A Brief History of Biological and Artificial Intelligence with Max Bennett

In this episode, Nathan sits down with Max Bennett, author of the book: A Brief History of Intelligence. They discuss the five major breakthroughs in evolution that resulted in human brains and cognition. They delve deeper into the workings of each breakthrough, the evolution of intelligence, and how AI can benefit from understanding these principles. If you need an ecommerce platform, check out our sponsor Shopify: https://shopify.com/cognitive for a $1/month trial period. We're hiring across the board at Turpentine and for Erik's personal team on other projects he's incubating. He's hiring a Chief of Staff, EA, Head of Special Projects, Investment Associate, and more. For a list of JDs, check out: eriktorenberg.com. LINKS: A Brief History of Intelligence: https://a.co/d/6VPWTf7 SPONSORS: The Brave search API can be used to assemble a data set to train your AI models and help with retrieval augmentation at the time of inference. All while remaining affordable with developer first pricing, integrating the Brave search API into your workflow translates to more ethical data sourcing and more human representative data sets. Try the Brave search API for free for up to 2000 queries per month at https://brave.com/api Omneky is an omnichannel creative generation platform that lets you launch hundreds of thousands of ad iterations that actually work customized across all platforms, with a click of a button. Omneky combines generative AI and real-time advertising data. Mention "Cog Rev" for 10% off www.omneky.com NetSuite has 25 years of providing financial software for all your business needs. More than 36,000 businesses have already upgraded to NetSuite by Oracle, gaining visibility and control over their financials, inventory, HR, eCommerce, and more. If you're looking for an ERP platform ✅ head to NetSuite: http://netsuite.com/cognitive and download your own customized KPI checklist. X/SOCIAL: @labenz (Nathan) @maxsbennett (Max) @CogRev_Podcast TIMESTAMPS: (00:00) Intro (06:00) Max's background on commercializing AI in technology (09:53) AI has taught us a lot of our intuitions are wrong (11:22) Why we're better off avoiding defining intelligence (14:38) The Five Breakthrough Model - steering, reinforcing, simulating, mentalizing, and speaking (15:43) Sponsor - Brave Search API | Shopify (18:20) The story of the first breakthrough - Steering (21:40) Evolution doesn't have forethought and every generation has to survive (23:05) The study of nematodes - how did this first brain emerge? (27:10) yet in bilaterians, but the idea is you classify things in the world into good and bad. (33:00) Netsuite by Oracle | Omneky (36:16) The story of the second breakthrough - Reinforcing (1:32:44) The story of the fourth breakthrough - Mentalizing (1:45:57) The story of the fourth breakthrough - Speaking (pls listen to the audio book / read the book) (1:46:46) How evolutionary paradigms will shape up in the future (1:55:03) A unified theory of value or moral patienthood that can be applied to the five breakthroughs (1:59:21) Wrap + Sponsor | Omneky This show is produced by Turpentine: a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering technology, business, and culture — all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We’re launching new shows every week, and we’re looking for industry-leading sponsors — if you think that might be you and your company, email us at [email protected].