AI’s D&C Cycles Accelerate: Harmonizing Agents and The Big 'O’rientation w/ Mahault Albarracin, PhD

What if we've been thinking about AI all wrong? What if endless scaling isn't the answer, but instead we need systems that understand context, embody knowledge, and grasp causal relationships like living organisms do?

In this mind-expanding conversation with Mahault Albarracin, PhD, VERSES AI Director of Research Strategy – recorded on the 49th anniversary of John Boyd's seminal paper "Destruction and Creation" – we journey through the fascinating landscape where neuroscience meets artificial intelligence. Mahault shares how her background in social sciences led her to active inference, a framework that models intelligence after natural cognitive systems rather than linear engineering approaches, echoing Boyd's emphasis on breaking down outdated mental models to create adaptive new ones.

The parallels between Karl Friston's active inference and Boyd's OODA loop emerge vividly, as both frameworks highlight prediction, orientation in complex environments, and harmonizing changing tactical actions with evolving strategic intentions. We explore why current AI systems struggle with tasks humans find intuitive – they lack embodiment within spatial-temporal reality and fail to grasp how context shifts meaning, much like the limitations Boyd critiqued in rigid, backwards-planning strategies.

Perhaps most provocatively, we challenge the dominant AI doom narratives, tracing them to biases rooted in defense funding, colonial hierarchies, and adversarial worldviews. Could our fears of malevolent artificial intelligence simply reflect our own projections? What if, instead of building systems expecting friction, we created AI capable of empathy, resonance, and connection? As Mahault suggests, "The condition for AI alignment is to give it the ability to love us, to have empathy, to see us as kin rather than just objectives."

The conversation ranges from the technical details of the spatial web (creating interoperable standards for meaningful, privacy-respecting data connectivity) to philosophical questions about consciousness, harmony in multi-agent systems, and how diverse perspectives – including Eastern philosophies and marginalized voices – might foster more ethical, sustainable AI. We even touch on how resonance between agents, from birds synchronizing songs to human intimacy, might inform human-AI teamwork and a potential "super consciousness layer" that augments our creativity without replacing it.

Ready to rethink everything you thought you knew about artificial intelligence? Listen now and discover why the future might belong not to the biggest models, but to distributed, agentic systems that understand context, relationships, and perhaps even love – all while honoring Boyd's timeless call for destruction and creation in the face of uncertainty.

Chapters:

01:47 The Intersection of AI and Social Sciences
05:10 Understanding the Current AI Landscape
08:35 The Role of Agents in AI
11:26 Active Inference and the Future of AI
13:58 Human-Agent Interaction and Agency
16:43 Ecological Intelligence in AI
19:08 The Role of AI in Enhancing Human Creativity
21:58 Web 3.0 and the Spatial Web
26:26 Protocols and Standards for AI Interaction
34:49 The Nature of Cognition and AI Ethics
38:06 Integrating Ethics into AI Models
40:55 The Limitations of Large Language Models
44:15 Harmony in AI and Human Interaction
49:41 The Role of Love and Empathy in AI
53:01 Biases in AI Development and Perception
59:49 Weaponization of AI and Its Implications