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Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

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Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)New top score on ARC-AGI-2-pub (29.4%) - Jeremy BermanWe need AI systems to synthesise new knowledge, not just compress the data they see. Jeremy Berman, is a research scientist at Reflection AI and recent winner of the ARC-AGI v2 public leaderboard.**SPONSOR MESSAGES**—Take the Prolific human data survey - https://www.prolific.com/humandatasurvey?utm_source=mlst and be the first to see the results and benchmark their practices against the wider community!—cyber•Fund https://cyber.fund/?utm_source=mlst is a founder-led investment firm accelerating the cybernetic economyOct SF conference - https://dagihouse.com/?utm_source=mlst - Joscha Bach keynoting(!) + OAI, Anthropic, NVDA,++Hiring...
2025-09-271h 08Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Deep Learning is Not So Mysterious or Different - Prof. Andrew Gordon Wilson (NYU)Professor Andrew Wilson from NYU explains why many common-sense ideas in artificial intelligence might be wrong. For decades, the rule of thumb in machine learning has been to fear complexity. The thinking goes: if your model has too many parameters (is "too complex") for the amount of data you have, it will "overfit" by essentially memorizing the data instead of learning the underlying patterns. This leads to poor performance on new, unseen data. This is known as the classic "bias-variance trade-off" i.e. a balancing act between a model that's too simple and one that's too complex.
2025-09-192h 03Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Karl Friston - Why Intelligence Can't Get Too Large (Goldilocks principle)In this episode, hosts Tim and Keith finally realize their long-held dream of sitting down with their hero, the brilliant neuroscientist Professor Karl Friston. The conversation is a fascinating and mind-bending journey into Professor Friston's life's work, the Free Energy Principle, and what it reveals about life, intelligence, and consciousness itself.**SPONSORS**Gemini CLI is an open-source AI agent that brings the power of Gemini directly into your terminal - https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli--- Take the Prolific human data survey - https://www.prolific.com/humandatasurvey...
2025-09-101h 21Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)The Day AI Solves My Puzzles Is The Day I Worry (Prof. Cristopher Moore)We are joined by Cristopher Moore, a professor at the Santa Fe Institute with a diverse background in physics, computer science, and machine learning.The conversation begins with Cristopher, who calls himself a "frog" explaining that he prefers to dive deep into specific, concrete problems rather than taking a high-level "bird's-eye view". They explore why current AI models, like transformers, are so surprisingly effective. Cristopher argues it's because the real world isn't random; it's full of rich structures, patterns, and hierarchies that these models can learn to exploit, even...
2025-09-041h 34Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Michael Timothy Bennett: Defining Intelligence and AGI ApproachesDr. Michael Timothy Bennett is a computer scientist who's deeply interested in understanding artificial intelligence, consciousness, and what it means to be alive. He's known for his provocative paper "What the F*** is Artificial Intelligence" which challenges conventional thinking about AI and intelligence.**SPONSOR MESSAGES***Prolific: Quality data. From real people. For faster breakthroughs.https://prolific.com/mlst?utm_campaign=98404559-MLST&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=mb***Michael takes us on a journey through some of the biggest questions in AI and consciousness. He starts by exploring what intelligence actually is - settling on the idea...
2025-08-281h 05Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Superintelligence Strategy (Dan Hendrycks)Deep dive with Dan Hendrycks, a leading AI safety researcher and co-author of the "Superintelligence Strategy" paper with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang.*** SPONSOR MESSAGESGemini CLI is an open-source AI agent that brings the power of Gemini directly into your terminal - https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cliProlific: Quality data. From real people. For faster breakthroughs.https://prolific.com/mlst?utm_campaign=98404559-MLST&utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=podcast&utm_content=script-gen***
2025-08-141h 45Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)DeepMind Genie 3 [World Exclusive] (Jack Parker Holder, Shlomi Fruchter)This episode features Shlomi Fuchter and Jack Parker Holder from Google DeepMind, who are unveiling a new AI called Genie 3. The host, Tim Scarfe, describes it as the most mind-blowing technology he has ever seen. We were invited to their offices to conduct the interview (not sponsored).Imagine you could create a video game world just by describing it. That's what Genie 3 does. It's an AI "world model" that learns how the real world works by watching massive amounts of video. Unlike a normal video game engine (like Unreal or the one for Doom) that needs to be programmed...
2025-08-0558 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Joscha Bach - AGI24 Keynote (Cyberanimism)Dr. Joscha Bach introduces a surprising idea called "cyber animism" in his AGI-24 talk - the notion that nature might be full of self-organizing software agents, similar to the spirits in ancient belief systems. Bach suggests that consciousness could be a kind of software running on our brains, and wonders if similar "programs" might exist in plants or even entire ecosystems. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perfect...
2024-08-2157 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Is ChatGPT an N-gram model on steroids?DeepMind Research Scientist / MIT scholar Dr. Timothy Nguyen discusses his recent paper on understanding transformers through n-gram statistics. Nguyen explains his approach to analyzing transformer behavior using a kind of "template matching" (N-grams), providing insights into how these models process and predict language. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perfect for AI model training and retrieval augmentated generation. Try it now - get 2,000 free queries monthly at http...
2024-08-1532 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Jay Alammar on LLMs, RAG, and AI EngineeringJay Alammar, renowned AI educator and researcher at Cohere, discusses the latest developments in large language models (LLMs) and their applications in industry. Jay shares his expertise on retrieval augmented generation (RAG), semantic search, and the future of AI architectures. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perfect for AI model training and retrieval augmentated generation. Try it now - get 2,000 free queries monthly at http://brave.com/api.
2024-08-1157 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Can AI therapy be more effective than drugs?Daniel Cahn, co-founder of Slingshot AI, on the potential of AI in therapy. Why is anxiety and depression affecting a large population? To what extent are these real categories? Why is the mental health getting worse? How often do you want an AI to agree with you? What are the ethics of persuasive AI? You will discover all in this conversation. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perfect...
2024-08-082h 14Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati - LLMs don't reason, they memorize (ICML2024 2/13)Prof. Subbarao Kambhampati argues that while LLMs are impressive and useful tools, especially for creative tasks, they have fundamental limitations in logical reasoning and cannot provide guarantees about the correctness of their outputs. He advocates for hybrid approaches that combine LLMs with external verification systems. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perfect for AI model training and retrieval augmentated generation. Try it now - get 2,000 free queries monthly...
2024-07-291h 42Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Sayash Kapoor - How seriously should we take AI X-risk? (ICML 1/13)How seriously should governments take the threat of existential risk from AI, given the lack of consensus among researchers? On the one hand, existential risks (x-risks) are necessarily somewhat speculative: by the time there is concrete evidence, it may be too late. On the other hand, governments must prioritize — after all, they don’t worry too much about x-risk from alien invasions. MLST is sponsored by Brave: The Brave Search API covers over 20 billion webpages, built from scratch without Big Tech biases or the recent extortionate price hikes on search API access. Perf...
2024-07-2849 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Ryan Greenblatt - Solving ARC with GPT4oRyan Greenblatt from Redwood Research recently published "Getting 50% on ARC-AGI with GPT-4.0," where he used GPT4o to reach a state-of-the-art accuracy on Francois Chollet's ARC Challenge by generating many Python programs. Sponsor: Sign up to Kalshi here https://kalshi.onelink.me/1r91/mlst -- the first 500 traders who deposit $100 will get a free $20 credit! Important disclaimer - In case it's not obvious - this is basically gambling and a *high risk* activity - only trade what you can afford to lose. We discuss: - Ry...
2024-07-062h 18Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)What’s the Magic Word? A Control Theory of LLM Prompting.These two scientists have mapped out the insides or “reachable space” of a language model using control theory, what they discovered was extremely surprising. Please support us on Patreon to get access to the private Discord server, bi-weekly calls, early access and ad-free listening. https://patreon.com/mlst YT version: https://youtu.be/Bpgloy1dDn0 Aman Bhargava from Caltech and Cameron Witkowski from the University of Toronto to discuss their groundbreaking paper, “What’s the Magic Word? A Control Theory of LLM Promptin...
2024-06-051h 17Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Dr. Thomas Parr - Active Inference BookThomas Parr and his collaborators wrote a book titled "Active Inference: The Free Energy Principle in Mind, Brain and Behavior" which introduces Active Inference from both a high-level conceptual perspective and a low-level mechanistic, mathematical perspective. Active inference, developed by the legendary neuroscientist Prof. Karl Friston - is a unifying mathematical framework which frames living systems as agents which minimize surprise and free energy in order to resist entropy and persist over time. It unifies various perspectives from physics, biology, statistics, and psychology - and allows us to explore deep questions about agency, biology...
2024-05-011h 37Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Connor Leahy - e/acc, AGI and the future.Connor is the CEO of Conjecture and one of the most famous names in the AI alignment movement. This is the "behind the scenes footage" and bonus Patreon interviews from the day of the Beff Jezos debate, including an interview with Daniel Clothiaux. It's a great insight into Connor's philosophy. At the end there is an unreleased additional interview with Beff. Support MLST: Please support us on Patreon. We are entirely funded from Patreon donations right now. Patreon supports get private discord access, biweekly calls, very early-access + exclusive content and lots more.
2024-04-211h 19Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Chris Bishop's NEW Deep Learning Textbook!Professor Chris Bishop is a Technical Fellow and Director at Microsoft Research AI4Science, in Cambridge. He is also Honorary Professor of Computer Science at the University of Edinburgh, and a Fellow of Darwin College, Cambridge. In 2004, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, in 2007 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in 2017 he was elected Fellow of the Royal Society. Chris was a founding member of the UK AI Council, and in 2019 he was appointed to the Prime Minister’s Council for Science and Technology. At Mi...
2024-04-101h 22Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Philip Ball - How Life WorksDr. Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He just wrote a book called "How Life Works", discussing the how the science of Biology has advanced in the last 20 years. We focus on the concept of Agency in particular. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford, and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He worked previously at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences and then as a consultant editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology...
2024-04-072h 09Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Dr. Paul Lessard - Categorical/Structured Deep LearningDr. Paul Lessard and his collaborators have written a paper on "Categorical Deep Learning and Algebraic Theory of Architectures". They aim to make neural networks more interpretable, composable and amenable to formal reasoning. The key is mathematical abstraction, as exemplified by category theory - using monads to develop a more principled, algebraic approach to structuring neural networks. We also discussed the limitations of current neural network architectures in terms of their ability to generalise and reason in a human-like way. In particular, the inability of neural networks to do unbounded computation equivalent to a...
2024-04-011h 49Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Can we build a generalist agent? Dr. Minqi Jiang and Dr. Marc RigterDr. Minqi Jiang and Dr. Marc Rigter explain an innovative new method to make the intelligence of agents more general-purpose by training them to learn many worlds before their usual goal-directed training, which we call "reinforcement learning". Their new paper is called "Reward-free curricula for training robust world models" https://arxiv.org/pdf/2306.09205.pdf https://twitter.com/MinqiJiang https://twitter.com/MarcRigter Interviewer: Dr. Tim Scarfe Please support us on Patreon, Tim is now doing MLST full-time and taking a massive financial hit. If you love MLST and want this to continue, please show your support! In return you...
2024-03-201h 57Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Nick Chater - The Language Game (Part 1)Nick Chater is Professor of Behavioural Science at Warwick Business School, who works on rationality and language using a range of theoretical and experimental approaches. We discuss his books The Mind is Flat, and the Language Game. Please support me on Patreon (this is now my main job!) - https://patreon.com/mlst - Access the private Discord, networking, and early access to content. MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/machine-learning-street-talk-mlst-937356144060530778 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk Buy The Language Game: https://amzn.to/3SRHjPm
2024-03-011h 43Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Kenneth Stanley created a new social network based on serendipity and divergenceSee what Sam Altman advised Kenneth when he left OpenAI! Professor Kenneth Stanley has just launched a brand new type of social network, which he calls a "Serendipity network". The idea is that you follow interests, NOT people. It's a social network without the popularity contest. We discuss the phgilosophy and technology behind the venture in great detail. The main ideas of which came from Kenneth's famous book "Why greatness cannot be planned". See what Sam Altman advised Kenneth when he left OpenAI! Professor Kenneth Stanley has just launched a brand new type of...
2024-02-283h 15Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Dr. Brandon Rohrer - Robotics, Creativity and IntelligenceBrandon Rohrer who obtained his Ph.D from MIT is driven by understanding algorithms ALL the way down to their nuts and bolts, so he can make them accessible to everyone by first explaining them in the way HE himself would have wanted to learn! Please support us on Patreon for loads of exclusive content and private Discord: https://patreon.com/mlst (public discord) https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk Brandon Rohrer is a seasoned data science leader and educator with...
2024-02-131h 31Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Showdown Between e/acc Leader And Doomer - Connor Leahy + Beff JezosThe world's second-most famous AI doomer Connor Leahy sits down with Beff Jezos, the founder of the e/acc movement debating technology, AI policy, and human values. As the two discuss technology, AI safety, civilization advancement, and the future of institutions, they clash on their opposing perspectives on how we steer humanity towards a more optimal path. Watch behind the scenes, get early access and join the private Discord by supporting us on Patreon. We have some amazing content going up there with Max Bennett and Kenneth Stanley this week! https://patreon.com/mlst...
2024-02-033h 00Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Mahault Albarracin - Cognitive ScienceWatch behind the scenes, get early access and join the private Discord by supporting us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mlst (public discord) https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk YT version: https://youtu.be/n8G50ynU0Vg In this interview on MLST, Dr. Tim Scarfe interviews Mahault Albarracin, who is the director of product for R&D at VERSES and also a PhD student in cognitive computing at the University of Quebec in Montreal. They discuss a range of topics...
2024-01-141h 07Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)$450M AI Startup In 3 Years | Chai AIChai AI is the leading platform for conversational chat artificial intelligence. Note: this is a sponsored episode of MLST. William Beauchamp is the founder of two $100M+ companies - Chai Research, an AI startup, and Seamless Capital, a hedge fund based in Cambridge, UK. Chaiverse is the Chai AI developer platform, where developers can train, submit and evaluate on millions of real users to win their share of $1,000,000. https://www.chai-research.com https://www.chaiverse.com https://twitter.com/chai_research https://facebook.com/chairesearch/ https://www.instagram.com/chairesearch/ Download the app on iOS...
2024-01-0929 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)DOES AI HAVE AGENCY? With Professor. Karl Friston and Riddhi J. PitliyaWatch behind the scenes, get early access and join the private Discord by supporting us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mlst (public discord) https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk DOES AI HAVE AGENCY? With Professor. Karl Friston and Riddhi J. Pitliya Agency in the context of cognitive science, particularly when considering the free energy principle, extends beyond just human decision-making and autonomy. It encompasses a broader understanding of how all living systems, including non-human entities, interact with their environment to maintain...
2024-01-071h 02Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Understanding Deep Learning - Prof. SIMON PRINCE [STAFF FAVOURITE]Watch behind the scenes, get early access and join private Discord by supporting us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/mlst https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk In this comprehensive exploration of the field of deep learning with Professor Simon Prince who has just authored an entire text book on Deep Learning, we investigate the technical underpinnings that contribute to the field's unexpected success and confront the enduring conundrums that still perplex AI researchers. Key points discussed include the surprising efficiency of deep learning...
2023-12-262h 06Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)MULTI AGENT LEARNING - LANCELOT DA COSTAPlease support us https://www.patreon.com/mlst https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk Lance Da Costa aims to advance our understanding of intelligent systems by modelling cognitive systems and improving artificial systems. He's a PhD candidate with Greg Pavliotis and Karl Friston jointly at Imperial College London and UCL, and a student in the Mathematics of Random Systems CDT run by Imperial College London and the University of Oxford. He completed an MRes in Brain Sciences at UCL with Karl Friston and Biswa Sengupta, an...
2023-11-0549 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)THE HARD PROBLEM OF OBSERVERS - WOLFRAM & FRISTON [SPECIAL EDITION]Please support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk YT version (with intro not found here) https://youtu.be/6iaT-0Dvhnc This is the epic special edition show you have been waiting for! With two of the most brilliant scientists alive today. Atoms, things, agents, ... observers. What even defines an "observer" and what properties must all observers share? How do objects persist in our universe given that their material composition changes over time? What does it mean for a thing to be a thing? And do things...
2023-10-291h 59Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)DR. JEFF BECK - THE BAYESIAN BRAINSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 YT version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4praCiy9qU Dr. Jeff Beck is a computational neuroscientist studying probabilistic reasoning (decision making under uncertainty) in humans and animals with emphasis on neural representations of uncertainty and cortical implementations of probabilistic inference and learning. His line of research incorporates information theoretic and hierarchical statistical analysis of neural and behavioural data as well as reinforcement learning and active inference. https://www.linkedin.com...
2023-10-161h 10Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Melanie Mitchell 2.0 - AI Benchmarks are Broken!Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Prof. Melanie Mitchell argues that the concept of "understanding" in AI is ill-defined and multidimensional - we can't simply say an AI system does or doesn't understand. She advocates for rigorously testing AI systems' capabilities using proper experimental methods from cognitive science. Popular benchmarks for intelligence often rely on the assumption that if a human can perform a task, an AI that performs the task must have human-like general intelligence. But benchmarks should evolve as capabilities improve. Large language models show surprising skill on many human tasks...
2023-09-101h 01Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Autopoitic Enactivism and the Free Energy Principle - Prof. Friston, Prof Buckley, Dr. RamsteadWe explore connections between FEP and enactivism, including tensions raised in a paper critiquing FEP from an enactivist perspective. Dr. Maxwell Ramstead provides background on enactivism emerging from autopoiesis, with a focus on embodied cognition and rejecting information processing/computational views of mind. Chris shares his journey from robotics into FEP, starting as a skeptic but becoming convinced it's the right framework. He notes there are both "high road" and "low road" versions, ranging from embodied to more radically anti-representational stances. He doesn't see a definitive fork between dynamical...
2023-09-051h 34Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)STEPHEN WOLFRAM 2.0 - Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of ThermodynamicsPlease check out Numerai - our sponsor @ http://numer.ai/mlst Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB The Second Law: Resolving the Mystery of the Second Law of Thermodynamics Buy Stephen's book here - https://tinyurl.com/2jj2t9wa The Language Game: How Improvisation Created Language and Changed the World by Morten H. Christiansen and Nick Chater Buy here: https://tinyurl.com/35bvs8be Stephen Wolfram starts by discussing the second law of thermodynamics - the idea that entropy, or disorder, tends to increase over time. He talks about how this law...
2023-08-151h 24Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Jürgen Schmidhuber - FATHER OF AI ON ITS DANGERSPlease check out Numerai - our sponsor @ http://numer.ai/mlst Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Professor Jürgen Schmidhuber, the father of artificial intelligence, joins us today. Schmidhuber discussed the history of machine learning, the current state of AI, and his career researching recursive self-improvement, artificial general intelligence and its risks. Schmidhuber pointed out the importance of studying the history of machine learning to properly assign credit for key breakthroughs. He discussed some of the earliest machine learning algorithms. He also highlighted the foundational work of Leibniz, who discovered the chain r...
2023-08-141h 21Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Can We Develop Truly Beneficial AI? George Hotz and Connor LeahyPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB George Hotz and Connor Leahy discuss the crucial challenge of developing beneficial AI that is aligned with human values. Hotz believes truly aligned AI is impossible, while Leahy argues it's a solvable technical challenge.Hotz contends that AI will inevitably pursue power, but distributing AI widely would prevent any single AI from dominating. He advocates open-sourcing AI developments to democratize access. Leahy counters that alignment is necessary to ensure AIs respect human values. Without solving alignment, general AI could ignore or...
2023-08-041h 29Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Dr. MAXWELL RAMSTEAD - The Physics of SurvivalPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Join us for a fascinating discussion of the free energy principle with Dr. Maxwell Ramsted, a leading thinker exploring the intersection of math, physics, and philosophy and Director of Research at VERSES. The FEP was proposed by renowned neuroscientist Karl Friston, this principle offers a unifying theory explaining how systems maintain order and their identity. The free energy principle inverts traditional survival logic. Rather than asking what behaviors promote survival, it queries - given things exist, what must they do? The answer: minimizing free energy, or "surprise."...
2023-07-162h 05Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)MUNK DEBATE ON AI (COMMENTARY) [DAVID FOSTER]Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB The discussion between Tim Scarfe and David Foster provided an in-depth critique of the arguments made by panelists at the Munk AI Debate on whether artificial intelligence poses an existential threat to humanity. While the panelists made thought-provoking points, Scarfe and Foster found their arguments largely speculative, lacking crucial details and evidence to support claims of an impending existential threat. Scarfe and Foster strongly disagreed with Max Tegmark’s position that AI has an unparalleled “blas...
2023-07-022h 08Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)[SPONSORED] The Digitized Self: AI, Identity and the Human Psyche (YouAi)Sponsored Episode - YouAi What if an AI truly knew you—your thoughts, values, aptitudes, and dreams? An AI that could enhance your life in profound ways by amplifying your strengths, augmenting your weaknesses, and connecting you with like-minded souls. That is the vision of YouAi. YouAi founder Dmitri Shapiro believes digitizing our inner lives could unlock tremendous benefits. But mapping the human psyche also poses deep questions. As technology mediates our self-understanding, what risks rendering our minds in bits and algorithms? Could we gain a new means of flourishing or lose something intangible? There are no easy answers, bu...
2023-06-291h 46Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Joscha Bach and Connor Leahy on AI riskSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk The first 10 mins of audio from Joscha isn't great, it improves after. Transcript and longer summary: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1TUJhlSVbrHf2vWoe6p7xL5tlTK_BGZ140QqqTudF8UI/edit?usp=sharing Dr. Joscha Bach argued that general intelligence emerges from civilization, not individuals. Given our biological constraints, humans cannot achieve a high level of general intelligence on our own. Bach believes AGI may become integrated into all parts of the world, including human minds and bodies. He...
2023-06-201h 31Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Neel Nanda - Mechanistic InterpretabilityIn this wide-ranging conversation, Tim Scarfe interviews Neel Nanda, a researcher at DeepMind working on mechanistic interpretability, which aims to understand the algorithms and representations learned by machine learning models. Neel discusses how models can represent their thoughts using motifs, circuits, and linear directional features which are often communicated via a "residual stream", an information highway models use to pass information between layers. Neel argues that "superposition", the ability for models to represent more features than they have neurons, is one of the biggest open problems in interpretability. This is because superposition thwarts our ability to understand...
2023-06-184h 10Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Prof. Daniel Dennett - Could AI Counterfeit People Destroy Civilization? (SPECIAL EDITION)Please check out Numerai - our sponsor using our link @ http://numer.ai/mlst Numerai is a groundbreaking platform which is taking the data science world by storm. Tim has been using Numerai to build state-of-the-art models which predict the stock market, all while being a part of an inspiring community of data scientists from around the globe. They host the Numerai Data Science Tournament, where data scientists like us use their financial dataset to predict future stock market performance. Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst
2023-06-051h 14Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Decoding the Genome: Unraveling the Complexities with AI and Creativity [Prof. Jim Hughes, Oxford]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk In this eye-opening discussion between Tim Scarfe and Prof. Jim Hughes, a professor of gene regulation at Oxford University, they explore the intersection of creativity, genomics, and artificial intelligence. Prof. Hughes brings his expertise in genomics and insights from his interdisciplinary research group, which includes machine learning experts, mathematicians, and molecular biologists. The conversation begins with an overview of Prof. Hughes' background and the importance of creativity in scientific research. They delve into the challenges of unlocking the secrets of the...
2023-06-0142 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)ROBERT MILES - "There is a good chance this kills everyone"Please check out Numerai - our sponsor @ https://numerai.com/mlst Numerai is a groundbreaking platform which is taking the data science world by storm. Tim has been using Numerai to build state-of-the-art models which predict the stock market, all while being a part of an inspiring community of data scientists from around the globe. They host the Numerai Data Science Tournament, where data scientists like us use their financial dataset to predict future stock market performance. Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST...
2023-05-212h 01Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)AI Senate Hearing - Executive Summary (Sam Altman, Gary Marcus)Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk In a historic and candid Senate hearing, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Professor Gary Marcus, and IBM's Christina Montgomery discussed the regulatory landscape of AI in the US. The discussion was particularly interesting due to its timing, as it followed the recent release of the EU's proposed AI Act, which could potentially ban American companies like OpenAI and Google from providing API access to generative AI models and impose massive fines for non-compliance.
2023-05-1749 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Future of Generative AI [David Foster]Generative Deep Learning, 2nd Edition [David Foster] https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/generative-deep-learning/9781098134174/ Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk In this conversation, Tim Scarfe and David Foster, the author of 'Generative Deep Learning,' dive deep into the world of generative AI, discussing topics ranging from model families and auto regressive models to the democratization of AI technology and its potential impact on various industries. They explore the connection between...
2023-05-112h 31Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)PERPLEXITY AI - The future of search.https://www.perplexity.ai/ https://www.perplexity.ai/iphone https://www.perplexity.ai/android Interview with Aravind Srinivas, CEO and Co-Founder of Perplexity AI – Revolutionizing Learning with Conversational Search Engines Dr. Tim Scarfe talks with Dr. Aravind Srinivas, CEO and Co-Founder of Perplexity AI, about his journey from studying AI and reinforcement learning at UC Berkeley to launching Perplexity – a startup that aims to revolutionize learning through the power of conversational search engines. By combining the strengths of large language models like GPT-* with search engines, Perplexity provides users with direct answers to their questions in a...
2023-05-0859 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#114 - Secrets of Deep Reinforcement Learning (Minqi Jiang)Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk In this exclusive interview, Dr. Tim Scarfe sits down with Minqi Jiang, a leading PhD student at University College London and Meta AI, as they delve into the fascinating world of deep reinforcement learning (RL) and its impact on technology, startups, and research. Discover how Minqi made the crucial decision to pursue a PhD in this exciting field, and learn from his valuable startup experiences and lessons. Minqi shares his insights into balancing serendipity and...
2023-04-162h 47Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)Unlocking the Brain's Mysteries: Chris Eliasmith on Spiking Neural Networks and the Future of Human-Machine InteractionPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Twitter: https://twitter.com/MLStreetTalk Chris Eliasmith is a renowned interdisciplinary researcher, author, and professor at the University of Waterloo, where he holds the prestigious Canada Research Chair in Theoretical Neuroscience. As the Founding Director of the Centre for Theoretical Neuroscience, Eliasmith leads the Computational Neuroscience Research Group in exploring the mysteries of the brain and its complex functions. His groundbreaking work, including the Neural Engineering Framework, Neural Engineering Objects software environment, and the Semantic Pointer Architecture, has...
2023-04-101h 49Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#112 AVOIDING AGI APOCALYPSE - CONNOR LEAHYSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 In this podcast with the legendary Connor Leahy (CEO Conjecture) recorded in Dec 2022, we discuss various topics related to artificial intelligence (AI), including AI alignment, the success of ChatGPT, the potential threats of artificial general intelligence (AGI), and the challenges of balancing research and product development at his company, Conjecture. He emphasizes the importance of empathy, dehumanizing our thinking to avoid anthropomorphic biases, and the value of real-world experiences in learning and personal growth. The conversation also covers the Orthogonality Thesis, AI preferences, the mystery of...
2023-04-022h 40Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#111 - AI moratorium, Eliezer Yudkowsky, AGI risk etcSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Send us a voice message which you want us to publish: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/machinelearningstreettalk/message In a recent open letter, over 1500 individuals called for a six-month pause on the development of advanced AI systems, expressing concerns over the potential risks AI poses to society and humanity. However, there are issues with this approach, including global competition, unstoppable progress, potential benefits, and the need to manage risks instead of avoiding them. Decision theorist Eliezer Yudkowsky took it a step further in...
2023-04-0126 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#110 Dr. STEPHEN WOLFRAM - HUGE ChatGPT+Wolfram announcement!HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT, CHATGPT+WOLFRAM! You saw it HERE first! YT version: https://youtu.be/z5WZhCBRDpU Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Stephen's announcement post: https://writings.stephenwolfram.com/2023/03/chatgpt-gets-its-wolfram-superpowers/ OpenAI's announcement post: https://openai.com/blog/chatgpt-plugins In an era of technology and innovation, few individuals have left as indelible a mark on the fabric of modern science as our esteemed guest, Dr. Steven Wolfram. Dr. Wolfram is a renowned polymath who has made significant contributions to the fields of physics, computer science, and mathematics. A prodigious young man...
2023-03-2357 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#109 - Dr. DAN MCQUILLAN - Resisting AIYT version: https://youtu.be/P1j3VoKBxbc (references in pinned comment) Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Dan McQuillan, a visionary in digital culture and social innovation, emphasizes the importance of understanding technology's complex relationship with society. As an academic at Goldsmiths, University of London, he fosters interdisciplinary collaboration and champions data-driven equity and ethical technology. Dan's career includes roles at Amnesty International and Social Innovation Camp, showcasing technology's potential to empower and bring about positive change. In this conversation, we discuss the challenges and opportunities at the intersection of technology...
2023-03-202h 51Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#108 - Dr. JOEL LEHMAN - Machine Love [Staff Favourite]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst   MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 We are honoured to welcome Dr. Joel Lehman, an eminent machine learning research scientist, whose work in AI safety, reinforcement learning, creative open-ended search algorithms, and indeed the philosophy of open-endedness and abandoning objectives has paved the way for innovative ideas that challenge our preconceptions and inspire new visions for the future. Dr. Lehman's thought-provoking book, "Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned" penned with with our MLST favourite Professor Kenneth Stanley has left an indelible mark on the f...
2023-03-162h 09Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#107 - Dr. RAPHAËL MILLIÈRE - Linguistics, Theory of Mind, GroundingSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Dr. Raphaël Millière is the 2020 Robert A. Burt Presidential Scholar in Society and Neuroscience in the Center for Science and Society, and a Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at Columbia University. His research draws from his expertise in philosophy and cognitive science to explore the implications of recent progress in deep learning for models of human cognition, as well as various issues in ethics and aesthetics. He is also investigating what underlies the capacity to represent oneself as oneself at a...
2023-03-131h 43Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#106 - Prof. KARL FRISTON 3.0 - Collective Intelligence [Special Edition]This show is sponsored by Numerai, please visit them here with our sponsor link (we would really appreciate it) http://numer.ai/mlst  Prof. Karl Friston recently proposed a vision of artificial intelligence that goes beyond machines and algorithms, and embraces humans and nature as part of a cyber-physical ecosystem of intelligence. This vision is based on the principle of active inference, which states that intelligent systems can learn from their observations and act on their environment to reduce uncertainty and achieve their goals. This leads to a formal account of collective intelligence that rests on shared n...
2023-03-112h 59Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#105 - Dr. MICHAEL OLIVER [CSO - Numerai]Access Numerai here: http://numer.ai/mlst Michael Oliver is the Chief Scientist at Numerai, a hedge fund that crowdsources machine learning models from data scientists. He has a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from UC Berkeley and was a postdoctoral researcher at the Allen Institute for Brain Science before joining Numerai in 2020. He is also the host of Numerai Quant Club, a YouTube series where he discusses Numerai’s research, data and challenges. YT version: https://youtu.be/61s8lLU7sFg TOC: [00:00:00] In...
2023-03-041h 20Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#104 - Prof. CHRIS SUMMERFIELD - Natural General Intelligence [SPECIAL EDITION]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst   MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Christopher Summerfield, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford is a Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a Research Scientist at Deepmind UK. His work focusses on the neural and computational mechanisms by which humans make decisions. Chris has just released an incredible new book on AI called "Natural General Intelligence". It's my favourite book on AI I have read so so far.  The book explores the algorithms and architectures that ar...
2023-02-221h 28Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#103 - Prof. Edward Grefenstette - Language, Semantics, PhilosophySupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst  MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 YT: https://youtu.be/i9VPPmQn9HQ Edward Grefenstette is a Franco-American computer scientist who currently serves as Head of Machine Learning at Cohere and Honorary Professor at UCL. He has previously been a research scientist at Facebook AI Research and staff research scientist at DeepMind, and was also the CTO of Dark Blue Labs. Prior to his move to industry, Edward was a Fulford Junior Research Fellow at Somerville College, University of Oxford, and was lecturing a...
2023-02-111h 01Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#102 - Prof. MICHAEL LEVIN, Prof. IRINA RISH - Emergence, Intelligence, TranshumanismSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 YT: https://youtu.be/Vbi288CKgis Michael Levin is a Distinguished Professor in the Biology department at Tufts University, and the holder of the Vannevar Bush endowed Chair. He is the Director of the Allen Discovery Center at Tufts and the Tufts Center for Regenerative and Developmental Biology. His research focuses on understanding the biophysical mechanisms of pattern regulation and harnessing endogenous bioelectric dynamics for rational control of growth and form. The capacity to generate...
2023-02-1155 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#101 DR. WALID SABA - Extrapolation, Compositionality and LearnabilityMLST Discord! https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst YT: https://youtu.be/snUf_LIfQII We had a discussion with Dr. Walid Saba about whether or not MLP neural networks can extrapolate outside of the training support, and what it means to extrapolate in a vector space. Then we discussed the concept of vagueness in cognitive science, for example, what does it mean to be "rich" or what is a "pile of sand"? Finally we discussed behaviourism and the reward is enough hypothesis. References: A Spline...
2023-02-1049 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#100 Dr. PATRICK LEWIS (co:here) - Retrieval Augmented GenerationDr. Patrick Lewis is a London-based AI and Natural Language Processing Research Scientist, working at co:here. Prior to this, Patrick worked as a research scientist at the Fundamental AI Research Lab (FAIR) at Meta AI. During his PhD, Patrick split his time between FAIR and University College London, working with Sebastian Riedel and Pontus Stenetorp.  Patrick’s research focuses on the intersection of information retrieval techniques (IR) and large language models (LLMs). He has done extensive work on Retrieval-Augmented Language Models. His current focus is on building more powerful, efficient, robust, and update-able models that can per...
2023-02-1026 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#99 - CARLA CREMER & IGOR KRAWCZUK - X-Risk, Governance, Effective AltruismYT version (with references): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxaTinmKxs0 Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 Carla Cremer and Igor Krawczuk argue that AI risk should be understood as an old problem of politics, power and control with known solutions, and that threat models should be driven by empirical work. The interaction between FTX and the Effective Altruism community has sparked a lot of discussion about the dangers of optimization, and Carla's Vox article highlights the need for an institutional turn when...
2023-02-051h 39Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)[NO MUSIC] #98 - Prof. LUCIANO FLORIDI - ChatGPT, Singularitarians, Ethics, Philosophy of InformationSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 YT version: https://youtu.be/YLNGvvgq3eg We are living in an age of rapid technological advancement, and with this growth comes a digital divide. Professor Luciano Floridi of the Oxford Internet Institute / Oxford University believes that this divide not only affects our understanding of the implications of this new age, but also the organization of a fair society.  The Information Revolution has been transforming the global economy, with the majority of global GDP now r...
2023-02-031h 06Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#98 - Prof. LUCIANO FLORIDI - ChatGPT, Superintelligence, Ethics, Philosophy of InformationSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst MLST Discord: https://discord.gg/aNPkGUQtc5 YT version: https://youtu.be/YLNGvvgq3eg (If music annoying, skip to main interview @ 14:14) We are living in an age of rapid technological advancement, and with this growth comes a digital divide. Professor Luciano Floridi of the Oxford Internet Institute / Oxford University believes that this divide not only affects our understanding of the implications of this new age, but also the organization of a fair society.  The Information Revolution has been transforming the global economy, with t...
2023-02-031h 06Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#95 - Prof. IRINA RISH - AGI, Complex Systems, TranshumanismCanadian Excellence Research Chair in Autonomous AI. Irina holds an MSc and PhD in AI from the University of California, Irvine as well as an MSc in Applied Mathematics from the Moscow Gubkin Institute. Her research focuses on machine learning, neural data analysis, and neuroscience-inspired AI. In particular, she is exploring continual lifelong learning, optimization algorithms for deep neural networks, sparse modelling and probabilistic inference, dialog generation, biologically plausible reinforcement learning, and dynamical systems approaches to brain imaging analysis. Prof. Rish holds 64 patents, has published over 80 research papers, several book chapters, three edited books, and a monograph on Sparse...
2022-12-2639 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#94 - ALAN CHAN - AI Alignment and Governance #NEURIPSSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Alan Chan is a PhD student at Mila, the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, supervised by Nicolas Le Roux. Before joining Mila, Alan was a Masters student at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute and the University of Alberta, where he worked with Martha White. Alan's expertise and research interests encompass value alignment and AI governance. He is currently exploring the measurement of harms from language models and the incentives that agents have to impact the world. Alan's research focuses on understanding and controlling the values expressed by machine learning models...
2022-12-2613 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#93 Prof. MURRAY SHANAHAN - Consciousness, Embodiment, Language ModelsSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Professor Murray Shanahan is a renowned researcher on sophisticated cognition and its implications for artificial intelligence. His 2016 article ‘Conscious Exotica’ explores the Space of Possible Minds, a concept first proposed by philosopher Aaron Sloman in 1984, which includes all the different forms of minds from those of other animals to those of artificial intelligence. Shanahan rejects the idea of an impenetrable realm of subjective experience and argues that the majority of the space of possible minds may be occupied by non-natural variants, such as the ‘conscious exotica’ of which he...
2022-12-241h 20Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#92 - SARA HOOKER - Fairness, Interpretability, Language ModelsSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Sara Hooker is an exceptionally talented and accomplished leader and research scientist in the field of machine learning. She is the founder of Cohere For AI, a non-profit research lab that seeks to solve complex machine learning problems. She is passionate about creating more points of entry into machine learning research and has dedicated her efforts to understanding how progress in this field can be translated into reliable and accessible machine learning in the real-world. Sara is also the co-founder of the Trustworthy ML Initiative, a forum and...
2022-12-2351 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#91 - HATTIE ZHOU - Teaching Algorithmic Reasoning via In-context Learning #NeurIPSSupport us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Hattie Zhou, a PhD student at Université de Montréal and Mila, has set out to understand and explain the performance of modern neural networks, believing it a key factor in building better, more trusted models. Having previously worked as a data scientist at Uber, a private equity analyst at Radar Capital, and an economic consultant at Cornerstone Research, she has recently released a paper in collaboration with the Google Brain team, titled ‘Teaching Algorithmic Reasoning via In-context Learning’. In this work, Hattie identifies and examines four key st...
2022-12-2021 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)(Music Removed) #90 - Prof. DAVID CHALMERS - Consciousness in LLMs [Special Edition]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst (On the main version we released; the music was a tiny bit too loud in places, and some pieces had percussion which was a bit distracting -- here is a version with all music removed so you have the option! ) David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, and an honorary professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. He is the co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, as well as the PhilPapers Foundation. His research focuses on the...
2022-12-1953 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#90 - Prof. DAVID CHALMERS - Consciousness in LLMs [Special Edition]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst David Chalmers is a professor of philosophy and neural science at New York University, and an honorary professor of philosophy at the Australian National University. He is the co-director of the Center for Mind, Brain, and Consciousness, as well as the PhilPapers Foundation. His research focuses on the philosophy of mind, especially consciousness, and its connection to fields such as cognitive science, physics, and technology. He also investigates areas such as the philosophy of language, metaphysics, and epistemology. With his impressive breadth of knowledge and experience, David Chalmers is a...
2022-12-1953 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#88 Dr. WALID SABA - Why machines will never rule the world [UNPLUGGED]Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst Dr. Walid Saba recently reviewed the book Machines Will Never Rule The World, which argues that strong AI is impossible. He acknowledges the complexity of modeling mental processes and language, as well as interactive dialogues, and questions the authors' use of "never." Despite his skepticism, he is impressed with recent developments in large language models, though he questions the extent of their success. We then discussed the successes of cognitive science. Walid believes that something has been achieved which many cognitive scientists would never accept, namely the ability...
2022-12-161h 21Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#86 - Prof. YANN LECUN and Dr. RANDALL BALESTRIERO - SSL, Data Augmentation, Reward isn't enough [NEURIPS2022]Yann LeCun is a French computer scientist known for his pioneering work on convolutional neural networks, optical character recognition and computer vision. He is a Silver Professor at New York University and Vice President, Chief AI Scientist at Meta. Along with Yoshua Bengio and Geoffrey Hinton, he was awarded the 2018 Turing Award for their work on deep learning, earning them the nickname of the "Godfathers of Deep Learning". Dr. Randall Balestriero has been researching learnable signal processing since 2013, with a focus on learnable parametrized wavelets and deep wavelet transforms. His research has been used...
2022-12-1130 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#85 Dr. Petar Veličković (Deepmind) - Categories, Graphs, Reasoning [NEURIPS22 UNPLUGGED]Dr. Petar Veličković  is a Staff Research Scientist at DeepMind, he has firmly established himself as one of the most significant up and coming researchers in the deep learning space. He invented Graph Attention Networks in 2017 and has been a leading light in the field ever since pioneering research in Graph Neural Networks, Geometric Deep Learning and also Neural Algorithmic reasoning. If you haven’t already, you should check out our video on the Geometric Deep learning blueprint, featuring Petar. I caught up with him last week at NeurIPS. In this show, from NeurIPS 2022 we discussed his recent work...
2022-12-0936 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#82 - Dr. JOSCHA BACH - Digital Physics, DL and Consciousness [UNPLUGGED]AI Helps Ukraine - Charity Conference A charity conference on AI to raise funds for medical and humanitarian aid for Ukraine https://aihelpsukraine.cc/ YT version: https://youtu.be/LgwjcqhkOA4 Support us! https://www.patreon.com/mlst  Dr. Joscha Bach (born 1973 in Weimar, Germany) is a German artificial intelligence researcher and cognitive scientist focusing on cognitive architectures, mental representation, emotion, social modelling, and multi-agent systems.  http://bach.ai/ https://twitter.com/plinz
2022-11-271h 15Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#81 JULIAN TOGELIUS, Prof. KEN STANLEY - AGI, Games, Diversity & Creativity [UNPLUGGED]Support us (and please rate on podcast app) https://www.patreon.com/mlst  In this show tonight with Prof. Julian Togelius (NYU) and Prof. Ken Stanley we discuss open-endedness, AGI, game AI and reinforcement learning.   [Prof Julian Togelius] https://engineering.nyu.edu/faculty/julian-togelius https://twitter.com/togelius [Prof Ken Stanley] https://www.cs.ucf.edu/~kstanley/ https://twitter.com/kenneth0stanley TOC: [00:00:00] Introduction [00:01:07] AI an...
2022-11-201h 09Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#80 AIDAN GOMEZ [CEO Cohere] - Language as SoftwareWe had a conversation with Aidan Gomez, the CEO of language-based AI platform Cohere. Cohere is a startup which uses artificial intelligence to help users build the next generation of language-based applications. It's headquartered in Toronto. The company has raised $175 million in funding so far. Language may well become a key new substrate for software building, both in its representation and how we build the software. It may democratise software building so that more people can build software, and we can build new types of software. Aidan and I discuss this in detail in this episode of...
2022-11-1551 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#79 Consciousness and the Chinese Room [Special Edition] (CHOLLET, BISHOP, CHALMERS, BACH)This video is demonetised on music copyright so we would appreciate support on our Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/mlst  We would also appreciate it if you rated us on your podcast platform.  YT: https://youtu.be/_KVAzAzO5HU Panel: Dr. Tim Scarfe, Dr. Keith Duggar Guests: Prof. J. Mark Bishop, Francois Chollet, Prof. David Chalmers, Dr. Joscha Bach, Prof. Karl Friston, Alexander Mattick, Sam Roffey The Chinese Room Argument was first proposed by philosopher John Searle in 1980. It is an argument against the possibility of artificial intelligence (AI) – that...
2022-11-082h 09Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)MLST #78 - Prof. NOAM CHOMSKY (Special Edition)Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB In this special edition episode, we have a conversation with Prof. Noam Chomsky, the father of modern linguistics and the most important intellectual of the 20th century.  With a career spanning the better part of a century, we took the chance to ask Prof. Chomsky his thoughts not only on the progress of linguistics and cognitive science but also the deepest enduring mysteries of science and philosophy as a whole - exploring what may lie beyond our limits of understanding. We a...
2022-07-093h 37Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#76 - LUKAS BIEWALD (Weights and Biases CEO)Check out Weights and Biases here!  https://wandb.me/MLST Lukas Biewald is an entrepreneur living in San Francisco. He was the founder and CEO of Figure Eight an Internet company that collects training data for machine learning.  In 2018, he founded Weights and Biases, a company that creates developer tools for machine learning. Recently WandB got a cash injection of 15 million dollars in its second funding round.  Lukas has a bachelors and masters in mathematics and computer science respectively from Stanford university.  He was a research student under the tutelage of the legendary Daph...
2022-06-0957 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#75 - Emergence [Special Edition] with Dr. DANIELE GRATTAROLAAn emergent behavior or emergent property can appear when a number of simple entities operate in an environment, forming more complex behaviours as a collective. If emergence happens over disparate size scales, then the reason is usually a causal relation across different scales. Weak emergence describes new properties arising in systems as a result of the low-level interactions, these might be interactions between components of the system or the components and their environment.  In our epic introduction we focus a lot on the concept of self-organisation, complex systems, cellular automata and strong vs weak emergence. In the ma...
2022-04-291h 55Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#74 Dr. ANDREW LAMPINEN - Symbolic behaviour in AI [UNPLUGGED]Please note that in this interview Dr. Lampinen was expressing his personal opinions and they do not necessarily represent those of DeepMind.  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB YT version: https://youtu.be/yPMtSXXn4OY  Dr. Andrew Lampinen is a Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind, and he thinks that symbols are subjective in the relativistic sense. Dr. Lampinen completed his PhD in Cognitive Psychology at Stanford University. His background is in mathematics, physics, and machine learning. Andrew has said th...
2022-04-141h 05Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#73 - YASAMAN RAZEGHI & Prof. SAMEER SINGH - NLP benchmarksPatreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB YT version: https://youtu.be/RzGaI7vXrkk This week we speak with Yasaman Razeghi and Prof. Sameer Singh from UC Urvine. Yasaman recently published a paper called Impact of Pretraining Term Frequencies on Few-Shot Reasoning where she demonstrated comprehensively that large language models only perform well on reasoning tasks because they memorise the dataset. For the first time she showed the accuracy was linearly correlated to the occurance rate in the training corpus, something which OpenAI should have done in the...
2022-04-0755 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#72 Prof. KEN STANLEY 2.0 - On Art and Subjectivity [UNPLUGGED]YT version: https://youtu.be/DxBZORM9F-8 Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst  Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB Prof. Ken Stanley argued in his book that our world has become saturated with objectives. The process of setting an objective, attempting to achieve it, and measuring progress along the way has become the primary route to achievement in our culture. He’s not saying that objectives are bad per se, especially if they’re modest, but he thinks that when goals are ambitious then the search space becomes deceptive.
2022-03-291h 24Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#71 - ZAK JOST (Graph Neural Networks + Geometric DL) [UNPLUGGED]Special discount link for Zak's GNN course - https://bit.ly/3uqmYVq Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB YT version: https://youtu.be/jAGIuobLp60 (there are lots of helper graphics there, recommended if poss) Want to sponsor MLST!? Let us know on Linkedin / Twitter.  [00:00:00] Preamble [00:03:12] Geometric deep learning [00:10:04] Message passing [00:20:42] Top down vs bottom up [00:24:59] All NN architectures are different forms of information diffusion processes (squashing and smoothing problem)
2022-03-251h 02Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#70 - LETITIA PARCALABESCU - Symbolics, Linguistics [UNPLUGGED]Today we are having a discussion with Letitia Parcalabescu from the AI Coffee Break youtube channel! We discuss linguistics, symbolic AI and our respective Youtube channels. Make sure you subscribe to her channel! In the first 15 minutes Tim dissects the recent article from Gary Marcus "Deep learning has hit a wall".  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/ESrGqhf5CB YT: https://youtu.be/p2D2duT-R2E [00:00:00] Comments on Gary Marcus Article / Symbolic AI [00:14:57] Greetings [00:17:40] Introduction [00:18:48] A shared j...
2022-03-191h 18Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#68 DR. WALID SABA 2.0 - Natural Language Understanding [UNPLUGGED]Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/HNnAwSduud YT version: https://youtu.be/pMtk-iUaEuQ Dr. Walid Saba is an old-school polymath. He has a background in cognitive  psychology, linguistics, philosophy, computer science and logic and he’s is now a Senior Scientist at Sorcero. Walid is perhaps the most outspoken critic of BERTOLOGY, which is to say trying to solve the problem of natural language understanding with application of large statistical language models. Walid thinks this approach is cursed to failure because it’...
2022-03-071h 42Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#67 Prof. KARL FRISTON 2.0We engage in a bit of epistemic foraging with Prof. Karl Friston! In this show; we discuss the free energy principle in detail, also emergence, cognition, consciousness and Karl's burden of knowledge! YT: https://youtu.be/xKQ-F2-o8uM Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/HNnAwSduud [00:00:00] Introduction to FEP/Friston [00:06:53] Cheers to Epistemic Foraging! [00:09:17] The Burden of Knowledge Across Disciplines [00:12:55] On-show introduction to Friston [00:14:23] Simple does NOT mean Easy [00:21:25] Searching for...
2022-03-021h 42Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#66 ALEXANDER MATTICK - [Unplugged / Community Edition]We have a chat with Alexander Mattick aka ZickZack from Yannic's Discord community. Alex is one of the leading voices in that community and has an impressive technical depth. Don't forget MLST has now started it's own Discord server too, come and join us! We are going to run regular events, our first big event on Wednesday 9th 1700-1900 UK time.  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/HNnAwSduud YT version: https://youtu.be/rGOOLC8cIO4 [00:00:00] Introduction to Alex  [00:02:16] Spline th...
2022-02-2850 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#65 Prof. PEDRO DOMINGOS [Unplugged]Note: there are no politics discussed in this show and please do not interpret this show as any kind of a political statement from us.  We have decided not to discuss politics on MLST anymore due to its divisive nature.  Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/HNnAwSduud [00:00:00] Intro [00:01:36] What we all need to understand about machine learning [00:06:05] The Master Algorithm Target Audience [00:09:50] Deeply Connected Algorithms seen from Divergent Frames of Reference [00:12:49] There is a Master Al...
2022-02-261h 28Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#64 Prof. Gary Marcus 3.0Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Discord: https://discord.gg/HNnAwSduud YT: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZDY2nhkPZxw We have a chat with Prof. Gary Marcus about everything which is currently top of mind for him, consciousness  [00:00:00] Gary intro [00:01:25] Slightly conscious [00:24:59] Abstract, compositional models [00:32:46] Spline theory of NNs [00:36:17] Self driving cars / algebraic reasoning  [00:39:43] Extrapolation [00:44:15] Scaling laws [00:49:50] Maximum likelihood estimation References: Grokking: Generalization Beyond Overfitting on Sm...
2022-02-2451 minMachine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#063 - Prof. YOSHUA BENGIO - GFlowNets, Consciousness & CausalityWe are now sponsored by Weights and Biases! Please visit our sponsor link: http://wandb.me/MLST Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst For Yoshua Bengio, GFlowNets are the most exciting thing on the horizon of Machine Learning today. He believes they can solve previously intractable problems and hold the key to unlocking machine abstract reasoning itself. This discussion explores the promise of GFlowNets and the personal journey Prof. Bengio traveled to reach them. Panel: Dr. Tim Scarfe Dr. Keith Duggar Dr. Yannic Kilcher
2022-02-221h 33Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#062 - Dr. Guy Emerson - Linguistics, Distributional SemanticsDr. Guy Emerson is a computational linguist and obtained his Ph.D from Cambridge university where he is now a research fellow and lecturer. On panel we also have myself, Dr. Tim Scarfe, as well as Dr. Keith Duggar and the veritable Dr. Walid Saba. We dive into distributional semantics, probability theory, fuzzy logic, grounding, vagueness and the grammar/cognition connection. The aim of distributional semantics is to design computational techniques that can automatically learn the meanings of words from a body of text. The twin challenges are: how do we represent meaning, and how do we...
2022-02-031h 29Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)061: Interpolation, Extrapolation and Linearisation (Prof. Yann LeCun, Dr. Randall Balestriero)We are now sponsored by Weights and Biases! Please visit our sponsor link: http://wandb.me/MLST Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst Yann LeCun thinks that it's specious to say neural network models are interpolating because in high dimensions, everything is extrapolation. Recently Dr. Randall Balestriero, Dr. Jerome Pesente and prof. Yann LeCun released their paper learning in high dimensions always amounts to extrapolation. This discussion has completely changed how we think about neural networks and their behaviour. [00:00:00] Pre-intro [00:11:58] Intro Part 1: On linearisation in NNs [00:28:17] Intro Part 2: On...
2022-01-043h 19Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#60 Geometric Deep Learning Blueprint (Special Edition)Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst The last decade has witnessed an experimental revolution in data science and machine learning, epitomised by deep learning methods. Many high-dimensional learning tasks previously thought to be beyond reach -- such as computer vision, playing Go, or protein folding -- are in fact tractable given enough computational horsepower. Remarkably, the essence of deep learning is built from two simple algorithmic principles: first, the notion of representation or feature learning and second, learning by local gradient-descent type methods, typically implemented as backpropagation. While learning generic functions in high dimensions is...
2021-09-193h 33Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#59 - Jeff Hawkins (Thousand Brains Theory)Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/mlst The ultimate goal of neuroscience is to learn how the human brain gives rise to human intelligence and what it means to be intelligent. Understanding how the brain works is considered one of humanity’s greatest challenges.  Jeff Hawkins thinks that the reality we perceive is a kind of simulation, a hallucination, a confabulation. He thinks that our brains are a model reality based on thousands of information streams originating from the sensors in our body.  Critically - Hawkins doesn’t think there is just one model but rather; thousa...
2021-09-032h 34Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#038 - Professor Kenneth Stanley - Why Greatness Cannot Be PlannedProfessor Kenneth Stanley is currently a research science manager at OpenAI in San Fransisco. We've Been dreaming about getting Kenneth on the show since the very begininning of Machine Learning Street Talk. Some of you might recall that our first ever show was on the enhanced POET paper, of course Kenneth had his hands all over it. He's been cited over 16000 times, his most popular paper with over 3K citations was the NEAT algorithm. His interests are neuroevolution, open-endedness, NNs, artificial life, and AI. He invented the concept of novelty search with no clearly defined objective. His key idea...
2021-01-202h 46Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)#035 Christmas Community Edition!Welcome to the Christmas special community edition of MLST! We discuss some recent and interesting papers from Pedro Domingos (are NNs kernel machines?), Deepmind (can NNs out-reason symbolic machines?), Anna Rodgers - When BERT Plays The Lottery, All Tickets Are Winning, Prof. Mark Bishop (even causal methods won't deliver understanding), We also cover our favourite bits from the recent Montreal AI event run by Prof. Gary Marcus (including Rich Sutton, Danny Kahneman and Christof Koch). We respond to a reader mail on Capsule networks. Then we do a deep dive into Type Theory and Lambda Calculus with community member...
2020-12-272h 56