Edward Frenkel

So they have established their right to speak about these matters.

And we cannot dismiss them as mere madmen.

They say, okay, well, if the same thing was said by somebody who never achieved anything in their field of endeavor, it would be easy for us to dismiss it.

But when it comes from someone like Isaac Newton,

We take notice.

So I think there's something important that they teach us.

And especially today in this age of AI, of course, there's a big elephant in the room always, which is called AI, right?

And so I know that you are an expert in the subject.

And we are living now in these very interesting times of new AI systems coming online pretty much every couple of weeks.

So to me, that whole debate about what is artificial intelligence, where is it going, what should we do about it?

needs an influx of this type of considerations that we've just been talking about.

That, for instance, the idea that inspiration, creativity, doesn't come from accumulation of knowledge.

Because obviously a child has not yet accumulated knowledge.

And yet the great ones are on record saying that a child has a capacity to create.

And an adult...

Credits, the inner child.

For this capacity to create as an adult, you see.

That's kind of weird if we take the point of view that everything is computation, everything is accumulation of knowledge, that just bigger and bigger datasets, finer and finer neural networks.

And then we will be able to replicate human consciousness.

If we take that point of view, then what I just said kind of doesn't fit.