[jcims]

Hey Dr Norvig, really enjoyed your podcast episode with Lex Fridman a couple of years ago. Once you get settled in it would be great to hear an update with how its going, some color around the background and objectives of the program and maybe just riff on the subject for a bit. Thanks!

[phreeza]

I think sadly Fridman has since left the path of conducting interesting interviews with accomplished AI researchers and now caters to a kind of vapid pseudo-philosophical TED-talk crowd.

[mindcrime]

I mean, there's no question that he chose to branch out from strictly hard-core AI researchers. And I don't watch every episode, so I may have missed some of the "bad" ones, but from what I've seen, most of his interviewees are still respected / credible scientists, with a smattering of "other" mixed in here and there. In the past month or so he's had Jeffrey Shainline[1], Travis Oliphant[2], Jay McClelland[3], Douglas Lenat[4], Donald Knuth[5] and Joscha Bach[6] as guests. That's a pretty impressive group, IMO.

[1]: https://www.nist.gov/people/jeff-shainline

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Travis_Oliphant

[3]: https://stanford.edu/~jlmcc/

[4]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Lenat

[5]: https://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~knuth/

[6]: http://bach.ai/

[phreeza]

Yea I think I was overly harsh in my comment, see sibling reply for why this 'other' category gets me so riled up. If you ask me Joscha Bach is also somewhat in the category I mentioned, but I see your point.

[mindcrime]

Interesting. When I look at Joscha's background and work[1][2][3], he seems pretty credible to me. Is there anything specific he's said/done that puts him in your "other" category?

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joscha_Bach

[2]: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=Q_yeuCUAAAAJ&hl=en...

[3]: https://www.amazon.com/Principles-Synthetic-Intelligence-Arc...

[phreeza]

The only thing I know him from is his CCC talk, which is definitely interesting, even dazzling for all the ideas it ties together, but in the end it isn't really presenting anything new, so to me it is a bit of intellectual popcorn, like a TED-talk. I don't know anything about his actual research (which I think is unrelated to most of what he talks about) even though I did my PhD in an adjacent field. I believe as a researcher/teacher he is not in the same category as Peter Norvig and some of the other people you mentioned.

[mindcrime]

Gotcha. Sounds like we may have a difference of perspective. I am not familiar with the CCC talk you speak of, and am mostly familiar with Joscha's work (to the extent that I am, which is not "deeply" so) from his work on MicroPsi[1].

[1]: http://www.cognitive-ai.com/page2/page2.html

[jcims]

Joscha is actually very accessible on Twitter (at least in replies to his tweets). Might be work picking apart one that sits funny with you to test your understanding of his positions.

[ta988]

What interviews make you think that?

[phreeza]

There were several that gave me this impression but Eric Weinstein and one about UFOs (forgot the name of the interviewee) come to mind.

[mindcrime]

I'm guessing you are referring to David Fravor[1] when you say "the one about UFO's".

I dunno. I'm a skeptic by nature (not just of UFO's, etc., but of almost everything) and I watched that episode and thought it was good. Fravor seemed like a sharp, knowledgeable, down-to-earth guy who was simply stating what he experienced... and went to great lengths to be clear that he wasn't necessarily positing that what he saw was caused by Little Green Men from Mars.

FWIW, I don't believe that intelligent aliens are visiting Earth, although I do believe that it's likely that there (is|was|will be) intelligent life elsewhere in our universe at some point in time. Given that bias, I didn't find anything particularly objectionable in the Fravor episode. But perspectives vary, of course...

[1]: https://lexfridman.com/david-fravor/

[jcims]

It's ok man, it's not a religion. You can skip those if you don't like them. He's also had James Gosling, Don Knuth (x2), James Keller (x2), Brian Kernighan and a bunch of other legends.

[phreeza]

You are right of course, but this whole phenomenon really rubs me the wrong way. There is a whole host of podcasts now that provide a large audience to borderline crackpots. I believe it actually pushes people who are maybe otherwise quite intelligent to adopt such theories, because of the large audience that can now be reached with such stuff. Another good example is Avi Loeb and the Alien-Omuamua theory, explained quite well here: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/o1dhlf/comm...