#2044 - Sam Altman

39:59And if you've got one idea, you get to do this, and if I've got one idea, I get to do that. And I have, like, rights to basically do whatever I want with my part of it. And if I come up with better ideas, then you, I get rewarded for that by whatever the society is or vice versa. Yeah. You know, the hardliners, the people that are against, like, welfare and against any sort of UG, universal basic income, UBI, what they're really concerned with is human nature. Right? They believe that if you remove incentives, if you just give people free money, they become addicted to it, they become lazy. But isn't that a human biological and psychological bottleneck?

40:41And perhaps, with the implementation, of artificial intelligence combined with some sort of neural interface, whether it's external or internal, it seems like that's a problem that can be solved, that you can essentially, and this is where it gets really spooky, you can re -engineer the human biological system, and you can remove all of these problems that people have that are essentially problems that date back to human reward systems when we were tribal people, hunter -gatherer people, whether it's jealousy, lust, envy, all these variables that come into play when you're dealing with money and status and social status, if those are eliminated with technology, and essentially we become a next version of what the human species is possible.

41:42We're very, very far removed from tribal, brutal societies of cave people. We all agree that this is a way better way to live. It's way safer. I was talking about this in my comedy club last night, because my wife was talking about DNA, and my wife was saying that, look, everybody came from cave people, which is kind of a fucked up thought, that everyone here is here because of cave people. Well, all that's still in our DNA, and these reward systems can be hijacked, and they can be hijacked by just giving people money, and like, you don't have to work, you don't have to do anything, you don't have to have ambition, you'll just have money, and just lay around and do drugs.

42:30That's the fear that people have of giving people free money. But if we can figure out how to literally engineer the human biological vehicle, and remove all those pitfalls, if we can enlighten people technologically, maybe enlighten as the wrong word, but advance the human species to the point where those are no longer dilemmas, because those are easily solvable through coding. They're easily solvable through enhancing the human biological system, perhaps raising dopamine levels to the point where anger, and fear, and hate are impossible. They don't exist. I mean, if you just had everyone on Molly, how many wars would there be?

43:23There would be zero wars. I mean, I think if you could get everyone on Earth to all do Molly once on the same day, that'd be a tremendous thing. It would be. If you got everybody on Earth to do Molly every day, that'd be a real loss. But what if they did a low dose of Molly where you just get to where everybody greets people, with love and affection, and there's no long and concern about competition. Instead, the concern is about the fascination of innovation and creation and creativity. Man, we could talk the rest of the time about this one topic. It's so interesting. I think if I could push a button to remove all human striving and conflict, I wouldn't do it, first of all.

44:13I think that's a very important part of our story and experience. Also, I think we can see both from our own biological history and also from what we know about AI that very simple goal systems, fitness functions, reward models, whatever you want to call it, lead to incredibly impressive results. If the biological imperative is surviving, reproduce. Look how far that has somehow gotten us as a society. All of this, all this stuff. We have all this technology, this building, whatever else.

44:55That got here through an extremely simple goal in a very complex environment, leading to all of the richness and complexity of people fulfilling this biological imperative to some degree and wanting to impress each other. I think evolutionary fitness is a simple and unbelievably powerful idea. Now, could you carefully edit out every individual manifestation of that? Maybe, but I don't want to live in a society of drones where everybody is just sort of on Molly all the time either. That doesn't seem the right answer. I want us to strive, I want us to continue to push back the frontier and go out and explore.

45:48I actually think something's already gotten a little off track in society about all of that and were, I don't know, I think I'm, I don't, I thought I'd be older by the time I felt like the old guy complaining about the youth. But I think we've lost something and I think that we need more striving, maybe more risk taking, more like explorers spirit. What do you mean by you think we've lost something?

46:30I mean, here's like a version of it very much from my own lens. I was a startup investor for a long time and it often was the case that the very best startup founders were in their early or mid 20s, late 20s maybe even. And now they skew much older. And what I want to know is in the world today where the super great 25 year old founders. And there are a few, it's not fair to say there are none, but there are less than there were before.

47:06And I think that's bad for society at all levels. I mean, like tech company founders is one example but like people who go off and create something new who push on a disagreeable or controversial idea, we need that to drive forward. We need that sort of spirit. We need people to be able to put out ideas and be wrong and not be ostracized from society for it or not have it be something that they get canceled for or whatever. We need people to be able to take a risk in their career because they believe in some important scientific quest that may not work out or may sound like really controversial or bad or whatever.

47:47Certainly when we started opening eye and we were saying we think this AGI thing is real and could be done unlikely but so important if it happens and all of the older scientists in our field were saying those people are irresponsible. You shouldn't talk about AGI, that's like they're like selling a scam or they're like, you know, they're kind of being reckless and it's going to lead to an AGI winter. Like we said we believed, we said at the time we knew it was unlikely but it was an important quest and we were going to go after it and kind of like fuck the haters. That's important to a society.

48:25What do you think is the origin? Like why do you think there are less young people that are doing those kind of things now as opposed to a decade or two ago? I am so interested in that topic. I'm tempted to blame the education system but I sure that I think that like interacts with society in all of these strange ways. It's funny there was this like thing all over my Twitter feed recently trying to talk about like what caused the drop in testosterone in American men over the last few decades. And no one was like, this is a symptom not a cause. And everyone was like, oh it's the microplastics, it's the birth control pills, it's the whatever, it's the whatever, it's the whatever.

49:14And I think this is like not at all the most important piece of this topic but it was just interesting to me sociologically that there was only talk about it being about what caused it, not about it being an effective some sort of change in society. But isn't what caused it, well there's biological reasons why. Like when we talk about the thalates and microplastic pesticides, environmental factors, those are real. Totally. And I don't like again, I'm so far out of my depth and expertise here. This was just interesting to me that the only talk was about like biological factors and now that somehow society can have some sort of effect.

50:03Well, society most certainly has an effect. Do you know what the answer to this is? I don't. I mean I've had a podcast with Dr. Shanna Swan who wrote the book Countdown and that is all about the introduction of petrochemical products and the correlating drop in testosterone, rise in miscarriages. The fact that these are ubiquitous endocrine disruptors that when they do blood tests on people they find some insane number. It's like 90 plus percent of people have thalates in their system. I appreciate the middle cups. Yeah, we try to mitigate it as much as possible but I mean you're getting it. If you're microwaving food, you're fucking getting it.

50:46You're just getting it. If you eat processed food, you're getting it. You're getting a certain amount of microplastics in your diet and estimates have been that it's as high as a credit card of microplastics in your body. You consume a credit card of that a week. Well, the real concern is with mammals because the introductions when they've done studies with mammals when they've introduced thalates into their body. There's a correlating, one thing that happens is that these animals, their taints shrink. Like the taint of them at this time. Yeah, the mammal, when you look at males, it's 50 percent to 100 percent larger than the females.

51:26With the introduction of thalates on the males, the taints start shrinking. The penises shrink, the testicles shrink, sperm count shrinks. So we know there's a direct biological connection between these chemicals. And how they interact with bodies. So that's a real one. And it's also the amount of petrochemical products that we have, the amount of plastics that we use. It is such an integral part of our culture and our society, our civilization. It's everywhere. And I've wondered if you think about how these territorial apes evolve into this new advanced species. Wouldn't one of the very best ways be to get rid of one of the things that causes the most problems, which is testosterone?

52:26We need testosterone. We need aggressive men and protectors, but why do we need them? We need them because there's other aggressive men that are evil, right? So we need protectors from ourselves. We need the good strong people to protect us from the bad strong people. But if we're in the process of integrating with technology, if technology isn't an Escapable part of our life, if it is everywhere, you're using it, you have the Internet of Everything that's in your microwave and your television, your computers, everything you use. As time goes on, that will be more and more part of your life, and as these Plastics are introduced into the human biological system, you're seeing a Feminization of the males of the species.

53:15You're seeing a downfall in birth rate. You're seeing all these correlating factors that would sort of lead us to become This more peaceful, less violent, less aggressive, less ego -driven thing. Which the world is definitely becoming all the time. And I'm all for less violence, obviously. But I don't...

53:47Look, obviously testosterone has many great things to say for it and some Bad tendencies too. But I don't think a world... If we leave that out of the equation and just say like a world that has a spirit that You know, we're going to defend ourselves. We're going to X. We're going to find a way to like protect ourselves and our tribe and our society into This future, which you can get with lots of other ways. I think that's an important impulse. More than that though, what I meant is about... If we go back to the issue of like where the young founders... Why don't we have more of those? And I don't think it's just the tech startup industry.

54:38I think you could say that about like young scientists or many other categories. Those are maybe just the ones that I know the best.

54:47In a world with any amount of technology, I still think we've got to... It is our destiny in some sense to stay on this curve. And we still need to go figure out what's next and after the next hill and after the next hill. And it would be... My perception is that there is some long term societal change happening here. And I think it makes us less happy too. Right. It may make us less happy. But what I'm saying is if the human species does integrate with technology... Wouldn't a great way to facilitate that, to be to kind of feminize the primal apes... And to sort of downplay the roles... You mean like should the AGI...

55:42Well maybe it's just an inevitable consequence of technology. Because especially the type of technology that we use... Which does have so much plastic in it. And then on top of that, the technology that's involved in food systems, preservatives... All these different things that we use to make sure that people don't starve to death... We've made incredible strides in that. There are very few people in this country that starve to death. Yeah. It is not a primary issue. But violence is a primary issue. But our concerns about violence are... And our concerns about testosterone and strong men and powerful people...

56:23Is only because... We need to protect against others. We need to protect against others. Is that true? Is that really the only reason? Sure. I mean, how many like incredibly violent women are out there running gangs? No, no. That part for sure. Yeah. What I meant more is that the only reason that society values like strong masculinity. Yeah, I think so. I think it's a biological imperative. Right? And I think that biological imperative is because we used to have to defend against incoming tribes... And predators and animals. And we needed someone who was stronger than most to defend the rest. And that's the concept of the military.

57:04That's why Navy SEAL training is so difficult. We want the strongest of the strong to be at the tip of the spear. But that's only because there's people like that out there that are bad. If... Our official general intelligence and the implementation of some sort of a device that changes the biological structure of human beings... To the point where that is no longer a concern. Like if you are me and I am you and I know this because of technology. Violence is impossible. Yeah, look, by the time... If this goes all the way down the sci -fi path and we're all like merged into this one single like planetary...

57:40Universal, whatever consciousness. Then yes, you don't. You don't need testosterone. Need testosterone. But especially if we can reproduce through other methods. Like this is the alien hypothesis, right? Like why do they look so spindly and without any gender and you know... And they have these big heads and tiny mouths. They don't need physical strength. They don't need physical strength. They have some sort of a telepathic way of communicating. They probably don't need sounds with their mouths. And they don't need this urge that we have to conquer and to spread our DNA. Like that's so much of what people do is these reward systems that were established when we were territorial apes.

58:20There's a question to me about how much you can ever get rid of that. If you make an AGI and it decides actually we don't need to expand. We don't need more territory. We're just like happy... We, at this point, you, me, it, the whole thing all together all merged in. We're happy here on Earth. We don't need to give any bigger. We don't need to reproduce. We don't need to grow. We're just going to sit here and run. A, that sounds like a boring life. I don't agree with that. I don't agree that that would be the logical conclusion. I think the logical conclusion would be they would look for problems and frontiers that are insurmountable to our current existence.

59:07Like intergalactic communication and transportation. What happens when it meets another AGI, the other galaxy over? What happens when it meets an AGI that's a million years more advanced? Like, what does that look like? Yeah. That's what I've often wondered if we are... I call ourselves the biological caterpillars that create the electronic butterfly. That we're making a cocoon right now. We don't even know what we're doing. And I think it's also tied into consumerism. Because what does consumerism do? Consumerism facilitates the creation of newer and better things. Because you always want the newest, latest, greatest.

59:41So you have more advanced technology and automobiles and computers and cell phones and all of these different things, including medical science. That's all for short, true. The thing I was like reflecting on as you were saying that is, I don't think I... I'm not as optimistic that we can or even should overcome our biological... biological base to the degree that I think you think we can. And to even go back one further level, I think society is happiest where there's roles for strong femininity and strong masculinity in the same people and in different people. And I don't like... And I don't think a lot of these like deep -seated things are gonna be able to get pushed aside very easily and still have a system that works.

1:00:50Like sure we can't really think about what... if there were consciousness in a machine someday or whatever, what that would be like. And maybe I'm just like thinking too small -mindedly. But I think there is something about us that has worked in a super deep way. And it took evolution a lot of search space to get here. But I wouldn't discount it too easily. But don't you think that cave people would probably have those same logical conclusions about life and sedentary lifestyle and sitting in front of a computer and not interacting with each other except through text? Well, I mean isn't that like what you're saying is correct?

1:01:35How different do you think our motivations are today and kind of what really brings us genuine joy and how we're wired at some deep level differently than cave people? Clearly lots of other things have changed. We've got better, much better tools. But how different do you think it really is? I think that's the problem is that genetically at the base level there's not much difference. And that these reward systems are all there. We interact with all of them. Whether it's ego, lust, passion, fury, anger, jealousy. All these different things. And you think we'll be, some people will upload and edit those out.

1:02:15Yes. Yeah. I think that our concern with losing this aspect of what it means to be a person. The idea that we should always have conflict and struggle because conflict and struggle is how we facilitate progress. Which is true. And combating evil is how the good gets greater and stronger if the good wins. But my concern is that that is all predicated on the idea that the biological system that we have right now is correct and optimal. And I think one of the things that we're dealing with with the heightened states of depression and anxiety and the lack of meaning and existential angst that people experience.

1:02:59A lot of that is because the biological reality of being a human animal doesn't really integrate that well with this world that we've created. That's for sure. Yeah. And I wonder if the solution to that is not find ways to find meaning with the biological vessel that you've been given. But rather, engineer those aspects that are problematic out of the system to create a truly enlightened being. Like one of the things if you ask someone today, what are the odds that in three years there will be no war in the world? That's zero. Like nobody thinks. No, there's never been a time in human history where we haven't had war.

1:03:50If you had to say what is our number one problem as a species? Well, I would say our number one problem is war. Our number one problem is this idea that it's okay to send massive groups of people who don't know each other to go murder massive groups of people that are somehow opposed because of the government and because of lines in the sand. That's clearly the same thing. It's an insane thing. How do you get rid of that? Well, one of the ways you get rid of that is to completely engineer out all the human reward systems that pertain to the acquisition of resources. So what's left at that point?

1:04:27Well, we're a new thing. I think we've become a new thing. And what does that thing do want? I think that new thing would probably want to interact with other new things that are even more advanced than it. I do believe that scientific curiosity can drive quite... That can be a great frontier for a long time. Yeah. I think it can be a great frontier for a long time as well. I just wonder if what we're seeing with the drop in testosterone, because of microplastics, which sort of just snuck up on us. We didn't even know that it was an issue until people started studying. How certain is that at this point that that's what's happening?

1:05:08I don't know. It's a very good question. Dr. Shannon Swan believes that it's the primary driving factor of the sort of drop in testosterone and all miscarriage issues and low birth weights. All those things seem to have a direct... There seems to be a direct factor environmentally. I'm sure there's other factors too. The drop in testosterone... It's been shown that you can increase male's testosterone through resistance training and through making... There's certain things you can do. One of the big ones they found through a study in Japan is cold water immersion before exercise. Yeah. Radically increases testosterone.

1:05:49So you could cold water immersion and then exercise post that. I wonder why. Yeah, I don't see who could find that. But it's a fascinating field of study. But I think it has something to do with resilience and resistance. And the fact that your body has to combat this external factor that's very extreme. It causes the body to go into this state of preservation and the implementation of cold shock proteins and the reduction of inflammation, which also enhances the body's endocrine system. But then on top of that, this imperative that you have to become more resilient to survive this external factor that you've introduced into your life every single day.

1:06:32So there's ways, obviously, that you can make a human being more robust. You know, we know that we can do that through strength training. And that all that stuff actually does raise testosterone. Your diet can raise testosterone. And a poor diet will lower it and will hinder your endocrine system. The hinder your ability to produce growth hormone, melatonin, and all these different factors. That seems to be something that we can fix in terms or at least mitigate in terms with decisions and choices and effort. But the fact that these petrochemical products, like there's a graph that Dr. Shannon Swan has in her book that shows during the 1950s when I started using petrochemical products and everything, microwave, plastics, ran -wrap, all those different stuff.

1:07:25There's a direct correlation between the implementation and the dip. And it all seems to line up, like that seems to be a primary factor. Does that have an equivalent impact on, like estrogen -related hormones? That's a good question. Some of them actually, I know some of these chemicals that they're talking about actually increase estrogen in men. I don't know. But I do know that it increases miscarriages. So I just think it's overall disruptive to the human body. Definitely a societal -wide disruption of the endocrine system in a short period of time. It seems like a... Sure. Difficult to wrap our heads up.

1:08:08And then pollutants and environmental toxins on top of the pesticides and herbicides and all these other things and microplastics. There's a lot of factors that are leading our systems to not work well. But I just really wonder if this... Are we just clinging on to this monkey body? Are we deciding... I like my monkey body. I do, too. Listen. I love it. But I'm also... I try to be very objective. And when I objectively look at it in terms of like, if you take where we are now and all of our problems and you look towards the future and like, what would be one way that you could mitigate a lot of these?

1:08:51And well, it would be the implementation of some sort of a telepathic technology where, you know, you couldn't just text someone or tweet at someone something mean, because you would literally feel what they feel when you put that energy out there. And you would... You would be repulsed. Yeah. And then violence would be... If you were committing violence on someone and you literally felt the reaction of that violence in your own being. And you would also have no motivation for violence. If we had no aggressive tendencies, no primal chimpanzee tendencies. You know, it's true that violence in the world has obviously gone down a lot over the decades, but emotional violence is up a lot.

1:09:39And the internet has been horrible for that. Yeah. Like, I don't walk... I'm not going to walk over there and punch you because you're like a big strong guy and you're going to punch me back. And also, there's a societal convention not to do that. But if I didn't know you, I might like send a mean tweet about you and I feel nothing on that. Yeah. And clearly, that has become like a mega epidemic in society that we did not evolve. The biological constraints on somehow. Yeah. And I'm actually very worried about how much that's already destabilized us and made us all miserable. It's certainly accentuated.

1:10:20It's exacerbated all of our problems. It's... I mean, if you read Jonathan Hades book, the column of the American Mind, if you read it. Great book. Yeah, it's great book. And it's very damaging to women, particularly young girls. Young girls growing up, there's a direct correlation between the invention of social media, the introduction to the iPhone, self -harm, suicide, online bullying. You know, like, people have always talked shit about people when no one's around. I think the fact that they're doing it now openly to harm people. Horrible. Obviously, I think it's super damaging to men too.

1:10:53Maybe they just like talk about it less, but I don't think any of us are like set up for this. No, no one's set up for it. And, you know, I think famous people know that more than anyone. We all get used to it. Yeah. You just get numb to it. Or if you're wise, you don't engage. You know, I don't engage. I don't even have any apps on my new phone. Yeah. I've decided I got a new phone and I decided, okay, nothing. That's really smart. No Twitter. And I saw I have a separate phone that if I have to post someone, I'll something I pick up. But all I get on my new phone is text messages. And is that more just to like keep your mind pure?

1:11:27Mm -hmm. Yeah. And not tempt myself into just doing fucking times. I've got up to go to the bathroom first thing in the morning and spent an hour just sitting on the toilet scrolling through Instagram like for nothing. It does zero for me. And there's this thought that I'm going to get something out of it. I was thinking actually just yesterday about how, you know, we all have talked for so long about these algorithmic feeds are going to manipulate us in these big ways and that will happen. But in the small ways already where like scrolling Instagram is not even that fulfilling. Like you finished that hour and you're like, I know that was a waste of my time.

1:12:08But it was like over the threshold where you couldn't quite, it's hard to put the phone down. Right. You're just hoping that the next one's going to be interesting. And every now and then the problem is every like 30th or 40th real that I click on is wild. I wonder by the way, if that's more powerful than if everyone was wild, if everyone was great. Sure. You know, it's like the assumption of mine for gold. Yeah. You don't just go out and pick it like daisy. So it's showing you the real. If the algorithm is like intentionally feeding you some shit along the way. Yeah. Well, there's just a lot of shit out there, unfortunately.

1:12:43But it's just in terms of, you know, I was talking to Sean O'Malley, who's this UFC fighter, who's obviously has a very strong mind, really interesting guy. But one of the things that Sean said is like, I get this like low level anxiety from scrolling through things. And I don't know why. Like what is that? And I think it's part of the logical mind realizes this is a massive waste of your resources. I also deleted a bunch of that stuff off my phone because I just didn't have the self control. I mean, I had the self control to delete it, but like not to stop once I was scrolling through. Yeah. And so I think we're just like, yeah, we're getting attention hacked in some ways.

1:13:26There's some good to it too, but we don't really have the stuff in place. The tools, the societal norms, whatever to modulate it well. Right. And we're not designed for it. So this is a completely new technology that, again, hijacks are human reward systems and hijacks. All of the checks and balances that are in place for communication, which historically has been one on one. Historically communication has been one person to another. And when people write letters to each other, it's generally things like if someone likes a love letter or they miss you, they're writing this thing where they're kind of exposing a thing that maybe they have a difficulty in expressing in front of you.

1:14:13And generally, unless the person was a psycho, they're not hateful letters. Whereas the ability to just communicate, fuck that guy, I hope he gets hit by a bus, is so simple and easy and you don't experience. Twitter seems to be particularly horrible for this as the mechanics work. It really rewards in ways that I don't think anybody fully understands that taps into something about human psychology. But that's how you get engagement, that's how you get followers, that's how you get the dopamine hits or whatever.

1:14:58And like the people who I know that spend all day on Twitter, more of them are unhappy about it than happy. Oh yeah, they're the most unhappy. I mean, there's quite a few people that I follow that I only follow because they're crazy. And then I'll go and check in on them and see what the fuck they're tweeting about. And some of them are on there eight, ten hours a day. I'll see tweets all day long. And I know that person cannot be happy. They're unhappy and they cannot stop. You can't stop. And it seems like it's their life. And they get meaning out of it in terms of reinforcement. They get short -term.

1:15:38Yeah. I think maybe each day you go to bed feeling like you accomplished something and got your dopamine. And at the end of each decade, you probably were like, where did that decade go? Yeah, I was talking to a friend of mine who was having a real problem with it. And he's saying he would be literally walking down the street. And he'd have to check his phone to see who's replying. And it wasn't even looking where he's walking. It was just like caught up at the anxiety of these exchanges. And it's not because of the nice things people say. No, no, no, it's all. And with him, he was recognizing that, you know, he was dunking on people.

1:16:07And then seeing people respond to the dunking. And yeah, I stopped doing that a long time ago. I stopped interacting with people on Twitter in a negative way. I just won't do it. Yeah. Even if I disagree with someone, I'll say something. I have, like, as far as possible. I have, like, more of an internet troll street than I would like to admit. And so I try to just, like, not give myself too much to the patient, but I slip up sometimes. Yeah. It's so tempting. Totally. It's so tempting and it's fun. It's fun to say something shitty. I mean, again, whatever this biological system we were talking about earlier, that gets a positive reward.

1:16:42Well, again, there's a react. You know, there's reactions. You say something outrageous. And someone's going to react. And that reaction is, like, energy. And there's all these other human beings engaging with your idea. But ultimately, it's just not productive for most people. And it's psychologically, it's just fraught with peril. There's just so much going on. I don't know anybody who engages all day long that's happy. That's certainly not. I don't, like... I mean, I think I've watched it, like, destroys who's strong of a word, but, like, knock off -track the careers or life's or happiness or human relationships of people that are, like, good, smart, conscientious people.

1:17:30Yeah. You just, like, couldn't fight this demon. Yeah. Because it, like, hacked their... And COVID really accentuated that because people were alone and isolated. And that made it even worse. Because then they felt... They felt even better saying shitty things to people. I'm unhappy, obviously. Even worse things about you. And then there was this psychological aspect of it, like, the angst that came from being socially isolated and terrified about this invisible disease. It's going to kill us all. And, you know, and that... So you have this, like, uh, and then you're interacting with people into it.

1:18:04And then you're caught up in that anxiety and you're doing it all day. And I know quite a few people, especially comedians, that really lost their minds and lost their respect to their peers by doing that. I have a lot of sympathy for people who lost their minds during COVID. Because what a natural thing for us all to go through in isolation was just brutal. But a lot of people did. And I don't think the internet, particularly not the kind of, like, social dynamics of things like Twitter, I don't think that, like, brought at anyone's best. No. Well, I mean, some people, I think, if they're not inclined to be shitty to people, I think some people did seek comfort.

1:18:45And they did interact with people in positive ways. Yeah, I see. There's plenty of positive. I think the thing is that the negative interactions are so much more impactful. Yeah, look, I think there are a lot of people who use these systems for wonderful things. I didn't mean to imply that's not the case. But that's not what drives people's emotions after getting off the platform of the end of the day. Right, right. And it's also probably not. If you looked at a pie chart of the amount of interactions on Twitter, I would say a lot of them are shitting on people and being angry about it. How many of the people that you know that use Twitter those eight or ten hours a day are just saying wonderful things about other people all day versus the virulent?

1:19:27Very few. Yeah. Very few. I don't know any of them. I know. But then again, I wonder with the implementation of some new technology that makes communication a very different thing that we're occurring. Like what we're doing now with communication is less immersive than communicating one -on -one. You and I are talking. We're looking into each other's eyes. We're getting social cues. We're smiling at each other. We're laughing. It's a very natural way to talk. I wonder if through the implementation of technology if it becomes even more immersive than a one -on -one conversation. Even more interactive.

1:20:11And you will understand even more about the way a person feels about what you say about that person's memory, that person's life, that person's history, their education, how it comes out of their mind, how their mind interacts with your mind, and you see them. You really see them. I wonder of that. I wonder if what we're experiencing now is just like the first time people invented guns they just are shooting at things. Yeah. If you can feel what I feel when you say something mean to me or nice to me, that's clearly going to change what you decide to say. Yes. Yeah. Unless you're a psycho. Unless you're a psycho.

1:20:56And then what causes someone to be a psycho? And can that be engineered out? Imagine what we're talking about. When we're dealing with the human mind, we're dealing with various diseases, bipolar, schizophrenia. Imagine a world where we can find the root cause of those things. And through coding and some sort of an implementation of technology that elevates dopamine and serotonin and does some things to people that eliminates all of those problems and allows people to communicate in a very pure way. It sounds great. It sounds great, but you're not going to have any rock and roll. You'll stand up comedy will die.

1:21:47You'll have no violent movies. You know, there's a lot of things that are going to go out the window. But maybe that is also part of the process of our evolution to the next stage of existence. Maybe. I feel genuinely confused on this. Well, I think you should be. I mean, to be. We're going to find out. Yeah. I mean, to be sure how it's going to do. It does the same. But I don't even have like this. The numbers beyond belief. I mean, you just you from the when did open AI? When did you first start this project? Like the very beginning and end of 2015 or the 2016. And when you initially started this project, what kind of timeline did you have in mind and has it stayed on that timeline?

1:22:32Or is it just wildly out of control? I remember talking with John Schulman, one of our co -founders early on. And he was like, yeah, I think it's going to be about a 15 year project. And I was like, yeah, it sounds about right to me. And I've always sort of thought since then. Now, I no longer think of like, AGI is quite the end point. But to get to the point where we like accomplish the thing we set out to accomplish. You know, that would take us to like 2030, 2031. That has felt to me like all the way through kind of a reasonable estimate with huge air bars. And I kind of think we're on the trajectory, sort of, what have assumed.

1:23:15And what did you think the impact on society would be? Like did you when you when you first started doing this and you said, okay, if we are successful and we do create some massively advanced AGI, what is the implementation? And what is the impact on society? Did you sit there and have like a graph, like you had to pros on one side, the cons on the other? Did you just sort of abstractly consider? Well, we definitely talked a lot about the cons. You know, many of us were super worried about, and still are, about safety and alignment. And if we build these systems, we can all see the great future.

1:24:04That's easy to imagine. But if something goes horribly wrong, it's like really horribly wrong. And so there was a lot of discussion about, and really a big part of the funding spirit of this is like, how are we going to solve this safety problem? What did that even mean? One of the things that we believe is that the greatest minds in the world cannot sit there and solve that in a vacuum. You've got to like have counter -threality. You've got to see where the technology goes. Practice plays out in a stranger way than theory. And that's certainly proven true for us. But we had a long list of, well, I don't know if we had a long list of cons.

1:24:40We had a very intense list of cons because, you know, there's like all of the last decades of sci -fi telling you about how this goes wrong. You're supposed to shoot me right now. Yeah. And... I'm sure you've seen the John Connor chat GPT. I haven't. What is it? It's like, you know, John Connor from the Terminator of the Kid looking at you when you open up chat GPT. Yeah. So that stuff we were like very clear in our minds on. Now, I think we understand. There's a lot of work to do, but we understand more about how to make AI safe in the... AI safety gets overloaded. Like, you know, it doesn't mean don't say something.

1:25:26People find defensive, or it doesn't mean don't destroy all of humanity, or some continuum. And I think the word is like gotten overloaded. But in terms of the like not destroy all of humanity version of it, we have a lot of work to do. But I think we have finally more ideas about what can work. And given the way the systems are going, we have a lot more opportunities available to us to solve it. Then I thought we would have given the direction that we initially thought the technology was going to go. So that's good. On the positive side, the thing that I was most excited about then and remain most excited about now is what if this system can dramatically increase the rate of scientific knowledge in society?

1:26:13That is a... I think that kind of like all real sustainable economic growth, the future getting better, progress in some sense, comes from increased scientific and technological capacity, so we can solve all of the problems. And if the AI can help us do that, that's always been the thing I've been most excited about. Well, it certainly seems like that is the greatest potential, greatest positive potential of AI. It's to solve a lot of the problems that human beings have had forever, a lot of the societal problems that seem to be... I mean, that's what I was talking about at an AI president. Kind of not joking, because I feel like if something was hyper -intelligent and aware of all the variables with no human bias and no incentives, no other than, here's your program, the greater good for the community of the United States and the greater good for that community as it interacts with the rest of the world.

1:27:19The elimination of these dictators, whether they're elected or non -elected, who impose their will on the population because they have a vested interest in protecting special interest groups and industry... I think as long as... The thing that I find scary when you say that is it feels like it's humanity not in control, and I reflexively don't like that. But if it's instead like it is the collective will of humanity being expressed without the mistranslation and corrupting influences along the way, then I can see it. Is that possible? It seems like it would be. It seems like if it was programmed in that regard to do the greater good for humanity and take into account the values of humanity, the needs of humanity.

1:28:19There's something about the phrase, do the greater good for humanity. I know, it's terrifying. It's very Orwellian, all of it is. But also, so is artificial general intelligence. For sure. I wish I had worked on something that was less morally fraught. But do you? Because it's really exciting. I can't imagine a cooler thing to work on. I feel unbelievably lucky. I feel like the luckiest person on earth. That's awesome. It is not on easy mode. Let's say that. This is not life on easy mode. No, no, no. I mean, you are at the forefront of one of the most spectacular changes in human history. And I would say, as, no, I would say more spectacular than the implementation of the internet.

1:29:05I think the implementation of the internet was the first baby steps of this. And that artificial general intelligence is, it is the internet on steroids. It's the internet in, you know, hyperspace. What I would say is it's the next step and there will be more steps after. But it's our most exciting step yet. Yeah. My wonder is, what are those next steps after? Isn't that so exciting to think about? It's very exciting. I think we're the last people. I really do. I think we're the last of the biological people with all the biological problems. I think there's a very excited about that. And do you feel excited about that?

1:29:46I just think that's just what it is. You're just fine with that. It is what it is. You know, I mean, that, I don't think you can control it at this point. Other than some massive natural disaster that resets its back to the Stone Age. Which is also something we should be very concerned with. Because it seems like that happens a lot. We're not aware of it because the timeline of a human body is so small. You know, the timeline of the human existence as a person is 100 years if you're lucky. But yet, the timeline of the Earth is billions of years. And if you look at how many times life on Earth has been reset by comets, slamming into the Earth and just completely eliminating all technological advancement.

1:30:29It seems like it's happened multiple times in recorded history. I do think I always think we don't think about that quite enough.

1:30:43We talked about the simulation hypothesis earlier. It's had this big resurgence in the tech industry recently. One of the things, one of the new takes on it is we get closer to AGI is that, you know, if ancestors were simulating us, the time they'd want to simulate again and again is right up to the, you know, right up, right, the lead up to the creation of AGI. Yeah. So it seems very crazy we're living through this time. It's not a coincidence at all. You know, this is the time that is after we had enough cell phones out in the world like recording tons of video to train the video model of the world that's all being, like, jacked into us now via brain implants or whatever.

1:31:15And before everything goes really crazy with AGI, and it's also this interesting time to simulate, like, can we get through? Does the asteroid come right before we get there for dramatic tension? Like, do we figure out how to make this safe? Do we figure out how to societally agree on it? So that's led to, like, a lot more people believing in it than before, I think. Yeah. For sure. And again, I think this is just where it's going. I mean, I don't know if that's a good thing or a bad thing. It's just a thing. But it's certainly better to live now. I would not want to live in the 1800s and be in a covered wagon trying to make my way across the country.

1:31:52Yeah, we got the most exciting time in history yet. It's the best. It's the best. But it's also has the most problems. The most social problems, the most awareness of social environmental infrastructure. We got to go sell them. And I intuitively, I think I feel something somewhat different than you, which is I think humans in something close to this form are going to be around for a lot longer than, I don't think we're the last humans. How long do you think we have?

1:32:36Like longer than a time frame I can reason about. Really? Now, there may be, like, I could totally imagine a world where some people decide to merge and go off exploring the universe with AI and there's a big universe out there. But like, can I really imagine a world where sort of a natural disaster. There are not humans pretty similar to humans from today on earth doing human -like things. And these sort of spirit of humanity merged into these other things that are out there doing their thing in the universe. It's very hard for me to actually see that happening. And maybe that means I'm like going to turn out to be a dinosaur and let it horribly wrong in this prediction.

1:33:19But I would say I feel it more over time as we make progress with AI, not less. Yeah, I don't feel that at all. I feel like we're done in like a few years. No, maybe a generation or two. It'll probably be a gradual change, like wearing of clothes. You know, I don't think everybody wore clothes and they invented clothes. I think it probably took a while. When someone figured out shoes, I think that probably took a while. When they figured out structures, doors, houses, cities, agriculture, all those things were slowly implemented over time and then now become everywhere. And I think this is far more transformative.

1:33:57And it's part of that because you don't think there'll be an option for some people not to merge. Right. Just like there's not an option for some people to not have telephones anymore. I used to have friends like, I don't even have email. Those three people don't exist anymore. They all have email. Everyone has a phone. At least a flip phone. I know some people that they just can't handle social media and all that jazz. They went to a flip phone. I don't know if this is true or not. I've heard you can't walk into an AT &T store anymore and still buy a flip phone. I heard they just changed. You can.

1:34:25Oh, really? Maybe. But I don't know if it's true. Verizon still has them. I was just there. They still have flip phones. I was like, I like it. I like this fucking little thing that you just call people. And I always romanticize about going to that. But my step was to go to a phone that has nothing on it but text messages. And that's been a few days. Feeling good, so far? Yeah, it's good. You know, I still have my other phone that I use for social media. But when I pick that motherfucker up, I start scrolling through YouTube and watching videos and scrolling through TikTok or Instagram. And I don't have TikTok.

1:34:59But I've, I've, I've tried threads for a little while. But I don't like it. I was like, fucking ghost town. So I went right back to X. I live on a ranch during the weekends and there's wifi in the house. But there's no cell phone coverage anywhere else. And it's every week, I forget how nice it is and what a change it is to go for a walk. Yeah. There's no cell phone coverage. It's good for your mind. It's unbelievable for your mind. And I think we have like so quickly lost something. Like out of service just doesn't happen. Doesn't even have an airplane anymore. But that, like hours where your phone just cannot buzz.

1:35:48Yeah. No text message either. Nothing. I think that's a really healthy thing. I dropped my phone once when I was in Lennie and I think it was the last time I dropped the phone. Like we're done. And it just started calling people randomly. Like it would just call people and I'd hang it up and call another person. I'd hang it up. And I was showing my wife. I was like, look at this. This is crazy. It's just calling people. And so the phone was broken. And so I had an order of phone and we were on vacation for like eight days. And it took three days for Apple to get me a phone. I bet you had a great three days.

1:36:21It was amazing. It was amazing. Because when I was hanging out with my family, I was totally present. There was no options. And I wasn't thinking about checking my phone. Because it didn't exist. I didn't have one. And there was a alleviation of again what Sean was talking about, that low level of anxiety. This sort of like that you have when you always want to check your phone. Yeah. I think that thing. It's so bad. We have not figured out yet. Like the technology has moved so fast. Biology moves very slowly. We have not figured out how we're going to function in a society. And get those occasional times when your phone is broken for three days.

1:37:05Yeah. Or you go for a walk within the service. But it's like.

1:37:12I very much feel like my phone controls me. Not the other way around. Uh -huh. And I hate it. But I haven't figured out what to do about it. Well, that's what I'm worried about with future technology. Is that this which was so unanticipated. If you'd imagine a world when you, you imagine going up to someone in 1984 and pointing to a phone and saying one day That'll be in your pocket. It's going to ruin your life. Like what? Like, yeah, one day people are going to be jerking off to that thing. You're like, what? One day people are going to be watching people get murdered on Instagram. I would see so many murders on Instagram over the last three months.

1:37:49Really? I've never seen a little bit of bad timeline. Me and my friend Tom Segura. Every morning we text each other the worst things that we find on Instagram. Why? For fun. He's a comedian or a girl with comedians. That's fun to you. Yeah. This is fucking just ridiculous. I mean, I mean, just crazy car accidents. People get gored by bulls and like every, like we try to top each other. So every day he's setting me the most, every day when I wake up and I check, Tom, fuck, what are you doing? Can you explain what's fun about that? Well, he's a comic and I'm a comic and comics like chaos. We like ridiculous outrageous shit that is just so far beyond the norm of what you experience in a regular day.

1:38:36And also the understanding of the wide spectrum of human behavior. If you're a nice person and you surround yourself with nice people, you very rarely see someone get shot. You very rarely see people get stabbed for no reason randomly on the street. But on Instagram, you see that every day. And there's something about that which just reminds you, oh, the work, crazy. Like the human species. Like there's a certain percentage of us that are just off the rails and just out there just causing chaos and jumping dirt bikes and landing on your neck. And like all that stuff is out there. Even to hear that makes me like physically like I know that happens of course.

1:39:22And I know like not looking at it doesn't make it not happen. Right. But it makes me so uncomfortable and I'm happy to watch. Oh, yeah, it makes me uncomfortable too. But yeah, we do each other every day. And it's not good. It's definitely not good, but it's also I'm not going to stop. It's fun. But why is it fun? It's fun because it's my friend Tom and we're both kind of the same in that way. Just look at that. Look at this. That I get. Look at this. And it's just a thing we started doing a few months ago. Just like can't stop. And Instagram has like learned that you do that. So just keep showing you more and more.

1:39:56Instagram knows when I my search page is a mess. When I go to the discover page. Oh, it's just crazy. But the thing is it shows up in your feed too. That's what I understand about the algorithm. It shows it. It knows your fucked up. So it shows up in your feed of things like even if they're not people I follow. But Instagram shows them to me anyway. I heard an interesting thing a few days ago by Instagram and the feed which is if you use it at off hours when they have more processing capability available because less people are using it, you get better recommendations. So your feed will be better in like the middle of the night.

1:40:32What is better though? Doesn't your feed more addictive to you or whatever? Right. So for me, better would be more murders, more animal attacks. Sounds horrible. It's horrible. But it's just it seems to know that's what I like. It seems to know that that's what I interact with. So it's just sending me that most of the time. Yeah. That probably has all kinds of crazy psychological. I'm sure. Yeah, I'm sure that's also one of the reasons why I want to get rid of it and move away from it. Yeah. So maybe maybe it went too far. I don't even know if it's too far, but what it is is it's showing me the darker regions of society, of civilization, of human behavior.

1:41:18But you think we're about to add it all that out. I wonder if that is a solution. I really do. Because I don't think it's outside the realm of possibility. If we really truly can engineer the like one of the talks about neural link that's really promising is people with spinal cord issues, injuries, people that can't move their body and being able to hotwire that where essentially it controls all these parts of your body that you couldn't control anymore. And so that would be an amazing thing for people that are injured. For an amazing thing for people that are paralyzed, they have all sorts of neurological conditions.

1:41:59That is probably one of the first, and that's what Elon has talked about as well, when the first implementations, the restoration of sight, you know, cognitive function enhanced from people that have brain issues. That's tremendously exciting. Yeah. And like many other technologies, I don't think we can stop neural interfaces. Because of the like great good that's going to happen along the way. But I also don't think we know where it goes. It's Pandora's box for sure. And I think when we open it, it's just we're not going to go back. Just like we're not going to go back to no computers without some sort of natural disaster.

1:42:38By the way, and I mean this is a great compliment. You are one of the most neutral people I have ever heard talk about the merge coming. You're just like, yeah, I think it's going to happen. You know, it's be good in these ways, bad in these ways. But you seem like unbelievably neutral about it, which is always something I admire. I try to be as neutral about everything as possible, except for corruption, which I think is just like one of the most massive problems with the way our culture is governed. Think corruption is just the influence of money. It's just a giant, terrible issue. But in terms of like social issues, and in terms of the way human beings believe and think about things, I try to be as neutral as possible.

1:43:26Because I think the only way to really truly understand the way other people think about things is try to look at it through their mind. And if you have this inherent bias and this, you have this very rigid view of what's good and bad and right and wrong, I don't think that serves you very well for understanding why people differ. So I try to be as neutral and as objective as possible when I look at anything. This is a skill that I've learned. This is not something I had in 2009 when I started this podcast. This podcast I started just fucking around with friends and I had no idea what it was, I mean, there's no way I could have ever known.

1:44:07And but also I had no idea what it was going to do to me and as far as the evolution of me as a human being. I am so much nicer, I'm so much more aware of things, I'm so much more conscious of the way other people think and feel. I'm just a totally different person than I was in 2009, which is hard to recognize. That's hard to believe. That's really cool. But it's just an inevitable consequence of this unexpected education that I've received. Did the empathy kind of like come on linearly? Yes. That was not a no, it just came, it came on recognized. Well, first of all, it came on recognizing that the interactive, the negative interactions on social media that I was doing, they didn't help me.

1:44:54They didn't help the person. And then having compassion for this person that's fucked up or done something stupid like it doesn't, it's not good to just dunk on people. Like it's no benefit there other than to give you some sort of social credit and get a bunch of likes. It didn't make me feel good. Like that's not good. And then also a lot of psychedelics, a ton of psychedelic experiences from 2009 on and with every one a greater understanding of the impact. They're like, I had one recently. And when I had the one recently, like the overwhelming message that I was getting through this was that everything I say and do ripples off into all the people that I interact with.

1:45:37And then if I'm not doing something with at least the goal of overall good or overall understanding that I'm doing bad and that that bad is a real thing as much as you try to ignore it because you don't interface with it instantly. And you're still creating unnecessary negativity and that I should avoid that as much as possible. It was like an overwhelming message that this psychedelic experience was giving me. And I took it because I was just particularly anxious that day about the state of the world, particularly anxious about Ukraine and Russia and China. And the political system that we have in this country and this incredibly polarizing way that the left and the right engage with each other.

1:46:33And God, it just seems so just tormented. And so I was just, sometimes I just get, I think too much about it. I'm like, I need something to crack me out of this. So I took these psychedelics. Are you surprised that psychedelic therapy has not made from what you thought would happen in the early 2010s till now? Are you surprised it has not made more progress sort of on a path to legalization as a medical treatment? No, no, I'm not because there's a lot of people that don't want it to be in place and those people have tremendous power over our medical system and over a regulatory system. And those people have also not experienced these psychedelics.

1:47:16There's very few people that have experienced profound psychedelic experiences that don't think there's an overall good for those things. So the problem is you're having these laws and these rules implemented by people who are completely ignorant about the positive effects of these things. And if you know the history of psychedelic prohibition in this country, it all took place during 1970 and it was really to stop the civil rights movement. And it was really to stop the anti -war movement. And they tried to find a way to make all these things that these people were doing that was causing them to think in these very different ways.

1:47:59They just wanted to put a fucking halt to that. What better way to unlock everyone who participates in that in cages? Find that people are producing it, lock them in cages, put them in jail for the rest of their life, make sure it's illegal, arrest people, put the bus on television, make sure that people are aware. And then there's also you connect it to drugs that are inherently dangerous for society and detrimental, the fentanyl crisis. You know, the cocaine crisis that we experience in the 90s, like all of those things, they're under the blanket of drugs. Psychedelic drugs are also talked about like drugs, even though they have these profound spiritual and psychological changes that they, you know, invite them.

1:48:44I remember when I was in elementary school and I was in like drug education, they talked about you know marijuana is really bad because it's a gateway to these other things. And there's this bad one, that bad one, heroin, whatever, and the very end of the line, the worst possible thing is LSD. Did you take LSD and go, oh, they're lying. Psychedelic therapy was definitely one of the most important things in my life. And I assumed, given how powerful it was for me, like I struggled with like all kinds of anxiety and other negative things and to like watch all of that go away. Like that. Like I traveled to another country for like a week, did a few things, came back, a totally different person.

1:49:30And it was like I've been lied to my whole life. Yeah. And I'm so grateful that this happened to me now. Talked to a bunch of other people, all similar experiences. I assumed, this was a while ago. I assumed it was, and I was like, you know, very interested in what was happening in the US. I was like, particularly like looking at where MDMA and South Simon were on the path. And I was like, all right, this is going to get through like this is, and this is going to like change the mental health of a lot of people in a really positive way. And I am surprised we have not made faster progress there, but I'm still optimistic we will.

1:50:02Well, we have made so much progress from the time of the 1990s. In the 1990s, you never heard about psychedelic retreats. You never heard about people taking these vacations. You never heard about people getting together in groups and doing these things. And coming back with these profound experiences that they relate to other people. And literally seeing people change, seeing who they are, change. Seeing people become less selfish, less toxic, less mean. You know, and more empathetic and more understanding. Yeah, it's, I mean, I can only talk about it from a personal experience. It's been a radical change in my life, but as well as, again, having all these conversations with different people.

1:50:47I feel so fortunate to be able to do this. That I've had so many different conversations with so many different people that think so differently. And so many exceptional people that have accomplished so many incredible things. And you get to sort of understand the way their mind works and the way they see the world, the way they interface with things. It's awesome. It's pretty fucking cool. And that is one of the cooler things about being a human. That you can find a way to mitigate all the negative aspects of the monkey body. And there are tools that are in place. But unfortunately, in this very prohibitive society, the society of prohibition, we're denied those.

1:51:29And we're denied ones that have never killed anybody. Which is really bizarre when, you know, oxy -contin can still be prescribed. What's the deal with why we can't make... If we leave, like, why we can't get these medicines that have transformed people's lives, like, more available. What's the deal with why we can't stop the opioid crisis? Or like, for example, seems like just an unbelievable crisis, first -hand Francisco. You remember when the beginning of the conversation when you said that AI will do a lot of good, overall good, but also not no harm. If we legalize drugs, all drugs, that would do the same thing.

1:52:12Would you advocate to legalize all drugs? It's a very complicated question. Because I think you're going to have a lot of addicts that wouldn't be addicts. You're going to have a lot of people's lives destroyed because it's legal. There's a lot of people that may not be psychologically capable of handling things. Maybe they already have... Like, that's a thing about psychedelics. They do not ever recommend them for people that have a slippery grasp on reality as it is. For sure. People that are struggling, people that are already on a bunch of medications that allow them just keep a steady state of existence in the normal world.

1:52:45If you just fucking bombard them with psilocybin, who knows what kind of an effect that's going to have, and whether or not they're psychologically too fragile to recover from that? I mean, there's many, many stories that people taking too much acid and never coming back. Yeah. Yeah, these are like...

1:53:08A powerful doesn't seem to like begin to cover it. But there's also what is it about humans that are constantly looking to perturb their normal state of consciousness? Constantly. Whether it's... We're both drinking coffee. People smoke cigarettes. They do all... They take out of all. They do all sorts of different things to change and enhance their normal state of consciousness. It seems like whether it's meditation or yoga, they're always doing something to try to get out of their own way or get in their own way. Or distract themselves from the pain of existence. And it seems like a normal part of humans.

1:53:46And even monkeys, like vervit monkeys, get addicted to alcohol. They get addicted to fermented fruits and alcohol and they become drunks and alcoholics. What do you think is the deep lesson there? Well, we're not happy exactly. And then some things can make you happy sort of. A couple of drinks makes you so happy for a little bit until you're in alcoholic. Until you destroy your liver, until you crash your car, until you're involved in some sort of a violent encounter that you would never be involved with if you weren't drunk. You know, I love caffeine, which clearly is a drug. Alcohol, like I like, but I often am like, yeah, this is like...

1:54:30Yeah, you know, this is like dolling me and I wish I hadn't had this drink. And then other stuff like I mostly would choose to avoid. But that's because you're smart. And you're probably aware of the pros and cons and you're also probably aware of how it affects you and what's doing good for you and what is detrimental to you. But that's a decision that you can make as an informed human being that you're not allowed to make if everything's illegal. Right. Yeah. And also when things are illegal, criminals sell those things because you're not tampering the desire by making it illegal. You're just making access to it much more complicated.

1:55:15What I was going to say is if fentanyl is really great, I don't want to know. Apparently it is. Apparently it is. Yeah. Peter Berg was on the podcast and he produced that painkiller documentary for Netflix. Yeah. The documentary drama about the Sackler family. It's an amazing piece. But he said that he took OxyContin once recreationally. And he was like, oh my god, it's amazing. He's like, keep this away from me. It feels so good. Yeah. And that's part of the problem is that, yeah, it will wreck your life. Yeah, it will capture you. But it's just so unbelievable. But the feeling, like how did Lenny Burst describe it?

1:55:53I think he described heroin as getting a warm hug from God. I think the feeling that it gives you is probably pretty spectacular. I don't know if legalizing that is going to solve the problems. But I do know that another problem that we're not paying attention to is the rise of the cartels. And that fact that right across our border, where you can walk, there are these enormous, enormous organizations that make who knows how much money, untold, uncalculable amounts of money, selling drugs and bringing them into this country. And one of the things they do is they put fentanyl in everything to make things stronger.

1:56:35And they do it for street Xanax. There's people that have overdosed thinking they're getting Xanax and they fucking die with fentanyl. Yeah, they do it with cocaine, of course. They do it with everything. There's so many things that have fentanyl in them. And they're cut with fentanyl because fentanyl is cheap and insanely potent. And that wouldn't be a problem if things were legal. So would you net out towards Xanax? Yeah, I would net out towards that. But I would also put into place some serious mitigation efforts, like in terms of counseling, drug addiction. And I began therapy, which is another thing that's illegal.

1:57:12Someone was just telling me about how transformative this was for them. Yeah, I haven't experienced that personally, but I began for many of my friends that have had pill problems. And I have a friend, my friend Ed Clay, who started an I began center in Mexico because he had an injury. And he got hooked on pills and he couldn't kick it. Did I begin? Gone. One time done. 24 -hour super uncomfortable experience. It's supposed to be a horrible experience, right? Yeah, it's supposed to be not very recreational. Not exactly something you want to do on the weekend with friends. It's something you do because you're fucked and you need to figure out how to get out of this fuckness.

1:57:50And we think about how much money has been on rehabs in this country. And what's the relapse rate? It's really high. I mean, I have many friends that have been the rehab for drug and alcohol abuse. And quite a few of them went right back to it. Quite a few. It doesn't seem to be that effective. It seems to be effective to people. When people have, like, they really hit rock bottom and they have a strong will. And then they get involved in a program, some sort of a 12 -step program, some sort of narcotics anonymous program. And then they get support from other people. And they eventually build this foundation of other types of behaviors and ways to find other things to focus on.

1:58:29To whatever aspect of their mind that allows them to be addicted to things. Now it's focused on exercise, meditation, yoga, whatever it is, that's your new addiction. And it's a much more positive and beneficial addiction. But the reality of the physical addiction that there are mitigation efforts. Like, there's so many people that have taken psilocybin and completely quit drugs. Completely quit cigarettes. Completely quit a lot. Because they realize, like, oh, this is what this is. This is why I'm doing this. Yeah, that's why I was more optimistic that the world would have made faster progress towards acceptance of...

1:59:08You hear so many stories like this. So I would say, like, all right, clearly a lot of our existing mental health treatment at best doesn't work. Clearly our addiction programs are ineffective. If we have this thing that in every scientific study or most scientific studies we can see is delivering these, like, unbelievable results. It's going to happen. Yeah. Yeah. I still am excited for it. I still think it'll be a transformative, positive development. It'll change politics. It'll absolutely change the way we think of other human beings. It'll absolutely change the way we think of society and culture as a whole.

1:59:47It'll absolutely change the way people interact with each other. If it becomes legalized. And it's slowly becoming legalized. Like, think of marijuana, which is like, you know, the gateway drug. Marijuana is now legal recreationally in how many states? 23. And then medically and many more. And, you know, it's really easy to get a license medically. And California is just... I got one in 1996. I used to be able to just go somewhere and go, I get a headache. That's it. Yeah, I get headaches. I'm in pain a lot. You know, I do a lot of martial arts. I'm always injured. I need some medication. I don't like taking pain pills.

2:00:27Bam. You got a legal prescription for weed. I used to have to go to Inglewood to get it. I used to have to go to the hood to the Inglewood Wellness Center. And I was like, this is crazy. Like marijuana is now kind of sort of legal. Yeah. And then in 2016, it became legal in California recreationally. And it just changed everything. I had all these people that were like right -wing people. That were taking edibles to sleep. You know, I'm like, this is... Because now that it's legal, they thought about it in a different way. And I think that... That drug, which is a fairly mild psychedelic, also has enhancing effects.

2:01:06It makes people more compassionate. It makes people more kind and friendly. It's sort of the opposite of a drug that enhances violence. It doesn't enhance violence at all. It just... Like alcohol does that. Cocaine does that. To say a thing that'll make me very unpopular, I hate marijuana. It does not sit well with me at all. What does it do to you that you don't like? It makes me tired and slow for a long time after it. Hmm. Well, I think also there's biological variabilities, right? Like some people, like my wife, she does not do well with alcohol. She can get drunk off one drink. But it's biological.

2:01:39She got some sort of a genetic... I forget what it's called. Something about Billy Rubin. Like some... Something that her body just doesn't process alcohol very well. So she's a cheap date. Oh, all I meant is that genetically I got whatever the mutation is that makes it an unpleasant experience. Yeah, what I was saying is for me that's the opposite. Alcohol doesn't bother me at all. I could drink three, four drinks and I'm sober in 20 minutes. Hmm. And my body just... My liver is like a blast, right? Just goes right through it. I can sober up real quick. But I also don't need it. Like I'm doing sober October for the whole month.

2:02:11I don't drink. Yeah. Did shows last night? Great. No problems. Not having alcohol doesn't seem to bother me at all. But I do like it. I do like a glass of wine. It's a nice thing at the end of the day. I like it. Speaking of that and psychedelics in general, many cultures have had a place for some sort of psychedelic time in someone's life or right of passage. But as far as I can tell, most of them are under... There's some sort of ritual about it. And I do worry that... And I think these things are so powerful that I worry about them just being like kind of used all over the place all the time.

2:02:53And I hope that we as a society, because I think this is not going to happen even if it's slow, find a way to treat this with the respect that it needs. Yeah. We'll see how that goes. Agreed. Yeah. I think set and setting is very important. And thinking about what you're doing before you're doing it, why you're doing it. Like I was saying the other night when I had this psychedelic experience, I was just like, yeah, sometimes I just think too much about the world. And then it's so fucked. And you have kids. And you wonder, what kind of a world are they going to throw up in? And it was just one of those days where I was just like, oh, there's so much anger and there's so much this and that.

2:03:34And then it's just... It took it away from me. The rest of the day, like that night, I was so friendly. And so happy. And I just wanted to hug everybody. I just really got it. I go, oh, my God. That does not think about it wrong. Do you think the anger in the world is way higher than it used to be? Or we just... It's like all these dynamics from social media we were talking about. I think the dynamics and social media certainly exacerbated anger in some people. But I think anger in the world is just a part of frustration, inequality, problems that are so clear but are not solved and all the issues that people have.

2:04:13I mean, it's not a coincidence that a lot of the mass violence that you're seeing in this country, mass looting and all these different things are being done by poor people. Do you think AGI will be an equalizing force for the world or further inequality? I think it would be... It depends on how it's implemented. My concern is, again, what we're talking about before with some sort of a neural interface. That it will increase your ability to be productive to a point where you can control resources so much more than anyone else. And you will be able to advance your economic portfolio and your influence on the world through that, your amount of power that you can acquire.

2:04:55Before the other people can get involved because I would imagine financially it'll be like cell phones. In the beginning, you remember when the movie Wall Street, when he had that big brick cell phone, he's like, look at him. He's out there on the beach with a phone. That was crazy. No one had one of those things back then. And they were so rare. I got one in 1994 when I first moved to California and I thought I was living in the fucking nature. No, it was a Motorola star -tack. That was a cool phone. I actually had one in my car in 1988. I was one of the first people to get a cell phone. I got one in my car and it was great because my friend Bill Blumenreich, who runs the comedy connection, he would call me because he knew he could get a hold of me.

2:05:39Like, if someone got sick or fell out, I could get a gig because he could call me. So I was in my car, I was like, Joe, what are you doing? Do you have a spot tonight? And I'm like, no, I'm open. He's like, fantastic. And so he'd give me gigs. So I got a bunch of gigs through this phone where it kind of paid itself. But I got it just because it was cool. Like I could drive down the street and call people. Dude, I'm driving and I'm calling you. Like, it was nuts to be able to drive and I had a little antenna, a little squirrelly. I'd be with a little squirrelly. A little antenna on my car, on the roof of the car.

2:06:09But now everyone has one. You know, you can go to a third world country and people in small villages have phones. It's super common. It's everywhere. Essentially, more people have phones than don't have phones. There's more phones than there are human beings, which is pretty fucking wild. And I think that that initial cost problem, it's going to be prohibitively expensive initially. And the problem is the wealthy people are going to be able to do that. And then the real crazy ones that wind up getting the holes drilled in their head. And if that stuff is effective, maybe there's problems with generation one, but generation two is better.

2:06:52There's going to be a time where you have to enter into the game. There's going to be a time where you have to sell your stocks. Like, you know, don't wait too long. Hang on there. Go. And once that happens, my concern is that the people that have that will have such a massive advantage over everyone else. That the gap between the halves and have knots will be even further. And it'll be more polarizing. This is something I've changed my mind on. I, you know, someone, it opened and I said to me a few years ago, like, you really can't just let some people merge without a plan, because it could be such an incredible distortion of power.

2:07:33And then we're going to have to have some sort of societal discussion about this. Yeah. That seems real. That seems like so at this point. Especially if it's as effective as AGI is, or as a, excuse me, chat GPT is. Chat GPT is so amazing. When you enter into it information, you ask it questions, and it can give you answers. And you can ask it to code a website for you, and it doesn't instantly. And it solves problems that literally you would have to take decades to try to solve. And it gets to it right away. This is the dumbest it will ever be. Yeah, that's what's crazy. That's what's crazy. So imagine something like that, but even more advanced.

2:08:15Multiple stages of improvement in innovation forward. And then it interfaces directly with the mind, but it only does it with the people that can afford it. And those people are just regular humans. So they haven't been, they haven't been enhanced. We haven't, we haven't evolved physically. We still have all the human reward systems in place. We're still basically these territorial primates. And now we have, you know, you just imagine some fucking psychotic billionaire, who now gets this implant, and it decides to just completely hijack our financial systems, acquire all the resources, set into place regulations and influences that only benefit them, and then make sure that they can control it from there on out.

2:09:05How much do you think this actually, though, even requires like a physical implant, or like a physical merge versus just some people have access to GPT -7 and can spend a lot on the inference compute for it and some don't? I think that's going to be very transformative too. But my thought is that once, I mean, we have to think of what are the possibilities of a neural enhancement? If you think about the human mind and how the human mind interacts with the world, how you interact with the language and thoughts and facts, and something that is exponentially more powerful than that, but it also allows you to use the same emotions, the same ego, the same desires and drives, jealousy, lust, hate, anger, all of those things.

2:09:59But with this godlike power, when one person can read minds and other people can't, when one person has a completely accurate forecast of all of the trends in terms of stocks and resources and commodities, and they can make choices based on those. I totally see all of that the only thing I'm... I feel a little confused about is human talking and listening bandwidth or typing and reading bandwidth is not very high. But it's high enough, or if you can just say, like, tell me everything that's going to happen in the stock market if I want to go make all the money, what should I do right now? And it just shows you on the screen.

2:10:45Even without a neural interface, you're kind of a lot of the way to scenario describing. Sure, with stocks. Or with, like, you know, tell me how to, like, invent some new technology that will change the course of history. Yeah. Yeah. All those things. Like, I think what somehow matters is access to massive amounts of computing power, especially, like, differentially massive amounts, maybe more than the interface itself. I think that certainly is going to play a massive factor in the amount of power and influence of human being has, having access to that. My concern is that what neural interfaces are going to do is now you're not a human mind interacting with that data.

2:11:34Now you are some massively advanced version of what a human mind is. And it has just profound possibilities that we can't even imagine. We can imagine, but we can't truly conceptualize them because we don't have the context. We don't have that ability and that possibility currently. We can just, we can just guess, but when it does get implemented, that you're dealing with a completely different being.

2:12:15The only true thing, as I could say, is I don't know. Yeah. Do you wonder why it's you? Do you ever think, like, how am I at the forefront of this spectacular change?

2:12:34Well, first of all, I think it's very much like, I think this is, you could make the statement from many companies, but none is as true for his opening eyes. Like, the CEO is far from the most important person in the company. Like, in our case, there's a large handful of researchers, each of which are individually more critical to the success we've had so far and that we will have in the future than me. But even that, and I bet those people, like, really are like, hmm, this is weird to be them. But it's certainly weird enough for me that it ups my simulation hypothesis probability somewhat.

2:13:16If you had to give a guess, what, when you think about the possibility of simulation theory, what kind of percentage do you have? I've never not put any number on it. Like, you know, it's every argument that I've read written explaining why it's like super high probability that all seems reasonable to me feels impossible to reason about though. What about you? Yeah, same thing. I go, maybe, but it's still what it is. That's the main thing is I think it doesn't matter. I think it's like, okay. It kind of, it kind of, it definitely matters, I guess, but there's not a way to know currently and also what matters though.

2:14:00Well, if this really is, I mean, our inherent understanding of life is that we are these biological creatures that interact with other biological creatures. We, we may inbreed and that this creates more of us and that hopefully as society advances and we acquire more information, more understanding and knowledge, this next version of society will be superior to the version that preceded it, which is just how we look at society today. Nobody wants to live in 1860 where you died of a cold and there's no cure for infections. It's much better to be alive now. You're like, just inarguably, there's, unless you really do prefer the simple life that you see on Yellowstone or something like, there's, it's like what we're dealing with now.

2:14:48In terms, first of all, access to information, the lack of ignorance. If you choose to seek out information, you have so much more access to it now than ever before. That's so cool. And over time, like if you go back to the beginning of written history to now, one of the things that is clearly evident is the more access to information, the better choices people can make. They don't always make better choices, but they certainly have much more of a potential to make better choices with more access to information. You know, we think that this is just this biological thing, but imagine if that's not what's going on.

2:15:28Imagine if this is a program and that you are just consciousness that's connected to this thing that's creating this experience that is indistinguishable from what we like to think of as a real biological experience from carbon -based life forms interacting with solid physical things.

2:15:54It's still unclear to me what I'm supposed to do differently or think differently. Yeah, there's no answer. Yeah, you're 100 % right. What can you do differently? I mean, if you exist as if it's a simulation, if you just live your life as if it's a simulation, is that? I don't know if that's the solution. You know, I don't, I think... I mean, it's real to me no matter what. It's real. Yeah. I'm going to live it that way. And that will be the problem with an actual simulation if and when it does get implemented. Yeah. If we do create an actual simulation that's indistinguishable from real life, like what are the rules of the simulation?

2:16:33How does it work? Is that simulation fair and equitable and much more reasonable and peaceful? Is there no war in that simulation? Should we all agree to hook up to it because we will have a completely different experience in life? And all the angst of crime and violence and the things that we truly are terrified of, there will be non -existent in the simulation. Yeah. I mean, if we keep going, it seems like if you just extrapolate from where VR is now, did you see the podcast that Lex Friedman did with Mark Zuckerberg? I saw some clips, but I haven't got to watch them. Bizarre, right? So they're essentially using like very realistic physical avatars in the metaverse.

2:17:21Like that's, that's step one. Maybe that's step three. Maybe it's a little bit on point. Yeah, maybe it's Atari. Maybe you're playing Space Invaders now. But whatever it is, it's on the path to this thing that will be indistinguishable. That seems inevitable. Those two things seem inevitable to me. The inevitable thing to me is that we will create a life form. That is an artificial intelligent life form that's far more advanced than us. And once it becomes sentient, it will be able to create a far better version of itself. And then as it has better versions of itself, it will keep going. And if it keeps going, it will reach God -like capabilities.

2:18:06The complete understanding of every aspect of the universe and the structure of itself, how to manipulate it, how to travel through it, how to communicate. And that, you know, if we keep going, if we survive a hundred years, a thousand years, ten thousand years. And we're still on the same technological, exponential increasing and capability path. That's God. We become something like a God. And that might be what we do. That might be what intelligent, curious, innovative life actually does. It creates something that creates the very universe that we live in. That creates the next simulation. Yeah, I mean, maybe that's the birth of the universe itself, is creativity and intelligence, and that it all comes from that.

2:19:01I used to have this joke about the Big Bang. But what if the Big Bang is just a natural thing? Humans get so advanced that they create a Big Bang machine. And then, you know, we're so autistic and riddled with Adderall that we don't know concept or worry of the consequences and someone's like, I'll fucking press it. And they press it and boom! And we start from scratch every 14 billion years. And then that's what a Big Bang is. I mean, I don't know where it goes. But I do know that if you looked at the human race from afar, if you were an alien life form, completely detached from any understanding of our culture, any understanding of our biological imperatives, and you just looked at, like, what is this one dominant species doing on this planet?

2:19:52It makes better things. That's what it does. That I agree. It goes to war. It, you know, it steals. It does a bunch of things that it shouldn't do. It pollutes. It does all these things that are terrible. But it also consistently and constantly creates better things. Whether it's better weapons going from the catapult to the rifle, to the cannonballs, to the rocket ships, to the hypersonic missiles, to nuclear bombs. It creates better and better and better things. That's the number one thing it does. And it's never happy with what it has. And you add that to consumerism, which is baked into us.

2:20:32And this desire, this constant desire for newer, better things. Well, that fuels that innovation because that gives it the resources that it needs to consistently innovate and constantly create newer and better things. Well, where, if I was an alien life model, I was like, what is it doing? It's trying to create better things. Well, what is the forefront of it? Technology. Technology is the most transformative, the most spectacular, the most interesting thing that we create. And the most alien thing. The fact that we just are so comfortable that you can face time with someone in New Zealand. Like instantly.

2:21:05We can get used to anything pretty quickly. You know anything. And take it for granted almost. Yeah. And well, if you were an alien life form and you were looking at us, you're like, what is it doing? Oh, it keeps making better things. It's going to keep making better things. Well, if it keeps making better things, it's going to make a better version of a thinking thing. And it's doing that right now. And you're a part of that. It's going to make a better version of a thinking thing. Well, that better version of a thinking thing. It's basically now in the amoeba stage, in the, you know, small multi cellular life form stage.

2:21:37Well, what if that version becomes a fucking Oppenheimer? What if that version, like if it scales up so far. Yeah. That it becomes so hyper intelligent that it is completely alien to any other intelligent life form that has ever existed here before. And it constantly does the same thing, makes better and better versions of it. Well, where does that go? It goes to a God. It goes to something like a God. And maybe God is a real thing. But maybe it's a real consequence of this process that human beings have of consistently, constantly innovating and constantly having this desire to push this envelope of creativity and of technological power.

2:22:24I guess it comes down to maybe a definitional disagreement about what you mean by it becomes a God. Like I can totally, I think it becomes something much, like unbelievably much smarter and more capable than we are. And what does that thing become if that keeps going? And maybe the way you mean it as a God -like force is that that thing can then go create, can go simulate a new universe. Yes. Okay. That I can resonate with. I think whatever we create will still be subject to the laws of physics in this universe. Right. Yeah, maybe that is the overlying fabric that God exists in. The God Word is a fucked -up word because it's just been so co -opted.

2:23:07But you know, I was having this conversation with Stephen Meyer who is a physicist. I believe he's a physicist. And he's also religious. And it's a real weird conversation, very fascinating conversation. What kind of believer in Christ? Yeah, he even believes in the resurrection, which I found very interesting. But you know, it's interesting communicating with him because he has these little pre -designed speeches that he's encountered all these questions so many times. That he has these very well -worded, very articulate responses to these things that I sense are like bits. You know, like when I'm talking to a comic, like a comic, like, I got this bit on train travel.

2:23:52And they tell you the bit. Like that's what it's like. He has bits on why he believes in Jesus and why he believes. And very, very intelligent guy. But I propose the question, when we're thinking about God, what if instead of God created the universe? What if the universe is God? And the creative force of all life and of all everything is the universe itself. Instead of thinking that there's this thing that created us. This is like close to a lot of the Eastern religions, I think. Yeah, easier thing to wrap my mind around than any other religions for me. And that is, when I do psychedelics, I get that feeling.

2:24:30I get that feeling like there's this insane soup of, like, innovation and connectivity that exists all around us. But our minds are so primal. We're this fucking thing, you know? This is what we used to be. And that... What is that? There's a guy named Shane against the machine who's this artist who created this. It's a chimpanzee skull that he made out of zilgen symbols. See, I see the... It's got a little zilgen logo. He left that on the back and he just made this dope, our piece. Cool. It's just cool. But I wonder if our limitations are that we are an advanced version of primates. We're still...

2:25:14We still have all these things that we talk about, jealousy, envy, anxiety, lust, anger, fear of violence. All these things that are detrimental, but we're important for us to survive and get to this point. And that as time goes on, we will figure out a way to engineer those out. And that as intelligent life becomes more intelligent and we create a version of intelligent life, that's far more intelligent than what we are. We're far more capable of what we are. If that keeps going, if it just keeps going, I mean chat GPT. Imagine if you go to chat GPT and go back to Socrates and show them that.

2:25:53Explain to that. And show them a phone and put it on a phone and have access to it. He'd be like, what have you done? What is this? I bet he'd be much more impressed with the phone than chat GPT. I think you'd be impressed with the phone's abilities to communicate for sure, but then the access to information would be so profound. I mean back then, I mean, look, you're dealing with the time when Galileo was put under house arrest because he had the gumption to say that the Earth is not the center of the universe. Well, now we fucking know it's not. Like we have satellites. We send literal cameras into orbit to take photos of things.

2:26:32No, I totally get that. I just meant that we kind of know what it's like to talk to a smart person. And so in that sense, you're like, oh, all right, I didn't think you could like talk to a not person and have them be person like in some responses some of the time, but a phone. Man, if you just like woke up after 2 ,000 years and there was like a phone, that would be your no model for that. You didn't get to get there gradually. Yeah, no, you didn't get it. My friend Eddie Griffin has a joke about that. He's about how Alexander Graham Bell had to be doing Coke. He goes, because only someone on Coke would be like, I don't want to talk to someone who's not even here.

2:27:10That's what a phone is. Is that something in Coke makes people want to do? I don't know, I've never done Coke, but I would imagine it is. I mean, it's just me like it just makes people like angry and chaotic. Yeah, a little that, but they also have ideas, you know. Yeah, I mean, back to this, where does it go? If it keeps going, it has to go to some impossible level of capability. I mean, just think of what that I believe is going to happen. What we're able to do now with nuclear power and nuclear bombs and hypersonic missiles, and just the insane physical things that we've been able to take out of the human creativity and imagination and through engineering and technology implement these physical devices that are indistinguishable for magic if you brought them 500 years ago.

2:28:05Yeah, I think it's quite remarkable. So keep going. Keep going 100 ,000 years from now. If we're still here, if something like us is still here, what can it do? In the same way that I don't think Socrates would have predicted the phone, I can't predict that. No, I'm probably totally off, but maybe that's also why comments exist. Maybe it's a nice reset to just like leave a few around, give them a distant memory of the utopian world that used to exist, have them go through thousands of years of barbarism, of horrific behavior, and then reestablish society. I mean, this is the Younger Drys Impact Theory that allowed 11 ,800 years ago at the end of the ice age that we were hit by multiple comments that caused the instantaneous melting of the ice caps over North America.

2:28:57Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything.

2:29:07Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything. Fluttered everything.

2:29:26Fluttered everything. ancient structures that they're now dating to like 11 ,000, 12 ,000 years ago when they thought people were hunter -gatherers and they go, okay, maybe our timeline is really off and maybe this physical evidence of the impact that was not with interest. Yeah. Randall Carlson is the greatest guy to pay attention to because of that. He's kind of dedicated his whole life to it, which by the way happened because of a psychedelic experience. He was on acid once and he was looking at this immense canyon and he had this vision that it was created by instantaneous erosions of the polar caps and that it just washed this wave of impossible water through the earth, it just caught these paths and now there seems to be actual physical evidence of that.

2:30:11That is probably what took place and that we're just the survivors and that we have re -emerged and that society and human civilization occasionally gets set back to a primal place. You know who knows? If you're right that what happens here is we kind of edit out all of the impulses in ourselves that we don't like and we get to that world seems kind of boring so maybe that's when we have to make a new simulation to watch people think they're going through some dramas or maybe it's just we get to this point where we have this power but the haves and the have -nots, the divide is too great and that people did get a hold of this technology and use it to oppress people who didn't have it and that we didn't mitigate the human biological problems, the reward systems that we have.

2:31:04That I got to have more and you got to have less. Yes, this is this sort of natural inclination that we have for competition and that someone hijacks that. I think this is going to be such a hugely important issue to get ahead of before the first people push the forward. What do you think about like when Elon was causing calling for a pause on AI? He was like starting in the AGI company while I was doing that. Yeah. Didn't he start it like after he was calling for the pause? I think before but I don't remember. Well it was in any case. Is it one of those you can't beat him, join him things? I think the instinct of saying like we've really got to figure out how to make this safe and good and like widely good is really important but I think calling for a pause is like naive that at best I kind of like I kind of think you can't make progress on the safety part of this as we mentioned earlier by sitting like in a room and thinking hard.

2:32:17You've got to see where the technology goes. You've got to have contact with reality and then when you like but we're trying to like make progress towards AGI conditioned on it being safe and conditioned on it being beneficial and so only hit any kind of like block we try to find a technical or a policy or a social solution to overcome it that could be about the limits of the technology and something not working and hallucinates or it's not getting smarter whatever or it could be there's this like safety issue and we've got to like redirect our resources to solve that but it's all like for me it's all this same thing of like we're trying to solve the problems that emerge at each step as we get where we're trying to go and you know maybe you can call it a pause if you want if you pause on capabilities to work on safety but in practice I think the field has gotten a little bit wander on the axle there and safety and capabilities are not these two separate things this is like I think one of the dirty secrets of the field it's like we have this one way to make progress you know we can understand and push on deep learning more and that can be used in different ways but it's I think it's that same technique that's going to help us eventually solve the safety that all of that said is like a human emotionally speaking I super understand why it's tempting to call for a pause happens all the time in life right this is moving too fast right I we got a pause here yeah how much of a concern is it in terms of national security that we are the ones that come up with this first well I would say that if an adversary of ours comes up with it first and uses it against us and we don't have some level of capability that feels really bad yeah but I hope that what happens is this can be a moment where to tie it back to the conversation we kind of come together and overcome our base impulses and say like let's all do this as a club together that would be better that would be nice and maybe through AGI and through the implementation of this technology it will make translation instantaneous and easy so well that's already happened right but I mean it hasn't happened in real time the point where you can accurately communicate very soon very soon very soon yeah I I do think for what it's worth that the world is going to come together here I don't think people have quite realized the stakes but this is like I don't think this is a geopolitical if this comes down to like a geopolitical fight race what I don't think is any winners and so I'm optimistic about people coming together yeah I am too I mean I think most people would like that if you ask the vast majority of the human beings that are alive wouldn't it be better if everybody got along you know maybe you can't go all the way there and say we're just going to have one global effort but I think at least we can get to a point where we have one global set of rules safety standards organization that makes sure everyone's following the rules we did this for atomic weapons and similar things in the world of biology I think we'll get there that's a good example the nuclear weapons because we know the destructive capability of them and because of that we haven't detonated once in 1947 pretty incredible yeah pretty incredible other than tests yeah we haven't used one in terms of war 45 or 47 when was the end of the World War II wasn't a 47 when they dropped the bombs I think that was 45 I was wondering if there's more after that I didn't know about no might be 40 I think it was 45 so from 1945 which is pretty extraordinary that's right it's remarkable I would not have predicted that I think I could teleport back to 45 no I would have thought oh my god this is just can be something that people do just launch bombs on cities yeah I mean I would have said like we're not going to survive this for very long and there was a real fear of that for sure it's pretty extraordinary that they've managed to stop that this this threat of mutually assured destruction self -destruction destruction destruction universe I mean the whole world we have enough weapons to literally make the world uninhabitable totally and because of that we haven't done it which is a good song I think that I think that should give some hope yeah it should I mean Stephen Pinker gets a lot of shit for his work because he just like sort of downplays violence today but it's not that he's downplaying violence today he's just looking at statistical trends if you're looking at the reality of life today versus life 100 years ago 200 years ago it's far more safer why do you think that's a controversial thing like why can't someone say sure we still have problems but it's getting better because people don't want to say that they they're especially people are activists they're they're completely engrossed in this idea that there's problems today and these problems are huge and there's there's not sees and there's but no one saying there's not huge problems right no one saying there's not but just to say things are better today yeah I guess some people they just don't want to hear that right but those are also people that are addicted to the problems the problems become their whole life solving those problems become their identity that being involved in the solutions or what they believe their solutions to those problems become their life's work and someone comes along it's actually life is safer than it's ever been before interaction that's deeply I can see that's deeply invalidated yeah but also true you know and again what what is the problem why why can't people recognize that well it's the primate brain I mean it's it's all the the problems that we highlighted earlier and that that might be the solution to overcoming that is through technology and there might be the only way we can do it without a long period of evolution because biological evolution is so relatively slow in comparison to technological evolution and that that might be our bottleneck was that we just still are dealing with this primate body and that something like general artificial general intelligence or something like some implemented form of engaging with it whether it's a neural ink something that shifts the way the mind interfaces with other minds isn't a wild speaking of biological evolution there will be people I think who are alive for the invention or discovery whatever you want to call it of the transistor there will also be alive for the creation of AGI one human lifetime yeah want to know a wild one from the implementation from the Orville and Wilbur Wright flying the plane it was less than 50 years for someone dropped an atomic bomb out of it that's wild that's crazy that's crazy that's 40 right that's crazy yeah bananas I mean 60 something years to land on the moon nuts nuts where you know where is it going I mean it's just guesswork but it's interesting for sure I mean it's the most fascinating thing of our time for sure it's fascinating it intellectually and I also think it is one of these things that will be tremendously net beneficial yeah like you know we've been talking a lot about problems in the world and I think that's just always a nice reminder of how much we get to improve and we're going to get to improve a lot and this will be I think this will be the most powerful tool we have yet created to help us go go do that I think you're right and this is an awesome conversation thanks for having us really really really appreciate it and thanks for everything keep us posted and if you create how I'll give you a call let us know all right thank you thank you bye everybody