Kind: captions
Language: en
today we're going to try something
different we're going to try a
conversation we have Lisa Feldman
Barrett with us she is a university
distinguished professor of psychology at
Northeastern University director of the
interdisciplinary affective Science
Laboratory author of the new amazing
book how emotions are made the secret
life of the brain she studies emotion
human emotion from social psychological
cognitive science and neuroscience
perspectives and so I think our
conversation may help us gain intuition
about how we instill emotional life into
future artificial intelligence systems
as Josh Tenenbaum gave you a shout out
on Tuesday and said that if you want to
understand how to create artificial
general intelligence systems from an
engineering perspective we should study
the human brain so with that let's have
some fun let me start with the curveball
to conjure up an image of emotion have
you ever cried while watching a movie
that you remember and what movie was it
I've cried during lots of movies
let me think the last time I cried
actually here's an interesting thing
when I'm speaking about when I'm giving
an academic talk I sometimes will talk
about a study that we did where we had
people watch films and we have them
watch the most evocative clips of films
and there's several clips that are
really powerful and
a couple of them every time I talk about
them I'm gonna try not to cry now every
time I talk about them I'm describing
for the audience what subjects are
seeing one of the clips is from a movie
called Sophie's Choice does anyone know
this film raise your hand if you know
this film so we show this is a film
about a woman who is forced in a
concentration camp to choose which of
her children will die in the gas
chambers and so I'm already you know
like if you were if I had a heart rate
monitor and respiration monitor you
would see them like it's a really
powerful scene Meryl Streep is Sophie
and it's very very evocative we have we
also show there's a scene from a film
with Susan Sarandon
who is dying of breast cancer and she
has to tell her 12 year old daughter
that she's dying
so there's another scene also that um
that I find very compelling and you use
these scenes to listen to motion as part
of experiments we do yeah and in fact I
was just giving a presentation to the
Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts
on implicit bias and to start the you
know they want to understand the
neuroscience of implicit bias and
whether or not they should be crafting
jury instructions for juries to be aware
of implicit bias and to open the
discussion I showed them a clip from a
film that was filmed I you know almost
20 years ago actually called a time to
kill a scene where Matthew McConaughey
is this kind of he's his closing
statements in a case where he is
defending an african-american man who
murdered two European American men who
raped his twelve-year-old daughter and
so the scene is he's this completely
pathetic lawyer until the end when he
masters this fantastic defense basically
of this man on trial for you know
basically avenging his daughter's death
and that one I hadn't seen that for 20
years that film and it brought me to
tears actually it's just a really
powerful powerful scene and it's it just
really punches you in the stomach you
just can't help but just experience the
weight of racism in that in that room
and the brilliance of the closing
argument to sort of puncture through it
basically right
okay so experience so one of the things
you talk a lot and you're working in
your book is the difference in the
experience of emotion the expression of
emotion so what our what's our biggest
misconception about emotion for folks
who haven't considered
have only considered emotions at a
surface level I would say one common
misconception is that you can look at
someone's face and read their emotion
the way you read words on a page that
everyone around the world when they're
feeling angry they scowl when they're
feeling happy they smile when they're
feeling sad that they frown the way that
I'm saying it sounds preposterous and it
is preposterous
but unfortunately that is actually what
people a lot of people believe and tech
companies around the world spend
tremendous amounts of money and you know
in the investment of some of the most
creative people on this planet trying to
build a motion detection systems when
really what they're building our
excellent systems for reading facial
movements which have no intrinsic
emotional meaning
I mean sometimes facial movements
communicate emotion but many times they
don't so people scowl for many reasons
they scowl when they're concentrating
they scowl sometimes when they're sad
they even can scowl when they're happy
people smile when they're angry they
smile when they're sad they don't just
smile when they're happy they sometimes
smile to indicate to send commute you
know a social message that has something
to do with emotion and so the idea that
there's one Universal facial expression
for example for each emotion is just
there's no strong scientific evidence
for that claim so how is emotion created
them because we nevertheless feel like
we're observing emotional we're
communicating with others so how does
emotion the creation of emotion change
in the presence of others the does the
audience change the display of emotion
is that essentially the message
well emotions are not displayed I would
say right so basically you and I are
having conversation right now
and part of what you know my brain is
doing is it's guessing make making
educated guesses about what your facial
movements mean so right now you have a
slight smile on your face not exactly a
smirk but and so you know say Russian by
the way so we're not allowed to show any
emotion you know I have a friend of mine
who is Russian who told me and she when
she moved to this country actually I've
had several friends tell me this that
their cheeks hurt for a year for how
much smiling they had to do I have also
a friend from the Netherlands who moved
here who told me the same thing her face
ached for how much smiling she did and
in Bulgaria they haven't apparently like
a name for you know the pervasive
American smile kind of like a not
flattering name for how much Americans
smile but basically you when you look at
someone's face you're making a guess
about how they feel and although you
yourself are focused on their face to
you it feels as if that's where all the
information is your brain is actually
taking in the entire sensory array so
it's taking in also you know the sound
of the person's voice and the person's
body posture and the dynamic temporal
changes in all of those signals to make
sense of things it's not you're not
really the face is not a lighthouse it's
not a beacon that just displays
somebody's internal state in an
obligatory way nevertheless there's some
signal there of course and so what are
what would you say as far as I
understand there's no good answer yet
from sciences what are the basic
building blocks of emotion well I
wouldn't say that there's no good answer
from science I would say scientists
disagree I think it's very clear what
the building plugs are
but you know in one way or another if
you look back all the way to ancient
Greece you can see that there are two
kinds of views of emotion that have been
battling it out for millennia one is the
idea that you have I will give you the
modern versions of these views but they
really do have a very long history one
is the idea that you are born with
circuits in your brain that are pre what
you know kind of pre-wired for emotion
so that everybody around the world is
born with an anger circuit a fear
circuit a sadness circuit a happiness
circuit some other circuits too you have
them we all have them all neurotypical
brains have them and actually other
animals have them too and the idea is
that when you know one of these circuits
is triggered you have an emotional
response which is obligatory so you have
a very stereotypic
your breathing changes in a stereotypic
way your you know heart rate changes
your the chemicals in your body change
in a particular way you make a
particular facial expression and you are
have a propensity to make a particular
action like you you know attack and
anger and you run in fear or you freeze
in fear and then there's another view
which says well there are some basic
kind of ingredients or building blocks
that the human mind or the human brain
now people talk about the brain now
there are some basic ingredients that
your brain uses and it uses them to make
every kind of mental event that you
experience and every action that you
take the recipes are what are unique the
ingredients are common right just like
you can take flour and water and salt
and you can make a whole bunch of
different recipes with them some of
which aren't even food like glue in a
similar way the idea is that your brain
has some kind of all-purpose capacities
and it can it puts these ingredients
together and it makes emotion as you
need them on the spot and you don't have
one anger you have a whole repertoire of
anger
you don't have one sadness you have a
whole repertoire of sadness and if you
grow up in a culture that has no concept
for sadness you don't experience sadness
and you don't perceive sadness because
your brain becomes wired to make
whatever mental events that are exist in
your particular culture so for
artificial intelligence systems the idea
of emotional intelligence is really
difficult and it seems like it's an
important thing to try to instill so for
human beings where do you see the
importance on the priority list of what
makes us human where does emotion sit I
usually think that's the wrong question
to ask because no I mean I think I think
people constantly ask that question but
I don't think it's the right question to
ask because you know some cultures in
our on our planet don't even have a
concept for emotion and people don't
while they experience what I'm going to
refer to as in scientific terms we call
effect which is our simple feelings of
feeling pleasant or unpleasant or
feeling worked up or calm or comfortable
or discs or you know having discomfort
these are feelings that come directly
from the internal state of the physical
systems in your body not everybody makes
emotions out of those feelings and in
fact we often don't make emotions out of
this way so those feelings the way to
think about it is that your brain comes
wired to regulate your body actually
sort of take that back you your brain
comes wired when you're born your brain
comes wired with the potential to
regulate your body infants actually
don't regulate their own nervous systems
very well they can't put themselves to
sleep they can't calm themselves down
they can't regulate their own
temperature that's what they need
caregivers for and as caregivers
regulate the nervous systems of their
infants that wires the infant's brain
right so infant little infant brains
aren't born like little miniature adult
brains they're born at waiting for a set
of wiring instructions from the world
and they wire themselves to the physical
and social
realities that they grow in and as they
learn to do this they experience these
simple feelings that you know a feeling
Pleasant or unpleasant feeling worked up
or feeling calm these are kind of like
barometer readings in a way they're very
simple and they lack a lot of detail
because of how we're wired and we have
to make sense of them and the way that a
culture makes sense of them is not
always about emotion so I would say you
know in our culture when we lose
something significant like a loved one
we feel sad into heat intuition people
feel sick they they have an illness it's
not sadness a hundred or two hundred
years ago there was an emotion called
nostalgia which killed people was
thought to kill people after you know
for example after serving in World War
one we would now call that depression
it's not just a matter of changing the
label of something it's actually the
formation of the experience is very
different so if you want to build an
intelligent agent
I don't think emotion is what you need
to endow it with you need to endow it
with these basic ingredients that it can
use to make whatever experiences or
guide whatever actions make whatever
States or guide whatever actions are
relevant to the situations that it's in
that will be different if it's an
American or a British or a Western
urbanized environment than say if you
were to go to Tanzania and steady
you know the HUD's ax who are hunting
and gathering since that culture since
the Pleistocene so do you have words or
human interpretable labels on these
basic ingredients that we can understand
so I mean I think the first thing to
understand is that when we think about
building an intelligent agent we think
about endowing the agent with cognition
or with emotion or with the ability to
COO you
to perceive things in the world because
as humans that those are these are the
things that are really important to us
especially in our culture thinking
feeling seeing and other cultures you
know they have different ways of parsing
things but the truth is that your brain
did not evolve so that you could think
and feel and see it evolved brains
evolved to control bodies brains evolved
so that they could control the various
systems of the body as creatures move
around in order to gain resources like
food and water and a brain has to figure
out how much resources to expend on
getting additional resources now that
may sound really trivial but it turns
out it's actually really hard and
scientists actually haven't really
figured out completely how brains do
this I mean what's really interesting to
me is that if you look for example at
computer vision try to figure out you
know how how to make an agent see that's
a pretty much solved problem not
completely it's a pretty much solved
problem the basics are solved it's your
perception problems yeah the peer
perception problem however if you want
to create an agent that just reaches out
smoothly grabs a glass and brings it
into the body to drink that problem is
not solved something is simple as
movement which we think of as this
really basic thing like oh it's so
trivial all animals can do it is
actually the heart at one of the hardest
problems to solve and the brains
basically I mean there's a whole story
here about evolution which has nothing
to do with having a lizard brain which
is wrapped in you know a cognitive brain
or anything like that that's a reference
to the Trion brain which a lot of people
believe it's a way of thinking about
brain evolution instead what we what
seems to be the case is that as bodies
got larger
and there were more systems because the
nish of the animal the environment the
animal got bigger and bigger and bigger
brains also had to get bigger but they
had to get bigger to a point with some
constraints like they have to be you
have to keep metabolic costs down it's
really important if you don't you know
creatures get sick and die and we can
talk about what that means in terms of
depression or metabolic illnesses or
what-have-you but so what are the basic
ingredients well one of the basic
ingredients is that your brain is
controlling your body all the time
whether you feel it or not whether
you're thinking about it or not whether
you're asleep or awake certain parts of
your brain are always very active all
the time even when you're sleeping or
else you'd be dead and those parts of
the brain that are controlling your
heart and your lungs and your immune
system and all of those regions that are
controlling the systems of your body are
also helping your brain to represent the
sensory consequences of those changes in
your body which you don't feel directly
you don't feel your heart beating most
of the time you don't feel your lungs
expanding most of the time and there's a
really good reason why we are all wired
not to feel those things and that is
you'd never pay attention to anything
outside in the world ever again if you
could feel every little movement that
was going on inside your body so your
brain represents those as a summary
these kind of simple summary feelings
you feel good you feel bad you feel
great
you feel like you feel really
jittery you feel really calm and these
feelings are not emotions they sometimes
get your brain can make them into
emotions but they're with you every
waking moment of your life there are
properties
consciousness in the way that lightness
and darkness is a property of vision and
sometimes we make them into emotions
when they're vit when we have a big
change in our heart rate or a big change
in our in our breathing rate or a big
change in our temperature or a big surge
of glucose we might the brain might make
a motion out of those changes those very
strong changes which you will feel as
really feeling unpleasant or really
feeling Pleasant but your brain might
also make hunger or your brain might
make an instance of a physical sensation
like nausea or your brain might even
make a perception of the world like
that's a nice guy that guy is an
this is a really delicious drink that's
a beautiful painting those are also
moments where these simple feelings
which we call effect are very strong so
effect is a basic ingredient there are
others that I could talk about too it's
not the only one but one of the things I
think that that sometimes people who are
studying to build AI systems don't
realize is that the brain its
fundamental job is to keep your body
alive and well and if you don't have
some kind of body to regulate with
effective feelings that come from that
regulation or something like that it's
you're kind of gonna be out of luck I
think in rendering something that looks
more something that seems more human
right so maybe you can elaborate like in
the book sapiens that we as human beings
are really good on mass as a thousands
millions of people together believing
something even if it's not true so
while scientifically sort of from a
neuroscience perspective it may be very
true that emotions aren't real I didn't
think real but I said they're not there
there isn't so interesting you finished
yeah yeah so what I'm trying to say is
also from AI perspective is they become
these trivial ideas of mapping a smile
to being happy and these kind of trivial
ideas become real to us through
Hollywood through cultural spreading of
information and we start to believe this
and therefore it becomes real
innocent in in in as much as anything is
real about our cult our perception
together so it's really important
scientifically the ideas that you're
presenting but does that mean there's
just because our brain doesn't feel
those explicit emotions does I mean
they're not real I didn't say we don't
feel explicit emotions so I want to be
really clear about this because it's an
interesting this you know this sum this
inference it's an interesting inference
that people often make and so but it's
it's a mistake and it's a mistake that
betrays a certain kind of thinking that
we do in this culture and is it's the
mistake of the following sort so when I
say there is no facial expression that
is diagnostic of a single emotion that
doesn't mean that people don't express
emotion they certainly do express
emotion they just don't you know when
when they're in a state of anger in a
state of sadness or in a state of awe
their faces don't do one thing when I
say well your body can do many things
when you're angry or when you're sad or
but let's take anger your heart rate can
go up it can go down it can stay the
same your breathing rate can go up it
can go down it can stay the same the
same pattern that you see in anger you
sometimes see in sadness and you
sometimes see in fear you sometimes even
see it in enthusiasm and in awe so does
that mean that emotions aren't real no
emotions are real but but sometimes
things are real because the physical
meaning of
the signal is endowed in the signal okay
so when your retina communicates to your
brain that you have that you are faced
with a wavelength of that you know is
600 you know 600 nanometers the signal
is endowed in your brain that's like in
the signal it's not like interpret you
don't interpret that it's 600 you know
nanometers it is 600 nanometers the
informations in the signal but when you
see read that information is not in the
signal your brain has added information
that isn't in the signal itself in a
sense your brain has imposed meaning on
a signal that the signal doesn't have on
its own they'll let me back up and give
a different example to make it a little
easier and then will reproach this
there's a there are some things that we
impose this is true almost of all
civilization right that we there are
some things that are real by virtue of
the fact that we agree that they exist
little pieces of paper serve as money or
now you know bitcoin or little pieces of
plastic or gold or diamonds or in the
past barley
salt shells rocks serve as currency have
value only because a group of people
agree that they have value so we impose
meaning on objects and once we all agree
that that object actually has value we
can trade it for material goods the
minute that some of us disagree that we
risk we withdraw our consent right the
things lose their value that's what
happened in the mortgage crisis that's
what happened in the tulip crisis in the
you know the Netherlands in the 17th
century or 16th century when it was
money currency
this because we impose meaning on
objects in the world physical objects in
the world that themselves don't have
that meaning on their own and they are
very real money is very real to people I
can stick somebody's head in a brain
scanner and show you that they
experience value in a very real way but
that that reality is constructed by the
fact that they have learned the value in
a particular culture well that's also
what we do with emotion we impose
meaning on certain physical signals that
they don't have by on their own and but
we have collective intentionality we all
agree that scowling is sometimes anger
and so it becomes anger in a very real
way just like little pieces of paper
become money so it sounds like you kind
of think about the expression R emotions
a kind of language as an extension of a
language that will learn in the same way
that we collectively agree in a language
ana lexicon and how we use that language
sure you could think of it that way I
mean everything everything in our
culture is almost everything
agriculture is a function of social
reality in this way we are citizens of a
country because we all agree that the
country exists more or less and wow you
guys barely even laughed at that okay
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what's a revolution a revolution is when
some people in the country withdraw
their consent they no longer agree right
a president has powers in a country
because we all agree that a president
has powers present only as powers by
virtue the fact that we all agree that
he or she has powers if we stop agreeing
the president doesn't have those powers
anymore it's very real people's lives
depend outcomes of real people depend on
these social realities that we build and
nurture and we why are these social
realities into the brains of our
children as we socialize them and when
people move from one culture to another
they have to learn the new social
reality that they are faced with and if
they don't they get very sick physically
because our ability to agree on what
something means actually is important
for regulating our nervous systems so
can you speak to that a little bit I
mean for machine learning methods for
systems that learn to behave based on a
certain reward it's important to kind of
have some ground truth and and learn so
how do it sounds like the expression of
emotion is learned can you talk about
how we learn to fit into our culture by
expressing emotion with our phase body
given the context given the rich what's
that process look like when does it
happen
how much sure well you know I mean yeah
I wrote a 400 page book so I'll try to
do it in like a couple sentences yeah so
so how does it how does an infant learn
anything so an infant's born and it
can't
do anything for itself it can't regulate
its own nervous system it can't keep its
body systems balanced this is a term
scientific term for this is alice stasis
alice stasis is your brain's ability to
predict what your body is going to need
before it needs it and tries to meet
those needs before they arise so an
example would be if you're gonna stand
up if your brain is gonna stand you up
it has to raise your blood pressure
before it stands you up if it doesn't
you'll fall that's costly from metabolic
standpoint it's costly you'll hurt
yourself so an infant's brain can't do
this very well an infant doesn't know
when to go to sleep and when to wake up
an infant doesn't can't feed itself
can't regulate its own temperature
someone else has to do it and when
someone does it the infant is learning
the infant is learning it's taking in
sights and sounds and smells and the
physical sensations from the body which
are comfortable and pleasant when the
infant Alice stasis is maintained so
right from the get-go an infant is
learning statistical learning you know
the capturing events including their
consequence for the infant's body
some people think babies are born you
know attached already to their
caregivers but they're not actually
infants don't even know what a caregiver
is it's just that the caregiver is there
constantly meeting that infant's needs
that's how infants start to learn now if
there are statistical regularities like
for example an infant is not born with
the ability to recognize a face as a
face but it learns that in like the
first couple of days of life why because
human faces have some statistical
regularities to them right to eyes and
nose and a mouth kind of in the same
place most of the time so it learns
really quickly but here's the
interesting thing around three months of
age infants start to learn
what we call abstract categories they
start to learn that some things which
don't look the same or sound the same or
smell the same actually have the same
function and how do they learn this they
learn it with words so if you do an
experiment with a three month old three
months old okay and you say to that baby
very very intentionally look sweetie
this is a one and you put the web down
and it makes a noise like a beep and
then you say I'm like I don't have props
and then you see my wallet yeah okay and
then you say give me your wallet yeah
give me your wallet and then you say
look sweetie
this is a and you put the down
and it makes a beep if you say look
sweetie
this is a that infant expects that
object to beep why is that important
because in the real experiments this
might be yellow and squishy and tall and
this might be red and pointy and you
know hard and this might be you know so
lots of different perceptual features
but but the infant nose learns that the
word is inviting the infant to
understand that the function of those
very different physical signals are
actually the same similarly you can take
you know six objects that are exactly
identical in their physical features how
they sound how they smell what they feel
like what they look like and you can
name three of them with one word and
three of them with the other word and
the infant will understand that these
are actually different objects that
happens a little after you know not not
as early as three months
but the point is that when we talk all
the time we use words all the time what
do we do with infants we're constantly
pointing things out and labeling them
this is a dog this is a cat you're angry
this person's sad Oh mummys really happy
today oh you know mommy loves you
Oh daddy's really excited about this and
so on and so forth and infants learn
really really quickly words are
considered to be kind of invitations to
form abstract concepts that is the basis
of almost all of the you know mental
categories that we that that we mental
events that we experience we're
basically teaching children to form
these abstract categories not and that's
the basis of money and it's the basis of
rules that we have with each other and
what we expect from each other it's the
basis of a lot of the sort of functional
categories that we use in everyday life
we're impose meaning on sensory on
sensory arrays that those sensory arrays
in and of themselves don't necessarily
have they only have that meaning because
you and I both learn that that package
of sensory array means something so when
I make that you can anticipate what will
happen next just because we've learned
those are they're wired into our brains
you know in our culture and when we go
to a different culture we have to learn
sometimes different packages yeah
different mappings so you're saying that
there's a few sources of sensory data
and a few building blocks inside us the
feelings of some kind that we learn to
then from an early that we've come born
with those or part of what your brain is
doing is it's trying to make sense of
the sensory array around it so from your
brains purse so from your brains
perspective just think about from your
brains perspective your brains
perspective it spends its entire life
trapped in a dark silent box
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Anna NASA makes sense of what's going on
around in the world so that knows what
to do to keep itself alive right and
well but it has to it has to know what
to do based on it has to know what
what's happening all around it only from
the effects that it receives through the
sensory systems of the body so a flash
of light
what's a flash of light it could be
anything what you know what's a look
like a siren a siren could be you know a
firetruck or it could be somebody's car
alarm went off or it could be a doorbell
or it could be right any particular
sensory cue could have multiple causes
so your brains trapped basically in your
skull and all it gets are the effects
the sensory effects of stuff that
happens in the world but it has to
figure out what those things are so that
it knows what to do so how does it do
that well it has something else that it
can draw on it has your past experiences
your brain basically is doesn't store
experiences from the past it can
reconstitute them in its wiring and
that's what it uses to guess at what
those sensory cues me of those sensory
changes me so in one situation a siren
means one thing in another situation it
means another a flash of light means one
thing in one situation and a different
thing in another so your brain is using
past experience to make guesses about
what these sensory changes me and so
that it knows what to do and it has the
same relationship to the sensory changes
in your body
what's an ache in your stomach well it
could be hunger it could be anger it
could be discussed it could be longing
it could be nausea it's not that there's
one ache in your stomach for nausea and
another ache in your stomach for hunger
there are many
aches in your stomach any different
feelings of achiness for nausea and many
different feelings of aching is for
hunger and sometimes they overlap so
your brain has to make the same kinds of
guesses about what's going on in your
body as it does about what the sensory
events mean in the world and that's
really what it's doing it's it's
guessing and making sense of the sensory
array so that it knows what to do next
and when it guesses wrong it takes in
that the you know the the sort of
information that it didn't predict well
which you know in psychology we have a
really fancy name for that we call it
learning your brain takes in the
information that it didn't predict and
so that it can predict better than the
next time to make sense of things the
next time so you kind of answered this a
little bit I'd like to elaborate on it
if you were to build a robot that
performs maybe passes the Turing test or
performs at the low bar level of instead
of myself here today it would be a robot
talking to you it'd be convincing as a
human how would you what kind of how
would you build that system in a sense
in paralleling the infant's what
essential aspect of the infant
experience do you think is important it
needs to well I mean I you know I don't
I'm not a computer scientist so but so
the way that I would say it is it needs
to have a body
these have something like physical
systems or an analogy to physical
systems it has to do something analogous
to a low stasis so whatwhat's sorry to
elaborate so what would be the goal for
the system you kind of mentioned
previously that the goal will be to for
the brain to just stabilize itself no
it's not that the brain is stabilized
though you know so people talk about
reward what is reward and machine
learning is pretty easy it's it's
something but
it's it's mathematical so it's there's
no philosophy to it you just
oh yeah there's philosophy to everything
right whether you admit it or not as a
different story right yeah so you wanted
to play a game of chess playing give
them go you wanted to pick up a water
bottle is uh okay but what is reward
existence dopamine is actually not
reward dopamine is effort dopamine is
necessary for effort it's not necessary
for reward
maybe it's commonly if you read the most
caught those up to date literature that
is what you'll see that it's actually
people can animals can find things
rewarding can be without without
dopamine actually but they they they
need to open to move they need dopamine
to encode fits and to learn information
so it's really for effort that is
required to work towards getting a
reward I would say and when the when a
brain an animal brain a human any kind
of animal brain miss predicts what the
reward will be that's what you see a
real surge of dopamine because it the
animal has to adjust its action but
reward is basically bringing the body
back into a low stasis it feels good
when that happens and people will and
animals will work tremendously hard to
have that happen so you know what is
motivation motivation is is expending
resources to get a reward so basically
if if you don't have something
like physical systems that have to be
kept in balance water I mean for humans
or for actually any living creature on
this planet even you know single-cell
organisms actually there's an analogy to
what we're talking about here to brains
but you know salt water glucose all
these systems have to be kept in balance
and they have to be kept in balance in a
very very efficient way and that's the
motivating so-called motivating force
really that's what that's what that's
what really brains are for so yeah and
that is the basis the consequence of
that regulation it are the basis of you
know effective feelings which are for
many many creatures on this planet a
property of consciousness ok so maybe if
it's ok we'll take some questions in the
audience but first let me ask the last
question as so I'm building on the robot
question how would you build the same
kind of robot that you would be able to
as a human being fall in love with well
you know people fall in love with their
cars they fall in love with they fall in
love with their blankets they fall in
love with their toys you know you don't
need MIT doesn't need much to fall in
love with something the question is will
it love you back
I would elaborate I think I think yeah I
think you're answering that love in the
way we're defining it loosely in poetry
and culture as a social construct and
its relative what I mean is sort of the
idea of monogamous law a long-term love
that we have deep connection with other
human beings that we have you're saying
you could do the same with a car like a
nice 69 Mustang are you telling me that
you you telling me that you've never you
know anyone who's like so in love with
their car that you okay now here's the
thing so one so here's the thing we we
are social animals okay what does that
mean what does it mean to be a social
animal it means that we regulate each
other's nervous systems so our brain my
brain isn't just regulating my nervous
system right now it's regulating yours
and actually it's regulating other other
people's in the audience too and vice
versa and why is that you know I mean
other animals do it too
we're just looking really good at it but
other animals like there are some
insects that are social species they
regulate each other's nervous systems
they do it with chemicals they do it
with smell primarily and a little bit
with touch like earwigs well you know
like they can actually I have this great
picture of there's like totally
disgusting looking little bug but it's
like you know cuddling it's a little
baby ugly little ugly baby bug - it's
adorable picture but you know what about
mammals like rats well they also use
chemicals like smell but they also use
touch and to some extent they also use
sound these hearing primates add vision
and as primates we do all weaves all of
those senses to regulate each other and
we also use something else words right
exactly and words the systems in our
brains that allow us to speak and allow
us to understand words are directly
connected to the parts of the brainstem
that control the body I don't mean like
they're a bunch of I mean monitor I mean
monosynaptic we connected so exactly the
same systems in your brain that are
important for you
to be able to understand language and to
speak are also directly directly
affecting the systems of your body and
that is why I can say something to
somebody I can speak to you and I can
have an impact on the nervous systems of
people all the way at the back of this
auditorium without they you know maybe
they can see me maybe they can't maybe
they can't hopefully they can't smell me
maybe they can hear me maybe they you
know but they can if they hear me speak
words I can affect their nervous systems
that's why a telephone works that's why
the telephone works to where you can
feel connected to someone just merely by
hearing their voice because the sound of
their voice has an effect on your
nervous system it can it can make you
breathe faster it can make you breathe
slower and the words also have an effect
because when I say a word like hmm I
don't know
when I say word like car that's a short
form I have a bunch of mental features
in my mind when I say the word car and I
say that word and that invokes those
similar mental features maybe not
identical but similar enough that
invokes it in your mind and your mind is
made by your brain so it invokes if I
just say the word car there are changes
in your motor system that would be
exactly the same or very close as if you
were actually in a car right so this is
something that we do and the fact we're
attachment comes from an infant to a
caregiver or or to lovers or to really
close friends comes from the ability
that we have to regulate each other's
nervous systems
and that is why when you don't have that
kind of attachment you die sooner on
average seven years sooner loneliness
kills I always tell my daughter my
daughter's 19 years old I always tell
her you know breaking up when you break
up with someone it feels like it will
kill you but it won't
loneliness however will kill you it will
kill you on average seven years earlier
than it would if you didn't have an
attachment and that's because our
nervous systems you know as our bodies
got really complex through evolution and
our brains got bigger they could only
get so big there are constraints on how
big any brain can get that have to do
with you know birthing the infant but it
also has to do with the metabolic cost
of a brain your brain is really
expensive my brain really expensive
three pounds 20 percent of your
metabolic budget that's a lot and so
what did evolution do to solve this
problem well it couldn't make our brains
any bigger so it just entrained other
brains to help manage our nervous
systems so you bear the burden of other
people's Alice stasis and they bury your
the burden of yours not always at the
same time but that's what it means to
give people support when someone when
you're feeling horrible and somebody
Pat's you on the back or says nice words
to you or gives you a hug they are
physically having an effect on your body
that they are helping your body to
maintain a low stasis at a time when
your brain probably couldn't manage it
on its own and so the basis of love or
attachment is basically that it's the
ability to affect each other's nervous
systems in a positive way I always say
to people you know the best thing for a
nervous system a human nervous system is
another human and the worst thing for a
human nerve
system is another human because we're
social animals
well beautifully put so maybe a few
questions in the audience do you mind if
there's a there's microphones on both
sides
okay sure hi thanks for talking here
you're saying cool stuff not a question
I'll take it it's all right so I was
thinking about what you're saying about
reward and I'm wondering first of all is
he described as a return to a lo stasis
is reward in any way linked to the and
just like the reinforcement of pathways
or behavior so that the next time you
get that stimulus you will you'll
respond in the same way and I'm also
wondering about the link between the
desire for aloe stasis and the need for
novelty and then he did like a great
it's a really great question
so um the second question is so much
more interesting than the first actually
so let me say this that that there is a
need for novelty the need differs right
for different people I will say novelty
so first of all the we can think about
the need for novelty in a really
proximal way we can think about it in a
really distal way like but basically
when I say that a brain is organized or
engineered for metabolic efficiency that
doesn't mean that the goal is to to only
ever have your prediction you know your
brains predicting all the time to always
have its predictions completely perfect
so you'll never learn nothing because
you'll be bored out of your mind right
and also you know humans like to
and their niche they like to explore so
it's a constant balance between what
biologists would call exploitation and
exploration novelty is is um it's
exciting it there's actually an increase
in norepinephrine an increase in arousal
it feels really exciting but it's also
super costly novelty requires usually
that you learn something new that means
that's actually really metabolically
expensive thing to do and it also means
usually that you're moving your body
around which is also metabolically
expensive thing to do so the need for
novelty is balanced by its cost and
different nervous systems can bear
different amounts of cost so for example
if you take two rats that are somewhat
genetically you know moderate like
they've been genetically bred one is
bred when you stick it in a a novel cage
it just sits still and the other one
when you put it a novel cage it like
roams all over the place and it's just
you know it's going crazy kind of
exploring everything well the one that
sits still scientists might say oh
that's a nervous rat or that rats afraid
what is that rat doing the rat is not
moving and it's not encoding anything
because encoding something is expense
it's expensive
this rat on the other hand is roaming
all over the place moving a lot learning
a lot so it's encoding a lot spend spend
spend save save save spend spend spend
there are time there are differences
between people and there are also
differences between times in your life
where moments where you feel like you
have a little bit to spend and other
moments where you feel like you really
have to conserve when I talk to the
public I always talk about I don't use
the word out of stasis it's just too
boring a word but I sort of do is sort
of explain it like a budget you know
like your brain is sort of like the
financial office of a company a company
has lots of offices it has to balance
the expenditures and revenues and it's
got to keep everything in balance so it
might take a little money here move
without office you know it's got to keep
everything in balance we're just always
trying to do is spend a little bit to
make a little bit more what happens when
it spends a little bit and it doesn't
get a revenue back there's no reward
what happens well it goes into the read
a little bit so what do you do when
something goes into the read well you
might do something risky you might
actually spend a lot to try to really
may you know not just make back your
deficit but actually make a lot that
would be novelty that would be move and
spent moving and encode or you might
reduce your spending you might say well
I'm gonna save a little bit now that
would be I'm not gonna move too much I'm
not gonna spend too much I'm not gonna
encode anything so I certainly don't
mean to suggest to you that that novelty
is unimportant or that learning is
unimportant and it's a really important
question about what is there any
intrinsic value to novelty over and
above the rewards that it would give you
an analysis at ik sense but it is really
clear to me that the extent to which you
any nervous system will embrace novelty
and even seek it pretty much depends on
the allostatic state of that of that
system if you don't have a lot to spend
and you're already in the red you if you
at a certain point if you continue to
spend when you're in the red you go
bankrupt what that means in human terms
is you get depressed it means that your
your brain makes you fatigued so you
can't move and it makes you locks you in
so you stop paying attention to anything
going on around you in the world and
your experience is just what's in your
head that that's actually what
depression is so that makes me think of
aloe stasis more of as a range than as a
zero point it's not homeostasis it's
Alice stasis it's a range for sure but
we answer some other questions and maybe
I'll get back to your first question if
there's time so if I understand your
argument correctly if we're going to
make anything like a general
intelligence something
approaching not like like a human it
needs to be an embodied system well I
want to be careful about saying that
because for two reasons one because in
biology there is this concept of
degeneracy just a sucky word but it's a
great concept and it means that there's
more than one way to skin a cat
basically you want a functional outcome
there are many ways to get to that
functional outcome so genes for example
you know there are a lot of
characteristics that are heritable but
we don't know the genes for them and the
reason why is that there isn't one set
of genes there are like multiple sets of
genes that can give you actually the
same outcome so what I want to say is
that you need something akin to a body
it doesn't actually have to be a body I
imagine there are lots of ways that you
could implement a system you could
implement an agent that has multiple
systems of some sort that it has to
manage but my point is that one thing
about that is very important that we
continually miss when we think about
building an agent with mental states we
continually miss the fact that it has a
body it has about humans have bodies and
that's the brains primary task and our
most fundamental feelings come from the
physical changes in our body even though
we don't normally experience it that way
that actually is how it is if you just
look at the wiring of the brain if you
just see it so it seems to me that if
you want to build an agent that is human
like it has to have something like a
body doesn't have to maybe be a body and
I'm sure there are many clever ways that
you could implement something like a
body without it actually being a body if
you know if you understand what I mean
so Amazon Alexa could be there if we
just gave it some sort of I don't know
representation of mental states or some
kind of a low static yeah target sure
here's just say one other thing because
I think it's really important all a
brain requires is that you at some point
had a body you know right so basically
being this is what phantom limb pain is
this is what chronic pain is this is
what happened you know if at some point
you cease to get information from your
body anymore your brain still can
simulate still can reinstate the sensory
patterns that once came from the body
and that's what's required right at some
point the body isn't really needed
anymore yeah I think we're here yeah so
emotions in humans Lucas are they
implemented by a bunch of hacks so
there's a bunch of chemicals that go
into your brain those oxytocin serotonin
a whole bunch of biochemical things that
diffuse around in the fluids in your
brain that affect your emotional state
and that seems like a Hank that we've
inherited over millions of years from
premature ancestors and if you look at
the machine learning world we can do a
bunch of similar things with you on that
so you can increase the activation
thresholds on a large scale you have
changed the map noise going into the
system you can do a bunch of similar
things but you don't have to rely on
fluids being kind of cleaned slowly by
glial cells things don't diffuse around
in and fluid in the system necessarily
seems like there's a lot more
flexibility so when you come to an
implementation there's not so many
constraints imposed by the evolutionary
history on the whole system and it seems
like that would make it work better so
when people are in negative emotional
states and they can't think straight
people can think actually quite well a
negative emotional state they don't tell
you so but they can play with crimes
they can do very nefarious things very
very effectively right so but the
general point I think is true even if
that example is not so emotions kind of
flood your nervous system without
emotions don't flood your nervousness
all right so som