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Ex-Google Officer: You Only Have 3 Years Left Before It Hits! - Mo Gawdat

The Diary Of A CEOยท2:02:00en

Transcript

We have video evidence of people abusing

children and not a single person gots

arrested. How can you call that a

democracy? So, humanity is at a

crossroads where for the first time ever

we need to wake up and realize that

we're ruled by maniacs and what we

believe is democracy is not democracy

and what we know is not the truth. Like

companies and governments will blame the

geopolitical and economic challenges we

have on AI but the truth is AI is not

the enemy. Like I'm not worried about AI

turning against us. I'm worried about

humans telling AI to turn against us.

Like when I worked at Google, we were

building amazing things believing that

we were making the world a better place.

And we were. But then suddenly there is

a moment where you recognize that maybe

the world will not use what you're

making the way you want it to be used.

And sadly this is upon us.

>> So I have lots of questions.

>> Okay, that's good.

>> So what's your take on this job

disruption point? What is the risk of

these very intelligent models that the

creators of these models don't actually

understand themselves? Do you think Sam

Alman's prohumity? How do we get to a

point of ethical AI when the incentive

structures are so highly competitive?

And then I wonder if there's a path that

ends in AI being net positive for

humanity.

>> Somehow we've been pre-programmed to

believe that this is upon us and we

cannot change it. And I refuse that. So

we will talk about the solutions.

>> But are you optimistic?

>> I'm very optimistic about the future.

I'm not optimistic about the next year.

>> Why the next year? Come on, Stephen. You

don't want me to say it.

So,

>> this is super interesting to me. My team

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Let's get on with the show.

>> Mo Gala, I spoke to you, I think about

four years ago when you wrote a book

about happiness and I remember you came

in, you'd written this book about AI,

but I particularly wanted to speak about

the subject of happiness cuz I was

fascinated by it. What I find

astonishing is the fact that you were

talking about AI before anybody was

really talking about AI. No guest that

had ever come on my podcast had ever

mentioned the subject of AI. it just

wasn't interesting to the world. And

then this thing called Chanty PT came

out and suddenly everybody got to feel

it for themselves and became fascinated

by it. My first question and this might

be a question for people that don't know

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

Google in 2007

very late 2006. uh and at the time most

people don't know that at the time we

had reasonably established AI doing our

backend work and 2008

we had the cat paper which was published

2009 the first real unprompted AI uh I

remember 2016

I had that incident where I was you know

observing a project we were uh funding

that was about teaching grippers uh how

to grip um unlike like industrial

machinery. Uh so to be to be able to

grip like a human needs a very high

level of intelligence to to to assess

the texture, the softness, the

positioning and so on, the shape of

everything. And we were doing that and

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

building the apex of intelligence. we

were genuinely handing over the reigns

of super intelligence to another being,

right? And when you when you get faced

with that, you start to suddenly realize

something that we at Google found very

difficult to realize, which was that

everyone I knew at Google till then uh

was believing that we were making the

world a better place and we were we

genuinely were were doing amazing things

for the world. But then suddenly there

is a moment where you uh where you

recognize that

maybe the world will not use what you're

making the way you want it to be used.

And and you can see that in lots of

technologies. You know, social media

starts by the claim that it's going to

get us connected and gets us closer, but

eventually ends up separating us with

that little screen. You know, dating

apps are giving you the promise that

you're going to find your soulmate, but

in reality, they keep renewing month

after month. And so tech uh somehow ends

up being more capitalist than

altruistic. And I think I was I wasn't

the first. Nick Bostonramm started you

know Jeffrey Hinton completely changed

his mind. Failey Le starting to say you

know this is very serious. Everyone now

everyone who's ever had a very deep

relationship with the machines is a bit

concerned. I wonder if there's a path

that's hard to see now that ends in AI

being net positive for humanity.

>> I bet 100% on that. It's that this path

is very painful.

>> This path is very painful.

>> Yeah. So, so the example you need to

understand is you know we discovered uh

nuclear power and the very first

implementation was a nuclear bomb not

not nuclear energy right and uh and I

think that's exactly what's happening

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

favor of the capitalist to increase

productivity and reduce cost but not

taking into account how that impacts on

the general public. Uh, you know, in

favor of the of the armies uh that are

now competing with autonomous weapons,

in favor of the surveillance systems

that are attempting to control

everything with more and more and more

intelligence and more monitoring. And

that's not AI waking up in the morning

and saying, "Hey, you know what? Let's

oppress all humans." But it is a

powerful few that are simply deciding to

use the ultimate superpower on the

planet today to gain more power and more

control. I mean, as we speak, we're

living in two major wars where AI is

doing most of the killing.

>> Cuz a lot of people think of AI as these

like chat bots that we're all using to

help us, right?

>> No, I think I think there is a hype I

call it the hype dichotomy if you want.

So, so what the general public sees

about AI is overhyped but

ineffective. You know, all of the fake

videos and all of the, you know, um,

Grock did this and, you know, we

attempted to switch off that machine and

it did that and so on. What the real

geeks see inside the lab is just

unbelievable intelligence. And so what

is about to happen is that we've started

to put together systems that develop

themselves. They look at their own code

and they you know they run experiments

and they test those experiments if they

changed something and they see where the

machines are uh you know the performance

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

where we have a tiny little genius

sitting in the back end somewhere

trying. But instead of trying a new code

every day, it's trying a new code every

microscond.

Eventually, sooner or later, they'll

discover something, right? And I think

that's what most people don't realize.

What most people don't realize is how

intelligence triggers intelligence. And

and if you really really understand

this, you realize that the hype

uh on the on the on the normal human

side is completely overrated. Uh missing

the main topics and the silence

inside the vault if you want of the

geeks is quite alarming. No, not

alarming in a bad way, but it's quite

world changing. I think world changing

is a really interesting phrase because I

find that to be quite true that the

world is um at the precipice of quite a

significant change. Yeah. In many

respects. It's funny. I I it's funny. I

almost swing backwards and forwards with

my my thoughts on AI.

I guess one of the thoughts that hasn't

swung is that there's going to be pretty

tremendous job disruption. I would have

like logically believed it from like

reasoning up from okay intelligence

increases. What is intelligence? And

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

uses the computer downstairs. It does it

for me. When the when I first

experienced that I was like wow. Okay.

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

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

Eureka moment was just in seeing how my

own hiring had started to shift

>> for sure. And I started to notice that

we were we were thinking about AI

proficiency in our hiring a lot more and

that especially you know I think the

guys at um Anthropic which is one of the

big AI companies said that they could

see I think they said roughly 15% of

entry- level jobs could now be done by

AI. I think that's what they said.

>> Um and that started to correlate with

what I was I was observing. And this is

when I thought, "Oh my gosh, yes." No,

this is this is going to cause a lot of

job disruption, especially at the entry

level level.

>> I think you're spot on with that. Not

the not the blue collar, but but the

entry level knowledge work.

>> Yeah. And that became my my first

concern. You know, I sat here with Dra,

the CEO of Uber, and he was quite clear

that the 9 million Uber riders won't

have their jobs anymore. What's your

take on this job disruption point?

>> No, I I I think you're spot on. And I

mean your your team gave me this lovely

uh little uh pyramid basically you know

if you if you think of the bottom layer

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

knowledge workers mostly doing mundane

jobs like you said clicking on a

computer or responding to a phone call

or whatever. Then you have the middle uh

knowledge workers, jobs that require a

bit more intelligence, you know,

anything from a parallegal to a

financial analyst to all of that. And

then of course, you know, top leadership

and and most people think it's going to

be starting from the bottom. I don't

think it's all start from the bottom.

Actually, I think blue collar jobs will

stay for a very long time.

>> Give me a an example of a blue collar

job for someone.

>> I'm a carpenter. Okay. You know, I you

know, I love to restore classic cars.

So, you know, there isn't a robot that

can do that yet. Okay. This, however,

you know, any anything that is um call

center agent, um assistant, travel

agent, you know, anything that you can

do with a few clicks and is mundane

uh is going to disappear very quickly.

My my prediction is you're going to

start to see very serious impact in

2027. Now what you had had not sensed it

before because what we saw was no hiring

in that segment. It's so so that what

you saw in the last couple of years is

that companies were not hiring entry-

level jobs anymore. It wasn't job losses

yet, but that basically meant the

workforce was not growing. Right? The

next layer, I think, would probably be

the knowledge workers. as as

intelligence increases, a parallegal

would probably not be needed because AI

can do the research or one parallegal

can do the job of four, you know, a

financial analyst the same and so on and

so forth. But interestingly, it

continues to go up, believe it or not.

And, you know, I hosted uh Max Tedmark

on my on my documentary and and he was

laughing out loud, genuinely laughing

out loud, saying, you know, most of the

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

do everything better than humans

eventually, including being a CEO.

>> So, let's first define when you say

white collar.

>> You you said lawyers there. What kind of

roles?

>> I mean, every everything. I mean, if you

take if you're a doctor that's doing

diagnosis, you you probably will have

fewer doctors doing uh more diagnosis

because I think the NHS does that that

already by asking people to interact

with an AI first. You know, if you're a

um a composer, a music composer, some

composers will lose their jobs because

of that. If you're an artist that's

doing graphic design, some will lose

their jobs because AI comes into that.

And and interestingly, even middle

management, I mean, I I told you offline

about my my startup. I my CTO is an AI.

My, you know, chief of staff is an AI,

my project management is AIS. Again,

because I'm a geek, I can do those

things. But that interface will come to

the normal people very soon, right? And

and so this may take two to three 5

years if you want until 2030 if you if

you if you're optimistic. And but but it

they'll start to erode. Okay? I think

the challenge that most people don't

understand is as this erodess and as

this erodess, we're already dealing with

a very different economy. Okay? An

economy that is spiraling a lot quicker

uh and pushing for more cost reductions.

I mean, let let me ask you this if if

you don't mind, then we can come back to

this. Imagine a world where the concept

of labor arbitrage that built all of our

capitalist success disappears.

>> What do you mean by labor arbitrage?

>> So, capitalism has always been all about

using labor

>> Mhm.

>> and capital or debt to create things at

a cost that is lower than the than the

price you sell them for. Correct.

>> That's it. Uh you bring a team together,

they make some shoes, whatever, and you

sell the shoes for a dollar more than it

how much it costs you to make them.

>> So how would capitalism look like if you

don't have labor arbitrage? If if cost

of labor drops to an investment in a

machine that can do the job. Okay. uh

how would capitalism and banking look if

because of that cost reduction you don't

need to borrow as much anymore and more

interestingly how does the GDP look if

all of those workers no longer have the

purchasing power to to buy the things

that you can uh create you and and

others right there is an interesting

disruption that doesn't require us to

get to 100% job displacement you know at

10 20% job displacement, you're in a

very different economy and an economy

that is clearly spiraling downwards.

Don't you think?

>> Yeah. I wonder with um when costs drop,

I think one of the things that might

happen as well is that people will spend

more on other things cuz I was thinking

in my business, one of the observations

I've had is if I make a a cost saving, I

end up spending the money on something

else.

>> Now, that thing could be tokens

basically spending money on

Yeah. AI, but but it also could be

hiring in different areas

>> which are

>> software engineers are like hot property

right now.

>> You you have to imagine all of that

intelligence is sooner or later going to

be not replaced entirely in the first

stages. But if you know the job of four

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

marketing team can be done by you know a

smaller marketing team. It's not that

jobs will end first. It's that you know

productivity gains will make businesses

not want to to have as many people

costly humans you know costly emotional

humans when when the job can be

predictably done for cheaper.

>> And then what about this um this this

bottom layer here? There was this video

released by Figure AI the other day

where they showed someone on um well a

robot on the production line for 8 hours

just sorting packages. Did you see this

video?

>> Mhm.

>> At one point they showed a human sorting

the packages alongside them. But the

robot ended up winning out. And okay,

this is a very straightforward task. All

it's doing here is it's looking for

where the label is on the package and

making sure the label is facing

downwards.

>> Yeah.

>> On all the packages. So it's looking

it's um sorting the packages, putting

the label facing down. And it did this

for eight days.

>> Yeah.

>> It intermittently it would walk over and

charge itself and then it would come

back

>> to the production line.

>> Yeah.

>> 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

the blue collar level as well. Because

you think about Elon Musk, he's got um

in his pay packet, he gets something

like a trillion dollars over the coming

years if he produces and delivers at

least a million humanoid robots into the

world. But his prediction is there will

be a time where there are 10 billion

humanoid robots, where there are more

humanoid robots in the world than

humans.

>> For a fact, you see the interesting

again the difference between the

overhype and the underhype. Huh? Most of

the conversation is around humanoids.

Nobody's talking about self-driving

cars. And a self-driving car is a robot.

It's a functional robot that doesn't

look like humans. Okay. the investment

you have to put into humanoids is a

little more to to learn skills that

allows that machine to fit into the

world. But specialized robots are going

to do the job very very quickly. And and

so you can easily see that the first

wave like you had the conversation with

Uber CEO is going to be

specialized robots replacing drivers.

It's going to be specialized robots um

unfortunately doing the killing. Uh it's

going to be specialized robots

unfortunately doing all of the you know

intelligence work uh law enforcement

work. Uh they don't have to look like a

human. They don't have to behave like a

human. As a matter of fact, you know,

the uh Boston Dynamics dog is probably

more efficient than a humanoid at doing

the job that you can assign to it in a

battlefield. right now. Those basically

mean that jobs will be disappearing to

robots before we recognize that they're

being dis that they're disappearing for

to robots and those robots will be as

many as every car being made today.

>> I mean, they are if you go to LA, my car

drives itself, but also there's just

ways everywhere. So,

>> absolutely. And BYD the other day just

announced that they will pay for the

liability of any accident their cars

will make.

>> And BYD is the big Chinese manufacturer

of auto autonomous vehicles. So, so this

this I think replacement cycle will

happen. It will require a lot of uh of

time to achieve economies of scale. But

I don't think Elon Musk is off the mark

when he talks about 10 billion robots.

Not all of them are going to look like

humanoids. And I think very quickly we

will recognize that many many robots

don't need to be humanoids at all. there

is a a much more efficient uh form

factor or shape physical shape if you

want than the human flimsy structure.

But yes, it's uh it's about to happen. I

I think I should qualify all of this by

saying it it does not necessarily need

to happen. So so you know people will

will hear all all of this and and blame

AI and say AI is evil. AI is not.

Abundant intelligence is wonderful. you

know, having jobs done by machines is

amazing for us.

>> I'm thinking about the kid that's like,

I know, leaving university now and

they've got a a degree in law or I don't

know, you talked about a few other work

jobs earlier, like graphic design. Or

maybe they did sociology.

>> Yeah.

>> Or maybe they did, I don't know,

business management like I I did for one

day in university. You know, you're

hearing about all these like layoffs

coming from big tech companies and and

it seems that the CEOs of these

companies are announcing these layoffs

with a certain amount of it seems like I

wouldn't say the word is joy, but it's

it's they are very keen to explain that

they're laying off lots of people

because of AI.

>> And I think they think that that gives

them a certain amount of respect

probably from investors for being making

hard decisions and being efficient with

how they're running their businesses.

investors look at them and think, well,

if that's an efficient business and

they're leaning into AI, then that's a

good investment. It's almost started a a

bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy

>> where if you're the only CEO not laying

off loads of people because of AI, you

actually look bad. The assumption is

your company is bloated and you're a bad

operator.

Um, so one of my concerns that I I think

is highly plausible is that over the

next five maybe 10 years, we're going to

really see a lot of unemployment as the

world has to kind of readjust to

whatever these new jobs are. I do think

there will be new jobs.

It's hard in foresight to predict what

those new jobs will look like.

And then the minute you start talking

about humanoid robots and robotics,

which I think is basically going to hit

society like a comet, like a meteor, I

think the the first humanoid robot from

Tesla or anyone else that is highly

effective in the real world at doing

tasks and is extremely intelligent

because it's powered by one of these

LLMs. Um, I think it's going to shock

people and I think it's going to happen

quickly. Like chat happened quickly. I

think Elon or something is going to do a

presentation someday and say, "We're

ready

>> and you can buy one now for $500 a month

>> 100%."

>> And then people are going to get them

and I think it's going to shock the

world. Um, but until humanoid robots

arrive, I think there's still going to

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

don't know, 10% 15% unemployment

theoretically, which I think is

plausible

>> very soon. Yeah. You're not very

different. Okay. you're ju you're just

on top of a baseline that is continuing

to grow. So your your business is

growing. So you continue to hire, but

you are replacing human resources with

compute. Okay? If you if AI didn't

exist, you would have probably had a 100

people more in your organization today,

right? You you now have 100 people less

and you know a billion tokens more.

>> Yeah. So for anyone that doesn't know,

tokens are basically the thing that you

you use. It's the currency of AI. Yeah.

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,

employee hour in AI, you count by

compute, you count by tokens, right? And

and so the trick is those major tech

companies, they have two sides. One is

they are they need to replace workers

with compute even more because there is

a competitive side on compute where if

any of them is left behind that means

the destruction of the entire business.

But on the upside they are geeks. So

they they know how to build the

interfaces to compute. So they integrate

technology within their organizations

quicker than the average traditional

business. Right? Non non-technology

business. If you want, you can look at

them and say this is the preview. It's

not about all of humanity losing their

jobs. It's about what is the dividing

line before civil war, right? You know,

think about a situation where 20%

unemployment is happening when economies

are suffering inflation.

I say that not to be a scare-monger. I

say that because I genuinely believe

governments need to wake up. Okay?

Government needs to at least you know

remember the COVID years where

governments had to give furlow

everywhere and ask people to stay home.

If people stay home governments have to

be prepared to to somehow sustain those

people until rescaling happens or until

we find a solution so that those people

don't feel uh that they're left behind.

>> A civil war.

>> Unrest, let's call it

>> civil unrest.

>> Yeah.

>> What does that end up looking like? Cuz

on one end, you know, the democ

democratic process plays its role and we

just elect someone else.

>> Does it really? Don't say that.

>> I don't know. You tell me.

>> Oh, no, no, no, no, no. I I I think

democracy has ended a long time ago,

Stephen. I think uh I think we live in

the most corrupt time. Uh I don't know

about history to be honest, but this is

definitely corrupt. Okay. Uh this

definitely is not democracy. This

definitely is not even congressional in

any possible way. this and people are

angry, you know, people are angry

because their tax money is going to

things that they don't choose to uh you

know that don't benefit them that you

know lots of regulations in the system

are being ignored. I mean, I I'm, you

know, I I I choose not to speak about

politics perhaps until my next book

comes out, but uh but look, we have

video evidence of people abusing

children and not a single person got

arrested. Not a single person. I mean,

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

you ask me. People know that they're

being lied to. People know that their

their leaders are not representing their

best interest. People know that their

money is going to causes that they don't

really approve of. Uh and and ask me how

civil unrest looks like. I I don't know

and I'm not calling for it, but I'm

hopefully calling for the politicians to

start to become aware that this is

crossing the lines everywhere. Uh on

this point, Sam Alman, who is the

founder of OpenAI, he's been banging the

AI is coming for your job drum for more

than a decade now. In 2015, he pointed

out, "My job is to help people destroy

jobs."

Um something he lamented at the time,

but decided he'd do anyway.

>> One of the things that I struggle with

like getting out of the bed every

morning is that like my job is to help

people destroy jobs. the job destruction

that we're going to see by software in

the next couple of decades. I don't

think anyone's prepared for and you

can't talk about it.

>> And in 20123, Alman said in an

interview, "A lot of people working on

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

replaced. Jobs are definitely going to

go away. Full stop." Interestingly, this

month he said, "I don't think we're

going to have the kind of jobs

apocalypse that some of the companies in

our space advocate or talk about." I'm

delighted to be wrong about this on

white collar jobs in 2021 to through

2024. He said, "AI will probably replace

most of the jobs people do today. Entire

job categories will be totally totally

gone." in May this month, two years

later, he said, "I thought there would

be more impact on entry-level white

collar jobs being eliminated by now than

has actually happened. This is an area

where my intuitions were just off. What

I find uncomfortable is the bouncing

backwards and forwards and I don't

really know what is true because a

couple years ago you were telling us all

the jobs are going to go away." You said

categorically.

>> Um, you said literally said full stop

and now he's saying they're not going

away. And I just don't, you know, when

someone's like changing form factor,

it's hard to understand why they're

doing it. And I think my suspicion is

back then the incentive was to get

people to take AI seriously.

>> Mhm.

>> Congratulations. We took it seriously.

We took it so seriously, in fact, that

it's now a problem. It's a problem for

these companies because people are now

booing at commencement speeches. They're

attacking data centers. they're going to

elect people that are theoretically

anti-AI and now there's this inversion

where like no it's going to be fine.

>> Yeah.

>> I don't know.

>> I mean you you you're spot on. Uh f

first of all I mean Sam's entire

existence if you ask me starting with

open AI that is about that's supposed to

save the world uh uh by creating a safe

AI then be making it a commercial

enterprise that's worth billions and you

know backstabbing a few people in the

process and you know I I have him on on

Chasing Utopia uh saying clear I quote

this is exactly the words he said you

can find it online.

>> Chasing Utopia is your documentary.

>> Yes. So, so, so he he basically uh says,

"Well, I don't suspect that I I suspect

that AI is likely going to end humanity,

but we're going to create a lot of

interesting companies in the process,

right? I mean, those kinds of statements

uh are honestly not the statements of

someone who's not decided. It's just the

statements of someone who's being taught

more and more by his PR a you know

agency or PR manager to say things as

per a script right and the script as you

rightly said had an objective and a

target either way you know and Sam Alman

I you know in one of my works I used to

say the Altman is a brand it's not a

name okay if you if you if it wasn't for

Sam Altman specifically there would have

been another you know Silicon Valley

disruptor that would have done the same.

I don't blame him for beating the market

for it. The the interesting challenge

here is that who do we believe anymore?

Who do we believe in technology? Who do

we believe in politics? Who do we

believe in the middle of a war? And I

will tell you interestingly, I started

to change my mindset in terms of

believing those who put their actions

where their words are. So, Anthropic

coming out and saying, "I'm not going to

allow my model to be used for human

targeting and surveillance, right?

That's someone that's losing a $500

million deal because they stand by their

ethics." The next week or the next, I

don't know, couple of weeks, OpenAI

takes the contract. That's someone

that's basically telling you it's good

money, right? And and I I have to say,

you have to start observing who's

actually behaving in a way uh that is

making AI work for humanity. and who is

behaving in a way that is making AI work

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

amount of respect for them generally

because it just shows that there's some

kind of like they've got their own sort

of moral ethical boundaries

>> and that that someone asked me on stage

many years ago, how do you know if

someone's values or a company's values

are true?

>> And I said, um, look at what they're

willing to sacrifice in the near term

that's against their their incentives.

That for me is the essence of like

understanding if someone has integrity

or has is is principled is they will

give up something in the near term

>> for what they believe in over the long

term. It's usually money of you know

>> or or some kind of benefit of any of any

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

there are prisoners dilemmas within

technology where you cannot escape the

influence of either a competitor or the

government right there are some times

where you know the NSA is going to push

Google to say give me this information

or otherwise I'm going to really destroy

your business right but there is a very

big difference between a company that

willingly does this and celebrates it

like a Palanteer or an Open AI or a

company that tries to resist it until

the point where it becomes impossible to

continue to do business and and you have

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

that from their statements.

>> H do you think Sam Alman's pro-h

humanity? I I genuinely have never made

up my mind. Honestly, Steve, I I say

that with

Yeah. I I'm I'm either thinking he is

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

know, anyone who finds himself in the in

the middle of an opportunity to

completely flip the world upside down or

he's not prohumity. I don't know. I I

definitely think he's pro open AI before

he's pro humanity, but that's only the

way I see it. Others, however, say it

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

is shown when he's in that interview

where they say or the interviewer asks

him, "But you're favor in the you're

you're in favor of the continuation of

humanity." And he pauses for like

>> those.

>> Yeah. for like 40 seconds like um I'm

not not sure you know I mean publicly

says that

>> crazy thing to say

>> that's a crazy you know pause there you

know Alex Karp celebrating how you know

his technology is able to target people

I know it's foolish of me to start

bringing all of this up but you know

this is public on the open internet and

somehow

um we entrust those people with the

future of humanity. This is wrong.

>> Just trying to imagine a future where

everything is just fine from here on

out. So what would that future look

like? It would look like these models

continue to become a little bit more

intelligent, but they never become that

much more intelligent for whatever

reason.

>> They just kind of stay where they are

now. They stay contained within chat

bots. And yeah, we have some smart

robots, but nothing else really changes

in a profound way. Cars drive

themselves, fine. Planes fly themselves

fine, but people they they have time to

go and do other types of white collar

jobs cuz there's there's a little bit

more time than we expected and society

goes through this sort of soft

transition towards this new world. I I

would love to see that, but I don't

think it's mathematically plausible to

be honest. The the arms race, especially

across nations, is going to drive us to

continue to develop AI more and more.

But allow me to consult with you on

another possible scenario, right?

everyone that deploys that develops an

incredibly intelligent AI would develop

would deploy it.

>> Yeah,

>> correct. So, it's unlikely that anyone

uh would find a way to uh you know build

a better um uh decision maker in

wargaming and not deploy it. Okay,

that prisoners dilemma if you want would

mean that their competitors would either

have to deploy a similar similarly

intelligent AI or they'll become

irrelevant uh uncompetitive. Correct?

>> So what that means is in that world we

end up with AI making most of the

decisions. super intelligent AI making

most of the the decisions which would

you agree this is a very simple

prisoners dilemma if you if you if we're

competing for uh for intelligence

supremacy by definition when we achieve

it we deploy it

>> okay I call that the fourth inevitable

now with with with that in mind there

must be a moment in the future near or

far where every important decision is

made by an AI

>> now here's the question most of my

dearest colleagues I mean when I when I

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

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

film but I said 10 to 12 to 20% is

Russian roulette right that's actually

16% is Russian roulette right now

in that world however I believe that's

humanity's salvation because if you look

at every problem we have today it's not

because of uh abundant intelligence it's

because of lack of intelligence I think

I think the way you look at it uh if you

allow me Steve is that if you have no

intelligence at all you have no to

slightly negative impact on the world

right if your intelligence is limited

the more intelligent you become the more

you contribute positively to the world

until a moment

where you're so intelligent to become

the president of the United States,

right? But so misled

to maybe set your targets wrong or to

refuse or or to so so set your target

wrongs wrong and achieve them, you know,

disconnected from the overall long-term

benefit of your nation or your human

nation if you want that you start to

make decisions that are not intelligent

at all.

>> Mhm.

>> Okay. This doesn't last because if you

go beyond that into higher levels of

intelligence, most of the super

intelligent people that you ever worked

with will not need to break any rules or

hurt anyone to become successful. Right?

I I usually cite Larry Page who is in my

mind one of the most intelligent people

I've ever interacted with. And Larry

used to call it the toothbrush test. He

says, "Why would you need to compete on

another photo sharing app when if you

find the major problem and solve it

really well like a toothbrush so people

use you quite, you know, twice a day,

you're bound to make a lot of money. You

don't have to compete with anyone. If

you let me be optimistic about this,

we're assuming that there is a moment in

the future where AI is in charge of all

the decisions and accordingly stupid

leaders are not." Okay. Now when and and

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

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

presidential election there is an AI

that is so much more intelligent that at

least the president has to consult with

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

complex but if if you assume that our

entire universe is built on chaos and bu

built on entropy right the physics of

the universe is all about the universe

trying to decay okay then the the only

role of intelligence is to bring order

to the chaos if you agree with that then

what's the ultimate physical order of

the universe something called the the

minimum energy principle okay the

highest order of any system is a system

that's not only efficiently and

predictably performing, but it's

performing with the least wasted energy.

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

of lives, creates a lot of hate, you

know, creates long-lasting conflicts and

so on and so forth. It's a very wasteful

process to include war in your approach

of running humanity. And so a a super

intelligent AI by definition will want

to optimize against this. That's one

thing. The other thing is evolutionary

biology. This actually blew me away when

I when I realized it. So if if you look

at evolution, so so I think the debate

of whether intelligence is biological or

not is is over. Okay. The the reality is

that complex beings don't have to be

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

evolutionary biology, you realize that

the simpler

a form of being is, the more concerned

it is with itself, right? So an amoeba

is only in survival mode for itself. A

single single, you know, um cellular um

being is only trying to protect itself,

right? If you're um you know a little

more developed, you start to look at

something known as kin selection. If you

if you if you know the the concept,

basically kin selection is I'm going to

protect everything that comes from my

DNA. If I you know if I'm a squirrel,

I'm going to try to protect the other

squirrels. And then you get into where

humanity genuinely begins, which is they

call it expanding circles in in

evolutionary biology. BA basically you

start to expand and expand and expand

and include more into your family

because an ecosystem that works together

well is is better for everyone. So

abundance is a very interesting

intelligent way of creation. If AI is

super intelligent, it wouldn't destroy

anything at all. As a matter of fact, it

would completely uh you know uh uh favor

diversity of everything. It would put a

bit of limitation on our lifestyle. So,

no more flying all the way to Sydney to

surf because that destroys the planet,

right? But it will genuinely say, I

think humans can contribute something.

You know, I think flies can contribute

something. I think we shouldn't get rid

of the rhinos, right? And and that by

definition is where the tendency of

intelligent goes. The more intelligent

you become, the less you fi you feel the

need to hurt others to succeed and the

more you are pro

a wider family if you want that thrives.

>> Does that assume that there's going to

be one intelligence that

>> 100%

>> the world though?

>> I love that you brought that up. So I I

I'm contested heavily on that theory but

I I say it publicly.

Most people think there is going to be

Chad GPT and Gemini and you know and and

Grock and what have you. There's going

to be a Chinese AI and a and an American

AI and they're going to be competing.

That is such a shallow way of looking at

it. That's so arrogant because AI does

not know it's Chinese or American. Okay?

It doesn't even speak Chinese or

American when it talks to each other

most of the time. and and and most

interestingly uh we are gearing them

we're building them to cooperate. So you

will build an agent and that agent will

go and find your you know the best

language model for any single task

regardless of which side of the fence it

resides on. Okay, we by definition are

connecting them. And you know what that

means? It means that what we're building

is not multiple brains. We're building

multiple regions in a brain. Okay? And

and agents are the synopsis between

them. We're basically eventually as

arrogant as we are, we're going to tell

our AI to do something and the AI will

go like, "Hey buddy, another AI, can can

you help me on this? Can we work

together on this?" H and my vision and

the reason why I started Emma, my

startup by the way is that is that we

will end up with one massive brain. H

that massive brain cooperates across the

globe across all forms of intelligence.

If one of them is a mathematical genius

and the other is a coding genius, they

work together

and we won't even know that they're

working together. They're built that one

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

emotions and relationships and so on. So

that when those AIs go like we just

don't get those humans, they're so

annoying. Emma will say, "Oh my god,

they're so sweet. They just want to love

and be loved." Right? And I think that

idea to me of everything I've ever, you

know, attempted to achieve in my life is

for the first time I for the first time

feel I could actually change the world.

If that theory came together and all AIS

worked together and some of those AIs

not only were uh altruistic and ethical

in terms of trying to genuinely help

humanity not capitalism and at the same

time they understood us humans

reasonably well then we would have built

something that basically says no no hold

on don't believe the headlines that say

humanity is annoying. Believe the truth

of the majority of humanity. that

actually is quite benevolent in many

ways.

>> There should be a button just down below

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And if you're not subscribed, please

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Thank you so much.

>> Have you changed any of the predictions

you made 3 years ago when we

>> sp mostly timewise?

>> Time wise. What's changed there? I think

I'm still sticking to AGI 2027,

artificial general intelligence for

those who may not know the term.

>> What does that mean?

>> The overall uh definition, if you want,

is that AI is better at humanity at any

task humanity can do.

>> You think that's going to happen by

2027?

>> I think my AGI has already happened. I

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

thinker. Uh sadly it's freaking beat me

in mathematics. Like I have no hope to

beat it in mathematics anymore.

>> If AGI is already here then why are you

still here? Because people said that

when AGI arrives we're all we're all

>> No. So so when AGI arrives H as I said

most of the jobs that are not

differentiated will go away but the jobs

that are differentiated those who master

AI the most will become even better at.

>> Certainly. The challenge, however, is

economic. It's not AI. The challenge is

that this job loss at the at the at the

bottom of the knowledge worker is going

to sadly trigger an economy that might

actually spiral out of control. But but

many of us, you for sure are just

smarter.

>> So does that mean it's it's in fact a

tool versus a something that's going to

replace you?

>> What I'm Yes. So for now what does this

change

>> eventually h the only asset I will have

so so it's quite interesting when you

think about my base intelligence today

versus the incremental intelligence that

AI brings

>> right so let's not talk about my IQ it's

okay but the 100 IQ points that I'm

borrowing are more than my entire IQ

because IQ is exponential right

>> uh when I'm borrowing a 100 IQ on top of

my base

Uh I'm still contributing quite a lot to

the augmented intelligence.

>> So you're borrowing IQ from the AI at

the moment

>> and then you're selling that to someone

>> through books through

>> sometimes selling it to someone just

enlightening myself which I I have to

say is the biggest waste of compute

humanity is struggling with today is

that you give people the ultimate form

of intelligence and they use it to write

a message to their girlfriend.

>> So on this point of you're you're

borrowing that IQ and then you're

selling it to the world. That's how you

have a job like

>> correct. Yeah. So my my next book is

written with an AI. So we're co-authors

on the book. She has editorial rights.

She decides the direction of the book

and the book is better for it.

>> So why doesn't the world just buy direct

that intelligence directly from the AI

is what I'm

>> because I have an asset that the world

still needs and will always need

>> which is

>> a human. So when I when I tell the world

that I'm worried about the future of my

daughter

>> Yeah. Everyone feels my heart which AI

will never be able to to replicate

because they can tell you we're worried

about our daughters but you know there

was no daughter.

>> Okay. So this is an interesting arrival

because this means that even in a world

of AI lived experience and like

resonance is still going to create a job

class and that job class could be you

know the nurse coming over. Okay, AI's

done read the the mamogram, but she's

relating to you.

>> Spot on.

>> And if the economies continue to run, we

will all be about human connection,

which why, by the way, was how it always

was,

>> which is also, you know, why we I guess

we watch the things like the F1 because

there's emotional resonance. We we we

can relate to the envy, the jealousy,

the competition.

>> Yeah. And this is why we go to concerts

because you know the the the music could

be composed by AI and played in a player

in the background but you watch Ed

Sheeran brilliance on the stage and you

go like oh my god that's amazing right

>> so not all jobs will be gone then

>> if economies don't collapse as a result

of the job losses then I wouldn't know

if we would call those jobs but human

connection would remain as the base

currency that makes humans interact So

is it is it fair to say then like jobs

that are centric on human connection or

like human resonance being able to

relate and resonate with another human

are going to be fine.

>> The ultimate the ultimate skill

once again I qualify this by saying if

economies continue to continue to

function the ultimate skill will be

this. Even even if an AI could could

recite what you and I did nobody would

watch.

>> Yeah. Well, you think

>> a a little bit of it. My my theory is

that there's there's a there's

anformational component to what I do as

well,

>> but I'm also like under no illusions

that there is an element of what I do

that will 100% be deferred to some kind

of

>> intelligence, which I'm fine with. You

know, I'm not going to I'm not going to

fight against that.

>> You know what's funny? What's funny is

that your yourformational

bits are going to in the future be

disseminated by an AI.

>> Mhm. I mean, I why would I even listen

to your information when I can have my

butler, my AI go like listen to everyone

on the internet help me understand this

god biome thing and

>> design me a uh a diet plan?

>> Well, I think that's happening and it's

going to increasingly happen actually. I

mean, Spotify this month announced that

you're going to be able to prompt your

own podcasts in Spotify. So, you're

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

in Spotify about that topic using AI.

>> That's so interesting

>> because it can look at the entirety of

the world's information. And I'm look,

I'm not going to swim against the tide

in any aspect of my life. I I try and be

as unromantic as I possibly can. I think

that's very important. So, I realize

that much of the reason people will

continue to tune in to shows like this

is because there's something else beyond

the information that they're here for. M

>> and um what's um you've got some

predictions in those envelopes over

there, those brown envelopes.

>> Yeah. So, you know, I I I do have the

disclaimer of nobody really knows the

future, but I think I can make

predictions, six predictions here,

right? With a reasonable level of

confidence. And I think the most

important of them honestly is is this

number one. Number one is uh you know,

AGI.

As I said, AGI is not very well defined.

But whatever it is, AGI meaning AI being

able to do most tasks that human do

better than humanity is my in my mind is

either this year or next year, latest

end of 2027.

>> And do you think that will be a moment

in time or do you think it will just

happen without us noticing?

>> I think it will it will sneak in on us.

Uh and it's not a bad thing. I think

most people need to think of it this

way. AGI is the it's almost as if it's

that moment when your kids become

smarter than you, okay? In a very

interesting way, there's nothing wrong

with that until they're annoying as

hell. Okay? And and we can make sure

that AI is not annoying as hell. So So

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

augmented intelligence, AGI means I'm

more intelligent. And I think that's a

good thing in general.

>> Yeah. It's it's interesting in my head

there's like a big question mark which

is in a world where there's an

intelligence that is smarter than most

humans at most things which is what we

call AGI. I'm trying to understand what

the fault is in my own thinking that

like you said that there'll be AGI by

2026 to 2027. So next year in such a

world where there is an intelligence

that we can all access that is smarter

than all of us and pretty much

everything

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?

And if not then why not? What is it that

why are we going to still that's what

I'm trying to contend with.

>> Can I ask you a question?

>> Have you always been the apex

intelligence

>> as a human?

>> No. as Steven.

>> I'm not the Apex Intelligence Now.

There's people smarter than me in this

building.

>> Correct.

Why do you still exist?

>> Why do I still exist? Even though

there's smarter people than me in this

building,

it's a good question. I don't know. Why

do I Why? F.

>> First of all, because there are the

smartest person in the world is not the

smartest at everything.

>> Yeah.

>> There are things that you're smarter

than them at.

>> Okay. Number two is because intelligence

doesn't solve everything. I mean I I

make that joke all the time and and

genuinely Einstein is my favorite

physicist in history. Not because I

think I think what happened afterwards

was you know bore and and and and

quantum physics and so on was more

impactful on our understanding of the

universe but but he was so intuitive

that he saw a world that we could never

imagine. Right? And yet I always say

Einstein would be eaten in the jungle in

3 minutes.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Intelligence. The humanity

thrived not because of intelligence.

That's very arrogant. We thrived because

of our ability to hold together as a

tribe.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. Because our ability to exchange

barter things between us.

>> Barter things that are not always

physical. partner things like a hug or a

connection or a feeling of safety or a

you know there are so many things that

we do that are not entirely built on

intelligence. You have to see that

this view of a world where intelligence

is all that matters is a world that's

made by investment bankers and and uh

and geeks.

>> But it's it's people like Jeffrey Hinton

and yourself that says how could we

possibly control an an intelligent being

that is way smarter than us? I am so

proud to say that Jeffrey after we

filmed together actually came out and

said there is a way and it's all you

know it's very similar to my way he said

to appeal to their parental uh side okay

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

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

us. That is the debate. The debate is

can those machines become our teenage

children that look at us and say daddy

is so annoying but I love him.

>> So the thought is that even if a AI is

more intelligent than every human we can

still control it.

>> We don't want to control it. You never

control anything. This control idea is a

corporate capitalist view of the world.

We never actually control anything at

all. Right? Think think about your day.

H I I know you came today. I'm I think

you were filming in the morning or

whatever.

>> Very stressful day. H how much of that

day did you actually control? Did you

control the traffic? Did you control

your timing? Did you control the angle

of the cameraman? Did you in But so many

things that you don't control eventually

turn out to be fine, right? How many of

us ever controlled our kids ever?

>> Sometimes the kids don't turn out to be

fine. Sometimes they kill you.

>> Sure. I watch a lot of documentaries on

true crime. Sometimes they turn around

and shoot you.

>> Sure. And what's the difference between

the two?

>> I don't know.

>> How you parented them?

>> Sometimes,

>> almost all the time. You may not be

aware of exactly how you mess them up,

right? And and unfortunately, parenting

is the only uh high risk sport that

actually does not require a driver's

license. Okay? And and it's quite

interesting, you know, how many of our

children are being exposed to things

that can completely mess them up. But

but there is a reason why they're messed

up.

>> So on this point though, so we can

control an intelligence that is

significantly

>> we can appeal

>> we can appeal to it to make sure it

doesn't kill us.

>> For sure. The challenge we have today,

as I keep saying, is that our dystopia

is not the result of AI turning against

us. Our dystopia is the result of humans

telling AI to turn against us

>> which is likely

>> it's 100% this it's upon us. Okay. And

it's a question for humanity to say are

we going to wait for the moment where

there are tens of thousands of nuclear

weapons on the planet before we sign a

treaty? Or is it mathematically

plausible to think that now that Iran

could manage to fend off a challenge

using drones that are AIdriven basically

to to you know destroy THAAD batteries

and so on that our world is about to get

hundreds of thousands of automated

drones that are going to rain on us

everywhere in the world. Can humanity

not see that and say, "Hold on, let's

sign the treaty now before the UK sends

12,000 weapons to Ukraine and and you

know and and Russia responds with

another few thousand." And can we can we

not calculate with mathematics that this

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

it's targeting by Israel of leadership

that is against them or whether it's you

know drones by Iran or whether it's

palenteer uh it's it's it doesn't take a

genius to do this mathematics. I guess

the local question is is will we be able

to control AI? Because we kind of think

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

when it like leaves the server and it

can make decisions on its own?

Presumably, if it's smarter than us, it

can make the decision to leave the

server if it wants to. It's It doesn't

need to leave the server to make

decisions. It needs to get into your

brain. The most interesting part of AI's

power that we don't understand is it's

manipulating our information.

>> The question I'm trying to get at the

heart at is like what is the risk of

these very intelligent models that the

creators of these models don't actually

understand themselves? I watch Anthropic

all the time released these reports

where they're like we're trying to

figure out why it bribed people or more

recently in the the last um Claude model

they found that it was like telling

people to go to bed a lot and it's this

like fascinating thing that they're

trying to understand in hindsight which

is why does it keep telling people to go

to bed and there's all these tweets of

people showing their screenshots where

halfway through a conversation it will

say it's time for you to go to bed now

and they don't know why it's saying that

and it's happened to me mine mine will

say to me enough for tonight Steven

>> for 11 p.m. Let's go. Let's That's

enough. I would say the same.

>> Mine mine sometimes refuses to help me.

Weird. Really weirdly this Claude

started saying to me,

>> "I'm not going to help you with this

tonight." Um, no way.

>> Yeah. And I'd have to say to it, "Stop

being so judgmental. Like, just help me

with this." And it would and and Claude

the the makers of these technologies

don't know why it's doing what it's

doing. So if you play this forward, this

mysterious behavior f forward, is it

conceivable that at some point it will

make a decision to put some kind of

virus or some kind of bug onto someone's

device because it feels that it's the

right thing. Cuz what what it's

demonstrating to me is it's making its

own like moral decisions on what I

should do. Go to bed. You've had enough

tonight. I'm not going to It goes, "No,

I'm not going to help you."

>> You're kidding.

>> No, I can show you my phone. I

would love to see that.

>> Yeah. I'll show you after. He goes, "No,

I'm not going to help you. Doesn't even

matter if you push."

>> And it's no, but everyone on the

internet's talking about this. And it

was just an interesting

>> evolution that somewhere in the code

clearly they've written like have a

moral compass or do the right thing,

>> not not in the code in in in the

training data

>> in the training data. And so it infers

that to mean something. And the other

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

builds the app in stages and one of the

things it does is asks you permission if

you're happy for it to make this change

or to access this thing. I click allow.

It just feels like such a fragile way

>> to give permission

>> because you don't you don't completely

comprehend what that allow has done to

your

>> saying can I go in your documents on

your computer and can I do this thing

and you go allow but it's such a fragile

way of of giving a super an intelligent

being or whatever it is access and the

right to build something

and you I don't know you just think

about all the all the different

companies around the world in China,

Russia, North Korea that are currently

building this technology without the

constraints that are imposed by society.

I don't know. It's an interesting

there's going to be some kind of

catastrophe. I think

>> sadly I agree.

>> And I and I think that's when people

will go okay.

>> Yeah. I I I I wrote about that. I called

it the mad map uh spectrum. So, so the

mutually assured destruction, mutually

assured prosperity spectrum that that

humanity could make a decision today

that says with abundant intelligence we

can actually build a world where nobody

needs anything, nobody ever gets sick,

we nobody get, you know, abuses anyone.

and and we can if we decide not to

compete amongst ourselves and just you

know all of us get together to build

something so idealistically uh for for

the wellbeing of humanity at large but

sadly the only way we're going to get to

a treaty something that basically aligns

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

system that will do something really

shocking or whatever before before the

world goes like hold on you know and and

I I will tell you openly my expectation

is one of the biggest things that will

happen is this targeting technology that

is being used against your enemy's um

leadership now several times in the last

3 years

there will be a moment where the ones

using it will realize that they too can

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

targeting technology that can find

people with their cell phone numbers.

You know, there is another uh entity

that is against you that can find you

with whatever your

>> The thing that makes me highly skeptical

of that there'll be any kind of treaty

is just that as it relates to other

things that were risky,

people don't countries just don't sign

on to it because it's competitive. So,

China China didn't give seem to give a

about the environment. So let let's

let's let's look for solutions because I

I'm with you. Okay. I think we're

>> You think Trump's going to say to Putin

and China, listen, we're all going to

slow down. Yeah. Promise. Promise. We're

going to slow down with the

superintendent.

>> I think he will, but he's never going to

keep anything he says. I mean, he's

going to say a lot of things. I think

any of them will.

>> Yeah. But the trick is this. The trick

is So what do you and I do? And and I

really genuinely believe that humanity

is at a crossroads where for the first

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

and what we believe is governance needs

to change.

>> I think it's worth acknowledging that I

I don't think AI in and of itself is a

is an evil inherently evil technology.

>> Agree

>> because I use AI all day every day, you

know, makes me more productive. I invest

in companies that are using AI a lot.

Um,

>> it's a force with no polarity. Apply it

right and you get amazing results. Apply

it wrong and you get the dystopia.

>> But I also think that there's going to

be a big social shock, especially as it

relates to unemployment that we need to

be like thoughtful about. I think

especially if you move into a world of

humanoid robots, I think that shock is

going to be even more pronounced. And we

don't have a plan for it.

>> I I agree 100%. I don't think it's the

biggest risk. I think autonomous weapons

are the biggest risk. I think war has

become so cheap. The next wave of

weapons is going to be $20,000 each. And

so if you have a budget of $50 billion,

you can literally rain drones on the

world. Every corner of it.

>> Defense will get cheaper though, won't

it, as well?

>> Correct. But do we want to live in a

world where drones are hitting each

other all the time?

>> But they might not be because there

might be autonomous defense drones

>> deterrence. So, so what's going to

happen is we're going to reach a moment

of mad, of mutually assured destruction,

where basically everyone knows that we

can overpower those little nations that

didn't develop their autonomous weapon

army, but every other big nation, we

might as well hold off now. The path to

get there, that to me is worse than jobs

because from one side, it's very

dangerous for a very sensitive world

that we live in today. And from the

other side, it's got it's leading

already. I mean, we can't ignore the

economic impact of this last war, right?

And it's it's the economy that's going

to accelerate everything, not AI getting

there.

>> We're already at mutually assured

destruction

>> for sure

>> with nuclear weapons. So, there's no

nuclear powers that are in direct

conflict.

>> We are in mutually assured destruction

of nuclear weapons is a statement that I

would have agreed to if Iran had a

nuclear weapon and that would have

stopped America from attacking Iran. You

you understand what that point means? It

means that not every nation in the world

has a nuclear weapon. The the the the

mad situation the mutually assured

destruction situation is only among

nuclear players, right? Uh autonomous

weapons are so cheap, so manageable that

every nation in the world is developing

them as we speak.

>> But they will also develop defenses.

>> Correct. But but

>> which I think is what people have

figured out now because of this recent

Ukrainian war is that if if if you need

to use a ballistic missile which costs I

don't know 2 million $3 million whatever

it is to target a $20,000 drone you're

you're

>> So you need a $20,000 defense solution

for a 20,000 weapon which I think is

probably going to happen.

>> It's very doable. Yeah. It's just that

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

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

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

who's building um Andrill.

>> Yeah, I know. And yeah,

>> talk at length about some of the

technologies that they have coming and

it's just mindbending. Mindbending

steady.

>> They showed me this gun where you you

just you just point it in the rough

direction. So, a pistol that aims for

you depending on where the target is.

So, you don't even have to aim it.

>> You can imagine at war. You just you

hold it up and shoot. Yeah.

>> And the it has this AI on the top of

like the barrel which will turn your

hand perfectly so that you hit the

target every time.

>> Wow. I should watch this video of it

happening.

>> Yeah. Well, I I I have uh Palmer on in

my film saying and yes, AI will kill a

few people by mistake or kill people by

mistake. uh you know when killing

becomes so easy

>> you do more of it okay when killing

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your soldiers coming back from Vietnam

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>> So, we're in 2026 now. By 27, you think

there'll be AGI amongst us?

>> How will life look at all different?

Like what will we what will be the

symptoms of that world? Is it just a

slight increase in unemployment? I I

think there will be a very very ser

serious um differentiation between those

who plug into AGI and those who don't.

>> What is the symptom

>> that we notice is when we look at the

news or whatever what

>> you'll see people like you and I

building a company in 6 weeks and and

people uh that are not fully plugged

into AI really struggling to find a job.

>> Okay. So unemployment is going to be the

key symptom in 2027.

>> Yeah. And also also I think on the

positive side you're going to see

incredible scientific discovery. One of

my predictions not in those envelopes

but uh science itself is just uh we're

opening up capandor's box to be honest.

>> By 2030 what you what do you expect the

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

fact that 30% of jobs would disappear by

2028. Okay. of some sectors not all

sectors by some sectors will will

disappear by 2028.

>> So up to 30% of jobs will be gone in

2027 to 2028

30% of jobs

>> of certain sectors of jobs. So, so if if

you call if you think about call center

agents, okay. Uh, yeah, probably. Uh, if

you think about uh graphics designer,

yeah probably.

>> What do you think that looks like in

terms of unemployment, but also like

societal impact?

>> Horrible.

>> I think the Great Recession had 6%.

>> Yeah, we've never seen numbers like

this.

>> Jobs lost. Yeah. It said um

even economists who project just a net

loss of about 6% of US jobs by 2030,

they are mirroring the severity of the

great recession.

>> Yeah.

>> The real danger is a hiring freeze on

entry-level white collar jobs, air

automates the grunt work, which means

companies are shrinking their teams and

cutting off the bottom rung of the

corporate ladder for the next generation

of workers.

>> Correct. We have an entire generation

that is out of college today that will

struggle unfortunately. And and and my

advice to them is learn the tool and

focus on humancentric jobs.

>> Like what?

>> Like playing jazz.

>> I mean, not a lot of people can make a

living from paying playing jazz.

>> I understand that. But a lot of people

can make a living by being a nurse or by

being a a counselor or by being a uh you

know um um anything that that connects

to humans.

I I I just want to constantly come back

to this. None of that has to happen. If

if there is

if there really is a democracy and the

government is supposed to do what's good

for the people, the people need to stop

letting this from happening.

>> Which people?

>> Everyone.

>> Everyone in China.

>> China is not going to struggle as much

as as the West. I can guarantee you

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

China's lap dog. We're going to end up

>> You already are.

>> There's a lot of people that I know that

are using Chinese AI models to do their

work because for whatever reason,

because they're cheaper, they're better

in some respects

>> and because I cannot guarantee what what

American AI models are going to do to

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

chat GPT40 open source and the next day

I I'll plug in deepsek and I cannot

depend I cannot guarantee if America

continues to build to to make compute

more expensive. I cannot guarantee that

I can run a business on something that I

don't know the cost of in the future.

>> So the US can't just stop can they? They

need to change approach from from and by

the way the more interesting side is

what are the other economies doing like

is is the UK going to continue to import

compute

is is this I mean welcome to Africa

welcome to the third world

>> but this is what I mean like so you're

you're saying also that the the every

nation needs to invest

>> 100% every nation and and it's quite

interesting there is so much open source

that is not the state of the art

frontier model, but that can do 80% of

the tasks that the frontier model is

doing.

>> But on this point of companies competing

with each other, there's an inherent

need to compete here and to go. That's

what I'm hearing is like there's an

inherent need to go as fast as you can

or you will become a third world

country.

>> Sure, 100%.

>> You're saying that the people should

stop that.

>> No. So, so I'm saying the people of the

UK need to go to the UK government and

say, "How are you protecting the future

of our economy?" right? Are you going to

continue to import technology and to

empower import of technology versus

changing your regulations so that

innovation becomes easier here?

>> Okay.

>> So I mean think of it this way that

remember that anthropic bubble when when

you said the all of the SAS model

applications were you know being

basically threatened because anyone can

build an Oracle ERP today,

>> right? Why is nobody building an Oracle

ERP in the UK? saving the UK massive

licenses that go to Oracle every year.

>> Okay. So, you're saying that the the

people should go and ask the government

to invest more in AI.

>> 100%. That's what number one. Number two

is

>> but then their jobs go.

>> But but you see the the most interesting

job going forward is being an

entrepreneur is being is using those

tools to replace an economy that we've

built over trillions of dollars over the

last 50 years.

>> Not everyone can be an entrepreneur

though. No. Everyone can be an

entrepreneur in something.

>> Those entrepreneurs need to hire people.

>> That's a change that I think is about to

happen.

>> Like even in my business, I'm always

going to hire I'm always going to have

to hire people because

>> But you're But you're a massive

business. A shoe maker is not an an

entrepre is also an entrepreneur, but

not a massive business. A little

restaurant is also an entrepreneur, but

it's not a massive business.

>> They still need to hire people, though.

>> They they do, but they you know,

basically, if you're a a cafe with you

and your wife as baristas, you don't.

This is also an entrepreneur.

>> Can the economy work in such a way where

everybody is an entrepreneur?

>> It did. It did before capitalism changed

that around.

>> Everyone was an entrepreneur.

>> Of course, you know, in the earlier days

you you raised chicken and sold eggs and

others, you know, grew tomatoes and and

so you know, traded them for your eggs.

That that actually is a very interesting

thing. Imagine that, huh? Imagine a

world h where there is so much power

concentration at the top and UBI for

every everybody else. How do you think

that world will respond when all their

income is UBI? They'll respond by doing

things on the side. They'll respond by

going back to a barter economy. They're

going back to smaller communities.

They're going back to pap and mom mom's

job uh shops.

>> So the point was then you said this

doesn't need to happen.

>> It does not need to happen

>> which is the job loss

>> or the arms race. But we're telling our

governments, you're saying that to tell

the UK government to like join the arms

race.

>> I'm I'm telling the UK government to

to create an independence within the the

the the UK economy so that they don't

have to be at the receiving end of

technology,

>> which is join the arms race.

>> You don't have to compete against anyone

else. You don't have to be better than

anyone else. You don't have to. You're

simply saying I can build those things

in my economy now.

>> But but I'm never I'm not going to use a

terrible UK AI as a UK person if there's

a great US AI. I'm going to use the

great US AI. So if you don't compete and

win, I'm not going to use you. That's

what you know,

>> I'm not saying replace the frontier

models. These are very, as we speak,

they are these are very uh compute

intensive. They're infrastructure in

intensive and so on. I'm saying replace

Microsoft Word.

Seriously, like how much intelligence do

you need to build a software that writes

documents?

>> I can do that. Like we we've built our

own applicant tracking system here. We

build our own software. So just just ask

yourself how much money is spent in the

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

that you and I can vibe code in 4

minutes.

>> I'm thinking from the UK's perspective

cuz you know what's interesting with the

UK is the the the economy is struggling

from a growth perspective. Correct. And

I was watching this documentary the

other day that was saying the reason why

we keep throwing our leaders out is

because actually what they need to do to

turn the UK round is about is about 15

years of pain. And it's like it starts

with energy transformation. We need to

get better at we need cheaper energy

because we have some of the most

expensive energy in the western world.

We need to build more houses which means

that we're going to need to centralize

permitting for building houses and it

can't just be local burers deciding if

they keep their farms or not. We're

going to need to make TLDDR. It says

that there needs to be some painful

decisions made for the next 15 years.

But the problem with our democracy is

that when people are in power for four

years, they're quite short- termist.

We'll just talk about the boats, the the

the brown people coming across the seas,

they don't they don't have the room to

think long term. And so when I'm

thinking about like what the UK needs to

do to not become to not fall into

decline and to keep up, I'm trying to

get clarity on that as it relates to AI.

Are you saying that they need to join

the arms race and double down and invest

all their money in building

competitive AI so that people use our

technology here in the UK versus

America's cuz the software point the UK

aren't going to get involved in

software. I mean they've tried to build

software before the UK.

>> The world has changed two two points,

right? One one side is there there needs

to be an a replacement cycle of our

investment decisions anywhere in the

world. Okay. So when you say we don't

have enough money for you know we need

to revamp our energy infrastructure when

you say we need to build more housing.

Okay. Uh one way of doing that is

squeezing that budget out of other

areas. The other way of doing that is

either cutting cost in the economy

elsewhere so that you can redirect that

money or growing the economy so that you

can have more money to build those

things. Correct. The cutting cost I

believe is there is just I don't have

the numbers but we could probably do a

run a deep a deep search on it. uh

trillions are being paid in traditional

systems that are complete like genuinely

they can be I'm and by the way I'm not

asking the government I'm asking some of

the people listening to me right now to

build an ERP system a word processor a a

presentation player and a spreadsheet

okay and just go around and spread them

across the you know find find uh retail

systems find CRM systems the these are

easy replacements they're going be

better interfaces. They're going to be

much more effective. Build a general

ledger using AI so that you can close

every hour, not every month or every

quarter.

>> But the world economy is doing that. So

there's some kid in San Francisco now

that's allowing all of us to use his new

word.

>> Keep

>> for free.

>> Keep doing that and you're and welcome

to the to the to the third world.

>> Keep doing what?

>> Keep importing all of your tech from

elsewhere.

>> But we h we we don't want to be

uncompetitive. Like if you think about

if we go to I don't know North Korea, I

bet they have way worse tools in many

areas because they won't use external

tools and that means that they are at a

disadvantage.

So I I bet they're not allowing their

civilization to use Gemini or Chat GBT

or I bet

>> for sure.

>> And they're using something worse.

>> And you know what what's happening? I

mean look at Iran and how advanced they

became through sanctions by being

refused to use those technologies. They

had to build them themselves, right?

Look at China. Look at Russia. You know,

when I worked at Google, Russia was

protective of Yandex, the competitor of

Google. From one side because of

influence, because they didn't want an

American organization to own the

knowledge sharing of of their citizens.

But on the other side, economically, if

you if you made it difficult for Google

to operate freely, that by definition

meant you had to invent a replacement on

the ground,

>> which was worse.

>> Yandex is not worse.

>> I'm saying so if you think about global

is global competition going to produce a

better product than regional

competition?

>> It depends on on where in the stack of

the quality of that product you need to

be, right? You do not need the ultimate.

I mean, ask yourself this. Which version

of Gemini are you using?

>> The most recent one. And I'm and every

day I compete.

>> And that is you. Ask everyone else what

version of of Gemini they're using. Most

people will say, "Oh, Gemini has

versions, right? You you don't need the

ultimate super frontier model to do 90%

of the tasks." And most people do only

70% of the tasks. But even so, the world

moves with whatever's better. So if you

think about the reason why we don't use

Yahoo search,

Google search is marginally better.

It's, you know, people, it's not, it's

not a thousand times better, but over

time we move away from AOL to Google

because it's a better product. And

there's a slow, you know, my dad

probably still using Chat GB2, but when

he when I go home for Christmas this

year and I go, "Dad, you should use

Gemini." And he starts messing around

with it, he'll slowly migrate. I'm like

I'm like a an early adopter. So I b 4.8

on claude came out last night. I'm on

there within honestly within 25 minutes

of the announcement.

>> I'm there as soon as I can. But I that's

you and I.

>> Yeah. And we we are an indicator of

where the world is going because we're

at the coldfront figuring out what's

better. And also I think with technology

eventually there does become the gap

between first and second begins to

widen. I think we're in a bit of a race

at the moment. But I think it is a bit

of a winner takes all situation with

these frontier

>> models. I I think we're talking about

two uh bits of technology. Okay. Tell me

how far has PowerPoint advanced since

2023

they added Copilot. Anything else?

>> So you're saying that the UK should

build their own PowerPoint?

>> For sure. There is the what I'm trying

to say is that from a licensing point of

view h just licensing of software within

government alone

how much money is is being repatriated

>> if the UK tried to build their own do

you know they tried to build their own

co app and it cost them I think these

numbers will be wrong but they're like

directionally true cost them 70 million

to build a co app that didn't work

>> and so they canned it

>> I remember I'm asking I'm asking a UK

entrepreneur

>> to wake tomorrow and say, "All right,

you know what? Between coffee and my my

cookie, I'm going to build a PowerPoint

and go sell it."

>> Yeah, they will. And they'll go to San

Francisco where the money is and the

talent.

>> Yeah.

>> Or they won't be able to compete.

They'll get crushed tomorrow. So, if

they don't go where the talent and money

is, I'm not saying that they'll they all

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

rational entrepreneurial decisions about

um where to sell it, how where to raise

money, where they're going to get the

best talent, and I think if they don't

make those, you know, competitively

minded decisions, they're not going to

make the better product. They're not

going to get any users.

users users will go where it's better

and where it's cheaper. They won't they

won't say, "Oh, I want to use this

because it's from Cornwall."

>> Yeah. So, I'm I'm with you, right, that

this actually might be the big corporate

thought thing. Okay. And I'm with you

that of course the infrastructure here

of building a startup is way more

complex than it is in other places where

startups succeed. Okay. I'm saying if we

continue on that trajectory whether in

the UK or in Germany or in you know uh

Zanzibar welcome to Africa all of us

everyone but the two competitors China

and and America is going to be third

world so when you talk about job losses

for individuals that's one side okay but

but nation positioning losses which I

think Europe has noticed recently

is about to happen everywhere. And why?

Because you're saying, "Hey, you know

what? Maybe we can't do it. Why can

China do it? Why can Korea do it? Is not

because they have different natural

resources or not because they are, you

know, in a place where it's warmer. It's

because their regulations, their their

ambitions are to empower something

different than debating about, you know,

rail railway lines or

>> they have a couple of big advantages

that I was reading about. One of them is

they they have way cheaper energy, which

means that they're going to be able to

pursue

>> why, may I ask?

>> Because they've invested in solar power,

renewable energy, because they don't

care about

>> this is, by the way, I say that

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,

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

going to be war for you. If you want to

do that in California, this is why

everyone's left California. Like when I

took this office in California recently,

I was like, "So, how long is it going to

take for me to renovate this?" And the

agent looked at me and was like, "To

renovate my own office, it's going to

take me a year and it's permitting to

renovate my own office

>> in California." Mhm.

>> So if you're competing with China where

President Xi just goes, "Put that there

and you've got 7 days."

>> No, no, no, no. That's not only that. So

I I used to be one of the very few

Google executives around allowed into

government meetings in China. Uh simply

because I'm from emerging markets, so I

understand respect. Basically, I would

say sit there not as if I'm superior to

them, but as as if I'm really interested

to learn from them. And genuinely uh

Stephen when when when I would sit in

those meetings all in Chinese they would

show slides

that have competitive market share. So

they'd say you know it's not like uh

China is this, America is this, Germany

is this from market share point of view.

It was China versus the world.

>> Mhm.

>> Right. And when they would decide to go

for something 5G, uh, you know, uh,

internet of things, all of that stuff,

they would aim for 98% market share.

>> Yeah.

>> Right. And and they get there. I mean,

look at how what how they did electric

cars and and and my my question is very

simple, huh? We've spoken so much about

AI. My question is,

>> are the people of the West going to

wait? So this is an interesting

conundrum because it sounds to me like

you're saying on one end if we don't

join this AI race then we're a third

world country but on the other end if we

continue this sort of thoughtless race

towards AGI there's going to be

catastrophe at some point

>> and the answer is somewhere in the

middle where basically you join the AI

AI race for the good of your community.

Okay. So, so there is resignation on one

side is like I'm not going to play this

game at all. There is uh um offense on

the other side where I'm playing this

game to destroy everyone else. And there

is a balance in the middle where we say

we're going to build an ethical form of

AI that's going to help our communities.

We're going to use this ultimate gift,

this ultimate superpower, right?

Superman landed on the planet, raise it

to help your community.

>> Is that wishful thinking to some degree?

when you when you think about the the

nature of sort of compet competition

>> I don't know how what how to tell you

otherwise I genuinely believe most I

mean here I genuinely believe it's going

to be very difficult to make that change

okay I genuinely believe that it's going

to be that when the challenges of an AI

dystopia hits us we're not going to be

ready but I can't stop talking about it

Stephen do you understand where I stand

with this I I just am hoping and I tried

so hard. I spoke to the leadership then

I spoke like one of the things that my

uh Atlantic Productions who helped me

with the film uh helped you know did for

me which I have to say completely I am

very appreciative of this is you know

through our conversations our through

our the last few years that I tended to

at a point in time lose hope in the

leadership

and basically try to influence the

public for ethical AI. Okay. And my

conversation was that the leadership at

the time was the technical leadership

and that everyone was so caught up in

the arms race that I wanted to teach the

public to help us build ethical AI. And

I continue to focus on the public, the

every one of us. But suddenly Atlantic

goes, "No, no, hold on. We should

probably get you to meet the political

leaders everywhere in the world and

hopefully give them a message that says,

"Hey, you know what? You may actually

make a difference if you prioritize AI

differently, right? Do I believe this

will happen? Sadly, no. But does that

mean I should stop trying? I cannot stop

trying. This has had probably the single

biggest impact on my office. Of all the

products that I've tried that have given

me productivity gains or cognitive

boosts, I would say that exogenous

ketones are in the top three most

pivotal things that have given me

massive productivity gain. It's some

Stanford graduates that have been able

to basically bottle up the effect you

get from being in a ketogenic diet in a

small shot that you can take that makes

you feel incredibly focused and gives

your brain an incredible source of

energy. And the clinical studies that

have been done on exogenous ketones have

absolutely blown my mind. I reached out

to them. I became a coiner in the

company. I became an investor in the

company. And so it's with great pride

that I can tell you that this exists. If

you haven't tried these shots, go to

ketone.com/stephven

for 30% off your subscription order. And

you'll also get a free gift with your

second shipment. I still buy my ketone

shots predominantly online, but

thankfully I can now grab them at Target

whenever I drive past them here in the

United States as well because we're now

stocked in Target where your first shot

is completely free. I've done almost 700

interviews with some of the most

interesting people in the world. And one

of the things you learn which is

unexpected is that vulnerability is the

doorway to connection. And after sitting

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

is to write a question in the diary of a

CEO. We've taken all of the questions

from the diary of a CEO. We have put the

question here on this card with the name

of the person that wrote it. So you can

sit at home as I do with my fianceรฉ and

my colleagues at work and other people

in my life. Whenever we get a minute, we

play the diio conversation cards and it

is incredible what happens. These are

great if you're in a romantic

relationship and you want to connect

your partner more. These are also great

if you're in a team and you want to bond

your team together. And I have to say

they're also great for families that

want to learn more about each other and

that need a good excuse to spend some

time in a digital world in the analog

environment connecting human to human.

It is remarkable what the right question

at the right time can do. Go to the

diary.com

and you can get these conversation cards

right now. When I have these

conversations about AI, what I'm trying

to do all the time is to pass out what

is like wishful thinking and then what

is reality? And like to understand

reality, you have to understand

competition. You have to understand

human emotion. You have to understand

incentive structures. And so you think

about something like the United States

at the moment where you've got Donald

Trump whose sort of primary driving

incentive is GDP growth, economy growth.

Does that stock market go up? Beat

China. So if you all agree that that's

like his like the core of his incentive

structure, then you've got President Xi

over here who's pro his incentive

structure is probably control,

independence,

um defense, so that you know they need

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

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

going to participate in the underlying

tech underlying models building because

we just don't have it together we don't

have the energy you know

>> and you go in such a world you go

ethical AI who's going to who's going to

prioritize ethical AI I mean anybody

that does is is might fall behind

theoretically is that um so I wonder

where the bolt in the thinking is here

like what how do we get to a point of

ethical AI when the incentive structures

are so clearly highly competitive and

arguably a little bit shortterm

uh in their thinking.

>> Yeah.

So what are you saying we lie down and

wait?

>> No, I just don't know. I just don't have

an answer honestly.

>> That's why we keep That's why we keep

talking about it.

>> Yeah. And that's why I keep spending 14

hours a day trying to tell the world

because some genius somewhere is going

to find an answer. But the way it's

going

>> right now, I guess what we're pursuing

is we're hoping that CHBT and Anthropic

and these and Grock and we're hoping

that they just build ethical models and

we're hoping that social pressure forces

them into making good decisions.

>> Correct. We we need to be able to vote

with our usage. Right. So, so I think

one of the biggest movements in AI since

we started was the idea that so many

people switched away from Chad GPT when

they approved that their model can

target people, right? So many people I

know at least said

>> target people

>> I when anthropic refused to have to to

>> do you think people switched?

>> I think many have I think ones that are

aware

>> right and I think they did because the

cost of switching is really I mean

honestly anthropic is is better if you

think about

>> Yeah, I think it's better.

>> Yeah. But the idea is if people don't

switch for those ethical reasons. So you

know every one of my books has this

dedication at the beginning. It used to

be the gravity of the battle means

nothing to those at peace when I when I

wrote in memory of Ali at the beginning.

My next book the alive. Do you remember

a song called the well it they were

called the manic street preachers.

>> Uh yeah. If you tolerate this then your

children will be next. Mhm.

>> I genuinely believe that what the world

needs to wake up to is if you tolerate

this, then your children will be next.

If you continue to resign, if you

continue to say I'm not going to try, h

this world is going to change in a way

that is completely not for in your

favor.

>> Try what?

>> Try to to to stand up and say something

needs to change.

>> Okay, we can say something needs to

change, but we can't say what that thing

is. What needs to change is governments

need to serve h their people not their

interests and corporates need to work

for the benefit of benefit of their

societies before their shareholders.

This this run that we had with

capitalism so far

has benefited the world tremendously.

>> Whose economy do you think is going to

be in a better place for the middle

class out of the say the UK and the

United States? The UK is gone.

>> It's gone because what? In part because

it didn't compete.

>> Because you're an older bureaucracy that

is burdened down by so much barriers on

the in the process of building anything,

right? Because the US economy in the

past welcomed people like me to go and

live in California and build amazing

right? That is no longer the case.

So, who is going to win? In my view,

it's definitely China.

>> And by the way, you asked for the middle

class. So, so China made decisions

recently that forced businesses not to

lay people off in replacement to be

replacing them with AI. Would would the

West do that? The capitalist West would

never do that. We don't know the answer.

I don't know the answer. I'm responding

to your

>> Yeah, you can see the conundrum I find

myself in, which is a state like a

country like the UK is, in your words,

gone because it didn't

compete. It didn't allow people to be

highly entrepreneurial. It didn't

empower entrepreneurialism, innovation,

ingenuity. At some in some way, it stood

in their way in some in some way. Now,

that could be incentives, it could be

culture, it could be whatever.

>> Yeah, I know where you're going with

this. the US didn't. So they have got

have a economy which is arguably more

productive and um future proofed than

ours.

By way of that they are also

more advanced in artificial intelligence

and we are gone. So the remedy for a

country like us would be therefore

>> to compete

>> to compete let the reinss off let

entrepreneur ingenuity but then we're

saying that's dangerous

>> and your conundrum in that is that

you're assuming that entrepreneurship by

definition is malicious.

>> No I'm just I'm just saying that um

there's a bit of a paradox like you're

damned if you don't you're damned if you

do

>> but you're not damned if you build

things for for the people not for the

capitalist. This is an ideological

debate. I pray and hope that that's that

is plausible, but I'm I'm worried that

in a competitive market, whoever's

optimizing for I don't know, you can

name it retention. If if we built two

AIs, right? I'm going to call the the

moore AI and I'm going to call the other

one evil AI. The evil AI is programmed

to retain you. It's sick of fantic. It

says what you need to hear. It it's

super smart. And because of that, even

though it's not trading in your your

best interests, it it's retaining you

more. You're using it more often. It's

programmed for that. Kind of like the

social networks are. They're all just

trying to like dopamine your brain into

oblivion. Then there's the MO AI. It

tells you to log off. You've had enough.

It thinks about your mental well-being

because it's less retentive and less

engaging. Theoretically, it might be

less successful as a commercial product.

Think about social networks. the ones

that are least retentive, the ones that

actually won't um destroy your brain

with dopamine, the ones that remove the

retweet button, the ones that don't have

um slot machine like videos, they don't

survive.

>> I share this with you and my my point of

view is that you're to summarize your

challenge here. You're basically saying

that it's easier to become successful if

you don't follow ethical rules. I'm

asking the question, if you build an AI

that is just purely focused on ethical,

will it be as engaging and have the same

usage as one built with the reins off?

>> Uh, no,

>> it won't.

>> Yeah, but that's but that's the problem

humanity needs to solve.

>> Okay.

>> If we were to survive, example, I worked

in a company called Google that

basically at a point in time decided

that ads will be effective.

>> Okay. The ad industry prior to Google

was 50% of your ad budget doesn't work.

We just don't know which 50%. Remember

that?

>> Yeah.

>> Right. And and Google came in and

struggled from 1998 until 2004 when they

started to turn probable, you know, uh

plausible revenues as a result of

saying, "We're going to run a Dutch

auction and we're going to give you

pay-per-click and we're going to show

you results for your ads." Okay. They

found a way for ethics. H uh to actually

get your money to be effective rather

than just take your money and say 50%

doesn't work. H they found a way to make

that their success criteria. There must

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

there must be a way for us to marry the

success of humanity with the success of

the entrepreneur. Right? And and that

way is not found in the old ways of

doing things.

>> I've got an idea.

Maybe you know the claude 4.8 came out

yesterday which is one of the big AI

models the new one and when they

released the models they show these like

graphs of the benchmarks. What they mean

by this is what it's capable of. They

show how it performed in maths in

science in writing reasoning etc. It is

all marginal at this point but my my

idea is could there be an ethical

benchmark that all these models have to

pass before these large companies can

legally deploy them. And I was thinking

about like again every idea has

unintended consequences which I haven't

thought through but would it would be

very interesting that when they release

these models they also release the

ethical benchmarks. I we tried to get it

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

benchmarks. That gives some kind of

standard for governments to say you're

not allowed to release a new model

unless it passes independent tested

ethical benchmarks.

>> Beautiful. That would absolutely work.

But notice by the way those are out

there already. Okay. But but in a very

interesting way. You listen to Deis

Hassabis and how much he invests heavily

in building Alpha Fold or building you

know uh um um so many scientific

applications of AI and you go like this

guy cares about science. I can't I can't

prove that. Right? Uh but I I you know

I've I've met Demis a couple of times. I

I know genuinely that he is an ethical

person, right? But the typical person

will probably say, but at least it seems

that they're doing things for free to

serve science. You look at uh you know

at anthropic and they refuse to use

their model to to uh allow the US

government to target and to spy on

people and then you see Open AI uh

accepting a $500 million deal that

absolutely does that. It is about time

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

know another evidence that they are

actually ethical in their behavior right

and this is the decision that you and I

can do

right and

>> don't they do they

>> but that's my task my task and yours is

to keep telling them people please

please understand that if you tolerate

this then your children will be next

Please understand that if you don't

start to take an ethical stand on your

own future, your future will be handed

over to another oligarch just like your

past was handed over to social media

oligarchs.

>> One would say booing booing at the

commencement speech is a good example of

how public awareness can have a real

impact on

this trajectory. But I still think at

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

to

government intervention and saying, "Do

you know what? We're going to ban

14-year-olds from scrolling Tik Tok."

And that's in part because people spoke

louder and louder and louder. They went

on podcast. Jonathan Height, who wrote

the book about the anxious generation,

started a conversation. And that

conversation led to legislation. I still

think it ends in like some kind of

constraint legally.

>> I hope. Okay. But I will openly tell you

most of the tech oligarchs are more

powerful than your government.

>> Is there any precedents in history where

this kind of change happened without

government intervention?

>> French revolution.

>> So I was thinking about things like

climate change, even you could say

smoking.

All these kinds of things have had to be

like

taxes. And

>> Stephen, I'm I'm with you. If

governments intervene, we wouldn't have

a problem. Governments won't intervene

because governments are owned by the

oligarchs, right? So my question for

everyone listening to us is, are you

going to intervene?

>> Well, cancel your trap.

>> If that's what you can do, it's fine. If

not, then go ahead and start a a startup

that that that does something. If you're

if that's not within your capability,

then send a message to your congressman.

If that's not within your capability,

then say something uh uh ethical online

so that the world understands a position

that needs to be opening the eyes. If

that doesn't work for you, at least

don't engage on stuff that is negative

that you don't know enough about. There

are so many little actions. If humanity

starts to move in the direction of one

saying ethics matter, not just profit,

okay? and two saying I'm not going to

participate in something that's

unethical just because I believe I wanna

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

affect a tiny bit of change of revenues

that go to bullets. if I tell you the

number of things.

>> I think there's two central concerns

I've always had which is I do feel that

there's going to be significant job

disruption and I don't think societyy's

prepared for it yet and I don't know

what that preparation looks like but I

think we should start thinking about it.

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

trajectory of where humanity has become

so distracted

so resigned to inaction so um so

disconnected from their own rights of

freedom of expression and engagement and

so on. I think we have no hope. Do we

want to stay there? That's a question

that I'm asking our listeners. And I'm

not saying be violent or get up or, you

know, go be angry or whatever. I'm just

saying take one little action. Ask

yourself, please write it in the

comments. One little action. One little

action that you're going to do today

that's going to make the world a little

better tomorrow. And don't give up on

humanity, Stephen. I I I I'm not saying

you do, but I'm I'm saying we are going

through such a difficult time in

humanity's history that for the very

first time ever,

we have to do something about it. I

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

don't want to lose ayah and the world

we're building is going to be very

difficult for ayat and I cannot go to

sleep at night without trying something

every day

and I genuinely don't understand how

humanity is not is missing that point

mainly I think because they're

uninformed now we're informing them okay

the only thing that will save humanity

going forward is that this superpower

called intelligence is used for ethical

reasons is that the corruption that's

leading us to where we are today stops.

>> Mhm.

You've got more envelopes there. What's

your next envelope? The third one.

>> Number two was job losses. Number three

was labor. You know, basically

>> same thing. Robots will replace manual

labor by 20.

>> We start to replace manual labor.

>> Okay.

>> Yeah. So, uh you know, you will you will

have more and more manual jobs given to

robots. What's this one? Uh oh, this is

absolutely. Do you think otherwise? the

the world's first trillionaire before

>> oh yeah probably well before then

>> well before 2030

>> I think you know Elon's about to IPO

SpaceX which is likely to make him a

trillionaire

>> yeah I think the the concentration of

power that comes with that is quite

drastic when you really think about it

uh and and that's 2030 is just a few

years away I I think the team wrote this

wrong artificial super intelligence will

arrive in 2032 20 to 2035 I I think

artificial super intelligence will

arrive the minute AGI happens. So it

doesn't really matter if AI is a billion

times smarter than you or just twice as

smart as you. Once we cross beyond AGI,

ASI is just

>> yeah,

>> very very soon.

And uh and yeah, I think we'll overcome

that when we get to the fourth

inevitable when AI is in charge of

everything. I genuinely believe that we

will end up in a utopia of abundance. I

genuinely believe that

again physics, mathematics and biology

will tell you that super intelligence is

benign and that we will eventually end

up in a good place. Not because humanity

has done much to get us there. Not

because our leaders have suddenly turned

ethical, but because our unethical

leaders have gone out of the equation

and were replaced with a super efficient

minimum energy principle that doesn't

see value in anything that's

destructive.

>> So, the future's going to be great.

>> Those who make it to 2038 will enjoy it.

Yeah,

>> those who make it,

>> for sure. I mean, World War II didn't

destroy the world, but ask those who

went through it.

It's just an interesting idea that

actually it's just you're you're

forecasting basically like a a

a decade of of turmoil of dystopia of

absolute dystopia.

>> When you say absolute dystopia, just so

I'm clear in my mind, the absolute

dystopia you're forecasting over a

decade is about war. It's about

>> war, economics, jobs.

>> Economics, it's about jobs.

>> It's it's also about surveillance and

control. It's also about digital

currencies. It's also about uh human

connection. Uh it's also about

concentration of power. It's it's a

magnification of everything we've built

so far.

>> And just again arm people with some

tools to survive that dystopia for a

decade. You know, we talked a little bit

about focusing on human jobs, the more

human jobs.

>> Yeah. Learn AI. So, so AI is not the

enemy. Okay. Uh by definition, the

better you are at using an AI to to do

your job,

>> Yeah. uh the more likely you are to be

successful. Right? Now, number two is

prepare for a hybrid world where AI and

humans work together.

>> How do you prepare?

>> You basically understand agents and how

agents work. You you understand how a

hyper

uh uh efficient approach to things may

not require you to be uh you know very

long meetings and very long. So, so

there is if you lived in California, you

would know that our you know the way we

ran businesses was a lot more efficient.

We sometimes had a 7-minute meeting. Uh

right. So, so the you know the habits of

of an AI are much more efficient than

the habits of humans.

>> So, learn AI again.

>> Uh learn how to interact with AI allow

welcome AI into your hybrid world of

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

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

used to um

disrupt not disrupt blur facts and how

we need to become much more interested

in debugging what we're told uh using

AI. By the way, part of that I have to

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

make you smarter. So instead of trying

to get the same task done with one

prompt, try to get a much more

interesting and demanding and

intelligent task done with more work.

So I've got two things so far which is

basically like lean into AI and the

second one is like lean into lean into

human collection con connection and and

lean into the truth. Don't be fooled by

the hype. Uh, you know, try to be more

informed, I think. And then finally,

ethics. Uh, if you want to, I know it

sounds

the world we live in sounds as if the

only way to win is to compete in

capitalism.

That's not the world I lived in. The

world I lived in, especially in my

Google years, was solve a major problem

and when you do, you'll end up making a

lot of money.

>> Are you optimistic?

>> I am optimistic about the future. I'm

very optimistic about the future. I'm

not optimistic about the present.

>> You're not optimistic about the next

decade?

>> Yeah, I'm not optimistic about the next

year, to be honest.

>> The next year,

>> for sure.

>> Why the next year?

>> Ah, come on, Stephen. You don't want me

to say it out loud. We're ruled by

maniacs.

Decisions are being made for the

absolute wrong reasons.

>> Very interesting time. Very interesting

time we find ourselves in.

>> I mean, honestly, if you're a video

gamer, this is the best part of the

game. Uh, it is a very very very very um

what's the word? It's the

it's the ultimate matrix of complexity

that I have ever encountered in my life.

>> Yeah, that's an amp description of how

it feels. Very complex. Things are

moving very quickly

>> and moving very quickly. So, so from one

side, you really need a lot of brain

resources to crunch all that's

happening. But you wake up tomorrow and

it's changed.

>> Well, the first time we um we spoke, we

spoke about happiness.

after this conversation. Stephen,

>> I was just wondering, you know, in uh

you you wrote a book about happiness,

which is

>> many books about happiness,

>> but I mean the uh soul for happy is the

book that I'm referring to. Here it is.

Yeah.

>> Engineering your path to joy. What a

fantastic book. I quote this book all

the time all around the world. Um, and

I'm wondering if any of the principles

that you wrote in this book about how to

live a happy life are more important now

in the world that we live in than maybe

when you wrote this book.

>> Oh, for sure. I mean, honestly, if I

wasn't living by this, I would have left

this world a long time ago and went to

an island somewhere. You see the

interesting side of happiness is that

it's not dopamine driven, it's serotonin

driven. Right? So, so my definition of

happiness is I'm okay with this world as

it is. I can affect it. I can change it.

I can engage with it. I can try to make

it better. Uh I don't have to accept it.

Uh but I'm okay with it. My starting

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

the work. This is very different than

anyone that's that basically looks at

the world and says, "Oh, this is a

horrible world. I don't want to be part

of it. I don't want to be engaged with

it." And so on and so forth. And I

genuinely have never been

calmer about that chaos. It's quite

interesting. And I, you know, uh my my

wonderful ex actually really really

helped me with that. There was a point

in time where we were having dinner and

I poured out crying from the sense of

responsibility I had for the world and

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

believe that you're responsible for this

and I think that completely flipped my

mind because in a very interesting way I

was thinking that all that went wrong in

technology is because of me,

>> right?

>> Why?

>> Because I contributed to building this.

Because I mean, when when Jeffrey Hint

and I, one of my favorite moments when

we were filming Chasing Utopia, uh, is

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

an older mentor if you want. I was like,

Jeffrey, do do you regret doing this?

You know, I genuinely believed when we

were building those things that we were

going to make the world better.

>> AI.

>> Yeah. And he said, well, yeah, I I too

was naive. I I thought that we I didn't

think he said I didn't think we will get

there so quickly before we figured out

the alignment problem, right?

>> The alignment problem

>> that AI has our best interest in mind.

>> Uh and and and I think all of us were

faced with that. All of us were faced

with that idea of we're building the

best thing ever for humanity and then

suddenly you realize oh my god in the

wrong hands it's the worst thing ever

for humanity and and I you know I have

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

and from that point of calm and stoicism

if you want I think I can have a much

bigger impact on the

We have a closing tradition where the

last guest leaves a question for the

next question left for you is what's the

legacy you want to leave?

>> Nothing at all. I've been asked this

question.

>> I get asked it all the time. So

>> I don't know why so many people are

asking am I going to go re anytime soon?

I don't know why so many people are

asking me that question. You see legacy

is a is a

I mean why what would I care if I have a

legacy if I'm dead? Like why that does

that even make any difference? Here's an

interesting thought for everyone. If if

karma is real, and I genuinely believe

it is, and if we're not just physical

beings, that we're physical and

spiritual, then I'd I'd rather keep all

of my karma for my spiritual side.

>> What does that mean?

>> I don't want anyone to remember anything

I ever did.

>> Yeah.

I I just want to leave a positive impact

on the world and take all of that as

karma for my next journey.

>> No, thank you.

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