Wait but Why? The Superintelligence Road | Tim Urban | Talks at Google

Tim Urban has become one of the Internet’s most popular writers. With wry stick-figure illustrations and occasionally epic prose on everything from procrastination to artificial intelligence, Urban's blog, Wait But Why, has garnered millions of unique page views, thousands of patrons and famous fans like Elon Musk. Urban has previously written long form posts on The Road to Superintelligence, and his recent TED talk has more than 6 million views. Tim speaks to his blog Wait but Why and his writing on the impact of artificial intelligence.

This talk was presented for Google's Singularity Network and hosted by John Bracaglia.

[tanys]

I saw this suggested after the Ted Talk about procrastination for the second time.

[SidV]

It's neat that such an entertaining writer also happens to be a pretty entertaining extemporaneous speaker

[proudmom]

His knack for putting things in laymen's terms & comedic touch is entertaining and informative!

[mattyb]

He's the coolest guy! Can't believe I didn't know about him until now. I guess I have some amazing new reading material to explore.

[wen]

Because I saw his Ted Talk, I am wondering if the bags under his eyes come because he procrastinated studying for this talk ... ^^"

[MustafaAhmed-phfm]

Glad I ended up watching this Talk, just kind of diverged from a time/duplex theory rant and found myself here.
Very interesting stuff

[burninhell]

I think that the idea at 12:50 was derived from the field of computation theory.
Turing's completeness/universality is a term used to label whether a computing machine is primitive or it can compute anything which can be computed. Of course our current computers are better than the ones from 40 years ago but in principle they are on the same level of computability, the only difference is the speed of the computations.
There probably does not even exist a higher level which could be achieved than the turing's completness(quantum computers are just faster at certain things aren't they?). And that I think is analogous to the idea that the human intelligence has crossed the border of understanding beyond which the higher intelligence is only faster.

[shredderspencer]

The subtitle is not sync with the video. Could you please solve it?

[PianoMastR]

You can tell while he was answering that last question that his brain was just forcefully shutting off and needing rest.

[britneyfierce]

The difference between Animals and Humans when it comes to understanding very complicated things, is that we can imagine them. We might not understand it but we can shape an idea or picture of it inside our heads. We can form some sort of scenario that makes sense to us, even if the topic is completely foreign.

[VZitSeV]

Maybe one of the most interesting 51 minutes I have ever spent haha.

[terascienceoficial]

Guys, the english subtitles are not synched. I´m surprised, it´s a Google video.

[jrr]

I'm going to go ahead and drag the level of deep intelligent discussion in this comment section way down and just say: Tim, can we be best friends? ha! I'm a writer myself, and I love the topics and the way you deliver them. Science is awesome, but due to the soul crushing boring way it normally is presented, not enough people get to enjoy the fantastic world of geekdom. Thank you for the work you do. And also, lets be best buddies, OK?

[maximkazhenkov]

5 months later, and we're still waiting on that VR post...

[arupmullick]

Tim should write on the BlockChain and Cryptocurrencies next

[sakshimahajan]

wanted to watch but apparently sub are not in sync and without subtitles I cannot understand due to different accent

[georgethomas]

This conversation neglected the most important topic: What is Artificial Intelligence? How can we discus a topic that we don't define?

[ozmuzo]

He is like a nerdy Harvey Specter in a good way.

[qwertyqart]

Star Trek TNG episode Neutral Zone, they recover 3 human from cryogenic stasis. I remember, those folks didn't had fun time adapting with 24th century world. hillbilly got bored without tv and booze and so did Wall Street guy who could get to his bank and attorney...

[thebookwasbetter]

He needs to button that. Video needs an age restriction.