What Is Life? Round 2 with Blaise Agüera y Arcas

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Blaise Agüera y Arcas, author and CTO of Technology & Society at Google, returns to the podcast to talk about his new work, What is Life?. This limited-edition, pocket-sized book is the first part of a larger print project with MIT Press and Antikythera titled What Is Intelligence?. What is Life? draws fascinating parallels between the life-building chemical reactions taking place in natural chimneys deep in our oceans and the work of Alan Turing and John von Neumann in the mid-twentieth century. Blaise joins Robb and Josh to explore how self-reproduction—and thus life—is inherently computational. This conversation delves into the nested nature of life on Earth and how technology is an extension of our evolution.

You can buy Blaise’s books from Hat & Beard Press:

Who Are We Now? https://hatandbeard.com/products/who-are-we-now-by-blaise-aguera-y-arcas
Ubi Sunt https://hatandbeard.com/products/ubi-sunt-by-blaise-aguera-y-arcas

In this episode, we mention:

Blaise Agüera y Arcas’s work, “What is Life” — read for free online: https://whatisintelligence.antikythera.org
Lynn Margulis’s books: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Lynn-Margulis/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3ALynn%2BMargulis
Conventional evolutionary theory (Neo-Darwinism): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neo-Darwinism
Stephen Jay Gould’s books: https://www.amazon.com/Books-Stephen-Jay-Gould/s?rh=n%3A283155%2Cp_27%3AStephen%2BJay%2BGould
W. Brian Arthur’s book, “The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves”: https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Technology-What-How-Evolves/dp/1416544062
The Invisible Machines episode, "Radically Honest AI with Dr. Anna Lembke": S5E01 Radically Honest AI with Dr. Anna Lembke
Anna Lemble’s book, “Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence”: https://www.amazon.com/Dopamine-Nation-Finding-Balance-Indulgence/dp/152474672X
Richard S. Sutton and Andrew G. Barto's book, "Reinforcement Learning: second edition: An Introduction (Adaptive Computation and Machine Learning series)" (about temporal difference learning): https://www.amazon.com/Reinforcement-Learning-Introduction-Adaptive-Computation/dp/0262039249/ref=dp_ob_title_bk
Wolfram Schultz’s work, “Responses of monkey dopamine neurons to reward and conditioned stimuli during successive steps of learning a delayed response task”: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/8441015/
The direction of time and Boltzmann’s time hypothesis: http://staff.mechmining.uq.edu.au/klimenko/pub/pdf/Phys_Scr_2019.pdf
Ray Kurzweil's book, "The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology": https://www.amazon.com/Singularity-Near-Humans-Transcend-Biology/dp/0670033847
The story of the Luddites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite
The Invisible Machines episode, “The Intelligence All Around Us” with James Bridle: S4E4 The Intelligence All Around Us
James Bridle’s' book, “Ways of Being: Animals, Plants, Machines: The Search for a Planetary Intelligence”: https://www.amazon.com/Ways-Being-Machines-Planetary-Intelligence/dp/0374601119
Disney Pixar’s movie, “WALL·E”: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0910970/
Joseph Henrich's book, "The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter": https://www.amazon.com/Secret-Our-Success-Evolution-Domesticating/dp/0691166854
Ethan Mollick's book, "Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI": https://www.amazon.com/Co-Intelligence-Living-Working-Ethan-Mollick/dp/059371671X

Learn about creating and orchestrating AI agents for your team:

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