Into the Impossible With Brian Keating

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David Sussillo spent years training neural networks at Google Brain

and now leads research at Meta Reality Labs. His verdict on the

path to artificial consciousness might surprise you.

In this conversation, we discuss why scaling transformers alone

won't produce conscious AI, how recurrent neural networks differ

from the transformer architectures powering today's LLMs, the

FORCE algorithm he developed to train RNNs, what his work on

Meta's EMG wristband reveals about AI and biological signals,

Rich Sutton's Bitter Lesson and whether we're locked into a

GPU-transformer paradigm, and why studying the brain may be

the only way out of AI's current limitations.

David is also the author of Emergence, a braided memoir that

tells the story of his path from foster care to the frontier

of neuroscience and AI research.

David Sussillo is a research scientist at Meta Reality Labs

and an adjunct professor at Stanford University. He completed

his PhD at Columbia University under Larry Abbott and previously

worked at Google Brain.

Key Takeaways:

00:00 Scale alone won't produce consciousness — here's why 

00:25 The "bitter lesson": big data crushes every algorithmic invention 

01:15 How hallucinations were discovered early at Google 

05:00 The lock-in problem: why LLM + GPU may cap AI's ceiling 

08:25 What Meta's neural wristband is actually trying to solve 

11:20 Rich Sutton's bitter lesson explained 

14:15 "More is Different" — why you can't reduce complexity upward 

28:30 The book Emergence — two stories braided into one 

36:00 Why mentorship matters more than intelligence for at-risk kids 

47:00 Stability over intensity: what kids in foster care actually need

 ➡️ Follow David Sussillo 

🌐 Website / Research: Meta Reality Labs 

📚 Emergence (memoir): https://www.amazon.com/Emergence-Memoir-Boyhood-Computation-Mysteries/dp/1538768577 

🎓 Stanford / Columbia / Carnegie Mellon Alumni

✍️ Email: [email protected] 

🏄‍♂️ Twitter: https://x.com/SussilloDavid

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My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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Aswath Damodaran joins Brian Keating to argue that markets, universities, and financial models are all suffering the same disease — mistaking mechanical processes for genuine thinking — and explains why Nobel economists aren't billionaires, why academia is the most deserving target for disruption, and why every major asset class is now overpriced with nowhere left to hide.

00:00 Intro

00:01:37 Why Nobel Economists Aren't Billionaires

00:06:08 Universities Have Completely Lost the Plot

00:07:43 95% of Academic Research Is Worthless

00:13:05 The University Is a Sticky Business — But Cracks Are Forming

00:40:00 ChatGPT Already Does What Bankers Charge Millions For

00:46:43 The Most Dangerous Number in Finance

00:52:35 There Is No Safe Place Left to Put Your Money

00:55:48 When Every Asset Is Overpriced, Buy What You Love

01:00:22 We Are Losing Our Ability to Think

01:01:30 Markets Are Smarter Than Experts — Every Single Time

 ➡️ Follow Aswath Damodaran 

🌐 Website: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ 

📚 The Little Book of Valuation: https://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/

 📝 Musings on Markets (Substack): https://aswathdamodaran.substack.com

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Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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In this video, we discuss the rapidly evolving intersection of artificial intelligence and fundamental science and how AI is transforming the way physicists handle massive streams of data from modern observatories—while also explaining where its power ends and human creativity begins.

Tune in for insights, surprising stories, and a behind-the-scenes look at how scientists are navigating the AI revolution. 🚀

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Key Takeaways:

00:00 - Cosmologist Exploring Universe and AI
05:30 - AI Success and Physics Limits
09:48 - How Did the Universe Begin?
14:00 - Limits of AI in Scientific Insight
16:04 - Cosmology's Data Revolution
19:29 - AI Insights: Science and Writing
23:04 - Limits of Predictive Models
25:32 - AI's Academic Impact: Pros & Cons
33:24 - LLM Chips and AI Accuracy
34:41 - Accountability, Writing, and Discovery
-

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Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #artificialintelligence #aiinscience #physics #machinelearning #futureofscience #aiandscience #scienceexplained #aiuniverse
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Nick Lane joins Brian Keating to argue that life is not information running on chemistry but energy in motion—showing how a single ancient metabolic “transformer” predates genes, powers mitochondria, shapes aging and cancer, constrains alien life, and reveals why today’s AI excitement echoes a solution biology discovered billions of years ago.

00:00 — Defining life vs. death; membrane potential as the boundary between living and dead
00:50 — The title “Transformer” and parallels between AI transformers and biochemical transformation
03:22 — Schrödinger’s What Is Life? and why defining life is intrinsically slippery
06:25 — Why the Krebs cycle sits at the center of metabolism
08:45 — The reverse Krebs cycle, CO₂ fixation, and links to cancer metabolism
11:35 — Mitochondrial membrane potential and the electrical field that powers life
15:00 — Reverse Krebs cycle vs. Calvin cycle and the evolution of carbon fixation
18:00 — Endosymbiosis: origin of mitochondria and chloroplasts
30:02 — Metabolism before genes; CO₂ + hydrogen and prebiotic chemistry
59:49 — Rapid-fire Q&A: RNA world critique and big open questions in origin-of-life research

------------------------------------------------------

➡️ Follow Nick Lane

🌐 Website: https://www.nick-lane.net  

📚 Transformer: The Deep Chemistry of Life and Death: https://nick-lane.net/books/transformer-the-deep-chemistry-of-life-and-death/ 

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My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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In this episode, I sit down with renowned Oxford mathematician, philosopher of science, and public intellectual John C. Lennox to explore the urgent questions surrounding artificial intelligence and humanity’s future.

We dive into the biggest questions about AI, consciousness, truth, faith, and what it means to be human in an age of accelerating technology. If you’re curious about whether AI is humanity’s greatest achievement, its greatest temptation, or something even more profound, watch the full conversation and join us as we explore the future of intelligence—and our place within it.

Key Takeaways:

01:05 - Who Decides What’s True in the Age of AI?
03:14 - Can AI Ever Be Truly Creative? The ‘Einstein Test’
04:10 - Consciousness: The Uncrossable Barrier
07:20 - The QWERTY Keyboard Problem: Are We Stuck with LLMs?
19:10 - The AI Hall of Mirrors: Training on Itself
27:02 - Information Isn’t Just Bits and Atoms
32:05 - Are We Trying to Build God?
36:48 - The Deepest Question—What Does It Mean to Be Human?
47:50 - The Temptation to Play God: From Babel to the Singularity
50:14 - AI’s Relationship to Power and Surveillance

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Join this channel to get access to perks like monthly Office Hours:

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📚 Get my books:

Think Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with productivity tips from 9 Nobel Prize winners: https://a.co/d/03ezQFu

Focus Like a Nobel Prize Winner, with life-changing interviews with 9 Nobel Prizewinners: https://a.co/d/hi50U9U

My tell-all cosmic memoir Losing the Nobel Prize: http://amzn.to/2sa5UpA

The first-ever audiobook from Galileo: Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems: Ptolemaic and Copernican https://a.co/d/iZPi9Un

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#universe #podcast #briankeating #intotheimpossible #science #astronomy #cosmology #cosmicmicrowavebackground #intotheimpossible #artificialintelligence #aiandethics #2084 #religionandscience #surveillancesociety #superintelligence #philosophyofscience #humanconsciousness

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