessary but not sufficient for AGI;
  • "Deep Mind" employs philosophers;
  • "Virtual Cell" in 10 years;
  • "In Silico" is a lovely new word for experimenting with a computational model;
  • Alpha Fold is a "gateway drug" to biology;
  • Will an AI win a Nobel prize in this century?
  • Galileo's telescope didn't do the discovery ...
  • Alpha X projects discover rules rather than use them. This seems to be a huge step toward "creativity";
  • What would it be like to "know" everything in Wikipedia?;
  • Possibly "solve" the fusion problem with AI? They were actually able to fiddle with a real test reactor and a plasma simulator! Maybe figure out plasma control like GO ...
  • How about the step from quantum mechanics (Shroedinger) to chemistry? Simulating materials!
  • The more we know, the more we discover what we don't know. Such as, do we really know what "time" is?
  • "Before" Alpha Fold - How did life originate?
  • DH comes to the same suspicion I have - we are alone in the Universe - but I can't agree with his logic, which seems confined to one galaxy out of zillions. Great idea about the "great filters" that we wiggled past to become what we are, such 
  • Notes that you can have consciousness without intelligence and vice versa;
  • Notes analogy between the specialization of animals to the specialization of early AI;
  • Comments on LamBDA issue. Sees it as a projection of how our minds work - seeing agency, especially in language, which is such an important medium. Breaks things down in a useful way. Importance of the "substrate" argument since we run on the same substrate as other living things, leading to our analogies. Note that Deepmind is part of Google, the same ecosystem that gave us LamBDA. DH comes across as a much deeper thinker than the LamBDA guy;
  • Puts his finger on the problem that many people will believe in an AI that "fakes it before it makes it";
  • Relevance of "bad actors" in existing media. Deeper question about whether an AI is "good or bad" in itself. Hard to fix. Hard to get the snakes back in the bag;
  • WONDERFUL question about power corrupts. How to stay grounded.
  • SF fan!
  • Meet as many people as possible, then a big block of thinking and planning. Likes hard copy - sticks in the brain better ;
  • Reads Spinoza and Kant; Flow; Good to find open-ended time for flow; context switching.
  • He is here to "understand" - a practical goal. What is going on here? He feels like he's inside a huge puzzle. 
  • Very similar to Gates;
  • Would ask: What is the true nature of reality?

MOVE TO ANOTHER TOPIC ...
This is a talk by John Searle, one of the "grey beards" in the AI field.

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