49. A Brief History of Intelligence - Max Bennett (Part 1)

Artificial or no, intelligence is confusing… What does that word even mean? If you can answer a lot of questions about octopus anatomy but your brain doesn’t move fast enough to play Guitar Hero very well and you don’t know why, are you intelligent? (asking for a friend)

On their quest to make sense of Artificial Intelligence, the Phools are starting with the fundamentals. What is Intelligence even? How many holes does the average human body have? If you ask the man in the mirror to change his ways and he refuses… what then?

THE PHOOLS JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW!!!

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Key Topics:

AI, evolution, intelligence, neuroscience, consciousness, history of life, neural networks, brain evolution, AI limitations, mental models

Episode Summary:

• The five stages of building intelligence: steering, classifying, reinforcing, mentalizing, speaking

• Evolution of the brain and the neocortex's role in simulation and planning

• The concept of hallucination and how the brain constructs reality

• The development of the hippocampus and spatial mapping in animals

• The limitations of current AI and the gaps in machine understanding of human intelligence