Dr. Michael Levin (@drmichaellevin ) is the Vannevar Bush Distinguished Professor of Biology at Tufts College and director of the Allen Discovery Middle. His background is in pc science and biology, and his group works on the intersection of developmental biophysics, pc science, and cognitive science. He’s primarily thinking about how intelligence self-organizes in a various vary of pure, engineered, and hybrid embodiments. Levin has been creating a framework for recognizing and speaking with unconventional cognitive techniques.
Utilized to the collective intelligence of cell teams present process morphogenesis, these concepts have allowed the Levin Lab to develop new functions in start defects, organ regeneration, and most cancers suppression. His lab additionally produces artificial life-forms (e.g., Xenobots and Anthrobots) that function exploration platforms for understanding the supply of patterns of type and conduct in a variety of pure, synthetic, and hybrid embodied minds.
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Dr. Michael Levin — Reprogramming Bioelectricity, Updating “Software program” for Anti-Growing old, Treating Most cancers With out Medication, Cognition of Cells, and A lot Extra (#849)
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Transcripts
SELECTED LINKS FROM THE EPISODE
- Join with Dr. Michael Levin:
Private Weblog | Lab Web site | Thoughtforms Life Podcast | YouTube | Twitter
Michael’s TED Speak
Occasions
Articles & Sources
Books & Tales
Movies & Documentaries
Corporations, Organizations, & Colleges
Key Ideas & Phrases
Bioelectricity
Regeneration & Growth
Growing old
Cognition & Intelligence
Computing & Info
Philosophy of Thoughts
Different Scientific Ideas
Analysis & Experiments
Medical & Therapeutic Purposes
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Folks
TIMESTAMPS
- [00:03:18] The Physique Electrical: A Vancouver bookstore discovery that launched a profession.
- [00:04:19] Bioelectricity 101: Your mind makes use of it to assume; your physique used it earlier than you had a mind.
- [00:06:05] The lesson discovered by scrambled tadpole faces that rearrange themselves.
- [00:08:51] Software program vs. {hardware}: The genome is your manufacturing unit settings, not your future.
- [00:11:43] Two-headed flatworms: Rewriting organic reminiscence with out touching DNA.
- [00:16:20] Seeing recollections: Voltage-sensitive dyes reveal the physique’s hidden blueprints.
- [00:20:12] Three killer apps for people: Delivery defects, regeneration, and most cancers.
- [00:24:27] Most cancers as id disaster: Cells forgetting they’re a part of a crew.
- [00:25:40] The boredom concept of ageing: Aim-seeking techniques with nothing left to do.
- [00:30:09] Planaria’s immortality hack: Rip your self in half each two weeks.
- [00:31:27] Manhattan Mission for ageing: Crack mobile cognition, the whole lot else falls into place.
- [00:33:47] Giving cells new objectives: Persuade a intestine to turn out to be an eye fixed.
- [00:37:42] Should mammalian mortality be necessary?
- [00:40:25] Cross-pollination: Why biologists would profit from programming programs.
- [00:47:15] Does acupuncture really do something?
- [00:50:57] Placebo as characteristic, not bug: Phrases and medicines share the identical mechanism.
- [00:55:06] The body drawback: Why robots explode and rats intuit what issues.
- [00:59:41] Binary considering is a lure: “Is it clever?” is the incorrect query.
- [01:07:46] Minimal mind, regular IQ: Medical instances that break neuroscience.
- [01:08:45] Tremendous panpsychism: Your liver might need opinions.
- [01:13:48] The Platonic area: Our bodies as skinny purchasers for patterns from elsewhere.
- [01:15:24] Preserve asking “why” and you find yourself within the math division.
- [01:23:07] Polycomputing: Sorting algorithms secretly doing aspect quests.
- [01:28:24] Energy scaling for the longer term and avoiding pink herrings for understanding machine minds.
- [01:34:06] Sci-fi suggestions.
- [01:37:24] Cliff Tabin’s toast and Dan Dennett’s metal manning.
- [01:41:21] Parting ideas.
DR. MICHAEL LEVIN QUOTES FROM THE INTERVIEW
“So what I attempted to indicate in that speak are some examples by which the residing tissues, for instance, flatworms which can be lower into items and every bit has to determine “What number of heads ought to I’ve? The place do the heads go? What ought to the form of my face be?” These sorts of issues, that in truth they do know, and the way in which they know is as a result of they retailer recollections, and possibly not shockingly, though it’s definitely stunning to a number of people, the way in which these recollections are saved is in {an electrical} community that’s similar to the way in which that we retailer our goal-directed behavioral repertoires in our mind and that this stuff are extensively unfold. And so regeneration, most cancers suppression, and most cancers restore and reworking, start defects and start defect restore, all of this stuff are extensively utilizing electrical sample recollections, and we now have a method to rewrite these sample recollections.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“I all the time say to individuals, ‘In your laptop computer, if you wish to go from Photoshop to Microsoft Phrase, you don’t get out your soldering iron and begin rewiring. It’d be laughable in the event you needed to, however that’s how we used to do it. Within the ’40s and ’50s, you programmed a pc by pulling and plugging wires, however you don’t do this anymore as a result of it’s reprogrammable. And that’s what the biology is.’” — Dr. Michael Levin
“The secret right here is speaking with the cells. This isn’t about stem cells or gene remedy or scaffolds product of nanomaterials. These are all instruments that may be helpful, however the true trick right here is to speak to a bunch of cells, what would you like them to construct? And that’s what the bioelectric code is all about; it’s about speaking to the collective, to the mobile collective.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“We are able to detect incipient tumor formation and we will stop and normalize tumors after they type … not by killing the cells with chemotherapy, however by electrically reconnecting them to the group such that they’ll type, once more, a reminiscence of what they’re imagined to be doing.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“Simply think about this commonplace Judeo-Christian model of Heaven. Let’s say you, your pet snake, and your canine get to Heaven. Every little thing is nice, there’s no extra injury, there’s no decay, nothing is broken, the whole lot is nice, the whole lot’s improbable. For the following trillion years, what occurs? The snake could also be fantastic doing snake issues for daily is similar as each different day, could also be fantastic. The canine, unsure. In all probability okay chasing rabbits on the farm, could also be fantastic for eternally, principally. The human although, what do you assume? What are the percentages {that a} human cognitive system could be sane for an infinite — okay, I’ll preserve myself busy for the primary 10,000 years, possibly 100,000 years, however a billion years in, are we nonetheless sane? What occurs?” — Dr. Michael Levin
“If you happen to make a circle of cognitive issues and residing issues, I believe cognition is wider than life. I believe cognition predates life and I believe it’s larger than life.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“It’s completely doable that in these AIs the factor we’ve pressured them to do, which is to speak, and the factor that we’re all obsessed about or the issues it says might be a whole pink herring so far as what sort of intelligence is definitely there, what does it need? How will we talk with it? The verbal interface that we’re all form of so glued in on won’t be the attention-grabbing a part of that equation.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“This area of various intelligence combines synthetic intelligence and engineering and cybernetics and evolutionary biology and AI and exobiology and the seek for alien life. All of this stuff are, collectively, asking what are literally the widespread threads of being an agent — it doesn’t matter what your origin story, whether or not you had been designed or advanced or engineered, or whether or not you had been product of squishy proteins, or whether or not you had been product of silicon or one thing else.” — Dr. Michael Levin
“If you happen to’re like a five-year-old and also you do this factor the place you retain asking, “However why? However why?” If you happen to preserve asking “However why?” lengthy sufficient, finally you all the time find yourself within the math division.” — Dr. Michael Levin
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