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The Times Tech Podcast

Vicarious founder Scott Phoenix: "Humanity's last invention"

The Times Tech Podcast

Will Morley

Business, Unknown, Technology

4.9654 Ratings

🗓️ 20 April 2018

⏱️ 40 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The Sunday Times’ tech correspondent Danny Fortson brings on Scott Phoenix, founder of artificial intelligence startup Vicarious, to talk about the dawn of the robot age (4:30), the “last invention” (6:05), replicating the human brain (8:55), putting robots in the wild (10:00), how he got into AI (11:15), why he’s not 500 years too early (12:20), why Elon Musk is wrong (13:15), having Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos as investors (16:55), not wanting to be an investment banker (18:05), launching a Y combinator startup (19:00), AI’s evolution (20:10), solving Captcha’s (22:05), understanding how the brain works (25:40), why general AI could change everything (28:10), the danger of bias (29:50), in-home robots (33:45), and what society looks like when AI takes over (36:10).

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Transcript

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0:00.0

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0:21.9

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0:32.3

Hello and welcome to Danny in the Valley, your weekly dispatch from behind the scenes and inside the minds of the top people in tech.

0:40.5

Before we get to today's show, a very quick heads up, we have another bonus episode for you this week.

0:48.0

So if all goes well and my fabulous producers, Matt and Chica, aren't completely snowed under and I get everything to them in time.

0:55.1

Shout out to them, Matt and Chica.

0:57.6

Then at the same time that this pod goes up, another will also go live.

1:02.0

So I won't spoil it for you guys, but I think you'll enjoy that one as well.

1:07.0

Now, on to today's show.

1:09.9

Yo, technology.

1:12.5

What is it all about?

1:14.1

Imagine a person who has a photographic memory and has read every document that any human

1:19.2

has ever written.

1:20.2

They can think for 60,000 years for every second that passes.

1:24.2

If you're a brain like that, then questions that are really difficult for us to

1:27.9

answer as a species or as individuals about the nature of the universe, how do you build a fusion

1:33.0

reactor, how do you build a teleporter, things that would be amazing if we had them, but are just

1:38.3

out of reach of our small minds, become in reach all of a sudden.

1:44.9

We have a real mindbender for you this week on Danny in the Valley.

...

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