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CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman

September 04, 2023 / 01:46:05

This episode features Mustafa Suleyman, co-founder of DeepMind and founder of Inflection AI, discussing the implications of artificial intelligence (AI) on society, safety, and containment. Key topics include the potential risks of AI, the importance of regulation, and the future of technology.

Suleyman shares his experiences from founding DeepMind and the development of AI technologies, including the challenges of ensuring AI benefits humanity while preventing misuse. He emphasizes the need for collective action to address the containment problem and the ethical considerations surrounding AI.

The conversation touches on the historical context of technology regulation, the potential for AI to solve major global issues, and the necessity of a precautionary approach to AI development. Suleyman expresses a sense of urgency for governments and organizations to collaborate on effective containment strategies.

Listeners are encouraged to engage with AI responsibly and understand its implications for the future. The episode concludes with reflections on the balance between optimism and caution in the face of rapid technological advancement.

TLDR

Mustafa Suleyman discusses AI's risks, containment challenges, and the need for collective action to ensure technology benefits humanity.

Episode

1:46:05
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are you uncomfortable talking about this yeah I mean it's pretty wild right Mustafa suan the billionaire founder of
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Google's AI technology he's played a key role in the development of AI from its
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first critical steps in 2020 I moved to work on Google's chat box it was the
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ultimate technology we can use them to turbocharge our knowledge unlike anything else why didn't they release it
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we were nervous we were nervous every organization is going to race to get their hands on intelligence and that's
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going to be incredibly destructive this technology can be used to identify cancerous tumors as it can to identify a
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Target on the battlefield a tiny group of people who wish to cause harm are going to have access to tools that can
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instantly destabilize our world that's the challenge how to stop something that
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can cause harm or potentially kill that's where we need containment do you think that it is containable it has to
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be possible why it must be possible why must it be because otherwise it contains
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us yet you chose to build a company in this space why did you do that because I want to design an AI that on your side I
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honestly think that if we succeed everything is a lot cheaper it's going to power New forms of transportation
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reduce the cost of healthcare but what if we fail the really painful answer to that question is
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that do you ever get sad about it yeah it's intense I think this is fascinating I looked at
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the back end of our YouTube channel and it says that since this channel started 69.9% of you that watch it frequently
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[Music] deal everything that's going on with artificial intelligence now and um this
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new wave and all these terms like AGI and saw another term in your your book called ACI first time I'd heard that
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term how do you feel about it emotionally if you had to incapsulate how you feel emotionally about what's
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going on in this moment how would you do what words would you use I would say say in the past it would have been
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petrified and I think that over time as you really think through the consequences and the pros and cons and
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the trajectory that we're on you adapt and you understand that actually there
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is something incredibly inevitable about this trajectory and that we have to wrap
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our arms around it and guide it and control it as a collective species as a as humanity and I think the more you
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realize how much influence we collectively can have over this outcome the more empowering it is because on the
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face of it this is really going to be the tool that helps us tackle all the challenges that we're facing as a
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species right we need to fix water desalination we need to grow food 100x cheaper than we currently do we need
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renewable energy to be you know ubiquitous and everywhere in our lives we need to adapt to climate change
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everywhere you look in the next 50 years we have to do more with less and there are very very
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few proposals let alone practical solutions for how we get there training machines to help us as AIDS scientific
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research Partners inventors creators is absolutely essential and so the upside is phenomenal it's enormous but AI isn't
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just a thing it's not an inevitable whole its form isn't inevitable right
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its form the exact way that it manifests and appears in our everyday lives and the way that it's governed and who it's
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owned by and how it's trained that is a question that is up to us collectively
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as a species to figure out over the next decade because if we don't Embrace that
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challenge then it happens to us and that's really what I'm I have been wrestling with for 15 years of my career
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is how to intervene in a way that this really does benefit everybody and those benefits far far outweigh the potential
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risks at what stage were you petrified so I founded Deep Mind in 2010 and you know over the course of the
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first few years our progress was fairly modest but quite quickly in sort of 2013
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as the Deep learning Revolution began to take off I could see glimmers of very early versions of AIS
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learning to do really clever things so for example one of our big initial achievements was to Teach an AI to play
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the Atari games so remember Space Invaders and and pong where you batter a ball from left to right and we trained
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this initial AI to purely look at the raw pixels screen by screen flickering or moving in front of the AI and then
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control the actions up down left right shoot or not and it got so good at learning to play this simple game simply
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through attaching a value between the reward like it was it was getting score and taking an action that it learned
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some really clever strategies uh to play the game really well that Us games players and humans hadn't really even
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noticed at least people in the office hadn't noticed it some professionals did
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um and that was amazing to me because I was like wow this simple system that learns through a set of stimuli Plus a
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reward to take some actions can actually discover many strategies clever tricks to play the game well that us humans
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hadn't occurred to us right and that to me is both thrilling because it presents
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the opportunity to invent new knowledge and Advance our civilization but of course in the same
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measure is also petrifying was there a particular moment when you were you were at Deep Mind where you go
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where you had that kind of Eureka Moment Like a day when something happened and and it caused
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that that Epiphany I guess was it yeah it it it was actually a moment even before 2013 where I remember standing in
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the office and watching a very early prototype of one of these image recognition image generation models that
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had um was trained to generate new handwritten black and white digits so imagine 0er to 1 2 3 4 5 6 789 all in
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different style of handwriting on a tiny grid of like 300 pixels by 300 pixels in
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black and white and we were trying to train the AI to generate a new version of one of those digits a number seven in
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a new handwriting sounds so simplistic today given the incredible photorealistic images that are being
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generated right um and I just remember so clearly it it took sort of 10 or 15 seconds and it just resolved it the the
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number appeared it went from complete Black to like slowly gray and then suddenly these were like white pixels
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appeared out of the the black darkness and it revealed a number seven and that sounds so simplistic in hindsight but it
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was amazing I was like wow the model kind of understands the representation of a seven well enough to generate a new
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example of a number seven an image of a number seven you know and you roll forward 10 years and our predictions
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were correct in fact it was quite predictable in hindsight the trajectory that we were on more compute plus vast
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amounts of data has enabled us within a decade to go from predicting black and white digits generating new versions of
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those images to now generating unbelievable photorealistic not just images but videos novel videos with a simple
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natural language instruction or a prompt what has surprised you you said you referred to that as predictable but what
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has surprised you about what's happened over the last decade so I think what was predictable to me
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back then was the generation of images and of audio um because the structure of an image is locally contained so pixels
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that are near one another create straight lines and edges and corners and then eventually they create eyebrows and
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noses and eyes and faces and entire scenes and I could just intuitively in a very simplistic way I could get my head
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around the fact that okay well we're predicting these number sevens you can imagine how you then can expand that out
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to enre images maybe even to videos maybe you know to audio too you know what I said you know a couple seconds
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ago is connected in phon space in the spectrogram but what was much more surprising to me was that those same
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methods for Generation applied in the space of language you know language seems like such a different abstract
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space of ideas when I say like the cat sat on the most people would probably predict Matt
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right but it could be table car chair tree it could be Mountain Cloud I mean there's a gazillion possible next word
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predictions and so the space is so much larger the ideas are so much more abstract I just couldn't wrap my
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intuition around the idea that we would be able to create the incredible large language models that you see today
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your chat gpts chat GPT Google B the Google's Bard inflection my new company has an AI
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called Pi pi. a which stands for personal intelligence and it's as good as chat GPT but much more emotional and
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empathetic and kind so it's just super surprising to me that just growing the
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size of these large language models as we have done by 10x every single year for the last 10 years we've been able to
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produce this and that that that's just an amazingly large number if you just
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kind of pause for a moment to Grapple with the numbers here in 2013 when we trained the Atari AI that I mentioned to
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you at Deep Mind that used two Peta flops of computation so peta peta stands for a million billion
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calculations a flop is a calculation so 2 million billion right which is already an insane
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number of calculations lost me at two it's totally crazy yeah just two of these units that are already really
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large and every year since then we've 10x the number of calculations that can
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be done such that today the biggest language model that we train at inflection uses 10 billion Peta flops so
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10 billion million billion calculations I mean it's just unfathomably large number and what we've really observed is
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that scaling these models by 10x every single year produces this magical experience of talking to an AI that
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feels like you're talking to a human that is super knowledgeable and super smart there's so much that's happened in
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public conversation around AI um and there's so many questions that I have I've I've been speaking to a few people
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about artificial intelligence and understand it and I'm I think where I am right now is I feel quite
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scared um but when I get scared I don't get it's not the type of scared that
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makes me anxious it's not like an emotional scared it's a very logical scared it's my very logical brain hasn't
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been able to figure out how the inevitable outcome that I've arrived at which is that humans become the less
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dominant species on this planet um how that is to be avoided in any way the first chapter of your book The Coming
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way wave is a is is a is titled appropriately to how I feel containment is not possible you you say in that
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chapter the widespread emotional reaction I I was observing is something I've come to call the pessimism aversion
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trap correct what is the pessimism aversion trap well so all of us being included feel
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what you just described when you first get to grips with the idea of this new new coming wave it's scary it's
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petrifying it's threatening is it going to take my job is my daughter or son
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going to fall in love with it you know what does this mean what does it mean to be human in a world where there's these
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other humanlike things that aren't human how do I make sense of that it's super
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scary and a lot of people over the last few years I think things have changed in
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the last six months I have to say but o over the last few years I would say the default reaction has been to avoid
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the pessimism and the fear right to just kind of recoil from it and pretend that
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it's like either not happening or that it's all going to work out to be Rosy
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it's going to be fine we don't have to worry about it people often say well
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we've always created new jobs we've never permanently displaced jobs we've
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only ever seen new jobs be created unemployment is at an all-time low right so there's this default optimism bias
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that we have and I think it's less about a need for optimism and more about a
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fear of P pessimism and so that trap particularly in Elite circles means that often we aren't having the tough
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conversations that we need to have in order to respond to the coming wave are you scared in part about having
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those tough conversations because of how it might be received um not so much anymore so I've spent most of my career
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trying to put those tough questions on the policy table right I've been raising
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these questions the ethics of AI safety and questions of containment for as long
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as I can remember with governments and civil societies and all the rest of it and so I've become used to talking about
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that and you know I think it's essential that we have the honest conversation because we can't let
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let it happen to us we have to openly talk about it is I mean this is a this is a big a
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big question but as you sit here now do you think that it is containable because
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I I I can't see how I can't see how it can be contained chapter 3 is the containment
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problem or you give give the example of how Technologies are often invented for good reasons and for certain use cases
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like the hammer you know which is used you know maybe to build something but it also can be used to kill people
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um and you say in history we haven't been able to ban a technology ever really it has always found a way into
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society um because of other societies have an incentive to have it even if we don't and then we need we need it like
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the nuclear bomb because if they have it then we don't then we're at a disadvantage so are you optimistic
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honestly I don't think an optimism or a pessimism frame is the right one because
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the E both are equally biased in ways that I think distract us as I say in the book on the face of it it does look like
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containment isn't possible we haven't contained or permanently banned a technology of this type in the past
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there are some that we have done right so we banned cfc's for example because
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they were producing a hole in the ozone layer we've banned certain weapons chemical and biological weapons for
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example or blinding lasers Believe It or Not There are such things as lasers that
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will instantly blind you you know so we have stepped back from the frontier in some cases but that's largely where
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there's either cheaper or you know equally effective Alternatives that are quickly adopted in this case
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these Technologies are Omni use so the same core technology can be used to identify you know cancerous tumors in
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chest x-rays as it can to identify a Target on the battlefield for an aerial strike so that mixed use or Omni use is
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going to drive the proliferation because there's huge commercial incentives because it's going to deliver a huge
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benefit and do a lot of good and that's the challenge that we have to figure out
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is how to stop something which on the face of it is so good but at the same time can be used in really bad ways too
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do you think we will I do think we will so I think that nation states Remain the
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backbone of our civilization we have chosen to concentrate power in a single Authority the nation state and we pay
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our tax is and we've given the nation state a monopoly over the use of violence and now the nation state is
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going to have to update itself quickly to be able to contain this technology because without
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that kind of essentially oversight both of those of us who are making it but also crucially of the open
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source then it will proliferate and it will spread but regulation is still a real tool and we we can use it and we
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must what does what does the world look like in um let's say 30 years if that
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doesn't happen in your view people because people the average person can't really gra grapple their
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head around artificial intelligence when they think of it they think of like these large Lang large language models
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that you can chat to and ask it about your homework that's like the average person's understanding of artificial
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intelligence because that's all they've ever been exposed to of it you have a
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different view because of the work you've spent the last decade doing so to try and give Dave who's I don't know an
00:20:04
Uber driver in Birmingham an idea who's listening to this right now what artificial intelligence intelligence is
00:20:10
and its potential capabilities if you know there's no there's no containment
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what does it what does the world look like in 30 years so I think it's going to feel
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largely like another human so think about the things that you can do not again in the physical world but in the
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digital world 2050 I'm thinking of I'm in 2050 2050 we will have robots 2050 we
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will definitely have robots I mean more than that 2050 we will have new biological beings as well because the
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same trajectory that we've been on with hardware and software is also going to
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apply to the platform of biology are you uncomfortable talking about this yeah I
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mean it's pretty wild right don't know you crossed your arms and no I always I always look I always I
00:21:04
always use that as as a cue for someone when when a subject matter is uncomfortable and it's interesting
00:21:10
because I know you know so much more than me and about this and I know youve spent way more hours thinking off into
00:21:16
the future about the consequences of this I mean you've written a book about
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it so P like you spent 10 years at the very deep mind is one of the the Pinnacle companies the Pioneers in this
00:21:24
whole Space so you know you know some stuff and it's funny because when I was
00:21:29
I watched an interview with Elon Musk and he was asked a question similar to this I know he speaks in certain certain
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tone of voice but he said that he he's almost he's gotten to the point where he
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thinks he's living in suspended disbelief where he thinks that if he spent too long thinking about it he
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wouldn't understand the purpose of what he's doing right now and he he says that
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it's more dangerous than nuclear weapons um and that it's too late too late to
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stop it there this's one interview that's chilling and I was filming Dragons Den the other day and I showed
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the dragons the clip I was said look what El musk said when he was asked about what his child what advice he
00:22:01
should give to his children in a world of in an an inevitable world of artificial intelligence it's the first
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time I've seen Elon Musk stop for like 20 seconds and not know what to say stumble stumble stumble stumble
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stumble and then conclude that he's living in suspended disbelief yeah I mean I think it's a
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great phrase that is the moment we're in we have to it's what I said to you about
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the pessimism verion trap and we have to confront the probab ility of seriously dark outcomes and we have to spend time
00:22:33
really thinking about those consequences because the competitive nature of companies and of nation states is going
00:22:42
to mean that every organization is going to race to get their hands on intelligence intelligence is going to be
00:22:51
a new form of of capital right just as there was a grab for land or there's a
00:22:56
grab for oil there's a grab for anything that enables you to do more with less
00:23:01
faster better smarter right and we can clearly see the predictable trajectory of the exponential improvements in these
00:23:09
Technologies and so we should expect that wherever there is power there's now
00:23:15
a new tool to amplify that power accelerate that power turbocharge it right and you know in 2050 if you ask me
00:23:25
to look out there I mean of of course it makes me Grimace that's why I was like
00:23:30
oh my God it's it really does feel like a new species and and that has to be brought
00:23:38
under control we cannot allow ourselves to be dislodged from our position as the
00:23:48
dominant species on this planet we cannot allow that you mentioned robots so these are sort of adjacent
00:23:55
technologies that Rising with artificial intelligence robots you mentioned um biological new biological
00:24:04
species give me some light on what you mean by that well so so far the dream of Robotics hasn't really come to fruition
00:24:14
right I mean we we still have the most we have now are sort of drones and little bit of self-driving
00:24:21
cars but that is broadly on the same trajectory as these other Technologies and I think that over for the next 30
00:24:29
Years you know we are going to have humanoid robotics we're going to have um
00:24:35
you know physical tools within our everyday system that we can rely on that will be
00:24:44
pretty good that would be pretty good to do many of the physical tasks and that's
00:24:48
a little bit further out because I think it you know there's a lot of tough problems there but it's still coming in
00:24:53
the same way and likewise with Biology you know we can now see sequence a genome for a millionth of the cost of
00:25:02
the first genome which took place in 2000 so 20ish years ago the cost has come down by a million times and we can
00:25:11
now increasingly synthesize that is create or manufacture new bits of DNA which obviously give rise to life in every
00:25:22
possible form and we're starting to engineer that DNA to either remove traits
00:25:29
uh or capabilities that we don't like or indeed to add new things that we want it
00:25:33
to do we want you know fruit to last longer or we want meat to have higher protein etc etc synthetic meat to have
00:25:42
higher protein levels and what's the implications of that potential implications I think the the darkest
00:25:54
scenario there is that people will experiment with pathogens engineered you know synthetic pathogens
00:26:03
that might end up accidentally or intentionally being more transmissible I.E they they can spread
00:26:10
faster um or more lethal I.E you know they cause more harm or potentially kill like a pandemic like a pandemic um
00:26:21
and that's where we need containment right we have to limit access to the tool TOs and the knowhow to carry out
00:26:31
that kind of experimentation so one framework of thinking about this with respect to making containment possible
00:26:39
is that we really are experimenting with dangerous materials and Anthrax is not something
00:26:47
that can be bought over the Internet that can be freely experimented with and likewise the very best of these tools in
00:26:55
a few years time are going to be capable of creating you know new synthetic um pandemic pathogens and so we have to
00:27:05
restrict access to those things that means restricting access to the compute it means restricting access to the
00:27:11
software that runs the models to the cloud environments that provide apis provide you access to experiment with
00:27:18
those things um and of course on the biology side it means restricting access to some of the substances and people
00:27:24
aren't going to like this people are not going to like that claim because it
00:27:30
means that those who want to do good with those tools those who want to create a start up the small guy the
00:27:38
little developer that struggles to comply with all the regulations they're going to be pissed off understandably
00:27:44
right but that is the age we're in deal with it like we have to confront that
00:27:51
reality that means that we have to approach this with the precautionary principle right never before in the
00:27:58
invention of a technology or in the creation of a regulation have we proactively said we need to go slowly we
00:28:05
need to make sure that this first does no harm the precautionary principle and that is just an unprecedented moment no
00:28:13
other Technology's done that right because I think we collectively in the industry those of us who are closest to
00:28:20
the work can see a place in 5 years or 10 years where it could get out of control and we have to get on top of it
00:28:27
now now and it's better to forgo like that is give up some of those potential
00:28:33
upsides or benefits until we can be more sure that it can be contained that it can be controlled that it always serves
00:28:41
our Collective interests and I I think about that so I think about what you've
00:28:45
just said there about being able to create these pathogens these diseases and viruses Etc that you know could
00:28:51
become weapons or whatever else but with artificial intelligence and the power of
00:28:55
that intelligence with these um pathogens you could theoretically ask one of these systems to create a virus
00:29:06
that a very deadly virus um you could ask the artificial intelligence to create a very deadly
00:29:12
virus that has certain properties um maybe even that mutates over time in a certain way so it only
00:29:19
kills a certain amount of people kind of like a nuclear bomb of of viruses that you could just pop hit an enemy with now
00:29:26
if I'm if I hear that and I go okay that's powerful I would like one of those you know there might be an
00:29:31
adversary out there that goes I would like one of those just in case America get out of hand and America's thinking
00:29:36
you know I want one of those in case Russia gets out of hand and so okay you might take a precautionary approach in
00:29:43
the United States but that's only going to put you on the back foot when China
00:29:47
or Russia or one of your adversaries accelerates forward in that in that path and this was the same with the the
00:29:52
nuclear bomb and you know you nailed it I mean that is is the race condition we refer to that as the race condition the
00:30:03
idea that if I don't do it the other party is going to do it and therefore I
00:30:10
must do it but the problem with that is that it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy so the default there is that we
00:30:16
all end up doing it and that can't be right because there is a opportunity for
00:30:23
massive cooperation here there's a shared that is between us and China and every other quote unquote them or they
00:30:31
or enemy that we want to create we've all got a shared interest in advancing
00:30:39
the collective health and well-being of humans and Humanity how well have we done at promoting shared interest well
00:30:47
in the development of Technologies over the years even at like a corporate level
00:30:51
even you know you know the nuclear nonproliferation treaty has been reasonably successful there's only nine
00:30:58
nuclear states in the world today we've stopped many like three countries actually gave up nuclear weapons because
00:31:05
we incentivize them with sanctions and threats and economic rewards um small groups have tried to get access to
00:31:12
nuclear weapons and so far have largely failed it's expensive though right and
00:31:16
hard to like uranium as a as a chemical to keep it stable and to to buy it and to house it I mean I couldn't just put
00:31:22
it in the shed you certainly couldn't put it in a shed you can't download
00:31:26
uranium 235 off the Internet it's not available open source that is totally true so it's got different
00:31:32
characteristics for sure but a kid in Russia could you know in his bedroom could download something onto his
00:31:38
computer that's incredibly harmful in the artificial intelligence Department
00:31:44
right I think that that will be possible at some point in the next five years it's true because there's a weird Trend
00:31:51
that's going on here on the one hand You've Got The Cutting Edge AI models
00:31:58
that are built by Google and open Ai and my company inflection and they cost hundreds of millions of dollars and
00:32:05
there's only a few of them but on the other hand the what was cutting edge a
00:32:10
few years ago is now open source today so gpt3 which came out in the summer of 2020 is now reproduced as an open-
00:32:22
Source model so the code and the weights of the model the design of the model and
00:32:26
the actual implementation code is completely freely available on the web and it's tiny it's like 60 times or 60
00:32:36
70 times smaller than the original model which means that it's cheaper to use and
00:32:41
cheaper to run and that's as you know we've said earlier like that's the
00:32:45
natural trajectory of technologies that become useful they get more efficient they get cheaper and they spread further
00:32:52
and so that's the containment challenge that's really the essence of what I'm
00:32:57
sort of trying to raise in my book is to frame the challenge of the next 30 to 50
00:33:03
years as around containment um and around confronting proliferation do you believe because
00:33:11
we're both going to be alive unless this you know there some robot kills us but
00:33:14
we're both going to be alive in 30 years time I hope so maybe the podcast will
00:33:19
still be going unless AI is now taking my job it's very possible so I'm I'm going
00:33:26
to sit you here and you know when you're you you'll be what 60 68 years old I'll
00:33:30
be 60 um and I'll say at that point when we have that conversation do you think we would have
00:33:41
been successful in containment at a global level I think we have to be I can't even think that we're not why
00:33:59
because I'm fundamentally a humanist and I think that we have to make a choice to
00:34:05
put our species first and I think that that's what we have to be defending for the next 50 years
00:34:15
that's what we have to defend because look it it's it's certainly possible
00:34:21
that we invent these agis in such a way that they are always going to be provably um
00:34:31
subservient uh to humans and take instructions you know from their human controller every single time but enough
00:34:41
of us think that we can't be sure about that that I don't think we should take
00:34:47
the gamble basically so that's why I think that we should focus on containment and non
00:34:54
proliferation because some people if they do have access of the technology will want to take those risks and they
00:35:00
will just want to see like what's on the other side of the door you know and they
00:35:05
might end up opening Pandora's Box and that's a decision that affects all of us
00:35:10
and that's the challenge of the networked age you know we live in this globalized world and we use these words
00:35:15
like globalization and we you sort of forget what globalization means this is what globalization is this is what a
00:35:21
networked world is it means that someone taking one small action can suddenly spread
00:35:28
everywhere instantly regardless of their intentions when they took the action it
00:35:33
maybe you know unintentional like you say may be that they're never they weren't ever meaning to do
00:35:41
harm well I think I asked you when I said it you 30 years time you said that there will be like human level
00:35:48
intelligence you'll be interacting with you know this new species but the species for me to think the the species
00:35:54
will want to interact with me is feels like wishful thinking because what will I be to them you know like I've got a
00:36:02
French Bulldog Pablo and I can't imagine our IQ is that far apart like like you
00:36:08
know in relative terms my the IQ between me and my dog Pablo I can't imagine
00:36:12
that's that far apart even when I think about is it like the orangutang where we
00:36:16
only have like 1% difference in DNA or something crazy and yet they throw their poop around and I'm sat here
00:36:22
broadcasting around the world there's quite a difference in that 1% you know
00:36:27
and then I think about this new species where as you write in your book in chapter
00:36:33
4 there seems to be no upper limit to ai's potential intelligence why would such an
00:36:39
intelligence want to interact with me well it depends how you design it so I think that our goal one of the
00:36:48
challenges of containment is to design AIS that we want to interact with that want to interact with us right if you
00:36:58
set an objective function for an AI a goal for an AI by its design which you know inherently disregards or
00:37:07
disrespects you as a human and your goals then it's going to wander off and do a lot of strange things what if it
00:37:12
has kids and the kids are you know what I mean what if it replicates in a way where because because I've I've heard
00:37:19
this this conversation around like it depends how we design it but you know I think about
00:37:28
it's kind of like if I have a kid and the kid grows up to be a thousand times
00:37:32
more intelligent than me to think that I could have any influence on it on it when it's a thinking
00:37:39
sentient developing species again feels like I'm overestimating my version of
00:37:46
intelligence and importance and significance in the face of something that is incomprehensibly like a even a
00:37:52
hundred times more intelligent than me and the speed of its computation is a thousand times what my
00:37:58
the meat in my skull can do yeah like how how how is it gonna how how do I know it's going to respect me or care
00:38:04
about me or understand you know that I me you know I think that comes back down to the
00:38:10
containment challenge I think that if we can't be confident that it's going to
00:38:15
respect you and understand you and work for you and us as a species overall then
00:38:24
that's where we have to adopt the precautionary principle I don't think we
00:38:28
should be taking those kinds of risks in experimentation and design and now I'm
00:38:33
not saying it's possible to design an AI that doesn't have those self-improvement
00:38:41
capabilities in the limit in like 30 or 50 years I think it you know that's kind
00:38:45
of what I was saying is like it seems likely that if you have one like that it's going to take advantage of infinite
00:38:52
amounts of data and infinite amounts of computation and it's going to kind of
00:38:55
outstrip our ability to act and so I think we have to step back from that precipice that's what the containment
00:39:04
problem is is that it's it's actually saying no sometimes it's saying no and
00:39:11
that's a different sort of muscle that we've never really exercised as a
00:39:16
civilization and and that's obviously why containment appears not to be possible because we've never done it
00:39:22
before we've never done it before and every inch of our you know Comm and politics and our war and all of our
00:39:30
instincts are just like Clash compete Clash compete prophit profit grow beat exactly dominate you know fear them be
00:39:39
paranoid like now all this nonsense about like China being this new evil like it how does that slip into our
00:39:46
culture how are we suddenly all shifted from thinking it's the the the Muslim
00:39:50
terrorists about to blow us all up to now it's the Chinese who are about to you know blow up Kansas it's just like
00:39:57
what are we talking about that like we really have to pair back the paranoia and the fear and the othering um because
00:40:06
those are the incentive dynamics that are going to drive us to you know cause self harm to humanity thinking the worst
00:40:14
in each other the the there's couple of key moments when in my understanding of
00:40:18
artificial intelligence that have been kind of Paradigm Paradigm shifts for me because I think like many people I
00:40:23
thought of artificial intelligence as you know like a like a child I was Raising and I would program I would code
00:40:31
it to do certain things so I would code it to play chess and I would tell it the
00:40:36
moves that are conducive with being successful in chess and then I remember watching that like Alpha go documentary
00:40:43
right which I think was deep deep mind wasn't it that was us yeah you guys so
00:40:45
you programmed this this um artificial intelligence to play the game go which is kind of like just think of it kind of
00:40:50
like a chess or a black am or whatever and it eventually just beats the best player in the world of all time and it
00:40:55
and the way it learned how to beat the best player in the world of all time the world champion who was by the way
00:41:00
depressed when he got beat um was just by playing itself right and then there's
00:41:06
this moment I think in is it game four or something where right it does this move that no one could have predicted a
00:41:12
move that seemingly makes absolutely no sense right in those moments where no one
00:41:20
trained it to do that and it did something unexpected Beyond where humans are trying to figure it out in hindsight
00:41:26
this is where I go how do you how do you train it if it's doing things we didn't
00:41:30
anticipate right like how do you control it when it's doing things that humans
00:41:34
couldn't anticipate it doing where we're looking at that move it's called like
00:41:37
move 37 or something correct yeah is it move 37 it is look at my intelligence F nice work yeah I'm I'm going to survive
00:41:43
a bit longer than I thought it's like move 37 you at least another decade in
00:41:48
you um move 37 does this crazy thing and you see everybody like lean in and go why has it done that and it turns out to
00:41:55
be brilliant that humans couldn't couldn't forecast the commentator actually thought it was a mistake yeah
00:42:00
he was a pro and he was like this this definitely a mistake you know it's the
00:42:03
the alpha go lost the game but it was so far ahead of us that it knew something we didn't right right that's when that's
00:42:10
when I lost hope in this whole idea of like oh train it to do what we want like a dog like sit pour roll over right well
00:42:18
the real challenge is that we actually want it to do those things like when it discovers a new strategy
00:42:27
or it invents a new idea or it helps us find like you know a cure for some disease like that's why we're building
00:42:34
it right because we're reaching the limits of what we as you know humans can
00:42:41
invent and solve right especially with what we're facing of you know in terms
00:42:45
of population growth over the next 30 Years and how climate change is going to affect that and so on like we really
00:42:52
want these tools to turbocharge us right and yet like it's that creativity and
00:42:57
that invention which obviously makes us also feel well maybe it it is really going to
00:43:05
do things that we don't like for sure right so interesting how do you contend with all
00:43:13
of this how do you contend with the the clearup side and then you must like Elon
00:43:19
must be completely aware of the the horrifying existential risk at the same time and and you're building a big
00:43:28
company in this space which I think is valued at 4 billion now inflection AI which has got this its own model called
00:43:36
Pi so you're building in this space you understand the incentives at both a nation state level and a corporate level
00:43:43
that we're we're going to keep planing forward even if the US stops there's
00:43:46
going to be some other country that sees that as a huge Advantage their economy will swell because they did if this
00:43:51
company stops then this one's going to get a get a huge advantage and their shareholders are you know
00:43:58
everyone's investing in AI full steam ahead but you feel you can see this huge
00:44:03
existential risk is it suspended is that the pathw suspended disbelief I mean just to kind of like
00:44:09
just know that it's I feel like I know that it's going to happen no one's been
00:44:13
able to tell me otherwise but just don't think too much about it and you'll be okay I think you
00:44:21
can't give up right I think that in some ways you're realization exactly what
00:44:28
you've just described like weighing up two conflicting and horrible truths about what is likely to happen those
00:44:37
contradictions that is a kind of honesty and a wisdom I think that we need all collectively to realize because the only
00:44:47
path through this is to be straight up and embrace you know the risks and embrace the default trajectory of all
00:44:56
these competing incentives driving forward to kind of make this feel like inevitable and if you put the blinkers
00:45:03
on and you kind of just ignore it or if you just be super Rosy and it's all going to be all right and if you say
00:45:07
that we've always figured it out anyway then you we're not going to get the
00:45:11
energy and the dynamism and engagement from everybody to try to figure this out and that's what gives me like reason to
00:45:19
be hopeful because I think that we make progress by getting everybody paying attention to this it isn't going to be
00:45:28
about those who are currently the AI scientists or those who are the technologists you know like me or the
00:45:34
Venture capitalists or just the politicians like all of those people no one's got answers so that's what we have
00:45:40
to confront there are no obvious answers to this profound question and I've basically written the book to say prove
00:45:51
that I'm wrong you know containment must be possible and I it must be it must be
00:45:59
possible it has to be possible it has to be you want it to be I I desperately want it to be yeah why must it be
00:46:08
because otherwise I think you're in the camp of believing that this is the inevitable evolution of humans the
00:46:17
transhuman kind of view you know some people would argue like what is okay let's part let's let's stretch the
00:46:24
timelines out okay so let's not talk about 30 years let's talk about 200
00:46:31
years like what is this going to look like in 2200 you tell me you're smarter than
00:46:40
me I mean it's mindblowing it's mind-blowing we'll have quantum computers by then what's a quantum
00:46:48
computer a quantum computer is a completely different type of computing architecture which in simple
00:46:57
terms basically allows you to those those calculations that I described at the beginning billions and
00:47:05
billions of flops those billions of flops can be done in a single computation so everything that you see
00:47:13
in the digital world today relies on computers processing information and and the speed of that processing is a
00:47:21
friction it kind of slows things down right you remember back in the day old School modems 56k modem the dialup sound
00:47:30
and the image pixel loading like pixel by pixel that was because the computers were slow and we're getting to a point
00:47:37
now where the computers are getting faster and faster and faster and Quantum Computing is like a whole new leap like
00:47:44
way way way Beyond where we where we currently are and so by analogy how would I understand that so like if my
00:47:52
I've got my dialup modem over here and then Quantum Computing over here right what's the how do I what's the
00:48:00
difference well I don't know what it's really difficult to exp a billion times
00:48:04
faster oh it's it's it's like it's like billions of billions times faster it's
00:48:08
it's it's much more than that I mean one way of think about it is like a floppy disc which I guess most
00:48:16
people remember 1.4 megabytes a physical thing back in the day in 1960 or so that was basically an entire
00:48:27
pallets worth of computer that was moved around by a forklift truck right which is insane today you know you have
00:48:37
billions and billions of times that floppy disc in your smartphone in your pocket tomorrow you're going to have
00:48:47
billions and billions of smartphones in minuscule wearable devices there'll be
00:48:54
cheap fridge magnets that you know are constantly on everywhere sensing all the time monitoring processing analyzing
00:49:02
improving optimizing you know and they'll be super cheap so it's super unclear what do you
00:49:10
do with all of that knowledge and information I mean it's ultimately knowledge creates value when you know
00:49:18
the relationship between things you can improve them you know make it more efficient and so more data is what has
00:49:26
enabled us to build all the value of you know online in the last 25 years and so
00:49:32
what does that look like in 150 years I can't really even imagine to be honest
00:49:36
with you it's very hard to say I don't think everybody is going to be working why would we yeah what we
00:49:45
wouldn't be working in that kind of environment I mean look the other trajectory to add to this is the cost of
00:49:53
energy production you know AI if it really helps us solve battery storage which is the missing piece I
00:50:05
think to really tackle climate change then we will be able to Source basically source and store infinite energy from
00:50:15
the Sun and I think in 20 or so years time 20 30 years time that is going to be a cheap and widely available if not
00:50:23
completely freely available resource and if you think about it everything in life has the cost of energy built into
00:50:32
its production value and so if you strip that out everything is likely to get a lot cheaper we'll be able to desalinate
00:50:41
water we'll be able to grow crops much much cheaper we'll be able to grow much
00:50:46
higher quality food right it's going to power New forms of transportation it's
00:50:50
going to reduce the cost of drug production and Healthcare right so all of those gains
00:50:57
obviously there'll be a huge commercial incentive to drive the production of
00:51:00
those gains but the cost of producing them is going to go through the floor I think that's one key thing that a lot of
00:51:05
people don't realize that is a reason to be hugely hopeful and optimistic about
00:51:09
the future everything is going to get radically cheaper in 30 to 50 years it's a 200 years time we have no
00:51:20
idea what the world looks like it's uh this goes back to the point about being
00:51:24
is it did you say transhumanist right what does that mean transhumanism I mean it's a group of
00:51:32
people who basically believe that you that that humans and our soul and our being will one day transcend or
00:51:44
move beyond our biological substrate okay so our physical body our brain our biology is just an enabler for your
00:51:55
intelligence and who you are as a person and there's a group of kind of crack
00:52:03
Bots basically I think who think that we're going to be able to upload ourselves to a silicon substrate right a
00:52:13
computer that can hold the essence of what it means to be Stephen so you in 200 in 20 uh in in
00:52:22
2200 will could well still be You by their reasoning but you'll live on a server somewhere
00:52:30
why are they wrong I think about all these adjacent Technologies like biological um biological advancements
00:52:36
did you call it like biosynthesis or something was yeah synthetic biology syn synthetic biology um I think about the
00:52:44
nanotechnology development right think about Quantum Computing the the progress in artificial intelligence everything
00:52:50
becoming cheaper and I think why why are they wrong it's hard to say precisely
00:52:57
but broadly speaking I haven't seen any evidence yet that we're able to extract
00:53:03
the essence of a being from a brain right it's that that that that kind of dualism that you know there is a mind
00:53:11
and a body and a spirit that is a I I don't think I don't see much evidence
00:53:18
for that even in Neuroscience um that actually it's much more one and the same
00:53:22
so I don't think you know you're going to be able to emulate the entire brain
00:53:26
so their thesis is that well some of them cryogenically store their brain after death Jesus so they they have it
00:53:33
they' they they wear these like you know how you have like an organ donor tag or
00:53:37
whatever so they have a cryogenically freeze me when I die tag and so they there's like a special like ambulance
00:53:45
services that will come pick you up because obviously you need to do it really quickly the moment you die you
00:53:49
need to get put into a cryogenic freezer to preserve your you know brain forever
00:53:55
I personally think this is this is is nuts but you know their belief is that you'll then be able to reboot that
00:54:01
biological brain and then transfer you over um it it doesn't seem plausible to me
00:54:08
when you said at the start of this this little topic here that you it must be possible to contain it said it must be
00:54:15
possible um the the reason why I I struggle with that is because in chapter 7 you say line in your book that AI is
00:54:22
more autonomous than any other technology in history for centuries the idea that
00:54:26
technology is is somehow running out of control a self-directed and self-propelling force beyond the Realms
00:54:32
of human agency remained a fiction not anym and this idea of autonomous technology that
00:54:43
is acting uninstructed um and is intelligent and then you say we must be able to contain
00:54:52
it it's kind of like a massive dog like a big rottweiler yeah that is you know a thousand times bigger
00:54:59
than me and me looking up at it and going I'm going to get take you for a walk y yeah and then it's just looking
00:55:05
down at me and just stepping over me or stepping on me well that's actually a good example
00:55:12
because we have actually contained Rottweilers before we've contained gorillas and you know tigers and
00:55:20
crocodiles and pandemic pathogens and nuclear weapons and so you know it's easy to be you know a hater on what
00:55:29
we've achieved but this is the most peaceful moment in the history of our species this is a moment when our
00:55:36
biggest problem is that people eat too much think about that we've spent our
00:55:42
entire evolutionary period running around looking for food and trying to stop you know our enemies
00:55:49
throwing rocks at us and we've had this incredible period of 500 years where you know each year things have
00:56:00
broadly well maybe each each Century let's say there's been a few ups and
00:56:04
downs but things have broadly got better and we're on a trajectory for you know
00:56:10
lifespans to increase and quality of life to increase and health and well-being to improve and I think that's
00:56:17
because in many ways we have succeeded in containing forces that appear to be more powerful than ourselves it just
00:56:25
requires unbelievable creativity and adaptation it requires compromise and it requires an a new tone right a much more
00:56:37
humble tone to governance and politics and and how we run our world not this kind of like hyper aggressive
00:56:45
adversarial paranoia tone that we talked about previously but one that is like much more wise than that much more
00:56:53
accepting that we are unleashing this force that does have that that potential to be the Rott riler that you described
00:56:59
but that we must contain that as our number one priority that has to be the thing that we focus on because otherwise
00:57:06
it contains us i' I've been thinking a lot recently about cyber security as well just
00:57:11
broadly on an individual level in a world where there are these kinds of tools which seems to be quite close um
00:57:18
large language models brings up this whole new question about cyber security and cyber safety and you know in a world
00:57:25
where there's these ability to generate audio and language and videos that seem
00:57:31
to be real um what can we trust and you know I was watching a video of a of a of
00:57:37
a young girl whose grandmother was called up by a voice that was made to sound like her son saying he'd been in a
00:57:44
car accident and asking for money and her nearly sending the money or this whole you know because this really
00:57:50
brings into Focus that we our lives are build on built on trust trusting the things we see here in
00:57:57
watch and in in and now we're at feels like a a a moment where we're no longer
00:58:04
going to be able to trust what we see on the internet on the phone what what what advice do you do we
00:58:11
you have for people who were worried about this so skepticism I think is healthy and
00:58:20
necessary and I think that we're going to need it um even more than than we ever did right and so if you think about
00:58:29
how we've adapted to the first wave of this which was spammy email scams um everybody got them and over
00:58:38
time people learned to identify them and be skeptical of them and reject them likewise you know I'm sure many of us
00:58:46
get like text messages I certainly get loads of text messages trying to fish me and ask me to meet up or do this that
00:58:52
and the other and we've adapted right now I think we should all know and expect that criminals will use these
00:59:02
tools to manipulate us just as you've described I mean you know the voice is
00:59:08
going to be humanlike the Deep fake is going to be super convincing and there are actually ways around those things so
00:59:18
for example the reason why the banks invented OTP um one-time passwords where they send you a text message with a
00:59:26
special code um is precisely for this reason so that you have a 2fa a two Factor authentication increasingly we
00:59:34
will have a three or four Factor authentication where you have to triangulate between multiple separate
00:59:42
independent sources and it won't just be like call your bank manager and release
00:59:46
the funds right so this is where we need the creativity and energy and attention of everybody
00:59:54
because defense the kind of defensive measures have to evolve as quickly as the potential offensive measures the attacks
01:00:04
that are coming I heard you say this that you think um some people are for many of
01:00:10
these problems we're going to need to develop AIS to defend us from the AIS right we kind of already have that
01:00:18
right so we have automated ways of detecting spam online these days you know most of the time there are um
01:00:27
machine Learning Systems which are trying to identify when your credit card is used in a fraudulent way that's not a
01:00:34
human sitting there looking at patterns of spending traffic in real time that's
01:00:38
an AI that is like flagging that something looks off um likewise with data centers or security cameras a lot
01:00:47
of those security cameras these days are you know have tracking algorithms that look for you know surprising sounds or
01:00:55
like if a if a glass window is is smashed that'll be detected by an AI often that is you know listening on the
01:01:03
security camera so you know that's kind of what I mean by that is that increasingly those AIS will get more
01:01:09
capable and we'll want to use them for defensive purposes and that's exactly
01:01:14
what it looks like to have good healthy well-functioning controlled AIS that serve us I went on one of these large
01:01:20
language models and and said to me give I said to the large language model give me an example where in artificial
01:01:25
intelligence takes over the world or whatever and just and results in the destruction of humanity and then tell me
01:01:31
what we'd need to do to prevent it and it said it gave me this wonderful example of this AI called Cynthia that
01:01:39
threatens to destroy the world and it says the way to defend that would be a different AI which had a different name
01:01:46
and it said that this one would be acting in human interests and we'd basically be fighting one AI with
01:01:51
another Ai and of and of course of course of course that level if Cynthia started to wreak hav havoc on the world
01:01:59
and take control of the nuclear weapons and infrastructure and all that we would
01:02:02
need an equally intelligent weapon to fight it although one of the interesting things that we found um over the last
01:02:12
few decades is that it so far tended to be the AI plus the human that has that is still dominating that's the case in
01:02:21
chess uh in go and other games um that in go it's still yeah so there was a paper that came out a few months ago
01:02:31
two months ago that showed that a human was actually able to beat The Cutting Edge go program um even one that was
01:02:38
better than Alpha go with a new strategy that they had discovered um you know so
01:02:44
obviously it's not just a sort of game over environment where the AI just arrives and it gets better like humans
01:02:50
also adapt they get super smart they like I say get more cynical ask get more more skeptical ask you know good
01:02:58
questions invent their own things use their own AIS to adapt and that's the evolutionary nature of what it means to
01:03:05
have a technology right I mean everything is a technology like your pair of glasses made you smarter in a
01:03:12
way like before there were glasses and people got bad eyesight they weren't able to read you know suddenly those who
01:03:18
did adopt those Technologies were able to read for you know longer in their lives or under low light conditions and
01:03:24
they were able to consume more information and got smarter and so that is the trajectory of Technology it's
01:03:29
this iterative interplay between you know human and machine that makes us better over time you know the potential
01:03:39
um consequences if if we don't reach a point of containment yet you chose to
01:03:43
build a company in this space yeah why why that why did you do that because I believe that the best way to
01:03:56
uh demonstrate how to build safe and and contained AI is to actually experiment with it in practice and I think that if
01:04:08
we are just Skeptics or critics and we stand back from The Cutting Edge then we give up that opportunity to shape
01:04:16
outcomes to you know all of those other actors that we referred to whether it's
01:04:22
like China and the US going at each other's throats uh you know you know or other big companies that are purely
01:04:27
pursuing profit at all costs and so it doesn't solve all the problems of course
01:04:33
it's super hard and again it's full of contradictions but I honestly think it's
01:04:38
the right way for everybody to proceed you know if experiment at the front yeah if you're afraid Russia Putin understand
01:04:47
right what reduces fear is deep understanding spend time playing with these models look at their weaknesses
01:04:54
they're not superhuman yet they make tons of mistakes they're crappy in lots
01:04:58
of ways they're actually not that hard to make the more you've experimented has
01:05:03
it has that correlated with a reduction in fear cheeky question no but that's yes
01:05:12
and no you're totally right yes it has in the sense that you know the problem
01:05:17
is the more you learn the more you realize yeah that's what I'm saying I
01:05:22
was fine before I started talking about Ai and now more I've talked about it it's true it's true it's it's sort of
01:05:30
pulling on a thread which it's a crazy spiral um yeah I mean like I think in the short term It's Made
01:05:39
Me way less afraid because I I don't see that kind of existential harm that we've
01:05:45
been talking about in the next decade or two but longer term that's that's where
01:05:49
I struggle to wrap my head around how things play out in 30 years some people say
01:05:57
government regulation will sorted out you discussed this in Chapter 13 of your book where you which is titled
01:06:04
containment must be possible I love how you didn't say is yeah containment must
01:06:11
be containment must be possible um what do you say to people that say government
01:06:15
regulation will sorted out I had rishy sunak did some announcement and he's got
01:06:18
a cobra committee coming together they'll handle it that's right and the
01:06:23
EU have a huge piece of regulation called the EU AI act um um you know Joe President Joe Biden has you know gotten
01:06:32
his own you know set of proposals and um you know we've been working with with
01:06:38
both you know Rishi sunak and and Biden and you know trying to contribute and shape it in the best way that we can
01:06:44
look it isn't going to happen without regulation so regulation is essential is
01:06:50
critical um again going back to the precautionary principle but at the same time regulation isn't enough you know I
01:06:59
often hear people say well we'll just regulate it we'll just stop we'll just
01:07:04
stop we'll just stop we'll slow down um and the problem with that is that it
01:07:10
kind of ignores the fact that the people who are putting together the regulation
01:07:17
don't really understand enough about the detail today you know in their defense
01:07:22
they're rapidly trying to wrap their head around it especially in in the last
01:07:25
6 months and that's a great relief to me cuz I feel the burden is now increasingly shared and you know just
01:07:32
from a personal perspective I'm like I feel like I've been saying this for
01:07:36
about a decade and just in the last six months now everyone's coming at me and
01:07:40
saying like you know what's going on I'm like great this is the conversation we
01:07:44
need to be having because everybody can start to see the glimmers of the future like what will happen if a chat GPT like
01:07:52
product or a piie like product really does improve over the next 10 years and so when I say you know regulation is not
01:08:00
enough what I mean is it needs movement it needs culture it needs people who are
01:08:06
actually building and making you know in like modern creative critical ways not just like giving it up to you know
01:08:14
companies or small groups of people right we need lots of different people experimenting with strategies for
01:08:19
containment isn't it predicted that this industry is A1 15 trillion dollar industry or something like that yeah
01:08:26
I've heard that it is a lot so if I'm rishy and I know that I'm going to be
01:08:30
chucked out of office Rish is the prime minister of the UK If I'm going to be
01:08:34
trucked out of office in two years unless this economy gets good I don't want to do anything to slow down that
01:08:39
$15 trillion dollar bag that I could be on the receiving end of I would I would definitely not want to slow that 15
01:08:45
billion trillion dollar bag and give it to like America or Canada or some other country I'd want that $15 trillion doll
01:08:53
windfall to be on my country right so I have I have no other than the long-term you know health and success of humanity
01:09:03
in my four-year election window I've got to do everything I can to boost these
01:09:07
numbers right and get us looking good so I I could give you lip service but but but listen I'm not going
01:09:15
to be here unless these numbers look good right exactly that's another one of
01:09:22
the problems short-termism is everywhere who is responsible for thinking about the 20-year
01:09:31
future who is it I mean that's a deep question right I mean we we we the world
01:09:36
is happening to us on a decade by decade time scale it's also happening hour by
01:09:41
hour so change is just ripping through us and this arbitrary window of governance of like a four-year election
01:09:49
cycle where actually it's not even four years because by the time you've got in
01:09:53
you do some stuff for six months and then by month you know 12 or 18 you're starting to think about the next cycle
01:09:59
and are you going to pull you know this just like the short-termism is killing us right and we don't have an
01:10:06
Institutional body whose responsibility is stability you could think of it as like
01:10:13
a you know like a global technology stability function what is the global strategy for
01:10:23
containment that has the ability to to introduce friction when necessary to implement the precautionary principle
01:10:31
and to basically keep the peace that I think is the missing governance piece which we have to invent
01:10:39
in the next 20 years and it's insane because I'm basically describing the UN Security Council plus
01:10:47
the World Trade Organization all these huge you know Global institutions which formed after you know the horrors of the
01:10:55
second world war have actually been incredible they've created interdependence and alignment and
01:11:02
stability right obviously there's been a lot of bumps along the way in the last
01:11:05
70 years but broadly speaking it's an unprecedented period of peace and when
01:11:11
there's peace we can create prosperity and that's actually what we're lacking
01:11:16
at the moment is that we don't have an international mechanism for coordinating
01:11:20
among competing Nations competing corporations um to drive the peace in fact we're actually going kind of in the
01:11:29
opposite direction we're resorting to the old school language of a clash of civilizations with like China is the new
01:11:36
enemy they're going to come to dominate us we have to dominate them it's a it's
01:11:39
a battle between two polls China's taking over Africa China's taking over
01:11:43
the Middle East we have to count I mean it's just like that can only lead to
01:11:49
conflict that just assumes that conflict is inevitable and so when I say regulation is not enough no amount of
01:11:56
good regulation in the UK or in Europe or in the US is going to deal with that Clash of civilizations language which we
01:12:04
seem to have been become addicted to if we need that Global collaboration to be successful here are you optimistic now
01:12:13
that we'll we'll get it because the same incentives are at play with climate
01:12:16
change in AI you know why would I want to reduce my carbon emissions when it's
01:12:19
making me loads of money or why you know why would I want to reduce my AI development when it's going to make us
01:12:25
15 trillion yeah so the the the really painful answer to that question is that we've only really ever driven extreme
01:12:36
compromise and consensus in two scenarios one off the back of unimaginable catastrophe and suffering
01:12:46
you know Hiroshima Nagasaki and the Holocaust and World War II which drove 10 years of consensus and new political
01:12:55
structures right and then the second is um we did fire the bullet though didn't
01:13:02
we we fired a couple of those nuclear bombs exactly and that that's why I'm
01:13:07
saying the brutal truth of that is that it takes a catastrophe to trigger the need for alignment right so
01:13:16
that that's one the second is where there is an obvious mutually assured destruction um you know
01:13:25
Dynamic where both parties are afraid that this would trigger nuclear meltdown right and that means suicide and when
01:13:35
there was few parties exactly when there was just nine people exactly you could get all nine but in in when we're
01:13:42
talking about artificial technology there's going to be more than nine people right that have P access to the
01:13:47
full sort of power of that technology for NE various reasons I don't think it
01:13:51
has to be like that I think that's the challenge of containment is to reduce the number of actors that
01:13:58
have access to the existential threat Technologies to an absolute minimum and then use the existing military and
01:14:07
economic incentives which have driven World Order and peace so far um to to prevent the proliferation of access to
01:14:14
these super intelligences or these agis a quick word on hu as you know they're a
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01:14:24
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that's exactly where heal fits in my life it's enabled me to get all of the
01:14:45
vitamins and minerals and nutrients that I need in my diet to be aligned with my
01:14:50
health goals while also not dropping the ball on my professional goals because it's convenient and because I can get it
01:14:56
online in Tesco in supermarkets all over the country if you're one of those people that hasn't yet tried hu or you
01:15:01
have before but for whatever reason you're not a Hu consumer right now I would highly recommend giving hu a go
01:15:09
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all across the UK 10 areas of focus for containment you're the first person I've
01:15:20
met that's really hazarded a laid out a blueprint for the things that need to be
01:15:24
done um cohesively to try and reach this point of containment so I super excited
01:15:29
to talk to you about these the first one is about safety and you mentioned there
01:15:33
that's kind of what we talked about a little bit about there being AIS that are currently being developed to help
01:15:37
contain other AIS two audits um which is being able to from what I understand being able to audit
01:15:47
what's being built in the these open source models three choke points what's
01:15:52
that yeah so choke point refers to points in the supply chain where you can throttle who has access to what okay so
01:16:02
on the internet today everyone thinks of the internet as an idea this kind of abstract Cloud thing that hovers around
01:16:09
above our heads but really the internet is a bunch of cables those cables you know are physical things that transmit
01:16:18
information you know under the sea and you know the those points the end points can be
01:16:25
stopped and you can monitor traffic you can control basically what traffic moves
01:16:31
back and forth and then the second choke point is access to chips so the gpus graphics processing units which are used
01:16:41
to train these super large clusters I mean we now have the second largest supercomputer in the world today uh at
01:16:50
least you know just for this next six months we will other people will catch up soon but we're ahead of the curve
01:16:54
we're very luy cost a billion dollars and those chips are really the raw commodity that we use
01:17:02
to build these large language models and access to those chips is something that
01:17:07
governments can should and are um you know restricting that's a choke point you spent a billion dollars on a
01:17:14
computer we did yeah it's bit more than that actually about 1.3 a couple of years time that'll be
01:17:23
the price of an iPhone that's the problem everyone's going to have it number six is quite curious you say
01:17:31
that um the need for governments to put increased taxation on AI companies to be
01:17:35
able to find um fund the massive changes in society such as paying for reskilling
01:17:40
and education yeah um you put massive tax on over here I'm going to go over here if you tax it if I'm an AI company
01:17:49
and you're taxing me heavily over here I'm going to Dubai yep or Portugal yep
01:17:56
so if it's that much of a competitive disadvantage I will not build my company
01:18:00
where the taxation's high right right so the way to think about this is what are the strategies for containment
01:18:09
if we're agreed that long-term we want to contain that is close down slow down
01:18:16
control both the proliferation of these Technologies and the way the really big AIS are used then the way to do that is
01:18:24
to tax things tax things taxing things slows them down and that's what you're
01:18:29
looking for provided you can coordinate internationally so you're totally right
01:18:34
that you know some people will move to Singapore or to Abu Dhabi or Dubai or whatever the reality is that at least
01:18:41
for the next you know sort of period I would say 10 years or so the concentrations of intellectual you know
01:18:48
horsepower will remain the big mega cities right you know I I moved from from London in 2020 to go to Silicon
01:18:57
Valley and I started my new company in Silicon Valley because the concentration of talent there is overwhelming all the
01:19:03
very best people are there on in in Ai and software engineering so I think it's
01:19:09
quite likely that that's going to remain the case for the foreseeable future but
01:19:13
in the long term you're totally right how do you it's another coordination
01:19:16
problem how do we get nation states to collectively agree that we want to try and contain that we want to slow down
01:19:24
because as we've discussed with the proliferation of dangerous materials or on the military side there's no use one
01:19:30
person doing it or one country doing it if others race ahead and that's the conundrum that we face I am I don't
01:19:38
consider myself to be a pessimist in my life I consider myself to be an optimist
01:19:42
generally I think and I always I think that as you've said I think we have no
01:19:45
choice but to be optimistic and I have faith in humanity we've done so much so
01:19:49
many incredible things and so overcome so many things and I also think I'm really logical as in I'm the type of
01:19:54
person that needs evidence to change my beliefs either way um when I look at all
01:19:59
of the whole picture having spoken to you and several others on this subject matter I see more reasons why we won't
01:20:06
be able to contain than reasons why we will especially when I dig into those incentives um you talk about incentives
01:20:13
at length in your book um at different different points and it's clear that all
01:20:17
the incentives are pushing towards a lack of containment especially in the short and Midterm which tends to happen
01:20:23
with new technology in the short and Midterm it's like a land grab the gold is in the Stream we all rush to get the
01:20:29
the shovels and the you know the cves and stuff and then we realize the unintended consequences of that
01:20:35
hopefully not before it's too late in chapter 8 you talk about Unstoppable incentives at play here the
01:20:43
coming wave represents the greatest economic prize in history and scientists and technologists
01:20:50
are all too human they crave status success and Legacy and they want to be recognized as the
01:20:57
first and the best they're competitive and clever with a carefully nurtured sense of their place in the world and in
01:21:04
history right I look at you I look at people like Sam um from open AI Elon you're all
01:21:14
humans with the same understanding of your place in history and status and success you all want that right
01:21:23
right there's a lot of people that maybe aren't as don't have as good a track
01:21:28
record of you at doing the right thing which you certainly have that will just want the status and the success and the
01:21:33
money incredibly strong incentives I always think about incentives as being the thing that you look at when you want
01:21:39
to understand how people will behave all of the incentives on a on a geopolitical
01:21:44
like on a global level suggest that containment won't happen am I right in that
01:21:52
assumption that all the incentives suggest containment won't happen in the short or midterm until there is a c a a
01:21:59
tragic event that makes us forces us towards that idea of containment or if there is a threat of mutually assured
01:22:08
destruction right so that and that's the case that I'm trying to make is that
01:22:14
let's not wait for something catastrophic to happen so it's self-evident that we all have to work
01:22:20
towards containment right I mean you you would have thought that the Potential Threat the potential idea that
01:22:31
covid-19 was a side effect let's call it of a laboratory in Wuhan that was exploring
01:22:40
gain of function research where it was deliberately trying to basically make the pathogen more transmissible you
01:22:48
would have thought that warning to all of us let's let's not even debate
01:22:52
whether it was or wasn't but just the fact that it's conceivable that it could
01:22:56
be that should really in my opinion have forced all of us to instantly agree that
01:23:04
this kind of research should just be shut down we should just not be doing gain of function research on what planet
01:23:09
could we possibly persuade ourselves that we can overcome the containment problem in biology because we've proven
01:23:16
that we can't cuz it could have potentially got out and there's a number
01:23:20
of other examples of where it did get out of other diseases like foot and mouth disease
01:23:25
mhm back in the '90s in the UK so but that didn't change our Behavior right
01:23:32
well foot and mouth disease clearly didn't cause enough harm because it only
01:23:35
killed a bunch of cattle right um and the pandemic we can't seem you know covid-19 pandemic we can't seem to agree
01:23:42
you know that it really was from a lab and not from a bunch of bats right and so that's where I struggle where you
01:23:52
know now you catch me in a moment where I feel angry and sad and pessimistic because to me that's like a
01:23:59
straightforwardly obvious conclusion that you know this is a type of research that we should be closing down and I
01:24:05
think we should be using these moments to give us insight and wisdom about how we handle other technology trajectories
01:24:15
in the next few decades should we should we should that's what I'm advocating for
01:24:20
must that's the best I can do I want to know will will I think be a low I can only do my best I'm doing my
01:24:28
best to advocate for it I mean you know like I'll give you an example like I
01:24:32
think autonomy is a type of AI capability that we should not be pursuing really like autonomous cars and
01:24:40
stuff well I I autonomous cars I think are slightly different because autonomous cars operate within a much
01:24:46
more constrained physical domain right like you know you you really can the containment strategies for autonomous
01:24:53
cars are quite reassuring right they have you know GPS control you know we know exactly all the Telemetry and how
01:25:01
exactly all of those you know components on board a car operate and we can observe repeatedly that it behaves
01:25:08
exactly as intended right whereas I think with with other forms of autonomy that people might be pursuing like
01:25:16
online okay you know where you have an an AI that is like designed to self-improve without any human oversight
01:25:23
or a battle Battlefield weapon which you know like unlike a car hasn't been you
01:25:28
know over that particular moment in the battlefield millions of times but is actually facing a new enemy every time
01:25:35
you know every single time and we're just going to go and you know allow these autonomous weapons to have you
01:25:41
know the these autonomous military robots to have lethal Force I think that's something that we
01:25:47
should really resist I don't think we want to have autonomous robots that have
01:25:53
lethal Force you're a super smart guy and I I struggle to believe that you're
01:25:58
you you because you you demonstrate such a clear understanding of the incentives
01:26:02
in your book that I struggle to believe that you don't think the incentives will
01:26:07
win out especially in the short and near term and then the problem is in the short and near term as is the case with
01:26:12
most of these waves is we we wake up and 10 years time ago how the hell did we get here right and why like and we and
01:26:21
as you say this precautionary approach of we should have ranged the Bell earlier we should have sounded the alarm
01:26:25
earlier but we waltzed in with optimism right and with that kind of aversion to confronting the realities of it and then
01:26:34
we woke up in 30 years and we're on a leash right and there's a big rottweiler
01:26:38
and we're we've lost control we've lost you know I I I I would love to
01:26:47
know someone as smart as you I don't I don't believe can be can believe that
01:26:52
containment is possible and that's me just being completely honest I'm not saying you're
01:26:58
lying to me but I just can't see how someone as smart as you and in the know
01:27:01
as you can believe that containment is going to happen well I didn't say it is
01:27:05
possible I said it must be right which is this is what we keep discussing right that's an important distinction is that
01:27:11
on the face of it look what I I care about I care about science I care about facts I care about describing the world
01:27:19
as I see it and what I've set out to do in the book is des describe a set of
01:27:25
interlocking incentives which drive a technology production process which produces potentially really dangerous
01:27:33
outcomes and what I'm trying to do is frame those outcomes in the context of
01:27:38
the containment problem and say this is the big challenge of the 21st century containment is the challenge and if it
01:27:45
isn't possible then we have serious issues and on the face of it like I've
01:27:49
said in the book I mean the CH the first chapter is called containment is not possible right the last chapter is
01:27:53
called con must be possible for all our sakes it must be possible but that but I
01:27:58
agree with you that I'm not I'm not saying it is I'm saying this is what we
01:28:02
have to be working on we have no choice we have no choice but to work on this problem this is a critical
01:28:08
problem how much of your time are you focusing on this problem basically all my time I mean bu building and creating
01:28:15
is about understanding how these models work what their limitations are how to build it safely and ethically I mean we
01:28:23
have designed the structure of the company to focus on the safety and ethics aspects so for example we are a
01:28:30
public benefit Corporation right which is a new type of corporation which gives us a legal obligation to balance profit
01:28:40
making with the consequences of our actions as a company on the rest of the world the way that we affect the
01:28:48
environment you know the way that we affect people the way that we affect users that people who aren't users of
01:28:55
our products and that's a really interesting I think and important New Direction it's a new Evolution in
01:29:04
corporate structure because it says we have a responsibility to proactively do our best to do the right thing right and
01:29:12
I think that if if you were a tobacco company back in the day or an oil company back in the day and your legal
01:29:19
Charter said that your directors are liable in if they don't meet the criteria of stewarding your work in a
01:29:29
way that doesn't just optimize profit which is what all companies are incentivized to do at the moment talking
01:29:33
about incentives but actually in equal measure attends to the importance of doing good in the world to me that's a
01:29:42
incremental but important innovation in how we organize society and how we incentivize our work so it doesn't solve
01:29:51
everything it's it's it's not a Panacea but that's my effort to try and take a
01:29:56
small step in the right direction do you ever get sad about it about what's happening yeah for sure for sure it's
01:30:08
intense it's intense it's a lot to take in this is it's a it's a very
01:30:14
real reality does that weigh on you yeah it does I mean every day every day I mean I've been working on this for
01:30:25
many years now and it's uh you know it's it's emotionally a lot to take in it's it's
01:30:32
it's hard to think about the far out future and how your actions today our actions collectively our weaknesses our
01:30:42
failures that you know that irritation that I have that we can't learn the lessons from the pandemic right like all
01:30:50
of those moments where you feel the frustration governments not working properly or corporations not listening
01:30:58
or some of the obsessions that we have in culture where we're debating like small things you know and you're just
01:31:06
like Whoa We need to focus on the big picture here you must feel a certain sense of
01:31:12
responsibility as well that most people won't carry because you've spent so much
01:31:17
of your life at the very cutting edge of this technology and you understand it better than most you can speak to it
01:31:22
better than most so you have a a great chance than many at steering that's a
01:31:29
responsibility yeah I embrace that I try to treat that as a privilege I feel lucky to have
01:31:39
the opportunity to try and do that there's this wonderful thing in my favorite theatrical play called Hamilton
01:31:47
where he says history has its eyes on you do you feel that yeah I feel the I feel that I feel
01:31:55
that it's a good way of putting it I do feel that you're happy right well what is happiness to
01:32:10
know um what's the range of emotions that you you contend with on a on a frequent basis if you're being
01:32:19
honest I think is kind of exhausting and exhilarating in equal measure because for me it is
01:32:32
beautiful to see people interact with AIS and get huge benefit out of it I mean you know every day now millions of
01:32:42
people have a super smart tool in their pocket that is making them wiser and healthier and happier providing
01:32:50
emotional support answering questions of every type making you more intelligent and so on
01:32:56
the face of it in the short term that feels incredible it's amazing what we're
01:32:59
all building but in the longer term it is exhausting to keep making this argument
01:33:07
and you know have been doing it for a long time and in a weird way I feel a bit of a sense of relief in the last six
01:33:15
months because after chat gbt and you know this this wave feels like it's started to arrive and everybody gets it
01:33:24
so I feel like it's a shared problem now and uh that feels nice it's not just
01:33:32
bouncing around in your head a little bit it's not just in my head and a few
01:33:35
other people at Deep Mind and open Ai and other places that have been talking about it for a long
01:33:40
time ultimately human beings May no longer be the primary planetary drivers as we have become accustomed to being we
01:33:48
are going to live in an Epoch where the majority of our daily interactions are not with other people but with a eyes
01:33:54
page 284 of your book The Last Page [Laughter] yeah think about how much of your day
01:34:08
you spend looking uh screen 12 hours pretty much right whether it's a phone or an iPad or a
01:34:16
desktop versus how much time you spend looking into the eyes of your friends and your loved
01:34:22
ones and so to me it's like we're already there in a way you know what I
01:34:30
meant by that was you know this is a world that we're kind of already in you know the last three years
01:34:39
people have been talking about metaverse metaverse metaverse and the mischaracterization of the metaverse was
01:34:45
that it's over there it was this like virtual world that we would all Bop around in and talk to each other as
01:34:51
these little characters and but that was totally wrong that was a complete misframing the metaverse is already here
01:35:01
it's the digital space that exists in parallel time to our everyday life it's
01:35:07
the conversation that you will have on Twitter or you know the video that you'll post on YouTube or this podcast
01:35:14
that will go out and connect with other people it's that meta space of interaction you know and I use meta to
01:35:22
mean Beyond this space not just that weird other over there space that people seem to point to and that's really what
01:35:33
is emerging here it's this parallel digital space that is going to live alongside with and in relation to our
01:35:41
physical world your kids come to you you got kids no I don't have kids your future kids if you ever have kids a
01:35:48
young child walks up to you and says asks that question that Elon was asks what should I do about with my future
01:35:55
what should I pursue in the light of everything you know about how artificial intelligence is going to change the
01:36:01
world and computational power and all of these things what should I dedicate my life to what do you say I would say
01:36:08
knowledge is power Embrace understand grapple with the consequences don't look the other way
01:36:16
when it feels scary and do everything you can to understand and part anticipate and shape
01:36:25
because it is coming and if someone's listening to this and they want to do something to
01:36:33
help this battle for which I think you present as the solution containment what can the individual
01:36:42
do read listen use the tools try to make the tools understand the current state of
01:36:51
Regulation see which organization are organizing around it like you know campaign groups activism groups you know
01:37:00
find solidarity connect with other people spend time online ask these questions mention it at the pub you know
01:37:09
ask your parents ask your mom how she's reacting to you know talking to Alexa or
01:37:13
whatever it is that she might do pay attention I think that's already enough
01:37:19
and there's no need to be more prescriptive than that because I think people are
01:37:24
creative and independent and will it will it will be obvious to you what you as an individual feel you need to
01:37:32
contribute In This Moment provided you're paying attention last question what if we fail
01:37:41
and what if we succeed what if we fail in containment and what if we succeed in containment of artificial
01:37:48
intelligence I honestly think that if we succeed this is going to be the the most
01:37:55
productive and the most meritocratic moment in the history of our species we are about to make intelligence widely
01:38:04
available to hundreds of millions if not billions of people and that is all going
01:38:09
to make us smarter and much more creative and much more productive and I think over the next few decades we will
01:38:16
solve many of our biggest Social Challenges I really believe that I really believe we're going to reduce the
01:38:22
cost of energy production storage and distribution to zero marginal cost we're
01:38:26
going to reduce the cost of producing healthy food and make that widely available to everybody and I
01:38:33
think the same trajectory with healthc care with Transportation with education I think that ends up producing
01:38:42
radical abundance over a 30-year period and in a world of radical abundance what
01:38:46
do I do with my day I think that's another profound question and believe me that is a good problem to have if we can
01:38:53
absolutely if do we don't need meaning and purpose and oh man that is a better
01:38:58
problem to have than what we've just been talking about for the last like 90
01:39:02
minutes yeah and I think that's wonderful isn't that amazing I don't
01:39:06
know I I don't know the reason I I I'm unsure is because everything that seems
01:39:11
wonderful has a has a unintended consequence I'm sure it does we live in a world of food abundance in the west
01:39:17
and our biggest problem is obesity right so I'll take that problem in the grand
01:39:21
scheme of everything not need struggle do we not need that kind of meaningful voluntary struggle I think we'll create
01:39:30
new other you know opportunities to Quest okay you know I I think that's an easier problem to solve and I think it's
01:39:38
an amazing problem like many people really don't want to work right they they want to pursue their passion and
01:39:43
their Hobby and you know all the things that you talk about and so on and absolutely like we're now I think going
01:39:49
to be heading towards a world where we can liberate people from the the Les of work unless you really want to Universal
01:39:56
basic income I've long been an advocate of Ubi very long time everyone gets a
01:40:01
check every month I don't think it's going to quite take that form I actually
01:40:06
think it's going to be that we basically reduce the cost of producing basic Goods
01:40:12
so that you're not as dependent on income like imagine if you did have basically free energy and food and you
01:40:20
you you could use that free energy to grow your own food you could grow in a desert because you would have adapted
01:40:25
seeds and so on you would have you know desalination and so on that really changes the structure of cities it
01:40:31
changes the structure of Nations it means that you really can live in quite different ways for very extended periods
01:40:38
without contact with the kind of Center I mean I'm actually not a huge advocate
01:40:42
of that kind of libertarian you know wet dream but like I think if you think about it in theory it's kind of a really
01:40:49
interesting Dynamic that's what proliferation of power means power isn't
01:40:52
just about access to intelligence it's about access to these tools which allow
01:40:57
you to take control of your own destiny and your life and create meaning and purpose in the way that you you know
01:41:03
might Envision and that's incredibly creative incredibly creative time that's
01:41:08
what success looks like to me and well in some ways the downside of that I think this that failure is not
01:41:17
achieving a world of radical abundance in my opinion and and more more importantly failure is a failure to
01:41:25
contain right what does that lead to I think it leads to a mass proliferation of power and people who
01:41:33
have really bad you know intentions what does that lead to will potentially use that power to cause harm to others this
01:41:42
is part of the challenge right a small in this networked globalized World a tiny group of people who wish to
01:41:51
deliberately cause harm are going to have access to tools that can instantly quickly have large scale
01:41:59
impact on many many other people and that's the challenge of proliferation is
01:42:04
preventing those Bad actors from getting access to the means to completely destabilize um our world that's what
01:42:12
containment is about we have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves
01:42:18
a question for the next guest not knowing who they're leaving the question for the question left for you is
01:42:24
what is a space or place that you consider the most sacred well I think one of the most
01:42:35
beautiful places I remember going to as a child was um windir Lake in the Lake District um and I was pretty young and
01:42:48
on a on a dingy with uh some family members and I just remember it being incredibly
01:42:56
Serene and beautiful and and calm I actually haven't been back there since but that was a pretty beautiful place
01:43:05
seems like the antithesis of the world we live in right maybe I should go back there and chill
01:43:11
out maybe thank you so much for writing such a great book it's wonderful to to
01:43:15
to read a book on this subject matter that does present Solutions because not many of them do and it presents them in
01:43:21
a balanced way that appreciates both sides of the argument doesn't isn't
01:43:25
tempted to just play to either what do they call it playing to like the crowd they call like playing to the orchestra
01:43:30
I can't remember right but just it doesn't attempt to play to either side
01:43:33
or Ponder to either side in order to score points it seems to be entirely nuanced incredibly smart and Incredibly
01:43:41
necessary because of the stakes that the book confronts um that are at play in the world at the moment and and that's
01:43:49
really important it's very very very important and it's important that I
01:43:52
think everybody reads this book it's incredibly accessible as well and I said
01:43:56
to Jack who's the director of this podcast before we started recording that there's so many term there's so many
01:44:02
terms like nanotechnology and um all the stuff about like biotechnologies and Quantum
01:44:09
Computing that reading through the book suddenly I understood what they meant and these had been kind of exclusive ter
01:44:15
terms and Technologies and I also had never understood the relationship that all of these Technologies now have with
01:44:21
each other and how like robotics emerging with artificial intelligence is going to cause this whole new range of
01:44:27
possibilities that again have a good side and a potential downside um It's a
01:44:32
Wonderful book and it's perfectly timed it's perfectly timed wonderfully written
01:44:36
perfectly timed I'm so thankful that I got to read it and I highly recommend
01:44:40
that anybody that's curious on this subject matter goes and gets the book so
01:44:44
thank you Mustafa really really appreciate your time and hopefully it wasn't too uncomfortable for you thank
01:44:48
you this was awesome I loved it it was really fun and uh thanks for such a amazing amazing wide ranging
01:44:54
conversation thank you if you've been listening to this podcast over the last few months you'll
01:45:01
know that we're sponsored and supported by Airbnb but it amazes me how many people don't realize they could actually
01:45:07
be sitting on their very own Airbnb for me as someone who works away a lot it just makes sense to Airbnb my place at
01:45:13
home whilst I'm away if your job requires you to be away from home for extended periods of time why leave your
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home empty you can so easily turn your home into an Airbnb and let it generate income for you whilst you're on the road
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whether you could use a little extra money to cover some bills or for something a little bit more fun your
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home might just be worth more than you think and you can find out how much it's
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worth at airbnb.co /host that's airbnb.co slost [Music] ah [Music]

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Episode Highlights

  • The Challenge of AI Containment
    Exploring the risks and challenges of AI technology and its potential for harm.
    “How to stop something that can cause harm?”
    @ 00m 47s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Pessimism Aversion Trap
    Discussing the societal tendency to avoid pessimism regarding AI's future.
    “People often recoil from fear and pretend it’s not happening.”
    @ 14m 33s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Race for Intelligence
    Every organization is racing to acquire intelligence, a new form of capital.
    “Intelligence is going to be a new form of capital right just as there was a grab for land.”
    @ 22m 49s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Dark Side of Engineering
    The potential for engineered pathogens raises serious containment concerns.
    “The darkest scenario is that people will experiment with synthetic pathogens that might spread faster or be more lethal.”
    @ 25m 51s
    September 04, 2023
  • Containment Challenges Ahead
    We must focus on containment and non-proliferation of dangerous technologies.
    “We have to adopt the precautionary principle; we shouldn’t take those kinds of risks.”
    @ 38m 26s
    September 04, 2023
  • Quantum Computing Revolution
    Explaining the transformative potential of quantum computing and its implications for the future.
    “Quantum computing is a leap beyond current technology.”
    @ 47m 41s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Future of Energy and AI
    Exploring how AI could revolutionize energy production and climate change solutions.
    “In 20 years, energy will be cheap and widely available.”
    @ 50m 11s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Role of Regulation
    Regulation is critical for AI governance, but it must be accompanied by cultural movement.
    “Regulation is essential, but it’s not enough.”
    @ 01h 06m 40s
    September 04, 2023
  • Incentives and Containment
    Incentives are pushing towards a lack of containment, especially in the short term.
    “All the incentives suggest containment won’t happen.”
    @ 01h 21m 51s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Challenge of Containment
    The discussion centers on the critical challenge of containing AI technology.
    “Containment is the challenge of the 21st century.”
    @ 01h 27m 40s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Importance of Knowledge
    Emphasizing the need for understanding AI's impact on society.
    “Knowledge is power. Embrace, understand, grapple with the consequences.”
    @ 01h 36m 08s
    September 04, 2023
  • The Future of AI and Humanity
    Exploring the potential benefits of AI if managed correctly.
    “If we succeed, this is going to be the most productive moment in history.”
    @ 01h 37m 51s
    September 04, 2023

Episode Quotes

  • The upside is phenomenal, it’s enormous.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman
  • We cannot allow ourselves to be dislodged from our position as the dominant species.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman
  • I think you can't give up right.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman
  • Regulation is essential, but it’s not enough.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman
  • Let’s not wait for something catastrophic to happen.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman
  • If we succeed, this is going to be the most productive moment in history.
    CEO Of Microsoft AI: AI Is Becoming More Dangerous And Threatening! - Mustafa Suleyman

Key Moments

  • Emotional Reflection01:25
  • Pessimism Trap13:44
  • Existential Risks43:23
  • Hopeful Future51:09
  • Cybersecurity Concerns57:10
  • Global Cooperation Needed1:12:09
  • Containment Challenges1:22:11
  • Radical Abundance1:38:42

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