Joe Rogan - The Creativity of Artificial Intelligence

Reality could be like an onion We don't know but it could be like an onion to where you think you know You're studying a layer of an onion and then you peel it away and there's more and you keep doing it and there's an infinite Number of layers with intelligence. There's the same kind of component to where we think we know we got it We figured out we figured out how to beat the human world champion to chess We solved intelligence and then we tried the next thing. Wait a minute Go is really difficult to solve as a game and then you say okay It's I came up when the game of go was impossible for artificial intelligence systems to be and have now recently have been beaten Within the last like five years right next the last five years. There's a lot of technical fascinating things of why that victory is Interesting and important for artificial intelligence. It requires creativity, correct? It it does not it it just exhibits creativity so the technical aspects of why AlphaGo from Google DeepMind that That was the designers and the builders of the system. That was the Victor they did a few very interesting technical things where Essentially You develop a neural network. This is this type of artificial intelligence system that looks at a board of Go as a lot of elements on it as black and white pieces and is able to tell you how good is this situation and how can I make it better and That idea so chess players can do this I'm not actually that familiar with the game of go so I can speak to I'm Russian so chess tosses romanticize. It's a beautiful game I Think that there you look at a board and all your previous experiences all the things you've developed over tons of Years of practice and thinking you get this instinct of what is the right path to follow? And that's exactly what in your own network is doing and some of the in some of the paths it has come up with are Surprising to other world champions. So in that sense, it says well this thing's exhibiting creativity because it's coming up with solutions that are Something that's outside the box thinking from the perspective of the human When what do you differentiate between requires creativity and exhibits creativity? I Think one because we don't really understand what creativity is so It's almost It's on the level of concepts such as consciousness for example the question which There's a lot of thinking about whether creating something intelligent requires consciousness requires for us to be actual living beings aware of our own existence in the same way does Doing something like building an autonomous vehicle. That's the area where I work in does that require Creativity does that even require something like consciousness and self-awareness? I Mean, I'm sure in LA there's some degree of creativity required to navigate traffic and in that sense You start to think are there solutions that are outside of the box and ai system used to create It's once you start to build it you realize that to us humans certain things appear creative certain things don't certain things We take for granted certain things we find beautiful and certain things we're like, yeah Yeah, that's that's boring. Well, there's creativity in different levels, right? There's creativity like to write the stand Stephen King novel that requires creativity There's something about his he's creating these stories. He's giving voices to these characters He's developing these scenarios and these dramatic sequences in the book that's gonna get you really sucked in that's that's almost undeniable creativity, right Is it so yeah, it's he's imagining a world. Mm-hmm. What is it always set in New Hampshire, Massachusetts? It's main main. Yes, right. So he's imagining a world and imagine the emotion of different levels surrounding that world Yeah, that's that's creative. Although if you there's a few really good books including his own that talks about writing Yeah, he's got a great book on writing and it's actually called on writing. I'm writing Yeah, if there's anyone who can write a book on writing it should be Stephen King. Mm-hmm I think Stephen Pressfield. I hope I'm not saying the war of art the war of art beautiful book and I Would say if for my recollection they don't necessarily talk about creativity very much That it's really hard work of putting in the hours of every day of just grinding it out Well, Pressfield talks about the muse Pressfield speaks of it almost in like a strange mystical mystical sort of connection to the unknown because he he almost I'm not even exactly sure if he believes in the muse But he I think if I could put words in his mouth, I have madam. He's a great guy He was on the podcast once I think the way he treats it is that if you decide the muse is real and you show up every day and You write as if the muse is real you get the benefits of the muse being real That's right. Whether or not there's actually a muse that's giving you these wonderful ideas and what is the muse? so I think of artificial intelligence the same way there's a quote by Pamela McCordick from 1979 book that I really like when she talks about the history of artificial intelligence AI began with an ancient wish to forge the gods and to me gods broadly speaking and religions represents it's kind of like the muse it represents the limits of Possibility the limits of our imagination So it's this thing that we don't quite understand that is the muse that is God this Us us chimps are very narrow in our ability to perceive and understand the world and there's clearly a much bigger Beautiful mysterious world out there and God or the muse represents that world and for many people I think throughout history and especially in the past sort of hundred years Artificial intelligence has become to represent that a little bit to the thing Which we don't understand and we crave we're both terrified and we crave in creating this thing that is greater That is able to understand the world better than us and that in that sense artificial intelligence is the desire to create the muse in this other this imaginary thing and I think the one of the beautiful things if you talk about everybody from Elon Musk to Sam Harris to all the people thinking about this is that there is a mix of fear of that of that unknown of creating that unknown and An excitement for it because there's something in human nature that desires Creating that because like I said creating is how you understand Mmm. Did you initially study biology? Did you study the actual development of the mind or what what is known about the the evolution of the human mind? Of the human mind. Yeah so my path is different as it's the same for a lot of computer scientists and roboticists is we Ignore biology neuroscience the physiology anatomy of our own bodies And there's a lot of beliefs now that you should really study biology You should study neuroscience you should study our own brain the actual chemistry what's happening What what is actually how are the neurons interconnected all the different kinds of systems in there? So that is a little bit of a blind spot or it's a big blind spot. But the problem is so I started with more Philosophy almost it's where If you think Sam Harris has last couple of years has started kind of thinking about artificial intelligence and He has a background in neuroscience, but he's also a philosopher and I started there by reading Camus and Nietzsche or Dostoyevsky thinking what is What is intelligence what is human morality will so all of these concepts Give you the context for which you can then start studying these problems and then I said There's a there's a magic that happens when you build a robot And it drives around I mean your father I'd like to be but I'm not yet There's a creation aspect. That's wonderful. That's Incredible. It's for me. I don't have any children at the moment But the act of creating a robot where you programmed it and it moves around and it senses the world is this Is a magical moment