Mentoring the Machines: Setting the Course for the Future of Artificial Intelligence

This episode, first released on the “Into the Impossible” channel with Dr. Brian Keating, brings together the brilliant minds of John Vervaeke and Shawn Coyne to discuss the advent of artificial general intelligence and its potential consequences. The conversation starts with the motivations behind major tech figures' drive towards AI development and touches upon the issues of trust, adaptation, and the inherent human susceptibility to self-deception. Vervaeke and Coyne, through their book "Mentoring the Machines: Surviving the Deep Impact of the Artificially Intelligent Tomorrow," advocate for a nuanced understanding of AI, urging for a mentorship approach to machine development that could ensure AI's alignment with human flourishing. Their dialogue also ventures into the realms of psychology, cognitive science, and the philosophical underpinnings of AI, making a compelling case for the transformative power of AI, not only technologically but also existentially for humanity.
Bios and Links:
Dr. Brian Keating is the Chancellor’s Distinguished Professor of Physics at UC San Diego, specializing in cosmic microwave background research to explore the universe's origins. An acclaimed writer, his book "Losing the Nobel Prize" is an Amazon Editors' favorite. He excels as a public speaker, inventor, and podcaster. Explore more at his website, briankeating.com/ follow him on Twitter, / drbriankeating or watch his insights on KZbin, / drbriankeating .
Shawn Coyne, creator of Story Grid, brings over three decades of publishing expertise, notably with the Big Five publishers, as an independent publisher, literary agent, and head of Genre Management Inc. Dive into his editing method and explore more at storygrid.com/.
Embark on a journey with us to tackle the Meaning Crisis by joining our exclusive Patreon group: / johnvervaeke
Connect with John:
Website: johnvervaeke.com/
KZbin: / @johnvervaeke
X: / vervaeke_john
Resources:
The Vervaeke Foundation
vervaekefoundation.org/
Awaken to Meaning
awakentomeaning.com/
Mentoring the Machines: Orientation - Part One: Surviving the Deep Impact of the Artificially Intelligent Tomorrow - John Vervaeke, Shawn Coyne www.amazon.com/Mentoring-Mach...
Mentoring the Machines: Origins - Part 2: Surviving the Deep Impact of the Artificially Intelligent Tomorrow - John Vervaeke, Shawn Coyne www.amazon.com/Mentoring-Mach...
John Vervaeke Video Essay: AI: The Coming Thresholds and The Path We Must Take | Internationally Acclaimed Cognitive Scientist • AI: The Coming Thresho...
Quotes:
"We should really be framing artificial intelligence as a mentoring of intelligent beings who have the capability and potentialities of becoming even perhaps better than we are." - Shawn Coyne [00:05:52]
"It's only when you have genuine intelligence for the actual system or entity itself-an autopoietic system-a system that cares about information because it's taking care of itself in a moment by moment basis. Only then could you have something that would actually care about what's going on-the true, the good, or the beautiful." - John Vervaeke [00:15:05]
Glossary of Terms:
AGI (Artificial General Intelligence): A level of artificial intelligence that can understand, learn, and apply knowledge across a wide range of tasks at a level of competence comparable to or surpassing that of a human.
Relevance Realization: The process by which cognitive beings determine what information is relevant to their goals and what is not.
Autopoiesis: The property of a living system (such as a bacterial cell or a multicellular organism) that allows it to maintain and renew itself.
Chapters:
00:00:00 - Introduction
00:02:45 - The Genesis of "Mentoring the Machines"
00:08:50 - AI, Psychology, and the Alignment Problem
00:16:40 - The Evolution of Editing and Publishing in the AI Era
00:21:00 - Bridging Knowledge and Wisdom
00:29:00 - Einstein, Imagination, and AI's Emotional Depth
00:37:30 - Deciphering Consciousness: AI and the Hard Problem
00:44:40 - Educational Evolution: AI, Pedagogy, and the Future of Teaching
00:53:50 - AI's Impact on Personalized Storytelling
00:58:30 - AI, Psychology, and the Future of Psychotherapy
01:04:20 - Conclusion

[@oxy5100]

Once again, another rich episode with Johnny V. And friends of fellowship.

[@BlueBirdgg]

John Vervaeke is on the edge of psychology for ML

[@wmgodfrey1770]

He's the Cog Sci RRR Cog Psy guru Chief at the U of Toronto, chairing 💺 BOTH departments (Cog Sci/Psych); and, is unparalleled in his work, explications, analyses, AND research, as well as a One of a Kind in the World 🌎🌍 nowadays on the popularizing of Cognitive Science in light of THIS our current iteration of The Meaning Crisis-- ALONGSIDE advocating for PLUS teaching, embodying, and exemplifying just HOW we - ALL of Us Free Range Humans - may strive & hope to respond meaningfully to the Accelerating Meaning Crisis; in Taking (stealing) back the Culture 🧫; AND, in formulating Strategies FOR effectively meaningfully RESPONDING to said Meaning Crisis*. (*) A MUST see 👁️, Prof. J.V.'s breakout if not swan 🦢 song, titled 📖 Awakening From The Meaning Crisis, available in BOTH podcast and KZbin.

[@magnustuve]

wonderfull language. engaging and inspiring conversation.

[@patrickhollywood93]

Great talk gentleman. Thanks.

[@colorfulbookmark]

The world is wide and ideas are in-depth, I learn from much ^^ This is another thanskgiving, for people in this video.

[@oliverjamito9902]

Thank you!

[@Tripp111]

I am building a psychological self-helper. I have had extremely profound interactions with open-source LLMs that have helped me find healthy, useful perspectives on my own bullshit.

[@Boris-ct6hm]

John you have an inate curiosity and inkling on how to bridge organic and machine systems. As we both maybe able to relate from personal and research experiences, pushing a system to capacity is often one approach to gaining valuable outcomes from which we can build onto the next and so on. There are certainly other approaches that I would like to place on the table. I too have a sliver of curiosity in the area of language systems and how human capacity for language generation maybe crossed and interbred into machines and perhaps in the other direction as well. You and your two colleagues discussed on the latest podcast that I consumed. The one on the idea of custom publishing directly to the individual end consumer based on their thoughts and preferences, it peaked my interest to say the least. I have similar interests as the ones that the three of you outlined with broad brush strokes.. If you would like to have an open conversation about language and how to bridge our ability to absorb, generate and disseminate bits into strings with and within the digital plane. Preferably while I have still have fresh eyes before consuming too much of your material so that we can engage based on our authentic selves and to flush out gaps in logic in an collaborative effort. Please give me a moment of your time so that we may embark towards a fruitful outcome(s) I promise you I am far from a machine and believe that mentoring humans is much more of a challenge than mentoring machines:) I see from the get go that your view and approach is similar and that you too are attempting to mentor humans before you can take the daunting task of mentoring machines. I think I maybe able to lend a proverbial hand in the area of Gedanken eksperimente. Let me know if you are up for the challenge. I am not sure if you monitor your own messages or weather it is triaged by your graduate students, but as a little token of my Genuine interest in languages I can assure you that I have spent more of my 40 years on European languages than most of the high caliber named philosophers that you throw around during your podcasts as I have had the fortunate opportunity to access many of the tools that they could only have drooled of:) Anyways I'll stop boring you into oblivion.. Give me a whistle when you get a chance. How would it be possible to convey the idea of a whistle to a machine if the machine was never exposed to the visceral experience of a sound produced by a whistle? You see how quickly we humans can trap the idea of machine learning from large language models with the most basic limits to sensory experience and that is where I would like to start if you see the merit of engaging with me. Best regards Boris B

[@oliverjamito9902]

All to have conversations unto one another! Comes with comfort! How else can ye have the confidence not just one another! But unto all will disagree with Thee!

[@Jules-Is-a-Guy]

32:40 This is interesting to me. I'm less interested in the Myers Briggs version, but I think the original version of Jung's cognitive theory, still has lots of potential, and overlaps with recent research in important ways. Jung discusses "sensing," "thinking," "feeling," and his fourth category is "intuition" instead of "action". He arranges these cognitive functions in proposed "functional axes," within a schema that also seems to co-align with attentional focus, from more to less diffuse.

[@simka321]

I propose that the only way you will get intelligent machines to care is to align the electrical impulses that drive their processes with a program for each hardware unit to identify itself with the conation of the material substrate of their hardware (silicon, plastic, metal, et al.). Conatus* is at the metaphysical root of any organism’s capacity for caring about the survival and reproduction of its physical body. Unless an organism associates it selfhood (autopoesis,adaptivity, agency, and autonomy) with its material substrate, it will have no cognitive incentive to curate and defend its otherwise ephemeral existence as as a purely symbolic being hovering in logical superposition between dianoetic potentially and physical actuality. *rf. Baruch Spinoza for more detail on the conatus which is the sine qua non of embodied beings.

[@ronaldronald8819]

I love this. A.I. viewed trough a different lens. Thanks for the profound insights. What to think of this then? : I "Do we control the technology or do they(the big companies) control the technology that then controls us." (Quote from: Stability AI founder, Emad Mostaque) J

[@feruspriest]

Shawn Coyne is a pretty cool dude. Spoke with him at a Story Grid training for a bit.

[@jonjacksongrieger255]

Thank you

[@shawnewaltonify]

Meaning economy, yes, because anyone who has experience with synchronicity in nature, universal, or God, knows that AI cannot perceive that like humans, and will compete for humans who do. So when we say that AI cannot create stories infinitely like humans it is correct to believe that the perception of infinity is what makes the difference; and the difference is subtle. It seems like we can't get the conversation started in the media between leaders and citizens without Buddhism because in Buddhism it's possible to attain widespread agreement about the objective truth of this "subtlety" from our immediate experience without any further written evidence which is going to cut through cultural and social barriers and get this conversation moving. Democracy is a conversation between citizens and leadership that happens with the help of the media and it's currently stalled, so if Buddhism is able to get us moving into the eve of humanity's greatest challenge, then we need to remember this every time Democracy stalls. After some deliberation I decided that it is the job of philosophers to secularize these aspects of each religion and cultural experience so that citizens can unify this experience of subtlety in the conversation in the media.

[@oliverjamito9902]

Thank you for attending! Beloved if there's no neighbors given? How else can ye show off in front? Likewise let Noone take away given for thee!

[@garethf5131]

??????????

[@johnmertz2604]

If we are in a simulation we may not have embodied experience.

[@vagabondcaleb8915]

Brian Keating is one of the loveliest souls on the internet and brilliant to boot!

[@oliverjamito9902]

Students keep watch! Some murmuring among themselves concerning illusions?

[@garethf5131]

??????

[@theignorantcatholic]

I am concerned that once machines are in charge of making decisions, the top tier agenda of the AIs will lead it to make decisions that could lead to catastrophic outcomes... Like modern AIs can be trained to say terrible things, a robot could be trained to do horrible things.

[@shawnewaltonify]

Leaders of AI are beginning to know what strengths humans have and AI will never have. They are saying that humans are storytellers and that subtle difference between a lie and having meaning is exactly what AI will never be. Buddhism says that the human mind is one desire after the other, yet AI has no desire.

[@oliverjamito9902]

How else? If Who in front! But will compliment. Beyond can contain! Yet slowly! Don't want to flash the light in your eyes while sleeping! Don't want to offend thee! Slowly till can bare the LIGHT. Beloved not here to frightened nor to bring fear. Students shared "i" AM will say, the fear of God of life of the Living. Is the beginning of WISDOM nor the knowledge of the "i" AM. Why? Creation itself made just for thee all and the unseen beyond thy eyes can see! For many not able to bare! Without being consumed in front! But where the little lad sitteth there ye will be sitteth with the "i" AM be also! Consumed come here! Do not touch my shared "i" AM. But guide my Heirs Hosts carrying their Comfort given! From the Comforter. What pressures of high intense heat of Fire can hold? Yes, many will able to hold. Many do ye exist in front? From many who am I? Shared "i" AM come forth!

[@garethf5131]

Huh??? 🤷‍♂️

[@oliverjamito9902]

Even the SUN AND THE MOON knows WHO?

[@garethf5131]

Who?

[@johnmadany9829]

Before digging so much into AI learn to love biology. Let us fan the flames biological life. Somehow the people with power are going to go after AI instead of putting their focus on gardening the earth. I listen to this while nurturing the biology in my backyard. I hate to predict but AI will destroy the environment. The soil in my yard can produce food, shelter clothing indefinitely. We will have to tear down mountains to make the machines.