Skeptiko – Science at the Tipping Point

Skeptiko – Science at the Tipping Point


Andrew Smart, AI, Consciousness, Turing Test |519|

September 21, 2021

Andrew Smart is helping Google figure out whether AI robots can/should take over.

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[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Copenhagen interpretation, which states that the act of measurement affects the system’s [unclear 00:05]. The Penrose interpretation, which suggests that the wave function collapse.
[00:00:12] Alex Tsakiris: Just to confirm, yes, you’re in the right place. This is Skeptiko. This is yet another movie clips I’m playing for you. This is from Devs, a series on Netflix like this is really super-duper mainstream. And like, right off the bat, they are talking about the most fundamental issues of consciousness, AI, how robots are going to take over the world, which of course that’s true, but also how robots may be creating a simulation that we’re living in and all the rest that shit that if you’re into that stuff, you better be into it. It’s the biggest thing. And it’s directly, directly relevant to this amazing interview, I have coming up with Andrew Smart, who’s written a book on all this. So, back to the clip.
[00:00:58] Speaker 1: I want to talk to you about the Von Neumann Vignor interpretation, which states that human consciousness is the key modifier in de-coherence. Are you fucking kidding? Katie, you’re offering a lecture on Von Neumann Vignor. Are you serious? Half the people in this room are undergrads they might actually believe what you’re saying. There are many interesting conjectures within the theory. It’s dual is bullshit, which is the worst kind of bullshit.
[00:01:31] Alex Tsakiris: Okay, so there’s like five different clips I could play for you from this upcoming interview with Andrew Smart, but I’m gonna kind of confine it very narrowly in this introduction, even though we talk about really important shit like, is Google the belly of the beast that has an unrelenting chokehold on our freedom and way of life, as we know it? We address that quite directly in this as we do demonetization, but also, social justice, and search and the responsibility and scale, which is really the issue, I mean, Google does have a problem, trillions of searches. So they have a certain responsibility there that they’re going to need some flexibility on handling, even if they have to use Gestapo tactics to do it. flavoring this, it’s really a good interview. It’s a fair balanced interview, and I super appreciate and respect this guy, Andrew Smart, who you’re going to hear from but here’s a clip, and then we’ll roll right into the interview.
[00:02:33] Andrew Smart: The idea is that we’ll these API’s will be just like human minds; they’ll literally be minds. And so the thought about LSD was then well, if it’s basically indistinguishable from the human mind it’s like, how you would engineer a system that could be perturbed by LSD?
[00:02:56] Alex Tsakiris: What I think has been the core question here a lot of times, and I think is, this question is skirted for the most part by the technology community and that is, is it the Turing test, or is it the metaphysical test? The question about consciousness is, is it somehow fundamental? Welcome to Skeptiko, where we explore controversial science and spirituality, with leading researchers, thinkers and their critics. I’m your host, Alex Tsakiris, and I have a terrific guest for you today. His name is Andrew Smart. He’s the author of a book from a few years ago,