Uploaded July 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 days ago
Johannes Jaeger on the cyborg myth, agency in living systems, and what makes biological organisms fundamentally different from machines and AI.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/241
Patreon (full episodes, archive, Discord, more): patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
Music by @dunovank
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
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Johannes Jaeger is Associate Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. He's also a freelance researcher, a philosopher, and an educator. He's here today to educate us about some of the fundamental differences between living organisms and machines, like AI, and why we should care about those differences. We discuss his paper The Cyborg Myth, an argument for why we can't seamlessly replace ourselves with machine parts over time. We talk about judgment and relevance realization as a fundamental difference between AI and living organisms -the ability to judge what is a relevant problem to solve in the first place, assuming intelligence is about problem solving. We also discuss
what agency is in living systems, and why AI agents are something completely different. I think you get the recurring theme here. Yogi is writing a book called Beyond the Age of Machines, which he is a work in progress and you can read it as he writes it on his expanding possibilities website
0:00 - Intro
7:11 - The cyborg myth
15:16 - Judgment
24:22 - Consciousness
28:56 - Agency
36:40 - Relevance realization and energy efficiency
46:44 - Metabolism as a metaphor
1:00:39 - Robert Rosen
1:06:20 - Conceptual engineering
1:12:55 - Dynamics and computation
1:23:07 - Agency book
Johannes Jaeger on the cyborg myth, agency in living systems, and what makes biological organisms fundamentally different from machines and AI.
Show notes: braininspired.co/podcast/241
Patreon (full episodes, archive, Discord, more): patreon.com/braininspired
Apple podcasts: itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/brain-inspired/id1428880766?mt=2
Spotify: open.spotify.com/show/2UZj8c8Ap5oc2gh2rJxLLe
Music by @dunovank
The Transmitter is an online publication that aims to deliver useful information, insights and tools to build bridges across neuroscience and advance research. Visit thetransmitter.org to explore the latest neuroscience news and perspectives, written by journalists and scientists.
Read more about our partnership: thetransmitter.org/partners
Sign up for the “Brain Inspired” email alerts to be notified every time a new “Brain Inspired” episode is released: thetransmitter.org/newsletters
To explore more neuroscience news and perspectives, visit thetransmitter.org.
Johannes Jaeger is Associate Faculty at the Complexity Science Hub in Vienna. He's also a freelance researcher, a philosopher, and an educator. He's here today to educate us about some of the fundamental differences between living organisms and machines, like AI, and why we should care about those differences. We discuss his paper The Cyborg Myth, an argument for why we can't seamlessly replace ourselves with machine parts over time. We talk about judgment and relevance realization as a fundamental difference between AI and living organisms -the ability to judge what is a relevant problem to solve in the first place, assuming intelligence is about problem solving. We also discuss
what agency is in living systems, and why AI agents are something completely different. I think you get the recurring theme here. Yogi is writing a book called Beyond the Age of Machines, which he is a work in progress and you can read it as he writes it on his expanding possibilities website
0:00 - Intro
7:11 - The cyborg myth
15:16 - Judgment
24:22 - Consciousness
28:56 - Agency
36:40 - Relevance realization and energy efficiency
46:44 - Metabolism as a metaphor
1:00:39 - Robert Rosen
1:06:20 - Conceptual engineering
1:12:55 - Dynamics and computation
1:23:07 - Agency book
