William Hahn: When Will AI Machines Become Genuinely Conscious?

Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal

Curt Jaimungal

Physics, Philosophy, Society & Culture, Science

4.6 • 606 Ratings

🗓️ 8 October 2024

⏱️ 160 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

William Hahn (director, AGI & AI Safety at Hahn AI) on how AI reshapes language, consciousness, and society — programmable mind metaphors, AI security, and emergent computation.0:00 Introduction2:30 AI’s Impact on Language and Human Thought5:10 Mind as a Programmable System and Historical Metaphors8:45 Society of Mind Theory and AI Agents11:30 Consciousness, Awareness, and Metacognition15:00 Free Will, Emotions, and Unconscious Programming18:40 Brain as an Immune System and Handling Unthinkable Thoughts22:50 Informational Parasites, Memes, and Nam Shub of Enki28:15 AI Security: Vulnerabilities and Protecting Minds33:00 The Cultural Shift: AI’s Influence on Psychology37:45 Historical Secrecy in AI and Government Role42:30 AI’s Evolution: Role of Data, Hardware, and Differentiation47:20 Speculating on Hidden AI Capabilities and Advanced Systems51:10 Richard Hamming’s Insights on Learning and Ambiguity57:10 Revisiting Ancient Knowledge and Advanced Civilizations1:03:30 Artifacts of Ancient Technology and Modern Interpretations1:09:10 Defining Meaning, Spirit, and Information in AI1:14:35 Wolfram’s Physics Model and Emergent Computation1:20:00 Computational Models of Consciousness and Mind1:27:28 Wolfram's Symbolic Language and Analog Computing1:34:00 Agent-Based Programming and AI Evolution1:39:10 Knowledge Gaps and Flat Earth as a Metaphor1:45:00 Synesthesia, Music, and Human Perception1:52:24 The Intersection of Software and Hardware2:00:02 Complexity Crisis in Modern Technology2:06:00 Optical Computing and AI's Future2:12:08 Philosophical Reflections on AI and Consciousness2:20:00 The Amorphous Boundary Between Software and Hardware2:28:00 Technology, Religion, and the Need for a New Understanding2:37:15 Outro / Support TOESPONSORS:- I personally subscribe to The Economist. TOE listeners get 35% off the annual subscription. No other podcast has this! https://economist.com/TOERESOURCES:- Snow Crash (book): https://amzn.to/3zYqJb9- Center for the Future Mind: https://www.fau.edu/future-mind/- Alan Turing’s papers archive: https://turingarchive.kings.cam.ac.uk/- Richard Hamming lectures: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL2FF649D0C4407B30- Iain McGilchrist on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M-SgOwc6Pe4- Gregory Chaitin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guQIkV6yCik- Mindfest playlist: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZ7ikzmc6zlOPw7Hqkc6-MXEMBy0fnZcb- Susan Schneider’s website: https://schneiderwebsite.com/index.html- Susan Schneider’s Google talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwVKXKlU1GU- William Hahn’s short courses: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLKoZnCEAIkvkvyVpbqx71EMT8BLpD6Oaq- Ekkolapto’s Polymath project: https://www.ekkolapto.org/polymath- Ekkolapto’s event page: https://ekkolapto.substack.com/- HyperPhysics: http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/hframe.html- Joscha Bach and Michael Levin on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgMFnfB5E_A- Stephen Wolfram on TOE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0YRlQQw0d-4- Curt on Julian Dorey: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q1mKNGo9JLQ- Substack: https://curtjaimungal.substack.com- Support TOE on Patreon: https://patreon.com/curtjaimungal (early access to ad-free audio episodes!) Theories of Everything with Curt Jaimungal features long-form, technically detailed interviews with leading researchers in physics, mathematics, consciousness, and philosophy, exploring topics at the level of active research. For academics, graduate students, and anyone seeking depth beyond popular science. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Professor William Hahn is an associate professor of mathematical sciences and a founder of the
0:04.3	machine perception and cognitive robotics laboratory, as well as the Gruber AI sandbox. Both you and I, Will,
0:10.1	we met at Mindfest at Florida Atlantic University a few times, and a link to all of those talks on
0:16.0	AI and consciousness are in the description. Will, please tell me what have you been working on since we last spoke.
0:22.9	Well, first, just want to say, great to see you and really happy to be joining you on tow today.
0:28.3	Really excited. You've got such an amazing community. Same, man. It's been a long time coming.
0:33.3	Thank you. I'm working on a whole bunch of different things. The thing that's been in my mind the most is this idea of info hazards. And in particular, this theme I've been bouncing around called lethal text.
0:48.8	Okay. Let's hear it. Well, so as everybody knows, you know, AI is here. And everybody is kind of prepared for the
0:57.6	technological revolution that we're witnessing. But I think the more interesting developments are
1:04.2	actually going to be in our mind. They're going to be the changes in language, how we think
1:09.8	about language, how we think about ourselves, and how we think about
1:13.5	thinking. How we think about language. What do you mean? So everybody, I'm sure, has gotten
1:20.1	their hands on one of these large language models at this point. And they have just absolutely
1:26.7	revolutionized the way we are thinking about words,
1:32.5	the way we're thinking about language. And as people might be aware, it's now becoming possible
1:39.0	to program a computer largely in English, that we can ask for computer code at a very high level
1:47.3	things people dreamed of back in the 50s. And now it's possible to just describe what you want
1:54.0	the computer to do, and then that behind the scenes is getting converted into runnable computer
1:59.6	code. But I think that now forces us to
2:03.2	think about, was language always a programming language? Is our mind something like a computer,
2:11.1	not in the obvious sense of transistors and gates and that sort of thing, but is it a programmable
2:16.8	object? And if so,
	...

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