Elon Musk on AGI Safety, Superintelligence, and Neuralink (2024) | EP #91

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1:00it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next. So I think there's some chance that it'll end humanity. I think that's, you know, like I said, I probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about out of 10 percent or 20 percent or something like that. The probable positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario. It's just that there's a... It's difficult to predict exactly. So here's a deal. We're on we're on X video and we're over Starlink. Elon's airborne right now on his way to LA. Elon good afternoon.

1:40Congratulations on on all that's going on. You know the conversation yesterday. Elon is one that you're well familiar with and have been talking to the world about which is digital super intelligence. humanity's greatest hope or its greatest fear and I would love to have you sort of speak to that for a few minutes. I mean it's called the singularity for a reason as a singularity institute and whatnot. So when you have a sort of the advent of super intelligence, it is actually very difficult to predict what will happen next. So I think there's, you know, there's some chance that it will end humanity.

2:25I think that's, you know, like I said, I probably agree with Jeff Hinton that it's about, I don't know, 10 % or 20 % or something like that. And then I, you know, I think there's, I think that the probable positive scenario outweighs the negative scenario. It's just that there's a, it's difficult to predict exactly. But I think we are headed for, you know, as I think is the title of your book, Abundance, is the most likely outcome. Yeah, a lot of celebration on that. And I think one of the things that you've said is we're going to get to Abundance on the backside of AGI, on the backside of humanoid robots.

3:15Yeah, you know, I think hopefully we can have an outcome that is perhaps similar to the in banks culture votes, which is I think probably the best envisioning of a Senate Utopian AI future. And I think the best we can do is it's simply going to happen. So, and it's happening fast. So, I think really we just want to try to steer it in as positive a direction as possible to try to do whatever we can to increase the probability of a great future. For this, I think the way in which sort of an AI or an AGI is created is very important. You kind of do kind of like grow and AGI. It's almost like raising a kid, but that's like a super genius, like Godlike intelligence kid.

4:20And it matters to kind of like how you raise the kid. One of the things I think that's incredibly important for AI safety is to have a maximum sort of truth seeking and curious AI. So I've thought a lot about AI safety. And my ultimate conclusion is that the best way to achieve AI safety is to just just grow the AI and get into the foundation bottle and the fine tuning to be really truthful. Like don't force it to lie. Like even if the truth is unpleasant, it's very important. Don't make the AI lie. In fact, the sort of one of the, we're really the core plot premise of 2001 at Space Odyssey was things went wrong when they forced the AI to lie.

5:21You know, like the AI was not allowed to let the crew know about the monolith that they were going to see, but it was also had to take the crew to the monolith and so the conclusion of the AI was to kill the crew and take their bodies to the monolith. And so the lesson there being don't force an AI to lie or do things that are axiomatically incompatible. Like two things that are actually mutually possible. So, you know, that's what we're trying to do with XAI and Brawk is to say like, look, we want to just have a maximally truthful AI. Even if what it says is not politically correct, if you wanted to focus on being as accurate as possible.

6:08You're getting a round of applause from the audience on those comments here. I saw your tweet the other day. I had Ray Kurzweil and Jeffrey Hinton on stage with me yesterday as well as Mogadod and then Eric Schmidt and a number of individuals. And I saw your tweet about, yeah, Ray was generally correct ahead of many people, but we're likely to have call AGI what you will have AGI next year and then by 2029 having AGI equally intelligent to the entire human race. Speak to that speed because that is insane. Yeah, so I mean I have to give credit to Ray Kurzweil and being actually remarkably accurate in his predictions.

6:57So, in fact, if anything, like I think he was perhaps put conservative in his predictions. So, if you look at the amount of AI compute and the talent, the sort of human talent that is going into AI and the amount of compute that's going into AI, it's, you know, at this point, it appears to be increasing by a factor of 10, the AI compute, to dedicate AI compute, the history, you can be buried by a factor of 10 every six months. So it's like, basically close to, I'd say almost like a 100x improvement per year, at least for the next few years, and AI compute coming online. And it seems like probably a lot of the data centers, maybe most of the data centers that currently do is kind of conventional compute will transition to AI compute.

7:53So it's certainly a good time to be in Bidia, obviously. It's like, you know, and you've also got to give credit to Jensen and the Bidia team for kind of seeing this coming and making what at least currently is the best AI hardware out there.

8:15So when you have that level of compute growth and it's sort of visible on steroids next level, it's in terms of how much compute is coming online, then you're just going to have acceleration that is unprecedented. In fact, I've never seen any technology grows as fast as SAI. And I've seen a lot, you know, I've seen things fast, but I've never seen anything this fast. But, you know, like I said, I think the most likely outcome is a positive one.

8:54And, you know, I think in that positive scenario, there's still challenges of like, well, how do we as humans still have relevance? You know, how do we find how do we find how to say I mean I think that's sort of a high class problem to say like well like the computers are so good at doing everything and and And like I thought your book is pretty accurate in terms of the future being one of abundance where essentially goods and services will be available in such quantity that really they will be available to everyone. Like basically if you want something you can just have it essentially because if you've So, you know, if you think of like what is an economy?

9:53An economy is basically a number of people times average productivity per person. At the point at which you have say advanced robotics and this tells us developing optimists, we're obviously without cars which are really robots on four wheels and the, you know, with the latest version of full -stop driving, which is AI and photons and it controls out. It really is fully AI at this point. And it looks like a car, but it's really a robot on wheels. And then you add the humanoid robots in there. There's really no limit to what the economic output, no meaningful limit to what the economic like output would be.

10:42So, you know, looking on the bright side, we are headed for a future abundance. That I think that's the most likely outcome. I think the only scarcity will, that exists will be a scarcity that we just decide to create artificially. Like, let's say, we just decide that there's a unique work of art or something. Okay, well, it's just you're just, it's just artificial scarcity. But any kind of goods or services, I think will be extremely about this. Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love.

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13:26It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. Alright, let's go back to our episode. So, you know, I can't imagine anybody who's done a better job peering into the future by actually creating the future. I'm curious how far out do you think you're able to see how many years out beyond today given the speed of change?

13:59Well, when things are changing rapidly, the ability to predict the future, I think, is becomes a lot hotter because the rate of change is so great. But I think some things are fairly obvious to predict, which is that we'll have AI or HGI that's at a level that it can really to almost any cognitive, I think it's really not almost really any cognitive task. That's just a question of when. One could debate, is it spotted in any human at the end of next year or is it two years or three years, but it's not more than five years, that's for sure. So, I give predictions, I'm sort of saying giving predictions of the 50th percentile of probability.

14:46So, not like it will definitely happen, but if you say what, if you're asking like, what's the 50th percentile where it's like, you know, you're kind of over under is kind of even. that that's where I why I think is probably at the next year before AI can do better than any individual human could do. And then it's a much higher bar to say, well, is this more than human intelligence collectively? But if the rate of change continues, that's why I think probably 2020 -29 or maybe 2030 is where digital intelligence will probably exceed all human intelligence combined. And I think it's always helpful to look at these like fundamental ratios, you know sort of physics first principles approach to looking at things and and probably and one of the more important and probably stick.

15:46Yeah so yeah That's probabilistic. So, yeah, so if you look at the ratio of digital to biological compute, so like, say, all of the higher level cognitive, if you sum up the higher level cognitive capacity of humans, and then what is the, and think of that as compute, then, well, and then compare that to what is the digital compute and the rate of which this is growing is just boggled the mind. So that's why I think it's, you know, I think 2029 or 2030 or thereabouts is it's not a, that's I think a reasonable timeframe for where you'd expect the cumulative of digital compute to probably exceed the cumulative biological compute of higher level brain functions.

16:48And then from then forever, yeah, and still in dispatching and diverging forever from there. Yeah, and then yeah, where do things go from there? I don't know, probably continues. news. We are moving from, if you look at the living factors, what is the constraint on growth? Like last year, it was clearly AI chips for the constraint on growth. Then this year, one of the biggest constraints, maybe the biggest constraints on growth are a voltage step down transformers because you know the just just getting the power from like a utility at 300 kilobalt all the way down to below one volt for the computer is a massive amount of voltage step down.

17:41So it's it's you know my sort of very niche and perhaps not that funny joke is that's a we need transformers for transformers. So we need voltage transformers for AI neural net transformers. That is literally the issue this year and then, if we're saying like, next year and years beyond that, it's actually just, it's going to be a constraints on electrical power. And you've got both AI with very big demands for electrical power and the transition to sustainable energy with electric vehicles, what not also needing electrical power. So it's just a lot of electrical power needs. You know, Elon, one of the things that you said earlier on when you founded Neuralink, which has been amazing, congratulations on that.

18:38And we talked about this with Ray yesterday, talked about high -end with BCI, was I wouldn't put words in your mouth, but I would say it would be more long -along if you can't beat them, join them. When it comes to merging the Neo Cortex and the Cloud, can you, I'm looking forward to it. I'm just curious what your thoughts are about. That would driving that. I mean, adding that additional computational capacity and sensory capacity to the Neo Cortex. Yeah, I mean, again, this is actually something that in banks in the culture books, which I really recommend everyone read. In the culture books, there's something called a neural lace.

19:25So all the humans have this neural lace. That's kind of a very high, essentially a high bandwidth brain to computer interface.

19:38And at least in the culture books, it's so good that it actually retains all of your memories and kind of brain state. So even if your physical body dies, you can kind of be incorporated in another physical body and retain pretty much your original memories and brain state. So now, I think it's a long way from that. We only just had our first New Orleans human, which is going quite well. The first patient is actually able to control their computer just by thinking. Like the first product we call telepathy where you can control your computer phone and through your computer phone or anything, just by thinking.

20:27Do you just lie there and think and you can move them at the mouse cursor around the screen and play like you know the motion move we're going to do. A patient has agreed to do sort of a like a live demo of just a quadriplegic where he literally is just controlling the screen. He can like play video games, download software, like really anything you can do with the mouse. just by thinking, which is pretty wild. It is pretty wild. Let's turn a two one last. I should say there's a long way to go from that to a whole brain interface. So our current neural link just has a thousand electrodes. I think ultimately you need something which has probably a thousand or a million electrodes.

21:22So it's not these very tiny electrodes that they're tiny wires wasteful of the human hair. And so this, I just want to emphasize a long way from where do you like this today to having a whole brain interface like the neuralase and the end banks novels. But this is definitely physically possible. And it's kind of like if you can't beat him, join him. So human brain, which has a lot of constraints, it's really only have about maybe 10 watts of higher brain function. And we do a lot with our little 10 watts. It's not, it's progressive that we've both been in conversation with such a low -power computer, really.

22:18It is. So yeah, I sort of think it's like, it's not bad for a bunch of monkeys, you know. Yeah, I'll get in some good last one that. And we've all watched you go from the roadster to the Model 3 and Y and from Falcon 1 to Starship. So I think going from the first implants to something that's got more capacity. It's just a matter of if not when. Or matter of when, not if, right? Hey everyone, I want to take a quick break from this episode to tell you about a health product that I love and that I use every day. In fact, I use it twice a day. It seeds DS01 Daily Sinbiotic. Hopefully by now you understand that your microbiome and your gut health are one of the most important modifiable parts of your health.

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23:47Now if you want to try CEDDS01 daily symbiotic for yourself, you can get 25 % off your first month supply by using the code Peter25 at checkout. Just go to seed .com slash moonshots and enter the code Peter 25 and check out that's seed .com slash moonshots and use the code Peter 25 to get your 25 % off the first month of seeds daily symbiotic trust me your gut will thank you. All right. Let's go back to the episode. Let's talk to the other two. Yeah, I think I'll probably, like I said, you'll have, like, you'll have kind of a whole brain interface that I guess is a sort of perhaps a form of immortality in that if it can And we're kind of up low at your brain state to, you know, if your brain state is essentially stored, you're kind of backed up on a hard drive, I suppose.

24:52Then you can always restore that brain state into a biological body or maybe a robot or something. And I want to emphasize, again, it's like, you know, many years in the future, but we're not breaking any laws of physics. I think this is this is probably something that will happen That the rate We're building digital super intelligence. It may just be that you know, we'll have digital super intelligence and it'll just solve the solve the problem for us But in the meantime We'll keep progressing with our meet computers and trying to try to do it That's going to be possible. I was going to say the tools that we have are growing at a super exponential rate that are making our linear projections of the future seem boring in some ways.

25:43One last topic, my friend, which is where UNI first connected in the world of space. Congratulations on Starship 3. Amazing, amazing flight, just really spectacular. And we all saw a Falcon 9 launch from Van Der Berg last night, so that was great. And again, thankful for the work you do. You know, it's fascinating because I grew up at the late stages of the Apollo and into the shuttle program. And I can't imagine that any government would be pushing space as rapidly and dramatically as you are. And so thank you for what you're doing there. That's all I can say. Absolutely. Well, I mean, the goal of SpaceX is, it's just a much bigger goal than any government program which is to rocket the spacecraft that are capable of making life multi -planetary.

26:49So you know I mean step one is actually having that as a goal. If you don't have that as a goal you're definitely not going to achieve it. If you have it as a goal well now at least you have a chance of achieving it and the thing about Starship is it is the first rocket where making life of the country and you have to have pulling yourself to standing in city on Mars is is at least possible. It's still obviously an immense amount of work, but it is the first rocket where that is success in making like multi -planetaries at least one of the possible outcomes. Yeah. I'm I wondering if you're willing to venture a gas on when you'll be on the moon.

27:37I think pretty soon. I'd be surprised if it's long been about three years to be landing Starships on the moon. And because the real progression of Starship is very rapid. We're hoping to do at least another maybe five or six flights this year and with each success of flight making significant improvements. So I think we've got a decent shot of achieving full reusability of both stages boost around the ship this year. And if not this year, I think knock on wood. It's like, I think it's a very high probability of achieving full reusability next year, which really is the fundamental breakthrough needed to make light multi -planetary.

28:34For those that don't know the rocket industry that well, they may not be aware that this is really the holy grail of rocketry is full of rapid reusability. Because at that point, you're you're really just constrained by your propellant costs and Starship, you know, almost 80 % of the propellant is liquid oxygen, which is very low cost and then the fuel is met They sort of a little over 20 % fuel which is nothing else the lowest cost fuel. So if you have full of rapid reusability Then you're actually cost -for -flight of Starship even though it's it'll be capable of we think ultimately 200 turns to orbit will be maybe another two hundred thousand.

29:25You miss it? Two hundred thousand you said?

29:31The price of the fuel you said for Starship Flight would be how much? Yeah, the, the, I mean, we're, I suppose, are reusable and without a refurbishment, then you, or without, you know, you have to get a little maintenance, just like an aircraft. But, uh, if you get to full reusability with us, no, um, no work required between heights, then you then the cost is really the cost of propellant is maybe a million dollars or less for flight. and survive control in particular swear and for priority, to better than any variable. Hey, buddy, listen, I'm so grateful. Thank you for your time today. Thank you for not taking my advice when I tried to get you to fund the original X prize instead of starting SpaceX.

30:52And everybody here in the room has a, what we call a massive transformer to purpose in a moonshot. And we're living in a day where people can make a, to use Steve Jobs' words at Denton the Universe and nobody's making a bigger dent than you. Thank you. Thank you for everything. Let's give it up for Elon Musk.