Ken Mogi bio, photos, and contact.

Ken Mogi is a neuroscientist, writer, and broadcaster based in Tokyo. Ken Mogi is a senior researcher at Sony Computer Science Laboratories, and a visiting and project professor at the University of Tokyo. He has a B.A. in Physics and Law, and Ph.D in Physics, from the University of Tokyo. He has done postdoctoral research in University of Cambridge, U.K. He has published more than 200 books in Japan covering popular science, essay, criticism, self-help, and novels. Ken Mogi published several bestsellers in Japan (with close to million copies sold). He was the first Japanese to give a talk at the TED main stage, in 2012 (Long Beach). 

Ken Mogi’s book on IKIGAI, published in 31 countries and in 29 languages, has become a global bestseller. Ken Mogi's second book, The Way of Nagomi came out in the U.K. in 2022 and in the U.S. in 2023. Ken Mogi has a life-long interest in understanding the origin of consciousness, with the focus on qualia and free will.

 

Contact: kenmogi2005qualia@gmail.com

 

Ken Mogi profile Photos (c) Itaru Hirama 2021

 

You can download large size files from the link below.

 

https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipMrTzWbdq3SKFl9QBDc4W0M5nHxozyyJJw5EYossNAi0CiEJLkaxkcn4w7_FoDS6Q?pli=1&key=NFpkOFpzQUdKd0ZwTjlXbkhqVXVaMk15NFBQUk5n

We don't have to cite Dostoevsky to call out the incredible shallowness of game theoretic thinking.

Born and raised in Japan, I am naturally aware of the destruction that nuclear weapons bring about, as exemplified by the tragedies in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. I would definitely like to see them abolished. I can see at the same time how difficult the process would be. Once the powers that be have such capabilities of mass destruction, it would be difficult to persuade them to abandon the weapons. British comedian Diane Morgan cried bitterly as the character Philomena Cunk when she learned that humanity has not abolished nuclear weapons. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DGrLUNpF7H4

Quite MAD, isn't it? We are so mad that we need comedy to face the reality.

We are not alone, and perhaps there have been experiments on the difficulty of abolishing nuclear weapons on the cosmic scale. When considering the Fermi Paradox, I always thought that the apparent absence of intelligent extraterrestrial life out there is due to the short life expectancy of any advanced civilizations. Once they reach a stage where they could produce nuclear weapons, they would implode, annihilating themselves through unavoidable contingencies. Perhaps earthlings would follow suit soon enough if we are not careful. 

Abolition of nuclear weapons would need a serious examination of the game theoretic logic behind Mutually Assured Destruction. It is literally MAD as the acronym suggests. Game theory is great in its own way, but it does not scale very much when it comes to ethics.

For me, game theory always appeared to be rather superficial, in its premises that agents would behave according to some evaluation functions. It is useful, but it is obviously not the whole story.

We don't have to cite Dostoevsky to call out the incredible shallowness of game theoretic thinking, but it is difficult still to make humans behave any differently in a world increasingly dominated by AI think, both theoretically and emotionally. I am a great fan of the present AI developments. I am avidly interested in AI alignment problems. At the same time, I can see how this whole process has trapped us in a rather nasty rabbit hole, and we probably need to start thinking rather seriously about ways out, or even ways further in so that we can get somewhere else through some wormholes of concepts. 

Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2017)

I came across a great shooting scene from Greta Gerwig's Lady Bird (2017). In it Ms Gerwig was laughing, exhibiting her genuine good nature, instructing the actors to run and hug and kiss, while sitting comfortably behind the monitor.

https://twitter.com/FilmUpdates/status/1687252198546440196

Lady Bird was a true eye-opener for me, where I became aware of Ms. Gerwig's incredible talent, and the superb film making gene of the company A24. I have been a fan of Ms. Gerwig and A24 ever since.

What was great about Lady Bird was the poignant way human psychology was treated. The reason why the protagonist kept calling her Lady Bird was something which would resonate with everyone who has been a teenager once. And the final accepting of her real name, and her identity, was moving and was a very fine piece of film making.

I would never forget the artistic satisfaction that welled up in my heart at that particular moment, when the Lady Bird became a true Lady.

Ohtani's kabuto helmet performance is a celebration of the inner child alive in each one of us.

When Shohei Ohtani hits a home run, his team mates would put a kabuto helmet. While this is a symbol of the samurai warrior, many Japanese associate the headgear with happy childhood memories.

It has been customary for boys to get a set of samurai symbolism, including the kabuto helmet, when they are infants, from parents and grandparents. These would be typically displayed in special festivities in May. The kabuto helmet would represent wishes for an audacious and successful life.

With the growth of more gender neutral awareness, perhaps these customs are losing momentum. Still, for many Japanese, the kabuto helmets are symbols of happy and blessed childhood, rather than the literal ethos of the samurai clan, which disappeared from the Japanese society with modernization more than 150 years ago.

Every time Shohei Ohtani wears the kabuto helmet, those versed in the tradition of Japan would remember a childhood surrounded by well-wishers. In that sense, Ohtani's kabuto helmet performance is a celebration of the inner child alive in each one of us. 

The film M3GAN was superb.

On the flight back from Vancouver to Tokyo after the TED conference, I watched the film M3GAN. Although I knew the hype about the film, I was not sure whether I had the guts to see it (I am weak about horrors and thrillers). However, after watching the film Nope (which is kind of a horror film, but I tend to accept sci fi), I felt that I was in a condition to watch M3GAN.

The film was superb. The script was clever and addressed some critical issues of AI alignment. M3GAN stands for Model 3 Generative Android, and the risks coming from uncontrollable generative artificial intelligence was well depicted in the film. 

This was days before ChatGPT surprised the world, and the producers of the film could be lauded for the future.

The mention of "attachment theory" in the script is symbolic of the general high standard of scientific and technological aptness. I recommend the film to anyone interested in the future of the alignment of AI with humans.

I am attending #TED2023 in Vancouver, Canada.

I am attending #TED2023 in Vancouver, Canada.

Despite competitions from likes of Lex Fridman podcast, TED still shines as one of the world's foremost market for exchanging ideas. Attending Session 1 I think I came to realize some reasons why.

It is the wholistic humane approach that characterizes TED. It is great to have geek talks about LLM and AGI, but at the end of the day, in order to alight AI with human society we need to value things outside the tech world. At TED we have a broad spectrum of people concerned with bringing the best in humanity. The better angels in us are flying in the arena.

It would be important to consider evolution of artificial intelligence systems in terms of group dynamics

For now, Artificial Intelligence systems seem to be developed as stand-alone entities, while historically,  evolution of biological species happened in the ecosystem. Instances such as ChatGPT are conceived as proving and being expected to prove excellence on its own. Dependence on the corpus makes them embedded in the ecosystem, though.

It would be important to consider evolution of artificial intelligence systems in terms of group dynamics, as happened in the case of biological systems, as opposed to the arms race metaphor typically employed in discussions about AI today, e.g. in the perceived confrontation between Elon Musk and Sam Altman, for example.

Related video. Towards a society of artificial intelligence.

Many things in Japan would perhaps go the way of Hachiko.

In Japan, for now, wherever you go, there are a lot of people. On the Shinkansen train, on the streets, at tourist attractions, everyone everywhere all at once.

With the covid-19 pandemic, the tourism came to a standstill, as in many countries. Now tourists are back with a vengeance. A noticeable change is the presence of people from abroad compared to domestic tourists.

Perhaps this is a vision of the future for Japan. In comparison to other global destinations such as London, New York, and Paris, Tokyo feels like and is still a place where the effects of globalism is seen only in mild signs, unless, of course, you go to the Shibuya Crossing. The Hachiko statue nearby is now always busy with tourists from abroad queueing up to have a chance to take a photo beside the famous Akita dog.

When I was a college student I could not imagine a day when the world would come to meet and greet Hachiko. It was a domestic presence then. Now many things in Japan would perhaps go the way of Hachiko. What a time to live in, apart from the rapid development of artificial intelligence. 

High intelligence is a double-edged sword

The conventional wisdom would be that if you have high intellect you would be more adaptive to a wide range of environments. Homo Sapiens has evolved to possess a highly developed intelligence, and it surely correlates with the fact that humans have come to dominate in a wide range of environments, from the tropics to the north and south poles on the earth, and to International Space Station and further beyond, perhaps even to Mars.

However, although intelligence has surely helped humans to be more robustly adaptive in a wide range of environments, it has also made the human existence less robust and stable. The possibility of human extinction through total nuclear war is just one example.

It could be argued therefore that high intelligence is a double-edged sword. On the one hand it can help make the system more robust. On the other there would be increased vulnerabilities, easily scaling out of the comfort zone.

It is an interesting question whether incorporating artificial emotion or consciousness in a system would make it more or less robust. Memorably, Eliezer Yudkowsky remarked in a recent Lex Fridman podcast that endowing an AI with emotion would be terrible. Artificial consciousness might make a AI more stable, by the incorporation of metacognitive processes, realizing the veto function, which is indispensable in human ethics.

The jury is still out.

In a recent episode of Ken Mogi's Street Brain Radio I discussed these pressing issues in some detail.

Related video:

High intelligence, artificial or natural, becomes unstable. Can consciousness help that? 

The arms race happen between people, not AI systems.

For some time now people have been discussing existential risks for humanity with the development of artificial intelligence. Although there would be genuine vulnerabilities due to the general disruption that the intelligence-related technologies would cause, especially by those involved in military operations, the tendency to depict AI, AGI in particular, in the light of possible overtaking of human existence is not only misleading but also potentially damaging.

Typically, when people discuss doomsday scenarios, they are projecting their own psychology onto the machine. It is not AI that would try to overtake the world. People have desires and ambitions about exerting control over others, and artificial intelligence systems are regarded as tools to realize their obsessions.

The arms race happen between people, not AI systems. The alpha male projection of aggression on the coming AGI is not only misplaced but also damaging to the neutrality of the technology.  

Related video.

The existential risk of Artificial Intelligence only comes from human nature and imagination