Dr. Philip Ball is a freelance science writer. He just wrote a book called "How Life Works", discussing the how the science of Biology has advanced in the last 20 years. We focus on the concept of Agency in particular. He trained as a chemist at the University of Oxford, and as a physicist at the University of Bristol. He worked previously at Nature for over 20 years, first as an editor for physical sciences and then as a consultant editor. His writings on science for the popular press have covered topical issues ranging from cosmology to the future of molecular biology. Philip is the author of many popular books on science, including H2O: A Biography of Water, Bright Earth: The Invention of Colour, The Music Instinct and Curiosity: How Science Became Interested in Everything. His book Critical Mass won the 2005 Aventis Prize for Science Books, while Serving the Reich was shortlisted for the Royal Society Winton Science Book Prize in 2014. This is one of Tim's personal favourite MLST shows, so we have designated it a special edition. Enjoy! Buy Philip's book "How Life Works" here: https://amzn.to/3vSmNqp TOC: 00:00:00 Outside interview 00:09:17 Nativism / capacities 00:11:50 Generative AI 00:17:59 Inscrutability and agency 00:22:06 Agency on creativity 00:26:38 Could we make an agential GPT-4? 00:31:06 If it agential if you tell the agents what to do 00:35:40 What is agency? 00:44:29 Are agents real 00:48:32 Causality and agency 00:54:40 Ghost in the machine / intelligibility 01:00:11 Multi scale / organisation view 01:04:05 Collective intelligence 01:09:00 Canalisation 01:13:36 Intelligence is specialised 01:16:29 No free lunch 01:18:19 Super intelligence 01:22:05 Mind is flat / confabulated goals 01:25:07 Is planning/goals explicit? 01:30:17 Sentience in LLMs 01:34:56 Are LLMs simulators? 01:40:04 Could LLMs feel? 01:49:33 Digital physics view 01:51:46 Agential vs nonagential AI 01:54:02 Bostrom thinks goals and intelligence are separate 02:05:41 Simulation sharing AI Transcript: https://docs.google.com/document/d/164FMAswgS9jAqxAaB5fkUtrJKMdq8rW7b94XgibvQ7Q/edit?usp=sharing Support MLST: Please support us on Patreon. We are entirely funded from Patreon donations right now. Patreon supports get private discord access, biweekly calls, early-access + exclusive content and lots more. https://patreon.com/mlst Donate: https://www.paypal.com/donate/?hosted_button_id=K2TYRVPBGXVNA If you would like to sponsor us, so we can tell your story - reach out on mlstreettalk at gmail