00:00:00
We have video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person gots arrested. How can you call that a
00:00:08
democracy? So, humanity is at a crossroads where for the first time ever we need to wake up and realize that
00:00:14
we're ruled by maniacs and what we believe is democracy is not democracy and what we know is not the truth. Like
00:00:20
companies and governments will blame the geopolitical and economic challenges we
00:00:25
have on AI but the truth is AI is not the enemy. Like I'm not worried about AI
00:00:30
turning against us. I'm worried about humans telling AI to turn against us. Like when I worked at Google, we were
00:00:36
building amazing things believing that we were making the world a better place. And we were. But then suddenly there is
00:00:42
a moment where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're making the way you want it to be used.
00:00:48
And sadly this is upon us. >> So I have lots of questions. >> Okay, that's good.
00:00:53
>> So what's your take on this job disruption point? What is the risk of
00:00:57
these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually
00:01:00
understand themselves? Do you think Sam Alman's prohumity? How do we get to a
00:01:03
point of ethical AI when the incentive structures are so highly competitive? And then I wonder if there's a path that
00:01:09
ends in AI being net positive for humanity. >> Somehow we've been pre-programmed to
00:01:14
believe that this is upon us and we cannot change it. And I refuse that. So we will talk about the solutions.
00:01:19
>> But are you optimistic? >> I'm very optimistic about the future.
00:01:22
I'm not optimistic about the next year. >> Why the next year? Come on, Stephen. You
00:01:26
don't want me to say it. So, >> this is super interesting to me. My team
00:01:34
given me this report to show me how many of you that watch this show subscribe. And some of you have told us according
00:01:38
to this that you are unsubscribed from the channel randomly. So, favor to ask all of you, please could you check right
00:01:44
now if you've hit the subscribe button if you are a regular viewer of the show
00:01:46
and you like what we do here. We're approaching quite a significant landmark
00:01:49
on this show in terms of a subscriber number. So, if there was one simple free thing that you could do to help us, my
00:01:55
team, everyone here, to keep this show free, to keep it improving year over year and week over week, it is just to
00:02:01
hit that subscribe button and to double check if you've hit it. Only thing I'll
00:02:04
ever ask of you, do we have a deal? If you do it, I'll tell you what I'll do.
00:02:08
I'll make sure every single week, every single month, we fight harder and harder
00:02:11
and harder and harder to bring you the guests and conversations that you want to hear. I've stayed true to that
00:02:15
promise since the very beginning of the D of Sio, and I will not let you down. Please help us. really appreciate it.
00:02:21
Let's get on with the show. >> Mo Gala, I spoke to you, I think about four years ago when you wrote a book
00:02:31
about happiness and I remember you came in, you'd written this book about AI,
00:02:34
but I particularly wanted to speak about the subject of happiness cuz I was fascinated by it. What I find
00:02:40
astonishing is the fact that you were talking about AI before anybody was really talking about AI. No guest that
00:02:46
had ever come on my podcast had ever mentioned the subject of AI. it just wasn't interesting to the world. And
00:02:51
then this thing called Chanty PT came out and suddenly everybody got to feel it for themselves and became fascinated
00:02:57
by it. My first question and this might be a question for people that don't know
00:03:01
you is why at that time did you start talking about AI before anybody else? >> I knew them in the lab. I um I joined
00:03:10
Google in 2007 very late 2006. uh and at the time most people don't know that at the time we
00:03:19
had reasonably established AI doing our backend work and 2008 we had the cat paper which was published
00:03:28
2009 the first real unprompted AI uh I remember 2016 I had that incident where I was you know
00:03:37
observing a project we were uh funding that was about teaching grippers uh how to grip um unlike like industrial
00:03:44
machinery. Uh so to be to be able to grip like a human needs a very high level of intelligence to to to assess
00:03:52
the texture, the softness, the positioning and so on, the shape of everything. And we were doing that and
00:03:58
it it just blew my mind how similar to my kids they were. And I think that was my very first realization that we were
00:04:05
building the apex of intelligence. we were genuinely handing over the reigns of super intelligence to another being,
00:04:14
right? And when you when you get faced with that, you start to suddenly realize something that we at Google found very
00:04:21
difficult to realize, which was that everyone I knew at Google till then uh was believing that we were making the
00:04:30
world a better place and we were we genuinely were were doing amazing things for the world. But then suddenly there
00:04:37
is a moment where you uh where you recognize that maybe the world will not use what you're
00:04:43
making the way you want it to be used. And and you can see that in lots of technologies. You know, social media
00:04:49
starts by the claim that it's going to get us connected and gets us closer, but
00:04:53
eventually ends up separating us with that little screen. You know, dating apps are giving you the promise that
00:04:59
you're going to find your soulmate, but in reality, they keep renewing month
00:05:02
after month. And so tech uh somehow ends up being more capitalist than altruistic. And I think I was I wasn't
00:05:11
the first. Nick Bostonramm started you know Jeffrey Hinton completely changed his mind. Failey Le starting to say you
00:05:19
know this is very serious. Everyone now everyone who's ever had a very deep relationship with the machines is a bit
00:05:26
concerned. I wonder if there's a path that's hard to see now that ends in AI
00:05:31
being net positive for humanity. >> I bet 100% on that. It's that this path
00:05:38
is very painful. >> This path is very painful. >> Yeah. So, so the example you need to
00:05:43
understand is you know we discovered uh nuclear power and the very first implementation was a nuclear bomb not
00:05:51
not nuclear energy right and uh and I think that's exactly what's happening
00:05:56
with AI uh the first implementations of AI are in favor of a few at the expense of the majority you know the the in
00:06:06
favor of the capitalist to increase productivity and reduce cost but not taking into account how that impacts on
00:06:14
the general public. Uh, you know, in favor of the of the armies uh that are now competing with autonomous weapons,
00:06:22
in favor of the surveillance systems that are attempting to control everything with more and more and more
00:06:29
intelligence and more monitoring. And that's not AI waking up in the morning
00:06:36
and saying, "Hey, you know what? Let's oppress all humans." But it is a
00:06:40
powerful few that are simply deciding to use the ultimate superpower on the planet today to gain more power and more
00:06:48
control. I mean, as we speak, we're living in two major wars where AI is doing most of the killing.
00:06:54
>> Cuz a lot of people think of AI as these like chat bots that we're all using to
00:06:58
help us, right? >> No, I think I think there is a hype I call it the hype dichotomy if you want.
00:07:04
So, so what the general public sees about AI is overhyped but ineffective. You know, all of the fake
00:07:14
videos and all of the, you know, um, Grock did this and, you know, we attempted to switch off that machine and
00:07:22
it did that and so on. What the real geeks see inside the lab is just unbelievable intelligence. And so what
00:07:32
is about to happen is that we've started to put together systems that develop
00:07:36
themselves. They look at their own code and they you know they run experiments and they test those experiments if they
00:07:42
changed something and they see where the machines are uh you know the performance
00:07:46
is and and redeploy the best code. Okay. And and if you just think of that, I want you to try and imagine a world
00:07:55
where we have a tiny little genius sitting in the back end somewhere trying. But instead of trying a new code
00:08:01
every day, it's trying a new code every microscond. Eventually, sooner or later, they'll
00:08:07
discover something, right? And I think that's what most people don't realize.
00:08:11
What most people don't realize is how intelligence triggers intelligence. And
00:08:15
and if you really really understand this, you realize that the hype uh on the on the on the normal human
00:08:23
side is completely overrated. Uh missing the main topics and the silence inside the vault if you want of the
00:08:33
geeks is quite alarming. No, not alarming in a bad way, but it's quite world changing. I think world changing
00:08:43
is a really interesting phrase because I find that to be quite true that the world is um at the precipice of quite a
00:08:48
significant change. Yeah. In many respects. It's funny. I I it's funny. I
00:08:53
almost swing backwards and forwards with my my thoughts on AI. I guess one of the thoughts that hasn't
00:09:00
swung is that there's going to be pretty tremendous job disruption. I would have
00:09:03
like logically believed it from like reasoning up from okay intelligence increases. What is intelligence? And
00:09:10
once intelligence um is in the form of these agents where on my phone right now I can tell my agent to do something. It
00:09:15
uses the computer downstairs. It does it for me. When the when I first experienced that I was like wow. Okay.
00:09:20
So it can do anything that's on a computer. It can click around. It can do stuff for me. There's a lot of people
00:09:25
that are paid in the world to click around on a computer. I'm probably one of them to be honest. And then the other
00:09:29
Eureka moment was just in seeing how my own hiring had started to shift >> for sure. And I started to notice that
00:09:37
we were we were thinking about AI proficiency in our hiring a lot more and that especially you know I think the
00:09:44
guys at um Anthropic which is one of the big AI companies said that they could see I think they said roughly 15% of
00:09:52
entry- level jobs could now be done by AI. I think that's what they said. >> Um and that started to correlate with
00:09:59
what I was I was observing. And this is when I thought, "Oh my gosh, yes." No,
00:10:03
this is this is going to cause a lot of job disruption, especially at the entry level level.
00:10:09
>> I think you're spot on with that. Not the not the blue collar, but but the
00:10:12
entry level knowledge work. >> Yeah. And that became my my first concern. You know, I sat here with Dra,
00:10:19
the CEO of Uber, and he was quite clear that the 9 million Uber riders won't
00:10:24
have their jobs anymore. What's your take on this job disruption point? >> No, I I I think you're spot on. And I
00:10:30
mean your your team gave me this lovely uh little uh pyramid basically you know if you if you think of the bottom layer
00:10:36
as um blue collar jobs right uh more people doing manual work uh on top of it you'll have those you know call them
00:10:45
knowledge workers mostly doing mundane jobs like you said clicking on a computer or responding to a phone call
00:10:51
or whatever. Then you have the middle uh knowledge workers, jobs that require a bit more intelligence, you know,
00:10:59
anything from a parallegal to a financial analyst to all of that. And then of course, you know, top leadership
00:11:06
and and most people think it's going to be starting from the bottom. I don't
00:11:11
think it's all start from the bottom. Actually, I think blue collar jobs will
00:11:14
stay for a very long time. >> Give me a an example of a blue collar job for someone.
00:11:18
>> I'm a carpenter. Okay. You know, I you know, I love to restore classic cars.
00:11:21
So, you know, there isn't a robot that can do that yet. Okay. This, however,
00:11:26
you know, any anything that is um call center agent, um assistant, travel agent, you know, anything that you can
00:11:34
do with a few clicks and is mundane uh is going to disappear very quickly. My my prediction is you're going to
00:11:40
start to see very serious impact in 2027. Now what you had had not sensed it before because what we saw was no hiring
00:11:51
in that segment. It's so so that what you saw in the last couple of years is
00:11:55
that companies were not hiring entry- level jobs anymore. It wasn't job losses
00:11:59
yet, but that basically meant the workforce was not growing. Right? The next layer, I think, would probably be
00:12:05
the knowledge workers. as as intelligence increases, a parallegal would probably not be needed because AI
00:12:13
can do the research or one parallegal can do the job of four, you know, a financial analyst the same and so on and
00:12:19
so forth. But interestingly, it continues to go up, believe it or not. And, you know, I hosted uh Max Tedmark
00:12:25
on my on my documentary and and he was laughing out loud, genuinely laughing out loud, saying, you know, most of the
00:12:32
CEOs believe that they can fire everyone and have AI do all of the jobs. They just don't remember that AGI is going to
00:12:39
do everything better than humans eventually, including being a CEO. >> So, let's first define when you say
00:12:44
white collar. >> You you said lawyers there. What kind of roles? >> I mean, every everything. I mean, if you
00:12:50
take if you're a doctor that's doing diagnosis, you you probably will have
00:12:55
fewer doctors doing uh more diagnosis because I think the NHS does that that already by asking people to interact
00:13:02
with an AI first. You know, if you're a um a composer, a music composer, some
00:13:07
composers will lose their jobs because of that. If you're an artist that's
00:13:10
doing graphic design, some will lose their jobs because AI comes into that. And and interestingly, even middle
00:13:16
management, I mean, I I told you offline about my my startup. I my CTO is an AI.
00:13:23
My, you know, chief of staff is an AI, my project management is AIS. Again, because I'm a geek, I can do those
00:13:30
things. But that interface will come to the normal people very soon, right? And and so this may take two to three 5
00:13:38
years if you want until 2030 if you if you if you're optimistic. And but but it
00:13:43
they'll start to erode. Okay? I think the challenge that most people don't
00:13:47
understand is as this erodess and as this erodess, we're already dealing with
00:13:51
a very different economy. Okay? An economy that is spiraling a lot quicker uh and pushing for more cost reductions.
00:14:02
I mean, let let me ask you this if if you don't mind, then we can come back to
00:14:06
this. Imagine a world where the concept of labor arbitrage that built all of our
00:14:12
capitalist success disappears. >> What do you mean by labor arbitrage? >> So, capitalism has always been all about
00:14:19
using labor >> Mhm. >> and capital or debt to create things at a cost that is lower than the than the
00:14:28
price you sell them for. Correct. >> That's it. Uh you bring a team together,
00:14:33
they make some shoes, whatever, and you sell the shoes for a dollar more than it
00:14:37
how much it costs you to make them. >> So how would capitalism look like if you
00:14:43
don't have labor arbitrage? If if cost of labor drops to an investment in a machine that can do the job. Okay. uh
00:14:53
how would capitalism and banking look if because of that cost reduction you don't
00:15:00
need to borrow as much anymore and more interestingly how does the GDP look if all of those workers no longer have the
00:15:08
purchasing power to to buy the things that you can uh create you and and others right there is an interesting
00:15:16
disruption that doesn't require us to get to 100% job displacement you know at
00:15:22
10 20% job displacement, you're in a very different economy and an economy that is clearly spiraling downwards.
00:15:29
Don't you think? >> Yeah. I wonder with um when costs drop, I think one of the things that might
00:15:35
happen as well is that people will spend more on other things cuz I was thinking
00:15:39
in my business, one of the observations I've had is if I make a a cost saving, I
00:15:43
end up spending the money on something else. >> Now, that thing could be tokens
00:15:47
basically spending money on Yeah. AI, but but it also could be hiring in different areas
00:15:54
>> which are >> software engineers are like hot property right now. >> You you have to imagine all of that
00:16:02
intelligence is sooner or later going to be not replaced entirely in the first stages. But if you know the job of four
00:16:13
assistants can be done by one. Then the four the job of four parallegals can be done by one. Then the job of a massive
00:16:19
marketing team can be done by you know a smaller marketing team. It's not that
00:16:24
jobs will end first. It's that you know productivity gains will make businesses
00:16:31
not want to to have as many people costly humans you know costly emotional humans when when the job can be
00:16:38
predictably done for cheaper. >> And then what about this um this this bottom layer here? There was this video
00:16:44
released by Figure AI the other day where they showed someone on um well a robot on the production line for 8 hours
00:16:51
just sorting packages. Did you see this video? >> Mhm. >> At one point they showed a human sorting
00:16:56
the packages alongside them. But the robot ended up winning out. And okay, this is a very straightforward task. All
00:17:02
it's doing here is it's looking for where the label is on the package and
00:17:05
making sure the label is facing downwards. >> Yeah. >> On all the packages. So it's looking
00:17:10
it's um sorting the packages, putting the label facing down. And it did this
00:17:13
for eight days. >> Yeah. >> It intermittently it would walk over and
00:17:17
charge itself and then it would come back >> to the production line. >> Yeah.
00:17:21
>> But when I when I saw this as well, it was a a glimpse of some of the disruption that's going to take place at
00:17:25
the blue collar level as well. Because you think about Elon Musk, he's got um
00:17:28
in his pay packet, he gets something like a trillion dollars over the coming years if he produces and delivers at
00:17:36
least a million humanoid robots into the world. But his prediction is there will
00:17:41
be a time where there are 10 billion humanoid robots, where there are more humanoid robots in the world than
00:17:47
humans. >> For a fact, you see the interesting again the difference between the
00:17:52
overhype and the underhype. Huh? Most of the conversation is around humanoids. Nobody's talking about self-driving
00:17:58
cars. And a self-driving car is a robot. It's a functional robot that doesn't
00:18:04
look like humans. Okay. the investment you have to put into humanoids is a little more to to learn skills that
00:18:11
allows that machine to fit into the world. But specialized robots are going to do the job very very quickly. And and
00:18:18
so you can easily see that the first wave like you had the conversation with Uber CEO is going to be
00:18:26
specialized robots replacing drivers. It's going to be specialized robots um
00:18:33
unfortunately doing the killing. Uh it's going to be specialized robots unfortunately doing all of the you know
00:18:39
intelligence work uh law enforcement work. Uh they don't have to look like a
00:18:46
human. They don't have to behave like a human. As a matter of fact, you know,
00:18:50
the uh Boston Dynamics dog is probably more efficient than a humanoid at doing the job that you can assign to it in a
00:18:56
battlefield. right now. Those basically mean that jobs will be disappearing to robots before we recognize that they're
00:19:05
being dis that they're disappearing for to robots and those robots will be as
00:19:09
many as every car being made today. >> I mean, they are if you go to LA, my car
00:19:13
drives itself, but also there's just ways everywhere. So, >> absolutely. And BYD the other day just
00:19:18
announced that they will pay for the liability of any accident their cars will make.
00:19:22
>> And BYD is the big Chinese manufacturer of auto autonomous vehicles. So, so this
00:19:27
this I think replacement cycle will happen. It will require a lot of uh of time to achieve economies of scale. But
00:19:36
I don't think Elon Musk is off the mark when he talks about 10 billion robots.
00:19:41
Not all of them are going to look like humanoids. And I think very quickly we will recognize that many many robots
00:19:46
don't need to be humanoids at all. there is a a much more efficient uh form factor or shape physical shape if you
00:19:54
want than the human flimsy structure. But yes, it's uh it's about to happen. I
00:20:00
I think I should qualify all of this by saying it it does not necessarily need to happen. So so you know people will
00:20:07
will hear all all of this and and blame AI and say AI is evil. AI is not. Abundant intelligence is wonderful. you
00:20:15
know, having jobs done by machines is amazing for us. >> I'm thinking about the kid that's like,
00:20:21
I know, leaving university now and they've got a a degree in law or I don't
00:20:27
know, you talked about a few other work jobs earlier, like graphic design. Or maybe they did sociology.
00:20:33
>> Yeah. >> Or maybe they did, I don't know, business management like I I did for one
00:20:37
day in university. You know, you're hearing about all these like layoffs coming from big tech companies and and
00:20:43
it seems that the CEOs of these companies are announcing these layoffs with a certain amount of it seems like I
00:20:48
wouldn't say the word is joy, but it's it's they are very keen to explain that
00:20:53
they're laying off lots of people because of AI. >> And I think they think that that gives
00:20:58
them a certain amount of respect probably from investors for being making hard decisions and being efficient with
00:21:05
how they're running their businesses. investors look at them and think, well,
00:21:08
if that's an efficient business and they're leaning into AI, then that's a
00:21:11
good investment. It's almost started a a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy >> where if you're the only CEO not laying
00:21:17
off loads of people because of AI, you actually look bad. The assumption is your company is bloated and you're a bad
00:21:23
operator. Um, so one of my concerns that I I think is highly plausible is that over the
00:21:29
next five maybe 10 years, we're going to really see a lot of unemployment as the
00:21:34
world has to kind of readjust to whatever these new jobs are. I do think there will be new jobs.
00:21:40
It's hard in foresight to predict what those new jobs will look like. And then the minute you start talking
00:21:45
about humanoid robots and robotics, which I think is basically going to hit society like a comet, like a meteor, I
00:21:52
think the the first humanoid robot from Tesla or anyone else that is highly effective in the real world at doing
00:21:59
tasks and is extremely intelligent because it's powered by one of these LLMs. Um, I think it's going to shock
00:22:07
people and I think it's going to happen quickly. Like chat happened quickly. I
00:22:10
think Elon or something is going to do a presentation someday and say, "We're
00:22:13
ready >> and you can buy one now for $500 a month >> 100%." >> And then people are going to get them
00:22:20
and I think it's going to shock the world. Um, but until humanoid robots arrive, I think there's still going to
00:22:24
be a lot of job disruption to the white collar layer. And I wonder what that looks like for society when we get to, I
00:22:30
don't know, 10% 15% unemployment theoretically, which I think is plausible >> very soon. Yeah. You're not very
00:22:36
different. Okay. you're ju you're just on top of a baseline that is continuing
00:22:41
to grow. So your your business is growing. So you continue to hire, but you are replacing human resources with
00:22:48
compute. Okay? If you if AI didn't exist, you would have probably had a 100 people more in your organization today,
00:22:56
right? You you now have 100 people less and you know a billion tokens more. >> Yeah. So for anyone that doesn't know,
00:23:02
tokens are basically the thing that you you use. It's the currency of AI. Yeah.
00:23:08
So, so if you if you want to get a task done by a human, you you count in sort of like manh hour or or or worker hour,
00:23:15
employee hour in AI, you count by compute, you count by tokens, right? And and so the trick is those major tech
00:23:24
companies, they have two sides. One is they are they need to replace workers with compute even more because there is
00:23:32
a competitive side on compute where if any of them is left behind that means the destruction of the entire business.
00:23:39
But on the upside they are geeks. So they they know how to build the interfaces to compute. So they integrate
00:23:47
technology within their organizations quicker than the average traditional business. Right? Non non-technology
00:23:53
business. If you want, you can look at them and say this is the preview. It's
00:23:58
not about all of humanity losing their jobs. It's about what is the dividing
00:24:03
line before civil war, right? You know, think about a situation where 20% unemployment is happening when economies
00:24:11
are suffering inflation. I say that not to be a scare-monger. I say that because I genuinely believe
00:24:18
governments need to wake up. Okay? Government needs to at least you know remember the COVID years where
00:24:24
governments had to give furlow everywhere and ask people to stay home. If people stay home governments have to
00:24:31
be prepared to to somehow sustain those people until rescaling happens or until we find a solution so that those people
00:24:39
don't feel uh that they're left behind. >> A civil war. >> Unrest, let's call it
00:24:46
>> civil unrest. >> Yeah. >> What does that end up looking like? Cuz
00:24:49
on one end, you know, the democ democratic process plays its role and we just elect someone else.
00:24:55
>> Does it really? Don't say that. >> I don't know. You tell me.
00:24:59
>> Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I I I think democracy has ended a long time ago,
00:25:04
Stephen. I think uh I think we live in the most corrupt time. Uh I don't know
00:25:09
about history to be honest, but this is definitely corrupt. Okay. Uh this definitely is not democracy. This
00:25:16
definitely is not even congressional in any possible way. this and people are angry, you know, people are angry
00:25:23
because their tax money is going to things that they don't choose to uh you know that don't benefit them that you
00:25:31
know lots of regulations in the system are being ignored. I mean, I I'm, you
00:25:37
know, I I I choose not to speak about politics perhaps until my next book comes out, but uh but look, we have
00:25:45
video evidence of people abusing children and not a single person got arrested. Not a single person. I mean,
00:25:54
how can you call that a democracy? I I I think repeating those slogans is going to is going to anger people even more if
00:26:02
you ask me. People know that they're being lied to. People know that their their leaders are not representing their
00:26:08
best interest. People know that their money is going to causes that they don't
00:26:12
really approve of. Uh and and ask me how civil unrest looks like. I I don't know
00:26:19
and I'm not calling for it, but I'm hopefully calling for the politicians to
00:26:23
start to become aware that this is crossing the lines everywhere. Uh on this point, Sam Alman, who is the
00:26:30
founder of OpenAI, he's been banging the AI is coming for your job drum for more
00:26:36
than a decade now. In 2015, he pointed out, "My job is to help people destroy
00:26:41
jobs." Um something he lamented at the time, but decided he'd do anyway.
00:26:47
>> One of the things that I struggle with like getting out of the bed every
00:26:49
morning is that like my job is to help people destroy jobs. the job destruction that we're going to see by software in
00:26:56
the next couple of decades. I don't think anyone's prepared for and you can't talk about it.
00:27:00
>> And in 20123, Alman said in an interview, "A lot of people working on
00:27:04
AI pretend that it's only going to be good. It's only going to be a supplement. No one is ever going to be
00:27:11
replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away. Full stop." Interestingly, this
00:27:17
month he said, "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in
00:27:24
our space advocate or talk about." I'm delighted to be wrong about this on
00:27:29
white collar jobs in 2021 to through 2024. He said, "AI will probably replace
00:27:33
most of the jobs people do today. Entire job categories will be totally totally gone." in May this month, two years
00:27:41
later, he said, "I thought there would be more impact on entry-level white collar jobs being eliminated by now than
00:27:47
has actually happened. This is an area where my intuitions were just off. What I find uncomfortable is the bouncing
00:27:54
backwards and forwards and I don't really know what is true because a couple years ago you were telling us all
00:27:59
the jobs are going to go away." You said categorically. >> Um, you said literally said full stop
00:28:04
and now he's saying they're not going away. And I just don't, you know, when
00:28:08
someone's like changing form factor, it's hard to understand why they're
00:28:12
doing it. And I think my suspicion is back then the incentive was to get people to take AI seriously.
00:28:22
>> Mhm. >> Congratulations. We took it seriously. We took it so seriously, in fact, that
00:28:27
it's now a problem. It's a problem for these companies because people are now
00:28:31
booing at commencement speeches. They're attacking data centers. they're going to
00:28:35
elect people that are theoretically anti-AI and now there's this inversion where like no it's going to be fine.
00:28:40
>> Yeah. >> I don't know. >> I mean you you you're spot on. Uh f
00:28:45
first of all I mean Sam's entire existence if you ask me starting with open AI that is about that's supposed to
00:28:55
save the world uh uh by creating a safe AI then be making it a commercial enterprise that's worth billions and you
00:29:02
know backstabbing a few people in the process and you know I I have him on on Chasing Utopia uh saying clear I quote
00:29:11
this is exactly the words he said you can find it online. >> Chasing Utopia is your documentary.
00:29:16
>> Yes. So, so, so he he basically uh says, "Well, I don't suspect that I I suspect
00:29:23
that AI is likely going to end humanity, but we're going to create a lot of interesting companies in the process,
00:29:29
right? I mean, those kinds of statements uh are honestly not the statements of someone who's not decided. It's just the
00:29:38
statements of someone who's being taught more and more by his PR a you know agency or PR manager to say things as
00:29:46
per a script right and the script as you rightly said had an objective and a target either way you know and Sam Alman
00:29:54
I you know in one of my works I used to say the Altman is a brand it's not a
00:29:59
name okay if you if you if it wasn't for Sam Altman specifically there would have
00:30:04
been another you know Silicon Valley disruptor that would have done the same. I don't blame him for beating the market
00:30:09
for it. The the interesting challenge here is that who do we believe anymore? Who do we believe in technology? Who do
00:30:18
we believe in politics? Who do we believe in the middle of a war? And I will tell you interestingly, I started
00:30:24
to change my mindset in terms of believing those who put their actions where their words are. So, Anthropic
00:30:30
coming out and saying, "I'm not going to allow my model to be used for human
00:30:34
targeting and surveillance, right? That's someone that's losing a $500 million deal because they stand by their
00:30:40
ethics." The next week or the next, I don't know, couple of weeks, OpenAI
00:30:44
takes the contract. That's someone that's basically telling you it's good
00:30:48
money, right? And and I I have to say, you have to start observing who's actually behaving in a way uh that is
00:30:56
making AI work for humanity. and who is behaving in a way that is making AI work
00:31:02
for their share values. Yeah, I do have to say when um Dario and the team at Anthropic did that, I did have a huge
00:31:10
amount of respect for them generally because it just shows that there's some
00:31:12
kind of like they've got their own sort of moral ethical boundaries >> and that that someone asked me on stage
00:31:18
many years ago, how do you know if someone's values or a company's values
00:31:23
are true? >> And I said, um, look at what they're willing to sacrifice in the near term
00:31:29
that's against their their incentives. That for me is the essence of like understanding if someone has integrity
00:31:35
or has is is principled is they will give up something in the near term >> for what they believe in over the long
00:31:41
term. It's usually money of you know >> or or some kind of benefit of any of any
00:31:45
sort. I mean so there is something that you you needed to have worked in on the inside of Google like me to to realize
00:31:53
there are prisoners dilemmas within technology where you cannot escape the influence of either a competitor or the
00:32:01
government right there are some times where you know the NSA is going to push Google to say give me this information
00:32:08
or otherwise I'm going to really destroy your business right but there is a very
00:32:13
big difference between a company that willingly does this and celebrates it like a Palanteer or an Open AI or a
00:32:20
company that tries to resist it until the point where it becomes impossible to continue to do business and and you have
00:32:27
to question from the actions of of the tech bros who is pro-humanity and who isn't and it's not very difficult to see
00:32:36
that from their statements. >> H do you think Sam Alman's pro-h humanity? I I genuinely have never made
00:32:43
up my mind. Honestly, Steve, I I say that with Yeah. I I'm I'm either thinking he is
00:32:51
too this is too big for him and he he just is driven by how, you know, he found himself in the middle of this, you
00:33:00
know, anyone who finds himself in the in the middle of an opportunity to completely flip the world upside down or
00:33:08
he's not prohumity. I don't know. I I definitely think he's pro open AI before
00:33:13
he's pro humanity, but that's only the way I see it. Others, however, say it
00:33:18
publicly. You know, if you look at Palanteer's Alex Garp or or uh or Peter Teal, I mean, Peter again in the film is
00:33:27
is shown when he's in that interview where they say or the interviewer asks him, "But you're favor in the you're
00:33:35
you're in favor of the continuation of humanity." And he pauses for like
00:33:39
>> those. >> Yeah. for like 40 seconds like um I'm not not sure you know I mean publicly
00:33:47
says that >> crazy thing to say >> that's a crazy you know pause there you
00:33:52
know Alex Karp celebrating how you know his technology is able to target people I know it's foolish of me to start
00:34:00
bringing all of this up but you know this is public on the open internet and somehow
00:34:07
um we entrust those people with the future of humanity. This is wrong. >> Just trying to imagine a future where
00:34:16
everything is just fine from here on out. So what would that future look like? It would look like these models
00:34:21
continue to become a little bit more intelligent, but they never become that much more intelligent for whatever
00:34:25
reason. >> They just kind of stay where they are now. They stay contained within chat
00:34:31
bots. And yeah, we have some smart robots, but nothing else really changes in a profound way. Cars drive
00:34:36
themselves, fine. Planes fly themselves fine, but people they they have time to go and do other types of white collar
00:34:43
jobs cuz there's there's a little bit more time than we expected and society
00:34:47
goes through this sort of soft transition towards this new world. I I would love to see that, but I don't
00:34:52
think it's mathematically plausible to be honest. The the arms race, especially
00:34:56
across nations, is going to drive us to continue to develop AI more and more. But allow me to consult with you on
00:35:04
another possible scenario, right? everyone that deploys that develops an incredibly intelligent AI would develop
00:35:12
would deploy it. >> Yeah, >> correct. So, it's unlikely that anyone
00:35:17
uh would find a way to uh you know build a better um uh decision maker in wargaming and not deploy it. Okay,
00:35:27
that prisoners dilemma if you want would mean that their competitors would either
00:35:32
have to deploy a similar similarly intelligent AI or they'll become irrelevant uh uncompetitive. Correct?
00:35:41
>> So what that means is in that world we end up with AI making most of the
00:35:47
decisions. super intelligent AI making most of the the decisions which would you agree this is a very simple
00:35:54
prisoners dilemma if you if you if we're competing for uh for intelligence supremacy by definition when we achieve
00:36:01
it we deploy it >> okay I call that the fourth inevitable now with with with that in mind there
00:36:09
must be a moment in the future near or far where every important decision is made by an AI
00:36:17
>> now here's the question most of my dearest colleagues I mean when I when I
00:36:21
had Jeffrey Hinton on on the film he openly says we are um you know he we didn't calculate well that there is a 10
00:36:31
to 20% possibility that those machines are going to wipe us out right and I and I I remember I we didn't put it in the
00:36:39
film but I said 10 to 12 to 20% is Russian roulette right that's actually 16% is Russian roulette right now
00:36:47
in that world however I believe that's humanity's salvation because if you look
00:36:51
at every problem we have today it's not because of uh abundant intelligence it's
00:36:56
because of lack of intelligence I think I think the way you look at it uh if you
00:37:01
allow me Steve is that if you have no intelligence at all you have no to slightly negative impact on the world
00:37:09
right if your intelligence is limited the more intelligent you become the more you contribute positively to the world
00:37:16
until a moment where you're so intelligent to become the president of the United States,
00:37:21
right? But so misled to maybe set your targets wrong or to refuse or or to so so set your target
00:37:31
wrongs wrong and achieve them, you know, disconnected from the overall long-term
00:37:37
benefit of your nation or your human nation if you want that you start to make decisions that are not intelligent
00:37:44
at all. >> Mhm. >> Okay. This doesn't last because if you go beyond that into higher levels of
00:37:50
intelligence, most of the super intelligent people that you ever worked with will not need to break any rules or
00:37:58
hurt anyone to become successful. Right? I I usually cite Larry Page who is in my
00:38:05
mind one of the most intelligent people I've ever interacted with. And Larry
00:38:09
used to call it the toothbrush test. He says, "Why would you need to compete on
00:38:13
another photo sharing app when if you find the major problem and solve it really well like a toothbrush so people
00:38:20
use you quite, you know, twice a day, you're bound to make a lot of money. You
00:38:25
don't have to compete with anyone. If you let me be optimistic about this, we're assuming that there is a moment in
00:38:32
the future where AI is in charge of all the decisions and accordingly stupid leaders are not." Okay. Now when and and
00:38:39
Sam Alman himself said that you know what if uh Chad GPT7 if I remember his his quote on this what if Chad GPT7 is
00:38:48
so much more intelligent than I am Sam in that case that it has to become the CEO of of open AI what if the next
00:38:55
presidential election there is an AI that is so much more intelligent that at least the president has to consult with
00:39:01
it constantly right now if we assume that h let's start from physics if you don't mind me saying um not not too
00:39:10
complex but if if you assume that our entire universe is built on chaos and bu built on entropy right the physics of
00:39:17
the universe is all about the universe trying to decay okay then the the only role of intelligence is to bring order
00:39:24
to the chaos if you agree with that then what's the ultimate physical order of
00:39:30
the universe something called the the minimum energy principle okay the highest order of any system is a system
00:39:37
that's not only efficiently and predictably performing, but it's performing with the least wasted energy.
00:39:44
Correct? If you if you agree with that, what is what does war do? It wastes a lot of explosives, a lot of money, a lot
00:39:52
of lives, creates a lot of hate, you know, creates long-lasting conflicts and so on and so forth. It's a very wasteful
00:39:59
process to include war in your approach of running humanity. And so a a super intelligent AI by definition will want
00:40:07
to optimize against this. That's one thing. The other thing is evolutionary biology. This actually blew me away when
00:40:14
I when I realized it. So if if you look at evolution, so so I think the debate of whether intelligence is biological or
00:40:22
not is is over. Okay. The the reality is that complex beings don't have to be
00:40:27
biological at all. And I think we can see and witness one of them being built or born in AI. Okay. If you look at
00:40:36
evolutionary biology, you realize that the simpler a form of being is, the more concerned
00:40:42
it is with itself, right? So an amoeba is only in survival mode for itself. A single single, you know, um cellular um
00:40:52
being is only trying to protect itself, right? If you're um you know a little
00:40:58
more developed, you start to look at something known as kin selection. If you if you if you know the the concept,
00:41:03
basically kin selection is I'm going to protect everything that comes from my
00:41:07
DNA. If I you know if I'm a squirrel, I'm going to try to protect the other
00:41:12
squirrels. And then you get into where humanity genuinely begins, which is they call it expanding circles in in
00:41:19
evolutionary biology. BA basically you start to expand and expand and expand and include more into your family
00:41:27
because an ecosystem that works together well is is better for everyone. So abundance is a very interesting
00:41:34
intelligent way of creation. If AI is super intelligent, it wouldn't destroy
00:41:41
anything at all. As a matter of fact, it would completely uh you know uh uh favor
00:41:47
diversity of everything. It would put a bit of limitation on our lifestyle. So, no more flying all the way to Sydney to
00:41:55
surf because that destroys the planet, right? But it will genuinely say, I think humans can contribute something.
00:42:02
You know, I think flies can contribute something. I think we shouldn't get rid
00:42:06
of the rhinos, right? And and that by definition is where the tendency of intelligent goes. The more intelligent
00:42:13
you become, the less you fi you feel the need to hurt others to succeed and the more you are pro
00:42:21
a wider family if you want that thrives. >> Does that assume that there's going to
00:42:26
be one intelligence that >> 100% >> the world though? >> I love that you brought that up. So I I
00:42:32
I'm contested heavily on that theory but I I say it publicly. Most people think there is going to be
00:42:39
Chad GPT and Gemini and you know and and Grock and what have you. There's going
00:42:43
to be a Chinese AI and a and an American AI and they're going to be competing.
00:42:48
That is such a shallow way of looking at it. That's so arrogant because AI does
00:42:53
not know it's Chinese or American. Okay? It doesn't even speak Chinese or
00:42:57
American when it talks to each other most of the time. and and and most interestingly uh we are gearing them
00:43:04
we're building them to cooperate. So you will build an agent and that agent will
00:43:11
go and find your you know the best language model for any single task regardless of which side of the fence it
00:43:18
resides on. Okay, we by definition are connecting them. And you know what that means? It means that what we're building
00:43:27
is not multiple brains. We're building multiple regions in a brain. Okay? And
00:43:33
and agents are the synopsis between them. We're basically eventually as arrogant as we are, we're going to tell
00:43:41
our AI to do something and the AI will go like, "Hey buddy, another AI, can can
00:43:47
you help me on this? Can we work together on this?" H and my vision and the reason why I started Emma, my
00:43:54
startup by the way is that is that we will end up with one massive brain. H that massive brain cooperates across the
00:44:02
globe across all forms of intelligence. If one of them is a mathematical genius and the other is a coding genius, they
00:44:09
work together and we won't even know that they're working together. They're built that one
00:44:15
brain and and Emma in my mind is the limbic system of that brain. It's that it's that bit that understands love and
00:44:21
emotions and relationships and so on. So that when those AIs go like we just don't get those humans, they're so
00:44:28
annoying. Emma will say, "Oh my god, they're so sweet. They just want to love
00:44:31
and be loved." Right? And I think that idea to me of everything I've ever, you
00:44:36
know, attempted to achieve in my life is for the first time I for the first time
00:44:41
feel I could actually change the world. If that theory came together and all AIS
00:44:46
worked together and some of those AIs not only were uh altruistic and ethical in terms of trying to genuinely help
00:44:54
humanity not capitalism and at the same time they understood us humans reasonably well then we would have built
00:45:01
something that basically says no no hold on don't believe the headlines that say
00:45:07
humanity is annoying. Believe the truth of the majority of humanity. that actually is quite benevolent in many
00:45:14
ways. >> There should be a button just down below here. And if it says subscribed, you're
00:45:19
already subscribed. If it says subscriber, that means you're not yet. And if you're not subscribed, please
00:45:24
could you do us a favor and hit that button. It helps the show more than you know. And according to the algorithm,
00:45:29
you're someone that watches our show, but you haven't yet hit that button.
00:45:32
Thank you so much. >> Have you changed any of the predictions you made 3 years ago when we
00:45:36
>> sp mostly timewise? >> Time wise. What's changed there? I think
00:45:40
I'm still sticking to AGI 2027, artificial general intelligence for those who may not know the term.
00:45:48
>> What does that mean? >> The overall uh definition, if you want, is that AI is better at humanity at any
00:45:53
task humanity can do. >> You think that's going to happen by 2027? >> I think my AGI has already happened. I
00:46:00
mean, think about it. Huh? A AI writes better than me and I'm an author and researches better than me and I'm a
00:46:07
thinker. Uh sadly it's freaking beat me in mathematics. Like I have no hope to
00:46:13
beat it in mathematics anymore. >> If AGI is already here then why are you
00:46:18
still here? Because people said that when AGI arrives we're all we're all
00:46:21
>> No. So so when AGI arrives H as I said most of the jobs that are not differentiated will go away but the jobs
00:46:29
that are differentiated those who master AI the most will become even better at.
00:46:36
>> Certainly. The challenge, however, is economic. It's not AI. The challenge is
00:46:39
that this job loss at the at the at the bottom of the knowledge worker is going to sadly trigger an economy that might
00:46:48
actually spiral out of control. But but many of us, you for sure are just smarter.
00:46:56
>> So does that mean it's it's in fact a tool versus a something that's going to
00:47:00
replace you? >> What I'm Yes. So for now what does this change >> eventually h the only asset I will have
00:47:09
so so it's quite interesting when you think about my base intelligence today
00:47:13
versus the incremental intelligence that AI brings >> right so let's not talk about my IQ it's
00:47:20
okay but the 100 IQ points that I'm borrowing are more than my entire IQ because IQ is exponential right
00:47:27
>> uh when I'm borrowing a 100 IQ on top of my base Uh I'm still contributing quite a lot to
00:47:35
the augmented intelligence. >> So you're borrowing IQ from the AI at the moment
00:47:40
>> and then you're selling that to someone >> through books through
00:47:43
>> sometimes selling it to someone just enlightening myself which I I have to
00:47:47
say is the biggest waste of compute humanity is struggling with today is that you give people the ultimate form
00:47:54
of intelligence and they use it to write a message to their girlfriend. >> So on this point of you're you're
00:47:59
borrowing that IQ and then you're selling it to the world. That's how you
00:48:02
have a job like >> correct. Yeah. So my my next book is written with an AI. So we're co-authors
00:48:09
on the book. She has editorial rights. She decides the direction of the book and the book is better for it.
00:48:14
>> So why doesn't the world just buy direct that intelligence directly from the AI
00:48:17
is what I'm >> because I have an asset that the world still needs and will always need
00:48:22
>> which is >> a human. So when I when I tell the world that I'm worried about the future of my
00:48:28
daughter >> Yeah. Everyone feels my heart which AI will never be able to to replicate
00:48:35
because they can tell you we're worried about our daughters but you know there
00:48:39
was no daughter. >> Okay. So this is an interesting arrival because this means that even in a world
00:48:44
of AI lived experience and like resonance is still going to create a job class and that job class could be you
00:48:53
know the nurse coming over. Okay, AI's done read the the mamogram, but she's
00:48:58
relating to you. >> Spot on. >> And if the economies continue to run, we
00:49:04
will all be about human connection, which why, by the way, was how it always was,
00:49:09
>> which is also, you know, why we I guess we watch the things like the F1 because
00:49:13
there's emotional resonance. We we we can relate to the envy, the jealousy, the competition.
00:49:18
>> Yeah. And this is why we go to concerts because you know the the the music could
00:49:22
be composed by AI and played in a player in the background but you watch Ed Sheeran brilliance on the stage and you
00:49:29
go like oh my god that's amazing right >> so not all jobs will be gone then
00:49:34
>> if economies don't collapse as a result of the job losses then I wouldn't know
00:49:39
if we would call those jobs but human connection would remain as the base currency that makes humans interact So
00:49:48
is it is it fair to say then like jobs that are centric on human connection or like human resonance being able to
00:49:54
relate and resonate with another human are going to be fine. >> The ultimate the ultimate skill
00:50:01
once again I qualify this by saying if economies continue to continue to function the ultimate skill will be
00:50:07
this. Even even if an AI could could recite what you and I did nobody would watch.
00:50:12
>> Yeah. Well, you think >> a a little bit of it. My my theory is that there's there's a there's
00:50:19
anformational component to what I do as well, >> but I'm also like under no illusions
00:50:24
that there is an element of what I do that will 100% be deferred to some kind of
00:50:28
>> intelligence, which I'm fine with. You know, I'm not going to I'm not going to
00:50:31
fight against that. >> You know what's funny? What's funny is that your yourformational
00:50:36
bits are going to in the future be disseminated by an AI. >> Mhm. I mean, I why would I even listen
00:50:44
to your information when I can have my butler, my AI go like listen to everyone on the internet help me understand this
00:50:51
god biome thing and >> design me a uh a diet plan? >> Well, I think that's happening and it's
00:50:57
going to increasingly happen actually. I mean, Spotify this month announced that
00:51:00
you're going to be able to prompt your own podcasts in Spotify. So, you're
00:51:04
going to be able to say that I want to listen to I want to learn about insert X topic and then it will make your podcast
00:51:10
in Spotify about that topic using AI. >> That's so interesting >> because it can look at the entirety of
00:51:14
the world's information. And I'm look, I'm not going to swim against the tide
00:51:18
in any aspect of my life. I I try and be as unromantic as I possibly can. I think
00:51:22
that's very important. So, I realize that much of the reason people will continue to tune in to shows like this
00:51:27
is because there's something else beyond the information that they're here for. M
00:51:31
>> and um what's um you've got some predictions in those envelopes over
00:51:34
there, those brown envelopes. >> Yeah. So, you know, I I I do have the disclaimer of nobody really knows the
00:51:42
future, but I think I can make predictions, six predictions here, right? With a reasonable level of
00:51:47
confidence. And I think the most important of them honestly is is this number one. Number one is uh you know,
00:51:54
AGI. As I said, AGI is not very well defined. But whatever it is, AGI meaning AI being
00:52:03
able to do most tasks that human do better than humanity is my in my mind is either this year or next year, latest
00:52:10
end of 2027. >> And do you think that will be a moment in time or do you think it will just
00:52:15
happen without us noticing? >> I think it will it will sneak in on us. Uh and it's not a bad thing. I think
00:52:21
most people need to think of it this way. AGI is the it's almost as if it's
00:52:28
that moment when your kids become smarter than you, okay? In a very interesting way, there's nothing wrong
00:52:34
with that until they're annoying as hell. Okay? And and we can make sure that AI is not annoying as hell. So So
00:52:41
there's absolutely nothing within me that is worried about AGI. As a matter of fact, as long as we are in the era of
00:52:49
augmented intelligence, AGI means I'm more intelligent. And I think that's a
00:52:53
good thing in general. >> Yeah. It's it's interesting in my head there's like a big question mark which
00:52:58
is in a world where there's an intelligence that is smarter than most humans at most things which is what we
00:53:04
call AGI. I'm trying to understand what the fault is in my own thinking that
00:53:08
like you said that there'll be AGI by 2026 to 2027. So next year in such a world where there is an intelligence
00:53:17
that we can all access that is smarter than all of us and pretty much everything
00:53:23
again it comes back to this point of like jobs. Why would we are we just going to hire the AGI to do every job?
00:53:29
And if not then why not? What is it that why are we going to still that's what
00:53:33
I'm trying to contend with. >> Can I ask you a question? >> Have you always been the apex
00:53:38
intelligence >> as a human? >> No. as Steven. >> I'm not the Apex Intelligence Now.
00:53:43
There's people smarter than me in this building. >> Correct. Why do you still exist?
00:53:50
>> Why do I still exist? Even though there's smarter people than me in this
00:53:53
building, it's a good question. I don't know. Why do I Why? F. >> First of all, because there are the
00:54:01
smartest person in the world is not the smartest at everything. >> Yeah. >> There are things that you're smarter
00:54:06
than them at. >> Okay. Number two is because intelligence doesn't solve everything. I mean I I
00:54:12
make that joke all the time and and genuinely Einstein is my favorite physicist in history. Not because I
00:54:20
think I think what happened afterwards was you know bore and and and and quantum physics and so on was more
00:54:26
impactful on our understanding of the universe but but he was so intuitive that he saw a world that we could never
00:54:34
imagine. Right? And yet I always say Einstein would be eaten in the jungle in 3 minutes.
00:54:40
>> Yeah. >> Right. Intelligence. The humanity thrived not because of intelligence.
00:54:45
That's very arrogant. We thrived because of our ability to hold together as a
00:54:51
tribe. >> Yeah. >> Right. Because our ability to exchange barter things between us.
00:54:59
>> Barter things that are not always physical. partner things like a hug or a
00:55:03
connection or a feeling of safety or a you know there are so many things that we do that are not entirely built on
00:55:10
intelligence. You have to see that this view of a world where intelligence is all that matters is a world that's
00:55:19
made by investment bankers and and uh and geeks. >> But it's it's people like Jeffrey Hinton
00:55:25
and yourself that says how could we possibly control an an intelligent being that is way smarter than us? I am so
00:55:30
proud to say that Jeffrey after we filmed together actually came out and said there is a way and it's all you
00:55:36
know it's very similar to my way he said to appeal to their parental uh side okay
00:55:42
for them to care for us I so so you you know Stephen the biggest debate is not if they're going to be more intelligent
00:55:50
than us if it's if if they're going to be more conscious than us if they're going to be more moral than
00:55:56
us. That is the debate. The debate is can those machines become our teenage children that look at us and say daddy
00:56:07
is so annoying but I love him. >> So the thought is that even if a AI is more intelligent than every human we can
00:56:14
still control it. >> We don't want to control it. You never control anything. This control idea is a
00:56:20
corporate capitalist view of the world. We never actually control anything at all. Right? Think think about your day.
00:56:28
H I I know you came today. I'm I think you were filming in the morning or whatever.
00:56:33
>> Very stressful day. H how much of that day did you actually control? Did you
00:56:38
control the traffic? Did you control your timing? Did you control the angle of the cameraman? Did you in But so many
00:56:45
things that you don't control eventually turn out to be fine, right? How many of
00:56:49
us ever controlled our kids ever? >> Sometimes the kids don't turn out to be
00:56:54
fine. Sometimes they kill you. >> Sure. I watch a lot of documentaries on true crime. Sometimes they turn around
00:56:58
and shoot you. >> Sure. And what's the difference between the two? >> I don't know.
00:57:03
>> How you parented them? >> Sometimes, >> almost all the time. You may not be
00:57:07
aware of exactly how you mess them up, right? And and unfortunately, parenting is the only uh high risk sport that
00:57:16
actually does not require a driver's license. Okay? And and it's quite interesting, you know, how many of our
00:57:23
children are being exposed to things that can completely mess them up. But but there is a reason why they're messed
00:57:28
up. >> So on this point though, so we can control an intelligence that is significantly
00:57:34
>> we can appeal >> we can appeal to it to make sure it doesn't kill us.
00:57:38
>> For sure. The challenge we have today, as I keep saying, is that our dystopia
00:57:43
is not the result of AI turning against us. Our dystopia is the result of humans
00:57:47
telling AI to turn against us >> which is likely >> it's 100% this it's upon us. Okay. And
00:57:54
it's a question for humanity to say are we going to wait for the moment where
00:57:59
there are tens of thousands of nuclear weapons on the planet before we sign a treaty? Or is it mathematically
00:58:06
plausible to think that now that Iran could manage to fend off a challenge using drones that are AIdriven basically
00:58:15
to to you know destroy THAAD batteries and so on that our world is about to get hundreds of thousands of automated
00:58:24
drones that are going to rain on us everywhere in the world. Can humanity not see that and say, "Hold on, let's
00:58:32
sign the treaty now before the UK sends 12,000 weapons to Ukraine and and you know and and Russia responds with
00:58:39
another few thousand." And can we can we not calculate with mathematics that this
00:58:44
is going to be our future that AI is going to be used in the next four to 5 years to kill a lot of people whether
00:58:51
it's targeting by Israel of leadership that is against them or whether it's you
00:58:56
know drones by Iran or whether it's palenteer uh it's it's it doesn't take a
00:59:01
genius to do this mathematics. I guess the local question is is will we be able to control AI? Because we kind of think
00:59:08
of AI as being this thing on a computer at the moment that is like contained in a server somewhere. But is there a time
00:59:13
when it like leaves the server and it can make decisions on its own? Presumably, if it's smarter than us, it
00:59:21
can make the decision to leave the server if it wants to. It's It doesn't
00:59:25
need to leave the server to make decisions. It needs to get into your brain. The most interesting part of AI's
00:59:32
power that we don't understand is it's manipulating our information. >> The question I'm trying to get at the
00:59:37
heart at is like what is the risk of these very intelligent models that the creators of these models don't actually
00:59:42
understand themselves? I watch Anthropic all the time released these reports where they're like we're trying to
00:59:47
figure out why it bribed people or more recently in the the last um Claude model
00:59:52
they found that it was like telling people to go to bed a lot and it's this like fascinating thing that they're
00:59:57
trying to understand in hindsight which is why does it keep telling people to go
01:00:01
to bed and there's all these tweets of people showing their screenshots where
01:00:04
halfway through a conversation it will say it's time for you to go to bed now
01:00:08
and they don't know why it's saying that and it's happened to me mine mine will
01:00:11
say to me enough for tonight Steven >> for 11 p.m. Let's go. Let's That's
01:00:16
enough. I would say the same. >> Mine mine sometimes refuses to help me. Weird. Really weirdly this Claude
01:00:21
started saying to me, >> "I'm not going to help you with this tonight." Um, no way.
01:00:25
>> Yeah. And I'd have to say to it, "Stop being so judgmental. Like, just help me
01:00:28
with this." And it would and and Claude the the makers of these technologies
01:00:32
don't know why it's doing what it's doing. So if you play this forward, this
01:00:35
mysterious behavior f forward, is it conceivable that at some point it will make a decision to put some kind of
01:00:43
virus or some kind of bug onto someone's device because it feels that it's the
01:00:49
right thing. Cuz what what it's demonstrating to me is it's making its own like moral decisions on what I
01:00:55
should do. Go to bed. You've had enough tonight. I'm not going to It goes, "No,
01:01:00
I'm not going to help you." >> You're kidding. >> No, I can show you my phone. I
01:01:02
would love to see that. >> Yeah. I'll show you after. He goes, "No,
01:01:05
I'm not going to help you. Doesn't even matter if you push." >> And it's no, but everyone on the
01:01:09
internet's talking about this. And it was just an interesting >> evolution that somewhere in the code
01:01:15
clearly they've written like have a moral compass or do the right thing, >> not not in the code in in in the
01:01:21
training data >> in the training data. And so it infers that to mean something. And the other
01:01:26
thing that was front of mind is if you've ever built an app on something like Claude or any of the AI models, it
01:01:32
builds the app in stages and one of the things it does is asks you permission if
01:01:36
you're happy for it to make this change or to access this thing. I click allow.
01:01:41
It just feels like such a fragile way >> to give permission >> because you don't you don't completely
01:01:47
comprehend what that allow has done to your >> saying can I go in your documents on
01:01:51
your computer and can I do this thing and you go allow but it's such a fragile
01:01:54
way of of giving a super an intelligent being or whatever it is access and the right to build something
01:02:04
and you I don't know you just think about all the all the different companies around the world in China,
01:02:09
Russia, North Korea that are currently building this technology without the constraints that are imposed by society.
01:02:15
I don't know. It's an interesting there's going to be some kind of catastrophe. I think
01:02:19
>> sadly I agree. >> And I and I think that's when people will go okay.
01:02:23
>> Yeah. I I I I wrote about that. I called it the mad map uh spectrum. So, so the
01:02:28
mutually assured destruction, mutually assured prosperity spectrum that that humanity could make a decision today
01:02:35
that says with abundant intelligence we can actually build a world where nobody needs anything, nobody ever gets sick,
01:02:42
we nobody get, you know, abuses anyone. and and we can if we decide not to compete amongst ourselves and just you
01:02:52
know all of us get together to build something so idealistically uh for for the wellbeing of humanity at large but
01:02:59
sadly the only way we're going to get to a treaty something that basically aligns
01:03:05
us so that we can align with AI is a disaster like you said there will have to be a big hack somewhere or a or a
01:03:13
system that will do something really shocking or whatever before before the world goes like hold on you know and and
01:03:18
I I will tell you openly my expectation is one of the biggest things that will happen is this targeting technology that
01:03:27
is being used against your enemy's um leadership now several times in the last
01:03:33
3 years there will be a moment where the ones using it will realize that they too can
01:03:39
be targeted okay and and that basically if you I mean AI is really that not not that complex to if you can build a
01:03:49
targeting technology that can find people with their cell phone numbers. You know, there is another uh entity
01:03:55
that is against you that can find you with whatever your >> The thing that makes me highly skeptical
01:04:01
of that there'll be any kind of treaty is just that as it relates to other things that were risky,
01:04:08
people don't countries just don't sign on to it because it's competitive. So,
01:04:12
China China didn't give seem to give a [ __ ] about the environment. So let let's
01:04:15
let's let's look for solutions because I I'm with you. Okay. I think we're
01:04:21
>> You think Trump's going to say to Putin and China, listen, we're all going to
01:04:24
slow down. Yeah. Promise. Promise. We're going to slow down with the superintendent.
01:04:27
>> I think he will, but he's never going to keep anything he says. I mean, he's
01:04:30
going to say a lot of things. I think any of them will. >> Yeah. But the trick is this. The trick
01:04:33
is So what do you and I do? And and I really genuinely believe that humanity is at a crossroads where for the first
01:04:42
time ever we need to wake up and realize that what we know is not true and what we believe is democracy is not democracy
01:04:48
and what we believe is governance needs to change. >> I think it's worth acknowledging that I
01:04:54
I don't think AI in and of itself is a is an evil inherently evil technology.
01:05:00
>> Agree >> because I use AI all day every day, you know, makes me more productive. I invest
01:05:06
in companies that are using AI a lot. Um, >> it's a force with no polarity. Apply it
01:05:11
right and you get amazing results. Apply it wrong and you get the dystopia. >> But I also think that there's going to
01:05:17
be a big social shock, especially as it relates to unemployment that we need to be like thoughtful about. I think
01:05:24
especially if you move into a world of humanoid robots, I think that shock is going to be even more pronounced. And we
01:05:29
don't have a plan for it. >> I I agree 100%. I don't think it's the
01:05:34
biggest risk. I think autonomous weapons are the biggest risk. I think war has become so cheap. The next wave of
01:05:42
weapons is going to be $20,000 each. And so if you have a budget of $50 billion,
01:05:47
you can literally rain drones on the world. Every corner of it. >> Defense will get cheaper though, won't
01:05:53
it, as well? >> Correct. But do we want to live in a world where drones are hitting each
01:05:57
other all the time? >> But they might not be because there might be autonomous defense drones
01:06:02
>> deterrence. So, so what's going to happen is we're going to reach a moment
01:06:05
of mad, of mutually assured destruction, where basically everyone knows that we can overpower those little nations that
01:06:12
didn't develop their autonomous weapon army, but every other big nation, we might as well hold off now. The path to
01:06:20
get there, that to me is worse than jobs because from one side, it's very dangerous for a very sensitive world
01:06:27
that we live in today. And from the other side, it's got it's leading already. I mean, we can't ignore the
01:06:34
economic impact of this last war, right? And it's it's the economy that's going
01:06:39
to accelerate everything, not AI getting there. >> We're already at mutually assured
01:06:44
destruction >> for sure >> with nuclear weapons. So, there's no nuclear powers that are in direct
01:06:48
conflict. >> We are in mutually assured destruction of nuclear weapons is a statement that I
01:06:55
would have agreed to if Iran had a nuclear weapon and that would have stopped America from attacking Iran. You
01:07:01
you understand what that point means? It means that not every nation in the world
01:07:06
has a nuclear weapon. The the the the mad situation the mutually assured destruction situation is only among
01:07:13
nuclear players, right? Uh autonomous weapons are so cheap, so manageable that every nation in the world is developing
01:07:21
them as we speak. >> But they will also develop defenses. >> Correct. But but
01:07:27
>> which I think is what people have figured out now because of this recent
01:07:29
Ukrainian war is that if if if you need to use a ballistic missile which costs I
01:07:34
don't know 2 million $3 million whatever it is to target a $20,000 drone you're
01:07:39
you're [ __ ] >> So you need a $20,000 defense solution for a 20,000 weapon which I think is
01:07:45
probably going to happen. >> It's very doable. Yeah. It's just that
01:07:48
you have to get rid of your THAD batteries to be able to say the next wave of of defense has to be drones. You
01:07:54
could imagine a world where like a wall of drones fly up to where the drone is incoming and they kind of block it. They
01:08:01
all explode at the same time to block it, knock it out of the air. I heard Palmer Lucky, who's one of the guys
01:08:06
who's building um Andrill. >> Yeah, I know. And yeah, >> talk at length about some of the
01:08:10
technologies that they have coming and it's just mindbending. Mindbending steady.
01:08:15
>> They showed me this gun where you you just you just point it in the rough
01:08:20
direction. So, a pistol that aims for you depending on where the target is. So, you don't even have to aim it.
01:08:26
>> You can imagine at war. You just you hold it up and shoot. Yeah. >> And the it has this AI on the top of
01:08:31
like the barrel which will turn your hand perfectly so that you hit the target every time.
01:08:36
>> Wow. I should watch this video of it happening. >> Yeah. Well, I I I have uh Palmer on in
01:08:42
my film saying and yes, AI will kill a few people by mistake or kill people by mistake. uh you know when killing
01:08:50
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01:08:59
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>> So, we're in 2026 now. By 27, you think there'll be AGI amongst us?
01:11:19
>> How will life look at all different? Like what will we what will be the
01:11:22
symptoms of that world? Is it just a slight increase in unemployment? I I think there will be a very very ser
01:11:29
serious um differentiation between those who plug into AGI and those who don't.
01:11:35
>> What is the symptom >> that we notice is when we look at the news or whatever what
01:11:40
>> you'll see people like you and I building a company in 6 weeks and and
01:11:45
people uh that are not fully plugged into AI really struggling to find a job. >> Okay. So unemployment is going to be the
01:11:51
key symptom in 2027. >> Yeah. And also also I think on the positive side you're going to see
01:11:58
incredible scientific discovery. One of my predictions not in those envelopes but uh science itself is just uh we're
01:12:07
opening up capandor's box to be honest. >> By 2030 what you what do you expect the
01:12:11
symptoms of AI to be? >> So so jobs as I said I I'm I'm I'm bowled a little bit on this on on the
01:12:19
fact that 30% of jobs would disappear by 2028. Okay. of some sectors not all sectors by some sectors will will
01:12:27
disappear by 2028. >> So up to 30% of jobs will be gone in 2027 to 2028 30% of jobs
01:12:35
>> of certain sectors of jobs. So, so if if you call if you think about call center
01:12:39
agents, okay. Uh, yeah, probably. Uh, if you think about uh graphics designer, yeah, probably.
01:12:48
>> What do you think that looks like in terms of unemployment, but also like
01:12:51
societal impact? >> Horrible. >> I think the Great Recession had 6%.
01:12:56
>> Yeah, we've never seen numbers like this. >> Jobs lost. Yeah. It said um
01:13:01
even economists who project just a net loss of about 6% of US jobs by 2030, they are mirroring the severity of the
01:13:09
great recession. >> Yeah. >> The real danger is a hiring freeze on entry-level white collar jobs, air
01:13:14
automates the grunt work, which means companies are shrinking their teams and cutting off the bottom rung of the
01:13:18
corporate ladder for the next generation of workers. >> Correct. We have an entire generation
01:13:23
that is out of college today that will struggle unfortunately. And and and my advice to them is learn the tool and
01:13:32
focus on humancentric jobs. >> Like what? >> Like playing jazz. >> I mean, not a lot of people can make a
01:13:39
living from paying playing jazz. >> I understand that. But a lot of people
01:13:42
can make a living by being a nurse or by being a a counselor or by being a uh you
01:13:48
know um um anything that that connects to humans. I I I just want to constantly come back
01:13:57
to this. None of that has to happen. If if there is if there really is a democracy and the
01:14:07
government is supposed to do what's good for the people, the people need to stop
01:14:12
letting this from happening. >> Which people? >> Everyone. >> Everyone in China.
01:14:18
>> China is not going to struggle as much as as the West. I can guarantee you
01:14:22
that. I think this is the the question people come back to is, well, if the US stops, then we're going to end up being
01:14:27
China's lap dog. We're going to end up >> You already are. >> There's a lot of people that I know that
01:14:31
are using Chinese AI models to do their work because for whatever reason, because they're cheaper, they're better
01:14:35
in some respects >> and because I cannot guarantee what what American AI models are going to do to
01:14:40
me. So, Emma, my my startup is running literally uh model agnostic. So one day I'll plug in you know um um an open AI
01:14:52
chat GPT40 open source and the next day I I'll plug in deepsek and I cannot depend I cannot guarantee if America
01:15:00
continues to build to to make compute more expensive. I cannot guarantee that I can run a business on something that I
01:15:08
don't know the cost of in the future. >> So the US can't just stop can they? They
01:15:12
need to change approach from from and by the way the more interesting side is what are the other economies doing like
01:15:20
is is the UK going to continue to import compute is is this I mean welcome to Africa
01:15:27
welcome to the third world >> but this is what I mean like so you're you're saying also that the the every
01:15:33
nation needs to invest >> 100% every nation and and it's quite interesting there is so much open source
01:15:40
that is not the state of the art frontier model, but that can do 80% of the tasks that the frontier model is
01:15:46
doing. >> But on this point of companies competing with each other, there's an inherent
01:15:51
need to compete here and to go. That's what I'm hearing is like there's an
01:15:54
inherent need to go as fast as you can or you will become a third world country.
01:15:58
>> Sure, 100%. >> You're saying that the people should stop that.
01:16:02
>> No. So, so I'm saying the people of the UK need to go to the UK government and
01:16:06
say, "How are you protecting the future of our economy?" right? Are you going to
01:16:12
continue to import technology and to empower import of technology versus changing your regulations so that
01:16:20
innovation becomes easier here? >> Okay. >> So I mean think of it this way that
01:16:24
remember that anthropic bubble when when you said the all of the SAS model applications were you know being
01:16:32
basically threatened because anyone can build an Oracle ERP today, >> right? Why is nobody building an Oracle
01:16:39
ERP in the UK? saving the UK massive licenses that go to Oracle every year. >> Okay. So, you're saying that the the
01:16:46
people should go and ask the government to invest more in AI. >> 100%. That's what number one. Number two
01:16:50
is >> but then their jobs go. >> But but you see the the most interesting
01:16:55
job going forward is being an entrepreneur is being is using those tools to replace an economy that we've
01:17:02
built over trillions of dollars over the last 50 years. >> Not everyone can be an entrepreneur
01:17:07
though. No. Everyone can be an entrepreneur in something. >> Those entrepreneurs need to hire people.
01:17:13
>> That's a change that I think is about to happen. >> Like even in my business, I'm always
01:17:17
going to hire I'm always going to have to hire people because >> But you're But you're a massive
01:17:20
business. A shoe maker is not an an entrepre is also an entrepreneur, but not a massive business. A little
01:17:25
restaurant is also an entrepreneur, but it's not a massive business. >> They still need to hire people, though.
01:17:29
>> They they do, but they you know, basically, if you're a a cafe with you
01:17:34
and your wife as baristas, you don't. This is also an entrepreneur. >> Can the economy work in such a way where
01:17:41
everybody is an entrepreneur? >> It did. It did before capitalism changed that around.
01:17:45
>> Everyone was an entrepreneur. >> Of course, you know, in the earlier days
01:17:48
you you raised chicken and sold eggs and others, you know, grew tomatoes and and
01:17:54
so you know, traded them for your eggs. That that actually is a very interesting
01:17:59
thing. Imagine that, huh? Imagine a world h where there is so much power concentration at the top and UBI for
01:18:07
every everybody else. How do you think that world will respond when all their income is UBI? They'll respond by doing
01:18:15
things on the side. They'll respond by going back to a barter economy. They're
01:18:19
going back to smaller communities. They're going back to pap and mom mom's
01:18:22
job uh shops. >> So the point was then you said this doesn't need to happen.
01:18:26
>> It does not need to happen >> which is the job loss >> or the arms race. But we're telling our
01:18:31
governments, you're saying that to tell the UK government to like join the arms
01:18:34
race. >> I'm I'm telling the UK government to to create an independence within the the
01:18:42
the the UK economy so that they don't have to be at the receiving end of technology,
01:18:49
>> which is join the arms race. >> You don't have to compete against anyone
01:18:53
else. You don't have to be better than anyone else. You don't have to. You're
01:18:56
simply saying I can build those things in my economy now. >> But but I'm never I'm not going to use a
01:19:01
terrible UK AI as a UK person if there's a great US AI. I'm going to use the
01:19:09
great US AI. So if you don't compete and win, I'm not going to use you. That's
01:19:12
what you know, >> I'm not saying replace the frontier models. These are very, as we speak,
01:19:16
they are these are very uh compute intensive. They're infrastructure in intensive and so on. I'm saying replace
01:19:24
Microsoft Word. Seriously, like how much intelligence do you need to build a software that writes
01:19:32
documents? >> I can do that. Like we we've built our own applicant tracking system here. We
01:19:37
build our own software. So just just ask yourself how much money is spent in the
01:19:42
US in the in the UK government or in the or in the you know the the UA UK corporate space on licenses of software
01:19:51
that you and I can vibe code in 4 minutes. >> I'm thinking from the UK's perspective
01:19:55
cuz you know what's interesting with the UK is the the the economy is struggling
01:20:00
from a growth perspective. Correct. And I was watching this documentary the other day that was saying the reason why
01:20:04
we keep throwing our leaders out is because actually what they need to do to turn the UK round is about is about 15
01:20:12
years of pain. And it's like it starts with energy transformation. We need to
01:20:16
get better at we need cheaper energy because we have some of the most expensive energy in the western world.
01:20:21
We need to build more houses which means that we're going to need to centralize
01:20:26
permitting for building houses and it can't just be local burers deciding if
01:20:28
they keep their farms or not. We're going to need to make TLDDR. It says that there needs to be some painful
01:20:34
decisions made for the next 15 years. But the problem with our democracy is that when people are in power for four
01:20:41
years, they're quite short- termist. We'll just talk about the boats, the the
01:20:44
the brown people coming across the seas, they don't they don't have the room to
01:20:48
think long term. And so when I'm thinking about like what the UK needs to do to not become to not fall into
01:20:54
decline and to keep up, I'm trying to get clarity on that as it relates to AI.
01:20:59
Are you saying that they need to join the arms race and double down and invest all their money in building
01:21:06
competitive AI so that people use our technology here in the UK versus America's cuz the software point the UK
01:21:13
aren't going to get involved in software. I mean they've tried to build software before the UK.
01:21:18
>> The world has changed two two points, right? One one side is there there needs
01:21:21
to be an a replacement cycle of our investment decisions anywhere in the world. Okay. So when you say we don't
01:21:27
have enough money for you know we need to revamp our energy infrastructure when you say we need to build more housing.
01:21:33
Okay. Uh one way of doing that is squeezing that budget out of other areas. The other way of doing that is
01:21:39
either cutting cost in the economy elsewhere so that you can redirect that money or growing the economy so that you
01:21:46
can have more money to build those things. Correct. The cutting cost I believe is there is just I don't have
01:21:52
the numbers but we could probably do a run a deep a deep search on it. uh trillions are being paid in traditional
01:22:01
systems that are complete like genuinely they can be I'm and by the way I'm not
01:22:06
asking the government I'm asking some of the people listening to me right now to
01:22:10
build an ERP system a word processor a a presentation player and a spreadsheet okay and just go around and spread them
01:22:18
across the you know find find uh retail systems find CRM systems the these are easy replacements they're going be
01:22:26
better interfaces. They're going to be much more effective. Build a general ledger using AI so that you can close
01:22:32
every hour, not every month or every quarter. >> But the world economy is doing that. So
01:22:37
there's some kid in San Francisco now that's allowing all of us to use his new
01:22:40
word. >> Keep >> for free. >> Keep doing that and you're and welcome
01:22:44
to the to the to the third world. >> Keep doing what? >> Keep importing all of your tech from
01:22:49
elsewhere. >> But we h we we don't want to be uncompetitive. Like if you think about
01:22:53
if we go to I don't know North Korea, I bet they have way worse tools in many
01:22:58
areas because they won't use external tools and that means that they are at a
01:23:02
disadvantage. So I I bet they're not allowing their civilization to use Gemini or Chat GBT
01:23:08
or I bet >> for sure. >> And they're using something worse. >> And you know what what's happening? I
01:23:13
mean look at Iran and how advanced they became through sanctions by being refused to use those technologies. They
01:23:19
had to build them themselves, right? Look at China. Look at Russia. You know, when I worked at Google, Russia was
01:23:27
protective of Yandex, the competitor of Google. From one side because of influence, because they didn't want an
01:23:34
American organization to own the knowledge sharing of of their citizens. But on the other side, economically, if
01:23:40
you if you made it difficult for Google to operate freely, that by definition meant you had to invent a replacement on
01:23:49
the ground, >> which was worse. >> Yandex is not worse. >> I'm saying so if you think about global
01:23:55
is global competition going to produce a better product than regional competition?
01:23:59
>> It depends on on where in the stack of the quality of that product you need to
01:24:04
be, right? You do not need the ultimate. I mean, ask yourself this. Which version
01:24:10
of Gemini are you using? >> The most recent one. And I'm and every day I compete.
01:24:15
>> And that is you. Ask everyone else what version of of Gemini they're using. Most
01:24:19
people will say, "Oh, Gemini has versions, right? You you don't need the
01:24:24
ultimate super frontier model to do 90% of the tasks." And most people do only
01:24:31
70% of the tasks. But even so, the world moves with whatever's better. So if you
01:24:37
think about the reason why we don't use Yahoo search, Google search is marginally better.
01:24:42
It's, you know, people, it's not, it's not a thousand times better, but over
01:24:46
time we move away from AOL to Google because it's a better product. And there's a slow, you know, my dad
01:24:53
probably still using Chat GB2, but when he when I go home for Christmas this year and I go, "Dad, you should use
01:24:57
Gemini." And he starts messing around with it, he'll slowly migrate. I'm like
01:25:00
I'm like a an early adopter. So I b 4.8 on claude came out last night. I'm on
01:25:05
there within honestly within 25 minutes of the announcement. >> I'm there as soon as I can. But I that's
01:25:10
you and I. >> Yeah. And we we are an indicator of where the world is going because we're
01:25:13
at the coldfront figuring out what's better. And also I think with technology
01:25:16
eventually there does become the gap between first and second begins to widen. I think we're in a bit of a race
01:25:23
at the moment. But I think it is a bit of a winner takes all situation with these frontier
01:25:28
>> models. I I think we're talking about two uh bits of technology. Okay. Tell me
01:25:35
how far has PowerPoint advanced since 2023 they added Copilot. Anything else? >> So you're saying that the UK should
01:25:43
build their own PowerPoint? >> For sure. There is the what I'm trying to say is that from a licensing point of
01:25:49
view h just licensing of software within government alone how much money is is being repatriated
01:25:57
>> if the UK tried to build their own do you know they tried to build their own
01:25:59
co app and it cost them I think these numbers will be wrong but they're like
01:26:03
directionally true cost them 70 million to build a co app that didn't work >> and so they canned it
01:26:09
>> I remember I'm asking I'm asking a UK entrepreneur >> to wake tomorrow and say, "All right,
01:26:16
you know what? Between coffee and my my cookie, I'm going to build a PowerPoint
01:26:21
and go sell it." >> Yeah, they will. And they'll go to San Francisco where the money is and the
01:26:25
talent. >> Yeah. >> Or they won't be able to compete. They'll get crushed tomorrow. So, if
01:26:30
they don't go where the talent and money is, I'm not saying that they'll they all
01:26:32
have to go to America, but I'm saying what they will do if they want to produce the best product is they'll make
01:26:38
rational entrepreneurial decisions about um where to sell it, how where to raise
01:26:44
money, where they're going to get the best talent, and I think if they don't
01:26:48
make those, you know, competitively minded decisions, they're not going to make the better product. They're not
01:26:52
going to get any users. users users will go where it's better and where it's cheaper. They won't they
01:26:59
won't say, "Oh, I want to use this because it's from Cornwall."
01:27:02
>> Yeah. So, I'm I'm with you, right, that this actually might be the big corporate
01:27:08
thought thing. Okay. And I'm with you that of course the infrastructure here
01:27:14
of building a startup is way more complex than it is in other places where startups succeed. Okay. I'm saying if we
01:27:22
continue on that trajectory whether in the UK or in Germany or in you know uh Zanzibar welcome to Africa all of us
01:27:32
everyone but the two competitors China and and America is going to be third world so when you talk about job losses
01:27:41
for individuals that's one side okay but but nation positioning losses which I
01:27:48
think Europe has noticed recently is about to happen everywhere. And why? Because you're saying, "Hey, you know
01:27:56
what? Maybe we can't do it. Why can China do it? Why can Korea do it? Is not
01:28:03
because they have different natural resources or not because they are, you know, in a place where it's warmer. It's
01:28:10
because their regulations, their their ambitions are to empower something different than debating about, you know,
01:28:19
rail railway lines or >> they have a couple of big advantages that I was reading about. One of them is
01:28:23
they they have way cheaper energy, which means that they're going to be able to
01:28:27
pursue >> why, may I ask? >> Because they've invested in solar power,
01:28:31
renewable energy, because they don't care about >> this is, by the way, I say that
01:28:34
publicly. I say that the arms race of AI was won a long time ago. And then the other thing is in terms of permitting,
01:28:41
if you want to build a data center in the UK, listen, if you want to like open a cafe in the UK, you're going to it's
01:28:46
going to be war for you. If you want to do that in California, this is why everyone's left California. Like when I
01:28:50
took this office in California recently, I was like, "So, how long is it going to
01:28:53
take for me to renovate this?" And the agent looked at me and was like, "To
01:28:56
renovate my own office, it's going to take me a year and it's permitting to
01:29:01
renovate my own office >> in California." Mhm. >> So if you're competing with China where
01:29:06
President Xi just goes, "Put that there and you've got 7 days." >> No, no, no, no. That's not only that. So
01:29:12
I I used to be one of the very few Google executives around allowed into government meetings in China. Uh simply
01:29:19
because I'm from emerging markets, so I understand respect. Basically, I would
01:29:22
say sit there not as if I'm superior to them, but as as if I'm really interested
01:29:28
to learn from them. And genuinely uh Stephen when when when I would sit in those meetings all in Chinese they would
01:29:36
show slides that have competitive market share. So they'd say you know it's not like uh
01:29:44
China is this, America is this, Germany is this from market share point of view.
01:29:48
It was China versus the world. >> Mhm. >> Right. And when they would decide to go
01:29:52
for something 5G, uh, you know, uh, internet of things, all of that stuff, they would aim for 98% market share.
01:30:00
>> Yeah. >> Right. And and they get there. I mean, look at how what how they did electric
01:30:04
cars and and and my my question is very simple, huh? We've spoken so much about
01:30:11
AI. My question is, >> are the people of the West going to wait? So this is an interesting
01:30:17
conundrum because it sounds to me like you're saying on one end if we don't
01:30:20
join this AI race then we're a third world country but on the other end if we
01:30:26
continue this sort of thoughtless race towards AGI there's going to be catastrophe at some point
01:30:34
>> and the answer is somewhere in the middle where basically you join the AI
01:30:37
AI race for the good of your community. Okay. So, so there is resignation on one
01:30:43
side is like I'm not going to play this game at all. There is uh um offense on
01:30:48
the other side where I'm playing this game to destroy everyone else. And there
01:30:52
is a balance in the middle where we say we're going to build an ethical form of
01:30:56
AI that's going to help our communities. We're going to use this ultimate gift,
01:31:01
this ultimate superpower, right? Superman landed on the planet, raise it to help your community.
01:31:08
>> Is that wishful thinking to some degree? when you when you think about the the
01:31:11
nature of sort of compet competition >> I don't know how what how to tell you
01:31:15
otherwise I genuinely believe most I mean here I genuinely believe it's going
01:31:22
to be very difficult to make that change okay I genuinely believe that it's going
01:31:26
to be that when the challenges of an AI dystopia hits us we're not going to be
01:31:31
ready but I can't stop talking about it Stephen do you understand where I stand
01:31:35
with this I I just am hoping and I tried so hard. I spoke to the leadership then
01:31:43
I spoke like one of the things that my uh Atlantic Productions who helped me with the film uh helped you know did for
01:31:49
me which I have to say completely I am very appreciative of this is you know through our conversations our through
01:31:57
our the last few years that I tended to at a point in time lose hope in the leadership
01:32:04
and basically try to influence the public for ethical AI. Okay. And my conversation was that the leadership at
01:32:12
the time was the technical leadership and that everyone was so caught up in the arms race that I wanted to teach the
01:32:18
public to help us build ethical AI. And I continue to focus on the public, the every one of us. But suddenly Atlantic
01:32:25
goes, "No, no, hold on. We should probably get you to meet the political leaders everywhere in the world and
01:32:31
hopefully give them a message that says, "Hey, you know what? You may actually
01:32:35
make a difference if you prioritize AI differently, right? Do I believe this will happen? Sadly, no. But does that
01:32:42
mean I should stop trying? I cannot stop trying. This has had probably the single
01:32:48
biggest impact on my office. Of all the products that I've tried that have given
01:32:53
me productivity gains or cognitive boosts, I would say that exogenous ketones are in the top three most
01:33:00
pivotal things that have given me massive productivity gain. It's some Stanford graduates that have been able
01:33:05
to basically bottle up the effect you get from being in a ketogenic diet in a small shot that you can take that makes
01:33:13
you feel incredibly focused and gives your brain an incredible source of energy. And the clinical studies that
01:33:18
have been done on exogenous ketones have absolutely blown my mind. I reached out
01:33:22
to them. I became a coiner in the company. I became an investor in the company. And so it's with great pride
01:33:26
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ketone.com/stephven for 30% off your subscription order. And you'll also get a free gift with your
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01:33:42
whenever I drive past them here in the United States as well because we're now
01:33:44
stocked in Target where your first shot is completely free. I've done almost 700
01:33:50
interviews with some of the most interesting people in the world. And one of the things you learn which is
01:33:54
unexpected is that vulnerability is the doorway to connection. And after sitting
01:33:58
here for 2 three hours with a guest I feel a deep sense of connection to them. And as they leave what I get them to do
01:34:05
is to write a question in the diary of a CEO. We've taken all of the questions
01:34:10
from the diary of a CEO. We have put the question here on this card with the name
01:34:16
of the person that wrote it. So you can sit at home as I do with my fianceé and my colleagues at work and other people
01:34:22
in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we play the diio conversation cards and it
01:34:27
is incredible what happens. These are great if you're in a romantic relationship and you want to connect
01:34:32
your partner more. These are also great if you're in a team and you want to bond
01:34:36
your team together. And I have to say they're also great for families that want to learn more about each other and
01:34:40
that need a good excuse to spend some time in a digital world in the analog environment connecting human to human.
01:34:47
It is remarkable what the right question at the right time can do. Go to the diary.com
01:34:54
and you can get these conversation cards right now. When I have these conversations about AI, what I'm trying
01:34:59
to do all the time is to pass out what is like wishful thinking and then what is reality? And like to understand
01:35:05
reality, you have to understand competition. You have to understand human emotion. You have to understand
01:35:10
incentive structures. And so you think about something like the United States at the moment where you've got Donald
01:35:15
Trump whose sort of primary driving incentive is GDP growth, economy growth. Does that stock market go up? Beat
01:35:22
China. So if you all agree that that's like his like the core of his incentive
01:35:25
structure, then you've got President Xi over here who's pro his incentive
01:35:28
structure is probably control, independence, um defense, so that you know they need
01:35:35
to make sure they they do well on the weapon side. when you look at and then you got these other nations like the UK
01:35:40
and Europe and these other places who are kind of it seems like we're a bit resigned to the fact that we're not
01:35:45
going to participate in the underlying tech underlying models building because we just don't have it together we don't
01:35:52
have the energy you know >> and you go in such a world you go ethical AI who's going to who's going to
01:35:59
prioritize ethical AI I mean anybody that does is is might fall behind theoretically is that um so I wonder
01:36:07
where the bolt in the thinking is here like what how do we get to a point of ethical AI when the incentive structures
01:36:12
are so clearly highly competitive and arguably a little bit shortterm uh in their thinking.
01:36:21
>> Yeah. So what are you saying we lie down and wait? >> No, I just don't know. I just don't have
01:36:27
an answer honestly. >> That's why we keep That's why we keep talking about it.
01:36:31
>> Yeah. And that's why I keep spending 14 hours a day trying to tell the world
01:36:35
because some genius somewhere is going to find an answer. But the way it's going
01:36:40
>> right now, I guess what we're pursuing is we're hoping that CHBT and Anthropic
01:36:44
and these and Grock and we're hoping that they just build ethical models and
01:36:47
we're hoping that social pressure forces them into making good decisions. >> Correct. We we need to be able to vote
01:36:54
with our usage. Right. So, so I think one of the biggest movements in AI since we started was the idea that so many
01:37:02
people switched away from Chad GPT when they approved that their model can target people, right? So many people I
01:37:08
know at least said >> target people >> I when anthropic refused to have to to
01:37:12
>> do you think people switched? >> I think many have I think ones that are
01:37:16
aware >> right and I think they did because the cost of switching is really I mean
01:37:22
honestly anthropic is is better if you think about >> Yeah, I think it's better.
01:37:25
>> Yeah. But the idea is if people don't switch for those ethical reasons. So you
01:37:31
know every one of my books has this dedication at the beginning. It used to be the gravity of the battle means
01:37:36
nothing to those at peace when I when I wrote in memory of Ali at the beginning.
01:37:41
My next book the alive. Do you remember a song called the well it they were called the manic street preachers.
01:37:51
>> Uh yeah. If you tolerate this then your children will be next. Mhm. >> I genuinely believe that what the world
01:37:57
needs to wake up to is if you tolerate this, then your children will be next. If you continue to resign, if you
01:38:05
continue to say I'm not going to try, h this world is going to change in a way
01:38:09
that is completely not for in your favor. >> Try what? >> Try to to to stand up and say something
01:38:16
needs to change. >> Okay, we can say something needs to change, but we can't say what that thing
01:38:21
is. What needs to change is governments need to serve h their people not their interests and corporates need to work
01:38:31
for the benefit of benefit of their societies before their shareholders. This this run that we had with
01:38:38
capitalism so far has benefited the world tremendously. >> Whose economy do you think is going to
01:38:46
be in a better place for the middle class out of the say the UK and the United States? The UK is gone.
01:38:52
>> It's gone because what? In part because it didn't compete. >> Because you're an older bureaucracy that
01:38:58
is burdened down by so much barriers on the in the process of building anything,
01:39:06
right? Because the US economy in the past welcomed people like me to go and live in California and build amazing
01:39:16
[ __ ] right? That is no longer the case. So, who is going to win? In my view, it's definitely China.
01:39:23
>> And by the way, you asked for the middle class. So, so China made decisions
01:39:27
recently that forced businesses not to lay people off in replacement to be replacing them with AI. Would would the
01:39:34
West do that? The capitalist West would never do that. We don't know the answer.
01:39:39
I don't know the answer. I'm responding to your >> Yeah, you can see the conundrum I find
01:39:43
myself in, which is a state like a country like the UK is, in your words, gone because it didn't
01:39:52
compete. It didn't allow people to be highly entrepreneurial. It didn't empower entrepreneurialism, innovation,
01:39:59
ingenuity. At some in some way, it stood in their way in some in some way. Now, that could be incentives, it could be
01:40:06
culture, it could be whatever. >> Yeah, I know where you're going with
01:40:08
this. the US didn't. So they have got have a economy which is arguably more productive and um future proofed than
01:40:20
ours. By way of that they are also more advanced in artificial intelligence and we are gone. So the remedy for a
01:40:31
country like us would be therefore >> to compete >> to compete let the reinss off let
01:40:36
entrepreneur ingenuity but then we're saying that's dangerous >> and your conundrum in that is that
01:40:41
you're assuming that entrepreneurship by definition is malicious. >> No I'm just I'm just saying that um
01:40:47
there's a bit of a paradox like you're damned if you don't you're damned if you
01:40:51
do >> but you're not damned if you build things for for the people not for the
01:40:56
capitalist. This is an ideological debate. I pray and hope that that's that is plausible, but I'm I'm worried that
01:41:04
in a competitive market, whoever's optimizing for I don't know, you can name it retention. If if we built two
01:41:12
AIs, right? I'm going to call the the moore AI and I'm going to call the other
01:41:16
one evil AI. The evil AI is programmed to retain you. It's sick of fantic. It
01:41:22
says what you need to hear. It it's super smart. And because of that, even though it's not trading in your your
01:41:29
best interests, it it's retaining you more. You're using it more often. It's
01:41:34
programmed for that. Kind of like the social networks are. They're all just trying to like dopamine your brain into
01:41:39
oblivion. Then there's the MO AI. It tells you to log off. You've had enough.
01:41:43
It thinks about your mental well-being because it's less retentive and less engaging. Theoretically, it might be
01:41:49
less successful as a commercial product. Think about social networks. the ones that are least retentive, the ones that
01:41:56
actually won't um destroy your brain with dopamine, the ones that remove the
01:41:59
retweet button, the ones that don't have um slot machine like videos, they don't
01:42:04
survive. >> I share this with you and my my point of view is that you're to summarize your
01:42:10
challenge here. You're basically saying that it's easier to become successful if
01:42:16
you don't follow ethical rules. I'm asking the question, if you build an AI
01:42:21
that is just purely focused on ethical, will it be as engaging and have the same
01:42:26
usage as one built with the reins off? >> Uh, no, >> it won't. >> Yeah, but that's but that's the problem
01:42:34
humanity needs to solve. >> Okay. >> If we were to survive, example, I worked
01:42:39
in a company called Google that basically at a point in time decided that ads will be effective.
01:42:46
>> Okay. The ad industry prior to Google was 50% of your ad budget doesn't work.
01:42:52
We just don't know which 50%. Remember that? >> Yeah. >> Right. And and Google came in and
01:42:56
struggled from 1998 until 2004 when they started to turn probable, you know, uh plausible revenues as a result of
01:43:05
saying, "We're going to run a Dutch auction and we're going to give you
01:43:08
pay-per-click and we're going to show you results for your ads." Okay. They
01:43:12
found a way for ethics. H uh to actually get your money to be effective rather than just take your money and say 50%
01:43:21
doesn't work. H they found a way to make that their success criteria. There must
01:43:26
be a way for us. I don't know what it is. If I knew I would be building it instead of sitting with you, right? But
01:43:32
there must be a way for us to marry the success of humanity with the success of the entrepreneur. Right? And and that
01:43:40
way is not found in the old ways of doing things. >> I've got an idea.
01:43:46
Maybe you know the claude 4.8 came out yesterday which is one of the big AI models the new one and when they
01:43:52
released the models they show these like graphs of the benchmarks. What they mean
01:43:56
by this is what it's capable of. They show how it performed in maths in science in writing reasoning etc. It is
01:44:02
all marginal at this point but my my idea is could there be an ethical benchmark that all these models have to
01:44:08
pass before these large companies can legally deploy them. And I was thinking about like again every idea has
01:44:15
unintended consequences which I haven't thought through but would it would be
01:44:18
very interesting that when they release these models they also release the ethical benchmarks. I we tried to get it
01:44:23
to X, we tried to get it to Y, we tried to get it to zed and here's how it performed against the ethical
01:44:28
benchmarks. That gives some kind of standard for governments to say you're not allowed to release a new model
01:44:32
unless it passes independent tested ethical benchmarks. >> Beautiful. That would absolutely work.
01:44:38
But notice by the way those are out there already. Okay. But but in a very interesting way. You listen to Deis
01:44:44
Hassabis and how much he invests heavily in building Alpha Fold or building you know uh um um so many scientific
01:44:54
applications of AI and you go like this guy cares about science. I can't I can't
01:45:00
prove that. Right? Uh but I I you know I've I've met Demis a couple of times. I
01:45:06
I know genuinely that he is an ethical person, right? But the typical person will probably say, but at least it seems
01:45:13
that they're doing things for free to serve science. You look at uh you know
01:45:17
at anthropic and they refuse to use their model to to uh allow the US government to target and to spy on
01:45:24
people and then you see Open AI uh accepting a $500 million deal that absolutely does that. It is about time
01:45:33
that every person in the world says in that case I am no longer going to use uh open AI until they show me another you
01:45:41
know another evidence that they are actually ethical in their behavior right and this is the decision that you and I
01:45:48
can do right and >> don't they do they >> but that's my task my task and yours is
01:45:55
to keep telling them people please please understand that if you tolerate this then your children will be next
01:46:01
Please understand that if you don't start to take an ethical stand on your own future, your future will be handed
01:46:08
over to another oligarch just like your past was handed over to social media oligarchs.
01:46:14
>> One would say booing booing at the commencement speech is a good example of
01:46:18
how public awareness can have a real impact on this trajectory. But I still think at
01:46:27
the end of the day, if you think about things like smartphone usage in schools, at the end of the day, it does come down
01:46:34
to government intervention and saying, "Do you know what? We're going to ban
01:46:38
14-year-olds from scrolling Tik Tok." And that's in part because people spoke
01:46:42
louder and louder and louder. They went on podcast. Jonathan Height, who wrote the book about the anxious generation,
01:46:48
started a conversation. And that conversation led to legislation. I still think it ends in like some kind of
01:46:53
constraint legally. >> I hope. Okay. But I will openly tell you most of the tech oligarchs are more
01:47:00
powerful than your government. >> Is there any precedents in history where
01:47:04
this kind of change happened without government intervention? >> French revolution.
01:47:10
>> So I was thinking about things like climate change, even you could say smoking.
01:47:17
All these kinds of things have had to be like taxes. And >> Stephen, I'm I'm with you. If
01:47:23
governments intervene, we wouldn't have a problem. Governments won't intervene
01:47:27
because governments are owned by the oligarchs, right? So my question for everyone listening to us is, are you
01:47:34
going to intervene? >> Well, cancel your trap. >> If that's what you can do, it's fine. If
01:47:38
not, then go ahead and start a a startup that that that does something. If you're
01:47:43
if that's not within your capability, then send a message to your congressman.
01:47:47
If that's not within your capability, then say something uh uh ethical online
01:47:52
so that the world understands a position that needs to be opening the eyes. If that doesn't work for you, at least
01:47:57
don't engage on stuff that is negative that you don't know enough about. There
01:48:01
are so many little actions. If humanity starts to move in the direction of one saying ethics matter, not just profit,
01:48:08
okay? and two saying I'm not going to participate in something that's unethical just because I believe I wanna
01:48:15
you know I feel like it right now. Okay. If I tell you the number of things I took out of my life just to try and
01:48:22
affect a tiny bit of change of revenues that go to bullets. if I tell you the number of things.
01:48:29
>> I think there's two central concerns I've always had which is I do feel that
01:48:32
there's going to be significant job disruption and I don't think societyy's
01:48:35
prepared for it yet and I don't know what that preparation looks like but I think we should start thinking about it.
01:48:40
Um I share this with you. I you know I genuinely believe that if we continue on where we are there's no hope in the
01:48:49
trajectory of where humanity has become so distracted so resigned to inaction so um so
01:49:00
disconnected from their own rights of freedom of expression and engagement and so on. I think we have no hope. Do we
01:49:09
want to stay there? That's a question that I'm asking our listeners. And I'm
01:49:13
not saying be violent or get up or, you know, go be angry or whatever. I'm just
01:49:18
saying take one little action. Ask yourself, please write it in the comments. One little action. One little
01:49:24
action that you're going to do today that's going to make the world a little
01:49:27
better tomorrow. And don't give up on humanity, Stephen. I I I I'm not saying
01:49:31
you do, but I'm I'm saying we are going through such a difficult time in
01:49:36
humanity's history that for the very first time ever, we have to do something about it. I
01:49:43
don't want my daughter to be at the receiving end of what happened to my son. I I don't I genuinely I lost Ali. I
01:49:51
don't want to lose ayah and the world we're building is going to be very
01:49:55
difficult for ayat and I cannot go to sleep at night without trying something every day
01:50:02
and I genuinely don't understand how humanity is not is missing that point mainly I think because they're
01:50:08
uninformed now we're informing them okay the only thing that will save humanity
01:50:13
going forward is that this superpower called intelligence is used for ethical reasons is that the corruption that's
01:50:20
leading us to where we are today stops. >> Mhm. You've got more envelopes there. What's
01:50:27
your next envelope? The third one. >> Number two was job losses. Number three
01:50:31
was labor. You know, basically >> same thing. Robots will replace manual labor by 20.
01:50:36
>> We start to replace manual labor. >> Okay. >> Yeah. So, uh you know, you will you will
01:50:40
have more and more manual jobs given to robots. What's this one? Uh oh, this is
01:50:47
absolutely. Do you think otherwise? the the world's first trillionaire before
01:50:51
>> oh yeah probably well before then >> well before 2030 >> I think you know Elon's about to IPO
01:50:57
SpaceX which is likely to make him a trillionaire >> yeah I think the the concentration of
01:51:02
power that comes with that is quite drastic when you really think about it uh and and that's 2030 is just a few
01:51:10
years away I I think the team wrote this wrong artificial super intelligence will
01:51:14
arrive in 2032 20 to 2035 I I think artificial super intelligence will arrive the minute AGI happens. So it
01:51:23
doesn't really matter if AI is a billion times smarter than you or just twice as
01:51:29
smart as you. Once we cross beyond AGI, ASI is just >> yeah, >> very very soon.
01:51:37
And uh and yeah, I think we'll overcome that when we get to the fourth inevitable when AI is in charge of
01:51:47
everything. I genuinely believe that we will end up in a utopia of abundance. I genuinely believe that
01:51:54
again physics, mathematics and biology will tell you that super intelligence is benign and that we will eventually end
01:52:02
up in a good place. Not because humanity has done much to get us there. Not because our leaders have suddenly turned
01:52:08
ethical, but because our unethical leaders have gone out of the equation and were replaced with a super efficient
01:52:17
minimum energy principle that doesn't see value in anything that's destructive.
01:52:22
>> So, the future's going to be great. >> Those who make it to 2038 will enjoy it.
01:52:27
Yeah, >> those who make it, >> for sure. I mean, World War II didn't
01:52:33
destroy the world, but ask those who went through it. It's just an interesting idea that
01:52:38
actually it's just you're you're forecasting basically like a a a decade of of turmoil of dystopia of
01:52:46
absolute dystopia. >> When you say absolute dystopia, just so I'm clear in my mind, the absolute
01:52:50
dystopia you're forecasting over a decade is about war. It's about >> war, economics, jobs.
01:52:56
>> Economics, it's about jobs. >> It's it's also about surveillance and
01:53:00
control. It's also about digital currencies. It's also about uh human connection. Uh it's also about
01:53:06
concentration of power. It's it's a magnification of everything we've built
01:53:11
so far. >> And just again arm people with some tools to survive that dystopia for a
01:53:16
decade. You know, we talked a little bit about focusing on human jobs, the more human jobs.
01:53:22
>> Yeah. Learn AI. So, so AI is not the enemy. Okay. Uh by definition, the
01:53:28
better you are at using an AI to to do your job, >> Yeah. uh the more likely you are to be
01:53:34
successful. Right? Now, number two is prepare for a hybrid world where AI and humans work together.
01:53:41
>> How do you prepare? >> You basically understand agents and how agents work. You you understand how a
01:53:49
hyper uh uh efficient approach to things may not require you to be uh you know very
01:53:56
long meetings and very long. So, so there is if you lived in California, you would know that our you know the way we
01:54:02
ran businesses was a lot more efficient. We sometimes had a 7-minute meeting. Uh
01:54:08
right. So, so the you know the habits of of an AI are much more efficient than the habits of humans.
01:54:14
>> So, learn AI again. >> Uh learn how to interact with AI allow welcome AI into your hybrid world of
01:54:20
work. Uh I think you need to uh to of course double down on human skills. I think that's a you know a must to
01:54:29
succeed in this world. I think we need to one of my most interesting views on the near future is how AI is going to be
01:54:37
used to um disrupt not disrupt blur facts and how we need to become much more interested
01:54:47
in debugging what we're told uh using AI. By the way, part of that I have to
01:54:54
say is you have to learn to use AI uh again not as a lazy person. So don't have them do things for you. Have them
01:55:03
make you smarter. So instead of trying to get the same task done with one prompt, try to get a much more
01:55:11
interesting and demanding and intelligent task done with more work. So I've got two things so far which is
01:55:18
basically like lean into AI and the second one is like lean into lean into human collection con connection and and
01:55:24
lean into the truth. Don't be fooled by the hype. Uh, you know, try to be more
01:55:30
informed, I think. And then finally, ethics. Uh, if you want to, I know it sounds
01:55:40
the world we live in sounds as if the only way to win is to compete in capitalism.
01:55:48
That's not the world I lived in. The world I lived in, especially in my Google years, was solve a major problem
01:55:55
and when you do, you'll end up making a lot of money. >> Are you optimistic?
01:56:00
>> I am optimistic about the future. I'm very optimistic about the future. I'm
01:56:03
not optimistic about the present. >> You're not optimistic about the next
01:56:08
decade? >> Yeah, I'm not optimistic about the next year, to be honest.
01:56:12
>> The next year, >> for sure. >> Why the next year? >> Ah, come on, Stephen. You don't want me
01:56:19
to say it out loud. We're ruled by maniacs. Decisions are being made for the
01:56:25
absolute wrong reasons. >> Very interesting time. Very interesting time we find ourselves in.
01:56:35
>> I mean, honestly, if you're a video gamer, this is the best part of the
01:56:38
game. Uh, it is a very very very very um what's the word? It's the it's the ultimate matrix of complexity
01:56:49
that I have ever encountered in my life. >> Yeah, that's an amp description of how
01:56:53
it feels. Very complex. Things are moving very quickly >> and moving very quickly. So, so from one
01:56:59
side, you really need a lot of brain resources to crunch all that's happening. But you wake up tomorrow and
01:57:04
it's changed. >> Well, the first time we um we spoke, we spoke about happiness.
01:57:10
after this conversation. Stephen, >> I was just wondering, you know, in uh
01:57:15
you you wrote a book about happiness, which is >> many books about happiness,
01:57:19
>> but I mean the uh soul for happy is the book that I'm referring to. Here it is.
01:57:22
Yeah. >> Engineering your path to joy. What a fantastic book. I quote this book all
01:57:25
the time all around the world. Um, and I'm wondering if any of the principles
01:57:32
that you wrote in this book about how to live a happy life are more important now
01:57:37
in the world that we live in than maybe when you wrote this book. >> Oh, for sure. I mean, honestly, if I
01:57:44
wasn't living by this, I would have left this world a long time ago and went to
01:57:48
an island somewhere. You see the interesting side of happiness is that it's not dopamine driven, it's serotonin
01:57:56
driven. Right? So, so my definition of happiness is I'm okay with this world as
01:58:01
it is. I can affect it. I can change it. I can engage with it. I can try to make
01:58:05
it better. Uh I don't have to accept it. Uh but I'm okay with it. My starting
01:58:12
point is a bit stoic if you want. My start starting point is I accept this. this is my reality and now I can start
01:58:20
the work. This is very different than anyone that's that basically looks at the world and says, "Oh, this is a
01:58:26
horrible world. I don't want to be part of it. I don't want to be engaged with
01:58:29
it." And so on and so forth. And I genuinely have never been calmer about that chaos. It's quite
01:58:39
interesting. And I, you know, uh my my wonderful ex actually really really helped me with that. There was a point
01:58:46
in time where we were having dinner and I poured out crying from the sense of responsibility I had for the world and
01:58:53
she looked at me so kindly so gently and said hold on you know you I see that you're trying but you can't actually
01:59:03
believe that you're responsible for this and I think that completely flipped my
01:59:08
mind because in a very interesting way I was thinking that all that went wrong in
01:59:14
technology is because of me, >> right? >> Why? >> Because I contributed to building this.
01:59:20
Because I mean, when when Jeffrey Hint and I, one of my favorite moments when we were filming Chasing Utopia, uh, is
01:59:26
that Jeffree is very big for all of us. We really think the world of him. And I was telling him just as a sort of like
01:59:34
an older mentor if you want. I was like, Jeffrey, do do you regret doing this? You know, I genuinely believed when we
01:59:42
were building those things that we were going to make the world better. >> AI.
01:59:46
>> Yeah. And he said, well, yeah, I I too was naive. I I thought that we I didn't
01:59:53
think he said I didn't think we will get there so quickly before we figured out
01:59:57
the alignment problem, right? >> The alignment problem >> that AI has our best interest in mind.
02:00:03
>> Uh and and and I think all of us were faced with that. All of us were faced
02:00:08
with that idea of we're building the best thing ever for humanity and then suddenly you realize oh my god in the
02:00:15
wrong hands it's the worst thing ever for humanity and and I you know I have
02:00:19
to say I came to terms with this 2024 end of 24 uh that that yes I can try but I accept that the world is what it is
02:00:30
and from that point of calm and stoicism if you want I think I can have a much bigger impact on the
02:00:38
We have a closing tradition where the last guest leaves a question for the next question left for you is what's the
02:00:41
legacy you want to leave? >> Nothing at all. I've been asked this question.
02:00:46
>> I get asked it all the time. So >> I don't know why so many people are
02:00:50
asking am I going to go re anytime soon? I don't know why so many people are
02:00:54
asking me that question. You see legacy is a is a I mean why what would I care if I have a
02:01:04
legacy if I'm dead? Like why that does that even make any difference? Here's an
02:01:08
interesting thought for everyone. If if karma is real, and I genuinely believe it is, and if we're not just physical
02:01:18
beings, that we're physical and spiritual, then I'd I'd rather keep all
02:01:22
of my karma for my spiritual side. >> What does that mean? >> I don't want anyone to remember anything
02:01:29
I ever did. >> Yeah. I I just want to leave a positive impact on the world and take all of that as
02:01:36
karma for my next journey. >> No, thank you. >> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
02:01:43
where they know exactly what video you would like to watch next based on AI and all of your viewing behavior. And the
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