Judea Pearl: Causal Reasoning, Counterfactuals, Bayesian Networks, and the Path to AGI

About this episode

<p>Judea Pearl is a professor at UCLA and a winner of the Turing Award, that&#8217;s generally recognized as the Nobel Prize of computing. He is one of the seminal figures in the field of artificial intelligence, computer science, and statistics. He has developed and championed probabilistic approaches to AI, including Bayesian Networks and profound ideas in causality in general. These ideas are important not just for AI, but to our understanding and practice of science. But in the field of AI, the idea of causality, cause and effect, to many, lies at the core of what is currently missing and what must be developed in order to build truly intelligent systems. For this reason, and many others, his work is worth returning to often.</p> <p><span style="font-weight: 400;">This conversation is part of the Artificial Intelligence podcast.</span>&#160;If you would like to get more information about this podcast go to <a href="https://lexfridman.com/ai">https://lexfridman.com/ai</a> or connect with @lexfridman on <a href="https://twitter.com/lexfridman">Twitter</a>, <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/lexfridman/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/lexfridman">Facebook</a>, <a href="https://medium.com/@lexfridman">Medium</a>, or <a href="https://www.youtube.com/lexfridman">YouTube</a> where you can watch the video versions of these conversations. If you enjoy the podcast, please rate it 5 stars on <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/artificial-intelligence/id1434243584">Apple Podcasts</a> or support it on <a href="https://www.patreon.com/lexfridman">Patreon</a>.</p> <p>This episode is presented by Cash App. Download it (<a href="https://apps.apple.com/us/app/cash-app/id711923939">App Store</a>, <a href="https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.squareup.cash&#38;hl=en_US">Google Play</a>), use code &#8220;LexPodcast&#8221;.&#160;</p> <p>Here&#8217;s the outline of the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.</p> <p>00:00 &#8211; Introduction<br /> 03:18 &#8211; Descartes and analytic geometry<br /> 06:25 &#8211; Good way to teach math<br /> 07:10 &#8211; From math to engineering<br /> 09:14 &#8211; Does God play dice?<br /> 10:47 &#8211; Free will<br /> 11:59 &#8211; Probability<br /> 22:21 &#8211; Machine learning<br /> 23:13 &#8211; Causal Networks<br /> 27:48 &#8211; Intelligent systems that reason with causation<br /> 29:29 &#8211; Do(x) operator<br /> 36:57 &#8211; Counterfactuals<br /> 44:12 &#8211; Reasoning by Metaphor<br /> 51:15 &#8211; Machine learning and causal reasoning<br /> 53:28 &#8211; Temporal aspect of causation<br /> 56:21 &#8211; Machine learning (continued)<br /> 59:15 &#8211; Human-level artificial intelligence<br /> 1:04:08 &#8211; Consciousness<br /> 1:04:31 &#8211; Concerns about AGI<br /> 1:09:53 &#8211; Religion and robotics<br /> 1:12:07 &#8211; Daniel Pearl<br /> 1:19:09 &#8211; Advice for students<br /> 1:21:00 &#8211; Legacy</p>