Blaise Agüera y Arcas: What is Intelligence in an AI Future?
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What is intelligence, and how is AI emergence a natural consequence of evolution? In his book "What Is Intelligence?" and in this conversation, Google's Blaise Agüera y Arcas takes up the idea that prediction is fundamental not only to intelligence and the brain but to life itself, and explores the wide-ranging implications. These include radical new perspectives on the computational properties of living systems, the evolutionary and social origins of intelligence, the relationship between models and reality, entropy and the nature of time, the meaning of free will, the problem of consciousness, and the ethics of machine intelligence.
Blaise Agüera y Arcas is a VP/Fellow at Google, where he is the CTO of Technology & Society, and the founder of Paradigms of Intelligence, an organization dedicated to fundamental AI research. He is the author of Who Are We Now?, and his research has included work on privacy-preserving machine learning, on-device AI, large language models, and human identity.
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Global Philosophy: What is the Person?
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How do diverse religions/traditions treat the “person,” present status and afterlife future? Buddhism’s no self. Hinduism’s soul illuminating the mind. Prior lives in Eastern and African traditions. Body and soul, resurrection and judgment, in Abrahamic traditions.
Featuring interviews with Jay Garfield, Yang Xiao, Oludamini Ogunnaike, Imran Aijaz, Andrew Loke, and Swami Medhananda.
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Stephen Wolfram on The Concept of the Ruliad
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The Ruliad is a term that Stephen Wolfram developed, which he describes as the entangled limit of everything that is computationally possible, the result of following all possible computational rules in all possible ways.
Stephen Wolfram is a British-American computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer algebra and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named a fellow of the American Mathematical Society. He is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research, where he works as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine.
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Global Philosophy: Is God Ultimate?
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Concepts of God/deities/ultimates in diverse, non-Western religions/traditions: Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, African. Is God/deities a “person?” Islam’s one transcendent God. Hinduism’s many schools: personal, impersonal, both. Buddhism’s no God but many deities.
Featuring interviews with Hamza Yusuf, Mohammed Saleh Zarepour, Oludamini Ogunnaike, Swami Medhananda, Venerable Dr. Yifa, and Yujin Nagasawa.
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Daniel Whiteson on Aliens, Physics, and the Nature of Reaity
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When the long-awaited day dawns and the aliens finally arrive on Earth, they might eat us and destroy the planet―or, just maybe, they might share the secrets of the Universe with us. When that time comes, will we be able to cross the communication barrier to beg for our lives? If the aliens do hold out those precious jewels of knowledge, will we even be able to grasp them? Professor Daniel Whiteson and Warner explode what we thought we knew about talking to our cosmic neighbors―and even science itself―by asking and answering questions both lighthearted and profound.
Whiteson's book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?: And Other Questions about Science and the Nature of Reality, is available for purchase now.
Closer To Truth presents the world’s greatest thinkers exploring humanity’s deepest questions in Cosmos, Life, Consciousness, and Meaning. Engage new and diverse ways of thinking. Appreciate intense debates. Seek your own answers.
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