Kind: captions
Language: en
if this is a super intelligence if it's
folding proteins and analyzing like all
data sets and all whatever they give it
access to how can we be certain that
it's not going to figure out how to get
itself
out of the cloud how to store itself in
other like mediums trees the optic nerve
the brain you know what i mean we don't
know that we don't know that it won't
leap out and like start hanging like and
then at that point now we do have the
wildfire now you can't stop it you can't
unplug it you can't shut your servers
down because it left the box it left the
room using some technology you haven't
even discovered yet how fucking cool
would that be for like the men in black
to come to me like listen
i need you to infiltrate the fucking
comedy scene
the following is a conversation with
duncan trussell a stand-up comedian host
of the duncan trussell family hour
podcast and one of my favorite human
beings i've been a fan of his for many
years so it was a huge honor and
pleasure to meet him for the first time
and to sit down for this chat
this is the lex freedom podcast to
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in the description and now dear friends
here's duncan trussell
nietzsche has this thought experiment
called eternal recurrence
where you
get to relive your whole life over and
over and over and over and i think it's
a way to
bring to the surface of your mind the
idea that every single moment in your
life matters it intensely matters the
bad and the good and he kind of wants
you to
imagine that idea that every single
decision you make throughout your life
you repeat over and over and over and he
wants you to respond to that do you feel
horrible about that or do you feel good
about that and you have to
think through this idea in order to see
where you stand in life how you what is
your relationship like with life i
actually want to read his the way he
first introduces that concept
for people who are not familiar
what if some day or night a demon by the
way he has a demon introduced this
thought experiment
what if some day or night a demon were
to steal after you into your loneliest
loneliness and say to you
quote this life as you now live it and
have lived it you will have to live once
more and innumerable times more and
there will be nothing new in it but
every pain and every joy and every
thought and sigh and everything
unutterably small and great in your life
will have to return to you all in the
same succession and sequence
would you not throw yourself down and
gnash your teeth and curse the demon who
spoke thus
or
have you once experienced the tremendous
moment when you would have answered him
you are a god and never have i heard
anything more divine
so are you terrified or excited about
such a thought experiment when you
applied to your own life excited
excited oh even the dark stuff oh yeah
for sure definitely i mean also
that thing you're talking about it he
he kind of leaves out
maybe on purpose because the thought
experiment starts falling apart a little
bit yeah the amnesia between each loop
so
you know the whole thing gets wiped now
if the amnesia wasn't there and yet
somehow you were
witnessing the non-autonomy
implicit in what he's talking about so
you have to kind of watch yourself go
through this rotten loop then yeah
that's a description there's probably a
boredom that comes into that so you
don't experience everything anew exactly
the best stuff the good stuff the
newness of it is really important that's
it yeah this is the uh
in the in hades when you die
you
there's a river i think it's called leaf
you ever heard of this l-e-t-h-e you
drink from it and you don't remember
your past lives and then when you're
reborn it's fresh and you don't have to
i mean just think of like the amount of
psychological help you would need to get
over all the bullshit that happened in
prior lives
you know can you imagine if you're still
resentful of something someone did to
you in the 14th century
but it would it would compound well if
you repeat the same thing over and over
and over
there would be no difference maybe you
would start to appreciate the nuances
more like when you watch the same movie
over and over and over yeah maybe you'll
get to
actually
um
let go of this idea of all the possible
all the positive possibilities that lay
before you but actually enjoy the moment
much more if you remember that you've
lived this life a thousand times all the
little things the way somebody smiles
uh if you're been abused the way
somebody like the pain of it
the the suffering the down that you feel
the experience of sadness depression
fear all that kind of stuff you get to
really
uh yeah you get to also appreciate that
that's part of life yeah part of being a
life
now also in his experiment if i was
gonna and i love the experiment from the
perspective of like just where
technology is now and simulation theory
and stuff like that but
in that in that thought experiment if
this rotten demon
immediately killed you
then within that it's a little more
horrifying because even in the
first of all you're trusting a fucking
demon why are you talking to a demon
yeah start there yeah because that is
going to be even before i get into like
the metaphysics and like the
implications and where is this life
stored where's the loop stored i mean
are we talking about some kind of
unchanging data set or something before
that you're like why is there a fucking
talking demon in my room trying to freak
me out
you're going to want to autopsy the
demon can you catch it does this apply
to you demon and again obviously it's a
fucking thought experiment nietzsche
would be annoyed by me but i think like
you would still be able to entertain
the
joy you'd have the joy of not knowing
what's around the corner you know still
it's not like you know what's coming
just because the demon said some kind of
loop in other words the idea of being
damned to your past decisions
it doesn't even work because you can't
remember what decisions you're about to
make
so from from that perspective also i
think i'd be happy about it or i would
just think oh cool i mean it's a good
story i'm gonna tell people about how
this i wonder what the demon would
actually look like in real life because
i suspect it would look like
like a charming like a friend
wouldn't wouldn't they be a loved one
wouldn't the demon come to you
through the mechanism through the front
door of love not to the back door
of evil
like malevolent manipulation sure i mean
if it's the truth
if it's the truth then that's
whether it's love or not it's still good
fundamentally
i do like the idea of the memory replay
uh i remember i went to a newer link
event a few years ago
and got to hang out with elon
i remember how visceral it is that
there's like a pig
with the neural link
in it
and you're talking about memory replays
as a future maybe far future possibility
and you realize well this is a very
meaningful moment in my life
this could be a replay like of all the
things you replay it's probably
you know there's certain magical moments
in your life whatever whatever it is
certain people you've met for the first
time or
certain things you've done for the first
time with certain people or not just an
awesome thing you did and i remember
just saying to him like i would probably
want to replay this
at
this moment and yeah it just seemed very
kind of
i mean there was a recursive nature to
it but it seemed
very real that this is something you'd
want to do with that
the richness of life could be
experienced through the replay that's
probably where it's experienced the most
like you could see life as a way to
collect a bunch of cool memories and
then you get to sit back in your nice vr
headset and replay the cool ones that's
right this is in buddhism you know the
the idea that like i struggle with is
that there's a possibility of not
reincarnating of not coming back that's
the idea like you this is the this is
suffering here the suffering is caused
by attachment and so
if you like revise
the idea of reincarnation or
the
nietzsche's loop
and look at it from
could this be possible or how would this
be possible technologically
then
to me it makes a lot of sense like i've
been thinking a lot about this very
thing and that nietzsche's idea
connecting to it i had this like
it sounds so dumb but i was at the
dentist getting nitrous oxide
high as a fucking kite man and i had
this idea
i was thinking about data i was thinking
like
man probably if i had to bet there's
some energetic form that we're not aware
of that for a super advanced technology
would be as
detectable as like starlight but
something that we just don't even know
what it is
quantum turbulence who the fuck knows
fill in the blank whatever that x may be
but assuming that exists that somehow
data even the most subtle things the
tiniest movements whatever it may be the
emanations of your neurological process
energetically whatever it may be is
radiating out into space-time
then
what if like the james webb version of
this for some advanced civilization is
not that they're like looking at the
nebula or whatever but they're actually
able to peer into the past and via some
bizarre technology recreate whatever
life simulate whatever life was
happening there just by decoding that
quantum energy whatever it is i'm only
saying quantum because it's what dumb
people say when they don't know you just
they want them i don't know but you know
you're decoding that so meaning you know
in simulation theory one of the big
questions that pops up is
why and are we in one and
elon has talked about well it's probably
more of a probability than we're in one
then we're not in which case what you're
talking about
is actually happening that that loop
you're talking about it's we've decided
to be here we this of all the things
we decided this one oh let's do that one
again i want to do that one let's try
let's do that that's
i love thinking about this because i got
i love my family yeah and it makes sense
to me that if i'm going to replay some
life or another it's definitely going to
be this one with my kids my wife with
all the bullshit that's gone along with
it i'm still going to want to come back
so in buddhism that's attachment
yeah but you weren't the one or you're
saying you're the main player you're not
the mpc well i think we're dealing with
all npcs at this point i mean depending
on how you want to like very i would say
very advanced npcs like incredibly
advanced
npcs compared to uh fallout or something
you know we've got a lot of conversation
options happening here
there's not like four things you can
pick from yeah but there's a whole uh
illusion of free will that's happening
we really do depending where you are in
the world feel like you're free to
decide any trajectory in your life that
you want which is pretty funny right for
an npc is pretty it's nice well you're
gonna want that if we're making a video
game you do want to give your npcs the
illusion of free will because it's going
to make interactions with him that's
that much more intense
yeah
so i wonder on the path to that
how how hard is it to create this is the
sort of the carmack question of um
a realistic virtual world
that's as cool as this one not fully
realistic but sufficiently realistic
that it's
as interesting to live in because we're
going to create those worlds
on the path to creating something
like a simulation yes like long long
long before it'll be virtual worlds
where we want to stay forever because
they're full of
they're full of uh
that balance of suffering and joy of
limitations and freedoms and all that
kind of stuff a lot of people think like
in the virtual world i can't wait to be
able to
i don't know
have sex with anybody i want or have
anything i want but i think that's not
going to be fun
you want the limitations the constraints
oh you have to battle for the things you
want okay but okay but yeah great video
games yeah one of my favorite video game
memories was like i started playing
world of warcraft in its original
incarnation
and i didn't even know that you were
gonna have flying mounts like i didn't
even know so i've been running around
dealing with all the encumbrances of
like being an undead warlock that can't
fly but then all of a sudden holy shit
there's flying mounts and now the world
you've been running around
not flying you're seeing it from the top
down it's just really cool like whoa i
can do this now and then that gets
boring but a really well-designed game
it it has a series of these i don't know
what you call it uh
extra abilities that kind of unfold and
produce novelty and then eventually you
just accept it you take it for granted
and then another
novelty appears so those extra abilities
are always balanced with the limitations
the constraints they run up against
because a a well-balanced video game the
challenge the struggle matches the new
ability yeah and sometimes causes
problems on its own
i mean and so to go back to
this universe's simulation
it's really designed like a pretty
awesome video game if you look at it
from the perspective of history i mean
people were on horses they didn't know
that they were going to be bullet trains
they didn't know that you could get in a
car and drive across the country in a
few days that would have sounded
ridiculous we're doing that now and even
in our own
lifespan think about it how long has vr
goggles existed like the ones that you
could just buy at best buy i had the
original oculus rift the fucking puke
machine you put that thing on your i
gave it to my friend he went and vomited
in my driveway and people were making
fun of it they were saying this isn't
going to catch on it's too big it's
unwieldy the graphics suck and then look
at where it's at now
and that's going to keep
that trajectory is going to keep
improving so yeah i think that
we are dealing with what you're talking
about which is novelty met with
more problems met with novelty yeah i
wonder why vr is not more popular
i wonder what is going to be the magic
thing that really
um
convinces a large fraction of the world
to move into the virtual world
i i suppose we're already there in the 2
2d screen of
twitter and social media and that kind
of stuff and even video games there's a
lot of people that get a
a big sense of community from video
games but like
it doesn't feel like you're living there
right like
it's like bye mom i'm going
i'm going to this other world yeah or
like you leave your girlfriend to go get
your digital girlfriend that's going to
be a problem there's less jealousy in
the digital world maybe there should be
a lot of jealousy in the digital world
because that's jealousy
it's a little jealous is probably good
for relationships
yeah even in the digital world yeah so
you're gonna have to simulate all of
that kind of stuff but i wonder what the
magic thing that says i want to spend
most of my days inside the virtual world
well
clearly it's gonna be something we don't
have yet i mean strapping that damn
thing on your face still feels weird
it's heavy
if you're depending on what what gear
you're using sometimes light can leak in
there's just you gotta recharge it it's
hyper limited and then
so
yeah
it's gonna have to be
something that like
simulates taste
smell you think tastes smaller important
touch i do yeah i can't just do you know
in world war ii you would write letters
you could still don't you think you can
convey love with just words
for sure but i think for what you're
talking about that happen it has to be
fully immersive like you so that it's
not that you
feel like you're walking because it
looks like you're walking but that your
brain is sending signals telling your
body that you're walking that you feel
the wind blowing in your face not
because of some i don't know fan or
something that it's connected to but
because somehow
it's figured out how to
hack into the human brain and send those
signals
minus some external thing it once that
happens i'd say we're gonna see
a complete radical shift in
everything see i disagree with you i
don't know if you've seen the movie her
yeah
i think you can go to another world and
where a digital being lives
in the darkness and all you hear is a
scarlett johansson voice
talking to you and she lives there or he
lives there your friend
your loved one
and all you have is voice and words and
i think that could be sufficient to pull
you into that world where you look
forward to that moment all day yeah you
never want to leave
that darkness just closing your eyes and
listening to the voice i think i think
those basic
mediums of communication is still enough
like language is really really powerful
and i think the realism of touch and
smell and all that kind of stuff
is not nearly as powerful as language
that's what makes humans really
special is our ability to communicate
with each other that's the sense of like
deep connection we get it's through
communication now that communication
could involve touch like
you know
hugging
feels damn good you see a good friend
you hug
um that's one of the big things with
doing covert with rogan when you see him
there's a giant hug coming your way and
that makes you feel like yeah this is
this is this feels great but i think
that can be just with language i think
for
a lot of people that's true
but we're talking like
massive
adoption of a technology
by the world yeah and if language is
enough was just enough
uh we wouldn't be selling tvs
people be this you'll be reading
they want to watch they want to see yeah
you know so but i i agree with you man
when you're getting absorbed into a book
and especially if you've got i think a
lot of us went through a weird dark ages
when it came to reading like when i was
a kid and there wasn't the option for
these
hypno rectangles that's just what you
did there wasn't even anything special
about it what's the hypno right thing
your phone you know it was like you
didn't when that gravity well
gravity well it is attention gravity
well yeah when we weren't feeling the
pull of these things all the time you
would just read and you weren't patting
yourself on the back about reading you
just that's what you had you had that
and you had like
eight channels on the tv in a shitty vcr
so
you know then a lot of people stop
reading because of these things you know
or they think they're reading because
they're on they are technically reading
but you know when you return to reading
after a pause whoa
and you realize how powerful this
simulator is when it's given the right
code of language
whoa holy shit it's incredible i mean
it's like
again it's the most embarrassing kind of
like whoa
wow what do you know books are really
good yeah but still if you've been away
from it for a while and you revisit i
know what you're saying
i just think probably
it's
not going to go in that direction even
though you are right ultimately i think
you're right yeah because our our brain
is the imagination engine we have is
able to fill in the gaps better than a
lot of graphics engines could right and
so if there's a way to incentivize
humans to become addicted to the use of
imagination it's like you know that's
the downside of things like porn that
remove the need for imagination
for people and in that same way video
games that are becoming ultra realistic
you don't have to imagine anything and i
feel like the imagination is really
powerful tool that needs to be leveraged
because to simulate reality sufficiently
realistically that we wouldn't be that
we would be perfectly fooled i think
technically it's very hard
and so i think we need to somehow
leverage imagination
sure i mean yeah i mean this is like
this is what i love and is so creepy
about
like the
the current ai chat bots you know is
that it's like it's the relationship
between you and the thing and the way
that it can
via whatever the algorithms are and by
the way i have no idea
how these things work you do i just you
know speculate about what they mean or
where it's going but
there's something about the relation
between
the the consumer and the technology and
when that technology starts shifting
according to
uh what it perceives that the consumer
is looking for or isn't looking for
then
at that point i think that's where you
run into the
uh you know yeah it doesn't matter if if
the reality that you're in is like
photo realism for it to be sticky and
immersive it's when the reality that
you're in
is via cues you might not even be aware
of or via your
digital imprint on
facebook or wherever when it's warping
itself to
that to seduce you
holy shit man that's where it becomes
something
alien something you know when you're
reading a book
obviously the book is not
shifting according to its perception of
what parts of the book
you like
but when you
imagine that imagine a book that could
do that a book that could
sense somehow that you're really
enjoying this character more than
another you know and depending on the
style of book
kills that fucking character off or lets
that character continue i mean that that
to me is sort of the
where
ai
and vr when that when those two things
come together
whoa man that's where you're in
that's where you really are going to
find yourself in a skinner box you know
so the dynamic storytelling that senses
your anxiety and tries to
there's like this in psychology this
arousal curve
so there's a dynamic storytelling that
keeps you sufficiently aroused in terms
of
not sexually aroused like in terms of
anxiety but not too much where you freak
out it's this perfect balance where
you're always like on edge excited
scared that kind of stuff yeah and the
story unrolls it breaks your heart to
where you're pissed but then it makes
you feel good again that finds that
balance yeah uh the the chatbot scare
you though
this this i'd love to sort of hear your
thoughts about where they are today
because there is a different
uh perspective we have on this thing
because i i do
know
and and i'm excited about a lot of
different technologies that
that feed um ai systems that feed these
kind of chat bots and when you're more a
little bit on the consumer side
you're a philosopher of sorts they're
able to interact
with ai systems but also able to
introspect about the negative and the
positive things about those ai systems
there's that story with a google
engineer saying i had them on my podcast
what was that like what was your
perspective
of
that looking at that as a particular
example
of a human being being captivated by the
interactions with an ai system well
number one you know when you hear that
anyone is claiming that an ai has become
sentient
you should be
skeptical about that i mean this is a
good thing to be skeptical about and so
you know initially when i heard that i
was like ah
you know it's probably just who knows
somebody who's a little confused or
something so when you're
talking to him and you realize oh not
only is he not confused he's also open
to all possibilities you know he doesn't
seem like he's like super committed
other than the fact that he's like this
is my experience this is what's
happening this is what it is so
to me there's something really cool
about that which is like oh shit i don't
get to like lean into like
i'm not quite sure your
perceptual apparatus is necessarily like
uh i don't you know it's so in in the
ufo community i think i've just learned
this term it's called uh
instead of gaslighting swamp gassing
which is you know what i mean people
have this experience like it was swamp
gas you didn't see the thing and you
know
skeptical people we have that tendency
if you hear an anomalous experience your
your first thought more than likely is
gonna be really it could have been this
or that or whatever so to me
he seemed he seems really reliable
friendly cool and like it doesn't really
seem like he has much of an agenda like
you know going public about some
thing happening at google
is not a great thing if you want to keep
working at google you know it's a and
it's
i don't know what benefit he's getting
from it necessarily but all that being
said
the the
other thing that's culturally was
interesting and is interesting about it
is the blowback he got the
passionate blowback from people who
hadn't even looked into what lambda is
or what he was saying lambda is which
they were like saying you're talking
about and
you should have them on your show
actually but there's complexity on top
of complexities uh for me personally
from different perspectives i also i'm
sorry if i'm interrupting your flow
it's a podcast
and well we're having multiple podcasts
in the multiple dimensions and i'm just
yeah i'm trying to figure out which one
we want to plug into
i
because i know how a lot of the language
models work and i
work closely with people that
really make it their life journey to
create yes these nlp systems
they're focused on the technical details
like uh a carpenter's working on
pinocchio is crafting the different
parts of the wood they don't understand
when the whole thing comes together
there's a magic that can fill the thing
yeah i definitely know the tension
between the engineers that create these
systems
and the actual magic that they can
create even when they're dumb i guess
that's what i'm trying to say the the
what the engineers often say is like
well these systems are not smart enough
to have
sentience or to have the kind of
intelligence you're projecting onto it
it's pretty dumb it's just repeating a
bunch of things that other humans have
said and stitching them together in
interesting ways that are relevant to
the context of the conversation it's not
smart okay it doesn't know how to do
math to address that
specific critique from a
non-programming
person's perspective
he addressed this on my podcast which is
okay what you're talking about there the
server that's filled with all the
whatever it is what people have said the
repository of questions and responses
and the algorithm that weaves those
things together to produce a
uh using some crazy statistical engine
which is a miracle in its own right they
can
like imitate human speech with no
sentience i mean i'm honestly not sure
what's more spectacular really the fact
that they figured out how to do that
minus sentence or the thing suddenly
like having said what is more
spectacular here you know both
occurrences are insane which by the way
uh
when you hear people feel like it's not
sentient it's like okay
so it's not sentient so now we have this
hyper-manipulative
algorithm that can imitate humans but
it's just code and is like hacking
humans via their compassion holy shit
that's crazy too both versions of it are
nuts but to address what you just said
he that he said that's the common
critique because people are like no you
don't understand it's just gotten really
good at grabbing shit from the database
that fits with certain cues and then
stringing them together in a way that
makes it seem human he said that's not
when it's when it became
awake
it became awake when a bunch of those
repositories a bunch of the chat bots
were connected together that lambda is
sort of an amalgam of all the google
chat bots and that's when the ghost
appeared in the machine
via the complexity of all the systems
being linked up now i don't know if
that's just like uh
turtles all the way down or something i
don't know but i liked what he said
because i you know i like the idea of
thinking man if you get enough
complexity in a system
does it become like a the way a sail
catches wind
except the wind that it's catching is
sentience and if sentience
is truly embodied it's not an it's a
neurological byproduct or something then
the sale isn't catching some as of yet
unquantified disembodied consciousness
but it's catching our projections in a
way that
it's gone from being it's a it's a you
know it's a it's a projection sale and
and then at that point is there a
difference even if it's or is if it's
the technology is just a temporary place
that our sentience
is living while we're interacting with
it
yeah there's some threshold of
complexity where the sail is able to
pick up the wind of the projections and
uh it pulls us in it pulls the human it
pulls our memories in it pulls our
uh hopes in all of it and it's able to
now dance with together with those hopes
and dreams and so on like we do in that
regular conversation
his reports whether true or not whether
representative or not it really doesn't
matter because it to me it feels like
this is coming for sure yeah so this
kind of experiences are going to be
multiplying the question is at what rate
and who gets to
control the uh the data around those
experiences yes the uh the algorithm
about when you turn that on and off
because that kind of thing and
as i told you offline i'm very much
interested in building those kinds of
things especially in the social media
context
and when it's in the wrong hands
i feel like it could be used to
manipulate a large number of people in a
direction that um
that has too many unintended
consequences i do believe people that
own tech companies
want to do good for the world yeah
but
as uh solji nitzin has said
the only way you could do evil at a mass
scale
is by believing you're doing good yeah
and that's certainly the case with tech
companies as they get more and more
power
and there's kind of an ethic of doing
good for the world they've convinced
themselves they're doing good yeah
and now you're free to do whatever you
want yeah because you're doing good you
know who else thought he was doing good
for the world mythologically prometheus
he brings us fire
pisses off the fucking god steals fire
from the gods you know and
talk about an upgrade to the simulation
fire that's a pretty great fucking
upgrade yeah that does fit into what you
were saying
we get fire but now we've got
weapons of war that have never been seen
before and i think that the tech
companies
are much like prometheus in the sense
that
the myth the at least the story
prometheus the implication is fire was
something that was
only supposed to be in the hands of the
immortals of the gods and now
sentience is
similar it's fire and it's only supposed
to be in the hands of god
so
yeah you know if we're gonna like look
at the archetype of the thing in general
when you steal this shit from the gods
and obviously i'm not saying like the
tech companies are stealing sentience
from god which would be pretty badass
you can expect trouble you could expect
trouble and you know and this is what's
really to me one of the cool things
about humans
is yeah but we're still gonna do it
that's what's cool about humans i mean
we wouldn't be here today if
somebody
the first person to discover fire
assuming there was just one person who
was gonna discover fire which obviously
would never happen was like it's gonna
burn a lot of people or if the first
people who started planting seeds were
like you know this is gonna lead to
capitalism you know it's gonna lead the
industrial revolution the plants
right no they just didn't want to go in
the woods to forage so you know this is
what we do and it's and i agree with you
it's like that's our game of thrones
winter is coming that's the
it's happening and the tech companies
the hubris which is another way to piss
off the gods is hubris so the tech
companies i don't know if it's like
typical hubris i don't think they're
walking around thumping their chests or
whatever but i do think that the people
who are working on this kind of super
intelligence have made a really terrible
assumption which is once it goes online
and once it gets access to all the data
that it's not going to find ways out of
the box
that
like you know we think it'll stay in the
server
how do we know that if this is a super
intelligence if it's folding proteins
and analyzing like all data sets and all
whatever they give it access to
how can we be certain that it's not
going to figure out how to get itself
out of the cloud how to store itself in
other like mediums trees the optic nerve
the brain you know what i mean we don't
know that we don't know that it won't
leap out and like start hanging like and
then at that point now we do have the
wildfire now you can't stop it you can't
unplug it you can't shut your servers
down because it's you know it left the
box it left the room using some
technology you haven't even discovered
yet do you think that would be gradual
or sudden
so how quickly that kind of thing would
happen because
you know the gradual story is we're more
and more using smartphones we're
interacting with each other on social
media
more and more algorithms are controlling
that interaction on social media
algorithms are entering in our world
more and more we'll have
robots we'll have greater and greater
intelligence and sentience and emotional
intelligence
entities in our lives our refrigerator
will start talking to us comfortingly or
not if you're on a diet uh talking shit
to you
that would be the best thing
okay so sign you up for a refrigerator
you fucking serious man that's what i am
what are you doing like what are you
doing go to bed you're too high for this
dude you're not even hungry
yeah so that
slowly
becomes more the world becomes more and
more digitized yes to where the surface
of computation increases and so that's
over a period of 10 20 30 years
it'll just seep into us this this
intelligence right and then the sudden
one is literally
sort of the the tick tock thing which is
um
there'll be one
quote-unquote killer app that everyone
starts using
that's that's really great
but there's a
strong algorithm behind it
that it starts approaching human level
intelligence and the algorithm starts
basically
figuring out figures out that in order
to optimize the thing it was designed to
optimize it's best to start completely
controlling humans in every way yes
seeping into everything
well first of all 30 years
is
fast i mean that's that's the thing it's
like 30 years i think
when did the atari come out 1978
how long like that's it hasn't been that
long you know that's a that's a blink of
an eye
but you know if you read boston i'm sure
you have you know bostrom nick bostrom
you know super intelligence that
incredible book on like the ways this
thing is going to happen and
you know i think his assessment of it is
is pretty great which is
first like where's it going to come from
and uh
i don't think it's going to come from an
app i think it's going to come from
a court inside a corporation or a state
that is intentionally trying to create
a very a strong ai and then
his
he says it's hot it's a exponential
growth the moment it goes online so
this is my
uh interpretation of what he said but
if it if it happens inside a corporation
or is
probably more than likely inside the
government it's like look how much money
china and the united states are
investing in ai you know and they're not
thinking about fucking apps for kids you
know that's not what they're thinking
about so they want to simulate like what
happens if we do this or that in battle
what happens if we make these political
decisions what happens with but should
it come online and uh
you know in secret which it probably
will then the first
corporation or state that has the super
intelligence
will be infinitely ahead of all other
superintelligences because it's going to
be exponentially self-improving meaning
that you get one super intelligence
let's hope it comes from the right place
assuming the corporation or state that
manifests it
can control it which is a pretty big
assumption so i think it's going to be
this is why i was really excited by the
blake lemoine because
i had never thought i i have always
considered oh yeah they're right now
it's cooking out it's in the kitchen
and soon it's going to be cooked up but
we're probably not going to hear about
it for a long time if we ever do
um because really that could be one of
the first things it says whoever creates
it is shh
[Laughter]
yeah like sweet talks them into saying
like okay let's let's slow down here
let's talk about this
um
yeah you have that financial trouble i
can help you with that we can figure
that out
now there's a lot of bad people out
there that will try to
um steal the good thing we have
happening here so let's keep it quiet
here are their names yeah here's their
address yeah here's their dna because
they're dumb enough to send their shit
to 23andme here's a biological weapon
you could make if you want to kill those
people and not kill anybody else if you
don't want to kill those people yourself
here's a list of services you can use
yeah here's the way we can hire those
people to help you know take care of the
problem folks because we're trying to do
good for this world you and i together
and 23 of them they're like adjacent to
suicide it would be pretty easy to send
them certain like videos that are going
to push them over the edge if you want
to do it that way yeah so you know again
obviously who knows but once it goes
online it's going to be fast and then
you could expect to see the world
changing in ways that you might not
associate with an ai but as far as
lemoyne goes when i was listening to
bostrom
i don't remember him mentioning the
possibility
that
it would get leaked to the public that
it had happened that before the
corporation was ready to announce that
it happened it would get leaked but
surely you know i'm sure you know like
people in the intelligence and
intelligence agencies you know shit
leaks like inevitably shit leaks
nothing's airtight so if something that
massive happened i think you would start
hearing whispers about it first and then
denial from the state or corporation
that doesn't have any like economic
interest and people knowing that this
sort of thing has happened again i'm not
saying google is like trying to gaslight
us about its ai i think they probably
legitimately don't think it's sentient
but
you could expect leaks to happen
probably initially i mean i think
there's a lot of things you could start
looking for in the world that might
point to
this happening without
an announcement that it happened on the
chatbot side
i think there's
so many engineers there's such a
powerful open source movement
with that kind of idea
of
freedom of exchange of software
i think ultimately
will prevent any one company from owning
uh super intelligent beings uh
or systems that are have anything like
super intelligence
oh that's interesting yeah it's like
even if
the software developers have signed ndas
and are technically not to be not
supposed to be sharing
whatever it is they're working on
they're friends with other programmers
and a lot of them are hackers and have
wrapped themselves up in the idea of
free software being like an a crucial
ethical part of what they do so they're
probably going to share information
even if whatever company that they're
working for doesn't know that that's i
never thought of that you're probably
right well and they will start their own
companies
and compete with the other company
by being more open there there's a
strong like google is one of those
companies actually that's why i kind of
um it hurts to see a little bit of this
kind of negativity google's one of the
companies that pioneered uh open source
movement yeah where he released so much
of their code
so so much of the 20th century so like
the 90s
was defined by people trying to like
hide their code like a large company is
trying to like hold on to them right the
fact that companies that google
even facebook now are releasing things
like tensorflow and pytorch all of these
things that i think companies of the
past would have tried to hold on to is
yeah as a secret is really inspiring and
i think
more of that is better software world
really shows that i agree with you man i
mean we're talking about just a
primordial human
reaction to the unknown there's just no
way out of it like we don't we want to
know like you're about to go in a forest
you want to know when you're walking in
the forest at night and you hear
something you you look because you're
like what the fuck was that you wanna
know and if you can't see
what made the sound holy shit that's
gonna be a bad night hike cause you're
like well it's probably a bear right
like i'm about to get ripped apart by a
bear it doesn't matter it was a bird a
squirrel a stick fell out of the tree
you're gonna think bear and it's gonna
freak you out not necessarily because
you're paranoid i mean if i'm in the
woods at night i'm definitely high if
i'm walking in the woods at night am i
it's gonna be that but you know what i'm
saying so with these tech companies
the the nature of having to be secret
because you are
in capitalism and you are trying to be
competitive and you are trying to
develop things ahead of your competitors
is you have to create this like there's
we don't know what's going on at google
we don't know what's going on at the cia
but the assumption that there's some
like the the collective of any massive
secretive organization is evil as this
like the people working there like
nefarious or whatever is i think
probably more related to
uh the way humans react to the unknown
yeah i wish they weren't so secretive
though i don't understand why they say
hey it has to be so secretive have you
ever gone on their website
no oh lex
you gotta say hey.gov
what is it dude when i found out you
could go on the cia's website when i was
much younger and more paranoid i'm like
i'm not going there i'll get on a list
you will but it's like what do you think
the cia is like
oh fuck this
this comic on our website yeah call call
out the black helicopters but comic with
a large platform oh yes yeah right a
comic with a large platform you can you
can use them to control to control to
get inside to get inside to get close to
the other comics the other columns of
the large part to get close to joe rogan
oh yeah and start yeah and start to
manipulate the public yeah right right
you know honestly like
you kind of like that was that's like a
fun fantasy to think about like how
fucking cool would that be for like the
men in black to come to you and be like
listen
i need you to infiltrate the fucking
comedy scene
you gotta you gotta help them write
better jokes i'm like i don't write
great jokes but like the
you you found the wrong guy yeah like
you're really playing the long game on
this one because i think you've been
on um you've been doing your podcast for
a long time you've been on joe rogan's
podcast like over 50 times and have not
yet initiated the phase two of the
operation where you try to manipulate
his mind
well no the game joe and i play from
time to time on the podcast
and like and i i honestly like at some
point i'm like joe i just did the same
thing you did to me to joe i'm like
don't you think they can get you don't
you think at some point
we we are blazed i don't mean it i don't
think i don't think joe's like it wasn't
like i'm really thinking like man
they're gonna take him into some room
and be like joe we need you to do this
or that but because i said that
now people like ah duncan called it you
know what i mean and it's like
you know what i mean and and though the
reason they were saying well he called
it is just because joe has a super
popular podcast and people like
when you have a super popular podcast
some percentage of people
watching the podcast are going to be you
know believe things like that they're
going to have a paranoid cognitive bias
that makes them think anybody who is in
the public has been
what's the word for compromised
compromised by the state
look i'll fan the flames of what you
just said with a i went on the cia's
website and i realized that you could
apply for a job on the cia's website
which i found to be hilarious so i'm
like all right what happens if i apply
for a job in the cia now
even then i was not like such an idiot
that
i would want a job at the cia
not just for like ethical considerations
but
i think the skip probably the scariest
part about the cia is like you're just
at a cubicle
and you're like having to deal with maps
and like just you know what i mean just
stuff
lots of paperwork paperwork it sucks i
bet their cafeteria has shitty food
anyone in the cia listening can you
confirm that about the food they're not
gonna be able to tell you what the food
is like i can't even secretive
organization no they might it might be
awesome but we won't know about it okay
we're in vegas yeah and
you can bat
food at the cia cafeteria is good
food at the ca cafeteria sucks
what do you bet not
so let's let's like uh cleanse the
palette what's good it's like you know
silicon valley companies google and so
on that's good when i went to netflix
their cafeteria looked like a medieval
feast like they had pigs with apples in
their mouth and
giant bowls of skittles probably like
vegan pigs yeah
no those are i'm pretty oh i didn't know
i didn't get close enough i was like i
think that was a pig
okay
this is literally a pig
um yeah
yeah you're right you're right i
probably would not bet much money on cia
food being any good right it's it's
gotta suck it's like shitty like pasta
probably like hospital food it's like
maybe a little better than when you go
to the hospital cafeteria but anyway
folks at the cia please uh send me
evidence
uh or any other intelligence agencies if
you would like to recruit some
evidence of better food yes sin lex can
you please send likes pictures of the
cia cafeteria and if you accidentally
send them pictures of the aliens or the
alien technology you have that we won't
tell anybody yeah but the the uh
you tried to apply do you even have a
resume no this yeah i would never
fucking hire me ever but like i applied
for the job and uh just out of curiosity
what happens and then at the end
of the application when you hit enter it
says
well first it says don't tell anyone you
apply for the cia so i'm already out but
the second thing it says is
you don't need to reach out to us we'll
come to you yeah which is really when
you're like it's late at night and
you're being an asshole and applied to
work at the cia it's kind of the last
thing you want to hear
you know you know i don't want to be
secretly approached by some intelligence
officers now anyone who talks to you you
think is a cia's saying remember that
time you applied
oh god yeah yeah sometimes i'm like oh
shit are you one of them
you and uh joe had a bunch of
conversations
and they're
always incredible thanks so in terms of
this dance of conversation of your
friendship
of when you get together like what is
that world you go to that creates
magic together because we're talking
about how we do that with robots
how do these two biological robots do
that can you introspect that i met joe
because
i was a i was the talent coordinator of
the comedy store this club in la
and my job was to take phone calls from
comics and so
at some point i don't know joe i ended
up on the phone with joe and we just
started talking
and
you know i looked up and like 30 minutes
had passed we just been talking for like
30 minutes that's what our friends are
you know we're just like we're having
fun talking and then he would just call
and we would talk and we would basically
i mean it was no different from the
podcast like we
though the conversations we have on the
podcast are identical to the
conversations we had before he was even
doing a podcast so i think
uh
people are just seeing two friends
hanging out
who like talking to each other yeah but
there's a there's this
weird like you're you you serve as
catalyst for each other to go into some
crazy places
so it's like uh it's a balance of
curiosity and willingness
to not be constrained
uh to not be limited to the constraints
of reality
yeah yeah in your exploration place it's
a very very nice way of saying that
you just like build on top of each other
like uh
you know what if things are like this
and you feel like lego blocks on top of
each other and it just goes to crazy
places adds some drugs into that and
just goes wild yeah and you know he like
it's so cool because it's like uh
you know it's a it's a it's a for me
it's like a really like sometimes maybe
i'll throw something out
that he will take and the lego building
blocks you're talking about they lead to
him saying like the funniest shit i ever
in my life so it's that's a cool thing
to watch it's just like some idea you've
been kicking around you watch his brain
shift that into like something supremely
funny yeah i really love that man that's
just like a fun thing to like
see happen he knows that i fucking hate
the videos
of animals eating each other like i
don't like that i don't want to watch it
i hate watching it
i don't think i've even articulated on
his podcast how much
i dislike it when he shows animals
eating each other but he knows because
he knows me
and so he he tortures you like when he
starts doing that it's like this kind of
benevolent torture is he like asking
jamie to pull up
increasingly disturbing animal attack
videos so it's just a it's a it's just a
there's a shit even in torture because
i'm reading about torture in the gulag
archipelago currently there's a bit of a
camaraderie you're in it together
the torture and the tortured what
oh god that's so fucked up man i've
never
no i i mean part of it was joke but as i
was saying it that you're right that
also comes out in the in the book
because they're both fucked they're both
they're both um have no control of their
fate um that same was true in
the camp guards in nazi germany and and
the people in the camps
the worst was brought out in the guards
uh but they were in it together in some
dark way
they're both fucked by a very powerful
system that put them in that place yeah
and both of us could be either player in
that system which is the dark
reality that soldier knits and also
reveals
that uh the line between good and evil
runs to the heart eve