Joscha Bach, Cognitive Scientist and AI researcher, as well as Anthony Aguirre, UCSC Professor of Physics, join us to explore the world through the lens of computation and the difficulties we face on the way to beneficial futures.

 Topics discussed in this episode include:

-Understanding the universe through digital physics
-How human consciousness operates and is structured
-The path to aligned AGI and bottlenecks to beneficial futures
-Incentive structures and collective coordination

You can find the page for this podcast here: https://futureoflife.org/2021/03/31/joscha-bach-and-anthony-aguirre-on-digital-physics-and-moving-towards-beneficial-futures/

You can find FLI's three new policy focused job postings here: futureoflife.org/job-postings/

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Timestamps: 

0:00 Intro
3:17 What is truth and knowledge?
11:39 What is subjectivity and objectivity?
14:32 What is the universe ultimately?
19:22 Is the universe a cellular automaton? Is the universe ultimately digital or analogue?
24:05 Hilbert's hotel from the point of view of computation
35:18 Seeing the world as a fractal
38:48 Describing human consciousness
51:10 Meaning, purpose, and harvesting negentropy
55:08 The path to aligned AGI
57:37 Bottlenecks to beneficial futures and existential security
1:06:53 A future with one, several, or many AGI systems? How do we maintain appropriate incentive structures?
1:19:39 Non-duality and collective coordination
1:22:53 What difficulties are there for an idealist worldview that involves computation?
1:27:20 Which features of mind and consciousness are necessarily coupled and which aren't?
1:36:40 Joscha's final thoughts on AGI

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Joscha Bach and Anthony Aguirre on Digital Physics and Moving Towards Beneficial Futures

The Future of Life Institute (FLI) is a nonprofit working to reduce global catastrophic and existential risk from powerful technologies. In particular, FLI focuses on risks from artificial intelligence (AI), biotechnology, nuclear weapons and climate change.

The Institute's work is made up of three main strands: grantmaking for risk reduction, educational outreach, and advocacy within the United Nations, US government and European Union institutions.

FLI has become one of the world's leading voices on the governance of AI having created one of the earliest and most influential sets of governance principles: the Asilomar AI Principles.