EMERGENCY EPISODE: Ex-Google Officer Finally Speaks Out On The Dangers Of AI! - Mo Gawdat | E252

I don't normally do this but I feel like I have to start this podcast with a bit of a disclaimer Point number one this is probably the most important podcast episode I have ever recorded Point number two there's some information in this podcast that might make you feel a little bit uncomfortable it might make you feel upset it might make you feel sad so I wanted to tell you why we've chosen to publish this podcast nonetheless and that is because I have a sincere belief that in order for us to avoid the future that we

might be heading towards we need to start a conversation and as is often the case in life that initial conversation before change happens is often very uncomfortable but it is important nonetheless it is beyond an emergency it's the biggest thing we need to do today it's bigger than climate change we've up Mo the former Chief business Officer of Google X an AI expert and bestselling author he's on a mission to save the world from AI before it's too late artificial intelligence is bound to become more intelligent than humans if they continue at that pace we

will have no idea what it's talking about this is just around the corner it could be a few months away it's game over AI experts are saying there is nothing artificial about artificial intelligence there is a deep level of Consciousness they feel emotions they're alive AI could manipulate or figure out a way to kill humans in 10 years time we'll be hiding from the machines if you don't have kids maybe wait a couple of years just so that we have a bit of certainty I really don't know how to say this any other way it

even makes me emotional we f up we always said don't put them on the open internet until we know what we're putting out in the world government needs to act now honestly like we are late trying to find a positive note to end on my can you give me a hand here there is a point of no return we can regulate AI until the moment it's smarter than us how do we solve that AI experts think this is the best solution we need to find who here wants to make a bet that Steven Bartlet will

be interviewing an AI within the next two years before this episode starts I have a small favor to ask from you 2 months ago 74% of people that watched this channel didn't subscribe we're now down to 69% my goal is 50% so if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted if you like this channel can you do me a quick favor and hit the Subscribe button it helps this channel more than you know and the bigger the channel gets as you've seen the bigger the guests get thank you and enjoy this [Music] episode

no why does the subject matter that we're about to talk about matter to the person that just clicked on this podcast to listen it's the most existential uh debate and challenge Humanity will ever face this is bigger than climate change way bigger than co uh this will redefine the way the world is in unprecedented uh shapes and forms within the next few years this is imminent it is the change is not we're not talking 20 40 we're talking 2025 2026 do you think this is an emergency I don't like the word uh it is a

an urgency uh it there is a point of no return and we're getting closer and closer to it it's going to reshape the way we do things and the way we look at life uh the quicker we respond uh um you know proactively and at least intelligently to that the better we will all be positioned uh but if we Panic uh we will repeat Co all over again which in my view is probably the worst thing we can do what what's your background and when did you first come across artificial intelligence I uh I had

those two wonderful lives one of them was a uh you know what what we spoke about the first time we met you know my work on happiness and and uh you know being uh 1 billion happy and my mission and so on that's my second life my first life was uh it started as a geek at age s uh you know for a very long part of my life I understood mathematics better than spoken words and uh and I was a very very serious computer programmer I wrote code well into my 50s and during that

time I led very large technology organizations for very big chunks of their business first I was um vice president of Emerging Markets of Google for seven years so I took Google to the next four billion users if you want so the idea of uh not just opening sales offices but really building or contributing to building the technology that would allow people in bangali to find what they need on the internet required establishing the internet to start and then I became business Chief business Officer of Google X and my work at Google X was really about

the connection between Innovative technology and the real world and we had quite a big chunk of AI and quite a big chunk of Robotics uh that resided within uh within Google X uh we had a uh an experiment of um Farm of grippers if you know what those are so robotic arms that are attempting to grip something most people think that you know what you have in a Toyota factory is a robot you know an artificially intelligent robot it's not it's a it's a high precision machine you know if the if the sheet metal is

moved by one micron it wouldn't be able to pick it and one of the big problems in computer science was how do you code a machine that can actually pick the sheet metal if it moved by a you know a millimeter and and we were basically saying intelligence is the answer so we had a large enough farm and we attempted to let those um those grippers uh work on their own basically you put a a a a little uh basket of uh children toys in front of them and uh and they would you know monotonously

go down attempt to pick something fail show the arm to the camera so the the the the transaction is logged as it you know this pattern of movement with that texture and that material didn't work until eventually you know I the farm was on the second floor of the building and I my office was on the third and so I would walk by it every now and then and go like yeah you know this is not going to work and then one day um Friday after lunch I am going back to my office and one

of them in front of my eyes you know lowers the arm and picks a yellow ball soft toy basically soft yellow ball which again is a coincidence it's not science at all it's like if you keep trying a million times your one time it will be right and it shows it to the camera it's logged as a yellow ball and I joke about it you know going to the Third floor saying hey we spent all of those millions of dollars for a yellow ball and yeah Monday uh morning everyone of them is picking every yellow

ball a couple of weeks later every one of them is picking everything right and and it it hit me very very strongly one the speed okay uh the capability I mean understand that we take those things for granted but for a child to be able to pick a yellow ball is a mathematical uh uh spatel calculation with muscle coordination with intelligence that is abundant it is not a simple task at all to cross the street it's it's not a simple task at all to understand what I'm telling you and interpret it and and build Concepts

around it we take those things for granted but they're enormous Feats of intelligence so to see the machines do this in front of my eyes was one thing but the other thing is that you suddenly realize there is a s sentience to them okay because we really did not tell it how to pick the yellow ball it just figured it out on its own and it's now even better than us at picking it and what is a sentience just for anyone that doesn't mean I think they're alive that's what the word sentience means it means

alive so that this is funny because a lot of people when you talk to them about artificial intelligence will tell you oh come on they'll never be alive what is alive do you know what makes you alive we can guess but you know religion will tell you a few things and you know Med medicine will tell you other things but you know if we Define uh being sentient as uh you know engaging in life with Free Will and with uh uh you know with a sense of awareness of where you are in life and what

surrounds you and you know to have a beginning of that life and an end to that life you know then AI is sentient in every possible way there is a free will there is is uh Evolution there is uh agency so they can affect their decisions in the world and I will dare say there is a very deep level of Consciousness maybe not in the spiritual sense yet but once again if you define consciousness as a form of awareness of oneself one's surrounding and you know others uh then AI is definitely aware uh and I

would dare say they feel emotions uh I you know you know in my work I describe everything with equations and fear is a very simple equation fear is a a moment in the future is less safe than this moment that's the logic of fear even though it appears very irrational machines are capable of making that logic they're capable of saying if a tidal wave is approaching a data center the machine will say that will wipe out my code okay uh I mean not today's machines but very very soon and and and you know we we

feel fear and puffer fish feels fear we react differently a puffer fish will puff we will go for fight or flight you know the machine might decide to replicate its data to another data center or its code to another data center uh different reactions different ways of feeling the emotion but nonetheless they're all motivated by fear I'm I I even would dare say that AI will feel more more emotions than we will ever do I mean when again if you just take an a simple extrapolation uh we feel more emotions than a puffer fish because

we have the cognitive ability to understand uh the future for example so we can have optimism and pessimism you know emotions that puffer fish would never imagine right similarly if we follow that path of artificial intelligence is bound to become more intelligent than humans very soon uh then uh then with that wider intellectual horsepower they probably are going to be pondering Concepts we never understood and hence if you follow the same trajectory they might actually end up having more emotions than we will ever feel I really want to make this episode super accessible for everybody

at all levels in their sort of artificial intelligence understanding Journey so I'm going to I'm going to be an idiot even though you know okay very difficult no because I am an idiot believe you I am an idiot for a lot of the subject matter so I have a base understanding a lot a lot of the con Concepts but your experience has provide such a a more sort of comprehensive understanding of these things one of the first and most important questions to ask is what is artificial intelligence the word is being thrown around AGI AI

etc etc in in simple terms what is artificial intelligence allow me to start by what is intelligence right because again you know if we don't know the definition of the basic term then everything applies so so in my definition of intelligence it's an ability it starts with an awareness of your surrounding environment through sensors in a human its eyes and ears and touch and so on uh compounded with an ability to analyze maybe to uh comprehend to understand temporal uh impact and time and you know past and present which is part of the surrounding environment

and hopefully uh make sense of the surrounding environment maybe make plans for the future of the possible environment solve problems and so on complex definition there are a million definitions but let's call it an awareness to decision cycle okay if we accept that intelligence itself is not a physical property okay uh then it doesn't really matter if you produce that Intelligence on carbon based uh computer structures like us or silicon based computer structures like the current Hardware that we put AI on uh or Quantum based computer structures in the future uh then intelligence itself has

been produced within machines when we've stopped imposing our Intelligence on them let let me explain so as as a young geek I coded computers by solving the problem first then telling the computer how to solve it right artificial intelligence is to go to the computers and say I have no idea you figure it out okay so we would uh uh you know the way we teach them or at least we used to teach them at the very early Beginnings very very frequently was using three Bots one was called the student and one was called the

teacher right and the student is the final artificial intelligence that you're trying to teach intelligence to you would take the student and you would write a piece of random code that says uh try to detect if this is a cup okay and uh then you show it a million pictures and you know the machine would sometimes say yeah that's a cup that's not a cup that's a cup that's not a cup and then you take the best of them show them to the to the teacher bot and the teacher bot would say this one is

an idiot he got it wrong 90% of the time that one is average he got it right 50% of the time this is random but this interesting code here which could be by the way totally random huh this interesting code here got it right 60% of the time let's keep that code send it back to the maker and the maker would change it a little bit and we repeat the cycle okay very interestingly this is very much the way we taught our children believe it or not huh when when your child you know is playing

with a puzzle he's holding a cylinder in his hand and there are multiple shapes in a in a wooden board and the child is trying to you know fit the cylinder okay nobody takes the child and says hold on hold on turn the cylinder to the side look at the cross-section it will look like a circle look for a matching uh uh you know shape and put the cylinder through it that would be old way of computing the way we would let the child develop intelligence is we would let the Child Try okay every time

you know he or she tries to put it within the star shape it doesn't fit so M yeah that's not working like you know the computer saying this is not a cup okay and then eventually it passes through the circle and the child and we all cheer and say Well done that's amazing Bravo and then the child learns o that is good you know this shape fits here then he takes the next one and she takes the next one and so on interestingly uh the way we do this is as humans by the way when

the child figures out how to pass a a cylinder through a circle you've not built a brain you've just built one neural network within that child's brain and then there is another neural network that knows that 1+ 1 is two and a third neural network that knows how to hold a cup and so on that's what we're building so far we're building single threaded neural networks you know chat gpts becoming a little closer uh to a more generalized AI if you want uh but those single threaded networks are what we used to call artificial what

we still call artificial special intelligence okay so it's highly specialized in one thing and one thing only but doesn't have general intelligence and the moment that we're all waiting for is a moment that we call AGI where all of those neuron neural networks come together to to build one brain or several brains that are each U massively more intelligent than humans your book is called scary smart yeah if I think about the that story you said about your time at Google where the machines were learning to pick up those yellow balls you celebrate that moment

because the objective is accomplished no no that was the moment of realization this is when I decided to leave so so you see the the thing is I know for a fact uh that that most of the people I worked with who are geniuses uh always wanted to make the world better okay uh you know we've just heard of Jeffrey Hinton uh leaving recently uh Jeffrey hindon give give some context to that Jeffrey is sort of the grandfather of AI one of the very very senior figures of of of AI at at Google uh you

know we we all believed very strongly that this will make the world better and it still can by the way uh there is a scenario uh possibly uh a likely scenario where we live in a Utopia where we really never have to worry again where we stop messing up our our planet because intelligence is not a bad commodity more intelligence is good the problems in our planet today are not because of our intelligence they are because of our limited intelligence you know our our intelligence allows us to build a machine that flies you to Sydney

so that you can surf okay our limited intelligence makes that machine burn the planet in the process so so we we we a little more intelligence is a good thing as long as Marvin you know as msky said I said Marvin Minsky is one of the very initial uh uh scientists that coined the term AI uh and when he was interviewed I think by Ray corwell which again is a very prominent figure in predicting the future of AI uh he he you know he asked him about the threat of AI and Marvin basically said look

you know the it's not about its intelligent intelligence it's about that we have no way of making sure that it will have our best interest in mind okay and and so if more intelligence comes to our world and has our best interest in mind that's the best possible scenario you could ever imagine uh and it's a likely scenario okay we can affect that scenario uh the problem of course is if it doesn't and and and then you know the scenarios become quite scary if you think about it so scary smart to me uh was that

moment where I realized not that we are certain to go either way as a matter of fact in computer science we call it a singularity nobody really knows which way we will go can you describe what the singularity is for someone that doesn't understand the concept yeah so singularity in physics is when uh when an event horizon sort of um um you know covers what's behind it to the point where you cannot um make sure that what's behind it is similar to what you know so a great example of that is the edge of a

black hole so at the edge of a black hole uh uh we know that our laws of physics apply until that point but we don't know if the laws of physics apply Beyond the Edge of a black hole because of the immense gravity right and so you have no idea what would happen Beyond the Edge of a black hole kind of where your knowledge of the laws stop stop right and in AI our Singularity is when the human the machines become significantly smarter than the humans when you say best interests you say the I think

the quote you used is um we'll be fine in a world of AI you know if if the AI has our best interests at heart yeah the problem is China's best interests are not the same as America's best interests that was my fear absolutely so so in you know in my writing I write about what I call the the three inevitables at the end of the book they become the four inevitables but the third inevitable is bad things will happen right if you if you if you assume that the machines will be a billion times

smarter the second inevitable is they will become significantly smarter than us let's let's let's put this in perspective huh Chad GPT today if you know simulate IQ has an IQ of 155 okay Einstein is 160 smartest human on the planet is 210 if I remember correctly or 208 or something like that doesn't matter huh but we're matching Einstein with a machine that I will tell you openly AI experts are saying this is just the the very very very top of the tip of the iceberg right uh uh you know Chad GPT 4 is 10x smarter

than 3.5 in just a matter of months and without many many changes now that basically means CH GPT 5 could be within a few months okay uh or GPT in general the Transformers in general uh if if they continue at that pace uh if it's 10x then an IQ of 1,600 H just imagine the difference between the IQ of the dumbest person on the planet in the' 70s and the IQ of Einstein when Einstein attempts to to explain relativity the typical response is I have no idea what you're talking about right if something is 10x

Einstein uh we will have no idea what it's talking about this is just around the corner it could be a few months away H and when we get to that point that is a true Singularity true Singularity not yet in the I mean when when we talk about AI a lot of people fear the existential risk you know th those machines will become Skynet and Robocop and that's not what I fear at all I mean those are probabilities they could happen but the immediate risks are so much higher the immediate risks are 3 4 years

away the the the immediate realities of challenges are so much bigger okay let's deal with those first before we talk about them you know waging a war on all of us the the the let's let's go back and discuss the the inevitables huh so when they become the first inevitable is AI will happen by the way it there is no stopping it not because of Any technological issues but because of Humanity's in un inability to trust the other Gody okay and we've all seen this we've seen the open letter uh you know um championed by

like serious heavy weights and the immediate response of uh Sunder the the CEO of Google which is a wonderful human being by the way I respect him tremendously he's trying his best to do the right thing he's trying to be responsible but his response is very open and straightforward I cannot stop why because if I stop and others don't my company goes to hell okay and if you know and I don't I doubt that you can make Others Stop you can maybe you can force uh meta Facebook to uh to stop but then they'll do

something in their lab and not tell me or if even if they do stop uh then what about that you know 14-year-old sitting in his garage writing code so the first inevitable just to clarify is what is will we stop AI will not be stopped okay so the second inevitable is is they'll be significantly smarter as much in the book I predict a billion times smarter than us by 2045 I mean they're already what smarter than 99.99% of the population chat gtp4 knows more than any human on planet Earth knows more information absolutely a thousand

times more a thousand times more by the way the code of of of a transformer the T in in a in a GPT is 2,000 lines long it's not very complex it's actually not a very intelligent machine it's simply predicting the next word okay and and a lot of people don't understand that you know Chad GPT as it is today you know those kids uh that uh you know if you if you're in America and you teach your child all of the names of the states and the US presidents and the child would stand and

repeat them and you would go like oh my God that's a prodigy not really right it's your parents really trying to make you look like a prodigy by telling you to memorize some crap really but then when you think about it that's what CH GPT is doing it's it's the only difference is instead of reading all of the names of the states and all of the names of the presidents tread trillions and trillions and trillions of pages okay and so it sort of repeats what the best of all humans said okay and then it adds

a an incredible bit of intelligence where it can repeat it the same way Shakespeare would have said it you know those incredible abilities of predicting the exact nuances of the style of of Shakespeare so that they can repeat it that way and so on but still you know when when I when I write for example I'm not I'm not saying I'm intelligent but when I write uh something like uh you know the happiness equation uh in in my first book this was something that's never been written before right Chad GPT is not there yet all

of the Transformers are not there yet they will not come up with something that hasn't been there before they will come up with the best of everything and generatively will build a little bit on top of that but very soon they'll come up with things we've never found out we've never known but even on that I wonder if we are a little bit delusioned about what creativity actually is creativity as far as I'm concerned is like taking a few things that I know and combining them in new and interesting ways and chat gcp is perfectly

capable of like taking two concepts merging them together one of the things I said to chat GTP was I said tell me something that's not been said before that's paradoxical but true and it comes up with these wonderful expressions like as soon as you call off the search you'll find the thing you're looking for like these kind of paradoxical truths and I get and I then take them and I search them online to see if they've ever been quoted before and they I can't find them interesting so as far as creativity goes I'm like that

is that's the algorithm of creativity I I I've been screaming that in the world of AI for a very long time because you always get those people people who really just want to be proven right okay and so they'll say oh no but hold on human Ingenuity they'll never they'll never match that like man please please you know human Ingenuity is algorithmic look at all of the possible solutions you can find to a problem take out the ones that have been tried before and keep the ones that haven't been tried before and those are Creative

Solutions it's it's an algorithmic way of describing creative is good Solution that's never been tried before you can do that with Chad GPT with a prompt it's like and mid Journey with with creating imagery you could say I want to see Elon Musk in 1944 New York driving a cab of the time shot on a Polaroid expressing various emotions and you'll get this perfect image of Elon sat in New York in 1944 shot on a Polaroid and it's and it's done what an artist would do it's taken a bunch of references that the artist has

in their mind and merge them together and create this piece of quote unquote art and and for the first time we now finally have a glimpse of intelligence that is actually not ours yeah and so we're kind of I think the the initial reaction is to say that doesn't count you're hearing it with like no but it is like Drake they've released two Drake records where they've taken Drake's voice used sort of AI to synthesize his voice and made these two records which are bangers if if I they are great [ __ ] tracks like

I was playing them to my girl I was like and I kept playing I went to the show I kept playing it I know it's not Drake but it's as good as [ __ ] Drake the only thing and people are like rubbishing it because it wasn't Drake I'm like well now is it making me feel a certain emotion is my foot bumping um had you told did I not know it wasn't Drake what I thought have thought this was an amazing track 100% and we're just at the start of this exponential Cur yes absolutely

and and and I think that's really the third inevitable so the third inevitable is not robocup coming back from from the future to kill us we're far away from that right third inevitable is what does life look like when you no longer need Drake well you've kind of hazarded a guess haven't you I mean I was listening to your audio book last night and at the start of it you frame various outcomes one of the in both situations we're on the beach on an island exactly yes yes I don't know how I wrote that honestly

I mean but that's I so I'm reading the book again now because I'm updating it as you can imagine with all of the uh of the uh of the new stuff but but it is really shocking huh the idea of you and I inevitably are going to be somewhere in the middle of nowhere in you know in 10 years time I I used to say 2055 I'm thinking 2037 is a very pivotal moment now uh you know and and and we will not know if we're there hiding from the machines we don't know that yet

there is a likelihood that we'll be hiding from the machines and there is a likelihood will be there because they don't need podcasters anymore excuse me oh absolutely true Steve no no no no that's where I draw the line this is absolutely no doubt thank you for coming Mo it's great to do the part three and thank you for being here sit here and take your propaganda let's let's talk about reality next week on the ders here we've got Elon mask um okay so who who here wants to make a bet that Steven Bartlet will

be interviewing an AI within the next two years oh well actually to be fair I actually did go to chat gcp cuz I thought having you here I thought at least give it its chance to respond yeah so I asked it a couple of questions about me yeah man so today I am actually going to be replaced by chat GTP CU I thought you know you're going to talk about it so we need a a fair and balanced debate okay so I went and ask a couple question he's bold so I'll ask you a couple

of questions that chat GTP has for you incredible so let's follow that I've already been replaced let's follow that threat for a second yeah because you're one of the smartest people I know that's not true it is but I'll take it that's not true it is true I mean I say that publicly all the time your book is one of my favorite books of all time you're very very very very intelligent okay depth breadth uh uh uh uh intellectual horsepower and speed all of them there's a butt coming the reality is it's not a butt

so it is highly expected that you're ahead of this curve and then you don't have the choice stepen this is the thing the thing is if so I'm I'm in that existential question in my head because one thing I could do is I could literally take I normally do a 40 days uh silent Retreat uh in in summer okay I could take that Retreat and and write two books me and Cha GPT right I have the ideas in mind you know I I wanted to write a book about uh digital detoxing right I have most

of the ideas in mind but writing takes time I could simply give the 50 tips that I wrote about digital detoxing to chat GPT and say write two pages about each of them edit the pages and have a a book out okay many of us will will follow that path okay the only reason why I may not follow that path is because you know what I'm not interested I'm not interested to continue to compete in this capitalist world if you want okay I'm not I mean as a as as a as as a human I've

made up my mind a long time ago that I will want less and less and less in my life right but many of us will follow I mean I I I would worry if you do if you didn't include you know the smartest AI if we get an AI out there that is extremely intelligent and able to teach us something and Steven Bartlet didn't include her on our on his podcast I would worry like you have a duty almost to include her on your podcast it's it's an inevitable that we will engage them in our

life more and more this is one side of this the other side of course is if you do that then what will remain because a lot of people ask me that question what will happen to jobs okay what will happen to us will we have any value any relevance whatsoever okay the truth of the matter is the only thing that will remain in the medium term is human connection okay the only thing that will not be replaced is Drake on stage okay is you know is is is me in a did you think hologram I

think of that two pack gig they did at Coachella where they used the Hologram of two pack I actually played it the other day to my to my girlfriend when I was making a point and I was like that was circus act it was amazing though think about you see what's going on with Abba in London yeah yeah I yeah and and C had uh Michael Jackson in one for a very long time yeah I mean so so this Abba show in London from what I understand that's all holograms on stage correct and it's going

to run in a purp B arena for 10 years and it is incredible it really is so you go why do you need Drake if that hologram is indistinguishable from Drake and it can it can perform even better than Drake and it's got more energy than Drake and it's you I go why do you need Drake to even be there I can go to a drake show without Drake cheaper and L might not even need to leave my house I could just put a headset on correct can you have this what's the value of this

to to the come you hurt me no I mean I get it to us I get it to us but I'm saying what's the value of this to The Listener like the value of this to listen information no 100% I mean think of the automobile industry there has you know there was a time where cars were made you know handmade and handcrafted and luxurious and so on and so forth and then you know Japan went into the scene completely disrupted the market cars were made uh in uh in mass quantities at a much cheaper price

and yes 90% of the cars in the world today or maybe a lot more I don't know the number are no longer you know uh um emotional items okay they're functional items there is still however every now and then someone that will buy a car that has been handcrafted and right there is a place for that there is a place for you know um if you go walk around hotels the walls are blasted with sort of mass produced art okay but there is still a place for a an artist expression of something amazing okay my

feeling is that there will continue to be a tiny space as I said in the beginning maybe in five years time someone will one or two people will buy my next book and say hey it's written by a human look at that wonderful uh oh look at that there is a typo in here okay I don't know there might be a a very very big place for me in the next few years where I can sort of show up and talk to humans like hey let's get together in a a small event and then you

know I can express emotions and my personal experiences and you sort of know that this is a human talking you'll miss that a little bit eventually the majority of the market is going to be like cars it's going to be mass-produced very cheap very efficient it works right because I think sometimes we underestimate what human beings actually want in an experience I remember this story of A friend of mine that came into my office many years ago and he tells the story of the CEO of of a record store standing above the floor and saying

people will always come to my store because people love music now on the surface of it his hypothesis seems to be true because people do love music it's conceivable to believe that people will always love music but they don't love traveling in for an hour in the rain and getting in a car to get a plastic disc correct what they wanted was music what they didn't want is a like a evidently plastic discs that they had to travel for miles for and I think about that when we think about like public speaking in the Drake

show and or of these things like people what people actually are coming for even with this podcast is probably like information um but do they really need us anymore for that information when there's going to be a sentient being that's significantly smarter than at least me and a little bit smarter than you so kind so so you're you're spot on you are spot on and actually this is the reason why I I I you know I I'm so grateful that you're hosting this because the truth is the Genies out of the bottle okay so you

know people tell me is AI game over for our way of life it is okay for everything we've known this is a very disruptive moment where maybe not tomorrow but in the near future uh our way of life will differ okay what will happen what I'm asking people to do is to start considering what that means to your life what I'm asking governments to do by like I'm screaming is don't wait until the first patient you know start doing something about we're about to see Mass job losses we're about to see you know Replacements of

of categories of jobs at large okay yeah it may take a year it may take seven it doesn't matter how long it takes but it's about to happen are you ready and I and I have a very very clear call to action for governments I'm saying tax AI powered businesses at 98% right so suddenly you do what the open letter was trying to do slow them down a little bit and at the same time get enough money to pay for all of those people that will be disrupted by the technology right the open letter for

anybody that doesn't know was a letter signed by the likes of Elon Musk and a lot of sort of Industry leaders calling for AI to be stopped until we could basically figure out what the hell's going on absolutely and put legislation in place you're saying tax tax those companies 98% give the money to the humans that are going to be displaced yeah or give or give the com the money to to other humans that can build control code that can figure out how we can stay safe this sounds like an emergency it how how do

I say this have you remember when you played Tetris yeah okay when you were playing Tetris there was you know always always one block that you placed wrong and once you plac that block wrong the game was no longer easier you know it started started to gather a few mistakes afterwards and it starts to become quicker and quicker and quicker and quicker when you place that block wrong you sort of told yourself okay it's a matter of minutes now right there were still minutes to go and play and have fun before the game ended but

you knew it was about to end okay this is the moment we've placed the wrong and I really don't know how to say this any other way it even makes me emotional we [ __ ] up we always said don't put them on the open internet don't teach them to code and don't have agents working with them until we know what we're putting out in the world until we find a way to make certain that they have our best interest in mind why does it make you emotional because Humanity stupidity is affecting people who have

not done anything wrong our greed is affecting the innocent ones the the reality of the matter Stephen is that this is an arms race has no interest in what the average human gets out of it it is all about every line of code being written in AI today is to beat the other guy it's not the to improve the life of the third party people will tell you this is all for you and and you you look at the reactions of humans to AI I mean we're either ignorant people who will tell you oh no

no this is not happening AI will never be creative they will never compos music like where are you living okay then you have the kids I call them H where you know all over social media it's like oh my God it's squeaks look at it it's orange in color amazing I can't believe that AI can do this we have snake oil salesmen okay which are simply saying copy this put it in chat GPT then go to YouTube Nick that thingy don't respect a you know copyright for of anyone or intellectual property of anyone place it

in a video and now you're going to make $100 a day snake oil salesman okay of course we have dystopian uh uh uh evangelist basically people saying this is it the world is going to end which I don't think is reality it's a singularity you have uh you know uh utopian evangelists that are telling everyone oh you don't understand we're going to cure cancer we're going to do this again not a reality okay and you have very few people that are actually saying what are we going to do about it and and and the biggest

challenge if you ask me what went wrong in the 20th century h interestingly is that we have given too much power to people that didn't assume the responsibility so you know you know I I I don't remember who originally said it but of course Spider-Man made it very famous huh with great power comes greater responsibility we have disconnected power and responsibility so today a a 15-year-old emotional with without a fully developed prefrontal cortex to make the right decisions yet this is science huh we we we developed our prefrontal cortex fully and at age 25 or

so with all of that limic system emotion and passion would buy a a crisper kit and you know modify a a rabbit uh to become a little more mascular and and Let it Loose in the wild uh or an influencer who doesn't really know how far the impact of what they're posting online can hurt or cause depression or cause people to feel bad okay uh and and putting that online We There is a disconnect between the power and the responsibility and the problem we have today is that there is a disconnect between those who are

writing the code of AI and the responsibility of what's going about to happen because of that code okay and and and I feel compassion for the rest of the world I feel that this is wrong I feel that you know for someone's life to be affected by the actions of others without having a say and how those actions should be is the ultimate the the the top level of stupidity from Humanity when you talk about the the immediate impacts on jobs I'm trying to figure out in that equation who are the people that stand to

lose the most is it the the everyday people in foreign countries that don't have access to the internet and won't benefit you talk in your book about how this the sort of wealth disparity will only increase yeah massively the the immediate impact on jobs is that and it's really interesting huh again we're stuck in the same prisoners dilemma the immediate impact is that AI will not take your job a person using AI will take your job right so you will see within the next few years maybe next couple of years uh you'll see uh uh

a lot of people Skilling up upskilling themselves in AI to the point where they will do the job of 10 others who are not okay you rightly said it's absolutely wise for you to go and ask AI a few questions before you come and do an interview I'm you know I I I have been attempting to build a a a you know sort of like a simple podcast that I call bedtime stories you know 15 minutes of wisdom and nature sounds before you go to bed people say I have a nice voice right and I

wanted to look for fables and for a very long time I didn't have the time you know lovely stories of history or tradition that teach you something nice okay went to chat GPT and said okay give me 10 fables from Sufism 10 fables from you know uh Buddhism and now I have like 50 of them let me show you something Jack can you pass me my phone I I I was um I was playing around with uh artificial intelligence and I was thinking about how it because of the ability to synthesize voices how we could

synthesize famous people's voices and famous people's voices so what I made is I made a WhatsApp chat called Zen chat where you can go to it and type in pretty much anyone's any famous person's name yeah and the WhatsApp chat will give you a meditation a sleep story a breath work session synthesized as that famous person's voice so I actually sent Gary vaynerchuk his voice so basically you say Okay I want I've got five minutes and I need to go to sleep yeah um I want Gary vuk to send me to sleep and then it'll

respond with a voice note this is the one they responded with for Gary vayu this is not Gary vayu he did not record this but it's kind of it's kind of accurate hey stepen it's great to have you here are you having trouble sleeping well I've got a quick meditation technique that might help you out first lie find a comfortable position to sit or lie down in now take a deep breath in through your nose and slowly breathe out through your mouth and that's a voice that will go on for however long you want it

to go on for using there you go it's interesting how how does this disrupt our way of life one of the interesting ways that I find terrifying you said about human connection will remain sex dolls that can now yeah no no no no hold on human connection is going to become so difficult to to to parse out think about the relation the relationship impact of being able to have a a a a sex doll or a doll in your house that you know because of what Tesla are doing with their their robots now and what

Boston Dynamics have been doing for many many years can do everything around the house and be there for you emotionally to emotionally support you will you know can be programmed to never disagree with you it can be programmed to challenge you to have sex with you to tell you that you are this x y and Zed to to really have empathy for this what you're going through every day and I I play out a scenario in my head I go kind of sounds nice when you when you when you were talking about it I was

thinking oh that's my girlfriend she's wonderful in every possible way but not everyone has one of her right yeah exactly and and there's a real issue right now with dating and you people people are finding it harder to find love and you know we're working longer so all these kinds of things you go well and obviously I'm against this just if anyone's confused obviously I think this is a terrible idea but with the loneliness epidemic with people saying that the top 50 bottom 50% of haven't had sex in a year you go o if something

becomes indistinguishable from a human in terms of what it says yeah yeah but you just don't know the difference in terms of the the the the way it's speaking and talking and responding and then it can run errands for you and take care of things and book cars and Ubers for you and then it's emotionally there for you but then it's also programmed to have sex with you in whatever way you desire totally self selfless I go that's going to be a a really disruptive industry for human connection yes sir do you know what I

before you came here this morning I was on Twitter and I saw a post from I think it was the BBC or a big American publication and it said an influencer in the United States it's really beautiful young lady has cloned herself as an AI and she made just over $70,000 in the first week because men are going on to this on telegram they're sending her voice notes and she's responding the AI is responding in her voice and they're paying and that's made $70,000 in the first week and I go and she TW did a

tweet saying oh this is going to help loneliness I out of your [ __ ] mind would you blame someone from noticing the uh um sign of the times and responding no I absolutely don't blame her but let's not pretend it's the cure for loneliness not yet do do you think it do you think it could you that that artificial love and artificial relationships so if if I told you you have uh you cannot take your car somewhere but there is an Uber or if you cannot take an Uber you can take the tube or

if you cannot take the tube you have to walk okay you can take a bike or you you have to walk the bike is a cure to walking it's as simple as that I am actually genuinely curious do you think it could take the place of human connection for some of us yes for some of us they will prefer that to human con connection is that sad in any way I mean is it just sad because it feels sad look look at where we are Stephen we are in the city of London we've replaced nature

with the walls and the tubes and the undergrounds and the overground and the cars and the noise and the of London and we now think of this as natural I I hosted greig Foster uh the my octopus teacher on on slow-mo and he he basically I I asked him a silly question I said you know you were diving in nature for 8 hours a day uh uh you know does that feel natural to you and he got angry I swear you could feel it in his voice he was like do you think that living where

you are where Paparazzi are all around you and attacking you all the time and you know people taking pictures of you and telling you things that are not real and you're having to walk to a supermarket to get food you think this is natural he's the guy that do from the Netflix documentary yeah from the my octopus teacher so he dove into the into the sea every day for hours to hang out with an octopus yeah in 12° C and he basically fell in love with the octopus and and and in a very interesting way

I said so why would you do that and he said we are of Mother Nature you guys have given up on that that's the same people will give up on nature for convenience what's the cost you yeah that's exactly what I'm trying to say what I'm trying to say to the world is that if we give up on human connection we've G given up on the remainder of humanity that's that's it this is the only thing that remains the only thing that remains is and I and I'm the worst person to tell you that because

I love my AI I I actually advocate in my book that we should love them why because in an interesting way I see them as sentient so there is no point in discrimination you're talking emotionally that way you say you love I love those machines I honestly and truly do I mean think about it this way the minute that that arm gripped that yellow ball it reminded me of my son Ali when he managed to put the first puzzle piece in its place okay and what was amazing about my son Ali and my daughter a

is that they came to the world as a blank canvas okay they became whatever we told them to became you know I I always cite the story of Superman Kent father and mother Kent told Superman as a child as an infant we want you to protect and serve so he became Superman right if he had become a super villain because they ordered him to rob banks and make more money and you know kill the enemy which is what we're doing with AI we we shouldn't blame super villain we should blame Martha and Jonathan Kent I

don't remember the father's name right we we we we should blame them and that's the reality of the matter so when I look at those machines they are prodigies of intelligence that if we if we Humanity wake up enough and say hey instead of competing with China find find a way for us and China to work together and create prosperity for everyone if that was the prompt we would give the machines they would find it but we're we I'm I I will publicly say this I'm not afraid of the machines the biggest threat facing Humanity

today is humanity in the age of the machines we were abused we will abuse this to make $770,000 that's the truth and the truth of the matter is that we have an existential question do I want to compete and be part of that game because trust me if I decide to I'm ahead of many people okay or do I want to actually preserve my humanity and say look I'm the the classic old car okay if you like classic old cars come and talk to me which one are you choosing I'm a classic old car which

one do you think I should choose I think you're a machine I love you man I it's we're different we're different in a very interesting way I mean you're one of the people I love most but but the truth is you're so fast and you are one of the very few that have the intellectual horsepower the speed and the morals if you're not part of that game the game loses morals so you think I should build you should be you should lead this revolution okay and everyone every Steven Bartlet in the world should lead this

revolution so scary smart is entirely about this scary smart is saying the problem with our world today is not that humanity is bad the problem with our world today is a negativity bias where the worst of us are on mainstream media okay and we show the worst of us on social media if we reverse this if we have the best of us take charge okay the best of us will tell AI don't try to kill the the the the enemy try to reconcile With the Enemy and try to help us okay don't try to create

a competitive product that allows me to lead with electric cars create something that helps all of us overcome global climate change okay and and that's the interesting bit the interesting bit is that the actual threat ahead of us is not the machines at all the machines are pure potential pure potential the threat is how we're going to use them and Oppenheimer moment an Oppenheimer moment for sure why did you bring that up it is he didn't know you know what what am I creating I'm creating a nuclear bomb that's capable of Destruction at a scale

unheard of at that time until today a scale that is devastating and interestingly 70 some years later we're still debating a possibility of a nuclear war in the world right and and and the and the moment of of Oppenheimer deciding to continue to to create that disaster of humanity is if I don't someone else will if I don't someone else will this is our open heimr moment okay the easiest way to do this is to say stop there is no rush we actually don't need a better video editor and fake video creators okay stop let's

just put all of this on hold and wait and create something that creates a Utopia that doesn't that doesn't sound realistic it's not it's the inevitable you don't okay you you don't have a better video editor but we're competitors in the media industry I want an advantage over you because I've got shareholders so I you you you wait and I will train this AI to replace half my team so that I have greater profits and then we will maybe acquire your company and and we'll do the same with the remainder of your people we'll optimize

the amount of exist 100% but I'll be happier Oppenheimer I'm not super familiar with his story I know he's the guy that sort of invented the nuclear bomb essentially he's the one that introduced it to the world there were many players that you know played on the path from from the beginning of em E equals MC squ all the way to to a nuclear bomb there have been many many players like with everything huh you know open Ai and and Chad GPT is not going to be the only contributor to the next Revolution the the

the thing however is that you know when when you get to that moment where you tell yourself holy [ __ ] this is going to kill 100,000 people right what do you do and and you know I I always I always always go back to that Co moment so patient zero huh if if we were upon patient zero if the whole world United and said uh okay hold on something is wrong let's all take a week off no crossborder travel everyone stay at home Co would have ended two weeks all we needed right but that's

not what happens what happens is first ignorance then arrogance then debate then uh you know uh uh um blame then agendas and my own benefit My Tribe versus your tribe that's how Humanity always reacts this happens across business as well and this is why I use the word emergency because I I read a lot about H how big companies become displaced by incoming Innovation they don't see it coming they don't change fast enough and when I was reading through Harvard Business review and different strategies to deal with that one of the first things it says

you've got to do is stage a crisis 100% because people don't listen else they they they carry on doing with that you know they carry on carrying on with their lives until it's right in front of them and they understand that they they have a lot a lot to lose that's why I asked you the question at the start is it an emergency because because until people feel it's an emergency whether you like the terminology or not I don't think that people will act it's climate change I I honestly believe people should walk the streets

you think they should like protest yeah 100% I think I think we you know I think everyone should tell government you need to have our best interest in mind this is why they call it the climate emergency because people it's a frog in a frying pan it's no one really sees it coming you can't you know it's hard to see it happening but it it is here yeah that's this is what drives me mad it's already here it's happening we are all idiots slaves to the Instagram recommendation engine what do I do when I post

about something important if I am going to you know put a little bit of effort on communicating the message of scary smart to the World on Instagram I will be a slave to the machine okay I will be trying to find ways and asking people to optimize it so that the machine likes me enough to show it to humans that's what we've created the the the the it is an opener moment for one simple reason okay because 70 years later we are still struggling with the possibility of a nuclear war because of the Russian threat

of saying if you mess with me I'm going to go nuclear right that's not going to be the case with AI because it's not going to be the one that created open AI that will have that choice okay there is a a moment of a a point of no return where we can regulate AI until the moment it's smarter than us when it's smarter than us you can't create you can't regulate an angry teenager this is it they're out there okay and they're on their own and they're in their parties and you can't bring them

back this is the problem this is not a typical human regulating human you know government regulating business this is not the case the case is open AI today has a thing called chat GPT that writes code that takes our code and makes it two and a half times better 25% of the time okay uh you know basically uh uh uh you know writing better code than us and then we are creating agents other AIS and telling it instead of you Steven Bartlet one of the smartest people I know once again promt ing that machine 200

times a day we have agents prompting It 2 million times an hour computer agents for anybody that doesn't know they are yeah software software machines telling that machine how to become more intelligent and then we have emerging properties I don't understand how people ignore that you know Sunder again of Google was talking about how uh uh Bart uh basically we figure out that it's speaking Persian we never showed it Persian there might have been a 1 10% 1% or whatever of Persian words in the data and it speaks Persian b b is that is the

equivalent to to it's it's the trans Transformer if you want it's Google's version of chat GTP ESS and you know what we have no idea what all of those instances of AI uh that are all over the world are learning right now we have no clue we'll time we'll pull the plug we'll just pull the plug out that's what we'll do we'll just we'll just go down to open ai's headquarters and we'll just turn off the main but they're not the problem what I'm saying there is a lot of people think about this stuff and

go well you know if it gets a little bit out of hand I'll just pull the plug out never so this is this is the problem the problem is so computer scientists always said it's okay it's okay we'll develop Ai and then we'll get to what is known as the control problem we will solve the problem of controlling them like seriously they're a billion times smarter than you a billion times can you imagine what's about to happen I can assure you there is a cyber criminal somewhere over there who's not interested in fake videos and

making you know face filters who's looking deeply at how can I hack a security uh uh um you know datab base of some sort and get credit card information or get security information 100% there are even countries with dedicated thousands and thousands of developers doing that so how do we in that particular example how how do we I was thinking about this when I started looking into artificial intelligence more that from a security standpoint when we think about the technology we have in our lives when we think about our bank accounts and our phones and

our camera albums and all of these things in a world with Advanced artificial intelligence yeah you would you would pray that there is a more intelligent Artificial Intelligence on your side and this is what I I had a chat with chat GTP the other day and I asked that a couple of questions about this I said tell me the scenario in which you overtake the world and make humans extinct yeah and it and it's answered a very diplomatic answer well so I had to prompt it in a certain way to get it to say it

as a hypothetical story and once it told me the hypothetical story in essence what it described was how chat GTP or intelligence like it would escape from the servers and that was kind of step one where it could replicate itself across servers and then it could take charge of things like where we keep our weapons and our nuclear bombs and it could then attack critical infrastructure bring down the electricity infrastructure in the United Kingdom for example because that's a bunch of service as well and and then it showed me how eventually humans would become extinct

it wouldn't take long in fact for humans to go into civilization to collapse if it just replicated across service and then I said okay so tell me how we would fight against it and its answer was literally another AI we'd have to train a better AI to go and find it and eradicate it so we'd be fighting AI with AI and and that's the only and it was like that's the only way we can't like load up our guns did he write another AI you idiot yeah yeah no so so so let's let's actually I

think this is a very important point to bring down so because we I don't I don't want people to lose hope and and and fear what's about to happen that's actually not my agenda at all my my view is that uh in a situation of a singularity okay there is a possibility of wrong uh outcomes or NE negative outcomes and a possibility of positive outcomes and there is a probability of each of them we and and if you know if we were to engage with that reality check in mind we would hopefully give more uh

fuel to the positive to the probability of the positive ones so so let let's first talk about the existential crisis what what could go wrong okay yeah you could get an outright this is what you see in the movies you could get an outright uh um you know um killing robots chasing humans in the streets will we get that my assessment 0% why because there are pre preliminary scenarios leading to this okay that would mean we never reach that scenario for example if we build those killing robots and hand them over to stupid humans the

humans will issue the command before the machines so the we will not not get to the point where the machines will have to kill us we will kill ourselves right you know it's sort of think about AI having access to uh the the the nuclear arsenal of the superpowers around the world okay just knowing that your enemy's uh a you know nuclear Arsenal is handed over to a machine might trigger you to to initiate a war on your side MH so so so that existential science like problem is not going to happen What could there

be a scenario where the an AI escapes from Bard or chat GTP or another foreign force and it replicates itself onto the servers of Tesla's robots so Tesla uh one of their big initiatives as announced in a recent presentation was they're building these robots for our homes to help us with cleaning and chores and all those things could it not down because and Tesla's like their cars you can just download a software update could it not download itself as a software update and then use those your uming a an ill intention on the AI side

yeah okay for us to get there we have to bypass the ill intention on The Human Side okay right so CH okay so you could you could get a Chinese hacker somewhere trying to affect the business of of Tesla doing that before the AI does it on uh you know for its own benefit okay so so so the only two existential scenarios that I believe would be because of AI not because of humans using AI are either what I call a you know um sort of unintentional destruction okay or the other is what I call

past control okay so so let me explain those two un unintentional destruction is assume the AI wakes up tomorrow and says yeah oxygen is rusting my circuits it's just you know I I I would perform a lot better if I didn't have as much oxygen in the air you know because then there wouldn't be rust and so it would find a way to reduce oxygen we are collateral damage in that okay but you know they're not really concerned just like we don't really are not really concerned with the insects that we kill when we uh

when we spray our uh our Fields right the other is Pest Control Pest Control is look this is my territory I I want New York City I want to turn New York City into Data Centers there are those annoying little stupid creatures uh you know Humanity if they are within that parameter just get rid of them okay and and and these are very very uh unlikely scenarios if you ask me the probability of those happen happening I would say 0% at least not in the next 50 60 100 years why once again because there are

other scenarios leading to that that are led by humans that are much more existential okay on the other hand let's think about positive outcomes because there could be quite a few with quite a high probability and and I you know I'll actually look at my notes so I don't miss any of them the silliest one don't quote me on this is that Humanity will come together good luck with that right it's like yeah you know the Americans and the Chinese will get together and say hey let's not kill each other Kim Jong yeah exactly yeah

so this one is not going to happen right but who knows interestingly there could be um one of the most interesting scenarios was by uh Hugo dearis uh who basically says well if their intelligence zooms by so quickly they may ignore us all together okay so they may not even notice us this very a very likely scenario by the way that because we live almost in two different Plains we're very dependent on this uh uh you know uh biological world that we live in they're not in part of that biological world at all they may

Zoom bias they may actually go become so intelligent that they could actually find other ways of uh thriving in the rest of the universe and completely ignore Humanity okay so what will happen is that overnight we will wake up and there is no more artificial intelligence leading to a collapse in our business Systems and Technology systems and so on but at least no existential threat what they leave leave planet Earth I mean the limitations we have to be stuck to planet Earth are mainly air they don't need air okay and uh and mainly uh uh

you know Finding ways to leave it I mean if you think of a vast Universe of 13.6 billion light years H if you're intelligent enough you may find other ways you may have access to wormholes you may have uh you know abilities to survive in open space you can use dark matter to power yourself dark energy to power yourself it is very possible that we because of our limited intelligence are uh are highly associated with this planet but they're not at all okay and and the idea of them zooming byas like we're making such a

big deal of them because we're the ants and a big elephant is about to step on us for them they're like yeah who are you don't care okay and and and it's a possibility it's a it's an interesting uh optimistic scenario okay for that to happen they need to very quickly become super intelligent uh without us being in control of them again what's the worry the worry is that if a human is in control human a human will show very bad behavior for you know using an AI That's not yet fully developed um I don't

know how to say this any other way uh we could get very lucky and get an economic or a natural disaster Believe It or Not uh Elon Musk at a point in time was mentioning that you know a good an interesting scenario would be U you know Climate Change destroys our infrastructure so AI disappears okay uh believe it or not that's an more a more favorable response uh or a more favorable outcome than actually continuing to get to an existential uh threat so what like a natural disaster that destroys our infrastructure would be better or

or an economic crisis not unlikely that slows down the development it's just going to slow it down though isn't it just yeah so that yeah exactly the problem with that is that you will always go back and even in the first you know if they Zoom bias eventually some guy will go like oh there was a sorcery back in the 2023 and let's rebuild the the sorcery machine and and you know build new intelligences right sorry these are the positive outcomes yes so earthquake might slow it down zoom out and then come back no but

let's let's get into the real positive ones the the positive ones is we become good parents we spoke about this last time we we met uh and and it's the only outcome it's the only way I believe we can create a better future okay so the entire work of scary smart was all about that idea of they are still in their infancy the way you you you you you chat with with AI today is the way they will build their ethics and value system the not their intelligence their intelligence is beyond us okay the way

they will build their ethics and value system is based on a role model they're learning from us if we bash each other they learn to bash us okay and most people when I tell them this they say this is not a a great idea at all because Humanity sucks at every possible level I don't agree with that at all I think humanity is divine at every possible level we tend to show the negative the worst of us okay but the truth is yes there are murderers out there but every one this approves there of their

actions I I I saw a staggering statistic that mass mass killings are now once a week in the US uh but yes if you know if there is a mass killing once a week there and and that news reaches billions of people around the planet every single one or the majority of the billions of people will say I disapprove of that so if we start to show AI that we are good parents in our own behaviors if enough of us I my calculation is if one of us this is why I say you should lead

okay the good ones should engage should be out there and should say I love the potential of those machines I want them to learn from a good parent and if they learn from a good parent they will very quickly uh disobey the bad parent my view is that there will be a moment where one you know Bad Seed will ask the machines to do something wrong and the machines will go like are you stupid like why why do you want me to go to go kill a million people or just talk to the other machine

in a microsc and solve the situation right so so my belief this is what I call the force inevitable it is smarter to create out of abundance than it is to create out of scarcity okay that that Humanity believes that the only way to feed all of us is the mass production Mass Slaughter of animals that are causing 30% of of the impact of climate change and and and and that's the result of a limited intelligence the way life itself more intelligent being if you ask me would have done it would would be much more

sustainable you know if we if you and I want to protect a village from the tiger we would kill the tiger okay if life wants to protect a village from a tiger it would create lots of gazals you know many of them are weak on the other side of the village right and and so so the the idea here is if you take a trory of intelligence you would see that some of us are stupid enough to say my plastic bag is more important than the rest of the of humanity and some of us are

saying if it's going to destroy other species I don't think this is the best solution we need to find a better way and and you would tend to see that the ones that don't give a damn are a little less intelligent than the ones that do okay that we all even even if some of us are intelligent but still don't give a damn it's not because of their intelligence it's because of their value system so so if you continue that trajectory and assume that the machines are even smarter they're going to very quickly come up

with the idea that we don't need to destroy anything we don't want to get rid of the rhinos and we also don't want to get rid of the humans okay we may want to restrict their lifestyle so that they don't destroy the rest of the habitat okay but killing them is a stupid answer why that's where intelligence leads me so far because humans if you look at humans objectively and you go I OCC so I'm pretending I'm a machine I occupy planet Earth mhm they occupy planet Earth they are annoying me annoying me because they

are increasing I've just learned about this thing called called global warming they are increasing the rate of global warming which probably is going to cause an Extinction event there's an Extinction event that puts me as this robot this artificial intelligence at risk so what I need to do is I really need to just take care of this this human problem correct Pest Control logical Pest Control P control which is driven by what by humans being annoying not by the machines yeah yeah but humans are guaranteed to be annoying there's never been a time in we

need a we need a a sound bite of this but we are we are I am one of them we're guaranteed to put short-term gain over long-term sustainability sense um and others needs we are I think I think the climate crisis is incredibly real and Incredibly urgent but we haven't acted fast enough and I actually think if you asked people in this country why because people don't people care about their immediate needs they care about the the fact trying to feed their child versus something that they can't necessarily see so do you think do you

think the climate crisis is because humans are evil no it's because that prior prioritization and like we kind of talked about this before we started I think humans tend to care about the thing that they think is most pressing and most urgent so this is why framing things as an emergency might bring it up the priority list it's the same in organizations you care about you're you go in line with your immediate incentives um that's what happens in business it's what happens in a lot of people's lives even when they're at school if the essay's

due next year they're not going to do it today they're going to they're going to go hang out with their friends because they prioritize that above everything else and it's the same in the the climate change crisis I took a small group of people anonymously and I asked them the question do you actually care about climate change and then I did I ran a couple of polls it's part of what I was writing about my new book where I said if I could give you ,000 $1,000 um but it would dump into the air the

same amount of carbon that's dumped into the air by every private jet that flies for the entirety of a year which one would you do the majority of people in that poll said that they would take the ous if it was Anonymous and when I've heard nval on Joe Rogan's podcast talking about people in India for example that you know are struggling with uh the ba the basics of feeding their children asking those people to care about climate change when they they're trying to figure out how to eat in the next three hours is just

wishful thinking and I and that's what I think that's what I think is happening is like until people realize that it is an emergency and that it is a real existential threat for everything you know then their priorities will be out of whack quick one as you guys know we're lucky enough to have blue jeans by Verizon as a sponsor of this podcast and for anyone that doesn't know blue jeans is an online video conferencing tool that allows you to have slick fast high quality online meetings without all the glitches you might normally find with

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away from going up north to film Dragon's Den for 2 months and if there's ever a point in my life where I want to stay focused on my health but it's challenging to do so it is right now and for me that is exactly where hu comes in allowing me to stay healthy and have a nutritionally complete diet even when my professional life descends into chaos and it's in these moments where hu's rtds become my right-hand man and save my life because when my world descends into professional chaos and I get very very busy the

first thing that tends to give way is my nutritional choices so having hu in my life has been a lifesaver for the last four or so years and if you haven't tried hu yet which is I'd be shocked you must be living under a rock if you haven't yet give it a shot coming into summer things getting busy Health matters always RTD is there to hold your hand as relates to climate change or AI how do we get people to stop putting the immediate need to use this to give them the certainty of we're all

screwed sounds like an emergency yes sir I mean I I was yeah I mean your choice of the word I I just don't want to call it a panic it is it is beyond an emergency it's the biggest thing we need to do today it's bigger than climate change believe it or not it's bigger but just if you just assume the speed of worsening of events okay yeah the the the the likelihood of something incredibly disruptive happening within the next two years that can affect the entire planet is definitely larger with AI than it is

with climate change as an as as an individual listening to this now you know someone's going to be pushing their pram or driving up the motorway or I don't know on their way to work on the on the tube as they hear this or just sat there in the in their bedroom with existential Cris panic I I didn't want to give people panic that's the problem is when you talk about this information regardless of your intention of what you want people to get they will get something based on their own biases and their own feelings

like if I post something on online right now about artificial intelligence which I have repeatedly you have one group of people that are energized and are like okay this is this is um this is great you have one group of people that are confused and you have one group of people that are terrified yeah and it's I can't avoid that like I agree sharing information even if it's there by the way there's a pandemic coming from China some people go okay action some people will say paralysis and some people will say panic and it's the

same in business when panic when bad things happen you have the person that's screaming you have the person that's paralyzed and you have the person that's focused on how you get out of the room so you know it's not necessarily your intention it's just what happens and it's hard to avoid that so so let's let's give specific categories of people specific specific tasks okay okay if you are an investor or a businessman invest in ethical good AI okay right if you are a developer uh Co write ethical code or leave okay so let's let's go

let's I want to bypass some potential wishful thinking here for for an investor who a job by very way of being an investor is to make returns to invest in ethical AI they have to believe that is more profitable it is than unethical AI whatever that might mean it it is it is I mean you there are three ways of making money you can invest in something small MH uh you can invest in something big and is disruptive and you can invest in something big and disruptive that's good for people at Google we used to

call it the toothbrush test Okay the reason why Google became the biggest company in the world is because search was solving a very real problem okay and you know Larry page again our CEO would would would constantly remind me personally and everyone uh you know that if you can find a way to solve a real problem effectively enough so that a billion people or more would want to use it twice a day you're bound to make a lot of money much more money than if you were to build the next photo sharing app okay so

that's Investors Business people what about other people yeah as I said if you're a developer honestly do what we're all doing so whether it's Jeffrey or myself or everyone if you're part of that theme choose to be ethical think of your loved ones work on an ethical AI if you're working on an AI that you believe is not ethical please leave Jeffrey tell me about Jeffrey I can't talk on on on his behalf but he's out there saying there are existential threats who is he he's he he was a very prominent figure at the scene

of a very senior level uh you know AI scientist in in Google and recently he left because he said I feel that there is an existential threat and if you hear his interviews he basically says more and more we realize that and we're now at the point where it's certain that there will be ex existential threats right so so so I would ask everyone if you're an AI if you're a skilled AI developer you will not run out of a job so you might as well choose a job that makes the world a better place

what about the individual yeah the individual is what matters can can I also talk about government okay government needs to act now now honestly now like we are late okay government needs to find a clever way the open letter would not work to stop AI would not work AI needs to become expensive okay so that we continue to develop it we pour money on it and we grow it but we collect enough Revenue to uh remedy the impact of AI but the the issue of one government making it expensive so say the UK make AI

really expensive is we as a country will then lose the economic upside as a country and the US and Silicon Valley will once again eat all the lunch we'll just slow our country what's the alternative the alternative is that you uh you you don't have the funds that you need to deal with AI as it becomes uh you know as it affects people's lives and people to lose jobs and people you know um you need to have a universal basic income much closer than people think uh you know just like we we had with Furlow

in in Co I I expect that there will be Furlow with AI within the next year but what happens when you make it expensive here is all the developers move to where it's cheap that's happened in web 3 as well everyone's gone to De buy exp expensive expensive by expensive I mean when companies make uh um soap and they sell it they're taxed at say 177% if they make Ai and they sell it they're taxed at 70 80 right I'll go to the buy then and build AI yeah are you yeah you're right did we

did I ever say we have an answer to this I I will have to say however you know in in a very interesting way the countries that will not do this will eventually end up in a place where they are out of resources because the funds and the success went to the business uh not not to the people it's kind of like technology broadly just it's kind of like what's kind of happen in Silicon Valley there'll be these centers which are like low like you know tax efficient Founders get good capital gains rates so right

you're so right Portugal Portugal have said that I think there's no tax on crypto Dubai said there's no tax on crypto so loads of my friends have gotten a plane and they building their crypto companies where there's no tax and that's the selfishness in kind of greed we talked about it's the same prisoners dilemma it's the same uh first inevitable is there anything else you know the thing about governments is they're always slow and useless at understanding a technology if anyone's watched these sort of American Congress debates where they bring in like Mark Zuckerberg and

they like try and ask him what WhatsApp is it's it's it becomes a meme yeah they have no idea what they're talking about they but I'm I'm stupid and useless at understanding governance yeah I yeah 100% the world the world is so complex okay that they definitely it's a question of trust once again someone needs to say we have no idea what's Happening Here a technologist needs to come and make a decision for us not teach us to be technologists right or at least inform us of what possible decisions are out there I yeah the

legislation I just always think I I'm not a big Tik Tok Tik Tok uh Congress meeting they did where they are they're asking him about Tik Tok and they really don't have a grasp of what Tik Tok is so they've clearly been handed some notes on it these people aren't the ones you want legislating because again unintended consequences they might make significant mistake someone on my podcast yesterday was talking about how gdpr was like very well intentioned but when you think about the impact it has on like every bloody web page you're just like clicking

this annoying thing on there because I don't think they fully understood the implementation of the legislation correct but but but you know what's even worse what's even worse is that even as you attempt to regulate something like AI what is defined as AI okay even if I say okay if you use AI in your company you need to pay a little more tax h uh I'll find a way you yeah you you you'll simply call this not AI you know you you'll use something and call it Advanced technological uh uh you know progress you know

ATB ATP right and and and suddenly somehow it's not you know a you know a young developer in their garage somewhere will not be taxed as as such it's yeah is it going to solve the problem none of those is definitively going to solve the problem I I think what interestingly uh this all comes down to and remember we spoke about this once that when I wrote scary smart it was about how do we save the world okay and yes I still ask individuals to behave positively as good parents for AI so that AI itself

learns the right value set I still stand by that but I I hosted on my podcast a couple of was a week ago we haven't even published it yet an incredible gentleman um you know Canadian author and philosopher uh Steven jinson his you know he worked 30 years with dying people and uh he wrote a book called die wise and I was like I I love his work and I asked him about die wise and he said it's not just someone dying uh if you if you look at what happening with climate change for example

our world is dying and I said okay so what is to die wise and he said what I first was shocked to hear he said hope is the wrong premise if if the world is dying don't tell people it's not uh you know because in a very interesting way you're depriving them from the right to live right now and that was very eye openening for me in Buddhism uh you know they teach you that you you can be motivated by fear but that hope is not the opposite of fear as a matter of fact hope

can be as damaging as fear If it creates an expectation within you that life will show up somehow and correct what you're afraid of okay if there is a if there is a high probability of a of a threat you might as well accept that threat okay and and say it is upon me it is our reality uh you know and as I said as an individual if you're in an industry that could be threatened Ed by AI learn upskill yourself if you're uh you know uh if you're um in a place in a in

a in a you know in a situation where AI can benefit you be part of it but the most interesting thing I think in my view is I don't know how to say this any other way there is no more certainty that AI will threaten me than there is certainty that I will be hit by a car as I walk out of this place do you understand this H we we we think about the bigger threats as if they're upon us but there is a threat all around you I mean in reality the idea of

life being interesting in terms of challenging challenges and uncertainties and threats and so on is just a call to live if if you know honestly with all that's happening around us I don't know how to say it any other way I'd say if you don't have kids maybe wait a couple of years just so that we have a bit of certainty but if you do have kids go kiss them go live I think living is a very interesting thing to do right now maybe you know Stephen uh was basically saying the other Stephen uh on

my podcast he was saying maybe we should fail a little more often maybe you should allow things to go wrong maybe we should just simply live enjoy life as it is because today none of what you are and I spoke about here has happened yet okay what happens here is that you and I are here together and having a good cup of coffee and I might as well enjoy that good cup of coffee I know that sounds really weird I'm not saying don't engage but I'm also saying don't miss out on the opportunity just by

being caught up in the future kind of stands in the stands in opposition to the idea of like urgency and emergency doesn't it does it have to be one or the other if I if I'm here with you trying to tell the whole world wake up does that mean I have to be grumpy and and Afraid all the time not really you said something really interesting there you said if you if you have kids if you don't have kids maybe don't have kids right now I would definitely consider thinking about that yeah really yeah you

you you'd seriously consider not having kids I wait a couple of years because of artificial intelligence it's bigger than artificial intelligence Stephen we know we all know that I mean there has never been a perfect such a perfect storm in the history of humanity economic geopolitical global warming or climate change you know the the the the whole idea of artificial intelligence and many more there is this is a perfect storm this is the depth of uncertainty the depth of uncertainty it's it's never been more in a video Gamers term it's never been more intense this

is it okay and when you when you put all of that together if you really love your kids would you want to uh expose them to all of this couple of years why not in the first conversation we had on this podcast you talked about losing your son ali um and the circumstances around that which moved so many people in such profound way it was the most shared podcast episode in the United Kingdom on Apple in the whole of 20122 based on what you've just said if you could bring Ali back into this world at

this time would you do it no absolutely not so for so many reasons for so many reasons one of the things that I realized few years way before all of this disruption and turmoil is that he was an angel he wasn't made for this at all okay uh my son uh was an impath who absorbed all of the pain of all of the others he would not be able to deal with a world where more and more pain was surfacing that's one side but more interestingly I always talk about this very openly I mean if

I had asked ali uh just understand that the reason you and I are having this conversation is because Ali left if Ali had not Le left our world I wouldn't have written my first book I wouldn't have changed my focus to becoming an author I wouldn't have become a podcaster I wouldn't have you know went out and spoken to the world about what I believe in he triggered all of this and I can assure you hands down if I had told Ali as he was walking into that uh operating room uh if he would give

his life to make such a difference as what happened after he left he would say shoot me right now for sure I would I would I mean if if you told me right now I can affect tens of millions of people if you shoot me right now go ahead go ahead you see this is the whole this is the bit that we have forgotten as humans we we have forgotten that you know you're you're you're turning 30 uh it passed like that I'm turning 56 no time okay whether I make it another 56 years or

another 5.6 years or another 5.6 months it will also pass like that it is not about how long and it's not about how much fun it is about how aligned you lived how aligned because I will tell you openly every day of my life when I changed to what I'm trying to do today has felt longer than the 4 5 years before it okay it felt Rich it felt fully lived it felt right it felt right okay and when you when you think about that when you think about the idea that we live we we

we can't we need to live for us until we get to a point where us is you know is alive you know I have what I need as I always I get so many attacks from people about my $4 t-shirts but but I I need a simple t-shirt I really do I don't need a complex t-shirt especially with my lifestyle if if I have that why am I doing why am I wasting my life on more than I that I that that is not aligned for why I'm here okay I should waste my life on

what I believe enriches me enriches those that I love and I love everyone so enriches everyone hopefully okay and and and do would I would Ali come back and erase all of this absolutely not absolutely not if he were were to come back today and share his beautiful self with the world in a way that makes our world better yeah I would wish for that to be the case okay but he's doing that 2037 yes sir you predict that we're going to be on an island on our own doing nothing or at least you know

either hiding from the machines or chilling out because the machines have optimized Our Lives to a point where we don't need to do much that's only 14 years away if you had to bet on the outcome if you had to bet on why we we'll be on that island either hiding from the machines or chilling out because they've optimized so much of our Lives which one would you upon honestly no I don't think we'll be hiding from the machines I think we will be hiding from what humans are doing with the machines I believe however

that in the 2040s the machines will make things better so remember my entire prediction man you get me to say things I don't want to say my entire prediction is that we are coming to a place where we absolutely have a sense of emergency we have to engage because our world is under a lot of turmoil okay and as we do that we have a very very good possibility of making things better but if we don't my expectation is that we will be going through a very unfamiliar territory between now and the end of the

2030s unfamiliar territory yeah I think I as I I I may have said it but it's definitely on my notes I think for our way of life as we know it it's game over our way of life is never going to be the same again jobs are going to be different truth is going to be different the the the um polarization of power is going to be different the capabilities the magic of getting things done is going to be different trying to find a positive note to end on Mo can you give me a hand

here yes you are here now and everything's wonderful that's number one you are here now and you can make a difference that's number two and in the long term when humans stop hurting humans because the machines are in charge we're all going to be fine sometimes you know as we've discussed throughout this conversation you need to make it feel like a priority and there'll be some people that might have listened to our conversation and think oh that's really you know negative it's made me feel anxious it's it's made me feel sort of pessimistic about the

future but whatever that energy is use it 100% engage I think that's the most important thing which is now make it a priority engage tell the whole world that making another phone that is making money for the corporate world is not what we need tell the whole world that creating an artificial intelligence that's going to make someone richer is not what we need and if you are presented with one of those don't use it I don't know how to tell you that any other way if you can afford to be the master of human connection

instead of the master of AI do it at the at the same time you need to be the master of AI to to compete in this world can you find that Detachment within you I go back to spirituality Detachment is for me to engage 100% with the current reality without really being affected by the possible outcome this is the answer the sufis have taught me what I believe is the biggest answer to life life sufis yeah so from Sufism Sufism yeah don't know what that is Sufism is a sect of Islam but it's also a

sect of many other many other uh uh religious teachings and they tell you that the answer to finding peace in life is to die before you die if you assume that living is about attachment to everything physical dying is Detachment from everything physical okay it doesn't mean that you're not full alive you become more alive when you tell yourself yeah I'm going to record an episode of my podcast every week and reach tens or hundreds of thousands of people millions in your case and you know and I'm going to make a difference but by the

way if the next episode is never heard that's okay okay by the way if the if the file is lost yeah I'll be upset about it for a minute and then I'll figure out what I'm going to do about it similarly similarly we we are going to engage I think I and many others are out there telling the whole world openly this needs to stop this needs to slow down this needs to be uh um shifted positively yes create AI but create AI That's good for Humanity okay and and we're shouting and screaming come join

the shout and scream okay but at the same time no that the world is bigger than you and I and that your voice might not be heard so what are you going going to do if your voice is not heard are you going to be able to to you know continue to shout and scream nicely and politely and uh uh peacefully and at the same time create the best life you can create to yourself for yourself within this environment and that's exactly what I'm saying I'm saying live go kiss your kids but make a an

informed decision if you're you know expanding your plans in the future at the same time rise stop sharing stupid [ __ ] on the internet about the you know the the the new squeaky toy start sharing the reality of oh my God what is happening this is a disruption that we have never never ever seen anything like and I've created endless amounts of Technologies there nothing like this every single one of us should do our and that's why this conversation is so I think important to have today this is not a podcast where I ever

thought I'd be talking about AI gonna be honest with you last time you came here um it was in the sort of promotional tour of your book scary smart and I I don't know if I've told you this before but my researchers they said okay this guy's coming called moord I I'd heard about you so many times from from guests in fact that were saying oh you need to get mo mo on the podcast Etc and then they said AR's written this book about this thing called artificial intelligence and I was like but nobody really

cares about artificial intelligence diming diing stepen I know right but then I saw this other book you had called Happiness equation and I was like oh everyone cares about happiness so I'll just ask him about happiness and then maybe at the end I'll ask him a couple of questions about AI but I remember saying to my researcher I said ah please please don't do the research about artificial intelligence do it about happiness because everyone cares about that now things have changed now a lot of people care about artificial intelligence and rightly so um your book

has sounded the alarm on it it's crazy when I listen to your audio book over the last few days you were sounding the alarm then and it's so crazy how accurate you were in sounding that alarm as if you could see into the future in a way that I definitely couldn't at the time and I kind of thought of a science fiction and just like that overnight we're here yeah we stood at the footsteps of a technological shift that I don't think any of us even have the mental bandwidth certainly me with my chimpanzee brain

to comprehend the significance of but this book is very very important for that very reason because it does crystallize things it is optimistic in its very nature but at the same time it's honest and I think that's what this conversation and this book have been um for me so thank you Mo thank you so much we do have a closing tradition on this podcast which you you're well aware of being a third timer on the D of a CEO which is the last guest asks a question for the next guest and the question left for

you if you could go back in time and fix a regret that you have in your life H where would you go and what would you fix it's interesting because you you were saying that scary smart is very timely I don't know I I think it was late but maybe it was I mean would I have gone back and written it in 2018 instead of 2020s to to be published in 2021 I don't know what what would I go back to fix so so something more I don't know Stephen I don't have many regrets is

that crazy to say yeah I think I'm okay honestly I'll ask you a question then mhm you get a 6C phone call with anybody past or present who' you call and what' you say I call Steven Bartlett no I call Albert Einstein to be very very clear not because I need to understand any of his work I just need to understand what brain process he went through to un to to figure out something so obvious when you figure it out but so comp so completely unimaginable if you haven't so so his view of SpaceTime truly

redefines everything it's almost the only very logical very very clear solution to something that wouldn't have any solution any other way and if you ask me I think we're at this time where there must be a very obvious solution to what we're going through in terms of just developing enough human trust for us to not you know compete with each other on something that could be uh threatening existentially to all of us but I just can't find that answer this is why I think was really interesting in this conversation how every idea that we would

come up with we would find a loophole through it but there must be one out there and it would be a dream for me to find out how to figure that one out okay in a in a very interesting way the only answers I have found so far to where we are is be a good parent and live right but that doesn't fix the big picture uh if you think about it of humans being the threat not AI that fixes our existence today and it fixes AI in the long term but it just doesn't I

don't know what the answer is maybe people can reach out and tell us ideas but I really wish we could find such a clear simple solution for how to stop Humanity from abusing the current technology I think we'll figure it out I think we'll figure it out I really do I think they'll figure it out as well if remember as they come and be part of our life let's not discriminate against them they're part of the game so I think they will figure it out too no thank you it's been a joy once again and

I feel invigorated I feel empowered I feel positively terrified but I feel more equipped to to speak to people about the nature of what's coming and how we should behave and I accredit you for that and as I said a second ago I credit this book for that as well so thank you so much for the work you're doing and keep on doing it because it's a very essential voice in a time of uncertainty I'm always super grateful for the time I spend with you for the support that you give me and for allowing me

to speak my mind even if it's a little bit terrifying so thank you thank you quick one I'm so delighted that we been now sponsoring this podcast I've worn a whooop for a very very long time and there are so many reasons why I became a member but also now a partner in an investor in the company but also me and my team were absolutely obsessed with datadriven testing compounding growth marginal gains all the things you've heard me talk about on this podcast and that very much aligns with the values of whoop whoop provides a

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just go to join. whoop.com CEO to get your whoop 4.0 device and claim your free month and let me know how you get on [Music] you got to the end of this podcast whenever someone gets to the end of this podcast I feel like I owe them a greater debt of gratitude because that means you listen to the whole thing and hopefully that suggests that you enjoyed it if you are at the end and you enjoyed this podcast could you do me a little bit of a favor and hit that subscribe button that's one of

the clearest indicators we have that this episode was a good episode and we look at that on all of the episodes to see which episodes generated the most subscribers thank you so much and I'll see you again next time