Brain Inspired
Paul Middlebrooks
Neuroscience and artificial intelligence work better together. Brain inspired is a celebration and exploration of the ideas driving our progress to understand intelligence. I interview experts about their work at the interface of neuroscience, artificial intelligence, cognitive science, philosophy, psychology, and more: the symbiosis of these overlapping fields, how they inform each other, where they differ, what the past brought us, and what the future brings. Topics include computational neuroscience, supervised machine learning, unsupervised learning, reinforcement learning, deep learning, convolutional and recurrent neural networks, decision-making science, AI agents, backpropagation, credit assignment, neuroengineering, neuromorphics, emergence, philosophy of mind, consciousness, general AI, spiking neural networks, data science, and a lot more. The podcast is not produced for a general audience. Instead, it aims to educate, challenge, inspire, and hopefully entertain those interested in learning more about neuroscience and AI.
Episodes
Mentioned books
Mar 17, 2021 • 1h 9min
BI 100.3 Special: Can We Scale Up to AGI with Current Tech?
Part 3 in our 100th episode celebration. Previous guests answered the question:
Given the continual surprising progress in AI powered by scaling up parameters and using more compute, while using fairly generic architectures (eg. GPT-3):
Do you think the current trend of scaling compute can lead to human level AGI? If not, what's missing?
It likely won't surprise you that the vast majority answer "No." It also likely won't surprise you, there is differing opinion on what's missing.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
3:56 - Wolgang Maass
5:34 - Paul Humphreys
9:16 - Chris Eliasmith
12:52 - Andrew Saxe
16:25 - Mazviita Chirimuuta
18:11 - Steve Potter
19:21 - Blake Richards
22:33 - Paul Cisek
26:24 - Brad Love
29:12 - Jay McClelland
34:20 - Megan Peters
37:00 - Dean Buonomano
39:48 - Talia Konkle
40:36 - Steve Grossberg
42:40 - Nathaniel Daw
44:02 - Marcel van Gerven
45:28 - Kanaka Rajan
48:25 - John Krakauer
51:05 - Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
53:03 - Grace Lindsay
55:13 - Konrad Kording
57:30 - Jeff Hawkins
102:12 - Uri Hasson
1:04:08 - Jess Hamrick
1:06:20 - Thomas Naselaris
Mar 12, 2021 • 1h 25min
BI 100.2 Special: What Are the Biggest Challenges and Disagreements?
In this 2nd special 100th episode installment, many previous guests answer the question: What is currently the most important disagreement or challenge in neuroscience and/or AI, and what do you think the right answer or direction is? The variety of answers is itself revealing, and highlights how many interesting problems there are to work on.
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
7:10 - Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
8:33 - Mazviita Chirimuuta
9:15 - Chris Eliasmith
12:50 - Jim DiCarlo
13:23 - Paul Cisek
16:42 - Nathaniel Daw
17:58 - Jessica Hamrick
19:07 - Russ Poldrack
20:47 - Pieter Roelfsema
22:21 - Konrad Kording
25:16 - Matt Smith
27:55 - Rafal Bogacz
29:17 - John Krakauer
30:47 - Marcel van Gerven
31:49 - György Buzsáki
35:38 - Thomas Naselaris
36:55 - Steve Grossberg
48:32 - David Poeppel
49:24 - Patrick Mayo
50:31 - Stefan Leijnen
54:24 - David Krakuer
58:13 - Wolfang Maass
59:13 - Uri Hasson
59:50 - Steve Potter
1:01:50 - Talia Konkle
1:04:30 - Matt Botvinick
1:06:36 - Brad Love
1:09:46 - Jon Brennan
1:19:31 - Grace Lindsay
1:22:28 - Andrew Saxe
Mar 9, 2021 • 43min
BI 100.1 Special: What Has Improved Your Career or Well-being?
Brain Inspired turns 100 (episodes) today! To celebrate, my patreon supporters helped me create a list of questions to ask my previous guests, many of whom contributed by answering any or all of the questions. I've collected all their responses into separate little episodes, one for each question. Starting with a light-hearted (but quite valuable) one, this episode has responses to the question, "In the last five years, what new belief, behavior, or habit has most improved your career or well being?" See below for links to each previous guest. And away we go...
Timestamps:
0:00 - Intro
6:13 - David Krakauer
8:50 - David Poeppel
9:32 - Jay McClelland
11:03 - Patrick Mayo
11:45 - Marcel van Gerven
12:11 - Blake Richards
12:25 - John Krakauer
14:22 - Nicole Rust
15:26 - Megan Peters
17:03 - Andrew Saxe
18:11 - Federico Turkheimer
20:03 - Rodrigo Quian Quiroga
22:03 - Thomas Naselaris
23:09 - Steve Potter
24:37 - Brad Love
27:18 - Steve Grossberg
29:04 - Talia Konkle
29:58 - Paul Cisek
32:28 - Kanaka Rajan
34:33 - Grace Lindsay
35:40 - Konrad Kording
36:30 - Mark Humphries
