#177 – Risto Miikkulainen: Neuroevolution and Evolutionary Computation

Risto Miikkulainen is a computer scientist at UT Austin. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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EPISODE LINKS:
Risto’s Website: https://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/risto/

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OUTLINE:
Here’s the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00)– Introduction
(06:51)– If we re-ran Earth over 1 million times
(10:08)– Would aliens detect humans?
(12:46)– Evolution of intelligent life
(16:31)– Fear of death
(22:47)– Hyenas
(26:12)– Language
(29:43)– The magic of programming
(35:43)– Neuralink
(43:15)– Surprising discoveries by AI
(46:49)– How evolutionary computation works
(58:12)– Learning to walk
(1:01:25)– Robots and a theory of mind
(1:10:29)– Neuroevolution
(1:20:47)– Tesla Autopilot
(1:24:11)– Language and vision
(1:29:53)– Aliens communicating with humans
(1:35:29)– Would AI learn to lie to humans?
(1:42:03)– Artificial life
(1:46:56)– Cellular automata
(1:52:32)– Advice for young people
(1:57:09)– Meaning of life