Kodsnack 136 - You can do all of this with the brain of a sesame seed

This episode is a little special. It is kind of bonus material for the Øredev conference of 2015. In it, you will hear Tim Urban and Torill Kornfeldt discuss artificial intelligence, life extension and the differing mindsets of technology and biology.

Tim Urban is the writer of Wait but whyy, a fantastic website of deep dives into topics like artificial intelligence, Tesla and SpaceX but also softer topics like procrastination and the fear of what other people think.

Torill Kornfeldt is a biologist and science journalist who is currently working on a book about de-extinction - the bringing back of extinct species.

We call this bonus material because you probably want some background in order to enjoy their conversation to its fullest. We highly recommend watching both their Øredev keynotes, and Tim’s ideas are of course well covered on Wait but why as well.

The conversation was recorded on stage at the conference and is also available in video form. Unfortunately there is some buzzing in the audio which I’ve done my best to filter out in this version. That’s why it sounds pretty processed. Special thanks to Stephen Chin of nighthacking.com for providing all the tech and expertise which made this recording possible!

We are so happy this conversation came together and how it turned out, pure audio quality aside, and we hope you will enjoy it too!

• Tim’s keynote - The AI revolution: the road to superintelligence
• Torill’s keynote - The real Jurassic park - rebirth of extinct species
• Wait but why
• Torill on Twitter
• The Øredev conference
• Neural networks in biology
• Calculations per second of the brain
• The human brain is “the most complex object in the known universe”
• Bees killing their queen by heating
• All-nighter
• Ray Kurzweil
• Communicating with octopus
• Billions of dollars spent on AI research
• Future of life institute and AI safety research
• The oldest organisms in the world are trees
• Every animal gets the same number of heartbeats
• Cryonics and cryopreservation

• You can do all of this with the brain of a sesame seed
• People both overestimate and underestimate the brain
• Kill the queen in a hot ball of fire
• That is so annoying for her
• Can we just talk about bees?
• I don’t talk to enough biologists
• Lacking a good definition of intelligence
• From the drive to get a Nobel price to the drive to go to the toilet
• We’re going to have a huge problem communicating with it
• The constantly changing hardwarex
• Every single want is a chemical
• That good enough-level
• A completely different take on aging