How to build a cybernetic society | Luke Igel & Keith Murray | TEDxMIT

Since the beginning, humans have worked to tame the complexity of nature through technology. And since the dawn of digital computing, we’ve seen technocrats from around the world use its language to cope with instability and to craft a more bountiful future. MIT students Luke Igel and Keith Murray believe that we have much to learn from the successes and the mistakes of these leaders. Through AI-enhanced photographs and an excavation of the history of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Luke and Keith explore the genealogy of “cybernetics”, and how its all-encompassing approach to engineering self-stabilizing systems inspired top leaders from both America and China to steer us towards a better world. Luke is an undergraduate at MIT studying computer science, a founder of an AI-first startup, and the co-director of MIT: REGRESSIONS, a feature-length documentary on the history of MIT. Alongside co-director and fellow MIT student Wesley Block, he took a 2 year journey across the Institute's dense history of earth shattering technologies, legendary figures, and ever-changing students. Through a stream of hypnotic, AI-enhanced archival footage, REGRESSIONS immerses you in each of MIT's core eras, from World War 2 to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Learn more at https://regressions.net. Keith Murray is a graduate student at MIT pursuing his Master’s of Engineering in Computation and Cognition. For his undergraduate, also at MIT, he majored in Computation and Cognition, and Linguistics and Philosophy. He’s always been fascinated by questions at the heart of cognitive science. His work as a researcher has included experimental, computational, and theoretical neuroscience projects completed at the McGovern Institute, Allen Institute, and CSAIL. He has been published in the Journal of Computational Biology for his work on creating deep learning models of the retina. AI, Computers, History, Machine Learning, Neuroscience, Public Policy "Luke Igel is an undergraduate at MIT studying computer science (S.B.). He has worked as a machine learning researcher and software engineer at SpaceX, NASA JPL, Slack, and multiple startups. He has been published in ICRA for his work in deep reinforcement learning on the Mars Perseverance rover's self-driving system through the Robotic Surface Mobility group at NASA JPL. He also worked on activity planning for SpaceX's Starlink satellite mega-constellation, which is now running his code in low earth orbit. Alongside Wesley Block, he recently completed a feature-length documentary on the history of MIT, a 2-year project that spans 80 years of the Institute's and America's history via AI-enhanced archival footage. He is currently the co-founder of the startup Kino AI, which speeds up video production for both professionals and amateurs via AI-based tools. Keith Murray is a graduate student at MIT pursuing his Master’s of Engineering in Computation and Cognition. For his undergraduate, also at MIT, he majored in Computation and Cognition, and Linguistics and Philosophy. He’s always been fascinated by questions at the heart of cognitive science. He’s worked as a computational neuroscientist at the McGovern Institute, Allen Institute, and CSAIL. His previous work has included training mice to complete navigation tasks in virtual reality to modeling the retina with deep learning. He has been published in the Journal of Computational Biology for his work. He hopes to pursue a PhD in Neuroscience in the near future and envisions himself never leaving the world of academia. " Keith Murray is a graduate student at MIT pursuing his Master’s of Engineering in Computation and Cognition. For his undergraduate, also at MIT, he majored in Computation and Cognition, and Linguistics and Philosophy. He’s always been fascinated by questions at the heart of cognitive science. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx