(0:35 – 0:40)

“AI allows us to test our theories by building computer programs that process information in very much the same way as our brains do it.”

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(0:52 – 0:54)
”We are right now in the middle of a revolution. The revolution of Deep Learning.”

Modeling a complete world: patterns → percepts → simulators → concepts

(5:58 – 7:22) The human mind

“Our mind are not classifiers, they are simulators and experiencers. Actually you and me we are not organisms. We are the side effect of organisms that need to do information processing to regulate their interaction with the environment. Most of the information processing of organisms is done with simple feedback loops. (…) But often feedback loops are not enough and you need to change behaviour. For this we have pleasure and pain. Pleasure tells you “do more of what you are currently doing”. Pain tells you “do less of what you are currently doing”. We have many kinds of pleasure and pain they are all related to need that we have. These needs are social needs, physiological needs and cognitive needs and most of my work is concerned in figuring out an architecture that regulates all these needs to find goals because we humans are not just goal directed systems, we are goal finding systems in the first place. We find goals to satisfy our needs and avoid getting hurt to frustrate our needs. These needs are what makes us distinctly human because they direct our interaction within the environment in very specific human ways.”

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(7:23 – 7:46) The hippocampus

“To associate these needs with situations in the world we have the hippocampus. Many animals have a hippocampus. It´s the brain region that is able to associate stimuli with needs and behaviours so we have impulses to direct us to seek out certain situations in the world.”

(7:48 – 9:09) The neocortex

“And for this we have our neocortex. This neocortex creates mental simulations. It creates a simulated world, the world that we live in. To do this it need to have representations that are compositional that can be put together like lego bricks. Individual neurons cannot do this. (…) We currently think that our brain uses small circuits “cortical columns” that are each made out of a few hundred neurons and they provide this interface so they can fit together. (…) The cortical columns talk to their neighbours and thereby they compute functions together to produce mental simulations. They link up in brain areas and they also talk to other brain areas further upstream and downstream in our cognitive processing.” (comparison with a functioning orchestra and sleepwalking)

(11:00 – 11:32) The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

Memory of happenings: “… this integrated experience gives us that memory of what just happened, of what we experienced. By accessing this memory we can perceive ourselves as being conscious - of having been conscious of sequences of things over the last moments in time. I call this the conductor theory of consciousness - You are not your brain, you are a story that your brain tells itself. This conscious stream allows us to tell us a story about who we are.”