Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Engineer who created machines that work like the brain, developing Wizard for pattern recognition and Magnus for artificial consciousness.
On the island
Eight records
Piano Concerto No. 5 in E-flat major, Op. 73 ('Emperor') - II. Adagio un poco mosso
Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli, Vienna Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Carlo Maria Giulini
This is because at an early age in South Africa I met him. He came to our house when I was showing some films of Laurel and Hardy, and this is what he really wanted to see. But I was impressed by his enormous hands.
Bella figlia dell'amore (from Rigoletto)
I used to be asked when my parents used to wind up their gramophone what I'd like to hear at about the age of three. And I'd always say rigoletto, I think because I liked the word rather than the music.
This is the first record I ever bought. I started to take notice of music at the age of about twelve or thirteen
During my university time I played the drums, and one of the things to do was to play just piano and drums in smoky nightclubs.
Symphony No. 5 - IV. Adagietto
New York Philharmonic, conducted by Bruno Walter
The next record is from a somewhat turbulent time in my life when I was listening to a lot of Mahler
I love going to Greece and uh Helen and I go every year uh and so we were minded to learn Greek and we went to evening classes and met a lot of very interesting people, amongst whom uh a young singer who spent some time in the UK by the name of Savina Yanatu
Violin Concerto No. 1 in A minor, Op. 77
Maxim Vengerov, London Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Mstislav Rostropovich
at a dinner afterwards, because the organizers thought I was Russian, they sat me next to the performance and I had a a wonderful discussion with Rostropovich about how he thinks the mind works
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:37What you do effectively is cross the line from electrical engineering into neuroscience, and that's what upsets people, isn't it?
I think it's also to do with the fact that most of the people who work in things like consciousness, psychology, neurobiology feel that they don't really want to mess with mathematics and engineering. But in fact, the systems that they're dealing with are enormously complex. And if there's anything that an engineer learns, it's how to deal with complexity by building things that are complex. And so I make no apologies for crossing that line.
Presenter asks
3:39Can [your computer Magnus] talk to you?
We're very much interested in computers that can communicate with us. They probably at the moment do this in writing rather than speaking. But the the whole question of language is is enormously interesting.
Presenter asks
7:01What's the power of Magnus in comparison with the human brain?
Oh, it's absolutely tiny. The human brain if you imagine the main part of the human brain as an enormous handkerchief about one metre square or one metre by one metre, the size of Magnus is about half a thumbnail with respect to that. But what I find absolutely fascinating is that that half a thumbnail can do quite sophisticated things.
The keepsakes
The book
The Oxford Companion to the Mind
Richard L. Gregory
I'd like Richard Gregory's Companion to the Mind. That's a book that's been an absolute Bible to me. But again, I haven't had time to look at its more interesting corners.
The luxury
A virtual reality version of the London Symphony Orchestra that responds to my conducting
My luxury I'm afraid I'm going to be a bit nerdy about this and ask for a virtual reality version of the London Symphony Orchestra, which would respond to my conducting movement. I'm a sort of conductor manque, and uh I'd love to be able to conduct the London Symphony Orchestra.
Presenter asks
10:53How much do you remember about [being a Yugoslav refugee on the run from the Nazis]?
I remember … the more emotional occasions of that period. But by various routes we ran from Yugoslavia and we all met up outside that beautiful town of Perugia in Italy.
Presenter asks
16:18Did you in effect then have to choose between being politically active [against apartheid] and pursuing your career?
Yes, um … The two came together in a way, because I wanted to pursue my my um career and the opportunity for doing that was was to go to the UK. And that in a way, in a cowardly way, resolved resolved the problem.
Presenter asks
27:44Do you ever have any fears that all of this beauty we're talking about could be destroyed by some intelligence greater than our own that you may be sowing the seeds of?
My fears have more to do with uh the intelligences that we have around at the moment that seem to be doing quite a good job of destroying uh large chunks of the world and uh … taking away some some of the beauty.
“I like working with computers that can develop their own ways of doing things, and develop their own programmes, if you like, which in a sense learn from the world, in a sense build up their own experience.”
“The best that Magnus will ever be able to do is to be conscious of being a machine. So if I tell it a joke, what it should do is come back to me and say, okay, I understand that you think that joke's funny, but it doesn't mean a thing to me.”
“Knowing how our brains create our consciousness is the biggest problem in science at the moment. And working with this problem in an artificial domain gives us insights that you just can't have by performing operations or just listening to human beings speak or even scanning their brains.”
“I don't think that Magnus will ever have a progeny that'll get up and want to take over the world. I think that's a misunderstanding. People do that. The sort of real evil in the world, I do believe, has to do with living consciousness rather than artificial consciousness.”