Mindscape 272 | Leslie Valiant on Learning and Educability in Computers and People
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Published 2024-04-15
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/podcast/2024/04/15/27…
Science is enabled by the fact that the natural world exhibits predictability and regularity, at least to some extent. Scientists collect data about what happens in the world, then try to suggest "laws" that capture many phenomena in simple rules. A small irony is that, while we are looking for nice compact rules, there aren't really nice compact rules about how to go about doing that. Today's guest, Leslie Valiant, has been a pioneer in understanding how computers can and do learn things about the world. And in his new book, The Importance of Being Educable, he pinpoints this ability to learn new things as the crucial feature that distinguishes us as human beings. We talk about where that capability came from and what its role is as artificial intelligence becomes ever more prevalent.
Leslie Valiant received his Ph.D. in computer science from Warwick University. He is currently the T. Jefferson Coolidge Professor of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics at Harvard University. He has been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Knuth Prize, and the Turing Award, and he is a member of the National Academy of Sciences as well as a Fellow of the Royal Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He is the pioneer of "Probably Approximately Correct" learning, which he wrote about in a book of the same name.
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All Comments (9)
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Do not fluid intelligence tests aim to measure /get at educability?
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Is it just me or Leslie Valiant sounds a lot like Cristopher Hitchens?
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I don't know if he'd even be interested in being on the Mindscape podcast, but I request that you try getting as a guest Robert Harper to talk about Computational Trinitarianism
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In the context of the idea that consciousness is not a computational process, we will never have AGI, Artificial General Intelligence. It would have to have been co-evolutionary with us throughout past history up till now, which implies that building a time machine is easier.
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1:53 in which universe do theoretical physicists make the big bucks? 🤔
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Looking forward.
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These AI's are not thinking, they are calculating. An AI cannot deduce the subtleties of poetry and the hierarchical meanings hidden within. It doesn't understand sarcasm. It doesn't have feelings based on past events, etc etc etc
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I've been entertained by AI but not really impressed. They are wrong surprisingly often. Keep working computer geeks and mathematicians! You're on the right path!
