Blaise Agüera y Arcas—AI researcher and the CTO of Technology & Society at Google—spoke to Closer To Truth about artificial intelligence, his biggest influences, and more.
His latest book, What Is Intelligence? Lessons from AI About Evolution, Computing, and Minds, is on sale now.
You can also watch our new interview with Blaise on our YouTube channel.
1. What do you wish the public knew about AI?
I wish more people knew how deeply connected AI has always been—at least, the parts of the research program that have actually worked—to neuroscience.
2. Who has influenced you the most?
I’ve drawn on the work of so many thinkers, living and dead, so this is really a very hard question. But Alan Turing, whom I already mentioned above, definitely has a special place for me.
He thought about so many problems across so many fields, was so bold and creative in his work, and was so right about much of his thinking—it truly is very impressive.
3. What has surprised you most in your work?
It was a big surprise to me when very powerful next-word predictors turned out to actually be intelligent. I know many people dispute the “be” and would rather say “act as if they are”, but for me, that’s like saying a simulation of a calculator isn’t “actually” calculating when you type 2+2 into it and get 4. If a “simulation” of a computation functionally performs the computation, then it is the computation, and by that token, if we believe that neuroscience (hence intelligence) is computational, then “successful imitation” under general conditions is actually the real thing. This is what Alan Turing was getting at when he came up with the “Imitation Game”, or what we now call the Turing Test.
4. What big question about our universe keeps you up at night?
One I’ve thought about a lot is whether life is rare or commonplace in the universe. I tend to think commonplace, but we haven’t found any yet, so the verdict is out.
There are a number of possible explanations for our failure to detect extraterrestrial life so far, all of which would be big if true, so I’d love to know which is or are true.
5. What are you reading right now?
I’m usually reading a few books at once.
On the nightstand now: How Language Began by Daniel Everett, Katabasis by R.F. Kuang; Vera, or Faith by Gary Shteyngart, and Hayek’s Bastards by Quinn Slobodian.