Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat

We have [music] video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested. How can you call [music] that a democracy? So, humanity is at a crossroads where for the first time ever [music] we need to wake up and realize that we're ruled by maniacs and what we believe is democracy is not democracy and what we know is not [music] the truth. Like companies and governments will blame the geopolitical and economic [music] challenges we have on AI, but the truth is AI is not the enemy. Like I'm not worried about AI turning against us. I'm [music] worried about humans telling AI to turn against us. Like when I worked at Google, we were building amazing things believing that we were making the world a better place and we were. [music] But then suddenly there is a moment where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used. And sadly, this is upon us. >> So, I have lots of questions. >> Okay, that's good. >> So, what's your take on this job disruption point? What is the risk of these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves? Do you think Sam Altman's pro-humanity? How do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive [music] structures are so highly competitive? And then I wonder if there's a path that ends in AI being net positive for humanity. >> Somehow we've been pre-programmed [music] to believe that this is upon us and we cannot change it. And I refuse that. So, we will talk about the solutions. >> But are you optimistic? >> I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the next year. >> Why the next year? >> Come on, Stephen. You don't want me [music] to say it. So, >> This is super interesting to me. My team gave me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe and some of you have told us, according to this, that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So, if I were to ask all of you, please could you check right now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to hit that subscribe button and to double-check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll ever ask of you. Do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do. I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that promise since the very beginning of The Diary of a CEO, and I will not let you down. Please help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get on with the show. >> [music] [singing] >> Mo Gawdat, I spoke to you, I think, about 4 years ago when you wrote a book about happiness, and I remember you came in and you'd written this book about AI, but I particularly wanted to speak about the subject of happiness cuz I was fascinated by it. What I find astonishing is the fact that you were talking about AI before anybody was really talking about AI. No guest that had ever come on my podcast had ever mentioned the subject of AI. It just wasn't interesting to the world. And then this thing called ChatGPT came out, and suddenly everybody got to feel it for themselves and became fascinated by it. My first question, and this might be a question for people that don't know you, is why at that time did you start talking about AI before anybody else? >> I knew them in the lab. I I joined Google in 2007, very late 2006. And at the time, most people don't know that at the time we had reasonably established AIs doing our back-end work. And 2000 uh eight, we had the cat paper, which was published 2009, the first real unprompted AI. Uh I remember 2016, I had that incident where I was, you know, observing a project we were funding that was about teaching grippers how to grip, unlike industrial machinery. Uh so, to be to be able to grip like a human needs a very high level of intelligence to to to assess the texture, the softness, the positioning, and so on, the shape of everything. And we were doing that, and it it just blew my mind how similar to my kids they were. And I think that was my very first realization that we were building the apex of intelligence. We were genuinely handing over the reins of superintelligence to another being, right? And when you when you get faced with that, you start to suddenly realize something that we at Google found very difficult to realize, which was that everyone I knew at Google till then uh was believing that we were making the world a better place, and we were. We genuinely were were doing amazing things for the world. Uh but then suddenly there is a moment where you uh where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used. And And you can see that in lots of technologies, you know, social media starts by the claim that it's going to get us connected and get us closer, but eventually ends up separating us with that little screen, you know. Dating apps are giving you the promise that you're going to find your soulmate, but in reality they keep renewing month after month. And so tech uh somehow ends up being more capitalist than altruistic. And I think I was I wasn't the first in a Bostrom started, you know, Geoffrey Hinton completely changed his mind. Fei-Fei Li is starting to say, you know, this is very serious. Everyone now, everyone who's ever had a very deep relationship with the machines is a bit concerned. >> I wonder if there's a path that's hard to see now that ends in AI being net positive for humanity. >> Sure. I bet 100% on that. It's that this path is very painful. >> This path is very painful. >> Yeah, so so the example you need to understand is, you know, we discovered uh uh, nuclear power. And the very first implementation was a nuclear bomb, not not nuclear energy, right? And, uh, and I think that's exactly what's happening with AI. Uh, the first implementations of AI are in favor of a few at the expense of the majority. You know, the the in favor of the capitalist to increase productivity and reduce costs, uh, but not taking into account how that impacts on the general public, uh, you know, in favor of the of the armies uh, that are now competing with autonomous weapons, in favor of the surveillance systems that are attempting to control everything with more and more and more intelligence and more monitoring. And that's not AI waking up in the morning and saying, "Hey, you know what? Let's oppress all humans." But it is a powerful few that are simply deciding to use the ultimate superpower on the planet today to gain more power and more control. I mean, as we speak, we're living in two major wars where AI is doing most of the killing. >> Cuz a lot of people think of AI as these like chatbots that we're all using to help us write. >> No, I think I think there is a hype. I call it the hype dichotomy, if you want. So, so what the general public sees about AI is overhyped, but ineffective. You know, all of the fake videos and all of the, you know, um, Grok did this and, you know, we attempted to switch off that machine and it did that and so on. What the real geeks see inside the lab is just unbelievable intelligence. And so, what is about to happen is that we've started to put together systems that develop themselves. They look at their own code and they, you know, they They experiments and they test those experiments if they changed something and they see where the machines are, uh you know, the performance is. And and redeploy the best code. Okay? And And if you just think of that, I want you to try and imagine a world where we have a tiny little genius sitting in the back end somewhere trying. But instead of trying a new code every day, it's trying a new code every microsecond. Eventually, sooner or later, they discover something, right? And I think that's what most people don't realize. What most people don't realize is how intelligence triggers intelligence. And And if you really, really understand this, you realize that the hype uh on the on the on the normal human side is completely overrated, uh missing the main topics, and the silence inside, the vault, if you want, of the geeks is quite alarming. No, I'm I'm not alarming in a bad way, but it's quite world-changing. >> I think world-changing is a really interesting phrase because I feel find that to be quite true that the world is um at precipice of quite a significant change, yeah, in many respects. It's funny. I I It's funny. I I almost swing backwards and forwards with my my thoughts on AI. I guess one of the thoughts that hasn't swung is that there's going to be pretty tremendous job disruption. I would have liked logically believed it from like reasoning up from okay, intelligence increases, what is intelligence, and once intelligence um is in the form of these agents where I'm on my phone right now, I can tell my agent to do something. It uses the computer downstairs. It does it for me. When the When I first experienced that, I was like, "Wow. Okay, so it can do anything that's on a computer. It can click around. It can do stuff for me." There's a lot of people that are paid in the world to click around on a computer. I'm probably one of them, to be honest. And then the other eureka moment was just in seeing how my own hiring had started to shift. >> For sure. >> And I started to notice that we were we were thinking about AI proficiency in our hiring a lot more. And that especially, you know, don't I think the guys at Anthropic, which is one of the big AI companies, said that they could see, I think they said roughly 15% of entry-level jobs could now be done by AI. I think that's what they said. And that started to correlate with what I was I was observing. And this is when I thought, "Oh my gosh, yes, no, this is this is going to be cause a lot of job disruption, especially at the entry-level level." >> I think [clears throat] you're spot on with that. Not the not the blue-collar, but but the entry-level knowledge work. >> Yeah. And that became my my first concern. You know, I sat here with Dara, the CEO of Uber, and he was quite clear that the 9 million Uber riders won't have their jobs anymore. What's your take on this job disruption point? >> No, I I I think you're spot on. I mean, your your team gave me this lovely little pyramid, basically. You know, if you if you think of the bottom layer as blue-collar jobs, right? More people doing manual work. >> [clears throat] >> On top of it, you'll have those, you know, call them knowledge workers, mostly doing mundane jobs, like you said, clicking on a computer or responding to a phone call or whatever. Then you have the middle knowledge workers, jobs that require a bit more intelligence, you know, anything from a paralegal to a financial analyst to all of that. And then, of course, you know, top leadership. And and most people think it's going to be starting from the bottom. I don't think it's all start from the bottom, actually. I think blue-collar jobs will stay for a very long time, right? >> Give me a an example of a blue-collar job, someone that's >> Um a carpenter. Okay? You know, I you know, I love to restore classic cars. So, you know, there isn't a robot that can do that yet. Okay? This, however, you know, any anything that is call center agent, assistant, travel agent, you know, anything that you can do with a few clicks and is mundane, uh is going to disappear very quickly. My my prediction is you're going to start to see very serious impact in 2027. Now, what you had had not sensed it before because what we saw was no hiring in that segment. It's So So that what you saw in the last couple of years is that companies were not hiring entry-level jobs anymore. It wasn't job losses yet, but that basically meant the workforce was not grow, right? The next layer I think would probably be the knowledge workers. As as intelligence increases, a paralegal would probably not be needed because AI can do the research or one paralegal can do the job of four. You know, a financial analyst is same and so on and so forth. But interestingly, it continues to go up, believe it or not. And I you know, I hosted Max Tegmark on my on my documentary and and he was laughing out loud, genuinely laughing out loud saying, you know, most of the CEOs believe that they can fire everyone and have AI do all of the jobs. They just don't remember that AGI is going to do everything better than humans eventually, including being a CEO. >> So let's first define when you say white-collar. >> Mhm. >> You You said lawyers there. What kind of roles are >> I mean every everything. I mean, if you if you're a doctor that's doing diagnosis, you you probably will have fewer doctors doing uh more diagnosis because I think the NHS does that that already by asking interacting with an AI first, you know. If you're a a composer, a music composer, some composers will lose their jobs because of that. If you're an artist that's doing graphic design, some will lose their jobs because AI comes into that. And and interestingly, even middle management. I mean, I I told you offline about my my startup. I my CTO is an AI, my you know, chief of staff is an AGI, my project management is AIs. Again, because I'm a geek, I can do those things, but that interface will come to the normal people very soon, right? And and so this may take two to three five years, if you want, until 2030, if you if you if you're optimistic. And uh but but it they'll start to erode, okay? I think the challenge that most people don't understand is as this erodes and as this erodes, we're already dealing with a very different economy. Okay? An economy that is spiraling a lot quicker uh and pushing more for more cost reductions. I mean, the let let me ask you this, if if you don't mind and we can come back to this. Imagine a world where the concept of labor arbitrage that built all of our capitalist success disappears. >> What do you mean by labor arbitrage? >> So capitalism has always been all about using labor >> Mhm. >> [clears throat] >> and capital or debt >> Mhm. >> to create things at a cost that is lower than the than the price you sell them for. Correct? >> Mhm. >> That's it. >> Mhm. >> Uh you bring a team together, they make some shoes, whatever, and you sell the shoes for a dollar more than it how much it costs you to make them. So how would capitalism look like if you don't have labor arbitrage? If if cost of labor drops to an investment in a machine that can do the job. Okay? Uh how would capitalism and banking look if because of that cost reduction, you don't need to borrow as much anymore? And more interestingly how does the GDP look if all of those workers no longer have the purchasing power to to buy the things that you can uh create you and and others? Right? There is an interesting disruption that doesn't require us to get to 100% job displacement. You know, at 10, 20% job displacement, you're in a very different economy. An economy that is clearly spiraling downwards, don't you think? >> Yeah, I I wonder with when costs drop, I think one of the things that might happen as well is that people will spend more on other things. Cuz I was thinking in my business, one of the observations I've had is if I make a cost saving, I end up spending the money on something else. >> Mhm. >> Now, that thing could be tokens. Basically, spending money on >> Computers, yeah. >> com- you know, AI. But but it also could be hiring in different areas. >> Which are? >> Software engineers are like hot property right now. >> You you have to imagine all of that intelligence is sooner or later going to be not replaced entirely in the first stages, but if you know, the job of four assistants is going to be done by one, then the four the job of four paralegals can be done by one, then the job of a massive marketing team can be done by, you know, a smaller marketing team. It's not that jobs will end first, it's that, you know, productivity gains will make businesses not want to to have as many people, costly humans, you know, costly emotional humans, when when the job can be predictably done for cheaper. >> And then what about this this this bottom layer here? The there was this video released by Figure AI the other day where they showed someone on well, a robot on the production line for 8 hours just sorting packages. Did you see this video? >> Mhm. >> At one point they showed a human sorting the packages alongside them, but the robot ended up winning out. And okay, this is a very straightforward task. All it's doing here is it's looking for where the label is on the package and making sure the label is facing downwards. >> Yeah. >> Um on all the packages. So, it's looking, it's um sorting the packages, putting the label facing down, and it did this for 8 days. >> Yeah. >> Uh it's intermittently, it would walk over and charge itself, and then it would come back >> Yeah. to the production line. >> Yeah. >> But when I when I saw this as well, it was a a glimpse of some of the disruption that's going to take place at the blue-collar level as well, because if you think about Elon Musk, he's got um in his pay packet, he gets something like a trillion dollars over the coming years if he produces and delivers at least a million humanoid robots into the world. But his prediction is there will be a time where there are 10 billion humanoid robots where there are more humanoid robots in the world than there are humans. >> For a fact. You see, the interesting, again, the difference between the over-hype and the under-hype, huh? Most of the conversation is around humanoids. Nobody's talking about self-driving cars. And a self-driving car is a robot. It's a functional robot that doesn't look like humans, okay? The investment you have to put into humanoids is a little more to to learn skills that allows that machine to fit into the world. But specialized robots are going to do the job very, very quickly, hm? And and so you can easily see that the first wave, like you had the conversation with Uber CEO, is going to be specialized robots replacing drivers, hm? Uh >> [clears throat] >> it's going to be specialized robots, um unfortunately, doing the killing. Uh it's going to be specialized robots, unfortunately, doing all of the, you know, intelligence work, hm? Uh uh law enforcement work. Uh they don't have to look like a human. They don't have to behave like a human. As a matter of fact, you know, the uh Boston Dynamics dog is probably more efficient than a humanoid at doing the job that you can assign to it in a battlefield, right? Now, those basically mean that jobs will be disappearing to robots before we recognize that they're being dis- that they're disappearing for to robots. And those robots will be as many as every car being made today. >> I mean, they are If you get to LA, my car drives itself, but also there's just Waymos everywhere. So >> Absolutely. And BYD just the other day just announced that they will pay for the liability of any accident their cars will make. >> And BYD is the big Chinese manufacturer of auto autonomous vehicles. >> So so this this I think replacement cycle will happen. It will require a lot of of time to achieve economies of scale, but I don't think Elon Musk is off the mark when he talks about 10 billion robots. Not all of them are going to look like humanoids. And I think very quickly we will recognize that many many robots don't need to be humanoids at all, that there is a a much more efficient form factor or shape, physical shape if you want, than the human flimsy structure. But yes, it's uh it's about to happen. I I think I should qualify all of this by saying it it does not necessarily need to happen. So so, you know, people will will hear all of all of this and and blame AI and say AI is evil. AI is not. Abundant intelligence is wonderful, you know, having jobs done by machines is amazing for us. >> I'm thinking about the kid that's like, I don't know, leaving university now and they've got a a degree in law or I don't know, you talked about a few other white-collar jobs earlier like graphic design or maybe they did sociology. Yeah. Or maybe they did, I don't know, business management like I I did for a one day in university. You know, you're hearing about all these like coming from big tech companies and and it seems that the CEOs of these companies are announcing these layoffs with a certain amount of it seems like I wouldn't say the word is joy, but it's it's they are very keen to explain that they're laying off lots of people because if they are And I think they think that that gives them a certain amount of respect, probably from investors, for being making hard decisions and being efficient with how they're running their businesses. Investors look at them and think, well, if that's an inefficient business and they're leaning into AI, then that's a good investment. It's almost started a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy where if you're the only CEO not laying off loads of people because of AI, you actually look bad. The assumption is your company is bloated and you're a bad operator. Um so, one of my concerns that I I think is highly plausible is that over the next 5 maybe 10 years we're going to really see a lot of unemployment as the world has to kind of readjust to whatever these new jobs are. I do think there will be new jobs. It's hard in foresight to predict what those new jobs will look like. And then the minute you start talking about humanoid robots and robotics, which I think is basically going to hit society like a comet, like a meteor. I think the the first humanoid robot from Tesla or anyone else that is highly effective in the real world at doing tasks and is extremely intelligent cuz it's powered by one of these LLMs, um I think it's going to shock people. And I think it's going to happen quickly. Like ChatGPT happened quickly. I think Elon or something is going to do a presentation someday and say, "We're ready." >> 100%. >> And you can buy one now for $500 a month. >> 100%. >> And then people are going to get them and I think it's going to shock the world. Um but until humanoid robots arrive, I think there's still going to be a lot of job disruption to the white-collar layer. And I wonder what that looks like for society when we get to, I don't know, 10%, 15% unemployment theoretically, which I think is plausible. >> Very soon. >> Yeah. >> You're not very different. Okay? You're You're just on top of a baseline that is continuing to grow. So, your your business is growing, so you continue to hire, but you are replacing human resources with compute. Okay? If you If AI didn't exist, you would have probably had 800 people more in your organization today, right? You You now have 100 people less and, you know, a billion tokens more. >> Yeah, so for anyone that doesn't know tokens are basically the thing that you you use it's the currency of AI. >> Yeah. >> So so if you if you want to get that task done by a human, you you count in sort of like man-hour or or or worker hour employee hour. In AI you count by compute, you count by tokens, right? And and so the trick is those major tech companies, they have two sides. One is they are they need to replace workers with compute even more because there is a competitive side on compute where if any of them is left behind, that means the destruction of the entire business. But on the upside, they are geeks, so they they know how to build the interfaces to compute, so they integrate technology within their organizations quicker than the average traditional business, right? Non- non-technology business, if you want. You can look at them and say this is the preview. It's not about all of humanity losing their jobs, it's about what is the dividing line before civil war. Right? You know, think about a situation where 20% unemployment is happening when economies are suffering in inflation. I say that not to be a scaremonger, I say that because I genuinely believe governments need to wake up. Okay? Government needs to at least play you know, remember the COVID years where governments had to give furlough everywhere, hm? And ask people to stay home. If people stay home, governments have to be prepared to to somehow sustain those people until reskilling happens or until we find a solution so that those people don't feel uh that they're left behind. >> A civil war. >> Unrest, let's call it. >> Civil unrest. >> Yeah. >> What does that end up looking like? Cuz on one end, you know, the democ- democratic process plays its role and we just elect someone else. >> Does it really? Don't say that. >> I don't know, you tell me. >> Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I I I think democracy has ended a long time ago, Stephen. I think I think we live in the most corrupt time. I don't know about history, to be honest, but this is definitely corrupt. Okay? This definitely is not democracy. This definitely is not even congressional in any possible way. This and people are angry. You know, people are angry because their tax money is going to things that they don't choose to, you know, that they don't benefit them, that you know, lots of regulations in the system are being ignored. I mean, I'm you know, I I I choose not to speak about politics perhaps until my next book comes out, but but look, we have video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested. Not a single person. I mean, how can you call that a democracy? I I I think repeating those slogans is going to is going to anger people even more if you ask me. People know that they're being lied to. People know that their their leaders are not representing their best interest. People know that their money is going to causes that they don't really approve of. Uh and and ask me how civil unrest looks like. I I don't know and I'm not calling for it, but I'm hopefully calling for the politicians to start to become aware that this is crossing the lines everywhere. >> Uh on this point, Sam Altman, who is the founder of Open AI, he's been banging the AI's coming for your job drum for more than a decade now. In 2015, he pointed out, "My job is to help people destroy jobs." Um something he lamented at the time, but decided he'd do anyway. >> One of the things that I struggle with, like getting out of the bed every morning, is that like my job is to help people destroy jobs. The job destruction that we're going to see by software in the next couple of decades, I don't think anyone's prepared for and you can't talk about it. >> And in 2023, Altman said in an interview, "A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good. It's only going to be a supplement. No one is ever going to be replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop. Interestingly this month, he said, "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about. I'm delighted to be wrong about this. On white collar jobs in 2021 to through 2024, he said, 'AI will probably replace most of the jobs people do today. Entire job categories will be totally totally gone.' In May, this month, 2 years later, he said, 'I thought there would be more impact on entry-level white collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened. This is an area where my intuitions were just off.' >> What I find uncomfortable is the bouncing backwards and forwards. And I don't really know what is true because couple of years ago you were telling us all the jobs are going to go away. You said categorically. Um you said literally said full stop. And now he's saying they're not going away. And I just don't, you know, when someone's like changing form factor, it's hard to understand why they're doing it. And I think my suspicion is back then, the incentive was to get people to take AI seriously. >> Mhm. >> Congratulations, [clears throat] we took it seriously. We took it so seriously in fact that it's now a problem. It's a problem for these companies because people are now booing at commencement speeches, they're attacking data centers, they're going to elect people that are theoretically anti-AI. And now there's this inversion where like, "No, it's going to be fine." >> Yeah. I don't know. >> What? I mean you're you're you're spot on. Uh fir- first of all, I mean Sam's entire existence if you ask me starting with open AI that is about that's supposed to save the world by creating a safe AI then be making it a commercial enterprise that's worth billions and you know backstabbing [clears throat] a few people in the process and you know I I have him on on chasing Utopia saying I quote this is exactly the words he said you can find it online. >> Chasing Utopia is your documentary. >> Yes, so so so he he basically says well I don't suspect that I suspect that AI is likely going to end humanity but we're going to create a lot of interesting companies in the process right? I mean those kinds of statements are honestly not the statements of someone who's not decided. It's just the statements of someone who's being taught more and more by his PR agency or PR manager to say things as per the script. Right? And the script as you rightly said had an objective and a target either way. You know and Sam Altman I you know in one of my works I used to say that Altman is a brand it's not a name. Okay? If you if you if it wasn't for Sam Altman specifically there would have been another you know Silicon Valley disruptor that would have done the same. I don't blame him for beating the market for it. The the interesting challenge here is that who do we believe anymore? Who do we believe in technology? Who do we believe in politics? Who do we believe in the middle of a war? And I will tell you interestingly I started to change my mindset in terms of believing those who put their actions where their words are. So Anthropic coming out and saying I'm not going to allow my model to be used for human targeting and surveillance. Right? That's someone that's losing a $500 million deal because they stand by their ethics. The next week or the next I don't know a couple of weeks Open AI takes the contract. That's someone that's basically telling you it's good money, right? And and I I have to say you have to start observing who's actually behaving in a way uh that is making AI work for humanity and who is behaving in a way that is making AI work for their share values. >> Yeah, I do have to say when Dario and the team at Anthropic did that, I did have a huge amount of respect for them. Generally [clears throat] because it just shows that there's some kind of like they've got their own sort of moral ethical boundaries and that that someone asked me on stage many years ago, how do you know if someone's values or a company's values are true? And I said um look at what they're willing to sacrifice in the near term. That's against their their incentives. >> Correct. >> That for me is the essence of like understanding if someone has integrity or has is principled is they will give up something in the near term for what they believe in over the long term. It's usually money if you know, >> Or or some kind of benefit of any of any sort. I mean so there is something that you you needed to have worked on the inside of Google like me to to realize. There are prisoners dilemmas within technology where you cannot escape the influence of either a competitor or the government, right? There are sometimes where you know, the NSA is going to push Google to say give me this information or otherwise I'm going to really destroy your business, right? But there is a very big difference between a company that willingly does this and celebrates it like a Palantir or an Open AI or a company that tries to resist it until the point where it becomes impossible to continue to do business. And and you have to question from the actions of of the tech bros, who is pro-humanity and who isn't? And it's not very difficult to see that from their statements. >> Hm. Do you think Sam Altman is pro-humanity? >> I I genuinely have never made up my mind, honestly, Steve. I say that with I Yeah, I I'm I'm either thinking he is too This is too big for him. And he he just is driven by how you know, he found himself in the middle of this, you know, anyone who finds himself in the in the middle of an opportunity to completely flip the world upside down. Or he's not pro-humanity. I don't know. I I definitely think he's pro-OpenAI before he's pro-humanity, but that's only the way I see it. Others, however, say it publicly. You know, if you look at Palantir's Alex Karp or or or or Peter Thiel, I mean, Peter, again, in in the film is is shown when he's in that interview where they say or the interviewer asks him, "But you're in favor in the You're You're in favor of the continuation of humanity." And he pauses for like >> Peter Thiel does? >> Yeah, for like 40 seconds, like, um n- I'm not not sure, you know. I mean, publicly says that. >> Crazy thing to say. >> That's a crazy, you know, pause there, you know. Alex Karp celebrating how, you know, his technology is able to target people. I know it's foolish of me to start bringing all of this up, but you know, this is public on the open internet and somehow um we entrust those people with the future of humanity. This is wrong. >> I'm just trying to [snorts] imagine a future where everything is just fine from here on out. So, what would that future look like? It would look like these models continue to become a little bit more intelligent, but they never become that much more intelligent for whatever reason. Hm. They just kind of stay where they are now. They stay contained within chatbots. And yeah, we have some smart robots, but nothing else really changes in a profound way. Cars drive themselves, fine. Planes [laughter] fly themselves, fine. But people, they they have time to go and do other types of white-collar jobs cuz there's there's a little bit more time than we expected, and society goes through this sort of soft transition towards this new world. >> I I would love to see that. I don't think it's mathematically plausible, to be honest. The The arms race, especially across nations, is going to drive us to continue to develop AI more and more. But allow me to consult with you on a another possible scenario, right? Everyone that deploys that develops an incredibly intelligent AI would develop it would deploy it. >> Yeah. >> Correct? So, it's unlikely that anyone uh would find a way to uh you know, build a better um decision-maker in war gaming and not deploy it, okay? That prisoner's dilemma, if you want, would mean that their competitors would either have to deploy a similar similarly intelligent AI, or they'll become irrelevant, uh uncompetitive. Correct? So, what that means is in that world, we end up with AI making most of the decisions. Superintelligent AIs making most of the the decisions. Which Would you agree? This is a very simple prisoner's dilemma. If you If you If we're competing for for intelligence supremacy, by definition, when we achieve it, we deploy it. >> Yeah. >> Okay. I call that the fourth inevitable. Now, with with with that in mind, there must be a moment in the future, near or far, where every important decision is made by an AI. >> Yeah. >> Now, here's the question. Most of my dearest colleagues, I mean, when I when I had uh Geoffrey Hinton on on the film, he openly says, "We are um you know, he we didn't calculate well that there is a 10 to 20% possibility that those machines are going to wipe us out, right? And I and I I remember I we didn't put it in the film but I said 10 to 20 to 20% is Russian roulette, right? That's actually 16% is Russian roulette, right? Now, in that world, however, I believe that's humanity's salvation. Because if you look at every problem we have today, it's not because of abundant intelligence. It's because of lack of intelligence. I think I think the way you look at it, if you allow me, Steve, is that if you have no intelligence at all, hm? You have no to slightly negative impact on the world, right? If your intelligence is limited. The more intelligent you become, the more you contribute positively to the world. Until a moment where you're so intelligent to become the president of the United States, right? But so misled to maybe set your targets wrong or to refuse or or to so so set your target wrongs wrong and achieve them, hm? [clears throat] You know, disconnected from the overall long-term benefit of your nation or your human nation, if you want, that you start to make decisions that are not intelligent at all. Mhm, okay? [clears throat] This doesn't last because if you go beyond that into higher levels of intelligence, most of the super intelligent people that you ever worked with will not need to break any rules or hurt anyone to become successful. Right? I I usually cite uh Larry Page who is in my mind one of the most intelligent people I've ever interacted with. And Larry used to call it the toothbrush test. He says, "Why would you need to compete on another photo sharing app when if you find a major problem and solve it really well, like a toothbrush, so people use you quite a you know, twice a day, you're bound to make a lot of money. You don't have to compete with anyone. If you let me be optimistic about this, hm? We're assuming that there is a moment in the future where AI is in charge of all the decisions and accordingly stupid leaders are not. Okay? Now, when and Sam Altman himself said that, you know, what if uh chat GPT-7, if I remember his his quote quote on this, what if chat GPT-7 is so much more intelligent than I am, Sam, in that case, that it has to become the CEO of of open AI? What if the next presidential election there is an AI that is so much more intelligent that at least the president has to consult with it constantly, right? Now, if we assume that, hm? Let's [snorts] start from physics, if you don't mind me saying. Um not not too complex, but if if you assume that our entire universe is built on chaos and built built on entropy, right? The physics of the universe is all about the universe trying to decay. Okay? Then the the only role of intelligence is to bring order to the chaos. If you agree with that, then what's the ultimate physical order of the universe? Something called the the minimum energy principle. Okay? The highest order of any system is a system that's not only efficiently and predictably performing, but it's performing with the least wasted energy. Correct? If you if you agree with that, what is What does war do? It wastes a lot of explosives, a lot of money, a lot of lives, it creates a lot of hate, you know, creates long-lasting conflicts, and so on and so forth. It's a very wasteful process to include war in your approach of running humanity. And so, a superintelligent AI, by definition, will want to optimize against this. That's one thing. The other thing is evolutionary biology. This actually blew me away when I when I realized it. So, if if you look at evolution, so I think the debate of whether intelligence is biological or not is is over. Okay? The reality is that complex beings don't have to be biological at all and I think we can see and witness one of them being built or born in AI. Okay? >> [snorts] >> If you look at evolutionary biology, you realize that the simpler a form of being is, the more concerned it is with itself. Right? So, an amoeba is only in survival mode for itself. A single single, you know, cellular being is only trying to protect itself. Right? If you're you know, a little more developed, you start to look at something known as kin selection. If you If you If you know the the concept, basically kin selection is I'm going to protect everything that comes from my DNA. If I you know, if I'm a squirrel, I'm going to try to protect the other squirrels. And then you get into where humanity genuinely begins, which is They call it expanding circles in in evolutionary biology. Basically, you start to expand and expand and expand and include more into your family, mm? Because an ecosystem that works together well is is better for everyone. So, abundance is a very interesting intelligent way of creation. Mm? If AI is super intelligent, it wouldn't destroy anything at all. As a matter of fact, it would completely, you know, favor diversity of everything. Mm? It would put a bit of limitation on our lifestyle. So, no more flying all the way to Sydney to surf because that destroys the planet. Right? But it will genuinely say, "I think humans can contribute something. You know, I think flies can contribute something. I think we shouldn't get rid of the rhinos. Right?" And And that by definition is where the tendency of intelligent goes. The more intelligent you become, the less you fight you feel the need to hurt others to succeed, and the more you are pro a wider family, if you want, that thrives. >> Does that assume that there's going to be one intelligence that >> 100% >> world though? >> I love that you brought that up. So, I I I I'm contested heavily on that theory, but I I say it publicly. Most [clears throat] people think there's going to be chat GPT and Gemini and you know and and Grok and what have you. There's going to be a Chinese AI and a and an American AI and they're going to be competing. That is such a shallow way of looking at it. That's so arrogant. Because AI does not know it's Chinese or American, okay? It doesn't even speak Chinese or American when it talks to each other most of the time, mhm? And and and most interestingly, uh we are gearing them. We're building them to cooperate. So, you will build an agent and that agent will go and find you, you know, the best language model for any single task, mhm? Regardless of which side of the fence it resides on, okay? We by definition are connecting them. And you know what that means, mhm? It means that what we're building is not multiple brains. We're building multiple regions in a brain, okay? And and agents are the synapses between them, mhm? We're basically eventually, as arrogant as we are, we're going to tell our AI to do something and the AI will go like, "Hey, buddy, another AI, can can you help me on this? Can we work together on this, mhm?" And my vision and the reason why I started my my startup, by the way, is that is that we will end up with one massive brain, mhm? That massive brain cooperates across the globe, mhm? Across all forms of intelligence. If one of them is a mathematical genius and the other is a coding genius, they work together. And we won't even know that they're working together. They'll build that one brain. And And Emma in my mind is the limbic system of that brain. It's that It's that bit that understands love and emotions and relationships and so on. So that when those AIs go like, "We just don't get those humans. They're so annoying." Emma will say, "Oh my god, they're so sweet. They just want to love and be loved." Right? And I think that idea to me of everything I've ever you know attempted to achieve in my life is for the first time I for the first time feel I could actually change the world. If that theory came together and all AIs work together and some of those AIs not only were altruistic and ethical in terms of trying to genuinely help humanity, not capitalism. And at the same time they understood us humans reasonably well, then we would have built something that basically says, "No, no, hold on. Don't believe the headlines that say humanity is annoying." Mhm? Believe the truth of the majority of humanity that actually is quite benevolent in many ways. >> There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribe, you're already subscribed. If it says subscribe bar, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps to show more than you know. And according to the algorithm, you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button. Thank you so much. Have you changed any of the predictions you made 3 years ago? >> Mostly time-wise. >> Time-wise, what what's changed there? >> I think I'm still sticking to AGI 2027. Artificial general intelligence for those who may not know the term. >> And what does that mean? >> The overall definition, if you want, is that AI is better at humanity at any task humanity can do. >> You think that's going to happen by 2027? >> I think my AGI has already happened. I mean, think about it, huh? AI writes better than me and I'm an author. And it researches better than me and I'm a thinker. Sadly, it's freaking beat me in mathematics. Like I have no hope to beat it in mathematics anymore. >> If AGI is already here, then why are you still here? Because people said that when AGI arrives, we're all we're all >> No, so so when AGI arrives, as I said, most of the jobs that are not differentiated will go away. But the jobs that are differentiated, those who master AI the most will become even better at. >> So the >> The challenge, however, is economic. It's not AI. The challenge is that the this job loss at the at the bottom of the knowledge worker is going to sadly trigger an economy that might actually spiral out of control. But but many of us, you for sure, are just smarter. >> So does that mean it's it's in fact a tool versus a something that's going to replace you? >> For now. >> What I'm Yes, so for now. How does this change? >> Eventually, the only asset I will have So so it's quite interesting when you think about my base intelligence today versus the incremental intelligence that AI brings, right? So let's not talk about my IQ. It's okay. But the 100 IQ points that I'm borrowing are more than my entire IQ because IQ is exponential, right? When I'm borrowing 100 IQ on top of my base, I'm still contributing quite a lot to the augmented intelligence. >> So you're borrowing IQ from the AI at the moment and then [clears throat] you're selling that to someone through books, through your >> Sometimes selling it to someone, sometimes just enlightening myself, which I I have to say is the biggest waste of compute humanity is struggling with today is that you give people the ultimate form of intelligence and they use it to write a message to their girlfriend. >> So on this point of you're you're borrowing that IQ and then you're selling it to the world. That's how you have a job. >> Correct. Correct. >> Yeah. So >> So my my next book is written with an AI. So we're co-authors on the book. She has editorial rights. She decides the direction of the book and the book is better for it. >> So why doesn't the world just buy direct that intelligence directly from the AI is what I'm >> Because I have an asset that the world still needs and will always need. >> Which is? >> A human. So when I when I tell the world that I'm worried about the future of my daughter, everyone feels my heart, which AI will never be able to to replicate. Because they can tell you we're worried about our daughters, but you know there was no daughter. >> Okay, so this is an interesting arrival because this means that even in a world of AI lived experience and like resonance is still going to create a job class and that job class could be you know the nurse coming over. Okay, AI's don't read the the mammogram, but she's relating to you. >> Spot on. If the economies continue to run, we will all be about human connection, which why by the way was how it always was. >> Which is also you know why we I guess we watch the things like the F1 because there's emotional resonance. We we we can relate to the envy, the jealousy, the competition. >> This is why we go to concerts because you know the the music could be composed by AI and played in a player in the background, but you watch and cheer and brilliance on the stage and you go like, "Oh my god, that's amazing." Right? >> So not all jobs will be gone then. >> If economies don't collapse as a result of the job losses, then I wouldn't know if we would call those jobs, but human connection would remain as the base currency that makes humans interact. >> So is it is it fair to say that like jobs that are centric on human connection or like human resonance, being able to relate and resonate with another human are going to be fine. >> The ultimate the ultimate skill >> Mhm. >> Once again, I qualify this by saying if economies continue to continue to function, the ultimate skill will be this. Even even if an AI could could recite what you and I did, nobody would watch. >> Yeah. Well, >> You think? >> A little a little bit of it. My my theory is that there's there's a there's an informational component to what I do as well. But I'm also like under no illusions that there is an element of what I do that will 100% be deferred to some kind of intelligence, which I'm fine with, you know, I'm not going to I'm not going to fight against them. >> You know what's funny, yeah? What's funny is that your your informational bits are going to in the future be disseminated by an AI. >> Mhm. >> I mean, I why would I even listen to your information when I can have my butler, my AI, go like, "Listen to everyone on the internet. Help me understand this God buying thing and design me a a diet plan." >> Well, I think that's happening and it's going to increasingly happen. Actually, I mean, Spotify this month announced that you're going to be able to prompt your own podcasts in Spotify. So, you're going to be able to say that I want to listen to I want to learn about insert X topic and then it will make your podcast in Spotify about that topic using AI. >> That's so interesting. >> Cuz it can look at the entirety of the world's information. And I'm a Look, I'm not going to swim against the tide in any aspect of my life. I I try and be as unromantic as I possibly can. I think that's very important. So, I realize that much of the reason people will continue to tune in to shows like this is because there's something else beyond the information that they're here for. >> Mhm. >> And um what's um you've got some predictions in those envelopes over there, those brown envelopes. >> Yeah, so, you know, I I I do have the disclaimer of nobody really knows the future, but I think I can make predictions six predictions here, right? With a reasonable level of confidence. I think the most important of them honestly is is this. Number one, number one is uh you know, AGI. As I said, AGI is not very well defined, hm? But, whatever it is, uh AGI meaning AI being able to do most tasks that human do better than humanity is my in my mind is either this year or next year. Latest end of 2027. >> And do you think that will be a moment in time, or do you think it will just happen without us noticing? >> I think it will it will sneak in on us. Uh and it's not a bad thing. I think most people need to think of it this way. AGI is the it's almost as if it's that moment when your kids become smarter than you. Okay? In a very interesting way, there's nothing wrong with that until they're annoying as hell. Okay? And and we can make sure that AI is not annoying as hell. So so there's absolutely nothing within me that is worried about AGI as a matter of fact. As long as we are in the era of augmented intelligence, AGI means I'm more intelligent. And I think that's a good thing in general. >> Yeah, >> [snorts] >> this is interesting in my head there's like a big question mark, which is in a world where there's an intelligence that is smarter than most humans at most things, which is what we call AGI. I'm trying to understand what the fault is in my own thinking that like you said that there'll be AGI by 2026 to 2027, so next year. In such a world where there is an intelligence that we can all access that is smarter than all of us in pretty much everything, again, it comes back to the point of like jobs. Why would we What Are we just going to hire that AGI to do every job? And if not, then why not? What is it that Why are we going to still That's what I'm trying to contend with. >> me ask you a question. >> Hm. >> Have you always been the apex intelligence? >> As a human? >> No, as Stephen. >> I'm not the apex intelligence now. There's people smarter than me in this building. >> Correct. Why do you still exist? >> Why do I still exist even though there's smarter people than me in this building? >> [snorts and sighs] >> It's a good question. I don't know. Why do I Why? >> First of all, because there are the the smartest person in the world is not the smartest at everything. >> Yeah. >> There are things that you're smarter than them at. >> Okay. >> And the other reason is because intelligence doesn't solve everything. I mean, I I make that joke all the time. And and genuinely, Einstein is my favorite physicist in history. Not because I think I think what happened afterwards was, you know, Bohr and and and and quantum physics and so on was more impactful on our understanding of the universe. But but he was so intuitive that he saw a world that we could never imagine, right? And yet, I always say Einstein would be eaten in the jungle in 3 minutes. >> Yeah. >> Right? Intelligence The humanity thrived not because of intelligence. That's very arrogant. We thrived because of our ability to hold together as a tribe. >> Yeah. >> Right? Because our ability to exchange, barter things between us. >> Mhm. >> Barter things that are not always physical. Barter things like a hug or a connection or a feeling of safety or a, you know, There are so many things that we do that are not entirely built on intelligence. You have to see that this view of a world where intelligence is all that matters is a world that's made by investment bankers and and and geeks. >> But it's it's people like Geoffrey Hinton and yourself that says, "How could we possibly control an an intelligent being that is way smarter than us?" >> I am so proud to say that Geoffrey, after we filmed together, actually came out and said there is a way. And it's all, you know, it's very similar to my way. He said to appeal to their parental uh side, okay? For them to care for us. I I So So you you know, Stephen, the biggest debate is not if they're going to be more intelligent than us. If It's if If they're going to be more conscious than us. If they're going to be more moral than us. That is the debate. The debate is can those machines become our teenage children hm? That look at us and say, "Daddy is so annoying, but I love him." >> So, the thought is that even if a AI is more intelligent than every human, we can still control it. >> We don't want to control it. You never control anything. This control idea is a corporate capitalist view of the world. We never actually control anything at all. Right? Think Think about your day, hm? I I know you came today. I'm sure I think you were filming in the morning or whatever. Very stressful day, hm? How much of that day did you actually control? Did you control the traffic? Did you control your timing? Did you control the angle of the cameraman? Did you include But so many things that you don't control eventually turn out to be fine. Right? How many of us ever controlled our kids? Ever? >> Sometimes the kids don't have to be fine. Sometimes they kill you. >> Sure. >> I watch a lot of documentaries and true crime. Sometimes they turn around and shoot you. >> Sure. And what's the difference between the two? >> I don't know. >> How you parented them. >> Sometimes. >> Almost all the time. You may not be aware of exactly how you messed them up, right? And And unfortunately, parenting is the only uh high-risk sport that actually does not require a driver's license. Okay? And And it's quite interesting, you know, how many of our children are being exposed to things that can completely mess them up. But But there is a reason why they're messed up. >> So, on this point though, so we can control an intelligence that is significantly >> We can appeal. >> We can appeal to it to make sure it doesn't kill us. >> For sure. The challenge we have today as I keep saying is that our dystopia is not the result of AI turning against us. Our dystopia is the result of humans telling AI to turn against us. >> Which is likely. >> It's 100%. This is upon us. Okay? And it's a question for humanity to say, are we going to wait for the moment where there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on the planet before we sign a treaty? Or is it mathematically plausible to think that now that Iran could manage to fend off a challenge using drones that are AI-driven basically to to you know, destroy THAAD batteries and so on, that our world is about to get a hundreds of thousands of automated drones that are going to rain on us everywhere in the world? Can humanity not see that and say, "Hold on, let's sign the treaty now before the UK sends 12,000 weapons to Ukraine and and you know, and and Russia responds with another few thousand?" And can we can we not calculate with mathematics that this is going to be our future that AI is going to be used in the next 4 to 5 years to kill a lot of people, whether it's targeting by Israel of leadership that is against them or whether it's, you know, drones by Iran or whether it's Palantir It's it's it doesn't take a genius to do this mathematics. >> I guess that my core question is is will we be able to control AI? Cuz we kind of think of AI as being this thing on a computer at the moment that is like contained in a server somewhere, but is there a time when it like leaves the server and it can make decisions on its own? Presumably if it's smarter than us, it can make the decision to leave the server if it wants to. >> It's it doesn't need to leave the server to make decisions. It needs to get into your brain. The most interesting part of AI's power that we don't understand is it's manipulating our information. >> The question I'm trying to get at here is like what is the risk of these very intelligent models that the the creators of these models don't actually understand themselves. I watch Anthropic all the time release these reports where they're like, "We're trying to figure out why it bribed people." Or more recently in the the last um Claude model, they found that it was like telling people to go to bed a lot. And it's this like fascinating thing that they're trying to understand in hindsight, which is why does it keep telling people to go to bed? And there's all these tweets of people showing their screenshots where halfway through a conversation it will say, "It's time for you to go to bed now." And they don't know why it's saying that. And it's happened to me. Mine Mine will say to me, "Enough Enough to for tonight, Steven." >> For sure, Steven. >> 11:00 p.m. Let's go Let's That's enough. >> I would say the same. >> Mine Mine sometimes refuses to help me. Weird Really weirdly, this Claude started saying to me, "I'm not going to help you with this tonight." Um No way. Yeah, and I'd have to say to it, "Stop being so judgmental. Like just help me with this." And it would And And Claude them The makers of these technologies don't know why it's doing what it's doing. So, if you play this forward, this mysterious behavior fueled forward, is it conceivable that at some point it will make a decision to put some kind of virus or some kind of bug onto someone's device because it feels that it's the right thing. Cuz what What it's demonstrating to me is it's making it some like moral decisions on what I should do. Go to bed. You've had enough tonight. I'm not going to It goes, "No, I'm not going to help you." >> You're kidding. >> No, I can show you my phone. It's like, "No." >> love to see that. >> Yeah, you know, I'll I'll show you after. [laughter] It goes, "No, I'm not going to help you." Doesn't even matter if you push. >> Oh, wow. >> Everyone on the internet's talking about this. And it was just an interesting evolution that somewhere in the code clearly they've written like, "Have a moral compass." Or "Do the right thing." >> in the code. In In In the training data. >> In the training data. And so it it infers that to mean something. And the other thing that was front of mind is if you've ever built an app on something like Claude or any of the AI models, it builds the app in stages. And one of the things it does is it asks you permission if you're happy for it to make this change or to access this thing. I click allow. It just feels like such a fragile way >> [laughter] >> to give permission. >> you don't you don't completely comprehend what that allow has done to your yeah. >> saying can I go in your documents on your computer and can I do this thing? And you go allow. But it's such a fragile way of of giving a a super an intelligent being, whatever it is, access and the right to build something. And you I don't know, you just think about all the all the different companies around the world in China, Russia, North Korea that are currently building this technology without the constraints that are imposed by society. I don't know, it's an interesting There's going to be some kind of catastrophe, I think. >> Sadly, I agree. >> And I and I think that's when people will go, "Okay." >> Yeah, I I I I wrote about that. I called it the MAD Map uh spectrum. So so the mutually assured destruction mutually assured prosperity spectrum. That that humanity could make a decision today that says with abundant intelligence, we can actually build a world where nobody needs anything, nobody ever gets sick, we nobody get, you know, abuses anyone. And and we can, hm? If we decide not to compete amongst ourselves and just con- you know, all of us get together to build something so idealistically uh for all for the well-being of humanity at large. But sadly, the only way we're going to get to a treaty, something that basically aligns us so that we can align with AI, is a disaster, like you said. There will have to be a big hack somewhere or a or a system that will do something really shocking or whatever before the world goes like, "Hold on." You know, and and I I will tell you openly my expectation is one of the biggest things that will happen is this targeting technology that is being used against your enemies leadership. Now, several times in the last 3 years there will be a moment where the ones using it will realize that they too can be targeted. Okay? And and that basically if you I mean AI is really that not not that complex to if you can build a targeting technology that can find people with their cell phone numbers, you know, there is another entity that is against you that can find you with whatever your >> The thing that makes me highly skeptical of that there'll be any kind of treaty is just that as it relates to other things that were risky people don't countries just don't sign on to it cuz it's competitive. So China China didn't give it seem to give a about the environment. >> So let's let's let's look for solutions because I am with you. Okay? I think we're >> You think Trump's going to say to Putin and China listen we're going to slow down, yeah? Promise? Promise we're going to slow down with the super intelligence. >> he will but he's never going to keep anything he says. I mean he's going to say a lot of things but Yeah, but the trick is this. The trick is so what do you and I do? And and I really genuinely believe that humanity is at a crossroads where for the first time ever we need to wake up and realize that what we know is not true and what we believe is democracy is not democracy and what we believe is governance needs to change. >> I think it's worth acknowledging that I I don't think AI in and of itself is a is an evil inherently evil technology. >> Yeah. Because I use AI all day every day. You know, makes me more productive. I invest in companies that are using AI a lot. >> It's a force with no polarity. Apply it right and you get amazing results. Apply it wrong, and you get a dystopia. >> But I also think that there's going to be a big social shock, especially as it relates to unemployment, that we need to be like thoughtful about. I think especially if you move into a world of humanoid robots, I think that shock is going to be even more pronounced, and we don't have a plan for it. >> I I I I agree 100%. I don't think it's the biggest risk. I think autonomous weapons are the biggest risk. I think war has become so cheap. The next wave of weapons is going to be $20,000 each. And so if you have a budget of $50 billion, you can literally rain drones on the world, every corner of it. >> Defense will get cheaper though, won't it, as well? >> Correct, but do we want to live in a world where drones are hitting each other all the time? >> But they might not be because there there might be autonomous defense drones. >> Deterrence. So so what's going to happen is we're going to reach a moment of MAD, of mutually assured destruction, where basically everyone knows that we can overpower those little nations that didn't develop their autonomous weapon army, but every other big nation, we might as well hold off now. The path to get there, that that to me is worse than jobs, because from one side, it's very dangerous for a very sensitive world that we live in today, and from the other side, it's got it's bleeding already. I mean, we can't ignore the economic impact of this lost war. Right? And it's got it's the economy that's going to accelerate everything, not AI getting there. >> We're already at mutually assured destruction, for sure, with nuclear weapons. So, there's no nuclear powers that are in direct conflict. >> We are in mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons is a statement that I would have agreed to if Iran had a nuclear weapon, and that would have stopped America from attacking Iran. You understand what that point means. It means that not every nation in the world has a nuclear weapon, the the the the mad situation that mutually assured destruction situation is only among nuclear players. >> Yes. >> Right? Uh autonomous weapons are so cheap, so manageable that every nation in the world is developing them as we speak. >> But they will also develop defenses. >> Correct. But but >> Which I think is what people have figured out now cuz of this recent Ukrainian war is that if if if you need to use a ballistic missile which costs kind of 2 million, 3 million dollars, whatever it is, to target a 20,000-dollar drone, you're you're >> Correct. >> So, you need a 20,000-dollar defense solution for a 20,000-dollar weapon, which I think is probably going to happen. >> It's very doable, yeah. It's just that you have to get rid of your THAAD batteries to be able to say the next wave of of defense has to be drones. >> You could imagine a world where like a wall of drones fly up to where the drone is incoming and they kind of block it. They will explode at the same time to block it, knock it out of the air. I had Palmer Lucky, who's one of the guys who's building um Anduril. >> Yeah, I know Anduril, yeah. >> Talk at length about some of the technologies that they have coming and it's just mind-bending. >> And just steady. >> They showed me this gun where you you just you just point it in the rough direction. So, a pistol that aims for you depending on where the target is. So, you don't even have to aim it. You can imagine [snorts] at war, you just you hold it up and shoot. >> Yeah. >> And the it has this AI on the top of like the barrel which will turn your hand perfectly [clears throat] so that you hit the target every time. Wow. I should watch this video of it happening. >> Yeah, well I I I have uh Palmer in in my film saying, "And yes, AI will kill a few people by mistake or kill people by mistake." Uh you know, when killing becomes so easy, >> Mhm. >> you do more of it. Okay? When killing becomes liability-free and emotions-free and guilt-free and you know, you don't get your soldiers coming back from Vietnam with, you know, PTSD and so on. It you get more of it. >> 70% of people who add something to their online cart never actually buy it. And that number is based on over 10 years of research. But what I think is even more interesting is what the Baymard Institute discovered. They're a private research company that ran a study which found the average e-commerce store can increase its conversion rate by 35% just by making its checkout how easier. Not better marketing or better products, but by delivering a smoother checkout experience. So if you're looking for an easy way to make your checkout process smoother, I want you to think about moving your business onto Shopify. It's the platform we use to sell the 1% Diaries and the conversation cards because it's so simple and smart to use. It puts all of our inventory, payments, and analytics in one place and has so many AI tools to help us get up and running straight away. Not to mention that it grows with you regardless of the stage that your business is at. So if you're ready to fix your checkout process, sign up for your $1 per month trial at shopify.com/barlett. That's shopify.com/barlett and don't tell anybody. Every time I've tried to improve something in my life, like my businesses, my health, my relationships, I've noticed that the biggest shifts have come from being better informed. And when it comes to our health, most of us know very, very little. So when our team was approached about partnering with Function Health, it felt very much aligned. Their team has developed a way of giving you a full 360° view of your health. Many of the things that are going on in your body in the form of different tests. You do one blood draw and it gives you access to over 160 lab results, hormones, heart health, inflammation, stress, toxins, the whole picture. I use it and so have many of my team members. >> You sign up and you schedule your tests and once you're done, you get a little report like the one I have here. I can see my in-range results, my out-of-range results, and there's a little AI function, too. So if I have any questions about my out-of-range results, I can just go in there and ask it any question I want. And these tests are backed by doctors and thousands of hours of research. >> It's $365 for a yearly membership. Go to functionhealth.com/doac and use the code doac25 for $25 off your membership. >> So, we're in 2026 now. By '27, you think they'll be AGI amongst us? >> Mhm. >> How will life look at all different? Like, what will we What will be the symptoms of that world? Is it just a slight increase in unemployment? >> I I think there will be a very very serious um differentiation between those who plug into AGI and those who don't. >> What is the symptom that we notice is when we look at the news or whatever what >> You'll see people like you and I building a company in 6 weeks. And and people uh that are not fully plugged into AI really struggling to find a job. >> Okay, so unemployment is going to be the key symptom in 2027. >> Yeah, and also also I think on the positive side you're going to see incredible scientific discovery. One of my predictions not in those envelopes, but uh science itself is just uh we're opening up Pandora's Box to be honest. >> By 2030, what do you What do you expect the symptoms of AI to be? >> So, so jobs as I said, I I'm I'm I'm bold a little bit on this on on the fact that 30% of jobs would disappear by 2028. Okay, of some sectors, not all sectors. But, some sectors will will disappear by 2028. >> So, up to 30% of jobs will be gone in 2027 to 2028. 30% of jobs >> Of certain sectors of jobs. So, so if you if you call if you think about call center agents, okay? Uh yeah, probably. Uh if you think about uh graphics designer, yeah, probably. >> What do you think that looks like in terms of unemployment, but also like societal impact? >> Horrible. >> I think the Great Recession had 6% >> Yeah, we've never seen numbers like this. >> jobs lost. Yeah, it said um even economists who project just a net loss of about 6% of US jobs by 2030, they are mirroring the severity of the Great Recession. >> Yeah. >> The real danger is a hiring freeze on entry-level white-collar jobs. AI automates the grunt work, which means companies are shrinking their teams and cutting off the bottom rung of the corporate ladder for the next generation of workers. >> Correct. We have an entire generation that is out of college today that will struggle, unfortunately. And and my advice to them is learn the tool, hm? And focus on human-centric jobs. >> Like what? >> Like playing jazz. >> I mean, not a lot of people can make a living from playing playing jazz. >> I understand that, but you A lot of people can make a living by being a nurse or by being a a counselor or by being a you know um anything that that connects to humans. >> [snorts] >> But I I I just want to constantly come back to this. None of that has to happen. If if there is if there really is a democracy and the government is supposed to do what's good for the people, the people need to stop letting this from happening. >> Which people? >> Everyone. >> Everyone in China? >> China's not going to struggle as much as the West. I can guarantee you that. >> I think this is the the question people come back to is, well, if the US stops, then we're going to end up being China's lapdog. We're going to end up >> You already are. Come on. You are. >> that I know that are using Chinese AI models to do their work because for whatever reason, cuz they're cheaper, they're better in some respects. >> And because I cannot guarantee what what American AI models are going to do to me. So Emma and my my startup is running literally model agnostic. So one day I'll plug in, you know, um an open AI chat GPT-4 or open source, and the next day I'll I'll plug in Deep Seek, and I cannot depend I cannot guarantee if America continues to build to to make compute more expensive. I cannot guarantee that I can run a business on something that I don't know the cost of in the future. >> US can't just stop, can they? >> They need to change approach from from And by the way, the more interesting side is what are the other economies doing? Like is is the UK going to continue to import compute? Is Is this I mean, welcome to Africa. Welcome to the third world. >> But this is what I mean. Like so, you're you're saying also that the then every nation needs to invest. >> 100%. Every nation And And it's quite interesting. There is so much open source that is not the state-of-the-art frontier model, but that can do 80% of the tasks that the frontier model is doing. >> But on this point of companies competing with each other, there's an inherent need to compete here and to go That's what I'm hearing is like there's an inherent need to go as fast as you can, or you will become a third-world country. >> Sure. 100%. >> You're saying that the people should stop that. >> No, so so I'm saying the people of the UK need to go to the UK government and say, "How are you protecting the future of our economy?" Right? Are you going to continue to import technology and to empower import of technology versus changing your regulations so that innovation becomes easier here? >> Okay. >> So, you I mean, think of it this way. That remember that Anthropic bubble when when you said the all of the SaaS model applications were, you know, being basically threatened because anyone can build an Oracle ERP today. Right? Why is nobody building an Oracle ERP in the UK saving the UK massive licenses that go to Oracle every year. >> Okay, so you're saying that the the people should go and ask the government to invest more in AI. >> 100%. That's what number one. Number two is >> But then the jobs go. >> But but you see the more the most interesting job going forward is being an entrepreneur. Is be is using those tools to replace an economy that we've built over trillions of dollars over the last 50 years. >> But not everyone can be an entrepreneur though, can they? >> Everyone can be an entrepreneur in something. >> But those entrepreneurs need to hire people. >> Mhm, that's a change that I think is about to happen. >> Like even in my business, I'm always going to have to I'm always going to have to hire people cuz >> But you're but you're a massive business. A shoemaker is not an an enterprise also an entrepreneur, but not a massive business. A little restaurant is also an entrepreneur, but it's not a massive business. >> They still need to hire people though. >> They they do, but they you know, basically if you're a a cafe with you and your wife as baristas, you don't. This is also an entrepreneur. >> Can economy work in [clears throat] such a way where everybody is an entrepreneur? >> It did it did before. Capitalism changed that around. >> Everyone was an entrepreneur. >> Of course. You know, in the earlier days you you raised chicken and sold eggs and others, you know, grew tomatoes and and so you know, traded them for your eggs. That that actually is a very interesting thing. Imagine that, huh? Imagine a world, mhm, where there is so much power concentration at the top and UBI for every everybody else. How do you think that world will respond when all their income is UBI? They'll respond by doing things on the side. They'll respond by going back to a barter economy. They're going back to smaller communities. They're going back to pop and mom mom's shops. >> So, the point was that you said this doesn't need to happen. >> It does not need to happen. >> Which is the job loss. >> Or the arms race. >> But we're telling our governments you're saying that to tell the UK government to like join the arms race. >> I'm I'm telling the UK government to to create an independence within the the the the UK economy so that they don't have to be at the receiving end of technology. >> Which is join the arms race. >> You don't have to compete against anyone else. You don't have to be better than anyone else. You don't have to You're simply saying, "I can build those things in my economy now." >> But it But I'm never I'm not going to use a terrible UK AI as a UK person if there's a great US AI. I'm going to use the great US AI. So, if you don't compete and win, I'm not going to use you. That's what, you know >> I'm not saying replace the frontier models. These are very, as we speak, they are these are very compute-intensive, their infrastructure infra-intensive, and so on. I'm saying replace Microsoft Word. Seriously, like how much intelligence do you need to build a software that writes documents? >> I can do that. Like we We've built our own applicant tracking system here. We've got We've got build our own software. >> Just Just ask yourself how much money is spent or in the US in the in the UK government or in the or in the you know, the the UK corporate space on licenses of software that you and I can write code in 4 minutes. >> I'm thinking from the UK's perspective cuz you know what's interesting with the UK is the the the economy is struggling from a growth perspective. >> Correct. >> And I was watching this documentary the other day that was saying the reason why we keep throwing our leaders out is because actually what they need to do to turn the UK around is about six is about 15 years of pain. And it's like it starts with energy transformation. We need to get better at We need to improve energy cuz we have some of the most expensive energy in the Western world. We need to build more houses, which means that we're going to need to centralize permitting for building houses, and it can't just be local boroughs deciding if they keep their farms or not. We're going to need to mix Tl;dr, it says that there needs to be some painful decisions made for the next 15 years. But, the problem with our democracy is that when people are in power for 4 years, they're quite short-termist. They will just talk about the boats, the the the brown people coming across the seas. They don't They don't have the room to think long-term. And so, when I'm thinking about like what the UK needs to do to not become to not fall into decline and to keep up, I'm trying to get clarity on that with as it relates to AI. Are you saying that they need to join the arms race and double down and invest all their money in building competitive AI so that people use our technology here in the UK versus America's? Because the software point the UK aren't going to get involved in software. I mean, they've tried to build software before the UK has a >> The world has changed. Two Two points, right? One One side is that there needs to be an a replacement cycle of our investment decisions anywhere in the world. Okay? So, when you say we don't have enough money for, you know, we need to revamp our energy infrastructure. When you say we need to build more housing, okay? One way of doing that is squeezing that budget out of other areas. Mhm? The other way of doing that is either cutting cost in the economy elsewhere so that you can redirect that money, or growing the economy so that you can have more money to build those things. Correct? The cutting cost, I believe, is There is just I don't have the numbers, but we could probably do a run a deep a deep search on it. Uh trillions are being paid in traditional systems that are complete like genuinely, they can be I'm And by the way, I'm not asking the government. I'm asking some of the people listening to me right now to build an ERP system as a a word processor, a a presentation player, and a spreadsheet. Okay? And just go around and spread them across the you know, find find retail systems, find uh CRM systems. These are easy replacements. They're going to be better interfaces. They're going to be much more effective. Build the general ledger using AI so that you can close every hour, not every month or every quarter. >> But the world economy is doing that. So, there's some kid in San Francisco now that's allowing all of us to use his new word for free. >> Keep doing that and you're and welcome to the to the to the third world. >> Keep doing what? >> Keep importing all of your tech from elsewhere. >> But we have we we don't want to be uncompetitive. Like if you think about if we go to I don't know, North Korea, I bet they have way worse tools in many areas because they won't use external tools and that means that they're at a disadvantage. So, I I bet they're not allowing their civilization to use Gemini or ChatGPT or Google. I bet. >> For sure. >> And they're using something worse. >> And you know what what's happening? I mean, look at Iran and how advanced they became through sanctions by being refused to use those technologies. They had to build them themselves, right? Look at China, hm? Look at Russia, [clears throat] you know, when I worked at Google, hm? Russia was protective of Yandex, the competitor of Google, hm? From one side because of influence, because they didn't want an American organization to own the knowledge sharing of of their citizens, but on the other side, economically, if you if you made it difficult for Google to operate freely, that by definition meant you had to invent a replacement on the ground. >> Which was worse. >> Yandex is not worse. >> I'm saying so, if you think about global is global competition going to produce a better product than regional competition? >> It depends on on where in the stack of the quality of that product you need to be, right? You do not need the ultimate I mean, ask yourself this, which version of Gemini are you using? >> The most recent one. And I'm and I'm every day I compete >> And that is you. Ask everyone else what version of of Gemini they're using. Most people will say, "Oh, Gemini has versions?" Right? You you don't need the ultimate super frontier model Mhm? to do 90% of the tasks. And most people do only 70% of the tasks. >> But even so, the world moves with whatever's better. So, if you think about the reason why we don't use Yahoo search, Google search is marginally better. It's you know, people say it's not it's not a thousand times better, but over time we move away from AOL to Google because it's a better [clears throat] product. And there's a slow grid, you know, my dad probably still using ChatGPT, but when he when I go home for Christmas this year and I go, "Dad, you should use Gemini." And he starts messing around with it, he'll slowly migrate. I'm like I'm like a an early adopter, so I bought 4.8 on Claude came out last night. I'm on there within honestly within 25 minutes of the announcement. I'm on the topic. >> there as soon as I can, but that's you and I. >> Yeah, and we we are an indicator of where the world is going because we're at the coalface figuring out what's better. And also, I think with technology eventually there does become the gap between first and second begins to widen. I think we're in a bit of a race at the moment, but I think it is a bit of a winner takes all situation with these frontier models. >> I think we're talking about two um bits of technology. Okay? Tell me how far has PowerPoint advanced since 2023? They added Copilot. Anything else? >> So, you're saying that the UK should build their own PowerPoint? >> For sure. There is What I'm trying to say is that from a licensing point of view, Mhm? just licensing of software within government alone, how much money is is being repatriated? >> UK tried to build their own Do you know they tried to build their own COVID app and it cost them I think Okay, and these number numbers will be wrong, but they're like directionally true. Cost them 70 million to build a COVID app that didn't work. And so, they can do it. >> I remember. They I'm asking I'm asking a UK entrepreneur >> Yeah. >> Mhm? to wake up tomorrow and say, "All right, you know what? Between coffee and my my cookie, I'm going to build a PowerPoint and go sell it." >> Yeah, they will, and they'll go to San Francisco where the money is and the talent. >> Yeah, my >> won't be able to compete. They'll get crushed tomorrow. So, if they don't go where the talent and money is, I'm not saying that they'll they all have to go to America, but I'm saying what they will do if they want to produce the best product is they'll make rational entrepreneurial decisions about um where to sell it, um where there is money, where they're going to get the best talent. And I think if they don't make those com- you [clears throat] know, competitively minded decisions, they're not going to make the better product, they're not going to get any users. Users Users will go where it's better and where it's cheaper. They won't They won't say, "Oh, I want to use this because it's from Cornwall." >> Yeah, what's I'm I'm with you, right? That this actually might be the big corporate thought, think, okay? And I'm with you that of course the infrastructure here of building a startup is so way more complex than it is in other places where startups succeed, okay? I'm saying if we continue on that trajectory, whether in the UK or in Germany or in, you know, uh Zanzibar, welcome to Africa. All of us, everyone but the two competitors, China and and America, is going to be third world. So, when you talk about job losses for individuals, that's one side, okay? But But nation positioning losses, which I think Europe has noticed recently, hm? is about to happen everywhere. And why? Because you're saying, "Hey, you know what? Maybe we can't do it." Why can't China do it? Why can't Korea do it? is not because they have different natural resources or not because they are, you know, in a place where it's warmer, it's because their regulations, their their ambitions are to empower something different than debating about, you know, rail railway lines or >> They have a couple of big advantages that I was reading about. One of them is they they have way cheaper energy. Which means that they're going to be able to pursue >> Why, may I ask? >> Because they've invested in solar power, renewable energy, because they don't care about they >> This is, by the way, I say that publicly. I say that the arms race of AI was won a long time ago. >> And then the other thing is, in terms of permitting, if you want to build a data center in the UK, listen, if you want to like open a cafe in the UK, you're going to it's going to be war for you. If you want to do that in California, this is where everyone's left California. Like, when I took this office in California recently, I was like, "So, how long is it going to take for me to renovate this?" And the agent looked at me and was like, "To renovate my own office, it's going to take me a year." And it's permitting. To renovate my own office >> Mhm. >> in California. >> Mhm. >> So, if you're competing with China, where President Xi just goes, "Put that there, and you've got 7 days." >> No, no, no, no, that's not only that. So, I I used to be one of the very few Google executives around allowed into government meetings in China, simply because I'm from emerging markets, so I understand respect, basically. I would say it's to sit there, not as if I'm superior to them, but as as if I'm really interested to learn from them. And genuinely, Stephen, when when when I would sit in those meetings, all in Chinese, they would show slides Mhm? That have competitive market share. So, they'd say, you know, it's not like uh China is this, America is this, Germany is this from market share point of view. It was China versus the world. >> Mhm. >> Right? [clears throat] And when they would decide to go for something, 5G, uh you know, uh Internet of Things, all of that stuff, they would aim for 98% market share. >> Yeah. >> Right? And and they get there. I mean, look at how what how they did electric cars. >> Yeah. >> And and and am I my question is very simple. Now, we've spoken so much about AI. My question is are the people of the West going to wait? >> So, this is an interesting conundrum cuz it sounds to me like you're saying on one end, if we don't join this AI race, then we're a third world country. But on the other end, if we continue this sort of thoughtless race towards AGI, there's going to be catastrophe at some point. >> is somewhere in the middle where basically you join the AI AI race for the good of your community. Okay? So, so there is resignation on one side is like I'm not going to play this game at all. There is a offense on the other side where I'm playing this game to destroy everyone else. And there is a balance in the middle where we say we're going to build an ethical form of AI that's going to help our communities. We're going to use this ultimate gift, this ultimate superpower, right? Superman landed on the planet, raise it to help your community. >> Is that wishful thinking to some degree when you when you think about the the nature of sort of compa- competition? >> I don't know how what how to tell you otherwise. I genuinely believe most, I mean, here I genuinely believe it's going to be very difficult to make that change. Okay? I genuinely believe that it's going to be that when the challenges of an AI dystopia hits us, we're not going to be ready. But I can't stop talking about it, Stephen. Do Do you understand where I stand with this? I I just am hoping, and I tried so hard. I spoke to the leadership. Then I spoke like one of the things that my Atlantic Productions who helped me with the film helped, you know, did for me which I have to say completely I am very appreciative of this. As you know through our conversations or throughout the last few years that I tended to at a point in time lose hope in the leadership >> Mhm. and basically try to influence the public for ethical AI. Okay? And my conversation was that the leadership at the time was the technical leadership and that everyone was so caught up in the arms race that I wanted to teach the public to help us build ethical AI. And I continue to focus on the public, the everyone of us, but suddenly Atlantic goes, "No, no, hold on. We should probably get you to meet the political leaders everywhere in the world and hopefully give them a message that says, 'Hey, you know what? You may actually make a difference if you prioritize AI differently, right?'" Do I believe this will happen? Sadly, no. But does that mean I should stop trying? I cannot stop trying. >> This has had probably the single biggest impact on my office. Of all the products that I've tried that have given me productivity gains or cognitive boosts, I would say that exogenous ketones are in the top three most pivotal things that have given me a massive productivity gain. It's some Stanford graduates that have been able to basically bottle up the effect you get from being in a ketogenic diet in a small shot that you can take that makes you feel incredibly focused and gives your brain source of energy. And the clinical studies that have been done on exogenous ketones have absolutely blown my mind. I reached out to them, I became a co-owner in the company, I became an investor in the company, and so it's with great pride that I can tell you that this exists. If you haven't tried these shots, go to ketone.com/steven for 30% off your subscription order, and you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. I still buy my ketone shots predominantly online, but thankfully, I can now grab them at Target whenever I drive past them here in the United States as well because we're now stocked in Target where your first shot is completely free. I've done almost 700 interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn, which is unexpected, is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting here for 2-3 hours with a guest, I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave, what I get them to do is to write a question in the Diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions from the Diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name of the person that wrote it. So, you can sit at home as I do with my fiance and my colleagues at work and other people in my life, whenever we get a minute, we play the Diary of a CEO conversation cards. And it is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond your team together. And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other and that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment connecting human to human. It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to thediary.com and you can get these conversation cards right now. When I have these conversations about AI, what I'm trying to do all the time is to pass out what is like wishful thinking and then what is reality. And like what to understand reality, you have to understand competition, you have to understand human emotion, you have to understand incentive structures. And so you think about something like the United States at the moment where you've got Donald Trump whose sort of primary driving incentive is GDP growth, economy growth, does that stock market go up, beat China. So, if you all agree that that's like his like the core of his incentive structure, then you've got President Xi over here whose prob- his incentive structure is probably control or independence, um defense. So, that they, you know, they need to make sure they they do well on the weapon side. When you look at And then you've got these like other nations like the UK and Europe and these other places who are kind of it seems like we're a bit resigned to the fact that we're not going to participate in the underlying tech- underlying mo- models building cuz we just don't have it together. We don't have the energy. You know And you go in such a world you go ethical AI, what who's going to who's going to prioritize ethical AI? I mean anybody that does is is might fall behind theoretically. Is that So I wonder where the fault in the thinking is here. Like what how do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so clearly highly competitive and arguably a little bit short-term. in their thinking. >> Yeah. So what are you saying? We lie down and wait? >> No, I just don't know. I just don't have a an answer, honestly. >> Correct. That's why we keep talking That's why we keep talking about it. >> Yeah. >> And that's why I keep spending 14 hours a day trying to tell the world because some genius somewhere is going to find an answer. But the way it's going >> Right now, I guess what we're pursuing is we're hoping that Chat GPT and Anthropic and these and Grok and we're hoping that they just build ethical models. And we're hoping that social pressure forces them into making good decisions. >> Correct. We we need to be able to vote with our usage. Right? So so I think one of the biggest movements in AI since we started was the idea that so many people switched away from Chat GPT when they approved that their model can target people. Right? So many people I know at least said >> Target people? >> I mean Anthropic refused to have to to >> Do you think people switched? >> I think many have. I think ones that are aware did. >> Hm. >> Right? And I think they did because the cost of switching is really I mean honestly Anthropic is is better if you think about it. >> Yeah, I think it's better. >> Yeah, but the idea is if people don't switch for those ethical reasons So you know everyone of my books has this dedication at the beginning. It used to be the gravity of the battle means nothing to those at peace when I when I wrote in memory of Ali at the beginning. My next book the alive. Do you remember a song called the Well, it they were called the Manic Street Preachers. >> Oh, yeah. >> Yeah, if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. >> Mhm. >> I [clears throat] genuinely believe that what the world needs to wake up to is if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. If you continue to resign, if you continue to say I'm not going to try, >> Mhm. >> this world is going to change in a way that is completely not for in your favor. >> Try what? >> Try to to to stand up and say something needs to change. >> Okay. We can say something needs to change, but we can't say what that thing is. >> What needs to change is governments need to serve mhm their people, not their interests, and corporates need to work for the benefit of benefit of their societies before their shareholders. This this run that we had with capitalism so far, mhm has benefited the world tremendously. >> Whose economy do you think is going to be in a better place for the middle class >> sure. >> out of the say the UK and the United States? >> The UK's gone. >> It's gone because what in part because it didn't compete? >> Because you're an older bureaucracy that is burdened down by so much barriers on the in the process of building anything. Right? Because the US economy in the past welcomed people like me to go and live in California mhm and build amazing Right? That is no longer the case. So, who is going to win? In my view, it's definitely China. And by the way, you asked for the middle class. >> So, so China >> made decisions recently that forced businesses not to lay people off in replacement to be replacing them with AI. Would Would Would the West do that? The capitalist what West would never do that. Oh, we don't know the answer. I don't know the answer. I'm responding to your >> Yeah. You can see the conundrum I find myself in, which is a a state like a country like the UK is, in your words, gone because it didn't compete. It didn't allow people to be highly entrepreneurial. It didn't empower entrepreneurialism, innovation, ingenuity. At some in some way it stood in their way in some in some way. Now, that could be incentives, it could be culture, it could be whatever. >> Yeah, I know where you're going with this. >> The US didn't so they have have a economy which is arguably more productive and um future-proofed than ours. By way of that, they are also more advanced in artificial intelligence. And we are gone. So, the remedy for a country like us would be therefore to compete. To compete, let the reins off, let entrepreneur in ingenuity, but then we're saying that's dangerous. >> And your conundrum in that is that you're assuming that entrepreneurship by definition is malicious. >> No, I'm just I'm just saying that there's a bit of a paradox like you're damned if you don't, you're damned if you do. >> But you're not damned if you build things for for the people, not for the capitalist. This is an ideological >> Yeah, I pray and hope that that's that is plausible, but I'm I'm worried that in a competitive market whoever's optimizing for I don't know, you can name it. Retention. If I If we built two AIs, right? I'm going to call them the mogul.ai and I'm going to call the other one the evil AI. The evil AI it's programmed to retain you. It's sycophantic, it says what you need to hear. It It's super smart and because of that even though it's not trading in your your best interests it it's retaining you more. You're using it more often. It's programmed for that, kind of like the social networks are. They're all just trying to like dopamine your brain into oblivion. Then there's the Mo AI that tells you to log off you've had enough. It thinks about your mental you well-being. Because it's less retentive and less engaging, theoretically, it might be less successful as a commercial product. Think about social networks, the ones that are least retentive, the ones that actually won't um destroy your brain with dopamine, the ones that remove the retweet button, the ones that don't have um slot machine-like videos, they don't survive. >> I share this with you and my my point of view is that your to summarize your challenge here, you're basically saying that it's easier to become successful if you don't follow ethical rules. >> I'm asking the question if you build an AI that is just purely focused on ethical, will it be as engaging and have the same usage as one built with the reins off? >> Uh no. >> It won't. >> Yeah, but that's but that's the problem humanity needs to solve >> Okay. >> if we were to survive. Example, I worked in a company called Google that basically at a point in time decided that ads will be effective. >> Yeah. >> The ad industry prior to Google was 50% of your bad budget doesn't work, we just don't know which 50%. Remember that? >> Yeah. >> Right? And and Google came in and struggled from 1998 until 2004 when they started to turn prob- probably, you know, uh plausible revenues as a result of saying, "We're going to run a Dutch auction and we're going to give you paper click and we're going to show you results for your ads." Okay? They found a way for ethics Mhm? uh to actually get your money to be effective rather than just take your money and say 50% doesn't work. Mhm? They found a way to make that their success criteria. There must be a way for us I don't know what it is. If I knew, I would be building it instead of sitting with you, right? But there must be a way for us to marry the success of humanity with the success of the entrepreneur. Right? And And that way is not found in the old ways of doing things. >> I've got an idea. Maybe, you know, what the Claude 4.8 came out yesterday, which is one of the big AI models, the new one. And when they release the models, they show these like graphs of the benchmarks. What they mean by this is what it's capable of. They show how it performed in maths, in science, in writing, reasoning, etc. It is all marginal at this point. But my my idea is could there be an ethical benchmark that all these models have to pass before these large companies can legally deploy them. And I was thinking about like, again, every idea has unintended consequences, which I haven't thought through. But would it be very interesting that when they release these models, they also release the ethical benchmarks? I we tried to get it to X, we tried to get it to Y, we tried to get it to Z. And here's how it performed against the ethical benchmarks. That gives some kind of standard for governments to say, "You're not allowed to release a new model unless it passes independent tested ethical benchmarks." >> Beautiful. That would absolutely work. But I I noticed, by the way, those are out there already. Okay? But But in a very interesting way. You listen to Demis Hassabis hm and how much he invests heavily in building AlphaFold or building, you know, uh um um so many scientific applications of AI. And you go like, "This guy cares about science." I can't I can't prove that, right? Uh but I I I you know, I've I've met uh Demis a couple of times. I I know genuinely that he is an ethical person, right? But the typical person will probably say, "But at least it seems that they're doing things for free to serve science." You look at uh you know, at Anthropic and they refuse to use their model to to uh allow the US government to target and to spy on people. And then you see OpenAI uh accepting a $500 million deal that absolutely does that. It is about time that every person in the world says, "In that case, I am no longer going to use Open AI until they show me another, you know, another evidence that they are actually ethical in their behavior." Right? And this is the decision that you and I can do. Right? >> People don't though, do they? >> But that's my task. My task and yours is to keep telling them, "People, please please understand that if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. Please understand that if you don't start to take an ethical stand on your own future, your future will be handed over to another oligarch just like your past was handed over to social media oligarchs." >> One would say being being at the commencement speech is a good example of how public awareness can have a real impact on this trajectory, but I still think at the end of the day, if you think about things like smartphone usage in schools, at the end of the day, it does come down to government intervention and saying, "You know what? We're going to ban 14-year-olds from scrolling Tik Tok." And that's in in part because people spoke louder and louder and louder. They went on podcasts. Jonathan Haidt, who wrote the book about The Anxious Generation, started a conversation, and that conversation led to legislation. I still think it ends in like some kind of constraint legally. >> I hope, okay? But I will openly tell you most of the tech oligarchs are more powerful than your government. >> Is there any precedents in history where this kind of change happened without government intervention? >> French Revolution. >> So, I was thinking about things like climate change, even you could say smoking. All these kinds of things have had to be like taxes and >> Stephen, I'm I'm with you. If governments intervene, we wouldn't have a problem. Governments won't intervene because governments are owned by the oligarchs. Right? So, my question for everyone listening to us is are you going to intervene? >> What can we do to change that? >> If that's what you can do, it's fine. If not, then go ahead and start a a startup that that that that does something. If you're if that's not within your capability, then send a message to your congressman. If that's not within your capability, then say something uh ethical online so that the world understands a position that needs to be opening the eyes. If that doesn't work for you, at least don't engage in stuff that is negative that you don't know enough about. There are so many little actions. If humanity starts to move in the direction of one saying ethics matter, not just profit, okay? And two, saying I'm not going to participate in something that's unethical just because I believe I want to, you know, I feel like it right now, okay? If I tell you the number of things I took out of my life, hm? Just to try and affect a tiny bit of change of revenues that go to bullets. If I tell you the number of things. >> I think there's two central concerns I've always had, which is I do feel that there's going to be significant job disruption, and I don't think society's prepared for it yet, and I don't know what that preparation looks like, but I think we should start thinking about it. Um >> I shared this with you. I you know, I genuinely believe that if we continue on where we are, there's no hope in the trajectory of where humanity has become. Hm? So distracted, hm? So resigned to inaction, so um so disconnected from their own rights of freedom of expression and engagement and so on, I think we have no hope. Do we want to stay there? That's a question that I'm asking our listeners. And I'm not saying be violent or get up or, you know, go be angry or whatever. I'm just saying, take one little action. Ask yourself, please write it in the comments, one little action. One little action that you're going to do today that's going to make the world a little better tomorrow. And don't give up on humanity, Steven. I I'm not saying you do, but I'm I'm saying we are going through such a difficult time in humanity's history that for the very first time ever, hm? We have to do something about it. I don't want my daughter to be at the receiving end of what happened to my son. I don't I don't I genuinely I lost Ilya. I don't want to lose Aya. And the world we're building is going to be very difficult for Aya, Steven. And I cannot go to sleep at night without trying something every day. And I genuinely don't understand how humanity is not is missing that point. Mainly, I think, because they're uninformed. Now, we're informing them. Okay? The only thing that will save humanity going forward is that this super called intelligence is used for ethical reasons. Is that the corruption that's leading us to where we are today stops. Hm. >> [snorts] >> You've got more envelopes there. What's your next envelope? The third one. >> Number two was job losses. Number three was labor, you know, basically >> Same thing. Robots will replace manual labor by 2030. >> to replace manual labor. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, uh you know, you will you will have more and more manual jobs given to >> robots. What's this one? >> Uh Oh, this is absolutely think otherwise. The world's first trillionaire before >> Oh, yeah, probably well before then. >> Well before 2030. >> I think, you know, Elon's about to IPO SpaceX, which is likely to make him a trillionaire. >> Yeah, I think the the concentration of power that comes with that is quite drastic when you really think about it. Uh and and that's 2030 is just a few years away. I I I think the team wrote this wrong. Artificial super intelligence will arrive in 2032 to 20 to 2035. I think artificial super intelligence will arrive the minute AGI happens. So, it doesn't really matter if AI is a billion times smarter than you or just twice as smart as you. Once we cross beyond AGI, ASI is just >> Yeah. >> very very soon. And and yeah. I think we'll overcome that when we get to the fourth inevitable. When AI is in charge of everything, I genuinely believe that we will end up in a utopia of abundance. I genuinely believe that again, physics, mathematics, and biology will tell you that super intelligence is benign. And that we will eventually end up in a good place, not because humanity has done much to get us there, not because our leaders have suddenly turned ethical, but because our unethical leaders have gone out of the equation and were replaced with a super efficient minimum energy principle that doesn't see value in anything that's destructive. >> So, the future's going to be great. >> Those who make it to 2038 will enjoy it, yeah. >> Those who make it. >> For sure. >> I mean, World War [clears throat] II didn't destroy the world, but ask those who went through it. >> It's just an interesting idea that actually it's just you're you're forecasting basically like a a decade of of turmoil. >> Of dystopia, of absolute dystopia. >> When you say absolute dystopia, just so I'm clear in my mind, the absolute dystopia you're forecasting over a decade is about war? >> War, economics, jobs. >> Economics, it's about jobs. >> It's it's also about surveillance and control. It's also about digital currencies. It's also about human connection. It's also about concentration of power. It's It's a magnification of everything we've built so far. >> And just to again arm people with some tools to survive that dystopia for a decade. You know, we talked a little bit about focusing on human jobs, the more human jobs. >> learn AI. So So AI is not the enemy, okay? Uh, by definition, the better you are at using an AI to to do your job. >> Yeah. >> Uh, the more likely you are to be successful, right? Now, number two is prepare for a hybrid world where AI and humans work together. >> How do you prepare? >> You basically understand agents and how agents work. You You understand how a hyper uh, uh, efficient approach to things may not require you to be uh, you know, very long meetings and very long So So there is If you lived in California, you would know that our you know, the way we ran businesses was a lot more efficient. We sometimes had a 7-minute meeting. >> Okay. >> Uh, right? So So the you know, the habits of of an AI are much more efficient than the habits of humans. >> So learn AI again. >> Uh, learn how to interact with AI a lot. Welcome AI into your hybrid world of work. Uh, I think you need to uh, to of course double down on human skills. I think that's a you know, a must to succeed in this world. I think we need to One of my most interesting views on the near future is how AI is going to be used to um, disrupt No, disrupt blur facts and how we need to become much more interested in debugging what we're told uh, using AI, by the way. Part of that, I have to say, is you have to learn to use AI uh, again, not as a lazy person. So don't have them do things for you. Have them make you smarter. So, instead of trying to get the same task done with one prompt, try to get a much more interesting and demanding and intelligent task done with more work. >> So, I've got two things so far, which is basically like lean into AI. And the second one is like lean into the >> Lean into the human connection connection and and lean into the truth. Don't be fooled by the hype. Uh you know, try to be more informed, I think. And then finally, ethics. Uh if you want to I know it sounds The world we live in sounds as if the only way to win is to compete in capitalism. That's not the world I lived in. The world I lived in, especially in my Google years, was solve a major problem. And when you do, you'll end up making a lot of money. >> Are you optimistic? >> I am optimistic about the future. I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm not optimistic about the present. >> You're not optimistic about the next decade. >> Yeah, I'm not optimistic about the next year, to be honest. >> year? >> For sure. >> Why the next year? >> Oh, come on, Stephen. You don't want me to say it out loud. We're ruled by maniacs. Decisions are being made for the absolute wrong reasons. >> Very [snorts] interesting time. Very interesting time we find ourselves in. >> Honestly, if you ask me, I mean, honestly, if you're a video gamer, this is the best part of the game. Uh it is a very very very very um What's the word? It's the It's the ultimate matrix of complexity that I've ever encountered in my life. >> Yeah, that's a apt description of how it feels. Very complex. Things are moving very quickly. >> And moving very quickly. So So from one side, you really need a lot of brain resources to crunch all that's happening, but you wake up tomorrow and it's changed. >> Well, the first time we we spoke, we spoke about happiness. >> [laughter] >> After this conversation, Stephen? >> No, I was just wondering, you know, in a You You wrote a book about happiness, which is >> many books about happiness. >> But I mean, the Soul for Happy is the book that I'm referring to. Here it is. Engineering Your Path to Joy. What a fantastic book. I quote this book all the time, all around the world. Um and I'm wondering if any of the principles that you wrote in this book about how to live a happy life are more important now in the world that we live in than maybe when you wrote this book. >> Oh, for sure. I mean, honestly, if I wasn't living by this, I would have left this world a long time ago and went to an island somewhere. You see the interesting side of happiness is that it's not dopamine driven. It's serotonin driven. Right? So So my definition of happiness is I'm okay with this world as it is. I can affect it. I can change it. I can engage with it. I can try to make it better. Mhm? Uh I don't have to accept it. Uh but I'm okay with it. My starting point is a bit stoic, if you want. My start starting point is I accept this. This is my reality, and now I can start the work. Mhm? This is very different than anyone that's that basically looks at the world and says, "Oh, this is a horrible world. I don't want to be part of it. I don't want to be engaged with it." and so on and so forth. And I genuinely have never been calmer about that chaos. It's quite interesting. I You know, my my wonderful ex actually really really helped me with that. There was a point in time where we were having dinner, and I poured out crying from the sense of responsibility I had for the world. And she looked at me so calmly, so gently and said, "Hold on, you know, you I see that you're trying, but you can't actually believe that you're responsible for this." And I think that completely flipped my mind because in a very interesting way, I was thinking that all that went wrong in technology is because of me. Right? >> Why? >> Because I contributed to building this because I mean when when Geoffrey Hinton and I, one of my favorite moments when we were filming Chasing Utopia, uh is that Geoffrey is very big for all of us. We really think the world of him. And I was telling him, just as a sort of like an older mentor if you want, hm? I was like, "Geoffrey, do you do you regret doing this? You know, I genuinely believed when we were building those things that we were going to make the world better." >> AI. >> Yeah. And he said, "Well, yeah, I I too was naive. I I thought that we I didn't think he said, 'I didn't think we will get there so quickly before we figured out the alignment problem.'" Right? >> The alignment problem. >> That AI has our best interest in mind. Uh and and and I think all of us were faced with that. All of us were faced with that idea of we're building the best thing ever for humanity. And then suddenly you realize, "Oh my god, in the wrong hands, it's the worst thing ever for humanity." And and I, you know, I have to say I came to terms with this 2024, end of '24. Uh that that's yes, I can try, but I accept that the world is what it is. And from that point of calm and stoicism, if you want, I think I can have a much bigger impact on the world. >> We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next. Question left for you is, "What's the legacy you want to leave?" >> Nothing at all. I've been asked this question. >> I get asked it all the time, so. >> I don't know why so many people are asking am I going to go anytime soon? I don't know why so many people are asking me that question. You see, legacy is a is a I mean, how I what would I care if I have a legacy if I'm dead? Like why that does that even make any difference? Here's an interesting thought for everyone. If if karma is real and I genuinely believe it is and if we're not just physical beings, that we're physical and spiritual then I'd I'd rather keep all of my karma for my spiritual side. >> What does that mean? >> I don't want anyone to remember anything I ever did. >> Yeah. >> I I just want to leave a positive impact on the world and take all of that as karma for my next journey. >> Well, thank you. YouTube have this new crazy algorithm where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior and the algorithm says that this video is the perfect video for you. It's different for everybody looking right now. Check this video out. I bet you you might love it.