In conversation: Steven Kane, television and theater writer, producer, director and Dr. Nataliya Kosmyna, Research Scientist, MIT Media Lab.
This conversation is centered around Cortana, a fictional AGI from HALO. This type of AGI is created out of brain liquid from a human brain. Being a co-creator and showrunner of HALO, Steven shares with us how and what it took to create a fictional AGI on a screen, which became a perfect partner for Master Chief. A partner we all would want to have...in our heads.
While ChatGPT spits out nonsense about the world, check the video to learn more about a perfect AGI, the one we all truly mean and imagine when we talk about AGIs - the one working for us, with us, learning with us, learning from us, the one truly augmenting us as species, pushing our intelligence on a new level of evolution – Singularity, a whole new species.
About Mr. Kane:
Steven Kane is an American television and theater writer, producer and director.
He was born in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where he graduated from Cherry Hill High School West as a proud member of the 1985 and 1986 New Jersey Knowledge Bowl Championship Teams. His prog-rock band, Next Century, almost came in third in back to back "Battle of the Bands" contests (Kane played key-tar) but he did manage to win consecutive "Best Director" awards in the school's annual One Act Play festival.
Flush with these early successes, Kane went on to major in English and French at the University of Pennsylvania before attending graduate film school at the University of Southern California. His USC Masters Thesis, a short film entitled Heroic Symphony, garnered awards at film festivals around the country.
Kane got his start in the entertainment industry writing and directing independent film and theater. His first feature film, The Doghouse, won Best Director at the NY Indy Film Festival. His collection of One Act plays, "Out of Your Mind," had a successful run in Los Angeles at the GuerriLA Theater.
His television credits as a writer, producer, and director include The Closer (for which he received an Edgar Nomination), Major Crimes, Alias, NCIS, and Without a Trace, as well as comedies American Dad and Curb Your Enthusiasm. From 2012-2018, he served as Creator, Executive Producer, and showrunner of TNT's The Last Ship, a post-apocalyptic drama based on William Brinkley's novel of the same name. He went on to co-create and showrun HALO for Showtime/Paramount Plus, living and working in Hungary for over two years. Upon his return, Kane ran the fourth season of JACK RYAN on Amazon Prime.
About Dr. Kosmyna:
Nataliya is passionate about an idea of creating a partnership between AI and human intelligence, fusion of a machine and a human brain. She obtained her Ph.D in 2015 in the domain of non-invasive Brain-Computer Interfaces (BCIs) as a part of EHCI team of Université Grenoble-Alpes, France. Most of her projects are focused around EEG-based BCIs in the context of consumer grade applications. Nataliya worked for the past 13 years on designing solutions to control drones, robots, home appliances using brain activity. These projects were presented to general public and were tested by more than 150000 people in 2015-2023. Nataliya won multiple awards for her work, among which is L’Oréal-UNESCO Women in Science award she received in 2016. Nataliya was also named as one of 10 Top French Talent 2017 from MIT Innovators Under 35. Since 2016 Nataliya is also interested in closed-loop systems using real-time biofeedback to enhance and augment human performance, particularly attention and focus. Check https://www.braini.io to learn more about her projects.