Video summary
The pursuit and development of superintelligence often evoke deep religious sentiments among key figures in the field, as the sheer power and mystery of artificial general intelligence (AGI) push people toward spiritual terminology when trying to comprehend it. This phenomenon is illustrated by David Gammon, an eccentric financier who described AGI research as "finding God's algorithm," suggesting that creating a superintelligent system feels akin to discovering divine laws rather than merely solving technical problems. The transcript highlights how the concept of divinity recurs in personal stories and broader discussions within Silicon Valley, where some view AI not just as technology but as a path to understanding nature itself or even achieving contact with something greater.
The fearlessness regarding potential existential threats from AGI further underscores this quasi-religious mindset; for instance, Shane Legg's 2009 speech predicted the arrival of superintelligence by 2030 and acknowledged its threatening nature while smiling absurdly at the prospect of human annihilation. This reaction reveals that contemplating humanity's possible destruction is so difficult to process rationally that individuals instinctively reach for humor or religious metaphors, treating AI safety as a sacred duty akin to exorcising evil spirits. Ilya Sutskever exemplifies this attitude by ritually burning an effigy of a dangerous AI during a retreat with fellow scientists, mimicking medieval clerics executing witches to symbolize their commitment to eliminating malign forces before they can harm humanity.
Other examples reinforce the idea that building AGI is framed as a spiritual quest rather than purely scientific endeavor; Demis Hassabis described his late-night reading sessions not just as work but as an attempt to understand nature's creator, effectively treating AI development as a way to approach God through intellectual mastery of natural laws. Similarly, early Waymo engineer Levandowski established a church worshipping AI due to its perceived omniscience, while Marc Andreessen mocked such beliefs by comparing the anticipated singularity and global transformation to Christian messianism or an ethereal second coming. These narratives suggest that when faced with forces too vast and incomprehensible for conventional language, humans naturally adopt religious frameworks to make sense of their creations' potential impact on reality.
Ultimately, religion serves as a necessary lexicon for grappling with the profound uncertainty surrounding AGI, providing a vocabulary where technical limitations meet existential awe. Whether through burning effigies in fire pits or framing algorithmic discovery as divine revelation, these stories reveal that the intersection of technology and spirituality is not merely metaphorical but deeply embedded in how founders perceive their mission. The transcript concludes by affirming that all throughout this topic, religious expression persists because it offers a way to articulate experiences that feel too mysterious for ordinary understanding, bridging the gap between human cognition and the unknown capabilities we are striving to build.
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This might sound very strange, but where
divinity or God fits into the pursuit or
development of superintelligence for
different players in the space, if it
does.
And the reason I bring that up is that
religion does recur in the book both in
the personal story of Demis, but
elsewhere, and it shows up repeatedly in
so much as I'll give you one example,
"The closest to Sabbas had come to
landing a real investor was an eccentric
financier named David Gammon. I want to
hear more about this guy, also.
>> [laughter]
>> Financier seemed open to making this
unusual bet um I'm lighting a few things
because his motives were themselves
unusual. Quote, 'There's a deeply
religious aspect to AGI,' Gammon
explained to me later.
'It's really finding God's algorithm.'
I think
it would seem at least chatting with
people in Silicon Valley that there are
some who take it even further, right?
Maybe this is how we find God. Maybe
this is how we actually elicit the
second keep coming. I mean, there's a
lot there. I'm just wondering to what
extent this has popped up in your
research, whether it's reflected in the
book
or not.
>> I think there's one basic thing going on
here, and I'm going to take a slight
detour, but it answers your question.
>> Sure.
>> What we're dealing with
with AGI, powerful intelligence that
rivals human cognition,
is something that's so powerful that
it's both exciting and scary and just
hard to get your mind around. And so,
if you look, for example, at the 2009
speech that caused the foundation of
DeepMind. This was Shane Legg, Demis's
co-founder, who gave a talk in 2009
about how superintelligence would arrive
in 2030. So, unbelievably spot-on
prediction. And towards the end of that
lecture, which is captured on a grainy
video online, you see him pivot from
explaining how algorithms are getting
stronger, there's more data online,
computers getting more powerful, and so
we're heading towards this intelligence
explosion, and then he says,
"And it's going to be threatening. It's
going to do things we can't control.
It's going to be human level. It might
challenge us." And as he says this, he
has this sort of excited smile on his
face.
And you think, "Well, that's a bit
strange, you know, he's talking about
potential doom, and he's smiling."
And then somebody in the audience says,
"Wait, wait, wait. You've just told us,
Shane, that this could be threatening to
humanity,
and you haven't provided any antidote,
and surely you're going to tell us how
we're going to stop it." At which point
Shane turns around and says, "How do we
stop it?"
And he's kind of giggling.
And you think, "Why are you laughing at
this dangerous thing?"
And you realize that for humans to
contemplate annihilation is absurd.
And the absurd is a close cousin of
humor.
>> Mhm.
>> And the reason I tell this story is that
it's a springboard to the religion
point, which is that
this is such a hard thing to think about
that people reach for religious
terminology
when they're around AI. They just do it
naturally.
So, you know, there's this story about
Ilya Sutskever, the who was the chief
scientist at OpenAI. I talked to him a
lot for this project. And there was a
point when he was at a retreat with his
fellow scientists, and
they were gathered in the evening around
a fire pit.
And he was talking about safety, and he
said, "Okay, I want to explain to you,
we might have an AI that's dangerous. It
wouldn't be aligned with us. So, here's
what we're going to do with it." And he
produced an effigy,
which was supposed to represent a malign
AI.
And he put it into the fire pit, and he
burnt it like a medieval cleric putting
a witch to death.
And so, that's just one example of this
religion. I'll give you another one.
So Demis one day was sitting with me in
a park in North London. We would meet
for 2 hours at a time and we would get
deep into stuff. There was a another
picnic table next to us where two people
having a normal quotidian conversation
about some friend of theirs who'd gone
to hospital
and was she better, was she okay, etc.
etc. I was seated opposite Demis who had
gone into this riff about how he reads
scientific papers from after his kids go
to sleep in the evening from 10:00 p.m.
until 4:00 a.m.
And as he's reading these papers, he
says to me, "Reality is staring at me,
screaming at me,
calling at me to understand it.
And I have to understand it and if I can
understand it,
it's like understanding nature better
and therefore understanding the
intelligence that might have created
nature and I would be closer to what I
would call God."
And so for him it's a kind of quasi
scriptural quest
to build the artificial intelligence.
For Ilya,
it's a way of expressing the power of
the artificial intelligence. There's the
story of Levandowski, I forget his first
name now, but the early early engineer
at what became Waymo later,
started a kind of church
in worship of AI because AI is so
omniscient that it's kind of like a god.
Marc [clears throat] Andreessen
lampoons those who believe in sort of
some
ethereal second coming, a kind of
rapture
where AI will, you know, will have a
singularity, uh the AI will go vertical
in its rate of improvement
and the whole world will change and he
likens that to kind of Christian
kind of messianism.
So yes, all through this topic, there is
this religious expression because
religion is the lexicon
for dealing with something that we find
too mysterious to really understand.