Joe Rogan Experience #2044 - Sam Altman

Joe Rogan podcast check it out The Joe. Rogan Experience Train by day Joe Rogan. podcast by night all. day hello Sam what's happening not much. thanks for coming in here appreciate it. thanks for having me so what have you. done like ever no I mean what have you. done with AI I mean it's um one of the. things um about this is I mean I think.

everyone is fascinated by it I mean. everyone is uh absolutely blown away at. the current capability and wondering. what the potential for the future is and. whether or not that's a good. thing I think it's going to be a great. thing but I think it's not going to be. all a great thing and that that is. where I think that's where all of the. complexity comes in for people it's not. this like clean story of we're going to. do this and it's all going to be great.

we're going to do this it's going to be. net great but it's going to be like a. technological Revolution it's going be a. societal Revolution and those always. come with change and even if it's like. net wonderful you know there's things. we're going to lose along the way some. kinds of job some kind parts of our way. of life some parts of the way we live. are going to change or go away. and no matter how tremendous the upside. is there and and I believe it will be. tremendously good you know there's a lot. of stuff we got to navigate through to. make sure um.

that's that's a complicated thing for. anyone to wrap their heads around and. there's you know deep and super. understandable emotions around that. that's a very honest answer that it's. not all going to be good but it seems. inevitable at this point it's yeah I. mean it's definitely inevitable my my. view of the world you know when you're. like a kid in school you learn about. this technological Revolution and then. that one and then that one and my view. of the world now sort of looking back. Ward and forwards is that this is like.

one long technological. Revolution and we had sure like first we. had to figure out agriculture so that we. had the resources and time to figure out. how to build machines then we got this. Industrial Revolution and that made us. learn about a lot of stuff a lot of. other scientific discovery too let us do. the computer Revolution and that's now. letting us as we scale up to these. massive systems do the AI Revolution but. it really is just one long story of. humans discovering science and. technology and Co evolving with it and I.

think it's the most exciting story of. all time I think it's how we get to this. world of abundance and. although you know although we do have. these things to navigate and there there. will be these downsides if if you think. about what it means for the world and. for people's quality of lives if we can. get to a world uh where the the cost of. intelligence and the abundance that. comes with that. uh the cost dramatically Falls the. abundance goes ways up goes way way up I.

think we'll do the same thing with. energy and I think those are the two. sort of key inputs to everything else we. want so if we can have abundant and. cheap energy and. intelligence that will transform. people's lives largely for the better. and I think it's going to in the same. way that if we could go back now 500. years and look at someone's life we'd. say well there there's some great things. but they didn't have this they didn't. have that can you believe they didn't. have modern medicine that's what people. are going to look back at us like but in. 50 years when you think about the people. that currently really rely on jobs that.

AI will replace when you think about. whether it's truck drivers or automation. workers people that work in Factory. assembly. lines what if anything what strategies. can be put to mitigate the negative. downsides of those jobs being eliminated. by. AI. so I'll talk about some general thoughts. but I I find making very specific.

predictions difficult because the way. the technology goes has been so. different than even my own intuitions or. certainly my own intuitions can we maybe. we should stop there and back up a. little what we what were your initial. thoughts if you had asked me 10 years. ago I would have said first AI is going. to come for bluecollar labor basically. it's going to drive trucks and do. factory work and you know it'll handle. heavy machinery then maybe after that. it'll will do like some kinds of.

cognitive Labor uh kind of you know but. not it won't be off doing what I think. of personally is the really hard stuff. it won't be off proving new mathematical. theorems won't be off you know. discovering new science um won't be offw. writing code and then eventually maybe. but maybe last of all maybe never. because human creativity is this magic. special special thing last of all it'll. come for the creative jobs that's what I. would have said now a it looks to me.

like and for a while AI is much better. at doing tasks than doing jobs it can do. these little pieces super well but. sometimes it goes off the rails uh it. can't keep like very long coherence so. people are instead just able to do their. existing jobs way more productively um. but you really still need the human. there today and then B it's going. exactly the other direction could do the. Creative work first stuff like coding. second they can do things like other. kinds of cogni labor third and we're the.

furthest away from like humanoid. robots so back to the initial. question if we do have something that. completely eliminates Factory workers. completely. eliminates truck drivers delivery. drivers things along those lines that. creates this massive vacuum in our. society so I think there's things that. we're going to do that are good to do.

but not sufficient so I think at some. point we will do something like a Ubi or. some other kind of like very long-term. unemployment insurance something but. we'll have some way of giving people. like redistributing money in society as. a cushion for people as people figure. out the new jobs but and I maybe I. should touch on that I I'm not a. Believer at all that there won't be lots. of new jobs I I think human cre. creativity desire for status wanting.

different ways to compete invent new. things feel part of a community feel. valued uh that's not going to go. anywhere people have worried about that. forever what happens is we get better. tools and we just invent new things and. more amazing things to do and there's a. big universe out there and and I think I. mean that like literally uh in that. there's like Space is really big but. also there's just so much stuff we can. all do if we do get to this world of. abundant intellig where you can sort of.

just think of a new idea and it it gets. created. but but again that doesn't to the point. we started with that that that doesn't. provide like great soless to people who. are losing their jobs today so saying. there's going to be this great. indefinite stuff in the future people. are like what are we doing today so you. know we'll I think we will as a society. do things like Ubi and other ways of. redistribution but I don't think that. could it's at the core of what people.

want I think what people want is like. agency self-determination the ability to. play a role in architecting the future. along with the rest of society the. ability to express themselves and create. something meaningful to them. and also I think a lot of people work. jobs they hate and I think there's we as. a society are always a little bit. confused about whether we want to work. more or work less but but somehow.

that we all get to do something. meaningful and we all get to play our. role in driving the future forward. that's really important and what I hope. is as those truck driving Long Haul. truck driving jobs go away which you. know people have been wrong about. predicting how fast that's going to. happen but it's going to happen um we. figure out not just a way. to solve the economic problem by like. giving people.

the equivalent of money every month but. that there's a way that and we have a. lot of ideas about this there's a way. that we like share ownership and. decision- making over the future um I. thing I say a lot about AGI is that. everyone everyone realizes we're going. to have to share the benefits of that. but we also have to share like the. decision making over it and access to. the system itself like I'd be more. excited about a world where we say. rather than give everybody on earth like. one eight billionth of the AGI money.

which we should do that too we say you. get like one8 billionth of a 1 eight. billionth slice of the system you can. sell it to somebody else you can sell it. to a company you can pull it with other. people you can use it for whatever. creative Pursuit you want you can use it. to figure out how to start some new. business um and with that you get sort. of. like a voting right over how this is all. going to be used and so the better the. AGI gets the more your little 1 18. billionth ownersh is is worth to you we.

were joking around the other day on the. podcast where I was saying that what we. need is an AI government that we we. should have ai president and have ai. make all the decisions yeah have. something that's completely unbiased. absolutely rational has the accumulated. knowledge of the entire human history at. its disposal including all knowledge of. psychology and psychological study. including Ubi cuz that comes with a host. of you know pitfalls and and and issues.

that people have with it so I'll say. something there um I think we're still. very far away from a system that is. capable enough and reliable enough that. you that any of us would want that but. I'll tell you something I love about. that someday let's say that thing gets. built the fact that it can go around and. talk to every person on Earth understand. their exact preferences at a very deep. level you know how they think about this. issue and that one and how they balance. the trade-offs and what what they want.

and then understand all of that and and. like collectively optimize optimize for. the collective preferences of humanity. or of citizens of the US that's awesome. as long as it's not co-opted right our. government currently is co-opted that's. for sure we we know for sure that our. government is heavily influenced by. special. interests if we could have an artificial. intelligence government that has no. influence nothing has influence on it.

what a fascinating idea it's possible. and I think it might be the only way. where you're going to get completely. objective the absolute most intelligent. decision for virtually every problem. every dilemma that we Face currently in. society would you truly be comfortable. handing over like final decision making. and say all right AI you got it from no. but I'm not comfortable doing that with. anybody right you know I mean don't I.

was uncomfortable with the Patriot Act. I'm uncomfortable with you know many. decisions that that are being made it's. just there's so much obvious evidence. that decisions that are being made are. not being made in the best interest of. the overall well of the people it's. being made in the decisions of. whatever gigantic corporations that have. donated to and what whatever the. military-industrial complex and. pharmaceutical industrial complex and. and then so just the money it's that's.

really what we know today that that. money has a massive influence on on our. society and the choices that get made. and the overall good or bad for the. population yeah I I have no disagreement. at all that the current system is super. broken not working for people super. corrupt corrupt and for sure like. unbelievably run by money yeah a and I. think there is a way to do a better job. than that with AI to in some way but and.

this might just be like a factor of. sitting with the systems all day and. watching all of the ways they fail we. got a long way to go a long way to go. I'm sure but when you think of AGI when. you think of the possible future like. where it goes to do you ever extrapolate. do you do you ever like sit and pause. and say well if this thing if this. becomes sensient and it has the ability. to make better versions of itself how. long before we're literally dealing with.

a God so the way that I think about this. is it used to be that like AGI was this. very binary moment it was before and. after and I think I totally wrong about. that and the right way to think about it. is this Contin Continuum of intelligence. this smooth exponential curve back all. the way to that sort of smooth curve. curve of technological Revolution the. the amount of compute power we can put. into the system the scientific ideas.

about how to make it more efficient and. smarter to give it the ability to do. reasoning to think about how to improve. itself that will all come but my my. model for a long time I I think if you. look at the world of AGI thinkers. there's uh there's sort of two. particularly around the safety issues. you're talking about there's two axes. that matter there's the short what. called short timelines or long timelines. you know to the first Milestone of AGI. whatever that's going to be is that.

going to happen in a few years a few. decades maybe even longer although at. this point I think most people are a few. years or few decades and then there's. takeoff speed once we get there from. there to that point you're talking about. where it's capable of the rapid. self-improvement um is that a slow or a. fast process the the world that I think. we're heading that we're in and also the. world that I think is the most. controllable and the safest is the short. timelines and slow takeoff quadrant.

and I think we're going to have you know. there were a lot of very smart people. for a while who were like the thing you. were just talking about happens in a day. or three days and I don't that doesn't. seem likely to me given the shape of the. technology as we understand it now now. even if that happens in a decade or. three decades it's still like the blink. of an eye from a historical perspective. and there are going to be some real. challenges to getting that right and the. decisions we.

make the the sort of Safety Systems and. the and the checks that the world puts. in place how we think. about global regulation or rules of the. road from a safety perspective for those. projects it's super important because. you can imagine many things going. horribly wrong but I've. been I feel cheerful about the progress. the world is making towards taking this. seriously and uh you know it reminds me. of what I've read about the.

conversations that the world had right. around the development of nuclear. weapons it seems to me that this is at. least in terms of public Consciousness. this has emerged very rapidly where I. don't think anyone was really aware. people were aware of the concept of. artificial intelligence but they didn't. think that it was going to be. implemented so comprehensively so. quickly so um chat GPT is on what 4 .5. now four four and with 4.5 there'll be.

some sort of an exponential increase in. its abilities it'll be somewhat better. uh each step you know from each like. half step like that you uh you kind of. humans have this ability to like get. used to any new technology so quickly. the thing that I think was unusual about. the launch of chat gbt 3.5 and then four. was that people hadn't really been. paying attention and that's part of the. reason we deploy we think it's very. important that people and institutions.

have time to gradually understand this. react co-design the society that we want. with it and if you just build AGI and. Secret in a lab and then drop it on the. world all at once I think that's a. really bad idea so we we had been trying. to talk to the world about this for a. while people if you don't give people. something they can feel and use in their. lives they don't quite take it seriously. everybody's busy and so there was this. big overhang from where the technology. was to where public Consciousness was.

now that's caught up we've deployed I. think people understand it I don't. expect the few the jump from like four. to whenever we finish 4.5 which would be. a little while I don't expect that to. be the crazy I think the crazy switch. the crazy adjustment that people have. had to go through has has mostly. happened I think most people have gone. from thinking that AGI was science. fiction and very far off to something. that is going to happen and that was. like a onetime re frame and now you know.

every year you get a new iPhone over the. 15 years or whatever since the launch. they've gotten dramatically better but. iPhone to iPhone you're like yeah okay. it's a little better but now if you go. hold up the first iPhone to the 15 or. whatever that's a big difference GPT 3.5. to AGI that'll be a big difference but. along the way it'll just get. incrementally better do you think about. the convergence of things like uh. neuralink and uh there's a few competing. Technologies where they're trying to. implement. some sort.

of some sort of a connection between the. human biological system and. Technology um do you want one of those. things in your head I don't until. everybody does right and you know I have. a joke about it but it's like the the. idea is like once it gets you have to. kind of because everybody's going to. have it so one of the hard questions. about the mer all of the related merge. stuff is exactly what you just said like.

as a society are we going to let some. people merge with AGI and not others and. if we do then and you choose not to like. what does that mean for you right and. will you be. protected H how you get that moment. right uh you know if we like imagine. like all the way out to the Sci-Fi. future there been a lot of sci-fi books. written about how you get that moment. right you know who gets to do that first. what about people who don't want to do. you make sure the people that do it.

first like actually help lift everybody. up together how do you make sure people. who want to just like live their very. human life get to do that that stuff is. really hard and. honestly so far off from my problems of. the day that I don't get to think about. that as much as I'd like to because I do. think it's super interesting um. I but yeah it seems like if we just. think logically that's going to be a. huge challenge at some point and. people are going to.

want wildly Divergent things but there. is a societal question about how we're. going to like the questions of fairness. that come there and what it means for. the people who don't do it super super. complicated anyway on the neural. interface side I'm in the short term. like before we figure out how. to upload someone's Consciousness into a. computer if that's possible at all which. I think there's plenty of sides you.

could take on why it's not um. the the thing that I find myself most. interested in is what we can do without. drilling a hole in someone's head H how. much of the inner monologue can we read. out with an externally mounted device. and if we have a imperfect low bandwidth. low accuracy neural interface can people. still just learn how to use it really. well in a way that's like quite powerful.

for what they can now do with a new. Computing platform and my guesses we. figure that out I'm sure you've seen. that headpiece there's a demonstration. where there's someone asking someone a. question they have this headpiece on. they think the question and then they. literally Google the question and get. the answers through their head that's. the kind of thing we've been that's the. kind of Direction we've been exploring. yeah that seems to me to be step one. that's the pong of the eventual. immersive 3 video games like you're.

you're going to get these first steps. and they're going to seem sort of crude. and slow I mean it's essentially slower. than just asking Siri I think if someone. built a system where you could think. words doesn't just be a question it. could just be your passive rambling. inner monologue but certainly could be a. question and that was being fed into GPT. 5 or six and in your field of vision the. words in response were being displayed. that would be the Palm yeah that's still.

super that's a very valuable tool to. have and that seems like that's. inevitable there's hard work to get. there on the neural interface side but I. believe it will happen yeah I think so. too and my my concern is that the. initial adopters of this will have such. a massive advantage over the general. population well that doesn't concern me. because that's like a you know that's. not you're not that's just like better. that's a better computer you're not like. jacking your brain into something. something in a high-risk thing you know. what you do when you don't want them.

when you take off the glasses mhm so. that feels fine well this is just the. external device then oh I think we can. do the kind of like read your thoughts. with an external device at some point. read your internal. monologue interesting and do you think. we'll be able to communicate with an. external device as well telepathically. or you semi telepathically through. technology I do yeah yeah I do I think. so too um my my real concern is that.

once we take the step to use an actual. neural interface when when there's an. actual operation and they're using some. sort of an implant and then that implant. becomes more sophisticated it's not the. iPhone 1 now it's the iPhone 15 and as. these things get better and. better we're on the road to cyborgs. we're we're on the road to like why. would you want to be a biological person. do you really want to live in a [ __ ].

Log Cabin when you can be in The Matrix. I mean it seems like we're not we're on. this. path we're already a little bit down. that path right like if you take away. someone's phone and they have to go. function in the world today they're at a. disadvantage Rel to everybody else so. that's that's like a maybe that's like. the lightest weight version of a merge. we could imagine but I think it's worth. like if we go back to that thing about. the one exponential curve I think it's.

worth saying we've like lifted off the. x-axis already down this path the. tiniest bit. and yeah even if you don't go all the. way to like a neural interface VR will. get so good that some people just don't. want to take it off that much right. and that's fine for them um as long as. we can solve this question of how do we. like think about what a balance of power. means in a world I think there will will. be many people um I'm certainly one of.

them who's like actually the human body. and The Human Experience is pretty great. that log heaven in the woods pretty. awesome I don't want to be there all the. time I'd love to go play the great video. game but like I'm really happy to get to. go there sometimes yeah there's still. human experiences that are just like. great Human Experience just laughing. with friends you know kissing someone. that you've never kissed before that you. you're on a first date that kind of. those kind of things are the real.

moments it just laughs having a glass of. wine with a friend and just laughing not. quite the same in VR yeah not now when. the VR goes Super far so you can't you. know it's like you are jacked on your. brain and you can't tell what's real and. what's not uh and then everybody gets. like super deep on the simulation. hypothesis or the like Eastern religion. or whatever and I don't know what. happens at that point do you ever [ __ ]. around with simulation Theory because. the real problem is when you combine. that with probability Theory and you. talk to the people that say well if you.

just look at the numbers the the. probability that we're already in a. simulation is much higher than the. probability that we're. not. um it's never been clear to me what to. do about it it's like okay that in that. intellectually makes a lot of sense yeah. I think probably sure right that seems. convincing but this is my reality this. is my life and I'm gonna live it and. I.

I've you know from. like 2 am. in my college freshman dorm. hallway till now I've made no more. progress on it than. that well it seems like one of. those it's there's no you know it's if. it is a possibility if it is real first. of all once it happens what are you. going to do I mean that that is the new. reality and and in many ways our new. reality is as alien to um you know.

hunter gatherers from 15,000 years ago. as that would be to us now I mean we. we're already we've already entered into. some very bizarre territory where you. know I was just having a conversation. with my kids we're asking questions. about something and you know I always. say let's guess what percentage of that. is this and then we just Google it and. then just ask Siri and we pull it up. like look at that like that alone. is soar compared to how it was when I.

was and you had to go to the. library and hope that the book was. accurate totally I I was very annoyed. this I was reading about how horrible. systems like chat gbt and Google are. from an environmental impact because. it's you know using like some extremely. tiny amount of energy for each query and. you know how we're all destroying the. world and I was like before that people. drove to the library let's talk about. how much carbon they burn to answer this. question versus what it takes now come. on those but that's just people looking.

for some reason why something's bad. that's not a logical perspective well we. should be looking at is the spectacular. changes that are possible through this. and all the problems the insurmountable. problems that we have with Resources. with the environment with cleaning up. the ocean climate change there's so many. problems we need this to solve all of. everything else and that's why we need. president AI. if if AI could uh make every scientific.

discovery but we still had human. presidents do you think we'd be okay no. because those creeps would still be. pocketing money and they'd have offshore. accounts and it would it would always be. a weird thing of corruption and how to. mitigate that corruption which is also. one of the fascinating things about the. current state of technology is that. we're so much more aware of corruption. we're so much more there's so much. independent reporting and we're so much. more COG ENT of the actual problems that.

are in place this is really great one of. the thing one of the things that I've. observed obviously many other people too. is corruption is such an incredible. hindrance to getting anything done in a. society to make it forward progress and. you know my my worldview had been more. us-centric when I was younger and as. I've just studied the world more and had. to work in more places in the world like. it's amazing how much corruption there. still is but the shift to a. technologically enabled world I think is.

a major Force against it because. everything is it's harder to hide stuff. and I do think corruption in the world. will keep trending. down because of its exposure yeah. through technology if I mean it comes at. a cost and I think the loss that like I. am very worried about how far the. surveillance State could go here but in. a world where. payments for example are no longer like.

bags of cash but done somehow digitally. and somebody even if you're using. Bitcoin can like watch those flows I. think that's like a COR corruption. reducing thing I agree but I'm very. worried about Central Bank digital. currency and that being tied to a social. credit. score super against yeah that scares the. [ __ ] out of me super against and that. the push to that is not that's not for. the overall of society that's for. control yeah I I think like I mean.

there's many things that I'm. disappointed that the US government has. done recently but the the war on crypto. which I think is a like we can't give. this up like we're going to control this. and all like that that's. like that that's a thing that like makes. me quite sad about the country it makes. me quite sad about the country too but. then you also see with things like FTX. like oh this can get without regulation. and without someone overseeing it this.

can get really. [ __ ] yeah I'm not anti-regulation like. I think there's clearly a role for it uh. and I also think FTX was like a sort of. comically bad situation that we. shouldn't learn much. from yeah but it's a fun one like it's. totally fun and I love that story I mean. you clearly. I really do I love the fact that they.

were all doing drugs and having sex with. each other yeah no no I had every part. of the drama of like a I mean it's a. gripping story cuz it had everything. there they did their taxes with uh like. what was the the program that they used. QuickBooks they're dealing with billions. of dollars Cas I don't know why I think. the word polycule is so funny but polyle. that was what they like when you call a. relationship like a poly but closed M. like poly Amorous molecule put together. oh I see so they were like this is our.

polycule so there's nine of them and. they're poly of them whatever yeah you. call that a polycule and I thought that. was the funny like that became like a. meme in silic Valley for a while that I. thought was hilarious um you clearly. want enough regulation that that can't. happen but they're like well I'm not. against that happening I'm against them. doing what they did with the money. that's what mean PO is kind of f go for. it no no I mean you want enough thing. that like FTX can't lose all of its. depositor money but but I think there's.

an important Point here which is you. have all of this other regulation that. people and and it didn't keep us safe. and the basic thing which was like you. know let's do that that was not all of. the crypto stuff people were talking. about yes I mean the the real. fascinating crypto is Bitcoin to me I. mean that's the one that I think has the. most likely possibility of becoming uh a. universal viable currency and it's you.

know it's limited in the amount that. there can be it's you know you people. mine it with their own it's like that to. me is very fascinating and I love the. fact that it's been implemented and that. at least some like I've had uh Andreas. Antonopoulos on the podcast and he's. when he talks about it. he's living it he's spending all of his. money everything he paid is in Bitcoin. he pays his rent in Bitcoin everything.

he does is in Bitcoin I I helped start a. project called worldcoin a few years ago. um that's and so i' I've gotten to like. learn more about the space um I'm. excited about it for the same reasons. I'm excited about Bitcoin too but I. think this idea that we have a Global. Currency that is outside of the control. of any government is a super logical and. important step yeah on the tech tree. yeah agreed I mean why should the.

government control currency I mean the. government should be dealing with all. the pressing environmental social. infrastructure issues foreign policy. issues economic issues the things that. we need to be governed in order to have. a peaceful and prosperous Society that's. equal and. Equitable what do you think happens to. money and currency after. AGI I I've wondered about that because I. feel like with money especially when. money goes digital the bottleneck is.

access if we get to a point where all. information is just freely shared. everywhere there are no secrets there. are no boundaries there are no borders. we're reading Minds we have complete. access to all of the information of. everything you've ever done everything. everyone's ever said there's no hidden. secrets what is money then money is this. digital thing well how can you possess. it how can you possess this digital.

thing if there is literally no. bottleneck there's no barriers to anyone. accessing any information because. essentially it's just ones and zeros. yeah I mean another way I think the. information frame makes sense another. way is that like money. is like a sort of way to trade labor or. trade like a limited number of hard. assets like land and houses and whatever. um and and if you think about a world.

where like intellectual labor is just. readily available and super. cheap. then that's somehow very different I I. think there will always be Goods that we. want to be scarce and expensive but. it'll only be those goods that we want. to be scarce and expensive that's and. services that still are and so money in. a world like that I think is just a it's. a very curious. idea yeah it becomes a different Ian. it's not a bag of gold in a Leather. Pouch that you're carrying around rid.

proba it's not going to do you much good. but then the question becomes how is. that money distributed and how do we. avoid some horrible Marxist Society. where there's one totalitarian. government that just it out that would. be bad I I think you've got to like my. my current best idea and maybe there's. something better is I think you act like. if if we are right to a lot of reasons. we could be wrong but if we are right. that like a the AGI systems of which. there will be a few become the high.

order bits of sort of influence whatever. in the world I think you do need. like not to just redistribute the money. but the access so that people can make. their own decisions about how to use it. and how to govern it and if you've got. one idea you get to do this and if I've. got one idea I get to do that and I have. like rights to basically do whatever I. want with my part of it and if I come up. with better ideas than you I get. rewarded for that by whatever the. society is or vice versa yeah you know.

the the hardliners the people that are. against like welfare and against uh any. sort of. ug um Universal basic income Ubi what. they're what they're really concerned. with is human nature right they believe. that if you remove incentives if you. just give people free money they become. addicted to it they become lazy but. isn't that a human biological and. psychological B NE and.

perhaps with the. implementation of artificial. intelligence combined with some sort of. neural interface whether it's external. or. internal it seems like that's a problem. that can be solved that you can. essentially and this is where it gets. really spooky you can re-engineer the. human biological system and you can. remove all of these problems that people.

have that are essentially problems that. date Back To Human reward systems when. we were tribal people hunter gatherer. people whether it's jealousy lust Envy. all these all these variables that come. into play when you're dealing with money. and status and social status if those. are eliminated with technology and. essentially we become a next version of. what the human species is possible. like look we're very very far removed.

from tribal brutal societies of cave. people we all agree that this is a way. better way to live it's it's a it's it's. way safer you know we were like I I was. talking about this at my comedy club. last night because we because my wife. was we were talking about um DNA and my. wife was saying that look everybody came. from cave people which is kind of a. [ __ ] up thought that everyone here is. here because of K people well that all.

that's still in our DNA all that's still. and these reward systems can be hijacked. and they can be hijacked by just giving. people money and like you don't have to. work you don't have to do anything you. don't have to have ambition you'll just. have money and just just lay around and. do drugs that's what the that's the fear. that people have of giving people free. money but if we can figure out how to. literally engineer near the human. biological.

vehicle and remove all those. pitfalls if we can Enlighten people. technologically maybe Enlighten is the. wrong word but but. Advance the human species to the point. where those are no longer dilemmas. because those are easily solvable. through coding they're easily solvable. through enhancing the human biological. system perhaps raising dopamine levels. to the point where anger and fear and.

hate are impossible they don't exist and. if I mean if you just had everyone on. Molly how many wars would there be there. would be zero Wars I mean I think if you. could get everyone on Earth to all dalii. once on the same day that'd be a. tremendous thing but if you got. everybody on Earth to dalii every day. that' be a real loss but what if they. did a low dose of Molly where you just. get to ah where everybody greets people. with love and affection and there's no.

longer concern about competition instead. the concern is about the fascination of. innovation and cre creation. creativity uh man we could talk the rest. of the time about this one topic it's so. interesting I I I. think if I could like push a button to. like remove all human striving and. conflict. I wouldn't do it first of all like I. think that's a very important part of.

our story and experience and and also I. think we can see both from our own. biological history and also. from what we know about AI that very. simple goal systems Fitness functions. reward models whatever you want to call. it lead to incredibly. impressive results you know if the. biological iCal imperative is survive. and. reproduce look how far that has somehow.

gotten us as a society all of this all. this stuff we have all this technology. this building whatever else. like. that that got here through an extremely. simple goal in a very complex. environment leading to all of the. richness and complexity of. people fulfilling this biological. imperative to some degree and wanting to.

impress each other uh so I think like. evolutionary Fitness is a simple and. unbelievably powerful idea. now could you carefully edit out every. individual manifestation of. that maybe but I I don't want to like. live in a society of drones where. everybody is just sort of like on Molly. all the time either like that doesn't. seem like the right answer like I want. us to continue to strive I want us to.

continue to push back the frontier and. go out and explore and I actually think. something's already gotten a little off. track in. society about all of that and. we're I don't know I think like I'm I. don't I thought I'd be older by the time. I felt like the old guy complaining. about the youth um but I think we've. lost something and I think that. we need more uh striving maybe more.

risk-taking more. like Explorer Spirit what do you mean by. you think we've lost something. um I mean here's like a version of. it very much from my own lens I was a. startup investor for a long time uh and. it often was the case that the very best.

startup Founders were in their early or. mid 20s or late 20s maybe even and now. they skew much older and what I want to. know is in the world today where the. super great 25-year-old Founders and. there are few it's not fair to say there. are none but there are less than there. were before. and I think that's bad for Society at. all levels I'm you like comp tech. company Founders is one example but like. people who go off and create something.

new who push on a disagreeable or. controversial idea we need that to drive. forward um we need that sort of spirit. we need people to be able to you know. put out ideas and be wrong and not be. ostracized from society for it or not. have it be like you know something that. they get canceled for or or whatever we. need people to be able to take a risk in. their career because they believe in. some important scientific Quest that may. not work out or may sound like really.

controversial or bad or whatever um you. know certainly when we started open Ai. and we were saying we think this AGI. thing is is real and could be you know. could be done unlikely but so important. if it happens and all of the older. scientists in our field were saying. those people are irresponsible you. shouldn't talk about egi that's like you. know they're like selling a scam or. they're like you know they're kind of uh. being Reckless and it's going to lead to. an AGI winter like we said we believed.

we said at the time we knew it was. unlikely but it was an important Quest. and we were going to go after it and. kind of like [ __ ] the. haters that's important to a. society what do you think is the origin. like what why do you think there are. less young people that are doing those. kind of things now as opposed to a. decade or two. ago I am so interested in that topic. um I'm tempted to blame the education.

system but I sure that I think that like. interacts with. Society in all of these strange ways. um it's funny there was this like thing. all over my Twitter feed recently trying. to talk about like what you know what. like what caused the drop in. testosterone in American men over the. last few decades and no one was like. this is a symptom not a. cause and everyone was like oh it's the. microplastics it's the birth control. pills it's the whatever it's the. whatever it's the whatever and I think.

this is like not at all the most. important piece of this topic but it was. just interesting to me. sociologically that there was there was. only talk about it being about what what. caused it not about it being an an. effect of some sort of change in. society but isn't what caused it well. well there's. biological reasons why like when we talk.

about the phalates and microplastic. pesticides environmental factors those. are real totally and I don't like again. I'm so far out of my depth and expertise. here this was it was just interesting to. me that the only talk was about like. biological factors and not that somehow. Society can have some sort of effect on. well Society most certainly has an. effect do you know what the answer to. this is I I don't I mean I I've I've had. a a with Dr Shanna Swan who wrote the. book countdown and that is all about the.

introduction of petrochemical products. and the correlating drop in testosterone. rise in. miscarriages the fact that these are. ubiquitous endocrine disruptors that. when they do um blood tests on people. they find some insane number it's like. 90 plus percent of people have phalates. in your system and you I appreciate the. metal cups yeah we we we try try to. mitigate it as much as possible but I. mean you're getting it if you're.

microwaving food you're you're [ __ ]. getting it you're get you're just. getting it you're get if you eat. processed food you're getting it you're. getting a certain amount of. microplastics in your diet and estimates. have been that it's as high as a credit. card of microplastics per in your body. you consume a credit card of that a week. whoa the real concern is with mammals. because the introductions when they've. done studies with mammals and they've. introduced thetes into their body. there's a correlating um one thing that.

happens is the the these animals they're. Tain shrink like the taint of yeah the. mammal when you look at males it's 50%. to 100% larger than the females with the. introduction of thies on the males the. taints start shrinking the penises. shrink the testicles shrink sperm count. shrinks so we know there's a direct. biological connection between the the. this the chemicals and how they interact. with with bodies so that's that's a real.

one and it's. also the amount of petrochemical. products that we have the amount of. plastics that we use it's it is such an. integral part of our culture and our our. society our civilization it's everywhere. and I've. wondered if you think about how. these territorial Apes. evolve into this new Advanced species.

wouldn't one of the very best ways be to. get rid of one of the things that causes. the most problems which is testosterone. we need testosterone we need aggressive. men and protectors but why do we need. them we need them because there's other. aggressive men that are evil right so we. need protectors from ourselves we need. the good strong people to protect us. from the bad strong people but if we're.

in the process of integrating with. technology if technology is an. inescapable part of our life if it is. everywhere you're using it you have the. internet of everything that's in your. microwave and your television your. computers everything you. use as time goes on that will be more. and more a part of your life and as. these Plastics are introduced into the. human biological system you're seeing a. feminization of the males of the species.

you're seeing a downfall in birth rate. you're seeing all these correlating. factors that would sort of lead us to. become this more. peaceful less violent less aggressive. less ego driven. thing which the world is definitely. becoming over time. um and I'm all for Less violence. obviously but I.

don't look obviously testosterone has. many great things to say for it and some. bad Tendencies too but I don't think a. world if we if we leave that out of the. equation and just say like a world that. has. a a spirit that you know we're going to. defend ourselves we're going to ex. we're going to find a way to like.

protect ourselves uh and our tribe and. our society into this future which you. can get with lots of other ways I think. that's an important. impulse more than that though what I. meant is about if we go back to the. issue of like where are the young. Founders uh why don't we have why don't. we have more of those and I don't think. it's just the tech startup industry I. think you could say that about like. young scientists or or many other. categories those are maybe just the ones.

that I I know the best. um in a world. with any amount of. technology I still think we we've got to. it is our destiny in some sense to stay. on this on this curve and we still need. to go figure out what's next and after. the next Hill and after the next Hill. and it would be. my perception is that there is some.

long-term societal change happening here. and I think it makes us less happy. too right it may make us less happy but. what I'm saying is if the human species. does integrate with. technology wouldn't a great way to. facilitate that to be to kind of. feminize the the Primal apes and to sort. of downplay the role like the like. should the. AGI World maybe I don't know if it's AGI.

I mean maybe it's just an inevitable. inevitable consequence of Technology. because especially the type of. technology that we use which does have. so much plastic in it and then on top of. that the technology that's involved in F. Food Systems preservatives all these. different things that we use to make. sure that people don't starve to death. we've made incredible strives in that. there are very few people in this. country that starve to death yeah it is. not it's not a primary issue but. violence is a primary issue but our VI.

our concerns about violence are and our. concerns about testosterone and strong. men and powerful people is only because. we need to protect against we need to. prot protect against other same things. is that really the only reason sure I. mean how many like incredibly vient. women are out there running gangs no no. that part for sure clearly not very many. um I what I meant more is is that the. only reason that Society values like.

strong masculinity yeah I think so I. think it's a biological imperative right. and I think that biological imperative. is because we used to have to defend. against incoming tribes and predators. and animals and and we we needed someone. who was stronger than most to defend the. rest and like that's the concept of the. military that's why Navy sealed training. is so difficult we want the strongest of. the strong to be at the tip of the spear. but that's only because there's people. like that out there that are bad if.

General in artificial general. intelligence and the implementation of. some sort of a device that changes the. biological structure of human beings to. the point where that is no longer a. concern like if you are me and I am you. and I know this because of Technology. violence is impossible yeah look by the. time if this goes all the way down the. Sci-Fi path and we're all like merged. into this one single like planetary. Universal whatever Consciousness then. then then yes you don't you don't need.

testosterone need testosterone but. especially if we can reproduce through. other methods like this is the alien. hypothesis right like why do they look. so spindly and without any gender and. you know and they have these big heads. and Tiny they don't need physical. strength they don't need physical. strength they they have some sort of. telepathic way of communicating they. probably don't need sounds with their. mouths and they don't need this urge. that we have to conquer and to spread. our DNA like that's so much of what.

people do is these reward systems that. were established when we were. territorial Apes there's a question to. me about how much you. can ever. get rid of rid of that if you make an. AGI and it decides actually we don't. need to expand we don't need more. territory we're just like happy we at. this point you and me it the whole thing. all together all merg in we're happy. here on Earth um we don't need to get.

any bigger we don't need to reproduce we. don't need to grow we're just going to. sit here and. run a that sounds like a boring life I. don't agree with that I don't agree that. that would be the logical conclusion I. think the logical conclusion would. be they would look for problems and. Frontiers that are insurmountable to our. current existence like Intergalactic. communication and trans. what happens when it meets another AGI. the other Galaxy over what happens if it.

meets an AGI that's a million years more. advanced or that like what do that look. like yeah that's what I've I've often. wondered if we are I I call ourselves. the biological caterpillars that create. the electronic butterfly that we're. making a cocoon right now and we don't. even know what we're doing and I think. it's also tied into consumerism consu. because what does consumerism do. consumerism facilitates the creation of. newer and better things because you. always want the newest latest greatest. so you have more advanced technology in.

automobiles and computers and cell. phones and and all of these different. things including Medical. Science that's all for sure true uh the. thing I was like reflecting on as you. were saying that is I don't think. I I'm not as optimistic that we can or. even. should overcome our biological base to.

the degree that I think you think we can. and you know to even go back one further. level like I I think I think Society is. happiest where there's like roles for. strong femininity and strong masculinity. in the same people and in different. people um. and and I don't. like and I don't think a lot of these. like deep-seated. things are going to be able to get.

pushed aside very easily and still have. a system that works like sure we can't. really think about what if there were. Consciousness in a machine someday or. whatever what that would be like um and. maybe maybe I'm just like thinking too. small-minded but I think there is. something about us that has worked in a. super deep. way and it took Evolution a lot of.

search space to get here but I wouldn't. discount it too easily but don't you. think that cave people would probably. have those same logical. conclusions about life and sedentary. lifestyle and sitting in front of a. computer and not interacting with each. other except through text. uh. well I mean isn't that like what you're. saying is correct how different do you. think our motivations are today and kind. of what really brings us genuine joy and. how we're how we're wired at some deep. level differently than cave people.

clearly lots of other things have. changed we've got better much better. tools but how different do you think he. really is I think that's the problem is. that genetically at the base level. there's not much difference and that. these reward systems are. all they we interact with all of them. whether it's ego lust passion Fury anger. jealousy all these different things that. and you think we'll be some people will.

upload and edit those out yes yeah I. think that our concern with losing this. aspect of what it means to be a person. this like the idea that we should always. have conflict and struggle because. conflict and struggle is how we. facilitate progress which is true right. and combating evil is how the good gets. greater and stronger if the good wins. but my concern is that that is all. predicated on the idea that the. biological system that we have right now.

is. correct and optimal and I think one of. the things that we're dealing with with. the heightened states of depression and. anxiety and the lack of meaning and. existential angst that people experience. a lot of that is because the biological. reality of being a human animal doesn't. really integrate that way with this. world that we've created that's for sure. yeah and I.

wonder if the solution to that is not. find ways to find meaning with the. biological you know vessel that you've. been given but rather engineer those. aspects that are problematic out of the. system to create a truly enlightened. being like one of the things if you ask. someone today what are the odds that in. 3 years there will be no war in the.

world that's zero like nobody thinks no. there's never been a time in human. history where we haven't had War if you. had to say what is our number one. problem as a species I would say our. number one problem is is war our number. one problem is this idea that it's okay. to send massive groups of people who. don't know each other to go murder. massive groups of people that are. somehow opposed because of the. government because of lines in the sand. ter an insane thing it's an insane thing.

how do you get rid of that well one of. the ways you get rid of that is to. completely engineer out all the human. reward systems that pertain to the. acquisition of of resources so what's. left at that point well we're a new. thing I think we become a new thing and. what does that thing do want I think. that new thing would probably want to. interact with other new things that are. even more advanced than it I do believe. that scientific curiosity can drive.

quite that that that can be a great. Frontier for a long. time yeah I think it can be a great. Frontier for a long time as well I just. wonder if what we're seeing with the. drop in. testosterone the because of. microplastics which sort of just snuck. up on us we didn't even know that it was. an issue until people started studying. how how certain is that at this point. that that's what's happening I don't I'm. going to study. it's it's a very good question Dr shanis. Swan believes that it's the primary.

driving factor of the sort of uh. dropping testosterone and all. miscarriage issues and low birth weights. the all those things seem to have a. direct there's seems to be a direct. Factor environmentally I'm sure there's. other factors too I the the drop in. testosterone I mean it's it's been shown. that you can increase Mal's testosterone. through resistance training and through. making there's certain things you can do. like one of the big ones they found. through a study in Japan is cold water.

immersion before exercise yeah radically. increases testosterone so you cold water. immersion and then exercise po that yeah. I don't know see I can find that um but. it's uh it's a fascinating Feld to study. but I think it has something to do with. resilience and resistance and the fact. that your body has to combat this. external Factor that's very extreme that. causes the body to go into this state of. preservation and the the implementation.

of cold shock proteins and the reduction. of inflammation which also enhances the. body's endocrine system but then on top. of that this imperative that you have to. become more resilient to survive this. external factor that you've introduced. into your life every single. day um so there's ways obviously that. you can make a human being more robust. you know we know that we can do that. through strength training we and that. all that stuff actually does raise.

testosterone your diet can raise. testosterone and the a poor diet will. lower it and will hinder your integrin. system will hinder your ability to. produce growth hormone melatonin all all. these different factors that seems to be. something that we can fix in terms or at. least mitigate in term with with. decisions and choices and effort but the. fact fact that these prochemical Pro. like there's a graph that Dr Shannon.

swan has in her book that shows during. the 1950s when they start using. petrochemical products in everything. microwave plastic Saran wrap all this. different stuff there's a direct. correlation between the implementation. and the dip and it all seems to line up. like that seems to be a primary. factor does that have an equivalent. impact on on uh like estrogen related. hormones that's a good question um some.

of them actually I know some of these. chemicals that they're talking about. actually increase estrogen in men I. don't know but I do know that it. increases. miscarriages so I I just think it's. overall disruptive to the human. definitely a societal wide dis. disruption of the endocrine system in a. short period of time seems like a just. bad and difficult to wrap our heads. around pollutants and environmental. toxins on top of the pesticides and.

herbicides and all these other things. and microplastics there's a lot of. factors that are leading our systems to. not work well um but I I just really. wonder if this like are we just Clinging. On to this monkey body are we deciding. that I like my monkey body I do too. listen I love it but I'm also I try to. be very objective and when I objectively. look at it in terms of like if you take. where we are now and all of our problems.

and you look towards the future and like. what would be one way that you could. mitigate a lot of these and well it. would be the implementation of some sort. of a telepathic technology where you. know you couldn't just text someone or. tweet at someone something mean because. you would literally feel what they feel. when you put that energy out there and. you would you would be repulsed. yeah and and then violence would be if. you were committing violence on someone.

and you literally felt the reaction of. that violence in your own. being you you would also have no. motivation for violence if we had no. aggressive tendencies no Primal. chimpanzee Tendencies You know it's it's. true that violence in the world has. obviously gone down a lot over the. decades but emotional violence is up a. lot and the internet has been horrible. for that like I don't walk I'm not going. to walk over there and punch you cuz.

you're look like a big strong guy you're. going to punch me back and also there's. a societal convention not to do that but. if I didn't know you I might like send a. mean tweet about you and I feel nothing. on that yeah and clearly that has become. like a mega epidemic in society that we. did not evolve the. biological constraints on somehow yeah. yeah. and I'm actually very worried about how.

much that's already destabilized us and. made us all miserable it certainly. accentuated it it's exacerbated all of. our problems it's I mean if you read. Jonathan haes book The Cod of the. American mind have you read it great. book yeah it's a great book and it's. it's very damaging to women particularly. young girls young girls growing up. there's a direct correlation between the. invention of social media the. introduction to the iPhone self harm. suicide online bullying you know like. people have always talked [ __ ] about.

people when no one's around the fact. that they're doing it now openly to to. harm people horrible obviously I think. it's super damaging to men too maybe. they just like talk about it less but I. don't think any of us are like set up. for this no no one's set up for it and. you know I think famous people know that. more than anyone we all get used to it. yeah you just get numb to it and or if. you're wise you don't engage you know I. don't engage I don't even have any apps. on my new phone yeah I've decid I got a. new phone and I decided okay nothing.

that's really smart no Twitter so I have. a separate phone that if I have to post. somethingone I'll something I pick up. but all I get on my new phone is text. messages and is that more just to like. keep your mind pure and uned yeah and. not not tempt myself and to just you how. many [ __ ] times I've got up to go to. the bathroom first thing in the morning. and spent an hour just sitting on the. toilet scrolling through Instagram like. for nothing does zero for me and there's. this thought that I'm going to get.

something out of it I was thinking. actually just yesterday about how you. know we all have talked for so long. about these algorithmic feeds are going. to manipulate Us in these big ways. and that will happen but in the small. ways already where like scrolling. Instagram is not even that fulfilling. like you finish that hour and you're. like I know that was a waste of my. time but it was like over the threshold. where you couldn't quite it's hard to. put the phone down right you're just.

hoping that the next one's going to be. interesting and every now and then the. problem is every like 30th or 40th reel. that I click on is wild great I wonder. by the way if that's more powerful than. if everyone was wild if everyone was. great sure you know it's like the slot. you to mine for gold you don't just go. out and pick it like. daisies if the algorithm is like. intentionally feeding you some [ __ ]. along the way. yeah well there's just a lot of [ __ ] out. there unfortunately but it's all it's.

just in terms of you know I was talking. to uh sha Ali who's this UFC fighter. who's you know obviously has a very. strong mind really interesting guy but. one of the things that Shawn said is. like I get this like lowlevel anxiety. yeah from scrolling through things and I. don't know why like what is that and I. think it's part of The Logical mind. realizes is a massive waste of your. resources I also deleted a bunch of that. stuff off my phone um because I just. didn't have the self-control I mean I. had the self-control to delete it but.

like not to stop once I was scrolling. through yeah and so I I think we're just. like yeah we're getting attention hacked. in some ways there's some good to it too. but we don't yet have the stuff in. place the tools the societal Norms. whatever to modulate it well right and. we're not designed for it. completely new technology that again. hijacks our human reward systems and.

hijacks all of the checks and balances. that are in place for communication. which historically has been one-on-one. historically communication has been one. person to another and when people write. letters to each other it's generally. things like if someone likes a a love. letter or you know they miss you they. they're writing this thing where they're. kind of exposing a thing that maybe they. have a difficulty in expressing in front. of you and it was NE you know generally.

unless the person was a psycho they're. not hateful letters whereas the ability. to just communicate [ __ ] that guy I hope. he gets hit by a bus is so simple and. easy and Avail and you don't experience. Twitter seems to be particularly. horrible for this as the mechanics work. um it it really rewards in ways that I. don't think anybody fully understands. that like Taps into something about. human psychology yeah where but that's.

kind of. like that's how you get engagement. that's how you get like followers that's. how you get what like you know the. dopamine hits or whatever. and like the people who I know that. spend all day on Twitter more of them. are unhappy about it than happy oh yeah. they're the most unhappy I I mean. there's quite a few people that I follow. that I only follow because they're crazy. and then I'll go and check in on them. and see what the [ __ ] they're tweeting.

about and some of them are on there 8 10. hours a day I'll I'll see tweets all day. long and I know that person cannot be. happy they're unhappy and they cannot. stop you can't stop and it seems like. it's their life it's it's a and they get. they get meaning out of it in terms of. reinforcement you know they short-term. meaning. I think maybe each day you go to bed. feeling like you accomplished something. and got your do and the end of each.

decade you probably like where' that. decade go yeah I was talking to a friend. of mine who was having a real problem. with it he's saying he would be. literally walking down the street and. he'd have to check his phone to see. who's replying and he wasn't even. looking where he was walking he was just. like caught up in the anxiety of these. exchanges and it's not because of the. nice things people say no no no no it's. all and with him he was recognizing that. you know he was dunking on people and. then seeing. resp. to yeah I stopped doing that a long time.

ago I stopped interacting with people on. Twitter in a negative way I just won't. do it just even if I disagree with. someone I'll say something as peacefully. as possible I have like more of an. Internet troll streak than I would like. to admit and so I try to just like not. give myself too much the temptation but. I slip up sometimes yeah it's so. tempting totally it's so tempting to and. it's fun it's fun to just say something. shitty I mean again whatever this bi IAL. system we were talking about earlier. that get that that gets a positive. reward well moment there's a react you.

know there's reactions you say something. outrageous and someone's going to react. and that reaction is like energy and. there's there's all these other human. beings engaging with your idea but. ultimately it's just not productive for. most people and it's. psychologically it's just fraught with. Peril there's just so much going on I. don't know anybody who engages all day. long that's. Happy certainly not I don't.

like I think I've watched it like. destroy is too strong of a word but like. knock off track the careers or life's or. happiness or Human Relationships of. people that are like good smart. conscientious people that just like got. couldn't fight this demon CU it like. hacked there and Co really accentuated. that because people were alone and isol. ol ated and that made it even worse. because then they felt they felt even.

better saying shitty things to people if. I'm unhappy I'm going to say even worse. things about you and then there was the. psychological aspect of it like The. Angst that came from being socially. isolated and terrified about this. invisible disease that's going to kill. us all and you know and that so you have. this like and then you're interacting. with people on Twitter and then you're. caught up in that anxiety and you're. doing it all day and I know quite a few. people especially comedians that really. lost their minds and lost the respect to.

their peers by doing that I have a lot. of sympathy for people who lost their. minds during Co cuz what a unnatural. thing for us all to go through and the. isolation was just brutal but a lot of. people did and I don't think the. internet and particularly not the kind. of like social dynamics of things like. Twitter I don't think that like brought. out anyone's best no well I mean some. people I think if they're they're not. they they're not inclined to be shitty. to people I think some people did seek.

comfort and they did interact with. people in positive ways I I see there's. plenty of positive I think the thing is. that the negative interactions are so. much more impactful yeah I look I think. there are a lot of people who use these. systems for wonderful things I didn't. mean to imply that's not the case but. that's not what. drives people's emotions after getting. off the platform at the end of the day. right right and it's also probably not. if you looked at a pie chart of the. amount of interactions on Twitter I.

would say a lot of them are [ __ ] on. people and being angry about things how. many of the people that you know that. use Twitter those eight or 10 hours a. day are just saying wonderful things. about other people all day versus the. virulent very few yeah very few I don't. know any of them I I. know but then again I wonder with the. implementation of some new technology. that makes communication a very. different thing than what we're curring. like what we're doing now with.

communication is less immersive than. communicating one-on-one you and I are. talking we're looking into each other's. eyes we're getting social cues we're. smiling at each other we're laughing. it's it's a very natural way to talk I. wonder if through the implementation of. Technology if it becomes even more. immersive than a one-on-one conversation. even more interactive and you will. understand even more about the way a.

person feels about what you say yeah. about that person's memory that person's. life that person's history their. education how it comes out of their mind. how their mind interacts with your mind. and you see them you really see them I. wonder if that I wonder if what we're. experiencing now is just like the first. time people invented guns they just. started shooting at things you know yeah.

if you can like feel what I feel when. you say something mean to me or nice to. me right like that's clearly going to. change what you decide to say yes yeah. yeah unless you're a psycho unless. you're a psycho and then what causes. someone to be a psycho and can that be. engineered. Out imagine of what we're talking about. when we're dealing with the human mind. we're dealing with a very ious diseases. bipolar schizophrenia. imagine a world where we can find the.

root cause of those things and through. coding and some sort of an. implementation implementation of. technology that elevates dopamine and. serotonin and and does some things to. people that eliminates all of those. problems and allows people to. communicate in a very pure way. it sounds great it sounds great but. you're not going to have any rock and. roll you'll stand up comedy will.

die um you'll have no violent movies you. know you're there's a lot of things that. are going to go out the window but maybe. that is also part of the process of our. Evolution to the next stage of. existence maybe I I feel genuinely. confused on this well I think you should. be I mean to be we're going to find out. yeah I mean to be sure how it's going. that's insane but I don't even have like. H beyond belief I mean you just you from.

the when did open AI when did you first. start this project uh all like the very. beginning and end of 2015 early 2016 and. when you initially started this project. what kind of timeline did you have in. mind and has it stayed on that timeline. or is it just wildly out of. control I remember talking with John. Schulman one of our co-founders early on. and he was like yeah I think it's GNA be. about a 15-year project and I was like.

yeah it sounds about right to me and. I've always sort of thought since then. now I no longer think of like AGI as. quite the end point but to get to the. point where we like accomplish the thing. we set out to. accomplish I you know that would take us. to like 2030 2031 that has felt to me. like all the way through kind of. a reasonable estimate with huge error. bars and I kind of think we're on the. trajectory I sort of would have assumed.

and what did you think the. impact on society would be like did you. when you when you first started doing. this and you said okay if we are. successful and we do create some. massively Advanced. AGI what what is the implementation and. how what is the impact on society how. have did you did you sit there and have. like a graph like you had the pros on.

one side the cons on the other did you. just sort of abstractly consider well we. we definitely talked a lot about the. cons you know uh many of us were super. worried about and still are. about safety and alignment and if we. build these systems we can all see the. great future that's easy to imagine but. if something goes horribly wrong it's. like really horribly WR and so there was. a lot of discussion about and and really. a big part of the founding Spirit of.

this is like how are we going to solve. this safety problem what does that even. mean one of the things that we believe. is that the greatest Minds in the world. cannot sit there and solve that in a. vacuum you've got to like have Conta. with reality you've got to see where the. technology goes practice plays out in a. stranger way than Theory and that's. certainly proven true for us but we had. a long list of. well I don't know if we had a long list. of cons we had a very intense list of. cons because you know there's like all.

of the last Decades of sci-fi telling. you about how this goes wrong and why. it's supposed to shoot me right now yeah. um and I'm sure you've seen the the John. Conor chat GPT I haven't what is. it it's it's like you know John Connor. from the Terminator the kid looking at. you when you open up chat GPT. yeah so that stuff we were like very. clear in our minds on now I think we.

understand there's a lot of work to do. but we understand more about how to make. AI safe in. the AI safety gets overloaded like you. know does it mean don't say something. people find offensive or does it mean. not don't destroy all of humanity or. some Continuum and I think the the word. is like gotten overloaded but in terms. of the like not destroy all of humanity. version of it uh we have a lot of work. to do but I think we have finally more. ideas about what can work and and given.

the way the systems are going we have a. lot more opportunities available to us. to solve it than I thought we would. have given the direction that we. initially thought the technology was. going to go so that's good um on the. positive. side the thing that I was most excited. about then and remain most excited about. now is what if this system can. dramatically increase the rate of. scientific knowledge in. society that is a I think that kind of.

like all real sustainable economic. growth the future getting better. progress in some sense comes from. increased scientific and technological. capacity so we can solve all the. problems and if the AI can help us do. that that's always been the thing I've. been most excited about well it. certainly seems like that is the. greatest potential greatest positive. potential of AI it is to solve a lot of.

the problems that human beings have had. forever a lot of the societal problems. that seem to be I mean that's why I was. talking about an AI president I'm kind. of not joking because I feel like if. something was hyper intelligent and. aware of all the variables with no human. bias and no incentives no other than. here's your program the greater good for. the community of the United States and. the greater good for that Community as.

it interacts with the rest of the. world the elimination of these dictators. these whether they're elected or. non-elected who impose their will on the. population because they have a vested. interest in protecting special interest. groups and and Industry I think I think. as long as the thing that I find scary.

when you say that is it does it feels. like it's Humanity not in control and I. reflexively don't like that but if. it's if it if it's in if it's instead. like it is the collective will of. humanity being expressed without the. mistranslation and corrupting influences. along the way yes then I can see it is. that possible it seems like it would be. it seems like if it was programmed in. that regard to do the greater good for. Humanity and and take into account the.

values of humanity the needs of humanity. there's something about the phrase do. the greater good for Humanity terrif. very orwellian all of it is but also so. is artificial general intelligence for. sure for sure open the door house I wish. I wish I had worked on you know. something that was less morally fraught. um but do you cuz it's really exciting. I'm I mean I can't imagine I cannot. imagine a cooler thing to work on I feel. unbelievably I feel like the luckiest. person on Earth but awesome it is.

not it's not on easy mode let's say that. this is not life on easy mode no no no. no I mean you are at the Forefront of. one of the most spectacular changes in. human history and I would. say as no I would say more spectacular. than the implementation of the internet. I think the implement the implementation. of the internet was the first baby steps. of this and that artificial general. intelligence is yeah it is the internet.

on steroids it's the the internet in you. know. hyperspace what I would say is it's it's. the next step and there will be more. steps after but it's our most exciting. step yet yeah my my Wonder is what are. those next steps after isn't that so. exciting to think about it's very. exciting I think we're the last people I. really do I think we're the last of the. biological people with all the. biological problems I think there's a.

very you feel excited about that I just. think that's just what it is you're just. fine with it it is what it is you know I. mean that I don't think you can control. it at this point other than some massive. natural disaster that resets us back to. the Stone Age which is also something we. should be very concerned with because it. seems like that happens a lot we're not. aware of it because the timeline of a. human body is so small you know the. timeline of the human existence as a. person is a hundred years if you're. lucky but yet the timeline of the earth.

is billions of years and if you look at. how many times life on Earth has been. reset by comets slamming into the Earth. and just completely eliminating all. technological advancement it seems like. it's happened multiple times in recorded. history I do I always think we don't. think about that quite enough. um we talked about the simulation.

hypothesis earlier it's had this big. Resurgence in in the tech industry. recently one of the things one of the. new takes on it as we get closer to AGI. is that you know if ancestors were. simulating us the time they'd want to. simulate again and again is right up to. the you know right up right the lead up. to the creation of AGI yeah so it seems. very crazy we're living through this. time but it's not a coincidence at all. you know this is the time that is after. we had enough cell phones out in the. world like recording tons of video to. train the video model of the world. that's all being like jacked into us now.

via brain implants or whatever and. before everything goes really crazy with. AGI and it's also this interesting time. to simulate like can we get through does. the asteroid come right before we get. there for dramatic tension like do we. figure out how to make this safe do we. figure out how to societally agree on it. so that's led to like a lot more people. believe in it than before I think yeah. for sure. and I I think this is just where it's. going I mean I don't know if that's a. good thing or a bad thing it's just a.

thing but it's certainly better to live. now I would not want to live in the. 1800s and be in a covered wagon trying. to make my way across the country yeah. we got the most exciting time in history. yet it's the best it's the best but it's. also has the most problems the most. social problems the the most awareness. of social. environmental infrastructure the the the. the issues that we have get to go solve. them yeah um and I intuitively I think I. feel.

something somewhat different than you. which is I think humans in something. close to this form are going to be. around for a lot longer than I don't. think we're the last humans how long do. you think we. have. um like longer than a time frame I can. reason about really now there may be. like I could totally imagine a world. where some people decide to merge and go.

off exploring the universe with AI and. there's a big universe out there but. like can I really imagine a world where. short of a natural disaster there are. not humans pretty similar to humans from. today on Earth doing humanlike things. and the sort of spirit of humanity. merged into these other things that are. out there doing their thing in the. universe it's very hard for me to. actually see that happening and maybe.

that means I'm like going to turn out to. be a dinosaur and Lite and horribly. wrong in this prediction but I would say. I feel it more over time as we make. progress with AI not less yeah I don't. feel that at all I feel like we're done. in like a few years no few decades maybe. a generation or two it'll probably be a. gradual change like wearing of clothes. you know I don't think every body wore. clothes and they invented clothes I. think it probably took a while when. someone figured out shoes I think that. probably took a while when they figured.

out structures doors houses C cities. agriculture all those things were slowly. implemented over time and then now. become everywhere and I think this is. far more transformative and is part of. that because you don't think there will. be an option for some people not to. merge right just like there's not an. option for some people to not have. telephones anymore it's see like I used. to have friends like I don't even have. email those those people don't exist. anymore they all have email everyone has. a phone at least a flip phone I know.

some people that they just can't handle. social media and all that jazz they went. to a flip phone good for I don't know if. this is true or not I've heard you can't. like walk into an AT&T store anymore and. still buy a flip phone I heard that just. changed you can oh really someone told. me this but I don't know if it's true. Verizon still has them I was just there. they they still have flip phones I was. like I like it I like this [ __ ]. little thing that you just call people. and I always like romanticized about. going to that. but my step was to go to a phone that. has nothing on it but text messages and. that's been a few days feeling good so.

far yeah it's good you know I still have. my other phone that I I use for social. media but when I pick that [ __ ]. up I start scrolling through YouTube and. watching videos and scrolling through. Tik Tok or uh Instagram and I don't have. Tik Tok but I've uh I have I tried. threads for a little while but I'm like. oh this like [ __ ] ghost town so went. right back x i I live on a ranch during. the weekends and there's Wi-Fi in the. house but there's no cell phone coverage.

anywhere. else. and. it's every week I forget how nice it is. and what a change it is to go for a walk. with no cell phone coverage it's good. for your mind for some it's unbelievable. for your mind and I think we have like. so quickly lost something mhm like out. of service just doesn't happen that it. doesn't even have on airplanes anymore. you know like uh but. that like ours where your phone just.

cannot Buzz yeah no text message either. nothing I think that's a really healthy. thing I dropped my phone once when I was. in Lai and I think it was the last time. I dropped the phone the phone was like. we're done and it just started calling. people randomly like it would just call. people and I'd hang it up and call. another person i' hanging up and I was. showing my wife I was like look at this. this is crazy it's just calling people. and so the phone was broken and so I had.

an order a phone and we were on vacation. for like eight days and it took three. days for Apple to get me a phone I bet. you had a great three days it was. amazing it was amazing because when I. was hanging out with my family I was. totally present there was no options and. I wasn't thinking about checking my. phone cuz it didn't exist I didn't have. one and there was a alleviation of again. what what Sean was talking about that. low level of anxiety this sort of. [Music].

like that you have when you always want. to check your phone yeah I think I think. that thing it's so bad um we have not. figured out yet like the technology has. moved so fast biology moves very slowly. we have not figured out how we're going. to function in a society and get those. occasional times when you know your. phone is broken for three days yeah or. you go for a walk with no service. but it's. like I very much feel like my phone.

controls me not the other way around. uhhuh and I hate it but I haven't. figured out what to do about it well. that's what I'm worried about with. future technology is that this which was. so unanticipated if you'd imagine a. world when you can you imagine going up. to someone in 1984 and pointing to a. phone and saying one day that'll be in. your pocket it's going to ruin your life. like what like yeah one day people are. going to be jerking off to that thing. you're like what one day people are.

going to be watching people get murdered. on Instagram I've seen so many murders. on Instagram over the last few months. really I've never seen one been a bad. timeline me and my friend Tom seura. every morning we text each other the. worst things that we find on Instagram. why for fun he's a comedian we're both. comedians that's fun to you yeah this. just [ __ ] just ridiculous I mean I. mean just crazy car accidents people get. gored by bulls and like every like we. try to top each other so every day he's.

sending me the most every day when I. wake up and I Tom [ __ ] what you got you. know can you explain what's fun about. that well he's a comic and am a comic. and Comics like chaos we like we like. ridiculous outrageous [ __ ] that is just. so far beyond the norm of what you. experience in a regular day just and. also the understanding of the wide. spectrum of human behavior if you're a.

nice person and you're surround yourself. with nice people you very rarely see. someone get shot you very rarely see. people get stabbed for no reason. randomly in the street but on Instagram. you see that every. day and there's something about that. where just reminds you oh the we're. crazy like the the human species like. there's a certain percentage of of us. that are just off the rails and just out. there just causing chaos and jumping.

dirt bikes and landing on your neck and. like all that stuff is out there even to. hear that makes me like physically like. I know that happens of. course and I know like not looking at it. doesn't make it not happen right but it. makes me so uncomfortable and unhappy to. watch oh yeah it makes me uncomfortable. too but yet we do itat to each other. every. day and it's not good it's definitely. not good but it's also I'm not going to. stop it's fun but why is it fun it's fun. because it's my friend Tom and we're.

both kind of the same in that way we. just just look at that look at this at. that look at this and it's just a thing. we started doing a few months ago just. can't. stop and Instagram has like learned that. you do that so just keep showing you. more and more Instagram knows when I my. search page is a mess when I go to the. Discover page oh it's just crazy but the. thing is it shows up in your feed too. that's that's what I understand about. the algorithm it shows it knows you're. [ __ ] up so it shows up in your feed of. things like even if they're they're not.

people I follow but Instagram shows them. to me anyway I heard an interesting. thing a few days ago about Instagram and. and the feed which is if you use it at. off hours when they have more processing. capability available because less people. are using it you get better. recommendations so your feed will be. better in like the middle of the night. what is better though doesn't your feed. more addictive to you or whatever right. so for me better would be more murders. more animal attacks sounds horrible it's. horrible it's but it's just it seems to.

know that's what I. like it seems to know that that's what I. interact with so it's just sending me. that most of the. time yeah that probably has all kinds of. crazy psychological effect I'm sure yeah. I'm sure that's also one of the reasons. why I want to get rid of it and move. away from it yeah so may maybe maybe it. went too far I don't even know if it's. too far but what it is is it's showing. me the darker regions of society of.

civilization of human behavior but you. think we're about to edit all that out I. wonder if that is a solution I really do. because I don't think it's outside the. realm of possibility if we really truly. can engineer the like one of the talks. about neurolink that's really promising. is people with spinal cord issues. injuries people that can't move their. body and to being able to hotwire that. where essentially it controls all these.

parts of your body that you couldn't. control anymore and so that would be an. amazing thing for people that are. injured for amazing thing for people. that are you know they're they're. paralyzed they have all sorts of. neurological conditions that that is. probably one of the first and that's. what elon's talked about as well one of. the first implementations the the. restoration of sight you know um. cognitive function enhanced from people. that have brain.

issues that's tremendously exciting yeah. uh and like many other Technologies I. don't think we can stop neural. interfaces nor because of the like great. good that's going to happen along the. way but I also don't think we know where. it goes it's Pandora's Box for sure and. I think when we open it it's just we're. not going to go back just like we're not. going to go back to no computers without. some. natural disaster by the way I and I mean. this is a great compliment you are one. of the most neutral people I have ever.

heard talk about the merge coming you're. just like yeah I think it's going to. happen you know it's be good in these. ways bad in these ways but you seem like. unbelievably neutral about it which is. always something I admire I try to be as. neutral about everything as possible. except for corruption which I think is. just like one of the most massive. problems with the the the way our our. culture is governed I think corruption. is just a and the influence of money is.

just a giant terrible issue but in terms. of like social issues and in terms of uh. the way human beings believe and think. about things I try to be as neutral as. possible because I think the only way to. really truly understand the way other. people think about things is try to look. at it through their mind and if you have. this inherent bias and this uh. you have this uh like very rigid view of. what's good and bad and right and wrong.

I I don't think that serves you very. well for understanding why people differ. so I try to be as neutral and as. objective as possible when I look at. anything this is a skill that I've. learned this is not something I had in. 2009 when I started this podcast this. podcast I started just [ __ ] around. with friends and I had no idea what it. was I mean there's no way I could have. ever known. and but also had no idea what it was. going to do to me in as far as the. evolution of me as a human being I am so.

much nicer I'm so much more aware of. things I'm so much more conscious of the. way other people think and feel I'm just. a totally different person than I was in. 2009 which is hard to recogniz it's hard. to believe that's really cool but that. it's just an inevitable consequence of. this unexpected. education that I've received did the. empathy kind of like come on linearly. yes it was not a no it just came it came.

on recogn well first of all came on. recognizing that the intera the negative. interactions on social media that I was. doing they didn't help me they didn't. help the person and then having. compassion for this person that's [ __ ]. up or done something stupid like it. doesn't it's not good to just dunk on. people like it's there's no benefit. there other than to give you some sort. of social credit and get a bunch of. likes it didn't make me feel good like. that's not good and then also a lot of. psychedelics a a ton of psychedelic.

experiences from 2009 on and with. everyone a greater understanding of the. impact like I had one recently and when. I had the one recently like the. overwhelming message that I was getting. through this was that everything I say. and do ripples off into all the people. that I interact with and then if I'm not. doing something with at least the goal. of overall good or overall.

understanding that I'm doing bad and. that that bad is a real thing as much as. you try to ignore it because you don't. interface with it instantly and you. you're still creating unnecessary. negativity and that I should avoid that. as much as possible it was like a. overwhelming message that this psych. this psychedelic experience was giving. me and and I I took it because I was. just particularly anxious that day about.

the state of the world particularly. anxious about Ukraine and Russia and. China and the the the political system. that we have in this country and this. incredibly polarizing way that the left. and the right engage with each other and. God just it just seems so just. tormented and so I was just some days I. just get I think too much about it I. just I'm like I need something crack me.

out of this so I I took these. psychedelics are you surprised. psychedelic therapy has not made from. what you thought would happen in the say. the early 2010s till now are you. surprised it has not made more progress. sort of on a path to legalization as a. medical achievement no no I'm not. because there's a lot of people that. don't want it to be in place and those. people have tremendous power over our. medical system and over our regulatory. system and those people have also not.

experien these psychedelics there's very. few people that have experienced. profound psychedelic experiences that. don't think there's an overall good for. those things so you're Pro the problem. is you're having these laws and these. rules implemented by people who are. completely ignorant about the positive. effects of these things and if if you. know the history of. psychedelic Prohibition in this country. it all took place during 1970 and it was.

really to stop the civil rights movement. and it was really to stop the anti-war. movement and they they tried to find a. way to make all these things that these. people were doing that was causing them. to think in these very different ways is. tune in turn on drop out they just. wanted to put a [ __ ] halt to that. what better way to lock everyone who. participates in that in cage. find the people are producing it lock. them in cages put them in jail for the. rest of their life make sure it's. illegal arrest people put the bus on.

television make sure that people are. aware and then there's also you connect. it to drugs that are inherently. dangerous for society and detrimental. the fenel crisis you know the crack. cocaine crisis that we experienced in. the 90s like all of those things they're. under the blanket of drugs psychedelic. drugs are also talked about like drugs. even though they have these. profound spiritual and psychological. changes that they you know emide I.

remember when I was in elementary school. and I was in like drug education they. talked about you know marijuana's really. bad because it's a gateway to these. other things and there's this bad one. that bad one heroin whatever and the. very end of the line the worst possible. thing is. LSD um did you take LST and go oh. they're lying psychedelic therapy was. definitely one of the most important. things in my life and I I assumed given. how powerful it was for me like I you.

know I struggled with like all kinds of. anxiety and other negative things and to. like watch all of that go away. in like I traveled to another country. for like a week did a few things came. back a totally different person and I. was like I've been lied to my whole life. yeah I'm so grateful that this happened. to me now talked to a bunch of other. people all similar experiences I assume. this was a while ago I assumed it was. and I was like you know very interested. in what was happening in the US I was.

like uh particularly like looking at. where MDMA and silos cyon were on the. path and I was like all right this is. going to get through like this is and. this is going to like change the mental. health of a lot of people in a really. positive way and I am surprised we have. not made faster progress there but I'm. still optimistic we will well we have. made so much progress from the time of. the 1990s in the 1990s you never heard. about psychedelic Retreats you never. heard about people taking these.

vacations you never heard about people. getting together in groups and doing. these things and coming back with these. profound experiences that they relay to. other people and literally seeing people. change seeing who they are change seeing. people become less less selfish less. toxic less mean you know you and and. more empathetic and more understanding. yeah it's I mean I can only talk about. it from a personal experience it's been. a radical change in my life as well as.

again having all these conversations. with different people I feel so. fortunate to be able to do this that. I've had so many different conversations. with so many different people that think. so differently and so many exceptional. people that have accomplished so many. incredible things and you get to sort of. understand the way their mind works and. the way they see the world the way they. interface with things it's awesome it's. pretty [ __ ] cool and that is one of. the cooler things about being a human. that you can find a way to mitigate all.

the negative aspects of the monkey body. and that there are tools that are in. place but unfortunately In This Very. prohibitive Society this so Society of. prohibition we we're denied those and. we're denied ones that have never killed. anybody which is really bizarre when you. know oxycotton can still be prescri what. what what's the deal with why we. can't make if we leave like why we can't. get these medicines that have transform.

people's lives like more available what. what's the deal with why we can't stop. the the opioid crisis or like f seems. like just an unbelievable crisis for San. Francisco you remember when the. beginning of the conversation when you. said that AI will do a lot of good. overall good but also not no harm. if we legalize drugs all. drugs that would do the same thing would. you Advocate to legalize all drugs it's.

a very complicated question because I. think you're going to have a lot of. addicts that wouldn't be addicts you're. going to have a lot of people's lives. destroyed because it's legal there's a. lot of people that may not be. psychologically capable of handling. things maybe they already have like. that's the thing about uh psychedelics. they do not ever recommend them for. people that have a slippery grasp on. reality as it is for sure people that. are struggling people that are already. on a bunch of medications that allow. them to just keep a steady state of.

existence in the normal world if you. just [ __ ] bombard them with. psilocybin who knows what kind of an. effect that's going to have and whether. or not they're psychologically too. fragile to recover from that I mean. there's many many stories of people. taking too much acid and never coming. back yeah yeah these are like. a powerful doesn't seem to like begin to. cover it right yeah but there's also.

what is it about humans that are. constantly looking to perturb their. normal State of Consciousness constantly. whether it's we're both drinking coffee. you know people smoke cigarettes they. they they do all they take Aderall they. do all sorts of different things to. change and enhance their normal State of. Consciousness it seems like whether it's. meditation or yoga they're always doing. something to try to get out of their own. way or get in their own way or distract. themselves from the pain of existence.

and it's it seems like a normal part of. humans and even monkeys like vervet. monkeys get addicted to alcohol they get. addicted to fermented fruits and alcohol. and they become drunks and. alcoholics it just it's it's what do you. think is the Deep lesson there well. we're not happy exactly you know and. then some things can make you happy sort. of for like a couple of drinks make you. so happy for a little bit until you're. an alcoholic until you destroy your. liver until you crash your car until. you're you know you're involved in some.

sort of a a violent encounter that you. would never be involved with if you. weren't. drunk you know I love caffeine which. clearly is a drug uh alcohol like I like. but I often am like yeah this is like. yeah you know this is like ding me and I. wish I hadn't had this drink and then. other. like I mostly would choose to avoid but. that's cuz you're smart um and you're. probably aware of the pros and cons and.

and you're also probably aware of how it. affects you and what's doing good for. you and what is detrimental to you but. that's a decision that you can make as. an informed human being that you're not. allowed to make if everything's illegal. right yeah right and also when things. are illegal criminals sell those things. because it's you're not tampering the. desire by making it illegal you're just. making access to it much more.

complicated what I was going to say is. if fenel is really great I don't want to. know apparently it is apparently it is. yeah Peter Berg was on the podcast and. he uh produced that painkiller. documentary for Netflix about the the. the the docu drama about the Sackler. family it's amazing piece but he said. that he took uh oxycotton once. recreationally he was like oh my God. it's amazing he's like keep this away. from me it feels so good yeah and that's.

part of the problem is that yeah it will. wreck your life yeah it will it will. capture you but it's just so. unbelievable but the feeling like what. how did Lenny Bruce describe it I think. he described heroin as getting a warm. hug from God you know I think the. feeling that it gives you is probably. pretty. spectacular I don't know if legalizing. that is going to solve the problems but. I do know that another problem that. we're not paying attention to is the.

rise of the cartels and that fact that. right across our border where you can. walk there are these. enormous enormous organizations that. make who knows how much money Untold. do it for like Street Xanax there's. people that have overdose thinking. they're getting Xanax and they [ __ ]. die from fenel yeah they they do it with.

cocaine of course they do it with. everything there's so many things that. have fentanyl in them and they're cut. with fentanyl because fentanyl is cheap. and insanely. potent and that wouldn't be a problem if. things were legal so do would you net. out towards saying all right let's just. leave yeah I would I would net out. towards that but I would also put into. place some ser serious mitigation. efforts like in terms of counseling drug. addiction and I beain therapy which is. another thing that's illegal someone was. just telling me about how transformative.

this was for them yeah I haven't. experienced that personally but Iain for. many of my friends that have had pill. problems and I have a friend my friend. Ed clay who uh started an IA gain Center. in Mexico because he had uh an injury. and he got hooked on pills and he. couldn't kick it did IA gain gone one. time done one time done 25 hour super. uncomfortable experience it's supposed. to be a horrible experience right yeah. it's supposed to be not very. recreational not exactly something you. want to do on the weekend with friends.

it's something you do because you're. [ __ ] and you need to figure out how to. get out of this. fuckness and that like we think about. how much money is spent on rehabs in. this country and what's the relapse rate. it's really high I mean I have many. friends that have been to rehab for drug. and alcohol abuse and uh quite a few of. them went right back to it quite a it. doesn't seem to be that effective it. seems to be effective to people when. people have like they really hit rock. bottom and they have a strong will and.

then they get involved in a program some. sort of a 12-step program or some sort. of a Nar Narcotics Anonymous program and. then they they get support from other. people and they eventually build this. Foundation of other types of behaviors. and ways to find other things to focus. on to the whatever aspect of their mind. that allows them to be addicted to. things now it's focused on exercise. meditation yoga whatever it is that's. your new addiction and it's a much more. positive and beneficial addiction but. the reality of the physical.

addiction that there are mitigation. efforts like there's so many people that. have taken psilocybin and completely. quit drugs completely quit cigarettes. completely quit a lot because they. realize like oh this is what this is. this is why I'm doing. this yeah that's that's why I was more. optimistic that the world would have. made faster progress towards acceptance. of you hear so many stories like this so. I would say like all right clearly a lot. of our existing mental health treatment.

at best doesn't work clearly our. addiction programs are ineffective if we. have this thing that in every scientific. study or most scientific studies we can. see is delivering these like. unbelievable. results it's going to happen yeah and it. yeah I still am excited for it I still. think it'll be a transformatively. positive development but it'll change. politics it'll it'll absolutely change. the way we think of other human beings. it'll absolutely change the way we think.

of society and culture as a whole it'll. absolutely change the way people. interact with each other if it's if it. becomes legalized and it's slowly. becoming legalized like think of. marijuana which is like you know the. gateway drug marijuana is now legal. recreationally in how many. states 23 and and then medically and. many. more and you know it's really easy to. get a license medically in California. you just I I got one in.

1996 used to be able to just go. somewhere and go I got a headache just. that's it yeah I get headaches I'm in. pain a lot you know I do a lot of. martial arts I'm always injured I need. some medication I don't like taking pain. pills bam you got a a legal prescription. for weed I used to have to go to. Englewood to get it I used to have to go. to the hood to the Englewood Wellness. Center. and um I was like this is crazy like. marijuana is now kind of sort of legal. yeah and then in 2016 it became legal in.

California recreationally and it just. changed everything I have all these. people that were like right-wing people. that were taking Edibles to sleep you. know I'm like this is because now that. it's legal they thought about it in a. different way and I think that that drug. which is a fairly mild psychedelic also. has enhancing effect effects it makes. people more compassionate it makes. people more kind and friendly it's sort. of the opposite of a drug that that.

enhances violence it doesn't enhance. violence at all it just it does like. alcohol does that cocaine does that to. say a thing that'll make me very. unpopular I hate marijuana it does not. sit well with me at all what does it do. to you that you don't like uh it makes. me tired and slow for a long time after. it I think also there's biological. variabilities right like some people. like my wife um she does not do with. alcohol she can get drunk off one drink. but it's biological like she she got. some sort of a genetic I forget what. it's called something about Billy Ruben. like some something that her body just.

doesn't process alcohol very well so. she's a cheap date oh all I meant is. that genetically I got whatever the. mutation is that makes it an unpleasant. experience yeah what I was saying is for. me that's the opposite alcohol doesn't. bother me at all I I could I could drink. three four drinks and I'm sober in 20. minutes and my body just my liver just. like a blast just goes right through it. I can sober up real quick. but I also don't need it like I'm doing. sober October like for the whole month I. don't yeah did shows last night great no.

problems not having alcohol doesn't seem. to bother me at all but I do like it I. do like a glass of wine it's a nice. thing at the end of the day I like it. speaking of that and psychedelics in. general I I you know many cultures have. had a place for some sort of psychedelic. time in someone's life or write of. Passage but as far as I can tell most of. them are. under there's some sort of ritual about. it and I do worry that and I think the.

these these things are so powerful that. I worry about them just being like kind. of used all over the place all the time. yeah and I hope that we as a society. because I think this is not going to. happen even if it's slow find a way to. treat this with the respect that it. needs um yeah see how that goes agreed. yeah I I think set and setting is very. important and thinking about what you're. doing before you're doing it while.

you're doing it like I was saying the. other night when I had this psychedelic. experience I was just like God sometimes. I just think too much about the world. and that it's so [ __ ] and you have. kids and you wonder like what what kind. of a world are they going to grow up in. and what is and it was just one of those. days where I was just like God there's. so much anger and there's so much this. and that and then it's just. it took it away from me the rest of the. day like that night I was so friendly. and so happy and I just wanted to hug. everybody I just really I got it I got.

oh my God that that's not thinking about. it wrong do you think the anger in the. world is way higher than it used to be. or we just it's like all these Dynamics. from social media we were talking about. I think the Dynamics in social media. have certainly exacerbated anger in some. people but I think uh anger in the world. is just a part. of frustration in. inequality uh problems that are so clear. but are not solved and all the issues. that people have I mean it's not a.

coincidence that a lot of the mass. violence that you're seeing in this. country Mass looting and all these. different things are being done by poor. people do you think AGI will be a. equalizing Force for the world or. further inequality I think it would be. it depends on how it's implemented I my. my concern is again what we were talking. about before with some sort of a neur. interface that it will increase your. ability to be productive to a point. where you can control resources so much. more than anyone else and you will be.

able to advance your uh your economic. portfolio and your influence on the. world through that your amount of power. that you can. acquire it it it will before the other. people can get involved because I I. would IM imagine financially it'll be. like cell phones in the beginning you. remember when uh the movie uh Wall. Street when he had that big brick cell. phone it's like look at him he's out. there on the beach with a phone that was. crazy no one had one of those things. back then and they were so rare I got.

one in 1994 when I first moved to. California and I thought I was living in. the [ __ ] F no it was a Motorola star. attack that was a cool phone I actually. had one on in my car in 1988 I was one. of the first people to get a cell phone. I got one in my car and it was great. because my f my friend Bill bloomen. Reich who runs the uh comedy connection. ction he would call me cuz he knew he. could get a hold of me like if someone. got sick or fell out I could get a gig. cuz he could call me so I was in my car.

I's like Joe what are you doing do you. do you have a spot tonight and I'm like. no I'm open he's like fantastic and so. he'd give me gigs so I got a bunch of. gigs through this phone where it kind of. paid itself but I got it just CU it was. cool like I could drive down the street. and call people dude I'm driving and I'm. calling you like it was nuts to be able. to drive and I had a little antenna. little squirrly. anten on my car on the roof of the car. but now everyone has one um you know you.

can go to a third world country and you. know people in small villages have. phones it's it's super common it's. everywhere essentially more people have. phones than don't have phones there's. more phones than there are human beings. which is pretty [ __ ] wild and I think. that that initial cost problem it's. going to be prohibitively expensive. initially and the problem is the wealthy. people are going to be able to do that. and then the real crazy ones that wind.

up getting the holes drilled in their. head and if that stuff is effective. maybe it's not gen maybe there's. problems with generation one but. generation 2 is. better there's going to be a time where. you have to enter into the game there's. going to be a time where you have to. sell your stocks like you know don't. wait too long hang on there go and once. that happens my concern is that that the. people that have that will have such a. massive advantage over everyone else. that the have the gap between the halves. and have knots will be even further and.

it'll be more polarized this is. something I've changed my mind on I you. know someone at Open the Eyes said to me. a few years ago like you you really. can't just let some people emerge. without a plan because it could be such. an. incredible Distortion of power and that. we're going to have to have some sort of. societal discussion about this yeah that. seems real that seems like so at this. point especially if it's as.

effective as AGI is or as uh excuse me. chat GPT is chat GPT is so amazing when. you enter into it information you ask it. questions and it can give you answers. and you could ask it to code a website. for you and it doesn't instantly and it. solves problems that literally you would. have to take decades to try to solve and. it and it gets to it right away this is. the dumbest it will ever be yeah that's. what's crazy that's what's crazy so. imagine something like that but even.

more advanced. multiple stages of improvement and. Innovation forward and then it. interfaces directly with the mind but it. only does it with the people that can. afford it and those people are just. regular humans so they haven't been. there's they haven't been enhanced we. haven't we haven't evolved evolved. physically we still have all the human. reward systems in place we're still. basically these territorial primates and. now we have you know you just imagine.

some [ __ ] psychotic billionaire who. now gets this implant and that decides. to just completely hijack our financial. systems acquire all the resources set. into place regulations and influences. that only benefit them and then make. sure that they can control it from their. how much do you think this actually. though even requires like a. physical implant or like a physical. merge versus just some people have.

access to gpt7 and can spend a lot on. the inference compute for it and some. don't I think that's going to be very. transformative too but my thought is. that. once I mean we have to think of what are. the possibilities of a neural. enhancement if you think about the human. mind and how the human mind interacts. with the world how you interact with. language and thoughts and. facts and something that is.

exponentially more powerful than that. but it it also allows you to use the. same emotions the same ego the same. desires and drives jealousy lust hate. anger all of those things but with this. Godlike power when one person can read. mind and other people can't when one. person has a completely accurate. forecast of all of the trends in terms.

of stocks and and resources and. commodities and they can make choices. based on those I totally see all of that. the only thing I'm I feel a little. confused about. is you know human talking and listening. bandwidth or typing and reading. bandwidth is not very high but it's high. enough where if you can just say like. tell me everything that's going to. happen in the stock market if I want to. go make all the money what should I do. right now it goes and then just shows.

you on the screen even without a neural. interface you're kind of a lot of the. way to the scenario you're describing. sure with with stocks or with like you. know tell me how to like invent some new. technology that will change the course. of. history. yeah yeah all those things like I think. what somehow matters is access to. massive amounts of computing power or. especially like differentially massive. amounts maybe more than the interface.

itself I think that certainly is going. to play a massive factor in the the the. amount of power and influence of human. being has having access to that my. concern is that what neural interfaces. are going to do is now you're not a. human mind interacting with that data. now you are some massively in advanced. version of what a human mind. is and it.

has just profound possibilities that we. can't even imagine we can imagine but we. can't. yeah we can't truly conceptualize them. because we don't have the context we. don't have that ability and that. possibility currently we can just we can. just guess but when it does get. implemented that you're dealing with a a. completely different.

being the only true thing is I can say. is I don't know. yeah do you wonder why it's you do you. ever think like how am I at the. Forefront of this spectacular. change um. well first of all I think it's very much. like I think this is you could make the. statement for many companies but none is. it as true for his open AI like the CEO.

is far from the most important person in. the company like in our case there's a. large handful of researchers Each of. which are individually more critical to. the success we've had so far and that we. will have in the future than me um but. even that and I bet those people like. really are like hm this is a weird to be. them. but it's certainly weird enough for me. that it like UPS my simulation. hypothesis probability.

somewhat what when if you had to give a. guess. what when you think about the. possibility of simulation Theory what. what what kind of percentage do you I've. never known how to put any number on it. like you know it's see every argument. that I've read written explaining why. it's like super high probability that. all seems reasonable to me feels. impossible to reason about though what. about you yeah same thing I go maybe but.

it's still what it is and I have to. that's the main thing is I think it. doesn't matter I think it's like a. okay it kind of It kind of ma it. definitely matters I guess but there's. not a way to know currently and also. what what matters though well if if this. really is I mean our inherent. understanding of life is that we are. these biological creatures that interact. with other biological creatures we we. mate and breed and that this creates. more of us and then hopefully as Society.

advances and we acquire more information. more understanding and knowledge this. next version of society will be superior. to the version that preceded it which is. just how we look at society today nobody. wants to live in 1860 where you died of. a cold and there's no cure for. infections it's much better to be alive. now now like just inarguably right. there's unless you really do prefer the. simple life that you see on Yellowstone.

or something like there's it's like what. we're dealing with now in terms first of. all access to information the the lack. of ignorance if you're if you. choose to seek out information you have. so much more access to it now than ever. before that's so cool and over time like. if you go back to the beginning written. history to. now one of the things that is clearly. evident is the more access to. information the better choices people. can make they don't always make better.

choices but they certainly have much. more of a potential to make better. choices with more access to. information you know we think that this. is just this biological thing but. imagine if that's not what's going on. imagine if this is a program and that. you are just Consciousness that's. connected to this thing that's creating. this experience that is. indistinguishable from what we like to. think of as a real biological experience.

from carbon-based life forms interacting. with solid physical things in the real. world it's still unclear to me what I'm. supposed to do differently or think yeah. there's no answer yeah you're 100% right. what can you do differently I mean if. you exist as if it's a s simulation if. you just live your life as if it's a. simulation is. that I don't know if that's the solution. you know I don't I think I mean it's.

real to me no matter what it's real yeah. I'm going to live it that way and that. will be the problem with an actual. simulation if and when it does get. implemented yeah if we do create an. actual simulation that's. indistinguishable from real life like uh. what are the rules of the simulation. what are what how does it work work is. that simulation fair and Equitable and. much more reasonable and peaceful does. is there no war in that simulation. should we all agree to hook up to it.

because we will have a completely. different experience in life and all the. the The Angst of crime and violence and. the the things that we truly are. terrified of there will be non-existent. in this. simulation yeah I mean if we keep going. it seems like if you just look if you. just extrapolate from where VR is now. did you see the podcast that um Lex. fredman did with Mark Zuckerberg I saw. some clips but I haven't got to watch. the whole bizarre right so they're.

they're they're essentially using like. very realistic physical avatars in the. metaverse like that's that's step one. that's P maybe that's step three maybe. it's a little B on pong at that point. yeah maybe it's. Atari maybe you're playing Space. Invaders now but whatever it is it's on. the path to this thing that will be. indistinguishable that seems inevitable. those two things seem inevitable to me. the the inevitable thing to me is that. we will create a life form that is an.

artificial intelligent life form that's. far more advanced than us and once it. becomes sensient it will be able to. create a far better version of itself. and then as it has better versions of. itself it will keep going and if it. keeps going it will reach God Godlike. capabilities the. complete understanding of every aspect. of the universe and the structure of it.

itself how to manipulate it how to. travel through it how to. communicate and that you know if we keep. going if we survive a hundred years a. thousand years 10,000 years and we're. still on this same technological. exponential increasing in capability. path that's God. we become something like a God and that. might be what we do that might be what. intelligent curious Innovative life.

actually does it creates something that. creates the very universe that we live. in like creates the next simulation and. then yeah maybe that's the birth of the. universe itself is creativity and and. intelligence and that it all comes from. that I used to have this joke about the. Big Bang like what if what if the Big. Bang is just a natural thing like humans. get so Advanced that they create a big. bang machine and then you know we're so. autistic and and riddled with Aderall.

that we have no concept or worry of the. consequences and someone's like I'll. [ __ ] press it and they press it and. boom we start from scratch every 14. billion years and then that's what a big. bang. is I mean I don't know where it goes but. I do know that if you looked at the. human race from afar if you were an. alien life form completely detached from. any understanding of our culture any.

understanding of our biological. imperatives and you just looked at like. what is this one dominant species doing. on this planet it makes better things. that's what it does that I agree it goes. to war it you know it steals it does a. bunch of things that it shouldn't do it. it pollutes it does all these things. that are ter terrible but it also. consistently and constantly creates. better things whether it's better. weapons going from the Catapult to the.

rifle to the cannonballs to the rocket. ships to the Hypersonic missiles to. nuclear bombs it creates better and. better and better things that's the. number one thing it does and it's never. happy with what it has and the you you. add that to consumerism which is baked. into us and this desire this constant. desire for new or better things well. that fuels that Innovation because that. gives it the resources that it needs to. consistently innovate and constantly. create newer and better things well.

where if I was an alien life form I was. like oh what is it doing it's trying to. create better well what is the forfront. of it technology technology is the most. transformative the most spectacular the. most interesting thing that we create. and the the most alien thing the fact. that we just are so comfortable that you. can FaceTime with someone in New Zealand. like instantly we can we can get used to. anything pretty quickly you know and. take it for granted almost yeah and well. if you were an alien life form and you.

were looking at us you're like what is. it doing oh it keeps making better. things it's going to keep making better. things well if it keeps me making better. things it's going to make a better. version of a thinking thing and it's. doing that right now and you're a part. of that it's going to make a better. version of a thinking thing well that. better version of a thinking thing it's. basically now in the amoeba stage it's. in the you know small multicellular life. form stage well what if that version. becomes a [ __ ] Oppenheimer what if. that version become like if if it scales.

up so far that it becomes so hyper. intelligent that it is completely alien. to any other intelligent life form that. has ever existed here before and it. constantly does the same thing makes. better and better versions of it well. where does that go it goes to a god it. goes to something like a God and maybe. God is a real thing but maybe it's a. real consequence of this process that. human beings have of consistently.

constantly innovating and constantly. having this desire to to push this. envelope of of creativity and of. technological power I I guess it comes. down to maybe a definitional. disagreement about what you mean by it. it becomes a god like I I can. totally I I think it becomes something. much like unbelievably much smarter and. more capable than we are and what does. that thing become if that keeps going.

and maybe the way you mean it as a. Godlike force is that that thing can. then go create can go simulate in a. universe yes okay that I that that that. I can resonate with I think whatever we. create will still be subject to the laws. of physics in this universe right yeah. maybe that is the overlying fabric that. God exists in the god word is a [ __ ]. up word cuz it's just been so co-opted. but you know I I was having this. conversation with Steven Meyer who is uh. he's a physicist I believe he's a.

physicist he's a phys and he's also. religious it was a real weird. conversation very fascinating. conversation believer in Christ yeah he. he he even believes in the resurrection. which I found very interesting but you. know it's it's interesting communicating. with him because he has these little pre. designed speeches that he's encountered. all these questions so many times that. he has these very well worded very.

articulate responses to these things. that I sense are like bits you know like. when I'm talking to a comic and like a. comic like they I got this bit on train. travel and they tell you they tell you. the bit like that's what it's like he. has bits on why he believes in Jesus and. why believes and very very intelligent. guy but I propose the question when. we're thinking about God what if the. instead of God created the universe what. if the universe is God and the creative. force of all life and all all everything.

is the universe itself instead of. thinking that there's this thing that. created us this is like close to a lot. of the Eastern religions I think this is. an easier thing to wrap my mind around. than many other religions for me and. that is the I when I do psychedelics I. get that feeling I get that feeling like. there's this insane suit. of like Innovation and and and. connectivity that exists all around us. but our minds are so Primal we we're.

this [ __ ] thing you know this is this. is what we used to be and that what is. that it's um there's a guy named Shane. Against the Machine who's this artist. who created this it's a chimpanzee skull. that he made out of zilan symbols so see. it's got a little zil Lo he left that on. the back and he just made this dope art. piece cool it's just cool um but I. wonder if our. limitations are that we are an advanced. version of primates we're still we still.

have all these things we talk about. jealousy Envy anxiety lust uh anger fear. violence all these things that are the. detrimental but were important for us to. survive and get to this point and that. as time goes on we will figure out a way. to engineer those out and that as in. intelligent life becomes more. intelligent and we create a version of. intelligent life that's far more. intelligent than what we are or far more. capable of what we are if that keeps.

going if it just keeps going I mean chat. GPT imagine if you go to chat GPT and go. back to Socrates and show him that. explain that and show him a phone and. you know and put it on a phone and have. access to it he'd be like what have you. done like what is this like I bet he'd. be much more impressed with the phone. than chachy PT. I think you'd be impressed with the. phone's abilities to communicate for. sure but then the access to information. would be so profound I mean back then I.

mean look you're you're dealing with a. time when Galileo was put under house. arrest because he had the gumption to. say that the Earth is not the center of. the universe well now we [ __ ] know. it's not like we we have satellites we. have we send literal cameras into orbit. take photos of things no I totally get. that I just me meant that we kind of. know what it's like to talk to a smart. person and so in that sense you're like. oh all right I didn't think you could. like talk to a not person and have them. be person like in some responses some of.

the time but a phone man if you just. like woke up after 2,000 years and there. was like a phone that would you have no. model for that and you didn't get to get. there gradually yeah no you didn't get. my friend Eddie Griffin has a joke about. that is's about how Alexander granbell. had to be doing coke he goes cuz only. someone on coke could be like I want to. talk to someone who's not even. here that's what a phone is is that. something Coke makes people want to do I. don't know I've never done Coke but I.

would imagine it is I mean it seems to. me like it just makes people like angry. and chaotic yeah a little that but they. also have ideas you know. um yeah I mean back to this where does. it go if it keeps going it has to go to. some imposs possible level of capability. I mean just think of what I believe is. going to happen what we're able to do. now with nuclear power and nuclear bombs. and and and Hypersonic missiles and the.

just the insane physical things that. we've been able to take out of the human. creativity and Imagination and through. engineering and Technology Implement. these physical devices that are. indistinguishable from Magic if you. brought them 500 years ago yeah I think. I think it's quite remarkable so keep. keep going keep going 100,000 years from. now if we're still here if something.

like us is still here what can it. do in the same way that I don't think. Socrates would have predicted the phone. I can't predict that no I'm probably. totally off but maybe that's also why. comets exist maybe it's a nice reset. just like leave a few around give them a. distant memory of the utopian world that. used to exist have them go through. thousands of years of barbarism of. horrific behavior and then reestablished. Society I mean this is the younger D.

impact theory that around 11,800 years. ago at the end of the Ice Age that we. were hit by multiple comets that caused. the. instantaneous uh uh melting of the ice. caps over North America everything. flooded everything the the source of the. flood myths from Epic of Gilgamesh and. the Bible and all those things and that. this and and also there's physical. evidence of it when they do core samples. there's high levels of aridium which is. very common in space very rare on Earth.

there's micro diamonds that are from. impacts and that it's like 30% of the. earth like that has evidence of this and. so it's very likely that these people. that are proponents of this Theory are. correct and that this is why they find. these ancient structures that they're. now dating to like 11,000 12,000 years. ago when they thought people were hunter. gatherers and they go okay maybe our. timeline is really off and maybe this. physical evidence of impa I've been. watching that with interest yeah Randle. Carlson is the greatest guy to pay. attention to that yeah he's kind of.

dedicated his whole life to it which by. the way happened because of a. psychedelic experience he was on acid. once and he was looking at this immense. Canyon and he had this Vision that it. was created by instantaneous erosions of. the the polar caps and that it just. washed this wave of impossible water. through the air the Earth it just caught. these paths and now there seems to be. actual physical evidence of that that. that is probably what took place and.

that you know we we're just the. survivors and that we have reemerged and. that society and human. civilization occasionally gets set back. to a primal Place yeah you know who. knows if you're if you're right that. what happens here is we kind of edit out. all the impulses in ourselves that we. don't like we get to that world seems. kind of boring so maybe that's when we. have to make a new simulation to watch. people think they're going through some. drama or something or maybe it's just we.

get to this point where we have this. power but the halves and the Have Nots. The Divide is too great and that people. did get a hold of this technology and. use it to oppress people who didn't have. it and that that they we didn't mitigate. the human. biological problems the re Ward systems. that we have that I got to have more and. you got to have less yes that's this. this sort of natural inclination that we. have for competition and that someone. hijacks that I think this is going to be.

such a hugely important issue to get. ahead of before the first people push. that button what do you think about like. when Elon was causing calling for a. pause on. AI he was like starting an AGI company. while he was doing that yeah didn't he. start it like after he was calling for. the pause I think before but I don't. remember in any case is it one of those. you can't beat him join them things. um I think the Instinct of saying like.

we've really got to figure out how. to make this safe and good and like. widely good is really important but I. think calling. for a pause is like naive at at. best uh I kind of. like I kind of think you can't make. progress on the safety part of this as.

we mentioned earlier by sitting like in. a room and thinking hard you've got to. see where the technology goes you've got. to have cont reality and then when you. like but we're trying to like make. progress towards AGI conditioned on it. being safe and conditioned on it being. beneficial and so when we hit any kind. of like block we try to find a technical. or or a policy or a social solution to. overcome it that could be about the. limits of the technology and something. not working and you know hallucinates or. it's not getting smart or whatever or it.

could be there's this like safety issue. and we've got to like redirect our. resources to solve that but it's all. like for me it's all this same thing of. like we're trying to solve the problems. that emerge at each step as we get where. we're trying to go and you know maybe. you can call it a pause if you want if. you pause on capabilities to work on. safety but in practice I think the field. has gotten a little bit wander on the. axle there and safety and capabilities. are not these two separate things this. is like I think one of the Dirty Secrets.

of the field it's like we have this one. way to make progress you know we can. understand and push on deep learning. more. and that can be used in different ways. but it's I think it's that same. technique that's going to help us. eventually solve the safety um that all. of that said. as like a human emotionally speaking I. super understand why it's tempting to. call for a pause happens all the time in. life right this is moving too fast right.

I we got to take a pause here yeah how. much of a concern is it in terms of. National Security that we are the ones. that come up with this. first. uh well I would say that if an adversary. of ours comes up with it first and uses. it against us and we don't have some. level of capability that feels really. bad yeah but I hope that what happens is. this can be a moment.

where to tie it back to the ear. conversation we kind of come together. and overcome our base impulses and say. like let's all do this as a club. together that would be better that would. be nice and maybe through AGI and. through the implementation of this. technology it will make trans. ation instantaneous and easy so well. that's already happened right but I mean. it hasn't happened in real time the. point where you can accurately.

communicate very soon very soon very. soon. yeah I I do think for what it's worth. that the world is going to come together. here I don't think people have quite. realized the stakes but this is like I. don't think this is a geopolitical if. this comes down to like a geopolitical. fight or race I don't think there's any. winners and so I'm I'm optimistic about. people coming. together yeah I am too I mean I think.

most people would like that if you asked. the vast majority of the human beings. that are alive wouldn't it be better if. everybody got. along um you know maybe you. can't go all the way there and say we're. just going to have one Global effort um. but I I think at least we can get to a. point where we have one Global set of. rules safety standards organization that. makes sure everyone's following the.

rules we did this for Atomic weapons. it's been similar things in the world of. biology I think we'll get there that's a. good example the nuclear weapons. because we know the destructive. capability of them and because of that. we haven't detonated one since 1947. pretty incredible pretty incredible. other than tests yeah we haven't used. one in terms of War 45 or 47 when was. The End of the World War.

II wasn't it. 47 when they dropped the bombs I think. that was 45 I was wondering if there's. more after that I didn't know about no. it might be 45 I think it was yeah 45 so. from 1945 which is pretty extraordinary. that's it's remarkable I would not have. predicted that I think if I could. teleport back to 45 no would have. thought oh my God this is just going to. be something that people do Just Launch. bombs on cities yeah I mean I would have. said like we're not going to survive. this for very long and there was a real.

fear of that for sure it's pretty. extraordinary that they've managed to. stop that this this threat of mutually. assur destruction. self-destruction destruction univer I. mean the whole world we have enough. weapons to literally make the world. inhabit uninhabitable. totally and because of that we haven't. done it which is a good sign I think. that I was gonna say I think that should. give some hope yeah it should I mean. Stephen Pinker gets a lot of [ __ ] for. his work because he just like sort of.

downplays um violence today but it's not. that he's downplaying violence today. he's just looking at statistical Trends. if you're look at the reality of Life. today versus life 100 years ago 200. years ago it's far more safer why do you. think that's a controversial thing like. why can't someone say sure we still have. problems but it's getting better because. people don't want to say that they they. especially people are activists they're. they're completely engrossed in this. idea that there's problems today and. these problems are huge and there's.

there's Nazis and there's but no one's. saying there's not huge problems today. right no one's saying there's not but. just to say things are better today some. people they just don't want to hear that. right but those are also people that are. addicted to the problems the problems. become their whole life solving those. problems become their identity being. involved in the solutions or what they. believe they solution to those problems. become their life's work and someone. comes along and says actually life is. safer than it's ever been before. interaction deep I can see that that's. deeply invalidated yeah but also true.

you know and again what what is the. problem why why can't people recognize. that well it's the primate brain I mean. it's it's all the the problems that we. highlighted earlier and that that might. be the solution to overcoming that is. through technology and that might be the. the only way we can do it without a long. period of evolution because biological. evolution is so relatively slow in. comparison to technological Evolution.

and that that might be our bottleneck is. that we just still are dealing with this. primate. body and that something like General. artificial general intelligence or. something like some implemented form of. engaging with it whether it's. U neuralink something that shifts the. way the Mind interfaces with other Minds. isn't it wild that speaking of. biological evolution there will be. people I think who were alive.

for the invention or Discovery whatever. you want to call it of the transistor. they will also be alive for the creation. of AGI one human lifetime yeah you want. to know a wild one from the. implementation from Orville and Wilbur. Wright flying the plane it was less than. 50 years before someone dropped an Aon. my palm out of it that's wild that's. [ __ ]. crazy that's crazy less than 40 right. that's crazy yeah.

bananas I mean 60 something years to. land on the moon nuts nuts where you. know where is it going I mean it's just. guesswork but it's interesting for sure. I mean it's the most fascinating thing. of our time for sure it's fascinating. intellectually and I also o think it is. one of these things that will be. tremendously net beneficial yeah like uh. you know we've been talking a lot about. problems in the world and I think that's.

just always a nice reminder of how much. we get to improve and we're going to get. to improve a lot and this will be I. think this will be the most powerful. tool we have yet created to help us go. go do that I think you're right and uh. this was an awesome conversation thanks. for having than for being appreciate it. and thanks for everything keep us posted. and if you create how I'll give you a. call let us. know all right thank you thank you bye. everybody.

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