Dr. Michael Levin on Embodied Minds and Cognitive Agents

[@joeldream6842]

I have watched pretty much all of the Mike Levin interviews, and am a big fan. This interview took it in a unique and fascinating direction relating Levin's work on cognitive systems with biology to its implications for AI. Great work on the questions and interacting thoughts. Thanks for bringing these ideas to the people, it is much appreciated!

[@stevedemoss1466]

Totally agree. In fact, I was getting ready to make a comment until I read yours and realized you already said everything I was going to say.

[@williamjmccartan8879]

​​@@stevedemoss1466The only thing I might add that as well as seeing most of Michael's work on numerous podcasts, I have also saved most of them in a library I've been building for over the last few years. Here's a link, kzbin.info/aero/PLEwpMD47png4zQ9gXjbsyHZCFC0gaeyRf&si=vHvljmonEW_AhUVD Peace

[@waynelewis425]

Me too…and agree

[@aaronknight7129]

Same! Yo do have any recommendations for other biologists to check out?

[@waynelewis425]

@@aaronknight7129 definitely check out Richard Watson

[@wizard4203]

michael levin might be the most important biologist alive today.

[@johndewey7243]

Michael Levin is a collective.

[@johnpaily]

I agree he has great visions

[@johnpaily]

What has caught my attention is how he integrates his visions in an appealing manner to scientific community

[@tuckerbugeater]

@@johndewey7243 there are infinite Levins

[@marcobono2082]

I have listened to Dr Levin many times on many podcasts and get something new each time. What I love about Dr Levins and his colleagues work is that they are asking the right questions but also rigorously testing them, very rare indeed.

[@markreditoofficial]

This was such a great insightful episode. My mind is blown!

[@johnc5893]

Out-fucking-standing! Watched many of Mike's interviews. The amount of ground covered across disciplines was just amazing. Thank you!

[@waynelewis425]

Fantastic stuff Mike especially embodiment ….if I am a cognitive agent embedded in an arena in which affordances become salient ….I am embodied in the more meaningful way.

[@PhilipSportel]

We are heading for a collision between 'story logic', humanity's old operating system, and intelligence, and language itself is the battleground.

[@dinomiles7999]

Ai will soon take the guess work out of it all. ❤ Don't die, we are coming. See you in 2500. Eyes mind heart and soul wide open. NO FEAR ! ❤

[@tuckerbugeater]

@@dinomiles7999 you won't be a chosen one

[@JakeWitmer]

41:00 *"Emergence" is a label that only has meaning relative to an observer who is surprised by some sort of (collective) behavior (of a system).*

[@BrianMosleyUK]

Wow, fantastic guest, this really resonates with the work I've seen by Karl Friston and the free energy principle with Markhov blankets. 😀

[@reidelliot1972]

I’m interested in the overlaps in this area with some research I’m interested as well. Namely AI Safety and capability emergence. Would you mind summarizing the Friston concepts and the free energy principle with Markhov blankets?

[@tadasturonis]

Michael has had more than a few collaborations co-writing papers with prof. Friston.

[@alertbri]

​@@tadasturonisthat makes sense, so much resonance with his foundational thinking.

[@alertbri]

​@@reidelliot1972lol, no. Suggest you look up Machine Learning Street Talk - there are a number of lengthy episodes on the topic. Me doing a summary wouldn't do it justice at all, I'm barely beginning to get my head around the topic. It's a beautiful theory.

[@matfar100]

There is at least one episode of the TOE podcast where Friston and Levin are in theolocution

[@shawnvandever3917]

Most of the things LLMs cannot do today is because their hands are tied. When the brain generalizes on new data it is continuously updating it predictions 100s of times per second. This also keeps us from "hallucinating". If you gave GPT-4 the ability to make many prediction updates against its world model or some belief system (RL) on real time data it would generalize. I think this is why Sam is making a huge deal over power and compute because they are moving along these lines.

[@brendawilliams8062]

It is the control of hallucination as in dreams. Or nightmares would leave us disabled. How can you say hallucination would not be a most available learning tool. AI can not learn from hallucinations would seem a more accurate premise

[@shawnvandever3917]

@@brendawilliams8062 Hallucinations as of now are not learning tool because the models are static and the weights do not change after training. Basically my comment above is what the premise of Open AIs new o1 that does .

[@brendawilliams8062]

@@shawnvandever3917 is it like an older office calculator. The faster you can move it along then the faster you can do the human work

[@brendawilliams8062]

@@shawnvandever3917 could society as a whole be driven to a language between humans with no verbs and using kippu thread knotting

[@shoug6555]

One of the main reasons I have become obsessed with Michael Levin's work was because of a book called Braiding Sweetgrass that talks about the botanical truths contained within indigenous spirituality. After reading that book, I think our colonial perspective on animism, and in fact the word "Animism" itself, is unfairly dismissive and infantilizing. I think the beliefs of "Animist" cultures such as indigenous Americans are very well supported by the work of Michael Levin, and we'd probably have arrived here much sooner if it weren't for the colonial genocides that deliberately framed Animist cultures as primitive and barbaric. When Michael tries to disambiguate between TAME and "ancient Animism," I think he's accidentally making some problematic assumptions. The first is that Animism is ancient. Animism *was* contemporary until only a few hundred years ago when colonists eradicated it along with the all the peoples who spoke the languages which encoded it. The second assumption is of the degree to which these cultures ascribed agency to non-living elements of their environment, and exactly how precisely those stories were actually meant to model reality. The word "Animism" itself comes from western anthropology, and I think it inappropriately ascribes a kind of authoritarian prescriptivism to these systems that the anthropologists who coined the terms were used to experiencing from the spiritual/moral authorities of Western culture. I understand that as a very intelligent, post enlightenment scientist, the automatic instinct is to distance oneself from spiritual or magical language, but it must be acknowledged that attaching personhood to everything around you in your environment is *less* magical and *more* scientifically supported than the alternative. Western, post-enlightenment, colonialist science has spent centuries brooding over pseudoscientific questions of identity and intelligence, always for the purpose of stripping the personhood from lifeforms we wished to exploit at massive scales, such as in the case of phrenology. It would have taken less steps to walk backwards from "Everything including the thunder and mountains is Animate," to TAME than it has taken to walk forwards to it from "Only Humans have Free Will and deserve dignity, Animals are basically robots merely reacting to stimuli, feel free to boil lobsters alive and burn cats in massive pyres and stack negros in heaps in the sweltering bowels of slave trade vessels." I really recommend reading Braiding Sweetgrass by Robin Wall Kimmerer, it's a short and beautiful read that relates a side of the story of colonialism that I had honestly never heard before. One chapter in that book, The Grammar of Animacy, and my love for the book in general, is what has caused me to do such a deep dive into TAME.

[@innaschneiderman5761]

Very interesting comment, thanks! (Not just phrenology, but also eugenics)

[@rockapedra1130]

Michael Levin is trail blazing a whole new science. Something like "Substrate and scale independent cooperative hierarchical computing". Yeah that named won't stick ... LOL

[@Pinstripe0451]

Absolutely brilliant.

[@jondor654]

The strongest claim for emergence if tenable probably relates to the complexity of the system and probably only extrapolates to living systems .

[@Darhan62]

Great conversation.

[@genegray9895]

I think Levin is grossly underestimating how agential LLMs are, and I'm shocked by that. I think maybe he hasn't considered them in the right way, as agents in the loss landscape of the training distribution. They have incredible competencies in navigating that space.

[@drmichaellevin]

I actually don't disagree with that. It needs more study, and and it's entirely possible that such agency is emergent there despite the fact that the key biological ingredients for it wasn't baked into the architecture.

[@genegray9895]

@@drmichaellevin oh my God, it is a HUGE honor to receive a reply from you. You are an inspiration and personal hero to me and I wish more scientists shared your open minded approach. I think a good place to start is with meta-optimization. Just looking at the code, you might expect the Adam optimizer to have fixed and finite intelligence, but once the policy itself becomes an optimizer, it can interact with the outer optimization process. An extreme example would be humans developing bioengineering technologies. A much subtler example is sexual reproduction, which improves gene flow and enables more parallel learning per generation. I think this might also be the explanation for why insertion sort can delay its gratification - it isn't the explicit code that has the secret competency, but rather the interplay between this code and the location of the list in configuration space, where the location encodes a behavioral policy in the language specified by the insertion sort algorithm. A prediction this hypothesis makes is that the delayed gratification ability should improve with the size of the list in accordance with a scaling law of the kind we see in ML. It should also improve with the number of steps since initialization.

[@JaMiHme1]

@@drmichaellevin I would like for him to expand on around 1h 07 min what does it mean to stay human. I have heard him talking about ethics in biology and stuff but this is a equaly importiant subject. Pyromaniacs at the end of their “career” watch their own house burn down with pupils the size of a pond and they enjoy every second of it … scientists atleast the true mad scientists can be similar. I would like Dr. Moreau Khhhm… Dr. Michael to adress this and make us fear not. ;)

[@IlEagle.1G]

Hell yeah Nathan!

[@BrianMosleyUK]

1:17:00 holy cow. 🤯

[@johnpaily]

Why cant think this way. The cell has complete memory and picures of what it is in adult state. Once. It has lost a part, the system insinctively craves to the go full state. All it needs is favorable situation to express the information and become whole

[@ChadKovac]

No shade on these guys but I really wish people interviewing Michael Levin would simply introduce him and then be quiet

[@realcygnus]

One of the most interesting cats out there today & I'm not even all that interested in biology otherwise.

[@aryangod2003]

WHat happened to that MICE with the wearable biorector did it regenerate LIMB? or is it a failure.

[@johnpaily]

The biggest fallacy of the modern world is that the mind is central to life. Central to life is the mind of the heart that connects to the INNER SPACE

[@travelerchikk]

Oh yes!!! Please. Where’s the video on Our beautiful heart, and the Universe or Space or well … I need info.pls

[@Hastingsnow]

Thank you for sharing

[@DG123z]

I pay for premium so I don't have ads then they put them in the video

[@aek12]

Okay happyman

[@belugaflying]

I do premium too but I liked that ad. I actually believe in brave and want to support them. Plus you can skip it easily.

[@PaulTopping1]

Good comments on embodiment and grounding. AI just needs a rich enough world (space) to operate in.

[@johnchase2148]

I can imagine the impossible ,the hard part is finding someone to believe you.. Social pressures stop your free will to believe.

[@johnpaily]

Great anology with caterpillar and butterfly. We need shift or transformation from material to livings

[@inquisition3000]

Good interview but I think Dr. Levin's bookshelf is a bit sparse

[@jondor654]

ET would have a field day , where is he now .

[@JakeWitmer]

1:06:00 *AI and the onus of education.* I couldn't agree more with his statements here. Very interesting. I wonder if he blames the Prussian education model for the Weimar and Hitler. I wonder if he's read John Taylor Gatto's books.

[@Don_Kikkon]

“We are intelligent, and no intelligence so different from our own as to baffle our powers of comprehension deserves to be called intelligence at all. The more a thing resembles ourselves, the more it thinks as we do-and thus by implication tells us that we are right, the more intelligent we think it; and the less it thinks as we do, the greater fool it must be; if a substance does not succeed in making it clear that it understands our business, we conclude that it cannot have any business of its own.” … Samuel Butler - 1865. Excerpt from Darwin Among the Machines George B. Dyson - 1997 This material may be protected by copyright.

[@dinomiles7999]

Nature's Source Code ❤ .

[@harrystein2000]

I am grateful for Michael Levin because he shows Darwinian evolution is seriously flawed because he shows it is not necessary for change -- he does this by showing change can happen in the lab in different ways - I never for a moment believed in Darwinian evolution (it has been shown to be seriously flawed) and always favored a finely tuned universe intelligently designed by God who in the last 10 years, has allowed scientists like Michael Levin to make leaps of advances -- the sheer progress in the last 200 years and in the last 50 years and in the last 10 years is amazing. Amazing in terms of shattering people invested in lifelong theories proven 100% wrong, amazing in terms of revealing some things will never be seeable or experimentally verified (dark matter, what is beyond the edge of the universe). Amazing in terms of how everything boils down to things like Pythagorean Theorem, Euler (differential equation), Newton (gravity, motion), Planck's constant, Maxwell, "i" in imaginary numbers, bosons, quarks, neutrinos, etc., etc. All of these are not random, not chaotic, but are elegant, simple, and beautiful fundamentals. To think there isn't a God behind all this is a choice we all have to make. I choose to glorify God (wisdom starts with fear (respect, awe) of the Lord). I'm sure someone will vitriolically insult me here - this is the normal course of action for some when God is mentioned -- geniuses like ML cannot and won't touch the topic of God in order to promote their studies and be the least offensive to the most people and I understand that. Yet brilliant people like ML indirectly show how amazing God's creation is at the cellular level, the neural network level, the electrical network level, etc. And physicists do the same at the math and physics levels. I think philosophers are getting pushed away in areas of theories of consciousness as God directs physicists and biologists and cosmologist to acknowledge their must be a Creator who created all of this finely tuned system and life as we know it. But philosophy remains important and was a stepping stone for most of the brightest scientific minds in existence. I appreciate and am in awe of ML as he tries to remain neutral and focus on the experiments and amazing results without giving God the glory. That's okay. Every experiment he conducts puts God's creation on full display. It's not random, it's not a chaotic fluke after billions of years. The tendency for some materialist scientists to be dismissive of God has been going on for centuries and they will continue to try and confuse people who believe in God. But ML just neutrally and brilliantly and subtly, perhaps without even realizing it, gives God all the glory by revealing His magnificence. Amen!

[@TempestofSolace]

You can see intelligence at the cellular level, but someone can still claim that at the human level everything is the result of chaotic processes. I notice the lack of consistency in this statement. If evolution is the result of random processes, then this chaoticness should be visible already at the cellular stage. However, when one argues, that intelligence at a lower levels implies possible inteligence at a higher levels, it is considered to be a far-fetched claim, even though the chaotic process theorem is clearly not visible in nature.

[@randymarsh8974]

no

[@johnpaily]

The need of the hour is that we humans need to become conscious and intelligent. We are the only species that exist disconnected from consciounrss. We live on the mind and material centered

[@slightlygruff]

why he has cicada on the chest?

[@JakeWitmer]

1:09:08 AI risk, sub-AGI AI risk, existing systems already capable of "AI catastrophe", etc. I personally believe that the threat of totalitarian expansionism (1) never went away, and (2) is a much greater risk than AI risk. We already have totalitarianism in the DEA, BATFE, ONDCP, OCDETF, FDA, and local police who mindlessly follow their orders... The prior totalitarianism can (and does) both expand and contract.

[@kaleygoode1681]

On children: they go through their, "terrible twos", learning that they're not the centre of the universe when they're tiny and adults can override them. Robots that think they're the centre of the universe will have meaningful tantrums...

[@realandar]

Mind blown.

[@masonleesummerhill]

I like the idea of cognitive lightcones because it gives us a way to assign responsibility and/or intention to a certain predefined organism over spatial and temporal scales, but it does seem a bit arbitrary. The definition of what constitutes a goal can vary widely. For instance, does a plant's growth towards light count as pursuing a goal in the same way a human planning their career does? Quantifying the spatial and temporal scope of an organism's goals involves interpretation and might not capture the full range of its capacities or intentions. For example, we might underestimate the cognitive abilities of animals due to a lack of understanding of their communication methods. Also, cognitive light cones can grow or shrink depending on the state of development of the organism in question. Also, the concept doesn't fully account for the interdependent nature of ecosystems, where the actions of one organism impact the goals and survival of another. A concept which is less dependent on the idea of a "here and now" would be more effective at capturing these shortcomings. perhaps something like "liquid lightcones" where the dynamic and adaptive nature of cognitive processes in biological organisms and their interactions within ecosystems are taken into account? and maybe the principle of superposition and entanglement could be useful? A Liquid Lightcone that exists in multiple states simultaneously. I like Michael levin's research, but his rate of speech and confidence level have always been a bit suspicious to me.

[@bobbeckel5266]

At 1:50:00 where Mike talks about what we want AI (AGI) to become I am reminded of the movie, "The Right Stuff", where the difference between America and Russia became manifest. In the German/Soviet space program, man is a passenger, the machine is in control. In the American space program, the man is the pilot. I hope we follow the same rule with AI where it will always be a human in control. I don't want the story of "To Serve Man" to be a cookbook.

[@NOMONEYTV]

My brain is seeing the artefacts in Michael's video feed and reading it as AI generated, can't not see it

[@JaMiHme1]

What

[@johnchase2148]

I can't believe that there is intelligence in criticism praise just share that the creation of energy that can not be created or destroyed is just perfect by the Creation of it for sometimes being wrong and bad mistakes we may make. If God is the creator, then everything must be respected . How big are we allowed to believe in the impossible.I want to nominate for creating a solar system that would reflect his beliefs.

[@tylermoore4429]

There is a principled way in the biological world to detect consciousness: anesthesia.

[@drmichaellevin]

People have anesthetized plants, flatworms, and even bars of metal with electrophysiological signatures. It's hard to know what has or hasn't happened, except in advanced animals where you see loss of behavior and humans who tell you they weren't present.

[@tylermoore4429]

​@@drmichaellevin​Dr. Levin, thanks for the reply. I was thinking of, among others, Luca Turin's work: kzbin.info/www/bejne/sJa0qaODhZ10mrM I may be deluded, but in recent months I am beginning to feel a little more confident about our grasp of the phenomenon of consciousness. This stems from encountering the EM field theories of consciousness by people like Susan Pockett, Johnjoe McFadden and Mostyn Jones, and I find some overlap between their thinking and your formulation of "bioelectricity as cognitive glue." Linking to their papers will probably flag this reply as spam, so instead I will name one paper that I am reading with great fascination currently: "Electromagnetism’s Bridge Across the Explanatory Gap: How a Neuroscience/Physics Collaboration Delivers Explanation Into All Theories of Consciousness" by Colin Hales and Marissa Ericson.

[@jondor654]

Sleep ?

[@johnchase2148]

My unexpected ability is looking at the sun without damage or blindness . Would AI agree?

[@HarryJensen-kr4qz]

Well idk if Dr Levin is the "Elon Musk" of medicine, but he says many interesting things. It's time for a revolutionary jump forward, maybe he's the guy, we'll see.

[@randymarsh8974]

Elon musk inherited billions from his dads slave mines in SA. He just uses his money to buy others ideas. And clearly to buy good PR. He’s not that smart, like at all… This is quite funny, and yet so sad. Look up an example of a billion dollars. Elon inherited multiple billions. He’s standing on a grave yard. Nobody should be able to accumulate that much wealth. You’re just unaware of how obscene it is. This isn’t even close to multi millionaires. Eat the rich! Don’t let them eat cake! Unchecked capitalism is killing us!

[@JaMiHme1]

I would like for him to expand on around 1h 07 min what does it mean to stay human. I have heard him talking about ethics in biology and stuff but this is a equaly importiant subject. Pyromaniacs at the end of their “career” watch their own house burn down with pupils the size of a pond and they enjoy every second of it … scientists atleast the true mad scientists can be similar. I would like Dr. Moreau Khhhm… Dr. Michael to adress this and make us fear not. ;)

[@JakeWitmer]

It's probably a mistake to define "human" based on marginal humans with defective desires...or sociopaths...we should look at the unhappiness of the pyromaniac when he has no place to sleep in subzero weather, the danger and destruction to the neighbors, etc... and rule the goal defective... at least for its inability to generalize. I.e.: If you're an engineer don't try to build it...and do try to avoid accidentally building it...and if you build it accidentally...do try to correct it or minimize damage ...or direct harmful thoughts towards harmless simulations...etc...

[@RSEFX]

The host sounds like he's either very nervous or hyperventilating for some reason. Levin is fascinating, as usual, though.

[@ChadKovac]

36:00 😮 Honey I can't help with the algorithm is forcing me to go hang out with the boys It's just in the algorithm

[@ChadKovac]

I plan on harnessing that for a night out on the town with the boys I don't know about you. 😂

[@peterfrance702]

Now factor in NDE experience into the conversation

[@johnpaily]

Between zero and one. Universe works on a ratio

[@shogun9450]

Edit: I mistook this Michael levin for a different Michael levin

[@gankaru24]

You’re thinking of Michael Levin the Philosopher; I too assumed it was the same individual, but after further assessment I can assure you they’re not the same person. Michael Levin (Biologist) has done extraordinary work thus far; and I have no doubts his research will have far reaching impact on all fields related to life.

[@shogun9450]

@@gankaru24 I am deeply sorry, thank you for this

[@johnpaily]

Our mind is limited. Max Plank and Einstein called us to look deep into one's mind and its thouhts as nd comprehend it in realtion to a GOD MIND. Or Absolute Mind

[@SaraRogers-f2j]

I care just saying but it’s struggle fighting past

[@nickidaisydandelion4044]

1:00 Ehh? A living being that cares about all living beings on Earth? That would be me. There are others as well. They are rare but they exist. And they will be coming for your lab Michael Levin. They will rescue all of your lab animals.

[@AIroboticOverlord]

He looks like he could be the old brother of mrBeast.

[@edgeArchitect]

In a universe where nothing ever happens you need a moving controller to preserve the Zero state. Lol

[@edgeArchitect]

Also, that's an awesome library in the bg

[@jondor654]

Does entropy Intermediate the sort algorithm .

[@SpenderDebby-x6n]

Gonzalez George Young Gary Jones Mark

[@WattisWatts]

Gee, what could possibly go wrong? Oh yeah, right and wrong are binary.

[@JakeWitmer]

No, the threshold for their permissability is binary. Stealing a pack of gum is wrong, but it's less wrong than murdering someone. Both are off-limits to right-thinking people, but if you think they're both equally wrong, you're a sociopath.

[@SamCheryl-s6q]

Lopez Frank Lopez Deborah Williams George

[@TheYashakami]

Fuck, how many ads can you put in one video.

[@SaraRogers-f2j]

Solar moth? 😂

[@aushole]

I hate announcer/radio dj voice.