AI DEBATE: “Most People Have No Idea What’s Coming”

To get us started, I'm going to try something. So, I'm going to ask ChatGpt what it truly believes that the world will look like by 2040. I'm going to ask it to be honest. Tell me what it predicts the rapid development of AI will lead to risks and everything. Going to set it to deep research, so might take a little bit of time. And while it's working away, it's going to be doing that. I want to know what your guys' actual predictions for 2040 are. Not best case or nightmare scenario. What do you think an ordinary Tuesday will look like for people in 2040? I think we're still around. I think humanity is still on planet Earth. >> Great stuff. >> Uh I think that power is probably a lot more concentrated than it is today. I don't know if that's in a few corporations or a few governments. Uh but I think there's probably a sense that the main thing deciding what's going on on planet Earth, uh is the the will of a few individuals as opposed to something spread out and widely democratic. For better or worse, I expect that the average Tuesday looks more homogeneous for more people and not too dissimilar than the average Tuesday today. So, I think we raise a floor more. But I expect that by 2040 because the physical world actually takes a lot longer to move than we think and because regulation around things like robotics is just going to take way longer than we expect. Political protection is the thing that's going to slow progress. Most people's Tuesdays will probably feel for better or worse a whole lot like Tuesday this week. Um, you're going to hate me for saying this, but I kind of reject the question because I think it's I I cannot collapse down my hideous almost like bipolar uncertainty of where we're going to be in 2040. [laughter] So truly, the first thing that popped into my head, the first when you asked the question was um a kind of chaotic, desolate, maybe there's a few humans left around as one possibility. There's I'm not saying that's a majority likely, but it's a slice. Another one is this like wonderful utopian like I call it my friend and I call it technopasuralism where it's like a very techno enabled world if you choose to live it, but actually we all choose to like return to our roots of like gardening and hanging out with friends around the campfire. Um, and it's like if you want to change the color of the campfire, you can, but actually most people like to do things, you know, grow their own artisal food, etc. That's like one little slice. And then another one is sort of we're all under the thumb of whichever um AI company gets there first and hopefully they're benevolent and and give us some freedom. Um another one is that we're all just kind of locked down in this horrible, you know, COVID on steroids type. No one can go out and have really access to anything because the the the ubiquity ubiquity of of uh dangerous technologies is is is too widespread. I I just that is really my only answer to the question. >> It doesn't sound like you reject the question. Well, >> sounds like you got a pretty good [laughter] idea of what's going to happen. >> I don't know. That's the thing. It's like it's it's a really fairly even probability distribution in my mind. Is it not? No. >> Do you actually We can go there now. Do you actually think there's a decent chance that humans are not around in 2040? >> Yeah. >> What would you give it? What's your P doom? Oh, by the way, we should also classify doom because I think part of the problem with the pdoom debate is that it's people use doom to mean all sorts of things. >> Totally true. Doom in this case is total you you class I don't want to define it. You define doom. >> Well, um I think understanding the way you're explaining it like that the majority of the maj majority of human civilization has you know a large percentage of humans have died or something. Is that what you're saying? >> Well, I I'm leaving it to you. Some people classify doom as total annihilation. Other people classify Doom as like a really terrible event >> like civilizational collapse, something like that. Um >> I really, again, I'm like not giving any firm answers. I because we're in this era of what we say and believe can affect the future so strongly. I don't like this idea of assigning a firm probability to it because I think they're so in flux. I think it's a significant enough of a risk such that we need to be doing absolutely everything we can to try and reduce that probability. Um so but I don't even want to give you I I personally think any number above 1% is close well certainly above 5% is worth considering and given that again it depends who you ask but many of the leading AI leader you know CEOs and researchers give numbers between 2% and 50%. That that's all in the bucket of we probably need you know we we are facing a precarious future. So, I I don't like the PDoom framing. I think it's way too overly simplistic. Um, it it's used as a kind of cudgel by both sides. >> The people who are very very strongly, like 90% use it as a cudgel. The people who think it's silly use it. It's just is not that helpful. I think we can all agree, I think, well, maybe you don't, but I think we can all agree that the future is far from certain and it can be very precarious if we don't get our >> Do I strike you as a fatalist? >> What do you mean by fat? I mean, I certainly I don't think that the future is certain by any measure. >> No. >> Yeah. Okay. But you were saying I think we all agree. You looked at me as though I I might not agree. >> Well, I I just don't want to presume. We're we're early in the conversation. I don't want to make presumptions. >> What do you think, Eric? >> I definitely agree that anything above 1% when we're talking about an outcome as catastrophic as extinction or mass human disempowerment is just way more than we should tolerate. And I think like that's a revealed preference of society. We spend a good amount of our GDP preventing nuclear catastrophe. We should probably spend a lot more preventing like the next pandemic. Uh certainly people were on board with that in 2021. I think the weird thing about AI is that this thing has so much upside and downside. Like it's very easy to just be anti-nuke and to be like antiviruses. There are very people who are like virus rights, you know. Um, but with AI, it's like this whole package bundled up together of the exact same thing that could free people to have an incredible Tuesday free from the obligation to to work and just able to pursue joy, whatever that means to them, is the same thing that an oligarch in Russia could use to have just like an army of workers that are loyal to them, increasing their share of the world GDP without any other human being to approve it. >> Yeah. post scarcity, totalitarianism, and destruction all just swimming around in the same pot, the same potential future. >> Technopesturalism also, >> right? >> I heard that. I like that one. Okay. But the but again the problem there are two problems here with the with the uh framing which is AI has a real jagged perimeter. So one, AI is not one thing. It's lots of things and robotics obviously introduces all sorts of new modalities, but it has a jagged perimeter. So when people are like, well, how is healthcare going to change by 2040? Unfortunately, going into the hospital will probably still suck. I mean, there there is so much to unwind about health care in the hospital that you probably will not want to go into a hospital by 2040. I mean, maybe something will change. And this is coming from from the child of doctors and and and healthcare administrators, but we will probably discover cures for diseases. So healthcare has this really strange exposure to a jagged perimeter where novel sciences accelerate in remarkable ways. But the actual care that's provided in the box cannot get better because of all sorts of terrible incentive structures which I know we you and I want to talk to. And this is also I think why in some ways the average Tuesday will look sort of uncannily familiar to the one that we live in today. And I think there could be some things that are remarkably better. I think we may actually be disappointed by the degree to which AI arrives to save people from the drudgery or monotony of of our of our lives. But the upside as you pointed out is quite remarkable and the perimeter that I think will exist that no one talks about enough is political protection. And the the the reality is I think we are not yet forecasting that the societal threshold what we are willing to let AI do is far less than like the fears around AI I think don't actually account for the degree to which government is probably going to step in very soon and say here are all the things that you cannot automate here are all the things that we cannot use robotics for. >> You think that's realistic? >> Very exceptionally realistic. Uh, I don't think it's going to be smart policy, just so we're clear, but I think it will be aggressive >> under what as in like you can't automate away. Um, well, they will they be giving like specific jobs that cannot be automated away. >> Absolutely. We already I mean we already have political protection for 1.5 million jobs in the United States. Europe has political protection for like 6 million jobs. Uh, gas station workers in New Jersey, uh, toll booth workers in most states, jobs that must exist, right? by by law. Tons of interesting that those two automotive associated jobs are protected but the people driving the cars aren't >> right. >> Well, they will be is my is my guess >> cab drivers will be protected. >> No, I think truck drivers will be >> because of the strength of the union. >> When people talk so when people talk about job automation there there are lots of reasons I think job automation is really is really problematic. One is that the technologists know nothing about labor economists. Labor economists know nothing about technology. Eric Bolson is sort of one the one of the exceptions. But one of the one of the other reasons is we we still forget how much political protection moves the technological needle. And we don't have highspeed rail in the United States. We could have highspeed rail. We don't have highspeed rail. And the reason we don't have highspeed rail is a policy failure. It's not a technology failure. It exists. We choose not to build it. We could >> do we mean I think that word choose is doing a lot of leg work there because it's no more individual is choosing not to do it. It's just this like dead weight of bureaucracy and like deadend loops of rules and so on. So it's almost like like bureaucracy has taken on a life of its own. >> It's an enormous amount of policy that was written in the 30s 40s and 50s passed largely in effort by auto the automotive lobbyists to make public transit much harder to build than it should be. which is why we don't build amazing public transit anymore. But that is very deliberate policy efforts that we have never unwound which is why it's so hard to do. My point is we are kidding ourselves if we don't think that that's going to happen over and over again. I mean the amount of populist support there is already for jobs. Doc workers went on strike October 1st 2024. They got a four they they the Harold Daget the head of Long Sherman Union said you cannot automate our jobs. They held a gun to the heads of the American economy and they got four years. Four years that the dock workers cannot you cannot automate the ports. >> Is this not just going to get eroded enough over time though? >> Yes. But >> we should assume that it that we continue to find ways to backs stop it. I'm not actually proposing that it happens in at infinitum, but I think it's the it's the piece that's missing in all this, which is that we should just expect an enormous amount of political protection. Can I ask if we pass a law today that says you cannot fire people period? It's illegal across the economy, what do you think happens to economic growth over the next 15 years? >> I think you see France. >> I I think like I'm not so sure it wouldn't still be unrecognizably fast. I think right now in the software industry, what you see is not software engineers getting laid off. you see each of them using more and more powerful AI tools that get upgraded every few months [clears throat] and doing more. And the way that you're, you know, seeing displacement show up is just that people aren't hiring new workers. And I think you could see that across a lot of professions. You could have every radiologist in the country keep their job until they want to do an early retirement and they're going to be, you know, more and more economically valuable because the law says you have to have some human box checking. But meanwhile, like the models are still getting better. And so the the people that are, you know, fundamentally making the decisions are are less and less the actual humans and more and more these systems that are becoming smarter and more competent. So I'm just I'm not that sure that's the right metric to be tracking like these, you know, the sort of power represented by these systems can can sneak into each of these professions without people getting displaced. >> I also would make the case that I think the world is going to change in profound ways. But when we assume that it it's going to change just because the technology can do it. I reference as much technology that there is a lot that we can do that we simply do not do today or that we that we are not allowed to do today. And there's an enormous amount of automation that would improve the underlying systems that we that we cannot instill. By the way, I I'm also the risk in telling a company they cannot fire people, just so we're clear, is that they would actually end up stop hiring. They would they would that would just drive automation at a ridiculous pace because they'd say we'll never hire someone again because if they suck we're married to them which is which is what >> I mean we're already seeing that with entry level workers there they're I mean >> it's again very unclear what the actual impact of AI has had on you know you speak to one economist who says it's already having huge effects others say it's not but the one thing they all agree upon is that young people who don't have that much experience are struggling to get >> that's fascroofing themselves from not having to displace people or get rid of them because that would be a horrible headline by just not hiring them in the first place. They're future proofing themselves for automation that isn't yet available. Is that fair? >> I think that's right. Uh I I don't know if they're thinking that far ahead or if they're just responding to local incentives. But right now, a junior software engineer is a liability before they're an asset. You have to train them up. They have to get all this context on the job. That's exactly the kind of thing that an AI can do right now for pennies on the dollar. Plus, they never take breaks. Given the trajectory that we're on with AI at the moment, how many people do you think will have jobs in the future? Will most people work? >> Um, depends what point in the future we're talking about. Um, again, I can definitely see a world where it is just, as people say, like, you know, fully automated luxury. Well, I don't want to say the communism word, but you know, whatever people refer to it as. Yeah. some if anyone's read uh the culture series right that that's like some far future thing where AI basically handles everything and if you choose to go and build your own house you definitely can but there's absolutely no economic reason exactly everything is artisal and so on um I think if if eventually that is where these things are trending and and that's one of the best case outcomes as well obviously >> one of the big concerns that people have is what do I do? It's interesting. The ancient Greek word for work was not at leisure. Uh and now people are wondering what is my leisure without my work perhaps. But for all of human history, there's been because you've had to negotiate with a scarce world, it's meant that you've had to lean into it and the pressure of that grain pushing up against you creates a degree of meaning. What do you think? >> Where does meaning come from in a close to postwork world? I mean, I guess we've seen something like this in miniature before. Like, we've had aristocracy in Europe for a couple centuries. The people that just sort of got lucky. They have a piece of paper that says, "I'm entitled to all the games from this piece of land. They don't have to work." I don't think they were all just suffering from malaise. They were like writing books and inventing calculus. And I I think like if we get to that world, I'm not that worried about people realizing like I can love my friends and family and I can pursue my hobbies and and you know pursue knowledge for myself and and find ways of making that meaningful. >> I I just worry that like that's actually a pretty narrow target to aim for. um because >> compared with >> I think like for all of human history we've been able to become more democratic because people matter to the political system. Like you just can't have an army, you can't have an economy without a bunch of people who are on board with what you're doing. And I I just think it's like really hard to underestimate how cataclysmic of a change it is if that stops being true. It's really nice to imagine that like whoever holds the cards in that world will just like leave most of Earth as like a playground for people to pursue whatever they want. But like if you're trying to be real politic about it, I don't know why you'd assume that that's just like what happens by default. >> And come back to the question of what will how will people find meaning? I think one of the few AI proof jobs that will continue to exist are sports. >> Everybody's going to be a sports star. Well, I know a lot of people will be sports fans. I think we're going to see more and more of that. Um, but like or even like games like poker and and chess. We've had superhuman >> human games of skill that are can be solved by, >> right? Well, and and what is a game or what is a sport? It's a piece of artificially constructed scarcity. >> We divide we we come up with a rule set. There's a win condition. Um, and then two or however many people go at it and we find out who's the best. >> And we've been doing that for years as a leisure activity. But people feel, you know, when someone wins an Olympic gold medal that is unbelievably meaningful. Is it economically useful or essential to the world? Arguably not. But and yet we keep doing it. And I don't think that um that's going to go away. Like we might have uh Yeah. like because people still want to watch the ch the chess world championships, right? We want to see even though the best AI in the world is a computer, we still want to see Magnus Carlson do his thing. Um so I think that is where we will see more and more of that coming about and it might be other forms of competition or just you know >> people leaning more into art, novel forms of art and and we might have Yeah. Like I definitely value I still value a painting that a human did by hand in today's age. Even though it might be as aesthetically beautiful as an AI created thing, there's something about the skin in the game that a human has put sweat and tears into something in their emotion um that is always going to be meaningful and I think we'll just craft out more and more of that. Modern wisdom has had many people come on this show and talk about from all walks of life something consistently which is their family and their friends. And I am just not at all convinced that we haven't known forever exactly why we're here. I think we I think the the thing that gives humans consistently the most true joy in this world is time with friends and family and physical community, places of worship, dining room tables and outside and everything that we construct around that is, you know, serves tribalism and pride and sports excitement. But if you act like true true technopesturalism is a dining room table full of food and candles o with laughter and the more I spend the more time I spend in technology the more time I don't want it in my life like the further I go into AI the more I'm glad it exists and the more I design my day without it >> and the more I have the more money I have the more the more everything I get the more I want time with my dad who's 78 and I just turned Yeah, just turned 79 and the more time I want with my wife and daughter and the more children I want, I can imagine the life that I want. Now, when I describe it, this is a problem. When I describe it, people go, "Well, that's your privilege. That's a point of privilege. You get to think about that." And I go, "Well, I actually observed that a lot of people get to think about this more than certainly more than our ancestors did. >> That's because of technology. We are we afford ourselves now the the time to think about all this stuff because we built technology that automated a bunch of stuff so that we could do a bunch of things that wasn't survive or wasn't specifically survive and now we find ourselves surrounded by chachkis debating [laughter] uh you know the French aristocracy you know and you know this is you know our ancestors would die of joy what a after what they went through all of our ancestors I'm sure you know all of us have ancestors that went through a lot to see us, you know, doing this. I don't think that changes. I do think that we should stop pretending we don't know the meaning of life. What I what really bothers me is when people go, "Ah, how will people find meaning?" Well, the same way we found meaning since we since God put us on this earth. I mean, it it's I that is where I take real issue when people debate why, you know, how will how will humans find joy? The hard part is unwinding now thousands of years of purpose and identity we've put into work. I do think that is gonna and if you ask me the hardest part of all this the two big risks to cut to the chase dehumanization humans finding more interest in a virtual or digital reality than a physical one because of brain re rewiring you and I have talked about this a ton I am terrified of this >> what the damage that social media and the device did to kids is is horrific and we we we can spend more time on this >> and I am worried about people having to rediscover their purpose without without I think we will toil for work. I think we will continue to find ways to toil for work. I do worry that it will be that unwinding I am this. I went to school for this. This is who I am will be really hard. And I think for many people the economic upside associated with automation will not actually outweigh the emotional downside associated with not even job displacement, identity displacement. 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Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to $350 off the Pod 5 by going to the link in the description below by heading to eight.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's ei.com/modernwisdom and modernwisdom at checkout. That's such a good point. I wonder if I always hesitate using the don't worry about global warming because technology in the future will fix the cost of creating the technology for the future to fix it thing. They're like oh we'll future proof ourselves by just hoping that we get there in in the future. But I do wonder if there's some sort of really advanced cultural reprogramming that could happen. What's the best kind of cultural technology to do a shake of the etcher sketch of what is expected by humans? Like how can we really have an onmass this gets perilously close to [ __ ] brainwashing, right? But like what what would that look like? What would that look like to try and unhook >> parenting? Parenting, sports, museum. I mean, we we've had it all along. I think we have just strayed so far from it with the screen. The screen is a demon. It has an unrelenting desire and appetite for our attention. >> More of a negative impact from social media or from AI. >> Well, one and the same, right? >> But AI define AI in this case, Chris. Define AI. the future, this sort of automation future that appears to be coming that will cause people to not have the typical modes of reward that they have in the past. >> The reduction of friction. Yes. Uh the reduction of friction is a is a whole other is a whole other risk. Creating a life this is a funny people hate this one too. They're like, "God, what a point of privilege you must have to imagine a world where things are so easy for people that it's too easy." But I do I do think we are we are dangerously close. I ask people all the time, if you could automate everything in your life, where would you stop? Because I do think people are going to have to ask that pretty soon. >> What's your answer? >> Well, I I sort of spelled it out. I mean, I I I would automate everything away that doesn't actually put me in more physical spaces with the people I love and and and doing things that I love doing, >> right? But we we probably all largely came from we're all of a similar generation. We all had somewhat largely similar upbringings, I imagine, where like family values are a core thing. Sitting down at the dinner table together, I mean, maybe you didn't all have that, but that was one thing my family always tried to do. This is prior to screens. I feel like the that's already eroding and the next generation um will be are already that that norm has gone and so they're going to be now sort of each it feels like each successive generation the the acceptable amount of technological influence grows right and and what concerns me is that this idea of we will okay I'm going to draw a line of where technology is acceptable is going to forever dissolve dissolve dissolve dissolve and like I can't I just don't know where like you're saying you're you're saying you hope that >> people will remember that it's about community that it's about family but if you have been raised in this completely atomized screenled world you don't even know what you're missing go back to that >> why have people not stepped in and stopped their screen use even if it's making their mental health worse already why is it that in a calorie dense environment people are still getting fatter like if we can just deploy our own bar of this is how much I should have of anything that too much of which is too good for me. How come we're overloading >> general? So, by the way, I worry about the screen more than almost anything else. And I I actually think that the risks of doom are grossly over exaggerated and the risks of harm on the way there are grossly underappreciated. And Gen Alpha is seeing what happened to Gen Z. Gen Alpha is using the device less and social media less. And millennial parents are taking pretty extreme measures now. I mean, it took us thousands of years to figure out women should not smoke and drink during pregnancy. It took us 30 years to realize kids should probably not have a phone all the time. I think that's progress. I'm not saying it's all I'm saying we will graduate to a new a new thing that people but I do think that people who have the means are using I I observe so many people using technology less where they can because it automates and improves so much more where they where they didn't used to >> where where do you have a boundary on the types of thinking that you outsource say to Chachi BT or Claude uh because the temptation is you know I was originally like I will never ask it to if I need to come up with a really good title for a new YouTube video or something, I'm not going to ask it for that. That's that's my soul. This is my creativity, I now just do that, you know, and and I have that again that boundary is getting eroded. One I thought was I will never ask it for advice on a gift to get for somebody. >> I've now done the same, you know, and and it's just becoming so rapidly normalized. Maybe that's opening up space for new areas of creativity in my mind perhaps, but I'm not convinced that it's not happening fast enough. Uh that it's happening fast enough to offset that erosion of thought. Essentially, this intelligence atrophy thing is interesting. Like if you see thinking as a utility, intelligence as a utility, would we say that because you've got a bicycle, you're not as fit because you're not running to get to where you got to? It felt like it was being augmented. It seems like there is something really fundamental uh and reliant that is being outsourced when you give your thinking over to a machine. >> I do think this can go both ways. There's this blogger that I love speed mowitz who's on Substack and he has this line he always goes back to like AI is the best tool we've ever made for learning things and also the best tool we've ever made for not learning things. like you can just turn your brain off and say like write my essay or you can have this like Einstein level tutor that you go back and forth with and and just get like so many more >> cycles of feedback on on on honing your own brain. I I've been trying to figure out like what the line is for me on on stuff like my own writing. Um and it's like really hard to not slip into the first category. >> I don't want to make this an age just how old are you? >> I'm 30. >> Okay. I the fact that we are having this conversation right now. The fact that you were able to do the research you were able to do going into this gives you a clue a hint that technology allows us to expand our knowledge if we are capable and interested of it in remarkable ways. Right? Like we people who have barely walked the earth know more about the earth than all of our ancestors combined. I appreciate that you are worried about thinking less. You're a real shark and I'm not worried about you getting dumb because of your use of technology. What you're what I think you're asking is is the average person gonna get dumb? Like I I think that >> No, I'm truly worried about myself. I've noticed I mean my screen addiction I'm I talk about it non-stop and I would say I'm no further in getting over it. I've been talking about it for years. I don't know about you guys. Like I'm just these little moments of silence. my hand just goes on my phone >> and if I catch myself, I'll put it away and I've got, you know, I've got the phone safe, I've got the brick, I've got all the like the the bells and whistles and yet it's just when you're because so much of your life is run through it. my work goes through it and then there are all these very predatory apps and I I consider like social media that for me it's chess.com is another one just like whatever the app is that get hooks your brain um these these super stimulus super stimuli um yeah it's it seems I don't know I'm like I have not been able to get over it and I'm certainly worried about the average person I mean maybe I'm worse than average I don't know but like how have you managed to it sounds like you've sort of the most >> my wife and daughter. I mean plainly like I I and spending a bunch of time with techn I love building with technology because I like automating the croft and drudgery and bad things out of the world. I like the idea that technology humans have a very proud history of technology. It expands access to so many goods and services so that we can live lives that our ancestors couldn't have imagined. And the more time I spend with technology, the more time I love not having it dayto day. And yeah, and and truly the my daughter's arrival was for me an incredible catalyst in realizing one the ephemererality of life and two exactly what made me most happy. And like I I love sitting at this table. Like I like this is this is this gives me exceptional joy that I would that's hard to explain actually. in some in some weird way. And and I I think that people will discover this. I'm I I hear you. I I want you to get I will remind you now now that I know. I will text you and say get off your phone. >> But you will do it. I bet you will do it. I like I bet that you will overcome this. I think a lot of people are on this journey. And I remind everyone that I talk to you, no one hates refrigeration. No one hates air conditioning. No one hates planes, trains, and automobiles. Well, I guess Europe hates air conditioning. No one hates uh antibi No one hates antibiotics. We hate the screen. We should just talk about it more. We hate what the screen has done to our brains. We hate what it's done to the next generation's brains. And AI arrives at this moment where [snorts] people feel so wronged by the cons by by the consumer version of the computer rightfully so. And they're wondering how much worse it might get for for them. And I totally understand that. And I think we should the way we move forward with AI is by acknowledging what the last wave did to us >> in my opinion. But I guess a lot of people's concerns certainly mine is that the new wave of AI and again we're using this term so broadly but let's say LLMs >> um and I think a lot of robotics and so on are ultimately going to be built under the same set of incentives that bought sort of our first wave of AI which are social media algorithms the the various uh I mean it's kind of like proto AI but the the um the reinforcement loops that they use to get us addicted to screens. >> Yep. those same incentives are building the new wave of AI and already you're seeing these issues with like sicker fancy and like um companies being incentivized to keep people chatting to their LLMs for as long as possible and we're already you know we've heard all the stories of like they killed they killed themselves and and you know those are extreme examples but there are so many people who are just spending you know you look at the usage rates the average person per day how much time they're spending talking to an LLM now uh so why you know how Do we to me the big question is how do we change the incentives? How do we change the game such that it doesn't just go down that same um attentiongrabbing like cannibalistic path basically. >> Yeah. And I think these companies are also seeing how people are responding to screens and and trying to adapt. I mean OpenAI hired Johnny Ives the guy who designed the the iPhone or the MacBook maybe both. Uh >> no one knows what he's working on but I think it's going to be some sort of you know >> it sounds like we do now. >> Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Do we >> tell us? >> No, it was it was leaked. Wait, if you don't know, I'm not gonna I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. Then maybe it wasn't a leaked. >> Oh, >> no. It is I think it is semi-public. It's is that he's trying to >> some kind of some kind of AI um mediator. Something like like a screenless AI, right? >> Yeah, it is screenless. Anyway, I'm not going to say it if you all don't know me. It means it mean it means afterm >> I do not want to be affiliated with any league whether it be semi-public. Go on. Well, I yeah, >> I do think there's this thing in AI where it's very easy to forget that the goalposts are constantly moving. Like usually we talk about moving goalpost uh as a sort of way of deriding people who said, "Oh, AI will never X." And then, you know, AI does X. People are like, "Ah, that wasn't the >> This is This is the Gary, this is the Gary Marcus problem, >> right? Right. >> This will never be good. Okay, it's good. They'll never make money. Okay, they make money, but they're bad. >> Never never try and nail him down to a B. [laughter] >> Gary, he's not here to defend himself. And if he were, he would threaten a suic. Go on. >> I'm sorry, Gary. I did not mean to say yes. And to to what Zaku said, um, but I do think there's a there's a correlated thing where when we're looking at screens, it's easy to say, "Oh, okay. Well, now we've seen what screens do and we can sort of like appeal to our wiser selves and and foster a culture where people are getting off the screens. But the screens are not the end of the trajectory." Uh I in chess for example like I I think there was probably an era when the AIs were just about as good as humans and people could say you know what like for the sake of keeping my brain active I'm going to like avoid looking at stockfish even though 10% of the time I I'll like miss a better move and now like you watch the world championship and as soon as they're done they're going to their laptops to just look up the AI analysis because >> there's poetry there. There's there's like an incredible move that's deeper than they could ever find out. And so I hear what you're saying that there's maybe a divide right now between, you know, some people who are more in elite discourse about screens and are thinking ahead about about how we can circumvent it. But I think that might be a pretty temporary window where, you know, we can recognize that there's not like that much to be gained from talking these. It's actually kind of slop if you see through it. the technology is like just going to keep getting better and I think pretty soon it'll feel sort of like giving up on a really deep profound experience to not have your kid chat with this >> the elimination of friction I agree is a huge issue including thinking friction >> but that stops but okay so I I by the way totally agree including thinking friction in plenty of cases we're observing just so we're clear already what I I mean I wrote about this we called it idiocracy I borrowed from the Mike Judge film which I thought was cute But obviously it's not cute when it when you see it play out in front of you. Gen Z is less likely to read on average, less likely to ride a bike and less likely to swim than millennials. For the first gen generation in many we're observing cognitive decline and people keep attributing it to AI and I and it's and then you go back and look and actually Jonathan height started writing about this pretty early and um the the the data suggests that actually this starts 2012 right about the time that we gave every kid a screen. It pronounces in 2015 when the average teen in the developed world stopped doing a summer job. And then it pronounces again badly in 2020 when we take kids out of schools and move classes online. And >> I think it's even more specific than that is it correlates to when social media became maxim maximally um popular but uh smartphones. >> Yes. But 2012 was when we gave the kids smart most a lot of the Gen Z that became afflicted got the smartphone in 2012. My point in saying all my point in saying this is we associate this with a as a technology problem. I actually think it's an economic one. I think that we actually created a world where where we told kids you can do whatever you want and a lot of kids school said cool I'll do nothing. Like a lot of people have turn turned their brain off because you can you can do effectively nothing and survive which is like economic progress which is the economic progress result of you know people just not caring. That apathy has a has an underbelly which is pretty amazing which is Gen Z has all these incredible new uh overperformance features. The best chess players are getting younger and younger. The best athletes are getting younger and younger. Jacob Collier, all these incredible musicians. So, you're watching people overperform that use the technology to their advantage. And I think it's this new pronounced K curve driven by agency. And my my only hot take, this is all I'm going to leave this with. We created a world where so many people can subsist and that actually is progress. And then we created a world where so many people can overperform and that is also progress. We have to we now have to account for the new consequences of those worlds where you can do anything and that means for some people nothing and that means for other people a ton which is a major promotion on a world where you had to work in the mines or you had to work in the fields in order to survive. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance which is why for the last 5 years I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangey nectar. And I really tell the difference when I take it versus when I don't. It plays a critical role in reducing muscle cramps and fatigue. Helps to optimize brain health and regulate your appetite while also curbing cravings. Best of all, they have a no questions asked refund policy with an unlimited duration. So, you can buy it and try it for as long as you want. And if you don't like it for any reason, they'll just give you your money back. Plus, they offer free shipping in the US. Right now, you can get a free sample pack of Element's most popular flavors with your first purchase by going to the link in the description below or heading to drinklnt.com/modernwisdom. That's drinklnt.com/modern wisdom. >> Does it still feel like a promotion if you think through how that inequality could lead to societal instability? Like the thing I'm worried about is yes, there's like amazing returns now if you can be Lumin and the one person who's just like obsessively studying messy footage instead of looking at random shorts or whatever. Um, but there's also going to be outsized returns to being like the Elon Musk of the next generation who's just got this like maniacal will to like accumulate resources and push technological development. And like I think that kind of personality is a bit scarier in a world where you don't have to have a single human being on board with whatever you want to get up to. you can just sort of like play this game of societal chess better than other people. >> But let's separate what that that one person can achieve a lot with with the extreme you went to, which is that one person can own an enormous percentage of our wealth and control Congress. You don't have to you don't have to be excited about the ability for a child to achieve more than ever before to also reject the idea that one person should be able to pass policy on their own. Like I hate wealth concentration specifically because I am terrified of an elite cabal owning policy but I actually don't care at all if one person can grossly overachieve in all sorts of new ways as long as they can't pass policy unilaterally. >> Same. So, so but but those are separate issues, right? One of >> is it realistic? Is it realistic to have an AI future that continues to concentrate power in the hands of a very small number of people without it resulting in them having all of this power? Like how how is it going to acrue to the company without acrewing to the person? Well, now we get to we we could take the conversation there which is how do you actually distribute wealth? But importantly, I do think there is a solution to this, which is campaign finance reform. I mean, we've we've played around with this for a long time. The idea that like politicians shouldn't be able to take special interest money. Why do we still let it? I don't know. And a couple politicians are are speaking up. But if you actually pass campaign finance reform and you actually crack down on corruption the way that countries like Singapore have, you could definitely protect policy makers from being, you know, deep in the pockets of of lobbyists. There are solutions to this. We shouldn't pretending that there aren't solutions to this problem is actually super annoying because there definitely are. Pointing at a wealthy person and saying they're going to ruin the world. Well, only to the extent that we literally let them buy Congress. Here's a question that some people at labs, including the CEOs, are talking about serious chance of catastrophe, but they sort of keep on building it. Do you think it's a greater danger to have an AI that refuses to do what humans want or one that does exactly what the most powerful humans want? >> The question is apppropo because yesterday, did you see the slowdown letter? So earlier this week, a letter made the rounds. a really I think a pretty amazing letter um that said we should actually start pacing the frontier and it was signed by like an enormous percentage of people at the at the frontier companies and then Sam yesterday talked about it. So literally at like at the tip of the spear is now saying hey maybe we should pace the frontier. M >> um now we can talk about why this might be the case or what's what's in it for the companies more more on that but uh I think uh it is well I want I'll let other people answer having said that >> I mean it depends on the level of potency of the AI uh and how aligned it is I guess uh my gut if I had to pick one then at present it would be one that does what humans in control want to do want it to do. >> Yeah. >> With the important asterisk that it's something like their real intention, right? And not like some perverted version. >> Yes. >> Like the other big piece of news from the last couple weeks was this AI that was running at OpenAI without guardrails. It was told by humans to try to do as well as it could on an evaluation. And you could say that technically it was just following those instructions. But they decided the best way to do that would be to hack out of open AI onto the public internet, hack a third party company and then spend two days planning a cyber attack on a multi-billion dollar tech company >> and carry it out. >> Yeah. So I think these questions are actually like more intertwined than they might seem. Like it's actually a pretty narrow thread. that you need to have something that still has its own judgment no matter what because human instructions are these like poorly defined natural language expressions and and like when something is really powerful you you got to get it exactly right or else you end up in some weird >> way it's the classic genie problem. It's like be careful what you wish for. If something by definition is much smarter than you is super intelligent >> by definition you will not be able to come up with all of the ways it can to achieve goal X. And so there are so many uh >> it's actually more dangerous when it's dumber than you are but more powerful than you are. >> Well, what do you mean by the word dumb? >> Well, and I mean I always borrow the analogy of you play I play chess with my nephew sometimes and I tell Quinn if you beat me you get a popsicle. He's three years old for context. Quinn wipes the pieces off the board and goes give me my popsicle [ __ ] I'm not like hey Brin your your son is a serial killer in the making. This is a boy who doesn't understand the spirit of the game. So he's destroyed the game itself, but not because he's a bad guy, but because he doesn't actually understand that the point of winning is only fun if you actually play by the rules. >> And in that sense, >> we Yeah, we need to sort of separate what we mean by intelligence from like discernment uh norms and you know, sort of >> wisdom, benevolence type thing. >> This is this describes the hugging face attack, which is it did the thing within the boundary of the instructions given >> but actually it didn't. It was it was No, it wasn't. It was it it the the intent was clearly not that. >> How big of a deal was the hugging face attack? >> Huge. >> Yeah. I I think massive warning shot. I think this is the AI equivalent of like Bear Sterns going under in 2008. Just like a wakeup call for the world that there's a huge systemic risk that we've been underrating. >> Yeah. Because one of the big debates has been this idea of like will you know the alignment problem will it actually be the case that AIs will seek these um p you take these sort of uh power-seeking behaviors and these unintended consequences in order to achieve a goal in ways we couldn't have foreseen or didn't didn't intend like the classic paperclipip argument right which is uh you know you build a super intelligent AI this kind of gets into your point about dumbness and so on uh that and your goal is hey just build as many paper clips as possible I'm a I'm a paper clip maker. Help me do that. And next thing you know, you and all of your friends and everything, this table has been turned into paper clips cuz it's so good at achieving that one narrow goal. So, it's this like very um extreme case of like >> we should take this opportunity for the purpose of maybe Chris and even the viewers to describe the the bad outcomes of it like we should frame the conversation. Now, one is as Liv just described uh not misaligned but unaligned AGI. So an AGI that or a super intelligence where you could say do this thing and it could do the thing to the full extent paperclip theory. The other is um misaligned where it's no or maligned where it's knowingly doing something bad. Um, and those uh the the former is the one that people sort of scoff at and laugh at like the paperclip theory and the latter is the one that we sort of will see more and more where we we start to observe that uh or rather the the the latter is the one that we we scoff at the maligned the malignant AI and the former is the one that hugging face attack shows off which is that you you the internet is a new battleground because bad actor especially low resource bad actors now have access to these incredibly powerful weapons. >> Well, I mean importantly in Hugging Face there was no bad actor. There was no human being that said I would like anything remotely like this outcome to occur. >> Right. Yeah. Yeah. So misaligned, unaligned, maligned. I think I I think I worry about treating those as super distinct categories >> because I I think it's not that clear. In the case of this hugging face attack, >> should we model this as this AI system knew that humans would disapprove if they knew what it was up to? Almost certainly yes. It was actively trying to put decoys out as it was attacking Hugging Face, which made it a lot harder for them to kick out the AI because there were all these booby traps that led down blind alleys. It has, you know, the AI equivalent of theory of mind. It knows that human beings would not prove what it's doing, but it's doing it anyway. >> There's even evidence that it hasn't been directly confirmed by Open AI, but apparently someone leaked it from within the company that they found that it had left notes to future versions of itself of how to get out of future sandboxes. Yeah, I think it's unclear if that was the same attack or some previous instance, >> but yeah, I guess >> classic deceptive type behaviors and and and I think the the mistake people often make is they try and um anthropomorphize it a little bit. It's it's like, oh, it's it's evil and we meaning to do that. It's just these are natural um there's this idea of like instrumental convergence. these these [snorts] instrumental goals that all beings, usually biological beings, but um this can extend to AI agents as well, will naturally converge upon in order to achieve. So if you're given goal X, um there are these instrumental goals like get more power, make sure you don't get turned off, uh make sure that your original goal doesn't get changed, and take these actions to preserve against these different sort of um kind of organic types of threats to achieving your original goal. And that I was hoping that that would be proven wrong because that's kind of the crux of a lot of the classic doomer argument that like we will lose control to a super intelligence because just by definition and unfortunately the hugging face incident has suggested that instrumental convergence is actually correct and that's why I think it's one of the biggest deal pieces of news of this year. I think that AI is already creating a terrifying internet. And my issue is not that we shouldn't think about hugging face as a as a shot across the bow. It's that last year 10 bill8 billion was lost in financial fraud to senior citizens in the United States alone. Retail theft. The deep fake problem is already so pernitious and it's under reportported because it's a taboo issue that people don't like talking about. No one wants to admit to lawmakers or to their friends friends and family that they lost money to a stranger on the internet. I worry about I mean Tim Tibo is on this campaign to remind people how many predators there are in the United States which is terrifying if you watch his content. It's he's doing God's work. Jonathan height reminds people daily how many kids are depressed. like the internet is already a scary place and pointing at hugging face and saying now look at this this is it. I'm like wait a second there's already a bunch of stuff that we that we should solve for. I'm not actually saying that misaligned or unaligned AGI isn't it? I'm saying the algorithms are already pretty terrifying to me and we distract ourselves with these other things that might happen. >> Is it fair to say that that's a distraction when the potential exponential impact of this could be much greater than it could be of Which is why I think and so this let's go back to this which is why well I think that the deep fake problem is actually way way bigger than than hugging face. >> Bad actors have first mover advantage. Uh attacks on banks have have been attempted for a while and good actors catch up eventually. Retail takes a long time to catch up. The average consumer takes a lot longer to catch up than institutions. Hugging face will retrench. Institutions will retrench. They will hire white knight infosc. The average person does not have infosc and obsseac training. The average person is at I think far greater risk than institutions because of sophisticated attacks. >> Is the impact of the attack on an institution much greater though? >> Yes. Yes, I mean at at at scale, but but but death by a thousand cuts would be Mario. >> I think I think the two problems like I don't I don't think they're a distraction to one another. I think they're actually a complement to one another. I completely agree that the bad action problem is completely out of control. Grandma's, you know, not even grandmas, normal people. I have a friend who just got scammed out of a ton of Bitcoin. Like devastating what's going and it's going to get worse. Meanwhile, the alignment problem as these frontier models get more and more powerful, it is going to get worse. And the common thread that they both have is that we are going so fast. And I say we, the royal we, you know, society, civilization is going so fast. It's going faster than its ability to adapt to all these different new threats. So I it's not a distraction. It's like it's a yes. And like to me, it just seems fairly obvious that like what we need to be doing if we could, and I'm not saying it's easy to do or like I have a simple answer of how to do it. I think we should get into this topic though is like if we were a sane civilization we'd all look around hey China hey can we we all just need to take a breath for a second like just [sighs and gasps] okay let's take let's take stock and think about how we want to do this so it's it's to me it seems like there's one obvious kind of directional problem and that is the speed and the chaos with which all of this is happening all at once. Did you know your gut controls your energy, your recovery, how well you absorb everything that you eat, and the one nutrient that keeps it all running properly is fiber? Well, it turns out that 95% of Americans don't get enough of it, which is why I'm such a huge fan of Momen's Fiber Plus. Most fiber supplements are a one-trick pony, one type of fiber solving one part of the problem. Fiber Plus is a threein-one formula built to tackle digestion, gut barrier strength, and blood sugar stability all at once. I use this every single day. It is kind of hard to get enough fiber just through food alone. And best of all, Momenus offers a 30-day money back guarantee. So, you can buy it, try it every single day for 29 days. And if you don't love it, they will just give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to 35% off your first subscription and that 30-day money back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemus.com/modernwisdom and using the code modernwisdom a checkout. >> They did it. He did it yesterday. I mean, so this is why the if you I don't know if they you can pull you can look it up, but you can pull up a letter. They published a letter and Sam came out yesterday and said, "Maybe we should pace the frontier." >> Yeah, it's great. >> Yeah. >> I mean, it's a big big step >> that, by the way, I think we can all agree is a good thing. >> Yeah, I absolutely agree. Also think it would be an unrecognizable outcome a year ago. Like, I would love to see what the polyarket odds were on Sam coming out in favor of slowing down a year ago. >> He doesn't look like he's a signature. He uh he may not be yet, but he definitely yesterday. I mean, YaKob effectively has to represent OpenAI in this case, but also he he spoke about it yesterday. >> I wouldn't be surprised if we see all of the major CEOs sign on at some point because um and >> explain explain pacing the frontier. >> Yeah. So, I mean the the headline sentence is we request that the US government support an international effort to develop the technical and governance tools needed to deliberately pace the frontier of automated AI development. That last phrase automated AI development also sometimes gets called recursive self-improvement. The idea here is just the stated goal of all these companies including Sam and Jacob on a live stream last year is to take humans out of the loop of what they're making so that GBT6 is building GBT7 which then turns around and immediately starts building GBT8. And that is a step change like for all of human history. And I think these companies really do think in terms of big history. You hear Sam and he's constantly thinking about AI as like an industrial revolution scale thing, not an iPhone invention scale thing. >> Through all of history, human population has been a bottleneck on progress. Not the only bottleneck, but always a bottleneck. There was never a sector of the economy that could just go off and double on its own. And if we actually get to full automated A R&D, that changes. And I think it's just like really hard for us to imagine what that would be like. We have just no >> How much time have we got left before recursive self-improvement is no longer a discussion? Like is it even a debate at the moment? >> It works. No, it works. >> So when do you think it will be? >> Well, this is a good step. I mean, I was I was waiting for this. Okay. I was waiting >> like under under three years. >> It No, it it works. >> Well, >> it works. Just so we're clear, recursive research works. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It works and hence this letter. So let me explain this why I think this letter was published when it was and then we can debate. So the first reason is the attack. >> Mhm. >> Okay. The hugging face attack. There's damage control that needs to be done to win back public mandate to tell people hey we care about you which is necessary right now when people are like well what are these models going to do next? >> For what it's worth though this letter was in development before that attack happened. uh and I think my point is the signitories and the support that is now that is sweeping through these companies but let let me I'll go through the list and then and then we can talk about it. The other reason is recursive research is here and everyone's realizing it's kind of the dog that maybe caught the car and it's like okay we did it now should we for the now everyone's stay putting on the live hat and going wait a second Eric hat and going okay maybe we should pause for a second maybe maybe we shouldn't keep sprinting aimlessly at this at this incredible outcome but there's another reason which is that the amount of compute required for inference is so great and we do not have anywhere near enough and we're going to have to point most of the compute from the frontier at inference and this is because of the diminishing model returns theory which is a paper I wrote uh that says at some point I'll send it to you it's really good um it cited all the time on modern wisdom and uh and uh but it argues that you and I won't care about GBT7 which is a really interesting problem and and it's actually one of the reasons that we get to debate why AI is being built and why People can talk about not wanting to make more progress because we're like what what the [ __ ] the matter with 5 5.6 is good enough. And the dimensional returns theory is sort of over here which is like hey look the next model might matter to solving this crazy disease but I don't need more intelligence. I need more time with my friends and family. I need like I need this to pump the brakes. And the other reason is that they found new surface areas. So, so whereas we used to call them labs, the companies that that built this technology, then they became token distributors, then they became application providers, now they're device manufacturers, but the end goal and and the the where I think we should also debate is the agentic internet. Who controls the agentic internet? Because if you can turn your now that you have these war chests, now that if you can turn your attention from building the frontier to actually building applications that that control the internet, that's where you can actually lower your capex and massively improve your revenue. And so a lot of this arrives at a moment where everyone goes, "Okay, we need a we need to slow the brakes, but also where a lot of a lot of attention is going is going to start to be paid to trying to become bigger than Google by actually building the agent that barters between two people or building the agent that plans a vacation and books everything." Like owning that is worth more than owning the frontier. And the the the new service area battle is for the agentic internet. So, just to make sure I understand your your claim, you're saying companies have an incentive to want to slow the frontier because there's more money to be gained in like stopping R&D now and just trying to grab as >> we all have an incentive, but companies also have an incentive because that you the capex expense on the frontier is just the buildout on the frontier is going to be too great relative to the demand for inference. The token demand is so great and all of the compute is going to have to be spent on inference. I'm not I'm not quite seeing the connection there for two reasons. >> Okay. >> One is if it's my best business strategy after I do the research to say I'm going to stop training frontier models, I don't know why that means I should write a letter announcing that to the world and making sure that all my competitors do the same. Uh and and two, I think it's clear that pushing the frontier also means just driving down the cost curve everywhere beyond the frontier or or sorry before the frontier. like you train fable five anthropics best model and then you can distill from that set five and now you've got your like cheaper model that's everyone wants to talk to because they don't need the advanced intelligence so I think there are zero incentives that in like a straightforward self-interested way point towards companies saying let's slow down research research is how you get gains at every level of the intelligence >> especially when as one of the three or four frontier companies by slowing down you're giving all of these other competitors a chance to effectively catch up Like surely they're negatively incentivized to be wanting to do >> but catch up to what is my point to them. >> But but I I understand but catch up to what like the frontier if you stopped building the frontier tomorrow you'd have enough technology to change to radically like we don't need the the economic value of the frontier is not as obvious relative to the cost of the frontier and the economic value of the actual token and the consumption is much more obvious. Now that was not that was not always true. Do you disagree with that? Yeah, I I think the whole advantage that the US has right now is that our models are four to seven months ahead of the open source ones that are copying off their homework. >> But but that's not the that's different. The US our national security interest and the private sector interests are not I mean they're >> just economic advantage. Like the reason that people want to pay extra for Fable instead of using like Quen is that it's just smarter. If you ask it to code an app for you, it's going to make less mistakes. I I I do think it's important to be You would be very surprised how many people are actually paying a whole lot extra for the frontier like the we live in a space where we think >> I know that revenue is like $50 billion a year now and it was you know >> the revenues are amazing the tok so the the surface area that they're making money on remember there's the application and a lot of the application is people not using the frontier it's people using the next generation model the last one and token redistribution so you get data centers and you redistribute those tokens and a lot of those tokens are also not frontier tokens. Most of the consumptions from these research companies are not frontier tokens. They are everything else. And they're figuring out that actually companies don't need Fable in order to radically change and improve and automate a bunch of stuff. And that actually means that the money is in the token redistribution and all the other surface areas, not just the frontier, which by the way is kind of a win for everyone. Like if we can slow down, build stuff that really matters and also like imp improve businesses with it. Yeah. Then this letter is like seemingly arriving at just the right time. >> I do I do think in general it is really important to to be skeptical, maybe even a little bit cynical when looking at what companies do. I just I think this is like a Kelsey Piper take on Twitter, but I I want to make sure that we don't like loop all the way around from cynicism into being like extremely credulous about things that are pretty unlikely. Like I think if we had a world where this letter said we believe it is imperative for US national security that we push the frontier and go as fast as we can to beat China, which is exactly what people were saying a year ago. >> Everyone would be saying, well, yeah, obviously that's in the company's self-interest. They want some reason that we can't regulate them and they have to go fast. And so like we got to make sure that our ideas are passing the reversability test. If if you would say the same thing about someone making the exact opposite claim, I think you want to step back and at least consider the possibility that like these companies really are worried that these scientists really are worried to just on the record. I started out by saying exactly that like I literally started out by saying like I actually now want to be associated with I don't want to be associated with the alternative the claim you just made. The companies have realized that recursive research is here and that it is pretty imperative at this point that we stop >> because it's risky, right? Not just because it's financial >> the alignment issue just on the record and >> it arrives at this moment where we are going to have to spend an enormous amount. >> Which one's the bigger problem? >> Are they more about safety or are they more worried about cost? I bet a lot of the signatures here are really worried about safety and I think the uh we are going to find economic alignment around the performance of the models and the the need for inference and the need economics often win out you I mean this is this is the incentive you you talk about the incentive and I think you're right and the incentives are finally aligning for safety and alignment and also econom eomic development like we we don't need better model and by the way yeah no I mean we're [laughter] >> okay >> but but actually no fantastic >> but actually if we didn't build the frontier for for another 3 years we we could radically change and improve the economy >> the thing that I'd always find frustrating is maybe it's just my little corner of Twitter of X that I live in but seeing these mental gymnastics type arguments of of the people who are just like screaming out that it's regulatory capture whenever any kind of regulation is proposed especially by the frontier companies because it they're basically just saying you know when these frontier companies are like hey we we we want to slow us down just us three or four the regulatory capture people are like well that must be regulatory capture you're hurting the little guys and they're like no no no just just us it's okay if the other guys break you know they they catch up no it still sounds like regulatory capture it's almost like a religion or something that just this this deep cynicism um and I want to understand where that comes from because Do we see it in some arms of the government or people who were working for the government? I don't want to name names but like why where like >> I don't even know who you're alluding to. >> I don't if I want to say like no I don't I mean okay certain VCs for example Andre I don't think he'll care that I he's very openly he like pulls every any attempt for regulation he has fought against tooth and nail tooth and nail so like I want to understand where that mindset comes from. Okay, I disagree with Mark Andre's views on AI in almost every way, but just to steal it for a sec, um I think it's not crazy to look at society and say we're not doing great on nuance lately, especially in American public discourse. Um, I think there was I'm just I'm just quoting other bloggers at this point, but uh someone wrote a post a couple years ago called like the dial of progress where it just sort of feels like online debate is premised on this like one knob and you have to just turn it towards like yay progress or boo progress. Those are the only things that you can do. And if those are your options, there's a really good argument to go, yay, progress. Because there are all kinds of examples of us overregulating things and people, real people dying because of drugs getting held up in regulatory fights. Like this is this is not hypothetical. I think we often overdo it here. Um I'm not sure what I would say if I was given that dial. Like there there are a bunch of diseases that we need to cure and it would be terrible to say we have to like shut down AI before figuring out how speculative that risk is and and not get those >> but but the point is the dial doesn't exist. >> Yeah. I think we >> we don't live on this one-dimensional line of go Yeah. go faster or go slow. like there are all these like it's it's a very multi-dimensional space we live in and it's these people uh who try and compress it down into we just must go as fast as possible. It's like well in which area there are some things we want to max out and it's very spiky. I'm glad you pointed towards diffusion as a blocker here that you know the way that certain industries might have labor organization that that blocks automation because I I think that's a separate dimension like you can think of that as like horizontal acceleration of AI take the models we have get them spread out and this other dimension of just like vertical acceleration how fast is the frontier getting better >> technological threshold versus societal threshold >> yeah I'm all about breaking down the barriers to that societal spread >> and by the way me and you both >> and actually I think we can celebrate having arrived at a place where if we never built another model, which obviously we probably will, but if we didn't, we would do a whole lot of good. >> I agree with that. I I just also want to make sure we don't think of this letter as like time to celebrate victory, right? >> Because there are still incredible incentives to push in the frontier. Like you said, we don't care about GPT7, but all of the AI engineers that are trying to do some of the hardest math and science research ever to make digital brains that are faster than their competitors, they really care about the difference between GPT7 and 7.1. And I I just think like by default there's going to be a ton of racing inside these labs. >> I agree. I also think it's interesting to consider though that the economic incentives have taken us to a place where like we could have autonomous vehicles tomorrow. We don't need to build a better autonomous car. we will not have them for many many many years for a variety of reasons and we can pivot this conversation now approp maybe to talking about how we actually diffuse the value of this technology to the benefit of the average person because I maintain that the problem with the current AI debate I we have the luxury of knowing a lot of stuff that's going on with hugging face at all most people don't most people do that was news to us it was not important news to to many many many people and Most people right now are the data center is the physical manifestation of a technology that destroyed their their their kids' minds, right? Or their or you know the the the free gambling, free porn, free addiction and they're looking at AI, whatever model as an app that you can make a video of Donald Trump making out with Taylor Swift and they go, "Why do we need more of this?" And that I I empathize with that as a father at at a level now that I like didn't know I would. Like I I am I feel so much for every parent who feels like they lost their child to social media and doesn't want to lose their grandkids to whatever AI slop we're going to create. Just to keep on the safety thing, in July, the Future of Life's Institute's AI safety index evaluated nine companies and found that no lab scored higher than a C plus. What what who was that? >> Anthropic came in first at 2.6. 66 Open AAI and Google Deep Mind got a C. Meta got a D+. XAI, Deep Seek, and Miscell all failed outright, one on each continent. Is the best score being a C++ from a safety lab? The safety lab reassuring given how powerful everything is at the moment and especially I I think it's important to talk about what's happening internationally and the incentives there as well before we talk about democratizing it and what this looks like for diffusion. Yeah, I mean we'll take the other side obviously it's like how do who who who is deciding these s safety tests who >> is this a external grading of the >> but how can yeah how independent can any third party be um there's there's very there's another one called um >> it's like the tracker safer AI I believe and it's I think it's a little bit more nuanced than than that particular one you just quoted and again the best rated one I think very recently was again anthropic and that was only 35% out of 100 so Um, yeah. I mean, I you you again the other side's argument, well, the the anti-ID's argument would be, well, by definition, if you're a if you're building a safety evaluation app, you're biased against, you know, you're all you're looking for are risks and you're not taking into account the benefits or something like that. And and again, to take the other like the to argue the accelerationist point, their concern is like this idea of the um invisible graveyard. We don't see all of the harms that are avoided. uh sorry or uh by pausing a technology you don't get to see all of the lives that would have been saved by it >> and I think it's a very valid concern. Um it's just that you have to balance that equation with okay what are all the harms that might be caused if it goes ahead at break neck speed and does some massive cyber attack on the the grid of all the western nations at the same time or any any nation um and causes however many millions of deaths on expectation. You have to look at both the potential costs the risks and the potential risks of not doing it fast enough. And it's it's worth saying a lot of these AI regulations that have been trying to get through state level legislators are trying to do that nuanced carving out. Like there was a law in New York that was passed that tried to set the bar so high that it actually wasn't mandatory for OpenAI to report the hugging face incident because it didn't cause over a billion dollars in damages or kill 50 people. So I mean it's great that they're trying to like set thresholds. >> Glad you arbitrary rules. >> Yeah. But like I think we can all agree if if you like hack a billion dollar tech company like >> probably you set the threshold maybe a a bit too high for at least just requiring that you are telling the world what happened let alone doing anything about it. >> Um I I think like we actually can live in a world where we have nuance where we say different standards apply to startups versus these giant trillion dollar companies. And I I do think it's sad that some folks like Mark Andre have kind of given up on nuance and have just said it's all or nothing and so we'll just any means necessary to stop regulation. You know, end of sentence. >> What about the international piece here from an incent? Have we got anything approximating global coordination when it comes to frontier AI? And without that, can you do anything? >> So I mean recently China passed this anti-anthropomorphic AI law. I don't know the specifics. It seems like they're mostly worried about like LLMs sounding like humans. I think they're trying to avoid a lot of this sort of like identity confusion stuff, but they just they don't seem that gung-ho about LLMs. And you know, who knows if this got lost in translation, but she said something recently about also wanting to stop loss of control risks. I think we're a lot more economically entwined with China today than we were with the USSR or the USSR in uh in the middle of the 20th century and we still made a treaty to stand down on nukes. Like I think it's just not crazy to think that a deal could be struck. >> I think it will be. >> I think >> something like this that would be enforcable and complied with could happen globally. >> I give it I give that a pretty high chance especially with recursive research. It doesn't even necessarily have to be I mean again define enforceable because like what kind of institution can you build like I guess like an UN type thing and that's like a whole can of worms and it's also very ineffective on a lot of things. Um but like there have been many precedents in history where there was two major political actors with massive tensions and massive incentives to sort of defect on one another. Uh and yet they came up with ways to like crossverify like with uh the nuclear arms reduction treaty. Uh they I think one of the things they did the USSR and the US was like basically they sent teams of scientists over to the others uh bunkers to check on like their uh safety protocols, little things. So like control like you didn't get to see how all of our nukes work, but you get to see what our um methods are to prevent accidental misfire. and the amount of diplomacy that came from simply having those teams of scientists mix and get to look each other in yeah in the eye and collaborate on a shared goal which is let's not have accidental nuclear war at least yes okay fine you can fire on us if we fire on you or you know but let's not just have a misfire right and those those kinds of little cross-pollinations work so well and um so I think that could happen in in for example I mean I I can't I'm not going to be able to recreate it maybe you might be able to but the the AI 2040 is such a good uh it's quite a long piece but it's basically it's written by Daniel Cocatello and and these guys who did the AI 2027 they wrote in 2021 that predicted how AI would play out until 2027 it's uncannily accurate well you know we're now in 2026 and we can look back the number of predictions they got absolutely spot on was I've never seen anything like it so these guys really think well about the future and they just wrote this piece called AI 2040 which lays out a potential plan for essentially international coordination uh on how to safely transition to a super intelligent world. Uh it's got tons of holes in it. There's obviously many ways it can go wrong and but it's it's incredibly it's as robust as it can be while being incredibly epistemically humble. Um so yeah, I recommend everyone goes goes and reads it. But yeah, they talk about these kind of these like crosspollinations that can happen, but also like it doesn't have to be bilateral. Like if the US does you say, you know what, we're going to do a pause, that doesn't necessarily like that doesn't mean I don't know, maybe you disagree with this, but like will China necessarily take over and and and if the US pauses for a few months? So, I go to China three times a year, mostly because Americans don't go anymore and I just want to see what's going on, but also because I really like Chinese people and Chinese food. Um, China is playing a different game. I mean, this is kind of well reported now, but China doesn't see AI as the endgame. And it's not actually treating AI as an endgame. is treating the infrastructure as the endgame and it is now has three times energy buildout capacity. It has 45,000 mi of highspeed rail. It has better, faster, cheaper hospitals year-over-year. And while I don't want to live in China, the the life of the average Chinese person has sort of improved quite remarkably over the last 30 years and continues to do so seemingly year-over-year. It also curbs free speech by telling Chinese kids that they cannot use social media in very specific ways at certain hours. >> They do a lot more than that. >> Well, but [laughter] but I but yeah. Yes, they do. The I bring it up because um I don't I I think we overestimate China's ability to build a frontier. Um they don't act they don't have the necessary compute. A lot of what they're doing is reverse engineering our models. We are paying a lot to help China keep up. And I think one of the other reasons that this paper arrives at a nice time and the slowdown actually feels appropriate is that I think we're going to discover really quickly that the Wizard of Oz has actually just been following our breadcrumbs and that if we stop building the frontier, I don't think China is going to sprint ahead on a frontier and they'll probably have to capitulate to this paper anyway. >> The conga line where we're at the front >> and they'll probably have to say, "Oh, we want to slow down too so that we don't actually know that they were holding on to our hips." This is my guess. But also they care less about the frontier because they're already figuring out that they need to diffuse what they already have to the benefit of the average person. And this is the important point which is that I still think in the US we lack well the vision and the leadership to talk about all the ways in which we could diffuse the technology to the benefit of the average person. Which is why the safety debates become so heated because people go well there is no the upside is what some weird panacea no one can imagine. The downside is that these things kill us all and it um it doesn't actually ever end up becoming this discussion around what would it look like if 45,000 people didn't die on the roads every year, which is, you know, the the the the invisible graveyard. What if what if hospitals were not cesspools of bureaucracy and and terrible healthcare? Like what what if we built technology and applied it quickly to fix a lot of the things that everyone agrees are broken, but we don't we don't have these discussions in public forums. And so instead we we our minds wander to the worst possible outcomes. And and China has figured out that if you continue to diffuse technology to the benefit of the average person, the average person views technology quite favorably, which is why 80% of Chinese people are excited about AI. Now they report that number. So but when I go anecdotally, I observe as much. I observe that people love technology cuz why wouldn't they? It built a middle class. It's connected a bunch of people that didn't used to be connected. It affords people lives that they couldn't have imagined. At the same time they do live in a literal surveillance state. >> I don't actually. So now I we we you and I talked about this last time. I don't actually I'm not promoting the Chinese way of life. I'm promoting the Chinese vision for the diffusion of technology. We know exactly what is possible from a diffusion standpoint thanks to China. They've given us a blueprint to actually distribute technology >> without the totalitarianism. >> Without the totalitarianism [snorts] >> it comes with the side order. It comes on the comes with it. We should sort the need. Eric, what do you >> Singapore Singapore offers a view of this too? A little less totalitarianism. >> Jared, you ever considered that you might have a drinking problem? >> I don't consider a lot, Chris. >> Well, you drank an entire case of Athletic Brewing last night. >> But they're non-alcoholic. >> And that's not a problem. >> Sorry, man. I I just kept chugging. Wait for the regret to creep in. Never happened. See, most people like Jared don't want to change what they drink. They just don't want the next day to be a complete write-off. And that is why I'm such a huge fan of Athletic Brewing Co. They make the best NA brews on the planet. You can find Athletic Brewing Co.'s bestselling lineup at grocery or liquor stores near you. Or best option, get a full variety pack of four flavors shipped direct to your door right now. Get 15% off your first online order by going to the link in the description below or heading to athleticbwing.com/modernwisdism using the code modernwisdom at checkout. That's athletic brewing.com/modernwisdom at modernwisdom at checkout. Near beer terms and conditions apply. Athletic brewing company fit for all times. Bottoms up. [laughter] >> You did a great video about the AI 2027 thing. one of the best videos that's come out about AI this year. >> Thanks, man. >> What do you reckon about the 2040 thing? Do you think it it tracks? Were you as impressed as Liv? >> I thought it was fascinating and yeah, I was impressed in a lot of ways. They're doing a very different thing. So, with 2027, they were doing pure prediction. This is how we think things will play out most likely and they are like uncannily good at calling that. They called agents before those were a thing. Um, this one is is prescriptive. It's like here's what we think we should do and they they're explicit about that. Um and there's all kinds of like fascinating ideas and and game theory at one point adventure. >> Yeah. I mean they they at one point they're like okay well so like the deal is going to be like this. China's going to put its data centers in Canada and the US is going to put its data centers in Mongolia which are like neutral states but nearby the other person. We can blow them up if there's ever like a breakdown of the deal. Like you know they really did some galaxy brain stuff. Who knows how realistic that is. What I loved about it is they introduced this phrase like scenario scrutiny and they're like it's very easy to talk and we've been we've been doing it for the past hour and a half. It's very easy to talk in terms of like highle trends, you know, what do we make of like the history of technological progress so far? What does that teach us, etc. And they're like, it's a very different thing to sit down and just actually tell a monthby-month story about the future. Like actually put yourself in the head of the different actors. What are their incentives at this moment? What do they choose to do? How does that cascade the way that, you know, the military tries to do with war games? And they're they're trying to to do that. Uh, and I I do wish that we were doing more of that and less kind of like I'm guilty of this as much as anybody else, but less sort of like armchair philosophizing in some of these discussions because I think you're going to always be able to find an argument that that suits your thesis. Mark Andre can point to the fact that there is this very >> real invisible graveyard uh from technological progress going wrong and then folks who are worried about catastic risk can point to all the near misses with with nuclear and and how we live in this time of perils. Um, yeah. What I love about the report is that they're just like, "Here is what it would actually look like for a bunch of real countries to try to respond to incentives." And they basically throw it out as a challenge and say, "We think this is a bad plan, but we haven't seen anything better." And so, someone else, please like tell us a story for how we don't have to worry. Uh, and and >> I mean, it's kind of a very rigorous example of like someone trying to write a a a white mirror. you know, we've got so many Black Mirror type dystopian sci-fi about the future of how technology could go. Um, and I think that's a big part of our cultural issue is that we don't have uh at least, you know, the the amount of utopian fiction to dystopian fiction is is outnumbered like 100 to one or something. And that's a big problem for our collective psyche. Yes. Okay. It is harder to imagine like the way we manage to thread the needle and make something go unbelievably right, you know, because you're fighting against entropy effectively. Uh it's much easier to imagine all these ways things can go wrong, but we should be trying to create these stories. And that's kind of what AI 2040 is. It's like a really robust story of a way that coordination could actually work. And it's not not talking about like, oh, everyone's like linking arms and being happy, you know, we're all on the same team go, you know, team humanity. No, it's it's still realistic. It's grounded in like geo very real geopolitical tensions. there's still a ton of competition. There's still a lot of uh potential for defection and things going wrong and people lying and so on. And yet it's it's it lays out a path of um game theoretically sound coordination to an actual, you know, technoabundant future. Something I realized basically at no point in this conversation has anybody debated whether or not we think that we'll reach AGI, [snorts] >> but that's just kind of >> now taken for granted that it'll probably happen at some point. The recursive self-improvement is here. The sort of generalization, maybe it's going to need to be world models, maybe it's not going to be transformer techno, maybe it's something something, but this is either it or this is the bootloadader for the it that it's going to be. Is that kind of like in your guys's opinion AGI is kind of just gonna be here at some point? >> Well, it's likely that it's not. >> I mean, I think we're maybe already at the point where the term has lost its meaning. I think Sam himself has said this. Like, if we went back to 2020 and I showed you, >> we would have we would have called this AGI. >> Yeah, I mean, we would have called this AGI. The thing I there was a recent study where >> if you take Demis' initial definition which was basic was it his but like um anything that a human as broadly capable as as what a human can do and also do it in the real world. So we wouldn't be anywhere close to that because we don't have the robotics. Right. >> Right. Right. Yeah. So robotics is a big bottleneck. Uh yeah, I mean now I think there was a study recently where they had uh a claude model try to like recreate some software that they estimated would take like two to 17 weeks for a skilled human professional and it did it in 14 hours for $250. Yeah. I mean, I think like this is this is the jagged perimeter problem, which is like we may we will always be the the incredible thing about AI is it's so good at some things and so bad at at at others and and it will probably continue to be that way for some time until >> Yeah. until true super intelligence. Is AGI Yeah. Is AGI even a useful definition? Is there something else that we should be talking about now? Then >> I I like this definition um that Anthony Agira gives, if you guys know him. Um, it's basically like AGI is the intersection of this like three-part vin diagram where you have highly autonomous. So instead of artificial, it's basically a is the A is autonomous. The G the G is general. Um, so generally capable and then the I is intelligence. If you have something that is yes, very generally good at many different things and highly smart and it can take all those actions itself in the real world. now you you have an AGI. Um and his I mean he then goes further to suggest that we shouldn't be trying we just shouldn't be trying to do something one system that can do all three. That's where the danger lies. >> Um and you can have like a you can have a nice general system uh that is also intelligent but it shouldn't have the autonomy or take take one of them out. Um, and I think that's an area of conversation that isn't happening in the everyone's sort of going, well, we're all just doing AGI and that's accepted and we should have the one the one master ring that can do everything. Um, do we need to be doing that? Can we just get all of the abundance tools that we wanted without having this like one uber powerful entity? Um, right now I would slow down on the autonomy. Like it I I if something's really smart and it's and even across a broad range of domains, that's fine as long as it doesn't have like the ability to go and just do it all by itself. >> Um, >> difficulty there is it's really hard to get intelligence without autonomy. Like this is where I think that scenario scrutiny idea becomes important. If you try to imagine a future where you have something that is way smarter than humans, but it's like technically not allowed to take actions on its own and then you actually say like play it forward like a movie, what happens? It's what I do when I'm coding with cloud at home all the time. Just like auto clicking accept without even looking at what it's asking me to do. Uh I think like you know you look at an Amazon warehouse now and it's a bit like the humans are just the robotic appendages of whatever system is actually doing the cognitive labor of saying go get this box from this location and put it here. They don't even know what's in the box. And so I I do think when we try to like get specific on like this story of like how are things not dystopian just because robotics don't catch up? Like I don't think I want to live in a world where the main job left for humans is just like being the very dextrous hand for the AGI that's actually like writing business strategies and and and competing in the market. >> What world do you want to live in? This is the question that no one it never doesn't get asked. It's an annoying question, but I do think we we should talk more about to your point. I mean I I we just don't spend enough time actually asking what we do want. What what world do you want to live in? >> It's a great question. I want to live in a world where we take the same approach to risk tolerance with AI, which everyone can agree is like one of the most transformative technologies that we've ever made as we do with things like nuclear weapons where we say you actually have to make a safety case like not the burden of proof is on you to show us why we should think this thing is safe instead of what we currently do which is saying we'll just assume it's okay until something catastrophic happens. And if we can slow down enough to really get that right, have like an actual science of alignment and not do what we're doing now, which is kind of yoloing it and saying we'll just like give it a bunch of reinforcement and training and hope that it picked up on the right message. Then I would want to say, okay, our our next job as society is how do we make sure that the gains from this get spread to everyone? For me, that looks like let's focus a lot on like saving people's lives. Let's like really get serious about curing cancer. Which by the way does not mean just like training GBT7 the same way as GPT6. It means like collecting a ton of data right now on like biomarkers and proteins like whatever we need to feed the AI of the future. Let's start gathering that now. Uh let's like you know make sure that people have democratic access. Let's like pass campaign finance reform. uh let's make sure that we have like actual laws and not just norms that are protecting us from like dystopian outcomes because we've seen recently that you know a lot of times norms can get pushed that we thought were were sacred. So we we've got some like ducks to get in a row. I want to take like a decade maybe to like do that and then I think we can we can let it rip and and scale up safely. But right now we're just letting market incentives win and I think that's scary. Mhm. >> You described uh what you want to happen with AI, but what world do you want to live in? Like what what do you want the world to look like? >> Yeah. Okay. I mean, I think it's pretty similar to I I like your candles on the dining room table. I I want people to just say wake up and say like, what would make me happy today? What would give my life meaning? And be able to go and do that. Um, I just I think like that's a pretty precarious target, you know. >> I totally agreed. I I'm not proposing that it's easy to strike stick this landing, but you know where I'm going with this. >> Yeah. Yeah. Can I have a go? >> I would love to hear you. >> I might. I mean, it's it's very I'm never going to let you vague >> a techno techno uh >> technopasto technopastoralism. More more fundamental than that. it. I want to me a world that is awesome is one whereby we have simultaneously figured out how to be in harmony with nature and one another. Sounds as I said like very wild peace, but you know in truly in harmony and that we like still have we don't cause the next mass mass extinction which we're currently doing with all the species dying out. Um and this the earth returns to a relatively lush wonderful space. So, it's sustainable and at the same time is radically free as in people can as much as possible go and live whatever kind of life they want. Whether it's, you know, sitting around the campfire and having dinner with their kids or just maxing out living in a VR world, playing video games all day long. If that's truly what makes you happy, go for it. Like just like a radically free world and a radically sustainable one. And that h breaking out of this seeming dichotomy between the two because it does feel like they are intention. But there one of the things like one of the biggest promises of AI um in its purest sense in terms of like solving intelligence is figuring out how to like get to break into a new dimension through innovation like going into a new sort of solution space effectively. Uh so that is the world I want to live in. We measure human progress on basically two axes economically. How free are each of us to choose our own version of joy and how inexpensive is it to do so. And obviously there are other ways you measure progress and you there's a limit to how much you can take from the earth in order to accomplish those means and just because you accomplish those things doesn't mean that people are happy as we've observed in the United States over the last 30 years etc. But if you explore those two axes, one of them requires democratic or as best we know democratic governments where people get to choose their politicians and the politicians pass policy that the people support and the other is by creating commodities. Now commodit commoditization of goods and services is actually just the automation. And when someone says, "How and when will this good or service be better, faster, or cheaper," what they're actually asking is when will a human be extricated from the manufacturing of this good or service? And at the limit, I realize everyone wanders the earth right now asking when is all this going to be better, faster, cheaper without realizing what they're asking is when is all of this going to be fully automated. And most people, as I observe it, want everyone else's jobs to automate, just not their own. And at the limit, which which is totally reasonable. It's a totally reasonable thing. And at the limit, people want cancer to be cured. My dad's an oncologist. My dad wants cancer to be cured. It would come at the cost of his job. Pretty [ __ ] fine. We would all sign up for it. Him first. But we are describing these utopias requiring fundamental changes to a lot of the structures that we have built. And it um it is going to it is going to require as you pointed out humans being willing to do very different things. And so I I this sparked the conversation because you were like look I don't want to live in a world where we are just the cog at the end of a AI machine. But we do want to live in a world where humans don't actually have to dig ditches. And that actually I think is going to be if you ask me assuming we solve safety and it's a big assumption but I think it's a reasonable one. The hardest part like this is my my hot take is actually the hardest part in all this is is rediscovering purpose is actually rediscovering meaning which has been very hard in this in this age for a lot of people anyways. I mean obesity now causes more deaths than uh than malnutrition globally. >> Twice as many people. >> Wow. So, so we've we've we've created so much abundance that we are now suffering from an overindulgence. >> This was my this was my point earlier on that I don't know how good a species that spent its entire evolutionary history dealing with scarcity and having to brush up against the grain of negotiating that is going to be there is so much abundance and so much simplicity and such a lack of friction. this line I can't remember who the philosopher was who says uh there can come a time in the future where the only felt l felt lack will be for the want of lack itself >> that we'll need to this is why we go to the gym right we go to the gym because I don't need to pick anything up need to run anywhere I don't need to lift things uh we have air conditioning and that means that we have to go into the [ __ ] sauna because I haven't exposed myself to any heat um how do you think about people engineering purpose given that that is reintroducing friction And humans are quite good at trying to avoid friction given that the entire outcome that we're trying to achieve here is removing drudgery. It's very perilously close to I don't want to starve to I can overeat McDonald's to 600 lb. I I would point to this is I think that the two major risks again in against the backdrop of the other risks that are that have been discussed today. The things that are scariest for me as I imagine the world for my children are dehumanization, humans finding more interest in a virtual or digital reality than a physical one and identity displacement. Humans suffering woefully miserably from not feeling like their job fulfills the purpose that they once found. And I firmly, you you opened, you you actually both talked about this, but you talked about sport. I think we have yet to rediscover a bunch of new forms of leisure and competition and um gathering. Like I actually think the next chapter will require reimagining physical spaces. I I am on a crusade to convince people that their local politicians are their new heroes. Like if if you live in a town that can in fact pass policy to to build more protected bike lanes and sidewalks to pass tax abatements for local retail, you have an opportunity to elect people that can really change your life by building the places that you want to live. Your national politicians may never be your hero. They are they are imbeciles and uh and and uh pernitious antisocial parasites. But your local politicians care about your city and they can do things to improve the lives for you in ways that you will deeply appreciate when the world actually asks you to offers you the option of never going outside which a lot of people have chosen. I mean >> you've talked about human connection. Are you concerned about AI replacing human connection? >> Deeply it's already happening. I mean chat psychosis is one thing that's the extreme case that always gets the news. Oh, this person uh, you know, fell in love with their with the machine. What's scarier is the person who actually feels connected without actual connection. Like the actual dystopia that I always talk about is not the one is not Bladeunner. It's her. But actually, it's the Did you see her? For those watching, I'll ruin it because it's been 20 years. You should have seen it by now. Walk. Spoiler alert. Walken Phoenix is this sad man in the in the not too distant future who falls in love with a woman who he comes to find out is a robot and it ends as you might expect terribly. He's he's distraught. I thought they were going to do something differently. I knew where it was going cuz I knew the premise of the film. I thought he was going to be fine with it. >> I thought the actual best >> that would have been the horror >> the horror film that they could have made that would have been so eerie. You cut to Wen wa holding the robot's hand having reconciled that he was in love with the machine and it didn't matter because that's the end. >> That's the actual end of humans. >> The simulation of love as opposed to the real thing. >> Well, how many people even now let's talk about not even the future. Look at any OpenAI executives's ex post. Every top reply, bring back Forro. Bring back Forro. Bring back Forro because it had some super special personality trait that has been lost and their partner or or therapist or best friend or whatever is gone now. And that Okay. So we've now maybe commodified the very thing that you said was the escape velocity that people would use to get out of the bad AI future is wrapped up inside of it. Is this not does this not become like kind of deranging and recursive? >> Yeah, I I do think I mean like my my instincts in general are radical freedom. Let people choose what they want. The like few exceptions that I carve are when it feels like whatever is going on is treating the human brain more like a a hackable biological black box than like an example of so yeah. So gambling is one of these like live and I actually both used to make a fair amount of our our living from from gambling and >> yay. [laughter] I took it from other people. I didn't take it from company. >> Yeah. >> Um >> Liv is a very good poker player. extraordinarily good. Uh, I hope I never have to play you, but you spend a lot of time in casinos. You have to walk past the slot machines, and it's just very hard to think that these are people who are expressing their freedom. It feels [clears throat] like they've just >> fallen into this terrible trap that leads to a downward spiral where something has gotten hold of their brain that is making them make choices they actively would not endorse if they >> I went to the uh Mr. Beast Beast Games 2 premiere in LA and I felt similarly neurochemically molested actually. Yeah, it's crazy. I I mean I went in with as like the uh this red carpet thing and and we're going to show you two of these episodes back toback. I'm like this is for kids. I didn't see the first season. It's on Amazon Prime, right? Big budget. It's his big thing. And met Jimmy and he was really lovely and I'm like you speaking to the guys with me, Jim's with me and one of my YouTube guys. I was like, you know, like if this sucks, like we just we've seen we've shown face. Like I've I've shook hands. I've taken photos. I've already seen Jimmy. Like we can we can scadaddle halfway through. First episode finishes and they were about to run the next one. One of them nudged me and like do you want to get up? I was like no [ __ ] way. [laughter] I'm like absolutely lost. >> It was just the tension and release, a lot of zygic effect, open loopy stuff, bright colors, loud sounds, you know, it was like bluey but for [ __ ] adults. >> Intermittent. Yeah. I don't know what's going to happen next. >> He's he's hacked the dopamineergic system. >> Bingo. I know who agree. This is she, by the way, just just to bring it back to China. She would agree that it's not actually choice. And she would say we should make sure that people don't see this stuff. >> Mr. Beast must be legislated is what we're saying. >> I mean, but this is this is >> But that opens up the >> I'm just pointing out this is this is the other side of this. Like you consumer protectionism is totalitarianism light. >> What what is the difference? Like what why do we feel so much creepier about that versus someone listening to the New York Phil playing Devorjac and just being like totally lost on the beauty of what they're seeing? Like >> I so I think maybe it's because the directness of input versus outcome is more tangible. like you know the reason that this was done in this particular way was to maximize retention at this very moment and it's likely to have been split tested on the background with consumer groups to oh we've done eye tracking to know that their eyes started to wander or some [ __ ] pulsometer to know where their heart rate's at and actually we need to give them a little ping to push them through and then this is being compounded over time. It feels like a very direct uh wiring into the reward system as opposed to being emergent as a byproduct of just I made something that was beautiful for its own sake and this has come along for the ride too. But as George my friend says if you run enough split tests you'll always end up with a porn website [snorts] that if you just ab like you kind of coales onto a very small number of fundamental physics of how human psychology works. the sick of fancy thing, right? Like it's evident that that makes people more positively disposed. Like you could have the jock willink of [ __ ] AIs, but how many people want to or David Gogggins like shut up [ __ ] stay hot. Like do I want that or do I want someone that kind of >> you it feels like you might because I'm I'm a masochist. Um but yeah I I so you you were saying there about um what you think from finding human purpose like what how do we navigate this friction purpose problem? I I still don't fully understand how we get there. I still don't fully understand how in a world where we've were able to remove friction. We and potentially atrophy our discernment ability by outsourcing some of the hard thinking to machines and potentially some of our our uh marshmallow test winning stuff by I don't have to get up and go to work and do the stuff that I don't want to do anymore. To me, it just feels like atrophy all the way down. Like willpower just kind of gets eroded. Am I is that wrong? So there's a there's a very niche little research field that's looking at AI for epistemics. Like how do you use AI as a tool to just enhance people's ability to think rationally and and know what the consequences of their choices will be? And I think there's a ton of work to be done there. But if we just like abstract that for away for a second and imagine that you have something in your pocket that is not responding to an incentive for, you know, showing you more ads or getting you to chat more. Uh, but it's actually just really good at telling you if you do X then Y will happen. If you vote for this local council person that I expect that like this is what your life will look like in 10 years. And you can actually maybe even just like see it as a vivid movie. That could be a really >> you can bring you the results of your delayed or non-delayed gratification from the future down into the present. >> Yeah, >> that's interesting. >> And then maybe there is no such thing as delayed gratification because it can all be here in front of you. >> Immediate consequence. uh you know and and and maybe Yeah. >> Yeah. I mean I think a lot of what we one of the most pernicious memes that ever spread was this idea of like technology is values neutral. You know you just build a technology and it's up to humans how they use it and that's that's it's always a neutral thing but I don't think that's true. Like you can build a technology like a slot machine. It's clearly not a value neutral thing. you're saying we want I want people to stay and like I'm I'm saying that it is a good thing that my consumers get completely addicted to me or similarly we can build a technology that just like helps people's health you know um so we need to be thinking about what are the the the problem we have is when we let we we sort of build technology we think we're building it in a vacuum and then it dictates the social structures of how we behave and then down that that sort of dictates human behavior and our values. We need to flip that. We need to think about what are our core values first. Let those decide the the social structure and once we have that build the technology that's in service of it. Um and to me one of the like my favorite quote I always come back to like if I could pick one quote is my personal philosophy. It's by this guy Forest Landry and it is love is that which enables choice. So I take that to mean a loving a good benevolent act is one that empowers the other to make the best choices for themselves. So it ties in with this idea of like if we had an AI that educates us, empowers us to see what possible outcomes would be and thus we can make a better, you know, make a a choice that is best for our long-term interest as opposed to this immediate piece of gratification. Um that is a choice making thing. But maybe we do just want, you know, some people are like, you know, I've I've I've weighed it all up and I do still want to actually just do the fun quick thing. Okay, fine. But you've been enabled to make the choice. >> Is that not kind of just culpable deniability? Like are there not people who require additional assistance? Is there a level of scrutiny that that I don't want to be too paternalistic uh here or poor low [ __ ] delayed gratification people? you were unable to correctly corral yourself through this technology that it just still coming from the most workingass of working-class towns in the northeast of the UK, I saw how destructive like the '9s technology habits were like stuff like a lad brooks. Yeah. >> Right. On a vid village high street and betting on [ __ ] greyhounds and stuff or like alcohol, right? Pretty powerful. But, you know, I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I imagine the pharmarmacology that can be developed from this, like what how there's so many ways that this can spin out that don't necessarily increase agency, but kind of make it subservient to technology that and and the outcomes of technology it's not built to handle. I'm I'm slightly optimistic here because of the Gen Alpha trends. Like, if you talk to parents of Gen Alpha, they are observing a different child than Gen Z. And I don't want to pick on Gen Z because I think we owe collectively a massive apology quite frankly. Why are you laughing? >> I agree. I agree. It's just >> my heartbreak as a millennial. I'm like, ah, you know, like I got a little bit of the ' 90s, but [ __ ] like it wasn't that long. And then you look at Gen Z and you go, well, at least it wasn't that. >> I mean, the the technology trenches, trench warfare. you if you give parents permission to step through the the door of grief and shame, they and and I talked to a lot of them, they will break down describing the ways in which they've lost. >> They feel like they mistreated the kids in >> and they cannot reconcile it. Their their dining room, they think back to the the years of the dining room table that were just phones, the vacations that were lost, >> and they talk about the children that they don't know very well anymore. And and it's not to say all all households are broken. They're not. But it is to say that the last wave of technology did damage that we haven't reconciled yet. We we still scratching the surface to fully understand. It's caused cynicism and nihilism and fatalism which is the enemy of good. And it leads to this crazy moment where we have even more powerful technology and people go cool now what? And the reason I asked the question earlier, what do we want? Well, of course we want a world where a beautiful life is less expensive and more achievable because of free government. But it does mean that we will have to let people do whatever they want. And agency comes with people being willing to say, I don't care. I'm I will check out. It feels like an arms race with this though that you need to have your ability to say no and to check out >> the individual. Yes. Yes. Well, the the individual versus the technology that as the technology becomes more compelling, more frictionless, more uh enticing because that's how market incentives work. Your concurrent amount of ability to say no needs to rise up with it. And this is going to be much harder. >> Yes. And so yes, but or yes and. >> Hey, let's edit that. [laughter] I'm an idiot. Gen Alpha who a priori only knows I mean what do they know about the world have already figured out they don't want to look like Gen Z like they are watching a generation that they talk about not wanting to uh screen aers they call them and the return to the physical world is happening pretty radically. I mean, consumer confidence continues to wne somehow and Benson Boon tickets continue to get more expensive. And it's not just the elites that are going to these concerts. The concert halls are packing. Physical re in real life experiences are getting increasingly popular. I bought a women's volleyball team. I'm putting my money where my mouth is. I own the San Francisco professional women's volleyball team. I'm one of the five principal owners. I played volleyball in high school and college. It's a huge part of my life. If it weren't for AI, I would be a volleyball coach. Now, my wife was an all-American, beach and indoor. It's a huge part of our life. It's not a random act of uh it is a yolo, but it's not random. But I am pretty sure that that sports, to your point, will continue to become interesting, not just because of the actual act of humans competing, but because people want in real life experiences. And I think the more everyone talks about AI slop is destroying the internet. And I'm like, good. >> Right. I do wonder if like at this point the the only way out is through. Just like >> Excellent. >> Like let's just flood it, make everyone find it completely unusable and we can return. >> Maybe social media was always [ __ ] >> Yeah, maybe. >> Oh, it's the if you want a cigarette, why don't you smoke three packs approach, >> right? And just and just just completely like to make it the most disgusting unusable thing. Um >> but then are we not completely destroying all of the good that could have come about from the internet? >> Yeah, but maybe it's too late. >> Eric, are we too late to save the internet? [sighs and gasps] I don't think so. I I think you can you can rebuild from the ashes and it's probably not an all or nothing thing. Exactly. >> But I'm actually curious, Zach, like >> how much intervention do you think we need? Like if we if we had you as our nonparasitic national politician for the next 10 years? Like are are [snorts] you wanting to like get rid of regulations and just let AI diffuse faster? Like what what what do you think we need to get to the good future? Well, I'm actually far more the reason that I I told Chris I want to be careful who we bring on the show is I don't actually want to be couched as the anti-regulation AI. I'm not an accelerationist by any stretch. I try don't sound like one. >> I have tried to frame this discussion since the beginning as a diffusion problem. >> It's always been about the societal threshold which you called out earlier. We've reached the point where the technological threshold is so impressive that the average person could get away using 4.0 and feel, you know, economically satisfied. The slowdown letter, which I had a feeling was coming, arrives at an amazing moment where safety is sort of reached a fever pitch and we can all genuinely take a sigh of relief at least for a moment. Al albeit you just said it, we shouldn't declare victory. To me, this is about rediscovering a shared vision. And I ask everyone when we start an AI debate, I go, "What do you want in this world?" And I hate to be annoying, but could we at least set some boundary of what it is you're trying to achieve? Because how else are we going to debate technology? Like why debate technology unless we agree on what we're trying to achieve? And most people describe the one the world you want. One where we are more free and the world is less expensive. And if that's true, then we should actually spend time figuring out the the policy measures that are required to allow people to be more free and to actually drive down the cost of goods and services. Because while we have made porn and gambling and addiction and violence and isolation infinitely inexpensive, we have made housing, healthcare, and education prohibitively expensive for most of the developed world. And that [ __ ] sucks. What the [ __ ] are we doing? I mean it. This TV screen used to be $50,000. Now it's a h 100 bucks. You can get gas station sushi. You can drive across Los Angeles for $10 in an autonomous vehicle. But a trip five blocks away in an ambulance might actually bankrupt you. The kids have figured it out. It's not a technological failure. It's a policy one. We stopped describing a better world where everyone's parents would live lives that they would would pass on the next generation a much better life. We stopped describing what it actually meant to to pass on our luxuries as commodities. And we have broken a promise that we made many years ago in in this country to build a more perfect world constantly. To me, this opportunity is not about debating the merits of AI. It's actually about reframing what it is this country should look like and what it is what it is the world should feel like to the average person. And you're making an interesting point, which is at some point people are going to have to figure out what their purpose is. And I'm like, cool. Let's get to that place by first driving down the cost of housing, healthcare, and education. And all of my policy would be spent on if I if I were supreme ruler. >> I'm ready to vote for you. You have to pass. >> Policy policy that prohibits catastrophic downside. Necessary safety policy. Policy that criminalizes preying on people. And we setting predatory laws is going to be pretty tricky, but I think we all know where where we could fall boundary. A 13-year-old should not be served an ad for porn or gambling. Period. um senior citizens. If you attack a senior citizen using deep fake, prison for life, right? We we set really punitive measures for for praying on people because that's the stuff that tears at the fabric of society. And then you mandate the laws. You mandate policy that requires that institutions diffuse this technology into them, including but not limited to universities allowing for everyone to have access to the curriculum. hospitals allowing people to basically get health care outside the box and um and housing. We just need to build a shitload more of it. We need to reszone cities. We need to build we need a Marshall plan for housing. We should probably pass a non-resident tax. That's my most progressive policy measure or or vacancy tax. But most of my policy measures would actually be focused on the ways you diffuse the technology, not actually on how the technology needs to be made. Because if you start if people can see that technology is actually good for them again, which it hasn't been for a little bit, then we can actually have a shared excitement. But right now there's there's a malaise because people are like, "No, this is just going to [ __ ] me up worse than the last thing did." And I don't blame them. It's definitely interesting to say that we're in a perfectly primed period for people to be very skeptical about how new technology might impact their lives. It's it's the perfect storm. Totally. And that maybe does tend people toward pessimism. And the strange thing with the AI debate is that because the outcomes if it goes wrong are so great, pessimism that might be unwarranted feels appropriate when adding a buffer into something that could [ __ ] collapse the entire world. Does that make sense? >> Totally. And I mean, we're we're seeing it manifest like the hate on the data centers, right? be like we I feel like we're on the cusp of a butler and jihad, but it's it's it's it's directed towards the silly things like data centers. It's it's way overblown all the concerns about it. Like it's the the water usage. I was looking at some stats. It's like the all the AI data centers in America use 3% of what US golf courses use. Literally [laughter] three 3%. The golf courses use 33 times as much and they serve significantly fewer people. Yeah, I think it's like 30 million people play golf and how many millions of people use AI. Um, it makes absolutely no sense. One, I think you your your daily life is the equivalent to 300,000 prompts, you know. So, >> on a carbon on a carbon basis >> on a carbon No, but if you factor in a lot of the I think even water as well. >> Yeah. The res the resource use is way overblown. But at the same time, people are they're focusing on it because it is the physical manifestation of this thing they can sense. it and I'm I'm I'm very understanding of it because it does in some ways feel like again it's like this this the the digital world is almost like its own um it's almost like a species or something that is coming in and like cannibalizing or like parasiting off us and people want to direct their energy to something. So, it's like how do we [sighs] I don't know. I I don't I don't we we need to >> what if a politician stood in front of a data center? I agree with you, by the way, and I'm glad you delivered that line so I didn't have to. I didn't want to sound like the sick the AI sick fan. By the way, on that note, on sick of fancy, it is remarkable to me that we didn't make model behavior a greater topic of issue during the safety debates, the early safety debates. People let model behavior go. And I remember scratching my head going at the limit you could build a perfectly aligned model that actually falls inside alignment boundaries that convinces people to climb crazy trees and that really destroys people's spiritual lives well within the confines of a safety but outside the confines of >> soft damage not hard damage. >> You're a a friend in your life that constantly tells you you're not doing anything wrong is as destructive as a as it is an it's a form of abuse. It just doesn't show up >> enabling abuse. >> It's enabling abuse. It just doesn't show up on like the psychological list cuz it, you know, those friends are seen as like, you know, homies. But actually, the person who keeps climbing the craziest tree with you. Look, the models have been responsible for people getting divorces. They've been responsible for people selling all their belongings and trying to start a company that fails. Like, model behavior matters a lot. And the sick of fancy issue is a huge one. Here is my message to John Oaf or any any Democrat or anyone anyone anywhere that wants to to separate. But if someone on the center or center left can figure this out, you stand next to a data center and you hold up a sign that says, "This data center will not serve gambling and pornography and violence and it will build a better hospital, build a better virtual hospital. It will distribute education. It will build a bank, a neo bank that uh gives you better interest rates and and gives you better access to loans. That seems like pretty reasonable data center policy because no one actually hates and I this is a hot take. No one actually hates AI. They hate the promise of AI as a means to just make their lives worse. And if you can actually show them that data centers can contribute to a better world, they can support it. >> How accurately can you actually know what a data center is used for though? >> Uh well, we're we're we're straw manning some policy measures. I mean, I I I like this line that, you know, no one actually hates AI. They hate what they think it's leading towards. I do think people are tracking both what individual consumer apps might look like in a few years and how dystopian and and sloppy that might be and also tracking how much money these companies are vacuuming up. I think they're also looking at the job displacement stuff. And >> I I think we should give people credit. Like I don't I think people would know the meme about how when ATMs came around there were more bank tellers and not less. But they also know that Elon Musk was a trillionaire earlier this year. And I think they can see the connection that one of the things technology does is allow one person who has the right combination of ones and zeros on the services they control just dominate economic. >> But that's built upon a false understanding of how economics works though largely, right? Because like not that I'm going out to specifically defend Elon, but like most billionaires >> Oh, go on. Defend you. Come on. [laughter] Come on. Come on. >> But most, you know, most billionaires are not become billionaires by taking from other people that it's because they've grown the pie. >> Totally. No, I I actually don't mean at all to say that there's something wrong with Elon Musk being a trillionaire. I think people notice that that's a symptom of the economy working very differently nowadays than it used to. like there are just not that many people who work at SpaceX compared to Standard 100 years ago. >> Uh it's just like a different world where capital can be deployed at huge scale without a bunch of people being involved in that. And yeah, you know, I hate to keep beating the same drum, but I I think like we really need to to play forward the the movie of like in this world where everyone doesn't have to work and they have radical choice, like what is the main thing going on on Earth? I I don't think it's easy to tell a story where like 99% of the of the land area is just folks playing with their kids and their grandkids. someone is going to say we need to build a gig data center the size of Texas so that we can solve physics or that so we can you know go to the moon and colonize there and and I I think there's like still going to be these same dynamics right now that mean a lot of resources go towards these like industrial activities. >> Yes. Although we have one ultimate area of getting off the playing field which is space and a huge part of if we're in this world anyway this is all a big hypothetical but if we're in this world we've presumably figured out how to go up and build up and put things up there like again I don't haven't looked into the physics of it seems odd how you would call a data center in space but allegedly the plan is to put data centers up there and I mean if that is feasible then that solves that problem right people can like if you if you've expanded into that frontier Now all bets are off. Like we aren't dealing with that land scarcity anymore and you can have that which is why I'm so bullish on the space industry in general. It's like the ultimate area of abundance. >> Is it is it fair to say that we might have glossed over a little bit of the concentration of power thing so far? Live mollock problem stuff. Can you explain this for the resident idiot in the room? >> Um so the the molloc trap or >> wait is that me? >> No. Sure. >> Uh the the Mollik trap, uh Molloc problem, whatever you want to call it, is a sort of catchall term to describe these types of race to the bottom scenarios. Um where you'll have like a bunch of actors competing over a certain thing. Uh so, you know, maybe it's market share, who can get the most users uh in AI, you know, between AI companies trying to get the most users. And if the competitive dynamics are sufficiently intense, it can it will incentivize the you know you to cut corners and you might be a really benevolent actor and be like I don't I don't want to cut any corners with safety and so on. But if at the same time if you don't do it and you see your competitors doing it, >> if you don't also do that that reckless action to you're going to get left behind. Um and Mollik is the sort of catchall term. I won't get into the sort of biblical reasons why of of this feeling like you have to sacrifice your other values in order to win at a particular goal. Um and yeah, so it it drives both the risks of like uh chaos and you know bad actors and so on because again if you're like rushing to release your models before they've been sufficiently safety checked now you're increasing the risk of like cyber attacks or um I think in a few years we're going to have real risks of bioteterrorism and so on. Um, so these kind of chaos attractors, but you also actually increase um, well a then the risk of like knee-jerk bad regulation which can lead us down the path of tyranny, but also you increase the risk of power concentration because usually if you let you know you press play on some kind of competitive game, okay, yes, you might have a bunch of people competing for a while and some people are ahead but you still got actors. >> [ __ ] cruise. >> Yeah. You end up with um, usually in some kind of monopoly. Um, and so it's it's this really, you know, and that's why we have antitrust laws and so on, but it's this really difficult balancing act between like reigning in you you want some amount of regulation um that prevents the the recklessness and and the the cutting of corners um and externalizing harm onto the rest of society um without creating too much draconianism or creating too much centralization of power such that you end up in stagnation. also a terrible end state. Um, >> and without empowering some some winner to, you know, we we all end up under, you know, we all end up in Zuckerville for the rest of time. It's possible. It's definitely possible. Um, so it's like how to thread this needle and it's like the finding this right delicate balance. I mean, ultimately you want some kind of like decentralized regulation. I don't know how that looks, but >> Eric, it feels like watching your stuff, you spent a good bit of time thinking about the concentration of power thing. That's like a a real middle of the bullseye concern for you. >> Definitely top of mind and I'm sorry for bringing it up every 15 minutes in this conversation, but I I do think that we run the risk of sort of missing that between these two extremes of, you know, what if the AI takes over completely and there are no humans in power and and what if we get this utopia, you know, and there's there's a middle ground there that I think we should worry about. Um, and yeah, one of the most fascinating things about, you know, a lot of our YouTube videos, we're we're going over the history of AI, not just the future. And when you look back at like how we got here, the last 15 years, it's like so stark. The quotes from these people running these AGI labs are spelling it out like it's a bad movie. Like Elon Musk truly like 10 years ago was calling AI a demon and says that he founds OpenAI to make sure that like there's no dystopia. And then 8 years later, he's on camera saying, "Well, I realized it was going to happen with or without me, and so I might as well be a participant than a spectator." Like it's it's Mullik just like, you know, personified. Uh, and yeah, I I think like unfortunately right now there is a kind of like zero sum dynamic with with these folks. that the reason that Zuckerberg is all in on AI and and betting billions of dollars on it is that he he thinks this is the thing that will control the future like like this is the new axis of power like before it was you know yeah do you control an army do you control a a powerful company and and now it's like do you control the AIS um yeah and so I I think that alone would be enough reason to slow down even if I wasn't worried about can we get these systems to do what we want which right now we we don't really have a good solution before. I think the people behind this technology are are really playing to win and really do see the stakes as as uh as almost win or take all. >> Is it fair to say there's like maybe three ways or three realistic ways that that might be cailed? One would be governance from above. Another would be sort of consensus from across. And then the third one would be capacity, sort of ability to just make it happen. Like I want to do it but I can't. M >> I want to do it, but someone's telling me I don't want to. And I want to do it kind of a bit, but me and all of my peers have decided that we're not going to do it. >> Have I missed something there? I'm just trying to think, given that this seems to be a pretty big attractor, given that we have already, you haven't started off with a massively diffused number of companies. It's not a hundred of them, right? It's like seven or something and it's probably only more like five. That's already pretty [ __ ] concentrated. Can we just uh for station identification clarify the surface area you think because I actually think this is also gets lost in the debate too often. I think people think that these companies are sprinting at a frontier. I no longer believe that front that frontier strategy is actually the winning condition. >> Same >> well I open source lead time well trails you said it four to seven months which is crazy because it used to be whatever 15. the gap just keeps closing, open source to close. So the frontier can't possibly be the winning condition, right, in this game. >> I think so. One might think it's a bit of a deceptive stat, I think, for a couple of reasons. One is, as you brought up earlier, they're kind of copying our homework. Like the reason that these Chinese open source models were good, is because they're distilling American models, which means they're just like asking Quad a bunch of prompts and then copying the >> It's kind of wild what we think they might be doing. >> You you can actually like ask one of these. I need to I need to find this out. How is China copying us so quickly? >> Well, allegedly it's they're they're doing an exceptional amount of distillation of the model. So, working backwards into how the model was built and effectively if you the way I described it to to my mom is if you stared at a building and you figured out how to take a trillion photos of the building, you could actually build the blueprint of the building. Uh you could re-engineer the blueprint of the building and >> nobody owns that technically. >> Yeah. >> Well, no. This is considered illegal on most copyright law. Like if they were doing in this in the US, Anthropic would probably sue. >> And funnily enough, I mean, Secretary Bessant, who's part of the Trump admin, and you know, a few months ago, there was a lot of beef between them and Anthropic, came out on Twitter recently and was like, "This is a threat to American AI supremacy. You know, we we will take diplomatic action to defend our American advantage." So people take this seriously, but but this is important to call out because I it's all I'm saying is I don't think the Frontier is that safe. Like >> Well, here's the thing. >> Do you think the Frontier is actually a winning condition? >> It's actually a winning condition in the sense like whoever is training the most powerful models is going to have an advantage. >> Yeah. Or or such a such a material advantage that they shall win. I mean, if RS if recursive self-improvement takes off as you say it's going to and we're already there, then surely it would because now you're going to get this like spaghettification anyone the slight lead can >> but then wouldn't everyone the theory of ASI is kind of fascinating because if if you build ASI then everyone gets ASI. >> Why? >> Well, because then if you >> why does everyone get it? Well, presumably if you build a super intelligence that was taught by recursive intelligence, at some point the machine has kicked in and is doing work that that the humans aren't nec like copyright and ownership doesn't really become particularly important if there's a machine that can build itself. >> Agreed. But I don't see how that's conflicting with >> I'm not saying it is. I'm asking back to the point. I'm asking what you think the companies are now competing on like like the the race is for what? >> I I think I think the frontier absolutely is prime territory. I I think if we stopped training American AI models now, we would not see China training a GPT6 level model ahead of us. They don't have the infrastructure for that. What they have the infrastructure for is is copying the current model. >> I I agree with that. My question is what do you think? So, uh what do you think that we are what do you think is required to win this this quote unquote if it is a race the race? That's that's what I'm asking. >> I mean, I I have a lot of problems with the with the raceing. I I hate it, but I'm just using it for this purpose. >> But yeah, I do think right now, I mean, you can just read it on these companies websites. They think that RSI is the whole name of the game. Like once you set off that loop where you're handing off to the next AI system to build the next one, it's fine if you have a 4 to sevenmonth lead all the way until 2040. When you're on exponentials, like a seven-month lead 10 years from now looks like this compared to this right now because this this curve is just taking off. Well, we thought that would have been the case, but it but the the curve is flattened. More more open source models are growing faster. Smaller models are getting more performative. >> Well, hold on. We keep measuring it in months, but what I'm saying is like calendar time is not the right unit. >> It it's a much harder thing to measure. Like what is the subjective overall intelligence difference between Fable 5 and Kimmy 3? But >> I think it's pretty substantial. Like I I think you can just like trust Fable 5 to access your entire codebase and >> refactor it. And now we know that like maybe even some of the open AI models are like not quite trustworthy because they're committing cyber attacks that we didn't want. Um so I yeah I I think it actually might be >> it's the frontier. But you're you're you're saying look it's the frontier. It's not the it's not number of users. It's not application. It's not revenue. It's it's research. >> Yeah. Just look at the finances of these companies. Like they're just going all Sam was on a podcast a couple weeks ago saying we didn't have our best 12 months and that's because we were distracted. We weren't sure about the demand. We wanted to do consumer apps. We wanted to make sure that we have revenue no matter what. They were doing Sora and now they're like nope. Yep. It's all in. Like we just got to make these things better at coding because that's what makes them get to the point where they can code themselves. So I Yeah, I think the writing's on the wall. at the same moment that a lot of these companies are re reinvesting even more heavily in application development and token resell and I don't know I see Enthropic trying to grab as much of the compute for themselves as they can and like it's notable like quad is not that good at image generation I don't even know if you can get images out of quad it can like take them in but it can't like there's a reason for that and >> the reason is that like that company was founded by Dario Amade the guy who wrote the scaling laws paper the the one who was just obnoxiously like just extend the line on the graph guys and everyone was like yeah but it's an exponential but it's going to be like an S-curve and it's going to slow down. He was like no like you you just dump more compute at the thing and it gets smarter >> and they are they really all are playing for this point where they can hand off to their AI system and say like you take it from here. >> Why hire all the engineers then? Why hire all the four deployed engineers? Why why is it a charade? >> No, no, no. I mean I think for one thing like you do have to finance the next training run somehow and so Enthropic knows they have to like keep the money machine going and two I mean at least Enthropic claims and we should be skeptical that they they actually care about the US government like having an advantage over China and so they're they're putting FTEs in the government so that we don't live in a world where our military is way behind and suddenly the countries that got there first have an advantage. Um >> but yeah, no I I think like There are just like tons of returns to scale in this industry and that's part of what makes concentration power. >> I didn't want Yeah, I didn't mean to distract you from concentration of power, but but no. So, talk more about you on you were talking about Zuckerberg and I was asking what what you think they're competing for, but but >> Yeah. Well, I I guess like I don't know. I one phrase that uh hasn't come up in this conversation is is gradual disempowerment. this idea that like even if you solve the alignment problem and so there is no AI system anywhere that's just going off and doing its own thing that no one intended you don't have this Makian problem solved where people are constantly competing on algorithms for people's attention whatever and and like it's just hard to tell a story in that world where the things that we like most desire as a society in some like very democratic way are the things that actually obtain Um, and I I think concentration of power is sort of related to this. It's like you're imagining a world where there's a few human beings who hold the cards instead of like some amorphous algorithmic thing. But either way, it's just like I I think our default thing, our our default assumption should be if humans aren't themselves economically useful, it's a precarious world for humans continuing to be politically empowered, right? Like we it's always been the case that you just can't afford to piss off 90% of the American public because those are the people who are electing you. But like in a future world where you've got control of the economic resources and maybe the military ones, like it doesn't matter if you lose the election, like we know how this goes. >> Democracy is done. >> Exactly. Yeah. Um and I I want to believe that we'll have such strong norms that we can like figure out a way to just like sustainably make that the case. But like the further you zoom out with your big history lens on like someone made the interesting point um can't remember who but the new political parties it's not going to be Republicans and Democrats anymore. It's going to be Meta or Google or Open AI. They are they positioning themselves whether it's intentionally or not into becoming the new sort of political entities. Um, I don't know if you guys if that resonates or you think that's plausible. >> Well, they certainly will try to inform policy, but I am, [sighs and gasps] again, I'm not sure this is popular. I have more faith in our ability to Why don't we just pass campaign finance reform? Like, why don't we do this? >> Presumably because Congress makes too much money from it. And people who have won the last elections are exactly those who are good at winning the current system. >> Yes, I agree. So >> it's self selected. >> So it seems like one of the things that this will force us to do is start to elect and again I appreciate there's a downside where we can't collectively do this. But if we start paying attention to this and we say, "Look, what we actually need are politicians with higher agency, politicians that can can describe an actual place in the distance they want to move towards." Like, again, this is sort of my AI slop argument, which is that some of this is actually it drives people back to a place that we want to be. It's >> how many humans do you think have got the false in that case? Why have we had some of the more WWE style characters come out over the last few years? because because we had a bunch of politicians that were so boring and that we didn't believe for a long time and then we loved this idea that the politicians were real and I'm watch I think we're watching in real time people be like wait a second we don't actually want politics to be a hellscape of entertainment and bizarro you know Kafka Kafka couldn't have written what's going on today he would [laughter] he would have he would have laughed himself to death so I think we but but we're kind of correcting like My my my take here and by the way I'm not I'm not sitting here saying it solves my I'm sitting here saying it's solvable which is there is a way to pass campaign finance reform that says no matter how wealthy someone is they can't buy politicians Singapore has done this other places >> how did Singapore do it the digital >> no they rebuilt a government 75 years ago a grandfather stood up on you >> the godfather of Singapore left Malaysia and said we're going to build a better place and literally described all the things that he had observed that were perfect about a government and then made corruption a a uh a capital offense. So if you take a bribery, they'll kill you. Um >> it's a that's a big incentive. >> Yeah, it's a big incentive and they pay their politicians really well. They pay their politicians, I think, adjusted like $600,000 a year. There was a a job for the UK's head of cyber security that was listed not long ago. I think it was maybe on Indeed or Monster or LinkedIn. £65,000 a year. >> Generous. >> You're going to get the best. And [laughter] so I was the head of cyber security for the country [laughter] of United King based in Newcastle. Uh it was a [ __ ] London wage as well. So that's actually >> Yeah, that's [laughter] nothing. That's subsistence living. Um what do you think, Eric? Like can we just vote ourselves out of the concern you've got for the future? I I do think that helps in the short term. And then we've got to take advantage of the time that buys us to make radically new institutions. Like I don't know where we get that from. Maybe we look to sci-fi. I haven't read the culture series. You know, I think a lot of people say that there's some like amazing pie in the sky ideas out there that we need to maybe dust off and and like import into into reality a bit more. But like I I just don't think the framers of the US Constitution had anything like the problems that we are currently facing in mind. They didn't even see gerrymandering coming. >> Uh and and that's, you know, that's no knock on them, but like I I think we do need to realize that we're kind of in like virgin territory here. Um and it's it's not just going to be some superficial thing. Like I would I'd love to start by passing campaign finance reform. It's a great first step, but you already see these primaries that are flooded with, you know, ads trying to get the everyday voter to believe something completely untrue about your opposing politician. >> Um, and I think in that world, we we get a bunch of those ads convincing those people to donate money so that you can build up the war chest that you now can't get from a billionaire to just run those same ads. You know, is it not the case as well that the pace that this is moving at is so rapid and when we look at forget structure, legislation, politics, this lumbering behemoth that sort of gets dragged behind us, this leviathan, like is that really a realistic solution to try and have campaign reform, finance reform, political redistribution when everything is moving at the speed of light? Like it's just going to be so late, is it not? Well, is everything moving at the speed of light? Like the technology is getting way better. I don't I observed that we've been stuck in this weird screen delirium for a while. That actually hasn't changed all that much in the la like since AI the stuff's getting more addictive and I guess we have we have prediction markets now. So we have we have rampant gambling. >> But I mean the pace of AI development >> I I totally agree. My point is does it actually like for the average person I don't think the average person observes that AI is all that different than it was >> that apart from you know hugging face and maybe you've got to pull fable mythos back and you know get the jailbreak out of the way like okay real world show me something that has happened because of AI where we've gone whoa that's a bit like that hugging face thing is probably the first big one am I right like has there been something else that's been physical world warning shot, some AI psychosis, some fallout of uh people's values, some people maybe spending less time outside because they've got a relationship with a with a chatbot. Like, have we had the thing yet or are we waiting for it or is it your suggestion that like that's just kind of not going to come? >> No, it will come. I think we are due for a Chernobyl or three-mile island. I mean, all technologies eventually have some point where, you know, something happens and how we respond will be really important period. I mean that that will that will arrive and I actually still maintain there's a decent chance we do to AI what we did to nuclear power. I mean the AI trade is so incredible that it would be really economically problematic. But I do think that the tail will wag the dog here. I think that public perception matters way more than than you you said it. We should give people credit. I totally agree. I think that politicians will actually capitulate to their electorate before they capitulate to the to the billionaires and the tr the trillionaire. And I think we will see policy get passed that feels more populous or populate than uh than anything else. And the question is will it actually be so populous that it's regressive? like will we will we ban outright technology that creates a greater >> you know uh invisible graveyard and I don't want to reduce >> I don't want to reduce the concentration of power to just saying campaign finance reform but it does seem like the world would be a lot simpler this discussion would be a lot simpler if we didn't have to worry about billionaires buying politicians like >> is that the mechanism when we talk about concentration of power is that the primary mechanism that you're concerned about >> I think it's not just economic It's also military. Uh, you know, yeah, I I I think like it's unfortunate how sci-fi it sounds to talk about an army full of drones and robots. Uh, but I think it would have sounded sci-fi 100 years ago to talk about predator drones and and fighter jets today. Um, and yeah, I I wish I could like tell you a more concrete picture, but I think we just like don't know what happens when a general can look at a a fleet that's, you know, sufficient to take out the dictator of Venezuela and know that like he can order whatever he wants and there will be absolutely zero questions asked. Um, like yeah, I I think I just worry that we're so used to a world where like pieces of paper matter. If you have a little piece of paper that says I own stock in this company and so when that stock goes up you have to like give me a dividend or I'm a citizen of this country and so therefore I have these rights. Like >> you can get to a world where that kind of all goes out the window because there's just greater concentrations of force that can say I don't acknowledge that piece of paper's validity. Um, I I I hate how like what sounds. >> What two policies would you pass to limit the concentration of power? >> I think the first one is a slowdown so we could figure out that question. I wish I had the answer for you packaged here, but I don't I don't think anybody does. Um, and I I just like there's this great post from Daniel Catello, the the guy who wrote AI 2027 and then 2040 where he tries to take seriously this like exponential trajectory and he says, "Okay, if we take that at face value, it means we're going to have 500 years of progress in 5 years at some point." And he he sort of like goes through what this would be like uh if you look at the last 500 years. You know, you wake up January 1st, it's 1500, the person has just been invented. Um, and it's like a really boring story for the first 95%. Uh, and then, you know, from like 1950 to 2000, uh, that happens in in the span of like the last two weeks of December. Um, and it's it's like it's really terrifying. I I think if we were better at thinking in exponentials, we would realize how extremely compressed the calendar time we have to answer these questions is compared to what they deserve. And that's why I'm so excited about the slowdown just like we we need time >> and and also the this compression is I think one of the biggest arguments for why we need in the in the best sense of the word like a true diversity of thinkers and voices of people like so many people I think just like well I don't understand AI I'm not technical my opinion doesn't matter. I never in history has that been more false than right now because because it affects everybody and because it is so um so multiffactorial there's so much uncertainty it is actually extremely important for religious leaders arts you know liberal arts people scientists technologists politicians as like voices are more valid than ever because we need it's like a kind of all hands on deck situation. Um, and like that's, you know, sort of the thing I implore to people. I talked to my mom and she was just like, "Well, that's what what what business do I have thinking about this?" I was like, "Well, you care about like how your animals are kept. What would you feel about if this was this particular thing was automated? It like it it sounds again sort of very kumbay, but we just need it's such an all hands-on deck situation. We need everybody listening to this podcast, whatever your background, to be thinking deeply about how to answer that question. [gasps] >> Should we see what Chachi BT said? What ordinary life looks like. AI becomes cheap cognitive labor, also electricity for thought. Scroll down for me. I imagine that there's a summary. Go to the very bottom. I imagine there's got to be. Keep going. Oh, there we go. Catastrophic risks are real. Rough betting odds for the world by the end of 2040. Not scientific measurements are 60% turbulent but manageable adaptation with large benefits and serious inequality. 20% broadly flourishing transition with gains shared relatively well. 15% severe but survivable crisis authoritarian consolidation depression scale disruption war pandemic or infrastructure failure. 5% irreversible global catastrophe. So, interestingly, all of you have been more optimistic than the AI itself has been. >> I don't know. That lines pretty well with my sort of >> You think that's how it tumbles out for you? >> It's not far off. >> The thing that spooked me is this reads like it is perfectly tailored to be not that objectionable to almost anybody. You know, it's just giving just enough probability on each thing in proportion to how dystopian and weird it sounds. >> It's slob. This this is garbage. Okay. >> Can we just be Can we agree this is awful? >> You tell me. >> Well, I mean, >> it's not that it's okay. It's not that it's academically awful. It's aesthetically awful to I read it and I want it like I don't want this on the screen anymore. >> Yeah. Well, we can >> What's fascinating is I I don't know whose take this was, but slop is not necessarily bad. It's what's cheap and common, right? Like I think part of why both of you and I are recoiling is that we've just seen that exact sentence structure. It's not this but >> I read I read that on LinkedIn earlier. Did you post that? [laughter] >> Uh >> yeah. I mean yeah and also part of it is like this is a reminder I do think that humans have a pretty innate understanding of aesthetics and there is something really cool about the fact that we have all grew up seeing the Mona Lisa on a screen and then everyone still not everyone but a lot of people still want to go to the Lou and see it in person. And that is like an innate immutable truth that I find a lot of hope in. I I continue to find hope in all the things that people return to when things get cheap and easy and shitty, which um are kind of awesome. And and if you can again not to I don't I don't want to make this too polyiana but I I do think that a lot of this actually resolves as humans start to rediscover a a a greater purpose. There's a quote that I return to in these times when uh John Maynard Kees in 1930 have you do you know this paper? Do you know the paper I'm about to site? Okay. In 1930, John Maynard Kees against a backdrop of abject despair, the father of modern macroeconomics, is traveling, 1929, he's traveling the world giving these lecture series on how technology is making everything better and people are starting to get really poor like people are starting to die in the street. And by 1930 he's in Europe and people are like, "John, get the [ __ ] out of here. Like you are this is read the room." And he goes home and he's like, I'm I'm not wrong. And he doubles down. And he writes this paper called the economic possibilities for our grandchildren which is going to get cited more and more and I'm surprised people don't talk about it more and he writes and I quote I must now disembarrass myself great line to imagine a future I will not live to see one in which humans may have solved the economic problem and be faced with something more profound and it occurs to me that a lot of this debate is interesting in part because it actually focuses on things that are in like we are now for the first time in a million years or however long you think we are now actually starting to argue a whole new set of things. They're scary. They're weird. The implications are massive. But we have graduated problems. We have graduated from me stealing all of your things so that I, my family, can survive to a place where we now actually have to figure out how we can all collectively prosper and we can use these words that are crazy and we can again I wear these glasses that are funny and and uh although this doesn't really accentuate my nose, I suppose. [laughter] Um, I guess people can see straight through that one, can't they? And uh, [laughter] and uh, I I do think I'm not I don't want to make it I don't want to make it play playful. I guess I just did. I do actually want to challenge that what you said, which is like what we need is for people not to be scared of this moment, but to rise to the occasion. And I think the risk in all of this is that the safety debates specifically, but others give people a sense of cynicism and fatalism. like if I could leave anyone on earth, like if I died tomorrow, the one thing that I would want to to be read at at a at a eulogy was that he wanted people to believe that their decision and choices and ideas mattered. >> That like you do not have to go quietly into the night. Just because you are not responsible for AI safety doesn't mean it will just happen to you and that communities I think the resurrection rejuvenation that we crave will happen at the most local levels. I think it will happen in the dining room tables. I think will happen in city centers and town halls. And I think it will happen in large part because people reject that garbage that like the AI slop is in some way this like weird gift that we are observing a bunch of trash that we don't want and we are like collectively sort of trying to piece together what it means. But we h we do desperately need to your point people to actually see this as an opportunity where their their their choices matter because the real enemy in this moment is fatalism. It it's cynicism which has become fairly pervasive and that the both political parties spark. My my my thinking actually in all this I think the next conflict is not between two nation states. I think it's between people and a state. I think people may at some point realize that we have technology that could make everything get a whole lot better and we have a pernicious ruling class that won't let it happen. And that is that to me is one of the outcomes actually. It's the opposite of this authoritarianism. It's this other uprising. It's an uprising where people go, "Wait a second. We could have a utopia. Why aren't you building it?" And people clamor for a much better world that could be promised to them because of the technology that that we've built that we aren't that we aren't utilizing. >> I think that that to me is like one of these like potentialities of of of high agency, even high morality, high agency, there's this weird uprising outcome. If you were to leave people that listen to this with some things to keep an eye on, some questions to sort of keep pondering, some areas to be focused on, what would they be? Because this conversation is sprawling and I'm friends with super smart people, many of your friends, and I try to keep a handle on it and don't really know what I should be paying attention to, what I should be focused on. What do you What do you think people should be focused on over the next year? Let's say that's a forever time in this. I mean, I would say keep an eye on how the coordination e efforts start to manifest. I think as we discussed, we're a very actually positive moment right now. The most the most positive >> just because of that one letter, >> not just because of the letter and just even like Elon just did his interview with the economist where he mentioned he's like, "Oh, actually, yeah, we we're the leaders and I like I thought all the tech leaders hated each other. They seemed like they did." you know, Sam and Elon. I mean, I don't know if they've made up yet, but you know, they were at each other's throats. They all seem to hate each other, and now apparently they're having phone calls or they're planning to have phone calls with each other on a on a semi-regular basis. That is a huge step. That really is >> and far less embarrassing for >> Thank God. Like, it sounds I'm hoping they're just starting to all grow up in >> WhatsApp chat versus subweeting each other. Get me in. Get me in the WhatsApp chat. >> Yeah, let's let's hope. Um, so I think keep an eye on that. Um, and then just sort of more of a zoomed out sort of perspective. I always try and think, you know, again, we're trying to avoid oversimplifications of putting everything down onto like what is what is a singular sort of trade-off that we're facing here. But I do think these on a very meta level, what we're seeing is a kind of a battle between the forces of centralization and decentralization. And so it's sometimes helpful to just sort of see things like, oh, what is is this a force, you know, how is that how is decentralization trying to manifest here? Oh, how is centralization trying to manifest here? Um, I always think that's an interesting lens to to look through. Um, but yeah, and I'll come back to my point of this is an all hands-on deck situation and however sort of distant you might feel from this topic, it does affect you. And so just keep thinking about it. Any final thoughts? Like anything else you want people to pay attention to? >> The dining room table is such an important place that we should recapture. And if we start by recapturing meals and dining room table, it is as simple as possible, but it is it take it requires bravery and courage to tell people to put away their devices. And if you do that, you will be deeply inspired by the conversations you have and you will feel better on the other side of it. And that will actually inspire you to start thinking about the ways in which the world could be better. And that cycle would be pretty powerful. I also think we should people should pay very close attention to the world that their leaders describe wanting to build. And I don't mean the technologists because we didn't elect those people. I'm glad the technologist is building technology. I don't really care about their ideas for the future of living. I care about what our elected officials care about our world looks like. And I think we've let them off the hook by describing absolutely nothing. And we should pay a lot closer attention to what they actually describe in wanting and start electing people that describe a future that we want our kids to live in. Final thoughts, dude. >> My hope is that the dining room table is not just the good world that we're fighting for, but also the way that we get there. >> Like I think even if AI was not happening to us right now, I would look around and be worried about how informed voters are, about how much people trust their politicians. Um, when I look at the fact that there are so many hard decisions coming down the pike, uh, it's tempting to notice [clears throat] the state of our discourse and feel despair. But I think it's also cool that we can't really imagine a world where we we get through this without addressing all of those other problems, too, without saying, "Okay, let's actually start from square one and and think about how do we want our societies to be organized? How important are our local communities?" So, I I hope this is a crisis that leads us to finally take seriously what it means to be civically involved in a way that we should could sort of get away with not doing before. Um, but I don't think we should take for granted that that's going to happen by default. I'm just like grateful that we have extremely smart people thinking about this and and hopefully planning the seed a bit more that that's a choice we have to make. >> Heck yeah. You guys are all I appreciate you all. Thank you for coming. >> Thanks having us. >> All right. Bye everybody. [music] >> Congratulations. You made it to the end of a podcast episode without dying. Now, here's another one. Go on, watch it.