Artificial Intelligence Meets Virtual Worlds: The Future of Sentience

The Next Big Idea

Next Big Idea Club

Social Sciences, Society & Culture, Education, Science

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 13 July 2023

⏱️ 78 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The two hottest topics in tech right now are the rise of generative AI and, with Apple’s recent push into spatial computing, the mainstreaming of augmented reality. Will silicon-based machines develop sentience? Will human experience extend into virtual worlds? These distinct technologies may eventually blend to spawn a surprising future, as our “real” world becomes digitally enhanced and our machines behave increasingly like humans. Today, a provocative discussion with some big (human) thinkers: Steven Johnson, visiting scholar at Google Labs and author of ”Extra Life,” “Where Good Ideas Come from,” and “How We Got to Now”; philosopher and cognitive scientist David Chalmers, author of ”The Conscious Mind” and “Reality+”; and Betaworks founder and AI investor John Borthwick. • Want to learn more about our executive membership? Email podcast@nextbigideaclub.com • “David Chalmers Thinks We May Be Living in a Simulation (and He’s OK With It)” • “Steven Johnson & Michael Specter on the Future of Life”

Transcript

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0:00.0	LinkedIn presents.
0:06.4	I'm Rufus Griskem, and this is the next big idea.
0:10.6	Today, a conversation about the rise of generative AI,
0:14.4	the mainstreaming of augmented reality, and the future of consciousness.
0:30.0	I have been fascinated ever since childhood by the scientific story of our origins.
0:43.3	How could 10 billion years of rocks swirling in space have resulted in the perfect
0:49.7	planet for the development of the first life forms?
0:53.1	And how could 3 billion years of microscopic organisms, increasing in complexity,
0:58.0	eventually result in the human experience of consciousness?
1:02.8	This continues to be a question without an answer, but there are hypotheses.
1:08.1	Some argue that small improvements in the ability of early organisms to predict the future,
1:13.4	the rhythms of night and day, for instance, and the approach of predators,
1:16.9	increase their rates of survival.
1:19.6	Billions of years later, as early primates became more and more social,
1:23.7	those who could better predict the behaviors of others in the tribe had a survival advantage.
1:29.7	This required developing a theory of mind and understanding of other humans' personalities and
1:35.0	motivations. And this, in turn, resulted in the ability to build an understanding of ourselves,
1:42.7	and a constant internal monologue about the people in the world around us,
1:47.0	which is our experience of consciousness.
1:50.1	For many decades now, we have been working on trying to replicate the evolution of human
1:55.4	intelligence on computers. It took about 14 billion years for human level intelligence
2:02.1	to emerge, and carbon-based organisms were told. We've spent about 70 some years trying to build
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