In this episode of the podcast, we have a special guest on the show, a man who has been in the field of artificial intelligence for over 60 years. He's a technologist, a musician, a painter, an inventor, an artist, a writer, a composer, and an inventor's wife. And he's also the creator of the world's first artificial intelligence (AI) music. We talk about what it means to be an AI artist, and how AI has changed the way we think about art, music, and other forms of art, and the impact it can have on our everyday lives. We also talk about the dangers of AI, and what it could mean for the future of the human experience, and why it's not as good as it used to be. This episode was produced by Alex Blumberg and edited by Annie-Rose Strasser. Our theme song is Come Alone by my main amigo, Evan Handyside, and our ad music is by Ian Dorsch. Please rate, review, and subscribe to our podcast on Apple Podcasts. Have a question or suggestion for our next episode? Send us an e-mail at sws@whatiwatchedtonight.co.uk and we'll get it on the next episode! Thanks again for listening! Timestamps: 1:00:00 - What's your favorite piece of art? 2:30 - What do you think of AI? 3:40 - Is AI better than human creativity? 4:15 - What are your favorite art form? 5: What would you like to see in an AI machine? 6: What are you scared of? 7:00 8:50 - What is your favorite kind of artist? 9:20 - What does AI do better? 10:10 - How AI is better than a robot? 11:30 | What would AI be better than humans? 12:00 | What can you imagine? 13: Is AI more than a human experience? 14:10 | What is the limit? 15: How will AI match a human? 16: What will AI be the best? 17:40 | What are we going to be a better human experience by 2029? 21: What's the limit of AI in the future? 19:30 22:40 Can AI match human experience ?
00:02:35.000And you could feed in music, like it could feed in, let's say, Mozart or Chopin, and it would figure out how they created melodies and then write melodies in the same style.
00:02:49.000So you could actually tell this is Mozart, this is Chopin.
00:02:53.000It wasn't as good, but it's the first time that that had been done.
00:03:04.000Because now they can do some pretty extraordinary things.
00:03:07.000Yeah, it's still not up to what humans can do, but it's getting there, and it's actually pleasant to listen to.
00:03:16.000We still have a while to do art, both art, music, so on.
00:03:23.000Well, one of the main arguments against AI art comes from actual artists who are upset that what essentially they're doing is they're, like you could say, write, draw a paint or create a painting in the style of Frank Frazetta,
00:03:39.000And what it would be would be they would take all of Frazetta's work that he's ever done, which is all documented on the internet, and then you create an image of That's representative of that.
00:03:52.000So you're essentially, in one way or another, you're kind of taking from the art.
00:05:20.000AI has invented moves that have now been implemented by humans in a very complex game that they never thought that AI was going to be able to be because it requires so much creativity.
00:10:25.000Has the function of it increased exponentially as well?
00:10:30.000Because what I had understood was that there was a bottleneck in the technology as far as how much you could extract from the Sun from those panels.
00:10:54.000And if you look at the curve, we'll be getting 100% of all the energy we need in 10 years.
00:11:01.000The person who told me that was Elon, and Elon was telling me that this is the reason why you can't have a fully solar-powered electric car, because it's not capable of absorbing that much from the sun with a small panel like that.
00:11:11.000He said there's a physical limitation in the panel size.
00:11:15.000No, I mean, it's increased 99.7% since we started.
00:11:46.000So you don't have to get it all from a solar panel that fits in a car.
00:11:52.000The concept was, like, could you make a solar-paneled car, a car that has solar panels on the roof, and would that be enough to power the car?
00:12:12.000He thought that there's a limitation of the amount of energy you can get from the sun, period, how much it gives out and how much those solar panels can absorb.
00:12:20.000Well, you're not gonna be able to get it all from the solar panel that fits in a car.
00:12:24.000You're gonna have to store some of that energy.
00:13:21.000I was not aware that we were anywhere near that kind of timeline.
00:13:25.000Well, that's because people are not taking into account exponential growth.
00:13:30.000So the exponential growth also of the grid?
00:13:33.000Because just to pull the amount of power that you would need to charge, you know, X amount of million, if everyone has an electric vehicle by 2035, let's say then, just the amount of change you would need on the grid would be pretty substantial.
00:13:49.000Well, we're making exponential gains on that as well.
00:14:15.000Is the bottleneck a battery technology?
00:14:18.000And how close are they to solving some of these problems, like conflict minerals and the things that we need in order to power these batteries?
00:14:28.000I mean, our ability to store energy is also growing exponentially.
00:14:33.000So putting all that together, we'll be able to power everything we need within 10 years.
00:16:26.000So it gives you some answer And if the answer's not there, it just makes something up.
00:16:34.000It's the best answer, but the best answer isn't very good because it doesn't know the answer.
00:16:40.000And the way to fix hallucinations is to actually give it more capabilities to memorize things and give it more information so it knows the answer to it.
00:16:51.000If you tell an answer to a question, it will remember that and give you that correct answer.
00:16:59.000But these models, we don't know everything.
00:17:07.000We have to be able to scan an answer to every single question, which we can't quite do.
00:17:14.000It would be actually better if it could actually answer, well, gee, I don't know that.
00:17:19.000Like, in particular, like, say, when it comes to exploration of the universe, if there's a certain amount of, I mean, a vast amount of the universe we have not explored.
00:17:29.000So if it has to answer questions about that, it would just come up with an answer?
00:17:33.000Right, it'll just come up with an answer, which will likely be wrong.
00:18:01.000But large language models don't have that capability.
00:18:06.000So it'd be good, actually, if they knew that they were wrong.
00:18:09.000They'd also tell us what we have to fix.
00:18:13.000What about the idea that AI models are influenced by ideology?
00:18:19.000That AI models have been programmed with certain ideologies?
00:18:23.000I mean, they do learn from people, and people have ideologies, some of which are not correct, and that's a large way in which it will make things up,
00:18:44.000So right now, If somebody has access to a good search engine, they will check before they actually answer something with a search engine to make sure that it's correct.
00:18:58.000Because search engines are generally much more accurate.
00:19:04.000When it comes to this idea that people enter information into a computer and the computer relies on ideology, do you anticipate that with artificial general intelligence that will be agnostic to ideology, that it will be able to reach a point where instead of deciding things based on social norms or whatever the culture is accepted currently,
00:19:28.000that it would look at things more objectively and rationally?
00:19:33.000But we still call it artificial general intelligence, even if it didn't do that.
00:19:39.000And people certainly are influenced by whatever their people that they respect That field is correct and will be as influenced as people are.
00:19:59.000And we'll still call it artificial general intelligence.
00:20:05.000We are starting to check what large language models come up with with search engines and that's actually making them more correct.
00:20:16.000But we have to actually continue on this curve.
00:20:18.000We need more data to be able to store everything.
00:20:22.000This is not enough data to be able to store everything correctly.
00:20:26.000This is a large amount of large language models for which we don't have storage for the data.
00:20:36.000So that's what's holding us back is data and storage?
00:20:38.000Yeah, we also have to have the correct storage.
00:20:43.000So that's really where the effort is going, to be able to get rid of these hallucinations.
00:20:51.000That's a fun thing to say, hallucinations in terms of artificial intelligence.
00:20:56.000Well, we usually come up with wrong things.
00:20:58.000Like large language models is not really the correct way to talk about this.
00:21:03.000It does know language, but there's a lot of other things it knows.
00:21:08.000We're using them now to come up with medicines.
00:21:20.000For example, the Moderna vaccine, we wrote down every possible type of medicine that might be That might work.
00:21:40.000It was actually several billion mRNA sequences.
00:21:44.000And we then tested them all and did that in two days.
00:21:50.000So I actually came up with, tested several billion and decided on it in two days.
00:22:15.000So for machines, when they start testing medications with machines, how will they audit that?
00:22:21.000So the concept will be that you take into account biological variability, all the different factors that would lead to a person to have an adverse reaction to a certain compound, and then you program all the known data about how things interact with the body?
00:23:03.000But the question would be, like, who's in charge of that data and, like, how does that get resolved?
00:23:09.000And if artificial intelligence is still prone to hallucinations and they start using those hallucinations to justify medications, that could be a bit of an issue, especially if it's controlled by a corporation that wants to make a lot of money.
00:23:23.000Well, that's the issue, to be able to do it correctly.
00:23:27.000So there's going to have to be a point in time where we all decide that artificial intelligence has reached This place where we can trust it implicitly.
00:23:36.000Well, that's why they take now the leading candidate and actually test it with people.
00:23:44.000But we'll be able to get rid of the testing with people once we can have reliance on the simulation.
00:23:54.000So we've got to make the simulations correct.
00:23:58.000But, like, right now we actually test it with people, and that takes, well, it took 10 months in this case.
00:24:07.000When you look at artificial intelligence and you look at the expansion of it and the ultimate place that it will eventually be, what do you see happening inside of our lifetime, like inside of 20 years?
00:24:19.000What kind of revolutionary changes on society would this have?
00:24:24.000Well, one thing I feel will happen in five years, by 2029, is we'll reach longevity escape velocity.
00:24:35.000So right now you go through a year and you use up a year of your longevity.
00:27:20.000And so your goal is to get to that point where they start doing the, you live a year, you stay static, and then eventually get back to youthfulness.
00:27:41.000Now, past that, this is for life extension, which is great, but what about how AI is going to change society?
00:27:52.000Yes, well, that's a very big issue, and it's already doing lots of things that make some people uncomfortable.
00:28:00.000What we're actually doing is increasing our intelligence.
00:28:04.000I mean, right now you have a brain, and it has different modules in it that deal with different things, but really it's able to connect one concept to another concept, and that's what your brain does.
00:28:20.000We can actually increase that by, for example, carrying around a phone.
00:28:38.000And without saying anything, you're just talking, and it says, oh, the name of that actress is so-and-so, and Yeah, but then it's a busybody.
00:28:47.000It's like interfering with your life, talking to you all the time.
00:28:50.000Well, there's ways of dealing with that, too.
00:31:34.000I have a slightly different view of that.
00:31:36.000I see these things as actually adding to our own intelligence and we're merging with these kinds of computers and making ourselves smarter by merging with it.
00:31:49.000And eventually it'll go inside our brain and be able to make us smarter instantly, just like we had more connections inside our own brain.
00:32:00.000Well, I think people have reservations always when it comes to great change.
00:32:04.000And this is probably the greatest change.
00:32:07.000The greatest change we've ever experienced in our lifetimes for sure has been the internet.
00:32:11.000And this will make that look like nothing.
00:34:35.000So we're making that much more in constant dollars.
00:34:40.000If you look over the past hundred years, we've made about ten times as much.
00:34:45.000I wonder if there's a similar chart about consumerism, like just about material possessions.
00:34:52.000I wonder if like how much more we're purchasing and creating.
00:34:55.000I've always felt like that's one of the things that materialism is one of those instincts that human beings sort of look down upon and this aimless pursuit of buying things.
00:35:09.000But I feel like that motivates technology because The constant need for the newest, greatest thing is one of the things that fuels the creation and innovation of new things.
00:35:22.000But if you were to go back a hundred years, you'd be very unhappy.
00:38:11.000The blow lights started 200 years ago because the cotton jenny came out and all these people that were making money with the cotton jenny were against it and they would actually destroy these machines at night.
00:38:27.000And they said, gee, if this keeps going, all jobs are going to go away.
00:38:32.000And indeed, people using Cotton Jenny to create more wealth, that did go away.
00:38:39.000But we actually made more money because we created things that didn't exist then.
00:38:44.000We didn't have anything like electronics, for example.
00:38:50.000And as we can actually see, we make 10 times as much in constant dollars As we did 100 years ago.
00:39:01.000And if you were to ask, well, what are people going to be doing?
00:39:04.000You couldn't answer it because we didn't understand the internet, for example.
00:39:11.000And there's probably some technologies down the pipe that are going to have a similar impact.
00:39:46.000What I think is that human beings are some sort of a biological caterpillar that makes a cocoon that gives birth to an electronic butterfly.
00:39:56.000I think we are creating a life form and that we're merely conduits for this thing and that all of our instincts and ego and emotions and all these things feed into it.
00:40:11.000And technology keeps increasing exponentially and eventually it's going to be artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence is going to create better artificial intelligence and a form of being that has no limitations in terms of what's capable of doing.
00:40:26.000And capable of traveling anywhere, not having any biological limitations in terms of...
00:41:00.000I mean, if you have a job doing coding, and suddenly they don't really want you anymore because they can do coding with a large language model, it's going to feel like it's competition.
00:41:11.000Well, there's an issue now with films.
00:41:13.000Tyler Perry, who was building an $800 million television studio, and he stopped production.
00:42:12.000Beautiful snowy Tokyo city is bustling, the camera moves through the bustling city street, following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls.
00:42:20.000Gorgeous sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes.
00:43:09.000I mean, no one took into consideration the idea that kids are going to be cheating on their school papers using ChatGPT, but my kids tell me that's a real problem in school now.
00:44:14.000I mean, once we have an ability to emulate everything that humans can do, and not just one human, but all humans, and that's only like 2029. That's only five years from now.
00:44:26.000And then it will make better versions of that.
00:44:29.000So it will probably solve a lot of the problems that we have in terms of energy storage, data storage, data speeds, computation speeds.
00:48:02.000When you think about the concept of integration and technological integration, when do you think that will start taking place and what will be the initial usage of it?
00:48:14.000Like, what will be the first versions and what would they provide?
00:48:31.000Some people feel that we can actually understand what's going on in your brain and actually put things into your brain without actually going into the brain with something like Neuralink.
00:48:42.000So something that, like, sits on the outside of your head?
00:48:47.000It's clear to me if that's feasible or not.
00:48:50.000I've been assuming that you have to actually go in.
00:48:53.000Neuralink isn't exactly what we want because it's too slow.
00:48:59.000And it actually will do what it's advertised to do.
00:49:04.000I actually know some people like this who were active people and they completely lost the ability to speak and to understand language and so on.
00:49:19.000And so they can't actually say anything to you.
00:49:25.000And we can use something like Neuralink to actually have them express something.
00:49:31.000They could think something and then have it be expressed to you.
00:49:58.000So how long do you think it'll be before it's implemented?
00:50:01.000Well, it's got to be by 2045 because that's when the singularity exists and we can actually multiply our intelligence on the order of a million fold.
00:50:18.000And when you say 2045, what is the source of that estimation?
00:50:29.000Because we'll be able to, based actually on this chart and also the increase in the ability of software to also expand,
00:50:45.000we'll be able to multiply our intelligence a million fold and we'll be able to Put that inside of our brain.
00:50:56.000It would be just like it's part of our brain.
00:50:58.000So this is just following the current graph of progress?
00:51:02.000So if you follow the current graph of progress, and if you do understand exponential growth, then what we're looking at in 2045 is inevitable.
00:52:11.000Not necessarily, but what people do say is that technology is too invasive and that it's too much a part of my life and I'd like to sort of have a bit of an electronic vacation and separate from it.
00:52:24.000And there's a lot of people that I know that have gone to...
00:52:36.000I'm saying some people just like being a human the way humans are now.
00:52:40.000Because one of the complications that comes with the integration of technology is what we're seeing now with people.
00:52:45.000Massive increases in anxiety from social media use, being manipulated by algorithms, the effect that it has on culture, misinformation and disinformation and propaganda.
00:52:56.000There's so many different factors that are at play now that make people more anxious and more depressed statistically than ever.
00:53:04.000I'm not sure we had more anxiety today than we used to have.
00:53:12.000Well, we certainly had more when the Mongols were invading.
00:53:15.000We certainly had more anxiety when we were worried constantly about war.
00:53:19.000But I think people have a pretty heightened level of social anxiety.
00:53:23.000I mean, 80 years ago, we had 100 million people die in Europe and Asia from World War II. We're very concerned about wars today, and they're terrible.
00:53:37.000But we're not losing millions of people.
00:55:19.000Hasn't happened yet because we do have people in charge and the people are enhanced with AI and AI can actually help us to avoid that kind of problem.
00:55:29.000By thinking through the implications of different solutions.
00:55:35.000Sure, if it has some sort of autonomy.
00:55:38.000But if we get to the point where one superpower has AI, artificial general intelligence, and the other one doesn't, how much of a significant advantage would that be?
00:55:50.000I mean, I do think there are problems.
00:55:53.000Basically, there's problems with intelligence.
00:56:23.000And how much capital is being put into these companies that are at the lead?
00:56:28.000And whoever achieves it first, If that is under the control of a government, it's completely dependent upon what are the morals and ethics of that government?
00:56:42.000What if it happens somewhere other than the United States?
00:56:44.000And even if it does happen in the United States, who's controlling it?
00:56:49.000I mean, the knowledge of how to create these things is pretty widespread.
00:56:54.000It's not like somebody can just capitalize on a way to do it and nobody else understands it.
00:57:03.000The knowledge of how to create a large language model or how to create the The type of chips that would enable you to create this is actually pretty widespread.
00:57:19.000So do you think essentially the competition is pretty even in all the countries currently?
00:58:04.000So do you have any concern whatsoever in the idea that AI gets in the hands of the wrong people?
00:58:11.000So when it first gets implemented, that's the big problem, is before it exists, before artificial general intelligence really exists, it doesn't, and then it does, and who hasn't?
00:58:22.000And then once it does, can that AGI stop other people from getting it?
00:59:56.000And if you were to ask people right after we used two atomic weapons within a week, 80 years ago, what's the likelihood that we're going to go another 80 years and not have that happen again?
01:00:53.000And if human beings were capable of doing it because no one else had it, if artificial general intelligence reaches that sentient level and is in control of the wrong people, what's to stop them from doing?
01:01:08.000There's no mutually assured destruction if you're the one who's got it.
01:02:02.000I know that's a ridiculous abstract concept, but if heaven is real, if the idea of the afterlife is real, and it's the next level of existence, and you're constantly going through these cycles of life, what if you're stepping in and artificially denying that?
01:03:39.000Certainly it could be something representative of what he looks based on photographs that you have, right?
01:03:44.000So things like that is a reason to continue so that we can create that And create our own ability to continue to exist.
01:03:57.000You talk to people and they say, well, I don't really want to live past 90 or whatever, 100. But in my mind, if you don't exist, there's nothing for you to experience.
01:04:45.000If they are experiencing something that's miserable, if they're suffering physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and they just cannot stand the way life is carrying on,
01:05:27.000That's what's interesting about the positive aspects of AI. Once we can manipulate human neurochemistry to the point where we figure out what is causing Great Depression?
01:06:04.000Think about how many people do take their lives and with this technology would not just live happily but also be productive and also contribute to whatever society is doing.
01:06:15.000That's why we're carrying on with this.
01:06:19.000But in order to do that, we do have to overcome some of the problems that you've articulated.
01:06:26.000I think what a lot of people are terrified of is that these people that are creating this technology, there's oversight, but it's oversight by people that don't necessarily understand it the way the people that are creating it.
01:06:40.000And they don't know what guardrails are in place.
01:06:44.000Especially when it's implemented with some sort of weapons technology, you know, or some sort of a military application, especially a military application that can be insanely profitable.
01:06:56.000And the motivations behind utilizing that are that profit.
01:07:01.000And then we do horrible things and somehow or another justify it.
01:07:05.000I mean, I think democracy is actually an important issue here because democratic nations tend not to go to war with each other.
01:07:15.000And, I mean, you look at the way we're...
01:07:23.000Handling military technology, if everybody was a democracy, I think there'd be much less war.
01:07:31.000As long as it's a legitimate democracy that's not controlled by money.
01:07:36.000As long as it's a legitimate democracy that's not controlled by the military-industrial complex or the pharmaceutical industry or whoever puts the people that are in elected places, who puts them in there?
01:07:54.000Do they bypass the safety and the future of the people for their own personal gain, which we've seen politicians do?
01:08:01.000There's certain problems with every system that involves human beings.
01:08:06.000This is another thing that technology may be able to do.
01:08:09.000One of the things, if you think about the worst attributes of humans, whether it's war, crime, some of the horrible things that human beings are capable of.
01:08:23.000Imagine that technology can find what causes those thoughts and behaviors in human beings and mitigate them.
01:08:31.000You know, I've joked around about this, but if we came up with something that would elevate dopamine just 300% worldwide.
01:08:55.000Maybe that's just a byproduct of our monkey minds and that one day we'll surpass that and get to this point of enlightenment.
01:09:05.000Enlightenment seems possible without technological innovation, but maybe not.
01:09:12.000I've never really met a truly enlightened person.
01:09:14.000I've met some people that are pretty close.
01:09:16.000But if you could get there with technology, if technology just completely elevated the human consciousness to the point where all of our conflicts become erased.
01:09:25.000Just for starters, if you could actually live longer, Quite aside from the motivations of people, most people die not because of people's motivations, but because our bodies just won't last that long.
01:09:43.000And a lot of people say, you know, I don't want to live longer, which makes no sense to me.
01:09:50.000Why would you want to disappear and not be able to have any kind of experience?
01:09:57.000Well, I think some people don't think you're disappearing.
01:09:59.000I mean, there is a long-held thought in many cultures that this life is but one step.
01:10:09.000And that there is an afterlife and maybe that exists to comfort us because we deal with existential angst and the reality of our own inevitable demise or maybe it's a function of consciousness being something that we don't truly understand and what you are is a soul contained in a body and that we have a very primitive understanding of the existence of life itself and of the existence of everything.
01:11:19.000I don't see the evidence of it either, but it's a concept that is not – look, just when you start talking to string theorists and they start talking about things existing and not existing at the same time, particles in superposition, you're talking about magic.
01:11:35.000You're talking about something that's impossible to wrap your head around.
01:12:03.000But if you look at people's If somebody gets a disease and it's kind of known they can only live like another six months, people are not happy with that.
01:12:42.000Or would it be like a lottery winner just goes nuts and spends all their money and loses their marbles because they can't believe they can't die?
01:12:51.000Well, first of all, it's not guaranteed to live forever.
01:14:44.000If you can take human consciousness and duplicate it, much like you could duplicate your phone, and you make this new thing, what does that thing feel like?
01:16:05.000If we figure out that if biological life is essentially a kind of technology that the universe has created, And we can manipulate that to the point where we understand it, we get it, we've optimized it, and then replicate it.
01:18:34.000Yeah, seven armed people is cool because it's like, you know, maybe five on one side, two on the other.
01:18:40.000No, I'm just curious as to how much time you've spent thinking about what this could look like.
01:18:48.000And I don't think it's going to be as simple as, you know, it's going to be Ray Kurzweil, but Ray Kurzweil as like a 30-year-old man 50 years from now.
01:18:59.000I think it's probably going to be, you're going to be all kinds of different things.
01:19:02.000You could be kind of whatever you want.
01:20:53.000I just wonder how much time you've spent thinking about what this world looks like with the full implementation of the kind of exponential growth of technology that would exist if we do make it to 2069. Well, I did write a book,
01:21:08.000Danielle, and This young girl has fantastic capabilities, and no one really can figure out how she does this.
01:21:23.000She actually takes over China at age 15, and she makes it a democracy, and then she actually becomes president of the United States at 19. She has,
01:21:38.000of course, Create a constitutional amendment that at least she can become president at 19. That sounds like what a dictator would do.
01:21:52.000Right, but unlike a dictator, she's very popular and she writes very good music.
01:21:59.000And this is one artificial intelligence creature?
01:22:52.000I mean, that's the best way of looking at it, that we become a completely altruistic, positive, beneficial to each other society of integrated minds.
01:24:37.000If you look at Steven Pinker's work, right, you scale it from hundreds-plus years ago to today, things are generally always seem to be moving in a better direction.
01:24:47.000Well, Pinker didn't credit this to technology.
01:24:52.000He just looks at the data and says it's gotten better.
01:24:57.000What I try to do in the current book is to show how it's related to technology, and as we have more technology, we're actually moving in this direction.
01:25:06.000So you feel it's a function of technology that we're moving in this direction?
01:25:30.000When you think about the idea of life on Earth and that this is happening and that we are on this journey to 2045 to the singularity, do you consider whether or not this is happening elsewhere in the universe or whether it's already happened?
01:28:10.000I think it's an argument that we aren't at the peak.
01:28:13.000What if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence gets implemented and then that becomes the primary form of life and it doesn't have the desire to do anything in terms of like galactic engineering?
01:28:28.000But even just incidental things would affect whole galaxies.
01:28:38.000Right, but what if it's like us, but it gets to the point where it becomes artificial intelligence, and then it doesn't have emotions, it doesn't have desires, it doesn't have ambitions, so why would it decide to expand?
01:28:49.000Well, we'd have to program it into it, but it would probably decide that that's foolish and that those things have caused all these problems, all the problems in human race.
01:29:32.000My point is that if artificial intelligence recognizes that the problem with human beings is these emotions, and a lot of it is fueled by these desires, like the desire to expand, the desire to acquire things,
01:29:48.000the desire to Well, the emotion is positive.
01:29:55.000But if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence is no longer stimulated by mere human creations, creativity, all these different things, why would it even have the ambition to do any sort of galaxy-wide engineering?
01:30:20.000If it realizes that, like if we're based on a very violent chimpanzee, and we say, you know what, there's a lot of what we are because of our genetics that really are a problem.
01:30:30.000And this is what's causing all of our violence, all of our crime, all of our war.
01:30:35.000If we just step in and put a stop to all that, will we also put a stop to our ambition?
01:30:42.000I would maintain that we're actually moving away from that.
01:31:24.000This is what made us, that got us to this point.
01:31:27.000If we create a sentient artificial intelligence that's far superior to us, and it can create its own version of artificial intelligence, the first thing it's going to engineer out is all these stupid emotions that get us in trouble.
01:31:40.000If it just can create happiness and joy from programming, why would it create happiness and joy through the acquisition of other people's creativity, art, music, all those things?
01:31:55.000And then why would it have any ambition at all to travel?
01:34:12.000I'm not saying that it's going to go wrong.
01:34:14.000I'm saying that if you wanted to program away some of the issues that human beings have in terms of what keeps us from working with each other universally all over the globe, what keeps us from these things?
01:34:30.000We're actually doing that more than we used to do.
01:34:48.000And if you looked at greed and war and crime and all the problems with human beings, a lot of it has to do with these biological instincts, these instincts to control things, these built-in genetic codes that we have that are from our ancestors.
01:35:06.000That's because we haven't gotten there yet.
01:35:09.000But when we get there, You think we will be a better version of a human being and we will be able to experience all the good, the positive aspects of being a human being?
01:35:23.000The art and the creativity and all these different things?
01:35:26.000I hope so and actually if you look at what human beings have done already, we're moving in that direction.
01:36:08.000It could be the end of the human race, right?
01:36:12.000Or it could be the beginning of the next race, of this new thing.
01:36:16.000Well, I mean, when I was born, we created nuclear weapons, and very soon we had hydrogen weapons, and we have enough hydrogen weapons to wipe out all humanity.
01:36:41.000So that is something that concerns me.
01:36:48.000And you could do the same thing with artificial intelligence.
01:36:51.000It could also create something that would be very negative.
01:36:55.000But what I'm getting at is like, what do you think life looks like if it's engineered?
01:37:00.000What do you think human life looks like if it's engineered by a far superior intelligence?
01:37:06.000And what would it change about what it means to be a person?
01:37:13.000I mean, first of all, we would base it on what human beings are already, so we'd become better versions of ourselves.
01:37:23.000For example, we'd be able to overcome life-threatening diseases, and we're actually working on that, and that's going to go into high gear very soon.
01:37:38.000Yes, but that's still being a human being.
01:37:41.000If you're implementing large-scale artificial intelligence You're essentially a superhuman.
01:38:03.000If you're engineering this artificial intelligence and you're engineering this with essentially like a superior life form— Well, you're making
01:38:34.000certain assumptions about what we'll create.
01:39:36.000The new software that they have, all they need is your phone number.
01:39:39.000All they need is your phone number, and they can look at every text message you send, every email you send, they can look at your camera, they can turn on your microphone.
01:40:48.000If you didn't have a phone, okay, and you were at home having a conversation, a sensitive conversation about maybe you didn't pay as much taxes as you should, there's no way anybody would hear that.
01:42:13.000But it can be done and if people want that, it will happen.
01:42:20.000But you recognize the financial incentive in not doing that, right?
01:42:23.000Because that's what – a company like Google for instance, that's where they make the majority of their money is from data or a lot of their money I should say.
01:42:33.000Well, I mean the – There's actually a lot of effort that goes into keeping what's on your phone private.
01:45:36.000If people agree that the benefit of overcoming that outweighs the loss in the financial loss that you would have with not having access to everybody's data and information.
01:45:48.000Well, I mean, what you're giving up is a certain type of data that you want, a certain type of capability that you could buy, and so they can advertise that to you and people feel that that's okay.
01:46:45.000But my point is, as this technology scales upward, when you have greater and greater computational power, And then you're also integrated with this technology.
01:46:56.000How does that keep whatever group is in charge from being able to essentially access the thing that is inside your head now?
01:47:09.000If you have a technology that's going to be upgraded and you're going to get new software and it's going to keep improving as time goes on, what kind of privacy would be involved in that if you're literally having something that can get into your brain?
01:47:25.000And if most people can't get into your brain, can intelligence agencies get into your brain?
01:47:29.000Can foreign governments get into your brain?
01:48:04.000What do you think about the potential for a universal language?
01:48:08.000Do you think that one of the things that holds people back is, you know, the Rosetta Stone, the Tower of Babel, the idea that we can't really understand what all these other people are saying.
01:49:55.000If we decided to make a better version of language through artificial technology and say, listen, instead of trying to translate everything, Now that we're super powerful, intelligent beings that are enhanced by artificial intelligence,
01:50:11.000let's create a better, more superior, universally adopted language.
01:50:24.000I mean, we'd lose all the amazing nuances of cultures, which I don't think is good for us as human beings, but we're not going to be human beings.
01:50:33.000So maybe it would be better if we could communicate exactly the way we prefer to.
01:50:39.000Well we would be human beings and in my mind the human being is someone who can change both ourselves and means of communication to enjoy Better means of expressing art and culture and so on.
01:51:01.000No other animal really quite does that.
01:51:23.000What are your thoughts on simulation theory?
01:51:30.000If you mean that we're living in a simulation, well, first of all, some people believe that we can express physics as formulas.
01:51:47.000And that the universe is actually able to...
01:51:51.000It's capable of computation, and therefore everything that happens is a result of some computation.
01:52:11.000And therefore the universe is capable of...
01:52:18.000We are living in something that is computable.
01:52:24.000And there's some debate about whether that's feasible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're living in a simulation.
01:52:34.000Generally, if you say we're living in a simulation, you assume that some other place and teenagers in that world like to create a simulation.
01:52:47.000So they created a simulation that we live in And you want to make sure that they don't turn the simulation off, so it'd have to be interesting to them, and so they keep the simulation going.
01:53:27.000If we can and we're on our way to creating something that is indiscernible from reality itself, I don't think we're that far away from that, many decades away from having some sort of a virtual experience that's indiscernible from regular reality.
01:53:42.000I mean, we try to do that with games and so on.
01:54:01.000Now you look at, like, the Unreal 5 engine.
01:54:03.000It's insane how beautiful it is and how incredible what the capabilities are.
01:54:08.000So if you live in that, that's kind of a simulation that Right, but as you expand that further and you get to the point where you're actually in a simulation and that your life is not this carbon-based biological life feeling and texture that you think it is,
01:54:25.000but that you're really a part of this thing that's been created.
01:54:29.000This is where it gets real weird with like probability theory, right?
01:54:33.000Because they think that if a simulation is possible, it's more likely it's already happened.
01:54:42.000I mean, there's really an unlimited amount of things that we could simulate and experience.
01:54:49.000So it's hard to say we're living in a simulation, because a lot of what we're doing is living in a computational world anyway, so it's basically being simulated.
01:55:05.000And if you were some sort of an alien life form, wouldn't that be the way you go instead of like taking physical metal crafts and shooting them off into space?
01:55:18.000Wouldn't you sort of create artificial space?
01:55:55.000And we could also experience people doing galaxy-wide engineering, not all of which would be simulated.
01:56:03.000So the galaxy-wide engineering is the main thing that you look at to the point where I don't see any evidence for life outside.
01:56:12.000Well, there's definitely no real evidence that we've seen, other than these people that talk about UFOs, UAPs and pilots and all these people that say that there's these things...
01:56:20.000Well, we basically don't see any evidence that life is simulated outside of our own life.
01:56:28.000I mean, we can simulate things and experience it.
01:56:32.000We don't see any evidence that other beings are doing that elsewhere.
01:56:38.000Right, but this is based on such limited data, though, right?
01:56:42.000I mean, look at what limited data we just have of Mars.
01:56:45.000We have a rover running around, satellites in orbit.
01:56:48.000It's very limited data with something that's just one planet over.
01:56:52.000We don't really have the data to understand what's going on in Alpha Centauri.
01:56:56.000It's possible that there's simulated life elsewhere.
01:57:00.000I mean, we don't see any evidence for it, but it's possible.
01:57:06.000Is it something that intrigues you, or do you just look at it like there's no evidence, so I'm not going to concentrate on that?
01:57:12.000I'm very interested to see what we can achieve, because I can see that we're on that path.
01:57:23.000So it doesn't take a lot of curiosity in my part to imagine other people simulating life and enjoying it.
01:57:35.000I'm much more interested to see what will be feasible for us, and we're not that far away from it.
01:57:44.000So over the next four years, five years, you think we're going to be able to far surpass the ability of human beings.
01:57:53.000We're going to be able to stop aging and then eventually reverse aging.
01:58:44.000Another way of looking at it, I mean, we have mice, and they have experiences.
01:58:58.000It's a limited amount of complexity because that particular species hasn't really evolved very much.
01:59:10.000And we'll be going beyond what human beings can do.
01:59:15.000So, to ask a human being what it's like to be a human being in singularity, it's like asking a mouse, what would it be like if you were to evolve to become like a human?
01:59:29.000Now, if you ask a mouse that, it wouldn't understand the question, it wouldn't be able to formulate an answer, it wouldn't even be able to think about it.
01:59:43.000And asking a current human being what it's going to be like to live in a singularity is a little bit like that.
01:59:56.000We'll be able to do things that we can't even imagine today, right?
02:00:01.000Well, I'm very excited about it, even though it's scary.
02:00:04.000I know I ask a lot of tough questions about this because these are my own questions.
02:00:09.000This is like what bounces around inside my own head.
02:00:12.000Well, that's why I'm excited about it also because it basically means more intelligence and we'll be able to think about things that we can't even imagine today.
02:00:30.000Listen man, I'm glad you're out there.
02:00:32.000It's very important that people have access to this kind of thinking and You've dedicated your whole life to this in this book Ray Kurzweil the singularity is near when we merge with AI. It's available now.