human evolution

Daniel Dennett gives a Royal Institution talk toward a unified theory of information, tying together evolution, learning and engineering. He argues that design can arise bottom-up through small steps without a designer.

A 2007 Google Tech Talk introducing Polyworld, an artificial life simulator used to evolve artificial intelligence by designing worlds rather than minds. It presents results from ongoing attempts to evolve intelligent behavior.

A 2006 Google TechTalk in which Luis von Ahn introduces human computation, using people's effort to solve problems like image recognition that computers cannot yet handle. It covers games with a purpose and related ideas such as CAPTCHAs.

Joseph Henrich's Talks at Google presentation of his book. He argues that human success comes from collective brains and cultural learning across generations rather than individual intelligence.

Bret Victor's closing keynote at UIST and SPLASH 2014 argues that our tools for thinking ignore most of human sensory and motor capability. He sketches representations that engage more modalities beyond screens and keyboards.

Luis von Ahn, creator of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, presents Duolingo at TEDxCMU 2011. The idea is to have millions of people translate the web for free while learning a language, an example of human computation.

John Sotos, a physician and former Intel chief medical officer, argues at DEF CON 25 that genetic diseases are exploitable vulnerabilities in the genome. He warns that CRISPR and related tools will make malicious genome hacks and targeted bioweapons feasible.

Cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues in this TED talk that evolution shaped perception to track fitness rather than truth. He uses evolutionary simulations and the Australian jewel beetle as examples.

A 92-minute RMIT University seminar in which Ken Stanley argues that setting an objective can block achieving it. He presents objective-less, novelty-driven search as an alternative approach to innovation and discovery, drawing on evolutionary computation.

Clinical psychologist Stephen Ilardi argues depression is a disease of modern civilization and presents a lifestyle-based program to treat it without drugs. Topics include exercise, sunlight, omega-3s and social connection.

Tristan Harris and Aza Raskin of the Center for Humane Technology present why current AI capabilities pose catastrophic societal risks. They argue companies are racing to deploy without adequate safety, and that institutions must adapt. It was given before GPT-4's launch.

Audio of Charlie Munger's 1995 Harvard speech on the psychology of human misjudgment, laying out a framework of cognitive biases and mental models for decision making. It covers factors like incentives, social proof and denial.

A BSidesLV 2013 talk from the Sixteen Colors project on archiving the ANSI and ASCII art scene. It traces the scene's evolution from BBSs to the NFO and IRC era.

UC Berkeley EECS colloquium by OpenAI's John Schulman on reinforcement learning from human feedback. He covers why RL helps with truthfulness, hallucination, and the limits of behavior cloning.

Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote argues that the computer revolution has not really happened yet, reflecting on how computing, objects and the web fall short of their potential.

Demis Hassabis of DeepMind speaks at Google Zeitgeist, saying human-level AI is decades away but the debate should start now. He covers DeepMind's focus on game-playing agents.

Elon Musk's 2016 IAC presentation on the technical challenges and architectures for building a self-sustaining human presence on Mars.

David Deutsch's TED talk arguing that humanity's survival depends on solving problems through knowledge growth. He frames people as improbable "chemical scum" capable of understanding distant quasars.

David Epstein argues in this TED talk that improving athletic records owe much to technology, training and the selection of specialized body types, not just humans getting inherently better. He gives counter-intuitive examples across sports.

TED talk by biochemist Cynthia Kenyon on how a simple genetic mutation can double the lifespan of the worm C. elegans, and what that suggests about extending healthy human life.

Jonathan Blow's 2010 Rice University talk argues that game designers refine their techniques in ways that can manipulate players, as with A/B-tested social games. He discusses the ethical responsibility of designers and what games can offer beyond addiction.

Alan Kay's 1997 OOPSLA keynote, preserved on YouTube after being lost from Google Video. He discusses what object orientation was meant to be, messaging, system design, and the state of computing practice.

Luis von Ahn, creator of CAPTCHA and reCAPTCHA, explains how small contributions from many people online can digitize books. He then introduces Duolingo as a way to translate the web while people learn languages.

Nickolas Means recounts the 1979 Three Mile Island accident minute by minute, from the control rod insertion to the operator's decision to switch off emergency cooling. He argues that finding systemic causes is more useful than blaming individuals.

Aral Balkan's re:publica 2015 talk argues that people are the product of surveillance-based business models. It makes an ethical case against data monopolies and for privacy as a human right.

David Sachs of InvenSense explains how gyroscopes, accelerometers and compasses work on their own and together, demonstrated on a modified Android handset. He covers sensor fusion algorithms and why rotation math such as Euler angles matters.

Prof. Eran Segal's TEDx talk on research showing that people's blood sugar responses to identical foods vary widely. It describes an algorithm that predicts individual responses and why one best diet for everyone does not exist.

Robin Deits presents the JuliaRobotics organization and shows how Julia is used to visualize, simulate and control a humanoid robot. The talk touches on real-time performance and composability across packages.

Neuroscientist Beau Lotto runs the audience through color and pattern illusions to show that perception is shaped by context and evolutionary history rather than being a direct readout of the world. The talk is playful and hands-on, and it argues that the brain interprets ambiguous signals.

A Talks at Google visit by Douglas Engelbart, inventor of the mouse. He presents his lifelong aim of augmenting collective human intelligence, followed by a Q&A.

Berkeley neuroscientist Jack Gallant shows how fMRI brain mapping can be used to decode what a person sees, with visualizations of brain activity and its implications.

Biologist Michael Levin explains the bioelectric layer that coordinates cells to build organs and bodies, showing footage of two-headed worms and introducing xenobots. He discusses implications for medicine and the nature of life.

An excerpt of the 2005 Harvard debate in which Steven Pinker gives his prepared case on biological sex differences and the under-representation of women in science. It covers cross-cultural patterns in preferences and abilities and the overlap between male and female distributions.

Steve Hsu's 2011 Google Tech Talk reviews psychometric measurement of intelligence and the heritability of adult IQ, then discusses genome-wide association studies seeking the genes behind cognitive ability.

Harvard geneticist David Sinclair discusses his book Lifespan at Google. He covers the biology of aging, lifestyle interventions and possible future ways to slow or reverse it.

Rhonda Patrick gives an IHMC talk on how genetic variation affects micronutrient absorption and metabolism, and how diet changes gene expression. It also covers epigenetics, including heritable changes, and stress tolerance.

Stuart Armstrong of the Future of Humanity Institute gives an Oxford physics talk on what exploratory engineering suggests about the Fermi paradox. He argues that von Neumann probes and Dyson spheres are plausibly buildable and asks what traces advanced civilizations would leave.

Java Language Architect Brian Goetz talks at a Clojure conference about the challenges of evolving a mature language like Java while preserving compatibility with existing code and developer expectations. It also gives a look at where the platform is headed.

Herb Sutter's CppCon 2022 talk on whether C++ can become ten times simpler and safer. He introduces his experimental Cpp2 syntax and the cppfront transpiler, explaining the limits on incremental improvement.

Bret Victor's talk proposing a new kind of maker space built for seeing and understanding a project's behavior: inside it, across time and across possibilities. It argues for scientific understanding over recipes and rules of thumb.