Hi Ron John, thanks so much for joining us today.
It's so nice to be here Let's start with Maybe
a simple but difficult to answer question is
how do you define reality? In my perspective
our reality is more a subjective Interface and
we're limited by our five senses and how we perceive
reality Tell me a bit more about how you define
reality. How do humans play into that? And with
the advent of AI, how is a reality changing?
Yeah, so I'm an engineer. I'm sort of a pragmatist.
And, you know, so I'm probably less on the spiritual
side, probably. But so I would sort of define
reality is um you know often there's a phrase
uh perception is reality people perceive it it
is real right and sometimes people are in denial
of a particular thing but uh other people are
perceiving things you have to realize that so
reality is the physical world uh reality might
be something you are projecting And if other
people are perceiving it, then that is part of
the reality universe that you are part of. Now,
there are realities in the mind, certainly time
travel. How do you do time travel? Well, you
go to sleep. So when you're asleep, it's a different
reality. We've all sort of gone to sleep and
woken up and thought, oh, I've just woken up.
I've only been asleep 10 minutes. Without you,
I've been asleep eight hours. There's sort of
time compression to be able to do things. So
part of it is the living reality, awake reality.
And then there's the... Sleeping reality what
you are thinking about what the brain is thinking
about and what the brain embodies and then in
between daydreaming Where you have reality in
your mind and you're not sure whether it's possible.
So when you're in inventing When you're in invention
space when you're trying to think of new ideas
or solutions to the problem You're simulating
reality in your mind. So a long -winded answer
but Maybe I'll answer to that, your question.
Thank you. And how does consciousness fit into
this framework of reality where you're breaking
reality down into sleeping reality, daydreaming
reality, and an awake reality? Is the thought
process there that there are different levels
of consciousness, which we know from anesthesia,
but we tend to frame the different levels of
consciousness in terms of how much input we perceive
and how sedated we are. Talk to me a bit about
consciousness. How does reality, or the three
different subtypes of reality play into consciousness?
Right, yeah. So, thousands of people for thousands
of years have been trying to think about what
is consciousness? And so, I feel myself an amateur
in this, but I don't feel myself unwilling to
opine on this. What is consciousness? People
have been trying to figure that out for a long
time from many different disciplines. Stanislas
Dehaene in Paris, he talked about three types
of consciousness. Subtype one where you can think
of is the autonomous consciousness where you're
doing things without even knowing it you're breathing
you're Blinking your eyes without even knowing
that you're doing it Then there's consciousness
type two where you have a more deliberate Action
points on what you're thinking about from an
internal paper paper basis so i am talking you
are talking we're doing that deliberately um
and there's consciousness type two where which
is uh um sorry type three where you're looking
at consciousness uh where you are with respect
to your environment and to the rest of the world
uh so that's one field of sort of definition
of what consciousness is. There are other ideas.
Roger Penrose, he got the Nobel Prize but not
for this. He got it for physics. Now he thinks
that consciousness is really embodied by quantum
forces in the molecular makeup in your cells
in your brain and those forces are really the
embodiment of consciousness. And maybe that's
why you get love at first sight. Maybe you get
tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny little forces going back
and forth. They're so infinitesimal, they're
really not really measurable by you and I, but
maybe they're there. And then there's other people
who think, well, one of the reasons it's difficult
to define is it's like a fundamental like time
and space. It's like asking a blind person to
describe what color is. It's just a fundamental
sort of mode where you can't define it in other
fields. It is a field by itself. uh uh you know
people have tried to study the brain uh uh francis
crick and christophe cock francis crick uh uh
discovered dna of course in the last uh uh in
his latter part of life started looking at the
brain uh started looking for a piece of the brain
that maybe that embodied awareness and self -awareness
in the brain. So I don't think people know, I
don't know the answer. I'm not clever enough
of my pay grade, but this is what I'm thinking
of, that consciousness is kind of a fundamental,
that as such, it's gonna be difficult to define.
And that's why it's maybe... difficult for a
machine to have consciousness because it needs
to be attached to something living needs to be
embodied and if you can't have it attached to
cells that are living then maybe it's going to
be difficult to get real consciousness that the
living beings think about but you know it's possible
to have biosilicon hybrids in semi -conductor
architectures where maybe you do have some living
components where things grow and add on versus
a silicon chip which is fixed. It may be pre
-programmable, a chip, you know, so -called EPROM
or a application -specific circuit that may be
specific for particular application they can
be put together just like your laptop you can
program it in different things but it doesn't
live it's fixed so i think consciousness needs
to be connected to something you know if we all
unfortunately there are some people who have
no locked in syndrome where they can think perfectly
but it can't move can't move a muscle, can't
speak, maybe they blink their eyes, but they
can think perfectly and obviously they're much
more limited in what they can do. So really computers
are like that, they can't move, they can't, often
they see at R .B. Hest, they listen at R .B.
Hest, they can't control when they see and not
see. And so if we start to get robotics, robots,
where the machine can actually move around and
sense things, maybe you get stronger consciousness
framework that living beings actually have. So
again, I'm sorry about my long -winded answer.
It's probably an engineering focused answer on
what consciousness might make up of. Let's go
a bit deeper deeper here and I will push back
a little bit Yeah, if we break down consciousness
into the three core components or the three types
of consciousness being involuntary or autonomous
processes or reflexes or breathing Outputs like
verbal communication such as us talking or in
us communicating and inputs such as hearing and
feeling and the senses we have. One could, and
I suppose I'm making this argument, that machines
can possess those three components. Machines
have involuntary or autonomous processes. Programs
are running, computers are running, there's things
happening in the background that are always happening.
Now with AI, machines have outputs as well. They
communicate with us. and they're able to take
input. The Chad GPT is a very simple example.
You can talk to it, takes digest that input,
does whatever it does with it, and it gives an
output. So by that definition, why does it need
to be a carbon life form? Why can't machines
possess consciousness? And maybe as he said,
we just cannot define consciousness. And the
only thing we know is is you personally are conscious,
and this is kind of going to the simulation argument
of the world, the only person I can know is conscious
as myself. And everything else could be a simulation,
this conversation could be a simulation in my
consciousness, but I cannot prove that you are
conscious, I can only prove that I am conscious.
And I know that was a long -winded question,
but let's opine on that a little bit. Yeah, so
can machines be conscious? Um, I think the difference
is it's not whether it's carbon or silicon. It's
a context concept of clearly machines can answer
questions like a human can right now. We've passed
the Turing test now many times. Um, uh, you know,
arguably, you know, can it think many, many steps
ahead? Maybe a couple of steps ahead, a few steps
ahead. Um, can it actually be aware of its existence,
of its feelings. So I can, in fact I've done
this, I've got a digital twin, you know, people
can talk to my digital twin and they can work
on my digital twin which will, they can talk
to it and it looks like it's me. But does it
feel like me? So to be able to know whether a
being is conscious, it won't be something as
simple as a Turing test, which merely tells you
what is a, no, does it behave like a human? You're
gonna have to talk to the machine and give it
concepts that you would only know about and be
able to intelligently articulate if you were
alive so there's something called the artificial
consciousness test where you have an artificial
consciousness test and you give it questions
that will only make sense if you were alive if
you had consciousness so you might give it have
a discussion you might actually have this interview
might be one of the some of the concepts we've
talked about already if you ask the machine about
it um and you'd have to probably wall off the
machine from the internet so it can't look it
up. And you'd probably also have to wall it off
of some of the training data so it doesn't interpolate.
Maybe it trains on this interview and can guess
what the answer should be. But you might have
a discussion about reincarnation, whether you
believe it or not. But if you're not alive, it'll
be a meaningless concept, reincarnation. You
might have a discussion about a movie where someone
switched from a seven -year -old to a 30 -year
-old. I forget the name of that movie, but at
least Tom Hanks is in that movie. Again, if you're
not alive, you might not be able to make any
sense of what that means. What does it feel like
to switch, you know, if you're 30 years old and
you're now seven years old and vice versa, what
does that feel like? And if you're not alive,
you may not be able to, you'll be able to have
some discussion, but it may not be a sensible,
intelligent interaction. So there is a couple
of schools of thought that right now GPT is a
level of, you know, a single PhD in one topic.
Can we get to superhuman? intelligence and some
people think is as early as 2029 where you have
a computer that's as clever as a PhD in every
topic and it really is surpasses all intelligence
in all humanity to be able to optimize and provide
new works completely beyond what humans can go
about and do at an accelerated pace. And at that
point, is it a new species? you know, does it
have feeling? We know we've sort of developed
our ideas with respect to animal testing over
the last few decades. Experiments that were done
decades ago might be different to experiments
done today where there's much more inspection
where non -human primates, even dolphins, are
given extra care on what experiments can be done
versus a versus a mouse but even mice there's
more rules about what how animals should be treated
in medical experiments and certainly you know
as you go down the down the animal hierarchy
they don't get as many privileges as non -human
primates do so people start to think you know
this it's not a sort of zero or one there's a
spectrum of of aliveness of consciousness across
the animal kingdom and across humans and machines
I'll stop there for a second so you can assimilate
that. Yeah, I think there's a risk and this is
kind of what we do right now is entities or organisms
or an amalgamation of molecules or cells that
are more similar to us or we say they're more
alive or they're more conscious and more aware.
And at the risk of maybe being a little bit not,
a little bit crass maybe, if you define life
and living by the ability to grow, adapt to stimuli,
reproduce and consume energy, cancer is arguably
more alive than us. It grows faster, it consumes
more energy, it reproduces faster. So I think
when we get into these definitions of consciousness,
awareness, and alive itself, I worry often we
frame them with the lens of, are they like us?
Do they look like us? Do they talk like us? Do
we think they have empathy? And these are all
very subjective terms. How do you think about
defining these things by removing the human element,
do you think we will get to a better truth? And,
you know, we have to be cognizant of the goal
of maybe science and experimentation is to make
our lives better. So there is a selfish goal
there. And by our, I mean, our human species,
our humankind's lives better. So we may get to
an objective truth where we, you know, and we
kind of know this with climate change and the
extension of species where the problem is us.
Like we are the reason climate change is happening
and so many species have gone extinct. But we
have to take that knowledge and reframe it, okay,
how can we mitigate against these risks but also
improve humankind? And talk to me about how,
you know, when we make these definitions, should
we just remove humanness from them and then bring
it back at the end? Or should we continue looking
at them through a human list? And I'm being a
bit pedantic here because I'm human. So I have
to look at things through a human lens by definition.
Well, I think, I don't think it has to be looked
through a human lens. Like I said, like the artificial
consciousness test, you know, that's independent
of being a machine or a human. There might be
other paradigms. We know that machines do things
better than humans already. They can calculate
large numbers. They can read books now quicker
than us. They can actually come up with reasoning
quicker than us. They still make mistakes, just
like we make mistakes. The question is, when
we talk about intelligence, sometimes people
ask me, when will a machine become intelligent?
There are different types of intelligence. And
if you look at it through the human's scape,
you might say. These are intelligence and these
may be very difficult to apply to a machine.
So there's IQ. We all know what IQ is and that's
machines are pretty good at IQ. They can bring
up facts and they can do calculations, lightning
speed, huge knowledge bases. But a very common
term in the last few decades is EQ, emotional
question. Are you interested in sitting next
to this person for 12 hours on an aeroplane?
Does this person have empathy? There's certain
people who have great empathy with other people.
They can sense when things are right and wrong
and maybe in the medical profession they sort
of build up that in particular because they need
to know the unwritten... phenomena that are going
on that the patient either doesn't want to tell
or can't tell you or can't articulate it in a
way that medicine needs to know to be able to
treat the patient. But that's really even at
the simplest level, EQ, we have things like qualia,
which is higher level moral codes, higher level
emotions. So you can certainly you know, use
AI to detect when someone's happy or someone's
sad. But what about envy or guilt? How would
you do implement guilt mathematically? Right.
So from internal into the machine. So the machine
might say, well, OK, I'm seeing things that are
good that are happening in the world. So for
example, my existence as a machine, I'm helping
lots of people answer lots of questions, but
I'm using lots of energy. So sort of maybe a
positive loop and a negative feedback and control
theory. In engineering, we call that control
theory. It's very common where you're setting
up motors and you want the motor not to spin
too fast, but not to spin too slow and get enough
energy, not to heat up, everything becomes even.
So, that's what is different. IQ, EQ, that's
just the basic levels. Now the next thing is
maybe AQ, right? So IQ, are you clever? EQ, are
you willing to sit next to this person? Are they
nice to be with? So they might meet those points.
AQ is ambition quotient. So it's an autonomous
thing where you want to drive and drive ahead.
So you might find someone who's clever and nice
to be with, but they have no ambition. You know,
they're shallow, right? And they don't want to
drive anything or get anything done. But suppose
you find that person and you get the machine
that's autonomous, where machines don't have
any ambition at the moment. As far as I can see,
they have no ambition. we don't let them have
any ambition we just interact with them they'll
optimize a mathematical objective function so
they have no internal drive to get to the top
no matter what to get to get to mars to build
this no matter what even though it looks impossible
and sometimes you have to be in the space before
you even know whether it's possible or not possible
so you've got aq and then um you've also got
uh No, fine. You've got someone in that area.
Then you've got, let's see, CQ, compassion quotient,
right? So you've got someone who's bright, brilliant,
great to be with, fun to be with. They have ambition
as well, but they have no compassion. They're
completely selfless, selfish, completely selfish,
right? And there's no... sort of understanding
of being compassionate to other people's needs
and other things needs. And then finally, you
may have FQ, which is like freedom quotient,
which is basically, are you going to do something
surprising? Sporadic. So in human terms, uh,
uh, Richard, let me get on a plane and meet you
tomorrow. Just decide to do that just now. Right.
Can a machine do that sporadically? Just think
of it as something to surprise me, sparkle me.
Uh, these are all sort of human attributes and
you could argue, well, do we care about any of
them? Do we just simply care about the mathematical
objective function of producing as many um as
much food as possible for the lowest cost uh
for the for the greatest number of people um
or do we want higher order uh functions and there
is mazlov's hierarchy which talks about you know
well the basic function can we just put food
on the table can we put shelter on the table
and then once you've got those well then you
say well uh Am I appreciated by other people?
Do I have status? If you can't put food on the
table, you don't really care about your status.
I'll do anything. I'll do any job, anything you
ask of me, just to get me to get food on the
table. And so we've got this hierarchy of intelligence,
hierarchy of consciousness that fits across the
different levels of machine development as AI
is coming up in the next few years. I think it's
clear to us that AI at this point, as you went
into a little bit, does not have free will. It
does not have that freedom. Coefficient do you
think we have free will I think that there's
an argument that can be made that we are We make
decisions based on our experiences and maybe
the DNA we were born with And that's kind of
the end of that sentence. But what are your thoughts
on free will and do we possess it? Yeah, that's
a very good question. I'm always asking my students
that and leaving aside the religious part of
it is sort of like I think people naturally feel
they do have free will. But you know, I think
there's a Sam Harris, I'm not sure if you're
familiar with his work, but it's sort of a controversial
topic in a way. The thought that actually, you
may think you have free will, but you actually
don't. You are actually just a product of your
chemicals. and you're just a bag of chemicals
and you've had a set of experiences and you have
a certain set of DNA and the experiences you
have the way you've brought up really affect
everything you're going to do either on a minute
by minute basis or on a macro year by year basis
and you are not your own person you may think
you are But you're not that's one theory. It's
controversial because it gives like Dictators
and criminals and the evil people a pass because
they're not evil just it's not their fault They're
evil. It's just the way though They were brought
up and their experiences that they had and if
you had the same experiences you'd be evil, too
So that's a controversial concept, so I think
that clearly we are a product of our experiences
We view the world based on what we see. However,
we are changeable. We see new experiences. We
will decide to put ourselves in places where
we listen to other views or not. If you have
a certain political ilk and you watch Fox News
all the time and don't give PBS a chance, then
you'll have a certain view continuing and vice
versa. If you just watch PBS all the time and
you never watch Fox News, then you will never
understand why the other half of the country
or the planet doesn't see it the way you see
it. I think what's a little bit different to
free will in a machine which doesn't have it
is we actually move around. We actually are exposed
to different things. And even if you do not watch
Fox News, you do bump into other people, you
bump into other thoughts and other areas in other
fields. And so then you start, you might start
thinking, is there a point there? At least can
you understand why they think that? Why does
the other side think the way they do? I think
in general you have free will, but it's affected
by your experiences. If you take the Chomsky
view on language, humans have a unique ability
to actually understand language because we essentially
have the ability to understand syntax and grammar
programmed in at birth and other animals don't
have that and that's why they can't have language.
But clearly they do have language but it's of
a more limited version than ours. I'm hesitating
because I have a couple of questions but I'm
hesitant to see which one I should ask first.
As humans, we have this inherent need, and I
will use the word need not desire, to group ourselves
in tribes. And be it based on, you know, race,
religion, gender, intelligence, sports team,
geography, and I would kind of put religion and
maybe now political party at the extreme of this
tribal association we place ourselves in. And
extreme means we are not willing to reconsider
our associations based on factual data. You can
probably discern what I think about religion
from this, but we'll leave that for another discussion.
Why do you think we have this need? I think there's
some good from it. It allows us to work together.
It allows us to feel better. It allows us to
have some more. If you look at people who have
them a lot of perseverance and grit a lot of
them have a faith that they rely on you know
that they say I'm doing this because of God or
And it gives them a lot of power To push through
something maybe to do good in this world and
sometimes to do a lot of bad in this world You
know if you want if you if you're comfortable
talking about religion obviously, you know feel
free to do so but the question primarily is Why
do you think we have this inherent need to organize
ourselves in tribes? We don't need to anymore.
Our needs to live are taken care of. We have
shelter, we have food, we have water. We don't
have to be in packs and defend ourselves against
lions or the woolly mammoth or whoever. So why
do we persist with this need? And will AI have
a similar need? Yes. So I think you're right.
We actually don't need that's very, very pertinent.
We don't need to be in tribes anymore for shelter
or protection from at least wild animals, protection
from each other by the sounds of it. We may do.
I think that There is an individual streak, and
if you ask a child, I think children, and certainly
as a child, when I was a child, I couldn't really
understand the concept of borders. Why can't
you just walk, go wherever you want to go, go
wherever you want to be? Across the border. Well,
yeah, yeah, there are no borders if you're an
individual organism. We're all the same. 99 .5
% of the DNA of all of us is the same. We're
all the same, 99 .5%. And I'm actually higher
than that, actually. And yet, there are societies,
you know, there's a society. And I think there's
much more globalization. If you play it forward,
there's already more cosmopolitan communities
within countries. If you looked 150 years ago,
you know, you looked at the country of Britain
or countries, even the United States, which is
an immigrant country at the time, it was very
homogeneous. Today, it is very cosmopolitan.
And if you play it forward, I think Bill Clinton
talked about this a few decades ago. Eventually,
you have the browning, the browning of America
where there's more people who are brown than
not brown. Um, and, uh, the ability to travel
from one place to another is extended that, uh,
interracial, uh, marriages, uh, you know, people
would be shocked by that 200 years ago and now
no one blinks. Um, or most people don't blink
at least. And, um, it, uh, uh, uh, and then that's
probably. resulted again in no religion being
a sort of a core force hundreds of years ago
and it's still a force amongst many groups but
it's much less I think than hundreds of years
ago if you look at the macro trend it's likely
become less and less of a force people may want
to be attached to a religion, people may believe
the concepts of religion, it is a faith by definition,
because as most of the religions have no evidence
of the material that is proposed, but there is
a set of values and often those values often
are common to lots of religions and some variations,
and maybe those values are not particularly religious
values, though religions might take on those
on board, but maybe those are human values, or
intuitive human values, rather than specifically
religious values. I think that, well, people
No, people are looking at a more economic war
rather than a tribal war. Right now, are you
willing to be able to keep your standard of living
as high as anyone else? If you look at economic
theory, there's a couple of schools of thought,
rising tides rise all boats. And if you'd have
trade, you can have different people, different
groups, depending on what resources they have,
adopt different strengths. So if you happen to
be lucky enough in a country that has lots of
energy resources, you have that competitive strength.
If you do not, then you have to maybe use your
mind. and the idea the competitive advantage
of nations idea is that each country sort of
works itself out well which what what's it good
at and they trade they trade with each other
you know in my own way I try not to do things
that other people are good at let them do it
let me find something that is not being done
already and and start thinking about that can
I do something that's new the ability to have
mobility is sort of turn things upside down.
200 years ago, basically a poor person today
has travel opportunities, entertainment opportunities
that a millionaire could only have 200 years
ago. So the mobility and exposure, transmission
of communication. We're talking to each other
on high quality video call for free or practically
free, which before you'd have a scratchy phone
call, a dollar a minute, pound a minute, euro
a minute. And this is now free. And we're now
seeing people interact with each other, expose
with each other, seen how the other people live,
the other half live, you almost have to sort
of close your borders to stop people knowing
what's going on. Whereas even as the late as
the 1970s, you had whole countries that really
didn't know what life was like in the other country.
you saw that in the breaking down of the cold
of the of the of the berlin wall and the cold
war breaking down um where people in the eastern
bloc said wait no wait they've got supermarkets
with a thousand different 40 000 things to buy
my supermarket as all the shelves are empty why
right um because they can just watch tv they
can watch movies they can watch uh television
shows and see how life is lived by other people
and they say well why can't we have this so I
think and then similarly if you're more in a
well -to -do environment you see why are people
in this world when we have so much why are people
suffering why can't we organize ourselves to
get food on the table Right, why can't people
figure out a solution to their land wars? Maybe
the solution in the future won't be land wars,
but will be AI wars, computing wars. Who's got
the cleverest AI system? I'll stop there for
a second to let you. Yeah, I guess It is the
theory that we are organizing ourselves in tribes
because of economic resources and our need to
Compare ourselves with others and want more and
more Well, yeah, hopefully we do organize it
not just as countries but as companies I mean
that's why companies exist to organize themselves,
they're not considered as countries, to organize
themselves to offer a solution to a problem that
hasn't been solved. And you need a certain set
of people for a certain type of problem. And
so this sense of organizing, it seems to be inherent
to human culture, not just particularly for the
tribal base, but to get things done. And, you
know, companies in the future may be stronger
than countries. Maybe that's already the case.
There's a TV series, I'm not sure if anyone remembers
it, it was on the Sci -Fi channel. I think it
was called Incorporation. It was set in 2070
and climate change has hit and they finally do
build a wall. But it's a wall on the Canadian
border to stop Americans emigrating to Canada
because the climate, the US has turned into a
desert. And yeah, if you're lucky enough to work
for a big tech company, there was only like six
or seven big tech companies who basically commandeered
all functions of society in particular areas,
you were living quite a comfortable life. But
if you were not, you'd be grasping at straws
and being a supplier or a servant or a nursemaid
to the people who did work in those companies
and those companies would tell the countries
what to do instead of the other way around. Right
now, we as countries tell companies what to do
and we'll stop them doing things or encourage
them to do things based on our policies as a
country. In this world, and it may happen, It
may be that companies tell governments what to
do. And it may be the AIs that those companies
run tell those companies what to do and what
to tell the governments to do to optimize the
particular functions. And it may not just be
profit. What are the other functions? that they
would optimize for. I would think profit and
shareholder value is what they would want and
this future sounds bleak to me. I'm not sure
if I would have religion around the world or
companies because in one of them at least charity
is mandated and both of them ethics are subjective
and malleable. Let's not harp on religion too
much but Do you see this as a positive that the
companies will run the world? Well, companies
is not just profit, it is also existence. It's
well known that companies that sometimes may
make too much profit, the bigger they are, the
harder they fall. Because if there's too much
profit being made, other companies come in. and
try and compete because there's so much profit
to be made. They try and compete and create the
same product. So things sort of mediate. And
so you'd optimize for existence. Some companies,
and if you look at the companies of the 20th
century or even 19th century, we're actually
quite paternalistic. You know, some companies...
set up values for their employees. So their employees
would be sometimes equally hired, they would
offer company stores that offer company housing,
company cars, everything for their employees.
But make no mistake, it was for the benefit of
the company, the ephemeral company shareholder.
not for pure charity. But it would appear as
an altruistic viewpoint that if we make our employees
happy, then we make good products. But it didn't
have to be altruistic. You just say we need to
make our employees happy. We need to keep them
fed. We need to have them get health care so
they keep working. Not just we don't want them.
uh to be well just for the sake of it we want
them to be well so they can be continued to be
our workers um and uh you can argue with today's
companies and certainly uh today's companies
a couple of decades old um you know we've got
a few companies here that's still a century old
right um you know ibm maybe one of them general
motors ford They're usually not the top, top,
top companies of today, but they do exist and
they seem to exist. They have a recipe built
in internally. These hundred year old companies
built in internally to continue to exist. Having
said that, a lot of companies have gone away,
gone away. Some of them have gone away completely.
Some of them shadow their former selves. If we
look at Kodak, we've got Polaroid. They still
exist just, but they're a shadow, one hundredth,
one one hundredth of their former selves. And
if you look at history, that's tends to what
happens. These big companies don't stay. There's
upstarts. And this goes back to the economics,
the competitor level. And maybe the governments
have been putting that so -called antitrust laws
to stop companies becoming overarching the dominance
to in particular industries or whole industries.
So I think I agree with you is a bleak situation
if the companies are optimized for their own
beings, it may not be optimized for human group
optimized for this ephemeral entity, right, which
may be may not even be okay for their employees,
right? But they might be positioning that this
is the optimum for the employees, for the shareholders
that own the company, and for society, they might
say, too, because this is usually the argument
in biotech. We need to have patents because we
need to have protection once we invent something
that we can get money for the investment we made
in inventing that system. There is a view, specifically
mostly in the VC community, but also in part
of the AI community that AI will usher an era
of abundance where humans will no longer have
to work. This requires that we take care of the
humans who don't have to work, which there doesn't
seem to be a plan to do that. What are your thoughts
on will AI usher an era where humans don't have
to work? And then what are some predictions?
If that is true, are we going to be happier as
a society? Because we get quite a bit of our
purpose and meaning from work. And maybe there's
a false dichotomy here where this is more common
in the male phenotype, whereas meaning can come
from relationships and other avenues, which sounds
better. What are your thoughts on meaning and
purpose in life? Where does it come from for
you, maybe? Whereas, where do you think it should
come from? For me, it comes from, you know, when
I think about where I drive the most meaning
from and purpose, oftentimes it's my career.
I don't want it to be my career. I want it to
be my family and friends, but my inherent programming
is the other way. And I've been working for the
past I would say five years when I recognize
this to try and change it, and I'm failing. So
where does meaning and purpose come for you?
Will AI usher an era of abundance? And if it
does, will we be happier as a society? And will
we take care of the people who don't have work
in that era? Right. So I'm optimistic. So first
of all, AI will usher an era of abundance. It
will create lots of new ideas, lots of reduction
of grunt work and speeding up of ideas, acceleration
of production. So there's a couple of theories
here. This is the lump of labor theory. And this
is the argument that basically, okay, if you
have machines that take over some work or even
something else that goes away, the work goes
away, there's nothing for those people to do.
There's only a finite set of work to be done
and if you take away some of the work to be done
by a machine or be done by something else who
doesn't need to be done, then the work gets smaller.
And that certainly could be the case, that the
world gets smaller and smaller and then people,
this is called the basic income theory, where
people just get given a check. It's not that
the society does worse because stuff is still
being produced, but people are given a check
every month to live on and buy things. I actually
think it's going to be the opposite. I think
there's humanity, humans. have an insatiable
desire to have new desires, new products, new
things to do, and that is practically infinite.
And it's only limited by their lack of time because
they're doing other things and doing the existing
forms of work. So it's a bit like bandwidth.
No matter how much bandwidth you have, it gets
filled up. So... This is like this, no matter
how much free time you have, you'll fill it up,
right? So work expands to fill the time available.
So if all of a sudden all the grunt work is now
done by a machine, that leaves up new time for
you to do more things. Also gives you new time
for you to desire more things and other people
will create systems to meet those desires. And
guess what? They will have machines to help them
create, they'll have AI to help them. This is
the golden age of invention about to appear.
It used to be you were limited by resources,
either energy resources, physical resources,
tools, and, or in later years, skills. Can you
code? And the skills are now going to be encoded
in machines. It's now going to be a golden age
of creativity. People who thought they weren't
creative will become creative. And it will be
a new sort of educational kind of era where you
know, it was already a bit like this. You don't
go to university to learn, you go to university
to learn how to learn, right, because the technology,
the knowledge is obsolete within several, you
know, within a year or two, particularly in science
and technology, but even in the humanities, new
ideas, new thoughts, new frameworks pop out.
And so if you come to, with the new new approaches.
There'll be just a million new entrepreneurs,
billion new entrepreneurs, a billion new ideas
exploding on the scene, not limited to by the
fact they can't program, not limited to they
don't have a machine at home. They can log into
the cloud and have those tools done for them.
And so that's the optimistic view. So I actually
don't think we're going to get to a world where
people just sit at home and get a check. I think
that will be a backdrop, a fallback. But I think
people are going to take that opportunity and
do things they want to do. I wish for that feature
as well. And I think the caveat being is we and
so the thought is that people would two things
they want to do, and there will be a market for
those services. And that's how they will make
money to pay for their expenses. Or there could
be a time shift, it could be a shift where there's
not actually quite matched in time, where people
are not those are sort of a shock to the system
that who do I work for now? Oh, well, actually,
no one got any work for you to do. You work for
yourself now, right? It's sort of a shift in
type of education and type of mindset where it
may be actually going back to eras of hundreds
of years ago where you didn't have big conglomerate
employers except for maybe the government or,
you know, armies and people like that where you
have sort of lots of small artisans and everyone
has got their own sort of advantage and or sort
of specialism too but it could be on a bigger
scale because you know you can distribute your
products worldwide it used to be if you wrote
some software you had to find a publisher and
you'd have to they'd put in a box and put it
in the shops and Now you can get it to a billion
people just by uploading it onto one of the phone
platforms. A billion people, but guess what?
A million other companies can do that too. So
everyone can do it, but actually getting the
person to find things is not as big an issue
if you actually want it. If you write a book,
you publish a book, you... It can self -publish
now. It used to be you got a traditional publishing
model with lots of publishers who would try and
get it in the bookstores. And you still have
those somewhat, but it's now a little bit more
level playing field where you can just write
your book and stick it on the Amazon store for
people to use. The concept of digital reality
versus physical reality is very interesting.
from a sense of what is truth and what is not
true or what is falsehood. We can prove physical
reality to be true or not true by various things.
And maybe a couple examples is did this tree
fall? Well, was there a tree there before and
did it fall? You can see it fell. If it's fallen
there currently, even if it's not fallen currently,
maybe. There's people saw a tree there, there's
evidence in the soil, there's roots. There are
things that you can go back in time and prove
beyond a shadow of a doubt. And I use that phrase
as much as we can, that this happened in physical
reality, or this is happening right now. Digital
reality is very different. without going into
blockchain perhaps and that technology hasn't
been adopted. So it's not part of our digital
reality at scale right now. There is a worry
that AI will say make a fake study to sell a
placebo medication and maybe even make a fake
journal. And as long as everything lives digitally,
AI can write or we can digitally alter the truth.
Before we couldn't because we did not have the
technology to make videos realistic, audios realistic,
but now we can have a video of someone doing
something from 50 years ago and punish them for
a crime and then to extrapolate that you can
get into this minority report scenario where
you're predicting crimes that are actually made
up by AI. because you want someone behind bars
because maybe, you know, maybe they work for
Facebook and you're Google, right? And there's
a world where companies rule the world. They
also have the ability to change our reality,
both the past, the present, and the future. How
do you kind of think about that? Are we giving
AI too much power? You know, one of my clinics
still uses paper and pen. And maybe we should
keep it that way. At least there's proof that
this is what happened in this encounter. And
then there's no, there's no way to alter that.
Um, and you can, yeah. Yeah. So we're going to
be entering a world and we're a third of the
way in that world already where anything digital,
you're actually not going to believe that this
is going to be like that. So fine. Yeah. AI can
fake something. You can fake something you're
going to get back to the world of endorsed curated
curators either by professions Where you say
well I can go to the AI doctor But who wrote
who's behind this AI doctor? So that's where
a real doctor may still have a role You're going
to get to the level where Maybe you need to buy
airline stocks, hotel stocks, because even DocuSign,
even a video call, we won't believe anymore.
We actually have to physically meet you, talk
to you, shake your hand in the flesh, and see
you sign with ink on a piece of paper to know
we can get the deal done, to have the physical...
ability. So anything digital will have its, you
know, so you're going to have to, this is where
like the New York Times or the newspapers who
went out of business or got diminished over the
last 40 years may come back with a play where
we know, I see something on the internet, on
Twitter, on Meta or what have you It's not curated
could be anybody But if it's the New York Times
website Okay, I might agree or disagree with
bits of the New York Times, but at least I know
it's them right and Therefore these curators
are going to come up and Their job is to stop
themselves being copied and deep -faked of course,
and there'll be a number of ways they can do
that. But you're going to see that there's going
to be actually, ironically, we saw this in when
computers came about, we thought there'd be no
paper needed anymore, then the amount of paper
would be reduced. In fact, the amount of paper
went up. and maybe this is what's going to happen
with AI we think well actually everything's going
to be digital now we don't need to do anything
meet anyone anymore it will just do all the work
for us but actually maybe we'll need actually
more human bonding as a result of this you know
we keep complaining about teenagers not just
teenagers even adults now glued to their phones
But if you see AI doing more and more stuff,
as it becomes more functional, but then if you
actually have to do a transaction, if you do
a contract, maybe that'll increase human person
-to -person communication. Also, digital's just
boring. It's much more fun to have a cup of coffee
with you than you have even this Zoom call. It'd
be more fun to do it in person than to... have
a sort of email, there's a hierarchy of, you
know, texting, email, video call, also phone
call, video call, and then in person, right?
So in person, you say, well, I haven't got time
to go and meet every single person one at a time,
but can we meet them in scale, which is where
you do a podcast in this kind of issue and have
sensible interactive discussion. As part of what
you do right now, you invest in startups. Tell
me a bit about how do you think about structure
versus intuition? How do you think about a purely
correlation -based strategy? And you know, maybe
we can go back to the Rentech model of investing
where I think my audience probably knows this
already, but Jim Simons came up with this model
called the Medallion Fund, and they invested
purely based on correlation data, and they took
out the human element. So if the algorithm said
invest in this startup, you invest in it. There's
no investment memo. There's nothing else. It's
just the algorithm says it, and you test the
algorithm. So I think there's a quantum light
is a new find by the Revolut founder who's trying
to do this. What are your thoughts and could
and you know, there's obvious reasons why it
can't be because we don't get feedback right
away. There's just too many unknowns. The public
markets are very different. You get feedback
almost instantly if you made the right decision.
And if you borrow Danny Kahneman's framework
or where to rely on validity versus intuition.
our venture value was in on structure versus
intuition. This is something where, you know,
you can't have just correlation -based intuition.
What are your thoughts on structure versus intuition?
How much of VC is just correlation, investing
in startups, and how much is intuition? Well,
first of all, the key word is correlation, not
causation, right? When I've seen some of these
quantitative models in VC, often I found really
they're just following expert investors. They
end up just investing in things that Sequoia
invested in, right? But that's usually later.
So we invest at the very earliest stages. So
we invest in AI and longevity sites companies.
and we invest at the very early stages, first
check off and only check. Probably the riskiest
point, the risk is to the riskiest point. And
certainly much of VC is pattern matching recognition.
You've seen this story before, seen this playbook
before, you've seen this playbook in one area,
can it be applied in a different area? um and
that's often you know they that's sort of the
uber story like you know the uber of cat feeding
the uber of dog walking this is like people will
talk about that you take one business model apply
it to a different segment uh and uh often that
can work uh and i'd say that's a correlation
kind of thing when you're doing deep science
or moonshot science. And venture still plays
in that, does play in that. That's almost the
definition of venture, because if it's building
another coffee shop, that's not venture. We know
how the coffee shop economics, we know that people
wanna drink coffee, we know what a successful
cafe looks like, we just build it. Location is
probably a big impact in coffee shop. business
and maybe put a different model you want to have
chains of coffee shops and where you put them
in the right place this is a Starbucks model
in deep science venture we were I play in the
science often know a lot of investors will say
well I don't want to invest in it because I don't
understand it well guess what no one understands
it that's why it's called deep science if it
was if it was just if it was science and people
understood they just call it science if it's
deep science no one understands it so you're
going to have to roll your sleeves up and get
the intuition first of all so you will be intuition
you know is there a there there uh to think about
and to play in that area and are you willing
to spend the time as an investor to roll your
sleeves up to understand what the venture is
about now the other view is don't bet on the
horses, but bet on the jockey instead. Right,
so you just assume the jockey has chosen the
right horse, chosen the right race to run in,
and that can work too. So some people will invest
in a company. So we're investors, but we're also
inventors. I'm an inventor. Now, one of my most
interesting ideas to work on a moonshot is a
vaccine. A vaccine for what, you may ask? A vaccine
for aging. Wait, how does that work? And who's
crazy enough to even try that, right? Yeah. And
well, maybe Ron John's one of those people where
when in 1983, he was working on a machine that
could transcribe speech. This is 1983. We said
we're going to make a machine that can understand
speech. And that concept at that point was only
seen in science fiction. Let's go deeper on the
vaccine for aging. Tell me a little bit more
about how you're thinking about that. How do
you think about aging? I'm assuming there are
some parts of aging that are beneficial for us
and some parts that aren't. In a lot of ways,
the memories we form or brain, if you want to
call it aging to an extent, is good. We want
to be wiser, smarter, more intelligent, make
better decisions, not be as driven by our emotions
to an extent. especially when the leaders are
straight, but bodily aging beyond a certain point,
we want to stop. How do you think about aging?
How do you break it down? And how do you kind
of control to only target the bad parts of aging
without the good parts? Exactly correct. So aging
is not all bad. No, we get wiser. We actually
don't get as reactive as we are when you're younger
we don't have no dollar reactions to nickel problems
you know younger people often get upset about
simpler things and as you get older you've seen
it all before and maybe a bit calmer and we just
know more we just know more as each year you
know more you know more people you know more
things and then you want to protect your brain
from neurodegenerative diseases. So one thing
about aging, as the way we look at it, at Agemica,
which is the company that is trying to do an
aging vaccine, that's A -G -E -M -I -C -A, is
that there are many diseases that are age -related
that increase in prevalence as you get older.
An aging concept is almost opposite to another
concept known as personalized medicine. Right,
so in aging we're trying to find solutions that
fix lots of things all at once. Personalized
medicine is often trying to fix one thing that
only affects you. Right, so they do sort of overlap
as well because you can sort of scale personalized
medicine ideas. But the way we look at aging
is think of it as clusters of diseases. So three
big clusters are cardiovascular, the number one
killer. Second one is cancer. And the third one
is neurodegenerative. So if we can solve those
three, that will give you. very big chunk of
a lot of age -related disease and they actually
are correlated as well if you solve one and then
the others improve as well. And what we want
to do is use the power of the tools of the day
which are different the tools of even five years
ago. Can we protect proteins from being disrupted
and turned into cancer cells? Can we sort of
realize that the central dogma theory that we
all have DNA, what's amazing is the DNA is the
same in every single cell of ours, whether it's
a tongue cell or a stomach cell, and DNA turns
into RNA, RNA creates proteins, and the proteins
tell ourselves what to do. And then when we get
older, that regulation seems to disrupt a little
bit? Can we stop that happening? Can we program
peptides to protect proteins from turning into
cancerous but not turning our normal cells into
disruptive components at the same time? So how
do you sort of kill bad cells without killing
normal cells? And with AI, you have a new tool
available to you. So that's what we're trying
to do at Aegemica. And we think we have a prototype
for an aging vaccine, an mRNA aging vaccine.
We think we can solve, at this point, about 30
cancers all at the same time. So a pan -cancer
vaccine. Think about it cluster by cluster. And
then thinking about rinsing and repeating, taking
the same idea and use the same technique for
the other clusters of diseases. And aging, if
you can solve even big chunks of it, all of a
sudden, society's medical problems go away. All
these problems about not enough doctors, not
enough nurses, paying $100 ,000 for a cancer
treatment. Well, if you don't get cancer, you
don't need to pay for it. If you don't get cancer,
you don't need to see the doctor. You know, nature's
come out with a study. If you can solve aging,
it's a $38 trillion impact. So, you know, think
of a big idea and thinking of the tools available
to you and then jumping into the space is one
of the ideas. If you don't jump into the space,
well, it won't happen. So what space do you want
to jump into? So that's something in space and
then you put some money to work at it in it and
try and do it step by step. So in the old speech
recognition days, when I couldn't, I said, I'm
going to make a machine to transcribe speech.
So, well, okay, let's break it down. Let's just
do telephone digits to start off with. And then
later on, 15, 18 years later, it's on everyone's
phones. Full speed transcription. So I think
about aging science. Okay, well, aging is a big
problem. There's many, many age -related diseases.
Let's start with cancer. Cancer is a good one
to look at because it's, as you know, it metastasizes.
So if you solve one cancer. It's often it's too
late. You've got another cancer. And so can you
solve groups of diseases at the same time? And
so that was a good model to look at. And then
can we solve that model in the other other models?
So there we have it. So that's that's the major
working on. And sometimes I say I encourage people,
Richard, what's your big idea? That's my big
idea. The loads of big ideas to work on. And
then think about how the big idea can be worked
on. And instead of saying giving up before you
even start saying, well, how do we break the
problem down? That's the engineer in becoming.
Now I'm an engineer where we will be pragmatic.
And so well, how do we break the problem down?
Yeah, I think from a medicine, care delivery
perspective, the problems aren't technical, the
problems are regulatory and reimbursement. We
can create an AI physician that's completely
autonomous for specific verticals from a technical
perspective tomorrow. You know, for to refill
birth control, blood pressure medications. These
are very, fairly straightforward clinical decision
trees. Some of them are more robust than others,
but you know, I can probably write a clinical
decision tree for a blood pressure refill in
a day or two. And it might be a comprehensive,
but I can do it. I'm sure someone can code it.
But no state medical board is going to give that
clinical decision tree a license to actually
refill the birth control. And no payers are reimbursed
today. So the question becomes, do I build it
now and wait? Because venture, and building a
company, you have to pay employees. there's a
time, there's a stopwatch that starts when I
start this. And yeah, like how long do I wait
before I build this? So last question, Ron, if
you could go back in time and talk to your 20
year old self, or maybe if you could go back
in time 10 years ago, what piece of advice would
you? Tell 20 year old Ron John and then Ron John
10 years ago. Yes. So 20 year old Ron John, I
think is have a thick skinned expect rejection
and show up 99 % of life is just showing up.
So all you have to do, you know, I've been rejected
so many times. for so many things, but over time
you get thicker, the skin got thicker and thicker
and thicker, didn't worry about it, but in the
early days it was quite unnerving when you got
rejected for something, but apply for things
and show up to things, talk to people, don't
be afraid, go out of your comfort zone. 10 years
ago, I think go out of your comfort zone is still
there. I think I've got used to being rejected,
so not a problem. In fact, the more you got rejected,
the more you wanted to do it, actually. I think
that's almost a positive sign. The more people
say you can't do it, the more you actually say,
well, you can do it. You can do it, and you are
going to do it. But try and be also as humble
as you can. I think I... sort of rolled into
it in trying to be factual and be available to
people and just have no airs and graces. I think
that's probably general theme is just be accessible
if someone wants to talk to you, talk to them
and be able to Think bigger, probably also think
bigger. About 10 years ago, I'd say think bigger.
So I'm thinking big now. And looking back, I
was thinking big, I guess, 20, 30 years ago,
but I didn't feel like I was, right? So I think
there's lots and lots of big ideas and lots of
now role models, people who have done big ideas.
And so you think, well, why can't I? Why can't
you? The resources now available to people. That's
great advice. Yeah. Don't be afraid of rejection
and think bigger. Thanks so much for joining
me today. Thank you for having me. Thank you
for having me, Richard.