You've been working on AI safety for two

decades at least.

>> Yeah. I was convinced we can make safe

AI, but the more I looked at it, the

more I realized is not something we can

actually do. You have made a series of

predictions about variety of different

dates. So, what is your prediction for

2027?

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy is a globally

recognized voice on AI safety and

associate professor of computer science.

He educates people on the terrifying

truth of AI

>> and what we need to do to save humanity.

In 2 years, the capability to replace

most humans in most occupations will

come very quickly. And then in 5 years,

we're looking at a world where we have

levels of unemployment we've never seen

before. Not talking about 10% but 99%.

And that's without super intelligence, a

system smarter than all humans in all

domains. So, it would be better than us

at making new AI. But it's worse than

that. We don't know how to make them

safe. And yet we still have the smartest

people in the world competing to win the

race to super intelligence. But what do

you make of people like Sam Altman's

journey with AI? So, a decade ago, we

published guardrails for how to do AI

right. They violated every single one.

And he's gambling 8 billion lives on

getting richer and more powerful. So, I

guess some people want to go to Mars.

Others want to control the universe.

But it doesn't matter who builds it. The

moment you switch to super intelligence,

we will most likely regret it terribly.

And then by 2045?

Now, this is where it gets interesting.

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy, let's talk about

simulation theory. I think we are in

one. And there is a lot of agreement on

this. And this is what you should be

doing in it so they don't shut it down.

First,

I see messages all the time in the

comment section that some of you didn't

realize you didn't subscribe. So, if you

could do me a favor and double-check if

you're a subscriber to this channel,

that would be tremendously appreciated.

It's the simple, it's the free thing

that anybody that watches this show

frequently can do to help us here to

keep everything going in this show in

the trajectory it's on. So, please do

double-check if you subscribed and uh

thank you so much because in a strange

way you are you're part of our history

and you're on this journey with us and I

appreciate you for that. So, yeah, thank

you.

Dr. Roman Yampolskiy.

What is the mission that you're

currently on? Cuz it's quite clear to me

that you are on a bit of a mission and

you've been on this mission for, I

think, the best part of two decades at

least.

I'm hoping to make sure that super

intelligence we are creating right now

does not kill everyone.

Give me some Give me some context on

that statement cuz it's quite a shocking

statement.

Sure. So, the last decade, we actually

figured out how to make artificial

intelligence better.

Turns out if you add more compute, more

data,

it just kind of becomes smarter.

And so now, smartest people in the

world, billions of dollars, all going to

create the best possible super

intelligence we can.

Unfortunately, while we know how to make

the systems much more capable,

we don't know how to make them safe.

How to

make sure they don't do something we

will regret.

And that's the state of the art right

now. When we look at

just prediction markets, how soon will

we get to advanced AI?

The timelines are very short, couple

years.

Two, three years according to prediction

markets, according to CEOs of top labs.

And at the same time,

we don't know how to make sure that the

systems are aligned with our

preferences.

So, we are creating this alien

intelligence.

If aliens were coming to Earth and

you had 3 years to prepare,

you would be panicking right now.

But most people don't don't even realize

this is happening.

So, some of the counterarguments might

be, well, these are very, very smart

people. These are very big companies

with lots of money. They have a

obligation and a moral obligation but

also just

a legal obligation to make sure they do

no harm. So, I'm sure it'll be fine. The

only obligation they have is to make

money for their investors. That's the

legal obligation they have. They have no

moral or ethical obligations. Also,

according to them, they don't know how

to do it yet. The state-of-the-art

answers are, we'll figure it out when we

get there or AI will help us control

more advanced AI.

That's insane.

In terms of probability, what do you

think is the probability that something

goes catastrophically wrong?

So, nobody can tell you for sure what's

going to happen. But if you're not in

charge, you're not controlling it, you

will not get outcomes you want. The

space of possibilities is almost

infinite. The space of outcomes we will

like is tiny.

And

who are you and how long have you been

working on this?

I'm a computer scientist by training. I

have a PhD in computer science and

engineering.

I probably started work in AI safety,

mildly defined as control of bots at the

time,

15 years ago.

15 years ago. So, you've been working on

AI safety before it was cool. Before the

term existed. I coined the term AI

safety. So, you're the founder of the

term AI safety? The term, yes, not the

field. There are other people who did

brilliant work before I got there.

Why were you thinking about this 15

years ago? Because most people have only

been talking about the term AI safety

for the last two or three years. Yeah,

it started very mildly just as a

security project. I was looking at poker

bots.

And I realized that the bots are getting

better and better.

And if you just project this forward

enough,

they're going to get better than us,

smarter, more capable. And it happened.

They are playing poker way better than

average players.

But

more generally, it will happen with all

other domains, all the other cyber

resources.

I wanted to make sure AI is a technology

which is beneficial for everyone. So, I

started work on making AI safer.

Was there a particular moment in your

career where you thought,

"Oh my god."?

First 5 years at least, I was working on

solving this problem. I was convinced we

can make happen, we can make safe AI.

That was the goal. But the more I looked

at it, the more I realized every single

component of that equation is not

something we can actually do.

And the more you zoom in, it's like a

fractal. You go in and you find 10 more

problems and then 100 more problems. And

all of them are not just difficult,

they're impossible to solve. There is no

seminal work in this field where like,

we solved this. We don't have to worry

about this. There are patches. There are

little fixes we put in place and quickly

people find ways to work around them.

They jailbreak whatever safety

mechanisms we have. So, while progress

in

AI capabilities is exponential or maybe

even hyper exponential,

progress in AI safety is linear or

constant.

The gap is increasing.

The gap between

the the how capable the systems are and

how well we can control them, predict

what they're going to do, explain their

decision-making.

I think this is quite an important point

because you said that we're basically

patching over the issues that we find.

So, we're developing this this core

intelligence and then to stop it doing

things

or to stop it showing some of its

unpredictability or its threats,

the companies that are developing this

AI are programming in code over the top

to say, "Okay, don't swear. Don't say

that rude word. Don't do that bad

thing." Exactly. And you can look at

other examples of that. So, HR manuals,

right? We have those humans, they're

general intelligences, but you want them

to behave in a company. So, they have a

policy. No sexual harassment. No this,

no that. But if you're smart enough, you

always find a workaround. So, you're

just pushing behavior into a different,

not yet restricted subdomain.

We We should probably define some terms

here.

So, there's narrow intelligence which

can play chess or whatever. There's

artificial general intelligence which

can operate across domains. And then

super intelligence which is smarter than

all humans in all domains.

And where are we?

So, that's a very fuzzy boundary, right?

We definitely have many excellent narrow

systems, no question about it. And they

are super intelligent in that narrow

domain. So,

protein folding is a problem which was

solved using narrow AI and it's superior

to all humans in that domain.

In terms of AGI, again I said, if we

showed what we have today to a scientist

from 20 years ago, they would be

convinced we have full-blown AGI. We

have systems which can learn. They can

perform in hundreds of domains and

they're better than human in many of

them.

So, you can argue we have a weak version

of AGI.

Now, we don't have super intelligence

yet. We still have brilliant humans who

are completely dominating AI, especially

in science and engineering.

But that gap is closing so fast. You can

see

especially in the domain of mathematics.

3 years ago,

large language models couldn't do basic

algebra.

Multiplying three-digit numbers was a

challenge. Now, they're helping with

mathematical proofs. They're winning

mathematics Olympiads, competitions.

They're working on solving millennial

problems, hardest problems in

mathematics. So, in 3 years, we closed

the gap from subhuman performance to

better than most mathematicians in the

world. And we see the same process

happening in science and engineering.

You have made a series of predictions

and they correspond to a variety of

different dates and I have those dates

in front of me here.

What is your prediction for the year

2027?

We're probably looking at AGI as

predicted by prediction markets and tops

of the labs.

So we'd have artificial general

intelligence by 2027.

And how would that make the world

different

to how it is now?

So if you have this concept of a drop-in

you have free labor, physical and

cognitive, trillions of dollars of it.

It makes no sense to hire humans for

most jobs.

If I can just get, you know, a $20

subscription or free model to do what an

employee does,

first, anything on a computer will be

automated.

And next thing, humanoid robots are

maybe 5 years behind, so in 5 years all

the physical labor can also be

automated.

So we're looking at a world where we

have levels of unemployment we've never

seen before. Not talking about 10%

unemployment, which is scary, but 99%.

All you have left is jobs where, for

whatever reason, you prefer another

human would do it for you.

But anything else

can be fully automated. It doesn't mean

it will be automated in practice. A lot

of times

technology exists, but it's not

deployed. Video phones were invented in

the '70s. Nobody had them until iPhones

came around.

So we may have a lot more time with jobs

and with world which looks like this.

But capability

to replace most humans in most

occupations will come very quickly.

Okay, so let's try and drill down into

that and and stress test it.

So

a podcaster like me,

would you need a podcaster like me?

So let's look at what you do. You

prepare, you

ask questions, you ask follow-up

questions, and you look good on camera.

Thank you so much. Let's see what we can

do. Large language model today can

easily read everything I wrote Yeah. and

have very solid understanding. Better, I

assume you haven't read every single one

of my books. I haven't. Yeah. That thing

would do it.

It can train on every podcast you ever

did, so it knows exactly your style, the

types of questions you ask. It can also

find correspondence between what worked

really well, like this type of question

really increased viewers, this type of

topic was very promising, so it can

optimize, I think, better than you can

because you don't have a data set.

Of course, visual simulation is trivial

at this point. So it can you can make a

video within seconds of me sat here and

So we can generate videos of you

interviewing anyone on any topic very

efficiently and you just have to get

likeness approval, whatever.

Are there many jobs that you think would

remain in a world of AGI? If you're

saying AGI is potentially going to be

here, whether it's deployed or not, by

2027,

what kind and then okay, so let's take

out of this any physical labor jobs for

a second. Are there any jobs that you

think a human would be able to do better

in a world of AGI

still? So that's the question I often

ask people. In the world with AGI, and I

think almost immediately we'll get

superintelligence as a side effect. So

the question really is, in a world of

superintelligence, which is defined as

better than all humans in all domains,

what can you contribute?

And so you know better than anyone what

it's like to be you.

You know what ice cream tastes to you.

Can you get paid for that knowledge? Is

someone interested in that?

Maybe not, not a big market.

There are jobs where you want a human.

Maybe you're rich and you want a human

accountant for whatever historic

reasons.

Old people like

traditional ways of doing things. Warren

Buffett would not switch to AI. He would

use his human accountant.

But it's a tiny subset of a market.

Today we have products which are

man-made

in US as opposed to mass-produced in

China, and some people pay more to have

those.

But it's a small subset. It's a almost a

fetish.

There is no practical reason for it.

And I think anything you can do on a

computer could be automated

using that technology.

You must hear a lot of rebuttals to when

this when you say it because people

experience a huge amount of mental

discomfort when they hear

that their job, their career, the thing

they got a degree in, the thing they

invested $100,000 into is going to be

taken away from them. So their natural

reaction, some for some people is that

cognitive dissonance that no, you're

wrong. AI can't be creative. It's not

this, it's not that. It will never be

interested in my job. I'll be fine

because

you hear these arguments all the time,

right?

>> It's really funny. I ask people and I

ask people in different occupations.

I'll ask my Uber driver, are you worried

about self-driving cars? And they go,

"No. No one can do what I do. I know the

streets of New York. I can navigate like

no AI.

I'm safe." And it's true for any job.

Professors are saying this to me. Oh,

nobody can lecture like I do. Like this

is so special.

But you understand it's ridiculous. We

already have self-driving cars replacing

drivers.

That is not even a question

if it's possible. It's like how soon

before you're fired.

Yeah, I mean, I've just been in LA

yesterday and my car drives itself. So I

get in the car, I set I put in where I

want to go, and then I don't touch the

steering wheel or the brake pedals, and

it takes me from A to B, even if it's an

hour-long drive without any intervention

at all. I actually still park it,

but other than that, I'm not I'm not

driving the car at all. And then

obviously in LA we also have Waymo now,

which means

you order it on your phone and it shows

up with no driver in it and takes you to

where you want to go. Oh, yeah. So it's

quite clear to see how that is

potentially a matter of time. For those

people, cuz we do have some of those

people listening to this conversation

right now, that their occupation is

driving,

to offer them a I think driving is the

biggest oc-

occupation in the world, if I'm correct.

I I'm pretty sure it is the biggest

occupation in the world.

>> of the top ones, yeah.

What would you say to those people?

What what should they be doing with

their lives? What should they should

they be retraining in something or

what time frame? So that's the paradigm

shift here. Before we always said this

job is going to be automated, retrain to

do this other job. But if I'm telling

you that all jobs will be automated,

then there is no plan B.

You cannot retrain.

Look at computer science.

2 years ago, we told people, learn to

code. Mhm. You are an artist, you cannot

make money, learn to code.

Then we realized, oh, AI kind of knows

how to code and getting better. Become a

prompt engineer.

You can engineer prompts for AIs. It's

going to be a great job. Get a 4-year

degree in it. But then we're like, AI is

way better at designing prompts for

other AIs than any human.

So that's gone. So I can't really tell

you right now, the hottest thing is

design AI agents for practical

applications. I guarantee you in a year

or two it's going to be gone just as

well.

So I don't think there is a

this occupation needs to learn to do

this instead. I think it's more like,

where's the humanity when we all lose

our jobs? What do we do? What do we do

financially?

Who's paying for us?

And what do we do in terms of

meaning? What do I do with my extra 60,

80 hours a week?

You've thought around this corner,

haven't you?

A little bit.

What is around that corner in your view?

So the economic part seems easy. If you

create a lot of free labor, you have a

lot of free wealth, abundance, things

which are right now

not very affordable become dirt cheap,

and so you can provide for everyone's

basic needs. Some people say you can

provide

beyond basic needs. You can provide very

good existence for everyone. The hard

problem

what do you do with all that free time?

For a lot of people, their jobs are what

gives them meaning in their lives, so

they would

retire or do early retirement. And for

so many people who hate their jobs,

they'll be very happy not working. But

now you have people who are chilling all

day.

What happens to society? How does that

impact crime rate, pregnancy rate, all

sorts of issues?

Nobody thinks about. Governments don't

have programs prepared to deal with 99%

unemployment.

What do you think that world looks like?

Again, I I think

>> you going to be doing? very important

part to understand here is the

unpredictability of it.

We cannot predict what a smarter than us

system will do.

And the point when we get to that is

often called singularity, by analogy

with physical singularity. You cannot

see beyond the event horizon. I can tell

you what I think might happen, but

that's my prediction. It is not what

actually is going to happen because I

just don't have cognitive ability to

predict a much smarter agent impacting

this world.

When you read science fiction,

there is never a superintelligence in it

actually doing anything because nobody

can write believable science fiction at

that level. They either banned AI, like

Dune, because this way you can avoid

writing about it, or it's like Star

Wars. You have this really dumb bots,

but not nothing superintelligent ever.

Cuz by definition, you cannot predict at

that level.

Because by definition of it being

superintelligent, it will make its own

mind up. By definition, if it was

something you could predict, you would

be operating at the same level of

intelligence, violating our assumption

that it is smarter than you.

If I'm playing chess with super

intelligence and I can predict every

move, I'm playing at that level. It's

kind of like my French bulldog trying to

predict

exactly what I'm thinking and what I'm

going to do. That's a good cognitive

gap. And it's not just he can predict

you going to work, you coming back, but

he cannot understand why you doing a

podcast. That is something completely

outside of his model of the world.

Yeah, he doesn't even know that I go to

work. He just sees that I leave the

house and doesn't know where I go.

By food for him. What's the most

persuasive argument against

your own perspective here? That we will

not have unemployment due to advanced

technology?

That there won't be this

French bulldog human gap in

understanding and

I guess like power and control.

So, some people think that we can

enhance human minds either through

combination with hardware, so something

like Neuralink, or through genetic

engineering to where we make smarter

humans.

Yeah. It may give us a little more

intelligence. I don't think we are still

competitive in biological form with

silicon form. Silicon substrate is much

more capable for intelligence. It's

faster. It's more resilient, more energy

efficient in many ways. Which is what

computers are made out of the brain.

Yeah.

So, I don't think we can keep up just

with improving our biology. Some people

think maybe, and this is very

speculative, we can upload our minds

into computers.

So, scan your brain, connectome of your

brain, and have a simulation running on

a computer and you can speed it up, give

it more capabilities. But to me, that

feels like you no longer exist. We just

created software by different means and

now you have AI based on biology and AI

based on some other forms of training.

You can have evolutionary algorithms.

You can have many paths to reach AGI.

But at the end, none of them are humans.

I have a another date here, which is

2030.

What's your prediction for 2030? What

will the world look like?

So, we probably will have

humanoid robots with enough flexibility,

dexterity to compete with humans in all

domains, including plumbers.

We can make artificial plumbers.

Not the plumbers. We That was That felt

like the last

bastion of

human employment. So, 2030, 5 years from

now, humanoid robots So, many of the

companies, the leading companies,

including Tesla, are developing humanoid

robots

at light speed and they're getting

increasingly more effective. And these

humanoid robots will be able to move

through physical space,

for you know, make an omelet,

do anything humans can do, but obviously

have

be connected to AI as well.

So, they can think, talk,

Like they're controlled by AI. They're

always connected to the network, so they

are already dominating in many ways.

Our world will look remarkably different

when humanoid robots are functional and

effective. Because that's really when,

you know, I start to think, "Crap." Like

the combination of intelligence and

physical ability

is really really doesn't leave much,

does it, for

us um

human beings.

Not much. So, today, if you have

intelligence through internet, you can

hire humans to do your bidding for you.

You can pay them in Bitcoin, so you can

have bodies, just not directly

controlling them. So, it's not a huge

game changer to add direct control of

physical bodies. Intelligence is where

it's at. The important component is

definitely higher ability to optimize,

to solve problems, to find patterns

people cannot see.

And then by 2045,

I guess the world looks even even more

um

which is 20 years from now. So, if it's

still around, If it's still around,

>> Ray Kurzweil predicts that that's the

year for the singularity. That's the

year where progress becomes so fast, so

this AI doing science and engineering

work makes improvements so quickly we

cannot keep up anymore. That's the

definition of singularity, point beyond

which we cannot see, understand,

predict.

See, understand, predict the

intelligence itself or

What is happening in the world? The

technology is being developed. So, right

now, if I have an iPhone, I can look

forward to a new one coming out next

year and I'll understand it has slightly

better camera. Imagine now this process

of researching and developing this phone

is automated. It happens every 6 months,

every 3 every month, week, day, hour,

minute, second.

You cannot keep up with

30 iterations of iPhone in 1 day. You

don't understand what capabilities it

has,

what

proper controls are. It just escapes

you. Right now, it's hard for any

researcher in AI to keep up with the

state of the art. While I was doing this

interview with you, a new model came out

and I will no longer know what the state

of the art is.

Every day, as a percentage of total

knowledge, I get dumber.

I may still know more because I keep

reading, but as a percentage of overall

knowledge, we all getting dumber.

And when you take it to extreme values,

you have zero knowledge, zero

understanding of the world around you.

Some of the arguments against this

eventuality are that when you look at

other technologies like the Industrial

Revolution, people just found new ways

to

to work and new careers that we could

never have imagined at the time were

created.

How do you respond to that in a world of

super intelligence?

It's a paradigm shift. We always had

tools, new tools which allowed some job

to be done more efficiently. So, instead

of having 10 workers, you could have two

workers and eight workers had to find a

new job. And there was another job. Now

you can supervise these workers or do

something cool. If you creating a meta

invention, you inventing intelligence,

you inventing a worker, an agent, then

you can apply that agent to the new job.

There is not a job which cannot be

automated. That never happened before.

All the inventions we previously had

were kind of

a tool for doing something. So, we

invented fire. Huge game changer. But

that's it. It stops with fire. We invent

a wheel. Same idea. Huge implications,

but wheel itself is not an inventor.

Here we are inventing

a replacement for human mind, a new

inventor capable of doing new

inventions. It's the last invention we

ever have to make. At that point, it

takes over and the process of doing

science, research, even ethics research,

morals, all that is automated at that

point.

Do you sleep well at night? Really well.

Even though you you spent the last 15,

20 years of your life working on AI

safety and it's suddenly

among us in a in a way that I don't

think anyone could have predicted 5

years ago. When I say among us, I really

mean that the amount of funding and

talent that is now focused on reaching

super intelligence faster has made it

feel more inevitable and more

soon

than any of us could have possibly

imagined.

We as humans have this built-in bias

about not thinking about really bad

outcomes and things we cannot prevent.

So, all of us are dying.

Your kids are dying, your parents are

dying, everyone's dying, but you still

sleep well, you still go on with your

day. Even 95-year-olds are still doing

games and playing golf and whatnot, cuz

we have this ability to not think about

the worst outcomes, especially if we

cannot actually modify the outcome. So,

that's the same

infrastructure being used for this.

Yeah, there is

humanity level

death-like event. We happening to be

close to it probably, but unless I can

do something about it, I I can just keep

enjoying my life. In fact, maybe knowing

that you have limited amount of time

left gives you more reason to have a

better life. You cannot waste any.

And that's the survival trait of

evolution, I guess, because those of my

ancestors that spent all their time

worrying

wouldn't have spent enough time having

babies and hunting to survive.

>> Suicidal ideation. People who really

start thinking about how horrible the

world is usually escape pretty soon.

Mhm.

One of the You co-authored this paper

um analyzing the key arguments people

make against the importance of AI

safety.

And one of the arguments in there is

that there's other things that are of

bigger importance right now. It might be

world wars, it could be nuclear

containment, it could be other things.

There's other things that the

governments and podcasters like me

should be talking about that are more

important. What's your rebuttal to that

argument?

>> So, super intelligence is a meta

solution. If we get super intelligence

right, it will help us with climate

change, it will help us with wars, it

can solve all the other existential

risks. If we don't get it right, it

dominates. If climate change will take

100 years to boil us alive and super

intelligence kills everyone in five, I

don't have to worry about climate

change. So, either way, either it solves

it for me or it's not an issue.

So, you think it's the most important

thing to be working on? Without

question, there is nothing more

important than getting this right.

And I know everyone says it. You take

any class but you take English

professor's class and he tells you this

is the most important class you'll ever

take. But

you can see the meta level differences

with this one.

Another argument in that paper is that

we will be in control and that the

danger is not AI.

This particular argument asserts that AI

is just a tool. Humans are the real

actors that present danger and we can

always maintain control by simply

turning it off. Can't we just pull the

plug out? I see that every time we have

a conversation on the show about AI,

someone says can't we just unplug it?

Yeah, I get those comments on every

podcast I make and I always want to like

get in touch with the guy and say this

is brilliant. I never thought of it.

We're going to write a paper together

and get a Nobel Prize for it. This is

like let's do it.

Because it's so silly. Like can you turn

off a virus? You have a computer virus

you don't like. You turn it off.

How about Bitcoin? Turn off Bitcoin

network.

Go ahead. I'll wait.

This is silly. Those are distributed

systems. You cannot turn them off and on

top of it they're smarter than you. They

made multiple backups. They predicted

what you're going to do. They will turn

you off before you can turn them off.

The idea that we will be in control

applies only to pre super intelligence

levels. Basically what we have today.

Today humans with AI tools are

dangerous. They can be hackers,

malevolent actors. Absolutely. But the

moment super intelligence becomes

smarter, dominates, they no longer be

important part of that equation. It is

the higher intelligence I'm concerned

about, not the human who

may add additional malevolent payload

but at the end still doesn't control it.

It is tempting

to

follow your the next argument that I saw

in that paper which basically says

listen

this is inevitable.

So there's no point fighting against it

because there's really no hope here. So

we should probably give up even trying

and be faithful that it will work itself

out.

Because everything you've said sounds

really inevitable.

And if with China working on it, I'm

sure Putin's got some secret division.

I'm sure Iran are doing some bits and

pieces. Every European country is trying

to get ahead of AI. The United States is

leading the way.

So it's it's inevitable. So we probably

should just have faith and pray.

Praying is always good but incentives

matter.

If you

looking at what drives these people. So

yes, money is important. So there is a

lot of money in that space and so

everyone's trying to be there and

develop this technology. But if they

truly understand the argument, they

understand that you will be dead.

No amount of money will be useful to

you.

Then incentives switch. They would want

to not be dead. A lot of them are young

people, rich people. They have their

whole lives ahead of them. I think they

would be better off not building

advanced super intelligence,

concentrating on narrow AI tools for

solving specific problems. Okay, my

company cures breast cancer. That's all.

We make billions of dollars. Everyone's

happy. Everyone benefits.

It's a win.

We are still in control today. It's not

over until it's over. We can decide not

to build general super intelligences.

I mean the United States might be able

to conjure up enough enthusiasm for

that. But if the United States doesn't

build general super intelligences, then

China are going to have the big

advantage, right?

So right now at those levels, whoever

has more advanced AI has more advanced

military. No question. We see it with

existing conflicts. But the moment you

switch to super intelligence and control

super intelligence, it doesn't matter

who builds it, us or them. And if they

understand this argument, they also

would not build it. It's a mutually

assured destruction on both ends.

Is this technology different than say

nuclear weapons which require a huge

amount of investment and you have to

like enrich the uranium and you need

billions of dollars potentially to even

build a nuclear weapon.

But it feels like this technology is

much cheaper to get to super

intelligence potentially or at least it

will become cheaper. I wonder if it's

possible that some some guy, some

startup is going to be able to build

super intelligence in

you know, a couple of years without the

need of

you know, billions of dollars of compute

or or electricity power. That's a great

point. So every year it becomes cheaper

and cheaper to train sufficiently large

model. If today it would take a trillion

dollars to build super intelligence,

next year it could be 100 billion and so

on. At some point a guy in a laptop

could do it.

But you don't want to wait four years to

make it affordable. So that's why so

much money is pouring in. Somebody wants

to get there this year and lock in all

the winnings. Litecoin level award.

So in that regard they're both very

expensive projects like Manhattan level

projects. Which is the nuclear bomb

project.

>> Right.

The difference between the two

technologies is that nuclear weapons are

still tools.

Some dictator, some country, someone has

to decide to use them, deploy them.

Whereas super intelligence is not a is

not a tool. It's an agent.

It makes its own decisions and no one is

controlling it. I cannot take out this

dictator and now super intelligence is

safe.

So that's a fundamental difference to

me.

But if you're saying that it is going to

get

incrementally cheaper like I think it's

Moore's law, isn't it? The technology

gets cheaper. It does.

Then there is a future where some guy on

his laptop is going to be able to create

super intelligence without

oversight or regulation or employees,

etc. Yeah, that's why a lot of people

suggesting we need to build something

like um

surveillance planet where you are

monitoring who's doing what and you're

trying to prevent people from doing it.

Do I think it's feasible? No. At some

point it becomes so affordable and so

trivial that it just will happen. But at

this point we're trying to get more

time. We don't want it to happen in five

years. We want it to happen in 50 years.

I mean that's not very hopeful. Depends

on how old you are.

Depends on how old you are.

I mean

if you're saying that

you believe in the future people will be

able to make super intelligence

without the resources that are required

today, then it is just a matter of time.

Yeah, but so will be true for many other

technologies. We're getting much better

in synthetic biology where today someone

with a bachelor's degree in biology can

probably create a new virus.

This will also become cheaper. Other

technologies like that. So we are

approaching a point where it's very

difficult to make sure no technological

breakthrough is the last one. So

essentially in many directions we have

this

pattern of making it easier in terms of

resources, in terms of intelligence to

destroy the world.

If you look at I don't know, 500 years

ago, the worst dictator with all the

resources could kill couple million

people. He couldn't destroy the world.

Now we know nuclear weapons we can blow

up the whole planet multiple times over.

Synthetic biology we saw with COVID, you

can very easily create a combination

virus which impacts billions of people.

And all those things becoming easier to

do.

In the near term you talk about

extinction being a real risk, human

extinction being a real risk. Of all the

the pathways to human extinction that

you think are

most likely, what what is the leading

pathway? Because I know you talk about

there being some issue pre-deployment of

these AI tools like you know, someone

makes a mistake when they're

designing a model or other issues

post-deployment. When I say

post-deployment, I mean once the chat

GPT or something, an

agent is released into the world and

someone hacking into it and changing it

and reprogram reprogramming it to be

malicious. Of all these potential paths

to human extinction, which one do you

think is the highest probability?

So I can only talk about the ones I can

predict myself. So I can predict even

before we get a super intelligence,

someone will create a very advanced

biological tool, create a novel virus

and that virus gets everyone or most

everyone.

I can

envision it. I can understand the

pathway. I can say that. So just

assuming on that then, that would be

using an AI to make a virus and then

releasing it. Yeah.

And would that be

intentional or

There is a lot of psychopaths, a lot of

terrorists, a lot of doomsday cults.

We've seen historically again, they

tried to kill as many people as they

can. They usually fail. They kill

hundreds of thousands.

But if they get technology to kill

millions or billions, they would do that

gladly.

The point I'm trying to emphasize is

that it doesn't matter what I can come

up with. I am not a malevolent actor

you're trying to defeat here. It's the

super intelligence which can come up

with completely novel ways of doing it.

Again, you brought up example of your

dog.

Your dog cannot understand all the ways

you can take it out.

It can maybe think you'll bite it to

death or something. But that's all.

Whereas you have

infinite supply of resources.

So if I asked your dog exactly how

you're going to take it out, it would

not give you a meaningful answer. It can

talk about biting.

And this is what we know. We know

viruses. We experienced viruses. We can

talk about them. But what

an AI system capable of doing novel

physics research can come up with is

beyond me.

One of the things that I think most

people don't understand is how little we

understand about how these AIs are

actually working. Cuz one would assume,

you know, with computers, we kind of

understand how a computer works. We we

know that it's doing this and then this

and it's running on code. But,

from reading your work, you describe it

as being a black box. We actually So, in

the context of something like ChatGPT or

an AI we know, you're telling me that

the people that have built that tool

don't actually know

what's going on inside there.

That's exactly right. So, even people

making those systems have to run

experiments on their product to learn

what it's capable of. So, they train it

by giving it all of data, let's say all

of internet text.

They run it on a lot of computers to

learn patterns in that text. And then we

start experimenting with that model. Oh,

do you speak French? Or, can you do

mathematics? Or, are you lying to me

now? And so, maybe it takes a year to

train it and then 6 months to get some

fundamentals about what it's capable of.

Some safety overhead.

But, we still discover new capabilities

in old models. If you ask a question in

a different way, it becomes smarter.

So, it's

no longer

engineering how it was the first 50

years where someone was a knowledge

engineer programming an expert system AI

to do specific things. It's a science.

We are creating this artifact, growing

it. It's like a alien plant. And then we

study it to see what it's doing.

And just like with plants, we don't have

100% accurate knowledge of biology.

We don't have full knowledge here. We

kind of know some patterns. We know,

okay, if we add more compute, it gets

smarter most of the time. But,

nobody can tell you precisely what the

outcome is going to be given a set of

inputs.

I've watched so many entrepreneurs treat

sales like a performance problem. When

it's often down to visibility. Because

when you can't see what's happening in

your pipeline, what stage each

conversation is at, what's stalled,

what's moving, you can't improve

anything. And you can't close the deal.

Our sponsor, Pipedrive, is the number

one CRM tool for small to medium

businesses. Not just a contact list, but

an actual system that shows your entire

sales process end-to-end. Everything

that's live, what's lagging, and the

steps you need to take next. All of your

teams can move smarter and faster. Teams

using Pipedrive are on average closing

three times more deals than those that

aren't. It's the first CRM made by sales

people for sales people that over

100,000 companies around the world rely

on, including my team who absolutely

love it. Give Pipedrive a try today by

visiting pipedrive.com/ceo.

And you can get up and running in a

couple of minutes with no payment

needed. And if you use this link, you'll

get a 30-day free trial. What do you

make of OpenAI and Sam Altman and what

they're doing?

And obviously, you're aware that one of

the co-founders, was it um This was Ilya

Sutskever?

Ilya yeah. Ilya left and he started a a

new company called Superintelligence

Safety. Superintelligence Safety.

>> AI safety wasn't challenging enough, he

decided to just jump right to the hard

problem.

As an onlooker, when you see that people

are leaving OpenAI to to start

superintelligent safety companies,

what was your read on that situation?

So, a lot of people who worked with Sam

said that maybe he's not the most direct

person in terms of being honest with

them and they had concerns about his

views on safety.

That's part of it. So, they wanted more

control, they wanted more concentration

on safety. But, also it seems that

anyone who leaves that company and

starts a new one gets a $20 valuation

just for having it started. You don't

have a product, you don't have

customers, but

if you want to make many billions of

dollars, just do that. So, it seems like

a very rational thing to do for anyone

who can.

So, I'm not surprised that there is a

lot of attrition.

Meeting him in person, he's super nice,

very smart.

Absolutely

perfect public interface. You see him

testify in the Senate, he says the right

thing to the senators. You see him talk

to the investors, they get the right

message.

But, if you look at what people who know

him personally are saying,

it's probably not the right person to be

controlling a project of that impact.

Why?

He puts safety second.

Second to

winning this race to superintelligence,

being the guy who created God and

controlling light cone of the universe.

He's worse.

Do you suspect that's what he's driven

by is by the the legacy of being an

impactful person that did a

remarkable thing versus

the consequence that that might have on

for society?

Because it's interesting that his his

other startup is Worldcoin, which is

basically a platform to create universal

basic income. I a platform to give us

income in a world where

people don't have jobs anymore. So, on

one hand you're creating an AI company,

on the other hand you're creating a

company that is preparing for people to

not have employment.

It also has other

properties. It keeps track of everyone's

biometrics.

It

keeps you in charge of a world's

economy, world's wealth. They are

retaining a large portion of Worldcoins.

So, I I think it's kind of very

reasonable part to integrate with world

dominance. If you have a

superintelligence system and you control

money,

you're doing well.

Why would someone want world dominance?

People have different levels of

ambition. Then you are very young person

with billions of dollars, fame, you

start looking for more ambitious

projects. Some people want to go to

Mars, others want to control light cone

of the universe.

What What did you say, light cone of the

universe?

>> Light cone. So, every part of the

universe light can reach from this

point, meaning anything accessible you

want to grab and

bring into your control. You think Sam

Altman wants to control

every part of the universe?

I I suspect he might, yes.

Hmm.

It doesn't mean he doesn't want a side

effect of it being a very beneficial

technology which makes all the humans

happy.

Happy humans are good for control.

If you had to guess

what the world looks like in

2100,

if you had to guess,

it's either

free of human existence or it's

completely not comprehensible to someone

like us.

It's one of those extremes. So, there's

either no humans It's basically the

world is destroyed or it's so different

that I cannot envision those

predictions.

What can be done to turn this ship to a

more certain positive outcome at this

point?

Is Is there still things that we can do

or is it too late? So, I believe in

personal self-interest. If people

realize that doing this thing is really

bad for them personally, they will not

do it. So, our job is to convince

everyone with any power in this space

creating this technology working for

these companies,

they are doing something very bad

for them. Not just forget about eight

billion people you're experimenting on

with no permission,

no consent, you will not be happy with

the outcome. If we can get everyone to

understand that's the default, and it's

not just me saying it. You had Geoff

Hinton on

him. Nobel Prize winner, founder of the

whole machine learning space. He says

the same thing. Bengio, dozens of

others, top scholars. We had a statement

about dangers of AI signed by thousands

of scholars, computer scientists. This

is basically what we think right now and

we need to make it a universal. No one

should disagree with this. And then, we

may actually make good decisions about

what technology to build. It doesn't

guarantee long-term safety for humanity,

but it means we're not trying to get

there as soon as possible to the worst

possible outcome.

And do you Are you hopeful that that's

even possible?

I want to try. We have no choice but to

try.

And what would need to happen and who

would need to act? What is it government

legislation? Is it

Unfortunately, I don't think making it

illegal is sufficient. There are

different jurisdictions, there is, you

know, loopholes. And what are you going

to do if somebody does it? You're going

to fine them for destroying humanity?

Like very steep fines for it? Like what

are you going to do? It's not

enforceable. If they do create it, now

the superintelligence is in charge. So,

the judicial system we have is not

impactful. And all the punishments we

have are designed for punishing humans.

Prisons, capital punishment doesn't

apply to AI.

Here's the problem I have is when I have

these conversations, I never feel like I

walk away with

hope that something's going to go well.

And what I mean by that is I never feel

like I walk away with clear some kind of

a clear set of actions that can course

correct what might happen here. So, what

should What should I do? What should the

person sat at home listening to this do?

You You talked to a lot of people who

are building this technology. Mhm.

Ask them precisely to explain some of

those things they claim to be

impossible, how they solved it or going

to solve it before they get to where

they're going. Do you know, I don't

think Sam Altman wants to talk to me.

I don't know. He seems to go on a lot of

podcasts. Maybe he does.

>> wants to go on mine.

I wonder why that is.

I'd love to speak to him, but I don't I

don't think he wants to

I don't think he wants me to

interview him. Have an open challenge.

Maybe money is not the incentive, but

whatever attracts people like that,

whoever can convince you that it's

possible to control and make safe super

intelligence gets the prize. They come

on your show and prove their case.

Anyone. If no one claims the prize or

even accepts the challenge after a few

years, maybe we don't have anyone with

solutions.

We have companies valued again at

billions and billions of dollars working

on safe super intelligence.

We haven't seen their output yet.

Yeah, I'd like to speak to Ilya as well

cuz I know he's he's working on safe

super intelligence, so

Notice the pattern too. If you look at

history of AI safety organizations

or

departments within companies,

they usually start well, very ambitious,

and then they fail and disappear.

So,

OpenAI had super intelligence alignment

team.

The day they announced it, I think they

said we're going to solve it in 4 years.

Like half a year later they canceled the

team.

And there is dozens of similar examples.

Leading

a perfect safety for super intelligence,

perpetual safety as it keeps improving,

modifying, interacting with people.

You're never going to get there. It's

impossible.

There is a big difference between

difficult problems in computer science

and be complete problems and impossible

problems. And I think control indefinite

control of super intelligence is such a

problem. So, what's the point trying

then if it's impossible? Well, I'm

trying to prove that it is specifically

that. Once we establish something is

impossible, fewer people will waste

their time claiming they can do it and

find looking for money. So many people

go and give me a billion dollars in 2

years and I'll solve it for you.

Well, I don't think you will.

But people aren't going to stop striving

towards it. So, if there's no attempts

to

make it safe and there's more people

increasingly striving towards it, then

it's inevitable. But it changes what we

do. If we know that it's impossible to

make it right, to make it safe, then

this direct path of just build it as

soon as you can become suicide mission.

Hopefully fewer people will pursue that.

They may go in other directions like

again,

I'm a scientist, I'm an engineer. I love

AI. I love technology. I use it all the

time. Build useful tools. Stop building

agents.

Build narrow super intelligence, not a

general one. I'm not saying you

shouldn't make billions of dollars. I

love billions of dollars.

But

don't kill everyone, yourself included.

They don't think they're going to

though.

Then tell us why.

I hear things about intuition. I hear

things about we'll solve it later. Tell

me specifically in scientific terms.

Publish a peer-reviewed paper explaining

how you're going to control super

intelligence.

It's strange. It's strange to it's

strange to even bother if there was even

a 1% chance of human extinction. It's

strange to do something. Like if there

was a 1% chance Someone told me there

was a 1% chance that if I got in a car,

I might not I might not be alive, I

would not get in the car. If you told me

there was a 1% chance that if I drank

whatever liquid is in this cup right

now, I might die, I would not drink the

liquid. Even if there was

a billion dollars

if I survived. So, the 99% chance is I

get a billion dollars, the 1% is I die.

I wouldn't drink it. I wouldn't take the

chance. It's worse than that. Not just

you die, everyone dies. Yeah. Yeah. Now,

would we let you drink it at any odds?

That's for us to decide. You don't get

to make that choice for us.

To get consent from human subjects,

you need them to comprehend what they

are consenting to.

If those systems are unexplainable,

unpredictable, how can they consent?

They don't know what they are consenting

to. Mhm.

So, it's impossible to get consent by

definition.

So, this experiment can never be run

ethically.

By definition, they are doing unethical

experimentation on human subjects. Do

you think people should be protesting?

There are people protesting. There is

Stop AI. There is Pause AI. They block

offices of OpenAI. They do it weekly,

monthly. There are quite a few actions

and they're recruiting new people. You

think more people should be protesting?

Do you think that's an effective

solution?

If you can get it to a large enough

scale to where majority of population is

participating, it would be impactful. I

don't know if they can scale from

current numbers to that, but I support

everyone trying everything peacefully

and legally.

And for the for the person listening at

home, what should they what should they

be doing? What what

cuz they they don't want to feel

powerless. None of us want to feel

powerless.

So, it depends on what scale we are

asking about time scale. I was saying

like this year your kid goes to college,

what major to pick? Should they go to

college at all? Yeah. Should you switch

jobs? Should you go into certain

industries? Those questions we can

answer. We can talk about immediate

future.

What should you do in 5 years with

this being created? For an average

person, not much. Just like they can't

influence World War III nuclear

holocaust, anything like that. It's not

something anyone's going to ask them

about.

Today, if you want to be a part of this

movement, yeah, join Pause AI, join Stop

AI. Those are organizations currently

trying to build up momentum to

bring

democratic powers to influence those

individuals.

So, in the meantime,

not a huge amount. I was wondering if

there there are any interesting

strategies in the meantime. Like should

I be thinking differently about my

family, about I mean, you've got kids,

right? You've got three kids. That I

know about, yeah.

How are you thinking about parenting in

this world that you see around the

corner? How are you thinking about what

to say to them, the advice to give them,

what they should be learning? So, there

is general advice.

I would say that there is the main that

you should live your everyday as if it's

your last.

It's a good advice no matter what. If

you have 3 years left or 30 years left,

you live your best life.

So,

try to not do things you hate for too

long.

Do interesting things. Do impactful

things.

If you can do all that while helping

people, do that.

Simulation theory

is a interesting sort of adjacent

subject here because as computers begin

to accelerate and get more intelligent

and we're able to

you know, do things with AI that we can

never have imagined in terms of like

imagine the worlds that we could create

with virtual reality. I think it was

Google that recently released

what was it called? Um

like the AI worlds. You take a picture

and it generates a whole world. Yeah.

Yeah. You can move through the world.

I'll put it on the screen for people to

see, but Google have released this

technology which allows you, I think

with a simple prompt actually, to make a

three-dimensional world that you can

then navigate through. And in that world

it has memory. So, in the world if you

paint on a wall and turn away, you look

back, the wall

>> Yeah, it's persistent. And when I saw

that, I thought oh God, Jesus, bloody

hell, this is

this is like the foothills of being able

to create a simulation that's

indistinguishable from everything I see

here. Right.

That's why I think we are in one. That's

exactly the reason. AI is getting to the

level of creating human agents, human

level agents, and virtual reality is

getting to the level of being

indistinguishable from ours.

So, you think this is a simulation? I'm

pretty sure we are in a simulation,

yeah.

For someone that isn't familiar with the

simulation arguments, what are what are

the first principles here that convince

you that we are currently living in a

simulation?

So,

you need certain technologies to make it

happen. If you believe we can create

human level AI, Yeah. and you believe we

can create virtual reality as good as

this in terms of resolution, haptics,

whatever properties it has,

then I commit right now, the moment this

is affordable, I'm going to run billions

of simulations of this exact moment

making sure you are statistically in

one.

Say that last part again. You're going

to run you're going to run I'm going to

commit right now when it's very

affordable. It's like 10 bucks a month

to run it. I'm going to run a billion

simulations of this interview.

Why?

Because statistically that means you are

in one right now. The chance of you

being in the real one is one in a

billion.

Okay. So,

to make sure I'm clear on this, It's a

retroactive placement. Yeah. So, the

minute it's affordable,

then

you can run billions of them

and they would feel and appear to be

exactly like this interview right now.

>> Right. So, assuming that AI has internal

states, experiences, qualia. Some people

argue that they don't. Some say they

already have it. That's a separate

philosophical question, but if we can

simulate this, I will.

Some people might misunderstand. You're

not

you're not saying that you will.

You're saying that someone will. I can

also do it. I don't mind.

Okay. Of course, others will do it

before I get there. If I'm getting it

for $10, somebody got it for $1,000.

That's not the point. If you have

technology, we're definitely running a

lot of simulations for research, for

entertainment, games,

all sorts of reasons.

And the number of those greatly exceeds

the number of real worlds we're in.

Look at all the video games kids are

playing. Every kid plays 10 different

games. You know, billion kids in the

world. So, there is 10 billion

simulations in one real world. Mhm.

Even more so when we think about

advanced AI super intelligent systems.

Their thinking is not like ours. They

think in a lot more detail. They run

experiments. So, running a detailed

simulation of some problem at the level

of creating artificial humans and

simulating the whole planet would be

something they'll do routinely.

So, there is a good chance this is not

me doing it for $10. It's a future

simulation thinking about something in

this world.

So, it could be the case that

a species of humans or a species of

intelligence in some form got to this

point where they could affordably run

simulations that are indistinguishable

from this

and they decided to do it

and this is it right now.

And it would make sense that they would

run simulations as experiments or for

games or for entertainment. And also,

when we think about time in the world

that I'm in in this simulation that I

could be in right now, time feels long

relatively. You know, I have 24 hours in

a day, but on there in their world it

could be

Time is relative. Relative, yeah. It

could be a second. My whole life could

be a millisecond in there.

>> Right. You can change speed of

simulations you're running for sure.

So, your belief is that this is probably

a simulation. Most likely. And there is

a lot of agreement on that if you look

again returning to religions. Every

religion basically describes what? A

super intelligent being

an engineer, a programmer creating a

fake world for testing purposes or for

whatever. But, if you took the

simulation hypothesis paper

you go to jungle, you talk to primitive

people, a local tribe and in their

language you tell them about it.

Go back two generations later. They have

religion. That's basically what the

story is.

Religion, you know, it describes a

simulation theory basically. Somebody

creates

>> So, by default that was the first theory

we had and now with science more and

more people are going like I'm giving it

non-trivial probability. A few people as

high as I am, but a lot of people give

it some credence. What percentage are

you at in terms of believing that we are

currently living in a simulation? Very

close to certainty.

And what does that mean for

the nature of your life? If you're close

to 100% certain that we are currently

living in a simulation

does that change anything in your life?

So, all the things you care about are

still the same. Pain still hurts. Love

still love, right? Like those things are

not different, so it doesn't matter.

They're still important. That's what

matters.

The

little 1% difference is that I care

about what's outside the simulation. I

want to learn about it. I write papers

about it. So, that's the only impact.

And what do you think is outside of the

simulation? I don't know.

But, we can

look at this world and derive some

properties of the simulators.

So, clearly brilliant engineer,

brilliant scientist, brilliant artist.

Not so good with morals and ethics.

Room for improvement.

In our view of what morals and ethics

should be. Well, we we know there is

suffering in the world. So, unless you

think it's ethical to torture children,

then

I'm questioning your approach. But, in

terms of incentives to create a positive

incentive, you probably also need to

create negative incentives. Suffering

seems to be one of the negatives and

incentives built into our design to stop

me doing things I shouldn't do. So, like

put my hand in a fire, it's going to

hurt. But, it's all about levels, levels

of suffering, right? So, unpleasant

stimuli, negative feedback doesn't have

to be at like negative infinity hell

levels. You don't want to burn alive and

feel it. You want to be like, "Oh, this

is uncomfortable. I'm going to stop."

It's interesting because we we assume

that they don't have great moral morals

and ethics, but we too would we take

animals and cook them and eat them for a

dinner and

we also take conduct experiments on mice

and rats

>> But, to get university approval to

conduct an experiment you submit a

proposal and there is a panel of

ethicists who would say, "You can't

experiment on humans. You can't burn

babies. You can't eat animals alive."

All those things would be banned.

In most parts of the world. Where they

have ethical boards. Yeah. Cuz some

places don't bother with it, so they

have easier approval process.

It's funny when you talk about the

simulation theory, there's a there's an

element of the conversation that makes

life feel less meaningful in a weird

way.

Like

I know it doesn't matter but whenever I

have this conversation with people not

on the podcast about are we living in a

simulation

you almost see a little bit of meaning

come out of their life for a second and

then they forget and then they carry on.

But, the the the thought that this is a

simulation almost

posits that it's not important

or that I I think humans want to believe

that this is the highest level and we're

that the most important and we're the

it's all about us. We're quite

egotistical by design.

And yeah, I just a interesting

observation I've always had when I have

these conversations with people that it

it seems to strip something out of their

life. Do you feel religious people feel

that way? They know there is another

world and the one that matters is not

this one. Do you feel they don't value

their lives the same?

I guess in some religions. Think um they

think that this world is being created

for them and that they are going to go

to this heaven or or hell and that still

puts them at the very center of it. But,

it but if it's a simulation, you know,

we could just be

some computer game that a 4-year-old

alien has is messing around with and

while he's got some time to burn.

But, maybe there is, you know, a test

and there is a better simulation you go

to and a worse one. Maybe there are

different difficulty levels. Maybe you

want to play it on a harder setting next

time.

I've just invested millions into this

and become a co-owner of the company.

It's a company called KetoneIQ and the

story is quite interesting. I started

talking about ketosis on this podcast

and the fact that I'm very low carb,

very very low sugar and my body produces

ketones which have made me incredibly

focused, have improved my endurance,

have improved my mood and have made me

more capable at doing what I do here.

And because I was talking about it on

the podcast, a couple of weeks later

these showed up on my desk in my HQ in

London, these little shots. And oh my

god. The impact this had on my ability

to articulate myself, on my focus, on my

workouts, on my mood, on stopping me

crashing throughout the day was so

profound that I reached out to the

founders of the company and now I'm a

co-owner of this business. I highly

highly recommend you look into this. I

highly recommend you look at the science

behind the product. If you want to try

it for yourself, visit ketone.com/steven

for 30% off your subscription order and

you'll also get a free gift with your

second shipment. That's

ketone.com/steven.

And I'm so honored that once again a

company I own can sponsor my podcast.

I've built companies from scratch and

backed many more. And there's a blind

spot that I keep seeing in early stage

founders. They spend very little time

thinking about HR. And it's not because

they're reckless or they don't care,

it's because they're obsessed with

building their companies and I can't

fault them for that. At that stage

you're thinking about the product, how

to attract new customers, how to grow

your team, really how to survive. And HR

slips down the list because it doesn't

feel urgent. But, sooner or later it is.

And when things get messy, tools like

our sponsor today JustWorks go from

being a nice-to-have to being a

necessity. Something goes sideways and

you find yourself having conversations

you did not see coming. This is when you

learn that HR really is the

infrastructure of your company and

without it things wobble. And JustWorks

stops you learning this the hard way. It

takes care of the stuff that would

otherwise drain your energy and your

time automating payroll, health

insurance benefits and it gives your

team human support at any hour. It grows

with your small business from startup

through to growth even when you start

hiring team members abroad. So, if you

want HR support that's there through the

exciting times and the challenging

times, head to justworks.com now. That's

justworks.com.

And do you think much about longevity? A

lot, yeah. It's probably the second most

important problem because if AI doesn't

get us, that will.

What do you mean? You're going to die of

old age.

Which is fine. That's not good. You want

to die?

I mean You don't have to. It's just a

disease. We can cure it.

Nothing stops you from living forever.

As long as universe exists unless we

escape the simulation.

But, we wouldn't want a world where

everybody could live forever, right?

That would be Sure we do. Why? Who do

you want to die?

Well, I don't know. I

I mean I say this because it's all I've

ever known that people die, but wouldn't

the world become pretty overcrowded if

>> No, you stop reproducing if you live

forever. You have kids because you want

a replacement for you. If you live

forever, you're like, "I'll have kids in

a million years. That's cool." I'll go

explore universe first.

Plus, if you look at actual population

dynamics outside of like one continent,

we're all shrinking. We're not growing.

This is crazy. It's crazy that the more

rich people get, the less kids they they

have which aligns with what you're

saying and I do actually think I think

if I'm going to be completely honest

here, I think if I knew that I was going

to live to 1,000 years old, there's no

way I'd be having kids at 30. Right.

It's a Biological clocks are based on