Warren McCulloch, not only a great intellect who tried to see the big picture and was willing to tackle the hardest problems, but a very compassionate man as well. He was willing to help the less fortunate in life, whether they were simply very poor, or having trouble with their academic careers, or sometimes both, by literally taking them into his extended family and possibly into his research group group as well. Someone once said this liberal attitude affected his ability to form cohesive research groups, but I doubt, for example, we would have the two seminal papers he wrote with Walter Pitts without it. I would say it was a life lived with both courage and compassion, and that he deserves the highest respect.
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Wow. Recorded in 1969, the year his close friend, colleague and mentee, Walter Pitts, passed away. I would love to see any possible interview with Pitts.
@@sierranevadatrail Keen insight; are you in the business?! My research is activation functions in neural networks and I have been so interested in what Pitts’ dissertation was about. I have read very general accounts from Lettvin and others but nothing definitive. As best as I can surmise, he was working on a 3D neuron, or 3D arrangement of nodes, and some form of memory based on modulo math.
@@elmoreglidingclub3030 I am an electrical engineer but not a specialist in this field, really. I almost delved into this area in the nineties and later, but kept reading things by the likes of John McCarthy who said the field of AI was going nowhere, so I ended up doing my graduate work in communication theory instead. There is recent, award winning article about McCulloch and Pitts "The man who tried to redeem the world with logic" and a book about Mcculloch by the same author. McCullochs papers are online courtesy of the American Philosphical Society. As you may have read, Pitts supposedly burned his thesis out of disgust. As I said, truly tragic.
@@sierranevadatrail I read an excellent book on information theory by Gordon Raisbeck a couple months ago. He was the son-in-law of Norbert Wiener, the one who broke off relations with Pitts-based on a ruse concocted by Wiener’s wife. Interesting connections. And I have read the article about Pitts you cited and have spoken with the author, Amanda Gefter, in hopes of finding additional resources or insights. I feel we have lost a substantial chapter of fundamental AI thinking when Pitts burned his thesis and notes and then, of course, when he died.
His chain smoking is a clear sign of a very anxious mind, always troubled by some thought. And then he proceeds to confirm it with his own words, that he can't sleep until he finds the answer for a question in his mind.
I would agree, but seeing as most of our current politicians can barely string a sentence together, having intellectuals and scientists in politics might be a step up from our current model.
It should be the contrary. Non intellectuals who know no shit about how the world works should not be allowed to do politics. The derive of the world shows that representative democracy is bullshit because anyone power hungry can acess power via rigged elections.
Any one who seeks political office probably shouldn't be in it. But hey ho! Such it is, has been and will remain so, at least during my remaining life time.
@@ONETimothy2.12-14IQ is a comparative test, so 130 is always going to be very intelligent. When they are normalized, back then IQs were lower. It is called the Flynn effect.
@@ONETimothy2.12-14 Yeah, I'm not sure why he said it. May have just been sarcasm, or to point out that at his level in academia it is normal to have IQs that high. If he indeed had an IQ of 140, then that is almost 3 standard deviations from the mean, which is by definition abnormal when compared to the rest of the population.
There's fewer zig-zagging or attention grabbing gimmicks. The focus is on what is being discussed. Also, people enunciate well and speak in proper sentences.
mcculloch is such a gem that he espouses wisdom i'll keep with me forever in response to the world's most silly and banal questions. imagine having the ear of such a mind and wasting it
In my view, History has not looked kindly on Norbert Weiner, while Mcculloch (and Pitts), who had problems with him, have only seen their stature grow.
what if the growth is not in having more neurons, but in "burning" the obsolete paths and keeping only the better ones? at the end, when everything aligns and you can see "the god" in everything, it means you have found the common denominator of all things and thus, only one path
Very astute observation on your part. He has to leave the soul out because this is the difference between any machine and mankind. All of the hype around Artificial Intelligence attempts to obfuscate the fact that no matter how fast, or "smart" the machine appears to be, it is really nothing more than a fancy comparator, that cannot initiate creative thought without input from man. It does not think like we do, but merely combines statistical probabilities with data. Artificial, yes; intelligent no.
@@ronpowers745 What you are describing is an algorithm, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are more than just that, the whole point is that these tools can generalize to new, unseen data. When you put this in the context of LLMs for example, creativity is needed to generalize on words, to create an original poem, story, solution to a problem, etc. If an LLM can generalize, it's being creative, it doesn't have human creativity, but it is creative.
@@ronpowers745 There is an opinion that not all representatives of homo have a soul. It seems that individuals of that very "transitional species" that creationists are worried about are deprived of it.
@@randominternet9338 but he is right today's generation understands almost nothing most of them are crippled by shorts and marketers who have worked out sales algorithms on them
Words are too crude. We learn things before we have words for them. They carry information, but the main interest is the mechanism that made them. As an example, children play with toys before them even have a name for them or a name for "playing". But the "word" is already in their minds.
The current state of the art (O1 etc) capping the recent years' series of breakthroughs may lead us to believe the computer, this time, understands what we want, and creates the output. But it doesn't understand what we want and doesn't understand the output it creates any more than a light switch understands our intent to make the dark room, brighter. The current AI that can animate an astronaut riding an elephant in the style of Dali, and make her sing lyrics in a particular style and voice is very impressive and useful in its own right, but there's a 50yr abyss between this and what Prof. McCulloch is talking about here. Moreover, 50yrs from now there will be still a 50yr abyss between then state of the art and what he's talking about. Like with nuclear fusion reactors (except they do it 20yrs at a time).
@@AlexKarasev I feel like these kind of positions that you express in the first half of the post are dogmatic. "AI doesn't understand", "AI doesn't exist". Why? Because of course it doesn't.
@@MrFujinko "But the "word" is already in their minds" yep, and is the only word, consisting of inarticulate sounds, they have one for everything around
A true delight for my brain, he is one of the few, next to Poincaré, Erdős, Dirac, Feynman, Hardy, whose thoughts he perceives at the same clock frequency High
He looks like an extremely smart monkey to me. Like he's the embodiment and fact that we are literally just fucking smart monkeys with the ability to create things to enhance our life.
In days of yore, a vision pure and bright, A sage emerged, his name a beacon's light, Warren Sturgis McCulloch, seer of the mind, Proclaimed a truth that left us all behind. He saw a world where numbers held the key, Where mathematics danced with harmony, A realm where machines would weave verse so fine, Through algorithms, they'd transcend the line. With prescience rare, he gazed into the mist, And foretold a future yet to be kissed, Where poetry's beauty, born of human art, Would find new life, a digital restart. Through circuits vast, his dreams would take their flight, Where bits and bytes would learn the poet's plight, And in the realm of silicon and steel, Their creations, masterpieces, would reveal. Math and group theory, their guiding light, To craft sonnets and ballads with such might, In ones and zeros, their language new and strange, They'd capture emotions, the human exchange. Lines intertwined, enigmatic and true, Metaphors unbound, their meanings to pursue, Computers, once calculators mere, Became the bards, their verse astoundingly clear. Oh, McCulloch, your foresight shone so bright, As you beheld the dawn of this wondrous sight, Your legacy, a testament profound, To the fusion of minds, where beauty is found. Today, we marvel at your gifted sight, As machines compose with poetic might, For you, the herald of a future grand, Where art and science forever hand in hand. So let us celebrate this prophet true, Whose vision led us to this dazzling view, Warren Sturgis McCulloch, we sing your praise, For guiding us through poetry's endless maze. - chatGPT
You can see at 4:20 how it was possible for a topic like Eugenics to take hold in the academic population of that time. They were pretty convinced that: 1. People have innate abilities 2. They are hardwired genetically Not voicing support on either way on the topic, just commenting that it was a very "in vogue" position in the early 20th century.
Eugenics is artificial selection, and if you look closely, it is in full swing right now. Those who conduct it are smart enough to do it implicitly and without unnecessary evidence
Pauses I call them...waits...browsing the channels, comments...wait!, that doesn't seem right, and off I go...I just saw a plein air artist bobbing his tongue while using his brush-weird, and gross...what's his name, the conservative pundit, his tongue lolled out in his on and ons...the liver regenerates...small wounds..."this one included" ie his brain a machine..."I mean in general..."..."Lets leave the soul out..."...wait, that's a long pause!😂interview questions are goofy...into the weather!
Came here from Marvin Minsky interview.
Warren McCulloch, not only a great intellect who tried to see the big picture and was willing to tackle the hardest problems, but a very compassionate man as well. He was willing to help
the less fortunate in life, whether they were simply very poor, or having trouble with their academic careers, or sometimes both, by literally taking them into his extended family and possibly
into his research group group as well. Someone once said this liberal attitude affected his ability to form cohesive research groups, but I doubt, for example, we would have the two seminal papers he wrote with Walter Pitts without it. I would say it was a life lived with both courage and compassion, and that he deserves the highest respect.
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The OG AI podcast
100% right.
He was most certainly born with a superior intellect, fascinating to listen to, I wish there were more recording like this.
I believe the BBC filmed him for six hours, but if the films still exist, I am not sure they are publicly available.
@@sierranevadatrail That is rather unhelpful.
Do you have more info on this?
Did you not listen to the interview where he says he's not a genius and wasn't born with a superior intellect? 6:22
He IS WORD Salad & So Smart He Smokes Dr Of Stupid He & Others Fluoride In The water
Wow. Recorded in 1969, the year his close friend, colleague and mentee, Walter Pitts, passed away. I would love to see any possible interview with Pitts.
Passed away or killed eh
So would I. A truly tragic figure, and a cautionary example of how calous people who are high up on the academic ladder can ruin others.
@@sierranevadatrail Keen insight; are you in the business?! My research is activation functions in neural networks and I have been so interested in what Pitts’ dissertation was about. I have read very general accounts from Lettvin and others but nothing definitive. As best as I can surmise, he was working on a 3D neuron, or 3D arrangement of nodes, and some form of memory based on modulo math.
@@elmoreglidingclub3030 I am an electrical engineer but not a specialist in this field, really. I almost delved into this area in the nineties and later, but kept reading things by the likes of John McCarthy who said the field of AI was going nowhere, so I ended up doing my graduate work in communication theory instead. There is recent, award winning article about McCulloch and Pitts "The man who tried to redeem the world with logic" and a book about Mcculloch by the same author. McCullochs papers are online courtesy of the American Philosphical Society. As you may have read, Pitts supposedly burned his thesis out of disgust. As I said, truly tragic.
@@sierranevadatrail I read an excellent book on information theory by Gordon Raisbeck a couple months ago. He was the son-in-law of Norbert Wiener, the one who broke off relations with Pitts-based on a ruse concocted by Wiener’s wife. Interesting connections. And I have read the article about Pitts you cited and have spoken with the author, Amanda Gefter, in hopes of finding additional resources or insights. I feel we have lost a substantial chapter of fundamental AI thinking when Pitts burned his thesis and notes and then, of course, when he died.
His chain smoking is a clear sign of a very anxious mind, always troubled by some thought. And then he proceeds to confirm it with his own words, that he can't sleep until he finds the answer for a question in his mind.
Lol people are allowed to enjoy smoking. Understanding a person is an emotional not logical process.
Do not use the brain for emotional connections😉
It’s called an addictive mind he’s an addict for learning and smoking and probably lots of other stuff
Einstein smoked too. Albeit more relaxed, a pipe. Had apparently some benefits
Brain I greedy machine bro, it's need a price for every output
Scientist should not be in politics. What a true genius!
I would agree, but seeing as most of our current politicians can barely string a sentence together, having intellectuals and scientists in politics might be a step up from our current model.
I was thinking about how stupid Fauci is. Dude should be in prison.
It should be the contrary. Non intellectuals who know no shit about how the world works should not be allowed to do politics. The derive of the world shows that representative democracy is bullshit because anyone power hungry can acess power via rigged elections.
Celebrities too
Any one who seeks political office probably shouldn't be in it. But hey ho! Such it is, has been and will remain so, at least during my remaining life time.
Love this! What an interesting man. Thanks for posting!
"a normal IQ, about 140"
our brains got nerfed :/
130 was genius even back then. Can't imagine why he worded it like that. Sarcasm? Idk.
@@ONETimothy2.12-14IQ is a comparative test, so 130 is always going to be very intelligent. When they are normalized, back then IQs were lower. It is called the Flynn effect.
@phantomcreamer Seems like that gives more reason for him to not have downplayed his iq?
@@ONETimothy2.12-14 Yeah, I'm not sure why he said it. May have just been sarcasm, or to point out that at his level in academia it is normal to have IQs that high. If he indeed had an IQ of 140, then that is almost 3 standard deviations from the mean, which is by definition abnormal when compared to the rest of the population.
Why is it so refreshing to watch older interviews like these? whatever the topic
because anything modern is absolute garbage.
There's fewer zig-zagging or attention grabbing gimmicks. The focus is on what is being discussed. Also, people enunciate well and speak in proper sentences.
mcculloch is such a gem that he espouses wisdom i'll keep with me forever in response to the world's most silly and banal questions. imagine having the ear of such a mind and wasting it
In my view, History has not looked kindly on Norbert Weiner, while Mcculloch (and Pitts), who had problems with him, have only seen their stature grow.
thank god for eccentrics and polymaths - we'd have little science or culture without them
Bravo. Now all we'll have are AI and quantum computers. Hardly a match for his intellect.
what a brilliant man he is
what if the growth is not in having more neurons, but in "burning" the obsolete paths and keeping only the better ones? at the end, when everything aligns and you can see "the god" in everything, it means you have found the common denominator of all things and thus, only one path
Thank you!
Turn on closed captions. It’s a lot easier to follow along.
"He never goes to sleep before 4am".
There you have it kids.
"Let's leave the soul out" in that statement lies why the machine will never be us
You don't have a soul either
A human soul, maybe not. A soul of it's own, you will never be able to say.
@@joerichardson6107 there's some humans that will never be us either
@@Curt-0001 there's no human soul
@@socialtraffichq5067 Depends on your definition I suppose.
“I’m sorry, let’s leave the soul out”
Very astute observation on your part. He has to leave the soul out because this is the difference between any machine and mankind. All of the hype around Artificial Intelligence attempts to obfuscate the fact that no matter how fast, or "smart" the machine appears to be, it is really nothing more than a fancy comparator, that cannot initiate creative thought without input from man. It does not think like we do, but merely combines statistical probabilities with data. Artificial, yes; intelligent no.
@@ronpowers745 What you are describing is an algorithm, Artificial Intelligence and machine learning are more than just that, the whole point is that these tools can generalize to new, unseen data. When you put this in the context of LLMs for example, creativity is needed to generalize on words, to create an original poem, story, solution to a problem, etc. If an LLM can generalize, it's being creative, it doesn't have human creativity, but it is creative.
@@ronpowers745
There is an opinion that not all representatives of homo have a soul. It seems that individuals of that very "transitional species" that creationists are worried about are deprived of it.
@@Daniel-xh9ot
And he already draws squares no worse than Malevich, lol
140 was considered a normal IQ back then, today I'd be surprised if it;s 105
🤣
Normal is 100 by definition tho
He was being sarcastic yours definitely ain't crossing 70 with that comment
@@randominternet9338
but he is right
today's generation understands almost nothing
most of them are crippled by shorts and marketers who have worked out sales algorithms on them
17:20 and today with LLM, transformer algorithm, and NLP in general, this is possible
Words are too crude. We learn things before we have words for them. They carry information, but the main interest is the mechanism that made them. As an example, children play with toys before them even have a name for them or a name for "playing". But the "word" is already in their minds.
The current state of the art (O1 etc) capping the recent years' series of breakthroughs may lead us to believe the computer, this time, understands what we want, and creates the output. But it doesn't understand what we want and doesn't understand the output it creates any more than a light switch understands our intent to make the dark room, brighter.
The current AI that can animate an astronaut riding an elephant in the style of Dali, and make her sing lyrics in a particular style and voice is very impressive and useful in its own right, but there's a 50yr abyss between this and what Prof. McCulloch is talking about here. Moreover, 50yrs from now there will be still a 50yr abyss between then state of the art and what he's talking about. Like with nuclear fusion reactors (except they do it 20yrs at a time).
@@AlexKarasev I feel like these kind of positions that you express in the first half of the post are dogmatic. "AI doesn't understand", "AI doesn't exist". Why? Because of course it doesn't.
@@MrFujinko
"But the "word" is already in their minds"
yep, and is the only word, consisting of inarticulate sounds, they have one for everything around
....anyways, nice weather we're having! 😂
Imagine interview like this today! I’m surprised a bunch of concerned people haven’t already reported it as disturbing and dangerous…
twitch has selected a unique species - homo condemnius vulgaris
A true delight for my brain, he is one of the few, next to Poincaré, Erdős, Dirac, Feynman, Hardy, whose thoughts he perceives at the same clock frequency
High
cant find his audiobook tho
Absolute legend.
He died Sept 1969
Hilarious at 16 i felt my growth was infinite now im tired.
Am I weird or is anybody reminded of Jim Carrey when looking at him in the thumbnail?
Jim Carrey/Willem Dafoe
Yes 🤣
He looks like an extremely smart monkey to me. Like he's the embodiment and fact that we are literally just fucking smart monkeys with the ability to create things to enhance our life.
"Hey, ChatGPT, tell me about Warren Sturgis."
This man is cool and interesting as hell
Good days
In days of yore, a vision pure and bright,
A sage emerged, his name a beacon's light,
Warren Sturgis McCulloch, seer of the mind,
Proclaimed a truth that left us all behind.
He saw a world where numbers held the key,
Where mathematics danced with harmony,
A realm where machines would weave verse so fine,
Through algorithms, they'd transcend the line.
With prescience rare, he gazed into the mist,
And foretold a future yet to be kissed,
Where poetry's beauty, born of human art,
Would find new life, a digital restart.
Through circuits vast, his dreams would take their flight,
Where bits and bytes would learn the poet's plight,
And in the realm of silicon and steel,
Their creations, masterpieces, would reveal.
Math and group theory, their guiding light,
To craft sonnets and ballads with such might,
In ones and zeros, their language new and strange,
They'd capture emotions, the human exchange.
Lines intertwined, enigmatic and true,
Metaphors unbound, their meanings to pursue,
Computers, once calculators mere,
Became the bards, their verse astoundingly clear.
Oh, McCulloch, your foresight shone so bright,
As you beheld the dawn of this wondrous sight,
Your legacy, a testament profound,
To the fusion of minds, where beauty is found.
Today, we marvel at your gifted sight,
As machines compose with poetic might,
For you, the herald of a future grand,
Where art and science forever hand in hand.
So let us celebrate this prophet true,
Whose vision led us to this dazzling view,
Warren Sturgis McCulloch, we sing your praise,
For guiding us through poetry's endless maze.
- chatGPT
Damnn
WOW, this is so awesome use of what Warren McCulloch and Walter Pitts invented
There is no irony lost on me a computer program composed that. Almost like paying tribute to an amazing parent. 🎉🎉🎉
@@melanieburg7614 A fitting tribute indeed. 55 years after his passing.
I knew this was ChatGPT straightaway
6:14 wow so learning in your sleep is a thing .. just like nikola tesla getting answers in his sleep ( lucid dreams)
15:17
“You mean it’s never going to be possible to stave off death?”
“Oh that could be. But who wants to end up a grasshopper?”
He's like a mix between John Houston and Willem Dafoe.
You can see at 4:20 how it was possible for a topic like Eugenics to take hold in the academic population of that time.
They were pretty convinced that:
1. People have innate abilities
2. They are hardwired genetically
Not voicing support on either way on the topic, just commenting that it was a very "in vogue" position in the early 20th century.
Eugenics is artificial selection, and if you look closely, it is in full swing right now. Those who conduct it are smart enough to do it implicitly and without unnecessary evidence
Does any one else thinks he looks like a modern day Jim Carry?🤔
A genius!
Pauses I call them...waits...browsing the channels, comments...wait!, that doesn't seem right, and off I go...I just saw a plein air artist bobbing his tongue while using his brush-weird, and gross...what's his name, the conservative pundit, his tongue lolled out in his on and ons...the liver regenerates...small wounds..."this one included" ie his brain a machine..."I mean in general..."..."Lets leave the soul out..."...wait, that's a long pause!😂interview questions are goofy...into the weather!
"...into the weather"
Warren was born in the 1800s...
i came back to smoking
About 140😂😂😂
but he did not specify numeral system!
@ИмяФамилия-е7р6и good point 🤔
He died the year of this interview.
cybernetic heaven is celebrating
wow
Thomas Larry Martinez Nancy Walker Charles
Adeptus mechanicas founding father
05:43
Lopez Amy Garcia Daniel Williams Edward
All the wisdom yet he is addicted to smoking!!! We need to stay pure
Whoooooah. Get outa town.
😅
Finally liberty is all that matters after life . That' s a point each individual should constantly remind itself ! ➿
17:13 programming langs differ from NL in that no context is required, everything's there
I want to know what they gave him to wear more than shorts.🩳
Why is it so refreshing to watch older interviews like these? whatever the topic
The substance.
Because it's about the interviewee rather than the bombastic rantings and opinions of the interviewer.
Because you know that the world was a better place back then, humans used to care about each other.
Truth with no smoke screens just a smart conversation
They weren't trained in the dark hypnotic arts of attention stealing and mind manipulations to ensure some type of hidden agenda.
Why is it so refreshing to watch older interviews like these? whatever the topic
Maybe because it was still possible to be a generalist in those days. After all, McColloch was a trained clinical psychiatrist.