Metawondering

September 2021

• The Graphical Model Zoo

  There are many ways to express complicated probability distributions. Some ways are more general than others.

  This post collates the sources I used to make the figure depicting the hierarchy of probabilistic graphical models. Some excerpts have been pasted verbatim, but others are edited for readability. Please let me know if you find any errors in the hierarchy.

  

• The Case for Cortical Computation as MCMC

  Epistemic status: Exploratory; low confidence. This is just a few informal notes on an idea whose plausibility was surprising to me.

April 2019

• The Thalamus: More than just Central Station

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Reinforcement Learning with the Basal Ganglia and prefrontal cortex

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Overviews: What, broadly speaking, is the brain computing?

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Motivation: why should we pay attention to the brain for AI?

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature

  Guide contents

  • Introduction (This page)
  • Motivation: why should we pay attention to the brain for AI?
  • Overviews: What, broadly speaking, is the brain computing?
  • The Cerebral Cortex: A Very Tangled Web
  • The Thalamus: More than just Central Station
  • The Hippocampus: A Less Tangled Web
  • Cortico-hippocampal interactions
  • Reinforcement Learning with the Basal Ganglia and prefrontal cortex
  • The Forebrain: Or, How I Learned Concepts in the Cortico-thalamo-basal ganglia-hippocampal system
  • The ‘Little Brain’, often forgotten: the Cerebellum
  • The Cerebello-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical system
  • Conclusions
    

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• The Hippocampus: A Less Tangled Web

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• The Forebrain: Or, How I Learned Concepts in the Cortico-thalamo-basal ganglia-hippocampal system

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Cortico-hippocampal Interactions

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• Systems Neuroscience for AI: Conclusions

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• The Cerebral Cortex: A Very Tangled Web

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• The ‘Little Brain’, often forgotten: The Cerebellum

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

• The Cerebello-basal ganglia-thalamo-cortical system

  This post is part of a series “Systems Neuroscience for AI: An Introductory Guide to the Literature”.

August 2018

• Some old predictions

  In the interest of having all my predictions linked on this site, here are some predictions made in the past on Facebook. Additionally, my metaculus profile is here.

October 2017

• An intervention to shape policy dialogue, communication, and AI research norms for AI safety

  The full article may be found on the original post.

March 2013

• Sonata for Unaccompanied Achilles

  One of my earlier pieces of writing, approx. March 2013. It was a lot of fun writing this, even if now I’d be more careful with the technical words used. Runner-up in the Dame Ivy Compton-Burnett Prize for Creative Writing (Pembroke College, Cambridge).