Episode · Lex Fridman Podcast · 2020-06-22
Lex Fridman & Ben Goertzel: books mentioned on Lex Fridman Podcast #103
#103 – Ben Goertzel: Artificial General Intelligence
Ben Goertzel is one of the most interesting minds in the artificial intelligence community. He is the founder of SingularityNET, designer of OpenCog AI framework, formerly a director of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, Chief Scientist of Hanson Robotics, the company that created the Sophia Robot.
Ben Goertzel discussed Solaris by Stanisław Lem, The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Gödel, Escher, Bach by Douglas R. Hofstadter, The Prometheus Project by Gerald Feinberg, and The phenomenon of science by Valentin Fedorovich Turchin.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Solaris
Solaris by Stanisław Lem is a classic science fiction novel about a scientific research station hovering above an enigmatic, sentient ocean planet that manifests the deeply repressed psychological traumas of the human crew.
Discussed“I'd say if I had to pick two it would have been H Stanis LM the the Polish writer yeah Solaris”
Where to get it
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The Brothers Karamazov
The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky is a profound philosophical novel that explores deep spiritual questions surrounding faith, free will, morality, and the human condition.
Discussed“and I think if if you look in the brothers karamazov in particular the the Russian literary theorist M Bakin wrote about this as a polyphonic mode of fiction”
Where to get it
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Gödel, Escher, Bach
Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R.
Discussed“when I 10 years after that or something I discovered Douglas Hoffer's book gordal shabbach and that was sort of to the same point of AI and Paradox and logic”
Where to get it
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The Prometheus Project
The Prometheus Project by Gerald Feinberg is an early futurist work written by a Princeton physicist that explores concepts of nanotechnology, life extension, and artificial general intelligence.
Discussed“then of course that's another book from back then which was by fine bomb Gerald fbom who was a who was a physicist at at at Princeton and that was the Prometheus project”
Where to get it
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The phenomenon of science
Discussed“and of course Valentin churchin uh a Russian writer who who I and a great Russian physicist who I got to know when we both lived in New York in the late 90s and early Arts I mean he he had a book in the late 60s in in Russia which was the phenomenon of science”
Where to get it
