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Scraping Bits

#122 - Tom Burns: Digital Neurosience, Fully Autonomous Agents, AI Safety + Control

Dec 2, 2024
In this talk, Tom Burns, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell specializing in neuroscience-inspired AI, dives into the fascinating parallels between human brain processes and AI. He discusses the importance of geometry in AI safety and memory, and how emotional factors influence decision-making in both humans and AI systems. Tom addresses ethical concerns surrounding generative AI and the necessity for dialogue among stakeholders to ensure responsible governance. The potential of hydrogen-based computing compared to traditional silicon is also explored, hinting at a promising future.
55:30

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

  • The podcast discusses the critical alignment between AI technology and human cognition to develop safer systems through insights from neuroscience.
  • AI safety necessitates both governance and technical understanding, emphasizing the interpretability of black box models to prevent harmful outcomes.

Deep dives

Neuroscience and AI Intersection

The relationship between neuroscience and artificial intelligence (AI) is explored through the perspective of interconnected neurons in the brain that represent memory items. This concept parallels the attention mechanism in transformer models, which are foundational for large language models (LLMs). Just as seeing a partial object can trigger the recall of a full image, similar mechanisms in AI help retrieve information. The discussion emphasizes the importance of aligning AI technology with human cognition to enhance understanding and create safer AI systems.

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