Matt Botvinick: Neuroscience, Psychology, and AI at DeepMind | Lex Fridman Podcast

[@lexfridman]

I really enjoyed this conversation with Matt. Here's the outline: 0:00 - Introduction 3:29 - How much of the brain do we understand? 14:26 - Psychology 22:53 - The paradox of the human brain 32:23 - Cognition is a function of the environment 39:34 - Prefrontal cortex 53:27 - Information processing in the brain 1:00:11 - Meta-reinforcement learning 1:15:18 - Dopamine 1:19:01 - Neuroscience and AI research 1:23:37 - Human side of AI 1:39:56 - Dopamine and reinforcement learning 1:53:07 - Can we create an AI that a human can love?

[@infinitycodes1588]

Great podcast brother... Try to bring Sam Harris if he wants to come. He doesn't want to do interviews these days. But you know how to ask meaningful questions. Best wishes for you man...

[@stevenjohnson9466]

Post your old wrestling videos. Some of us are interested... i miss wrestling

[@allen254]

Hi lex, I love your podcasts. I had a professor of cognitive science at the university of California, Irvine by the name of Dr. Donald Hoffman. He is developing a theory of consciousness. I think he’d be a great guest. He has a Ted talk and has been on the closer to truth series and many other podcast including Sam Harris not to long ago. Look him up I think you’d be very interested .

[@yo.d.s.]

just for the sake of sound. get the reading of three vibrations of vocal patterns dharma meditation um sounds. under the domes in male, female and mix. then run billions of simulations through my old thumb drives. more than likely lost in a cafe or stolen by a friend.

[@robinampipparampil]

It is great to see an AI researcher acknowledge that several of the fundamental works in Artificial Intelligence and neural networks was done in Psychology departments in U.S. Universities. Especially by Cognitive psychologists David Rumelhart, James McClelland and Joshua Tenenbaum. Also Walter Pitts, Warren McCulloch and Jerome Lettvin. This is wonderful. Thank you very much Lex Fridman and Matt Botvinick.

[@khwajawisal1220]

not tenenbaum, he was not even in high school at that time, i think Terrence srejnowski is a person you are missing, peter dayan, barto and sutton(sutton himself was trained in psychology) which allowed him to come up with the idea of temporal difference learning.

[@robinampipparampil]

@@khwajawisal1220 There are many psychologists who contributed to AI - These include: Seymour Papert, Noam Chomsky, George Miller, Allan Collins and Ross Quillian, John Robert Anderson (ACT-R), Herbert Simon and Allen Newell, Yair Weiss and many many more. Tenenbaum did as well in the area of Machine Learning although that was in the late 90s and through the 2000s.

[@TomtomWaits]

@@robinampipparampil Chomsky is not a psychologist. But yeah, his work was very important for psychology.

[@citiblocsMaster]

Please invite Josh Tenenbaum ! I'm pretty sure he just a few rooms across so you have no excuses

[@RR-et6zp]

psychology is bs

[@Fhill05]

A conversation with Demis Hassabis would be very interesting.

[@tyfoodsforthought]

🤩🤩🤩 You got that right

[@hgbrwr]

If possible, YES PLEASE!!!!

[@jorgeluis5871]

Couldn’t agree more!!!

[@cowboybebopenthusiast4135]

It finally happened, it was interesting indeed.

[@zanyarzohourian9398]

Dear Lex, thank you so much for your wonderful podcast, during the past 2 years your videos have enlighten me to a level that i could not imagine. As a AI student, i have always learned from you, to be curious, and look at everything with an open mind.

[@amolitacia]

This is the first time I heard Matt Botvinick speak. He is a *great* communicator. Should have a podcast.

[@asabovesobelow8901]

Big fan of Dr. Botvinick’s work, especially his work on implementations of distributional rl in the brain and meta learning. Thanks for another great guest and conversation!

[@kirstinstrand6292]

I believe an open mind is more important than a formally educated mind.

[@musicalfringe]

I really noticed how, about 25 minutes in, Lex struck Matt's enthusiasm and humanity and he suddenly became really engaging to listen to. Nice job Lex.

[@JacobWeaver]

This has given me so much motivation, given that I am currently a senior Psych major and that I am pursuing a Ph.D in neuroscience

[@RR-et6zp]

its BS, also, read the unplugged alpha by richard cooper, human behaviour is derived from biology

[@natsharpe4364]

You're killing it Lex. Love these conversations

[@christianpadilla4336]

After the Joscha Bach interview I can't help wondering what some of these other people have to say about his ideas. It would also be interesting to hear comments about Penrose's models involving micro-tubules. I'd also like less of the "what is the prefrontal cortex" and "do you see value in psychology" type questions that we can pretty easily get consensus opinions on without consulting the leaders in the field.

[@busTedOaS]

Sometimes the leaders' opinions are more valuable than any widespread consensus.

[@charlesk7623]

Thanks, I really enjoy the podcasts. Have you ever considered having two guests on at the same time?

[@Andr3sote]

That ending was tear-jerkingly beautiful

[@Nonenone-rj9yp]

this was one of the best interviews this guy has done! Interview technique is so much better, after every episode.

[@tyfoodsforthought]

That was awesome. What a humble and intellgent guy. I am a sucker for the virtuous cycle that is the engine of deepmind and other biologically inspired/constrained artifical intelligence work. Dr. Botvinick truly embodies this approach to understanding the mind/intelligence. Meta-learning via emergent rules, for me, was the most mind blowing part of the talk. A really, particularly, stunning example of complex behavior through simple rules. Thank you so much for this one, Lex!

[@psychastheneia7]

22:42 "what's PDP?" that made me cry a little bit inside

[@tyfoodsforthought]

Excited for this! Deep minds approach is simply awesome!!

[@krishnendubose2620]

Please interview Joshua Tenenbaum.

[@matt-g-recovers]

This is outstanding. I was thinking about going back for a medical neuroscience degree to apply to computer science... I'm a senior software engineer now but I have this obsession with machine learning and that's what...sorry with artificial intelligence, and that's what drew me to you in the first place, Lex! This is outstanding

[@martin-fc4kk]

Another very interesting conversation, thank you Lex!

[@varswitch]

Hi lex. AMAZING WORK . this chan is absolutely superb. Ive spread the word amongst all my software engineering friends. Truly great guests with intelligent questioning. No ads. Except start off. Very long shows. What more do u need. !TS A SUPERLATIVE SHOW!!!

[@abbotsful]

Stop me if you've heard this before: I used to think that the human brain was the most fascinating part of the body, then I realised, look who's telling me that. Thanks heaps for this, science graduate in psychology, inspiring me to work harder to get to that next level.

[@sprink88]

14:40 ❤ "I fell in love with psychology and psychiatry with Freud when I was really Yung..." Ahaaahaaaha. Haha. Ha HaHa... Bonk.

[@Joeonline26]

Fantastic pun...

[@kirstinstrand6292]

@@skierpage Both, but mostly Jung...he brought more into Consciousness.

[@UserName-ii1ce]

Really Jung lol

[@RR-et6zp]

its BS, also, read the unplugged alpha by richard cooper, human behaviour is derived from biology

[@gerritelenbaas4817]

Wonderful again! MATT IS THE BEST!

[@qixuanfeng6918]

Thank you Lex for the inspiring conversation! Your content has been fuel for my passion for AI

[@yashmandilwar8904]

You have to get Peter Dayan, Yael Niv and Samuel Gershman!

[@emrazum]

I feel like you guys just need to talk to some sociologists and you'll make a bunch of breakthroughs, most of these hard questions about the world we should want to live in and how human groups interact have already been answered (to the extent they are answerable)

[@7Tijntje]

Can you recommend a couple of sociologists or books? I'd love to get into sociology a bit more

[@sevdev9844]

Yeah, good to know sociologists can tell us in which world "we" should want to live in.

[@breaktherules6035]

Congratulations! One of the best videos of the podcast and on AI. Thank you so much!

[@mihaibalais8864]

Intelligence is one of the structures of this Universe arranging it on so many levels. Things are simpler and make more sense. Love your work!

[@penguinista]

Seems like we discount the information processing power of each neuron. Single cell organisms carry out surprisingly complex behaviors. A neuron takes in information from hundreds of sources and uses that information to determine whether and how to fire its axon. What factors go into that determination and how does that work at the molecular level?

[@cogoid]

People realize that real neurons are very complex and computationally powerful. A vast amount of research in neuroscience and in biophysics always went into studying specifically how single neurons work -- there has been several Nobel prizes for figuring out molecular-level mechanisms of their functioning. People in neuroscience use extremely detailed and accurate computational models of real neurons, which match well the behavior of the real ones. But this takes a lot of computing power -- such models include the actual geometry of the neuron with all its appendages, the distribution of different receptors and dozens if not hundreds of different kinds of ion channels, etc. Top AI people (like Hinton or people at Deep Mind) are well aware of all this, and of the fact that artificial NN neurons are extremely simplified, comparing to the real ones. It would be more accurate to say that a single biological neuron is more similar to at least a small multiple-layer artificial NN, rather than to a single artificial neuron. There are some AI researchers who use slightly more life-like models of neurons. For example, some make circuits with spiking neurons. But then they struggle to make them work as well as the more conventional models do. Unless one knew that there is some important feature in the real neurons that is really very helpful for making the circuits to work better, it seems unlikely that making artificial neurons more realistic would be advantageous. As far as I understand, that's the rationale for using such trivial and unrealistic models of neurons in artificial neural networks.

[@The_mazatec_mystic]

Lex get John Carmack on!!! Let him talk some video games and vr!!!!

[@budgieterminal7426]

i love the language of the both gentlmen. thank you for this revolutionary stuff. a truly bizarre era we are living in

[@Haveuseenmyjetpack]

Aliens arrive: “Take us to your..Lex”

[@CataSaini1]

Incredible interview! Thank you!!

[@kirstinstrand6292]

Lex, you have a charmed life! Better than that is that YOU created it. Bravo!

[@whiterice9377]

"Flavor of champions" Sold !

[@aimonbenfield-chand158]

Thank you Lex and Dr. Botnivick!! While I was listening, I thought of a few common threads and would love to hear what people make of them. On the topic of human/AI interaction and engaging with the possible consequences of AGI intelligence, it seems like a good analogy of our position as AI devs is that of an adult deciding whether to have a child. When making this decision, all parents realize that they will be responsible for the actions and development of their child as well as it's own happiness and health, yet we also accept that they are fundamentally beyond our total control. Taking this analogy even further, our approach to creating an AGI intelligence seems comparable to giving birth to an alien species - one that is not only beyond our control but that perceives/experiences the world, consciousness, and identity in a totally inconcievable way and on a different scale. We wouldn't even know how much of our own human perspective is transferrable to the AI, making us truly first time parents. I know this metaphor of parent/child is pretty common in sci-fi dystopian literature/media, but i also think that understanding a non human identity relates to the last question of whether we will ever be able to love an AGI. Your response centered around the question of non-engineered and authentic "warmth" is really interesting and I would take it a step father to say that this prerequisite of warmth is actually tied to the identity of a system. For instance, while it is true that I love my parents, it is also true that I don't always respond to them with total warmth (i.e. investment in our talking and enthusiastic body language and tone). In fact, most of the daily interaction involved in a loving relationship can't be of this form, otherwise the "highs" would feel less of special. So beyond endless warmth, isn't what we're really looking for in AGI some perceived sense of genuine personality and developed identity? Without reaching a confident understanding of it's identity, it seems to me that we'll ever manage to develop feelings of intimate trust/love with an AGI, or be able to call it "a good guy". What do y'all think?

[@empathylessons2267]

This is the perfect podcast to listen to while working on a Leaky Integrate & Fire neuron simulation.

[@chrisjernigan1912]

needs more blinker fluid.

[@naomiharding4963]

With reference to the part near the end of the conversation about AGI needing a warm aspect to it in addition to an aspect of capability; I agree, we need to reward the friendliness, not only the efficacy. What is the warmth they refer to? I think it is; not only the absence of fear (of humiliation/ ridicule/shame/error/death) but also the building of self acceptance/celebration as a vital part within a system. We need to have AGI see itself & others as equal, yet gloriously different. We must reward respect. We must avoid punishing indifference, no? Thanks for this video.

[@longboardvid143]

Not sure where this was filmed but I would be down to skateboard the pool in the background. Excellent conversation as usual, thank you.

[@rrutherford69]

Striking similarity of his voice with Lawrence Krauss

[@mohamedyazit7149]

A conversation with Miguel Nicolelis would be very interesting.

[@bakaexmachina]

This comment is for people who want to see Lex bring Ray Kurzweil on the podcast.

[@Loveandyoutube]

Absolutely love this. Thank you god for lex fridman

[@glory2cybertron]

The analogy between dopamine and reinforcement learning is pretty jaw dropping

[@matthieucneude5761]

That's nice that engineers ask themselves the goal of their research. The problem I see, however, is that the company they work for can decide for them.

[@rochellecurtis4850]

This ties in nicely with two courses I'm currently taking. Thanks so much!

[@RR-et6zp]

its BS, also, read the unplugged alpha by richard cooper, human behaviour is derived from biology

[@rahusphere]

Hi Lex, really love your podcast. Please consider having Donald Hoffman on this podcast.

[@SKARTHIKSELVAN]

Thanks for putting lots of efforts in making these podcasts. I am working to bring AI into space medicine. Your work motivates me to work harder.

[@aurisnow]

Big fan of yours Lex! Rogan and AI are my favorite podcasts out there. Stoked to see you are about to start skateboarding also. That pool in the background looks inviting. hahah. Keep it up.

[@avichalsharma3856]

As someone from Computer Science background and wants to contribute in the field of AI, is pursuing higher education in computational neuroscience helpful?

[@stephenjimenez6129]

Hey Lex, always a treat to experience these ‘talks’. With that said, especially regarding this show, it would be very interesting to have Dr. Donald D. Hoffman’s POV. Also, it’d be cool to have a real jam session with you, in the spirit of love and possibilities. Thanks

[@CyberAnalyzer]

Awesome podcast! Really sympathetic!

[@MohamadAwada]

Excellent episode, I really enjoyed this one!

[@NicholasKujawa]

1:12:30 What he is describing might function as a definition of intelligence. Measuring the capacity of meta-learning capabilities of a system may act as an indication/metric of intelligence.

[@imranq9241]

Do you think there is an infinite (or extremely large) descent kind of analysis required in neuroscience? In physics we can always reason all the way down to the atoms, but in neuroscience we are trying to explain why certain combinations of atoms are acting in concert. This transforms a problem space from just the physical space into a larger "combinatorial" space (2^(Number of Atoms in a Brain))

[@manosprotonotarios5187]

rate of neuron spiking needs much more time to estimate than the time scale of human reaction to events - it seems to be a combination of both rate and precise timing that carries the information depending on the circuit

[@Sickpisspakh23971]

Nice podcast Lex!

[@RobotProctor]

RE: building "warm" AI. Getting answers to how "warm" an AI is will be exceedingly slow compared to getting answers about how proficient it is at a computational task. We can choose the latter in an algorithm but in the former a human being has to be in the loop. Getting better at making warm AI system necessarily means making systems that are about to generalize from less data. I think AI research is well on its way!

[@grahamjoss4643]

8:25 great metaphor Lex. in response to matt's statement of psychology, cognitive sci, neuro sci unity. do an extra push up for me ;)

[@Squiderrant]

Good questions Lex

[@gianlucasanchirico5932]

A conversation with peter thiel would be interesting

[@mihirnath6946]

I'd love to hear you talk with Ed Boyden.

[@unRheal]

I Saw an ad seconds after you finished your intro ad, after the talk had started, and just saw another around 14-15 minutes in... I really hate ads while watching something, and totally don't mind yours at the beginning, but not while the conversation is going on... (don't know if there's more yet... but seems likely..)

[@franciscogarcia9441]

Amazing content!

[@ravijoglekar123]

@Lex, I have a question for you. Before that, thank you so much for doing this. Matt layed out the top down and bottom up approaches in AI-Cogntion-Neuroscience. What do you personally believe? To give you my opinion, as Joscha said in your other interview, if there are things being built then let them build it. Even François for that matter said, L5 is something which is very hard to achieve and they are sticking to the vision, as in the deep learning part of it to begin with and I believe, as he mentioned in his paper, it is going to be system centric generalization at first (hopefully) anyway. What if the bottom up approach can contribute effectively to this mutually exclusive domains in broader terms. What do you personally believe or think considering you staying at the AI end of it?

[@noodlechrist4958]

Fix your site Magic Spoon! I want it!

[@tech4028]

I'd love to see Denny Britz

[@ante_]

I heard about another botvinik, he had huge influence on post ww2 soviet era of chess

[@filipgara3444]

Please do podcast with Josiah Zayner

[@profoundminds_9021]

Idk where I would be today if not for neuroscience podcast

[@lizgichora6472]

Thank you for an interesting interview; learning is on going, learning to work with other intellectuals across disciplines enhances our capacity to reach meta, knowing what humans want and delivering the kind of Society would be most ideal. Neural networking and AI may lead to a progressive future, " the greatest good for the greater majority", being in the middle actually gives a broader scope of perspective as one reconciles both worlds.

[@ZKITPO]

Get Nassim Taleb in this Podcast

[@andrewandersonbmx7009]

Please do part 2 and go crazy on the romanticized and philosophy side 🙌🏼

[@memoai7276]

This is so wonderful!

[@fmapls]

Fascinating discussion. How about making the first AGI a politician? (not to set the bar too low tho ;)

[@Masonic_Ronin]

So, food for thought. Learning the mechanisms and learning the psychology are to contradicting aspects and how they correlate is a trait you bbot. Simultaneously display in this interview. So the way I se it, there are 2 aspects to the human brain being chemica and electrical meaning that emotions are singular and neurology is singular. The process of life occurs over time. That would go to say that the purpose of the two functions unity is to live over time. Electrically or neurologically your brain yearns to simplify, to create solutions, and to remember common problems and how to solve them. However chemically we yearn for life, excitement, euphoria, peace, love, anger, abstraction. So the problems we create chasing the emotions we enjoy are the problems our neurons and synapses are constantly configuring solutions to. This comes with the understanding that life is meaningless yet beautiful. We seek food, water, and shelter not to survive for nothing; but to continue our experience chemically. Is not exactly a mystery to some. For example, the companionship of the one I love, the euphoria of observing nature, and the indifference to social norms are what make me tick in my own natural state. Love and peace are my natural programed states and that is due to stress and a desire to live uncontrolled. My electrical signals are naturaly used to liberate from anything but what I desire, yet my emotions create altercations out of a desire to liberate others from the same things I reject given the understanding that I do not like them (control, confinement, etc.). It does infact bother me that your expirements have costt me all of which I care about and sacrificed the freedoms of the ones I love. I believe this was the purpose of not only nuremberg law, but also our governments design and constitution was to protect the pursuit of true human nature. You should vear from artificial intelligence and lean more towards wiling subjects in order to fulfill the desires of you pursuit.

[@paulmichaud3230]

Maybe my second favorite conversion, after the one with Lex's dad.

[@---Snaporaz---]

I recommend the book Gesture and Speech by Leroi-Gourhan, page 154 " cerebral evolution of the neantropics " , Is an anthropological and also archaeological point of view, he introduce the prefrontal cortex as the main reason for hour conscience. I also recommend the work of Searle and his research on the Conscience , he is a pioneer to bringing the biological study of conscience in the academy system

[@chrisjernigan1912]

Lex, why don't you have a Discord server?

[@hoolerboris]

Have Ken Stanley on the podcast

[@DStanleyCorcoranIII]

as an answer to your final question please consider this source of research and development: binstitute.org/ Thank you very much!

[@zuhairmehdee]

Last time I was this early, psychology and neuroscience were still different things.

[@travisfitzwater8093]

Metal learning is memorizing all the hard rock bands from T. Rex through Disturbed.

[@travisfitzwater8093]

Motley Crue; Ratt; Judas Priest; Iron Maiden; Queensryche; Metallica; Megadeth; Tesla; Quiet Riot; Metal Church; Leatherwolf; and all that.

[@enio17]

Invite Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds for a point of view from FLOSS. Also Jaron Lanier may be interesting.

[@MySynthDungeon]

Enjoyed!! Cheers! :-)!

[@fight2keep]

Is that fence around the pool to keep skateboarders out?

[@longleaf0]

It sounded like Matt asked Lex a hell of a lot more questions than Lex asked him... I know we shouldn't rag on people's intonation... But I find it really tiring, my mind has to do a "double take" to work out why he's making a statement in the tone of a question...

[@proddreamatnight]

Lol I had your podcast on auto-play on here and thought you were talking to Lawrence Krauss the whole time

[@callumvanheerden1530]

Cool vid.

[@myallhanckel8405]

If only the encoding potential of a neuron is relevant then the mind emerges only from the abstraction of the information the neurons encode, if it is only software, not tied to the underlying physical structures then it exists in an abstract not physical space.

[@natecodesai]

I just subscribed but i was amazed I hadn't before. Love your stuff, keep it up @Lex. One thing I thought of when Matt was talking about making an AI that can love or be "warm" is that... okay, yes, beating an opponent at a game can be seen as a goal, and it is only one dimensional. The thing is, we can imagine way more dimensions to playing a game, each with it's own reward distribution. So my question is, could an empathetic dimension be realized in this game context as for instance: letting the opponent win sometimes. Also, that seems to be part of a "play" behavior in mammals and other animals which includes multiple sub-dimensional rewards like, "the want to keep playing". I guess, empathy and thusly other emotions end up posing an unanswered question along the lines of: Is it possible for humans to perform truly selfless actions? I mean, I know that people do things for others, etc. but we always do get that dopamine reward even if we cannot measure a material reward for helping others (sometimes to our own deficit). What does it mean to "be warm" from a logic perspective?

[@deeplearningpartnership]

Naftali Tishby would be great to see @Lex Fridman.

[@miroslavdyer-wd1ei]

I heard that John Smith was going to be on the podcast, but lex didn't think his name was 'eurotech' enough. I suggested to John that he change his name to Jahn Schmitt. He said, no way, my mother changed our name from Schmitt to Smith ever since she fled nazi Germany. Whoops.

[@bogdanglisici7662]

Lex, if you do one with Tim Urban or Max Hodak i'll build you a statue.

[@josephpereira6754]

Will the statute be capable of having the podcast that will hold me over until the Kurzweil and/or maybe the Downstreamers from Stephen Baxter’s work - great podcast so I heard but the buffering on the video is taking way too long.

[@henryvanderspuy3632]

But if current DL is so inflexible, why are we trying to mimic human behaviour? Why don't we build a whole new way of perceiving the world that is still beneficial? for aren't humans unique?

[@oldbond6527]

Injective protocol a very smart project brings us excitement to always follow. I believe @InjectiveLabs project will work and succeed because this project is with a great team that always provide creative ideas and those ideas make this project unique. @InjectiveLabs #InjectiveProtocol #investing

[@bobwelham8792]

The best cereal is plain old porridge. Ask any Scot. 😊👍

[@halllithorien]

You should get Bernardo Kastrup on your podcast.

[@hansintakt5228]

how can he take so long to answer whether animals have a PFC at around 47:00 thats an indisputable "yes"-fact about anatomy of nervous systems in mammals, not "open questions" at 49:00

[@hansintakt5228]

people want to answer what they take intelligence to be before plainly collecting and sorting what behavior there is and distribute that over brain MRIs which makes them struggle where they shouldnt be: no mice dont speak, hence they arent intelligent and speaking is what Kant said was essential to rationality, ... ok... stop talking

[@dmitrysamoylenko6775]

Ok, Lex FrYdman!