Sam Altman is a straight-up tech lord. He s one of the leaders in the development of artificial intelligence and founded OpenAI, a company best known for developing chatbot, chatPGP. In this episode, we chat about the pros and cons of AI, the fears and hopes, and where we re headed.
00:03:06.200And now he's, like, grabbing stuff and passing it between his hands.
00:03:08.280And getting to, like, watch it day to day is just an amazing rate of change.
00:03:14.920And then I don't, like – again, I realize it's, like – you know, I realize that, like, everything about babies are very finely tuned over a long period of evolution to make us, like, love them and be fascinated by them.
00:03:32.340So it's really, like, almost like a coffee for your heart or something kind of?
00:03:35.020I don't even know how to find – I've tried to, like, come up with an analogy to tell – because now I'm, like, telling everybody, you've got to have a lot of kids.
00:03:43.420And I've been looking for an analogy of what to explain.
00:03:45.920And then I always just say, like, I don't know how to explain this.
00:03:48.440It's just – it is the best thing I've ever done by far.
00:03:51.020I feel like a completely changed person.
00:03:54.940And I was, like, thinking the other day, like, there used to be all these other – like, at this point, all I do is work and hang out with my family.
00:04:02.140I was, like, I don't – I don't, like, really get to do a lot of hobbies anymore.
00:04:36.440Oh, that's a funny – like, at five or six months, they start to get, like, fun and you can, like – they're still, like, they can't go anywhere, you know?
00:04:42.940But they're, like, intrigued and stuff.
00:04:45.300They start to, like, smile or process more.
00:05:40.820Like, or I thought that would be, like, a thought.
00:05:42.780Like, I guess, like, that – for me, that's one of, like, my futuristic thoughts, you know?
00:05:46.520Like, I can totally accept that that will be what everybody does and that it's, you know, easier and we can, like, make it healthier for the child and the mother.
00:06:17.820People would, like, decorate it all up or write little messages on there.
00:06:22.280You know, I think there's another – like, another take I have on all of this is that in this world that we're heading to of, like, crazy sci-fi technology becoming reality,
00:06:30.920the sort of, like, the deeply human things will become the most precious, sacred, valued things.
00:06:36.040And that we'll really care about, like, the human experience more than ever.
00:11:21.200Is that – are there some subjects in, like, they're going to be a historian?
00:11:26.260Is that still a viable space of work as AI moves forward, do you think, honestly?
00:11:31.900I assume there will be some version of it that is – I think it's very hard to predict exactly how something evolves or predict exactly what the jobs of the future are going to be.
00:11:46.940Like, the – you know, not that long ago, it would have been very hard to predict either of our jobs.
00:11:56.080If you go back 100 years, the idea of, like, this CEO of an AI company or a podcaster, like, you know, probably would have been things that didn't seem to be the most obvious evolutions of the things people were doing at the time.
00:12:11.020Yeah, you just seemed almost probably crazy even in trying to explain those to someone.
00:13:15.240I guess I – if – when I take that avenue of thought, like, okay, there will still be this historian or somebody, it will be some evolution of that, right?
00:13:25.200That does seem kind of cool to me because there's a level of creativity in there.
00:13:28.980There's a level of, like, faith and spontaneity in there that I think is kind of exciting.
00:13:33.700So, yeah, I guess I hadn't really thought about that.
00:13:35.280As soon as I get stuck in this doomsday thing, like I just see, like, you know, like the history book closes and they're like, we have enough.
00:13:41.380We have all the history over here, you know?
00:13:43.700You know, people used to say, like, oh, there's no need for more music.
00:14:39.020I think it's important to be honest about that.
00:14:40.660There will be some jobs that totally go away.
00:14:43.420But mostly, I think we will rely on the fact that people's desire for more stuff, for better experiences, for, you know, a higher social status or whatever, that seems basically limitless.
00:14:59.260And human desire to be useful to each other and to connect with each other and focus on other people seems pretty limitless, too.
00:15:06.540So I think throughout all of history, there have been these predictions like, you know, we're going to like all be on the beach and work an hour a day or hour a week or whatever, and we're going to have unlimited wealth.
00:15:24.340They used to say, like, the Industrial Revolution, people were like, oh, you know, we just figured out how to automate, like, man's lot in life.
00:15:45.860If you could go back to that Industrial Revolution time and people before that were, you know, really on the grind, working super hard, trying to, like, kind of have enough food to survive.
00:16:00.100Would those people say we have real jobs?
00:16:01.980Or would they say you have unbelievable abundance, unbelievable wealth, so much food to eat, incredible luxury, and you guys are just, like, playing a game to entertain yourselves?
00:16:53.620I think it's great that those people in the past think we have it so easy.
00:16:56.440I think it's great that we think those people in the future have it so easy.
00:16:58.820Like, that is the beautiful story of us all contributing to human progress and everybody's lives getting better and better.
00:17:04.940Say we're able to get to that space, right, like the movement that happens with AI and with just technology, which will advance quicker, I think, which is one thing that AI feels like to me it's a fast-forward button on technology and on possibility because things can be – information can be quantified so quick.
00:17:22.480And a lot of, like, more menial tasks, even though they're not really menial in people's lives, but menial hypothetically can be done quicker to get a lot of the framework for things done fast.
00:17:36.240Like, how do we adjust our structure of, like, if some people own the companies that have the AI and then a lot of people are just using the AIs and the agents created by AIs to do things for them?
00:17:51.760How will society, like, societal members still be able to financially survive?
00:18:14.760And everybody has access to just this, like, crazy thing such that everybody can be more productive, make way more money.
00:18:21.880It doesn't actually matter that you don't, like, own the cluster itself.
00:18:24.720But everybody gets to use it, and it turns out even getting to use it is enough that people are, like, getting richer, faster, and more distributed than ever before.
00:18:35.340There's another version of this where the most important things that are happening are these systems are discovering, you know, new cures for diseases, new kinds of energy, new ways to make spaceships, whatever.
00:18:49.040And most of that value is accruing to the, like, cluster owners, us, just so that I'm not dodging the question here.
00:18:55.260And then I think society will very quickly say, okay, we got to have some new economic model where we share that and distribute that to people.
00:19:05.060I used to be really excited about things like UBI.
00:19:07.800I still am kind of excited, like universal basic income where you just give everybody money.
00:19:13.600Yeah, I heard you and Rogan talk about that too a while back.
00:19:15.680I still am kind of excited about that, but I think people really need agency.
00:19:20.260Like, they really need to feel like they have a voice in governing the future and deciding where things go.
00:19:26.220And I think if you just, like, say, okay, AI is going to do everything and then everybody gets, like, a, you know, dividend from that, it's not going to feel good.
00:19:37.300And I don't think it actually would be good for people.
00:19:39.640So I think we need to find a way where we're not just, like, if we're in this world, where we're not just distributing money or wealth.
00:19:48.020Like, actually, I don't just want, like, a check every month.
00:19:51.620What I would want is, like, an ownership share in whatever the AI creates so that I feel like I'm participating in this thing that's going to compound and get more valuable over time.
00:19:58.640So I sort of like universal basic wealth better than universal basic income.
00:20:02.900And I think I don't like basic either.
00:20:04.840I want, like, universal extreme wealth for everybody.
00:20:07.680But even then, like, I think what people really want is the agency to kind of co-create the future together.
00:20:13.960And in a world where it's, like, the AI is mostly coming up with the new scientific inventions, at least we've got to still have humans, like, invent the new culture and have that be a very distributed thing.
00:22:02.220And also, I think the idea that we are the ones advancing humanity gives us purpose.
00:22:09.200Like, we are the, like, yeah, like, we have some control over our own destiny maybe gives us this sense of purpose.
00:22:20.420And it feels like that we would lose a sense of purpose or that purpose would be adjusted, like, if AI is to really, you know, continue to advance so quickly.
00:22:30.820It feels like our sense of purpose would start to really disappear.
00:24:20.680The sun is the center of the solar system.
00:24:22.200But the solar system is at least the center of the galaxy.
00:24:25.100And now, oh, man, there's a lot of galaxies.
00:24:26.840And, oh, man, now we're this, like, tiny speck in this, like, very huge universe.
00:24:31.820And yet we still manage to feel all, like, a lot of main character energy.
00:24:36.880And so I somehow think even in a world where AI is doing all of this stuff that humans used to do, we are going to find a way in our own telling of the story to feel like the main characters.
00:24:47.420And I think in an important sense we will be.
00:25:13.100Yeah, that's the part that I think a lot of times it's, like, even though you can get into, like, these wormholes of, like, possibility and these fear holes of possibility or kind of these dystopian ideas, that in the end I'm, like, I'd rather probably watch something that's real, you know?
00:25:29.900It's, like, because I'm real, you know what I'm saying?
00:25:32.400Like, I don't want to talk really to a robot.
00:26:19.160But it was, like, I mean, it was what kind of we were talking about.
00:26:21.380I felt, like, useless relative to the AI in this thing that I felt like I should have been able to do and I couldn't and it was really hard.
00:26:30.860Yeah, I think that's – I think that feeling right there, that's the feeling a lot of people kind of have, like, what's going – you know, when does it happen?
00:26:51.520I don't think we know quite how that's going to feel.
00:26:53.620You just have to, like, approach it step by step.
00:26:55.520Another thing I'm afraid of and we had a, you know, a real problem with this earlier but it can get much worse is just what this is going to mean for users' mental health.
00:27:09.600There's a lot of people that talk to ChatGPT all day long.
00:27:12.140There are these sort of new AI companions that people talk to like they would a girlfriend or a boyfriend.
00:27:16.560And we were talking earlier about how it's probably not been good for kids to, like, grow up, like, on the dopamine hit of scrolling, you know, TikTok or whatever.
00:27:27.480Yeah, do you think that – how do you keep, like, AI from having that same effect, like, that negative effect that social media really has had?
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00:31:42.880And we haven't figured that out yet for when you talk to ChatGPT.
00:31:47.500So if you go talk to ChatGPT about your most sensitive stuff and then there's like a lawsuit or whatever, like we could be required to produce that.
00:32:16.800It's one of the reasons I get scared sometimes to use certain AI stuff because I don't know how much personal information I want to put in because I don't know who's going to have it.
00:32:25.260I think we need this point addressed with some urgency.
00:32:28.880And, you know, the policymakers I've talked to about it like broadly agree.
00:32:32.220It's just – it's new and now we got to do it quickly.
00:33:25.760But he's certainly seen to be kind of like a lifeguard for AI, like thinking about like how do we keep the pool safe, how much water should be in it, the chlorine, how many lifeguards do you need on duty, that type of thing hypothetically.
00:33:38.600And he was saying that some AIs, they have like deception techniques inside of them, like that there were AIs that would rather give you an answer that was possibly pleasing to the user.
00:33:58.320And then he was also saying that there were AIs that were developing some of their own languages to communicate with each other, which would be languages that we don't even know.
00:34:10.840How do you guys curtail that when those types of things come up?
00:34:13.440What does that even kind of feel like to you guys?
00:34:16.040Are these just problems that happen in new spaces and you figure it out as you go?
00:34:21.520There are these moments in the history of science where you have a group of scientists look at their creation and just say, you know, what have we done?
00:34:34.400Like maybe the most iconic example is thinking about the scientists working on the Manhattan Project in 1945, sitting there watching the Trinity test and just, you know, this thing that it was a completely new, not human scale kind of power.
00:34:52.140And everyone knew it was going to reshape the world.
00:34:55.380And I do think people working on AI have that feeling in a very deep way.
00:35:06.000It kind of feels like you should be able to say something more than that.
00:35:09.980But in truth, I think all we know right now is that we have discovered, invented, whatever you want to call it, something extraordinary that is going to reshape the course of human history.
00:35:41.200The transistor part that, you know, made computers and radios and everything else.
00:35:45.280But we discovered this completely new thing that enabled the whole computer revolution and is in this microphone and those computers and our iPhones and like the world would be so different if people had not discovered that.
00:35:56.060And then over the decades figured out how to make them smaller and more efficient.
00:35:59.380And now we don't even think about it because the transistors are just in everything.
00:36:03.080We have all this modern technology from that one scientific discovery.
00:36:06.480And I do think that's what AI is going to be like.
00:36:09.280We had this one crazy scientific discovery that led to these language models we all use now.
00:36:15.800And that is going to change the course of society in all kinds of ways.
00:36:21.340And, of course, we don't know what they all are.
00:36:28.600Like, that's what we're – because we don't know.
00:36:31.720You know, like, that's, I think, the tough thing.
00:36:33.760There's no time in human history at the beginning of a century where the people ever knew what the end of the century was going to be like.
00:37:05.320You know, there's a couple different things.
00:37:06.800But then there's also this part of me that's like, this guy is this hopeful guy who's, like, involved in this crazy space.
00:37:15.680And he kind of has this whimsical energy about the future, which is, in a crazy way, a nice energy to have about the future generally is that something could happen or that things are possible.
00:37:30.880So it just – yeah, it's all kind of like – I don't know.
00:37:47.700And it almost feels like you guys are the new Formula One drivers or you guys are, like, the new, like – it's like Mario Andretti or you guys are the new, like, Bubba Watts and all the – you know.
00:37:59.200It's almost like these are the new race cars that everybody's kind of watching position themselves.
00:40:15.320I don't think I can articulate anything where I would say, like, this is mission complete.
00:40:18.920But if I had to give, like, a self-referential answer there, you know, the moment where we would rather give our research cluster, like, our, you know, GPUs that we run all of our AI experiments on, the moment where we would rather give that to an AI researcher rather than our brilliant team of human researchers, that does at least seem like some kind of very different new era.
00:40:43.880Yeah, and at that point, who's even we?
00:40:46.840I feel like it's just you kind of, like, wheeling the stuff across the hall and, you know, like, who's going to, you know what I'm saying?
00:40:52.580It starts to get this idea, like, if we keep, if things were to keep leaving the people and go to the computer, you're just shoveling coal into the AI hypothetically, you know?
00:41:04.140Well, again, I assume that what will happen, like with every other kind of technology, is we'll realize, like, we, there's this one thing that the tool's way better than us at.
00:41:13.540Now we got to go solve some other problems, so let's put our brain power there.
00:41:16.100I, I still don't think it'll ever feel like we all just get to, like, push a button and go on vacation.
00:41:22.980Um, like, we will, I think as, what one version of this is as, uh, as capabilities go up, because as we get better tools, the expectation goes way up too.
00:41:33.480And so we've got to, like, yes, we get much better tools, but we have to do way more to remain competitive.
00:41:39.240Well, I think there's this hopeful idea, say if you come up with all these.
00:41:41.900Or maybe not, like, maybe, maybe the AI is just better than us at absolutely everything.
00:41:44.740And we just sit there being like, all right, that was cool.
00:41:47.580Yeah, because at a certain point, if something has all the information, right?
00:41:51.780If something has all the information and it can think and, and, and ponder and, uh, pontificate and serve multi options of answers, don't we then work in for that thing?
00:42:12.920So there's like, there's something about the way the world works.
00:42:17.140There's something about, this doesn't mean it's true forever, but there's something about what humans can do today that is so different.
00:42:23.760There's also something about what humans care about today that is so different than AI that I don't think the simplistic thing quite works.
00:42:31.080Now, again, by the time it's a million times smarter than us, who knows?
00:42:34.780Is part of you want to kind of get there?
00:42:36.840Like, how do we get, we're like, I open the door and you, and I say, excuse me, sir.
00:42:43.500Like, you know, when, when I was a kid, I, I sort of thought about these technological revolutions that happened one at a time.
00:42:54.600There was the agriculture revolution a long time ago, and that freed us up to do these other things.
00:42:58.940And then there was the like, there was the age of enlightenment, and there was the industrial revolution, and there was the computer revolution, and all these things happened.
00:43:05.640And I thought of them as like these distinct things.
00:43:08.180And now I view it as just this one long compounding exponential where all of these things come together.
00:43:17.080Each piece of technology is built continuously, overlapping on the one that comes before, and we're able to just do more and more.
00:43:25.860And so in some sense, AI is this big, special, unique, different thing.
00:43:29.080And in some other sense, it is just part of this long arc of human progress.
00:43:32.620We talked about the transistor earlier, but like, that was way more important in some sense to AI happening than the work we do now.
00:43:40.040And all this stuff has to like compound, compound.
00:44:29.740I think the, the part that I think gets spooky is I can't build any, I can build some stuff, but I can't build like any technological stuff.
00:44:38.500So then I'm like, dang dude, well, I'm not gonna, what am I going to build over there?
00:45:27.360Then that seems a little bit different.
00:45:28.760I think there's this idea in my head that I'm going to have to figure out all this coding.
00:45:31.880I'm going to figure out all of this different ways to do things to even have a possibility of, of use of myself in the future.
00:45:39.320No, I think this is, uh, without talking too much about the future and what we're going to launch, like the fact that you will be able to have an entire piece of software created just by like explaining your idea is going to be incredible for humans getting great new stuff.
00:45:56.000Because right now I think there's like a lot more good ideas than people who know how to make them.
00:45:59.940And if AI can do that for us, we're really good at coming up with creative ideas.
00:46:52.940I mean, those are some of the huge parts, but I think like there's like probably that.
00:46:57.440I think that in the end, I think there's a general feeling of like, well, if all the trucking jobs disappear, you know, if those become automated and like, yeah, if everything becomes a robo tax, like, you know, will that feel, you know, where will those people go for jobs?
00:47:16.720Will everybody just be dancing on TikTok, trying to get people to tip them for trends and stuff, you know, like there's part of that.
00:47:23.080I had this dream years ago that it all ends with everybody's driving an Uber and literally holding each other at gunpoint to be each other's passengers.
00:47:32.360Like, get in my car, because that's how bad, like somebody's like, I need to fare more than you do.
00:47:38.080You know, my whole family's in the backseat, sit, shotgun, we'll get you to where, you know, like people are literally holding each other at gunpoint to subscribe to their OnlyFans and stuff like it's just that dystopian or whatever.
00:47:49.980Um, so I guess part of that, but then there's a deeper part where it's like, yeah, what comes out of us if it feels like a lot of the regular stuff that gives us purpose that we know right now gives us purpose?
00:48:05.040Is there a new evolution of our purpose?
00:48:08.940Is there like a blooming inside of us?
00:48:11.080Is it this utopian place that you almost think of as like a heaven idea where, you know, people are fed and have enough, you know, can, are provided for, can take care of themselves?
00:48:25.420Or what, because purpose gives people work, work gives people so much of their purpose and so for to lose those things, what is it, what happens, you know?
00:48:31.580And I know I kind of keep asking that over and over again.
00:48:33.540You don't really have the answers and that's, it's okay.
00:48:38.160I mean, I think people really do love to be useful to each other and people love to express their creativity as part of that.
00:48:49.960And as the long-term trend of society getting richer has continued, more people I think are able to do, get closer to sort of expressing themselves in the best way that they can.
00:49:04.680Maybe like, you know, as recently as five or 600 years ago, not very many people got to be artists.
00:49:15.880There were a limited number of patrons that could like pay you to create art, but there were more than zero.
00:49:20.100And before that, there were almost none.
00:49:21.860And then you got this beautiful Italian Renaissance and all of this amazing art because there was like excess capital in the world.
00:49:27.660And now a lot more people can be artists or a lot more people can start startups, which is another, like for me, that's like my expression of creativity.
00:49:39.300And this idea that people can find whatever way they can to express themselves, their talent, their vision for kind of collective love of other people and a care for putting their brick in society's progress.
00:50:10.360What startups will look like in the future when people can kind of just say whatever they want to their AI and it can make this off of them right then?
00:51:33.640You would rather get that food from like the dude who's been making it and perfecting it on the, you know, that little pizza shop on the corner for the last 20 years.
00:51:51.880Because I think I start to feel like we're in this universe where it's like, you're walking down the street or something and like a Waymo goes by and it's like, eat now.
00:51:59.720And you're like, but, and you already did eat.
00:52:01.780It's just got a bad reading or something.
00:52:03.380It's got a bad valve in it or something.
00:53:07.880And that's not helping me like really accomplish my true goals in life.
00:53:11.600And I think if AI does that, people will reject it.
00:53:13.740However, if ChatGPT really helps you to figure out what your true goals in life are and then accomplish those, you know, it says, hey, you've said you want to be a better father or a better, you know, you want to be in better shape or you, you know, want to like grow your business.
00:53:26.840If you want, we can change that goal and I can help you scroll TikTok all night or, you know, eat the burritos or whatever.
00:53:35.060And I'll give you the GLP one shots and I'll make you as healthy as you can.
00:53:38.560But like maybe instead, I can try to help convince you you should go for a run tonight.
00:53:42.060And I think if AI feels like it is helping you try to accomplish your goals and be your best, that will feel very different than the last generation of technology.
00:53:53.240And that's where I'm like, and that's where a kid growing up right now, to them, that would probably, some young people might be like, that makes the most sense.
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00:55:45.420There's definitely been a lot of talk about like tech and governance, right?
00:55:51.400And I know we touched on it a little bit earlier.
00:55:54.040And there were people like lobbying and Trump had a big, beautiful bill for like a 10-year ban on state legislation against AI.
00:57:29.480I think like, I know you, how do you mean, like, do we give you guys lie detector tests?
00:57:34.220Are we like, how do we know you're like test the system?
00:57:36.420You can, anyone can like test the AI and say, if I say this, to say this, if I say that, but you, you touch on a really big point here, which is like hundreds of millions of people talk to chat.
00:57:46.080LGBT every day and it probably has like a big impact on what they believe.
00:57:53.340And so I think society's interest in making sure that we are, you know, a responsible, neutral party should be huge.
00:58:01.500Now people do test it a lot and I think that's good, but like, we got to be held to a very high standard there.
00:58:06.180But how do we like this as regular people or how do like regular people just hold you guys to a high standard?
00:58:11.120Like, is it the, I guess it's politicians responsibility or, I mean, these guys are idiots.
00:58:15.420Some of them are like 80 year old dudes giving thumbs up.
00:58:18.060That one guy couldn't get the wifi on.
01:02:23.460But like I can say with conviction, the world needs a lot more processing power.
01:02:29.960But if that looks like tiling data centers on Earth, which I think is what it looks like in the short term, in the long term also, or we do go build them in space.
01:03:24.500Where you basically knock two small atoms together and it makes a bunch of energy but no carbon, very clean, doesn't generate – you know, doesn't really harm the environment.
01:03:33.040And power can become like abundant and pretty limitless on Earth.
01:03:37.820And we get out of all the current problems we're in.
01:03:41.740And I think AI can help us figure it out even faster.
01:03:43.940So that's like a – you know, if you have to like burn a little bit more gas in the short term but you figure out, you know, the future of energy with that AI, it's a huge win.
01:03:52.640And would you guys sell tickets to that or what do you think that would be like?
01:04:13.940I'm like, dude, there's enough of that going on.
01:04:16.280Look, I think the – yeah, there will be some way to watch Fusion and it will be awesome and it will be like loud and bright and theatrical and it will be making huge amounts of energy.
01:04:26.660Even if you can't watch the two atoms hit, you'll watch them collectively produce fireworks.
01:04:42.580But to provide it at the scale that humanity will demand it, I think we do need it.
01:04:47.340Because people – the desire to use this stuff, people are just going to want more and more and more.
01:04:53.120And eventually, like the two things that I think matter most, the two kind of critical inputs are intelligence and energy.
01:04:59.460The ability to like have great ideas, come up with plans, and then energy is the ability to like make them happen in the world and also to run the intelligence.
01:05:07.020And I think the story of the next couple of decades is going to be the demand for these goes up and up and up to crazy heights and we better find out how to produce a lot.
01:05:16.900Otherwise, someone is going to feel like they're getting screwed.
01:05:53.360I saw where you and Joe Rogan spoke about there possibly being one day like an AI president, you know, where like what if you had this one kind of – let's just use the term supercomputer or this agent that was created that knew all the information and knew all of the problems and knew the best ways to solve them.
01:06:12.500Is that – do you think that something like that is becoming more and more possible one day?
01:06:19.580I don't know everything that it takes to be a president.
01:06:23.780But I do know it like takes a lot of things that I don't have to do and that people are going to – well, maybe I could reframe it to an AI CEO of OpenAI because I do know what that job is like.
01:06:37.740Like I think the idea to look at an organization, to make really good decisions – there's a lot of things you can imagine that an AI CEO of OpenAI could do that I can't.
01:06:45.860I can't talk to every person at OpenAI every day.
01:06:48.220I can't talk to every user of ChatGPT every day.
01:06:50.900I cannot synthesize all that information even if I could.
01:08:32.240Or you get certainly, like, yeah, like these council, these councilmen kind of, like, do you think there's bad artists amongst, like, these tech lords in these AI realms?
01:08:42.420Do you think there's bad artists out there?
01:09:02.220But I think most of these people running the big tech efforts are not in that category.
01:09:06.040I think people get blinded by ambition.
01:09:08.180I think people get blinded by competition.
01:09:09.720I think people get caught up, like, very well-meaning people can get caught up in very negative incentives, negative for society as a whole.
01:09:20.500And, by the way, I include us in this.
01:09:23.060Like, we can totally get caught up and we can be very well-meaning but get caught up in some incentive and it can lead to a bad outcome.
01:09:35.520There's a lot of talk about, like, Palantir and Peter Thiel and their company about being like a – you know, they got to deal with – from Trump about to have this surveillance – or not a surveillance state but to create a database on most of America.
01:09:53.080But it starts to feel like a surveillance state, you know?
01:09:56.160Do you feel like we will need something like that in order for the future?
01:10:04.720You know, do you feel like something like that is included in the future?
01:10:08.160So I don't know about that specifically.
01:10:10.100I mean, I think Palantir and Peter do a lot of great stuff.
01:10:13.980But, again, I can't comment on this specifically.
01:10:17.140I'll say generally, I am worried that the more AI in the world we have, the more surveillance the world is going to want because the tool is so powerful.
01:10:27.640The government will say, like, how do we know people aren't using it to make bombs or bioweapons or whatever?
01:10:32.240And the answer will be more surveillance.
01:11:32.620Yeah, I think that's been a lot in the Middle East recently is just, like – it's just such a gross displays over there sometimes of inhumanity.
01:12:15.780I don't feel that energy from him, but I – at all, like, I – in fact, I think he's been one of the most important forces,
01:12:27.240at least in my life, for questioning assumptions about the path that society was on.
01:12:32.980And maybe I was like, oh, I thought this was all going well, but maybe we are in a tech stagnation.
01:12:37.420Maybe we really do have this huge economic challenge that no one's talking about.
01:12:41.160And so I think these people who are just very – that think very differently, he would call it very contrarian, is super important to a society.
01:12:54.800Now, on the other hand, you know, maybe he – maybe he sometimes does things like this that don't do him any favors.
01:13:50.620Like he has these super different takes and then he doesn't have maybe the circuit in his brain that makes him immediately say yes and then say what he was going to say.
01:14:05.960You want – they're – novel thinkers have changed things throughout time, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, sometimes for the indifferent.
01:14:14.100But novel thinkers have – you've always like – I don't know.
01:14:33.600Well, do you think – and I'm just going to ask you real honestly.
01:14:36.240Do you think a lot of these guys have – I mean, you know, it's not like, you know, love on the spectrum is like a big show, right?
01:14:44.340People – you know, it's like – and those people are in love shit.
01:14:47.140Half the people I know are just, you know, barely – you know, they're crying in parking lots or whatever.
01:14:52.000But, you know, their spousal issues or whatever.
01:14:54.580But anyway, what I'm saying is do you think that some of the creators now and some of the tech lords are – almost have some tech built into them?
01:15:03.840Like almost a – I don't want to say like an autism dude because –
01:15:21.400And for years ago, I was – first time I ever met some people with autism, I was like, dude, these guys are computers, right?
01:15:27.560Like a lot of these guys are just – you know, they're some – they're kind of like a little bit of a cyborg in some way in the way that they think, right?
01:15:34.720You know, look, I'm – you are this like impossibly charming cool guy and I'm like kind of a lot more computery than you.
01:16:22.040I do feel human all the time, but I feel like I have noticed that I think extremely differently about the future, about exponential change, about compounding technology than almost anybody else that I kind of come across in regular life.
01:17:21.880Because, yes, some of us are – we can't conceptualize sometimes how you guys are thinking.
01:17:25.740It can't – I can't even like – we feel like we can't figure it out, you know?
01:17:29.540So it feels like it's almost like a unique – it's like are we all evolving into this new kind of species and that's where we meet the future at anyway?
01:17:37.920And you're just like the dang Paul Revere out there, you know?
01:19:42.880There have been two revolutions in computers in history.
01:19:45.460There was the keyboard, mouse, and screen, that thing that was invented down the street in I think the 70s where, you know, the people at Xerox Park figured out what has become the modern computer interface.
01:19:55.860And then in the early 2000s, I guess, Apple figured out this idea of touch on a device.
01:20:03.980And really, those have been the two big ones.
01:20:09.020I think AI is – it so changes the game that you can design a new kind of computer based off of a really smart AI where you can give a complex instruction to a system.
01:20:22.100You'll trust it to act on your behalf.
01:20:23.560It could like maybe be aware of everything going on in this room and it could like kind of not just be on or off but like lightly get our attention if it wants us to know something or maybe more aggressively get our attention.
01:20:33.020It could really be like following what we're talking about here and remind us both of things later.
01:20:38.420And current hardware just can't do that.
01:20:41.140The current kind of computers we have I don't think are a fair – they don't honor what the technology is not really capable of.
01:20:49.140So I want to make a totally new kind of computer that is meant for this world of AI.
01:21:24.320It can go like change some things in the world for you and think more and use tools.
01:21:28.260Like I think most people think of ChatGPT as this app that you can ask anything but it will become this thing that can do anything and that will change how you use computers.
01:21:39.380It will change how you do things in your life.
01:21:42.060I was watching the guy do it and it was just kind of fascinating.
01:21:45.060He was showing like one time he went to like a website and bought something that he needed and then now moving forward he could just be like, hey, go to this and make sure to get me these or go to – go here and see – go to the restaurants I like and see if there's any table available for 7 p.m. tomorrow.
01:21:59.620And it was able to book it and do everything.
01:22:01.820It was like having a secretary right there.
01:22:03.980When I first started using it, I was like – it was one of those moments where I could tell that, oh, man, doing this the old-fashioned way is going to feel like the Stone Age so quickly.
01:22:13.920You know, I'm going to like try to tell people someday like, do you remember when if we wanted to do something, we actually had to go like click around the internet and like, you know, look for a table and then if we wanted to move it, we had to like call the restaurant and that's going to be unimaginable because of course you just tell your AI to do those things for you.
01:24:08.040The best improvement I made in my life, in my, like personally in my life and for my own happiness over the last couple of years, a lot of bad shit has happened to us.
01:24:15.440To me, it's been like a crazy intense experience.
01:24:18.440And I just decided that I was going to like learn to love the hard parts.
01:24:24.080If I'm in this crazy moment, if I'm in this like crazy thing, if I like feel my emotions are high, I'm going to like make myself learn to be grateful for that, to love it, to find enjoyment in the, in the tension, in the competition, whatever.
01:24:37.280And it, it kind of needed to work because like so many things go wrong in any given day.
01:24:42.040But I was like thinking about, you know, someday I'll be like retired on my ranch.
01:24:45.700I'll be sitting there watching the plants grow and I'll be missing the excitement and the drama and the anger and the tension and the whatever.
01:24:52.120And so I'm going to be like grateful for it and like learn to have fun with it.
01:24:55.500And now it, like, I cannot believe that that mind shift, mindset shift worked, but it did.
01:25:02.660And were there practices like in a moment, like say like a moment came up, like some of the early ones, right?
01:25:07.020Because I agree with you that like having some mindset, like I used to hate traveling, like every week traveling for work.
01:25:12.260But then one day I was like, dude, you have to travel for work.
01:25:48.740I have like underground concrete, heavy reinforced basements, but I don't have anything I would call a bunker.
01:25:54.860Hold on, hold on, hold on, hold on, dude.
01:25:57.340Look, I'll let you, I'll let you keep me on the ropes in a lot of this conversation, but I am going to call that out as a dang bunker, dude.
01:26:11.140I have been thinking I should really do a good version of one of those, but I don't, I don't have like a, I don't have what I would call a bunker, but it has been on my mind.
01:26:18.740Not because of AI, but just because of like people are dropping bombs in the world again.
01:26:48.300If, could we, could we ever have instead of, so you start to see, say if AI comes over and there's this whole new kind of like, you know, I believe that one of the things that's been happening, there's been like a lot of like ice raids and people getting like taken out of their homes.
01:27:00.800And, you know, there's been a lot of crackdown because part of me believes that they're having to get everybody documented or online basically because they're going to start to have this like this like facial recognition everywhere.
01:27:20.580So, yes, this stuff had to happen because in a year or year and a half, you wouldn't even be able to be outdoors anywhere, anywhere without a drone or something noticing you or some camera noticing that you're not supposed to be there or you're not there with documentation, right?
01:27:34.160Whatever people's thoughts are on that.
01:27:36.120But just so part of me starts to see like, oh, okay, that's going on.
01:27:40.020Do you think we could ever then down the line have new countries like delineated by like almost like a new AI landscape?
01:27:48.580Like remember when on Snapchat, if you were in a certain realm, you could put like a filter on something and they almost created these new like geo barriers and stuff.
01:27:57.820Do you think we could potentially be looking at something like that one day?
01:28:01.820I know that what you just said is going to happen.
01:28:04.200I know that we're going to have like cameras on, you know, all over the place and it's going to make the cities way safer because everybody like if you commit a crime, they'll have like a facial recognition hit on you right away.
01:28:53.960It it it feels like we really do give up a lot to get it.
01:29:01.280But could there one day you think if we had that, then we could have whole new countries kind of that were.
01:29:06.380What do you mean by new countries in this case?
01:29:08.040Like, say, if there was this new kind of this new like layer, right, of a surveillance layer that's kind of in the in the air, then could that be divided into different realms?
01:30:39.140I think it's attaching my own perceptions of what I think about AI and stuff or the possibilities of technology, you know, like that kind of stuff, like that curmudgeoning energy.
01:30:47.460I think I was probably attaching it to you.
01:30:49.260And now I feel like I'm more whimsical about it, kind of like or not whimsical, but like let's see what can happen.
01:31:10.960I just I'm really I'm really thankful for you.
01:31:12.840You even let me tell you what I thought of what I was like judging and then and then sharing like kind of where I thought what I thought now in 20 years.
01:31:51.340Do the best work I can have the most fun to like have the most impact of the most interesting stuff.
01:31:56.460But then, you know, you retire and then you die and then like life goes on and people as they're supposed to go on with life and forget about you.
01:32:03.920And this whole thing of like I'm going to live for high and remembered after I die and my legacy and like you're dead.
01:32:11.040You know, do you have one of those deals where you save in your heart with those people?