#78 – Ann Druyan: Cosmos, Carl Sagan, Voyager, and the Beauty of Science

Robert Langer is a professor at MIT and one of the most cited researchers in history, specializing in biotechnology fields of drug delivery systems and tissue engineering. He has bridged theory and practice by being a key member and driving force in launching many successful biotech companies out of MIT. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex - Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: - Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe - Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 03:07 - Magic and science 05:34 - Memorable rejection 08:35 - How to come up with big ideas in science 13:27 - How to make a new drug 22:38 - Drug delivery 28:22 - Tissue engineering 35:22 - Beautiful idea in bioengineering 38:16 - Patenting process 42:21 - What does it take to build a successful startup? 46:18 - Mentoring students 50:54 - Funding 58:08 - Cookies 59:41 - What are you most proud of?

30 Kesä 20201h 2min

David Patterson is a Turing award winner and professor of computer science at Berkeley. He is known for pioneering contributions to RISC processor architecture used by 99% of new chips today and for co-creating RAID storage. The impact that these two lines of research and development have had on our world is immeasurable. He is also one of the great educators of computer science in the world. His book with John Hennessy "Computer Architecture: A Quantitative Approach" is how I first learned about and was humbled by the inner workings of machines at the lowest level. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - Jordan Harbinger Show: https://jordanharbinger.com/lex/ - Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: - Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe - Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 03:28 - How have computers changed? 04:22 - What's inside a computer? 10:02 - Layers of abstraction 13:05 - RISC vs CISC computer architectures 28:18 - Designing a good instruction set is an art 31:46 - Measures of performance 36:02 - RISC instruction set 39:39 - RISC-V open standard instruction set architecture 51:12 - Why do ARM implementations vary? 52:57 - Simple is beautiful in instruction set design 58:09 - How machine learning changed computers 1:08:18 - Machine learning benchmarks 1:16:30 - Quantum computing 1:19:41 - Moore's law 1:28:22 - RAID data storage 1:36:53 - Teaching 1:40:59 - Wrestling 1:45:26 - Meaning of life

27 Kesä 20201h 50min

Ben Goertzel is one of the most interesting minds in the artificial intelligence community. He is the founder of SingularityNET, designer of OpenCog AI framework, formerly a director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created the Sophia Robot. He has been a central figure in the AGI community for many years, including in the Conference on Artificial General Intelligence. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - Jordan Harbinger Show: https://jordanharbinger.com/lex/ - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 03:20 - Books that inspired you 06:38 - Are there intelligent beings all around us? 13:13 - Dostoevsky 15:56 - Russian roots 20:19 - When did you fall in love with AI? 31:30 - Are humans good or evil? 42:04 - Colonizing mars 46:53 - Origin of the term AGI 55:56 - AGI community 1:12:36 - How to build AGI? 1:36:47 - OpenCog 2:25:32 - SingularityNET 2:49:33 - Sophia 3:16:02 - Coronavirus 3:24:14 - Decentralized mechanisms of power 3:40:16 - Life and death 3:42:44 - Would you live forever? 3:50:26 - Meaning of life 3:58:03 - Hat 3:58:46 - Question for AGI

22 Kesä 20204h 9min

Steven Pressfield is a historian and author of War of Art, a book that had a big impact on my life and the life of millions of whose passion is to create in art, science, business, sport, and everywhere else. I highly recommend it and others of his books on this topic, including Turning Pro, Do the Work, Nobody Wants to Read Your Shit, and the Warrior Ethos. Also his books Gates of Fire about the Spartans and the battle at Thermopylae, The Lion's Gate, Tides of War, and others are some of the best historical fiction novels ever written. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - Jordan Harbinger Show: https://jordanharbinger.com/lex/ - Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: - Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe - Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 05:00 - Nature of war 11:43 - The struggle within 17:11 - Love and hate in a time of war 25:17 - Future of warfare 28:31 - Technology in war 30:10 - What it takes to kill a person 32:22 - Mortality 37:30 - The muse 46:09 - Editing 52:19 - Resistance 1:10:41 - Loneliness 1:12:24 - Is a warrior born or trained? 1:13:53 - Hard work and health 1:18:41 - Daily ritual

20 Kesä 20201h 27min

Joscha Bach is the VP of Research at the AI Foundation, previously doing research at MIT and Harvard. Joscha work explores the workings of the human mind, intelligence, consciousness, life on Earth, and the possibly-simulated fabric of our universe. Support this podcast by supporting these sponsors: - ExpressVPN at https://www.expressvpn.com/lexpod - Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: - Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe - Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 03:14 - Reverse engineering Joscha Bach 10:38 - Nature of truth 18:47 - Original thinking 23:14 - Sentience vs intelligence 31:45 - Mind vs Reality 46:51 - Hard problem of consciousness 51:09 - Connection between the mind and the universe 56:29 - What is consciousness 1:02:32 - Language and concepts 1:09:02 - Meta-learning 1:16:35 - Spirit 1:18:10 - Our civilization may not exist for long 1:37:48 - Twitter and social media 1:44:52 - What systems of government might work well? 1:47:12 - The way out of self-destruction with AI 1:55:18 - AI simulating humans to understand its own nature 2:04:32 - Reinforcement learning 2:09:12 - Commonsense reasoning 2:15:47 - Would AGI need to have a body? 2:22:34 - Neuralink 2:27:01 - Reasoning at the scale of neurons and societies 2:37:16 - Role of emotion 2:48:03 - Happiness is a cookie that your brain bakes for itself

13 Kesä 20203h

Karl Friston is one of the greatest neuroscientists in history, cited over 245,000 times, known for many influential ideas in brain imaging, neuroscience, and theoretical neurobiology, including the fascinating idea of the free-energy principle for action and perception. Support this podcast by signing up with these sponsors: – Cash App – use code "LexPodcast" and download: – Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe – Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w EPISODE LINKS: Karl's Website: https://www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/~karl/ Karl's Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_J._Friston This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 01:50 - How much of the human brain do we understand? 05:53 - Most beautiful characteristic of the human brain 10:43 - Brain imaging 20:38 - Deep structure 21:23 - History of brain imaging 32:31 - Neuralink and brain-computer interfaces 43:05 - Free energy principle 1:24:29 - Meaning of life

28 Touko 20201h 29min

Sertac Karaman is a professor at MIT, co-founder of the autonomous vehicle company Optimus Ride, and is one of top roboticists in the world, including robots that drive and robots that fly. Support this podcast by signing up with these sponsors: – Cash App – use code “LexPodcast” and download: – Cash App (App Store): https://apple.co/2sPrUHe – Cash App (Google Play): https://bit.ly/2MlvP5w EPISODE LINKS: Sertac's Website: http://sertac.scripts.mit.edu/web/ Sertac's Twitter: https://twitter.com/sertackaraman Optimus Ride: https://www.optimusride.com/ This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 01:44 - Autonomous flying vs autonomous driving 06:37 - Flying cars 10:27 - Role of simulation in robotics 17:35 - Game theory and robotics 24:30 - Autonomous vehicle company strategies 29:46 - Optimus Ride 47:08 - Waymo, Tesla, Optimus Ride timelines 53:22 - Achieving the impossible 53:50 - Iterative learning 58:39 - Is Lidar is a crutch? 1:03:21 - Fast autonomous flight 1:18:06 - Most beautiful idea in robotics

20 Touko 20201h 23min

Stephen Schwarzman is the CEO and Co-Founder of Blackstone, one of the world's leading investment firms with over 530 billion dollars of assets under management. He is one of the most successful business leaders in history, all from humble beginnings back in Philly. I recommend his recent book called What It Takes that tells stories and lessons from this personal journey. Support this podcast by signing up with these sponsors: - ExpressVPN at https://www.expressvpn.com/lexpod - MasterClass: https://masterclass.com/lex EPISODE LINKS: What It Takes (book): https://amzn.to/2WX9cZu This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon. Here's the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time. OUTLINE: 00:00 - Introduction 04:17 - Going big in business 07:34 - How to recognize an opportunity 16:00 - Solving problems that people have 25:26 - Philanthropy 32:51 - Hope for the new College of Computing at MIT 37:32 - Unintended consequences of technological innovation 42:24 - Education systems in China and United States 50:22 - American AI Initiative 59:53 - Starting a business is a rough ride 1:04:26 - Love and family

15 Touko 20201h 10min