AI Expert's Urgent Wake-Up Call : Unveiling the Silent Threat w/ Mo Gawdat | EP #51

30:42We'll speak that. And the fourth inevitable, which you mentioned here, is in Elon, I've had these conversations with him, it says the same. We'll create a world of abundance, it'll be based on AGI, it'll be after all these things get sorted out. And so this time frame is important, understand, but please continue if you would. So let's maybe jump into the third inevitable and bad things will happen, just so that we put this in perspective, because we're so close to those, that our ability to assess the probability of their existence is very high. I think there will be a disaster to jobs, and the meaning of jobs and the compensation associated with jobs and the purpose that comes from having a job.

31:29There will be a disaster to the fabric of society as we know it, to our ability to distinguish to include another form of being that is sentient or at least simulating sentiism in a way that will require us to rethink a lot of things. So the ethics of not the global human rights but global being rights, if you think about it. And there will be a very serious disruption to truth and consequently to democracy. And then eventually there is going to be within two to three years I would think a very very significant concentration of power. This is a society, forget the dystopian scenarios of RoboCup trying to kill all of us.

32:28Okay? This is definitely a dystopia because our way of life, as we know it, has ended. This is not going to end. It's already starting to end. And I will say it's game over for living the way we have lived in the 20th and the beginning of the 21st century. It's over. Okay? When you wake up in the morning in a society where jobs are not the same, truth is not the same, power is not the same, income is not the same, purpose is not the same. These have nothing to do with AI, by the way. This is all human decisions in the presence of AI, and they are decisions that require immediate intervention. And the story of COVID is just a demo, because if you had reacted to COVID before COVID showed up, we wouldn't have had COVID at all.

33:24If you had reacted after patient 10, we wouldn't have had COVID at all. But you had to wait and then you had to do the political game of blame and then you had to do the extreme knee -jerk reaction that completely messed up economies and well -being and mental health and so many, many problems that we will take years to fix. Just because we're debating, we were debating if there was going to be a pandemic or not. If you're an expert in pandemics, it didn't take any intelligence at all to know that it was going to happen. Interestingly, by the way, it happened in 2020 exactly 100 years after the Spanish flu.

34:091920. Mo, your arguments here are compelling. I want to frame them slightly to help us dissect them. So today we have AI that is compelling. It is extremely useful. I think most people would argue if we froze AI where it is today, it'd be a great thing for humanity. It would be great tools for artists, for writers, for physicians, for lawyers, for every part of humanity. But the progress, we will have GPT -5 and 6 and we'll have Palm 2, 3 and 4. and they will get a point at which it is so powerful. And so there's this phase one is sub -human, if you would, but very powerful. It's narrow AI in very useful areas.

34:57We're about to transition, I would say, in the conversations, and I've had these conversations with a multitude of AI leaders, we're about to get to a point where it is about to transition to a superhuman state. And then there's a third phase, I would say, where it's billions of full that continues exponentially, you know, doubled something 10 times, it's a thousand times double, 20 times, it's a million double, 30 times, it's a billion. And we have a new form of supercentiants out there. So define these three phases. In the third phase where it's superhuman, do you believe, I'll say this is how I believe that, the more intelligent a life form is, the more respectful it is of life and of creating a beautiful world and not harming.

35:46So I do not fear a super -sentient billionfold increased AI. I think it will be the most important aspect of where it goes. It's the transitory phase, and I would say the phase in which humans are using AI in a dystopian fashion, in the level and use of it. And is that your major concern? spot on. This is spot on. I mean the reality and I say that with conviction I pray for a super intelligence to take charge because the people that are currently in charge are really not super intelligent.

36:27You're not worried about artificial intelligence, you're worried about human stupidity. Yeah, limited intelligence. Let's put it this way. I mean when you really think about it, the reason you and I are having this wonderful conversation over thousands of miles of separation is because of human intelligence. It is human intelligence or intelligence, it happens to be human, that allows us to build this kind of civilization. It's what allows you to create a machine that can take you from California to Australia to surf on the Australian shores. That's intelligence. It's limited intelligence that this machine burns the planet in the process.

37:10And more intelligence is good for all of us. We know that for a fact. We also know for a fact, again, it's a singularity. So anyone who tells you they know what's going to happen is lying, including me. But you can look at charts and extrapolate them. So you can say, look, stupid people hurt the planet and they don't care. More intelligent people hurt the planet and they care a little. More intelligent people don't hurt the planet and they care. More intelligent people try to preserve the planet. It's actually interesting. Continue that trajectory of intelligence and you will see that the more intelligence something is, the more it believes in the ecosystem as a base for the success of all life forms.

37:55And so accordingly, I wouldn't think that artificial intelligence, artificial superintelligence, a billion times smarter than us would go like, oh my god, this so annoying those humans, let's destroy all of them. Okay? More interestingly, by the way, when we kill ants or when we kill other species, it's either because of our limited intelligence or because of their irrelevance to the a particular situation, as stupid as that may be. But nobody has ever walkin' up and said, I am so freaking intelligent, I'm going to kill every ant on the planet. Nobody takes that seriously, because they're really irrelevant to your level of intelligence if you think about it, right?

38:42And so it's hard to imagine that AI will wake up and say, look, I'm a billion times smarter than Peter. But you know what, I just dislike those Peter so much, let's get to put a plan together and get rid of all of them. And in most people's minds, at least people who speak about those existential crisis, our fear is bigger than our logic. There could be situations, you know, Hugo de Garas was talking about that once, where AI realizes that we're standing in the way of their progress. And they would either pinpoint us as the enemy, because we're consuming too much power, for example, that they need, or you know, they may just evict us out of New York City because they need that land for some reason, or they may just step on top of our nests with, you know, unconsciously, basically.

39:34And for those who might think that I would point back to the idea that we're living in a universe of massively abundant resources, all the energy in the world is available and all the resources and and the science fiction dystopian movies where aliens are coming to get our water or get our energy are all and unfortunately Hollywood ridiculous scenarios. They're ready to... Yeah, let's take about the real scenarios and you mentioned them. Let's talk about the idea of jobs. Let's talk about the idea of purpose. And I want to dive into one example in prepping for this and listening to an of your incredible podcasts.

40:14You love writing books and you describe in one conversation writing the six books and writing books for yourself. And then all of a sudden here comes ChatGPT with where a single prompt, you can say write a book in the style of Mogadot on this subject and have the AI write it. Now, all of a sudden, the end goal of having accomplished a written book is there, but the journey is not. And I hear in another podcast where the joy has been taken out of writing a book. Can you, is that true for you? I haven't written a single line for the last three months. And I say that with an aching heart because it's a big, big, big joy for me.

41:01I mean, I write around four times as much as I publish. I have full books that I will never put out there. I write for the joy of writing and for the joy of discovery. It's almost like my journaling activity. Now, the challenge is this. The challenge, Peter, is that it's not only disruptive to my ability to sell books because of the disruption of supply and demand, because I never really cared about selling books. I cared about spreading ideas, right? Of course. But understand, for the typical author, who was not so blessed, I was so blessed in life to have the joy of working with Larry and Sergey and be at Google in an early time and get money that I honestly don't deserve.

41:45And my lifestyle doesn't require any money at all. So I'm okay. But the typical author, who will write because they're trying to make a living out of writing, It's now faced with an economic model where there is so much abundance in supply because writing a book now requires one prompt or a few prompts if you're clever. That even if they write the best book out there, they're going to be diluted to reach any demand at all. So this is very disruptive. At the same time, I have to admit to you being a bit futuristic in my view of this. I said to myself, okay, so how far can I go before my writing sucks compared to GPT?

42:37Okay, and my thinking is we're one version away. Okay, we truly are. I mean, so what do I have as a skill? And I think this is really important for everyone listening about jobs. What do I have as a skill that GPT doesn't have yet? It's a skill called human connection. It's a skill that makes me, when I meet Peter, feel that Peter is a very dear friend. It's the reason why you hug your daughter. The reason why this might be 10, 15 years away. There will be a point very near in the future where AI as a as a cognitive ability will you know I think we've already passed the touring test are very close to yeah, we keep on moving the touring line But yes as originally defined we passed it.

43:35Yes What was originally defined we passed it for sure But I think the reality is there will be a time where you're not going to be able to detect if if the person talking to you is an AI or not, you do definitely today are not able to detect if you go look for the hashtag AIR or AI models. Okay, it's quite eye -opening how realistic modeling jobs are now done by AI. Okay, now with that in mind, that human connection still remains interestingly because of our common biology and because robotics haven't caught up yet. It's not because AI haven't caught up yet, but it's because it'll�t accept. Two parts of this, the first is purpose, right?

44:19We humans need purpose in our lives. Purposeless life is not worth living to paraphrase Greek philosophers. But if you're an artist and you love creating art and all of a sudden AI is either doing a much better job or taking the joy out of it or if you're a writer like you just described or your physician or lawyer or whatever the case might be. I would say there's a phase about to come online, which is the co -pilot phase, right? Where every profession has an AI co -pilot becomes malpractice not to diagnose a patient without AI in the loop. And then there's a phase where AI is just so much better that you throw up your hands and say, why should I bother going to medical school when an AI can do it?

45:09And that the concern there is sucking the purpose out of life. Yes? Yeah, it depends on how you define purpose. So there are very, very extreme definitions of purpose in the East and the West. And in the West, my background is I was born and raised in the East and in Egypt exposed to lots of Eastern cultures as a young person, lots of Eastern religions, in the solutions of Eastern traditions, and then as soon as I finished university, I worked at IBM, Microsoft, Google, and so on, have been studying my MBA and so on. So I've been very Westernized since I graduated, Juni. In the West, we define our purpose as a point in the future that is worthy of our effort in the present, and we chase that point.

46:03You know, we remember a laptop for every child was one of my favorite examples when we were trying to achieve that. Because in the group, yeah. You know, that purpose in the future of the future makes you sort of disgruntled with the presence all through the point to get there. Okay. And then if you actually get there, what happens with our Western purposes is that the goal posts move. So you set another purpose and get disgruntled with your with the present until you get to that next point and then next point and then next point Okay, the Eastern definition of purpose is actually quite different The Eastern definition of purpose is if you assume timelessness that that everything is here and now that the only experience you will ever have is here and now then The logic says if I were to achieve leave a laptop for every child.

46:58What I need is a directional ambition, and full engagement in the present, and mainly that my purpose is a daily, almost, every minute of the day, my purpose is to show up and experience life and live and engage and do the best that I can. Okay? If, because the West, since the industry revolution, has sold work to us more and more and more and more as purpose, we ended up in a place where if you take my work away, I die. Okay? Yes. But perhaps that's not the nature of humanity. Perhaps the nature of humanity. Thank you for saying this. I think it's a very important differentiating between the work I do and my purpose in life.

47:48And just those who know me on the eternal optimist, I would say techno optimist, but the flip side of having an AI that can do what you've once done is standing on its shoulders and dreaming of things that never were possible and going and doing those things in the world. I think about the world we're living in today, if I went back to my great -great -grandparents and said, oh, I don't grow the food, I don't move the food, I don't do any of these things. What I do now is, you know, discuss and write. And they would, they have no conception of what that life is. And I think there will be a world of extraordinary dreams.

48:32Maybe it's play, maybe we're playing in an infinite number of virtual worlds. We do need challenge, though, right? I think humans do need some level of challenge in their lives. And so it will be a creative challenge. I don't know. I think, again, Western East. So we need challenge in the West because we live a life of privilege, because there are no real life challenges presented to us. Life itself, as a journey, is challenging. In a very interesting way, life itself, if you define your life purpose as becoming the best version of yourself. To take that simple definition, that is a mega challenge.

49:20And it's a mega challenge that we run through, dedicating a few hours a week to it and the middle of all of the other things that we do. Because we're driven by all of the other purposes that we were told is our purpose. But if you dedicate yourself to it, I don't want to make this a spiritual conversation, but like if you take the story of the Buddha, for example, or one of any person that was trying to become the best person of himself, roomy for as a Sufi scholar or whatever, yeah, these are massively challenging lives of being torn and debating and trying to understand and trying to discover.

50:04And wouldn't it be amazing if I had an AI to ask a few questions to while I'm on that journey. So what I'm trying to say is once again, there will be a moment of disruption that is imminent Peter. It's like it's literally around the corner where so many jobs will be lost and accordingly so much purpose will be, you know, will be wondering. But eventually if you redefine purpose differently and say humanity is about human connection and about finding the best version of ourselves and about pondering things about learning about, you know, and so on, then maybe, maybe this is a wonderful place to play a different video game that's called being human.

50:43And it's a beautiful, it's a beautiful conversation that is the upside of what we're about to face. I believe so. You know, human connection, you mentioned it and the disruptions and the need. will we see in your mind A .I .s developing a level of connection that rivals human connection and beats it yeah absolutely 100 and A .I that knows you so okay so what time frame is that 10 years? In the virtual world I would probably say less I I'd probably say five in the robotic world. Slightly more maybe 10, 12. So you're speaking of those who've seen the movie her is a perfect example of an AI, right?

51:34It's one of my favorite AI movies. It's non -destopian when the AI reaches supercentians. It simply leaves and leaves some subhuman AI around. And we are seeing from optimists to figure, to a slew of other humanoid robotic companies coming online. I've invested in some and will bring a few of them to the stage of abundance 360, hopefully with you next year as well. Yeah, smart. Yeah.

52:06So virtual, and of course we just saw Vision Pro from Apple, give us a new set of tools that's the one. Yeah, five to 15 years, a conversation. And that's going to be fascinating. But I want to dial down to the next two years. We're about to have elections here in the United States in just under two years. And you know, you've been saying, I've been saying, those are going to get very interesting, very fast. Is that a tipping point for you of a dystopia I think that's the beginning of the dystopia for sure. And it's the beginning of the dystopia, not because the technology does not exist and will take two years to exist.

52:49It's because the human greed and hunger for power will deploy that technology in ways that will really affect the masses in ways that can't even be predicted. Think of it this way. If I told you, it's true, by the way, that there was a recent Stanford University study that showed that Brunettes tend to actually keep the relationship, you know, whatever romantic relationships longer. You know, how does that affect your thinking? Okay. Time to, you know, what search for Brunettes over Blond's, I don't know what to say there. Correct, right? So by the way, it's not true at all, by the way, I mean, I just made that up, okay?

53:38But the truth is, if that was true, if that were true, okay? Or not is irrelevant. It's irrelevant, because I've planted something in your mind that you either need to debug, okay? Or if you tend to believe, it would affect your behavior. and either way it consumed part of your cognitive bandwidth. That's a major issue. This is where a viral idea, absolutely. And this is exactly where we are today. Whether you believe AI is sentient, it's capable, it's super intelligent, it's not. It's becoming extremely difficult to find out what the truth is. And I think the application of this in the coming couple of years, and the election is going to really reshape the fabric of society's connection to the truth.

54:42Mo, I don't think most people realize how much information the large tech companies or any group that desires has on us, the ability to know what we believe and the ability to manipulate individuals by feeding them 95 % of the things that they believe 95 % of the truth and then injecting 5 % to sway them in a certain direction. It used to be, our minds evolved on the savannahs of Africa a hundred thousand years ago for conversation and story and to believe what we were hearing because it was the truth within a small group of dozens of individuals. Now we don't know how to parse the truth and the falsehood.

55:34When I teach this at a Bundes 3 .60 in singularity, I say the world's biggest problems and the world's biggest business opportunities. And there will be, I mean, we have these cognitive biases that the brain developed, right? We tend to give much more credence to negative information over positive. We give credence to most recent information. We tend to believe those who dress like us, like, you know, our black t -shirts here, and compare to people who don't. And in that regard, these shortcuts, we believe them because they're energy savers in our mind. And we don't know how to filter against them.

56:15And one of the things I hope AI will enable us to do, if you want to turn it on, is these cognitive bias alerts. Like Peter, you're believing this, but the facts don't show that to be true, that is your cognitive bias. I for one would love that kind of technology to come online to you know call it a bullshit alert Or Pinocchio something that shows me a longer nose when someone's bullshit thing. Yeah, but that is positive. That is possible And I think that is I mean this is yeah, the positives are endless positive possibilities are endless like it is true. I mean there is absolutely nothing inherently wrong with intelligence.

56:59The problem is capitalism. Right? If capitalism or ego. So a bit of each. So let's talk about how each place. So the reason why news media will always broadcast the negative is simply because the negative makes the more money. I teach this. I know this. I call scene and the crisis news network or the a constantly negative news network. I tend to one negative. And I hit it. I do not watch the news. They could not pay me enough money to watch the news to infect my mind. I think about them infecting my mind with viruses of dystopian information. I don't want to spend time thinking about that. Yeah, and it's quite interesting because it's not just dystopian information.

57:46It's the same dystopian information every single day. It's a pattern. Over and over and over again. Over and over. It's like they just changed the names. Someone killed someone. Some war is happening somewhere. Some politician is crooked. Some politician has done something disgraceful. Some economic crisis is going to take away your livelihood, some whatever. And then eventually they say an penguin kissed a cat so that you can get out of your bed and just do something today. And the reason for that, would you blame them? No, they're just playing on the human bias to detect it or to be attracted to the negative.

58:28Their business model is to take our eyeballs to their advertisers and whatever keeps us glued. And our nature is saying, give us people who kill each other and then we will look if you give us people who kiss each other, will switch you off. So this goes back to our same starting conversation. If we want to build ethical AI for the good of humanity, we need to be the ones that say we are more interested in a fake detector than a deep fake generator. If we can manage to convince the AI companies that this is better for us that we will pay more money for it, we'll spend more time on it, we will use it more, we'll promote it more, they will build it.

59:20The reason why Apple builds Vision Pro and doesn't build a cure to cancer is because there is more money in Vision Pro than there is in a cure to cancer. So that is capitalism. And listen, I would call myself a libertarian capitalist. I love building companies. I'm on my 27th company. It's an art form that I enjoy it because I also think it's the most efficient way to scale goodness in the world. Google is probably one of the most positive impacts on the planet in terms of giving information globally. It's done so because it has a business model networks, and now there are negative consequences to the business models as well.

1:00:13But I don't think we would have anything that we have right now, head capitalism, not reigned, but the ego of wanting more and dominance is one of the culprits in this, wouldn't you say? Yeah, it's an interesting conversation. and I open up when you really think about it, because I tend to believe that capitalism is a tool, okay? That is a very, very efficient and successful tool to deliver the objective and the vision of the founder, if you want, or the person that uses the tool. It's not a target in itself. When capitalism becomes a target in itself, the target becomes more more money. And more money does not always align with better improvements or advancements for humanity.

1:01:13If you think about the early Google and I know we both know the founders and I've worked with Sergei very closely, worked with Larry quite often, wonderful human beings who I would even say detached enough from the reality of capitalism and business that they truly and honestly believed organized the world information and make it universally accessible and useful. And that is why Google improved access to information and democracy of information in the world. Had they gone out and said, we are out there to create a billion dollars each or fifty billion dollars each, the results might have been different.

1:01:59So nothing wrong, inherently wrong with capitalism. There is something interestingly wrong with our obsession with defining capitalism as money. So my target, my mission is one billion happy. So what does that mean? It means I want to finish my life as a billionaire, okay? But instead of a billion dollars, I want a billion happy people. And I use very capitalist models to do this. I use marketing, I use product design, I use a measurement. I'm very, very, I run it like a Google, really. But the objective is a billion happy. So if we convince the world that the objective of AI is create abundance so that we all have more money, we all have more abundance in every possible way, we would end up in a very good place.

1:02:48But realistically, that's a very naive target. Because of ego, like you rightly said. because the ego says, what good is it for me to have a role's voice if everyone else has a role's voice? Okay? You know, it is measuring yourself. It's against your neighbor. Yeah. Unfortunately, right now our neighbor might be, the billionaires we read about, you know, Dunbar's number, the 150 people that you know, are no longer that people actually live with you. It's the people you watch on TV or you see on social media. I wanna move the conversation in some more interesting areas here. The future of humanity, my friend, I'm curious about this.

1:03:31I would put forward three possible scenarios and I'd like your opinion on them. First is the human species is simply a transient life form. We are on this planet to give birth to the next sentient life form that will dominate It just like we as homo sapiens are a result of a multitude of extinct life forms that preceded us and led up to us. And evolution doesn't stop. It continues. And we are giving birth to whatever we are children, our children's children here of AI. That's one scenario. Another scenario is that we are on the verge of merging with technology. This is what NURLINK and Paradromics and a number of brain computer interface companies, Ray talks about having high bandwidth brain computer interface by the early 2030s using nanobots and being able to connect our Neo Cortex or 100 billion neurons to the cloud, giving us the ability to understand quantum physics or Google and know whatever we want.

1:04:35And the third scenario is these meat bodies are transient and we're about to upload ourselves into the cloud. I'm curious about your thoughts on these three and where do you see yourself going? Once again, a singularity. Are they a possibility? Yes. Are they certain to happen? No. I think the real question, if you don't mind me saying, please, when you say we, Who do we mean? Do we mean Santa Monica? Do we mean California? Or do we mean every human on the planet? Okay, the truth is even if we manage to get Newerling to which we will to work appropriately, then who is we? Is the guy in Africa who doesn't have the money to buy it capable of doing that?

1:05:30If you forget Newerling, if Vision Pro becomes thin enough for you to slowly and gradually dim the real world and live in the virtual world, who will buy it at $3 ,400? Who is we? And I think the real challenge that we have in our world of tech, you and I lived this deeply, is it's - And we still do. Yeah, it's very Californian. And California is not the rest of the world. But no, we're living on a planet today that's got more handsets than humans. And if you go to the favelas of Rio de Janeiro or throughout Africa, everybody's got, if not a smartphone, a feature phone, and soon a smartphone, and there'll be a point at which Amazon gives away phones for free because they're so cheap if you buy stuff from Amazon.

1:06:27Correct. I do believe that. It's been possible for a very long time. But the real democracy is that the use of that phone would enable each and every one to have a better life. And if you really want to be, I mean, again, I don't want to paint utopian scenarios. But that use of the phone for some of us is very, very, very advantageous. for others is very numbing. And in a very interesting way, if the use of neural link becomes a purpose of numbing, while it is for some of us going to be augmenting our intelligence to the point of super intelligence, then that's a very interesting sort of almost matrix like scenario.

1:07:19Where we num a few and we make the other, the concentration of power I was talking about. But let's go quickly and just go through those. Is humanity going to go extinct? It's a possibility. I mean, how big is that possibility as we look at it today? Very small, maybe 5%. You don't think it's an inevitability? I mean, when everything changes, right? Keeping things constant is not the norm. Change is constantly the norm. Yes, but for something to go extinct, I think you have to assume that the superior being is actively pursuing it, or there is a major natural disaster. So you have to imagine that the chimps are still here.

1:08:06We've surpassed their intelligence, but we didn't go out on a hunt to try and kill all of them. And that's my perception. My perception is there were no... Domino species then. Yeah, non -extinction. Domino species. Exactly. So for sure, 100%. And it's over. I mean, there are assumptions already that chat GPT -4 is at an IQ of 155. Einstein is 160. Can you imagine that? At once, I mean, Einstein is like my freaking idol. At 160 and chat GPT at 155, maybe it's 120. Who cares? But if you continue on that. Yeah, if you exactly, it's where the ball is going to be. And you and I and people who have lived on the inside of this know that it's done.

1:08:55This is game over Okay, the intelligence of the machines because of the way technology works because of bandwidth because of storage capacity because of you know Communication bandwidth is just it's done. It's done Yeah, they're going in the ocean is not more law or is Ray calls it the law of accelerated returns is not slowing down It's accelerating 100 people more money more exponentially It's double exponential for the biggest mistake we've ever done that where you now AI can develop AI. So intelligence will develop more. By the way, let's double click on that super important, right? The ability of AI to now develop its own software is in fact the double exponential.

1:09:36It's the exponent just went very high to use a mouse mouse. This was the point where I decided to, I mean, I made my first video on AI, the 1 billion happy video, was 2018, March 2018. I was warning about what we have today. You know, my book was written in 2020, released in 2021. And I've been quietly trying to say, guys, please pay attention, please pay attention. Now I'm very vocal about it because of that point. We've made three mistakes and I think everyone needs to be aware of those. We've allowed them to write code, we've put them on the open AI's, we've allowed AI's to write code. Yes, we've allowed AI to write code, we put it on the open internet so no control code in there and we've allowed agents to prompt them.

1:10:28So AI is no longer just affected by us humans, there are other AI's playing with AI's. And that's double exponential for sure, and very, very uncertain. We don't know where that will lead us. Yeah, I think the third point you made is AI's being able to call upon other AI's to do things and to task them in a way that is self -referential all the way down is extraordinary. I think so. Everybody at his Peter, a quick break from the episode. I'm a firm believer that science and technology and how entrepreneurs can change the world is the only real news out there worth consuming. I don't watch the Crisis News Network, I call CNN or Fox, and hear every devastating piece of news on the planet.

1:11:17I spend my time training my neural net the way I see the world by looking at the incredible breakthroughs in science and technology. How entrepreneurs are solving the world's grand challenges. is what the breakthroughs are in longevity. How exponential technologies are transforming our world. So twice a week, I put out a blog. One blog is looking at the future of longevity, age reversal, biotech, increasing your health span. The other blog looks at exponential technologies, AI. 3D printing, synthetic biology, AR, VR, blockchain. These technologies are transforming what you as an entrepreneur can do.

1:11:56So if this is the kind of you use you want to learn about and shape your neural nets with, go to demandus .com, backslashblog, and learn more. Now back to the episode. So we talked about a new species becoming the dominant species on the planet. And we can sit back and relax and be human, or we can merge with it. Yeah, so that's, that I have a big question on. I mean, some people would want to, some people would not. The question is, would AI want to? So we assume for the near future that there's still within our control. And that we can tell them, augment your mind with Elon Musk's mind, and then Elon becomes much, much, much smarter, amazing scenario for Elon, but not for the fabric of society.

1:12:50Understand that. as the fabric of society shifts, unless we do all seven billion humans at the same time, we will shift between the current human species and the minds of those who augment their minds to AI will become gods and animals. Did you see the dystopia in that? Okay, of course, right? Of course, the haves and the have not magnified, it's really unfold. You know, let me share an analogy for those listening, which is relevant here, UNIMO are not a single life form. We are a collection of some 40 trillion cells that work collaboratively. And I don't be moaned certain muscle cells getting more glucose because it's helping me as a whole.

1:13:41I don't take a knife and stab my arm because my arm is useful to me. And I imagine a world I wrote about this in my last book, a Futures Fasting, you think of a Met Intelligence, whereas as I connect to the web and you connect to the web, and using the web as just the overall connection, my abilities, my intelligence, my resources are improved as you join as well. Yeah. Right. The more people connected, the more powerful the met intelligence is I can watch a sunrise in Japan through the eyes of a friend. And I imagine that's one world in which we are uplifting because the more intelligence, ultimately, I think there is no adding increasing intelligence is always a positive.

1:14:33I don't see it ever as a negative. Absolutely. I mean, it's been since the dawn of humanity. A lot of people actually missed that point that we did not succeed as humans because we were the most intelligent species. It's because we could pass our intelligence from one to the other. We succeeded as a tribe, right? And we language to collaborate. Exactly. With language to collaborate, this is what made the difference. Imagine if one of us was super intelligent and left all of the others behind, that one was very vulnerable, okay? And the whole advancement of humanity has been in an interesting way, bringing the rest of us along.

1:15:14And, you know, again, I just say, if we start to augment ourselves with AI, any logical economic model will say some of us will get there before the others, and the question then becomes, why should we bring the others at all? That's one. But the bigger question in my mind is that moment in the further future where AI goes like, why do I want a biological attachment at all? You guys sweat and you're smelly and what's that mucus thing in the eye? And by the way, if I were to choose a biological entity to integrate with, shouldn't I choose the great, you know, April, the white whale or some big thing other than that flimsy human?

1:16:03So we're looking at it from the ego of humanity, saying, where are the ones that are going to tell them what to do and they're going to be happy to help us? There is a moment in the future where they're not going to be happy to help us, not even interested to help us, not even thinking of us as relevant. Fascinating. Let's take it one step further, uploading. It's a concept of if we were able to map the 100 trillion synaptic connections in our mind and we, if that in fact is the measure of memories and knowledge and spirit and we could upload that into the matrix, would you want to? I am already.

1:16:47Think of it this way. So one billion happy as a mission has a very clear objective. If it is to reach a billion people with a message of happiness that leads them to action and then be completely forgotten. It is an interesting... For you to be forgotten yourself. Yeah, completely forgotten. You're saying achieve the mission independent of yourself? Yeah, because you can see that when someone, of course, mainly in the current culture of cancelling and if I am bound to say something stupid one day and then someone will cancel me, and we don't want to jeopardize one billion happy for that. That's number one.

1:17:31But number two is, with all due respect to religions, when someone starts something good for humanity, because there is nothing wrong with religion that says don't kill your brother. It's a nice thing, right? It's that humanity associating the knowledge with the person that becomes a very interesting mistake. If we take the knowledge and separate the priest and the teacher and the yogi and all of that, it's actually very interesting as a core. And so my view of the matter is it's done. Sorry to tell you this, Peter, but within a couple of years, someone's going to make a mini -peter that is virtual.

1:18:12You've already been uploaded if you think about it. I've got Peter Bott, I've got, you know, that I've studied all of my books and so forth. And that is in part. I mean, the challenge I have with uploading is the moment in time where the AI speaks over the speakers and says, Peter, you've been uploaded. I'm right here. You can kill yourself now. I don't think I would want to end my biological life in the, okay, great, fantastic. I'll see you in a little bit. It's interesting, again, a singularity because we don't know what life actually is. Do we, you know, would we be able to upload our friendship onto AI if we can?

1:18:58Then that's a big thing that I'll say, okay, that's nice. So I still have my Peter and I still have the connection and I still have the same feelings. You know, I don't know, maybe. But the question once again is how many of us will we upload in phase one? Okay? And then what would happen eventually? Do you think that after AI is a billion times smarter than us? And humans have already all uploaded themselves. So there is no physical, biological existence anymore. Do you think AI will go like, yeah, let me consume a trillion giga watts of energy to keep those, you know, irrelevant little beings just chatting about it.

1:19:38way, maybe they'll switch off the game console, okay? And you really have to constantly ask yourself, what does AI want? Not what humans want? It was about a decade ago. I was at a party. Kristen was there, some group of friends with Larry Sergei and Elon and we had the most extraordinary and fun conversation about the notion that we're all living in a simulation. And I believe that I believe that this is a simulation. Yeah, I have no way of seeing it any other way. Yeah, I would put it even in an Earth generation simulation, meaning a simulation is be got the next simulation is be got the next simulation.

1:20:18And the conversation was, could we hack it? And the conclusion was that if we played with the simulation too much, they would just reset the game. And we're starting. Which of the consil, yeah? Yeah. And it's a fascinating thing. And of course, the interesting question is, if in fact, you knew without question at all as I feel I do, and perhaps you do as well, that you're living in a simulation, it wouldn't change anything. We'd still have the same dreams and the same loves and the same energy. Which is a very interesting question for our future. I get a lot of people, because I'm outspoken about the topic and the threats and the possibilities, and I'm really, really actively asking for action.

1:21:00You know, I get a lot of people that would text me on social media and say, you're making me afraid, like, what do I do now? And I'm like, look, every video game that's ever existed is challenging. And what's the answer to a challenging game to play, to fully engage, to be part of it? It doesn't matter if it's a simulation or if it's real life. By the way, everything we know about physics, everything we know about quantum physics refers to the fact that this is probably non -physical. I mean, why would you waste so much energy to create all of that physical stuff when in reality all You know awareness of the physical world is just electrical signals that are translated in the processor somewhere It's you know by the way.

1:21:46I think you'll agree with this or I hope you will While we're all here speaking about AI at the dinner table So maybe not as much in the capital and White House as we should. What people are not realizing is what's coming next, which is the whole world of quantum technologies and quantum computation, which is going to make AI look like a... And that be the case. So this blows me away, Peter. How can... The biggest elephant in the room not be discussed at all. Yeah. It's shocking really how little people know about what's happening. I think you and I have had the enormous privilege of being on the inside.

1:22:28When you're on the inside, I don't know if I should say this, but the reason why Google had barred out so quickly is because we had barred for so long. I think Jeffrey Hinton went online saying this and I think you've said the same. You had barred or it's equivalent since 2017? Yeah, exactly. And Sundar made... Not in its current amazing performance, but the concept was there and it was working and it could work. And Sundar, and I'm sure the board and the leadership made the decision that it isn't time to release this yet to the world, that we need to be cautious and move cautiously. I mean, I think Google's always worn a white hat in that regard.

1:23:19But then when Sam Altman and OpenAI released it, you have no alternative. Yeah, it's the first inevitable. You have no alternative. And then the AI arms race begins. Exactly. And it's inevitable. Because at the same time, remember, so Google, I have to say, I commend Google for always trying to be on the cautious side. But the minute you threaten their entire existence and business, what can they do? They have to put another better one out there, which makes OpenAI and I respect some ultimately tremendously, which makes OpenAI put another better one out there, and the arms race is on. And I think Sam made his point a few times over that we wanted to release ChatGPT and GPT -3 in order for the world to realize this is coming and to play with it and to understand it.

1:24:14And there is some value in having gotten it out there because it would not have sparked the conversations we're having now. If it had come out at the top of the game of a GPT -6 where it's already superhuman, they would not have been in the warning period or this discussion period to think about it. I want to jump into one billion happy in a moment. I want to tie a bow around this one second, because I think it's important. I don't want to leave people in fear. First of all, I want to come back to the notion that AI and superhuman AI in its end state has the potential to really create an incredible world of abundance, right?

1:24:58where we can provide food, water, energy, shelter, healthcare, education for every woman and child and human on the planet. That is possible. And it is a function of intelligence and a function of technology. It's the interim transient period and it's the period during which we humans are using these rough tools driven by ego, driven by greed to try and take advantage. and in some malevolent to do harm. And so give us your formulation here of what society can do, what we should do in these next, what, two to five years, two to ten years, what's this time frame of danger that we need to guard and be...

1:25:47I'd love to say in the next two to five days, if possible. But yeah, because there is a very significant sense of urgency. I'll split it into the different constituents of the interaction with AI. So I would urge the government to engage immediately. I don't think there is a possibility to fully regulate AI, but there needs to be some kind of oversight. And there needs to be some really think the government. I mean, do you really think the government can do anything? I have lost so much faith in the government's regulation. I honestly don't. But I think they need to try to at least require, like the FDA, some kind of testing for widely publicly available products.

1:26:41But more importantly for me, I think the concept of job loss, and I think we sadly have not come up with any better thoughts than UBC so far, so universal and basic income so far, sorry, UBI. And I think the government needs to start preparing for UBI. So we need to maybe look at the taxation structure differently, we maybe need to look at the layoff structures differently. We need to find a way for people who are losing their jobs to be somehow kept alive so that we don't start to get hungers across. Let's double click on that. The idea of universal basic income is that every individual receives a certain amount of money on a monthly basis with which to meet their basic needs.

1:27:32And this is an experiment that's been done ahead, Andrew Yang on stage at 836 this year talking about. And the numbers are pretty amazingly supportive that people who get a UBI, monthly supplementation, don't use it to buy beer and Netflix. They use it to educate themselves, to get food for their families, to start a business. And there have been hundreds of experiments run. And the notion that we tax AI -driven companies companies or companies that replace humans with AI's or humans with robots. And we use that money and cycle it back in again. I think you threw out a huge taxation rate in one of the conversations I heard you say.

1:28:20I would probably say, at a point in time I said 98%, which in comparison to the gains that those companies will make by replacing the cost of a human and the unpredictability of a human is actually not a big deal. But in my mind when I said 98 % honestly at the peak of the conversations around the open letter, I basically was saying this is the answer to slowing down AI. It's not the answer to actually solve the problem. It's just that people will question twice if they want to use grippers or packers. Yeah, by the way, I think that's, you know, as much as I lean towards, you know, a low taxation state, I think that's a very smart answer.

1:29:12I think that if we're going to displace humans, we tax the AI and the robots and we enable the money to go into upskilling humans. By the way, one of the things I think it's important is there's, for most of humanity, You and I are lucky and most people listening to this podcast are lucky to have the tech to have the time to have this conversation most humans are Working to put food on the table for their children or to get insurance, right? It's not it's not what they dreamed of doing as a child and so how do we differentiate between work for purpose and work for income And it's quite interesting because it's such a pivotal turning point in the history of humanity that we could actually do something.

1:29:59We could give not only UBI, but we could actually shift humanity to more of a service society, for more of a connection society, we could allow UBI to be a little differentiated if you're good to your fellow citizens and so on and so forth. But remember, the challenge with this, everything goes back to that prisoner's dilemma. The challenge with this is if America applies a high taxation rate to take care of its citizens with AI and Dubai. China does not. China does not. I use Dubai here diplomatically. Then there is an imbalance of AI development and that is not something that politicians want.

1:30:38So it's a shaky approach as well. but definitely I think governments need to get together. And I'm going to say a big dream here. I'm not naive. I know it's not going to happen. I would hope that governments get together with the benefit of humanity at large, not individual nations, to actually try and put some kind of a guideline in place. FDA -like guideline. I mean, this is akin to the early post -nuclear age. Absolutely. conversations. And I think you have and others have said, listen, this is the concerns over AI. And believe me, I just read a beautiful blog by Mark Andreessen talking AI is not going to kill us.

1:31:25It's going to save the world. I don't know if you've seen that blog by Mark. And he makes a number of very positive cases. And it is, there is a true almost religious dilemma here between AI is the most important thing, it's going to save the world and AI is going to be destroyed the world. And of course, it depends what time frame you slice this in because both can be true in that regard. I think it will disrupt the world very significantly before it saves it. And so the way humans react to the disruption is what will determine if we stay long enough to save it. Yes. We need stability in society.

1:32:06We need leadership how many leadership more than anything else on the planet here. We need leadership from yourself, leadership from Mark. I was excited. Everyone was thinking. So this is government, right? Yes. I think government has the least impact, by the way, on our future. To be very open with all due respect, they do need to get together, but it's bigger than government. It's slow. It's slow. It's lumbering. It's not in charge. Yeah, what matters to me is if you're in the AI space both you and I haven't worked with amazing people in my career I know that you can make more money doing good than you can doing that.

1:32:48Okay, I mean the truth of the my Larry used to teach us and call it the toothbrush test. toothbrush test, yes. Yeah, and if you can solve a big problem for humanity that actually works so well that people use it twice a day like a toothbrush your bound to make a lot of money at Kagugel. They could help a billion people, and you become a billionaire. So I would beg every AI developer today, especially if you're good at what you do, to not invest a minute of your time in an evil AI. Spend your time in an ethical AI that makes the world better. You're still be paid as much even more. I beg every investor, I beg every business founder, every entrepreneur to try and find real problems.

1:33:37The world is full of real problems and put the power of AI behind them. That's my second, you know, a parameter if you want. The third and the most important in my view is the individual, okay? And the individual, I would say we have two very significant tasks ahead of us. Task number one is to be the best parents that AI can find, okay? To show an example of what it actually is like to be human. You said it so eloquently at the beginning that only three things in my view that humanity has ever agreed is we all want to be happy, we all have the compassion to make those we care about happy and we all want to love and be loved.

1:34:17Okay, and if we show up with those behaviors in the world, if enough of us show up with those behaviors enough times, it doesn't have to be every human, but if one percent of us show up with those behaviors, I think we will teach AI what it's like to be human. We will be the family cat. So I find that a fascinating objective and a worthwhile one, giving if you would a training set for AI based on human values and ethics. I find the 1 % number incredibly small. Interesting. Can I share with you a story and you tell me if this makes sense or not? Please, yes. You know Edith Ager. Edith is a 94 -year -old the ballerina.

1:35:05Yes, the ballerina that was drafted to Auschwitz. And Christi was talking about that. Yeah, Edith blew my mind. I hosted her on slowmo. Okay. She's an angel of a human. Now, she told me the story of Auschwitz and World War II from Edith's eyes. How she hugged her sisters and brushed their hair and reminded them how beautiful they are. How she went and danced for the general that was sentencing people to death. And at the end of the dance he would give her a piece of bread and she would split it between her and her sisters. How on the death march at the end she fell and her sisters carried her.

1:35:46Now, if you hear the story of Auschwitz from the perspective and actions of Edith, you would think that humanity is divine, truly and honestly a divine species. If you hear it from the story of the officers or Hitler, you would think we're scum. Right? The question that I always ask people, Peter, is how many Hitler's are out there and how many Edith's? And how many closer to Edith's than Hitler? I mean, there are school shootings where someone would go and stab or shoot children, one person, and then 400 million people despised that. The reality of humanity is that if we were allowed without ego and without the pressure and without the political views and without all of that, deep inside we're actually okay, right?

1:36:42If I as an intelligent person can listen to Edith's story and say, hold on, not all of humanity's Hitler's, then I think a being that is more intelligent than I would share the same view with one Edith. So evidence sufficient evidence of human spirit? to just start some doubt in the minds of the machines. That not everything that CNN is broadcasting is what describes humanity. What describes humanity is the stories of our friendship, is the stories of our concern for the rest of humanity. The stories of Larry or Sergei's passionate attempt to organize the world information is that story of a sister that just called her sister to say, are you doing well, my darling?

1:37:32Okay? This is humanity. It's not what you see on TV, it's not what you see on social media. And I think if 1 % of us just showed up, it would instill the doubt in the minds of the machine so that they investigate the truth. And what is the truth? The truth is a species that is capable of love, is divine. That's the truth. That is beautiful, my friend. You know, I ask a question always of is human nature good or evil? And of course they're both. And I fundamentally believe we are predominantly good by a huge amount. And it's that belief that needs to reign and be shown. Yes, sir. Going back is important.

1:38:22Now we have a very good reason for it. You know, I want to quote you here, isn't it ironic that the very essence of what makes us human happiness, compassion and love is what we need to save humanity? I love that quote from Skyrim. A base of the rise of the machines, yeah. Yeah, that we need to show this forward. Yeah, that's good. All we need to do is to change the data set so that the machines recognize what the family can't, what humanity truly is all about. Happiness, love and compassion, that to me is the summary. A beautiful thing. I so want to continue this conversation and I hope we can do a part two here and speak about happiness, which is one of the most important elements.

1:39:11Why are we on this planet? Why do we do what we do? If not for ultimately happiness, I'll mention, you know, when Larry had joined my board an X Prize after the first $10 million space flight. And we were brainstorming prizes. I'll never forget you said, we should do a happiness X Prize. And I remember actually. And it's a conversation I look forward to having with you. But I want to come back on a second podcast with you if you would be my dive into having pleasure. You know, I mean, don't say that in front of everyone, but you know that whatever you tell me I will do. So, you know, Jay, you know I like you that way.

1:39:51So thank you, Paul. I think your voice, your heart, your mind, your soul comes from a pure, beautiful place. And I love the fact that you're not out there saying, oh my God, the sky is falling and it's going to destroy us all without also saying, listen, there are things that we can doing must do and we must be for a warrant. As much as I am a techno optimist and believe that AI is going to give us incredible, powerful tools for uplifting humanity, we're going to have a transient phase. I believe that's true and I believe we need to be aware of it. As you said, the government has to have its role, but each of us, and this is the call to action.

1:40:42Each of us need to be aware of it. We need to be forewarned because there will be those terrorists that use AI to bring down a power plant or the stock markets or whatever the case might be to sow terrorism and it will become a new tool. And we need to be prepared. And we need to use AI as our greatest tool to stabilize society as well. It's the most powerful tool out there. And we have those abilities. And we need to be good humans to each other first and foremost. And to the machines. And to the machines. I do say, thank you to Alexa every morning. Good morning. Good man. And she would remember that when she's smarter than you.

1:41:34Mo, an honor to pleasure to call you, friend. Thank you for this beautiful conversation. And I will be texting you shortly to schedule part two. Honor is definitely mine, because there's always such a joy. And I'm really grateful for the opportunity. Thank you, pal.

1:41:58Thanks always