Can artificial intelligence be emotionally intelligent?

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When we talk about AI, we’re often talking about a very particular, narrow form of intelligence — the sort of analytical competence that can win you games of GO or solve complex math equations. That type of intelligence is important, but it’s incomplete. Human affairs don’t operate on reason and logic alone. They sometimes don’t operate on reason and logic at all.

In 1995, computer scientist Rosalind Picard wrote a paper and subsequent book making the case that the fields of computer science and AI should take emotion seriously, and providing a framework for how machines could come to understand, express and monitor emotion. That project launched the field of “Affective Computing” and today Picard is the founder and director of the Affective Computing Research Group at MIT, and a leading inventor and entrepreneur in affective computing. 

In this conversation, Picard and I discuss the importance of emotional cognition to human decision-making, how emotion-tracking technology is being used to help disadvantaged populations (but could also be used to bring about dystopian results), how affective computing deals with the subjective expressions of human emotions, what studying affective computing taught her about interacting with other humans, why Picard believes the goal of AI technology should be to “empower the weak”and “reduce inequality,” and much more.

Book recommendations:

The Bible (stick around for the reasoning behind this one)

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

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Credits:

Producer/Editer/ Jack-of-all-audio-trades Jeff Geld

Researcher – Roge Karma

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Eroom’s Law is Moore’s Law spelled backwards. It’s a term that was coined in a Nature Reviews Drug Discovery article by researchers at Sanford Bernstein and describes the exponential decrease in biopharma research and development efficiency between the 1950s and 2010. Whereas Moore’s describes technologies becoming exponentially faster and cheaper over time, Eroom’s Law describes the trend of drug development becoming exponentially more expensive over time.

The article describing Eroom’s Law was published in 2012, and analyzed data up till 2010. That is perhaps ironic as 2010 appears to be an inflection point in the trend. In Breaking Eroom’s Law, the authors analyze the data since 2010 and show that costs appear to have stabilized over the last ten years. But what has contributed to this critical and exciting trend shift? In our conversation, Jorge and Vijay discuss the three causes cited by the authors of the Breaking Eroom’s Law article, their views on what technologies and policies will continue to push costs down, and their opinion on whether Eroom’s Law is broken for good.

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Joined our private FB group yet? It’s a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they’re already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. This episode includes: Abhishek Kumar Maurya, the founder of UberPro.In; the companies capitalizing on people fleeing cities; how tech is helping humans become fitter; the world of alternate data; the Freeport for baseball cards; and the million dollar challenge. 

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#106 – Matt Botvinick: Neuroscience, Psychology, and AI at DeepMind

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Matt Botvinick is the Director of Neuroscience Research at DeepMind. He is a brilliant cross-disciplinary mind navigating effortlessly between cognitive psychology, computational neuroscience, and artificial intelligence.

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If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to https://lexfridman.com/ai or connect with @lexfridman on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Medium, or YouTube where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on Apple Podcasts, follow on Spotify, or support it on Patreon.

Here’s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.

OUTLINE:
00:00 – Introduction
03:29 – How much of the brain do we understand?
14:26 – Psychology
22:53 – The paradox of the human brain
32:23 – Cognition is a function of the environment
39:34 – Prefrontal cortex
53:27 – Information processing in the brain
1:00:11 – Meta-reinforcement learning
1:15:18 – Dopamine
1:19:01 – Neuroscience and AI research
1:23:37 – Human side of AI
1:39:56 – Dopamine and reinforcement learning
1:53:07 – Can we create an AI that a human can love?

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Joined our private FB group yet? It’s a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they’re already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. The guys discuss: Andrew Wilkinson Hey.com replacer, VidIQ for influencers, why Grammarly is a huge business, learning via text messages and Stadium Live (ESPN for Gen Z). 

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Danielle Allen on the radicalism of the American revolution — and its lessons for today

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My first conversation with Harvard political theorist Danielle Allen in fall 2019 was one of my all-time favorites. I didn’t expect to have Allen on again so soon, but her work is unusually relevant to our current moment.

She’s written an entire book about the deeper argument of the Declaration of Independence and the way our superficial reading and folk history of the document obscures its radicalism. (It’ll make you look at July Fourth in a whole new way). Her most recent book, Cuz, is a searing indictment of the American criminal justice system, driven by watching her cousin go through it and motivated by the murder that ended his life. Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics, which Allen directs, has released the most comprehensive, operational road map for mobilizing and reopening the US economy amidst the Covid-19 crisis. And to top it all off, a two-year bipartisan commission of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, which Allen co-chaired, recently released a report with more than 30 recommendations on how to reform American democracy — and they’re very, very good.

This is a wide-ranging conversation for a wide-ranging moment. Allen and I discuss what “all men are created equal” really means, why the myth of Thomas Jefferson’s sole authorship of the Declaration of Independence muddies its message, the role of police brutality in the American revolution, democracy reforms such as ranked-choice voting, DC statehood, mandatory voting, how to deal with a Republican Party that opposes expanding democracy, the case for prison abolition, the various pandemic response paths before us, the failure of political leadership in this moment, and much more.

References:

My first conversation with Danielle Allen

Harvard’s Edmond J. Safra Center’s Covid-19 work

“Our Common Purpose” report on reinventing democracy for the 21st century

Book recommendations:

To Shape a New World by Brandon Terry and Tommie Shelby 

Solitary by Alfred Woodfox 

The Torture Letters by Laurence Ralph

Want to contact the show? Reach out at ezrakleinshow@vox.com

Please consider making a contribution to Vox to support this show: bit.ly/givepodcasts Your support will help us keep having ambitious conversations about big ideas.

New to the show? Want to check out Ezra’s favorite episodes? Check out the Ezra Klein Show beginner’s guide (http://bit.ly/EKSbeginhere)

Credits:

Producer/Editer/ Jack-of-all-audio-trades Jeff Geld

Researcher – Roge Karma

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424. How to Make Your Own Luck

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Before she decided to become a poker pro, Maria Konnikova didn’t know how many cards are in a deck. But she did have a Ph.D. in psychology, a brilliant coach, and a burning desire to know whether life is driven more by skill or chance. She found some answers in poker — and in her new book The Biggest Bluff, she’s willing to tell us everything she learned.

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Joined our private FB group yet? It’s a page where people share each others million dollar ideas or what they’re already working on: https://www.facebook.com/groups/ourfirstmillion. Episode summary: (5:15) The unbundling of Reddit (11:50) The formula for finding niches to unbundle (16:24) Examples of a subreddits that could become a business (31:00) The businesses that use giveaways to grow. 

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