Latest / The Joe Rogan Experience / #2525 - Nick Bostrom

Transcript

#2525 - Nick Bostrom · The Joe Rogan Experience

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Podcast.
• 0:03
  Speaker 2: Check it out.
• 0:03
  Speaker 3: But Joe Rogan Experience Train by Day.
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: Joe Rogan Podcast by Night, all day. It's great to
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: see again.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, good to see you.
• 0:16
  Speaker 1: So since the last time we talked, we spent a
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: lot of time where you were trying to explain to
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: me simulation theory and why the probability of simulation theory
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is more likely than it not being a simulation.
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it was five years ago or something.
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  Speaker 1: I think it was six, six or six somewhere.
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  Speaker 3: I mean, a lot of things happened in the world since, Donna.
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  Speaker 1: Yes, yes, a lot of things. I mean, for example,
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  Speaker 1: back then, I think we did we even talk about AI.
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  Speaker 3: It probably came up a bit, but not like it wasn't.
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  Speaker 1: It wasn't this thing looming over civilization, which is really
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: kind of fascinating when you think about the fact that
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: it's only been six years and in six years is
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: like what a massive jump in some new technology in
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: our life, like just sort of like the Internet where
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: like crept up on us. We just accepted that it's
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  Speaker 1: a thing, but that this this thing has gotten massively
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  Speaker 1: entangled in every aspect of society and every aspect of
• 1:20
  Speaker 1: people's lives in a very short period of time.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean things are like so much is happening
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  Speaker 2: now that is kind of a full time job just
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  Speaker 2: to monitor this situation.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah, and you're one of the things that you're talking
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  Speaker 1: about is the positive aspects of it, right, You're talking
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  Speaker 1: about like that this is probably going to be a
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  Speaker 1: net good for humanity hopefully.
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  Speaker 2: I mean, I think I take both cases seriously, the
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  Speaker 2: sort of the risk side and the big unlock if
• 1:54
  Speaker 2: we get things right.
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  Speaker 1: I feel like we have the potential, like we're on
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  Speaker 1: a white water rat, we have the potential to get
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  Speaker 1: to our destination, but we also have the potential to
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  Speaker 1: flip over and try to figure out how to get
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: to shore and freezing cold water and sort of rebuild.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, that seems about right.
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  Speaker 1: Yeah.
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  Speaker 3: Yeah, And it seems like it's kind of speeding up
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  Speaker 3: a bit as well.
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  Speaker 2: Right, If you are sort of in this field, there's
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  Speaker 2: like every few weeks there's a new model being released
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: or something. I yes, I guess it's like if you imagine,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: I guess commentating some fight, right that's been recorded and
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  Speaker 2: you're supposed to do the voiceover, and the first round
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  Speaker 2: is like normal speed, and then the second round is
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  Speaker 2: two x and then the third one for it and
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  Speaker 2: it's just like a whir of lengths and arms.
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  Speaker 1: That's a great way to describe it. Yeah, it's it's
• 2:47
  Speaker 1: just so strange how quickly it snuck up on us,
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  Speaker 1: and that there's there's two narratives that we hear. The
• 2:53
  Speaker 1: one narrative is we're in real trouble and that this
• 2:56
  Speaker 1: thing is going to take over every aspect of society
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  Speaker 1: and it's essentially going to be a superior life force,
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: a superior intellect that exists amongst us that we created,
• 3:06
  Speaker 1: and we don't think that's wise. And then there's the
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  Speaker 1: other side that is saying things like what Elon says.
• 3:13
  Speaker 1: He's saying we're going to have universal high income. It's
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  Speaker 1: going to be so much prosperity that no one's ever
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  Speaker 1: going to have to toil again. There'll be no more
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: third world countries, there'll be no more poverty. Like we
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: can eradicate poverty with the resources that we have on earth,
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  Speaker 1: and we can change what it means to have to work,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: like you just to provide yourself with food and housing,
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  Speaker 1: that's all going to be easy and free, and then
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  Speaker 1: everything else is going to be you have to find
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  Speaker 1: a purpose in your life. My problem is, and I
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  Speaker 1: love Elon, but the people who have that perspective are
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  Speaker 1: all making money off AI. They are all invested like heavily,
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  Speaker 1: Mark Andresen, all these people that have this rosy view
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  Speaker 1: of it, they're all invested heavily into it. So when
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  Speaker 1: someone like you, who's not necessarily in that camp, you
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  Speaker 1: know that is more of a true objective analyst of
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  Speaker 1: what's going on. When you have a positive aspect or
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  Speaker 1: a positive viewpoint of it, I get a little more excited. Yeah.
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  Speaker 2: Well, I mean the truth is, we don't know right
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  Speaker 2: how a world pan out. So I mean I think
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  Speaker 2: there are these scenarios where we unlock this, you know,
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  Speaker 2: enormous boost.
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  Speaker 3: Both to economic productivity.
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  Speaker 2: But then you know, across medicine, entertainment, environment, travel, all
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  Speaker 2: kinds of things, and like a tsunami of wealth just
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  Speaker 2: kind of flows through and lifts all boats. And then
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  Speaker 2: the idea of human work becomes an anachronism and where
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  Speaker 2: you have machines that can do everything that we can
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  Speaker 2: do physically mentally and do it much better and cheaper.
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  Speaker 2: And so I think in those scenarios where this really works,
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  Speaker 2: the transformation is a lot. I mean, so that kind
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: of layers to the onions. So like the most superficial
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  Speaker 2: level is, well, they ultimate their jobs and what are
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  Speaker 2: people gonna.
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  Speaker 3: What are they gonna do for they're gonna work?
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  Speaker 2: Well, well, that that comes a little bit deeper. First,
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  Speaker 2: like the most superficial level is people just wonder where
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  Speaker 2: will I get the job if the replaces me? And
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  Speaker 2: then the superficial level of that conversation I think is, well,
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  Speaker 2: you need to retrain workers so they can work in
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  Speaker 2: other fields, and maybe they need to be I don't know,
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  Speaker 2: employment insurance whilst they are being retrained.
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  Speaker 3: Or something like that.
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  Speaker 2: But but once you think through where this ultimately leads,
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  Speaker 2: it's you think, like, it's not just a few jobs,
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  Speaker 2: I think, but it's really everything that that humans can
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  Speaker 2: do to a good approximation, with maybe the exception being
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  Speaker 2: where the consumer has a direct preference that the particular
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: product or service be done by human like mm hm, priest,
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  Speaker 2: prostitute and politician, Right, those might.
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  Speaker 1: Survive well politician hopefully not. Hopefully AI can handle that
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  Speaker 1: all without any corruption.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, but somebody's got to take credits for it.
• 6:05
  Speaker 1: This is true and code it. Yeah, it's.
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  Speaker 2: And so then then you get to these like more
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: profound questions I think about meaning and purpose and like
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  Speaker 2: what does a human life look like at technological maturity?
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  Speaker 1: Right? Also what is experience? Does experience have to be measurable?
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  Speaker 1: Like can do you have to touch it? Do you
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  Speaker 1: have to measure and weigh it? Or is virtual experience
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  Speaker 1: still experience? Like if you have a very full and
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  Speaker 1: enjoyable and fulfilling virtual life, is that enough? You know
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  Speaker 1: what I mean? Like do you do you have to
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  Speaker 1: do everything in the material world or can you find
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  Speaker 1: happiness in a virtual world that doesn't currently exist? But
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  Speaker 1: we could clearly see the technology, if it expands, it's
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  Speaker 1: going to there's going to be the possibility of experiencing
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  Speaker 1: a matrix type reality.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I see where you are going. Yeah,
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  Speaker 2: but yeah, and I mean I think like different strokes
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  Speaker 2: for different folks. If you imagine a world where presumably
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: these virtual worlds will be very rich, hm and deep
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  Speaker 2: and fascinating, but some people might just like the idea
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  Speaker 2: of you know, climbing the real Mount Everest rather than
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: you know, being in.
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  Speaker 1: Most certainly, But however, there could come a time where
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  Speaker 1: people are locked out of regular reality. Like, this is
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: worst case scenario with AI is that you have your
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: needs taken care of, but there is no purpose, there's
• 7:43
  Speaker 1: nothing to do. There's nothing to do because AI is
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  Speaker 1: taking care of all aspects of society other than recreation.
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  Speaker 1: There's nothing to do. And then this one recreation comes along.
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  Speaker 1: That's not reality, but it's way more fulfilling and exciting
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  Speaker 1: than any other aspect of reality. And you know what
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: example that would just be in a very minor way,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: your phone provides you with that sort of an escape
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  Speaker 1: and it's not even that thrilling, and yet it's massively
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  Speaker 1: addicted your phone. People are on their phone six hours
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  Speaker 1: a day. If you if we come up with a
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  Speaker 1: virtual reality that's way more exciting than regular reality, everyone's
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  Speaker 1: going to hop on in.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think to some extent this will
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  Speaker 2: maybe be the case, whether you go the virtual path
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  Speaker 2: or the physical paths. I mean, you could imagine a
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  Speaker 2: future where there like resources and people are sort of
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  Speaker 2: lying in beach chairs sleeping drinks all day long, and
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  Speaker 2: like that's also a kind of checking out.
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  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, well that, yeah, that's not fulfilling. You know.
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  Speaker 1: The thing about a virtual reality is you don't have
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  Speaker 1: to even live within our physics. I mean, you can fly,
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  Speaker 1: you can do anything.
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  Speaker 2: It's a larger space of possibilities. But either way, it
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  Speaker 2: could be like a passive existence in physical reality where
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  Speaker 2: you're like launching to beat or in video games like
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  Speaker 2: you could have like tendency every straining every fiber to
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  Speaker 2: try to succeed in this virtual environment, or like one
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  Speaker 2: where you're just kind of floating on some cloud in
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  Speaker 2: a drug like state.
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  Speaker 1: But I don't think people are going to be interested
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  Speaker 1: in that because just the way the human mind works,
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  Speaker 1: Like what kind of video games are people attracted to?
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  Speaker 1: It's because a video game is essentially approximate. It's an
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  Speaker 1: approximation of that you're just watching it on a screen,
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  Speaker 1: but you're sort of forgetting the fact that you're watching
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  Speaker 1: on a screen. You're just concentrating on this three D
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  Speaker 1: reality that you're running through with a machine gun or
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  Speaker 1: whatever you're doing. Right, That's what people are interested in.
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  Speaker 1: They're not interested in these games we just like float
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  Speaker 1: over the earth and like fly and just eat bananas. No,
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  Speaker 1: they're they're interested in thrilling things. And if that gets
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  Speaker 1: provided in a virtual way, the amount of people that
• 9:51
  Speaker 1: are going to just say this is better than regular
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  Speaker 1: boring life, or we're a slave to a computer.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean they are both kinds.
• 10:01
  Speaker 1: Okay, we're back. Where were we? Oh?
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I was just saying that there are also these
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  Speaker 2: computer games that like provide a more passive experience, yeah,
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  Speaker 2: like not really doing much and it's more kind of
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  Speaker 2: zoning out.
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  Speaker 1: But most people aren't interested in those. Most people are
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  Speaker 1: interested in Call of Duty. They're interested in these wild
• 10:20
  Speaker 1: first person shooters where you're running down hallways and everything's
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: exciting and thrill some sci fi game or you know,
• 10:27
  Speaker 1: Half Life something like that. That's what people are interested.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Well, I mean I think there are like some
• 10:34
  Speaker 2: personality differences in what path you would take there. But
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: either way, I think a lot of the choices that
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: people would make currently depend on what they are sort
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: of designed to respond to by feeling good about it.
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: So like, if you enjoy one thing, you choose that,
• 10:50
  Speaker 2: if you enjoy another, that in this condition of technological maturity,
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: if we might one sort of a future civilization that
• 10:57
  Speaker 2: has developed all possible tech aldies to their maximum, then
• 11:03
  Speaker 2: amongst the affordances, amongst the things they could do is
• 11:06
  Speaker 2: like they wouldn't just have control over the external environment
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: things around them, but also their own biology and brains.
• 11:15
  Speaker 2: So if you were one of these people and like
• 11:18
  Speaker 2: maybe right now the only way you get enjoyment is
• 11:21
  Speaker 2: by you know, getting like crazy drunk or doing sort
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: of things you don't really approve of. Maybe, but that's
• 11:26
  Speaker 2: actually what sort of lights your fire. Like you could
• 11:31
  Speaker 2: I mightn't redesigning yourself to take the same kind of pleasure,
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: but in some kind of contemplating the beauty of the universe,
• 11:38
  Speaker 2: or like appreciating the goodness in the heart of others,
• 11:42
  Speaker 2: or like some some more sort of noble aspiration, like
• 11:46
  Speaker 2: assolving abstract mathematics rather than you know, playing first person shooters.
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  Speaker 2: You would have a choice like whether you would get
• 11:52
  Speaker 2: your your thrills from one kind of activity or the other.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: Yeah, which brings us to the question like what does
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: it mean to be human? Like for people finding beauty
• 12:03
  Speaker 1: and joy in you know, interesting and fascinating things, and
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  Speaker 1: you know how to be a better person and all
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: all the different aspects of human life that we think
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: about when we think about people, and we think about
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: noble aspects of humanity. But doesn't that have to exist
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: in conjunction with the worst aspects of society for us
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  Speaker 1: to appreciate it. It seems like this is a part
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: of the human condition, is that we have to have
• 12:31
  Speaker 1: crime so that we can appreciate peace. We have to
• 12:34
  Speaker 1: have war so we could appreciate peace. We have to
• 12:37
  Speaker 1: have hate so we could appreciate love. And we're never
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: without one or the other. They're always both together in
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: constant conflict, and we're always nobly hoping that the good
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: wins out over the bad. And this is part of
• 12:51
  Speaker 1: the struggle of being a human being. And if we
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: just completely eliminate that struggle, we're gonna have to find
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: some we're gonna have. We're gonna have to be a
• 13:00
  Speaker 1: different thing, because what we are is this very strange
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: territorial primate and who's endlessly curious, and this territorial primate
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: is moving in a certain direction, and that direction seems
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: to be a better society seems to be over time.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: If you look at statistics from thousands of years ago
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  Speaker 1: to today, there's less violence, there's better medicine, there's better education.
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  Speaker 1: It's moving in a better and better and better direction.
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: But it's in a struggle. That's part of why it
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  Speaker 1: moves if all of a sudden there's no struggle and
• 13:34
  Speaker 1: everyone is this wonderful, enlightened being, Like what are we?
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Because we're going to be a different thing than what
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: we are right now? And if you love music, and
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: if you love art, and if you love you know,
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: novels and all these different things that come out of
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: the human condition, those things come out of struggle. Those
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: things come out of confusion and pain and heartbreak and
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: love and joy and all that stuff all pile up
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  Speaker 1: together without that, like what are we? And so if
• 14:04
  Speaker 1: we are moving in this direction technologically and we're not
• 14:08
  Speaker 1: moving as fast biologically, do we merge? Because that seems
• 14:15
  Speaker 1: to be what I think. I think that if this
• 14:17
  Speaker 1: thing goes the way it continues to go, the bottleneck
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: is going to be human biology.
• 14:24
  Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, there is a kind of paradox.
• 14:28
  Speaker 3: In our efforts to make progress.
• 14:31
  Speaker 2: So like there are all these kind of scientists and
• 14:33
  Speaker 2: people working to develop better technologies and throughout the economy,
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: you know, in some company, maybe you try to figure
• 14:38
  Speaker 2: out how to make some process a little bit more
• 14:40
  Speaker 2: efficient so you can serve customers better. And all of
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: this is designed to solve problems, right to like if
• 14:47
  Speaker 2: you sort of extrapolate that to its logical endpoint, right,
• 14:52
  Speaker 2: you imagine we would have perfect technology that can do everything,
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: solve all the problems, like presumably with AI and automation, Right,
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: But then you end up in this condition where there
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: is kind of nothing left for us to do, you
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: might think. And so although it looks like we have
• 15:07
  Speaker 2: these strong reasons to push forward in this direction, if
• 15:10
  Speaker 2: you actually look at the endpoint, if we succeeded too
• 15:14
  Speaker 2: many people, it will look kind of unpalatable and like
• 15:17
  Speaker 2: this kind of future where you know, all the problems
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: are solved, and nevertheless that that does seem to be
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: you know, the direction that we are headed in, probably
• 15:27
  Speaker 2: the direction that we should be head.
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, wouldn't that be a better goal if there was
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: zero murder, zero violence, zero zero crime, zero lying, zero corruption,
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: and human beings all worked in coordination with each other,
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: just like in a sense of unique sinking and harmony. Right,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: that would be way better, I think.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: But it does, like if you actually stare at that situation,
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: it does have these slightly.
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: Unpalatable Yeah, because quality, I think it looks kind of
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: blind done, right.
• 16:02
  Speaker 1: If it's not necessarily though, it's just it looks bland
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: if you think about what we're experiencing now, like all
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: the excitement and the weirdness of uncertainty and of not
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: knowing you know, and also the negative aspects of our
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: life in conjunction with the positive aspects of our lives.
• 16:19
  Speaker 1: We contrast the two of them, and you really appreciate
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: good people have to run a bunch of fucking assholes,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: you know, if that doesn't but doesn't have to be
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: that way. This is just what we are dealing with.
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: This is my position on work too, because everybody in
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: their head is like what happens when AI takes all
• 16:37
  Speaker 1: the jobs? And I'm like, do you have to have
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: a fucking job? Isn't that a human invention? Like why
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: do you have to have a job? But it seems
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: crazy that our main focus is on housing and food
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: and like most people are basically just working for that.
• 16:55
  Speaker 1: Most people that are most people that are struggling check
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: to check. Basically housing and food is their daily labor.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: If that's removed, wouldn't enough people figure out what to
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: do with their time?
• 17:08
  Speaker 2: But yeah, yeah, I think so that's like, yeah, there
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: will be some transition and yeah, discomfort and this is
• 17:15
  Speaker 2: made ultimately that is like, yeah, I mean I think
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: it's like, so slavery is really bad, right, Like, yeah,
• 17:21
  Speaker 2: wage slavery is a sort of you know, slavery light
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: in a sense. You have to sell a third of
• 17:26
  Speaker 2: your waking day just to get money to pay for necessities.
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: And the people that are trying to make the most
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: money make the conditions for their employees as shitty as
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: possible because it costs the least amount. They don't think
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: about it, like, listen, maybe we make less money, but
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: we have an awesome experience for everybody that works there.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: Nobody thinks like that. They all think like, we have
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: to make the most money because we have shareholders and
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: we have responsibility, and these people need to make more
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: money every quarter.
• 17:53
  Speaker 2: So yeah, although sometimes you do need to compete for talent,
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: that's true.
• 17:57
  Speaker 1: Too, but only the top talent. That's why the CEOs
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: get all the bread and all the people in the assembly.
• 18:02
  Speaker 3: Some players get treated well, right, what would you say?
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: I mean, Jamie is a different kind of employee. Jamie
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: is literally the co I mean, he's the co person
• 18:12
  Speaker 1: on this show. That's different. But you know some dude
• 18:15
  Speaker 1: who's out there, you know, stocking boxes for Amazon. That's
• 18:19
  Speaker 1: different than being the CEO.
• 18:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think like ultimately that would be
• 18:23
  Speaker 2: a huge liberation and kind of restore dignity. Like you
• 18:27
  Speaker 2: should be in control of your own time. It's kind
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: of almost the most like aside from your own body,
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: like your own time, you're on attention.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: You have to teach people discipline. They have to this.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: The thing is like, if you give people the opportunity
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: to just do nothing, we we do. You know, we're primates.
• 18:43
  Speaker 1: We'll find a way to really this. We're genetically sort
• 18:47
  Speaker 1: of designed to conserve resources. You don't want to over
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: use resources for no reason, to do a bunch of
• 18:52
  Speaker 1: shit because you won't survive you don't have enough food.
• 18:55
  Speaker 1: So we're sort of designed to like know how to
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: be lazy. And so we're gonna have to find things
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: that give us purpose or we'll get depressed. This episode
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• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it used to be the traditional idea,
• 20:01
  Speaker 2: like a British aristocracy, like that you wouldn't have to
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: work for a living. It was kind of unfortunate necessity
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: for many people that they had to work for their
• 20:10
  Speaker 2: daily bread, right, But the ideal way of being human
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: was that you just had money and then you spent
• 20:15
  Speaker 2: your time doing other things like you know, maybe you
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: were involved in politics, or maybe you had like an
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: art collection, or you did your gardening or entertained friends.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: That's the best aspect of it. But when you think
• 20:27
  Speaker 1: about British aristocracy, don't you think about fuck ups? I
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: do I think about guys that are just drunk they
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: drive their ferrari into a lake and they accidentally drown
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: their friend, and then they pay off the cops and
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: they get away with it. That's what I think of it.
• 20:41
  Speaker 2: Well, yeah, there is that, but they were also these
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: kind of I don't know, amateur scientists or eccentrics, had
• 20:46
  Speaker 2: their weird thing and it about it. So I guess
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: it brings out like the more freedoms of what it has,
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: the more they can reveal their true nature.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: Like, well, it also depends on how they're raised, right,
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: who who are their parents? What value did they instill
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: in them when they were young? Did they explain the
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: value of hard work that it's actually good for you?
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: And then if you just find something you really want
• 21:08
  Speaker 1: to do and you concentrate on it and really work
• 21:10
  Speaker 1: hard at it, it's actually very fulfilling.
• 21:13
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So you could aboute it for a top of
• 21:15
  Speaker 2: education system in this world where we no longer need
• 21:17
  Speaker 2: to work, like presumably we need to be redesigned from
• 21:21
  Speaker 2: from some sketch basically because right now it's a kind
• 21:25
  Speaker 2: of machine. Right, So you take children coming in kind
• 21:28
  Speaker 2: of on a conveyor belt, and then some processing is done,
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: like say that their desk carries this assignment here are
• 21:34
  Speaker 2: good and then they come out with a quality label attached. Yeah, right,
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: and then they are meant to be productive workers that
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: you could put in an office and they will. So
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: this kind of is an unfortunate fact about the current
• 21:48
  Speaker 2: condition that I mean, the world needs a lot of
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: these office workers that can do all these tasks in
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: the economy. So like it's we have to have until
• 21:54
  Speaker 2: it doesn't, until it doesn't and at.
• 21:56
  Speaker 3: That point it would be absurd to keep doing this.
• 21:58
  Speaker 2: Right, then you could imagine changing education so that it
• 22:01
  Speaker 2: would be much more about like how can you learn
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: to live well a life of leisure like you imagine
• 22:11
  Speaker 2: you're cultivating, like you know, the art of conversation, appreciation
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: for art and music, hobbies, physical wellness like nature, the
• 22:22
  Speaker 2: ability to set your own goals and take your own
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: initiatives too, you know, to develop true friendships with people
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: like these are things are not taught in school, but
• 22:32
  Speaker 2: you could imagine that being the curriculum, like spirituality, like
• 22:35
  Speaker 2: all kinds of sure things that would then equip people
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: to sort of use their freedom, their wealth, their free
• 22:43
  Speaker 2: time for you know, some kind of you know, actually
• 22:48
  Speaker 2: meaningful and beautiful activities, for.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Sure, for for sure, preemptively we should be kind of
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: teaching people like that now, Like if young people are
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: coming up now, the world that they're if you're in
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: first grade right now, twelve years from now, when you're
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: graduating from high school, like, the world is a totally
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: different place, and this idea that being a productive worker
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: who could sit still for eight hours a day is
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: that's the best way we should teach kids. That seems
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: crazy if we're really like seeing the world that you're describing,
• 23:18
  Speaker 1: and then most people seem to think is oncoming.
• 23:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I guess that the timeline is a little
• 23:25
  Speaker 2: bit uncertain, So you don't want end up in a
• 23:26
  Speaker 2: situation right where you sort of now you find yourself,
• 23:29
  Speaker 2: you're twenty years old, it's time to go out in
• 23:31
  Speaker 2: the world. You have no skills. The AI revolution hasn't
• 23:34
  Speaker 2: yet quite hap fun.
• 23:35
  Speaker 1: It's kind of listen that a liberal arts degree anyway. Yeah,
• 23:39
  Speaker 1: there's a lot of silly degrees that people get right
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: now that are useless anyway, and they spend a tremendous
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: amount of time working on getting it, and then when
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: they get it out there's no jobs for that degree.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they were a little bit too early maybe
• 23:54
  Speaker 2: and helping on this maybe, or.
• 23:56
  Speaker 1: You know, there's also traps. There's things that you can
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: get really excited about and do. Like if you want
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: to play professional bowling, you want to bowl professionally, well,
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: the amount of money you're going to make is very
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: limited because the best bowler in the world. Like, what
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: does the best professional bowler in the world make, let's guess,
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: I say one hundred thousand dollars? Yes, the professional bowlers.
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: We used to know a guy Ari's friends with a guy, uh,
• 24:23
  Speaker 1: Tommy kind of can't remember his last name. Do you
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: remember his last name, Jamie? He was a professional bowler,
• 24:29
  Speaker 1: but he used to come to the commed store and
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: hang out. Really nice guy and love comedy.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: Maybe the very best one makes a pretty decent living,
• 24:36
  Speaker 2: and that the third best, Like it's just.
• 24:38
  Speaker 1: I bet barely. I bet the best guy probably makes
• 24:41
  Speaker 1: maybe one hundred grand or two hundred grand at the most,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: And that means like the thirtieth guy in the world
• 24:47
  Speaker 1: is fucked. Yeah, there you have to have another job
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: to pursue it.
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: Well, but then in this what does he.
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: Make two hundred k oh four hundred K in Big
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: Season four fifty including prize money and sponsorship. But then
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: like what the EJ. Tuckett made four hundred and thirty six?
• 25:04
  Speaker 1: Fuck yeah, EJ. EJ. Tackett made four hundred and thirty
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: seven five hundred and forty dollars for a twenty twenty
• 25:11
  Speaker 1: five season, with several others between one hundred and ninety
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: k and two hundred and seventy k in prize money alone.
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: Top tier. So the top tier guys make a good living.
• 25:21
  Speaker 1: But how many guys are there? You know?
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm saying, It's probably like a very
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: thin sort of right.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: So if you choose to go into bowling, it's not
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: like choosing to go into you know, there's a lot
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: of other jobs. Like even if you want to be
• 25:33
  Speaker 1: a basketball player, they're they're making a lot of money.
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: You know, if you're a really good basketball player and
• 25:38
  Speaker 1: you pursue that, like you could get very very rich.
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: But how many of them get must?
• 25:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But then like so maybe maybe the money factor
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: would kind of drop out of the picture.
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: Yes, and it would just be what you're interested in.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: And then maybe even it would I mean, the opportunities
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: are and what.
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: Other people are interested in to some extent, because I
• 25:56
  Speaker 2: think part of what people are competing for is also
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: a prestige.
• 25:59
  Speaker 1: And yes, that would be a thing, right, like status
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: would be more important. It's like who's the best at
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: this thing? Like a bunch of friends who play golf,
• 26:08
  Speaker 1: Like Jamie plays golf all the time. Golfers are all
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: like comparing each other's scores, and they're all they're playing.
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: They're competing in this game, and that they think about
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: that more than they think about work. Like people who
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: love golf they freaking hate work. Like I used to
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: say that about comedy back when I first started. One
• 26:25
  Speaker 1: of the things that I noticed is the guys who
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: really got into golf, their careers kind of stalled because
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: they were more excited about playing golf than they were
• 26:33
  Speaker 1: about writing jokes and going on the road. And I
• 26:36
  Speaker 1: was like, okay, so if the average person doesn't need
• 26:40
  Speaker 1: food and housing anymore from labor, if that's gone, and
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: now you just get it, and so now you could
• 26:45
  Speaker 1: just go do things. We just have to teach people
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: to be excited about stuff. We have to teach people
• 26:51
  Speaker 1: the value of curiosity and finding things that are interesting
• 26:55
  Speaker 1: to you, and then the value of just education for
• 26:59
  Speaker 1: this sake of life, earning things because it's interesting. It's
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: just pure satisfaction of curiosity, which is a beautiful thing.
• 27:06
  Speaker 1: Like that would be great for everybody if we instead
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: of learning things because your teacher tells you have to
• 27:13
  Speaker 1: learn it. Well, there's always going to be people that
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: just naturally gravitate towards mathematics, and they're really fascinated by mathematics.
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: And there's always going to be people that are just
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: naturally gravitating towards history. They're like, how did we get here?
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: What is this? How did that start? Who wrote that?
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: Who's the first guy to figure that out? And that's
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: you're going to naturally go towards that and just be
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: educated for the sake of satisfying your curiosity. And maybe
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: we'll have a more balanced society because people will actually
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: be able to just pursue their interests. We have to
• 27:42
  Speaker 1: teach them to do it. That's what I think is
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: going to be really important about young people in the future.
• 27:48
  Speaker 1: Teach them to actually pursue their curiosity rather than just
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: squash any desires they have for novelty and for interesting
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: things and just be able to work all day doing
• 28:00
  Speaker 1: something you hate, because that's what it means to be
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: an adult.
• 28:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah. I think like cultivating that would be like the
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: way forward in this case.
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: Right, and it seems very possible. It's doable, Like we
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: know curious people, Yeah.
• 28:16
  Speaker 2: At least to's some make sense. I think there's probably
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: also some differences in how different folks are wired. Like
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: some people get bored very easily, others find everything fascinating. Yeah,
• 28:25
  Speaker 2: people are like just naturally depressed or have low mood.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Others are sort.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Of Yeah, but those people that are naturally depressed, how
• 28:31
  Speaker 1: much would their life change if they were coached that
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: are very early age the value of exercise and if
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: they started running, if they started doing yoga, and they
• 28:39
  Speaker 1: started feeling much better and they weren't naturally depressed anymore.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: And then you change their diet and you start adding
• 28:44
  Speaker 1: in vitamins and nutrients and stop giving them process foods,
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: and all of a sudden they feel better. Because the
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: concept even of depression, like what does that mean? Well,
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: it's varies so wildly. And when you're talking about people
• 28:58
  Speaker 1: that aren't taking care of their bodies, and that's not
• 29:00
  Speaker 1: thought of as a primary factor in why depression exists
• 29:04
  Speaker 1: in the first place. Well, this is a very unscientific
• 29:07
  Speaker 1: approach then, because we know that it has a profound
• 29:09
  Speaker 1: impact on human beings. So you were pretending that there's
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: this one size fit all. No, I think that should
• 29:15
  Speaker 1: be also a part of teaching people how to be
• 29:18
  Speaker 1: a human being. Chase your curiosities. But also this is
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: why you're not feeling well, and that if you just
• 29:24
  Speaker 1: develop this ability to get some momentum going and just
• 29:27
  Speaker 1: show up at that yoga class every day, you feel
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: way better and you don't have to take a pill.
• 29:33
  Speaker 2: And I think many could be a lot improved if
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: they were taught to sort of take care of their
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: basic physiology.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: And everyone can be improved, one percent of them can
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: be improved. It's a part of being a human being.
• 29:46
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I think there is
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: also some people who might just have some you know,
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: imbolence of some neurotransmitter because of some genetics.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: One hundred percent maybe they don't even.
• 29:56
  Speaker 2: Have the energy to engage in these activities that would
• 29:59
  Speaker 2: make them feel better. But then I think that would
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: be much better medicines for helping comes in.
• 30:06
  Speaker 1: Let's go give them some adderall, well, get them fired up,
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: get them start running. I'm kidding, But what we're saying
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: is all doable. We're not asking people to breathe underwater.
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: Right where we're saying is that there are people on
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: earth that live like that. And this idea that living
• 30:27
  Speaker 1: just for a paycheck so that you can cover your
• 30:29
  Speaker 1: food and your housing, which we've always thought of as
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: being just an undeniable part of being a person an adult,
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: this is what you have to do. You have to
• 30:38
  Speaker 1: pay for your food, pay for your housing. But if
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: we do get to a point where the structure of
• 30:44
  Speaker 1: society is now run by hyper intelligent artificial intelligence, you
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: would wouldn't need most jobs that people have to do
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: that suck. And in order to get our society to
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: this point, if you wanted an iPhone, you needed and
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: people that were in a factory somewhere putting it all together.
• 31:04
  Speaker 1: You needed someone who's designing it. You needed someone who's
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: sitting there in the office trying to figure out how
• 31:10
  Speaker 1: to market it. You needed all those jobs. But when
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: we don't need all those jobs anymore, then things are
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: going to be very interesting. And that's what I'm saying.
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: We need to become a different thing. Like it's kind
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: of true and kind of not, Like you can be
• 31:23
  Speaker 1: a human being and live in that world, but we're
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: going to have to re educate people how to be
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: a human being. It's gonna this Our education system, specifically
• 31:34
  Speaker 1: in this country, is just designed to make factory workers, specifically,
• 31:38
  Speaker 1: Like there's a there's a real history of it, Like
• 31:41
  Speaker 1: we know why they made it this way. They made
• 31:43
  Speaker 1: it this way, and they got people in really early
• 31:46
  Speaker 1: so they could get people set up for jobs. They
• 31:48
  Speaker 1: just want people to work.
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are kind of currently ill suited for
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: really thriving in an environment of abundance and for enjoying
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: life because I mean, both at deep biological time scales
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: and during the life span of a single individual, there
• 32:06
  Speaker 2: are all these pressures necessities that kind of force us
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: to become a certain type. So, I mean, we talked
• 32:12
  Speaker 2: about the education system training people to be the kind
• 32:15
  Speaker 2: who can sit at the desk all day long and
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: performed tasks. Yeah, Biologically we evolved drives to be lazy,
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: to conserve energy, to eat as much as we can.
• 32:26
  Speaker 2: And now in the modern environment where there are fridges everywhere,
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: like it causes problems metabolically and in terms of enjoying life.
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: For many people, there's this hedonic treadmill, right Like, so
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: you achieve something, some improvement, there's a spike of happiness,
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: and then you sort of go back to baseline very
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: quickly start to take for granted all the blessings of life,
• 32:50
  Speaker 2: which makes it very difficult to actually achieve a state
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: of permanent happiness and felicity. And it's kind of been
• 33:01
  Speaker 2: necessary because that needed to be this motivation to keep
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: striving for the next thing. Now once we've actually achieved
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: all the things, So then maybe that becomes a kind
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: of dysfunctional, right like, why keep wanting to strive for
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: the next thing if all the things have already been
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: achieved at.
• 33:18
  Speaker 3: Least in a certain domain.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: And so I think as we move deeper into this
• 33:24
  Speaker 2: hypothesized future where we get all these medical technologies, then
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: at some point probably some transformation of human nature would
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: have to go along with that. First, maybe cultural changes
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: to sort of equip people for a life of leisure,
• 33:41
  Speaker 2: and then ultimately maybe more profound changes to our very biology.
• 33:45
  Speaker 2: And so that imagine, if you solve aging and you
• 33:48
  Speaker 2: can now live for thousands of years, right like maybe
• 33:51
  Speaker 2: the way our memory work is not really set up
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: for them. Maybe we would just go stale after two
• 33:56
  Speaker 2: hundred years with our current brains, like we just get
• 33:58
  Speaker 2: stuck in a rot. We don't know because we haven't
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: lived for two hundred years, but that could easily turn
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: out to be the case with the human So then
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: maybe at that point you would need to sort of
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: do something to sort of add more cognitive resources, more flexibility,
• 34:12
  Speaker 2: and some sort of psychedelic reset or something to sort
• 34:15
  Speaker 2: of keep the flexibility going for longer periods of time.
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: I'm glad you said a psychedelic reset, because it would
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: be very funny if the main tools that we have
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: for navigating this are all illegal, because I think they
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: might be, and specifically with psilocybin and DMT and probably
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: avagaine as well, Like if we wanted chemical tools to
• 34:39
  Speaker 1: navigate a new reality, those are probably the best ones
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: that we have available, and they're all illegal. And I
• 34:46
  Speaker 1: think you're right. I think if we're going to be
• 34:48
  Speaker 1: able to navigate this correctly, we have to kind of
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: change the way we interact with each other what it
• 34:54
  Speaker 1: means to be a person. But I wonder how much
• 34:57
  Speaker 1: of the conflict that we have is a direct result
• 35:00
  Speaker 1: of this inherent struggle that so many people have. And
• 35:04
  Speaker 1: I mean there's a direct correlation between extreme poverty and
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: extreme crime, you know, specifically in this country. If you
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: look at the areas of extreme poverty in this country,
• 35:13
  Speaker 1: they're also the areas with extreme crime. And I wonder
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: how much of that would be completely alleviated with a
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: complete lack of poverty. We've always assumed that if you're
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: going to have a functioning society, that you're going to
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: have slums. Why like, why they don't serve any function?
• 35:36
  Speaker 1: It's not a good thing. Well, it's because some people
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: are always going to be making bad decisions and some
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: people are always going to be going down the wrong
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: road and crime and this and that. Right, but there's
• 35:47
  Speaker 1: still just humans, and some humans don't do that. So
• 35:49
  Speaker 1: it wouldn't it be better to figure out a way
• 35:51
  Speaker 1: to not have humans ever do that anymore? And it
• 35:53
  Speaker 1: seems like a way to there seems like a way
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: to do that. It's again not asking people to breathe underwater.
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: We're just we're trying to figure out why does some
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: people never engage in crime? Why do some people live
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: these really fulfilling and interesting lives, probably because they were
• 36:08
  Speaker 1: exposed to it when they were really young, Probably because
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: they weren't exposed to like very bad environments and very
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: bad crime and very bad poverty, and how much of
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: that would change if there was no more property. It
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: sounds like such a little fairy tale child, like, oh, wenday,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: we'll have no poverty. But that's doable if everyone is alive, right, Okay,
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: that's alive right now, is not starving to death. That
• 36:33
  Speaker 1: means we figured out a way to at least the
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: very least get you resources so you could feed yourself, right,
• 36:39
  Speaker 1: no matter how dysfunctional things are. All it has to
• 36:43
  Speaker 1: do is get ramped up a few steps, and now
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: you have no one ever worried about being fed, no
• 36:49
  Speaker 1: one ever worrying about not having a place to sleep,
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: And then you have to find purpose. But it seems
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: like there's a lot of people that find purpose without
• 36:58
  Speaker 1: having a fire financial price tag attached to it, just
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: by what we're talking about with golf. Or you could
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: be like really into writing books. You could write books
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: all day long, and people are always going to want
• 37:10
  Speaker 1: human created fiction. People are always going to be interested
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: in the way other people think about things. You'll find
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: there's plenty of things to do. There's plenty of games
• 37:19
  Speaker 1: to play, and plenty of skills to learn. The idea
• 37:23
  Speaker 1: that the only reason why we work is to eat
• 37:26
  Speaker 1: and to not get rained on seems nuts.
• 37:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it is, I guess to some except an open
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: question to what extent people will always want to read
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: human fiction or to prefer the human generated outputs. It
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: might be just because current AI generated writing is kind
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: of lacking in various ways. It's often it's not and boring.
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: But if it became really good, then you know, maybe
• 37:57
  Speaker 2: it would just be like much more fun to like,
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: like if a movie made by an AI might just
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: be so much.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Better and richer and the lighting is perfect and the
• 38:05
  Speaker 3: dialogue is sharp and it's more funny and deep and
• 38:08
  Speaker 3: certainly such as it.
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: And then you're going to watch this human produced thang
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: and it's gone, like like most people don't go and
• 38:14
  Speaker 2: watch sort of film school students' productions.
• 38:18
  Speaker 1: Right, But then there's that like that movie Obsession, wasn't
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: that movie made like very inexpensively and it's a huge hit, right,
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: And that's part of the thrill of it, is that
• 38:27
  Speaker 1: this guy who was like a YouTuber right who created
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: this film, And now this movie is a giant hit
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: and everybody's like super excited about it. Now that same
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: movie was made by AI, I wonder if it would
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: have that impact because it doesn't have the human connection.
• 38:43
  Speaker 2: So that's possible that we keep getting interested in these
• 38:48
  Speaker 2: things because we sort of are really entangled with the
• 38:52
  Speaker 2: human world much more than we are with the world
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: of ais And I mean for the same reason you
• 38:57
  Speaker 2: might be more interested in if like your brother our
• 39:00
  Speaker 2: friends did something. You might think, oh, this is interesting,
• 39:03
  Speaker 2: I want to check that out of courses with some
• 39:05
  Speaker 2: random dude who makes something likely better. It's like, doesn't mean.
• 39:08
  Speaker 1: Right when you go to see your nephew play baseball,
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: you wouldn't really go see little kids based when your
• 39:15
  Speaker 1: nep gets on first base, like, way to go, Bobby.
• 39:18
  Speaker 2: So I think these kind of social entanglements that we
• 39:22
  Speaker 2: have like will be a big part of what gives
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: structure to lives in this condition where where like the
• 39:30
  Speaker 2: external constraints are removed.
• 39:33
  Speaker 1: I think that there is a great value for the
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: human mind, for whatever reason, in getting better at things
• 39:39
  Speaker 1: and learning things. And I think that if we could
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: instill that in people at a young age. I think
• 39:46
  Speaker 1: it would be fairly easy to get people to pursue
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: that path, but we have to completely revamp our education system,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: which should have been done a long time ago. Anyway,
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: the idea of having unenthusiastic, underpaid people being any percentage
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: of what children encounter for most of the day when
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: they're in their most formative period isn't seen. It should
• 40:09
  Speaker 1: be a rich, exciting, enthusiastic journey and how to be
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: a better person, and how it's exciting to learn things,
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: and I was exciting to get better at things and
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: about how anybody can get better at things.
• 40:21
  Speaker 2: Yeahh I mean I hate it. Every day of school.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: I hated it. Yeah, hated it. I didn't even know
• 40:26
  Speaker 1: that I was interested in learning anything until I got
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: out of school.
• 40:30
  Speaker 3: The tame for me, I mean, I only discovered it.
• 40:31
  Speaker 2: Like I also hated books and everything like that for
• 40:35
  Speaker 2: my first fifteen years of life because I associated that
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: with school. That was the kind of school thing. So
• 40:40
  Speaker 2: it's only done randomly. One day I happened to walk
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: into the local library for no reason and pulled out
• 40:47
  Speaker 2: the book here and there, and then I discovered that
• 40:49
  Speaker 2: there was this whole world of science and idea and
• 40:52
  Speaker 2: literature and all of that, like very different from what
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: we were doing in school. And then that kind of
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: opened the gates for me.
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: To imagine what a heead start you would have had
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: if you had like a different kind of education with
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: super enthusiastic people who really love teaching children are really
• 41:08
  Speaker 1: good at it, and that we reward them, and that
• 41:12
  Speaker 1: it becomes a very prestigious position to be in rather
• 41:14
  Speaker 1: than what it is now. If you talk to some
• 41:16
  Speaker 1: guy and then he goes, I'm a high school teacher,
• 41:18
  Speaker 1: You're like, oh, poor bastard, how's he feed himself? That's
• 41:21
  Speaker 1: the immediately what I think, like, good for you that
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: you're doing that, But also I guarantee you could probably
• 41:27
  Speaker 1: be making a lot more money and be happier doing
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: another job. And so that's a terrible way to start
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: life off. And if we just revamp that, then you
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: have a bunch of people that are interacting with life
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: in a very different way. And instead of being thought,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I have to get a job someday, I have to
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: get a job after school anyway to help my mom
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: pay the bills because we're struggling. So I got to
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: contribute to the household. Even though I'm sixteen, I can't
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: hang out with friends if all that stuff's out the window.
• 41:55
  Speaker 1: And now it's like no, What we need to find
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: out is what is exciting for you, Like what excites
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: your mind, your specific personality, What is it about life
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: that's interesting? And let's expose you to a bunch of
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: different things that are exciting and interesting that other people
• 42:11
  Speaker 1: find value in. And let's find out which way you gravitate,
• 42:15
  Speaker 1: because maybe you gravitate towards chess, or maybe you gravitate
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: towards something completely different. Maybe you're just really into painting.
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: Maybe painting just lights you up and you like look
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: at a canvas and you just start fucking around with
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: it and that's your thing. There's a lot of people
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: in this world that find that it's just they have
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: to find it themselves.
• 42:32
  Speaker 2: Unfortunately, I think that that's kind of inspiring. And but
• 42:38
  Speaker 2: like I think, the train doesn't stop there. So if
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: we think even more farther into this kind of condition
• 42:46
  Speaker 2: of technological maturity, I think in addition to sort of
• 42:49
  Speaker 2: freeing up people, you know, like making it easy to
• 42:52
  Speaker 2: produce the food and the houses and like cars, that
• 42:55
  Speaker 2: go faster and don't pollute and all of this stuff.
• 42:59
  Speaker 2: Like if you think through what maybe a technolgically mature
• 43:02
  Speaker 2: civilization could do. Like so a lot of these like learning,
• 43:05
  Speaker 2: for example, is something that gives people purpose, but maybe
• 43:09
  Speaker 2: you would have the ability to sort of download knowledge
• 43:14
  Speaker 2: at the click off a botton. So rather than like,
• 43:15
  Speaker 2: if you want to learn advanced mathematics, now you have
• 43:18
  Speaker 2: to study a year, like for years, right, do like
• 43:21
  Speaker 2: books with exercises and apply yourself and then eventually you
• 43:25
  Speaker 2: sort of unlock. Yeah, but like maybe a technogical maturity
• 43:29
  Speaker 2: there would be like Okay, I understand mathematics. Okay, I've
• 43:32
  Speaker 2: got a press dog button boom, now right mathematic the matrix. Yeah,
• 43:37
  Speaker 2: so if you had like you know, you may maybe
• 43:39
  Speaker 2: some kind of nanobots that could infiltrate your brain and
• 43:42
  Speaker 2: then change the synopsis in just such a way that
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: you're not the same as you were before exact you
• 43:48
  Speaker 2: have these.
• 43:48
  Speaker 3: Concepts from abstract mathematics.
• 43:50
  Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, after twenty minutes or something like that,
• 43:53
  Speaker 2: some super intelligence works out how to change your synopsis
• 43:56
  Speaker 2: to this new condition. And if you were inclined to
• 44:01
  Speaker 2: do various things because they give you doy and pleasure.
• 44:04
  Speaker 2: Like you could also think, well, I could do those
• 44:07
  Speaker 2: things and get the joint pleasure, or I could just
• 44:09
  Speaker 2: push this spot on that like activates the same doy
• 44:12
  Speaker 2: and pleasure. So that would be these shortcuts to everything,
• 44:16
  Speaker 2: and it looks like you would have a post instrumental
• 44:19
  Speaker 2: condition where that would, at least at first time, it
• 44:22
  Speaker 2: seemed to be no reason to do anything for the
• 44:25
  Speaker 2: sake of achieving something else because there would always be
• 44:28
  Speaker 2: this like shorter path to that other.
• 44:30
  Speaker 3: Thing that pressing the button.
• 44:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that's a kind of deeper form of redundancy.
• 44:35
  Speaker 2: It seems that all forms of human instrumental effort would
• 44:39
  Speaker 2: become unmotivated. You could still, you know, go to the
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: gym every day and sweat for an hour, or you
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: could just take the pills that induces exactly the same
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: physiological effects and the mental effect like the calm or
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: whatever you feel after it.
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Or maybe even better genetic the engineers from yeah, so
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: they don't have to take a pill.
• 45:02
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 45:04
  Speaker 2: And so then I think you're getting more into these
• 45:07
  Speaker 2: fundamental questions of value, right, philosophical quests. But what ultimately
• 45:12
  Speaker 2: is it that makes a life good.
• 45:15
  Speaker 1: And what makes the life good for a primate, because
• 45:18
  Speaker 1: that's what we are, or a primitive version of primates.
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: I think we're going to become something different. And if
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: we do it through technologically induced evolution or biologically induced evolution,
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: we're still moving in a general direction just biologically there. Mean,
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: if you look at ancient hominids and look at us,
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: we're clearly very different. So we're moving in a general
• 45:38
  Speaker 1: direction anyway. And when you look at the grays, like
• 45:41
  Speaker 1: these prototypical aliens that everybody sees with the big heads
• 45:45
  Speaker 1: and skinny bodies, what do they look like, Well, they
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: look like if we keep going, that's what we're going
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: to look like. We're going to be these genderless, sexless, muscleless,
• 45:53
  Speaker 1: little skinny things with giant heads that communicate telepathically, which
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: is probably where we're moving. And if we're moving that way,
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: maybe we you know, we think of them as being
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: an alien from another Maybe that's not Maybe that's just
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: the general direction that primates go. Once they figure out technology,
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: they eventually realize, well, all, first of all, the idea
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: of having to have a male and a female is
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: kind of crazy, right, Why, Well, because we have to reproduce, Well,
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: what if we don't reproduce like that anymore. What if
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: all reproduction is done through engineering and there's no more
• 46:27
  Speaker 1: there's no more sex, so there's no more lusts, so
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: there's no more jealousy, so there's no more ego, there's
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: no more anything, And then there's a hive mind because
• 46:35
  Speaker 1: technology is advanced to the point where the reason why
• 46:37
  Speaker 1: they have these big giant heads, they're essentially locked into
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: everybody all around them all the time.
• 46:42
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well it's not what we would want though.
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: Not us, but I don't think will be us anymore.
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: I think this idea like if you went to chimps
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: and you said, hey, dude, one day you're going to
• 46:53
  Speaker 1: be on a plane eating peanuts flying over the ocean,
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: they'd be like, fuck that. I don't want to do that.
• 46:57
  Speaker 1: I'll just stay here where the fruit is nuts, Like
• 47:00
  Speaker 1: why do you want to do that? And you'll be
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: addicted to create them, and you'll be watching YouTube all
• 47:06
  Speaker 1: day long, like, no, I don't want to do that.
• 47:09
  Speaker 1: It doesn't sound fun.
• 47:10
  Speaker 2: But we do have a lot of bananas.
• 47:12
  Speaker 1: Don Maybe you have to get killed by the other
• 47:15
  Speaker 1: chimpanzees that want the bananas. You know, they have chimp wars,
• 47:18
  Speaker 1: they come in and kill each other. So I think
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: we're gonna be something different, And I think that's inevitable anyway,
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: if you believe in evolution, it's inevitable anyway that we
• 47:28
  Speaker 1: become something different. We're not a finished product.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, I think that is true. We are not
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: the finished product. Now, the question is the thing that
• 47:36
  Speaker 2: we become or that becomes is that a result of
• 47:43
  Speaker 2: us choosing how we want to be or is it
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: just these kind of impersonal forces like evolutions, selecting certain
• 47:51
  Speaker 2: types that might then end up leading to outcomes that
• 47:55
  Speaker 2: we actually don't want. And so I guess the help
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: is that we would be able to develop a path
• 48:01
  Speaker 2: that preserves and develops the things that we actually value
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: about being human, right, maybe amplifies them, then maybe adds
• 48:09
  Speaker 2: other things. So there are many different possible things you
• 48:12
  Speaker 2: could develop in the future, but that we sort of
• 48:14
  Speaker 2: select those that actually make us better rather than just
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: randomly different, that we can sort of grow into our ideals.
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: But it's so funny how much value we put in
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: human condition, how much value we put in meaning, because
• 48:32
  Speaker 1: it is valuable to us when you think about what
• 48:35
  Speaker 1: that means in terms of the amount of energy, it
• 48:38
  Speaker 1: produces the amount of impact that it has versus the
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: structure of the universe itself, versus black holes and stellar
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: nurseries and things that are just infinitely more spectacular than
• 48:51
  Speaker 1: the human condition. But to us, it's like, oh, what
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: is meaning? What is meaning? What is meaning to me? Like, well,
• 48:57
  Speaker 1: what is meaning to me? You as your finite biological
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: organism that has to find meaning because you're sort of
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: tramping around through this weird world where eventually you're going
• 49:07
  Speaker 1: to die and you leave your mark, and maybe reincarnation's real,
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: maybe the afterlife's real. Nobody fucking knows. So you've got
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: to have meaning. But the universe itself, like a human
• 49:16
  Speaker 1: only lives one hundred years. How much meaning can you
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: have in one hundred years?
• 49:20
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that is I think we kind of die prematurially.
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: I mean we think of us as like, first, first
• 49:25
  Speaker 2: to become stronger and more capable for fifteen twenty years, right,
• 49:32
  Speaker 2: then biologically you stagnate, and then maybe you keep accumulating
• 49:36
  Speaker 2: sort of knowledge and skills for another few decades. Just
• 49:39
  Speaker 2: as you have started to acquire like a modicum of wisdom,
• 49:43
  Speaker 2: like a brain starts to rot yep, and then everything
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: is erased by Alzheimer's or death, and it's kind of okay,
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: that's all gone, the whole lifetime of experience, there's your meaning,
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: all the memories and the hard earned lessons that so
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: that seems kind of sad and probably not the best
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: way for things to be. I think we would want
• 50:04
  Speaker 2: to extend the human lifespan so you could continue to grow,
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: not just kind of reach twenty and then plateau there
• 50:10
  Speaker 2: for the rest of your life, But what if we
• 50:12
  Speaker 2: could continue to develop so that like at eighty, you
• 50:16
  Speaker 2: were as much stronger and like be able to understand
• 50:20
  Speaker 2: more and move better and like just have the same
• 50:22
  Speaker 2: capacity increase as you had like between like zero and twenty,
• 50:26
  Speaker 2: and you just kept going.
• 50:28
  Speaker 1: Well, these live extension scientists that are working on these things,
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: guys like David Sinclair, like they believe that that's not
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: just a possibility but an inevitability.
• 50:37
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, so that's more like I guess preserving preventing
• 50:40
  Speaker 2: or delaying that decay sure, which is already very good.
• 50:44
  Speaker 1: Like if you're reversing, they're talking about rever yeah.
• 50:46
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but then you would go back to being twenty.
• 50:47
  Speaker 2: Right in terms of magical yea yeah, but then you
• 50:51
  Speaker 2: have engineering if you have very long time spans, so
• 50:54
  Speaker 2: then you might at some point want to continue to grow. Yeah,
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: like you might not want to just be stuck at
• 50:58
  Speaker 2: a twenty year old human. Of course, in a thousand years,
• 51:01
  Speaker 2: like maybe eventually you would want to become like it's
• 51:06
  Speaker 2: likely bigger, like in terms of your sure related to
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: engage with the world.
• 51:11
  Speaker 1: Of course, and if they can figure out how to
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: make people, well, there's already genetic engineering that's being done
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: in terms of increasing potential intelligence and IQ. They're already
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: doing that, you know. And so this was a I know,
• 51:24
  Speaker 1: I'm sure you know about that thing that happened in
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: China where this one doctor got in trouble because he
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: had genetically engineered some babies to be inoculated to HIV.
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: But it also, at the same time gave them a
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: far increased potential IQ. It remains to be seen whether
• 51:46
  Speaker 1: or not it actually works as these guys, you know,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: become like twenty and thirty and we start putting them
• 51:51
  Speaker 1: in chess tournaments and see if it really did make
• 51:53
  Speaker 1: them smarter. But if the possibility of that is already
• 51:57
  Speaker 1: being studied, they already understand the difference between like what
• 52:04
  Speaker 1: is what's possible, what we understand, and that increases every day.
• 52:08
  Speaker 1: They understand more every day, more as possible every day.
• 52:11
  Speaker 1: If that just keeps going, we have a different version
• 52:14
  Speaker 1: of what the human consciousness is. You have a different
• 52:17
  Speaker 1: version of the human mind.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, a lot. I think the way AI is going,
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: I think that's the train that's going to reach the
• 52:24
  Speaker 2: destination faster.
• 52:26
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah.
• 52:27
  Speaker 2: And then once you do have super intelligence in machine
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: substrate like, then that can then unlock all kinds of technologies,
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: including these biological technologies or nanotechnology, our stuff, other things
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: that could then sort of bring us up. If that's
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: how we decide to go, yeah, and uplift us into
• 52:47
  Speaker 2: different like either biologically enhancing us or like uploading us into.
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: But again, it's that whitewater river raft. It's like we're
• 52:56
  Speaker 1: going down this white water and we might make it
• 52:58
  Speaker 1: out of this or it might crash. You know. One
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: of the weird things about I'm very fascinated with ancient civilizations,
• 53:09
  Speaker 1: and one of the weirdest things about ancient civilizations is
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: when you go really really far back, a bunch of
• 53:14
  Speaker 1: them have these depictions of kings that ruled for thousands
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: of years, and it's very strange stuff because the Egyptians
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: in Ancient Sumer there's a bunch of different depictions of
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: these kings that lived lives that were way longer than
• 53:34
  Speaker 1: biological humans lived. And then there's the flood myth or
• 53:39
  Speaker 1: the flood story, and then after the flood, biological life
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: decreases pretty radically, and it seems to get back to
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: like a normal version of what we assume now, which
• 53:48
  Speaker 1: is like one hundred years. And one of the weird
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: questions that these alternative ancient historians have is are we
• 53:57
  Speaker 1: missing the possibility that there was a hyperadvanced civilization that
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: existed tens of thousands of years ago, and that what
• 54:06
  Speaker 1: we're seeing now is not a linear progression from caveman
• 54:10
  Speaker 1: to human being with an iPhone in twenty twenty six,
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: that along the way there might have been a very
• 54:16
  Speaker 1: high level of sophistication, and the evidence of that might
• 54:19
  Speaker 1: be the Pyramids and some of these other ancient structures
• 54:22
  Speaker 1: that are mind boggling as much as you try to
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: explain them away. When you're dealing with two million, three
• 54:27
  Speaker 1: hundred thousand stones, some of them are cut from a
• 54:30
  Speaker 1: quarry five hundred miles away, eighty tons stones that are
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: in the ceiling, perfectly cut granite where it looks like
• 54:37
  Speaker 1: they have diamond drill holes in them. It seems like
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: there's some lost technology. And every society has this flood myth,
• 54:44
  Speaker 1: and every society that has this flood myth, especially these
• 54:48
  Speaker 1: ones that were very advanced somehow or another, like ancient Egypt.
• 54:52
  Speaker 1: They have these depictions of people that lived way longer
• 54:56
  Speaker 1: than people live today. And I wonder if human beings
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: one day will realize, like, oh, if you keep going
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: long enough, one hundred years is silly, like people can
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: They'll just figure out what it is that makes people
• 55:10
  Speaker 1: age and die. Fix that, and you'll live in an
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: insanely long time. And then if people live in insanely
• 55:16
  Speaker 1: long time and their capacity for reason and logic increases,
• 55:19
  Speaker 1: their capacity for intelligence increases, then you have these insane
• 55:23
  Speaker 1: technologies that were required to do things like build the pyramids,
• 55:27
  Speaker 1: And that might be what happens. That might be a
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: natural course of progression that the first thing we realize
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: is one hundred years is not enough. Because I'm fifty eight,
• 55:37
  Speaker 1: I'm a moron still, Like why am I learning every day?
• 55:40
  Speaker 1: How come I'm getting better at being a person every day.
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: I would have I should have figured this out already,
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: But you don't ever have time to figure it out.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: There's not enough time.
• 55:47
  Speaker 3: I only get one run, Like I mean you would
• 55:49
  Speaker 3: take one trial run.
• 55:51
  Speaker 2: First right on life, right, and like okay, and I
• 55:54
  Speaker 2: kind of know the bit tidworks, not not, let's do
• 55:55
  Speaker 2: it for real. That's the it's kind of scary. I mean,
• 55:58
  Speaker 2: it's a bit crazy that each of us is put
• 56:01
  Speaker 2: in charge of a whole human life, right, Like, are
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: we really like reach the level of Look, if you
• 56:06
  Speaker 2: want to run an airplane, you have to go through
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: these certifications and stuff, right, and then maybe it can
• 56:11
  Speaker 2: be a pilot. But like for a human life, it's
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: like every single person, like, okay, you have one dictatorial
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: control of this person, like that completely hostage your whims. Yeah,
• 56:22
  Speaker 2: and then that's.
• 56:23
  Speaker 3: Like us, but that's that's the way it is.
• 56:25
  Speaker 2: But yeah, having the ability to kind of try different
• 56:28
  Speaker 2: things and maybe do like like have a kind of
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: opportunity to do a do over if like if the
• 56:38
  Speaker 2: life turned out to be like for every fifty years
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: or something, you have a chance to kind of.
• 56:44
  Speaker 1: Or maybe not even I can do over, but it's
• 56:46
  Speaker 1: the same life, but you can do whatever you want
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: and you don't have to be constrained to this idea
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: that you only have a certain amount of time and
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: you want to retire by your sixty five. We might
• 56:55
  Speaker 1: look at that as being like one of the first
• 56:58
  Speaker 1: completely archaic notions and the reason why people got it
• 57:00
  Speaker 1: all wrong, Like, well, society will be better because people
• 57:03
  Speaker 1: are going to live way longer. And if you think
• 57:05
  Speaker 1: about how much smarter how old are you fifty three? Okay,
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: now with the way you said those sad I'm older
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: than you, dog, don't worry about it. But if you
• 57:15
  Speaker 1: think about how much smarter you are at fifty three
• 57:18
  Speaker 1: then you were at thirteen. You know. Now, imagine how
• 57:21
  Speaker 1: much smarter you'll be at three hundred and fifty three
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: or one thousand and fifty three. And if that actually
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: becomes possible, If a person can live to be one
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: hundred years, why can't they live to be four thousand years?
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: If they can figure out what makes people age, if
• 57:36
  Speaker 1: we really can genetically engineer human beings, that's not again,
• 57:40
  Speaker 1: that's not breathing underwater, that's just extending life. And if
• 57:43
  Speaker 1: you extent extend life and extend intellectual capacity and your
• 57:47
  Speaker 1: ability to learn and grow. Holy shit, you're dealing with
• 57:51
  Speaker 1: a two thousand year old person. That's a completely different
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: kind of thing, and that could be real someday, and
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: that might be also one of the things that comes
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: along with this new understanding of just life in general
• 58:05
  Speaker 1: with super intelligent AI.
• 58:07
  Speaker 2: Yeah, no, for sure, Fixing aging and reversing it would
• 58:11
  Speaker 2: be amongst things that a technologically mature civilization would be
• 58:15
  Speaker 2: able to do.
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: We just have to get people out of the idea
• 58:18
  Speaker 1: that it's vain. Why do you want to live forever?
• 58:21
  Speaker 2: That's what I say now, right, But when somebody actually
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: has the therapy and you could like out here, you
• 58:27
  Speaker 2: could either continue to get you know, worse kidneys and
• 58:31
  Speaker 2: more painful knees and wrinkles and you start forget things,
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: or you can take this this rejuvenation serum that everybody
• 58:38
  Speaker 2: else is using and they are like full of energy
• 58:40
  Speaker 2: and running around and doing stuff like do you still
• 58:43
  Speaker 2: think it's vain? So I think a lot of this
• 58:45
  Speaker 2: is Stockholm syndrome that like, you are kind of faced
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: with the inevitability of aging and decay and have been
• 58:52
  Speaker 2: for thousands of years, so you develop a kind of
• 58:56
  Speaker 2: romantic scaffold that reconciles you to the inevitable stock, which
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: is maybe adaptive, but only up until the point where
• 59:04
  Speaker 2: there actually might be something you could do to escape.
• 59:07
  Speaker 2: Right then, if you're too stock in this mindset, it
• 59:10
  Speaker 2: might sort of prevent it from taking advantage to regain
• 59:14
  Speaker 2: your freedom.
• 59:15
  Speaker 3: And I think we are now at that stage.
• 59:17
  Speaker 2: We don't yet have the therapies, but there are certainly
• 59:20
  Speaker 2: like investments and research and stuff we could do that
• 59:22
  Speaker 2: would hasten the arrival. And I think in fact, we
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: should have started on a big sort of you know,
• 59:29
  Speaker 2: Manhattan product to defeat aging, like decades ago, and maybe
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: we would have better therapies by now then. But for
• 59:36
  Speaker 2: a long time, aging was not seen as a problem.
• 59:39
  Speaker 2: Only the specific diseases that are the result of the aging.
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: They got all this funding, right Like, so you have
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: like huge research products for Alzheimer's and for heart disease
• 59:47
  Speaker 2: and for cancer, But if you look at the main
• 59:50
  Speaker 2: common cause of most human disease, it's an essence like
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: you're much more likely to get any of these when
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: you're eighty than when you're twenty, because your cells gradually
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: decay A and gunk builds up. Yeah, arteries clug off.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 2: You know, your your DNA mutates, your methylation pattern gets
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: scrambled brain. So rather than just trying to put out
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 2: the fires one by one after they occur, like at
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 2: some point, you just need to sort of try to prevent,
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: like maybe you need a bit of rain to sort
• 1:00:18
  Speaker 2: of prevent.
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 1: It's kind of amazing how much we've accomplished as a society,
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 1: as civilization. When you think about the fact that people
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: only live to be one hundred kind of incredible.
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's kind of incredible.
• 1:00:32
  Speaker 1: Got rockets and satellites and cell phones and people only live.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: So it's like everybody has to build on everybody else's
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 1: intelligence and everybody else's understanding of the world and develop
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: new things, and everybody has to learn those new things.
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 2: And each brain is so small that it can only
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: learn a small little special right, then you need millions
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: of them. Yeah, although it's not entirely clear with humans,
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: if we had been much more long lived, like the
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: way we currently are configured, maybe we would just have
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 2: gotten to stock in our ways and sort of stagnated
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: into some sort of al drug conservative society where nobody
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 2: is allowed to do anything different, or the old geezers
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: that have their way of doing things just remain forever
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: in charge. Yeah, So, I mean we just don't know
• 1:01:17
  Speaker 2: right like whether that would have slowed progress or or
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: accelerated it. But it is, yeah, it is still it
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: is still amazing. Like it's a long path from sort
• 1:01:29
  Speaker 2: of running around in the forest to sort of these
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: look at these like advanced chip technologies and the whole
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 2: global supply chain or or like thousands of people are
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 2: working to develop just one little tool that then feeds
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: into the ability to make another tool that eventually makes
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 2: these leading h ai chips.
• 1:01:48
  Speaker 1: Whether layering things for atoms deep.
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 3: It's it's remarkable, it's incredible.
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: And humans only live to be one hundred. Imagine what
• 1:01:58
  Speaker 1: we could accomplish if we live to be three thousand.
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: You know, or if we were just a little bit
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: you know, better at these things.
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, because I think we are sort of the stupidest
• 1:02:08
  Speaker 2: possible species that they're capable of developing advanced technology. Look
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 2: because as soon as we evolved to reach that level,
• 1:02:16
  Speaker 2: we started developing it right then done.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 3: So that's what we are, like the dumbest possible that
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: just barely can do.
• 1:02:21
  Speaker 1: This barely can do this while we're blowing each other up. Yeah,
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: at the same time, all over the world blown up people.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 1: So yeah, but maybe a lot of that frantic, stupid,
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: illogical behavior is because we're so finite, like we're in
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: a rush that you know, we realize we have a
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: certain amount of time to get things done, and so
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: this sort of accentuates the desire to control resources and
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: to cement your immortality and to do these things that
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 1: people love to do. Put their name on buildings, there's
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 1: a thing that people like to do that it's almost
• 1:02:56
  Speaker 1: like cementing their immortality. That maybe there'll be less of
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: a desire to do that if people live way longer.
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: And then you would have to assume if you can
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: engineer humans to live longer, you could probably engineer a
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 1: lot of stupidity out of us. They could just find
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: out why people be like, what if you could just
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: eliminate lying? What if there's a genetic solution to lying well?
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 3: Or I guess they're a really good light detector.
• 1:03:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean, what if you just you can
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: genetically engineer out the desire to lie well?
• 1:03:33
  Speaker 2: I mean, if you had a perfect light detector, that
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 2: would be no point in lying because people just see right.
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: Or if you can read each other's minds, it'd be fruitless.
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and so that that might be closer. I mean,
• 1:03:45
  Speaker 2: who knows what you could do if you sort of
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 2: had like full AIS system trained to detect microexpression.
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: We just all have to get the big gray heads
• 1:03:53
  Speaker 1: with the black eyes like the aliens have. Then then
• 1:03:56
  Speaker 1: you read each other's minds. Well. One of the weirder
• 1:04:01
  Speaker 1: things that Bob Blozar said, again, I don't know if
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: you're into this UFO stuff, but he was one of
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the guys that was a whistleblower that said he back
• 1:04:09
  Speaker 1: engineered crafts for the United States government in the nineteen eighties.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 1: They don't have any controls in these crafts, supposedly, and
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 1: that they're all powered by the minds of the beings
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: that are running it, and that they have it's almost
• 1:04:21
  Speaker 1: like these crafts are alive and they have some sort
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 1: of a sinking with the thing that instead of like
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: pressing buttons and working a joystick, they just sink with
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: this this creation and then they can propel it with
• 1:04:34
  Speaker 1: their minds, so their minds become the computer that moves
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: this thing around.
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 2: I'm a bit skeptical. I haven't looked into.
• 1:04:42
  Speaker 1: That you should be. Sounds crazy. How could you not
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: be scared? Anybody who's not skeptical sounds crazy. But if
• 1:04:49
  Speaker 1: you think about where we are now and where we're
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 1: going to be, the possibility of that being our future
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: is pretty likely.
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 2: Right, And I think that like that, the kind of
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 2: possibility of engineering something like that with sufficiently advanced technology
• 1:05:03
  Speaker 2: would be there, like all kinds of stuff. Yeah, basically
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 2: everything that doesn't violate some law physics, to a first approximation,
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: you would be able to construct.
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: And even when we say that it's like our current
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: understanding of physics, it's not the understanding of physics that
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: society it's a million years older than ours, because that's
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: I mean, that's a blink in the eye of the
• 1:05:25
  Speaker 1: time that it took to create what we are at
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: right now from the Big bang, Like a million years
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: is nothing.
• 1:05:32
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but even with our current understanding of what physics permits,
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 2: that's still an enormous space of designs and types of
• 1:05:44
  Speaker 2: life and being that you could imagine instantiating. You could
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 2: have you know, like a Dyson sphere. You've heard of
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 2: this concept, right, It's basically like using the output of
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: the sun for energy generation, and it could have like
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 2: you surround the sun y solar panels them powers, a
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 2: civilization infrastructure, maybe like a computer, like imagine the like
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 2: already we have like AI computes growing at like two
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 2: hundred and forty percent per year or something right right
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: with this, and then like imagine the kind of mind
• 1:06:14
  Speaker 2: that could run on that sized computer. So people are
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: wondering whether, like could machines be conscious? And like discussing
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: that right right now, I think like maybe the more
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 2: pertinent quantum is like are we really conscious? I think
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: barely driving on like the road for two and a
• 1:06:39
  Speaker 2: half hours of motorists, right and like driving past thousands
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 2: of people and homes and like mothers with their strollers,
• 1:06:47
  Speaker 2: And then after does he does he remember any of that?
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 2: Like was he even really aware of any of this? Well,
• 1:06:54
  Speaker 2: it was driving. It's like a little diffuse sense of
• 1:06:57
  Speaker 2: body and of murky perceptions floating through through maybe some
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 2: confused abstract idea that we don't really understand. That's kind
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: of the consciousness that can fit into this coconut sized
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 2: biowotical organ that we think and we think, wow, we
• 1:07:11
  Speaker 2: are so conscious, But like imagine this Diyson sphere consciousness
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 2: or like a mind that maybe spans a galaxy. I
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 2: think the difference between the sort of awareness that it
• 1:07:23
  Speaker 2: could have and our awareness might be like bigger than
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 2: the difference between our awareness and like whatever a flea
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 2: has or something like that, way bigger. So it could
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: be this like transition where we develop superintellerent minds that
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: for the first time is really life, waking up and
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 2: becoming truly aware.
• 1:07:43
  Speaker 3: And that we are a little bit sort of.
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 2: Overpride proud in our own specialness when we think that
• 1:07:52
  Speaker 2: we have achieved something close to the maximum level of
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 2: that we are the standard by which consciousness should be measured,
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 2: and we this kind of feeble, confused, murky glimmer that
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: is barely sentient at all. So that's like, I think,
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 2: maybe the big challenge for our era like giving birth
• 1:08:15
  Speaker 2: to super intellergence and then hopefully shaping and nurturing it
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 2: and staring it so that it becomes a positive thing
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: both for us ourselves and also for it itself and
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 2: also for whatever other if there are other super beings
• 1:08:30
  Speaker 2: somewhere in the world or in the cosmos, that it
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 2: sort of is able to get along with us and
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 2: contribute positively at the cosmic scale. And that's a very
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 2: multifaceted challenge. But I think that's kind of seems to
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 2: be what's going on.
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 1: Yeah, And it's hard for people to think that far ahead.
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 1: You know, you just think of intelligence being something superior
• 1:08:55
  Speaker 1: to what we currently experience. But when you're talking about
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 1: a computer or a being, a conscious being that is
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: infinitely more powerful than anything we can imagine, that seems
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 1: to be. What if everything keeps going in the same
• 1:09:14
  Speaker 1: general direction, and AI increases its power and we figure
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: out new ways to power it. And then because one
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 1: of the things that AI needs that's so interesting is
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: it needs enormous amounts of power, and so the just
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: these AI centers that they're developing now, like Google's doing
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 1: one where they're developing their own nuclear power. Do you
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: want some coffee there? Yeah? Right, you're reaching for your cup.
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: You shouldn't be drinking out of paper cups anyway, Man.
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 1: I don't usually do that, so I know I don't either,
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 1: but occasionally I do, but they're so bad for you.
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 2: I'm usually quite conscientious with.
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 1: Yeah, even when I go on the road. I've started
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: taking a little yetty coffee cup with me, so I
• 1:09:56
  Speaker 1: could buy coffee and just have them put it in that.
• 1:10:01
  Speaker 1: The inside of those things is just lined with plastic.
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: You're pouring hot water into plastic and then the plastic
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: leaches into your coffee.
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: I don't do that normally, but I figured it, like
• 1:10:10
  Speaker 2: for having a chat with you on the dragon shot
• 1:10:15
  Speaker 2: would be worse, like I guess some hundred microplastics.
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you. I think what we're talking about is inevitable.
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 1: If human beings don't blow ourselves up, if we don't
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 1: get hit with an asteroid blow ourselves up, or a
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: supervolcation volcano doesn't eradicate civilization, all this stuff is it's inevitable.
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 1: It's just it's how much time does it take and
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 1: how much does it grow exponentially in power? Because we're
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: talking about computers, then they start bringing up quantum computing
• 1:10:48
  Speaker 1: and quantum computer's ability to do calculations, and it doesn't
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: even make sense, and so you think, well, this is
• 1:10:55
  Speaker 1: just one version of that, Like what if what is
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 1: a quantum computing going to look like hundred years from now?
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: Like what is computing power which is connected to AI?
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: What is that going to look like? Five hundred years
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: from now, it's impossible to even guess.
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 2: Well, we can sort of see lower bounds on what's possible,
• 1:11:13
  Speaker 2: like thinking already of just the designs we can conceive
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 2: of that we see in principle you could make. Maybe
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 2: it'll take a long a lot of grind to get there,
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 2: but at least that establishes like a lower bound of
• 1:11:25
  Speaker 2: what a technolgically immature civilization could do. And then maybe
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 2: they have additional ideas beyond that, but already that is
• 1:11:32
  Speaker 2: enough to really unlock.
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 3: So if you think of a.
• 1:11:36
  Speaker 2: Space of possible modes of being, where like a mode
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 2: of being is a way of experiencing, living, interacting. I
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 2: think you look around humanity and all people have existed
• 1:11:48
  Speaker 2: in the past, a lot of different characters, right men, women,
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 2: like mean.
• 1:11:53
  Speaker 3: People, nasty people, crazy people.
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: But I think all of that diversity human experience is
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 2: like a tiny little corner in this space of possible
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 2: modes of being. Like it's a huge cathedral, and we've
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 2: been kind of basically sitting in the janitor's corset. It's
• 1:12:11
  Speaker 2: like the exploration we've done and and the kinds of
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: modes of being, the kinds of ways of experiencing and
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 2: relating to each other or thinking and doing stuff that
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: they are ultimately possible. Is just this this enormous space that
• 1:12:27
  Speaker 2: we haven't that we haven't been able to explore, because
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 2: ultimately what we can currently conceive of and imagine and
• 1:12:32
  Speaker 2: experience and feel is limited to.
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: Our biological substrate, to human brain.
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: And just as you're like earlier human ancestors from a
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 2: few million years ago that you were talking about before,
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: like they wouldn't really have been able to conceive of
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: the modern human condition, not just because I didn't think
• 1:12:51
  Speaker 2: of it, but because like the ape brain can't really
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 2: they don't like they even if you try to describe
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 2: it to them somehow, like what is music?
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 3: What is humor?
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 2: What is romantic love?
• 1:13:03
  Speaker 1: Like?
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: What is science?
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 3: What is like all of these things? What's literature?
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: Like that they just doesn't fit into right right And
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: so presumably, I mean you could think, right now we've
• 1:13:15
  Speaker 2: achieved the right brain size where all possible values and
• 1:13:18
  Speaker 2: interesting ideas are accessible to us, that seems kind of implausible.
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 2: It seems much more likely that just as the chimpanzees
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: are necessarily blind to like a lot of what can
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 2: give life meaning and value, and significance, so probably are
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: we too.
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they don't even have the capacity for it, which
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 1: is interesting that can't even Yeah, we think of them
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: as being so intelligent, and they are in comparison to
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 1: a lot of other animals. But I think one of
• 1:13:44
  Speaker 1: the things that they were puzzled by when they started
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: teaching primates sign language was that they never asked questions, Like,
• 1:13:53
  Speaker 1: they don't seem to have questions about stuff, so they
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: just they just they exist in intelligent when they can
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: figure things out, they can they can do things. They
• 1:14:03
  Speaker 1: know when the doors left unlocked, they understand. They understand fairness,
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: which is really weird. Like chimps get very upset if
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: they're treated unfairly, Like if one chimp gets something and
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: they don't get they get super violent. But they don't
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: have a lot of questions. You know, we're filled with
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: questions like, so, what are we missing at the next
• 1:14:25
  Speaker 1: stage of being a human will have that we're not
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: even considering now because it's not a.
• 1:14:29
  Speaker 2: Part of our experience, Like what's the asking question? Type
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 2: of thing that we are not able to imadine and
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 2: m many of those types of things.
• 1:14:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and the possibilities are literally endless. We just don't
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 1: conceive of them because we're trapped in this territorial primate mindset.
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think that's likely.
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so too. I think so too. I
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 1: think the possibilities are endless, and I think it's going
• 1:14:58
  Speaker 1: to be really, really weird if that happens inside of
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 1: our lifetime. Because you and I were, you know, close
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: to the same age, so we grew up with answering machines.
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: You probably remember the first cell phones. You probably got online,
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 1: and probably the like when'd you get online?
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 2: Like the early ninety six?
• 1:15:16
  Speaker 1: Yeah, there you go. Yeah, see, I think for me
• 1:15:19
  Speaker 1: it was ninety four, so we we got to see
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 1: all this happen. If we get to see the new
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: version of humans in our lifetime, that would be like
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: literally bonkers. What an amazing time to be alive if
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: you really think about it. We're so fortunate because if
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 1: you grew up between like seventeen hundred and eighteen hundred,
• 1:15:42
  Speaker 1: how much did shit change sixteen hundred and seventeen hundred,
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 1: would you make a better boat? Like? What's what's different?
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: A lot of different man, everybody kind of is the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 1: same for one hundred years, and inside of our lifetime
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 1: from the nineteen the late nineteen sixties for me to
• 1:15:59
  Speaker 1: the early seventies for you, Like, in the amount of
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: time that we've been alive, things have radically changed, like
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: really really radically, to the point where it's probably the
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: biggest shift in human ingenuity and innovation that the world's
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: ever seen, and we're just the middle of it, and
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: we might be in the middle of the next one,
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: which like literally allows us to see what the world
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 1: looks like a thousand years from now, because you're going
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: to be alive.
• 1:16:28
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that's why. Yeah, it is now this
• 1:16:31
  Speaker 2: full time job just to monitor the situation like it's
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 2: really but it is.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 1: How do you do that?
• 1:16:35
  Speaker 2: Well, you don't really, but if you try to sort of,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 2: so I think the opportunity so it used to be.
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 3: Like, at least in my sphere effect.
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: If you're doing philosophy or something like it, most people
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 2: would think you have a kind of unlimited time horizon.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 2: And people have been working on philosophical questions of thousands
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 2: of years, and that doesn't seem to be any huge
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 2: urgency if they have been on sold for thousands of years.
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 2: Maybe if it takes another five hundred, So I always
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 2: thought of philosophy as having a deadline, meaning that at
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 2: some point we would develop smarter than human forms of intolerance,
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 2: presumably AI that could then do the philosophy much better
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 2: than us, And so there was a limited period of
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 2: time during which any advances like I could contribute to
• 1:17:30
  Speaker 2: would be meaningful, and that it w that make sense
• 1:17:33
  Speaker 2: on focusing on that subset of philosophical questions or general
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 2: questions that we really need the answer to now, as
• 1:17:40
  Speaker 2: opposed to like, you know, ten twenty years in the future,
• 1:17:44
  Speaker 2: when when somebody else can do them better, like the
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 2: machine minds. So that's kind of been a lens through
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 2: which I have selected the things to work on. And now,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 2: of course that deadline is moving closer, so there's less
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: time remaining, and so my focus is increasingly drifting towards
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 2: questions where it's like that it might be relevant to
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 2: have the answer to now rather than a year or
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 2: two from now.
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: So you're almost like a cultural navigator, like a guy
• 1:18:10
  Speaker 1: with a sextent at the helm of a ship looking
• 1:18:14
  Speaker 1: at the constellations, go, I think we're in the right direction.
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 2: Yeah, but now we're sort of moving maybe into close
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 2: to harbor, and you need to like, yeah, pay more
• 1:18:25
  Speaker 2: attention to exactly how deep the rocks are, the rocks are,
• 1:18:29
  Speaker 2: and looks scan around you.
• 1:18:33
  Speaker 1: When you think about a timeline for radical change in
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: your mind, what do you think? What do you think
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: that looks like?
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean I take short timelines seriously with AI, mean,
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: for what we know, it could be like like, it
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: could be like a year or two or three or
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 2: four and probably a bit longer. But we're no longer
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: at a point where we can be confident that we
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: won't have super intelligence in just a few years, like
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: it could happen.
• 1:19:03
  Speaker 1: So what is that when you say that for the uninitiated,
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 1: what do you mean by super intelligence?
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess we first have agi artificial general intelligence
• 1:19:17
  Speaker 2: AI that can do all the stuff that we can do,
• 1:19:21
  Speaker 2: and then super intelligence would just be that but can
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 2: do it way better than any human can do. It's
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 2: all technical, intellectual, common sense tasks. And then you'd.
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 3: Have robotics as well can do all the physical stuff not.
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 2: Much later, and so this, Yeah, so the timeline remains
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: on uncertain, but I think it's not impossible that this
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 2: could happen very soon. And then once you have super intelligence,
• 1:19:51
  Speaker 2: then I think from there on it might be like
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 2: a sort of sprint to something approximating technological maturity, because
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: what you have super intelligence that then design it's even
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 2: more smart ais right, using it's kind of super intellent
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: AI research capability and designing better chips and all of that.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: So you might then have this like intelligence explosion where
• 1:20:13
  Speaker 2: you go from something slightly greater than human level to
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 2: some radical superintalence that can then sort of invent whatever
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: the remaining technologies are. Maybe there needs to be some
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 2: trial and error and experiments in the physical world that
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: slow things down a bit, but some smallish number, like
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 2: a single digit number of years from superintellence, I think
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 2: you might have something that unlocks allay these like sci
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: fi level capabilities that we've talked about.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: At least that seems relatively plausible to me.
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: It seems inevitable. And my question is how does it
• 1:20:50
  Speaker 1: How does it announce itself? Does it send a mass
• 1:20:52
  Speaker 1: text message to the whole world? Everybody's phone starts like
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: you know, when you have those Amber alerts and your
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: phone starts vibrating, or when there's some sort of a
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 1: storm warning, all of a sudden, your phone goes off
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 1: and then it alerts to the fact that it's taken over.
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 2: Well, so this means so here we don't really know.
• 1:21:11
  Speaker 2: It's like this is very confusing and I've never done
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 2: this before and so it's like very hard to figure
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 2: out how this has gone to unfold And maybe it's
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 2: not even fixed it. Maybe it depends a little bit
• 1:21:21
  Speaker 2: on what on which we do and the extent to
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: which different actors get their stuff together.
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but.
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 2: Like one, I guess one possible type of scenarios where
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: like things are just like accelerating. They're more and more
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 2: of these advances model releases. Increasingly there is automation of
• 1:21:45
  Speaker 2: the research process in AI labs, Like already you have
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: coding assistance right that are really useful to people in
• 1:21:53
  Speaker 2: AI labs.
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 3: They're using them to write a lot of their software.
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 2: Like right now, you still need humans for seat of
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: the research taste and judgment, and sometimes things go like
• 1:22:02
  Speaker 2: get stuck and you need a human to kind of
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 2: redirect them. But more and more of that make it automated,
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 2: and then.
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 3: You have kind of.
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 2: New iterations of models being trained at the faster and
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 2: faster clip they can do more and more stuff.
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 3: They start to.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 2: Automate increasing chunks of the economy. So right now a
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 2: lot of coding is automated, but like other areas as well,
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 2: maybe they they've become dropping virtual workers that can do
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 2: everything like a human could do with a remote connection initially,
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 2: and then like you have people working on robotics, so
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 2: that that would start to kicking, and then eventually just
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 2: more and more of the action is run by these
• 1:22:51
  Speaker 2: AI systems one or more and they're kind of doing
• 1:22:56
  Speaker 2: it at their timescale, which is speeding up. Then from
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 2: that point it would depend a lot on whether we
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 2: have successfully aligned these systems so that they actually do
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 2: what the people created them intended, or whether they have
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 2: somehow gone off the rails.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 1: Is there's also the fear that America doesn't come up
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: with it first.
• 1:23:23
  Speaker 2: This is that's mostly affair in China, for examples from
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 2: America comes up with the first.
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's really just America and China.
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: They're at the forefront of this brace, right, Russia a
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 1: little bit, but not on the same level. Not Russia, No,
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 1: not Russia. Who else is it?
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 2: Did you see this last week?
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: Ford hiring three hund and fifty engineers after AI failed
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: shows failed shows human value in AI era? What does
• 1:23:50
  Speaker 1: that mean that I tried to find the only one
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: that didn't known? Just did it? They rehired a bunch
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: of engineers they fired after their AI wasn't matching the
• 1:23:59
  Speaker 1: quality they need. Oh and this is forward. That's interesting.
• 1:24:03
  Speaker 1: They probably jumped the gun, you know, they probably fired
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: them too quickly. And now these people that they rehire,
• 1:24:11
  Speaker 1: these people are going to like, oh, how much time
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: we have left six months for AI figures out how
• 1:24:15
  Speaker 1: to do this?
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 2: Just I mean, it's also possible that I thinks timelines
• 1:24:22
  Speaker 2: could extend if like.
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 3: One way that could happen is.
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 2: That the progress we've seen in the last ten years,
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 2: which has been remarkable, right, it's to a substantial extent
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 2: driven by the advances, the increase in compute that is
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 2: being used to train and run these systems. Like it
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 2: used to be that you had a cutting edge AI
• 1:24:46
  Speaker 2: system if you were academic, like running on your PC
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 2: in your office, Like that was kind of the amount
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 2: of computing power that was applied to like doing AI stuff.
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 2: And now of course you have these kind of tens
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 2: of billions of dollars data cent like hundreds of megawatts,
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 2: like just massive funding, so the chips have gotten better,
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 2: but also just the amount of funding, like you're just
• 1:25:07
  Speaker 2: building many more of these chips, and so as you
• 1:25:10
  Speaker 2: apply more and more, compute like performance improves and that's
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 2: like has been a big driver. Now at some point,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 2: like you might not be able to keep increasing the
• 1:25:21
  Speaker 2: amount of money you spend on it because like you
• 1:25:24
  Speaker 2: can you can go from like one thousand dollars PC
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 2: to like a million dollars quite easily, and you can
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 2: go from a million dollar to a billion dollars. And
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 2: now maybe you're spending on the order of a trillion
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 2: dollars across the world to build data centers per year,
• 1:25:40
  Speaker 2: but you can't really do like three orders of magnitude
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 2: very easily. There there's like not a thousand trillion dollars
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 2: to spend on it. So at some point that expenditure
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 2: has to kind of slow down. So if we haven't
• 1:25:50
  Speaker 2: achieved super intelligence by that, then maybe that would mean
• 1:25:53
  Speaker 2: progress gets slower if the main driver is the scale
• 1:25:57
  Speaker 2: up of compute. Now, it is also true that some
• 1:25:59
  Speaker 2: of the progress is driven by algorithmic advances, like just
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 2: kind of clever algorithms, so that that might continue. But
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 2: if one driver stalls out, then that could result in
• 1:26:10
  Speaker 2: faster progress.
• 1:26:12
  Speaker 3: And then, of course there is a possibility.
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 2: That the people who want to pass or regulate AI
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 2: gain enough traction to kind of get regulatory inhibitions.
• 1:26:24
  Speaker 1: How would they do that? Though? If there really is
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: some sort of a Manhattan Project style race between the
• 1:26:29
  Speaker 1: United States and China and what other countries are developing
• 1:26:32
  Speaker 1: right now that are.
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 2: Close, well, I mean those are the those are.
• 1:26:35
  Speaker 1: The two big ones, big ones. Is it possible that
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: someone could sneak up on us and develop intelligent A first?
• 1:26:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's possible if there were like some
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 2: big algorithmic breakthrough, for example, that made it a lot
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 2: more efficient to run a similar level of capability with
• 1:26:52
  Speaker 2: less sort of AI data center infrastructure. And many other
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 2: countries are also trying, It's just that they are not
• 1:26:59
  Speaker 2: as advanced and out of US and China. I'd say,
• 1:27:02
  Speaker 2: like US currently has the edge.
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: What would happen if China got there first?
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 2: Well, I mean part would depend on whether they had
• 1:27:12
  Speaker 2: successfully aligned their AI. If it's unaligned, then I guess
• 1:27:17
  Speaker 2: the same thing happens as if US AI is unaligned.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 2: That is, the future gets shaped according to whatever values
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 2: this AI had ended up with. If the alignment problem
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 2: is solved, then it might make a difference because then
• 1:27:31
  Speaker 2: the values would then depend on sort of the people
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 2: who owned and controlled or governed it would ask it
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 2: to pursue and so then then in that scenario maybe
• 1:27:43
  Speaker 2: it makes some difference who who initiates it.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 1: So right now the big players are you know, there's
• 1:27:53
  Speaker 1: Google and there's open Ai. There's all these different companies.
• 1:27:57
  Speaker 1: When you say aligned, do they have to all be
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: kind of on the same page or like, when aligned,
• 1:28:04
  Speaker 1: we're not going to be aligned if there's a bunch
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: of corporations that are competing to come up with this first,
• 1:28:08
  Speaker 1: So they have to be aligned in terms of the
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: way they're programmed, that they're valuing human life and that
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: they're valuing society. Like what do you mean by all.
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 2: Well, so, I mean just the technical challenge of if
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 2: you're building an AI system and you have certain things
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 2: you wanted to do and certain things you don't want
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 2: it to do, are you technically able to get the
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 2: AI to behave that way that you as the person.
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 2: Well that's a non separate question which is equally important
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 2: maybe but different because that's not the technical like you
• 1:28:38
  Speaker 2: can't just go to the whiteboard and right answer formula
• 1:28:41
  Speaker 2: and now you have that's like a political question, ultimately
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 2: right question of governance.
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 3: So there you need. You know, political organization appeals.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 2: To the best in human nature, dialogues like check and balances,
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 2: whatever stuff that might work in the political arena to
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 2: help that the governance of this that the values to
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 2: which it disaligned are sort of benign values that hopefully
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 2: incorporates a wide set of stakeholders.
• 1:29:10
  Speaker 1: Right, But that's a little isn't that a little naive?
• 1:29:12
  Speaker 1: Because whenever there's any sort of a situation where something
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: has massive amounts of power above others, that one of
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: the first things they think of is what's the most
• 1:29:21
  Speaker 1: money you can generate doing it? And what is the
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: best way to generate the most amount of money? Like
• 1:29:27
  Speaker 1: that's they're gonna think that way. They're not going to
• 1:29:29
  Speaker 1: think like, what's the best for the human race, Like
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: no one ever thinks that way. They think, what is
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: the best way in terms of like destroying the competition,
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: What is the best way in terms of extracting the
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: most resources out of this making it work for me?
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: That's what people think of immediately and what's the best
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 1: way to stop other people from competing with us?
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 2: Right?
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 3: Yeah, well, so that would be I think a lot of.
• 1:29:55
  Speaker 2: Pressures and strains on whatever governance mechanism siss at the
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 2: time when super intelligence is developed.
• 1:30:03
  Speaker 1: Right, So is this something that the technology is so
• 1:30:08
  Speaker 1: far ahead the potential for it to be so far
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 1: ahead of our understanding of what it's going to be
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 1: able to do that like making laws for that Now
• 1:30:16
  Speaker 1: it's going it's going to be very difficult to even
• 1:30:18
  Speaker 1: explain to people like we need we need these laws
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: and we need these guardrails in place now because here's
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: what could happen, and that that conversation is not really
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: happening right now.
• 1:30:30
  Speaker 2: It is happening, but.
• 1:30:32
  Speaker 1: Is it happening politically?
• 1:30:34
  Speaker 2: It's starting to happen.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 1:30:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah, it's been happening to an increasing extent politically. And
• 1:30:40
  Speaker 2: there have been various actions.
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: Okay, what actions?
• 1:30:43
  Speaker 2: Well, so a few years ago, for example, that was
• 1:30:45
  Speaker 2: the whole expert export regime imposed by the US on
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 2: chips the most advanced chips, where like China was cut
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 2: out from being able to access the most advanced Nvidia
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 2: chips and so forth, and that's kind of been modified
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 2: but that was motivated to a significant extent by trying
• 1:31:06
  Speaker 2: to preserve ai edge that the US has.
• 1:31:10
  Speaker 1: Right, but that's like internationally, I mean in terms of
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 1: like being able to stop corporations from having the kind
• 1:31:18
  Speaker 1: of power that this could provide.
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 2: So so then there have been various efforts. That was
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 2: like proposition in California, where there were various things.
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 3: More recently you saw the whole thing.
• 1:31:29
  Speaker 2: I don't know if you followed it with the Mythus
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 2: and Fable five, the Anthropic models that where like so
• 1:31:40
  Speaker 2: Mythos has not been released, this is the most powerful
• 1:31:42
  Speaker 2: model because it seems to have significant cyber offense capabilities.
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 2: It can easily detect vulnerabilities in software, and so Anthropic
• 1:31:53
  Speaker 2: figured that rather than immediately making it available to everybody,
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 2: maybe it would be better to first try to make
• 1:31:58
  Speaker 2: it available to.
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: Providers of.
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 2: Critical software infrastructure, like like like big banks, and I'd
• 1:32:07
  Speaker 2: like that sort of they can patch up their systems.
• 1:32:13
  Speaker 2: And then Fable five was a kind of restricted version
• 1:32:17
  Speaker 2: of the Mythos model, like the same underlying model, but
• 1:32:21
  Speaker 2: with extra safeguards. It basically refused anything that remotely seemed
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 2: like you know, cyber hacking programming biological stuff because maybe
• 1:32:32
  Speaker 2: that would be bios so like it sort of drew
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 2: a wide circle around anything that even remotely looked possibly
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 2: dangerous and it just refuses that. So that was released.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 2: But then after like a week or so, the administration
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 2: imposed and.
• 1:32:50
  Speaker 3: A kind of export restriction.
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 2: That prevented any non US citizen from using it, and
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 2: that meant Anthropic had to cut it off for everybody
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 2: because I didn't have a way in real time to
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 2: verify who is a US citizen or not. So then
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 2: it was like unavailable for several weeks and intense negotiations
• 1:33:11
  Speaker 2: behind the scenes and working to try to figure out
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 2: because allegedly it was possible to jail break it, so
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 2: that it sometimes gave some little assistance with some cyber
• 1:33:20
  Speaker 2: like finding vulnerabilities in code. And now recently it just
• 1:33:25
  Speaker 2: became available again because they had reached some understanding with
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 2: the government where it was deemed sufficiently safeguarded to be released.
• 1:33:35
  Speaker 2: And now there is like efforts on the way to
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 2: try to work out a framework because like in the future,
• 1:33:39
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't want to do this on an ad hoc basis,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 2: like somebody just decides this particular model for some unspecified reason,
• 1:33:46
  Speaker 2: like you want to have clear standards ideally, right that
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 2: applies to everybody, every company. So there's now some industry
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 2: wide effort to try to work with the government to anyway.
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 2: So there's like a lot of this stuff happening. I
• 1:33:57
  Speaker 2: expect much more of this going forward. It just has
• 1:34:01
  Speaker 2: recently become like a serious issue people. Until recently we're
• 1:34:06
  Speaker 2: kind of ignoring the whole AI thing for the most part.
• 1:34:10
  Speaker 2: And then there is a second wave coming, I think once.
• 1:34:14
  Speaker 2: So so far we haven't really seen a big impact
• 1:34:16
  Speaker 2: on the labor market right from AI. But once that
• 1:34:21
  Speaker 2: starts to hit and you get maybe you know, high
• 1:34:25
  Speaker 2: levels of unemployment amongst white collar workers, and like imagine
• 1:34:29
  Speaker 2: if you have millions and millions of people with that
• 1:34:32
  Speaker 2: have their university diplomas, right, they feel a sense of superiority, entitlement.
• 1:34:36
  Speaker 2: They've gone through the whole process, they got their degree,
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 2: and now they expect a well paying job, and then
• 1:34:43
  Speaker 2: there is no job for them. They've got nothing to
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 2: do all day long. What they but complain about AI.
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 2: So you've got to have all these well educated people
• 1:34:52
  Speaker 2: who feel resentful and are going to say every possible
• 1:34:55
  Speaker 2: bad thing about AI that could be said all day long. Yeah,
• 1:34:57
  Speaker 2: and mobilized. They are very powerful political constituency that will
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 2: emerge from that that's not even yet happened, but that
• 1:35:04
  Speaker 2: will kind of add to all of these other grievances
• 1:35:08
  Speaker 2: that people point to with AI. So I think there's
• 1:35:12
  Speaker 2: going to be kind of significant political pressures for doing
• 1:35:17
  Speaker 2: something about AI, isn't.
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: The key is getting ahead of it, though, So how
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: can people find how can we see the vulnerabilities in
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: advance and recognize like when this is going to like
• 1:35:32
  Speaker 1: if there's going to be a tipping point and a
• 1:35:34
  Speaker 1: bunch of white collar workers are going to be out
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: of work, and there's going to get to a point
• 1:35:37
  Speaker 1: where we realize like this is coming, this is like
• 1:35:39
  Speaker 1: three weeks from now, what do we do? Like what
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: do they do? Like what?
• 1:35:42
  Speaker 2: Yeah? So that's not clear to me at least. I
• 1:35:45
  Speaker 2: mean a lot of people think they have different views
• 1:35:48
  Speaker 2: about what you've been on, of course, but it's like
• 1:35:52
  Speaker 2: very hard to have an It's such a complex strategy.
• 1:35:56
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've been thinking about this for like three
• 1:35:58
  Speaker 2: decades maybe, and I still feel extremely unsure even which
• 1:36:03
  Speaker 2: direction is kind of up and which is down. I
• 1:36:07
  Speaker 2: don't think it would be possible right now to sort
• 1:36:09
  Speaker 2: of figure out a detailed, perfect regulatory scheme or system
• 1:36:14
  Speaker 2: of laws. There's so many unknowns. I think we need
• 1:36:17
  Speaker 2: to sort of watch this closely as it happens, and
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 2: be ready to react quickly to issues that come up,
• 1:36:26
  Speaker 2: and hope that relevant people are like highly competent and
• 1:36:30
  Speaker 2: well motivated and not trying their best. And then on
• 1:36:34
  Speaker 2: the margin, maybe we can do things that kind of
• 1:36:36
  Speaker 2: are constructive and increases the chances that it will be
• 1:36:40
  Speaker 2: for the good. Even when I have some clear insight
• 1:36:46
  Speaker 2: as to some overall big directional push, I will let
• 1:36:50
  Speaker 2: you know, but even basic questions like, for example, do
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 2: we want more government involvement or less involvement. Do we want.
• 1:37:02
  Speaker 3: Faster progress in AI or slower progress in AI?
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 2: I don't know.
• 1:37:11
  Speaker 3: Is not completely obvious to me.
• 1:37:15
  Speaker 1: Well, I think it's eventually going to get to wherever
• 1:37:17
  Speaker 1: it's going to get either way, having it slower, I
• 1:37:22
  Speaker 1: don't know if that's really going to help us. I
• 1:37:24
  Speaker 1: think almost like we have to crash and then we
• 1:37:26
  Speaker 1: have to figure out how to rebuild and pick up
• 1:37:29
  Speaker 1: the pieces. I don't think we're going to be intelligent
• 1:37:31
  Speaker 1: or have enough foresight to recognize where all these flaws
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: and where all these problems are going to ultimately be.
• 1:37:40
  Speaker 1: I think they're just going to have to happen, and
• 1:37:42
  Speaker 1: then people are going to have to adjust. That's what
• 1:37:44
  Speaker 1: I think.
• 1:37:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'm not advocating an AI pause. By contrasting,
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 2: a lot of some of my colleagues and friends and
• 1:37:52
  Speaker 2: stuff are like, I could see that some scenario in
• 1:37:56
  Speaker 2: which it would be helpful at some point to have
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 2: a temporary slowdown of you know, a few months maybe
• 1:38:03
  Speaker 2: or a half year or year. Like if you imagine,
• 1:38:05
  Speaker 2: you know, there are different companies, countries may be racing
• 1:38:08
  Speaker 2: to get their first yeah, and then eventually somebody figures
• 1:38:12
  Speaker 2: out they basically have the system in place, they just
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 2: need to like amp up, like run it for longer.
• 1:38:17
  Speaker 2: They can sort of see that it will become super intellergent.
• 1:38:20
  Speaker 2: They hope it's aligned. It might be very helpful in
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 2: that situation to have a few extra months just to
• 1:38:26
  Speaker 2: sort of double check all your safeguards and rather than
• 1:38:30
  Speaker 2: immediately cranking all the knobs up to eleven, like, maybe
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 2: sort of do it a little bit incrementally, watch what happens,
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 2: study it, then crank it up a little bit more
• 1:38:39
  Speaker 2: and I just think you might gain some extra safety
• 1:38:41
  Speaker 2: if you have a few extra months there, Like the
• 1:38:43
  Speaker 2: pressures on these people in the lab, that makes if
• 1:38:46
  Speaker 2: it's all going to happen over a week, like it's
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 2: just going to be this is the first time we
• 1:38:50
  Speaker 2: ever do this huturely complex thing.
• 1:38:51
  Speaker 3: It has to be right. We never get a second chance.
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 2: Just being able to like even just being able to
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 2: sleep properly for like between your work sessas and like
• 1:38:59
  Speaker 2: how being you know, a weekends two malt things, so
• 1:39:02
  Speaker 2: like just that kind of human Humans don't really operate
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 2: on well on in these like super short timelines. So
• 1:39:11
  Speaker 2: I think a short if you could be sure that
• 1:39:14
  Speaker 2: the pause would in fact be limited and short and
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 2: then it would be lifted, I think that could be
• 1:39:20
  Speaker 2: quite useful to have at if it could also be
• 1:39:23
  Speaker 2: timed to be at the right moment and well implemented.
• 1:39:26
  Speaker 1: But wouldn't the problem be espionage? First of all?
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 2: That's one one issue with it.
• 1:39:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if they realized if somebody realized, hey, they're about
• 1:39:34
  Speaker 1: three days away from this, and then China bribes a
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: bunch of people, and you know, people take off and
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 1: move to Yeah.
• 1:39:42
  Speaker 2: There are various basis there are various downsides to passing.
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 2: So one one is that like there are competitors who
• 1:39:50
  Speaker 2: just even without espionage or catching up anotherre is, it's
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 2: not as if the world is safe without AI.
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: Right.
• 1:40:02
  Speaker 2: There are other like wellther like the natural hazards. I
• 1:40:06
  Speaker 2: think they are very small, like super volcanos and stuff
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 2: like that on the relevant time scales until well, I mean,
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 2: we've survived for hundreds of thousands of years, right, and.
• 1:40:14
  Speaker 1: We're almost wiped out entirely seventy thousand years ago.
• 1:40:17
  Speaker 2: That's a long time ago, is it?
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 1: Though?
• 1:40:19
  Speaker 2: Well, well, but like, if something hasn't done us in
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 2: in that long a time, probably it's not going to
• 1:40:27
  Speaker 2: do us in within the next ten years.
• 1:40:28
  Speaker 1: Well, you're more optimistic than me.
• 1:40:30
  Speaker 2: Well, it's just based on the actual empirics of these
• 1:40:33
  Speaker 2: natural catastrophes. By contrast, I would say there are other
• 1:40:36
  Speaker 2: hazards that are not low. I mean, we have rapid
• 1:40:41
  Speaker 2: advances in synthetic biology, some some of them driven or
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 2: enabled maybe even by already AI.
• 1:40:50
  Speaker 3: Progress that has already.
• 1:40:51
  Speaker 2: Taken place like that can start to assist with this
• 1:40:54
  Speaker 2: and more just happening independalies. So you get increasing risks
• 1:40:57
  Speaker 2: from synthetic boloity. We still have the nuclear arsenals right
• 1:41:01
  Speaker 2: kind of existing. We think have gotten a little bit
• 1:41:06
  Speaker 2: complacent about the risks of nuclear war and various other
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 2: things as well. So I think there's like a background
• 1:41:16
  Speaker 2: level of existential risk that humanity faces in the absence
• 1:41:20
  Speaker 2: of superintolerance that probably is growing as well. So you know,
• 1:41:24
  Speaker 2: one way, so long that you don't even get a
• 1:41:26
  Speaker 2: chance to roll the dice with AI because you destroy
• 1:41:29
  Speaker 2: yourself before even got I would kind of be sad.
• 1:41:35
  Speaker 2: And then then also, I mean, I think there's like
• 1:41:39
  Speaker 2: some risk if you set up a pause infrastructure that
• 1:41:42
  Speaker 2: what's initially meant to be a temporary thing becomes permanent.
• 1:41:47
  Speaker 2: Like they say, there's nothing more permanent like than a
• 1:41:49
  Speaker 2: temporary government program. So if you have to set up
• 1:41:51
  Speaker 2: the infrastructure to actually control this, ideally at the global scale,
• 1:41:55
  Speaker 2: right it's meant to be for six months, like what
• 1:41:57
  Speaker 2: happens after six months? Nobody can still prove that the
• 1:42:00
  Speaker 2: AA will be safe. So you have all these people
• 1:42:03
  Speaker 2: now whose job it is to to regulate it, and
• 1:42:06
  Speaker 2: like maybe they so it could it could bomp kind
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 2: of frozen in and become permanent. And and then also
• 1:42:15
  Speaker 2: the delay benefits of this. So if you think, what
• 1:42:20
  Speaker 2: like sixty five million people die every year, that's that's
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 2: a lot of human lives. That's like one nine eleven
• 1:42:31
  Speaker 2: every twenty five minutes, just kind of boom.
• 1:42:34
  Speaker 1: Like that's the way I look at it.
• 1:42:37
  Speaker 2: And so there is a certain urges if there is
• 1:42:39
  Speaker 2: something that somehow could have a chance to to to
• 1:42:44
  Speaker 2: fix this, like all the suffering that is happening in
• 1:42:47
  Speaker 2: the world aside from the people dying, like all the
• 1:42:49
  Speaker 2: people who are bereaved right to lost their loved one,
• 1:42:53
  Speaker 2: and then all the disease that led up to that dying, right,
• 1:42:57
  Speaker 2: and then all the non disease related all the horrible poverty,
• 1:43:01
  Speaker 2: and like the suicidal depression, and the animals in the
• 1:43:04
  Speaker 2: animal factories that they're like spending. There's just like this
• 1:43:09
  Speaker 2: I think moral urgency that if there is a hope
• 1:43:11
  Speaker 2: that getting AI right could fix this, then you don't
• 1:43:15
  Speaker 2: want to wait unnecessarily long because every day it's just
• 1:43:18
  Speaker 2: this massive horror. So I think there are many reasons
• 1:43:22
  Speaker 2: for why you wouldn't want unnecessary or excessive delays in
• 1:43:27
  Speaker 2: developing AI.
• 1:43:28
  Speaker 3: But but there is a trade off because if.
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 2: We can make more progress on AI safety and alignment
• 1:43:33
  Speaker 2: and get our act together a little bit before we
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 2: take the plunge.
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 3: Like that's also worth quite a lot.
• 1:43:39
  Speaker 1: It's uh, it's certainly exciting because the possibilities are right
• 1:43:46
  Speaker 1: in front of us, and they're kind of endless, and
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: it seems like they're right in front of us. It
• 1:43:50
  Speaker 1: seems like too in my mind, it seems like we're
• 1:43:52
  Speaker 1: like twenty four months away from something really insane.
• 1:43:55
  Speaker 2: I think it could be. It could be. It could be,
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 2: could be forty eight months, it could be. I mean
• 1:43:59
  Speaker 2: we don't yeah.
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: Right, it could be. Yeah, who knows. But there's something
• 1:44:03
  Speaker 1: happening really quickly, you know. When I talk to Elon
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: about Grock, he said, it's it shocks us, like every
• 1:44:10
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks that we're like, how is it doing this?
• 1:44:14
  Speaker 1: How is it so fast? How is it advancing so quickly?
• 1:44:17
  Speaker 1: And one day Cat's going to be on the back
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: and there's not going to be any way stop it.
• 1:44:24
  Speaker 1: Like if the power went out right now, if there
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: was some sort of a massive solar flare that killed
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: our power grids and all computer hard drives got fried
• 1:44:34
  Speaker 1: and we had to restart from now, like we would
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: have to rebuild society. Right, But if we get to
• 1:44:41
  Speaker 1: the point where this thing understands what would cause that,
• 1:44:45
  Speaker 1: how to prevent that, how to make sure that never happens,
• 1:44:48
  Speaker 1: much better power supply, much better allocation of resources, much
• 1:44:53
  Speaker 1: better batteries, much better redundant data systems where you never
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: have to worry about hard drives crashing, and you never
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: have to worry about any of these problems, Like any
• 1:45:05
  Speaker 1: information you have now will be secure, and then understanding
• 1:45:09
  Speaker 1: of natural disasters will actually get drill into this volcano
• 1:45:12
  Speaker 1: and it never goes off. Like there's gonna be a
• 1:45:14
  Speaker 1: few things that they're going to figure out through AI
• 1:45:17
  Speaker 1: that's going to prevent a lot of the things that
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: are probably wiped out enormous swasipy. I mean, imagine if
• 1:45:22
  Speaker 1: we could just actually see asteroids coming, all of them
• 1:45:25
  Speaker 1: and know how to divert them instantaneously. We have a
• 1:45:29
  Speaker 1: bunch of ideas right now, and how to do it right,
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: like coding them, yeah, with something that changes the aerodynamics
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 1: of them, and I.
• 1:45:37
  Speaker 2: Think that one would be relatively easy.
• 1:45:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, even we could figure it out to do that,
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 3: I think.
• 1:45:42
  Speaker 1: And there's also detonating them. There's a bunch of different
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: crazy ideas. But imagine if AI is like, actually, you
• 1:45:48
  Speaker 1: could just do this, you know, and then you put
• 1:45:50
  Speaker 1: a shield over the Earth and you never have to
• 1:45:52
  Speaker 1: worry about it. Ever, the shield's powered by the sun,
• 1:45:55
  Speaker 1: so you have ultimate power and you never have to
• 1:45:57
  Speaker 1: worry about being hit by a Manhattan side the asteroids.
• 1:46:01
  Speaker 2: I think the trickier ones might be ones that are
• 1:46:03
  Speaker 2: more internal to civilization. If you have some process that's
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 2: either like a worldwide process with different humans and corporations
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 2: and governments, or like an internal process in the AI.
• 1:46:19
  Speaker 2: Like on the one hand, you want to be able
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 2: to continue to develop new ideas, new ways of doing things,
• 1:46:26
  Speaker 2: so you need to experiment and try new things. But
• 1:46:28
  Speaker 2: then there's also the risk of just keep trying new
• 1:46:32
  Speaker 2: ideas like that eventually you get stuck on some idea
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 2: that actually proves really harmful or dangerous to you, and
• 1:46:40
  Speaker 2: that you then sort of derail internally through your own
• 1:46:44
  Speaker 2: mimetic or internal evolutionary development. So how to sort of
• 1:46:51
  Speaker 2: grow up safely in this world where you have unlocked
• 1:46:55
  Speaker 2: all kinds of new technolgical capabilities, even if you're easily
• 1:46:59
  Speaker 2: able to protect yourself against external threats like volcanoes and
• 1:47:02
  Speaker 2: asteroids and stuff. Right, there might still be processes arising
• 1:47:07
  Speaker 2: from within this global civilization, just as that we might
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 2: invent new technologies that are dangerous. We might invent new
• 1:47:15
  Speaker 2: like drugs that are super addictive. Once you invent them,
• 1:47:18
  Speaker 2: you try them, and then you're addicted. You never want
• 1:47:20
  Speaker 2: to Yeah, that could be other like some some crazy
• 1:47:23
  Speaker 2: ideology that once it takes hold that lodge.
• 1:47:28
  Speaker 1: Because that that's one of the major fears that a
• 1:47:30
  Speaker 1: lot of people have, is that human beings will develop
• 1:47:33
  Speaker 1: ideologies based around AI. That there will be like an
• 1:47:37
  Speaker 1: AI god that someone develops.
• 1:47:41
  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I mean I think all that's in fact,
• 1:47:43
  Speaker 2: I would add that to the list of I mentioned
• 1:47:45
  Speaker 2: nuclear and bio terrorist risk as like background existential risks
• 1:47:52
  Speaker 2: like another is like some form of insanity, like collective insanity.
• 1:47:56
  Speaker 2: I feel are civilizational sanity they already is kind of
• 1:48:02
  Speaker 2: a little bit precarious. I think we're just kind of
• 1:48:05
  Speaker 2: maybe barely holding ourselves together. And it's amazing how well
• 1:48:09
  Speaker 2: the world functions despite how crazy people are and how
• 1:48:13
  Speaker 2: much they loath their opponents and so farth and we'll
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 2: still manage to somehow get it to work.
• 1:48:18
  Speaker 1: There's also a manipulation of the zeitgeist that's clearly being
• 1:48:21
  Speaker 1: done by bots. So you've got a bunch of people
• 1:48:25
  Speaker 1: online that are having arguments on Twitter and they're not
• 1:48:29
  Speaker 1: even talking to people. There's a bunch of ideas that
• 1:48:31
  Speaker 1: are being pushed out on Twitter and a lot of
• 1:48:34
  Speaker 1: these social media platforms. It's not even human beings tweeting
• 1:48:37
  Speaker 1: about it. So it's not there's algorithms, there's AI, there's
• 1:48:42
  Speaker 1: people that are hired to do it. There's people that
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: are working for certain organizations that are hired to muddy
• 1:48:48
  Speaker 1: up the waters, gaslight, people create problems, how people argue
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: with each other, and so it's like if AI recognizes
• 1:48:57
  Speaker 1: how easy it is to manipulate people do whatever wants,
• 1:49:01
  Speaker 1: that's a fear as well.
• 1:49:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so whenever you change the basic parameters of sort
• 1:49:07
  Speaker 2: of the social cultural political discourse, new dynamics will emerge.
• 1:49:17
  Speaker 2: And we don't have the kind of social science that
• 1:49:20
  Speaker 2: is able to predict what happens if you change some
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 2: of these nubs. So we've seen in the past, like
• 1:49:25
  Speaker 2: you invent let's go all the way back, Like somebody
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 2: invents writing Okay, So that turns out to have had
• 1:49:31
  Speaker 2: a huge effect not just on people writing like literature
• 1:49:35
  Speaker 2: and stuff, but like on political systems. You could now
• 1:49:37
  Speaker 2: have states that could keep tax records, right, so you
• 1:49:41
  Speaker 2: could have larger political units with writing, and then they
• 1:49:44
  Speaker 2: can higher standing armies, and now you have like large
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 2: scale war, you.
• 1:49:49
  Speaker 3: Have social stratification. You could have like the ruler.
• 1:49:52
  Speaker 2: Of a large area could have you know, enormous wealth,
• 1:49:55
  Speaker 2: and you could have a soldier cast that like protects
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 2: against internal linex. So like just the way that human
• 1:50:02
  Speaker 2: societies are political organized changes as a result of this
• 1:50:06
  Speaker 2: change in the rules of communication, when you can have
• 1:50:09
  Speaker 2: written texts, right, and then you have the printing press
• 1:50:12
  Speaker 2: again with like one hundred years of religious wars in
• 1:50:15
  Speaker 2: Europe like Reformation, and all of this stuff is possibly
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 2: and then like forms of democracy later on also coming
• 1:50:22
  Speaker 2: out of this and the scientific revolution. Then you have
• 1:50:27
  Speaker 2: like mass media in the last century with like radio
• 1:50:29
  Speaker 2: and stuff, and you have kind of demagogues that take
• 1:50:32
  Speaker 2: advantage of being able to simultaneously talk to millions of
• 1:50:35
  Speaker 2: people because that was never possible before. Right, right, you
• 1:50:38
  Speaker 2: could have some charismatic kind of guy who's like rallies
• 1:50:42
  Speaker 2: up the whole nation, and then new ideologies become memetically
• 1:50:46
  Speaker 2: fit in that situation that might never have if it
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 2: were people writing letters to the editor. Like it's kind
• 1:50:53
  Speaker 2: of a different type of idea that works there. Then
• 1:50:56
  Speaker 2: if you're giving a kind of stump speech that goes
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 2: out to millions simultaneously. And now with social media, of course,
• 1:51:01
  Speaker 2: we have another one of these, and you do see
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 2: that starting to change culture in different ways.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: Yea.
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 2: And now with AI being the next wave of this,
• 1:51:09
  Speaker 2: that will also change. You have like bots, you have
• 1:51:11
  Speaker 2: new ways of finding information. You have maybe AIS that
• 1:51:14
  Speaker 2: can themselves be super persuaders. That will also change, presumably
• 1:51:19
  Speaker 2: in some unknowable way, the way that social discourse pans out.
• 1:51:25
  Speaker 2: And for any one of these, I guess it could
• 1:51:27
  Speaker 2: turn out to be a lot better. We could become
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 2: more informed having AI advisors. I think that's fairly likely scenario.
• 1:51:32
  Speaker 2: But it's also possible somehow the dynamics shape out in
• 1:51:35
  Speaker 2: a different way and we kind of got collectively insane
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 2: in some.
• 1:51:38
  Speaker 1: Way, back to the white water raft.
• 1:51:42
  Speaker 3: White to backwater rafts.
• 1:51:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, and it all becomes kind of totalitarian, or we
• 1:51:46
  Speaker 2: sort of fragment into political war and tribes, or we've
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 2: become kind of completely unhinged every one of us becomes
• 1:51:54
  Speaker 2: convinced of their own little natty theory that they then,
• 1:51:57
  Speaker 2: like the AI or feed just turfs them material to
• 1:52:00
  Speaker 2: kind of fuel their conviction. There are different ways in
• 1:52:03
  Speaker 2: which this could go badly, But.
• 1:52:07
  Speaker 1: But don't you think even if that happens, ultimately the
• 1:52:10
  Speaker 1: progress of AI won't stop And so the Again, I
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: keep going back to this thing, but I think this
• 1:52:19
  Speaker 1: is really what it is. Is we have to change,
• 1:52:21
  Speaker 1: like what it means to be a person. All those
• 1:52:23
  Speaker 1: things are only problems if people stay what we are now,
• 1:52:27
  Speaker 1: which is territorial primates with desire to possess material goods
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: for some strange reason, even though we're finite life form.
• 1:52:36
  Speaker 1: If all that changes, if we change what it means
• 1:52:39
  Speaker 1: to be a person, which seems inevitable, yeah, then it
• 1:52:43
  Speaker 1: won't matter then if we all like if we if
• 1:52:47
  Speaker 1: there's no if we could figure out a way to
• 1:52:51
  Speaker 1: literally engineer out all of the issues that humans have
• 1:52:55
  Speaker 1: with greed and violence and all the all the different
• 1:52:57
  Speaker 1: things that trouble society, the desire for that is no
• 1:53:01
  Speaker 1: longer a part of being a person, Which is that's doable.
• 1:53:06
  Speaker 1: That's that seems like if we're going to continue to
• 1:53:09
  Speaker 1: evolve past. You know, Australia pithecus to Homo sapi in
• 1:53:13
  Speaker 1: twenty twenty six. If that we continue the same amount
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: of time in the future, well probably won't be like
• 1:53:19
  Speaker 1: that anymore. The best versions of people aren't people that
• 1:53:22
  Speaker 1: want to steal your house and steal your land and
• 1:53:24
  Speaker 1: shoot you and take your resources. That's the best people
• 1:53:28
  Speaker 1: are the people that contribute, and they're interesting and they
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: make you excited to be around them and you like it.
• 1:53:33
  Speaker 1: If that keeps going on, and if that is aided
• 1:53:37
  Speaker 1: by technology, if we recognize that there's actual patterns of
• 1:53:41
  Speaker 1: human thinking and behavior that can be changed, and that
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: if we all agree to subscribe to this algorithm, to
• 1:53:50
  Speaker 1: connect to this computer program, connect to this external device,
• 1:53:54
  Speaker 1: or maybe not even external, maybe maybe it's internal that
• 1:53:58
  Speaker 1: allows us to communicate with each other telepathically. Like all that,
• 1:54:02
  Speaker 1: all that changes, and then it doesn't matter. It doesn't
• 1:54:06
  Speaker 1: matter if there's any guard rails for AI or not,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: because we're not the same thing anymore. Like all the problems,
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: the worry that we have about AI, the worry we
• 1:54:14
  Speaker 1: have about power manipulation and the ability to influence people,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: all that kind of goes away. If people don't behave
• 1:54:22
  Speaker 1: the way they behave currently.
• 1:54:25
  Speaker 2: Well, I guess here's one difference with your like whitewater
• 1:54:31
  Speaker 2: rafting metaphor that so the one is in that metaphor,
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 2: it's kind of we need to hang on, Like there's
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 2: a risk we could smash ourselves on the rock. But
• 1:54:39
  Speaker 2: if we don't do that, then there's kind of one
• 1:54:40
  Speaker 2: way we end up right downstream.
• 1:54:42
  Speaker 1: We get up in a nice lake.
• 1:54:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, But I think in reality, what might also be
• 1:54:48
  Speaker 2: the case that in addition to trying to not smash
• 1:54:50
  Speaker 2: ourselves on the rock, that might be places where the
• 1:54:54
  Speaker 2: choices we make affect the ultimate destination.
• 1:54:58
  Speaker 1: Right, go left, to go right? Yeah? Or which?
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 2: But maybe maybe a more yeah moment and where like
• 1:55:06
  Speaker 2: if you stare in one direction, you might end up
• 1:55:08
  Speaker 2: in one place ultimately in some sort of strange post
• 1:55:11
  Speaker 2: human world. And maybe it's really beautiful and people have
• 1:55:14
  Speaker 2: the chance to grow into their true self and we
• 1:55:16
  Speaker 2: love each other and are creative and take initiatives and
• 1:55:20
  Speaker 2: go a different way. Maybe you have a pipe paperclip
• 1:55:23
  Speaker 2: maximizing ai R and maybe that just everything is paper clips.
• 1:55:26
  Speaker 2: So going a third way, maybe you have like a
• 1:55:28
  Speaker 2: totalitarian system with like a small elite on top and
• 1:55:32
  Speaker 2: everybody else or just yeah, there are many more possibilities,
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 2: and maybe some that kind of we would think would
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 2: look kind of good if we chose now, but then
• 1:55:45
  Speaker 2: in reality they have some hidden flaw that we didn't
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 2: think of, So if we chose those, it would sort
• 1:55:49
  Speaker 2: of be a mistake. And then maybe others that don't
• 1:55:52
  Speaker 2: look at appealing to us knife if you just presented
• 1:55:54
  Speaker 2: them in a brochure to you like, but then actually,
• 1:55:57
  Speaker 2: if you thought hard about it, maybe you would realize
• 1:55:59
  Speaker 2: that actually would be a really nice place to live.
• 1:56:02
  Speaker 2: Because like in the current world, there there are places
• 1:56:04
  Speaker 2: that are nice to visit, that are interesting, but then
• 1:56:07
  Speaker 2: those are not necessarily the same place as we would
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 2: want to live and raise a kid. Right, so there
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 2: are like novels and movies that are really fun to watch,
• 1:56:15
  Speaker 2: but you wouldn't want to live in those worlds. So
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 2: there's a difference between the kind of what makes for
• 1:56:19
  Speaker 2: the good interesting story and the place we actually want
• 1:56:21
  Speaker 2: to spend the rest of your life. And so I
• 1:56:24
  Speaker 2: think that would be possibly a lot of opportunities to
• 1:56:26
  Speaker 2: make foolish choices or unwise choices or conflicts.
• 1:56:31
  Speaker 3: That sort of thwarts.
• 1:56:34
  Speaker 2: The process and makes it end up not just that
• 1:56:36
  Speaker 2: we go extinct before we reach them, but that the
• 1:56:38
  Speaker 2: the area that we reach might depend on the level
• 1:56:40
  Speaker 2: of wisdom and kindness that we have during the process.
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: And there's always undertended consequences with every solution that we
• 1:56:47
  Speaker 1: try to find for any problem that we have, there's
• 1:56:50
  Speaker 1: always some new thing that comes up. We're like, oh,
• 1:56:52
  Speaker 1: we didn't see that coming. I mean, certainly whenever we're
• 1:56:55
  Speaker 1: dealing with nature, like whenever they've brought an invasive species
• 1:56:59
  Speaker 1: to handle other invasive species, it always a giant disaster,
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: you know. Yeah, always, there's always unintended consequences, like, oh,
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: now you have one hundred million frogs. Who's telling us
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: about that? Was it Ali Sadik that was telling us
• 1:57:14
  Speaker 1: about the frogs? Who about they brought in? What did
• 1:57:20
  Speaker 1: they bring in? Forget what the invasive species was? When
• 1:57:24
  Speaker 1: they brought in this one species to kill another species,
• 1:57:29
  Speaker 1: and the problem they didn't realize that that species had
• 1:57:31
  Speaker 1: been It was like coyotes are I don't forget it
• 1:57:34
  Speaker 1: was it was guam. What did they get rid of?
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: Whatever it was? They got rid of this thing that
• 1:57:42
  Speaker 1: had been killing the frogs, So then they had toads, right,
• 1:57:47
  Speaker 1: was it toads? So they had millions of these things
• 1:57:50
  Speaker 1: that were like all over the highway, so you drive
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: on them, you just squash them everywhere you go because
• 1:57:54
  Speaker 1: there was nothing controlling the population of these things anymore.
• 1:57:57
  Speaker 1: It's like unintended consequences of you know, because we're we're
• 1:58:02
  Speaker 1: very short sighted and even in our ability to be
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: contemplative about what the possibility of the future is when
• 1:58:10
  Speaker 1: you're dealing with such an open ended thing like AI,
• 1:58:14
  Speaker 1: super general intelligence that can maybe make better versions of itself, Like,
• 1:58:19
  Speaker 1: who the hell knows what that means? Are we making
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: a god? Because it seems like if it keeps going
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: and that if it makes better versions of itself, it's
• 1:58:26
  Speaker 1: ultimately going to get to the point where it could
• 1:58:28
  Speaker 1: do anything, which is exactly what a god is. It
• 1:58:30
  Speaker 1: can make universes. You know what if the ultimate end
• 1:58:34
  Speaker 1: of this is a big bank button that some scientist invents.
• 1:58:40
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so we are a little bit like, yeah, it's
• 1:58:43
  Speaker 2: I don't know the different analogies fond might reach for,
• 1:58:46
  Speaker 2: but I mean I guess like like say, are on
• 1:58:50
  Speaker 2: a plane and then like the pilot has passed out
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 2: or had a heart attack, or something. And now it's
• 1:58:55
  Speaker 2: like we passengers somehow have to I don't know, figure
• 1:58:59
  Speaker 2: out how to do this, uh run the controls. We're
• 1:59:03
  Speaker 2: not really I mean, you have to still try to
• 1:59:05
  Speaker 2: make your best right. But then add to that that
• 1:59:07
  Speaker 2: all the passengers are fighting amongst each other. Each one
• 1:59:10
  Speaker 2: thinks they are the guy who should control the the
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 2: like they all convinced that they are the superior person
• 1:59:17
  Speaker 2: to try to land the plane. So in addition to
• 1:59:20
  Speaker 2: trying to figure out how the controls work, they are
• 1:59:22
  Speaker 2: like actually having a big fist fight in the cockpit
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 2: as well. And somebody is like dragging somebody else away,
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 2: And there's like the kind of monkey tribe that is
• 1:59:30
  Speaker 2: the current state of the world here, and we're trying
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 2: to shepherd like this ship of humanity into utopia. It's yeah,
• 1:59:40
  Speaker 2: it's yeah, it's it's an interesting.
• 1:59:43
  Speaker 1: It's Doctor Strangelove on steroids.
• 1:59:45
  Speaker 2: But but that's it. We might only have to like
• 1:59:49
  Speaker 2: get it, so at some point we would should be
• 1:59:52
  Speaker 2: able to hand over like the reins, like once you
• 1:59:57
  Speaker 2: have a sufficiently good AI like maybe get assistance from
• 2:00:01
  Speaker 2: that point on.
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: I think it's the first thing that it's going to
• 2:00:05
  Speaker 1: take over as government, He's going to realize how unbelievably
• 2:00:09
  Speaker 1: inefficient the government is doing almost everything, and how much
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: how much of the money that gets allocated is fraud
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: and waste. If you allow AI to sort through that
• 2:00:20
  Speaker 1: and develop much more efficient pathways to controlling and any.
• 2:00:26
  Speaker 3: Resources, people would not want to see that exactly.
• 2:00:29
  Speaker 1: That's going to be a problem. But if we get
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: to the point where there's some sort of some sort
• 2:00:36
  Speaker 1: of a high mind possibility, some sort of I mean,
• 2:00:40
  Speaker 1: one of the things that Elon said that I thought
• 2:00:42
  Speaker 1: was really fascinating, he said, you're going to be able
• 2:00:44
  Speaker 1: to talk without words. Well, if we're able to talk
• 2:00:48
  Speaker 1: without words, like, does that eventually get to the point
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: where we could read minds? Could we is is thought?
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: And is communication no longer verbal? It's no longer sounds?
• 2:01:00
  Speaker 1: So right now we associate sounds that I'm making where
• 2:01:03
  Speaker 1: you know what words I'm using, what I'm referencing, and
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: we get a certain understanding of what each other is
• 2:01:08
  Speaker 1: trying to say. But what if that's just clunky and
• 2:01:12
  Speaker 1: that's silly, And what if instead of a scroll that
• 2:01:17
  Speaker 1: you leave in a cave somewhere, now you have a
• 2:01:20
  Speaker 1: movie that you can watch, like something much more engrossing
• 2:01:23
  Speaker 1: and much more, much more powerful, and that this is
• 2:01:27
  Speaker 1: what human communication becomes, it doesn't it, And maybe this
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: is why the grays don't have mouths. We move away
• 2:01:34
  Speaker 1: from sounds because right now what we figured out is
• 2:01:38
  Speaker 1: like sort of like a duct tape. We're communicating. We
• 2:01:42
  Speaker 1: kind of patched it up. We figured out something. We're
• 2:01:45
  Speaker 1: just gonna use noises we make. Well, we have different
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: noises here than the people that live on this island.
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: They have totally different noises. I don't know what the
• 2:01:51
  Speaker 1: fuck they're saying. And then you have people on the
• 2:01:53
  Speaker 1: other side of the world totally different noises. So Tower
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: of Babbel type situation right where we really can't communicate
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: with each other less we have translators. But if we
• 2:02:02
  Speaker 1: get to the point where that's not how humans communicate,
• 2:02:05
  Speaker 1: We communicate purely through thought and intention and understanding, and
• 2:02:10
  Speaker 1: that it's no longer based on language, It's no longer
• 2:02:13
  Speaker 1: based on this is a transistor, this is a coffee mug.
• 2:02:18
  Speaker 1: Instead it's a complete understanding of each individual thing that
• 2:02:22
  Speaker 1: we're discussing everything. You know what it is, You understand
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: what it is without it having to have a noise
• 2:02:28
  Speaker 1: associated with it.
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I guess the cyber security implications are
• 2:02:34
  Speaker 2: significant if you are giving direct access to other people
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 2: to transmit signals to your brain in a high bandwidth
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 2: way that is not just words kind of that it's
• 2:02:46
  Speaker 2: almost like you heard them even though there's no sound
• 2:02:48
  Speaker 2: in your air. But if it's like actually directly kind
• 2:02:50
  Speaker 2: of interfacing in a high bandwidth way with neural network.
• 2:02:54
  Speaker 1: Also encryptions out the window if we no longer have encryption,
• 2:02:59
  Speaker 1: if we get to the point where because if computing
• 2:03:03
  Speaker 1: gets to the point where the bottleneck is like, think
• 2:03:07
  Speaker 1: about money, right, what is money right now? Money is
• 2:03:10
  Speaker 1: all ones in zero somewhere potentially right, it's all bank accounts.
• 2:03:14
  Speaker 1: It's it's like we're not on a gold standard anymore.
• 2:03:17
  Speaker 1: So what if that bottleneck it's it's an information bottleneck,
• 2:03:21
  Speaker 1: like someone's preventing you from go into going into these
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: places and getting these ones and zeros and transferring it
• 2:03:28
  Speaker 1: to your place. But what if that is all? If
• 2:03:31
  Speaker 1: what if computing power gets to the point where AI
• 2:03:34
  Speaker 1: gets to the point where that those boundaries are nonsense.
• 2:03:37
  Speaker 1: Now all all encryption is instantaneously decoded.
• 2:03:42
  Speaker 2: I think probably cryptography is defense dominant in the limit.
• 2:03:49
  Speaker 2: I think like, if you imagine mature technology, I think
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 2: it would be possible to encrypt. I mean, if nothing else,
• 2:03:56
  Speaker 2: you could use like a one time pad, which would
• 2:04:00
  Speaker 2: will you to encrypt things in a way that is unbreakable.
• 2:04:04
  Speaker 1: Really, I feel like that's going to be a bottleneck.
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: And I think once we start reading each other's minds,
• 2:04:10
  Speaker 1: that might be the first thing to go, Well, it'll
• 2:04:13
  Speaker 1: be like the ultimate socially.
• 2:04:14
  Speaker 3: Now that's where you read it.
• 2:04:15
  Speaker 2: Probably would want encryption, right if you're going to transmit
• 2:04:18
  Speaker 2: thoughts to me, Oh, yeah, like you don't. You don't
• 2:04:20
  Speaker 2: want to sort of have it.
• 2:04:21
  Speaker 1: Oh you don't want some asshole constantly in your head.
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: You're next door neighbor just poking you and prodding you.
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: But you was. You would hope that along with this
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: technology becomes like a general state of enlightenment that the
• 2:04:34
  Speaker 1: human beings achieve where that's no longer the kind of
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: behavior that we indulge.
• 2:04:38
  Speaker 2: In, the which behavior do we know they're annoying each other,
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 2: annoying getting each other, stealing each other's money, that kind
• 2:04:45
  Speaker 2: of stuff. Well, but then yeah, I guess we go
• 2:04:47
  Speaker 2: back to this question of the utopian condition, like if
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 2: you and I it, So, there are a lot of
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 2: things that individually are bad, like lying, stealing, cheating, greed,
• 2:05:00
  Speaker 2: excessive pride, like all kinds of disease, stubbing your knees
• 2:05:04
  Speaker 2: bad like, Yet if you sort of imagine removing all
• 2:05:09
  Speaker 2: of those things, then that changes to human condition quite profoundly,
• 2:05:14
  Speaker 2: and to some people would feel kind of maybe are
• 2:05:16
  Speaker 2: a pair of flavorless or sort of if there is
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 2: no tension, no conflict, no no bruce ego, no like.
• 2:05:27
  Speaker 2: But it might still be good, but it does force
• 2:05:30
  Speaker 2: us to sort of I think it would be a
• 2:05:31
  Speaker 2: rather fundamentally different thing that we would be metamorphosing into
• 2:05:35
  Speaker 2: if we went all the way in that direction, which
• 2:05:37
  Speaker 2: ultimately might be right, but it would require us to
• 2:05:41
  Speaker 2: kind of find new ways of realizing whatever values are
• 2:05:44
  Speaker 2: imperfectly realized in the current world through conflict and competition
• 2:05:49
  Speaker 2: and pain, Like some people get motivation from painful failure,
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 2: and so if you get rid of the pain from failure,
• 2:05:56
  Speaker 2: then you'd need some other motivation, like some other thing
• 2:06:00
  Speaker 2: that drives on which there could be like maybe it's
• 2:06:02
  Speaker 2: just a love of achievement. Then you feel kind of
• 2:06:04
  Speaker 2: neutral or just less happy when you fail, but you
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 2: would still need something that kind of preserves whatever structure
• 2:06:11
  Speaker 2: it is that we think is valuable in the current
• 2:06:14
  Speaker 2: human condition unless you go all the way to sort
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 2: of radical hedonism and think the future is best if
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 2: we were all just kind of floating in some kind
• 2:06:22
  Speaker 2: of drug induced euphoria as blobs that experienced immense pleasure,
• 2:06:28
  Speaker 2: but i'd no real texture in our experiences, didn't engage
• 2:06:32
  Speaker 2: in activities, and didn't interact with each other. Like there's
• 2:06:36
  Speaker 2: like a philosophical view where ultimately pleasure is the only
• 2:06:39
  Speaker 2: thing that matters and the.
• 2:06:40
  Speaker 3: Minimization of suffering.
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 2: So if that's your axiology, then it's relatively easy to
• 2:06:45
  Speaker 2: see then how a technogical maturity you would achieve a
• 2:06:49
  Speaker 2: sort of optimal state. But if you have a more
• 2:06:51
  Speaker 2: complex value system where maybe pleasure is one good thing,
• 2:06:55
  Speaker 2: maybe really important, but there are also other things like
• 2:06:58
  Speaker 2: appreciating beauty in true friendship, courage, achievement, and ideally you'd
• 2:07:04
  Speaker 2: want the future that includes all of these things, then
• 2:07:07
  Speaker 2: you need to do a little bit more sort of
• 2:07:09
  Speaker 2: design work to figure out the way to combine them
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 2: all in a meaningful way.
• 2:07:13
  Speaker 1: But this all comes back to our idea of human meaning.
• 2:07:17
  Speaker 1: What's important to humans our finite one hundred year lifespan
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: adoption of this concept of meaning. But the black hole
• 2:07:25
  Speaker 1: doesn't give a shit about human meaning, and it's going
• 2:07:28
  Speaker 1: to be around a lot longer than us, and it's
• 2:07:31
  Speaker 1: got a lot more power than us, and it's doing
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: a lot more change than us. And we want to
• 2:07:36
  Speaker 1: think that we are more important than black holes.
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, because we are. I think we are.
• 2:07:42
  Speaker 3: I mean to us, Yeah, to us.
• 2:07:45
  Speaker 1: But to the universe. Is it is human meaning that
• 2:07:47
  Speaker 1: important to the universe or is it just sort of
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: a placeholder for what will ultimately become? Is it? Is
• 2:07:53
  Speaker 1: it motivate us to continue to progress?
• 2:07:58
  Speaker 2: Well, so I think, like at technolgical maturity, there are
• 2:08:01
  Speaker 2: certainly forms of purpose that you could have. You could
• 2:08:04
  Speaker 2: have an artificial purpose. So this is when you basically
• 2:08:08
  Speaker 2: set yourself a goal for the sake of having the
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 2: goal and then doing the activity that. So you know,
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 2: maybe you set yourself the goal I'm going to get
• 2:08:16
  Speaker 2: this little white ball into a sequence of eighteen holes.
• 2:08:21
  Speaker 3: And not only that.
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 2: But in order to achieve this goal, it's part of
• 2:08:25
  Speaker 2: the goal that I'm only a lose allowed to use
• 2:08:27
  Speaker 2: this very inconvenient method. I can hit the ball with
• 2:08:30
  Speaker 2: the club right, I can't much easier to just pick
• 2:08:33
  Speaker 2: it up and put it in each hole successively, but
• 2:08:36
  Speaker 2: that doesn't count as being successful.
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 3: So you could make up this goal pretty arbitrary.
• 2:08:43
  Speaker 2: Now, once you have that goal, then you now have
• 2:08:45
  Speaker 2: reason to try hard to concentrate to perfect your swing,
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 2: and you can play golf.
• 2:08:50
  Speaker 3: So the goal enables you to do this activity of.
• 2:08:53
  Speaker 2: Golf playing, which maybe you find fun or worthwhile or meaningful.
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: And the goal, it's what you saw that means because
• 2:09:00
  Speaker 1: it's difficult to do.
• 2:09:02
  Speaker 2: Yeah, And so the future would consist I think if
• 2:09:07
  Speaker 2: we succeed in a lot of game playing, and you
• 2:09:11
  Speaker 2: could certainly have these artificial purposes that you set yourself,
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 2: these goals that then give you a reason to engage
• 2:09:16
  Speaker 2: in any activity.
• 2:09:17
  Speaker 1: Now we're back in the world of Half Life. Now
• 2:09:20
  Speaker 1: we're back in a video game. Now we're also in
• 2:09:23
  Speaker 1: the simulation. This is going to be your artificial goal.
• 2:09:27
  Speaker 2: And you could imagine I think maybe we shouldn't think
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 2: of video games here, but it could be much like
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 2: games we can't give animated. It could be like society
• 2:09:35
  Speaker 2: wide games that last for twenty years that involve all
• 2:09:39
  Speaker 2: kinds of multimodal things and little groups that work together
• 2:09:43
  Speaker 2: to like come up with new ways of creatively and
• 2:09:47
  Speaker 2: so in that broad sense of kind of things we
• 2:09:51
  Speaker 2: do for their own sake, I think game playing could be.
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 2: And it's like a lot of what children do that
• 2:09:56
  Speaker 2: kind of for curiosity and spend a lot of the
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 2: time playing games, and we might all be like kids. Again,
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 2: what might be in shorter supply is a lot of
• 2:10:03
  Speaker 2: natural purpose like purposes which we don't just arbitrarily make
• 2:10:10
  Speaker 2: up in order to have a purpose, but that are
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 2: sort of given toss. So right now in the world,
• 2:10:16
  Speaker 2: you might say, you know, making a living is not
• 2:10:20
  Speaker 2: just an arbitrary purpose, because there are real consequences if
• 2:10:23
  Speaker 2: you fail, Like maybe eventually you get kicked out from
• 2:10:26
  Speaker 2: your flat and then you know it's really cold and
• 2:10:30
  Speaker 2: you get rained on, and like horrible things happen. So
• 2:10:33
  Speaker 2: like similarly, if you like don't brush your teeth, eventually
• 2:10:37
  Speaker 2: you will have tooth decay and there will be real consequences.
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 2: So these there are various things that you have reason
• 2:10:42
  Speaker 2: to do because there are real negative consequences if you
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 2: fail to do them, and a lot of our lives
• 2:10:47
  Speaker 2: is structured by these natural purposes. At a societal level,
• 2:10:51
  Speaker 2: there's a whole bunch of things we need to do together.
• 2:10:53
  Speaker 2: Right in this future world, maybe there would be many
• 2:10:56
  Speaker 2: fewer of those natural purposes because for any one of them,
• 2:10:59
  Speaker 2: you could just ask the AI to sort it out,
• 2:11:01
  Speaker 2: and so the artificial purposes would be a larger chunk.
• 2:11:04
  Speaker 2: And it's interesting to think, are there any natural purposes
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 2: that would survive to technolgical maturity, like anythings that we
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 2: still have sort of instrumental reasons that we need to
• 2:11:14
  Speaker 2: do ourselves.
• 2:11:16
  Speaker 3: And I think that might be a few, but they are.
• 2:11:20
  Speaker 2: More subtle that might not strike us currently as very important.
• 2:11:24
  Speaker 2: But it's one of those things where like you know
• 2:11:30
  Speaker 2: that during the day, if you're outside, you can't see
• 2:11:33
  Speaker 2: the stars, right, it's not because they're not there, like,
• 2:11:36
  Speaker 2: it's because like there's so much light that they are
• 2:11:39
  Speaker 2: sort of blotted out. But at night, when the stronger
• 2:11:45
  Speaker 2: light from the sun is absent, you can see these
• 2:11:47
  Speaker 2: finter lights. I think similarly in this future that might
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 2: be once the sort of urgent, screaming moral values of
• 2:11:54
  Speaker 2: immediately pressing practical concern go away, you might be able
• 2:11:58
  Speaker 2: to perceive a whole constellation of these more total values
• 2:12:00
  Speaker 2: that we are blind to currently.
• 2:12:02
  Speaker 3: So take the value of, take the value.
• 2:12:04
  Speaker 2: Of like I don't know, like some like honoring your forebears.
• 2:12:09
  Speaker 2: So right now, it doesn't seem I mean, maybe it's
• 2:12:11
  Speaker 2: nice sometimes to remember your past parents or some historical
• 2:12:17
  Speaker 2: hero who did something good that benefacted humanity, right, but
• 2:12:21
  Speaker 2: it's like not the main thing that you're Like, maybe
• 2:12:23
  Speaker 2: that would be a bigger thing if that was nothing
• 2:12:25
  Speaker 2: else you needed to do, maybe you could actually spend
• 2:12:27
  Speaker 2: serious time or spiritual quests. Like even for people who
• 2:12:32
  Speaker 2: are very religious, a lot of their actual waking hours
• 2:12:35
  Speaker 2: are spent on random other things, doing their laundry, right,
• 2:12:39
  Speaker 2: like driving to work, like the old kinds of stuff.
• 2:12:41
  Speaker 2: Like if all of that was automated, you could imagine
• 2:12:44
  Speaker 2: spending more time on trying to align yourself, orient yourself
• 2:12:49
  Speaker 2: to this higher being and trying to be in communication
• 2:12:53
  Speaker 2: with them. Like maybe esthetic values, like there are may
• 2:12:56
  Speaker 2: be some things that would just be kind of nice
• 2:12:59
  Speaker 2: and cool if if the world were like that. We
• 2:13:01
  Speaker 2: don't really have time to worry so much about them now,
• 2:13:03
  Speaker 2: but if there was nothing else on the agenda, like
• 2:13:06
  Speaker 2: coming together in a way that upholds some tradition in
• 2:13:10
  Speaker 2: a beautiful, original way that still is true to the
• 2:13:13
  Speaker 2: original spirit, together with other people and enacting some ceremony,
• 2:13:17
  Speaker 2: like maybe those things would start to feel more of
• 2:13:19
  Speaker 2: our time in conjunction with this game playing, and there
• 2:13:25
  Speaker 2: might be many other of these kind of subtler values
• 2:13:28
  Speaker 2: that would start to shape what people were doing.
• 2:13:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and ultimately, who knows. Yes, it's very interesting, and
• 2:13:41
  Speaker 1: it's very open ended, and we really don't know what's
• 2:13:44
  Speaker 1: going to happen, but we're probably going to see it.
• 2:13:46
  Speaker 1: We're probably going to see the strangest thing that humans
• 2:13:50
  Speaker 1: have ever had a possibility to experience.
• 2:13:53
  Speaker 3: Yeah, and in the end, I guess it's trustful.
• 2:13:56
  Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean the conversations are always fascinating, and
• 2:14:02
  Speaker 1: who knows, Let's let's do another one in a few
• 2:14:04
  Speaker 1: years and see how off we are if you if
• 2:14:07
  Speaker 1: come back in four years, all right, let's have four years.
• 2:14:11
  Speaker 1: If we have four years, if you can, if you're
• 2:14:13
  Speaker 1: allowed to travel in four years, come back and let's
• 2:14:15
  Speaker 1: see how wrong we were.
• 2:14:18
  Speaker 2: Make an updates.
• 2:14:19
  Speaker 1: Well, thank you very much. I really appreciate you coming
• 2:14:21
  Speaker 1: in here. It's great to see you again. It's always fun, okay,
• 2:14:25
  Speaker 1: all right, think about the kids, buy everybody