Knowledge grounding and the Chinese Room

This is a lively, no-holds-barred debate about whether AI can truly be intelligent, conscious, or understand anything at all — and what happens when (or if) machines become smarter than us.

Dr. Mike Israetel is a sports scientist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of RP Strength (a fitness company). He describes himself as a "dilettante" in AI but brings a fascinating outsider's perspective.

Jared Feather (IFBB Pro bodybuilder and exercise physiologist)

The Big Questions:

1. When is superintelligence coming?

2. Does AI actually understand anything?

3. The Simulation Debate (The Spiciest Part)

4. Will AI kill us all? (The Doomer Debate)

5. What happens to human jobs and purpose?

6. Do we need suffering?

Mikes channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCfQgsKhHjSyRLOp9mnffqVg

RESCRIPT INTERACTIVE PLAYER: https://app.rescript.info/public/share/GVMUXHCqctPkXH8WcYtufFG7FQcdJew_RL_MLgMKU1U

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TIMESTAMPS:

00:00:00 Introduction & Workout Demo

00:04:15 ASI Timelines & Definitions

00:10:24 The Embodiment Debate

00:18:28 Neutrinos & Abstract Knowledge

00:25:56 Can AI Learn From YouTube?

00:31:25 Diversity of Intelligence

00:36:00 AI Slop & Understanding

00:45:18 The Simulation Argument: Fire & Water

00:58:36 Consciousness & Zombies

01:04:30 Do Reasoning Models Actually Reason?

01:12:00 The Live Learning Problem

01:19:15 Superintelligence & Benevolence

01:28:59 What is True Agency?

01:37:20 Game Theory & The "Kill All Humans" Fallacy

01:48:05 Regulation & The China Factor

01:55:52 Mind Uploading & The Future of Love

02:04:41 Economics of ASI: Will We Be Useless?

02:13:35 The Matrix & The Value of Suffering

02:17:30 Transhumanism & Inequality

02:21:28 Debrief: AI Medical Advice & Final Thoughts

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REFERENCES:

Paper:

[00:10:45] Alchemy and Artificial Intelligence (Dreyfus)

https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2006/P3244.pdf

[00:10:55] The Chinese Room Argument (John Searle)

https://home.csulb.edu/~cwallis/382/readings/482/searle.minds.brains.programs.bbs.1980.pdf

[00:11:05] The Symbol Grounding Problem (Stephen Harnad)

https://arxiv.org/html/cs/9906002

[00:23:00] Attention Is All You Need

https://arxiv.org/abs/1706.03762

[00:45:00] GPT-4 Technical Report

https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.08774

[01:45:00] Anthropic Agentic Misalignment Paper

https://www.anthropic.com/research/agentic-misalignment

[02:17:45] Retatrutide

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/37366315/

Organization:

[00:15:50] CERN

https://home.cern/

[01:05:00] METR Long Horizon Evaluations

https://evaluations.metr.org/

MLST Episode:

[00:23:10] MLST: Llion Jones - Inventors' Remorse

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DtePicx_kFY

[00:50:30] MLST: Blaise Agüera y Arcas Interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rMSEqJ_4EBk

[01:10:00] MLST: David Krakauer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dY46YsGWMIc

Event:

[00:23:40] ARC Prize/Challenge

https://arcprize.org/

Book:

[00:24:45] The Brain Abstracted

https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Abstracted-Simplification-Philosophy-Neuroscience/dp/0262548046

[00:47:55] Pamela McCorduck

https://www.amazon.com/Machines-Who-Think-Artificial-Intelligence/dp/1568812051

[01:23:15] The Singularity Is Nearer (Ray Kurzweil)

https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Nearer-Ray-Kurzweil-ebook/dp/B08Y6FYJVY

[01:27:35] A Fire Upon The Deep (Vernor Vinge)

https://www.amazon.com/Fire-Upon-Deep-S-F-MASTERWORKS-ebook/dp/B00AVUMIZE/

[02:04:50] Deep Utopia (Nick Bostrom)

https://www.amazon.com/Deep-Utopia-Meaning-Solved-World/dp/1646871642

[02:05:00] Technofeudalism (Yanis Varoufakis)

https://www.amazon.com/Technofeudalism-Killed-Capitalism-Yanis-Varoufakis/dp/1685891241

Visual Context Needed:

[00:29:40] AT-AT Walker (Star Wars)

https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/All_Terrain_Armored_Transport

Person:

[00:33:15] Andrej Karpathy

https://karpathy.ai/

Video:

[01:40:00] Mike Israetel vs Liron Shapira AI Doom Debate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RaDWSPMdM4o

Company:

[02:26:30] Examine.com

https://examine.com/