The Man Who Invented Modern AI (Before Everyone Else) — Jürgen Schmidhuber @MachineLearningStreetTalk
The Man Who Invented Modern AI (Before Everyone Else) — Jürgen Schmidhuber  @MachineLearningStreetTalk
Uploaded August 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 week ago
Jürgen Schmidhuber, the father of generative AI shares his groundbreaking work in deep learning and artificial intelligence. In this exclusive interview, he discusses the history of AI, some of his contributions to the field, and his vision for the future of intelligent machines. Schmidhuber offers unique insights into the exponential growth of technology and the potential impact of AI on humanity and the universe.

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TOC
00:00:00 Intro
00:03:38 Reasoning
00:13:09 Potential AI Breakthroughs Reducing Computation Needs
00:20:39 Memorization vs. Generalization in AI
00:25:19 Approach to the ARC Challenge
00:29:10 Perceptions of Chat GPT and AGI
00:58:45 Abstract Principles of Jurgen's Approach
01:04:17 Analogical Reasoning and Compression
01:05:48 Breakthroughs in 1991: the P, the G, and the T in ChatGPT and Generative AI
01:15:50 Use of LSTM in Language Models by Tech Giants
01:21:08 Neural Network Aspect Ratio Theory
01:26:53 Reinforcement Learning Without Explicit Teachers

Refs:
★ "Annotated History of Modern AI and Deep Learning" (2022 survey by Schmidhuber):
★ Chain Rule For Backward Credit Assignment (Leibniz, 1676)
★ First Neural Net / Linear Regression / Shallow Learning (Gauss & Legendre, circa 1800)
★ First 20th Century Pioneer of Practical AI (Quevedo, 1914)
★ First Recurrent NN (RNN) Architecture (Lenz, Ising, 1920-1925)
★ AI Theory: Fundamental Limitations of Computation and Computation-Based AI (Gödel, 1931-34)
★ Unpublished ideas about evolving RNNs (Turing, 1948)
★ Multilayer Feedforward NN Without Deep Learning (Rosenblatt, 1958)
★ First Published Learning RNNs (Amari and others, ~1972)
★ First Deep Learning (Ivakhnenko & Lapa, 1965)
★ Deep Learning by Stochastic Gradient Descent (Amari, 1967-68)
★ ReLUs (Fukushima, 1969)
★ Backpropagation (Linnainmaa, 1970); precursor (Kelley, 1960)
★ Backpropagation for NNs (Werbos, 1982)
★ First Deep Convolutional NN (Fukushima, 1979); later combined with Backprop (Waibel 1987, Zhang 1988).
★ Metalearning or Learning to Learn (Schmidhuber, 1987)
★ Generative Adversarial Networks / Artificial Curiosity / NN Online Planners (Schmidhuber, Feb 1990; see the G in Generative AI and ChatGPT)
★ NNs Learn to Generate Subgoals and Work on Command (Schmidhuber, April 1990)
★ NNs Learn to Program NNs: Unnormalized Linear Transformer (Schmidhuber, March 1991; see the T in ChatGPT)
★ Deep Learning by Self-Supervised Pre-Training. Distilling NNs (Schmidhuber, April 1991; see the P in ChatGPT)
★ Experiments with Pre-Training; Analysis of Vanishing/Exploding Gradients, Roots of Long Short-Term Memory / Highway Nets / ResNets (Hochreiter, June 1991, further developed 1999-2015 with other students of Schmidhuber)
★ LSTM journal paper (1997, most cited AI paper of the 20th century)
★ xLSTM (Hochreiter, 2024)
★ Reinforcement Learning Prompt Engineer for Abstract Reasoning and Planning (Schmidhuber 2015)
★ Mindstorms in Natural Language-Based Societies of Mind (2023 paper by Schmidhuber's team)
arxiv.org/abs/2305.17066
★ Bremermann's physical limit of computation (1982)

EXTERNAL LINKS
CogX 2018 - Professor Juergen Schmidhuber
youtube.com/watch?v=17shdT9-wuA
Discovering Neural Nets with Low Kolmogorov Complexity and High Generalization Capability (Neural Networks, 1997)
https://sferics.idsia.ch/pub/juergen/loconet.pdf
The paradox at the heart of mathematics: Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem - Marcus du Sautoy
youtube.com/watch?v=I4pQbo5MQOs
The Philosophy of Science - Hilary Putnam & Bryan Magee (1977)
youtube.com/watch?v=JJB2q8ufAgk
Optimal Ordered Problem Solver
arxiv.org/abs/cs/0207097
Levin's Universal Search from 1973
rjlipton.com/2011/03/14/levins-great-discoveries
https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/optimalsearch.html
On Learning to Think
arxiv.org/abs/1511.09249
Mindstorms in Natural Language-Based Societies of Mind

Untersuchungen zu dynamischen neuronalen Netzen
https://www.bioinf.jku.at/publications/older/3804.pdf
Evolutionary Principles in Self-Referential Learning
https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/diploma1987ocr.pdf
Hans-Joachim Bremermann
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bremermann%27s_limit
Highway Networks
arxiv.org/abs/1505.00387
https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/highway-networks.html
The principles of Deep Learning Theory
amzn.to/3WJtPaj
Understanding Deep Learning amzn.to/4doDk63
Discovering Problem Solutions with Low Kolmogorov Complexity and High Generalization Capability (ICML 1995)
https://sferics.idsia.ch/pub/juergen/icmlkolmogorov.pdf
"History of Modern AI and Deep Learning":
https://people.idsia.ch/~juergen/deep-learning-history.html
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The Man Who Invented Modern AI (Before Everyone Else) — Jürgen Schmidhuber

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