“Current AI is kind of untethered relative to how our brains work, in the sense that they don't have a proper global flow hierarchy. Our global flow hierarchy is grounded at the bottom by perception-action cycles. We're embodied, and that's important for preventing what's called hallucinations. And at the top we have core values that shape our goal pursuits.”
Brain Inspired · AI Research & Frontier Labs · November 2026
Context
The host asked how the brain-flow account changes the way he thinks about artificial intelligence. The guest argues that today's AI lacks both a bodily grounding at the bottom and internalized values at the top, which he sees as the two things that define the human system.
Transcript
Yeah, the sweet spot. Yeah.
…like consciousness, intelligence, et cetera, how does this make you think differently, if at all? Or has this reoriented, oriented how you think about artificial intelligence and what it is, its nature relative to our very human way of performing these things or implementing these things? Yeah,
so I could bring it. So that's, I think, chapter seven is on intelligence. I included natural and artificial intelligence in that chapter. And the way I've been thinking about artificial intelligence in this framework is that current AI is kind of untethered relative to how our brains work in the sense that they don't have a proper global flow hierarchy. Like our global flow hierarchy is grounded at the bottom by perception action cycles. We're embodied. And that's important for preventing what's called hallucinations, just like kind of, you know, not enough grounding in reality. And then on the other side, at the top of the global flow hierarchy, we have core values that shape our goal pursuits. And so, you know, we'll have, I don't know, a conscience essentially, right? We want to don't want to go against some of these core values when even if we have conflict internally, right? They don't have that. So they don't have sides of the pole. Exactly. They're just like the middle part that's like good, basically. And there's attempts, right? They have, what's it called, constitutional AI that tries, I think, you know, to get the upper end of…
more or less impressive, like what these models have been
able to do, right?
Yeah, I don't know. I mean, like, to be fair, there's some grounding and at the upper end. Like, one thing that I think isn't always talked about is how reinforcement learning is in the core of these large language models because they'll do this, you know, reinforcement learning from human…
More from Brain Inspired
