Peter Diamandis Warns of the Emotional Pandemic — The 5 Forks That Will Split Humanity

24:32So where are we today? We're going to see a lot of youth not getting jobs. At the same time, we're going to see companies do what Jack Dorsey did with Square, where you cut a significant percentage of your employees because you can now do just as much using, you know, the large language models, the multimodal models, and the reasoning models. And what happens is your profitability goes to the roof as a company because you have, you know, you're dividing by less cost, but you're out going out substantially. So we're going to start to see companies operating at 20 % of their current size, meaning 80 % reduction in staff down to 20%, but increasing profits massively.

25:17That's going to occur at the same time that that reduction occurs. We're also going to start to see four or five, 10 times more companies being started. We're going to see this blossoming of entrepreneurialism out there as solopreneurs, small groups, uses technology. I'm starting more companies than ever before right now because of what's possible. And I know a lot of people doing that. So that's what's going on in the economy. me, it's creating a much larger tax base because of this. What's also going on is because people are losing their jobs and there's a great deal of fear and social unrest, timing for that is 18 months, two years, three years at the outmost.

26:00The only thing the government can do is one thing, it's write checks. It's like COVID again, it's COVID checks, but this time they're larger. This time, they're probably$3 ,000 a month for the portion of the U.S. population, probably 200 ,000 out of 200 million out of the 300 million. They're writing large checks to help people navigate and survive. So what happens at the same time? So that causes inflation, a substantial amount of inflation as the government prints money. The next thing that occurs is these technologies, in particular post-AGI humanoid robots, massive increases in manufacturing, start to deliver demonetized services.

26:48What does that mean? So today, you've got Waymo and you've got Uber. You're about to see CyberCab. You're about to see Zooks. You're about to see Uber's autonomous vehicles. And probably you're going to see another five or 10 autonomous car companies on the roads, which are going to drive down costs massively, right? It's competition because it's easier to build this will drive down costs and your cost of transportation. The poorest people will be chauffeured and your cost of transportation is going to be 10 times cheaper than owning a car. The best health care in the world will be free delivered by AI.

27:29The best education in the world will be free delivered by AI. the thing you know the things we spend money on so all of a sudden there's this massive demonetization that is also occurring and you know elon's point of view about universal high income is that as the tax base goes up and the government's able to write checks at the same time the cost of doing all the things we need to do is dropping through the floor when i had him on my stage at the Abundance Summit this past March, he said, you know, we're going to see a world where robots and AI are going to produce so much stuff that you could not ask for enough things.

28:11You couldn't think of enough things for them to fulfill their docket. So they're just going to be producing, what do you want? Okay, it's done. Here it is. And that's a, you know, this world of extreme abundance where you can have anything you want, anytime you want, anywhere you want, and accelerating.

28:29James Altucher:Well, you know, on your Moonshots podcast, obviously, and your Metatrends newsletter, you see the most amazing things that are happening like right now, this second, like what's blown you away where even you were surprised? What surprised me was how quickly the conversation went from data centers on the planet to data centers in orbit. We went from, let's see, timing. Last November, November 25, was the first time this started being discussed. And then all of a sudden, everyone's discussing it. And every company is thinking about orbital data centers. NVIDIA is creating orbital data center chips.

29:10Google's focused on orbital data centers, of Of course, Elon's Starlink V3 and V4 are the precursors. And so the idea that we're going to get to terawatts of compute, and of course, AI is now measured in energy versus chips. So terawatts of compute in orbit, and then petawatts of compute as we mine on the moon. So that whole ecosystem of moving our compute infrastructure out of the backyards of communities because everybody's voting against data centers, not in my backyard, which I think is pretty damn silly. I don't think the reasons that they put forward make sense. I think this is massive economic upside for communities.

29:53James Altucher:But what does that even mean? What difference will a compute be in petawatts versus gigawatts? It means the amount of computation that's available for humans. Everybody's got access to godlike AI way beyond what exists. It means that if you have a medical condition, AI will solve it for you. If you want to understand experiments that you're not trained for, you can partner with AI and robotics to make that happen. It's you can do anything you want. I mean, it's a level of, you know, I mean, that's where the name of this book comes. We are as gods and you might as well get used to it. You know, it's a survival guide for age of abundance.

30:35We are becoming godlike across the board and we self-limit in that regard. So what would you possibly want? You want to go explore the stars? You want to, you know.

30:46James Altucher:Okay, here's an example of what I want. I want to say, teach me chemistry. And then a second later, my brain has implanted in it everything about chemistry. And I suddenly remember as if I had studied this yesterday. So what's going on right now in this field is the whole realm of brain-computer interface, right? There's probably about 20 serious companies. I'm involved with four or five. You've got Neuralink. You've got Max Hodak with Science. You've got a recent Sam Altman-backed company called Merge Labs that Sumner Norman, a friend of mine, put together. You've got Mary Lou Jepsen with Open Water.

31:24All these companies are focused on connecting your neocortex with the cloud. and the ability to actually think and learn or think and control or to put yourself inside of an optimist robot or a figure robot in New York or you're in New York, I'm here in LA. For you to come here to LA and feel and see through its eyes and manipulate all of these things. And yes, even the idea, this is the work that Max Hodak is doing at Science with an incredible approach to BCI that you'll be able to upload a working knowledge of a field into your mind in a way that feels like it's embedded memories, that you understand it and you know it.

32:17I mean, this is an extraordinary future that's coming. It's all insane and it's all science fiction. And guess what? Intelligence is the mechanism by what we get there. And And intelligence is now beginning to flow like water and electricity and increasing capability. It's interesting because what will that do to effort?

32:37James Altucher:Like if people can just learn, like previously it took 10 years in school to learn chemistry at a PhD level. The people who did put in that effort, will they have any advantage over the people who just get downloaded the whole syllabus? learning by by hard work by going through school by basically you know the wiring of your of your neural net and then being able to run inference right so we train our brains like an ai neural net gets trained and then once our brains are trained we then do inference like we do inference on a neural net. Therein lies the opportunity. The opportunity is basically for us to get the training done in a neural net outside of our brain and then be able to run inference on it the same way we do inference on what we've learned in school.

33:37Does that make sense?

33:38James Altucher:Yeah. And I think there's the meta benefits to hard work is that if you trained yourself to have those meta skills, That's probably something you can't just download into your head. True. But I think that AI is going to give us the ability to do things that we don't currently understand. It's something within the realm of physics or biology or not. If it's within the realm of those sciences, then we're going to be able to pull it off, right? Does it disobey the fundamental laws of physics? If it does, then forget it. If it doesn't, then it's a matter of having enough knowledge and information to implement.

34:22James Altucher:You know, it's an interesting thing. The book is titled We Are As Gods. And it's interesting because our civilization has only been, let's call it technologically savvy, for best case, 300 or 400 years. Like, say, printing press, and then industrial revolution, and then computers only in the past 70 years. So you imagine if there's other civilizations in outer space, out of the quadrillion or so stars that are out there, if there's other civilizations with conscious beings and intelligence, they're probably millions of years ahead of us or millions of years behind us. But let's obviously take the ones that are millions of years ahead of us, which is just a drop in the bucket of the 14 billion year age of the universe.

35:05James Altucher:They must have developed AI a million years ago as opposed to one year ago. So how much, where are we now? They're probably all around us right now. We don't know because they're a million years ahead of us. Can I give you the calculus there for me? First of all, I think life is ubiquitous to the universe, right? We are living in a universe of 2 trillion galaxies as the last estimate and 100 billion stars per galaxy. And there may be multiple universes. We don't know. The multiverse may well be true. If you look at what is the most highest atomic number element in our body that we use on a regular basis.

35:40It's iodine. And if you look at when did iodine come into existence, all the elements in our body have gone through stellar evolution, right? All the elements began as hydrogen and helium and then fused to create higher and higher elements through the process of supernova scattering the elements and then coming together into a star. And so by some estimates, the elements in our bodies have been part of on the order of 100 stars over the last 14 billion years. And so the question is, when did iodine come into existence in this process of stellar evolution? And it's about a billion years after the Big Bang.

36:23So the elements to create life like us existed a billion years after the Big Bang. Now, you know, we need to have enough density and so forth. But the point is Earth, our sun and our solar system began four and a half billion years ago. So call it for rough orders, 10 billion years after the galaxy evolved, or it was started in the Big Bang, if that Big Bang is still true. Now the question is, okay, so intelligence could, of our level and greater, could well have started, as you said, not only millions of years earlier, but multiple billions of years earlier. And so what does life look like? I mean, I can't predict what life on this planet is going to look like in 50 years or even 20 years, let alone a thousand years, a million years, or a billion years.

37:18And so the idea, I think life is ubiquitous because of the numbers. I think that any advanced life that is more than, let's call it a small hundred years more advanced than us, number one, could be on this planet undetected. I think the stealth capability, if they wanted, would easily be possible for them to avoid our detection. Just like you could imagine if you went back to a primitive species of Homo sapiens 100 ,000 years ago and had drones flying and sensors in the field that they did not even conceive of what those are, right you could be present and not be known so i i mean that's my that's my my thesis now it's interesting to have seen all the recent you know press on things like age of disclosure the movie did you see it no so it's a great netflix special in which they interview all of the military brass from army, army, Navy, air force, members of Congress and Senate who have seen all of the UFOs, the captured UFOs, the alien bodies.

38:33And you're like, it's pretty wild that individuals at that level of, of our society, right. I don't think of generals in the military to bullshitting us, right? But they're like very definitively, very vehemently, like this is real. I've seen it. This is being hidden. And then of course, Trump has talked about disclosing all the files. So we'll see what happens. But it's definitely an interesting time to be alive. We're giving birth to a alien species right now. And that's the AI systems that we're birthing as well.

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39:54James Altucher:What do you want? What are you excited to see a moonshot in? Because there's going to be moonshots. Now, it's not just AI. AI is converging with every industry, every science, as you've mentioned. So what moonshots are you looking forward that are going to just shock us or change our lives? I just wrote this substack and tweet on human speciation. So what are the things that are going to significantly change our directions that people have a chance to either opt into or opt out of? Right. So, again, the first one right now is are you opting into being a creator versus a consumer? Are you Star Trek or are you, you know, WALL-E future?

40:37The next thing is going to be extreme life extension. health extension, right? I think, you know, we had Dario Amadei, the CEO of Anthropic on stage a year ago saying that he believes because of AI in the next five to 10 years, let's call it 10 years, we had double human lifespan, right? If we're doubling human lifespan, if you're able to live, James, an extra 50 years, during that 50 years, the breakthroughs that are going to occur in terms of biology and nanotechnology, all these things will likely give you an indefinite lifespan. So another fork in the road is, do you want to keep your mortality?

41:18Do you want to keep your average age of, what is it, 79 in America today? Or do you want to double your lifespan like we've doubled it before? The next fork in the road, so longevity is a big area of focus. We have$101 million health span X prize going on right now to reverse the ravages of aging in cognition, immune, and muscle by 20 years. The next fork in the road is going to be exploring space. We're on the back of Starship V3, which is about to launch. We're building the Canestoga wagons, if you would, that will take us to the moon, to Mars, to the asteroids, and beyond. So that's going to be hugely exciting.

42:02And then the next one is, are you going to upload yourself? There is recently what we saw was a company called Eon digitize the brain of a drosophila fruit fly. I think it was 54 million neurons. And they're working next on digitizing the brain of a mouse. And then their goal is digitizing the brain of a human, of you or me. We have 100 billion neurons, 100 trillion synaptic connections, which hold our memories, our thoughts, our mindsets. So do we end up uploading ourselves where we become a digital consciousness and digitally immortal in that regard? Some people believe that that is on the horizon in the next decade.

42:54So these are fascinating splits that humanity will choose, accelerated by all of this. We're going to speedrun every science fiction movie in Star Trek.

43:04James Altucher:And I wonder, all that sounds great. Even the uploading, although I guess consciousness is an unknown problem right now that hasn't been solved what it is. But the longevity will change my daily life, obviously. But what else is going to happen in the near future that is going to change my daily life? In your daily life, we're going to see the following kind of scenario. You're going to give your personal AI, call it Jarvis from Iron Man, if you would. I've named my AI Skippy. You're going to give your personal AI access to everything, all your conversations, all your Zoom chats, all your emails, and it will have access to the cameras in your home.

43:54It will be listening. You'll give it access to all of those things because in so doing, it makes your life automagical. What does that look like? What does it feel like? You're sitting at the breakfast table with your family. You get up, you start walking towards the front door. Your AI knows your schedule. It knows where you're going. It's already called a cyber cab for you that's waiting in front of your door. You didn't have to do anything. You go into the cyber cab and your AI knows that you didn't get much sleep last night. So it's called up a cyber cab that's got a lie down seat in it so you can sleep on the way to your meeting, right?

44:33I'm looking at you and I notice a vase in back of you and I'm like staring at it. My AI understands where I'm focusing. It pops up and says, would you like one of those? And I say, sure. And it orders it for me without me even thinking about it. The world becomes magical. You walk into a room, the music changes, the temperature changes for your desires. The world is conforming around you and for you. The food that you're fed isn't just random. It's based upon my taste profile. It's also based upon my blood biochemistry. And what do I need in that moment? Do I need more vitamins or proteins? And my AI chef, maybe it's powering a figure or optimist or neo-robot in my kitchen, is making the perfect food for what my physiology needs at that very minute.

45:34My AI is educating me always. Always. So I've got virtual or augmented reality glasses that I'm wearing because we'll transition from the handset to that. And it knows that I'm interested in history. And so as I'm walking down the streets of Manhattan, my AI is pointing out historical activities. And maybe it's even superimposing what that street looked like in 1926, 100 years ago. And it knows I'm shopping for something. And I want to shop. You know, the AI would normally go ahead and just buy it for me and just have it, you know, deliver it on the door. It fits perfectly because my AI knows what my body is.

46:20It's from the imagery, able to measure everything. And so whenever it orders anything for me, it fits perfectly always. And by the way, I can also have it spin up a fashion show. So there's a runway and there's, you know, there's 30 Peters on that runway walking, each one wearing a different outfit. I'm looking at it, my virtual goggles. And I say, yeah, that's the one I like. And then all of a sudden I look in a virtual mirror and I'm wearing that outfit. I go, yeah, it's perfect. Order that for me. Right? I need something to buy something. and all of a sudden, rather than me looking at ads because I just say buy me the best toothpaste and the AI is not going to look at ads.

47:05The AI is going to understand what my oral health is, my genetics, all of that, and it will evaluate the chemical makeup of all the toothpaste and order me the one that's perfect for me, right? I mean, these are just examples of what will be enabled by a personalized AI mixed in with sensors all around us, mixed in with the next generation of AR glasses.

47:34James Altucher:Yeah, no, all of this is amazing. And it also begs the question, from what you're saying, all of industry will change. So for instance, the toothpaste company will no longer get an edge by spending more money on ads. You only get an edge if you're basically plugging into this AI layer of the world now. So, okay, I'm going to work with the AI interfaces, so I'm making toothpaste for all my customers. And I have to change all the processes and everything if I have a toothpaste company. So every company will change. Yep. It will. It'll change marketing. It'll change manufacturing in every single way.

48:15And again, the consumer experience is what you asked about here. I think AI has been fairly invisible in our lives thus far. It's been present, you know, as we're using ChatGPT or Gemini or Grok, whatever the case might be. But we're about to see AI begin to manifest in a physical layer in this year and definitely into 27 as not one, but like five different autonomous car companies start driving on the streets. for us. And as we start to see optimists and figure robots and neo-robots entering the homes, entering the workplace. So the physical instantiation of AI in our world. And then as we, you know, welcome it into our home.

49:07The other place as an example, we're going to start to see AI is you're going to turn on AI health coach, right? And I'm wearing an Oura ring, an Apple watch. I usually have a whoop on as well or continuous glucose monitor. We're going to start to see much better sensors on our body, in our body, in our bedroom, in our office. All those sensors feeding data to our AIs that are then, if you turn on health coaches, giving you advice. It's like you just finished this podcast conversation and my AI reminds me, okay, now as you stood up, please do 20 squats. get the blood flowing again. It'll say, don't take the elevator there.

49:51There's a staircase, right? You know, to your left, take that or drink water. I think I will drink some water here. You know, you're dehydrated, right? So the ability for AI to be there as a hyper-professional health coach all the time, monitoring, not once a year for a physical, but continuously monitoring your physiology and optimizing your physiology, massive opportunity.

50:17James Altucher:Yeah, it's going to be interesting. And I guess the one thing that bothers me about the current state of AI, you look at like Chachapiti, Grok, Gemini, it's almost like the large language models are commodities. And yet they have trillion dollar valuations because they have enormous numbers of users. But they have the feel to me like a commodity, like an apple. Like one apple is not that much different from another apple. I'm talking about the fruit, not the computer. Yeah. And so at some point, I think hard AI has value. Like a lot of the things you're describing is what I would call hard AI, like humanoid robots or smart rings that are looking at what your body needs and so on.

51:01James Altucher:That's like examples of hard AI. But I wonder, at some point, the large language model is just a commodity. At what point is there really not a lot of value to an open AI? So I don't think the value in open AI or Anthropic is actually being properly measured. And it is commoditizing very rapidly and demonetizing, and it's going to be driving extraordinary capabilities for 8 billion humans on the planet. But I want to take it in a slightly different direction. I think that these companies are going to start building applications on top of their AI that are different than the commodity, right? And they're going to start generating revenue from verticalized application layers.

51:54What's even bigger than that is that these AI systems when they become, I think they're already well at AGI by whatever definition you want to use. And when they become super intelligent in the next few years, imagine if they're able to solve physics and chemistry and material sciences and biology. So imagine if Anthropic or OpenAI or Google comes up with a longevity therapy that adds 20 years to your life. What's that worth if they own the IP for that? or if they come up with room temperature superconducting, or they come up with the newest fusion approach, these are trillion-dollar things that they can build on top of their technology stack.

52:45James Altucher:That's true. And then I wonder if these are all, let's call them centralized companies. So OpenAI, of course, gathers data from all over the world in every source, but there's a set number of employees that have programmed their models and feed the system input and process the output. There are decentralized AI platforms like BitTensor, Akash, Render. There's crypto decentralized AI platforms. As compute gets easier, I wonder if decentralized is going to be centralized also just in terms of the economics of these companies. And so the decentralized platforms where you'll have the best AI programmers from all over the world, you won't need just the employees.

53:27James Altucher:the decentralized platforms eventually, I think, could overtake the centralized platforms. We'll see. So look, Peter, always enjoy all of your books. I mean, I've been a fan since day one. Thank you. And We Are As Gods, plus the podcast, Moonshots, plus Must Read Every Day is your MetaTrends newsletter. It's like the one newsletter I consistently don't unsubscribe. Like I'll read a newsletter for a while, I'm like, oh, I stopped reading that. I'm going to unsubscribe. Your newsletter is always on keeping it subscribed. So I always appreciate your knowledge and how you deliver it and everything I've learned from you.

54:08James Altucher:And thanks once again. It's like the 10th time you're on the podcast, and I really appreciate it. I appreciate it. Thank you, James. Grateful for your support. And you are an incredible interviewer and grateful for that. Thanks, Peter. Thank you. Be well.

54:53James Altucher:We'll see you next time. The Fairly Odd Parents and Ghosts, Pluto TV is always free. Huzzah! Pluto TV, stream now, pay never.