Category Archives: ai

Michio Kaku: Future of Humans, Aliens, Space Travel & Physics

Michio Kaku is a theoretical physicist, futurist, and professor at the City College of New York. He is the author of many fascinating books on the nature of our reality and the future of our civilization. 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 or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
01:14 – Contact with Aliens in the 21st century
06:36 – Multiverse and Nirvana
09:46 – String Theory
11:07 – Einstein’s God
15:01 – Would aliens hurt us?
17:34 – What would aliens look like?
22:13 – Brain-machine interfaces
27:35 – Existential risk from AI
30:22 – Digital immortality
34:02 – Biological immortality
37:42 – Does mortality give meaning?
43:42 – String theory
47:16 – Universe as a computer and a simulation
53:16 – First human on Mars

David Ferrucci: IBM Watson, Jeopardy & Deep Conversations with AI

David Ferrucci led the team that built Watson, the IBM question-answering system that beat the top humans in the world at the game of Jeopardy. He is also the Founder, CEO, and Chief Scientist of Elemental Cognition, a company working engineer AI systems that understand the world the way people do. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
01:06 – Biological vs computer systems
08:03 – What is intelligence?
31:49 – Knowledge frameworks
52:02 – IBM Watson winning Jeopardy
1:24:21 – Watson vs human difference in approach
1:27:52 – Q&A vs dialogue
1:35:22 – Humor
1:41:33 – Good test of intelligence
1:46:36 – AlphaZero, AlphaStar accomplishments
1:51:29 – Explainability, induction, deduction in medical diagnosis
1:59:34 – Grand challenges
2:04:03 – Consciousness
2:08:26 – Timeline for AGI
2:13:55 – Embodied AI
2:17:07 – Love and companionship
2:18:06 – Concerns about AI
2:21:56 – Discussion with AGI

Gary Marcus: Toward a Hybrid of Deep Learning and Symbolic AI

Gary Marcus is a professor emeritus at NYU, founder of Robust.AI and Geometric Intelligence, the latter is a machine learning company acquired by Uber in 2016. He is the author of several books on natural and artificial intelligence, including his new book Rebooting AI: Building Machines We Can Trust. Gary has been a critical voice highlighting the limits of deep learning and discussing the challenges before the AI community that must be solved in order to achieve artificial general intelligence. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
01:37 – Singularity
05:48 – Physical and psychological knowledge
10:52 – Chess
14:32 – Language vs physical world
17:37 – What does AI look like 100 years from now
21:28 – Flaws of the human mind
25:27 – General intelligence
28:25 – Limits of deep learning
44:41 – Expert systems and symbol manipulation
48:37 – Knowledge representation
52:52 – Increasing compute power
56:27 – How human children learn
57:23 – Innate knowledge and learned knowledge
1:06:43 – Good test of intelligence
1:12:32 – Deep learning and symbol manipulation
1:23:35 – Guitar

Peter Norvig: Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach

Peter Norvig is a research director at Google and the co-author with Stuart Russell of the book Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach that educated and inspired a whole generation of researchers including myself to get into the field. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
00:37 – Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach
09:11 – Covering the entire field of AI
15:42 – Expert systems and knowledge representation
18:31 – Explainable AI
23:15 – Trust
25:47 – Education – Intro to AI – MOOC
32:43 – Learning to program in 10 years
37:12 – Changing nature of mastery
40:01 – Code review
41:17 – How have you changed as a programmer
43:05 – LISP
47:41 – Python
48:32 – Early days of Google Search
53:24 – What does it take to build human-level intelligence
55:14 – Her
57:00 – Test of intelligence
58:41 – Future threats from AI
1:00:58 – Exciting open problems in AI

Leonard Susskind: Quantum Mechanics, String Theory, and Black Holes

Leonard Susskind is a professor of theoretical physics at Stanford University, and founding director of the Stanford Institute for Theoretical Physics. He is widely regarded as one of the fathers of string theory and in general as one of the greatest physicists of our time both as a researcher and an educator. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon. Here’s the outline with timestamps for this episode (on some players you can click on the timestamp to jump to that point in the episode):

00:00 – Introduction
01:02 – Richard Feynman
02:09 – Visualization and intuition
06:45 – Ego in Science
09:27 – Academia
11:18 – Developing ideas
12:12 – Quantum computers
21:37 – Universe as an information processing system
26:35 – Machine learning
29:47 – Predicting the future
30:48 – String theory
37:03 – Free will
39:26 – Arrow of time
46:39 – Universe as a computer
49:45 – Big bang
50:50 – Infinity
51:35 – First image of a black hole
54:08 – Questions within the reach of science
55:55 – Questions out of reach of science

Regina Barzilay: Deep Learning for Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

Regina Barzilay is a professor at MIT and a world-class researcher in natural language processing and applications of deep learning to chemistry and oncology, or the use of deep learning for early diagnosis, prevention and treatment of cancer. She has also been recognized for her teaching of several successful AI-related courses at MIT, including the popular Introduction to Machine Learning course. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon.

Colin Angle: iRobot

Colin Angle is the CEO and co-founder of iRobot, a robotics company that for 29 years has been creating robots that operate successfully in the real world, not as a demo or on a scale of dozens, but on a scale of thousands and millions. As of this year, iRobot has sold more than 25 million robots to consumers, including the Roomba vacuum cleaning robot, the Braava floor mopping robot, and soon the Terra lawn mowing robot. 25 million robots successfully operating autonomously in people’s homes to me is an incredible accomplishment of science, engineering, logistics, and all kinds of entrepreneurial innovation. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon.

François Chollet: Keras, Deep Learning, and the Progress of AI

François Chollet is the creator of Keras, which is an open source deep learning library that is designed to enable fast, user-friendly experimentation with deep neural networks. It serves as an interface to several deep learning libraries, most popular of which is TensorFlow, and it was integrated into TensorFlow main codebase a while back. Aside from creating an exceptionally useful and popular library, François is also a world-class AI researcher and software engineer at Google, and is definitely an outspoken, if not controversial, personality in the AI world, especially in the realm of ideas around the future of artificial intelligence. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon.

Vijay Kumar: Flying Robots

Vijay Kumar is one of the top roboticists in the world, professor at the University of Pennsylvania, Dean of Penn Engineering, former director of GRASP lab, or the General Robotics, Automation, Sensing and Perception Laboratory at Penn that was established back in 1979, 40 years ago. Vijay is perhaps best known for his work in multi-robot systems (or robot swarms) and micro aerial vehicles, robots that elegantly cooperate in flight under all the uncertainty and challenges that real-world conditions present. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon.

Yann LeCun: Deep Learning, Convolutional Neural Networks, and Self-Supervised Learning

Yann LeCun is one of the fathers of deep learning, the recent revolution in AI that has captivated the world with the possibility of what machines can learn from data. He is a professor at New York University, a Vice President & Chief AI Scientist at Facebook, co-recipient of the Turing Award for his work on deep learning. He is probably best known as the founder of convolutional neural networks, in particular their early application to optical character recognition. 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 iTunes or support it on Patreon.