#15: Tools, not gods: IBM VP on AI, neuroscience and the nature of intelligence - David Cox

At HumanX, I sat down with Dr. David Cox — the VP for AI models at IBM Research and the IBM Director of the MIT-IBM Watson AI Lab — to dissect those complex, nuanced differences between biological brains and the artificial neural networks behind LLMs, and how it all relates to the pursuit of AGI. 

Episode links: 
  • Neural networks: https://www.ibm.com/think/topics/neural-networks
  • Convolutional neural networks: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/introduction-convolution-neural-network/
  • Everything we know about the human brain: https://ny.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/stn15.sci.neuro.colbrain/what-we-still-dont-know-about-the-brain/
  • MIT Flywire diagram: https://www.nature.com/immersive/d42859-024-00053-4/index.html
  • Language and thought are not the same thing:https://mcgovern.mit.edu/2019/05/02/ask-the-brain-can-we-think-without-language/
  • Decoding internal monologues: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC7252628/
  • Anthropic’s anthropomorphization: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/the-public-health-crisis-of-ai
  • AGI and existential risk: https://www.thedeepview.co/p/the-nobel-prize-and-the-mainstreaming-of-ai-s-x-risk#4
Outline

0:00 — Intro
2:07 — What is intelligence? 
4:36 — How AI boosts our understanding of the brain
8:09 — The differences between neurons and artificial neurons
12:13 — How much do we know — and not know — about biological brains
15:49 — LLMs and the illusion of intelligence
20:07 — Language vs Thought
23:37 — Should we train models not to use the first person? 
28:04 — The pursuit of AGI 
34:26 — IBM’s model approach
35:49 — AGI is a distraction
40:02 — How big a deal is AI? 
45:26 — The risk of the AI brain drain

Get The Deep View — your daily source for in-depth, fact-based reporting on artificial intelligence — in your inbox every morning. Subscribe here! (https://www.thedeepview.co/subscribe)

Connect with us on X, TikTok and Instagram.  

Artificial intelligence is a complicated topic, bound by a number of complex threads — technical science, ethics, safety, regulation, neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, investment and — above all — humanity. On The Deep View: Conversations, Ian Krietzberg, host and Editor-in-Chief at The Deep View, breaks it all down, cutting through the hype to make clear what's important and why you should care.

Creators and Guests

Ian Krietzberg
Host
Ian Krietzberg
Former Editor in Chief
#15: Tools, not gods: IBM VP on AI, neuroscience and the nature of intelligence - David Cox