Artificiality: Minds Meeting Machines

One of our research obsessions is Edge AI through which we study opportunities to build and deploy AI on a computing device at the edge of a network. The premise is that AI in the cloud benefits from scale but is challenged by cost and privacy and Edge AI solves many of these challenges by eliminating cloud computing costs and keeping data within secure environments. Given this interest, we were excited to talk with Rodrigo Liang, the Co-Founder and CEO of SambaNova Systems which has built a platform to deliver enterprise grade chips, software, and models in a fully integrated system, purpose built for AI. In this interview, Rodrigo discusses how his company is enabling enterprises to adopt AI in a secure, customizable way that builds long-term value by building AI assets. Their full-stack solutions aim to simplify AI model building and deployment, especially by leveraging open source frameworks and using modular, fine-tuned expert models tailored to clients' private data. Key Points: SambaNova Systems aims to help companies adopt AI technology, particularly in enterprise environments. It provides full-stack AI solutions including hardware, software, models, etc. to simplify adoption. The company’s offerings are designed to enable companies to leverage AI while maintaining data privacy and security. A modular approach provides the flexibility to adapt to diverse enterprise needs. SambaNova takes an "AI asset" approach focused on creating long-term value rather than just providing "AI tools." A focus on open source models provides diversity of technology while reducing vendor lock-in. The company’s software stack enables fine-tuning of granular models on customer data, creating a multitude of AI experts to serve the enterprise. Unlimited use encourages experimentation without the same cost challenges as public cloud AI. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Barbara Tversky, an Emerita professor of psychology at Stanford and a thought leader in spatial cognition, shares her groundbreaking insights on how our physical interactions shape cognitive processes. The conversation explores the connection between spatial reasoning and AI, highlighting how Large Multimodal Models mirror human sensory integration. Tversky also discusses the powerful role of external expressions in creativity, the dynamics of memory during crises, and the cultural nuances influencing urban driving behaviors. These concepts are increasingly relevant as we navigate AI's evolving landscape.

In this episode, we speak with cognitive neuroscientist Stephen Fleming about theories of consciousness and how they relate to artificial intelligence. We discuss key concepts like global workspace theory, higher order theories, computational functionalism, and how neuroscience research on consciousness in humans can inform our understanding of whether machines may ever achieve consciousness. In particular, we talk with Steve about a recent ⁠research paper⁠, Consciousness in Artificial Intelligence, which he co-authored with Patrick Butlin, Robert Long, Yoshua Bengio, and several others. Steve provides an overview of different perspectives from philosophy and psychology on what mechanisms may give rise to consciousness. He explains global and local theories, the idea of a higher order system monitoring lower level representations, and similarities and differences between human and machine intelligence. The conversation explores current limitations in neuroscience for studying consciousness empirically and opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration between neuroscientists and AI researchers. Key Takeaways: Consciousness and intelligence are separate concepts—you can have one without the other Global workspace theory proposes consciousness arises when information is broadcast to widespread brain areas Higher order theories suggest a higher system monitoring lower representations enables consciousness Computational functionalism looks at information processing rather than biological substrate Attributing intelligence versus attributing experience/consciousness invoke different dimensions of social perception More research needed in neuroscience and social psychology around people’s intuitions about machine consciousness ⁠Stephen Fleming⁠ is Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Department of Experimental Psychology, University College London. Steve’s work aims to understand the mechanisms supporting human subjective experience and metacognition by employing a combination of psychophysics, brain imaging and computational modeling. He is the author of *⁠Know Thyself*,⁠ a book on the science of metacognition, about which we interviewed him on Artificiality in December of 2021. Episode Notes:  2:13 - Origins of the paper Stephen co-authored on consciousness in artificial intelligence 5:17 - Discussion of demarcating intelligence vs phenomenal consciousness in AI 6:34 - Explanation of computational functionalism and mapping functions between humans and machines 13:42 - Examples of theories like global workspace theory and higher order theories 19:27 - Clarifying when sensory information reaches consciousness under global theories 23:02 - Challenges in precisely defining aspects like the global workspace computationally 28:35 - Connections between higher order theories and generative adversarial networks 30:43 - Ongoing empirical evidence still needed to test higher order theories 36:52 - Iterative process needed to update theories based on advancing neuroscience 40:40 - Open questions remaining despite foundational research on consciousness 46:14 - Mismatch between public perceptions and indicators from neuroscience theories 50:30 - Experiments probing anthropomorphism and consciousness attribution 56:17 - Surprising survey results on public views of AI experience 59:36 - Ethical issues raised if public acceptance diverges from scientific consensus About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

If you’ve used a large language model, you’ve likely had one or more moments of amazement as the tool immediately responded with impressive content from its massive data cosmos training set. But you’ve likely also had moments of confusion or disillusionment as the tool responded with irrelevant or incorrect responses, displaying a lack of reasoning. A recent research paper from Meta caught our eye because it proposes a new mechanism called System 2 Attention which “leverages the ability of LLMs to reason in natural language and follow instructions in order to decide what to attend to.” The name System 2 is derived from the work of Daniel Kahneman who in his 2011 book, Thinking, Fast and Slow, differentiated between System 1 thinking as intuitive and near-instantaneous and System 2 thinking as slower and effortful. The Meta paper also references our friend Steven Sloman who in 1996 made the case for two systems of reasoning—associative and deliberative or rule-based. Given our interest in the idea of LLMs being able to help people make better decisions—which often requires more deliberative thinking—we asked Steve to come back on the podcast to get his reaction to this research and generative AI in general. Yet again, we had a dynamic conversation about human cognition and modern AI, which field is learning what from the other, and a few speculations about the future. We’re grateful for Steve taking the time to talk with us again and hope that he’ll join us for a third time when his next book is released sometime in 2024. Steven Sloman is a professor of cognitive, linguistic, and psychological sciences at Brown University where he has taught since 1992. He studies how people think, including how we think as a community, a topic he wrote a fantastic book about with Philip Fernbach called The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone. For more about that work, please check out our first interview with Steve from June of 2021. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

In this episode, we speak with Julia Rhodes Davis, a Senior Advisor at Data & Society, about her recent report "Advancing Racial Equity Through Technology Policy" published by the AI Now Institute. This comprehensive report provides an in-depth examination of how the technology industry impacts racial inequity and concrete policy recommendations for reform. A critical insight from the report is that advancing racial equity requires a holistic approach. The report provides policy recommendations to reform antitrust law, ensure algorithmic accountability, and support tech entrepreneurship for people of color. In our interview, Julia explains how advancing racial equity requires policy change as well as coalition-building with impacted communities. She discusses the urgent need to reform practices of algorithmic discrimination that restrict opportunities for marginalized groups. Julia highlights some positive momentum from federal and state policy efforts and she encourages people to get involved with local organizations, providing a great list of organizations you might consider. Links: AI Now Institute Advancing Racial Equity Through Technology Policy report Algorithmic Justice League Athena Color of Change Data for Black Lives Data & Society Media Justice Our Data Bodies About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Grounding her work in the problem of causation, Alicia Juarrero challenges previously held beliefs that only forceful impacts are causes. Constraints, she claims, bring about effects as well, and they enable the emergence of coherence. Alicia is the author of multiple books, most recently Context Changes Everything: How Constraints Create Coherence. Helen says in this interview that it feels like this book is from the future. It’s about using the tools of complexity science to understand identity, hierarchy, and top-down causation, and in so doing, presents a new way of thinking about the natural world but also the artificial world. In this interview, we discuss how to use concepts from complexity—including the important role of constraints—to enlighten our perspectives on the community of humans and machines. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Jai Vipra is a research fellow at the AI Now Institute where she focuses on competition issues in frontier AI models. She recently published the report Computational Power and AI which focuses on compute as a core dependency in building large-scale AI. We found this report to be an important addition to the work covering the generative AI industry because compute is incredibly important but not very well understood. In the report, Jai breaks down the key components of compute, analyzes the supply chain and competitive dynamics, and aggregates all the known economics. In this interview, we talk with Jai about the report, its implications, and her recommendations for industry and policy responses. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Wendy Wong is a professor of political science and principal’s research chair at the University of British Columbia where she researches and teaches about the governance of emerging technologies, human rights, and civil society/non-state actors. In this interview, we talk with Wendy about her new book We, the Data: Human Rights in the Digital Age which is described as “a rallying call for extending human rights beyond our physical selves—and why we need to reboot rights in our data-intensive world.” Given the explosion of generative AI and mass data capture that fuels generative AI models, Wendy’s argument for extending human rights to the digital age seems very timely. We talk with her about how human rights might be applied to the age of data, the datafication by big tech, individuals as stakeholders in the digital world, and our awe of the human contributions that enables generative AI. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Chris Summerfield is a Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Oxford. His work is concerned with understanding how humans learn and make decisions. He is interested in how humans acquire new concepts or patterns in data, and how they use this information to make decisions in novel settings. He's also a research scientist at Deepmind. Earlier this year, Chris released a book called Natural General Intelligence, How understanding the brain can help us build AI. This couldn’t be more timely given talk of AGI and in this episode we talk with Chris about his work and what he’s learned about humans from studying AI and what he’s learned about AI by studying humans. We talk about his aim to provide a bridge between the theories of those who study biological brains and the practice of those who are seeking to build artificial brains, something we find perpetually fascinating. About Artificiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is dedicated to understanding the collective intelligence of humans and machines. We are grounded in the sciences of artificial intelligence, collective intelligence, complexity, data science, neuroscience, and psychology. We absorb the research at the frontier of the industry so that you can see the future, faster. We bring our knowledge to you through our newsletter, podcast interviews with academics and authors, and video interviews with AI innovators. Subscribe at artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Subscribe to get Artificiality delivered to your email Learn about our book Make Better Decisions and buy it on Amazon Thanks to Jonathan Coulton for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai 

Michael Bungay Stanier has an extraordinary talent for distilling the complexity of human relationships into easy to remember and follow frameworks—doing so with just the right amount of Australian humor and plenty of vulnerability. Despite his remarkable success with books like The Coaching Habit, The Advice Trap, and How to Begin, Michael never comes across as one of those gurus who thinks they have all the answers. That mindset comes through perfectly in the title of his newest book, How to Work with (Almost) Anyone—not absolutely anyone, almost anyone. The book is built around five questions for building the best possible relationships which we have found to be very helpful in our working relationship. We have grown to be friends with Michael through our repeated gatherings at the House of Beautiful Business. I know all three of us would encourage all of our listeners and readers to join us at the next House as well. In this interview, we talk about Michael’s new book, how to use a keystone conversation to build the best possible relationship, and we even consider how to apply Michael’s frameworks to working with generative AI. About Artficiality from Helen & Dave Edwards: Artificiality is a research and services business founded in 2019 to help people make sense of artificial intelligence and complex change. Our weekly publication provides thought-provoking ideas, science reviews, and market research and our monthly research releases provides leaders with actionable intelligence and insights for applying AI in their organizations. We provide research-based and expert-led AI strategy and complex change management services to organizations around the world. We are artificial philosophers and meta-researchers who aim to make the philosophical more practical and the practical more philosophical. We believe that understanding AI requires synthesizing research across disciplines: behavioral economics, cognitive science, complexity science, computer science, decision science, design, neuroscience, philosophy, and psychology. We are dedicated to unraveling the profound impact of AI on our society, communities, workplaces, and personal lives.  Subscribe for free at https://www.artificiality.world. If you enjoy our podcasts, please subscribe and leave a positive rating or comment. Sharing your positive feedback helps us reach more people and connect them with the world’s great minds. Learn more about ⁠⁠Sonder Studio⁠⁠ Subscribe to get ⁠⁠Artificiality⁠⁠ delivered to your email Learn about our book ⁠⁠Make Better Decisions⁠⁠ and buy it on ⁠⁠Amazon⁠⁠ Thanks to ⁠⁠Jonathan Coulton⁠⁠ for our music This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.artificiality.world. #ai #artificialintelligence #generativeai #airesearch #complexity #futureofai