AI Safety Expert: No One Is Ready for What's Coming in 2 Years | Roman Yampolskiy

19:48They're all competing with each other. the only way to win is to reach super intelligence, right? Because there's no other way to win this game.

19:55Roman Yampolskiy:Well, you can make a lot of money curing real problems in the real world. You don't have to create super intelligence to get most of economic benefit. It feels like once you reach super intelligence, you're able to build businesses, you're able to cure cancer, and just solve every problem in the world. Except controlling it. Except controlling it. It seems like a big problem. No amount of money is a good investment if you're going to be dead. Have you ever, like, have you seen a leader of those companies or similar companies who are committed to doing what you're describing? So they all on record, even before they became CEOs of those companies, are saying AI safety is very important.

20:37Roman Yampolskiy:This is very dangerous and likely to kill us. more recently many of them have indicated that if others stop they would stop so i think ceo made a statement exactly that i think china versus us likewise china said we are interested in doing it right the communist party doesn't want to lose power so they would be open to slowing down if us did but nobody nobody's doing that they're just saying that we are still alive we should try we cannot give up it feels like we need to have a nuclear level accident for people to actually start paying attention we considered that unfortunately people don't learn from those we had nuclear war we had nuclear bombs dumped and we continued developing nuclear weapons and spreading them to new countries but at least we haven't used them sense and that so far at that scale so give it some time hopefully hopefully not sadly really sadly something like that would reduce our technological capabilities for a while so while we would suffer tremendously from a weapon of mutual assured destruction like nuclear weapon we would not deal with another mutually assured destruction coming from like a distraction intelligence.

21:55What is your personal view on the next five years? What do you think is going to happen?

21:59Roman Yampolskiy:More of what we see, automation of more and more capabilities, and very likely we'll fully cross the human intelligence barrier. We'll have systems smarter than smartest humans. How do you prepare for that? You always ask questions, assuming there is an answer. Some things are impossible to do. If you ask me how to build perpetual motion device, i would not say i need more funding or more time i would say it is impossible to do so if you ask me how do we control super intelligent machines i don't think we can if we build them there is nothing you can do if we made a smart decision against financial incentives not to build it to benefit from narrow tools then how do i learn more about those tools how do i deploy them those of great questions.

22:48Since you know, like you, you know, the worst case scenario, right? And you know, it's very, very possible. You're basically going podcasts and talking about this problem, right? To raise more awareness, but someone who doesn't have an ability to go and just talk about it, what can they do? Stop using those tools, stop buying stocks of those companies. Like, what is a practical thing?

23:10Roman Yampolskiy:So if you have a chance to vote for a politician who is on board with limits and we're starting to see those. It's so like I don't really see politicians talking about this. What I see is like don't regulate AI. Let's just let companies figure it out. So federal government is exactly like that. Right now they removed all previous regulations. They made it through executive order illegal for all 50 states to regulate AI. But we have certain senators, certain congresspeople now waking up to at least some of those problems. They may not fully comprehend long term game, but they are going, oh, deep fakes are bad.

23:43Roman Yampolskiy:or maybe the large data centers will use too much energy. It doesn't matter what they are concerned about. They're sort of directionally correct. So they are suggesting limits. They are suggesting some regulation. It's true for other countries. I testified to UK Parliament. I testified to Kentucky legislation. There are people who are willing to listen, but it needs to be a lot of support from people where politicians can sort of come out of the closet and say, I'm worried about superintelligence. I want to make sure we pass the right legislation. It's just, I feel like even on a personal level, it's so hard.

24:16I'm just imagining like, okay, you're going voting for this politician who's pausing whatever super intelligence, but then you have someone in your family who has cancer and you know that if this progresses, then your family member might survive for a couple of years. And as humans, we tend to prioritize short-term gains over long-term threats. How do you see this possible? Okay, so in the US, I feel like 70 % of people have negative attitude towards AI, according to Edelman Trust Barometer. But in countries like China, I feel like 80 % are pro-AI. How do you see this? Because it feels to me that people who are going to be voting for those politicians are still going to be a minority.

24:59Roman Yampolskiy:So you said long-term versus short-term. Short-term gains versus long-term. I understand. And historically, you would be right. It's 20 years away, 30 years away, and this is now. Cancer is measured by five-year survival rate. We are saying AGI is coming in two to five. So there is no time difference. Your cancer relative is going to be dealing with one of those outcomes no matter what. I feel like for people, it's so much easier to understand cancer because we already saw it. We haven't seen AGI yet and we don't understand it. And we still think, again, even with AI, like you've seen these graphs where only 1 % of people really use it to optimize things.

25:3899 % of people have no idea. Or like 90 % haven't used it. 10 % used it for search. It's just so hard to imagine that in two years or like five years, it's going to be a human threat. And do you think people who are building it won't be able to control it?

25:54Roman Yampolskiy:They have nothing. There is no patents, no papers, no algorithms which can possibly scale. They're literally telling us we'll figure it out and we get there. Okay. As a mom, off to. If you're saying that, okay, I'm talking about this, you know, I don't know any politicians who are talking about this. But anyways, when it comes to our day-to-day life, if we're all facing a future we can't really predict, what is the best thing to do now? Enjoy life? It's always a good advice. If I'm completely wrong, you're going to regret having an awesome time. Okay, that actually makes me feel better. What about using AI?

26:38Do you feel like by using AI, we're helping that progress?

26:41Roman Yampolskiy:We do, but unless all of us stop, it doesn't matter. You alone will not financially impact development. The investors, independent of what the membership fees are. I think OpenAI is making like, I don't know, 13 billion, but investments are in a trillion. So it's just not a significant source of... What should people be investing in? I've heard you say invest in Bitcoin because it has a finite supply. Would you say investing in stocks, gold? Invest in something AI cannot make more of. So if AI can just produce more of it, that's probably going to go down and down. Well, gold... Gold is a wonderful example, yeah.

27:20Roman Yampolskiy:There is limited supply of it, but it's not so limited that if a price goes up, we cannot produce more of it. Some of the gold is mineable, but it costs a lot more than current price per ounce. So let's say right now we're at, I don't know,$4 ,500 or whatever it is. If price of gold was a million, we can get a lot more gold at that price point. Whereas Bitcoin, it doesn't matter what the price is. It's exactly the same supply. What about real estate? It seems like we're not very good at making more waterfronts. Countries like United Arab Emirates with Dubai definitely tried. I think Qatar has some good examples of artificial islands, but it's very limited.

27:58Roman Yampolskiy:So I think long term, having a place to be and limited ability to produce more could be a good investment. It's just the way that I see it. So for me, when I'm hearing this, super intelligence still seems very far away. But what I actually can feel is automation of this white collar labor. And it looks like, I think, in five years, yes, we're going to have more automated jobs. But again, when I'm talking to people like Mustafa Suleiman, right, he says AI is going to produce more jobs than it takes away. I just talked to LinkedIn CEO and they saw 1.2 million new jobs because of AI, because you require a new skill set.

28:40Yes, some jobs are going away, but I don't know. I just can't believe a future where is that drastic.

28:47Roman Yampolskiy:Let's just go with definition. So then we say we'll create artificial general intelligence. What are we saying? We're saying we'll have a system capable of doing what a human can do. But we still haven't, like we have automated some tasks, but are we even able to create that? So it's a very different question. Are you arguing that it's impossible to ever get software to human level performance? It seems very unlikely. Some people have argued it, usually from some sort of religious perspective. We have an immortal soul, nothing material can automate that. but it seems in many domains we started with not knowing how to do it got to reasonable performance got to human level and now in most domains it's super intelligent so a human will never win a game of chess against a computer again same happens in artificial general intelligence means the system can do anything a human can do so if we live in a world where that is true let's say in two years, five years, whatever number makes you happy, what jobs will be there?

29:50Roman Yampolskiy:Jobs where I choose to hire a human. Yeah. But that's it. If I don't care who does it, then it gets automated. So basically the plan is then within the next few months, identify those jobs, right? And for me, it's definitely a nanny, right? I don't want a robot. Well, my husband's like, a robot is even more for size if it teaches your kids how to swim. So my husband's like, like closer to what you're thinking. Can you name, let's say five jobs that are still going to be relevant? Oldest profession. Must be the last one too. I don't know. I've heard a lot of people say how it's getting robotized.

30:34Roman Yampolskiy:It is. And there's going to be a huge market for it, just like we see with virtual stimuli. But I think humans will always have a certain weak spot for human females. Okay, I don't think my target audience really wants to switch to that job. Can you give me four more? Anything similar where a human is a sensei, a guide, a leader, someone who is personally a trainer for you becoming a human like that. So nannies? So again, your yoga teacher, your, I don't know, hiking guru, So whatever meditation expert, experts in what it's like to be human in certain domains where it's not so much about algorithmic following of steps, but an experience maybe.

31:21Do you think for people who are starting their personal brands now, there's still opportunity or that it's already done?

31:27Roman Yampolskiy:There is, but you have to do it pretty quickly. You have to become somewhat recognizable before AI is better than you and you are competing now as a nobody with something better. And that gives you how long? Again, as soon as we switch to human level or above. So I don't know how long it's going to take in practice. I've seen people say 2027, 2028, 2030. All of those numbers have been suggested by people who are not insane. So would you say if you have goals right now within your certain job that you think is going to be automated, you need to be running as fast as you can right now to reach those goals?

32:06Roman Yampolskiy:or just chill just because whatever it is in five years we're all gone ideally it's like what you did where you combine your hobby with something financially lucrative that's the best if you can get paid for doing what you like and it benefits society that's the concept behind ikigai Japanese concept you try to combine those we call it i-risks, ikigai risks where that meaning is taken from you by AI so you want to kind of grandfather yourself in as a famous podcaster. How do you think about your career as a researcher? Is it done or you still have a couple more years? So it seems right now the writing of code is pretty much automatable.

32:49Roman Yampolskiy:Still top humans in machine learning are designing new architectures, new systems. So a few more years than that. But I wouldn't recommend someone spend 10 years at the university to become a professor today. I don't think they have future. What about higher education in general? Should I be saving for my kids' college? It's always been a bad idea. Really? It's not worth it. So half the majors were dead-end majors. They never got jobs in the major they got. And the ones which were like for specific tasks, like programming and such, you could have gotten a certificate online in six months and get the job in Silicon Valley making more than your professor.

33:29But don't you think it teaches you how to think? So for me, like I started my university when I was 17. I had no idea who I wanted to. Actually, I wanted to become a translator. I love languages. I'm like, I want to be a translator. My parents were like, no, no, no, you're going to go study mathematics. I'm glad they told me that because I was able to both. And for me, those five years were about meeting my husband, starting a business because I saw an opportunity being among those students. And so I feel like when it comes to education, it's really not about learning the skill because yeah, I studied mathematics.

33:59did i use it in my business not really but it taught me how to think it taught me how to interact with professors which is certain skill that you need um it taught me how to learn and how to be among students do you feel this is going to lose value in 10 years or it's going to be different

34:17Roman Yampolskiy:form then i don't know how long you went to college but i'm sure you didn't pay 100 000 a year this is what they're charging now in some universities so historically it made sense You went to socialize, you went to kind of mature, grow up. Today, for$100 ,000, you have alternative ways of meeting your spouse, socializing, join a private club, join gym membership, go to a scientific conference, go to a TED talk. You'll accomplish all those things without spending five years and half a million dollars. When you say that, I feel like people, to do that, you need agency. You need to be able to tell yourself, this is my plan and stick to the plan.

34:58For a 17-year-old, it's so much easier to just be put into an institution for four years that tells you what to do. And sometimes it doesn't have to cost like 100 ,000. Like if you're doing PhD, it's sponsored for you, right?

35:11Roman Yampolskiy:You usually don't start with PhD. You still need to pay for four years. But then you can, I don't know, you can, I studied in Germany. I got the scholarship that paid for my studies, which was great. So I don't know. Like I've heard from you. I've heard from Mustafa Suleiman. Colleges don't make sense. I'm still, I started the 529 accounts for my daughters because I feel like, I don't know. It's just, yes, it's not a must, but it's such a great opportunity to go and start it for four years. So I meet a lot of students and here's what I hear a lot lately. I went to college for four years to learn this trade.

35:49Roman Yampolskiy:I paid a lot of money. I wasted four years of my life not doing fun things I wanted. I now graduate and there is no job waiting for me. My job has been automated. What should I do? And at this point, I want to tell them, go back in time for years and not get that degree. You wasted it. And ask today, again, let's set aside the existential problems. What will be the case in four years, five years, six years when you graduate in the market? Will this job exist? if you're not doing it for training, you're not doing it for a job, you want to become a Renaissance man, you just want liberal arts education, I think you can get it cheaper with less BS.

36:32Yeah, but this, I don't feel like a lot of people have agency. Like, I don't, I'm not sure about my daughters. If they, if I tell them like, hey, I give you this money that I saved for college and you go do whatever. I'm not sure a 17 year old will make a good decision. Like I wanted to be a translator again, like going back to me being 17. I want to be a singer, a translator. Like I'm so glad my parents told me you're going to study mathematics.

36:55Roman Yampolskiy:What are you telling your kids? I don't know. So the examples you give, you're saying this 17 year old, you cannot trust him to make a good decision. Yeah. We're telling them go take a loan, borrow half a million dollars and see if you can graduate with this, that degree. Let's talk about where it's cheaper. If they wanted to start a company, we wouldn't give them a loan. So are your kids going to college or not? My oldest is 17, so he's going to decide next year. What are you telling him? He is lucky in that his both parents are professors, so he'll get it for free. And free makes it a much sweeter deal.

37:30So free education is fine. So if somebody gets a scholarship to do their bachelor's, you'll tell them go in.

37:35Roman Yampolskiy:It's a much easier investment, right? Well, it's your time still. Four years. You could have been doing something else. Right. And that's the question. What is the alternative? If you want to start a company, if you want to do something else, I'll support you more in that direction. But if you just want to be a doctor, go ahead. Fine. So when it comes to education, I feel like we touched upon this topic. Agency is so important and knowing what you will be doing and how you'll be doing. How does one work on agency? How do you prevent AI from making decisions for you? So it's interesting that you realize this important distinction, tools versus agents.

38:13Roman Yampolskiy:That's the game changer. And we are about to create AI agents, which will be doing it for us. But then we ask, well, how do we make humans who are independent agents? It helps to have good examples. So your daughters may look at you and see your mom is doing all that cool stuff. Maybe they learn by example, but it's not guaranteed. Some of it may be biological. You're just not predisposed to this type of activities. Are you teaching your kids that? I always taught them to be very independent and make their own decisions. My job was to make sure they're safe, safety and security. But anything else, they make their own money, they decide how to spend it, how to invest it, everything.

38:57How early did you start with that, like make money, spend it? Three years old, two years old. I don't know. Do you want money? So basically go and ask your kids to start a business, right?

39:06Roman Yampolskiy:Absolutely. Make them sell popcorn, lemonade, whatever. Whatever they can figure out, yeah. Yeah, I feel like that's one of the qualities when all the jobs are taken away, right? This is something that will help us survive and find the ikigai. I think so. But again, I think ikigai meaning economic problems are all kind of second level in comparison to existential risks. if we're not surviving, it doesn't matter. We need to figure out how to make sure humans are primary, we are not replaced, we are not automated away, and we control our destiny. Can you give me probabilities? Like in five years, one scenario, super intelligence, uncontrollable, the world is ending or whatever.

39:53In five years, second scenario, we unionized, We protected a lot of jobs like teachers, doctors, because we still feel they are needed as humans, not as robots. And countries still can't agree how we're going to regulate this. And we're still like in a pretty normal world. Give me probabilities.

40:14Roman Yampolskiy:So I think we'll gradually go towards that human level super intelligent point. And as we walk towards it, more and more jobs will be automated. And maybe we'll have protections for certain human jobs. I think New York State was about to suggest legislation to make it illegal for LLMs to talk about any licensed professions. So no psychiatry, no law, no CPAs, nothing like that. I don't know if it's going to pass. It's New York State. It's going to pass. And then you just use a Chinese LLM. Like, I don't see this. Exactly. But here's the problem. Even if we agree not to build it right now, right now we can regulate it because it's very expensive.

40:53Roman Yampolskiy:Those projects are like Manhattan Project. They are noticeable. You see the electricity use, you see compute use. Problem is every year it gets cheaper and cheaper to train very powerful models. So if today you need a trillion dollars, next year it's a billion, at some point you can do it on a laptop. And at that point you can't stop all the psychopaths in the world who will try to do it. So eventually we're going to have this technology developed. So eventually scenario number one, but in five years, what's the probability of scenario number one? So I think in five years we'll definitely get to human level intelligence, but whatever the system decides to strike against us immediately or not is not obvious.

41:36Roman Yampolskiy:Game theoretically, it has no pressure to strike right away. It can accumulate more resources, make more backups, allow us to surrender more control because we trust it. It's immortal. It can wait 10 years, 50 years, thousand years and just take over by being friendly. Yeah. So that's an option. Interesting. If it's immortal and it has all the time in the world, do you feel like efforts like talking to local politicians are even going to help? We need more time no matter what. It's a good thing to have more time for this problem. Maybe we'll find some different architectures. Maybe we'll just get to enjoy more time.

42:16For everyone who's building right now, do you think software is dead? For example, if I'm building an app and if I can just Vibe code the same app, wouldn't everyone be just talking to their LLM, whatever they prefer to just build them an app or help them solve the problems?

42:30Roman Yampolskiy:If you're already big and famous, you're kind of locked in. We saw it with social media. I mean, to write code to do something like what Twitter does is trivial, but people end up buying it for 40 billion instead of just coding it up. Because what you have is the network, you have people, all the relationship that you cannot automate. So if I'm first mover in that space and I have an app which does something no one has done before, it doesn't matter how many clones I'm going to get in the same market, they're not going to take over. Advice for everyone who's worried about their future. You're not worried enough.

43:01Roman Yampolskiy:If you were worried enough and fully understand the problem, we would have people in the streets protesting and more than 100 people we had last week in San Francisco. You're like my husband. We just were in New York and we were talking to the founder of Duolingo. And he's like, no, no, no. People are still going to. And a lot of people in New York are like, no, no, it's fine. It's like, they just don't understand. And they're like, oh, you live in a bubble. It's like, no, we're not. And the last one, are we in a simulation? And if yes, who's behind it? We're in a simulation simulators. Who are they?

43:34Roman Yampolskiy:We don't know from inside. You have to escape from the simulation to find out. That's the ultimate scientific question. What is outside the simulation? Wow, I feel like that's a topic for another podcast. Thank you so much, Roman. If you enjoyed this episode, there's actually another person I really want you to listen to. I did an episode with Mustafa Suleiman, who is also a philosopher. So he's kind of similar to Roman. We talked a lot about the future. He's much more positive, but he has the same take on education. Don't save for a kid's college. So thank you so much for tuning into this episode.

44:05And now tune in and listen to Mustafa. Thank you.