Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)
Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

Machine Learning Street Talk (MLST)

TechnologyEnglish
Welcome! We engage in fascinating discussions with pre-eminent figures in the AI field. Our flagship show covers current affairs in AI, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind with in-depth analysis. Our approach is unrivalled in terms of scope and rigour – we believe in intellectual diversity in AI, and we touch on all of the main ideas in the field with the hype surgically removed. MLST is run by Tim Scarfe, Ph.D (https://www.linkedin.com/in/ecsquizor/) and features regular appearances from MIT Doctor of Philosophy Keith Duggar (https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-keith-duggar/).
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Evolution "Doesn't Need" Mutation - Blaise Agüera y Arcas
16 February 2026

Evolution "Doesn't Need" Mutation - Blaise Agüera y Arcas

What if life itself is just a really sophisticated computer program that wrote itself into existence?Blaise Agüera y Arcas presenting at ALife 2025 — the most technically detailed public walkthrough of the ideas in his *What is Life?* and *What is Intelligence?* books that we've come across.He covers the BFF experiments (self-replicating programs emerging spontaneously from random noise), the...
VAEs Are Energy-Based Models? [Dr. Jeff Beck]
25 January 2026

VAEs Are Energy-Based Models? [Dr. Jeff Beck]

What makes something truly *intelligent?* Is a rock an agent? Could a perfect simulation of your brain actually *be* you? In this fascinating conversation, Dr. Jeff Beck takes us on a journey through the philosophical and technical foundations of agency, intelligence, and the future of AI.Jeff doesn't hold back on the big questions. He argues that from a purely mathematical perspective, there's...
Abstraction & Idealization: AI's Plato Problem [Mazviita Chirimuuta]
23 January 2026

Abstraction & Idealization: AI's Plato Problem [Mazviita Chirimuuta]

Professor Mazviita Chirimuuta joins us for a fascinating deep dive into the philosophy of neuroscience and what it really means to understand the mind.*What can neuroscience actually tell us about how the mind works?* In this thought-provoking conversation, we explore the hidden assumptions behind computational theories of the brain, the limits of scientific abstraction, and why the question of...
Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION]
23 January 2026

Why Every Brain Metaphor in History Has Been Wrong [SPECIAL EDITION]

What if everything we think we know about the brain is just a really good metaphor that we forgot was a metaphor?This episode takes you on a journey through the history of scientific simplification, from a young Karl Friston watching wood lice in his garden to the bold claims that your mind is literally software running on biological hardware.We bring together some of the most brilliant minds...
Bayesian Brain, Scientific Method, and Models [Dr. Jeff Beck]
31 December 2025

Bayesian Brain, Scientific Method, and Models [Dr. Jeff Beck]

Dr. Jeff Beck, mathematician turned computational neuroscientist, joins us for a fascinating deep dive into why the future of AI might look less like ChatGPT and more like your own brain.**SPONSOR MESSAGES START**—Prolific - Quality data. From real people. For faster breakthroughs.https://www.prolific.com/?utm_source=mlst—**END***What if the key to building truly intelligent machines isn't bigger...
Your Brain is Running a Simulation Right Now [Max Bennett]
30 December 2025

Your Brain is Running a Simulation Right Now [Max Bennett]

Tim sits down with Max Bennett to explore how our brains evolved over 600 million years—and what that means for understanding both human intelligence and AI.Max isn't a neuroscientist by training. He's a tech entrepreneur who got curious, started reading, and ended up weaving together three fields that rarely talk to each other: comparative psychology (what different animals can actually do),...
The 3 Laws of Knowledge [César Hidalgo]
27 December 2025

The 3 Laws of Knowledge [César Hidalgo]

César Hidalgo has spent years trying to answer a deceptively simple question: What is knowledge, and why is it so hard to move around?We all have this intuition that knowledge is just... information. Write it down in a book, upload it to GitHub, train an AI on it—done. But César argues that's completely wrong. Knowledge isn't a thing you can copy and paste. It's more like a living organism that...
"I Desperately Want To Live In The Matrix" - Dr. Mike Israetel
24 December 2025

"I Desperately Want To Live In The Matrix" - Dr. Mike Israetel

This is a lively, no-holds-barred debate about whether AI can truly be intelligent, conscious, or understand anything at all — and what happens when (or if) machines become smarter than us.Dr. Mike Israetel is a sports scientist, entrepreneur, and co-founder of RP Strength (a fitness company). He describes himself as a "dilettante" in AI but brings a fascinating outsider's perspective.Jared...
Making deep learning perform real algorithms with Category Theory (Andrew Dudzik, Petar Velichkovich, Taco Cohen, Bruno Gavranović, Paul Lessard)
22 December 2025

Making deep learning perform real algorithms with Category Theory (Andrew Dudzik, Petar Velichkovich, Taco Cohen, Bruno Gavranović, Paul Lessard)

We often think of Large Language Models (LLMs) as all-knowing, but as the team reveals, they still struggle with the logic of a second-grader. Why can’t ChatGPT reliably add large numbers? Why does it "hallucinate" the laws of physics? The answer lies in the architecture. This episode explores how *Category Theory* —an ultra-abstract branch of mathematics—could provide the "Periodic Table" for...
Are AI Benchmarks Telling The Full Story? [SPONSORED] (Andrew Gordon and Nora Petrova - Prolific)
20 December 2025

Are AI Benchmarks Telling The Full Story? [SPONSORED] (Andrew Gordon and Nora Petrova - Prolific)

Is a car that wins a Formula 1 race the best choice for your morning commute? Probably not. In this sponsored deep dive with Prolific, we explore why the same logic applies to Artificial Intelligence. While models are currently shattering records on technical exams, they often fail the most important test of all: **the human experience.**Why High Benchmark Scores Don’t Mean Better AIJoining us...