#7 Tony Zador: The Embodied Turing Test, Genomic Bottlenecks, Molecular Connectomics

Tony has a lab at Cold Spring Harbour, New York. Using rodents, his lab studies the neural circuits underlying auditory decisions. He is also developing new technologies for connectome sequencing and does some NeuroAI work. In the episode, after a detour on language and the Costa Rican singing mouse, we discuss his recent paper on 'The Embodied Turing Test' and Moravec's paradox; the idea that what we find hard is easy for AI, and vice versa. We explore how Tony's work in creating a rodent decision-making model might inform a virtual platform for embodied animal-like agents. Evolution is an underlying thread in the discussion, including his work on the genomic bottleneck, which might 'be a feature, not a bug'.  We discuss how Tony is revolutionizing connectomics using molecular sequencing and why people in AI should care about connectomics and architecture more generally. Finally, we discuss some cultural questions as to why some people might believe more or less in 'Human uniqueness' vs evolutionary continuity and some career questions. 

Timestamps:

(00:00) - Intro

(02:08) - Tony's background, Costa Rican singing mouse

(06:59) - Traditional & embodied Turing Test, large language models

(15:16) - Mouse intelligence, evolution, modularity, dish-washing dogs?

(26:16) - Platform for training non-human animal-like virtual agents

(36:14) - Exploration in children vs animals, innate vs learning, cognitive maps, complementary learning systems theory

(46:53) - Genomic bottleneck, transfer learning, artificial Laplacian evolution

(01:02:06) - Why AI needs connectomics?

(01:06:55) - Brainbow, molecular connectomics: MAPseq & BRICseq

(01:14:52) - Comparative (corvid) connectomics

(01:18:04) - "Human uniqueness" - why do/ don't people believe in evolutionary continuity

(01:25:29) - Career questions & virtual mouse passing the Embodied Turing Test in 5 years?

Tony's lab website

Tony's Twitter

My Twitter

Papers

Toward Next-Generation Artificial Intelligence: Catalyzing the NeuroAI Revolution - Embodied Turing Test paper (2022)

A critique of pure learning and what artificial neural networks can learn from animal brains paper (2019)

Genomic bottleneck paper (2021)

MAPseq paper (2016)

BRICseq paper (2020)

Squirrel ninja warrior course video

Marbled Lungfish wiki

Paper on corvids

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