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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#392 – Joscha Bach: Life, Intelligence, Consciousness, AI & the Future of Humans

1 Aug 2023 42 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Joscha BachLex Fridman

Claim mix

belief 23evaluation 7prediction 5uncertainty 3commitment 3recommendation 1

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Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

42 published records

01 / recommendation

Mentions personal use of ChatGPT.

“I still have the illusion that when I play with ChatGPT, that it’s in principle not doing anything that I could not do if I had Google at my disposal and I get all the resources from the internet and spend enough time on it. But this thing that I have an extremely autistic stupid intern in a way that is extremely good at drudgery, and I can offload the drudgery to the degree that I’m able to automate the management of the intern is something that is difficult for me to overhype at this point because we have not yet started to scratch the surface of what’s possible with this.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

05 / evaluation

For some people, this doesn’t work, and they’re forced to build more agency over their rational beliefs than this, and construct their norms rationally, and so they go to this level.

“For some people, this doesn’t work, and they’re forced to build more agency over their rational beliefs than this, and construct their norms rationally, and so they go to this level.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

07 / uncertainty

I’m recently wrote a tool that is using the camera on my MacBook and Swift to read pixels out of it and manipulate them and so on. I don’t know Swift.

“I’m recently wrote a tool that is using the camera on my MacBook and Swift to read pixels out of it and manipulate them and so on. I don’t know Swift.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / evaluation

In the same way when you conclude a thought, the thought is going to wrap up and gives control over to other thoughts in your own mind. So, there is no single thing that you need to do, but I observe myself as a being, that sometimes I’m a parent and then I have an identification and a job as a parent, and sometimes I am an agent of consciousness on earth, and then from this perspective, there’s other stuff that is important.

“In the same way when you conclude a thought, the thought is going to wrap up and gives control over to other thoughts in your own mind. So, there is no single thing that you need to do, but I observe myself as a being, that sometimes I’m a parent and then I have an identification and a job as a parent, and sometimes I am an agent of consciousness on earth, and then from this perspective, there’s other stuff that is important.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / belief

Some people do. But I think that once you realize that you wear a costume at Burning Man, a variety of costumes, realize that you cannot not wear a costume.

“Some people do. But I think that once you realize that you wear a costume at Burning Man, a variety of costumes, realize that you cannot not wear a costume.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

10 / commitment

You tweeted, “Effective accelerationism is the belief that the Paperclip Maximizer and Roko’s Basililisk will keep each other in check by being eternally at each other’s throats, so we will be safe and get to enjoy lots of free paperclips and a beautiful afterlife.

“You tweeted, “Effective accelerationism is the belief that the Paperclip Maximizer and Roko’s Basililisk will keep each other in check by being eternally at each other’s throats, so we will be safe and get to enjoy lots of free paperclips and a beautiful afterlife.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

13 / belief

I suspect, it’s a favorite training goal for a number of meditators. But I think that enlightenment is, in some sense, more mundane, and it’s a step further, or sideways.

“I suspect, it’s a favorite training goal for a number of meditators. But I think that enlightenment is, in some sense, more mundane, and it’s a step further, or sideways.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / belief

First you say, I suspect the experience that leads to the panpsychism syndrome of some philosophers, and other consciousness enthusiasts represents the realization that we don’t end at the self, but share a resonant universe representation with every other observer coupled to the same universe.

“First you say, I suspect the experience that leads to the panpsychism syndrome of some philosophers, and other consciousness enthusiasts represents the realization that we don’t end at the self, but share a resonant universe representation with every other observer coupled to the same universe.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / belief

I suspect that the monks who are self emulated for their political beliefs to make statements about the occupation of Tibet by China, they were probably being able to regulate the physical pain in any way they wanted to.

“I suspect that the monks who are self emulated for their political beliefs to make statements about the occupation of Tibet by China, they were probably being able to regulate the physical pain in any way they wanted to.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / belief

In some sense, I learned a lot about costumes at Burning Man. Before that, I did not really appreciate costumes, and saw them more as uniforms like wearing a suit.

“In some sense, I learned a lot about costumes at Burning Man. Before that, I did not really appreciate costumes, and saw them more as uniforms like wearing a suit.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / belief

Now I think that almost every serious computer scientist goes through a phase like this in their life. This question that is almost no longer relevant because what is different between the programming language is not what they let the computer do, but what they let you think about what the computer should be doing.

“Now I think that almost every serious computer scientist goes through a phase like this in their life. This question that is almost no longer relevant because what is different between the programming language is not what they let the computer do, but what they let you think about what the computer should be doing.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

21 / belief

I think that given the amazing hardware that we have, we could build something that is much more beautiful than our own mind, and this thing is not as beautiful as our own mind despite being so much larger.

“I think that given the amazing hardware that we have, we could build something that is much more beautiful than our own mind, and this thing is not as beautiful as our own mind despite being so much larger.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

23 / belief

What would be the implication for AI systems that try to be intelligent, because he didn’t see a mechanism by which a computer program would become telepathic, and I suspect if telepathy would exist or if all the reports that you get from people when you ask the normal person on the street, I find that very often they say, “I have experiences with telepathy.

“What would be the implication for AI systems that try to be intelligent, because he didn’t see a mechanism by which a computer program would become telepathic, and I suspect if telepathy would exist or if all the reports that you get from people when you ask the normal person on the street, I find that very often they say, “I have experiences with telepathy.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

24 / belief

Sometimes, stuff is happening in parallel. But it’s, I think, a useful framework to look at what’s present, and the structure of a person, and how they interact with the world, and how they relate to themselves.

“Sometimes, stuff is happening in parallel. But it’s, I think, a useful framework to look at what’s present, and the structure of a person, and how they interact with the world, and how they relate to themselves.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

25 / belief

What are the first principles from which the whole thing is derived? And when I was young, I was not blessed with a lot of people around myself who knew how to make proofs from first principles, and I think mathematicians do this quite naturally, but most of the great mathematicians do not become mathematicians in school, but they tend to be self-taught because school teachers tend not to be mathematicians.

“What are the first principles from which the whole thing is derived? And when I was young, I was not blessed with a lot of people around myself who knew how to make proofs from first principles, and I think mathematicians do this quite naturally, but most of the great mathematicians do not become mathematicians in school, but they tend to be self-taught because school teachers tend not to be mathematicians.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

26 / belief

Yeah. So is there a practical advice you can give on how to think paradigmatically, how to think independently or because you’ve said I had no choice, but I think to a degree you have a choice because you said you want to be productive and I’m thinking independently is productive if what you’re curious about is understanding the world, especially when the problems are very new and open.

“Yeah. So is there a practical advice you can give on how to think paradigmatically, how to think independently or because you’ve said I had no choice, but I think to a degree you have a choice because you said you want to be productive and I’m thinking independently is productive if what you’re curious about is understanding the world, especially when the problems are very new and open.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

27 / commitment

I believe that if we make everything open source and make this mandatory, we are going to lose about a lot of beautiful art and a lot of beautiful designs.

“I believe that if we make everything open source and make this mandatory, we are going to lose about a lot of beautiful art and a lot of beautiful designs.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

28 / belief

To me, it would be fascinating to think about how to build such systems. It’s not obvious that they would necessarily be more efficient than us on a digital substrate, but I suspect that they might, so I suspect that the actual AGI that is going to be more interesting is going to use slightly different algorithmic paradigms or sometimes massively different algorithmic paradigms than the current generation of transformer-based learning system.

“To me, it would be fascinating to think about how to build such systems. It’s not obvious that they would necessarily be more efficient than us on a digital substrate, but I suspect that they might, so I suspect that the actual AGI that is going to be more interesting is going to use slightly different algorithmic paradigms or sometimes massively different algorithmic paradigms than the current generation of transformer-based learning system.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

29 / belief

To some degree you start doing this when you [inaudible 01:35:15] sense, I believe that you understand that you are in charge of your own emotion to some degree and that you are responsible how you approach the world, that it’s basically your task to have some basic hygiene how in the way in which you deal with your mind and you cannot blame your environment for the way in which you feel.

“To some degree you start doing this when you [inaudible 01:35:15] sense, I believe that you understand that you are in charge of your own emotion to some degree and that you are responsible how you approach the world, that it’s basically your task to have some basic hygiene how in the way in which you deal with your mind and you cannot blame your environment for the way in which you feel.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

31 / evaluation

Roko’s Basililisk is the idea that there could be an AI that is going to punish everybody for eternity by simulating them if they don’t help in creating Roko’s Basililisk.

“Roko’s Basililisk is the idea that there could be an AI that is going to punish everybody for eternity by simulating them if they don’t help in creating Roko’s Basililisk.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

32 / belief

I believe that you get this experience, because your mind is modeling the fact that you are no longer identified with the personal self in that state, but you have transcended this division between the self model and the wealth model, and you’re experiencing yourself as your mind as something that is representing a universe.

“I believe that you get this experience, because your mind is modeling the fact that you are no longer identified with the personal self in that state, but you have transcended this division between the self model and the wealth model, and you’re experiencing yourself as your mind as something that is representing a universe.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

33 / prediction

Because the cancer cannot procreate beyond the organism, except for some infectious cancers like the ones that eradicated the Tasmanian devils, you typically end up with a situation where the organism dies together with the cancer, because the cancer has destroyed the larger system due to playing a shorter game.

“Because the cancer cannot procreate beyond the organism, except for some infectious cancers like the ones that eradicated the Tasmanian devils, you typically end up with a situation where the organism dies together with the cancer, because the cancer has destroyed the larger system due to playing a shorter game.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

34 / evaluation

I thought it needs to be a big body of knowledge that I can just study and that works, and so I entered studies and philosophy and computer science and later psychology and a bit of neuroscience and so on, and I was disappointed by what I found because I found that the questions of how consciousness and so on works, how emotion works, how it’s possible that the system can experience anything, how motivation emerges in the mind were not being answered by the authorities that I met and the schools that were around.

“I thought it needs to be a big body of knowledge that I can just study and that works, and so I entered studies and philosophy and computer science and later psychology and a bit of neuroscience and so on, and I was disappointed by what I found because I found that the questions of how consciousness and so on works, how emotion works, how it’s possible that the system can experience anything, how motivation emerges in the mind were not being answered by the authorities that I met and the schools that were around.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

35 / evaluation

I noticed the same thing when I came into the math school that I think at least half, probably two thirds of these kids were severely traumatized as children growing up, and in large part, due to being alone, because they couldn’t find anybody to relate to.

“I noticed the same thing when I came into the math school that I think at least half, probably two thirds of these kids were severely traumatized as children growing up, and in large part, due to being alone, because they couldn’t find anybody to relate to.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

36 / evaluation

This notion that you are a human being that is interacting in a social context and is confronted with an immutable world in which objects are fixed and can no longer be changed, in which the dream can no longer be influenced, it’s something that emerges a little bit later in our life. And I personally suspect that this is something that our ancestors had known and we have forgotten because I suspect that it’s there in plain sight in Genesis 1, in this first book of the Bible, where it’s being described that this creative spirit is hovering over the substrate and then is creating a boundary between the world model and sphere of ideas, earth and heaven, as they’re being described there, and then it’s creating contrast and then dimensions and then space, and then it creates organic shapes and solids and liquids and builds a world from them and creates plants and animals, give them all their names.

“This notion that you are a human being that is interacting in a social context and is confronted with an immutable world in which objects are fixed and can no longer be changed, in which the dream can no longer be influenced, it’s something that emerges a little bit later in our life. And I personally suspect that this is something that our ancestors had known and we have forgotten because I suspect that it’s there in plain sight in Genesis 1, in this first book of the Bible, where it’s being described that this creative spirit is hovering over the substrate and then is creating a boundary between the world model and sphere of ideas, earth and heaven, as they’re being described there, and then it’s creating contrast and then dimensions and then space, and then it creates organic shapes and solids and liquids and builds a world from them and creates plants and animals, give them all their names.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

37 / evaluation

Part of your brain is sending a learning signal to another part of the brain to improve its performance. And sometimes this doesn’t work because this trainer who sense the signal does not have a good model of how to improve the performance, so it’s sending a signal, but the performance doesn’t get better and then it might crank up the pain and it gets worse and worse and the behavior of the system may be even deteriorating as a result, but until this is resolved, this regulation issue, your pain is increasing, and this is, I think, typically what you describe as suffering.

“Part of your brain is sending a learning signal to another part of the brain to improve its performance. And sometimes this doesn’t work because this trainer who sense the signal does not have a good model of how to improve the performance, so it’s sending a signal, but the performance doesn’t get better and then it might crank up the pain and it gets worse and worse and the behavior of the system may be even deteriorating as a result, but until this is resolved, this regulation issue, your pain is increasing, and this is, I think, typically what you describe as suffering.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

38 / commitment

If the AI says something racist or sexist, we are all lost, because we will assimilate the wrong opinions from the AI, and so we need to make sure that the AI has the right opinions, and the right values, and the right structure.

“If the AI says something racist or sexist, we are all lost, because we will assimilate the wrong opinions from the AI, and so we need to make sure that the AI has the right opinions, and the right values, and the right structure.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

39 / prediction

If you are at stage five, you’re mostly worried that AI is not going to be enlightened fast enough, because you realize that the game is not so much about intelligence, but about agency, about the ability to control the future, and the identity is instrumental to this.

“If you are at stage five, you’re mostly worried that AI is not going to be enlightened fast enough, because you realize that the game is not so much about intelligence, but about agency, about the ability to control the future, and the identity is instrumental to this.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

40 / prediction

It’s basically a function that moves the system from one representational state to the next representational state. So if you try to map this into a metaphor that is closer to our brain, imagine that you would take a language model or a model like DELI that you use… For instance, this image-guided diffusion to approximate and camera image and use the activation state of the neural network to interpret the camera image, which in principle I think will be possible very soon.

“It’s basically a function that moves the system from one representational state to the next representational state. So if you try to map this into a metaphor that is closer to our brain, imagine that you would take a language model or a model like DELI that you use… For instance, this image-guided diffusion to approximate and camera image and use the activation state of the neural network to interpret the camera image, which in principle I think will be possible very soon.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

42 / prediction

I suspect that soon we are going to see a bunch of cognitive architectures where every module is in some sense a language model or something equivalent.

“I suspect that soon we are going to see a bunch of cognitive architectures where every module is in some sense a language model or something equivalent.”
Speaker
Joscha Bach
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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