#177 – Risto Miikkulainen: Neuroevolution and Evolutionary Computation

Lex Fridman Podcast

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