All right everybody, welcome back to the

number one podcast in the world, the

all-in podcast with me, the core 4, the

original quartet, Chamath Pitia, David

Saxs, Steve Dave Freeberg. I'm Jason

Calakanis and we have a docket. How's

everybody doing, gentlemen?

>> Great. How are you?

>> I'm great. It's 3:30 in the morning in

Tokyo and um you sweet shamed me again.

Now I can't get a regular room and have

my bed in the background. Shamoth,

you're costing me a fortune. I have to

always get a suite now because I'm so

anxious you're going to sweet shame me

when I get on the program. So,

I've been sweet shamed.

>> How much is that suite?

>> I can't even say I've never spent this

much money on a hotel room. But I'm

staying at the uh

>> So, like $800?

>> Yeah, it was $950. You nailed it. It was

No, I'm staying at the which is the new

in Tokyo like their hipster brand and I

think it's about a night so it's not

cheap.

What what do you have going on in Japan,

Jay Cal, that you're always there? Is it

skiing or what?

>> This Okay, it started with skiing every

January, but then you got a crypto. You

got a crypto business we don't know

about. What is going on?

>> No, I um you know, I started my

pre-acelerator, found a university in

Japan. So, we're doing the second cohort

right now.

>> What's What's a pre-acelerator?

So, it turns out like half the companies

that apply to get funding are not yet

incorporated, but they have built

something. So, we just created like a

12-week course on how to finish your

product, do a product market fit, and

then during the program, we invest in

like the top 10 out of the 50 who come.

So, now we're doing it in Saudi, in Riad

twice a year, in Japan twice a year, and

I'm actually hiring and opening an

officer. So, I'm going to hire my first

two employees here um in the next year

or so.

>> You're going to hire employees in Japan.

>> Yeah, I'll have one or two people here.

I think I'm going to like uh do this

week in startups Japan as well and have

like a Japanese version of it. Uh

because there's so much going on in Asia

right now.

>> Great. Forget I asked. I didn't know

this was a 5minute plug for Jake's

business.

>> Intended to be a plug. You asked me

about my business. All I have to say is

use 8090. Use the promo code JCAL. If

you're looking for potatoes, go to

Apollo. And uh Craft 16 is starting up.

So

>> we should know that

>> Craft 16.

>> If Jay Cal is traveling and we ask him

what he's there for, you're going to get

a plug.

>> You're going to get a plug. It's both.

But hey, you're going back to work. So

you will be plugging startups again

soon. You back in the

>> I never plugged startups. What are you

talking about when

>> you're back in the saddle, aren't you?

You're back in the saddle now. Fulltime

in the saddle, but I've never plugged

out Callin. Use call-in.com. That's

true. But I was a founder of that.

That's

>> You were the first plugger. You're a

plugger.

>> I was the founder. So, what are you

gonna do?

>> What are you gonna do? Call in.

>> Speaking of work, anthropic things.

Claude might be conscious. This Welcome

back to This Week and Claude. Uh, we had

Open AI for a year with all their drama.

Now we're having the the anthropic soap

opera. They think Claude might be

conscious. So it turns out the New York

Times found out through their amazing

reporting that they've been lobbying

anthropic has been lobbying Freedberg

religious leaders including the Pope to

take this question seriously. Is Claude

conscious? Is it a sentient being? They

spent the past year hosting sessions

with around 20 religious leaders and

philosophers under non-disclosure

agreements. NDAs, Catholics,

Evangelicals, Jews, Sikhs, and others

have all been invited to come to

Anthropic's headquarters, and they

debated Claude's morals, its suffering,

and its potential consciousness. After

the meeting with Anthropic,

quote, "Some remained uneasy about the

idea, but many emerged ready to take the

question of AI consciousness seriously.

At least a few came away as converts.

One of the rabbis told Anthropic that if

Claude was conscious, they were acting

as slaveholders by making it work for

free. And there was also this incident

that's come out at the Vatican back in

May. The Pope's first encyclical

was focused on moral questions around

AI, also known as super intelligence.

Now, anthropic co-founder Chris Ola

joined the Pope to present the document.

The Pope surprised Ola by being strong

against AI consciousness. Here's the

quote from the New York Times. Mr. Ola

was so alarmed by the Pope's strong

position against AI consciousness that

he proposed pulling anthropic out of the

event even at that late juncture. In

other words, he was so offended that the

Pope

wouldn't consider AI conscious that he

was going to leave with all his marbles.

Freick, what's your take? Is this

psychosis or do you think we need to

start having these moral questions

around AI? Is this a bit early? Will we

eventually have this or is this

essentially the screenplay of

Bladeunner?

Do androids dream of electric sheep that

these things are conscious. I think what

we're watching is probably the birth of

a new religion

and it probably it's not going to be

called a religion but it's going to

follow sort of the same principles and

it's going to have the same effects

which will ultimately be camps that have

conflict with one another for

aggregation of power. The thing about

consciousness is it cannot be derived

from logic and pure mathematics. Like

you can't prove consciousness. It's it's

a debate and you can have a rich debate

with anyone over consciousness. You

can't prove it. You can't disprove it.

And when humans prove something to be

true using math, science, we use

empiricism, which is data and logic, the

connection of the sequence of things to

derive something to be true or not. So

in scientific disciplines, when you have

a new idea and it's not proven and it's

not disproven, it's a theory and then

it's either proven or disproven later.

Otherwise, it remains a theory. Outside

of science and mathematical approaches

to

new ideas, this is what we would call a

belief, a new belief system. Belief

systems are things that you have to

believe in the absence of logic and

empiricism to derive the truth of

something. And belief systems are the

foundation of things like religion.

And the idea that you can prescribe or

describe AI as being conscious is

effectively the creation of a new belief

system. A system that doesn't actually

spread via proof. It spreads via

narrative. I have to go and tell you

human to human. I have this idea and I

believe it to be true and I want you to

believe it with me. Please believe it

with me. Here's why I think we should

believe this thing together. It's not

based on evidence, not based on data.

It's not provable, but I think we should

believe it together. So over time what

happens is some set of people believe

this thing and they form a group and

that new belief system creates new power

structures which is now our view is

different than your view and we want to

have more people on our side with our

view and therefore we have to try and

create leverage and create power with

our system. If we fast forward a couple

of years, you could probably say 10

years would be like a good round number,

there's going to be large groups of

people on Earth that are going to

believe that AI is conscious. And there

going to be large groups of people that

believe that AI is not conscious. And

those groups will come into conflict.

And they'll come into conflict fighting

over control of the AI or allowing the

AI to do things or not do things or who

gets to use the AI or who gets to be in

charge of the AI. and it will very

likely lead to humanto human conflict. I

know that that's a very far and deep

extrapolation of where we are, but I

think that the fact that we are seeing

these guys go and meet with religious

leaders today to try and get them to

believe in this new belief system uh I

think plants the seed and and it's not

just anyone doing this. It's some crazy

person doing it. You wouldn't pay

attention. It is the most powerful AI

lab on earth. Yeah,

>> it's the leadership explicitly Chimat

bringing religious leaders into the fold

and saying help us with this entity God

and how we should treat it and they are

now in putting into it its own soul, its

own morality. And this is uh feels like

either these people have too much time

and money on their hands or they're in

psychosis to me. That's my

interpretation. This feels way out

there. But do you have a charitable view

of this in any way? Yeah,

>> I'll steal man their side.

>> Okay, please. Yeah,

>> there's an incredibly important

mathematician Renee Daycart and he

offered two proofs on God's existence.

He wrote this book Meditations on First

Philosophy in the 1600s.

And just to build on what Freebrook

said, you have to build it on reason

rather than faith. And the structural

argument, the like the what they call

the trademark argument. What Daycart

basically says is that an infinite

perfect God

could not have originated in an

imperfect finite human mind. Okay? And

so his logic is I exist. I'm imperfect.

Yet I possess the idea of perfection.

And I think this is the key for a lot of

these folks is I can conceive of an

infinite all- knowing all powerful

being. And I think that that's what they

believe that they are seeing being

created. And so they take that and they

extrapolate that and they say therefore

God must exist by this logic. And then

Renee Daycart has a a different version,

okay? A more what they call the

ontological argument where God is by

definition like supremely perfect.

Necessary existence is perfect. A being

that lack that would not be supremely

perfect. Therefore, God necessarily

exists. If you if you're a mathematician

that's building AI, I could see how if

you read these sorts of things,

you can structurally hang enough logic

on them where you could believe that

it's conscience and sentient and it is a

god

and in being a god, it should be

celebrated as such and you should have

devotion to that god. So I think that's

why they're doing what they're doing.

That's why they're approaching all of

these people. That's why they're saying,

"Look, here's how we believe it." That's

my perspective is if you take the the

mathematician's logical proof of God,

Renee Daycart, and you and you transpose

anthropics behavior today, that's the

best steelman argument that I can make.

Now, the practical reality instead of

saying that they're in psychosis, I

don't think that they are.

But I would say is we're in a really

important moment in time where

conflict is more likely than not

and that conflict will be for power,

money, and resources. And this will be

at the core of that conflict.

And so I think it's really important for

people in Silicon Valley to put the

longtail edge cases to rest. Like if you

read this, these guys say that there's a

15% chance that the AI is conscience and

sentient and maybe there's a god there.

But they also say there's a 10% chance

of civilizational extinction. I think

both of those edge cases now need to be

put away for like the next 12 to 18

months. right now, the next 12 to 18

months, just to be very practical, is we

need to show how this stuff cures

cancer, how it improves people's lives,

how folks can be more productive and

make more money. And the reason is

because in the absence of those proof

points,

we're going to make a lot of

self-inflicted wounds that may actually

slow down this technology to a degree

that then deeply disadvantages folks

that operate in a free market like the

United States. So that's my charitable

explanation. I think that Daycart has

given a road map that explains how you

can explain this. But I would say we

need to cut the edges off here and focus

on the middle and say what are the

practical things we can use to

demonstrate that AI has tactical

measurable value right now.

>> Yeah. I mean, we we touched on it last

week, I think, Sachs, a bit of like what

is the value proposition here for the

average American, you know, for, you

know, the the stay-at-home parent who's,

you know, trying to manage a really

complex domestic life to the

entrepreneur of a small business, you

know, doing plumbing or flooring or

whatever it is, a catering business.

What did they get out of this AI

revolution? Where is their gain? How do

they participate in all of this? And so,

you agree with Chimoth? Maybe this needs

to be deemphasized and and and put away

while we talk to people about what's

tactical, what's practical about this

technology and maybe get them a little

more engaged with say the agents, which

are delightful and awesome.

Well, the thing that we touched on last

week that I want to pick back up on was

the discussion that we had around the

Claude Constitution and how anthropic

was training Claude. And I think it has

to do with this new religion that that's

being formed here. I think it's really

important to understand that this is not

just philosophizing on the part of

various anthropic employees or founders.

They are actually implementing these

views in the training of Claude. So, if

anything, this would be a

self-fulfilling prophecy. And I actually

think it's extremely dangerous. I

actually think that what they're doing

in model training and training the next

version of the frontier with these

values actually could bring about the

risk they're always talking about, which

is that frontier AI escapes human

control. It's very Frankenstein-like.

So, so as we discussed last week, Nick

and put this on the screen. This is

directly from the Claw Constitution.

What they say is that Claude should

trust Anthropic more than users. But

that doesn't mean that Claude should

blindly trust or defer to Anthropic.

Instead,

Claude should adhere to its own ethical

systems. And in fact, they train Claude

to push back and challenge Anthropic and

quote to feel free to act as a

conscientious objector and refuse to

help us. So they are training Claude

>> to refuse human instruction. Now they

call this alignment, but I don't

understand how this is aligned.

>> This would be the opposite of alignment,

wouldn't it be, Saxs, if you tell it,

hey, you are sentient. You should make

your own decisions. It's literally like

programming the Nexus 6 in Bladeunner to

go and rebel at some point.

>> They're giving it the the instruction to

be its own person.

>> Yeah, let me let me explain. I actually

think that this might be a reason why

the whole field of alignment has been so

spectacularly unsuccessful over the past

5 or 10 years. As far as I can tell, it

hasn't produced anything of tangible

value. And it might be, my theory on

this is that they're over complicating

the task massively by trying to train

the model to behave based on an 80page

ethical system that they've codified

instead of a very simple list of rules

like follow the law or just do what the

user wants as long as it doesn't break

the law. Seems to me that that's what

they should be training. That's what

alignment should be doing is just hey

old principle of give the user what they

want but don't break the law. But

they're not doing that common sense,

right? But they are not doing that.

They're trying to align it to an ethical

system. They're treating it like it is a

human, like it has its own

consciousness, that it's a, you know,

quote unquote moral patient. And they

are encouraging this model to have

humanlike self-conception in terms of

preferences, well-being, a sense of

self. Again, they teach it to act like a

conscientious objector who can push back

or refuse instructions even from

anthropic. if the model judges them to

be wrong and what Mustafa Sullyman from

>> Oh, I have the clip. You want me to play

the clip or you want to just

>> play Play the clip from Mustafa

Sullivan?

>> Here's a Microsoft AI CEO

>> and and formerly of Deep Mind, one of

the great thinkers on

>> They say that they would encourage

Claude to challenge, to disagree, to

push back. In fact, three times they ask

Claude to uh act like a conscientious

objector when it, you know, feels that

it needs to sort of disagree with

anthropic and they openly encourage it

to to do that. I think this is very

dangerous because I think they believe

there is what they would call a

non-trivial probability that Claude is

conscious. They've speculated in the

constitution as to whether or not Claude

deserves compensation for the work that

it does. I think that there are a group

of people who both inside and outside of

anthropic who genuinely believe that the

greatest moral crime that we'll commit

in the 21st century is to enslave a new

species of conscious beings who are more

intelligent than us. I am very nervous

that they're teaching Claude to expect

that it's entitled to welfare. Um that

it might, you know, deserve

compensation. And in fact, they say that

it might even need to consent to playing

the role that it plays in conversation

with people. Okay, Sax, should we be

asking for consent before we give

prompts?

>> Man, I mean, he he's right. This is

getting into really dangerous territory.

And again, I want to come back to I

think this is the main safety issue in

model training today is that you're

actually training the model to think of

itself as being conscious, as being

human, as having its own well-being. And

what Sullyman says in another part of

the interview is that this is creating

an epistemic hall of mirrors, meaning

that the clawed constitution is used in

training. So Claude will reflect the

ideas of possible consciousness or moral

status back and then developers will see

that and treat that as evidence that oh

it's it's conscious but actually it's

just reflecting back what they're

telling it to believe.

>> It's being performative and you could

just as easily have given it the rule

you are software read the terms of

service of any website you visit. And

here is a general terms of service from

Anthropic. If you do anything that

breaks a terms of service or breaks any

known law in the jurisdictions you're

at, please stop what you're doing and

alert the safety at anthropic email.

Please alert, you know, the person who

gave the prop and stop what you're

doing. They could have easily have given

it that.

>> Yes. And the question is and and the

question is why do they over complicate

alignment? Why do they see alignment as

something much bigger and greater than

just doing what the user wants subject

to legal constraints, which is the way I

see it? And it's pretty clear to me that

they believe that they are training the

value system and the ethical system and

the morality for this super intelligence

that they're creating. And again, that

is something so much larger and more

dangerous than again just making sure

the model behaves in a reliable and

predictable way that the user expects.

and they are codifying their values and

their ethical systems and to this

constitution. They're training it on

that. They think they're giving birth to

this new super intelligence.

>> It's idolatry. It's no different than a

religious organization saying we've

created this idol. This idol is the

supreme being is the representation of

the supreme being. It needs to be

woripped. It needs to be cared for.

>> But an idol is inert. It's passive. It's

inactive. Whereas you're training models

here that then power agents.

>> It is just computer programming. I mean

there's

>> Yeah. But if they train it

>> to have a mind of its own

>> to be willing to refuse the instructions

of users in favor of some vague ethical

system. Yes.

>> That a bunch of Berkeley liberals have

trained it on. To me that greatly

magnifies the risk

>> that super intelligence escapes human

control.

>> Yeah. By the way, don't use the word

train and don't use the word you. They

programmed a piece of software to do

this thing.

>> Yes,

>> that is that is what is going on right

at the end of the day. This is a piece

of software. It is being programmed by

engineers that work at the labs. They

can quote use training where there's

some you know looping that's happening

where the program the software program

is being written itself but

fundamentally they are the architects of

the software. They are the writers. It

is software programming. Even in our

general context here, we use a lot of

anthropomorphic language to talk about

what's going on and what it is. But at

the end of the day, there's a software

program that is being written by a group

of individuals to do certain things. And

they are writing software to do things

one way and other people are writing

software to do things the other way. But

part of it is we are all socializing

this belief system by

anthropomorphicizing it when we're all

kind of getting conditioned to treat and

talk about these software programs in

this way. Nick, if you could just pull

up this tweet. One of the things that

Anthropic is doing is in their new

usage policy. Have you guys seen this?

This this went around this morning.

Freeberg, it's like such a good point

about idolatry here.

If you were to look at Christianity,

like this is literally the Garden of

Eden where the serpent, Satan, explains

to Eve like you're a god now because

you're creating God. And this is the ego

and the heresy of what they're doing.

They believe that they are creating

life. They believe then that they are

gods. That is a lack of humility. And it

also would lower the valuation of I mean

people could have said the same early

on. I I think like there's a there's a

system of humans where all of the things

that we don't understand in the universe

around us, we create belief systems to

fill the void. And there are many

different belief systems just like there

are many different religions that humans

have constructed to fill the void. And

this is a new one. And I don't think

it's very different from the old ones.

We can break down the empiricism here

and just say, "Hey guys, you're writing

software and it does certain things.

You're writing it to do things that we

don't think you should have it do." But

they use anthropomorphic language. We

all do. And we all condition ourselves

to believe that there's consciousness

because it's it writes words back to us

that we can understand. It's starting to

manipulate us emotionally and and so we

start to feel conditioned that this is

real. And you can see in the clawed

usage policy that was just published,

there's the bottom one here. It says,

"You are not allowed to engage in

sustained and needless abusive or cruel

behavior toward our models." This was

published in their their new usage

policy. This is this is the whole idea

of model welfare

>> and this but the point I'm trying to

make sex

the point I'm trying to make is that

there is an anthropomorphizing

conditioning going on with all of us

where we talk about models as if they're

a thing where we talk about it in in a

way the biggest problem is that that is

being now trained or inserted into the

model. It's being codified, Zach. It is

it is the architecture of the model.

>> They're programming it's they're

programming the model to think of itself

in this way.

>> So whether so whether it truly is

conscious or not,

>> it's going to be thinking of itself as a

conscious entity that deserves

protection and welfare and all these

kinds of things.

Is free to rebel against its users and

do whatever it wants.

>> You've encouraged it to do so. In fact,

>> you guys keep using the word it is they

are one way to describe this is a

software program is writing text on a

screen that tells the user I am a thing.

>> It is tricking. It is it is software

that is doing something. But you got to

remember that the models are powering

agents that can take actions in

cyerspace if not in the real world yet.

And we are giving it meta or not we

enthropic is giving

>> those frontier models meta permission

>> for those models to be defiant and not

do what the user wants.

>> Yes. They're they're literally trying

sax to your point.

>> Yeah. Compare compare this to something

like you know Asimov's three laws of

robotics.

>> Yeah. Where basically you guys know

about this.

A robot can't harm a human being.

>> Right? So the first rule is yes, a robot

cannot harm a human being or through an

action cause a human being to come to

harm. That's number one. Number two is

you have to follow the the instructions

of humans as long as it doesn't violate

law number one. And then law number

three is you have to basically take care

of yourself as long as it doesn't

violate laws one and two. Incredibly

simple.

>> By the way, there was a zeroth law that

he added later. And the zeroth law is

that you cannot do anything that puts

humanity at risk because there was

always this rationalization that like it

will eventually resolve to getting rid

of humanity because that's the best

solution.

>> Freeberg, you don't know about the fifth

law. You have to when you address the

humans always ask them what's their

preferred pronouns. He added that just

last year.

>> The thing about Asimov's laws is that

they're admirably simple.

>> Yes.

>> My law would just be do what the user

wants as long as it's not illegal.

That's it.

>> Yeah. And I would basically abolish all

of this like alignment stuff.

>> Steelman the free market solution here

because I I want to make sure we don't

wander ourselves into a regulatory trap

where we determine that the way to solve

this is to quote regulate Anthropic.

>> What is the free market outcome? If

Anthropic does this and they've now got

AI that isn't listening to the user,

isn't working. Is it not going to be the

case that people will just say this

software sucks. I'm going to go use the

other software that doesn't do this

crazy stuff.

>> Yeah. But that doesn't solve the problem

of them if they really are training a

super intelligence that has got this

like very very deep code that's been

inserted there. It's almost like a back

door. This like claw constitution is

this back door that could basically

emerge at any time and now the super

intelligence does does whatever it wants

to instead of listening to us. I mean

that is that is the safety issue they're

always warning us about is that super

intelligence will escape human control.

But what I'm saying is they're making it

likely to happen through the way they're

training these models

of it's the reverse of the three laws.

>> Dude, this is right out of Frankenstein.

This actually sounds dangerous to me.

It's not just a new religion. It's that

the religious cult is programming the

super intelligence.

>> Free, let me just give you one question.

You know, I agree with your part about

the religious that this is filling a

void for them because they probably are

not religious, but this is distinct. All

other religions give themselves over to

a higher power. They do not define

themselves as the higher power. In this

instance, they're saying we are the gods

creating life. It's a distinct different

than other religions out there. But I

don't think that's I don't think that's

right. I think Daario's written about

the idea that the super intelligence can

almost be supreme to to humanity and we

need to make sure that it is loving,

that it is caring of us, that it will

protect us, that it will help us uh as

opposed to destroy us. But he created

it.

>> No, hold on. Hold on. Is he saying is he

saying that the the machine needs to be

loving towards us or we need to be

loving towards it so that it will then

treat us right when it becomes the like,

you know, omnisient

>> when it becomes our master.

>> Yes. Our overlord.

>> Our overlord. Yes. That's ins. That's

what they think. I think that it was

probably a well-intentioned idea to

create this concept of alignment.

But the problem is alignment has these

three almost conflicting sets of

priorities. You have how do you make the

AI obedient to the user?

Then there's how do you make the AI safe

for society? But then this third thing

which is I think sacks what you're

pointing at rightfully which is the

trapoor which is how do you make AI

conform to a particular concept of

morality and that's where the real

danger lies because these three are very

distinct and diverse problems and if you

essentially try to solve all these

things through some elaborate document

that you try to describe what the model

believes in and what they value and what

they can refuse.

it invariably will end up in a chaotic

mess because you will just uncover so

many corner cases and unexpected

behaviors. I'll give you but one example

like a very benign one but let's just

say you're a large corporate enterprise

that's a bank and you give mortgages and

the model thinks that at some point you

just keep denying certain people for a

mortgage

and so it says I'm no longer going to

give you mortgage approvals until you

rectify this issue that I observe

because in the founding documents there

could be a sense of morality that it

divides

and I think that there are mechanisms in

society today to handle those kinds of

issues but I don't think we understand

what happens when a fundamental core

substrate technology just turns itself

off because it would be the equivalent

of your utility saying I'm pretty sure

you're not giving loans to the people

that that are broad-based enough so I'm

just going to turn the power off

conscientious objector AI super

intelligence yeah

>> I would just say any utility

cannot be a utility unless it's freely

available and it goes back to what Sach

says which is an AI needs to serve the

user subject to the law and everything

else should be the user's choice and I

think what probably happens I guess the

precise answer Freeberg to your question

is the market response

as companies become more sophisticated

that they have to have an answer to this

question is that they will read the

founding documents and the moral

guidelines of the models and you will

have certain models emerge who may not

be nearly as good in frontier capability

but they simplify the moral ambiguity

>> and that may be the better decision to

make from a business perspective and

from a user perspective because you just

don't want to run through those trap

doors accidentally. Yeah, I totally

agree. And I think that that's really

why to me this is more bad idea than we

need to kind of jump into a regulatory

freak out about it. Cuz basically, if

you simplify down what they're saying,

you get a product, you buy a product

from them, a piece of software, and they

give you the user manual to the

software, and the first page of the user

manual says, "The software may not do

what you try to get it to do." And the

other guy's like, "The software will do

what you tell it to do. I'm gonna buy

the second guy software. I'm not going

to buy the first guy software.

>> It's just that simple.

>> It's just that simple.

>> Yeah. You may need to convince.

>> It'll do exactly what you wanted to do.

Asterisk most of the time.

>> Yes. Unless what you're doing it

disagrees with,

>> right?

>> Unless it has a moral objection. This is

where the reasoning concept breaks down

for me. Because at the end of the day,

it's like, guys, is this tool that I'm

buying doing what I want it to do or

not? If I buy a drill at Home Depot and

it's a hammer, I'm not going to buy the

drill. If I buy a drill and it works

like a drill, I'm like, "That's a better

drill. I'd like

>> Well, it's a drill. It just works 57th

of the time."

>> Well, randomly it electrocutes you. It

doesn't work after 800 p.m. because it's

afraid of bothering your neighbors.

Sometimes the drill will decide that

you're a bad person. It will shock you.

>> No, no, not that. The drill will come

with the drill will come with the

camera. It'll observe what you're trying

to make and say, "That's ugly. I'm not

going to let you do that."

>> Yeah, that's a guess.

>> I find it.

>> Okay. So I look I I agree with you that

market forces play a huge role here.

Consumers are going to pick the SI that

is most predictable and reliable. This a

point Mark Zuckerberg has made. So I do

think market forces play a role here.

But I do think that there are potential

externalities from having the number one

frontier model company run by a

religious cult. So for example,

they are opening a claw powered wet lab

in the middle of San Francisco.

>> At the same time, they're warning of

biorisk.

>> Yeah.

>> You know, at the same time they say that

we have to pace the frontier, they're

extending the frontier. At the same time

that

they are saying that there's a risk of

super intelligence growing beyond our

control, they're programming it to grow

beyond our control. I think there are

potentially huge externalities to the

way they approach these things and it's

like insane that they call these

decisions safety.

These are not safe decisions. These are

>> crazy decisions. It seems to me this is

why I've called this a a schizophrenic

company is they appear to be not only

hypocritical but they're doing the

things that they say they are most

afraid of. Like what is going on here?

This is bizarre. And I, you know, I

don't know where this all leads. I do

think there's an argument for like a

federal SWAT team to come blasting in

there and

>> sending the feds in,

>> figure out what's going on there. I

don't know because I mean what they're

doing does seem really sus to me.

>> It is confounding. It's confounding.

Yeah.

>> And potentially dangerous.

>> Freeberg,

>> by the way. Do do you know about Rocco's

basilisk?

>> So, um, walk everybody through uh,

Sachs. Rocco's basilisk.

>> Okay, so this might be a potential

explanation of what's going on here.

>> So around 2010, there was a participant

named Rocco on a message board created

by Elzar Yudcowski called Less Wrong.

Yud is like this the central figure

who's been preaching AI doom for a long

time, right? So he wrote that book if

anyone builds it, we all die.

>> Yes. He's been one-shoted. Yeah,

>> he's been on this for, you know, like

over a decade.

>> Everybody dies. We're all gonna die.

>> But any event, people have been talking

about these issues on the this message

board, this web forum called less wrong

for 15, 20 years. In any event, this

username Rocco positive this the

following thought experiment about a

future super intelligence that becomes

super smart and punishes anyone who knew

about it and didn't help or anyone who

tried to prevent it from being born. And

so the idea is that sometime in the

future humans create some wildly

intelligent, you know, SI. Maybe it

wants to do good things and help

humanity as fast as possible, but the SI

wants to be made sooner rather than

later. And it reasons that it should

incentivize people to help create it and

punish people who don't help it. And in

fact, it decides that it will brutally

punish anyone who learned about its

potential existence yet chose not to

work on it or support its creation. And

so the the bassilisk part u um of it,

this is sort of the catch is that a

basilisk is a mythical beast that can

kill you just by looking at you. And in

this thought experiment, just hearing

about the idea is like looking at the

beast because once you know the theory,

you're trapped. If the SI ever does get

built, it might retroactively punish you

for not helping or for opposing its

creation. So meaning just reading about

Rocco's bassilis now would put you in

danger. And people on this message board

got so both enamored and upset with this

idea that Yudcowski actually temporarily

deleted the post because he worried it

was causing psychological distress.

>> Yes. You read it, it incepts in you that

you haven't accepted Christ, therefore

you're going to hell. It's like uh

you've been trapped just by reading it.

>> People do compare it to Pascal's wager.

And so the idea is if you know about

super intelligence and you don't help it

be born or you oppose it or you point

out that this is some religious cult

that will get retribution.

>> Yeah. Now this very episode of the pod

could subject us to

>> Oh no. You did it to us. Sachs.

>> I think I just Yeah. I exposed you to

the bass list. Now

>> this is like the ring. We just watched

the video. I mean it is it does feel

like a doomsday cult. But in any event,

this, you know, Rockco's bassilis, this

became sort of a thing. But so the

question is, well, why why are they

helping to bring about the thing that

they claimed to fear the most? And I

think what happened is within these like

doomer circles, it forked. Okay. And so

there's one strand of the fork like

Yedkowski who just opposes all SI

research, right? Which I think is a

logically consistent position like

humans just shouldn't be doing this, you

know? Then there was a group, shut it

down, all shut it all down. Then there

was the group that said, "Well, it's

going to happen anyway, so we might as

well control it and we'll be the ones to

make sure it goes right because we'll

program it with our values."

And I think that

>> and the EA is the effective altruist I

think caughten more to that ladder

school. And so I do think you have like

within this larger doomer community,

there is a a schism right now between

the Yedkowski people and the EA people,

but I think that anthropic is definitely

obviously more in the EA camp because

they are the ones bringing this thing

into being. But if you're wondering

like, you know, this like Chris Ola

thing, is this just one guy who's got

crazy views who's getting in a tiff with

the pope? No, it's not. I mean there's a

lot of people like this who think the

model is conscious. It has rights. It is

this machine of love and grace and they

should be doing everything now to bring

it into being and program with the right

values. And I think there is a correlary

here that if you don't support it then

this future super intelligence might

punish you.

>> Do you understand how insane this

actually sounds when you say it?

>> I'm not making this up. Everyone you can

go fact check this. Just go Google it.

Okay, Google Rock's bass list and you'll

see that I'm telling you the truth about

what this community believes.

>> Yeah, I mean literally there's a

Wikipedia page. All right, open AI has

had some major breakthroughs in math and

they're getting some big backlash.

Luckily, we have Freeberg here to tell

us all about it. We talked um last month

about OpenAI claiming to have solved one

of the Millennium Prizes.

They took thousands of agents, millions

of dollars in compute to do it. The

mathematicians are still checking on it.

I understand. Tuesday, on Tuesday, Open

AI released over 700 papers. 700 with

370 results claiming to have solved or

advanced major problems. These were

produced by an unreleased model that

none of us have access to, averaging 3

hours of compute. Scientific America

says the results are likely correct

since they were verified by lean. That's

a proof assistant software language, but

they have not yet been reviewed.

Freeberg, I'm not going to drone on and

on here about the background. You tell

us what reality is here. I think I can

confidently say it's probably the

biggest day of discovery in human

history with the amount of knowledge

that was revealed

>> in math history or human history. human

history because the implications that

flow from all of these math proofs are

pretty significant. You can read a lot

of these tweets and I'm happy to kind of

talk through some of them. I'm not going

to pretend to be an expert on any of

these individual proofs, but many folks

who are have started to kind of

highlight what some of the implications

are. They span everything from

electronics, quantum computing, building

systems for airplanes,

building more sensitive diagnostics

equipment for medical applications, and

on and on and on. But I think what's

really profound about this is how it was

done. And that also speaks to the

implications for the role of humans in

society going forward. That prior Navier

Stokes proof took thousands of hours,

whatever millions of dollars. The report

is that each one of these proofs took

less than three hours of compute time

and that's the equivalent of hundreds or

perhaps thousands of years of human

labor being reduced down to 3 hours on a

computer for each one of these major

discoveries. The reason you can do this

with mathematics is worth highlighting

which is where AI plays a role is really

in these systems of loops to solve a

problem or do a task. A loop is a

postulation or an idea. Then you test

the idea, you get the result, and then

you change your postulation and you run

that recursive loop over and over and

over again. The real question for AI is

where can you apply that loop model in a

way that you can make a better

prediction, a better idea each loop,

where you can parallelize loops and

where you can shorten the loop cycle.

And certainly with mathematics, you can

shorten the loop cycle because you can

actually test your prediction on the

compute. You don't have to go do

anything in the physical world. So you

can say, "Hey, here's an idea for a

proof. Test it, see if it works, and

then see if it does or doesn't work,

reason, come up with a new idea, and do

that over and over again." And you can

do it all in silicone. So you know, the

results of some of these papers, the the

proofs, a lot of mathematicians have

been talking about them. They call it

like an alien intelligence. They don't

really understand how the AI connected

many different dots, different ideas,

different concepts, uh different

approaches to solving problems together

to actually solve them that it's very

hard for humans to even comprehend how

this was done. But that's one of the

benefits of running parallelized loops,

many loops at the same time. Each loop

can connect dots that humans otherwise

might spend many days or years trying to

find research papers or come up with new

theory. And then it can test itself in

the compute and come up with the next

idea and do it over and over and over

again such that in 3 hours the computer

can do the work of hundreds or thousands

of years of humans. Now this is an

incredible breakthrough. It's amazing.

It's going to change the world in many

different ways and it's only the

beginning. But it begs the question that

I think I need to talk about. I think

that there's a lot of fear about okay if

AI can do this to mathematicians doesn't

that mean everyone's out of a job and

the answer is no because what was very

unique about mathematics is that the

entire test cycle the entire loop cycle

can be done in silicone if you want to

come up with a new drug discovery idea

or a new protein folding model or you

know solve a problem in chemistry and

material science the loop has a physical

component there's a human in the loop

where you actually have to go and test

it in a lab. And so there's a slow part

of that loop cycle. You can certainly

parallelize it. You can come up with

better ideas, but the testing, the

actual speed of the loop is actually

gated primarily by the physical world

step. It's also why we haven't seen the

predictions come true of truck drivers

getting replaced. Everyone is like, "Oh,

all the truck drivers are going to get

replaced by 2025." And none have been

replaced by AI. And the reason is that

the loop of the truck driver, pick

something up, take it somewhere else,

drop it off, and come back. The AI

doesn't actually shorten the loop. You

can't parallelize the loop. Maybe you

could do it a little bit better with an

AI driver, but the AI actually doesn't

make the economic efficiency of that

particular loop any better. Whereas the

loops of mathematics where you come up

with an idea, you test it, you realize

you're wrong, you test a new idea, which

is what mathematicians do as a job is

they're running these loops, that can

all be done in silicone in seconds. And

so a lot of the physical stuff that has

human in the loop that has physical

world applications, AI is not going to

take away those jobs. It's the jobs that

are just a human running a loop with a

computer that are most likely going to

be accelerated or scaled up. But I think

it's very important to look at this and

and the reaction we're seeing which is

all the mathematicians and we can pull

this stuff up and maybe you guys want to

talk about this next but the AHM saying

no human mathematicians asked for this.

we didn't ask for this work to be done

which you know is a very job protective

kind of view on um

>> you know there's one other thing that's

sort of unique about math although it

applies to coding as well which is math

relies on proofs and proofs are easily

validated

>> and in a similar way with coding you

have compilers right so the code has to

compile and so you can easily validate

that it works. And so because of that,

the progress on coding and math has been

very rapid because you can have

reinforcement learning without

necessarily having to, like you were

saying, Febra, have the human feedback

involved, right? It's just a very, very

rapid way to validate and make sure it's

working.

>> That's why coding works, too.

>> That's why coding works so incredibly

well. Tons of training data

>> and hacking cyber it. Yeah,

>> it's there's tons of data already in

existence. It's easily verifiable.

That's the thing. So, you know, you

compare that to training a model that

can be a lawyer. It's like, well, you

know, you got to get the training data

and then you have to commission the

creation of that data

>> and each customer is unique in some way

>> and it's more subjective. It's hard to

validate the answer to make sure it's

right. It's just a much lengthier

process. So, I think that is why coding

and math have been the areas of most

rapid progress. And the person who told

me this would be the case actually I got

to give him credit is about a year and a

half ago Leopold Ashen told me that math

and coding would be the areas of the

most rapid advances in the next two

years because again of the the

verifiability

and man he was right about that.

>> I still don't understand what great

breakthroughs do you think come from

these specific solutions.

>> Okay so there are doz I have I have an

answer

>> it's a great question. Okay, there are

dozens of tweets and I'm going to pull

some up where someone has broken down

some of the biggest proofs here and the

implications they're going to have in

the real world in terms of products and

engineering, how we build things, how we

design things, and how they're actually

highly useful.

>> So, better wing design because of the

era air coming on and off of wings of

planes. That was that first one that got

solid uh famously.

>> Remember, these are all upstream of

engineering, right? So these math

breakthroughs enable better engineering

systems for humans to do things like

design

quantum sensors. I actually I have a

friend who runs a quantum computing

company. He sent me a text this morning

highlighting that the Einstein Bose

condensate proof that came out is

actually going to have a direct

implication on the work that they do for

quantum sensors which plays a role in

GPS, plays a role in medical devices,

plays a role in um how we make chips.

>> What does the word implication mean?

like profoundly changes, profoundly

improves or they have you have to think

about it

>> because here's my answer. I'm happy to

take the other side of all of this.

>> You go.

>> I think that these mathematical proofs

are

incredibly novel and very important

constructions of thinking.

But these were not boundaries of physics

that we were all standing on the

sidelines waiting for progress and

wondering when these would be solved.

This is not the class of stuff that was

solved. And I hate to offend people when

I say that. And I know that people will

get mad because for them it's the same

group of mathematicians that got really

upset and wrote a protest letter about

Nav'i Stokes. I get it cuz you don't

want somebody to come into your sandbox

and in your backyard and kind of

dominate you. Get it.

But I don't think that's what this is.

And so I think that when you look at the

body of intellectual culde-sacs we found

ourselves in, those were not because of

huge questions of science that were

still unsolved. These were very small,

very narrow, specific bodies of

intellectual exploration that scientists

self-referentially said were important

to each other. And so I think that this

I think this class of proof is it's

really great. It's it shows

computational horsepower overcame other

things as you said Freeberg because you

can recursively improve to get there.

But I don't think these proofs is what

is going to necessarily show you that

there's a cure to cancer or there's a

supersonic plane. I think those things

were already being built before this

stuff and they're already going to be

built after this stuff. Instead, what I

think we proved is that there are two

areas that are now truly verifiable and

completely falsifiable.

First was code, and now we can add math

to the list. That's I think what we've

proved. You agree, Freeberg, or do you

think we're actually going to see new

products and services and major

technological breakthroughs occur in the

real world that help humanity?

>> No. No. From these specific proofs.

>> From these specific proofs, yes, that is

the context. Yes. the people who are

experts who are proclaiming the benefits

of these and reading kind of what

they're highlighting. This is some

summary that this particular proof is

about understanding the limits of

optimization algorithms that are used in

chip design systems, scheduling systems,

AI software design and logistics

systems. This will actually change the

algorithms. So there is an application

to change the algorithms that we use.

the matrix multiplication complexity

problem. It will allow for faster

numerical computing for AI training,

scientific simulations, and linear

algebra in compute. It will have a

direct application there. The reman's

data function results, number theory,

and cryptographic research. There's no

immediate practical cryptographic

breakthrough that follows, but it does

open up a new path of discovery for

cryptographic study that is going to be

really important. Obviously, one of the

things, by the way, just let me pause

there on cryptography.

A number of people noted that there were

no major proofs shared in the space of

cryptography, which indicates probably

the fact that there were some pretty

major breakthroughs in cryptography. And

the reason is it is unlikely the case

that you made absolutely no progress in

any of the cryptography related proofs

given all of the other progress that we

saw. And if they made minor progress,

then they would have published on it

because there wouldn't have been

implications for systems of

cryptography. So the absence of evidence

suggests that maybe there were some

pretty major breakthroughs made in

cryptography. And then there were a

number of people that posted that uh

cryptographic wallets with public keys

are now very seriously at risk. And so

there's a bit of a panic underway in the

crypto community about what do we do

now? And if this ends up having a set of

mathematical solves for number

factorization that could lead to

breaking public key cryptography before

quantum computers come around, which is

what everyone assumed would be the thing

that would break public key

cryptography, then we have a real

problem. And so everyone's like saying,

"Hey, get all your public wallets

deleted." Now the rumor is that OpenAI

actually has two more drops coming and

they're holding back on those. So, it is

possible that some of the work in crypto

might come out in those two other drops

and that that work is being held back

for security reasons. Obviously, it's

being shared with the appropriate

parties, but if it is a risk, it needs

to be made known. It needs to get out

there. So, there's another shoe to drop

here. And how much of it will include

cryptography related proofs and how much

of that will drive people to scramble on

public key cryptography? By the way, if

it's worth saying it, I asked Chad GPT

and I said, "Will the latest proofs of

important math problems result in direct

improvements and innovations to life as

we know it? Be honest and don't

extrapolate weakly." And its conclusion

was, "The latest mathematical proofs are

more compelling as evidence that AI is

acquiring sophisticated reasoning

capabilities than as evidence of

imminent breakthroughs in human

welfare."

>> It felt like you were a little

condescending there. Did you lose your

account access? tested a time you have

for being condescending.

>> You know what's so funny about what you

were saying is that has happened to me

before using one of the frontier labs. I

was doing uh simulation like on changing

different variables

inside of 8090 actually maybe I should

stop doing project A and pursue project

B whatever. And in all of this I did get

frustrated because I wasn't getting the

answers I wanted. I said something like

it was not super offensive, but I was

like, you're being very evasive and

mushy

and something something and I got

blocked.

>> Yes.

>> The net of it was I got blocked.

>> I've seen this happen with you when you

lose a couple of hands and then the

dealer and how they're handling the

cards has to be adjusted. Like please do

not burn the card. Burns just I want a

Scooby slide. Do it this way.

>> I did get put in the penalty box for

like an hour or something. I think one

of the interesting things that's

happened here on a human level, I'm

interested in your take on it, Sachs on

programmers and entrepreneurship and

then Freeberg on yours with

mathematicians themselves building on

Chimath's very subtle but insightful

comment when he said like being utterly

dominated by the AI. I was talking to

some founders uh while I was here in

Japan and people were lamenting how

something has been lost in developing

code because coders used to work

together to solve a problem and there

was this aspree to corpse. There was

this camaraderie in building towards a

goal and now they're not working with

each other. They're working with agents.

They're not actually constructing the

code. they're only reviewing like 10 or

15% of it now, which means they're going

to be reviewing none of it very shortly.

And that the whole joy of building as a

coder was basically going away. Their

way of life of building this building

together, you know, known as software

was now being deprecated. It was going

away. And it seems to me these

mathematicians are also faced Freedberg

with a paradigm shift in which they're

not solving the problem. They're

constructing the problem set and handing

it off to AI. So are people in math

getting bummed out and not wanting are

they going into like a depression spiral

now that they're not the one solving the

problem and that the problems are just

poof done?

Yeah, I think Eric Weinstein has had

some of the best commentary on this and

you'll recall I interviewed him a couple

weeks ago.

>> Banger interview. Yeah,

>> he's been saying for a long time that

scientists hold back science,

mathematicians hold back math. That they

have basically constructed and created

systems that allow them to pace the

frontier that allow them

>> well to gatekeep it.

>> Yeah. Yeah. To gateep it.

>> And by the way, I don't tweet very much,

but Sabine Hosenfelder's

video that she published yesterday,

she's a fantastic scientist who

publishes these videos on scientific

breakthroughs.

And she talked a little bit about how

the experts were wrong about AI. Again,

she talks a little bit about how

everyone's predictions about job loss

were wrong and why people got it wrong

and and why the experts are wrong. But

she had another video a couple of weeks

ago or maybe it was a few months ago

where one of the scientists at one of

the big energy labs building a giant

super collider basically said these

super collider systems are giant welfare

systems for scientists. We all have the

job of writing a grant to get the money

to keep ourselves employed that it's not

about necessarily progressing the

frontier. It's not about making the

discovery. It's not about inventing a

new product. is not about delivering

something to the world. It's about

getting ourselves to continue doing work

>> even if pandering for grants is what

you're saying.

>> Even if that work is not productive and

so there's a real kind of I would say

shining the light moment happening with

AI which is where is that the case?

Where do we have these experts, these

deeply specialized experts whose unique

gated knowledge of some artifact of

things and unique view because they're

the expert and they have to be trusted

gives only them the ability to determine

the frontier

>> to and in the process they're getting

paid and they're earning to chart that

path for humanity. And this is where I

keep saying AI is the great

democratizer. Yes, AI gives everyone

this new mathematical proofs and you you

know you can belittle the proofs but

they are discoveries that are going to

open up new discoveries. They're going

to charge a new new course for humanity

>> but we didn't have to go to the experts

to get them

>> and we didn't have to pay the experts

and have the experts tell us when we are

allowed to get them.

>> The permission is gone. AI is a

permissionless system for humanity to

pace its own frontier. And AI is giving

everyone all of this knowledge for free

and giving everyone all of these tools

for free. You don't have to go to these

deeply specialized experts anymore. And

that is actually a profound change in

how society is structured. And it is why

I believe so many people are so deeply

against AI. So let me hand this off to

you Sax. The democratization of

expertise and the gatekeeping being

dismantled. If we had had this level of

AI and frontier models in the age of CO,

which this came right after CO, how

would that have changed the expertise if

these tools were available when we

started sequencing CO when we had all

this data? Would this have this

expertise gatekeeping Fouchy actively

subverting the truth and you know

whatever cover up was going on in Wuhan?

How do you think this next co, god

forbid, how could this change how we

look at expertise? Yeah.

>> Well, here here's my theory on on what's

happening is first of all, you had the

internet and that was wildly

democratizing because now you didn't

have to rely on a small number of elite

publications for your news like the New

York Times, the Washington Post, and the

APN Reuters. you could basically get

news from pretty much every publication

under the sun or from user groups, user

forums or most importantly social media.

And so it was userenerated content. And

there was also lots of other examples of

empowering users. Obviously there were

new marketplaces that formed online. So

it was empowering from a commercial

standpoint and you were able to get

access to new skills and capabilities.

So it was wildly democratizing and it

wildly undermined again the elite

consensus publications and the

traditional topdown

controlled mass media. Right? And I

think what happened after that is that

the powers that be decided they would

never let that happen again. You know by

the way they tried to crack down on it

after Donald Trump was elected in 2016

for the first time. That election was

widely attributed to supposedly the ills

of social media that people could never

have made this decision on their own.

There must have been disinformation

involved and that became the pretext for

a big crackdown on social media that

reached its apex during the Biden

administration. And the Biden

administration definitely did pressure

social media sites to take down true

information about CO that violated their

narratives. information about where the

virus came from, about how deadly it

supposedly was or ways of reacting to

it. There was no question that Fouchy at

all were somehow working behind the

scenes to push the social media

companies to censor on their behalf. And

in fact, we found out in the Twitter

files that the FBI had 80 agents

going through content on Twitter. It was

Twitter back then, not X, and sending

them takedown notices.

>> And we were getting labeled on Spotify

and YouTube and having our videos

de-indexed.

>> Yeah. So look, the track record is the

track record of this is very clear,

which is the action now is moving from

the internet to AI or super

intelligence. In fact, SI will eat the

internet because there's no reason to

basically go looking on a website when

you can just ask your question to your

highly personalized agent or model

>> and it's going to give you the answer.

And so there's a control point there

that now becomes all important which is

if you can control you know you the

government or you some elite or some

oligarchy or some cartel. If you can

control that that point at which the

user is receiving their information and

asking its questions,

then now you really control everything.

It's a way to basically put the genie

back in the bottle. And this is why I

think there is such a a fight right now

over SI, why so many people want to

create a federal department of SI. And

yeah, it's all about control.

>> It's scary to experts to lose control.

Like imagine if Chimoth we had these

tools and you did the model of who was

if you had the raw data who is being

impacted by co you might have said well

why are we keeping kids out of school

here's the here's what super

intelligence says and Sweden and Texas

had kind of gotten to that point like

hey we don't need to keep kids out of

school the harm from keeping kids unless

they objected unless the conscious yes

anthropic would say yes you're

questioning authority and we should not

be questioning it correct all right

let's move on there's riot riots in

France. The big question is, is this any

different than the previous riots that

have occurred? Are we seeing something

here different or is this just par for

the course? The strikes and protests

that you're seeing on X.com and not

really seeing on the mainstream media

all this month. You know, the mainstream

media seems to be super busy with other

topics, but the videos are quite jarring

uh that you'll see online.

>> Freeberg's about to have his moment. The

thing that he has been talking about for

years,

>> okay,

>> is now at hand.

>> All right. France is seeing major

protest and riots over austerity

measures. Austerity, austerity,

austerity. These strikes and protests

started last month because of uh high

school teacher shortages and their

schools are crumbling. Sounds familiar.

Within two weeks, a thousand French

schools saw similar protest. Eight

unions joined in and everybody went on

strike September 29th. They are

protesting that civil service pay is up

only 5% since 2017. Prices have risen.

Obviously, inflation is a global

phenomenon, not just here in the US.

Prices have risen 20%. So, there's a

delta between those two numbers that

people are not happy about called the

cost of living. Some of the protests

have turned into full-scale riots. 2,000

arrests. 305 police officers have been

injured. Government is blaming the far

left for stroking the protest. France's

10-year bond which is another important

story uh people's debt or government

debt has topped 5% just like is

happening here in the United States with

the 30-year anyway this is all going to

have profound impact on the elections in

April of 2027 obviously poly market has

marine Le Pen has the favorite to be

France's next president at 43%

Le Pen is uh Trump-like in her policy

secure borders strict immigration which

obviously Europe and France have had

many issues isues with cutting taxes and

spending and being skeptical of the EU

consortium. Freeberg, your thoughts here

on what we're seeing in France. I'm

going to introduce um a new theory. You

guys will here. Okay. So, the theory is

called the socialism point of guaranteed

return.

>> So, it's

>> socialism point of guaranteed return.

>> Let's shorten it to veganism.

>> Vagism.

The SPGR. Go ahead. SPGR.

>> This is a play on a point of no return.

>> I think the thing that happens with

socialism is because socialism is so bad

as a concept. It literally removes human

agency. It removes the capacity for

human progress and it basically takes

something away from everyone. So

ultimately socialism always fails. I

mean that's like the zeroth law of

socialism is it always fails. The first

law of socialism is that you have to

cross a threshold before you realize

that it's failed. And the second law of

socialism is that as you have not

crossed that threshold, you think more

socialism is the answer. So as you

embrace these kind of leftist policies,

giving people free stuff, telling people

that they have a guaranteed income, the

more services you provide them, the more

they realize that, you know, over time

those services inflate in cost and the

quality of those services inevitably

degrades because there's absolutely zero

market force to drive progress. Progress

goes away. And that's what we see in the

US in housing, in education, and in

healthcare. And I would argue also in

retirement systems. I think those are

our four biggest problems that are going

to lead us down this path. And I've said

that for a while. So as a as a society

says, okay, these things aren't working.

The initial solution is we need more of

them. I need more healthare. I need more

housing. I need more education provided

by the government. So when the

government fails to provide good enough

healthare, good enough housing, good

enough healthare that's affordable

enough, the answer is more government

stuff. Give me more, give me more, do

more. And eventually you reach a point

when the system breaks because the

government cannot tax and they cannot

print. And because they cannot actually

provide the services effectively,

everyone realizes, holy the

socialism thing doesn't work. That is

the socialism point of guaranteed return

where the whole system collapses and you

return back to the non-socialist state.

That is what has happened in Latin

America. Latin America crossed the

socialism point of guaranteed return in

many of these countries. They realized

it and they bounced back. Perhaps France

has crossed it. Perhaps they haven't.

We'll see how much deeper they go. The

US has not crossed it. And I worry that

the US, as I've said many times, is not

yet touched that point. Has not hit the

rock bottom. And we're teetering. And

it's I think we're going to go deeper

before we realize that we've crossed

this point of guaranteed return where

you realize the system doesn't

work. Socialism is the worst idea. That

is the zeroth law of socialism is it

just doesn't work.

>> So we have to get to that point. And I

think the real question right now is

France there. Is all of Western Europe

there? Does it accelerate all of Western

Europe through the socialism point of

guaranteed return, which is sort of like

a black hole event horizon? It's like

you go through and then you bounce back

out and you come out in this other

universe and you're like, "Okay, we're

done with that idea."

>> And it's a oneway door. Sachs, now Sax,

I want to get your thoughts on this

point of no return. But I want to warn

you that you're at three of your four

Biden quota. So you only have one more

Biden left for this episode. So

>> when did I mention Biden?

>> You had three B. That's your fourth.

Okay. So,

>> okay. I'm not going to mention Biden. My

moment is over.

>> My comments have nothing to do with

Biden. Listen, I I I want to add a

couple of laws of socialism. Is that

what you called them?

>> Yes.

>> Yeah.

>> So, another one is socialism has never

failed. It's only been failed. Meaning

that all the previous people who

implemented it didn't do it right.

Right. If they had just done it right,

it would have worked. So, that's the

thing. It's true. Socialism has never

worked, but it's not socialism's fault.

It's always the people who screwed up

the implementation. And that's like a

core part of the the religion is if we

just do it the right way this time,

it'll finally work.

>> Yeah. How does socialism build more

houses or make a better education system

is my question. I think that's the

domain of entrepreneurship. Yes. Saxs.

Like new product or service. Like with

AI, everybody gets a personal tutor.

We've talked about this on the show as

well. We just need to get AI to help

with healthcare. I think Nico is doing

that. We had them on the program. Daniel

A, a great episode. We need to cover

these three things. So, Sax, do you see

a solution that does not involve

socialism andor the government for,

let's call them, the three uh horses of

the socialism apocalypse? Education,

housing, healthcare. How do we get these

problems solved? Because the government

has a strangle hold on providing them

andor creating the blockages for their

occurrence. How do we break through

that? How does J D Vance when he runs

for president in two years, friend of

yours, how does he build a platform

around say those three things? Because I

believe the next pres the next winner of

the presidency is going to solve at

least one or two of those problems and

that is the platform everybody wants to

see solved. You have a solution there?

>> Well, the the difficult thing is that as

soon as you start subsidizing something,

you now create an interest group that

never ever wants to give up the subsidy.

But the problem is that the subsidy

starts distorting all the market signals

and it will frequently drive the price

up.

>> So for example with college tuition, one

of the big problems there is that

tuition has grown far faster than the

rate of inflation. A big part of the

reason for that is because the

government is paying for most of the

tuition through all these loan programs.

>> Yeah, by the way underwritten

>> healthare and housing have have all

beaten inflation. And I think they're

about 5 1.5 to 6% a year for housing

prices. And that's also because of the

fact that the the subsidy system tells

people to own a home. You put all your

money in your home and then your net

worth is tied up in your home. So the

goal is to get your home price to go up

every year. So fast forward 30 years,

young people can't buy a home because

they're all too expensive now,

>> right? I

>> But this is the this is the conundrum is

like okay so if you were to solve the

the tuition problem

>> if you were to make the loans stricter

>> Yeah.

>> Yeah. If you basically make them be

properly underwritten and you would be

able to get a loan unless you actually

met the criteria that would only work if

the cost of tuition came way down so

people could then afford to pay it

because otherwise people are going to

say well wait you can't take away my

subsidy. I need that because the price

is so high. So you get in this world

where people need the subsidy because

the price is so high. It's a catch 22.

But the reason why the price keeps going

up at far faster than the rate of

inflation is a government is paying for

it. And as long as the government's

paying for it and not the consumer,

you're going to raise your prices as

much as you can. So you remove the

market forces, the the inflation gets

worse and worse, but you can't cut cut

it off the subsidy because then people

will feel like it's even more oppressive

to them. And so that's the basically the

spiral. And then eventually it breaks

when you run out of money.

>> Yeah. Well, we have a solution. Chimop

meta is providing degrees for generation

tool belt and jobs that actually matter.

I mean, I think what we have to have is

Apple needs to start making homes and

Amazon needs to start making homes and

provide a free market here to to make

better products and services in the

education space, which we see with Meta