social contracts, game theory, sociobiology and extinction threats here and now e.g.Russia

 Whenever we try to think really deeply, out of the box, to make sense of big challenges right in front of us... it can point to a need for new paradigms. THIS WEEK, the crisis in US-Russian relations has woken me up that way, pointing to very basic issues in fundamental science, BUILDING on but EXTENDING the frameworks given in http://www.werbos.com/mind_brain_soul.htm and in my draft paper on approximation of entropy operators. It comes down to the theory of dynamical games....

Sudden shifts in Russian policy this week have strongly reduced the probability of World War III over Ukraine this year. But even as Western policy leaders all breathed VERY loud sighs of relief, going back to other issues on their plate, a strong warning came to me: "DON'T think this is over, or that 

you folks are home free. Nowhere near that." As I see this playing out, it is a warning that the

"AGI/IOT existential threat" is EVEN more urgent, difficult and compelling than I was already saying months ago. That, yes, plus the nuclear and bio threats entangled with US-Russian relations. 

In the past, I have generally just agreed with Yeshua that these existential threats (with the partial exception of climate changes) can be seen as examples of existential level CONFLICTS, demanding peace as a solution, peace as in some kind of new social contract or Pareto optimal bargain. (Xi Jinping even seems to understand these words, more than other major world leaders, whatever the actions of other Chinese may or may not be.) We have always thought back to the Twelve Tablets of Rome, the ten Commandments, Locke and the US Constitution. (I have even visited Washington's meditation study, and been locked by accident  into a large room containing his private papers.) I view this as an example of Schelling's analysis of nonzero sum games, in Strategy of Conflict.

HOWEVER: WHAT DOES THIS SAY ABOUT THE GAME OF HUMAN LIFE INCLUDING THE POSSIBLE OUTCOME OF EXTINCTION?

Naive judgmental people often say: "Of course this species will not go extinct. Species (like this) never go extinct. The biosphere has a very powerful natural stability, resulting from the mechanisms Darwin told us about." 

It is SO SAD how many "mainstream" academic cultures never learn what other cultures down the hall from them, in the same universities, know much better. To discuss the evolution of life, people really should know the foundational (if incomplete) work by E.O. Wilson, in Sociobiology, the classic work by George Gaylord Simpson before that, and the seminal book by Robert May Stability and Complexity in Model Ecosystems. (For a more complete up to date factual account see Ward and Kirschvink.) 

Back in the 1970's, May used solid mathematical modeling to completely disprove the old fantasies about stability in ecosystems. Species go extinct all the time, both at the bottom and the top of the food chain. What we see as stability is usually just HEAVILY FILTERED by millions of years of selection, BUT MASSIVE CHANGES in the web of ecological relations typically DO lead to massive new extinctions. 

The key point is that HUMANS (and all species affected by us) are at the BEGINNING of even more massive changes in the ecology of the earth, most notably through the AGI/IOT complex but also through many others. 

Here is a fundamental key question: in what kinds of  nonlinear dynamical games is the long-term outcome more or less guaranteed? What degrees of freedom do we really have? 

My common sense, informed by deep knowledge of the entropy functions predicted by the most solid modern physics, tells me that I am asking about the existence of widely separated BASINS OF ATTRACTION in the space of the human cultures which could lead to a sustainable social contract or to entropy and extinction. That in turn depends on the variety and scale of noise and connection in that cultural system. That does not sound much like separability. Nor does it LOOK that way, as I think of examples like the entropic processes guiding Putin and ALL other large human societies and organizations on earth today. (I pray that IEEE will be an exception, and there are reasons why it MIGHT be enough for us tALL o survive, but I will learn more this coming week or two.) Furthermore, the examples cited by May all feel like the kind of nonlinear dynamical process we are involved in; I do not see signs of collective intelligence giving collective free will there, or in any of the history reviewed by Ward and Kirschvink. 

IMPLICATION: ONLY A CHANGE OF GAME gives us much hope. And that comes back to issues

buried (too deeply) in http://www.werbos.com/How_to%20Build_Past_Emerging_Internet_Chaos.htm.

INTERNET design **IS** a kind of game design. Approached that way, with the right kind of immune system included, it may be possible to create enough of the right kind of separability of "QAGI workspace of consciousness" to give us a chance to survive. The odds may be against our species surviving in the face of so many things which we have to get right, but in such a large cosmos SOME species probably get through, so it is only natural that we should try our best... as part of our noosphere, we naturally do respond to the most basic feedback we receive from it, feedback which gently guides us all to help as much as we can.. 

Is Putin Determined to Start World War III?

For several days now, MANY people in the West have been wondering how best to react to a major speech by Putin which seemed to say: "I have told you exactly what my detailed demands are from you. You must concede IMMEDIATELY, visibly, and at massive scale, or else something is coming which you will regret deeply, and not be able to ignore. Ukraine is my target now." 

 This statement, plus some discussions we had yesterday, stimulated my "early morning self" to think a bit more deeply. In the discussions yesterday, I heard two theories about the Ukraine situation: =======================================================================

One theory: he will try an anschluss, just two provinces. "After all, if it worked for Hitler.." [Comment those words in quotes were not what anyone said. Just an inner reaction which came to me then. Call it "the voice of Loki," which is useful but which needs to be kept leashed.] 

 Another: he will show he can hack into the Turkish drones which Ukraine plans to use to restore national control. One argument in favor: after all, even WE could. (If USGOV knows the more basic things even I know.) One argument against: if Russia could, why didn't they save Armenia? ======================================================= 

 But in truth, I did hear a lot of Putin's speech (on France24 and DW and maybe FT especially), and had a sense of what was behind it. In truth... it is ever more clear this morning... that I can even empathize with what lies behind that speech and that expression of frustration and desperation. Some even say that empathy is a crucial starting point in addressing these kinds of problems (once one is prepared enough to really empathize and not fake it.) 

 As usual, my early morning meditation got into complexities 'way beyond what I could write down even in days of typing on a laptop. Two bits of some relevance: ACRONYMS (important to how my higher self encodes memories to my mundane daily self): in this case EHUB (Endless Halls of Unthinking Bureaucracy), what drives Putin nuts, and GGC (Give God Choices, an aspect of how I think about synchronicity in guiding behavior). 

 A major part of Putin's message felt like: "You guys said you wanted to join with us in a new global alliance right after the end of the Cold War, circa Yeltsin time. You raised all these promises. But then we tried and tried, and nothing worked, it got worse and worse and worse. I am sick and tired of that. I won't take it any more. If I have to kick the walls, well, what choice did you give me?" 

In fact... EHUB. I too have had lots of experience trying to figure out how to get constructive results, intelligence and sanity out of the US government, which I have interacted with in many many ways at many different levels. In addition to the EHUB experience, I have seen more and more in the past few decades of a syndrome I think of as " bait and switch." That and EHUB are not conscious policies of anyone, but a kind of reflex response syndrome which has evolved through time, in part because of the effects of greater concentration of power. "Power corrupts..". 

 The promises made to Putin were probably MOST astronomical under Donald Trump. Whatever his self image and beliefs about himself, Trump certainly was the most extreme practitioner of bait and switch I have ever seen in the White House in my life. What hit ME directly was when Trump promised to strengthen the US economy, including the energy economy, and live up to the US Constitution (interstate Commerce) by getting rid of irrational regulations and barriers to competition which hold us back. That was exciting. Then he hired ... alligators from Maro Lago?... who created NEW regulations, forcing more use of coal in regions which do not want to use it, so severe that Illinois almost seceded from the US national grid system. Bait and switch. One policy announced to the public, and the diametric opposite in actual operation. 

 So did Putin also encounter the EHUB -- not only mindless bureaucracy but hired trolls and alligators, thinking only of THEIR receipts from government funding, or ideological faction? And is he basically at his wits end now, seeing little hope that the people on top will be able to get rid of the alligators and tame the system to make it live up to what the people on the top SAY they want?

 There ARE some parallels between the dynamics at work now in the world and the dynamics of the 1920s and 1930s. People did write serious books about frustration-aggression. Frustration can lead to a kind of gotterdammerung feeling, where the status quo is so intolerable they are willing to risk war. But are any of us intelligent, broad and focused enough to find a third way, not just the empty BS we see in a lot of internet policy discussions today, but a more operational kind of dialogue? Again, I think of John Von Neumann's BALANCED way of navigating between Scylla and Charybdis, step by step.

 ======================================== ======================================= 

An important friend responded: I think that to interpret these geopolitical movements and threats, such as that of Putin's Russia, or the Middle East conflict, or the China-United States dispute, it is useful the analysis of the French professor Dominique Moisi, in his book “Geopolitics of emotions " https://www.amazon.com/Geopolitics-Emotion-Cultures-Humiliation-Reshaping-ebook/dp/B0027MJU32/ "It is not possible to understand the world in which we live without examining the emotions that contribute to shaping it. The world first moves around basic emotions: fear, humiliation and hope."

 So please forgive -- I have good reason to believe I now know more about how brains work as intelligent minds than anyone else on earth. That may sound crazy, but there is a paper by Werbos and Davis (open access, easy to find on scholar.google.com) which reviews our theory of how brains work, and shows how real-time deep recording data from the best lab in the US strongly favors our theory over the behaviorist style of model more common now in computational neuroscience. In a way, our strong mathematical model describes the mammal brain as a "machine to produce and act on hopes and fears," positive and negative values of J and lambda. And so, two of the three points in this sentence are 100% consistent with and directly reflect how the brain really does work, to the best of our knowledge. 

Hopes are basically the positive sign of J or lambda, and fears the negative side. The mathematics (the ultimate goals of any RLADP optimization machine) demand that both be present, and both be learned, reflecting the actual circumstances of the organism. SOME folks do live in a world where objective reality justifies more fear, and some more hope. 

 But what of HUMILIATION??? (Certainly a theme we cannot overlook in considering Putin, or in considering experiences I had in graduate school which make it easier for me to empathize with Putin.) This is one of those phenomena extensive and fuzzy enough that I cannot be truly brief and accurate both. Crudely... how others think about us and respond to us is PART OF our image of reality, and like all other dimensions of that image a venue for hopes and fears to develop. FEAR of being misunderstood, disrespected and humiliated is undoubtedly part of the very complicated set of thoughts in Putin's mind right now. Maybe a little HOPE of actually being understood and respected, not just pandered to as one would pander to a certain kind of dog, might be a thread that could help the world escape from the serious risk of WWW3 coming... 

My friend went on to say:  HE SAID IN 2019; "Ten years ago I published the book entitled The Geopolitics of Emotion: How the Cultures of Fear, Humiliation and Hope are reshaping the world, which was based on a double conviction. First: it is not possible to fully understand the world in which we live without trying to understand and integrate their emotions. And second: emotions are like cholesterol, there are good and bad. The question is to find the correct balance between the two. Fear versus hope, hope versus humiliation ; the humiliation that leads to mere irrationality, and sometimes even violence. " 

 I would NOT say that feeling hope is good and feeling fear is bad. Hope and fear are there in the machinery of the brain (and the soul as well, I would add) for a good reason. At best it is like the duality of what we optimize and what the constraints are which we need to honor as we perform that optimization. (I could write a book on just that duality, which cuts across so many dimensions of life and thought!!). Fear and hope can both be more rational or less rational. FREUD... a great and fundamental source, which fits well with our new mathematics... talked about traumatic memories in the "id" (an example-based prediction system, in great part, prediction by association rather than by global model or dynamics). They are often traumatic, or negative, biasing expectations relative to what a true causal understanding would predict. But whatever we may say about scientologists, they are quite right that irrational hope, "euphoric memories," can be biasing and destructive just as much as traumatic memories can. 

If you are interested, I could even forward to you a message I sent to Yeshua's list on the neuroscience of the cells which actually implement these things, which some of us now know how to copy in AGI. Irrationality can of course lead to bad behaviors in a huge number of ways. That is such a huge subject, maybe too huge for an email which is already long enough. 

 One final thought: OUR EFFORTS TO LEARN AND GROW PAST the most common pitfalls which limit us, and lead to dangerous crazy behavior (like what Putin is very close to now, and like what already hit Trump in 2020 and last January) is a central part of the HUMAN POTENTIAL focus, the final chapter of Part VI of the IEEE book. I am still looking for better venues and institutional structures to do more justice to it. Best of luck, Paul

New experiment proved that living multicell organism can be turned into a Schrodinger cat

 Many reactionary philosophers have prayed that WE multicellular organisms could not possibly be "macroscopic Schrodinger cats". "You can put a block of wood or a communication network into a quantum mixed state, but not a LIVING CREATURE, not REAL LIFE." 

Now they have been proven wrong. But the creature they used in the experiment, a tardigrade, is ALSO very provocative, and I received this news at a time when the Presidential election in Chile seemed close to being in a mixed state too! Here is what I wrote to friends at the time, on the meaning of the experiment and on events in Chile:

====================================================================

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302337-tardigrade-is-first-multicellular-organism-to-be-quantum-entangled/

One of you recently posted:  "Tardigrade first organism to demonstrate quantum entanglement."

My initial reaction: "TARDIGRADES. I remember them well. But does anyone else know WHY I remember them and why I consider them important in the history of life?" (Suddenly I bcc the one other person, besides my wife, who really knows about them even as much as I do.) 

In fact, that post was an incredible exercise in synchronicity, connecting SEVERAL important threads in my early morning meditation today.

The first thread was political. When I first saw the post yesterday, I recalled a great visit to a research outpost in the Atacama desert. A graduate student showed me a box surrounded by endless dry sand desert, and explained that this desert was a great place to look for extreme extremophiles. The most extreme extremophiles we know about (other than places kilometers deep) are tardigrades ("little water bears")  and archaea. Tardigrades are the multicellular ones, so big that they are.. insect size, easy to find on the web.

This morning, that reminded me of the very important ELECTIONS in Chile. (https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-59331694  )  Chile has had several great decades (and was not exactly zero before that), managing to take serious intellectual leadership in  many areas essential to our future. What has enabled them to move up so far, compared to any other nation in South America? In fact, the elections starting now in Chile remind me a lot of the important election we just had in Virginia, which I understand MUCH BETTER than any of the big media seem to, simply because I get to observe directly here (and ALSO have access to lots of media).

Chile like Virginia? Will the "Republican" candidate there (Bast) defeat the "Democrat" (Boric)?

Actually, in the past decades (after Pinochet was ousted) Chile has had a beautiful balance and dialogue between a rational left and a rational right. Just as many remember great rational Democrats in Virginia (still there, and I even gave them some money), many of us also remember Bachelet's time in Chile, a support for great enlightenment (including great serious deep research in Atacama). So why did Virginians suddenly elect a Republican governor his year, and why is Bast doing so well in the polls despite the friendly things he said about Pinochet and lack of interest in global climate change etc.? Why did the REMNANTS of the center parties (which lost the initial rounds) go to Bast?

Well, I blame it on good old-fashioned overreach, the extremism one gets when people feel too obligated to appeal to the base. Even the national Democrats in the US are suffering seriously in some ways from the same problem.

(Why is Kamala Harris being buried by the wrong kind of staff? What is that recruitment system doing to her?) 

A few days ago, I had been thinking of how to build ties to Boric, who has benefitted a lot from honest idealistic graduate students more into cybernetics than into Maduro or BLM stuff. BUT THE TARDIGRADE NEWS, at exactly the right time, crystallized my sight on why revered folks like Bachelet now see it differently. We could HOPE that Boric will do better on networking and recruitment and deal making than Biden and Harris, but how realistic is that, given the evidence we NOW have? I hope I am wrong, and I certainly have my eyes open, but it looks for NOW like Kast,

How Catholic IS Kast? What KIND of Catholic? Could he appreciate Teilhard de Chardin (or even our upgraded  version of that) or Pope Francis? Better than Maduro or Trump in any case. I certainly remember when BACHELET had a followers of Teilhard de Chardin in two of her key official  futurist networks (and so sad I am that I was violently ill when I had a follow-up meeting with one of the two). Would Bast be open to listening to her (who supports him now) about making plans for that, both for the sake of his administration but also for a nice election headline?

===================================================

But can you believe, that is only ONE PART of what cane to me in five minutes of my usual morning meditation?

Another part was a quick memory of the Climate Extinction cause and network which has been my main activity, after all, for several months now, thanks to IEEE and to some of the folks I bcc. 

I will resist the temptation to  the great draft preface by Ward, Wadhams and Werbos for the IEEE book proposal we have been working on. (I hope it will be releasable in a week or so, after we nail down more of the brain stuff, another topic in my morning meditation. I get long homework assignments these days.) THE NUMBER ONE THREAT to human survival from climate change is due to the growing likelihood that ANOTHER extremophile, the archaea producing H2S, will proliferate suddenly at the deep source of the Humboldt current which now brings oxygen (and lots of fish) to the coast off of Chile. Only this year did we actually combine the relevant numbers and models, and see how close and real it is. Poison enough to kill all humans on dearth, manifesting FIRST as a great stink in that same place where they were looking for tardigrades! It reminded me a little of the "silly" science fiction movie, Pacific Rim, where another form of life changes the oceans in a way which could kill OUR form of life. These extremophiles are actually doing that here and now! But IEEE, not Vancouver, is our best hope of preventing their success in annihilating us. (But I don't blame it on the souls of the tardigrades. And folks in Vancouver COULD help..)

==============

The other thread... came this morning, AFTER my brain research post, when I looked up the story posted here yesterday on tardigrades.

When I READ the whole article... no it is not a quantum mind kind of post!

Rather, it is... "The world's first demonstrated quantum entanglement of an entire  multicellular organism."

The first REAL macroscopic Schrodinger cat was not actually a cat, but a "water bear," but it still is hugely important.

More precisely, it is a hugely important landmark contribution to the large emerging literature on "macroscopic Schrodinger cats." It is the first solid empirical proof (that I know of) of a macroscopic multicellular organism being put into a quantum mixed state. Because WE are macroscopic multicellular organisms, it becomes ever more clear that folks who say "I could not be in a mixed state, that violate all our mainstream philosophies" need to learn that those philosophies are FALSE, proven empirically wrong. 

Just FYI, I attach a paper (accepted subject to minor revision, and revised accordingly) which goes on go describe how technology based on macroscopic Schrodinger cats has huge potential applications in technology, such as cybersecurity

issues immediately relevant to global currency issues here and now. (I just hope they start implementing BEFORE certain currencies like bitcoin crash.) 

Best of luck,

  Paul

===========

Later, my friend in Chile described their work with Boric, and I am VERY glad he corrected the vague impressions I had before that. Ffrench-Davis knows more about currency and inflation and deficit issues than the Great Authorities we read at Harvard years ago. AGI/IOT it radically changing those systems, but if such technology could be COMBINED with what Ffrench-Davis, maybe the world economy might have a prayer of surviving.

Best webcast I have seen for years on serious climate action

Earlier today, I saw a HORRID webcast, where COP26 people congratulated themselves on how successful they were. The measure of success? They got lots of kids to take the issue seriously, and then do stuff like wash dishes better. It's great that they wash dishes better, but ... that is not the kind of outcome we need, if the goal is to keep our species from extinction sooner than we expect!! 

 I hope that the IEEE book project will point us to a better way... but in the meantime, I was very delighted to see a far more encouraging webcast at noon today. Here is what I sent immediately to the transportation sector of the IEEE project: ============================================== 

Our Energy Policy (OEP) Webcast on Electrifying Transportation  

  Why this is important  

 More than 80% of net greenhouse gas (GHG) emitted from US comes directly from making electricity or from transportation. Those two are about equal.Most serious climate advocates see the replacement of fossil fuels by electricity as the best way by far to achieve climate survival, in transportation. Our draft IEEE book plan insists on taking a more efficient, market-based approach, with room in it for clean fuels under correct market incentives. However, there is no question that electric transportation is opportunity number one in this sector. 

 The webcast today (12/8/2021) https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/energy-leaders-webinar-series/electrifying-transport-the-state-of-electric-vehicles-a-webinar/ conveyed essential new information on the very best serious action now being taken in the US on electrifying transportation (as it bears on climate risk). It was concrete enough both to point to important opportunities unmet even beyond that, but also to give important pointers to how to connect to and assist the existing great efforts. It is the most encouraging and uplifting piece I have seen on ACTION to prevent climate extinction from the US in years.

 I was surprised to see such a good webcast, but not SO surprised, since OEP is in many ways an offshoot of the EnergyConsensus dialogue led by the office of Roscoe bartlett (R-Md), which, until he was gerrymandered out of office, was the most effective, serious and honest deep dialogue on US energy security  across US government and other serious players. At first, EOP was not really living up to that high mandate, but today may be a major turning point.

  Selected Points  

 OEP usually posts these webcasts a few days later. For now… here are my scattered recollections, from scrawled notes, of most important things said. 

 EVERYONE agreed that incentives to purchasers of EV (also PHEV and HEV?) are the most crucial target in electrification.  

 I was so delighted that Colleen Jansen of Charge Point stressed that her firm is building networks of collaboration and information, to connect all the players which need to be connected to make this work, certainly to include auto makers, battery makers, and local governments. She ALSO spoke strongly on their advocacy of a Clean Fuel Standard (see werbos.com/oil.htm, for links to topics like the Brownback bill). She was setting very high standards of integrity and market-based balance, to a truly unusual degree.  

 Steven Boyd of the DOE Program on Batteries and Electrification and Michael Maten of GM had really great chemistry in discussion. No one who sincerely wants to accelerate electrification should neglect what lessons THEY have learned! Michael Maten in particular felt like “the new replacement” for a GM engineer/manager (Al Sobey) who was one of my very best partners in these areas until his recent death by old age. Maten’s rank is not as high as Al’s was, but it is really great that there is SOME coverage of that crucial base, including the link to government action. 

Boyd does NOT have so much mandate as his area (and Biden's climate commitments) call for, but you could see on his face that there is an upswing going on.  I was surprised that Boyd cites a $100/kwh target for car batteries, and others project $65 a bit later. But then he said Bloomberg cites more like $131, and it is a complex area, very variable across different car markets even in the US. 

Maten recommended https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/articles/national-blueprint-lithium-batteries and https://www.energy.gov/eere/vehicles/federal-consortium-advanced-batteries-fcab as crucial sources we all should build on. HOWEVER: Maten stressed that it is all “batteries, batteries, batteries” in their efforts.“That is THE issue in achieving their goal of being competitive without subsidies.” When I was at NSF and IEEE USA energy policy committee, we had access to much more detailed breakdowns on WHERE THE extra costs were which made a Toyoto Prius PHEV more expensive, for example, than a comparable ICE car. Batteries were part of it, but as I recall power electronics were even bigger. And yes, motor quality and control were crucial as well. (I remember how switched reluctance motors with modern RLADP control outperform electric motors requiring rare earths.) I suspect there are major unmet opportunities here still, from work we started (AND CHECKED) from NSF, used in Asia but not yet in US or EU. Some not even in Asia yet.

Dan Levy of Credit Suisse was a great moderator, and asked balanced but probing questions, showing awareness of how electrification is moving so much faster in other nations now. Part of the issue is supply chains, and Biden HAS given encouragement to strengthening our supply chains. DOE **IS** supporting more robust supply chains, though do they know what firms in China were doing decades ago in recycling lithium batteries? (All in my files.) Or how the foundation of rare earth production in China turns out to be TECHNOLOGY, not resources, as we learned in discussing it in Changsha and Wuhan decades ago with people who applied control algorithms I developed to the separation issues and other control in that sector? (The Chinese wanted to share with us, in a joint China/NSF research effort, but our protectors protected us from having that technology.  Memos in my files.)

Sarah Fitts, a partner of Schiff-Hardin, inaugurated the session, and had very exciting things to say as well. It felt as if she deserves a lot of the credit for this renaissance of OEP, and that her firm will be providing great guidance to electrification in coming years.

I do wonder whether Boyd has seen the workshop report from Sadoway of MIT, the last major NSF cut in batteries relevant to cars. In my files. Along with LOTS of technical details. I saw heavy filtering in some of the other channels, which may have limited what he had access to. 

  The discussion of hydrogen was quite amusing -- showing insight and depth and a sense of humor. The GM guy clearly and politely said "FORGET it for reducing GHG in transportation." (Is anyone proposing to use it to generate electricity for the US grid???) (Not his exact words, but close enough. The webcast video is coming soon. I will cite it in my chapter on alternatives to electricity in transportation.) 

All participants argued strongly about the importance of the grid interface. At times Colleen seemed to have a picture in her mind of a “recharge at work” station which exactly matched a design which Kumar Venayagamoorthy fleshed out for a grant I awarded him back when I was at NSF!! For Section II of the book, where there are MANY relevant technology opportunities beyond the transportation group as such.

IEEE Citation for Frank Rosenblatt Award, top technical field award for computational intelligence

2022 IEEE FRANK ROSENBLATT AWARD Sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society PAUL JOHN WERBOS For development of backpropagation and fundamental contributions to reinforcement learning and time series analysis Among the first researchers to realize the power of bio-inspired learning techniques to train neural networks in real time, Paul John Werbos’ development of backpropagation algorithms provided the backbone of reinforcement and deep learning methods for solving today’s complex tasks. Backpropagation allows training of neural network data online and in real time by using gradients computed backward through the layers of the neural network. His leadership of the Adaptive and Intelligent Systems group at the U.S. National Science Foundation enhanced the ability of countless researchers to contribute to prediction and control of systems ranging from nanorobots to the electric power grid. His work has made possible many advances in areas including electric vehicles and speech, face, and handwriting recognition applications. An IEEE Fellow, Werbos is program director (retired) with the National Science Foundation, Arlington, Virginia, USA. TAGLINE: Backpropagation is the backbone of neural network training for deep learning applications critical to prediction and control of complex systems