#2117 - Ray Kurzweil

29:53And it's already doing lots of things... ...make some people uncomfortable. Well, we're actually doing its increasing our intelligence. I mean, right now you have a brain. It has different modules in it that deal with different things. But really, it's able to connect one concept to another concept. And that's what your brain does. We can actually increase that by, for example, carrying around a phone. This has connections in it. It's a little bit of a hassle to use. If I say to do something, you've got to mess with it. It should be good if this actually listens to your conversation. Oh, it does.

30:38And without saying anything, you're just talking. And it says, oh, the name of that actress is so -and -so. Yeah, but then it's a busy body. It's like interfering with your life, talking to you all the time. Well, there's ways of dealing with that too. You shut it off. We don't... So we haven't done that yet. But that's a way of expanding your connections. This episode is brought to you by Life Lock. Tax season is already stressful. You shouldn't have to worry about identity theft on top of everything else. And trust me, it's a big worry. Especially since during tax season, your sensitive info does a lot of traveling to places you can't control.

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33:49What a long language model does, it has connections in it as well. And the fact that it's getting now to a point that's getting fairly comparable to the human brain. We have about a trillion connections in our brain. Things like the top model from Google or GPT -4, they have about 400 billion connections approximately. There'll be a trillion probably within a year. That's pretty comparable to what the human brain does. Eventually it will go beyond that and we'll have access to that. So it's basically making us smarter. So if you have the ability to be smarter, that's something that's positive really.

34:49If we were like mice today and we had the opportunity to become like humans, we wouldn't object to that. In fact, we are humans and we don't object to that. We used to be shrews.

35:06And this is going to basically make us smarter. Eventually we'll be much smarter than we are today. And that's the positive thing. We'll be able to do things that are today that we find bothersome in a way that's much more palatable. The idea of us getting smarter sounds great. Great. It'd be great to be smarter. But people object to that because it's like competition. In what way? Well, I mean, Google has, I don't know, 60, 70 ,000 programmers and how many programmers exist in the world. How much longer is that going to be a viable career? Because lots of language models already can code. Not quite as good as a real expert coder.

36:04But how long is that going to be? It's not going to be 100 years. It's going to be a few years. So people see it as competition. I have a slightly different view of that. I see these things as actually adding to our own intelligence. And we're merging with these kinds of computers and making ourselves smarter by merging with it. And eventually it'll go inside our brain and be able to make us smarter instantly, just like we had more connections inside our own brain. Well, I think people have reservations always when it comes to great change. And this is probably the greatest change. The greatest change we've ever experienced in our lifetimes for sure has been the internet.

36:53And this will make that look like nothing. It'll change everything. And it seems inevitable. I understand that people are upset about it, but it just seems like what human beings were sort of designed to do. Right. We're the only animal that actually creates technology. It's a combination of our brain and something else, which is a thumb. So I can imagine something. Oh, if I take that leaf from a tree, I could create a tool with it. Other animals have actually a bigger brain, like the whale, dolphins, elephants. They have a larger brain than we do, but they don't have something equivalent to the thumb.

37:42Monkey has a thing that looks like the thumb, but it's actually an inch down. It doesn't actually work very well. So they can actually create a tool, but they don't create a tool that's powerful enough to create the next tool. So we're actually able to use our tools and create something that's that much more significant. So we can create tools. And that's really part of who we are. It makes us that much more intelligent. And that's a good thing. I mean, he is.

38:32So he is US person link come per capita. So this is the average amount that we make per person in constant dollars. And it's just right here. It's on the screen. It's we make a lot more money, but things cost a lot more money too, right? No, this is constant dollars. Constant dollars in relation to the inflation. Yeah. So this does not show you inflation. These are constant dollars. And so we're actually making that much more each year on average. So if you read it doesn't take into account inflation, correct? So it's not taking into account the rise of cost of things. No, it is taking. It is.

39:15It is taking. Oh, it is. Okay. So we're making that much more in constant dollars. And if you look over the past 100 years, we've made about 10 times as much. I wonder if there's a similar chart about consumerism, like just about material possessions. I wonder if like how much more we're purchasing and creating it. I've always felt like that's one of the things that materialism is one of those instincts that human beings sort of look down upon. And this aimless pursuit of buying things. But I feel like that motivates technology because the constant need for the newest, greatest thing is one of the things that fuels the creation and innovation of new things.

40:04But if you were to go back 100 years, you'd be very unhappy. Oh, yeah. Because you wouldn't have, I mean, you wouldn't have a computer, for example. You wouldn't have anything. You would have most things you've grown accustomed to. Yeah. I mean, unless that's why you wanted to. Also, we didn't live very long. Right. Medical advancements. For average, life was 48 years in 1900. It's 35 years in 1800. Right. Go back a thousand years, it was 20 years. That takes into account child mortality too though, right? But it's also injuries, death. Some people did live long. Like there was people that lived back then.

40:50If nothing happened to you, you did live to be 80 like a normal person. But that's actually very rare. Because most people happen to people. Most people, by the time you get to 80, you've had at least one hospital visit. Something's gone wrong. Broken arm, broken this, broken that. It was very rare to make it to 80. Right. 200 years ago. But the human body was physically capable of doing it. Right. Well, a human body can go on forever if you fix things properly. There's nothing in our body that means that you have to die at 100 or even 120. We can go on really indefinitely. Well, that's the groundbreaking work today, right?

41:34They're treating disease or, excuse me, age as if it is a disease. Not just inevitable consequence of the Y. And FDA doesn't accept that, but they're actually beginning to accept it now. Why does they get older? Yeah, exactly. They're forced into it. The concept of artificial general intelligence scares a lot of people also because of Hollywood, right? Because of the Terminator films and things along those lines. Like, how far away are we, do you think, from actual artificial humans, or will we ever get there? Will we integrate before that takes place? I mean, all of this additional intelligence that we're creating is something that we use.

42:19And it's just like it came with us. So we're actually making ourselves more intelligent. And ultimately, that's a good thing. And if we have it, and then we say, well, gee, we don't really like this. Let's take it away. People wouldn't have never accept that. There may be against the idea of general intelligence, but once they get it, nobody wants to give that up. And it will be beneficial.

42:53The blow light started 200 years ago because the cotton journey come out. And all these people that were making money with the cotton journey were against it. And they would actually destroy these machines at night. And they said, gee, if this keeps going, all jobs are going to go away. And indeed, people using cotton journey to create more wealth that did go away. But we actually made more money because we created things that didn't exist then. We didn't have anything like electronics, for example.

43:33And as we can actually see, we make 10 times as much in constant dollars as we did 100 years ago. And if you were to ask, well, what are people going to be doing? You couldn't answer it because we didn't understand the Internet, for example. And there's probably some technologies down the pipe that are going to have a similar impact. Exactly. And they're going to extend life, for example. But are they going to create life?

44:11Well, we know how to create life.

44:22Well, that's an interesting question. What do you mean by create life? What I think is that human beings are some sort of a biological caterpillar that makes it cocoon that gives birth to an electronic butterfly. I think we are creating a life form and that we're merely conduits for this thing. And that all of our instincts and ego and emotions and all these things feed into it, materials and feeds into it. And we keep buying and keep innovating and technology keeps increasing exponentially. And eventually, it's going to be artificial intelligence. And artificial intelligence is going to create better artificial intelligence and a form of being that has no limitations in terms of what's capable of doing.

45:09And capable of traveling anywhere, not having any biological limitations in terms of... But that's going to be ourselves. I mean, we're going to be able to create life that is like humans, but far greater than we are today. With an integration of technology. If we choose to go that route, but that's the prediction that you have that we will go that route, like a neural -linked type deal, something along those lines that... I don't see this competition like the things that are going to... No, I don't think it's competition. Well, it will seem like that. I mean, if you have a job doing coding, and suddenly they don't really want you anymore because they can do coding with a large language model, it's going to feel like it's competition.

45:53Well, there's an issue now with films. Tyler Perry owns and it was building an $800 million television studio and he'd stop production. What is it called, Sora? Is that what it's called, Jamie? Yeah. He stopped production when he saw the capabilities of AI just for creating visuals, scenes, movies. There's one that's incredibly impressive. It's Tokyo. They're walking down the street of Tokyo in the winter. So it's snowing and they're walking down the street and you look at it. This is insane. This looks like a film. See if you can find that film. But it's incredible. But would you want to get rid of that?

46:35Get rid of what? The capability. No. No, I don't want to get rid of the capability. But people do want to get rid of it. People that make movies. People that actually film things with cameras and use actors are going to be very upset. So this. This is all fake. Which is insane. Beautiful snowy Tokyo city is bustling. The camera moves through the bustling city street. Following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping it nearby stalls. Gorgeous Sakura petals are flying through the wind along with snowflakes. And this is what you get. Yeah. I mean, this is insanely good. The variability, like just the way people are dressed.

47:15If you saw this somewhere else, look at this, a robot's life in a cyberpunk setting. If you saw this, you would say, oh, they filmed this. But just looking at what they're able to do with animation and kids movies and things are almost not. Yeah. And it's going to get better. Yeah. It's just incredible. I mean, it's a new art form. So right there, the smoke looks a little uniform. But yeah, I mean, there's some problems with this. But not much. Yeah. And you imagine what it was like five years ago and then imagine what it's going to be like five years from now. Yeah, absolutely. And it's insane.

47:52We know, no one took into consideration the idea that kids are going to be cheating on their school papers using chat GPT. But my kids tell me that's a real problem in school now. Yes, definitely. So no one saw that coming. No one saw this coming. And what we're at now is what chat GPT 4, right? 4 .5. So what it is? Well, 4 .5 is coming. 4 .5 is coming. 5 is supposed to be the massive leap. It'll be a leap. Just like 3 to 4 was a massive leap. But it's going to continue. It's never going to be finished. It'll keep going. And it will also be able to make better versions of itself, correct? And yes, we do that.

48:39I mean, technology does that already. Right. But if you scale that out 100 years from now, what are you looking at? You're looking at a God. Well, it'll be less than 100 years. So you're looking at a God in 50 years? Less than that. I mean, once we have an ability to emulate everything that humans can do, and not just one human, but all humans. Yes. And that's only like 2029. That's only five years from now. And then it will make better versions of that. So it will probably solve a lot of the problems that we have in terms of energy storage, data storage, data speeds. Right. Computation speeds.

49:21And also medications for us, for humans, you know. Wouldn't it be better to just rain? Just download yourself into this beautiful electronic body. Why do you want to be biological? I mean, ultimately that's what we're going to be able to do. You think that's going to happen? Yeah. So do you think that we'll be able to, I mean, we'll be able to create, I mean, the singularities when we multiply our intelligence a million fold, and that's 2045. So that's not that long from now. That's like 20 years from now. Right. And therefore, most of your intelligence will be handled by the computer part of ourselves.

50:08The only thing that won't be captured is what comes with our body originally. We'll ultimately be able to do that as well. That will take a little longer, but we'll be able to actually capture what comes with our normal body and be able to recreate that. So that also has to do with how long we live, because if everything is backed up, I mean, right now, anytime you put anything into a phone or any kind of electronics, it's backed up. So, I mean, I could, this has a lot of data. I could flip it and it ends up in a river and we can't capture anymore. I can recreate it because it's all backed up.

50:57And you think that's going to be the case with consciousness. That's going to be the case of our normal biological body as well. What's the stop someone like Donald Trump from just making 100 ,000 versions of himself? Like, if you can back someone up, could you duplicate it? Could you have three or four of them? Could you have a bunch of them? Could you live multiple lives? Yes. Would you be interacting with each other while you're living multiple lives, having consultations? About what is St. Louis Ray doing? Well, I don't know. Let's talk to San Francisco Ray. San Francisco Ray is talking to Florida Ray.

51:35It's basically a matter of increasing our intelligence and being able to multiply Donald Trump, for example, that comes with that. Do you think there'll be regulations on that? To stop people from making 100 ,000 versions of themselves that operate a city? There'll be lots of regulations. There's lots of regulations we have already. You can't just create a medication and sell it to people that cures its disease. We have tremendous amount of regulations. Sure, but we don't really with phones. With your phone, you could essentially, if you had the money, you could make as many copies of that as you wanted.

52:12There are some regulations. We regulate everything. But you're right. Generally, electronics doesn't have as much regulation as... Right. And when you get to a certain point, we will be electronics. Yes. Yes. I mean, certainly, if we're a multiplier intelligence, a million fold, everything of that additional million fold of yours is not regulated. Right. When you think about the concept of integration and technological integration, when do you think that will start taking place? And what will be the initial usage of it? Like, what will be the first versions and what would they provide? We have it now.

53:03A large language model is pretty impressive. If you look at what they can do...

53:20What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration?

53:42What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration? What will be the first version of the digital integration?

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55:04What will be the first version of the digital integration?

55:18But, there is a physicistslarını belongs to other 필요als as far as to grasp where it is written. The image of TensorFlow programming essentially does not be at any practical measure. And clearly the image of the data is located directly on the poster, always an actually several UI sub persönlich. or brain, it would be just like it's part of our brain. So this is just following the current graph of progress. Yeah, exactly. So if you follow the current graph of progress, and if you do understand exponential growth, then what we're looking at in 2045 is inevitable. Right. Does that concern you at all, or are you excited about it?

55:58Do you think it's just a thing that is happening and you're a part of it and you're experiencing it? I think it will be enthusiastic about it.

56:12I mean, imagine if you were to ask a mouse, would you like to actually be as intelligent as a human? Right.

56:23It's hard to know what people would say, but generally that's a positive thing. Generally. Yeah. And that's what it's gonna be like. We're gonna be that much smarter. And what do you, and once we're there, I'm gonna say, not a really like this, I wanna be stupid like human beings used to be. Nobody's really gonna say that. Do human beings now say, gee, I'm really too smart. I'd really like to be like a mouse. Not necessarily, but what people do say is that technology is too invasive. And it's too much a part of my life. And I'd like to sort of have a bit of an electronic vacation and separate from it.

57:07And there's a lot of people that I know that have gone to. But nobody does that. I mean, nobody becomes stupid like we used to be when we were monkeys. Right, but I'm not saying stupid. I'm saying some people just like being a human, the way humans are now. Because one of the complications that comes with the integration of technology is what we're seeing now with people. Massive increases anxiety from social media use, be manipulated by algorithms. The effect that it has on culture, misinformation and disinformation and propaganda. There's so many different factors that are at play now that make people more anxious and more depressed statistically than ever.

57:47I'm not sure we had more anxiety. You're not sure? Today than we used to have. Well, we certainly had more when the Mongols were invading. We certainly had more anxiety. We were worried constantly about war. But I think people have a pretty heightened level. They take more anxiety. I mean, 80 years ago we had 100 million people die in Europe and Asia from World War II. We're very concerned about wars today and they're terrible. But we're not losing millions of people. Right. But we could. We most certainly could. With what's going on with Israel and Gaza, what's going on with Ukraine and Russia?

58:33But it is easily escalated. What is thousands of people? It's not millions of people. For now? Yeah, but if it escalates to a hot war where it's involving the entire world. What would really cause a tremendous amount of danger is something that's not really artificial intelligence. It was invented when I was a child, which is atomic weapons. I remember when I was like five or six, we'd actually go outside, put our hands behind our back to protect us from a nuclear war. Yeah, it drills. And it seemed to work. We're still here. So do you remember those things when they tell kids to get into the desk?

59:17Yes, that's right. We went out of the desk and put out. Which is hilarious. As if a desk is going to protect you from a nuclear bomb. Right, but that's not AI. Right. No, but AI applied to nuclear weapons makes them significantly more dangerous. And isn't one of the problems with AI is that AI will find a solution to a problem. Say if you have AI running your military, and AI says, what do you want me to do? And you say, well, I'd like to take over Taiwan. And AI says, well, this is how to do it. And it just implements it with no morals. And no thought of any sort of diplomacy or just force. Right.

1:00:01Hasn't happened yet. Because we do have people in charge. And the people are enhanced with AI. And AI can actually help us to avoid that kind of problem by thinking through the implications of different solutions. Sure. If it has some sort of autonomy. But if we get to the point where one superpower has AI, artificial general intelligence, the other one doesn't, how much of a significant advantage would that be?

1:00:33I mean, I do think there are problems. Basically, there's problems with intelligence. And we'd like to say stupid.

1:00:46But actually, it's better to be intelligent. I believe it's better to have intelligence. Overall, sure. Right. But my question was, if there's a race to achieve AGI, how close is this race? Is it neck and neck? Is it clinging? Who's at the lead? And how much capital is being put into these companies that are at the lead? And whoever achieves it first, if that is under the control of a government, it's completely dependent upon what are the morals and ethics of that government, what is the constitution? What if it happens in China? What if it happens in Russia? What if it happens somewhere other than the United States?

1:01:27And even if it does happen in the United States, who's controlling it? I mean, the knowledge of how to create these things is pretty widespread. It's not like somebody can just capitalize on a way to do it, and nobody else understands it. The knowledge of how to create a large language model or how to create the type of chips that would enable you to create this is actually pretty widespread. So do you think essentially the competition is pretty even? In all the countries currently? And there's also probably espionage. There's espionage where there's stealing information and sharing information and selling information.

1:02:15And in terms of differences, the United States actually has superior AI compared to other places. Well, that's good for us.

1:02:33I mean, we're actually way ahead of China, I would say. Right, but China has a way of figuring out what we're doing in a copy. Pretty good at that. They have been, yeah. Yeah. So do you have any concern whatsoever in the idea that AI gets in the hands of the wrong people? So when it first gets implemented, that's the big problem. Is before it exists, before artificial general intelligence really exists, it doesn't. And then it does. And who hasn't? And then once it does, can that AI stop other people from getting it? Can you programming it, program it to make sure you can use sabotage grids? Can you do whatever you can to take down the internet in these opposing places?

1:03:18Could you inject their computations with viruses? What could you do to stop other people from getting to where you're at if you have an infinitely superior intelligence? First, if that's what your goal is, then yes, yeah, you could do that. Are you worried about that at all? Like, yes, I worry about it. What is your main worry? I mean, worry about the implementation of artificial intelligence. What's your main worry?

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1:05:42I mean, I'm worried if people who have a destructive idea of how to use these capabilities get into control. Right. And that could happen. And I've got a chapter in the book about perils that are like what we're talking about. And what do you think that could look like? If the wrong people got hold of this technology. Well, you know, if you look at actually who controls atomic weapons, which is not AI, it's some of the worst people in the world. Right. And if you were to ask people right after we use two atomic weapons within a week, 80 years ago, what's the likelihood that we're going to go another 80 years and not have that happen again?

1:06:44Everybody would say zero. Right. But it actually has happened. Chocking. Yeah. Yeah. And I think there's actually some message there. Mutual is sure destruction. But the thing is would artificial intelligence. But that has not happened. Right. It has not happened yet. But would artificial general intelligence in the control of the wrong people negate that mutually assured destruction that keeps people from doing things? Obviously, we did drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Right. We did indiscriminately kill who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people with those weapons. We did it. And if human beings were capable of doing it because no one else had it, if artificial general intelligence reaches that sentient level and is in control of the wrong people, what's to stop them from doing, there's no mutually assured destruction if you're the one who's got it.

1:07:43You're the only one who's got it. And you possibly, my concern is that whoever gets it could possibly stop it from being spread everywhere else and control it completely. And then you're looking at a completely dystopian world. Right. So that's, if you ask me what I'm concerned about, it's one of those lines. Because that's what I always want to get out of you guys. Because there's so many people that are rightfully so, so high on this technology and the possibilities for enhancing our lives. But the concern that a lot of people have is that at what cost and what are we signing up for? Right. But I mean, if we, one of, for example, live indefinitely, this is what we need to do.

1:08:29We can't do, we can't. What if you're denying yourself heaven? You're a thought of that possibility? I know that's a ridiculous abstract concept. But if heaven is real, if the idea of the afterlife is real, and it's the next level of existence, and you're constantly going through these cycles of life, what if you're stepping in artificially denying that? It's hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine, but so is life. So is the universe itself. So is the big gang. My father's black holes. My father died when I was 22. So it's more than 50, 60 years old.

1:09:09And it's hard, and he was actually a great musician, and he created fantastic music. But he hasn't done that since he died.

1:09:23And there's nothing that exists that is in all creative, based on him, we have his memories. Actually created a large language model that represented him. I can actually talk to him. You do that now? Yeah, it's in the book. When you do that, have you thought about implementing some sort of a Sora -type deal where you're talking to him? Well, you can do that now with language. Right, but I mean physically. We're like looking at him like you're in a Zoom call with him. That's a little bit in the future to be able to actually capture the way he looks, but that's also feasible. It seems pretty feasible.

1:10:10Yeah. And so it's certainly it could be something representative of what he looks based on photographs that you have, right? So things like that is a reason to continue, so that we can create that and create our own ability to continue to exist. You talk to people and they say, well, I don't really want to live past 90 or whatever, 100.

1:10:39But in my mind, if you don't exist, there's nothing for you to experience. That's true. In this dimension. My thought on that, people saying that I don't want to live past 90. It's like, okay, are you alive now? Do you like being alive now? What's the difference between now and 90? Is it just a number? Or is it the duration of your physical body? And how much effort have you put into mitigating the deterioration of your natural body so that you can enjoy life now? Exactly. And we've actually seen who would want to take their lives? People do take their lives. If they are experiencing something that's miserable.

1:11:21If they're suffering physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and they just cannot stand the way life is carrying on, then they want to take their lives. Otherwise, people don't. If they're enjoying their lives, they continue. And people say, I don't want to live past 100. But when they get to be 99 .9, they don't want to disappear. Unless they're suffering. Unless they're suffering. That's what's interesting about the positive aspects of AI. Once we can manipulate human neurochemistry to the point where we figure out what is causing great depression? What is causing anxiety? What is causing a lot of these schizophrenic people?

1:12:15We definitely had that before. We didn't have the terms. We didn't have the sense that schizophrenia. People definitely had it. For sure. But what if we get to a point where we can mitigate that with technology? Where we can say, this is what's going on. That's why we're continuing. I was saying, that's a good thing. That's a positive aspect of this technology. And think about also... Profoundly. Think about how many people do take their lives and with this technology would not just live happily but also be productive. And also contribute to whatever society is doing. That's why we're carrying on with this.

1:12:51But in order to do that, we do have to overcome some of the problems that you've articulated. Yeah. I think what a lot of people are terrified of is that these people that are creating this technology, they're being... There's oversight. But it's oversight by people that don't necessarily understand it the way the people that are creating it. And they don't know what guardrails are in place. How safe is this? Especially when it's implemented with some sort of weapons technology, or some sort of a military application, especially a military application that can be insanely profitable. And the motivations behind utilizing that are that profit.

1:13:33And then we do horrible things and somehow are not justified. I mean, I think democracy is actually an important issue here. Because democratic nations tend not to go to war with each other. And I mean, you look at the way we're handling military technology. If everybody was a democracy, I think they'd be much less war. As long as it's a legitimate democracy, it's not controlled by money. As long as it's a legitimate democracy, it's not controlled by the military industrial complex, or the pharmaceutical industry, or whoever puts the people that are in elected places, who puts them in there? How do they get funded?

1:14:20Well, it's a big deal. And what do they represent once they get in there? Are they, therefore, the will of the people? They're there for their own career? Do they bypass the safety in the future of the people for their own personal gain, which we've seen politicians do? There's certain problems with every system that involves human beings. This is another thing that technology may be able to do. One of the things, if you think about the worst attributes of humans, whether it's war, you know, crime, some of the horrible things that human beings are capable of, imagine that technology can find what causes those thoughts and behaviors in human beings and mitigate them.

1:15:04You know, I've joked around about this, but if we came up with something that would elevate dopamine, just 300 percent worldwide, there would be no more war. It would be over. Everybody would be loving everybody. We'd be interacting with each other. Well, that's the point of doing this. But there would also be no sad songs. Well, he needs some blues in your life. Need a little bit of that too. Or do we? Maybe we don't. Maybe that's just a byproduct of our monkey minds. And that one day we'll surpass that and get to this point of enlightenment. Enlightenment seems possible without, right, technological innovation, but maybe not.

1:15:44I've never really met a truly enlightened person. I've met some people that are pretty close. But if you could get there with technology, if technology just completely elevated the human consciousness to the point where all of our conflicts come to race, just for starters, if you could actually live longer, quite aside from the motivations of people, most people die not because of people's motivations, but because our bodies just won't last that long. Right.

1:16:15And a lot of people say, you know, I don't want to live longer, which makes no sense to me. Why would you want to disappear and not be able to have any kind of experience? Well, I think some people don't think you're disappearing. I mean, there is a long held thought in many cultures that this life is but one step. And that there is an afterlife. And maybe that exists to comfort us because we deal with existential angst and the reality of our own inevitable demise. Or maybe it's a function of consciousness being something that we don't truly understand. And what you are is a soul contained in a body.

1:17:02And that we have a very primitive understanding of the existence of life itself and of the existence of everything. Well, I guess that makes sense. But I don't really accept it. I mean, if there's no evidence, right? But is it there's no evidence because we're not capable of determining it yet and understanding it? Or is it just because it doesn't exist? That's the real question. It's like, is this it? Is this everything? Or is this merely a stage? And are we munking with that stage by interfering with the process of life and death? Well, it makes sense. Yeah, but I don't really see the evidence for that.

1:17:48I could see from your perspective. I don't see the evidence of it either, but it's a concept. And that is not... Look, just when you start talking to strength theorists, and they start talking about things existing and not existing at the same time, particles in superposition, you're talking about magic. You're talking about something that's impossible to wrap your head around. Even just the structure of an atom. Like, what? What's in there? Nothing? How much of it is space? The entire existence of everything in the universe seems preposterous, but it's all real. And we only have a limited grasp of understanding of what this is really all about and what process is really in place.

1:18:35But if you look at people's perspective, if somebody gets the disease and kind of known they could only live like another six months, people are not happy with that. No, well they're scared. They're scared to die. It's a natural human instinct. It's kept us alive for all these hundreds of millions of years. Yeah, but very few people would be happy with that. And if you then had something, gee, we have this new device, you could take this and you won't die. Right. Almost everybody would do that. Sure. But would they appreciate life if they knew it had no end? Would it be the same thing or would it be like a lottery winner?

1:19:17It just goes nuts and spends all their money and loses their marbles because they can't believe they can't die?

1:19:24Well, first of all, it's not guaranteed to live forever. Sure, you can get an accident. You can, you can, something can happen. You can get injured. But if we get to a point where you have automated cars that significantly reduce the amount of automobile accidents. Well, also we can back up everything in our physical body as well as how far away we from that, that idea of, I mean, we don't really truly understand what consciousness is, correct? Right. So how would we be able to manipulate it or duplicate it to the point where you're putting it inside of some kind of a computation device? Well, we know to be able to create a computation that matches what our brain does.

1:20:16That's what we're doing with these large language models. Right. And we're actually very close now to what our brain can do with these large language models and it will be there like within a year.

1:20:32And we can back up the electronic version and we'll get to the point where we can back up what our brain normally does. So it will be able to actually back that up as well, be able to detect what it is and back that up as just like computers. So we'll create it in the form of an artificial version of everything that it is to be a human being. In terms of emotions, love, excitement. And that's going to happen over the next 20 years. It's not a thousand years. But will that be a person? I mean, or it will be some sort of a zombie. And you're like, what motivations would have if you can take human consciousness and duplicate it much like you could duplicate your phone and you make this new thing?

1:21:23What does that thing feel like? Does that thing live in hell? Like what does that experience like for that thing? What are our large language models? Do they really exist? Can they actually, I mean, they can talk. They certainly do, but would you want to be one? Are we different than that? Yeah, we're people. We shake hands. I give you a hug. You pet my dog. You listen to music. You have to be able to do all of that. Right, but will you want to? Will you even care? The thing is like a lot of what gives us joy in life is biological motivations. There's human reward systems that are put in place that allow us to...

1:21:58It's going to be part of who we are. Right. We just like put that in and we'll also have our physical bodies as well. And that'll also be able to be backed up. And we'll be doing the things that we do now except we'll be able to have them continue. So if you get hit by a car and you die, there's another rate that just pops up. Oh, we got the backup ray. And the backup ray will have no feelings at all about having it had died and come back to life. Well, that's a question. I mean, why wouldn't it be just like ray is now? Why wouldn't it? If we get to certain... If we figure out that if biological life is essentially some kind of technology that the universe has created, and we can manipulate that to the point where we understand it, we get it, we've optimized it, and then replicate it, physically replicate it.

1:22:56Not just replicated in form of, you know, on a computer, but an actual physical being. Right. Well, that's where we're headed. Do you anticipate that people will be happy with whatever they have? Because if you decide, I don't like being five, six, I wish I was six, six. I don't like being a woman. I like, I want to be a man. I don't want to be Asian. I want to be, you know, whatever. I want to be a black person. I want to be... I will actually be able to do all of those things simultaneously and so on. We're not going to be limited by those kinds of... Right. Happen, happens, happens. Which is going to be very strange.

1:23:35Like, what will human beings look like? If you give people the ability to manipulate your physical form? Well, we do things now that we're impossible to leave in ten years ago. We certainly do, but we don't change race's size, sex, gender, height. We don't do all of the radical increase in just your intelligence. Like, what is that going to look like? What kind of an interaction is it going to be between two human beings? When you have a completely new form, you know, you're much different physically than you ever were when you were alive. Your tall, your stronger, your smarter, your faster, you're basically not really a human anymore.

1:24:12You're a new thing. I mean, we're expanding who we are, we're already expanded who we are from, you know, sure. Over a course of hundreds of thousands of years, well, that's gone from being Australia -Pethicist to what we are now. That has to do with the...

1:24:32...pasted which we make changes. We can make changes now much more quickly than we could, you know, 100 ,000 years ago. Right, but if we can manipulate our physical form with no limitations, what are the... We have six armed people that can fly? Like, what is it going to look like? Well, do you have a problem with that? Yeah, I'm discriminating against six armed people like a fly. That's the one area I allow myself to give me, prejudice to. No, I'm just curious as to how much time you've spent... Seven armed people would be okay. Seven armed people is cool because it's like, you know, maybe five on one side or two on the other.

1:25:12No, I'm just curious as to how much time you've spent thinking about what this could look like. And I don't think it's going to be as simple as, you know, it's going to be Ray Kurzweil, but Ray Kurzweil as like a 30 -year -old man, 50 years from now. I think it's probably going to be... you're going to be all kinds of different things. You could be kind of whatever you want. You could be a bird. I mean, what's the stop? If we can get to manipulate the physical form and we can take consciousness and put it into a physical form. But this is a description, I think, of something that's positive rather than negative.

1:25:49You could be a giant eagle. I mean, negative is... people that wanted to destroy things... Sure. ...getting power. And that is a problem. Well, it's certainly improvement in terms of... ...of the habitability. ...of seven arms and being like an eagle and so on. I mean, you can also change that. Right. So I think that's a positive aspect. And we will be able to do that kind of thing. Sure. If you want to look at it in a binary fashion of positive and negative, but it's also going to be insanely strange. Like, it's not going to be as simple as there'll be people that are living in 2069. Once that's first reported, if it's been reported now for five years and people are constantly doing it, you want to find it that strange.

1:26:42It'll just be life. Yeah. So that's what I'm asking. Like, when you think about the implementation of this technology to its fullest, what does the world look like? What does the world look like in 2069?

1:27:00I mean, the kind of things that you can imagine right now will be able to do. And my team's strange when it first happens, but when it happens for the, you know, millionth time, it won't seem that strange. And maybe you're like being an eagle for a few minutes. It's certainly interesting. It's certainly, it's certainly interesting. I'm just, I just wonder how much time you've spent thinking about what this world looks like with the full implementation of the kind of exponential growth of technology that would exist if we do make it to 2069. Well, I did write a book. Danielle.

1:27:44And this young girl has fantastic capabilities. And no one really can figure out how she does this. She actually takes over China at age 15. And she brings about, she makes it a democracy. And then she actually becomes president of the United States at 19, just across, create a constitutional amendment that at least she can become president at 19. That sounds like what a dictator would do. Right. But unlike a dictator, she's very popular and she writes very good music. And this is one artificial intelligence creature. Yes. And how was she created? It never says that she gets these capabilities through AI.

1:28:45I didn't want to spell that out. But that would be the only way that she could do this. Right. Unless some insane freak of genetics. And she's like a very positive person. She's very popular. Yeah, but she's the only one that has that. Yeah. All right. She doesn't give it to everybody. Which is which is where it gets really weird. You have a cell phone. I have a cell phone. Pretty much everybody has one now. What happens when everybody gets the kind of technology we're discussing? Well, it shows you the benefit the she has it. And if everybody gets it, that would be even more positive. Perhaps, yeah.

1:29:24I mean, that's the best way of looking at it that we become a completely altruistic, positive, beneficial to each other society. Well, that is the idea of integrated minds. A benefit. If you have more intelligence, you'd be more likely to do this. Yes. Yeah. For sure. That's the benefit. Yeah. Yeah. So we live longer and we're also smarter to making more rational decisions towards each other. So overall, when you're looking at this, you just don't concentrate really on the negative possibilities. Well, no. I mean, I do focus on that as well. I mean, and, but you think overall it's net positive.

1:30:09Yes. It's called intelligence. And if you have more intelligence, we'll be doing things that are more beneficial to ourselves and other people. Do you think that the experiences that we're having right now? I mean, like right now, we have much less crime than we did 50 years ago. And if you listen to people debating presidential politics, they'll say crime is worse than ever. But if you look at the actual statistics, it's gone way down. And if you actually go back like a few hundred years, crime and murder and so on was far, far higher than it is today, it's actually pretty rare. So the kind of additional intelligence that we've created is actually good for people.

1:31:06If you look at the actual data. Sure. If you look at Stephen Pinkers' work, right, scale it from 100 years ago to today. Things are generally always seem to be moving in a better direction. Well, Pinker didn't credit this to technology. He just looks at the data and says it's gotten better. What I try to do in the current book is to show how it's related to technology. And as we have more technology, we're actually moving in this direction. So you feel it's a function of technology that we're moving in this direction? Absolutely. And that's why. I mean, look at the technology. In 80 years, we've multiplied the amount of computation 20 quadrillion times.

1:31:56And so we have things that didn't exist two years ago. Right. When you think about the idea of life on Earth and that this is happening, and that we are on this journey to 2045 to the singularity, do you consider whether or not this is happening elsewhere in the universe, or whether it's already happened? Yeah, we see no evidence that this any form of life, let alone intelligent life, anywhere else. And I can say, well, we're not in touch with these other people. It is possible. But it seems, I mean, given the exponential impact of this type of technology, we would be spaced out based on...

1:33:07over a large period of time. So some people that might be ahead of us, could be ahead of us, certainly thousands of years, even millions of years. And so they'd be like way ahead of us, and they'd be doing galaxy -wide engineering. How is it that we look out there and we don't see anybody doing galaxy -wide engineering? Well, maybe we don't have the capability to actually see it. I mean, the universe is... or whatever it is. But even just incidental capabilities will affect galaxies. We would see that somehow. Would we, if we were at the peak, if there is intelligent life in the universe, some form of that intelligent life has to be the most advanced, and what if we are underestimating our position in the universe?

1:34:05Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying. Maybe there's something that's like 10 years. I mean, there's an industrial age. I think there's a good argument that we are ahead of other people. But we don't have the capability of observing the goings -on of a planet 5 ,000 light years away. We can't see into their atmosphere. We can't look at high -resolution video of activity on that planet. If they were doing galaxy -wide engineering, I think we would notice that. If they were more advanced than us, maybe we would. But what if they're not? What if they're at the level that we're at? Well, that's what I'm saying.

1:34:40What if we're at the peak? And this is like, I think it's an argument that we are at the peak. What if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence gets implemented? And then that becomes the primary form of life, and it doesn't have the desire to do anything in terms of galactic engineering. This episode is brought to you by me undies. When date night comes around, you want to look good for your partner. That's normal. So here's some advice guys. If you want to impress your date, it starts with some nice fitting clothes that complement your body. And I'm not just talking about a suit or a slacks or a blazer wearing a nice pair of underwear.

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1:36:42Why would it not have those things? Well, we'd have to program it into it, but it would probably decide that that's foolish, and that those things have caused all these problems. All the problems in human race, what's our number one issue? War. What is war caused by? It's caused by ideologies, it's caused by acquisition of resources, that's the war. War is not violence. War is not the primary thing that we are motivated by. It's not the primary thing we're motivated by, but it's existed in every single step of the way of human existence. But it's actually getting better. I mean, just look at the effect of war.

1:37:19Sure. I mean, we have a couple of wars going on. They're not killing millions of people like they used to. Right. Right. My point is that if artificial intelligence recognizes that the problem with human beings is these emotions, and a lot of it is, it's fueled by these desires, like the desire to expand, the desire to acquire things, the desire to... Well, the emotion is positive. I mean, the music... To us. To us. But if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence is no longer stimulated by mere human creations, creativity, all these different things, why would it even have the ambition to do any sort of galaxy -wide engineering?

1:38:04Why would it want to?

1:38:08Because it's based on us. It is based on us until it decides. It's not based on us anymore. That's my point. If it realizes that, like, if we're based on a very violent chimpanzee, and we say, you know what, there's a lot of what we are because of our genetics that it really are a problem. And this is what's causing all of our violence, all of our crime, all of our war. If we just step in and put a stop to all that, will we also... We'll have to maintain the ambition. Moving away from that. And the... We are moving away from that. But that's just natural, right? That's natural with our more understanding and our mitigations of these social problems.

1:38:47So if we expand that even more, we'll be even more in that direction. As long as we're still we. But as soon as you become something different, why would it even have the desire to expand? If it was infinitely intelligent, why would it even want to physically go anywhere? Why would it want to? What's the reason for our reason, our motivation to expand? What is it? It's human. So the same humans that were tribal creatures that roamed, the same humans that stole resources from neighboring villages. This is our genes, right? This is what made us that got us to this point. If we create ascension artificial intelligence that's far superior to us, and it can create its own version of artificial intelligence, the first thing it's going to engineer out is all these stupid emotions that get us in trouble.

1:39:34Well, if it just can create happiness and joy from just from programming, why would it create happiness and joy through the acquisition of other people's creativity, art, music, all those things? And then why would it have any ambition at all to travel? Why would it want to go anywhere? Well, I mean, it's an interesting philosophical problem. Right. It is a problem because a lot of what we are and the things that we create is because of all these flaws that you would say. If you were programming us, you would say, well, what is the cause of all these issues that plague the human race? They say that their flaws are murderous.

1:40:13Murderous flaw? Is it in a flaw? But that's what weighed down. Right. But it's a technology that moves ahead. If it happens to you, it's a flaw. And it will crime as a flaw. All these theft is a fraud. Those are flaws. If we could engineer those out, what would be the way that we do it? Well, one of the things we do, we get what it is to be a person. Because what it is is corrupt people that go down these terrible paths, take cause harm to other people. You're taking a step there of the ability to feel emotion and so on as a flaw. No, I'm not. I'm saying that it's the root of these flaws. That greed and envy and lust and anger are the root.

1:40:57Like the death of the bathroom. Yeah, okay. Because you just go to the bathroom. We'll come back and we'll talk about flaws. And we're back. Provide an answer to that. I mean, as I think about myself now, it's when I have emotions that are positive emotions, like really getting off on a song or a picture or some new art form that didn't exist in the past. That's positive. That's what I live for, relating to another person in a way that's intimate.

1:41:40And so, I mean, the idea, if we're actually more intelligent, we'd not get rid of that, but to actually enjoy that to a greater extent. Hopefully. But what I'm saying is that... Yes, the things that can go wrong, but lead us in incorrect direction. I'm not even saying it's wrong. I'm not saying that it's going to go wrong. I'm just saying that if you wanted to program away some of the issues that human beings have, in terms of what keeps us from working with each other universally, all over the globe. What keeps us from these things? What we're actually doing that more than we used to do. Sure.

1:42:27But also not. We're also like massive inequality. We've got people in the Congo mining cobalt with sticks that powers your cell phones. There's a lot of real problems with society today. Right, but there used to be even more of that. There's a lot of that, though. There's a lot of that. And if you looked at greed and war and crime, and all the problems with human beings, a lot of it has to do with these biological instincts, these instincts to control things. These built -in genetic codes that we have that are from our ancestors. That's because we haven't cut them yet. Right. But when we get there, you think we will be a better version of a human being, and we will be able to experience all the good, the positive aspects of being human being.

1:43:18There are no creativity and all these different things. I hope so. And actually, if you look at what human beings have done already, we're moving in that direction. Right. I mean, I think that way. No, it does seem that way to me. It does overall. But it's also like, if you look at a graph of temperatures, it goes up, and it goes down, and it goes up, and it goes down, but it's moving in a general direction. We are moving in a general direction. Like generally positive direction. Why do we want to continue moving in this same direction? Yeah, I don't think that it works. It's not a guarantee. I mean, you can describe things that would be horrible, and it's feasible.

1:44:00Yeah. It could be the end of the human race. Right? Or it could be the beginning of the next race of this new thing. Well, I mean, when I was born, we created nuclear weapons, and people were concerned. And very soon we had hydrogen weapons, and we have enough hydrogen weapons to wipe out all humanity. We still have that. That didn't exist like a hundred years ago. Well, it didn't exist 80 years ago. Yeah. So that is something that concerns me. And you could do the same thing with artificial intelligence. It could also create something that would be very negative. But what I'm getting at is, what do you think life looks like if it's engineered?

1:44:54What do you think human life looks like if it's engineered by a far superior intelligence? And what would it change about what it means to be a person?

1:45:07I mean, first of all, we would base it on what human beings are already. So we'd become better versions of ourselves. For example, we'd be able to overcome life -threatening diseases. And we're actually working on that, and that's going to go into high gear very soon.

1:45:31Yes. But that's still being a human being. If you're implementing large -scale artificial intelligence, you're essentially a superhuman. You're a different thing. You're not what we are. If you have the computational power... The human being is part of it. For now. But this is the thing. If you're engineering this artificial intelligence and you're engineering this, what's essentially like a superior life form, it's going to look at it logically. It's going to look at the issues that human beings have logically and say, well, we don't need this. This is a problem. This is what we needed when we were primates, and we're not that anymore.

1:46:18We're in this new thing. We're going to... Who cares what the movie's like? It's just a thing that's tricking your body and pretending that it's involved in drama. But it's not really. Well, you're making certain assumptions about what we'll create. No, I'm just making an assumption. I mean, in my mind, we would want to create better music, and better art, and better relationships. Well, the relationships should be all perfect eventually, if we keep going in this general direction. Well, it's not perfect. But if you get artificial intelligence, we're all reading each other's minds and everyone's working towards the same goal.

1:46:58Well, no, you can't read each other's minds. Ever? We can create... Yes, we can create privacy that's virtually unbreakable and you can keep the privacy to yourselves. But can you do that as technology scales upward? If it continues to move... I mean, it's difficult like your phone. Like anyone can listen to you on your phone. I mean, anyone who has a significant technology... No, actually, it has a very... It has pretty good technology already. You can't really read someone else's phone. You're definitely good. Yeah, if you have Pegasus, you could hack into your phone easily, not hard at all.

1:47:30The new software that they have, all they need is your phone number. All they need is your phone number, and they can look at every text message you send, every email you send, they can look at your camera, they can turn on your microphone, easy. We have ways of keeping total privacy, and if it's not built, since your phone now, it will be. But it's definitely not built in your phone now. The security people that really understand the capabilities of intelligence agencies, they 100 % can listen to your phone. 100 % can turn on your camera. 100 % can record your voice. Yes and no. I mean, we have an ability to keep total privacy in a device.

1:48:11But from who? You can keep privacy from me, because I don't have access to your device. But if I was working for an intelligence agency, and I had access to a Pegasus program, I am in your device. Now, I've talked to people that... Only because it's not perfect. We can actually build much better privacy than exists today. But the privacy that we have today is far less than the privacy that we had before we had phones. I don't really quite agree with that. How so? If you didn't have a phone, okay? And you were at home having a conversation, a sensitive conversation about maybe you didn't pay as much taxes as you should.

1:48:50There's no way anybody would hear that. But now your phone hears that. If you have an Alexa in your home, your Alexa hears you say that. People have been charged with crimes because Alexa heard them committing murder.

1:49:06We actually know how to create perfect privacy in your phone. And if your phone doesn't have that, that's just an imperfection in the way we're building these things now. But it's not just an imperfection. It's sort of built into the program itself because that's what fuels the algorithm as it has access to all of your data. It has access to all of your... what you're interested in, what you like, what you don't like. You can't opt out of it, especially you. You've got a Google phone. That thing is just a net scooping up information. We know how to build perfect privacy. And how do we do it?

1:49:56I mean, if it's not built into your phone now, it should be. Unless they don't want it to be built in there because there's an actual business model and it's not being built in there. But it can be done. If people want that, it will happen. But you recognize the financial incentive in not doing that, right? Because that's what a company like Google, for instance. That's where they make the majority of their money. He's from data. For a lot of their money, I should say. Well, I mean, that there's actually a lot of effort that goes into keeping on your phone private. It's not that easy. Private from some people, but not really private.

1:50:44It's only private until they want to listen. And now the capability of listening to your phone is super easy. Not really. No? With the Pegasus program? It's very easy. Well, that has to do with imperfections and the way phones are created. Right. But I think it's a feature. I think part of the feature is that they want as much data from you and knowing about what you're doing, what you're talking about. If you've had a conversation with someone, then you see an ad for that thing on Google.

1:51:18That happens. Yes. But so something's going on where it's listening to your conversation and it's picking up on keywords. It's not picking up on everything. Not yet. Well, it's not unless it wants to. Like I said, if they're using a program, an intelligence program to gather information from your phone, it is. And then you're basically, you got a little spy that you carry around with you everywhere you go. Unless you're using, I mean, if you think that's a major issue, we could build phones that are impossible to spy on. Maybe. But if we did, well, there are some phones that like graphene. You know about that.

1:52:01You know about what people that they take a Google phone and they put a different Linux based operating system on it, makes it much more difficult to track. And there's multi levels of protection. There's a bunch of phones that are being made that are security phones. But I mean, we lose access to apps. You lose access to a lot of the features that people rely on when it comes to phones. Like for instance, like if you have GPS on your phone, as soon as you're using GPS, you're easy to find. Right? So you lose that privacy. They want to know where race phone is. They know exactly where race phone is.

1:52:33And that's where you are. And you're with your phone. They've got you tracked everywhere you go. It's complicated. If this were a major issue, we could definitely overcome that. I think it's a major issue, but I don't think it's a major concern for most people. Right. But it's because they reap the benefits of it. Like the algorithm is specifically tailored. That's how we find the types of things we put on phones. Right. But you can't opt out of it. Unless you just decide to get a flip phone. But even if you do, they can figure out where you are to triangulate you from cell phone towers.

1:53:10I mean, we give up certain things in order to get the benefits of phones. Yeah, we do. If what you're giving up is a grave concern, we could overcome that. We know how to do that. Yeah. If people agree that the benefit of overcoming that outweighs the loss in the financial loss that you would have would not have access to everybody's data and information. Well, I mean, what you're giving up is a certain type of data that you want to get a certain type of capability that you could buy. So they can advertise that to you. And people feel that that's okay.

1:54:05But for example, keeping your email private is quite feasible. It's possible. But it's also easy to hack. Like people could be reading your emails all the time. You should probably assume that they do.

1:54:26Well, it's a complicated issue. But we keep, for example, your email is private. And generally, we actually do do that generally for most people. But my point is, as this technology scales upward, when you have greater and greater computational power, and then you're also integrated with this technology, how does that keep whatever group is in charge from being able to essentially access the thing that is inside your head now? How do you, if you have a technology that's going to be upgraded and you're going to get new software and it's going to keep improving as time goes on, what kind of privacy would be involved in that if you're literally having something that can get into your brain?

1:55:19And if most people can't get into your brain, can intelligence agencies get into your brain? Can foreign governments get into your brain? Like, what does that look like? And I'm not looking at this as a negative. I'm just saying, if you're just looking at this, it's just like completely objectively. Like, what are the possibilities that this could look like? I'm trying to paint like a weird picture of what this could look like. Well, a lot of things you want to share. I mean, music and so on. It's desirable to share that. And you'd want that to be shared. If you didn't share anything, you'd be pretty lonely.

1:55:57Sure. What do you think about the potential for a universal language? Do you think that one of the things that holds people back is the Rosetta Stone, the Tower of Babel. We can't really understand what all these other people are saying. We don't know how they think. If we can develop a universal worldwide language through this, do you think it's feasible? I mean, all languages that we have were created. They're all... We have a certain means of changing one language into another. Right. That's what I'm saying. And we're doing that now with some like Google does that, with Translate and the new Samsung phones do that in real time.

1:56:38I wrote about that in 1989 that we'd be able to have universal translation between languages. But do you think that the adoption of a universal language... Perfect, but it's actually pretty good. It's pretty good. But there's also context that's missing because there's different cultural significance. There's different ways that people say things. There's gendered language and other nationalities use, and other countries use. Let's try to get that into the language translation as well. You can, but it's a little bit imperfect, right? Well, you might have something that's fed very quickly and you'd have to translate it into much longer language in order to capture that.

1:57:23Right. But would a universal language be possible? If you're creating something... Why would you need that? Because what we have, all of our languages, pretty flawed, ultimately, I mean, we use it, but how many versions of your do we have? How many of our... There's a bunch of different weird things about language that's imperfect because it's old. It's like old technology. If we decided to make a better version of technology through art... Excuse me, a better version of language through artificial technology and, say, listen, instead of trying to translate everything, now that we're super powerful intelligent beings that are enhanced by artificial intelligence, let's create a better, more superior, universally adopted language.

1:58:11Maybe. I mean, do you see that as a major need? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I think that would change a lot. I mean, we'd lose all the amazing nuances of cultures, which I don't think is good for us as human beings, but we're not going to be human beings. So maybe it would be better if we could communicate exactly the way we prefer to. Well, it would be human beings. In my mind, the human beings, someone who can change both ourselves and means of communication to enjoy better means of expressing art and culture and so on. No other animal really quite does that, except human beings. So that is an essence of what it means to be a human being.

1:59:04For now. But when you're a mind -reading eagle and you're flying around, are you really a human being anymore? Yes, because we're able to change ourselves. So that's just a new definition of what a human being is. Yeah. What are your thoughts on simulation theory? If you mean that we're living in simulation, well, first of all, some people believe that we can express physics as formulas and that the universe is actually able to… It's capable of computation, and therefore everything that happens is a result of some computation. And therefore, the universe is capable of… We are living in something that is computable.

2:00:18And there's some debate about whether that's feasible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're living in a simulation. Generally, if you say we're living in a simulation, you assume that some other place and teenagers in that world like to create a simulation. So they created a simulation that we live in, and you want to make sure that they don't turn the simulation off. So we'd have to be interesting to them, and so they keep the simulation going.

2:00:56But the whole universe could be capable of simulating reality, and that's what we live in, and it's not a game, it's just the way the universe works. I mean, what would the difference be if we lived in a simulation? But this is what I'm saying. If we can, and we're on our way to creating something that is indesernable from reality itself, I don't think we're that far away from that. Many decades away from having some sort of a virtual experience that's indesernable from regular reality. I mean, we try to do that with games and so on. Right. And those are far superior to what they were. I mean, I'm younger than you, but I can remember a Pong.

2:01:47Remember a Pong? It was groundbreaking. You can play a video game on your television. This is crazy. It was so nuts. I don't know what it would be on that now. Now you look at the Unreal 5 engine, it's insane how beautiful it is, and how incredible. So if you live in that, that's kind of a simulation. Right, but as you expand that further, and you get to the point where you're actually in a simulation, and that your life is not this carbon -based biological life, feeling and texture that you think it is, whether you're really a part of this thing that's been created. This is where it gets real weird with like probability theory, right?

2:02:27Because they think that if a simulation is possible, it's more likely, it's already happened. I mean, this really unlimited amount of things that we could simulate and experience. Yeah. And so it's hard to say we're living in a simulation because a lot of what we're doing is living in a computational world anyway. So it's basically being simulated. Yeah. In a way. Yeah. And if you were some sort of an alien life form, wouldn't that be the way you go instead of like taking physical metal crafts and shooting them off into space? Wouldn't you sort of create artificial space, create artificial worlds, create something that exists in the sense that you experience it?

2:03:22And it's indesernable to the person experiencing it. But if you're intelligent enough, you'll be able to tell what's being simulated and what's not. Up to a point until it actually does all the same things that regular reality does. It just does it through technology. And maybe that's what the universe is. But that's okay. We could still experience what's happening. Yeah. And we could also experience people doing galaxy wide engineering, which I don't know if which would be simulated. So the galaxy wide engineering is the main thing that you look at into the point where I don't see any evidence for life outside.

2:04:06Well, there's definitely no real evidence that we see other than these people that talk about UFOs, UAPs and pilots and all these people that say that there's this thing. And basically don't see any evidence that life is simulated outside of our own life. We can simulate things and experience it. We don't see any evidence that other beings are doing that elsewhere. But this is based on such limited data though, right? I mean, look at what limited data we just have of Mars. Rover, Ronan rounds, Adelites and orbit. It's very limited data with something that's just one planet over. We don't really have the data to understand what's going on out of Centauri.

2:04:50It's possible that this simulated life elsewhere. I mean, we don't see any evidence that far, but it's possible. Is it something that intrigues you or do you just look at it like there's no evidence? So I'm not going to concentrate on that. I'm very interested to see what we can achieve. Because we're actually out. I can see that we're on that path.

2:05:17And so it doesn't take a lot of career out of saying my part. To imagine other people simulating life and enjoying it. I'm much more interested to see what will be feasible for us. And we're not that far away from it. So over the next four years, five years, you think we're going to be able to far surpass the ability of human beings. We're going to be able to stop aging and then eventually reverse aging. And then 2045 comes along. What does that look like? Well, one of the reasons we call it singularity is because we really don't know. I mean, that's why it's called singularity. Singularity in physics is where you have a black hole.

2:06:13No energy can get out of a black hole. And therefore we don't really know what's going on. And we call it a singularity. So this is a historical singularity based on the kinds of things we've been talking about. And again, we don't really know what that will be like. And that's why we call it a singularity. Is that the way it's serious? Another way of looking at it. I mean, we have mice and they have experiences. It's a limited amount of complexity because that particular species hasn't really evolved very much.

2:07:05And we'll be going beyond what human beings can do. So to ask a human being what it's like to be a human being in singularity is like asking a mouse, what would it be like if you were to evolve to become like a human? Now, if you ask a mouse that, it wouldn't understand the question, it wouldn't be able to formulate an answer, it wouldn't even be able to think about it.

2:07:37And asking a car as human being what it's going to be like to live in a singularity is a little bit like that. So it's just who knows? It's going to be wild. We'll be able to do things that we can't even imagine today. Well, I'm very excited about it. Even though it's scary, I know I ask a lot of tough questions about this because these are my own questions. These are like what bounces around my own head. Well, that's why I'm excited about it also. Because it basically means more intelligence and we'll be able to think about things that we can't even imagine today. And solve problems. Yes. Including like dying, for example.

2:08:24Well, listen, man, I'm glad you're out there. It's very important that people have access to this kind of thinking and you've dedicated your whole life to this. In this book, Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity is near when we merge with AI. It's available now. Did you do the audio version of it? That's being worked on now. Are you doing it? It's coming out June.

2:08:48No. No? I want to hear it in your voice. It's your words. Yeah, that's what people say. Yeah, why don't you do it? You know what you should do. Just get AI to do it. Why waste all that time? They're not doing it. Basically, they could do it now. 100%. Look, and they could take your voice from this podcast and do this book in an audio version. Easy. Do you know what they're doing now? It's Spotify. They're translating this podcast. They're going to translate it to German, French, and Spanish. And it's going to be like your voice in perfect Spanish, my voice in perfect Spanish. Well, this actually came up yesterday.

2:09:28I'll think about that. Pretty wild. Yeah. 100%. You should do that. Okay. My friend Duncan does that all the time. He'll have friends, text, friends, or send a voice message as a fake voice message. That's ridiculous. He'll talk about how he's marrying his cat or something like that. It's just like, just, but he does it with AI. And it sounds exactly like whoever that person is. Okay. So that's the solution. Yeah. Have AI read your, of course, you should have AI read your book. I can't believe we even would think of you sitting down for 40 hours or whatever it would take. It would probably take more than that to read this whole book.

2:10:04And then if you mess up, you got to go back and start again. Well, certainly that's going to be feasible. The feasible now that I could get all the nuances correct. I bet it's pretty close. Yeah. I bet it's pretty close right now. But it has to be very close because we're doing it like in the next month or so and so. I bet I bet. Don't you think they can do it, Jamie? Yeah. I think they can do it right now. Listen, Ray, I appreciate you very much. Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your time. And thank you for this book. When is it available? June 24. June, I got an early copy again.

2:10:37Yes. Yes. Thank you, sir. Really appreciate it. Thank you very much. I like pleasure. Bye, everybody.