Welcome to this curated educational transcript of the Joe Rogan Experience. In this session, we provide a deep-dive examination of the critical perspectives and historical dialogues presented in Episode #2044. Our mission is to offer a high-fidelity, searchable research resource for students of cultural history, emerging technology, and global discourse. This transcript has been specifically optimized for academic reference, linguistic study, and archival preservation regarding Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), Silicon Valley Ethics, and the Future of OpenAI 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 one of the things about this
is, I mean, I think everyone is fascinated by
it. I mean, everyone is 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 is where I
think... And 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. It's 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
to 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 jobs, some kinds
of parts of our way of life, some parts of the
way we live are going to change or go away. Eat
no matter how tremendous the upside is there,
and I believe it will be tremendously good. There's
a lot of stuff we've got to navigate through
to make sure. That's a complicated thing for
anyone to wrap their heads around, and there's
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. Yeah, I mean, it's definitely
inevitable. 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 backwards 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...
although we do have these things to navigate
and there will be these downsides, if you think
about what it means for the world and for people's
quality of lives, if we can get to a world where
the cost of intelligence and the abundance that
comes with that, the cost dramatically falls,
the abundance goes 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'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 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 find making very specific. difficult because
the way the technology goes has been so different
than even my own intuitions, or certainly my
own intuitions. Maybe we should stop there and
back up a little. What were your initial thoughts?
If you had asked me 10 years ago, I would have
said, first, AI is going to come for blue -collar
labor, basically. It's going to drive trucks
and do factory work, and it'll handle heavy machinery.
Then maybe after that, it'll do some kinds of
cognitive labor, but it won't be off doing what
I think of personally as the really hard stuff.
It won't be off proving new mathematical theorems.
It won't be off discovering new science. It won't
be off writing code. And then eventually, maybe,
but maybe last of all, maybe never, because human
creativity is this magic 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. It can't keep very long coherence.
So people are instead just able to do their existing
jobs way more productively, 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 cognitive
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.
And maybe I should touch on that. I'm not a believer
at all that there won't be lots of new jobs.
I think human creativity, desire for status,
wanting different ways to compete, invent new
things, feel part of a community, feel valued,
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 I think, I mean that
like literally 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
intelligence where you can sort of just think
of a new idea and it gets created. But again,
that doesn't, to the point we started with, that
doesn't provide like great solace 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, I think we will as a society do
things like UBI and other ways of redistribution.
But I don't think that gets 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 people have been wrong about
predicting how fast that's going to happen, but
it's going to happen. We figure out not just
a way to solve the economic problem by 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 share
ownership and decision -making over the future.
The thing I say a lot about AGI is that everyone
realizes we're going to have to share the benefits
of that, but we also have to share the decision
-making over it and access to the system itself.
I'd be more excited about a world where we say,
rather than give everybody on Earth one -eighth
billionth of the AGI money, which we should do
that to, we say, you get a one -eighth billionth
slice of the system. Sell it to somebody else.
You can sell it to a company. You can pool 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. 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
one eight billionth ownership 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. We should have an AI president. Just
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, because that comes with a host of pitfalls
and issues that people have with it. So I'll
say something there. I think we're still very
far away from a system that is... capable enough
and reliable enough 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, how they think about this
issue and that one and how they balance the trade
-offs and what they want, and then understand
all of that and collectively optimize for the
collective preferences of humanity. or of citizens
of the U .S., that's awesome. As long as it's
not co -opted, right? Our government currently
is co -opted. That's for sure. 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 final decision -making
and say, all right, AI, you got it from here?
No, but I'm not comfortable doing that with anybody.
I was uncomfortable with the Patriot Act. I'm
uncomfortable with many decisions 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 whatever the military industrial complex
and pharmaceutical industrial complex and just
the money. That's really what we know today,
that money has a massive influence on our society
and the choices that get made and the overall
good or bad for the population. Yeah, I have
no disagreement at all that the current system
is super broken, not working for people, super
corrupt, and for sure, like, unbelievably run
by money. And I think there is a way to do a
better job than that with AI in some way. But
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 ever
like sit and pause and say, well, if this becomes
sentient 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 AGI was this very
binary moment. It was before and after. And I
think I was totally wrong about that. And the
right way to think about it is this continuum
of intelligence, this smooth exponential curve,
back all the way to that sort of smooth curve
of technological revolution. 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 model for a long time, I think
if you look at the world of AGI thinkers, 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's 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 a few decades.
And then there's takeoff speed. Once we get there,
from there to that point you were talking about
where it's capable of the rapid self -improvement,
is that a slow or a fast process? 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. 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 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 sort
of safety systems 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, 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 ChatGPT 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. Each step, from each
half step like that, humans have this ability
to get used to any new technology so quickly.
The thing that I think was unusual about the
launch of ChatGPT... 3 .5 and then 4, 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 in secret in a lab
and then drop it on the world all at once, I
think that's a really bad idea. So 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
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 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 one -time
reframe. 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 Neuralink and
there's a few competing technologies where they're
trying to implement some sort of a connection
between the human biological system and technology?
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
idea is like once it gets – you have to kind
of because everybody is going to have it. So
one of the hard questions about 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
how you get that moment right uh you know if
we like imagine like all the way out to the sci
-fi future there's 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 how do you make sure that people
that do it first like actually help lift everybody
up together yeah 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. 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 conscience into a
computer, if that's even possible at all, which
I think there's plenty of sides you could take
on why it's not. The thing that I find myself
most interested in is... What we can do without
drilling a hole in someone's head? 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 quite powerful for what
they can now do with a new computing platform?
And my guess is we'll 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 direction we've been exploring. Yeah.
That seems to me to be step one. That's the pong
of the eventual immersive 3D video games. 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, it doesn't have to be a question. It could
just be your passive rambling inner monologue,
but it certainly could be a question. And that
was being fed into GPT -5 or 6. And in your field
of vision, the words in response were being displayed.
That would be the palm. Yeah. 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 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 in
a high risk thing. You know what you do when
you don't want them? When you take off the glasses.
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 semi -telepathically through technology? I
do. Yeah. Yeah, I do. I think so too. My real
concern is that. Once we take the step to use
an actual neural interface, 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 on the road to
like why would you want to be a biological person?
Do you really want to live in a fucking 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
relative to everybody else. So 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 earlier 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. And that's fine for them 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 be many people. 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're you're on a first date that
kind of those kind of things are the real moments
it just laughs yeah having a glass of wine with
a friend and just laughing not quite the same
in vr yeah now when the vr goes super far so
you can't you know it's like you are jacked in
on your brain and you can't tell right 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 fuck 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 probability that we're already in a simulation
is much higher than the probability that we're
not. It's never been clear to me what to do about
it. It's like, okay. Right. That intellectually
makes a lot of sense. Yeah. I think probably,
sure. Right. That seems convincing, but this
is my reality. Yeah. This is my life. Yeah. And
I'm going to live it. And I've, you know, from
like 2 a .m. 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, if it is a possibility,
if it is real. First of all, once it happens,
what are you going to do? I mean, that is the
new reality. And in many ways, our new reality
is as alien to, you know, hunter -gatherers from
15 ,000 years ago. As that would be to us now.
I mean, 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 so bizarre compared
to how it was when I was 13 and you had to go
to the library. And hope that the book was accurate.
Totally. I was very annoyed. I was reading about
how horrible systems like ChatGPT and Google
are from an environmental impact because it's
using some extremely tiny amount of energy for
each query. And 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 burned to answer this question versus
what it takes now. Come on. But that's just people
looking for some reason why something's bad.
That's not a logical perspective. What 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.
We need this to solve everything else. And that's
why we need President AI. If AI could 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 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 cognizant of
the actual problems that are in place. This is
really great. 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 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,
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. 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 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 shit out of me.
Super against. And the push to that is not –
that's not for the overall good of society. That's
for control. Yeah. I think like – I mean there's
many things that I'm disappointed that the US
government has done recently. But 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 this. That's like – That's the thing that
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 fucked. Yeah,
I'm not anti -regulation. Like, I think there's
clearly a role for it. And I also think FTX was
like a sort of. comically bad situation yeah
we shouldn't it's like worst case scenario yeah
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 dramas of like uh it i mean
it's a gripping story because they 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 of cash.
I don't know why I think the word polycule is
so funny. Polycule? That was what they, like,
when you call a relationship, like a poly but
closed, like polyamorous molecule put together.
Oh, I see. So they were like, this is our polycule.
So there's nine of them and they're poly amongst
them. Or ten of them or whatever. Yeah, and you
call that a polycule. And I thought that was
the funny, like, that became like a meme in Silicon
Valley for a while that I thought was hilarious.
You clearly want enough regulation that that
can't happen. But they're – Well, I'm not against
that happening. I'm against them doing what they
did with the money. That's what I mean. The polycule
is kind of fun. Go for it. No, no. I mean you
want enough thing that like FTX can't lose all
of its depositors' money. Yes. But I think there's
an important point here, which is you have all
of this other regulation that people – 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 real fascinating crypto
is Bitcoin to me. I mean, that's the one that
I think has the most likely possibility of becoming
a universal viable currency. And it's, you know,
it's limited in the amount that there can be.
It's, you know. 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 – like I've had Andreas Antonopoulos
on the podcast and he's – when he talks about
it, he's living it. He's spending all of his
– everything he gets paid is in Bitcoin. He pays
his rent in Bitcoin. Everything he does is in
Bitcoin. And so I've gotten to learn more about
the space. 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 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'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 to trade
like a limited number of hard assets like land
and houses and whatever. 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 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 and services that still
are. And so money in a world like that, I think,
is just a very curious idea. Yeah, it becomes
a different thing. I mean, it's not a bag of
gold in a leather pouch. That you're carrying
around. Not going to do you much good probably.
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 – That would be bad. I think you've got
to like – my current best idea and maybe there's
something better is I think you – like if we
are right – a lot of reasons we could be wrong.
But if we are right that like – 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. 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 hardliners, the people that
are against like welfare and against any sort
of universal basic income, UBI, 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 bottleneck?
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
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, it's, it's, it's way
safer. You know, we were like, I was talking
about this at my comedy club last night. Because
my wife was, we were talking about DNA, and my
wife was saying that, look, everybody came from
cave people, which is kind of a fucked up thought,
that everyone here is here because of cave people.
Well, 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 lay around and
do drugs. That's the fear that people have of
giving people free money. But if we can figure
out how to literally engineer the human biological
vehicle. And remove all those pitfalls. If we
can enlighten people technologically. Maybe enlighten
is the wrong word. 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 I
mean, if you just had everyone on Mali, how many
wars would there be? There'd be zero wars. I
mean, I think if you could get everyone on Earth
to all do Mali. once on the same day, that'd
be a tremendous thing. It would be. If you got
everybody on earth to do Mali every day, that'd
be a real loss. But what if they did a low dose
of Mali where you just get to, ah, where everybody
greets people with love and affection and there's
no longer a concern about competition. Instead,
the concern is about the fascination of innovation
and creation and creativity. Man, we could talk
the rest of the time about this one topic. It's
so interesting. I think if I could push a button
to remove all human striving and conflict, I
wouldn't do it, first of all. I think that's
a very important part of our story and experience.
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 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 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. So
I think evolutionary fitness is a simple and
unbelievably powerful idea. Could you carefully
edit out every individual manifestation of that?
Maybe, but I don't want to live in a society
of drones where everybody is just sort of like
on Molly all the time either. That doesn't seem
like the right answer. 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. But I think
we've lost something. And I think that we need
more striving, maybe more risk -taking, more
like. What do you mean by you think we've lost
something? I mean, here's like a version of it
very much from my own lens. I was a startup investor
for a long time. 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 are the super great
25 year old founders and there are a 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 mean like 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. We need that sort of spirit.
We need people to be able to put out ideas and
be wrong and not be ostracized from society for
it or not have it be like something that they
get canceled for 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. You
know, certainly when we started OpenAI and we
were saying, we think this AGI thing 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 AGI. That's like, you know, they're like
selling a scam or they're like, you know. they're
kind of 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 fuck 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 kinds
of things now as opposed to a decade or two ago?
I am so interested in that topic. I'm tempted
to blame the education system, but I think that
interacts with society in all of these strange
ways. It's funny. There was this thing all over
my Twitter feed recently trying to talk about
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 not at all the most important piece of
this topic, but it was just interesting to me
sociologically that there was only talk about
what caused it, not about it being an effect
of some sort of change in society. But isn't
what caused it – well, there's biological reasons
why. Like when we talk about the phthalates 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? Well, society most certainly has an
effect. Do you know what the answer to this is?
I don't. I mean, I've had a podcast 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 blood tests on people, they find some Insane
number. It's like 90 -plus percent of people
have phthalates in their system. I appreciate
the metal cups. Yeah. We try to mitigate it as
much as possible. But, I mean, you're getting
it. If you're microwaving food, you're fucking
getting it. You're just getting it. 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 week in your
body. You consume a credit card of that a week.
The real concern is with mammals because the
introductions, when they've done studies with
mammals, when they've introduced phthalates into
their body, there's a correlating. One thing
that happens is these animals, their taints shrink.
Like the taint of the mammal, when you look at
males, it's 50 % to 100 % larger than the females.
With the introduction of phthalates 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 these chemicals and how they interact
with bodies. So 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
is such an integral part of our culture and 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 all the time. 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 leave that out of the equation and just
say like a world that has a spirit that, you
know, we're gonna... defend ourselves we're going
to we're going to find a way to like protect
ourselves 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 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 many other
categories. Those are maybe just the ones that
I know the best. In a world with any amount of
technology, I still think we've got to – it is
our destiny in some sense to stay 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 primal apes and to sort
of downplay the role – You mean like should the
AGI take phthalates into the world? I don't know
if it's AGI. I mean maybe it's just an 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 food
systems, preservatives, all these different things
that we use to make sure that people don't starve
to death. We've made incredible strides in that.
There are very few people in this country that
starve to death. It's not a primary issue. But
violence is a primary issue. But our concerns
about violence. And our concerns about testosterone
and strong men and powerful people is only because
– We need to protect against others. We need
to protect against other same things. Is that
really the only reason? Sure. I mean how many
like incredibly violent women are out there running
gangs? No, no. That part for sure. Yeah. Probably
not very many. 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
we needed someone who was stronger than most
to defend the rest. And that's the concept of
the military. That's why Navy SEAL 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. 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 yes, you don't.
You don't need testosterone. Need testosterone,
but you still... 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,
when they have these big heads and tiny mouths?
They don't need physical strength. They don't
need physical strength. 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, me, it, the whole thing
all together, all merged in. We're happy here
on earth. 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 transportation.
What happens when it meets another AGI the other
galaxy over? What happens when it meets an AGI
that's a million years more advanced? Or that.
Like, what does that look like? Yeah. That's
what I've often wondered if we are. 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. 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 and automobiles
and computers and cell phones 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 gonna 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. And maybe I'm just thinking too small
-mindedly, 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? 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 wired at some deep level differently than
cave people? Clearly lots of other things have
changed. We've got much better tools. But how
different do you think it 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 there. We interact
with all of them, whether it's ego, lust, passion,
fury, anger, jealousy, all these different things.
And you think will 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 well 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
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 three years there will
be no war in the world? That's zero. Like nobody
thinks. 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? Well,
I would say our number one problem is is war.
Our number one problem is this idea that it's
OK 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. That's
clearly the same 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 resources. So what's left
at that point? Well, we're a new thing. I think
we've 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.
But scientific curiosity can drive quite – 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, 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 it. How certain is that at this point
that that's – What's happening? I'm going to
go study after this. It's a very good question.
Dr. Shanna Swan believes that it's the primary
driving factor. of the sort of drop in testosterone
and all miscarriage issues and low birth weights.
All those things seem to be a direct factor environmentally.
I'm sure there's other factors too. The drop
in testosterone, I mean, it's been shown that
you can increase male'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 radically increases
testosterone. So cold water, immersion, and then
exercise post that. I wonder why. Yeah, I don't
know. Let's see if we can find that. But it's
a fascinating field of 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 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 and that all that stuff actually does
raise testosterone. Your diet can raise testosterone.
And a poor diet will lower it and will hinder
your integrin system, will hinder your ability
to produce growth hormone, melatonin, all these
different factors. That seems to be something
that we can fix in terms or at least mitigate
with decisions and choices and effort. But the
fact that these petrochemical – like there's
a graph that Dr. Shanna 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 like estrogen -related
hormones? That's a good question. 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 just think it's overall disruptive
to the human body. Definitely a societal -wide
disruption of the endocrine system in a short
period of time. It seems like a just bad and
– Sure. Difficult to wrap our heads around. And
then 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. But I just really wonder if this –
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 be repulsed. Yeah. 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. That's fascinating. You would
also have no motivation for violence. If we had
no aggressive tendencies, no primal chimpanzee
tendencies. You know, 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.
I'm not going to walk over there and punch you
because you look like a big strong guy. You're
going to punch me back. And also there's a societal
convention not to do that. If I didn't know you,
I might like send a mean tweet about you. And
I feel nothing on that. And clearly that has
become like a mega epidemic in society that we
did not evolve the biological constraints on
somehow. And I'm actually very. worried about
how much that's already destabilized us and made
us all miserable. It's certainly accentuated
it. It's exacerbated all of our problems. I mean,
if you read Jonathan Haidt's book, The Coddling
of the American Mind, have you read it? Great
book. Yeah, it's a great book. And 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.
People have always talked shit about people when
no one's around. The fact that they're doing
it now openly to harm people. Horrible, obviously.
I think it's super damaging to men too. Maybe
they just talk about it less, but I don't think
any of us are like... Yeah. Set up for this.
No, no one 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. 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 decided, 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 something, I pick
up. But all I get on my new phone is text messages.
And is that more? Just to keep your mind pure
and unpolluted. And not tempt myself. Do you
know how many fucking 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 for nothing? It 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 30th or 40th reel
that I click on is wild. I wonder, by the way,
if that's more powerful than if everyone was
great. Sure. You have to mine for gold. You don't
just go out and pick it like daisies. If the
algorithm is intentionally feeding you some shit
along the way. Yeah. Well, there's just a lot
of shit out there, unfortunately. But it's it's
just in terms of, you know, I was talking to
Sean O'Malley, who's this UFC fighter who's,
you know, obviously has a very strong mind, really
interesting guy. But one of the things that Sean
said is like, I get this like low level anxiety
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 this is a massive
waste of your resources. I also deleted a bunch
of that stuff off my phone because I just didn't
have the self -control. I mean, I had the self
-control to delete it, but not to stop once I
was scrolling through. And so 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. Certainly.
This is a 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 writes a love letter or you know
they miss you like yeah 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 not it did you know
generally unless the person was a psycho they're
not hateful letters Whereas the ability to just
communicate, fuck that guy, I hope he gets hit
by a bus, is so simple and easy and you don't
experience. Twitter seems to be particularly
horrible for this as the mechanics work. It really
rewards in ways that I don't think anybody fully
understands that like taps into something about
human psychology. But that's kind of like, that's
how you get engagement. 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 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 fuck they're tweeting about and Some
of them are on there eight, ten hours a day.
I'll see tweets all day long. And I know that
person cannot be happy. They are unhappy and
they cannot stop. They can't stop. And it seems
like it's their life. And they get meaning out
of it in terms of reinforcement. They get short
term. Yeah. I think maybe each day you go to
bed feeling like you accomplished something and
got your dopamine. And at the end of each decade,
you probably are like. where that decade go.
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's walking.
It 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
people respond to the dunking. 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. 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 temptation, but
I slip up sometimes. Yeah. It's so tempting.
Totally. It's so tempting and it's fun. It's
fun to say something shitty. I mean, again, whatever
this biological system we were talking about
earlier, that gets a positive reward in the moment.
You know there's reactions. You say something
outrageous and someone's going to react. And
that reaction is like energy. And 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 mean
i think i've watched it like destroy is too strong
of a word but like knock off track the careers
or lives or happiness or human relationships
of people that are like good smart conscientious
people yeah just like got couldn't fight this
demon yeah like hacked there and kovid really
accentuated that because people were alone and
isolated and that made it even worse because
then they felt they felt even better saying shitty
things to people i'm unhappy i'm yeah even worse
things about you and then there was a psychological
aspect of it like the angst that came from being
socially isolated and terrified about this invisible
disease it's going to kill us all And, you know,
and 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
of their peers by doing that. I have a lot of
sympathy for people who lost their minds during
COVID because what a natural thing for us all
to go through. 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 not – 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 see there's plenty
of positive – I think the thing is the negative
interactions are so much more impactful. Yeah.
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 shitting
on people and being angry about things. How many
of the people that you know that use Twitter
those eight or ten 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 know. But then again, I wonder
with the implementation of some new technology
that makes communication a very different thing
than what we're currently doing. 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 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, 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 what we're experiencing now is just
like the first time people invented guns, they
just started shooting at things. Yeah. If you
can feel what I feel when you say something mean
to me or nice to me, 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 what
we're talking about when we're dealing with the
human mind. We're dealing with various 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
of technology that elevates dopamine and serotonin
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. Stand -up comedy will die. You'll have
no violent movies. You know, 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 feel genuinely confused on this. Well, I think
you should be. We're going to find out. Yeah.
I mean, to be sure. That's insane. But I don't
even have like. Hubris beyond belief. Right.
I mean, you just you from the. When did OpenAI.
When did you first start this project? All right.
Like the very beginning, 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 going
to be about a 15 -year project. And I was like,
yeah, that sounds about right to me. I've always
sort of thought since then, now, I no longer
think of like AGI as quite the endpoint, but
to get to the point where we like accomplish
the thing we set out to accomplish, 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? When you first
started doing this and you said, okay, if we
are successful and we do create some massively
advanced AGI, what is the implementation and
what is the impact on society? Did you sit there
and have a graph? You had the pros on one side,
the cons on the other. Did you just sort of abstractly
consider? Well, we definitely talked a lot about
the cons. 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. If something
goes horribly wrong, it's like really horribly
wrong. And so there was a lot of discussion about,
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 contact
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
you're supposed to shoot me right now. Yeah.
I'm sure you've seen the John Connor chat GPT
memes. I haven't. What is it? It's like John
Connor from the Terminator, the kid, looking
at you when you open up chat GPT. Yeah. So that
stuff we were 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.
Does it mean don't say something people find
offensive or does it mean don't destroy all of
humanity or some continuum? And I think the word
has gotten overloaded. But in terms of the not
destroy all of humanity version of it, we have
a lot of work to do. But I think we have finally
more ideas about what can work. 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. 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. I mean, that's what I was talking about
at 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,
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 industry. 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 instead like it is the collective
will of humanity being expressed without the
mistranslation and corrupting influences along
the way, 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 take into account the values
of humanity, the needs of humanity. There's something
about the phrase, do the greater good for humanity.
I know, it's terrifying. It's very Orwellian.
All of it is. But also, so is artificial general
intelligence. For sure, for sure. Open the door
now. I wish I had worked on something that was
less morally fraught. But do you? Because it's
really exciting. I mean, I cannot imagine a cooler
thing to work on. I feel unbelievably, I feel
like the luckiest person on earth. That's awesome.
But 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 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 internet in hyperspace. What
I would say is it's the next step and there will
be more steps after, but it's our most exciting
step yet. Yeah. 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... And do 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.
The timeline of the human existence as a person
is 100 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 always think we don't think
about that quite enough. We talked about the
simulation hypothesis earlier. It's had this
big resurgence 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 believing it than before, I think. Yeah,
for sure. And again, 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 also
has the most problems, the most social problems,
the most awareness of social, environmental,
infrastructure, the issues that we have. We get
to go solve them. Yeah. 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? 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 human -like 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 going to turn out to be a dinosaur
and lot I 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. A few decades. Maybe a
generation or two. It'll probably be a gradual
change, like wearing of clothes. You know, I
don't think everybody 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, cities, agriculture. All those
things were slowly implemented over time and
then now become everywhere. And I think this
is far more transformative. And it's 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. I used to have friends
like, I don't even have email. 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 them. I don't know if this is true or
not. I've heard you can't 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
still have flip phones. I was like, I like it.
I like this fucking little thing that you just
call people. And I always romanticize 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. I still have my other phone that I use
for social media, but when I pick that motherfucker
up, I start scrolling through YouTube and watching
videos and scrolling through TikTok or Instagram.
I don't have TikTok, but I tried threads for
a little while, but I was like a fucking ghost
town. Went right back to X. 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.
It's unbelievable for your mind. And I think
we have like so quickly lost something. Like
out of service just doesn't happen. It doesn't
even happen on airplanes anymore. But that. Like
hours 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 Lanai. 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'd hang
it 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 to 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 because
it didn't exist. I didn't have one. And there
was an alleviation of, again, what Sean was talking
about, that low level of anxiety. This sort of
like – that you have when you always want to
check your phone. Yeah, I think that thing –
it's so bad. 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 this 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. Uh -huh. 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 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 haven't seen so many murders
on Instagram over the last few months. Really?
I've never seen one. It's been a bad timeline.
Me and my friend Tom Segura, 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.
It's just fucking ridiculous. Just crazy car
accidents. People get gored by bulls. We try
to top each other. So every day he's sending
me the most. Every day when I wake up and I check,
Tom, fuck, what are you doing? Can you explain
what's fun about that? Well, he's a comic and
I'm a comic. And comics like chaos. We like ridiculous,
outrageous shit. That is just so far beyond the
norm of what you experience in a regular day.
Got it. And also the understanding of the wide
spectrum of human behavior. If you're a nice
person and you surround yourself with nice people,
you very rarely see someone get shot. You very
rarely see people get stabbed for no reason randomly
on the street. But on Instagram, you see that
every day. And there's something about that which
just reminds you, oh, we're crazy. Like the human
species, like there's a certain percentage 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 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 I'm
happy to watch. Oh, yeah. It makes me uncomfortable
too. But, yeah, we do it 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.
Just look at that. Look at this. That I get.
Look at this. And it's just a thing we started
doing a few months ago. Just can't stop. And
Instagram has learned that you do that, so it
just keeps showing you more and more. Instagram
knows. 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
what I don't understand about the algorithm.
It knows you're fucked up, so it shows up in
your feed of things. 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 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. 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
effects. 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 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
that. Like one of the talks about Neuralink that's
really promising is people with spinal cord issues.
injuries people that can't move their body and
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 is probably one
of the first, and that's what Elon's talked about
as well, one of the first implementations, the
restoration of sight, cognitive function enhanced
from people that have brain issues. That's tremendously
exciting. Yeah. And like many other technologies,
I don't think we can stop neural interfaces because
of the 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 sort of natural
disaster. By the way, and I mean this as 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'd 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 way our culture is governed. I think
corruption is just – and the influence of money
is just a giant, terrible issue. But in terms
of like social issues and in terms of 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 you have this very
rigid view of what's good and bad and right and
wrong, 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 fucking 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 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 recognize.
It's hard to believe. That's really cool. But
that is just an inevitable consequence of this.
unexpected education that i've received did the
empathy kind of like come on linearly yes that
was not a no it just came it came on recognize
well first of all came on recognizing that the
interact 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 fucked up or done something
stupid. It's not good to just dunk on people.
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. That's not
good. And also a lot of psychedelics. A ton of
psychedelic experiences from 2009 on with everyone
a greater understanding of the impact. 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 that 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're still creating unnecessary negativity
and that I should avoid that as much as possible.
It was like an overwhelming message that this
psychedelic experience was giving me. And 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 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,
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.
Yeah. 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 treatment?
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 experienced 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
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 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 thinking
these very different ways Tune in, turn on, drop
out. They just wanted to put a fucking halt to
that. What better way than to lock everyone who
participates in that in cages? Find the people
who 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 busts
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 fentanyl crisis. The crack cocaine
crisis that we experience. 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
imbibed i remember when i was in elementary school
and i was in like drug education they talked
about you know marijuana is 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 lsd and go oh they're
lying psychedelic therapy was definitely one
of the like most important things in my life
and i i assumed given how powerful it was for
me like i I struggled with all kinds of anxiety
and other negative things. And to watch all of
that go away. Like that. I traveled to another
country for a week. Did a few things. Came back.
A totally different person. And I was like, I've
been lied to my whole life. I'm so grateful that
this happened to me now. Talked to a bunch of
other people. All similar experiences. This was
a while ago. I assumed it was. And I was very
interested in what was happening in. the U .S.
I was like particularly like looking at where
MDMA and psilocybin 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 relayed to other
people and literally seeing people change, seeing
who they are change, seeing people become less
selfish, less toxic, less mean. And more empathetic
and more understanding. Yeah. 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 fucking
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 there are tools that are in place. But unfortunately,
in this very prohibitive society, this society
of prohibition, we're... denied those and we're
denied ones that have never killed anybody which
is really bizarre when you know oxycontin can
still be prescribed what's the deal with why
we can't make if we leave like why we can't get
these medicines that have transformed people's
lives like more available what's the deal with
why we can't stop the the opioid crisis or like
fentanyl seems like just an unbelievable crisis
for san francisco You remember in the beginning
of the conversation where 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 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 fucking
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, people smoke
cigarettes, they take Adderall, 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 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. What do
you think is the deep lesson there? Well, we're
not happy exactly. And then some things can make
you happy sort of. Like a couple of drinks makes
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 involved in
some sort of 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. Alcohol, like, I like, but I often am like,
yeah, this is like, you know, this is like dulling
me and I wish I hadn't had this drink. And then
other stuff like... I mostly would choose to
avoid. But that's because you're smart. And you're
probably aware of the pros and cons. 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 fentanyl 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 docudrama about the
sackler family it's an amazing piece but he said
that he took uh once recreationally. And 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 capture you.
But it's just so unbelievable. But the feeling,
like how did Lenny Bruce describe it? I think
he described heroin as getting a warm hug from
God. 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 the fact that right across our border where
you can walk, there are these enormous, enormous
organizations that make. Who knows how much money,
untold, uncalculable amounts of money, selling
drugs and bringing them into this country. And
one of the things they do is they put fentanyl
in everything to make things stronger. And they
do it for, like, street Xanax. There's people
that have overdosed thinking they're getting
Xanax and they fucking die from fentanyl. Yeah,
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 it's insanely potent.
And that wouldn't be a problem if things were
legal. So would you net out towards saying, all
right, let's just legalize it? Yeah, I would
net out towards that, but I would also put into
place some serious mitigation efforts, like in
terms of counseling, drug addiction, and Ibogaine
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 Ibogaine for many of my
friends that have had pill problems. I have a
friend, my friend Ed Clay, who started an Ibogaine
center in Mexico because he had an injury and
he got hooked on pills and he couldn't kick it.
Did Ibogaine. Gone. One time done. One time done.
24 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
fucked 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 quite
a few of them went right back to it. 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, some sort of a 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
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 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. 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 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 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 then medically in many more. And, you
know, it's really easy to get a license medically.
In California, I got one in 1996. I used to be
able to just go somewhere and go, I've got a
headache. 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've got
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 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 had 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 effects. It makes people more
compassionate. It makes people more kind and
friendly. It's sort of the opposite of a drug
that enhances violence. It doesn't enhance violence
at all. Alcohol does that. Cocaine does that.
To say a thing that will 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? 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, she does
not do well with alcohol. She can get drunk off
one drink. But it's biological. She got some
sort of a genetic, I forget what it's called,
something about Billy Rubin, like 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 but what
i was saying is for me that's the opposite alcohol
doesn't bother me at all like 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 For the whole month I don't drink. Feels
good? 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, many cultures have had a place for
some sort of psychedelic time in someone's life
or rite 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 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.
Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Agreed. Yeah.
I think – Set and setting is very important.
And thinking about what you're doing before you're
doing it and why 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 fucked. And you have kids and you wonder,
like, what kind of a world are they going to
grow up in? 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 got it. I go, oh, my God, that is
not thinking about it wrong. Do you think the
anger in the world is way higher than it used
to be, or it's like all these dynamics from social
media we were talking about? I think the dynamics
in social media certainly exacerbated anger in
some people, but I think anger in the world is
just a part of it. frustration, inequality, 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 an equalizing
force for the world or further inequality? I
think it would be, it depends on how it's implemented.
My concern is, again, what we were talking about
before with some sort of a neural 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 economic portfolio and your influence
in the world through that, your amount of power
that you can acquire. Before the other people
can get involved, because I would imagine financially
it'll be like cell phones. In the beginning,
you remember when the movie Wall Street, when
he had that big brick cell phone? I was 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 fucking future.
Giant thing? No, it was a Motorola StarTAC. That
was a cool phone. I actually had one 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 friend Bill Blumenreich, who
runs the Comedy Connection, he would call me.
Because he knew he could get a hold of me. Like
if someone got sick or fell out, I could get
a gig because he could call me. So I was in my
car. I was like, Joe, what are you doing? 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 because 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, a little
squirrely pigtail antenna on my car, on the roof
of the car. But now everyone has one. You can
go to a third world country and people in small
villages have phones. 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 fucking
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
there's problems with generation one, but generation
two 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.
Don't wait too long. Hang on there. Go. And once
that happens, my concern is that the people that
have that will have such a massive advantage
over everyone else that the gap between the haves
and have -nots will be even further, and it'll
be more polarizing. This is something I've changed
my mind on. Someone at OpenAI said to me a few
years ago, like, you really can't just let some
people merge without a plan because it could
be such an incredible distortion of power. And
then we're going to have to have some sort of
societal discussion about this. Yeah. That seems
real. I think so at this point. Especially if
it's as effective as... AGI is, or as, excuse
me, ChatGPT is. ChatGPT is so amazing. When you
enter into it information, you ask it questions,
and it can give you answers, and you can ask
it to code a website for you, and it does it
instantly, and it solves problems that literally
you would have to take decades to try to solve,
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
enhanced. We haven't evolved. 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 fucking
psychotic billionaire who now gets this implant.
and 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 there on out. 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 GPT -7 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 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 minds and other people
can't when one person has a completely accurate
forecast of all of the trends in terms of stocks
and yeah 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 and 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 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, especially like differentially
massive amounts, maybe more than the interface
itself. I think that certainly is going to play
a massive factor in the amount of power and influence
a 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 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 truly conceptualize
them because we don't have the context. We don't
have that ability and that possibility currently.
We can just guess. But when it does get implemented,
that you're dealing with a completely different
being. The only true thing 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? 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 as true for as OpenAI is 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.
But even that, and I bet those people really
are like, hmm, this is weird to be them. But
it's certainly weird enough for me that it ups
my simulation hypothesis probability somewhat.
If you had to give a guess, when you think about
the possibility of simulation theory, what kind
of percentage do you— I've never known how to
put any number on it. Like, you know, every argument
that I've read written explaining why it's like
super high probability, that all seems reasonable
to me. It feels impossible to reason about, though.
What about you? Yeah, same thing. I'd go maybe.
But it's still what it is and I have to exist.
That's the main thing is I think it doesn't matter.
I think it's like, okay. It kind of – it definitely
matters, I guess, but there's not a way to know
currently and also – What matters though? Well,
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 mate and breed and that this creates more
of us. And that hopefully as society advances
and we acquire more information, more understanding
and knowledge, this next version of society will
be superior to the version. 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. Like just inarguably. Unless you really
do prefer the simple life that you see on Yellowstone
or something. It's like what we're dealing with
now. First of all. Access to information, the
lack of ignorance. 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
of 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 differently. 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 simulation,
if you just live your life as if it's a simulation,
is that – I don't know if that's the solution.
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 what are the rules of the simulation?
How does it work? Is that simulation fair and
equitable and much more reasonable and peaceful?
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 angst of crime and violence and the things
that we truly are terrified of, there will be
nonexistent in this simulation. Yeah. I mean,
if we keep going, it seems like if you just extrapolate
from where VR is now. Did you see the podcast
that Lex Friedman did with Mark Zuckerberg? I
saw some clips, but I haven't got to watch all
of them. Bizarre, right? So they're essentially
using very realistic physical avatars in the
metaverse. Like, that's... That's step one. Maybe
that's step three. Maybe it's a little bit 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 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 sentient 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 -like
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
and 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 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 riddled
with Adderall that we have no concept or worry
of the consequences. And someone's like, I'll
fucking press it. And they press it and boom,
we start from scratch every 14 billion years.
And 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
steals. It does a bunch of things that it shouldn't
do. It pollutes. It does all these things that
are terrible. But it also. It 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 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 forefront of it? Technology. Technology is
the most transformative, the most spectacular,
the most interesting thing that we create and
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 get used
to anything pretty quickly. Anything. 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, well, what is it doing? Oh,
it keeps making better things. It's going to
keep making better things. Well, if it keeps
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 small multicellular life form stage. Well,
what if that... version becomes a fucking oppenheimer
what if that version because like if it scales
up so far yeah 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 push this envelope of creativity and of technological
power. I guess it comes down to maybe a definitional
disagreement about… What you mean by it becomes
a god. I can totally – 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 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 fucked up word because
it's just been so co -opted. But, you know, I
was having this conversation with Stephen Meyer,
who is a physicist. I believe he's a physicist.
And he's also religious. It was a real weird
conversation, very fascinating conversation.
What kind of religion? A believer in Christ.
Yeah, he even believes in the resurrection, which
I found very interesting. But, you know, 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. Like a comic, like, oh, I got this
bit on train travel. And they tell you the bit.
Like that's what it's like. He has bits on why
he believes in Jesus and why he believes. And
very, very intelligent guy. But I propose the
question, when we're thinking about God, what
if instead of God created the universe, what
if the universe is God? And the creative force
of all life and of 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
any other religions for me. And that is – when
I do psychedelics, I get that feeling. I get
that feeling like there's this insane soup. of
like innovation and and and connectivity that
exists all around us but our minds are so primal
we're this fucking 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 uh shane against the machine
who's this artist who created this it's a chimpanzee
skull that he made out of zildjian symbols so
you see that it's got a little zildjian he left
that on the back and he just made this dope art
piece cool It's just cool. But I wonder if our
limitations are that we are an advanced version
of primates. We still have all these things that
we talk about, jealousy, envy, anxiety, lust,
anger, fear, violence, all these things that
are 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 intelligent life becomes
more intelligent and we create a version of intelligent
life, that's far more intelligent than what we
are. We're 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? I bet
he'd be much more impressed with the phone than
Chachi PT. I think he would 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
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 fucking know it's not. Like, we
have satellites. We send... literal cameras into
orbit take photos of things no I totally get
that I just 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 alright 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 2000 years and there was like a phone that
would you have no model for that you didn't get
to get there gradually yeah no you didn't get
My friend Eddie Griffin has a joke about that.
He's about how Alexander Graham Bell had to be
doing Coke. He goes, because only someone on
Coke would be like, I want to talk to someone
who's not even here. And 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. It seems to me like it
just makes people angry and chaotic. Yeah, a
little of that. But they also have ideas. Yeah,
I mean, but back to this, where does it go? If
it keeps going, it has to go to some impossible
level of capability. I mean, just think of what
we're able to do now with nuclear power and nuclear
bombs. hypersonic missiles and 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 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 reestablish society. I mean,
this is the Younger Dryas Impact Theory that
allowed 11 ,800 years ago at the end of the Ice
Age that we were hit by multiple comets that
caused the instantaneous melting of the ice caps
over North America. Flooded everything. Flooded
everything. It's the source of the flood myths
from the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Bible and
all those things. And also there's physical evidence
of it when they do core samples. There's high
levels of iridium. which is very common in space,
very rare on Earth. There's micro diamonds that
are from impacts, and it's like 30 % of the Earth
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 impact. Yeah,
I've been watching that with interest. Yeah.
Randall Carlson is the greatest guy to pay attention
to when it comes 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
polar caps, and that it just washed this wave
of impossible water through 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 we're just
the survivors. And that we have reemerged in
that society and human civilization occasionally
gets set back to a primal place. Yeah. You know,
who knows? If you're right that what happens
here is we kind of edit out all of 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 haves 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
we didn't mitigate the human biological problems,
the reward systems that we have. That I've got
to have more and you've got to have less. Yes,
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 when
Elon was calling for a pause on AI? He was starting
an AGI company while he was doing that. Yeah.
Didn't he start it 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
them, join them thing? 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 best. 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 contact with 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 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, I think, one of the
dirty secrets of the field. It's like we have
this one way to make progress. We can understand
and push on deep learning more, and that can
be used in different ways, but I think it's that
same technique that's going to help us eventually
solve the safety. 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. 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? 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 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. and through the implementation of this
technology, it will make translation instantaneous
and easy. Well, that's already happened. Right.
But, I mean, it hasn't happened in real time
to the point where you can accurately communicate.
Very soon. Very soon. Very soon. Yeah. 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
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? You know, maybe you can't
go all the way there and say we're just going
to have one global effort. But 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. There have been
similar things in the world of biology. I think
we'll get there. That's a good example, nuclear
weapons. 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. 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
was 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
right. It's remarkable. I would not have predicted
that, I think, if I could teleport back to 45.
No. I 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 threat of mutually
assured destruction. Self -destruction, destruction,
universe. I mean, the whole world. We have enough
weapons to literally make the world uninhabitable.
Totally. And because of that, we haven't done
it, which is a good sign. I was going to say,
I think that should give some hope. Yeah, it
should. I mean, Steven Pinker gets a lot of shit
for his work because he just sort of downplays.
violence today. But it's not that he's downplaying
violence today. He's just looking at statistical
trends. If you're looking 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? Why can't someone say,
sure, we still have problems, but it's getting
better? Because people don't want to say that.
Especially people who are activists. They're
completely... engrossed in this idea that there's
problems today. And these problems are huge.
And there's Nazis. 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. Yeah, I guess that. To 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 are solutions
to those problems become their life's work. And
someone comes along and says, actually, life
is safer than it's ever been before. Interactions
with police is safer. I can see that that's deeply
invalidated. Yeah. But also true. And again,
what is the problem? Why can't people recognize
that? Well, it's the primate brain. I mean, it's
all the problems that we highlighted earlier.
And that might be the solution to overcoming
that is through technology. And that might be
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 might be our bottleneck,
is that we just still are dealing with this primate
body. And that something like artificial general
intelligence or something like some implemented
form of engaging with it, whether it's... neural
link, 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 atomic bomb out of it. That's wild. That's
fucking 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 think it is one of these things that
will be tremendously net beneficial. Yeah. 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 I think this will
be the most powerful tool we have yet created
to help us go do that. I think you're right.
And this was an awesome conversation. Thanks
for having me. Thank you for being here. I really
appreciate it. And thanks for everything. Keep
us posted. Will do. And if you create Hal, let
us know. All right. Thank you. Thank you. Bye,
everybody.