English subtitles for clip: File:Yoshua Bengio on intelligent machines-VPRO-The Mind of the Universe.ogv

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Yoshua: Yes, my name is Yoshua Bengio. And I am a professor here at the University of Montreal.

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I also lead an institute called the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms,

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that is specializing in my area of science, which is machine learning, how computers learn from examples.

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Speaker 2: And what is the difference between, you say, machine learning?

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: But there's also this new thing called deep learning.

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Yoshua: Right.

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Speaker 2: What's the easiest way to,

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Yoshua: Yes, so deep learning is inside machine learning, it's one of the approaches to machine learning.

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Machine learning is very general, it's about learning from examples.

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And scientists over the last few decades have proposed many approaches for allowing computers to learn from examples.

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Deep learning is introducing a particular notion that the computer learns to represent information

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and to do so at multiple levels of abstraction.

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What I'm saying is a bit abstract, but to make it easier,

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you could say that deep learning is also heavily inspired by what we know of the brain, of how neurons compute.

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And it's a follow up on decades of earlier work, on what's called neural networks, or artificial neural networks.

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Speaker 2: So, what is your background that you can relate to this?

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Yoshua: I got interested in neural networks and machine learning, right at the beginning of my graduate studies.

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So when I was doing my master's, I was looking for a subject

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and I started reading some of these papers on neural networks.

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And this was the early days of the so-called Connectionist Movement.

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And I got really, really excited and I started reading more.

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And I told the professor who was gonna supervise me that this is what I want to do.

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And that's what I did, and I continued doing it and I'm still doing it.

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Speaker 2: And do you think with your research, that you are on a route or a mainline, main thinking line,

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which will get you somewhere?

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Yoshua: So, say it's funny that you ask this question, cuz it depends.

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It's like some days I feel very clearly that I know where I'm going and I can see very far.

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I have the impression that I'm seeing far in the future and I see also where I've been and there's a very clear path.

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And sometimes maybe I get more discouraged and I feel, where am I going? [LAUGH]

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Yoshua: It's all exploration, I don't know where the future, what the future holds, of course.

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So I go between these two states, which you need.

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Speaker 2: Where are you now?

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Yoshua: Right now I'm pretty positive about a particular direction.

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I've moved to some fundamental questions that I find really exciting, and that's gonna drive in a lot of my thinking,

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looking forward.

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Speaker 2: Can you tell me, I'm a not a scientist, most of our viewers are not as well.

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But can you describe for me where you think your path leads to?

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Because you sometimes you have a clear goal, you know where you're going.

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Yoshua: Right.

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Speaker 2: Where are you going?

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Yoshua: So,

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Yoshua: My main quest is to understand the principles that underlie intelligence.

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And I believe that this happens through learning, that intelligent behavior arises in nature

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and in the computers that we're building through learning.

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The machine, the animal, the human becomes intelligent because it learns.

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And understanding the underlying principles is like understanding the laws of aerodynamics for building airplanes,

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right?

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So I and others in my field are trying to figure out what is the equivalent of the laws of aerodynamics

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but for intelligence.

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So that's the quest, and we are taking inspiration from brains,

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we're taking inspiration from a lot of our experiments that we're doing with computers trying to learn from data.

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We're taking inspiration from other disciplines, from physics, from psychology, neuroscience.

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And other fields, even electrical engineering, of course statistics, I mean, it's a very multi-disciplinary area.

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Speaker 2: So you must have a clue?

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Yoshua: Yes, I do. [LAUGH] So, one of the, well, may not be so easy to explain.

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But one of the big mysteries about how brains manage to do what they do,

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is what scientists have called for many decades the question of credit assignment.

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That is, how do neurons in the middle of your brain, hidden somewhere, get to know how they should change.

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What they should be doing that will be useful for the whole collective, that is, the brain.

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And we don't know how brains do it, we now have algorithms that do a pretty good job at it.

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They have their limitations

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but one of the things I'm trying to do is to better understand this credit assignment question.

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And it's crucial for deep learning, because deep learning is about having many levels of neurons talking to each other.

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So that's why we call them deep, there are many layers of neurons. That's what gives them their power.

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But the challenge is, how do we train them, how do they learn? And it gets harder the more layers you have.

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So, in the 80s people found how train networks with a single, hidden layer.

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So just not very deep, but they were already able to do interesting things.

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And about ten years ago we started discovering ways to train much deeper networks,

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and that's what led to this current revolution called deep learning.

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Speaker 2: And this revolution, I didn't read it in the papers, so it's not front page news,

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but for the science world it's a breakthrough.

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Yoshua: Yes, so in the world of artificial intelligence there has been a big shift brought by deep learning.

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So there has been some scientific advances but then it turned into advances in application.

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So very quickly these techniques turned out to be very useful for improving how computers understand speech for example,

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that speech recognition.

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And then later much bigger, I would say, in terms of impact, effect fact happened

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when we discovered that these algorithms could be very good for object recognition from images.

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And now many other tasks in computer vision are being done using these kinds of networks.

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These deep networks

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or some specialized version of deep networks called convolutional networks that work well for images.

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And then it moves on, so now people are doing a lot of work on natural language.

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Trying to have the computer to understand English sentences, what you mean Being able to answer some questions

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and so on. So these are applications but they have a huge economic impact and even more in the future.

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That has attracted a lot of attention from other scientists, from the media,

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and from of course business people who are investing billions of dollars into this right now.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, is it exciting for you to be in the middle of this new development?

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Yoshua: It is, it is very exciting and it's not something I had really expected.

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Because ten years ago when we started working on this there were very few people in the world,

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maybe a handful of people interested in these questions.

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And initially it started very slowly we, it was difficult to get money for these kinds of things.

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It was difficult to convince students to work on these kinds of things.

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Speaker 2: Well maybe you can explain to me the ten years, or whatever,

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12 years ago you were three people because it was not popular [CROSSTALK]

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Yoshua: Right, that's right, that's right. Yes, that's right.

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So there has been a decade before the last decade where this kind of research essentially went out of fashion.

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People moved on to other interests.

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They lost the ambition to actually get AI, to get machines to be as intelligent as us,

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and also the connection between your science and machine learning, it got divorced.

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But a few people including myself and Jeff Hinton and continue doing this and we started to have good results.

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And other people in the world who are also doing this and more people joined us.

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And in a matter of about five years it started to be a more accepted area and then the applications,

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the success in applications started to happen, and now it's crazy.

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We get hundreds of applicants, for example, for doing grad studies here and companies are hiring like crazy

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and buying scientists for their research labs.

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Speaker 2: Do you notice that. Do they approach you as well?

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Yoshua: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: Big companies.

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Yoshua: Yes. [LAUGH]

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Yoshua: So I could be much richer. [LAUGH]

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Yoshua: But I chose to stay in academia.

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Speaker 2: So you've made some good thinking? And now it has become popular.

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: But, it has become valuable as well.

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Yoshua: Yes, very valuable, yes.

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Speaker 2: Why? Maybe-

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Yoshua: Basically it's at the heart of what companies like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Facebook, Samsung, Amazon, Twitter.

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Speaker 2: Why?

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Yoshua: All of these companies they see this as a key technology for their future products

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and some of the existing products already.

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Speaker 2: And

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Speaker 2: Are they right?

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Yoshua: Yeah, they are. Of course, I don't have a crystal ball.

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So there are a lot of research questions which remain unsolved, and it might take just a couple of years

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or decades to solve them, we don't know. But even if, say, scientific research on the topic stopped right now.

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And you took the current state of the arts in terms of the science, and you just applied it, right,

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collecting lots of data sets because these items need a lot of data.

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Just applying the current science would already have a huge impact on society.

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So I don't think they're making a very risky bet,

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but it could be even better because we could actually approach human level intelligence.

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Speaker 2: You know that or you think so?

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Yoshua: We could.

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I think that we'll have other challenges to deal with and some of them we currently know are in front of us,

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others we probably will discover when we get there.

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Speaker 2: So now you're in the middle of a field of exciting research.

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Yoshua: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: That you know you're right and you have the goal and sometimes you see it clearly,

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and it has become popular around people who want to study here.

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Yoshua: Yep.

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Speaker 2: And the companies want to invest in you.

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: So you must feel a lot of tension or a lot of-

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Yoshua: It's true, it's true. Sudden.

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Speaker 2: How does it feel to be in the middle of this development?

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Yoshua: So initially it's exhilarating to have all this attention, and it's great to have all this recognition.

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And also, its great to attract really the best minds that are coming here for doing PhD's and things like that.

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It's absolutely great. But sometimes I feel that it's been too much, that I don't deserve that much attention.

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And that all these interactions with media and so on are taking time away from my research

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and I have to find the right balance here.

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I think It is really important to continue to explain what we're doing so that more people can learn about it

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and take advantage of it, or become researchers themselves in this area.

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But I need to also focus my main strength which is not speaking to journalists.

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My main strength is to come up with new ideas, crazy schemes, and interacting with students to build new things.

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Speaker 2: Have you thought of the possibility that you're wrong?

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Yoshua: Well, of course, science is an exploration. And I'm often wrong.

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I propose ten things, nine of which end up not working.

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But we make progress, so I get frequent positive feedback that tells me that we're moving in the right direction.

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Speaker 2: If your right enough to go on.

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Yoshua: Yes, yes, yes and these days because the number of people working on this has grown really fast,

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the rate at which advances come is incredible.

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The speed of progress in this field has greatly accelerated and mostly because there are more people doing it.

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Speaker 2: And this is also reflected in what the companies do with it.

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Yoshua: Yes, so companies are investing a lot in basic research in this field which is unusual.

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Typically companies would invest in applied research where they take existing algorithms

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and try to make them use them for products.

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But right now there's a big war between these big IT companies to attract talent.

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And also they understand that there is the potential impact,

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the potential benefit of future research is probably even greater than what we have already achieved.

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So for these two reasons, they have invested a lot in basic research and they are basically making offers to.

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Professors

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and students in the field to come work with them in an environment that looks a little bit like what you have in

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universities where they have a lot of freedom, they can publish, they can go to conferences and talk with their peers.

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So it's a good time for the progress of science because companies are working in the same direction as universities

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towards really fundamental questions.

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Speaker 2: [INAUDIBLE] What's the difference?

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Yoshua: Yeah, that's something that's one of the reasons why I'm staying in academia.

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I want to make sure that what I do is going to be, not owned by a particular person, but available for anyone.

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Speaker 2: But is that the risk?

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Is it really a risk that because the knowledge is owned by a company that, why would it be a risk?

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Yoshua: I don't think it's a big deal right now, so the major research, industrial research centers,

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they publish a lot of what they do.

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And they do have patents, but they say that these patents are protected so in case would sue them.

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But they won't prevent other people, other companies using their technologies. At least that's what they say.

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So right now there's a lot of openness in the business environment for this field.

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We'll see how things are in the future.

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There's always a danger of companies coming to a point where they become protective.

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But then what I think is that companies who pull themselves out of the community,

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and not participate to the scientific progress and exchange with the others. They will not progress as fast.

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And I think that's the reason, they understand that, if they want to see the most benefits from this progress,

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they have to be part of the public game of exchanging information and not keeping information secret.

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Speaker 2: Part of the mind of the universe.

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Yoshua: Yes, exactly. Part of the collective that we're building of all our ideas and our understanding of the world.

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There is something about doing it personally into in that enables us to be more powerful and understanding.

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If we're just trying to be consumers of ideas.

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We're not mastering those ideas as well as if we're actually trying to improve them.

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So

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when we do research we get on top of things much more than if we're simply trying to understand some existing paper

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and trying to use it for some product.

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So there's something that is strongly enabling for companies to do that kind of thing, but that's new.

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One decade ago for example many companies were shutting down their research labs and so on,

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so it was a different spirit.

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But right now, the spirit is openness, sharing, and participating in the common development of ideas through science

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and publication and so on.

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Speaker 2: It's funny that you said basic research is the same thing as [INAUDIBLE]

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Yoshua: Yes, yes. Yes.

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Speaker 2: And that it becomes popular in some way.

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Yoshua: Well, I think first of all it's appealing.

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I mean as a person, I find researchers, PhD's candidate or professor or something.

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It's much more appealing to me to know that what I do will be a contribution to humanity, right,

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rather than something secret that only I and a few people would know about

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and maybe some people will make a lot of money out of it that. I don't think it's as satisfying.

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And as I said I think there are circumstances right now, that even from purely economic point of view,

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is more interesting for companies to share right now. And be part of the research.

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Speaker 2: So I think first to understand what you're really into I would like to know from you some basic definitions.

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: For example.

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Speaker 2: What in your way of thinking is, and would you describe thinking?

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: What is thinking?

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Yoshua: Right, well obviously we don't know. Because the brain-

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Speaker 2: What do we don't know?

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Yoshua: We don't know how the brain works. We have a lot of information about it.

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Too much maybe, but not enough of the kind that allows us to figure out the basic principles of how we think,

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and what does it mean at a very abstract level. But of course, I have my own understanding, so I can share that.

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And with the kinds of equations I drew on the board there, and other people in my field.

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There's this notion that what thinking is about is adjusting your mental configuration to be more coherent,

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more consistent with everything you have observed, right?

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And more typically, the things you're thinking about, or what you are currently observing.

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So if I observe a picture, my neurons change their state to be in agreement with that picture and agreement,

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given everything that the brain already knows, means that they are looking or an interpretation for that image.

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Which may be related to things I could do that are related like I see this,

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I need to go there because it tells me a message that matters to me.

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So everything we know is somehow built in this internal model of the world that our brain has

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and you get all these pieces of evidence each time we hear something, we listen to something

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and our brain is actuating all of that stuff and then what it does is try to make sense of it,

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reconcile the pieces like a piece of a puzzle. And so sometimes you know, it happens to you, something clicks right.

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Suddenly you see a connection that explains different things.

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Your brain does that all the time and not always that you get at this conscious impression, and thinking is this,

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according to me, it's finding structure, and meaning, and the things that we observing and we've seen,

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and that's also what science does, right?

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Science is about finding explanations for what is around us,

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but thinking it's happening in our head where science is a social thing.

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Speaker 2: It's outside your.

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Yoshua: Science has a part inside.

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Yeah, science has a part inside of course, because we are thinking when we do science. But science has a social aspect.

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Science is a community of minds working together,

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and the history of minds having discovered concepts that explain the world around us,

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and sharing that in ways that are efficient. [INAUDIBLE]

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Yoshua: One thing I could talk about too is learning, right.

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You asked me about thinking but I think a very important concept in my area is learning, I think.

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I can explain how that can happen in those models or brains. [INAUDIBLE] Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Okay [INAUDIBLE] So you explained what the thinking is. Now we'd like to know what is intelligence?

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Yoshua: That's a good question. I don't think that there's a consensus on that either.

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Speaker 2: On what?

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Yoshua: On what is intelligence.

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Speaker 2: If you reframe my question that I can.

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Yoshua: Okay. So what is intelligence?

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That's a good question and I don't think that there's a consensus but in my area of research people generally,

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understand intelligence as the ability to take good decisions. And what good decisions.

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Speaker 2: What's good?

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Yoshua: Good for me. Right?

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Speaker 2: Okay.

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Yoshua: Good in the sense that they allow me to achieve my goals, to, If I was a animal to survive my predators,

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to find food, to find mates. And for humans good might be achieving social status, or being happy, or whatever.

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It's hidden in your mind. What is it that's good for you.

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But somehow we are striving to take decisions that are good for us and, in order to do that,

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it's very clear that we need some form of knowledge.

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So, even a mouse that's choosing to go left or right in a maze is using knowledge,

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and that kind of knowledge is not necessarily the kind of knowledge you find in the book, right?

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A mouse cannot read a book, cannot write a book,

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but in the mouse's brain there is knowledge about how to control the mouses' body in order to survive in order to find

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food and so on. So the mouse is actually very intelligent in the context of the life of a mouse.

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If you were suddenly teleported in a mouse, you would probably find it difficult to do the right things.

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So, intelligence about taking right decision requires knowledge.

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And now the question is to build intelligent machines or to understand humans and animals are intelligent,

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where are we getting the knowledge? Where can we get the knowledge?

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And some of it is hard-wired in your brain from birth.

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And some of it is going to be learned through experience, and that's the thing that we're studying in my field.

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How do we learn or rather what are the mathematical principles for learning that could be applied to computers

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and not just trying to figure out what animals, how animals learn.

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Speaker 2: Then we get to point the learning.

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Yoshua: Right.

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Speaker 2: So can you explain To me, because for everybody else, you think of learning, you learn at school?

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Yoshua: Yeah.

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Speaker 2: You read books, and there's someone telling you how the world works.

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So what, in your concept, is the definition of learning?

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Yoshua: Yes, my definition of learning is not the kind of learning that people think about when they're in school

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and listening to a teacher. Learning is something we do all the time.

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Our brain is changing all the time in response to what we're seeing, experiencing. And it's an adaptation.

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And we are not just storing in our brain our experiences, it's not learning by heart, that's easy,

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a file in a computer is like learning by heart. You can store facts.

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But that's trivial, that's not what learning really is about.

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Learning is about integrating the information we are getting through experience into some more abstract form that

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allows us to take good decisions. That allow us to predict what will happen next.

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That allow us to understand the connections between things we've seen. So, that's what's learning is really about.

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In my field, we talk about the notion of generalization.

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So, the machine can generalize from things it has seen and learned from, to new situations.

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That's the kind of learning we talk about in my field.

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And the way we typically do it in machines and how we think it's happening in the brain is that it's a slow,

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gradual process. Each time you live an experience, one second of your life, there's gonna be some changes in your brain.

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Small changes. So it's like your whole system is gradually shifting towards what would make it take better decisions.

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So that's how you get to be intelligent, right?

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Because you learn, meaning you changed the way you perceive and act, so that next time you would see something,

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you will have some experience similar to what happened before, you would act better

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or you would predict better what would have happened.

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Speaker 2: So, it's very experienced based.

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Yoshua: Yes, learning is completely experienced based.

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Of course, in school we think of learning as, teaching knowledge from a book or some blackboard.

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But, that's not the really the main kind of learning.

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There is some learning happening when the student integrates all that information and tries to make sense of it.

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But just storing those facts is kind of useless.

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Speaker 2: It's a difference that you have to have an interest in it.

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Yoshua: Well motivation for humans is very important. Because we are wired like this.

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The reason we are wired like this is there are so many things happening around us that emotions help us to filter

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and focus on some aspects more than others, those that matter to us, right?

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That's a motivation, might be fear as well sometimes.

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But for computers, basically they will learn what we ask them to learn, we don't need to introduce motivation

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or emotions. These, up to now, we haven't needed to do that.

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Speaker 2: But when you explain this deep learning.

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Yoshua: Yes, yes.

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Speaker 2: Maybe from the perspective of a machine and a human, you can learn from computer experience?

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I see, but not interest for.

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Yoshua: Well you can, emotions are something you're born with.

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We're born with circuits that make us experience emotions because some situations matter more to us.

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So, in the case of the computer, we also, in a sense,

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hardwire these things by telling the computer Well this matters more than that

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and you have to learn well to predict well here and here it matters less.

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So we don't call that emotions but it could play a similar role.

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Speaker 2: It looks like emotions.

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Yoshua: Right.

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Speaker 2: But then it's still program.

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Yoshua: Absolutely so AI is completely programmed.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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But as I understand it well, you are reaching searching in this area where this program, which is beyond programming.

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That they start to think for themselves.

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Yoshua: Okay. So there's an interesting connection between learning and programming.

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So the traditional way of putting knowledge into computers,

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Is to write a program that essentially contains all our knowledge.

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And step by step you tell the computer, if this happens you do this, and then you do that, and then you do that,

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and then this happens you do that, and so on and so on. That's what a program is.

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But when we allow the computer to learn we also program it, but the program that is there is different.

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It’s not a program that contains the knowledge we want a computer to have.

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We don't program the computer with the knowledge of the wars and cars and images and sounds.

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We program the computer with the ability to learn and then the computer experiences.

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You know, images, or videos, or sounds, or texts and learns the knowledge from those experiences.

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So you can think of the learning program as a meta program and we have something like that in our brain.

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If one part of your codex dies you have an accident,

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that part used to be doing some job like maybe interpreting music or some types of songs or something.

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Well, if you continue listening to music then some other part will take over

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and that function may have been sort of impaired for some time

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but then it will be taken by some other part of your cortex. What does that mean?

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It means that the same program that does the learning, works there in those two regions of your cortex.

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The one that used to be doing the job, and the one that does it now.

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And that means that your brain has this general purpose learning recipe that it can apply to different problems

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and that this different parts of your brain will be specialized on different tasks.

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Depending on what you do and which how the brain is connected.

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If we remove that part of your brain then some other parts will start doing the job,

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if the job is needed because you do those experiences, right?

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So if I had a part of my brain that was essentially dealing with playing tennis and that part dies,

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I'm not gonna be able to play tennis anymore. But if I continue practicing is gonna come back.

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And that means that the same learning, general purpose learning recipe is used everywhere at least in cortex.

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And this is important not just for understanding brains,

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but for companies building products because we have this general purpose recipe

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or family recipes that can be applied for many tasks.

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The only thing that really differs between those different tasks is the data, the examples that the computer sees.

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So that's why companies are so excited about this because they can use this for many problems that they wanna solve so

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long as they can teach the machine by showing it examples.

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Speaker 2: Is it always, is learning always positive?

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Yoshua: Learning is positive by construction in the sense that it's moving the learner towards a state of understanding

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of its experiences. So in general, yes, because learning is about improving something.

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Now, if the something you're improving is not the thing you should be improving, you could be in trouble.

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People can be trained into a wrong understanding of the world and they start doing bad things,

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so that's why education is so important for humans.

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And for machines right now the things we are asking the machines to do are very simple like understanding the content

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of images and texts and videos and things like that.

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Speaker 2: So learning is not per se positive because also you can learn wrong things.

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Yoshua: Right but if you're just observing things around you and taken randomly then it's just what the world is right.

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Speaker 2: And that's the state of the some kind of primitive learning of computers right now or?

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Yoshua: Right now, yeah the learning the computers do is very primitive. It's mostly about perception.

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And in the case of language some kind of semantic understanding, but it's still a pretty low level understanding.

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Speaker 2: Is it possible for you to explain that in a simple way how is it possible for a computer to learn?

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Yoshua: So the way that the computer is learning is by small iterative changes, right?

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So let's go back to my artificial neural network, which is a bunch of neurons connected to each other,

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and they're connected through these synaptic connections.

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At each of these connections there is the strength of the connection which controls how a neuron influences another

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neuron. So you can think that strength as a knob. And what happens during learning is those knobs change.

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We don't know how they change in the brain, but in our algorithms, we know how they change.

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And we understand mathematics wide make sense to do that and they change little bit each time you see an example.

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So i show the image of a cat but the computer says it's a dog.

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So, I'm going to chance those knobs so that it's going to be more likely that the computer is going to say cat.

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Maybe the computer outputs a score for dog and a score for cat.

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And so what we want to do is decrease the score for dog and increase the score for cat.

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So that the computer, eventually, after seeing many millions of images, starts seeing the right class more often

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and eventually gets it as well as humans.

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Speaker 2: That still sounds like just putting enough data or less data [INAUDIBLE] to recognize something.

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But how do you know that the computer is learning? How do you know [CROSSTALK]

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Yoshua: Well, we can test on new images.

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So if the computer was only learning by heart, copying the examples that it has seen,

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it wouldn't be able to recognize a new image of say, new breed of dog, or a new angle, new lighting.

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At level of pixels, those images could be very, very different.

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But, if the computer really figured catness,

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at least from point of view of images it will be able to recognize new images of new cats, taking a new postures

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and so on and that's what we call generalization.

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So we do that all the time, we test the computer to see if it can generalize to new examples, new images,

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new sentences Can you show that to us, not right now but-

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Speaker 2: Yeah. You can show that proof of learning skills.

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Yoshua: Yeah, yeah I'll try to show you some examples of that, yeah.

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Speaker 2: Great, so This is something, I'm missing that right now for understanding deep learning?

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Yoshua: Yes.

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Speaker 2: Okay, tell me.

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Yoshua: I thought this was a statement, not a question.

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Well, but yes, of course I [LAUGH] think there are many things that you are missing.

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So there are many, many interesting questions in deep planning,

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but one of the Interesting challenges has to do with the question of supervised learning versus unsupervised learning.

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Right now, the way we teach the machine to do things

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or to recognize things is we use what's called supervised learning where we tell the computer exactly what it should do

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or what output it should have for a given input.

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So let's say I'm showing it the image of a cat again, I tell the computer, this is a cat.

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And I have to show it millions of such images.

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That's not the way humans learn to see and understand the world or even understand language.

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For the most part, we just make sense of what we observe without having a teacher that is sitting by us

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and telling us every second of our life. This is cow, this is dog.

423
00:41:16,28 --> 00:41:16,74
Speaker 2: Supervising.

424
00:41:16,74 --> 00:41:18,6
Yoshua: That's right. There is no supervisor.

425
00:41:19,12 --> 00:41:25,05
We do get some feedback but it's pretty rare and sometimes it's only implicit.

426
00:41:25,41 --> 00:41:37,29
So you do something and you get a reward but you don't know exactly what it was you did that gave you that reward.

427
00:41:37,77 --> 00:41:44,99
Or you talk to somebody, the person is unhappy and you're not sure exactly what you did that was wrong

428
00:41:44,99 --> 00:41:48,35
and the persons not gonna tell you in general what you should have done.

429
00:41:48,67 --> 00:41:54,21
So this is called reinforcement learning when you get some feedback but it's a very weak type.

430
00:41:54,42 --> 00:41:56,36
You did well or you didn't do well.

431
00:41:56,6 --> 00:42:05,67
You have an exam and you achieved 65% but you don't know, if you don't know what the errors were

432
00:42:05,67 --> 00:42:08,94
or what the right answers are it's very difficult to learn from that.

433
00:42:08,94 --> 00:42:16,65
But we are able to learn from that, from very weak signals or no reinforcement at all, no feedback,

434
00:42:16,66 --> 00:42:21,16
just by observation and trying to make sense of all of these pieces of information.

435
00:42:21,23 --> 00:42:22,79
That's called unsupervised learning.

436
00:42:23,25 --> 00:42:32,54
And we're not yet, we are much more advanced with supervised learning than with unsupervised learning.

437
00:42:32,54 --> 00:42:38,06
So all the products that these companies are building right now, it's mostly based on supervised learning.

438
00:42:38,06 --> 00:42:41,06
Speaker 2: So the next step is unsupervised learning?

439
00:42:41,06 --> 00:42:42,72
Yoshua: Yes, yes.

440
00:42:42,72 --> 00:42:47,39
Speaker 2: Does that mean that unsupervised learning that the computer can think for themselves?

441
00:42:47,39 --> 00:42:56,86
Yoshua: That means the computer will be more autonomous, in some sense. That we don't need.

442
00:42:56,86 --> 00:42:57,85
Speaker 2: That's a hard one.

443
00:42:57,85 --> 00:42:59,19
Yoshua: More autonomous.

444
00:42:59,19 --> 00:43:00,02
Speaker 2: Autonomous computer?

445
00:43:00,02 --> 00:43:04,86
Yoshua: Well more autonomous in its learning. We're are not talking about robots here, right?

446
00:43:04,86 --> 00:43:12,67
We are just talking about computers gradually making sense of the world around us by observation.

447
00:43:13,04 --> 00:43:19,91
And we probably will still need to give them some guidance, but the question is how much guidance.

448
00:43:20,1 --> 00:43:27,97
Right now we have to give them a lot of guidance. Basically we have to spell everything very precisely for them.

449
00:43:27,98 --> 00:43:34,62
So we're trying to move away from that so that they can essentially become more intelligent because they can take

450
00:43:34,62 --> 00:43:44,04
advantage of all of the information out there which doesn't come with a human that explains every bits and pieces.

451
00:43:44,04 --> 00:43:47,04
Speaker 2: But when a computer starts to learn.

452
00:43:47,04 --> 00:43:48,04
Yoshua: Yes.

453
00:43:48,04 --> 00:43:51,71
Speaker 2: Is it possible to stop the computer from learning? [LAUGH]

454
00:43:51,71 --> 00:43:54,22
Yoshua: Sure.

455
00:43:54,22 --> 00:43:58,17
Speaker 2: How? It sounds like if it starts to learn, then it learns.

456
00:43:58,17 --> 00:44:05,76
Yoshua: It's just a program running. It's stored in files. There's nothing like, there's no robot.

457
00:44:05,96 --> 00:44:08,7
There is no, I mean at least in the work we do,

458
00:44:08,7 --> 00:44:19,03
it's just a program that contains files that contain those synoptic weights for example.

459
00:44:19,05 --> 00:44:26,97
And as we see more examples we change those files so that they will correspond to taking the right decisions.

460
00:44:27,13 --> 00:44:44,33
But there's no, those computers don't have a consciousness, there's no such thing right now, at least, for a while.

461
00:44:44,33 --> 00:44:51,15
Speaker 2: Is it right when I say, well, deep learning or self learning of computer becoming more autonomous.

462
00:44:51,15 --> 00:44:54,89
Yoshua: Autonomous in its learning, right?

463
00:44:54,89 --> 00:44:56,42
Speaker 2: Yes, free.

464
00:44:56,42 --> 00:45:04,66
Yoshua: Again, it's probably gonna be a gradual thing where the computer requires less and less of our guidance.

465
00:45:04,66 --> 00:45:09,51
That we probably, so, If you think about humans, we still need guidance.

466
00:45:09,52 --> 00:45:15,53
If you take a human and baby if nobody wants to do that experiment.

467
00:45:15,53 --> 00:45:24,32
But you can imagine a baby being isolated from society. That child probably would not grow to be very intelligent.

468
00:45:24,32 --> 00:45:33,91
Would not understand the world around as well as we do. That's because we've had parents, teachers and so on, guide us.

469
00:45:34,87 --> 00:45:37,32
And we've been immersed in culture.

470
00:45:37,47 --> 00:45:44,79
So all that matters, and it's possible that it will also be required for computers to reach our level of intelligence.

471
00:45:44,8 --> 00:45:48,99
The same kind of attention we're giving to humans, we might need to give to computers.

472
00:45:48,99 --> 00:45:53,75
But right now, the amount of attention we have to give to computers for them to learn about very simple things,

473
00:45:53,96 --> 00:45:56,86
is much larger than what we need to give to humans.

474
00:45:57,32 --> 00:46:01,77
Humans are much more autonomous in their learning than machines are right now.

475
00:46:01,79 --> 00:46:04,46
So we have a lot of progress to do in that direction.

476
00:46:04,46 --> 00:46:09,37
Speaker 2: Is the difference also just a simple fact that we have biology?

477
00:46:09,37 --> 00:46:16,42
Yoshua: Well biology is not magical. Biology is, can be understood.

478
00:46:17,42 --> 00:46:19,08
It's what biologists are trying to do

479
00:46:19,08 --> 00:46:25,03
and we understand a lot that they're Aas far as the brain is concerned there's still big holes in our understanding.

480
00:46:25,03 --> 00:46:28,03
Speaker 2: A baby grows but a computer doesn't.

481
00:46:28,03 --> 00:46:39,39
Yoshua: Sure it can, we can give it more memory and so on right? So you can grow the size of the model.

482
00:46:40,36 --> 00:46:42,52
That's not a big obstacle.

483
00:46:42,52 --> 00:46:50,88
I mean computing power is an obstacle, but I'm pretty confident that over the next few years we're gonna see more

484
00:46:50,88 --> 00:46:54,44
and more computing power available as it has been in the past,

485
00:46:55,31 --> 00:47:00,75
that will make it more possible to train models to do more complex tasks.

486
00:47:00,75 --> 00:47:10,4
Speaker 2: So how do you tackle all the people who think this is a horror scenario?

487
00:47:10,4 --> 00:47:15,29
Of course, people start to think it's broke and it's not about that.

488
00:47:15,29 --> 00:47:18,43
Yoshua: So I think.

489
00:47:18,43 --> 00:47:20,69
Speaker 2: You have to have a stand point.

490
00:47:20,69 --> 00:47:33,99
Yoshua: That's right. I do. So first of all, I think there's been a bit of excessive expression of fear about AI.

491
00:47:34,33 --> 00:47:40,96
Maybe because the progress has been so fast, it has made some people worried.

492
00:47:40,96 --> 00:47:46,14
But if you ask people like me who are into it every day.

493
00:47:46,65 --> 00:47:51,39
They're not worried, because they can see how stupid the machines are right now.

494
00:47:51,68 --> 00:47:54,58
And how much guidance they need to move forward.

495
00:47:55,52 --> 00:48:00,98
So to us, it looks like we're very far from human level intelligence

496
00:48:01,57 --> 00:48:11,93
and even have no idea whether one day computers will be smarter than us. Now that may be a short term view.

497
00:48:11,93 --> 00:48:18,92
What will happen in the future is hard to say, but we can think about it.

498
00:48:18,93 --> 00:48:23,5
And I think it's good that some people are thinking about the potential dangers.

499
00:48:25,58 --> 00:48:31,5
I think it's difficult right now to have a grasp on what could go wrong.

500
00:48:31,5 --> 00:48:36,15
But with the kind of intelligence that we're building in machines right now, I'm not very worried.

501
00:48:37,16 --> 00:48:46,04
It's not the kind of intelligence that I can foresee exploding, becoming more and more intelligent by itself.

502
00:48:46,05 --> 00:48:51,61
I don't think that's plausible for the kinds of deep learning methods and so on.

503
00:48:51,91 --> 00:48:56,9
Even if they were much more powerful and so on, it's not something I can envision.

504
00:48:56,9 --> 00:49:02,26
That being said, it's good that there are people who are thinking about these long term issues.

505
00:49:02,27 --> 00:49:11,18
One thing I'm more worried about is the use of technology now, or in the next couple of years or five or ten years.

506
00:49:11,74 --> 00:49:19,04
Where the technology could be developed and used in a way that could either be very good for many people

507
00:49:19,04 --> 00:49:21,22
or not so good for many people.

508
00:49:21,22 --> 00:49:28,95
And so for example, military use and other uses, which I think I would consider not appropriate,

509
00:49:28,95 --> 00:49:31,43
are things we need to worry about.

510
00:49:31,43 --> 00:49:35,5
Speaker 2: All right, can you name examples of that?

511
00:49:35,5 --> 00:49:37,97
Yoshua: Yeah, so there's been a fuss

512
00:49:37,97 --> 00:49:48,28
and a letter signed by a number of scientists who tried to tell the world we should have a ban on the use of AI for

513
00:49:48,28 --> 00:49:52,76
autonomous weapons that could essentially take the decision to kill by themselves.

514
00:49:53,68 --> 00:49:59,53
So that's something that's not very far fetched in terms of technology and the given science.

515
00:49:59,53 --> 00:50:02,77
Basically, the science is there, it's a matter of building these things.

516
00:50:03,72 --> 00:50:09,27
But it's not something we would like to see, and there could be an arms race of these things.

517
00:50:09,44 --> 00:50:18,74
So we need to prevent it, the same way that, collectively, the nations decided to have bans on biological weapons

518
00:50:18,74 --> 00:50:25,22
and chemical weapons and, to some extent, on nuclear weapons. The same thing should be done for that.

519
00:50:25,22 --> 00:50:30,7
And then there are other uses of this technology, especially as it matures,

520
00:50:30,71 --> 00:50:32,88
which I think are questionable from an ethical point of view.

521
00:50:32,95 --> 00:50:39,84
So I think that the use of these technologies to convince you to do things, like with publicity,

522
00:50:40,31 --> 00:50:48,59
and trying to influence, maybe think about influencing your vote, right?

523
00:50:50,47 --> 00:50:52,79
As the technology becomes really stronger,

524
00:50:53,32 --> 00:51:00,9
you could imagine people essentially using this technology to manipulate you in ways you don't realize.

525
00:51:01,37 --> 00:51:05,37
That is good for them, but is not good for you.

526
00:51:05,89 --> 00:51:14,03
And I think we have to start being aware of that and all the issues of privacy are connected to that as well.

527
00:51:14,65 --> 00:51:21,3
But in general, because we're training currently, companies are using these systems for advertisements.

528
00:51:21,3 --> 00:51:29,34
Where they're trying to predict what they should show you, so that you will be more likely to buy some product, right?

529
00:51:29,68 --> 00:51:41,29
So it seems not so bad, but if you push it, they might bring you into doing things that are not so good for you.

530
00:51:41,3 --> 00:51:45,05
I don't know, like smoking or whatever, right?

531
00:51:45,05 --> 00:52:10,9
Speaker 2: Well, we just stopped at the points where I was going to ask you about,.

532
00:51:54,16 --> 00:52:11,56
is that why you wrote the manifest about diversity and thinking? Because I'll show you, [FOREIGN] Okay.

533
00:52:11,56 --> 00:52:12,9
Speaker 2: Those computers,

534
00:52:12,9 --> 00:52:24,45
Speaker 2: You can know about a lot of things, but it's almost unmeasurable, the [INAUDIBLE] and diversity.

535
00:52:24,51 --> 00:52:26,65
Am I correct that that has a connection?

536
00:52:26,65 --> 00:52:34,87
Yoshua: If you want, I will elaborate now. So you're asking me about diversity,

537
00:52:34,87 --> 00:52:39,88
Yoshua: And I can say several things.

538
00:52:40,59 --> 00:52:48,39
First of all, people are not aware of the kinds of things we do in AI, with machine learning, deep learning, and so on.

539
00:52:48,51 --> 00:53:00,08
May not realize that the algorithms, the methods we're using already include a lot of what may look like diversity,

540
00:53:00,08 --> 00:53:05,65
creativity. So for the same input, the computer could produce different answers.

541
00:53:05,65 --> 00:53:08,35
And so there's a bit of randomness, just like for us.

542
00:53:08,9 --> 00:53:12,28
Twice in the same situation, we don't always take the same decision.

543
00:53:12,32 --> 00:53:17,99
And there are good reasons for that, both for us and for computers. So that's the first part of it.

544
00:53:17,99 --> 00:53:23,12
But there's another aspect of diversity, which I have studied in a paper a few years ago,

545
00:53:23,12 --> 00:53:34,34
which is maybe even more interesting. Diversity is very important, for example, for evolution to succeed.

546
00:53:35,41 --> 00:53:46,42
Because evolution performs a kind of search in the space of genomes of the blueprint of each individual.

547
00:53:46,42 --> 00:53:56,29
Yoshua: And up to now, machine learning is considered what happens in a single individual, how we learn,

548
00:53:57,04 --> 00:53:58,76
how a machine can learn.

549
00:53:59,28 --> 00:54:08,13
But has not really investigated much the role of having a group of individuals learning together, so a kind of society.

550
00:54:09,69 --> 00:54:19,32
And in this paper a few years ago, I postulated that learning in an individual could get stuck.

551
00:54:19,32 --> 00:54:25,85
That if we were alone learning by observing the world around us, we might get stuck with a poor model of the world.

552
00:54:26,4 --> 00:54:32,06
And we get unstuck by talking to other people and by learning from other people,

553
00:54:32,28 --> 00:54:39,32
in the sense of they can communicate some of the ideas they have, how they interpret the world.

554
00:54:39,49 --> 00:54:45,46
And that's what culture is about. Culture has many meanings, but that's the meaning that I have.

555
00:54:45,46 --> 00:54:54,21
That it's not just the accumulation of knowledge, but how knowledge gets created through communication and sharing.

556
00:54:54,21 --> 00:55:02,27
Yoshua: And what I postulated in that paper is that there is a, it's called an optimization problem,

557
00:55:02,52 --> 00:55:08,03
that can get the learning of an individual to not progress anymore.

558
00:55:08,15 --> 00:55:13,06
In a sense that, as I said before, learning is a lot of small changes,

559
00:55:13,4 --> 00:55:19,69
but sometimes there's no small change that really makes you progress.

560
00:55:19,7 --> 00:55:24,93
So you need some kind of external kick that brings a new light to things.

561
00:55:25,65 --> 00:55:32,44
And another connection to evolution, the connection to evolution, actually,

562
00:55:32,44 --> 00:55:42,58
is that this small kick we get from others is like we are building on top of existing solutions that others have come

563
00:55:42,58 --> 00:55:47,53
up with. And of course, the process of science is very much like this. We're building other scientists' ideas.

564
00:55:47,87 --> 00:55:49,71
But it's true for culture, in general.

565
00:55:50,46 --> 00:55:59,74
And this actually makes the whole process of building more intelligence beings much more efficient.

566
00:55:59,74 --> 00:56:10,72
In fact, we know that since humans have made progress, thanks to evolution and not just thanks to culture

567
00:56:10,72 --> 00:56:17,78
and not just to evolution, we've been making our intelligence has been increasing much faster.

568
00:56:18,14 --> 00:56:24,45
So, evolution is slow whereas you can think of culture,

569
00:56:24,45 --> 00:56:31,46
the evolution of culture as a process that's much more efficient. Because we are manipulating the right objects.

570
00:56:31,46 --> 00:56:32,87
So what does this mean in practice?

571
00:56:33,18 --> 00:56:40,62
It means that just like evolution needs diversity to succeed, because there are many different.

572
00:56:40,95 --> 00:56:49,11
Variance of the same type of genes that are randomly chosen and tried,

573
00:56:49,44 --> 00:56:56,25
and the best ones combine together to create new solutions just like this in cultural evolution.

574
00:56:56,26 --> 00:57:02,17
Which is really an important for our intelligence see what I'm saying, we need diversity,

575
00:57:02,18 --> 00:57:09,66
we need not just one school of thought, we need to allow all kinds of exploration, most of which made fail.

576
00:57:09,84 --> 00:57:16,06
So, in science we need to be open to new ideas, even if it's very likely it's not gonna work,

577
00:57:16,06 --> 00:57:20,57
it's good that people explore, otherwise we're gonna get stuck.

578
00:57:20,57 --> 00:57:27,72
In some, in the space of possible interpretations of the world, it may take forever before we escape.

579
00:57:27,72 --> 00:57:31,98
Speaker 2: It is like doing basic research but you don't have-

580
00:57:31,98 --> 00:57:33,54
Yoshua: Yes.

581
00:57:33,54 --> 00:57:33,79
Speaker 2: A specific goal.

582
00:57:33,79 --> 00:57:38,83
Yoshua: That's right so basic research is exploratory, it's not trying to build a product.

583
00:57:38,83 --> 00:57:43,08
It's just trying to understand and it's going in all possible directions.

584
00:57:43,08 --> 00:57:48,84
According to our intuitions of what maybe more interesting but without a strong constraint.

585
00:57:48,84 --> 00:58:00,92
So, yeah basic research he's like this, but there's a danger because humans they like fashionable things, and trends,

586
00:58:00,92 --> 00:58:09,74
and compare each other, and so on, that we're not giving enough freedom for exploration.

587
00:58:10,42 --> 00:58:15,2
And it's not just science, it's in general, right in society we should allow a lot more freedom.

588
00:58:15,6 --> 00:58:22,21
We should allow marginal ways of being and doing things to coexist.

589
00:58:22,21 --> 00:58:23,88
Speaker 2: But if you will allow this freedom,

590
00:58:23,88 --> 00:58:27,42
of course most people think well let's don't go that way because then you have autonomous, self-thinking computers

591
00:58:27,42 --> 00:58:28,54
Speaker 2: Creating their own diversity,

592
00:58:28,91 --> 00:58:46,86
and so there are a lot of scenarios which people think of because they don't know, and which scare them, so this.

593
00:58:46,86 --> 00:58:52,65
Yoshua: Well, it's a gamble and I'm more on the positive side.

594
00:58:52,66 --> 00:58:59,09
I think that the rewards we can get by having more intelligence in our machines is immense.

595
00:58:59,1 --> 00:59:04,19
And the way I think about it is, it's not a competition between machines and humans.

596
00:59:05,01 --> 00:59:14,71
Technology is expanding what we are, thanks to technology we're now already much stronger

597
00:59:14,71 --> 00:59:17,52
and more intelligent than we were.

598
00:59:18,14 --> 00:59:26,74
The same way that the industrial revolution has kinda increased our strength and our ability to do things physically.

599
00:59:26,96 --> 00:59:34,97
The sorta computer revolution and now the I revolution is gonna increase, continue to increase our cognitive abilities.

600
00:59:34,97 --> 00:59:41,37
Speaker 2: That sounds very logical, but I can imagine you must get tired of all those people who don't,

601
00:59:41,37 --> 00:59:42,77
who fear this development.

602
00:59:42,77 --> 00:59:44,02
Yoshua: Right,

603
00:59:44,02 --> 00:59:53,8
but I think we should be conscious that a lot of that fear is due to a projection into things we are familiar with.

604
00:59:53,81 --> 00:59:58,89
So, we are thinking of AI like we see them in movies,

605
00:59:58,89 --> 01:00:03,26
we're thinking of AI like we see some kind of alien from another planet, like we see animals.

606
01:00:03,57 --> 01:00:10,12
When we think about another being, we think that other being is like us and so we're greedy.

607
01:00:10,82 --> 01:00:16,69
We want to dominate the rest and if our survival is at stake, we're ready to kill right.

608
01:00:16,84 --> 01:00:25,2
So, we project that some machine is gonna be just like us, and if that machine is more powerful then we are,

609
01:00:25,2 --> 01:00:26,53
then we're deep trouble, right?

610
01:00:26,53 --> 01:00:35,06
So, it's just because we are making that projection, but actually the machines are not some being that has an ego

611
01:00:35,42 --> 01:00:41,07
and a survival instinct. It's actually something we decide to put together.

612
01:00:41,07 --> 01:00:44,53
It's a program and so we should be smart enough

613
01:00:44,53 --> 01:00:52,48
and wise enough to program these machines to be useful to us rather than go towards the wrong needs.

614
01:00:52,49 --> 01:00:56,39
They will cater to our needs because we will design them that way.

615
01:00:56,39 --> 01:01:03,04
Speaker 2: I understand that, but then there's also this theory of suppose you can develop machines

616
01:01:03,04 --> 01:01:17,09
or robots that can self-learn. So, if that close with this power of.

617
01:01:17,09 --> 01:01:18,09
Yoshua: Yes.

618
01:01:18,09 --> 01:01:27,05
Speaker 2: There is some acceleration in their intelligence or that's.

619
01:01:27,05 --> 01:01:32,21
Yoshua: Maybe, maybe not, I don't, that's not the way I,

620
01:01:32,21 --> 01:01:36,72
what you're saying is appealing if I was to read a science fiction book.

621
01:01:36,73 --> 01:01:47,5
But it doesn't correspond to how I see the eye, and the kind of the eye we're doing, I don't see such acceleration,

622
01:01:47,5 --> 01:01:56,4
in fact what I see is the opposite. What I foresee is more like barriers than acceleration. So our-

623
01:01:56,4 --> 01:01:57,08
Speaker 2: Slowing you down?

624
01:01:57,08 --> 01:02:01,79
Yoshua: Yes, so our experience in research is that we make progress.

625
01:02:01,88 --> 01:02:07,13
And then we encounter a barrier, a difficult challenge, a difficulty, they the algorithm goes so far

626
01:02:07,13 --> 01:02:13,75
and then can't make progress. Even if we have more concurred power, that's not really the issue.

627
01:02:13,76 --> 01:02:21,71
The issue are more, are basically computer science issue that things get Harder as you try to solve,

628
01:02:21,71 --> 01:02:26,97
exponentially harder, meaning much, much harder as you try to solve more complex problems.

629
01:02:27,3 --> 01:02:30,68
So, it's actually the opposite I think that happens that.

630
01:02:30,82 --> 01:02:37,16
And I think that would also explain maybe to some extent why we're not super intelligent ourselves.

631
01:02:37,16 --> 01:02:44,92
I mean, the sense that our intelligence is kind of limited. There are many things for which we make the wrong decision.

632
01:02:44,92 --> 01:02:46,46
And then it's true also of animals.

633
01:02:46,56 --> 01:02:53,09
Why is it like that some animals have much larger brains that we do and they're not that smart?

634
01:02:54,95 --> 01:02:59,23
You could come up with a bunch of reasons but it's not they have the bigger brain.

635
01:02:59,9 --> 01:03:08,02
And their brain, a mammal's brain is very very close to ours. So it's hard to say.

636
01:03:08,23 --> 01:03:14,19
Now I think it's fair to consider the worst scenarios and to study it

637
01:03:14,19 --> 01:03:21,46
and have people seriously considering what could happen and how we could prevent any dangerous thing.

638
01:03:21,46 --> 01:03:24,01
I think it's actually important that some people do that.

639
01:03:24,26 --> 01:03:31,69
But, right now I see this as a very long term potential, and the most plausible scenario is not that,

640
01:03:31,69 --> 01:03:32,56
according to my vision.

641
01:03:32,56 --> 01:03:42,42
Speaker 2: Does it have to do with the fact that you tried to develop this deep learning That if you know how it works,

642
01:03:42,42 --> 01:03:49,96
then you also know how to deal with it. Is that why you are confident in not seeing any problem?

643
01:03:49,96 --> 01:03:53,7
Yoshua: You're right that I think we are more afraid of things we don't understand.

644
01:03:54,48 --> 01:04:03,49
And scientists who are working with deep learning everyday don't feel that they have anything to fear because they

645
01:04:03,49 --> 01:04:04,5
understand what's going on.

646
01:04:04,5 --> 01:04:11,27
And they can see clearly that there is no danger that’s foreseeable, so you're right that’s part of it.

647
01:04:11,27 --> 01:04:17,1
There’s the psychology of seeing the machine as some other being. There’s the lack of knowledge.

648
01:04:17,1 --> 01:04:18,54
There’s influence of science fiction.

649
01:04:18,54 --> 01:04:23,74
So all these factors come together and also the fact that the technology has been making a lot of progress recently.

650
01:04:23,74 --> 01:04:27,8
So all of that I think creates kind of an exaggerated fear.

651
01:04:27,8 --> 01:04:31,19
I'm not saying we shouldn't have any fear I'm just saying it’s exaggerated right now.

652
01:04:31,19 --> 01:04:52,26
Speaker 2: Is your main part of life, or your, how you fill the day, is it thinking? Is your work thinking?

653
01:04:52,26 --> 01:04:54,27
How do you physically do?

654
01:04:54,27 --> 01:04:57,56
Yoshua: I'm thinking all the time, yes.

655
01:04:57,56 --> 01:05:03,23
And whether I'm thinking on the things that matter to me the most, maybe not enough.

656
01:05:03,88 --> 01:05:09,64
Managing a big institute, with a lot of students, and so on, means my time is dispersed, but.

657
01:05:10,23 --> 01:05:18,7
When I can focus, or when I'm in a scientific discussion with people, and so on.

658
01:05:18,71 --> 01:05:24,07
Of course there's a lot of thinking, and it's really important, that's how we move forward.

659
01:05:24,07 --> 01:05:30,26
Speaker 2: Yeah, what does that mean? The first question I asked you was about what's it's thinking.

660
01:05:30,26 --> 01:05:31,06
Yoshua: Yes.

661
01:05:31,06 --> 01:05:33,52
Speaker 2: And now we are back to that question.

662
01:05:33,52 --> 01:05:34,43
Yoshua: Yeah, yeah, so, so.

663
01:05:34,43 --> 01:05:40,31
Speaker 2: You are a thinker so what happens.

664
01:05:40,31 --> 01:05:40,85
Yoshua: Okay.

665
01:05:40,85 --> 01:05:41,75
Speaker 2: During the day?

666
01:05:41,75 --> 01:05:42,29
Yoshua: Yes.

667
01:05:42,29 --> 01:05:43,01
Speaker 2: With you?

668
01:05:43,01 --> 01:05:48,69
Yoshua: So when I listen to somebody explaining something.

669
01:05:48,69 --> 01:05:53,49
Maybe one of my students talking about an experiment, or another researcher talking about their idea.

670
01:05:55,9 --> 01:06:00,34
Something builds up in my mind to try to understand what is going on.

671
01:06:03,01 --> 01:06:12,54
And that's already thinking but then things happen so other pieces of information and understanding connects to this.

672
01:06:12,87 --> 01:06:24,1
And I see some flaw or some connection and that's where the creativity comes in.

673
01:06:24,27 --> 01:06:39,2
And how I have the impulse of talking about it. And that's just one turn in a discussion. And we go like this. And,

674
01:06:39,2 --> 01:06:43,69
Yoshua: New ideas spring like this. And it's very, very rewarding.

675
01:06:43,69 --> 01:06:47,96
Speaker 2: Is it possible for you not to think?

676
01:06:47,96 --> 01:06:55,69
Yoshua: Well, yes. Yes, it is possible not to think.

677
01:06:56,18 --> 01:07:06,74
It's hard, but if you really relax or you' are experiencing something very intensely,

678
01:07:06,74 --> 01:07:18,96
then you're not into your thoughts, you're just into some present-time experience.

679
01:07:18,96 --> 01:07:22,45
Speaker 2: Like it's more emotional rather than rational?

680
01:07:22,45 --> 01:07:28,33
Yoshua: For example, yes, but thinking isn't just rational.

681
01:07:28,86 --> 01:07:31,28
A lot of it is, I don't mean it's irrational,

682
01:07:31,28 --> 01:07:36,55
but a lot of the thinking is something that happens somehow behind the scenes.

683
01:07:36,55 --> 01:07:48,49
It has to do with intuition that has to do with analogies and it’s not necessarily a causes b causes c.

684
01:07:49,19 --> 01:07:54,09
It’s not that kind of logical thinking that’s going on in my mind most of the time.

685
01:07:54,55 --> 01:08:03,86
It's much softer and that's why we need the math in order to filter and fine tune the ideas,

686
01:08:03,86 --> 01:08:15,25
but the raw thinking is very fuzzy. But it's very rich because it's connecting a lot of things together.

687
01:08:15,63 --> 01:08:26,7
And it's discovering the inconsistencies that allow us to move to the next stage and solve problems.

688
01:08:26,7 --> 01:08:34,39
Speaker 2: Are you aware of that you are in that situation when you are thinking?

689
01:08:34,39 --> 01:08:36,39
Yoshua: It happens to me.

690
01:08:36,39 --> 01:08:46,41
I used to spend some time meditating and there you're learning to pay attention to your own thoughts.

691
01:08:46,75 --> 01:08:49,92
So it does happen to me.

692
01:08:50,23 --> 01:08:54,34
It happens to me also that I get so immersed in my thoughts in ordinary,

693
01:08:54,44 --> 01:09:02,85
daily activities that people think that I'm very distracted and not present and they can be offended. [LAUGH]

694
01:09:02,85 --> 01:09:08,45
Yoshua: But it's not always like this, sometimes I'm actually very, very present.

695
01:09:08,46 --> 01:09:16,55
I can be very, very present with somebody talking to me and that's really important for my job, right?

696
01:09:16,56 --> 01:09:27,71
Because if I listen to somebody in a way that's not complete, I can't really understand fully

697
01:09:29,33 --> 01:09:34,07
and participate in a rich exchange.

698
01:09:34,07 --> 01:09:39,98
Speaker 2: I can imagine that when you are focused on a thought.

699
01:09:39,99 --> 01:09:40,1
Or you were having this problem and you're thinking about it, thinking about it.

700
01:09:40,1 --> 01:09:46,15
And then you are in this situation that other people thinking about something else of you like attention for your

701
01:09:46,15 --> 01:09:54,25
children or whatever. Then there's something in you which decides to keep people focused or how does it work with you?

702
01:09:54,25 --> 01:09:54,97
Yoshua: Right.

703
01:09:54,97 --> 01:09:57,61
Speaker 2: You don't want to lose the thought of course.

704
01:09:57,61 --> 01:10:04,9
Yoshua: That's right. So I write, I have some notebooks. I write my ideas.

705
01:10:05,9 --> 01:10:11,33
Often when I wake up or sometimes an idea comes and I want to write it down, like if I was afraid of losing it.

706
01:10:11,33 --> 01:10:15,19
But actually the good ideas, they don't they don't go.

707
01:10:15,19 --> 01:10:17,39
It turns out very often I write them, but I don't even go back to reading them.

708
01:10:17,4 --> 01:10:21,13
It's just that it makes me feel better, and it anchors.

709
01:10:21,13 --> 01:10:28,06
Also, the fact of writing an idea kind of makes it take more room in my mind.

710
01:10:31,81 --> 01:10:34,98
And there's also something to be said about concentration.

711
01:10:36,21 --> 01:10:42,8
So my work now, because I'm in with so many people, can be very distractive.

712
01:10:42,8 --> 01:10:52,23
But to really make big progress in science, I also need times when I can be very focused

713
01:10:54,6 --> 01:11:02,84
and where the ideas about a problem and different points of view and all the elements sort of fill my mind.

714
01:11:02,97 --> 01:11:04,81
I'm completely filled with this.

715
01:11:05,09 --> 01:11:11,16
That's when you can be really productive and it might take a long time before you reach that state.

716
01:11:11,17 --> 01:11:20,09
Sometimes it could take years for a student to really go deep into a subject. So that he can be fully immersed in it.

717
01:11:20,09 --> 01:11:28,58
That's when you can really start seeing through things and getting things to stand together solidly.

718
01:11:28,92 --> 01:11:36,2
Now you can extend science, right? Now, when things are solid in your mind, you can move forward.

719
01:11:36,2 --> 01:11:38,74
Speaker 2: Like a base of understanding?

720
01:11:38,74 --> 01:11:46,02
Yoshua: Yeah, yeah, when you need enough concentration on something to really get these moves.

721
01:11:46,02 --> 01:11:48,79
There's the other mode of thinking, which is the brainstorming mode.

722
01:11:49,34 --> 01:11:54,25
Where, out of the blue, I started discussion, five minutes later something comes up.

723
01:11:54,26 --> 01:12:01,42
So that's more like random and it's also very, it could be very productive as well.

724
01:12:01,42 --> 01:12:03,98
It depends on the stimulation from someone else.

725
01:12:03,98 --> 01:12:13,33
If someone introduces a problem and immediately I get a, something comes up. And we have maybe an exchange.

726
01:12:13,34 --> 01:12:19,04
So that's more superficial, but a lot of good things come out of that exchange because of the brainstorming.

727
01:12:19,04 --> 01:12:26,64
Whereas the other, there's the other mode of thinking which is I'm alone nobody bothers me.

728
01:12:26,64 --> 01:12:29,42
Nobody's asking for my attention. I'm walking.

729
01:12:30,02 --> 01:12:35,66
I'm half asleep, and there I can fully concentrate, eyes closed

730
01:12:36,00 --> 01:12:41,73
or not really paying attention to what's going on in front of me, because I'm completely in my thoughts.

731
01:12:41,73 --> 01:12:46,9
Speaker 2: When do you think?

732
01:12:46,9 --> 01:12:47,41
Yoshua: When?

733
01:12:47,41 --> 01:12:49,13
Speaker 2: During the day. Let's start a day.

734
01:12:49,13 --> 01:13:00,94
Yoshua: So the two times when I spend more on this concentrated thinking, is usually when I wake up, and

735
01:13:00,94 --> 01:13:04,77
when I'm walking back and forth between home and university.

736
01:13:04,77 --> 01:13:10,49
Speaker 2: Just enlarge this moment, what happens?

737
01:13:10,49 --> 01:13:20,67
Yoshua: So I emerged to conciousness like everybody does every morning, and eyes closed

738
01:13:20,94 --> 01:13:29,58
and so on Some thought related to a research question or maybe non-research question comes up

739
01:13:31,53 --> 01:13:37,76
and if I'm interested in it I start like going deeper into it. And.

740
01:13:37,76 --> 01:13:39,57
Speaker 2: Still with your eyes closed?

741
01:13:39,57 --> 01:13:40,06
Yoshua: Still with my eyes closed.

742
01:13:40,2 --> 01:13:55,64
And then it's like If you see a thread dangling and you pull on it, and then, more stuff comes down.

743
01:13:55,64 --> 01:14:01,96
Now, you see more things and you pull more, and there's an avalanche of things coming.

744
01:14:02,12 --> 01:14:10,7
The more you pull on those strings, and the more new things come, or information comes together.

745
01:14:11,46 --> 01:14:15,91
And sometimes it goes nowhere and sometimes that's how new ideas come about.

746
01:14:15,91 --> 01:14:21,26
Speaker 2: And what stage in this pulling the thread, do you open your eyes?

747
01:14:21,26 --> 01:14:24,69
Yoshua: I could stay like this for an hour.

748
01:14:24,69 --> 01:14:25,82
Speaker 2: Eyes closed.

749
01:14:25,82 --> 01:14:26,66
Yoshua: Yeah.

750
01:14:26,66 --> 01:14:28,06
Speaker 2: Pulling a thread.

751
01:14:28,06 --> 01:14:28,9
Yoshua: Yeah.

752
01:14:28,9 --> 01:14:30,02
Speaker 2: Seeing what's happening.

753
01:14:30,02 --> 01:14:30,87
Yoshua: Yeah.

754
01:14:31,43 --> 01:14:37,87
Often what happens is I see something that I hadn't seen before and I get too excited, so that wakes me up

755
01:14:37,87 --> 01:14:42,33
and I want to write it down. So I have my notebook not far and I write it down.

756
01:14:42,33 --> 01:14:48,55
Or I wanna send an email to somebody saying, I thought about this and it's like six in the morning [LAUGH]

757
01:14:48,74 --> 01:14:53,27
and they wonder if I'm working all the time. [LAUGH]

758
01:14:53,27 --> 01:14:58,66
Speaker 2: So, and then, what happened then? Then you woke up.

759
01:14:58,66 --> 01:14:58,93
Yoshua: Yeah.

760
01:14:58,93 --> 01:15:02,42
Speaker 2: You open your eyes or you wrote it down?

761
01:15:02,42 --> 01:15:13,77
Yoshua: So once I'm writing it down, my eyes are open and it's like, I feel relieved, it's like now I can go

762
01:15:13,77 --> 01:15:16,73
and maybe have breakfast or take a shower, something.

763
01:15:16,73 --> 01:15:26,86
So having written it down, it might take some time to write it down, also sometimes I write an email

764
01:15:26,86 --> 01:15:33,33
and then it's longer. And now the act of writing it is a different thing.

765
01:15:33,34 --> 01:15:41,59
So there's the initial sort of spark of vision, which is still very fuzzy.

766
01:15:41,59 --> 01:15:46,18
But then, when you have to communicate the idea to someone else. Say, in an email.

767
01:15:46,89 --> 01:15:51,34
You have to really make a different kind of effort, you realize some flaws in your initial ideas

768
01:15:51,34 --> 01:15:57,00
and you have to clean it up and make sure it's understandable. Now it takes a different form.

769
01:15:58,65 --> 01:16:06,84
And sometimes you realize when you do it, that it was nothing really. Yeah, it was just half dream.

770
01:16:06,84 --> 01:16:10,75
Speaker 2: What does your partner think of the ideas, that [INAUDIBLE]

771
01:16:10,75 --> 01:16:13,08
Yoshua: I didn't understand the question.

772
01:16:13,08 --> 01:16:24,07
Speaker 2: What does your partner think of this? That you wake up or you have to write something down?

773
01:16:24,07 --> 01:16:34,23
Yoshua: She's fine with that. I think she's glad to see this kind of thing happen.

774
01:16:34,38 --> 01:16:41,55
And she's happy for me that I live these very rewarding moments.

775
01:16:41,55 --> 01:16:43,88
Speaker 2: But she understands what happens.

776
01:16:43,88 --> 01:16:54,97
Yoshua: Yeah. I tell her often, I just had an idea. I wanna say, i just wanna.

777
01:16:54,97 --> 01:16:55,04
Speaker 2: Then she understands?

778
01:16:55,04 --> 01:16:56,37
Yoshua: What do you mean the science?

779
01:16:56,37 --> 01:16:56,72
Speaker 2: Yes.

780
01:16:56,72 --> 01:17:06,16
Yoshua: No, no but she understands that it's really important for me and this is how I move forward in my work

781
01:17:07,5 --> 01:17:12,16
and also how emotionally fulfilling it is.

782
01:17:12,16 --> 01:17:21,6
Speaker 2: Okay, and then you have to go to work.

783
01:17:21,6 --> 01:17:23,98
Yoshua: Yes.

784
01:17:23,98 --> 01:17:23,99
Speaker 2: Let's talk about the work you do every day.

785
01:17:23,99 --> 01:17:24,86
Yoshua: Yes.

786
01:17:24,86 --> 01:17:26,96
Speaker 2: So what does it mean?

787
01:17:26,96 --> 01:17:30,94
Yoshua: So that walk is you can really think of it as a kind of meditation.

788
01:17:30,94 --> 01:17:31,27
Speaker 2: Tell me about what you were doing if you want to.

789
01:17:31,27 --> 01:17:43,41
Yoshua: So everyday I walk from my house. Yeah, so everyday I walk up the hill from my home to the university.

790
01:17:43,41 --> 01:17:48,64
And it's about half an hour and it's more or less always the same path.

791
01:17:50,25 --> 01:17:55,17
And because I know this path so well, I don't have to really pay much attention to what's going on.

792
01:17:55,47 --> 01:18:05,09
And I can just relax and let thoughts go by, and eventually focus on something, or not.

793
01:18:05,27 --> 01:18:17,89
Sometimes it's just maybe more in the evening where I'm tired maybe just a way to relax and let go.

794
01:18:17,89 --> 01:18:19,23
Speaker 2: Quality thinking time is the problem.

795
01:18:19,23 --> 01:18:30,1
Yoshua: Yes. Absolutely. Because I'm not bombarded by the outside world I can just.

796
01:18:30,1 --> 01:18:33,06
Speaker 2: Normal people are bombarded by every signs, and cars, and sound.

797
01:18:33,06 --> 01:18:34,63
Yoshua: Yeah.

798
01:18:34,63 --> 01:18:36,3
Speaker 2: With the weather.

799
01:18:36,3 --> 01:18:38,81
Yoshua: Yeah I kind of ignore that. [LAUGH]

800
01:18:38,81 --> 01:18:46,77
Speaker 2: So you are when there are folks around you.

801
01:18:46,77 --> 01:18:54,61
Yoshua: When I was young I used to hit my head [LAUGH] on poles. [LAUGH]

802
01:18:54,61 --> 01:19:07,14
Speaker 2: Because you were thinking [CROSSTALK] yourself..

803
01:18:57,28 --> 01:19:06,92
Yoshua: Yeah, or reading while walking [LAUGH]

804
01:19:07,14 --> 01:19:09,07
Speaker 2: [LAUGH] Now it doesnt happen any more.

805
01:19:09,07 --> 01:19:09,72
Yoshua: No.

806
01:19:10,15 --> 01:19:16,46
Well, actually it does now, because I sometimes, I check my phone [LAUGH] see lots of people do that,

807
01:19:16,47 --> 01:19:20,6
not being paying attention to what's going on.

808
01:19:20,6 --> 01:19:20,74
Speaker 2: Yeah.

809
01:19:20,74 --> 01:19:20,89
Yoshua: Yeah.

810
01:19:20,89 --> 01:19:27,66
Speaker 2: So, well we will film your walk may be something happen Mm-hm.

811
01:19:27,66 --> 01:19:32,79
[LAUGH] but during this walk, if you do it for such a long time, walking uphill.

812
01:19:32,79 --> 01:19:32,84
Yoshua: Yeah.

813
01:19:32,84 --> 01:19:43,18
Speaker 2: That's kind of a nice metaphor, walking up the hill.

814
01:19:43,18 --> 01:19:43,92
Yoshua: Yeah.

815
01:19:43,92 --> 01:19:47,36
Speaker 2: Are there, on this route situations, or positions, or places

816
01:19:47,85 --> 01:19:51,65
when you had some really good ideas that you can remember?

817
01:19:51,65 --> 01:19:52,28
Yoshua: Well.

818
01:19:52,28 --> 01:19:53,33
Speaker 2: How was it?

819
01:19:53,75 --> 01:20:02,47
I was waiting at the traffic light, or was it- Yeah, I have some memories of specific moments growing up.

820
01:20:02,47 --> 01:20:14,02
Yoshua: Thinking about some of the ideas that have been going through my mind over the last year in particular.

821
01:20:14,02 --> 01:20:22,73
I guess these are more recent memories. Can you enlarge one of those moments like you did with waking up?

822
01:20:22,73 --> 01:20:32,49
Right, right, so, like I said earlier, it's like the rest of the world is in a haze, right.

823
01:20:32,49 --> 01:20:40,45
It's like there's automatic control of the walking and watching for other people and cars, potentially.

824
01:20:43,04 --> 01:20:50,34
But it's like if I had a 3-D projection of my thoughts in front of me, that are taking most of the room.

825
01:20:52,92 --> 01:20:59,08
And my thinking works a lot by visualization. And I think a lot of people are like this.

826
01:20:59,09 --> 01:21:09,06
It's a very nice tool that we have, using our kind of visual analogies to understand things.

827
01:21:09,14 --> 01:21:17,94
Even if it's not a faithful portrait of what's going on, the visual analogies are really helping me, at least,

828
01:21:18,27 --> 01:21:26,58
to make sense of things. So it's like I have pictures in my mind to illustrate what's going on, and it's like I see

829
01:21:26,58 --> 01:21:41,84
Yoshua: What do I see? I see information flow, neural networks.

830
01:21:41,84 --> 01:21:49,05
It's like if I was running a simulation in my mind of what would happen if

831
01:21:49,05 --> 01:21:58,15
Yoshua: Some rule of conduct was followed by in this algorithm in this process.

832
01:21:58,15 --> 01:22:00,45
Speaker 2: And that's when you woke up, and that's what you see?

833
01:22:00,45 --> 01:22:06,45
Yoshua: Yeah, yeah, so it's like if I was running a computer simulation in my mind.

834
01:22:07,06 --> 01:22:18,33
To try to figure out what would happen if I made such choices or if we consider such equation.

835
01:22:18,66 --> 01:22:21,27
And what would it entail what would happen?

836
01:22:21,52 --> 01:22:30,44
Imagine different situations and then of course it's not as detailed as if we did a real computer simulation.

837
01:22:30,75 --> 01:22:36,6
But it provides a lot of insights for what's going on.

838
01:22:36,6 --> 01:22:37,42
Speaker 2: But then you walk up to the everyday.

839
01:22:37,42 --> 01:22:37,66
Yoshua: Yeah.

840
01:22:37,66 --> 01:22:41,49
Speaker 2: And describe the most defining moment during one of those walks. Where you were? Where you stood?

841
01:22:48,24 --> 01:22:49,37
Which corner?

842
01:22:49,37 --> 01:23:00,41
Yoshua: Well, so I remember a particular moment. I was walking on the north sidewalk of Queen Mary Street.

843
01:23:01,25 --> 01:23:15,92
And I was seeing the big church we have there, which is called the oratoire. It's beautiful.

844
01:23:15,92 --> 01:23:24,16
Yoshua: And then I got this insight about perturbations propagating in brains.

845
01:23:24,16 --> 01:23:26,36
Speaker 2: Maybe you want to do that sooner than that.

846
01:23:26,36 --> 01:23:29,53
Yoshua: Yeah, yeah. From the beginning or just the last sentence?

847
01:23:29,53 --> 01:23:30,62
Speaker 2: The last one. Go on.

848
01:23:30,62 --> 01:23:40,48
Yoshua: And so, then I got this insight, visually of these perturbations happening on neuron.

849
01:23:40,48 --> 01:23:42,19
That propagate to other neurons, that propagate to other neurons.

850
01:23:43,85 --> 01:23:55,72
And like I'm doing with my hands, but it was something visual. Then suddenly I had the thought that this could work.

851
01:23:56,02 --> 01:23:59,29
That this could explain things that I'm always trying to understand.

852
01:23:59,29 --> 01:24:01,29
Speaker 2: How did this feel?

853
01:24:01,29 --> 01:24:15,81
Yoshua: Great, I think of all the good feelings that we can have in life, the feeling we get when something clicks,

854
01:24:15,81 --> 01:24:24,28
the eureka. Is probably, maybe, the strongest and most powerful than one that we can seek again and again.

855
01:24:24,63 --> 01:24:39,00
And only brings positive things. Maybe stronger than food and sex and those usual good things we get from experience.

856
01:24:39,00 --> 01:24:40,66
Speaker 2: You mean this moment?

857
01:24:40,66 --> 01:24:46,67
Yoshua: This- These kinds of moments provide pleasure.

858
01:24:46,67 --> 01:24:53,89
Yoshua: It's a different kind of pleasure, just like different pleasures or different sensory pleasure or so on.

859
01:24:54,03 --> 01:25:00,83
But it's really, I think, when your brain realizes something, understands something.

860
01:25:00,83 --> 01:25:08,3
It's like you send yourself some molecules to reward you. Say great, do it again if you can, right?

861
01:25:08,3 --> 01:25:10,24
Speaker 2: Did you do it again?

862
01:25:10,24 --> 01:25:12,81
Yoshua: Yeah, yeah, that's my job.

863
01:25:12,81 --> 01:25:18,25
Speaker 2: So this is one moment at the church. Was it a coincidence that it was at a church?

864
01:25:18,25 --> 01:25:18,55
Yoshua: No.

865
01:25:18,55 --> 01:25:19,44
Speaker 2: That has nothing to do with it.

866
01:25:19,44 --> 01:25:20,95
Yoshua: I don't believe in God.

867
01:25:20,95 --> 01:25:35,96
Speaker 2: But, when, I don't believe in God, I do but if you think of God as someone who created us as is,

868
01:25:35,96 --> 01:25:37,14
and he is our example.

869
01:25:37,14 --> 01:25:38,67
Yoshua: Yes.

870
01:25:38,67 --> 01:25:44,6
Speaker 2: Trying to understand what's happening in your head or your brain.

871
01:25:44,6 --> 01:25:45,98
Yoshua: Yes.

872
01:25:45,98 --> 01:25:49,39
Speaker 2: Isn't that what other people call God?

873
01:25:49,39 --> 01:25:51,06
Speaker 2: Or looking for?

874
01:25:51,06 --> 01:25:58,03
Yoshua: I'm not sure I understand your question.

875
01:25:58,03 --> 01:26:11,15
Speaker 2: How can I rephrase that one?

876
01:26:11,15 --> 01:26:18,38
Speaker 2: When you understand how a brain works-

877
01:26:18,38 --> 01:26:19,11
Yoshua: Yes.

878
01:26:19,11 --> 01:26:22,11
Speaker 2: Maybe then you understand who God is.

879
01:26:22,11 --> 01:26:29,16
Yoshua: When we understand how our brains work we understand who we are to some extent,

880
01:26:29,16 --> 01:26:31,72
I mean a very important part of us. That’s one of my motivations.

881
01:26:33,99 --> 01:26:46,03
And the process of doing it is something that defines us individually but also as a collective, as a group,

882
01:26:46,03 --> 01:26:54,48
as a society. So there may be some connections to religion which are about connecting us to some extent.

883
01:26:54,48 --> 01:27:00,84
Speaker 2: That's one of those layers you were talking about. Religion is one of them.

884
01:27:00,84 --> 01:27:02,51
Yoshua: Mm-hm. Yep.

885
01:27:02,51 --> 01:27:09,69
Speaker 2: So but doing this show [NOISE] this half an hour, then you were almost here so-

886
01:27:09,69 --> 01:27:16,94
Yoshua: Sometimes I think it's too short. But then, had things to do, so.

887
01:27:16,94 --> 01:27:24,52
Speaker 2: Let's continue this metaphor. It's uphill, when you are uphill, what do you feel?

888
01:27:24,52 --> 01:27:30,57
Yoshua: I feel, so I'm going uphill, my body's working hard.

889
01:27:30,57 --> 01:27:33,67
I mean, I'm not running, but I'm walking and I can feel the muscles.

890
01:27:35,46 --> 01:27:46,86
Warming up, and my whole body becoming more full with energy. And I think that helps the brain as well.

891
01:27:46,86 --> 01:27:49,09
That's how it feels, anyway.

892
01:27:49,09 --> 01:27:55,46
Speaker 2: But I mean, when you Moses went up to the mountain and he saw the Promised Land. [LAUGH]

893
01:27:55,46 --> 01:27:58,52
Speaker 2: When you go uphill what do you see?

894
01:27:58,52 --> 01:28:10,14
Yoshua: When I go uphill [LAUGH] I see the university, but there is something that's related to your question.

895
01:28:10,42 --> 01:28:16,95
Which is, each time I have these insights, these Eureka moments, it's like seeing the Promised Land.

896
01:28:16,95 --> 01:28:25,89
It's very much like that. It's like you have a glimpse of something you have never seen before and it looks great.

897
01:28:27,19 --> 01:28:30,91
And you feel like you now see a path to go there.

898
01:28:31,48 --> 01:28:37,9
So I think it's very, very close to this idea of seeing the Promised Land.

899
01:28:37,9 --> 01:28:39,86
But of course it's not just one Promised Land.

900
01:28:39,86 --> 01:28:46,86
It's one step to the next valley and the next valley, and that's how we climb, really, the big mountains.

901
01:28:46,86 --> 01:28:58,83
Speaker 2: So is there anything you want to add to this yourself? Because I think we are ready now to go uphill.

902
01:28:58,83 --> 01:29:00,84
Yoshua: No, I'm fine.

903
01:29:00,84 --> 01:29:12,42
Speaker 2: Maybe just a few questions about Friday, so what you're going to do. What are you going to do on Friday?

904
01:29:12,42 --> 01:29:25,23
Yoshua: So Friday I'm going to make a presentation to the rest of the researchers in the lab in the institute about one

905
01:29:25,23 --> 01:29:28,56
of the topics I'm most excited about these days.

906
01:29:30,59 --> 01:29:38,56
Which is trying to bridge the gap between what we do in machine learning, what has to do with AI

907
01:29:38,56 --> 01:29:44,79
and building intelligent machines and the brain. I'm not really a brain expert.

908
01:29:44,79 --> 01:29:48,18
I'm more a machine learning person, but I talk to neuroscientists and so on.

909
01:29:48,27 --> 01:29:57,03
And I try, I really care about the big question of how is the brain doing the really complex things that it does.

910
01:29:57,19 --> 01:30:08,57
And so the work I'm going to tell about Friday is one small step in that direction that we've achieved in the last few

911
01:30:08,57 --> 01:30:10,02
months.

912
01:30:10,02 --> 01:30:12,17
Speaker 2: On your path to the Promised Land?

913
01:30:12,17 --> 01:30:14,86
Yoshua: Yes, exactly, that's right.

914
01:30:14,87 --> 01:30:21,28
And I've been making those small steps on this particular topic for about a year and a half.

915
01:30:21,29 --> 01:30:27,47
So it's not like just something happens and you're there, right?

916
01:30:27,76 --> 01:30:40,7
It's a lot of insights that make you move and get understanding. And science makes progress by steps.

917
01:30:41,15 --> 01:30:44,67
Most of those steps are small, some are slightly bigger.

918
01:30:44,67 --> 01:30:49,42
Seen from the outside, sometimes people have the impression that, there's this big breakthrough, breakthrough.

919
01:30:49,52 --> 01:30:51,85
And journalists like to talk about breakthrough, breakthrough, breakthrough.

920
01:30:52,28 --> 01:30:58,15
But actually science is very, very progressive because we gradually understand better the world.