The Joe Rogan Experience - #2117 - Ray Kurzweil

Episode Date: March 12, 2024

Ray Kurzweil is a scientist, futurist, and Principal Researcher and AI Visionary at Google. He's the author of numerous books, including the forthcoming title "The Singularity is Nearer." Look for it on June 25, 2024. www.thekurzweillibrary.com Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The Joe Rogan Experience. Train by day Joe Rogan podcast by night all day. Good to see you sir. Great to see you. I was telling you before I'm admiring your suspenders and you told me you have how many pairs of these things? 30 of them. Yeah. How did you?

I wear them every day. Do you really? Every day? Yeah. Why do you like suspenders? Practicality thing? No. It's... Expresses my personality. Hmm. And different ones have different... Different personalities that express how I feel that day. I see. So it's just another style point.

Yeah. See the reason why I was asked? You don't see any hand-painted suspenders. Have you ever seen one? I don't know. I would have not noticed. I only noticed because you were here. I'm not really a suspender aficionado.

But the reason why I'm asking is because you're you know basically a technologist I mean you know a lot about technology when you would think that Suspenders are kind of outdated tech Well people like them clearly yeah, and I'm surprised I haven't caught on But you have to have somebody who can actually paint them. I mean, these are hand-painted suspenders. So the ones that you have, these are right here, these are hand-painted? Yeah.

Interesting. Okay, so that's part of it. So you're wearing art. Exactly. Got it. So... And art is part of technology. I mean, we're using technology to create art now, so...

Well, that's true. And it's in fact the very first, I mean, I've been now in AI for 61 years, which is actually a record. And the first thing I did was create something that could write music. Writing music now with AI is a major field today, but this was actually the first time that it had ever been done. Yeah, that was one of your many inventions.

That was the first one, yeah. So why did you go about doing that? What was your desire to create artificial intelligence music? Well, my father was a musician and I felt this would be a good way to relate to him. And he actually worked with me on it. And you could feed in music, like you could feed in, let's say, Mozart or Chopin, and I would figure out how they created melodies and then write melodies in the same style. So you can actually tell this is Mozart, this is Chopin.

It wasn't as good, but it's the first time that that had been done. It wasn't as good then. Is it, what are the capabilities now? Because now they can do some pretty extraordinary things. Yeah, it's still not up to what humans can do, but it's getting there and it's actually, it's pleasant to listen to. We still have a while to do art, both art, music, so on. Well, one of the main arguments against AI art comes from actual artists who are upset

that what essentially they're doing is they're, like you could say, right, draw a paint, or create a painting in the style of Frank Frasetta, for instance. And what it would be, they would take all of Frasetta's work that he's ever done, which is all documented on the Internet, and then you create an image that's representative of that.

So you're essentially in one way or another, you're kind of taking from the art. Right. But it's not quite as good. It will be as good. I mean, I think we'll match human experience by 2029 that's been my idea It's not it's not as good, which is the best image generator right now Jamie It's there they really changed almost from day to day right now, but like mid-journey was the most right when I first and then from day to day right now, but like mid-journey was the most popular one at first, and then Dolly, I think is a really good one too.

Mid-journey is incredibly impressive. Incredibly impressive graphics. I've seen some of the mid-journey stuff. It's just, it's mind-blowing. Still not quite as good. Not, but boys, it's so much better than it was five years ago. That's what's scary. Yeah.

It's so quick. I mean, it's never going to reach its limit. We're not going to get to a point, okay, this is how good it's going to be. It's going to keep getting better. And what would that look like? If it can get to a certain point, it will far exceed what human creativity is capable of. Yes. I mean, when we reach the ability of humans, it's not going to just match one human, it's going to match all humans, and it's going to do everything that any human can do.

If it's playing a game like Go, it's going to play it better than any human. Right. Well, that's already been proven, right? That they have invented moves. AI has invented moves that have now been implemented by humans in a very complex game that they never thought that AI was going to be able to be because it requires so much creativity. Right.

Arthur, we're not quite there, but we will be there. And by 2029, it will match any person. That's it? 2029? That's just a few years away. This is a I'm actually considered conservative. People think that will happen like next year or the year after. I actually said that in nineteen ninety nine. I said we would match any person by twenty twenty nine so 30 years, people thought that was totally crazy.

And in fact, Stanford had a conference, they invited several hundred people from around the world to talk about my prediction. And people came in, and people thought that this would happen, but not by 2029, they thought it would take 100 years. Yeah, I've heard that. I've heard that, but I think people are amending those. Is it because human beings have a very difficult time grasping the concept of exponential growth?

That's exactly right. In fact, still economists have a linear view. And if you say, well, it's going to grow exponentially, it's a, yeah, but maybe 2% a year. It actually doubles in 14 years. And I brought a chart I can show you that really illustrates this. Is this chart available online so we could show people?

Yeah, it's in the book. But is it available online? That chart? Where Jamie could pull it up? And someone could see it? Just so the folks watching the podcast could see it too. But I could just hold it up to the camera. I can pull it up on pictures they sent. What's the title of it? It says, price performance of computation, 1939 to 2023. You have it. OK, great.

Jamie already has it. Yeah, the climb is insane. It's like the San Juan mountains. What's interesting is that it's an exponential curve, and a straight line represents exponential growth. And that's an absolute straight line for 80 years. The very first point, this is the speed of computers, it was 0.0007 calculations per second per constant dollar.

The last point is 35 billion calculations per second. So that's a 20 quadrillion fold increase in those 80 years. But the speed with which it gained is actually the same throughout the entire 80 years because if it was sometimes better and sometimes worse, this curve would bend. It would bend up and down. It's really very much a straight line. So the speed with which we increased it was the same regardless of the technologies. And the technology was radically different at the beginning versus the end and yet it increased the speed exactly the same for 80 years. In fact, the first 40 years nobody even knew this was happening. So it's not like somebody was in charge and saying,

okay, next year we have to get to here and people would try to match that. We didn't even know this was happening for 40 years. 40 years later, I noticed this for various reasons. I predicted it would stay the same, the same speed increase each year, which it has. In fact, we just put the last dot like two weeks ago and it's exactly where it should be. So technology and computation certainly prime form of technology increases at the same speed and this goes through one piece you might say well maybe it's greater during war no it's exactly the same you can't tell when there's war piece or or anything on here, it just matches from one type of technology to the next.

And it's also true of other things, like, for example, getting energy from the sun. That's also exponential. It's also just like this. It's increased. We're now getting about a thousand times as much energy from the sun that we did 20 years ago. Because the implementation of solar panels and the like. Yes. Has the function of it increased exponentially as well?

The function of, because what I had understood was that there was a bottleneck in the technology as far as how much you could extract from the sun from those panels. No, not at all. No? I mean, it's increased 99.7% since we started. Right. And it does the same every year. It's an exponential curve.

And if you look at the curve, we'll be getting 100% of all the energy we need in 10 years. The person who told me that was Elon. And Elon was telling me that this is the reason why you can't have a fully solar powered electric car because it's not capable of absorbing that much from the sun with a small panel like that. He said there's a physical limitation in the panel size. No, I mean it's increased 99.7% since we started. Since what year? That's about 35 years ago 35 years ago in 99% and 99% of the ability of it as well as the expansion of use I mean you might have to store it we're also making exponential gains in the storage of electricity. Right, battery technology. So you don't have to get it all from a solar panel that fits in a car.

The concept was like could you make a solar paneled car, a car that has solar panels on the roof, and would that be enough to power the car? And he said no. He said it's just not really there yet Right, it's not there yet, but it will be there in ten years You think so yeah He seemed to doubt that he thought that there's a certain It's limitation of the amount of energy you can get from the Sun period how much it gives out and how much those solar panels can absorb Well, you're not going to be able to get it all from the solar panel that fits in a car You're gonna have to store some of that energy. Right.

So, you wouldn't just be able to drive indefinitely on solar power. Yeah. That was what he was saying. But you can obviously power a house. And especially if you have a roof, the Tesla has those solar-powered roofs now. But you can also store the energy for a car. I mean, we're going to go to all renewable energy, wind and sun, within 10 years, including our ability to store the energy. All renewable in 10 years?

So what are they going to do with all these nuclear plants and coal power plants and all these things? That's completely unnecessary. People say we need nuclear power, which we don't. You can get it all from the sun and wind within 10 years. So in 10 years, you'd be able to power Los Angeles with sun and wind? Yes. Really?

Yeah. I was not aware that we were anywhere near that kind of timeline That's because people are not taking into account Exponential growth so the exponential growth also of the grid Because just to pull the amount of power that you would need to charge You know x amount of million if everyone has an electric vehicle by 2035 let's say then Just the amount of change you would need on the grid would be pretty substantial. Well, we're making exponential gains on that as well.

Are we? Yeah. Yeah. I wasn't aware. I had this impression that there was a problem with that, especially in Los Angeles. They've actually asked people at certain times when it's hot out not charge your car looking at the future Mm-hmm. That's true now But it's growing exponentially in every in every field of technology then essentially yeah

Is the bottleneck a battery technology and how how close are they to? Solving some of these problems with like conflict minerals and the things that we need in order to power these batteries? I mean, our ability to store energy is also growing exponentially. So putting all that together, we'll be able to power everything we need within 10 years. Wow. Most people don't think that. So you're thinking that based on this idea that people would have a limited idea.

I didn't imagine that computation would grow like this. And it's just continuing to do that. And so we have large language models, for example. No one expected that to happen like five years ago. Right. And we had them two years ago, but they didn't work very well. So it began a little less than two years ago that we could actually do large language models.

And that was very much a surprise to everybody. So that's probably the primary example of exponential growth. We had Sam Altman on one of the things that he and I were talking about was that AI figured out a way to lie, that they used AI to go through a CAPTCHA system and the AI told the system that it was vision impaired, which is not technically a lie, but it used it to bypass, are you a robot?

What we don't know now is for the language models to say they don't know something. So you ask it a question and if that, the answer to that question is not in the system, it still comes up with an answer. So it'll look at everything and give you its best answer. And if the best answer is not there, it still gives you an answer, but that's considered a hallucination. And we know- A hallucination. Yeah but that's considered a hallucination. And we know hallucination. Yeah, that's what it's called.

Really? So AI hallucination. So they cannot be wrong. They have to be able to answer that. So far, we're actually working on being able to tell if it doesn't know something. So if you ask it something and say, oh, I don't know that. Right now it can't do that. Oh, wow.

That's interesting. So it gives you some answer. And if the answer is not there, it's just like, make something up. It's the best answer. But the best answer isn't very good, because it doesn't know the answer. And the way to fix hallucinations is to actually give it more capabilities to memorize things and give it more capabilities to memorize things and give it more information so it knows the answer to it. If you tell an answer to a question, it will remember that and give you that correct answer.

But these models are not – we don't know everything. And it has to, we have to be able to scan an answer to every single question, which we can't quite do. And it'd be actually better if it could actually answer, well, gee, I don't know that. Right. Like, in particular, like say when it comes to exploration of the universe, if there's a certain amount of, I mean, vast amount of the universe we have not explored.

So if it has to answer questions about that, it would just come up with an answer. Right, it'll just come up with an answer which will likely be wrong. That's interesting. But that would be a real problem if someone was counting on the AI to have a solution for something too soon, right? Right. They don't know everything. Search engines actually are pretty well vetted, and if it actually answers something, it's

usually correct. Unless it's curated. But large language models don't have that capability. So it would be good, actually, if they knew that they were wrong. They'd also tell us what we have to fix. What about the idea that AI models are influenced by ideology, that AI models have been programmed with certain ideologies? I mean, they do learn from people. Yeah. And people certain ideologies. I mean they do learn from people and people have ideologies, some of which are not correct

and that's a large way in which it will make things up because it's learning from people. Right. So right now, if somebody has access to a good search engine, they will check before they actually answer something with a search engine to make sure that it's correct. Because search engines are generally much more accurate. Generally. Right. When it comes to this idea that people enter information into a computer and the computer relies on ideology, do you anticipate that with artificial general intelligence that will be agnostic to ideology, that it'll be able to reach a point where instead of deciding things

based on social norms or whatever the culture is accepted currently, that it would look at things more objectively and rationally? Well eventually, eventually. But we still call it artificial general intelligence even if it didn't do that. And people certainly do are influenced by whatever their people that they respect feel is correct and will be as influenced by as people are and we'll still call it artificial general intelligence. We are starting to check what large language models come up with search engines and that's actually making them more correct. But we have to actually continue on this curve. We need more data to be able to store everything.

This is not enough data to be able to store everything. This is not enough data to be able to store everything correctly. This is a large amount of large language models for which we don't have storage for the data. So that's what's holding us back is data and storage? Yeah, we also have to have the correct storage. So that's really where the effort is going to be able to get rid of these hallucinations. That's a fun thing to say, hallucinations in terms of artificial intelligence. Well, we usually come up with the wrong things. Like large language models is not really the

correct way to talk about this. It does know language, but there's a lot of other things it knows. We're using them now to come up with medicines. For example, the Moderna vaccine, we wrote down every possible type of medicine that might be, that might work. It was actually several billion mRNA sequences, and we then tested them all and did that in two days. So it actually came up with, tested several billion and decided on it in two days.

We then tested it with people. We'll be able to overcome that as well because we'll be able to test it with machines But we was we actually did test it with people for ten months there was still a record So for for machines when they start testing medications with machines How will they audit that so the concept will be that you do you take into account biological variability All the different factors that would lead to a person to have an adverse reaction to a certain compound and then you Program all the known data about how things Interact with the body right? I mean you need to be able to simulate all the different possibilities

right and Then and then come up with like a number of how many people will be adversely affected by something? That's one of the things you would look at. And then efficacy based on age, health. But that could be done literally in a matter of days rather than years. Right. But the question would be like who's in charge of that data and like how does that, how does it get resolved?

And what if, if, if artificial intelligence is still prone to hallucinations and they start using those hallucinations to justify medications, that could be a bit of an issue. Especially if it's controlled by a corporation that wants to make a lot of money. Well, that's the issue. Yeah, to be able to do it correctly. So we'll have to come, there's gonna have to be a point in time where we all decide that artificial intelligence has reached this place where we can trust it implicitly. Right, well that's why they take now the leading candidate

and actually test it with people. But we'll be able to get rid of the testing with people once we can have reliance on the simulation. So we've got to make the simulations correct. But like right now we actually tested with people and that takes, well, it took ten months in this case. When you look at artificial intelligence and you look at the expansion of it and the ultimate place that it will eventually be, what do you see happening inside of our lifetime,

like inside of 20 years? What kind of revolutionary changes on society would this have? Well, one thing I feel will happen in five years by 2029 is we'll reach longevity escape velocity. So right now you go through a year and you use up a year of your longevity, you're then a year older. However, we do have scientific progress and we're making coming up with new cures for diseases and so on. Right now you're getting back

about four months. So you lose a year but through scientific progress you're getting back four months. So you're only losing eight months. However, the scientific progress is progressing exponentially. And by 2029, you'll get back a full year. So you lose a year, but you get back a year, and you pretty much stay in the same place. So by 2029, you'll be static. And past 2029, you'd like to get back more than a year.

You'll get back. Can I be a baby again? more than a year, you'll get back. Can I be a baby again? No, but in terms of your longevity, you'll get back more than a year. Right. So you'll be able to essentially go back in biological age, lengthening of the telomeres, changing the elasticity of the skin. Eventually, you'll be able to do that. It doesn't guarantee you living forever.

I mean, you could have a 10 year old and you could compute that he's got many decades of longevity and he could die tomorrow. So, but overall there be an expansion of the exactly that most people die. And that's something that we that we're gonna get and it's also using the same type of logic as large language models, but that's not language you're actually creating medications So we should call the large event models not large language models because it's not just dealing with language It's dealing with all kinds of things when I talked to you 10 years ago, you were telling me about this pretty extensive supplement routine that you're on. Are you still doing it?

Well, I'm trying to get to the point where we have longevity escape velocity in good shape. Right. And yes, I do follow that. I take maybe 80 pills a day and some injections and so on. Peptides? Yes, peptides. So far it works. Have you ever gone off of it to see what you feel like normally?

No. Well, I do that, right? Yeah. I mean, it seems to work, and there's evidence behind it. How old are you now? Seventy-six. You look good. You look good for seventy-six, man.

That's great. So it's doing something. Yeah. I think it's working. And so your goal is to get to that point where they start doing the you live a year you stay static and then eventually get back to youthfulness. Right and it's not that far off. If you're diligent I think we'll get there by 2029. Now not everybody's diligent so. Right of course. Now, past that, this is for life extension, which is great.

But what about how AI is going to change society? Yes, well, that's a very big issue. And it's already doing lots of things, makes some people uncomfortable. What we're actually doing is increasing our intelligence. I mean right now you have a brain, it has different modules in it to deal with different things, but really it's able to connect one concept to another concept and that's what your brain does. We can actually increase that by for example carrying around a phone. This has connections in it. It's a little bit of a hassle to use.

If I ask you to do something, you've got to kind of mess with it. Actually, it'd be good if this actually listened to your conversation. Oh, it does. And without saying anything, you're just talking and it says, oh, the name of that actress is so-and-so. Yeah, but then it's a busy body. It's like interfering with your life, talking to you all the time. Well, there's ways of dealing with that too.

You shut it off. But we don't, so we haven't done that yet. But that's a way of expanding your connections. What a language model does, it has connections in it as well. And the fact that it's getting now to a point that's getting fairly comparable to the human brain. We have about a trillion connections in our brain. Things like the top model from Google or GPT-4, they have about 400 billion connections approximately. They'll be at a trillion probably within a

year. That's pretty comparable to what the human brain does. Eventually it'll go beyond that and we'll have access to that. So it's basically making us smarter. So if you have the ability to be smarter, that's something that's positive, really. If we were like mice today and we had the opportunity to become like humans, we wouldn't object to that. In fact, we are humans and we don't object to that. We used to be shrews.

And this is going to basically make us smarter. Eventually, we'll be much smarter than we are today. And that's a positive thing. We'll be able to do things that are today that we find bothersome in a way that's much more palatable. The idea of us getting smarter sounds great. Great, it'd be great to be smarter. Right, but people object to that because it's like competition.

In what way? Well, I mean, Google has, I don't know, 60,000, 70,000 programmers and how many programmers exist in the world. How much longer is that going to be a viable career? Because large language models already can code. Not quite as good as a real expert coder, but how long is that going to be? Right. It's not going to be 100 years.

It's going to be a few years. So people see it as competition. I have a slightly different view of that. I see these things as actually adding to our own intelligence, and we're merging with these kinds of computers and making ourselves smarter by merging with it and eventually it'll go inside our brain and be able to make us smarter instantly just like we had more connections inside our own brain. Well I think people have reservations always when it

comes to great change. And this is probably the greatest change. The greatest change we've ever experienced in our lifetimes for sure has been the Internet. And this will make that look like nothing. It'll change everything. And it seems inevitable. I understand that people are upset about it, but it just seems like what human beings were sort of designed to do

Right. We're the only animal that actually creates technology. Yeah, it's a combination of our brain and something else Which is our thumb So I can imagine something. Oh if I take that you can leave from a tree. I could create a tool with it Other animals have actually a bigger brain, like the whale. Dolphins. Dolphins, elephants, they have a larger brain than we do, but they don't have something equivalent to the thumb. Monkey has a thing that looks like the thumb, but it's actually an inch down and It doesn't actually work very well. So they can actually create a tool, but they don't create a tool that's powerful enough to create the next tool. So we're actually able to use our tools and create something that's that much more significant.

So we can create tools, and that's really part of who we are. It makes us that much more intelligent and that's a good thing. So here's US person income per capita. So this is the average amount that we make per person in constant dollars. There it is right here. It's on the screen. We we make a lot more money? But things cost a lot more money too, right? No. This is constant dollars.

Constant dollars in relation to the inflation? Yeah. So this does not show you inflation. These are constant dollars. And so we're actually making that much more each year on average. So if you- But it doesn't take into account inflation, correct? So it's not taking into account the rise of cost of things.

No, it is taking. It is. It is taking the- Oh, it is, okay. So we're making that much more in constant dollars. If you look over the past hundred years, we've made about ten times as much. I wonder if there's a similar chart about consumerism, like just about material possessions.

I wonder if like how much more we're purchasing and creating. I've always felt like that's one of the things that materialism is one of those instincts that human beings sort of look down upon and this aimless pursuit of buying things. But I feel like that motivates technology because the constant need for the newest, greatest thing is one of the things that fuels the creation and innovation of new things. Right. But if you were to go back a hundred years, you'd be very unhappy. Oh yeah.

Because you wouldn't have, I mean, you wouldn't have a computer, for example. You wouldn't have anything. You would have most things you've grown accustomed to. Yeah. I mean, unless that's why you wanted it. Also we didn't live very long. Right, medical advancements. At average, life was 48 years, 1900. It's 35 years and 1800.

Right. Go back a thousand years, it was 20 years. That takes into account child mortality too though, right? But it's also injuries, death. Some people did live long like there was people that live back then if nothing happened to you you did live to be 80 like a normal person but that's was actually very rare I mean because most things happen to people most people by the time you get to 80 you've

had at least one hospital visit something's gone wrong broken arm broken this broken that it was very rare to make it to 80, 200 years ago. But the human body was physically capable of doing it. Right. Well, our human body can go on forever if you fix things properly. There's nothing in our body that means that you have to die at 100 or even 120 We can go on really indefinitely That's the groundbreaking work today, right?

They're treating disease or excuse me age as is as it's as if it is a disease not just inevitable Consequences and our FDA doesn't accept that but they're actually beginning to accept it now. Why does they get older? They're forced into it um And our FDA doesn't accept that, but they're actually beginning to accept it now. Why does they get older? Yeah, exactly. They're forced into it. The concept of artificial general intelligence scares a lot of people also because of Hollywood, right? Because of the Terminator films and things along those lines. How far away do you think are we from actual artificial humans or will we ever get there?

Will we integrate before that takes place? I mean All of this additional intelligence that we're creating Is something that we use and it's just like it came with us So we're actually making ourselves more intelligent And ultimately that's a good thing. And if we have it, and then we say, well gee, we don't really like this, let's take it away.

People would never accept that. They may be against the idea of general intelligence, but once they get it, nobody wants to give that up. And it will be beneficial The blood I started 200 years ago because the cotton Jenny come out and all these people that were making money with the cotton Jenny Were against it and they would actually destroy these machines at night uh... and they said g if this keeps going

all jobs are going to go away and indeed people using the cotton jenny to create more wealth that did it did go away but we actually made more money because we created things that didn't exist then we didn't have anything like electronics, for example. And as we can actually see, we make ten times as much in constant dollars as we did a hundred years ago. And if you were to ask, well, what are people going to be doing? You couldn't answer it because we didn't understand the internet, for example.

And there's probably some technologies down the pipe that are going to have a similar impact. Exactly. And they're going to extend life, for example. But are they going to create life? Well, we know how to create life. Well, that's an interesting question. What do you mean by create life?

What I think is that human beings are some sort of a biological caterpillar that makes a cocoon that gives birth to an electronic butterfly. I think we are creating a life form and that we're merely conduits for this thing and that all of our instincts and ego and emotions and all these things feed into it materialism feeds into it we keep buying and be keep innovating and Technology keeps increasing exponentially and eventually it's going to be artificial intelligence and artificial intelligence is going to create better artificial intelligence and a form of Being that has no limitations in terms of what's capable

of doing and capable of traveling anywhere, not having any biological limitations in terms of... But that's going to be ourselves. I mean, we're going to be able to create life that is like humans but far greater than we are today. With an integration of technology. If we choose to go that route. But that's the prediction that you have, that we will go that route, like a Neuralink

type deal, something along those lines. Right. So I don't see this competition like the things are going to... No, I don't think it's competition. Well, it will seem like that. I mean, if you have a job doing, and suddenly they don't really want you anymore because they can do coding with a large language model, it's going to feel like it's competition. Well there's an issue now with films.

Tyler Perry owns and he was building an $800 million television studio and he stopped production. What is it called, Sora? Is that what it's called, Jamie? He stopped production when he saw the capabilities of AI just for creating visuals, scenes, movies. There's one that's incredibly impressive. It's Tokyo. They're walking down the street of Tokyo in the winter. So it's snowing and they're walking down the street and you look at it, you know, this is insane. This looks like a film. See if you can find that film. Because it's incredible.

But would you want to get rid of that? Get rid of what? The capability. No. No, I don't want to get rid of the capability. Right. But people do want to get rid of it. People that make movies. People that actually film things with cameras and use actors Are gonna be very upset so this this is all fake Which is insane beautiful snowy Tokyo City is bustling the camera moves through this through the bustling city street

Following several people enjoying the beautiful snowy weather and shopping at nearby stalls gorgeous Sakura petals are flying through the wind Along with snowflakes and this is what you get Yeah, I mean this is Insanely good the variability like just the way people are dressed if you saw this somewhere else Look at this a robot's life in a cyberpunk setting if you saw this You would say oh they film this But just looking what they're able to do with animation and kids movies and things along those lines.

Yeah, and it's going to get better. Yeah. It's just incredible. I mean, it's a new art form. So right there, the smoke looks a little uniform. But yeah. I mean, there's some problems with this, but. Not much.

And you imagine what it was like five years ago, and then imagine what it's going to be like five years from now. Absolutely. And it's insane. I mean, no one took into consideration the idea that kids are going to be cheating on their school papers using chat GPT.

But my kids tell me that's a real problem in school now. Yes, definitely. So no one saw that coming, no one saw this coming, and what we're at now is with chat GPT-4, right? 4.5? Is that what it is? Well, 4.5 is coming. 4.5 is coming.

5 is supposed to be the massive leap. It'll be a leap, just like 3 to 4 was a massive leap. But it's going it's gonna continue It's never gonna be finished Right, it'll keep going and it will also be able to make better versions of itself, correct and Yes, well we do that. I mean technology does that already right but if you scale that out a hundred years from now What are you looking at? You're looking at a God. Well, it'll be less than a hundred years.

I mean, so you're looking at a God in 50 years. Less than that. I mean, once we have an ability to emulate everything that humans can do and not just one human, but all humans. Yes. And that's only like 2029. That's only five years from now. And then it will make better versions of that. So it will probably solve a lot of the problems

that we have in terms of energy storage, data storage, data speeds, computation speeds. And also medications. For us. For humans, yeah. Wouldn't it be better just to just download yourself into this beautiful electronic body? Why do you want to be biological? I mean, ultimately that's what we're going to be able to do.

You think that's going to happen? Yeah. So do you think that we'll be able to... I mean, we'll be able to create... I mean, the singularity is when we multiply our intelligence a million fold, and that's 2045. So that's not that long from now, that's like 20 years from now. And therefore, most of your intelligence will be handled by the computer part of ourselves. The only thing that won't be

captured is what comes with our body originally. We'll ultimately be able to do that as well. It'll take a little longer but we'll be able to actually capture what comes with our normal body and be able to recreate that. That also has to do with how long we live, because if everything is backed up, I mean, right now, anytime you put anything into a phone

or any kind of electronics, it's backed up. So, I mean, I could, this has a lot of data. I could flip it and it ends up in a river and we can't capture anymore. I can recreate it because it's all backed up. And you think that's going to be the case with consciousness? That's going to be the case of our normal biological body as well. What's to stop someone like Donald Trump from just making a hundred thousand versions of himself?

Like, if you can back someone up, could you duplicate it? Couldn't you have three or four of them? Couldn't you have a bunch of them? Couldn't you live multiple lives? Yes. Would you be interacting with each other while you're living multiple lives, having consultations about what is St. Louis Ray doing? Well, I don't know.

Let's talk to San Francisco Ray. San Francisco Ray is talking to Florida Ray. It's basically a matter of increasing our intelligence and being able to multiply Donald Trump, for example, that comes with that. Do you think there'll be regulations on that to stop people from making 100,000 versions of themselves that operate a city? There'll be lots of regulations. There's lots of regulations we have already.

You can't just create a medication and sell it to people that cares its disease. Right. We have a tremendous amount of regulations. Sure, but we don't really with phones. With your phone, essentially, if you had the money, you can make as many copies of that as you wanted. Yes There are some regulations we have we regulate everything but yeah, but you're right generally electronics is Doesn't have as much regulation right and when you get to a certain point we will be electronics Yes, yes, I mean

Certainly if we multiply our intelligence a million fold everything of that additional million fold of yours is not regulated right when you think about about the concept of integration and technological integration, when do you think that will start taking place and what will be the initial usage of it? Like what will be the first versions and what would they provide?

Well, we have it now. Large language models are pretty impressive. And if you look at what they can do... I mean, I'm talking about physical integration with the human body, like a neurolink type thing. Right. Some people feel that we could actually understand what's going on in your brain

and actually put things into your brain without actually going into the brain with something like neurolink. So something that sits on the outside of your head? Yeah. It's not clear to me if that's feasible or not. I've been assuming that you have to actually go in. Now Neuralink isn't exactly what we want because it's too slow and it's actually will do what

it's advertised to do. Like if actually know some people like this who were active people and they completely lost the ability to speak and to understand language and so on. And so they can't actually say anything to you. So they can't actually say anything to you and We can use something like Neuralink to actually Have them express something they could think something and then have it be expressed to you right and they're doing that right They had the first patient the first patient that was yeah Yeah, and apparently that person can move a cursor around on a screen. Right, and therefore you can do anything.

It's fairly slow though. And neural link is slow. If you really want to extend your brain, you need to do it at a much faster pace. But isn't that going to increase exponentially as well? Yes, absolutely. So how long do you think it'll be before it's implemented? Well, it's got to be by 2045, because that's when the singularity exists and we can actually multiply our intelligence on the order of a million fold.

When you say 2045, what is the source of that estimation? Because we'll be able to, based actually on this chart, and also the increase in the ability of software to also expand, we'll be able to multiply our intelligence a million fold, and we'll be able to put that inside of our brain, it would be just like it's part of our brain. So this is just following the current graph of progress? Yeah, exactly.

So if you follow the current graph of progress, and if you do understand exponential growth, then what we're looking at in 2045 is inevitable. Right. Does that concern you at all? Are you excited about it? Do you think it's just a thing that is happening and you're a part of it and you're experiencing it? I think it will be enthusiastic about it. I mean, imagine if you were to ask a mouse, would you like to actually be as intelligent as a human? Right.

It's hard to know what people would say, but generally that's a positive thing. Generally. Yeah. And that's what it's going to be like. We're going to be that much smarter. What do you anticipate? And once we're there, is someone going to say, no, I don't really like this.

I want to be stupid like human beings used to be. Nobody's really going to say that. Do human beings now say, gee, I'm really too smart, I'd really like to be like a mouse? Not necessarily, but what people do say is that technology is too invasive, and that it's too much a part of my life, and I'd like to sort of have a bit of an electronic vacation and separate from it. And there's a lot of people that I know that have gone to. But nobody does that. Nobody becomes stupid like we used to be when we were mice.

Right. But I'm not saying stupid. I'm saying some people, just like being a human, the way humans are now. Because one of the complications that comes with the integration of technology is what we're seeing now with people. Massive increases in anxiety from social media use, being manipulated by algorithms, the effect that it has on culture, misinformation and

disinformation and propaganda. There's so many different factors that are at play now that make people more anxious and more depressed statistically than ever. I'm not sure we had more anxiety today than we used to have. Well, we certainly had more when the Mongols were invading. We certainly had more anxiety when we were worried constantly about war. But I think people have a pretty heightened level. They take war. I mean, 80 years ago, we had 100 million people die in Europe and Asia from World War II. We're very concerned about wars today and they're terrible, but we're not losing millions

of people. All right. But we could. We most certainly could with what's going on with Israel and Gaza, what's going on with Ukraine and Russia. But it could easily escalate. But it's thousands of people. It's not millions of people.

For now. Yeah. But if it escalates to a hot war where it's involving the entire world. What would really cause a tremendous amount of danger is something that's not really artificial intelligence. It was invented when I was a child, which is atomic weapons.

Right. I remember when I was like five or six, we'd actually go outside, put our hands behind our back to protect us from a nuclear war. Yeah, drills. And it seems to work. We're still here.

Do you remember those things where they tell kids to get under the desk? Yes, that's right. We went under the desk and put our... Which is hilarious, as if a desk is going to protect you from a nuclear bomb. Right, but that's not AI. Right. is going to protect you from a nuclear bomb. Right, but that's not AI. Right. No, but AI applied to nuclear weapons

makes them significantly more dangerous. And isn't one of the problems with AI is that AI will find a solution to a problem. So if you have AI running your military and AI says, what do you want me to do? And you say, well, I'd like to take over Taiwan. And AI says, well, this is how to do it, and just implements it with no morals, no thought of any sort of diplomacy or just force.

Right. It hasn't happened yet because we do have people in charge and the people are enhanced with AI. yet because we do have people in charge and the people are enhanced with a i and they i can actually help us to avoid that kind of problem uh... by thinking through the implications of different solutions for if it has some sort of autonomy but if we get to the point where one superpower has a i

artificial general intelligence the other one doesn't. How much of a significant advantage would that be? I mean, I do think there are problems. Basically, there's problems with intelligence, and we'd like to say stupid, but actually, it's better to be intelligent. I believe it's better to be to have great intelligence. Overall, sure. Right. But my question was, if there's a race to achieve AGI, how close is this race?

Is it neck and neck? I mean, who's at the lead and how much capital is being put into these companies that are at the lead and whoever achieves it first, if that is under the control of a government, it's completely dependent upon what are the morals and ethics of that government? What was the constitution? What if it happens in China? What if it happens in Russia? What if it happens somewhere other than the United States? And even if it does happen in the United States, who's controlling it? I mean, the knowledge of how to create these things is pretty widespread.

It's not like somebody can just capitalize on a way to do it and nobody else understands it. Knowledge of how to create a large language model or how to create the type of chips that would enable you to create this is actually pretty widespread. So do you think essentially the competition is pretty even in all the countries currently. And there's also probably espionage. There's espionage where they're stealing information and sharing information and selling information. And in terms of differences, the United States actually has superior AI compared to other places. Well, that's good for us.

I mean, we're actually way ahead of China, I would say. Right. But China has a way of figuring out what we're doing in copying it. We're pretty good at that. They have been, yeah. Yeah. So do you have any concern whatsoever in the idea that AI gets in the hands of the wrong people?

So when it first gets implemented, that's the big problem is before it exists, before artificial general intelligence really exists, it doesn't, and then it does, and who hasn't? And then once it does, can that AGI stop other people from getting it can you Programming it program it to make sure you can you sabotage grids? Can you do whatever you can to take down the internet in these opposing places? Could you inject their computations with viruses? What could you do to stop other people from getting to where you're at if you have an infinitely superior intelligence first. If that's what your goal is, then yes, you could do that.

Are you worried about that at all? Yes, I worry about it. What is your main worry? I mean, are you worried about the implementation of artificial intelligence? What's your main worry? I mean, I'm worried if people who have a destructive idea of how to use these capabilities get into control. Right. And that could happen.

And I've got a chapter in the book about perils that are like what we're talking about. And what do you think that could look like if the wrong people got to hold this technology? Well, if you look at actually who controls atomic weapons, which is not AI, some of the worst people in the world. And if you were to ask people right after we used two atomic weapons within a week, 80 years ago,

what's the likelihood that we're gonna go another 80 years and not have that happen again? Everybody would say zero. Right, right. But it actually has happened. Chocking. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think there's actually some message there. Mutual assured destruction. But the thing is, would artificial general intelligence- But that has not happened. Right. It has not happened yet. But would artificial general intelligence in the control of the wrong people negate that mutually assured destruction that keeps people from doing things?

Obviously we did drop bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We did. We did indiscriminately kill who knows how many hundreds of thousands of people with those weapons. We did it. And if human beings were capable of doing it because no one else had it, if artificial general intelligence reaches that sentient level and is in control of the wrong people, what's to stop them from doing? There's no mutually assured destruction if you're the one who's got it. You're the only one who's got it. And you possibly, my concern is that whoever gets it could possibly stop it from being spread everywhere else and control it completely. And then you're

looking at a completely dystopian world. Right. So that's, if you ask me what I'm concerned about, it's along those lines. It's that. Yeah, that's what, because that's what I always want to get out of you guys, because there's so many people that are rightfully so, so high on this technology and the possibilities for enhancing our lives. But the concern that a lot of people have is that at what cost and what are we signing

up for? Right. But I mean if we want to, for example, live indefinitely, this is what we need to do. We can't do... What if you're denying yourself heaven? You ever thought of that possibility? I know that's a ridiculous abstract concept, but if heaven is real, if the idea of the afterlife is real, and it's the next level of existence, and you're constantly going

through these cycles of life, what if you're stepping in artificially denying that? It's hard to imagine. It is hard to imagine, but so is life. So is the universe itself. So is the big bang. Right. My father died when I was 22. engine, but so is life. So is the universe itself. So is the big bang. So is black holes. My father died when I was 22, so it's more than 50, 60 years ago. And he was actually

a great musician and he created fantastic music, but he hasn't done that since he died. And there's nothing that exists that is at all creative based on him. We have his memories. Actually created a large language model that represented him. I can actually talk to him. You do that now? Yeah.

It's in the book. When you do that, have you thought about implementing some sort of a SORA type deal where you're talking to him? Well, you can do that now with language. Right. But I mean, physically, like looking at him like you're on a zoom call with him. That's a little bit in the future to be able to actually capture the way he looks, but that's also feasible.

It seems pretty feasible. Yeah. And certainly it could be something representative of what he looks based on photographs that you have, right? So, things like that is a reason to continue so that we can create that and create our own ability to continue to exist. You talk to people and they say, well, I don't really want to live past 90 or whatever 100. But in my mind, if you don't exist, there's nothing for you to experience. That's true in this dimension. My thought on that, people saying that I don't want to

live past 90, it's like, okay, are you alive now? Do you like being alive now? What's the difference between now and 90? Is it just a number or is it a deterioration of your physical body and how much effort have you put into mitigating the deterioration of your natural body so that you can enjoy life now? Exactly and we've actually seen who would want to take their lives. People do take their lives. If they are experiencing something that's miserable, if they're suffering physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually, and they just cannot stand the way life is carrying on, then they

want to take their lives. Otherwise people don't. If they're enjoying their lives, they continue. And people say, I don't want to live past 100. But when they get to be 99.9, they don't want to disappear unless they're suffering. Unless they're suffering. That's what's interesting about the positive aspects of AI. Once we can manipulate human neurochemistry to the point where we figure out what is

causing great depression, what is causing anxiety, what is causing a lot of these schizophrenic people. And we definitely had that before. We didn't have the terms. We didn't understand schizophrenia. But people definitely had it. For sure. But what if we get to a point where

we can mitigate that with technology? Where we can say, this is what's going on in the human way. That's why we're continuing. Right. I was saying, that's a good thing. That's a positive aspect of this technology. And think about also profoundly. Think about how many people do take their lives and with

this technology would not just live happily but also be productive and also contribute to whatever society is doing. That's why we're carrying on with this. But in order to do that we do have to overcome some of the problems that you've articulated. Yeah. I think what a lot of people are terrified of is that these people that are creating this technology, there's oversight, but it's oversight by people that don't necessarily understand it the way the people that are creating it. And they don't know what guardrails are in place.

How safe is this? Especially when it's implemented with some sort of weapons technology, you know, or some sort of a military application, especially a military application that can be insanely profitable. And the motivations behind utilizing that are that profit. And then we do horrible things and somehow justify it. I mean, I think democracy is actually an important issue here because democratic nations tend not to go to war with each other. And I mean, you look at the way we're handling military technology, if everybody was a democracy, I think there'd be much less war. As long as it's a legitimate democracy, it's not controlled by money. Right.

As long as it's a legitimate democracy, it's not controlled by the military industrial complex or the pharmaceutical industry or whoever puts the people that are in elected places who puts them in there? How do they get funded? And what do they represent once they get in there? Are they there for the will of the people? They're there for their own career? Do they bypass the safety and the future of the people for their own personal gain, which

we've seen politicians do? There's certain problems with every system that involves human beings. This is another thing that technology may be able to do. One of the things, if you think about the worst attributes of humans, whether it's war, you know, crime, some of the horrible things that human beings are capable of. Imagine that technology can find what causes those thoughts and behaviors in human beings and mitigate them. You know, I've joked around about this, but if we came up with something that would elevate dopamine, just 300 percent worldwide, there would be no more war. It would be over. Everybody

would be loving everybody. We'd be interacting with each other. Well, that's the point of doing this. But there would also be no sad songs. Well, you need some blues in your life. Need a little bit of that too. Or do we? Maybe we don't. Maybe that's just a byproduct of our monkey minds, and that one day we'll surpass that and get to this point of enlightenment. Enlightenment seems possible without technological innovation but maybe not. I've never really met a truly enlightened person. I've met some people that are pretty close. But if you could get there with technology, if technology just completely elevated the human consciousness to the point where all of our conflicts come erased.

Just for starters, if you could actually live longer, quite aside from the motivations of people, most people die not because of people's motivations but because our bodies just won't last that long. Right. And a lot of people say, you know, I don't want to live longer, which makes no sense to me. Why would you want to disappear and not be able to have any kind of experience? Well, I think some people don't think you're disappearing. I mean, there is a long-held thought in many cultures that this life is but one step and that there is an afterlife.

And maybe that exists to comfort us because we deal with existential angst and the reality of our own inevitable demise. Or maybe it's a function of consciousness being something that we don't truly understand. And what you are is a soul contained in a body, and that we have a very primitive understanding of the existence of life itself and of the existence of everything. Yeah. Well, I guess that makes sense, but I don't really accept it. I mean, if you...

There was no evidence, right? Yeah. Right. But is it there's no evidence because we're not capable of determining it yet and understanding it or is it just because it doesn't exist? That's the real question. It's like, is this it? Is this everything or is this merely a stage?

And are we monkeying with that stage by interfering with the process of life and death? Well, it makes sense. But I don't really see the evidence for that. I could see from your perspective. I don't see the evidence of it either, but it's a concept that is not... Look, just when you start talking to strength theorists and they start talking about things existing and not existing at the same time, or particles in superposition, like you're talking about magic, you're talking about something that's impossible to wrap your head around, even just the structure of an atom.

Like, what? What's in there? Nothing? What's... How much of it is space that though the entire? Existence of everything in the universe seems preposterous, but it's all real and we only have a limited grasp of understanding of what this is really all about and what processes are really in place right, but if you look at people's perspective if somebody gets disease and is kind of known they could only live like another six months, people are not happy with that. No, well they're scared. They're scared to die.

It's a natural human instinct. It's what kept us alive for all these hundreds of millions of years. Yes, but very few people would be happy with that. And if you then had something, gee, we have this new device, you could take this and you won't die. Almost everybody would do that. Sure. But would they appreciate life if they knew it had no end?

Would it be the same thing? Or would it be like a lottery winner just goes nuts and spends all their money and loses their marbles because they can't believe they can't die? Well, first of all, it's not guaranteed to live forever. Sure. You can get in an accident. Something can happen. You can get injured. But if we get to a point where you have automated cars that significantly reduce the amount of automobile accidents. Well, also we can back up everything, everything in our physical body as well as-

How far away are we from that? That idea of, I mean, we don't really truly understand what consciousness is, correct? Right. So how would we be able to manipulate it or reduplicate it to the point where you're putting it inside of some kind of a computation device? We know to be able to create computation that matches what our brain does. That's what we're doing with these large language models. Right.

And we're actually very close now to what our brain can do with these large language models and it will be there like within a year. And we can back up the electronic version and we'll get to the point where we can back up What our Brain normally does so it will be able actually back that up as well We'll be able to detect what it is and back that up as just like our computers So we'll create it in the form of an artificial version of everything that it is to be a human being. In terms of emotions, love, excitement. And that's going to happen over the next 20 years.

It's not a thousand years. But will that be a person? I mean, or will it be some sort of a zombie? Like, what motivations will it have? If you can take human consciousness and duplicate it, much like you could duplicate your phone and you make this new thing, what does that thing feel like? Does that thing live in hell? What does that experience like for that thing?

What about large language models? Do they really exist? Can they actually, I mean they can talk. They certainly do, but would you want to be one? Are we different than that? Yeah, we're people. We're chickens, I give you a hug. You pet my dog, you listen to music.

You have, you have- We'll be able to do all of that as well. Right, but will you want to, will you even care? The thing is like a lot of what gives us joy in life is biological motivations. There's human reward systems that are put in place that allow us to... Well, it's going to be part of who we are. Right.

And we just like a person, and we'll also have our physical bodies as well, and that'll also be able to be backed up. And we'll be doing the things that we do now, except we'll be able to have them continue. So if you get hit by a car and you die, there's another ray that just pops up. Oh, we got the backup ray. And the backup ray will have no feelings at all about having it had died and come back to life. Well, that's a question.

Yeah. I mean, why wouldn't it be just like Ray is now? Why wouldn't it? If we get to a certain point, if we figure out that if biological life is essentially some kind of technology that the universe has created, and we can manipulate that to the point where we understand it, we get it, we've optimized it, and then replicate it, physically replicate it. Not just replicate it in form of, you know, on a computer, but an actual physical being.

Right, well that's where we're headed. Do you anticipate that people will be happy with whatever they have? Because if you decide, I don't like being 5'6", I wish I was 6'6", I don't like being a woman, I like, I want to be a man, I don't want to be Asian, I want to be, a woman. I like I want to be a man. I don't want to be Asian I want to be you know, whatever I want to be a black person. I want to be Will actually be able to do all of those things Simultaneously and so on we're not going to be limited by those kinds of right happens happenstance

Which is going to be very strange like what will human beings look like if you give people the ability to manipulate your physical form we do things now that's impossible even 10 years ago we certainly do but we don't change races size sex gendered height we don't we don't do all those in the the radical increase in just your intelligence like what is that going to look like what what kind of an interaction is it gonna be between two human beings when you have a completely new form? You're much different physically than you ever were when you were alive.

You're taller, you're stronger, you're smarter, you're faster, you're basically not really a human anymore. You're a new thing. I mean, we're expanding who we are. We're already expanded who we are from, you know. Sure. Right. Over a course of hundreds of thousands of years, we've gone from being Australia apithic

as to what we are now. That has to do with the pace at which we make changes. We can make changes now much more quickly than we could 100,000 years ago. Right, but if we can manipulate our physical form with no limitations, what are the... We have six armed people that can fly? What is it going to look like? Well, do you have a problem with that?

Yeah, I would discriminate against six armed people that can fly. That's the one area I allow myself to give prejudice to. Okay. No, I'm just curious as to how much time you've spent. Seven armed people would be okay. Yeah, seven armed people is cool because it's like, you know, maybe five on one side, two on the other. No, I'm just curious as to how much time you've spent thinking about what this could look like.

And I don't think it's going to be as simple as, you know, it's going to be Ray Kurzweil, but Ray Kurzweil as like a 30-year-old man, 50 years from now. I think it's probably going to be, you're going to be all kinds of different things. You could be kind of whatever you want You'd be a bird I mean what's what's to stop if we can get to manipulate the physical form and we can take consciousness and put it into a physical But that's a description. I think of something that's positive Rather than negative you could be a giant eagle. I mean a negative is I'm with that that wanted to destroy things, getting power.

Sure. And that is a problem. Well, it's certainly improvement in terms of the viability. But having seven arms and being like an eagle and so on, I mean, and you can also change that. Right. So, I think that's a positive aspect and we will be able to do that kind of thing. Sure.

If you want to look at it in a binary fashion, positive and negative, but it's also going to be insanely strange. It's not going to be as simple as there'll be people that are living in 2069. Well, it seems strange once it's first reported. If it's been reported now for five years and people are constantly doing it, you won't find it that strange. It'll just be life. So that's what I'm asking.

When you think about the implementation of this technology to its fullest, what does the world look like? What does the world look like in 2069? I mean the kind of things that you can imagine right now will be able to do. And it might seem strange when it first happens, but when it happens for the, you know, billions of time, it won't seem that strange. And maybe you're like being an eagle for a few minutes. It's certainly interesting. It's certainly it's certainly interesting. I'm just I just wonder how much time you've spent thinking about what this

world looks like with the full implementation of the kind of exponential growth of technology that would exist if we do make it to 2069? Well, I did write a book, Danielle, and this young girl has fantastic capabilities, and no one really can figure out how she does this. She actually takes over China at age 15. And she makes it a democracy. And then she actually becomes president of the United States at 19.

Chester cost created a constitutional amendment that at least she can become president at 19. That sounds like what a dictator would do. Right, but unlike a dictator, she's very popular and she writes very good music. And this is one artificial intelligence creature? Yes. And how was she created? It never says that she gets these capabilities through AI.

I didn't want to spell that out. But that would be the only way that she could do this. Right. Unless it's some insane freak of genetics. And she's like a very positive person. She's very popular. Yeah, but she's the only one that has that. Yeah. Right. She doesn't give it to everybody, which is where it gets really weird. You have a cell phone, I have a cell phone. Pretty much everybody has one now. What happens when everybody gets the kind of technology we're discussing?

Well, it shows you the benefit that she has it, and if everybody gets it, that would be even more positive, right? Perhaps, yeah. I mean, that's the best way of looking at it, that we become a completely altruistic, positive, beneficial to each other, society of integrated minds. A benefit. If you have more intelligence, you'd be more likely to do this. Yes.

Yeah, for sure. That's the benefit. So we live longer and we're also smarter than making more rational decisions towards each other. So overall, when you're looking at this, you just don't concentrate really on the negative possibilities. Well, no. I mean, I do focus on that as well.

I mean, in my... But you think overall it's net positive? Yes. It's called intelligence. And if you have more intelligence, we'll be doing things that are more beneficial to ourselves and other people. Trevor Burrus-Do you think that the experiences that we're having right now- David Bowman-I mean, like right now, we have much less crime than we did 50 years ago.

Now, if you listen to people debating presidential politics, they'll say crime is worse than ever. But if you look at the actual statistics, it's gone way down. And if you actually go back like a few hundred years, crime and murder and so on was far, far higher than it is today. It's actually pretty rare. So the kind of additional intelligence that we've created is actually good for people if you look at the actual data. Sure. If you look at Stephen Pinker's work, right, scale it from 100 plus years ago to today,

things generally always seem to be moving in a better direction. Right. Well, Pinker didn't credit this to technology. He just looks at the data and says it's gotten better. What I try to do in the current book is to show how it's related to technology. And as we have more technology, we're actually moving in this direction. So you feel it's a function of technology that we're moving in this direction? Absolutely. I mean, that's why.

I mean, look at the technology. In 80 years, we've multiplied the amount of computation 20 quadrillion times. And so we have things that didn't exist two years ago. Right. When you think about the idea of life on Earth and that this is happening and that we are on this journey to 2045, to the singularity, do you consider whether or not this is happening elsewhere in the universe or whether it's

already happened? Yeah, we see no evidence that there's any form of life, let alone intelligent life, anywhere else. And I can say, well, we're not in touch with these other people. It is possible. But it seems, I mean, given the exponential impact of this type of technology, we would based on over a long period of time. Some people that might be ahead of us could be ahead of us certainly thousands of years, even millions of years. And so they'd be like way ahead of us and they'd be doing galaxy-wide engineering. How is it that we look out there and we don't see anybody doing galaxy-wide engineering?

And maybe we don't have the capability to actually see it. I mean, the universe is, what's the 13.7 billion years old or whatever it is? But even just incidental capabilities would affect galaxies. We would see that somehow. Would we, if we were at the peak, if there is intelligent life in the universe, some form of that intelligent life has to be the most advanced. And what if we are underestimating our position in the universe, that we are the most advanced? Well, that's what I'm saying. That's what I'm saying.

But maybe there's something that's like 10 years, maybe there's an industrial age. I think there's a good argument that we are ahead of other people. But we don't have the capability of observing the goings on of a planet 5,000 light years away. We can't see into their atmosphere. We can't look at high resolution video of activity on that planet. Yeah, but if they were doing galaxy-wide engineering, I think we would notice that. If they were more advanced than us, maybe we would. But what if they're not? What if they're at the level that we're at? Well, that's we would notice that. If they were more advanced than us, maybe we would, but what if they're not?

What if they're at the level that we're at? Well, that's what I'm saying. What if we're at the peak and this is like a... I think it's an argument that we are at the peak. What if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence gets implemented and then that becomes the primary form of life and it doesn't have the desire to do anything in terms of like galactic engineering But even just incidental

Things would affect whole galaxies like what things like we're doing are we affecting the whole galaxy? No, not yet, right? But what if it's like us but it gets to the point where it becomes artificial intelligence and then it doesn't have emotions It doesn't have desires. It doesn't have ambitions. So why would it decide to explain why would it not have those things? Well, we'd have to program it into it But it would probably decide that that's foolish and that those things have caused all these problems all the problems in human race What's our number one issue war? What is war called caught caused by it's caused by? Ideologies it war caused by? It's caused by ideologies. It's caused by acquisition of resources, theft of resources, violence.

War is not the primary thing that we are motivated by. It's not the primary thing we're motivated by, but it's existed in every single step of the way of human existence. But it's actually getting better. I mean, just look at the effect of war. Sure. I mean, we have a couple of wars going on. Now, they're not killing millions of people like they used to.

Right. My point is that if artificial intelligence recognizes that the problem with human beings is these emotions and a lot of it is fueled by these desires, like the desire to expand, the desire to acquire things, the desire to achieve. Well, the emotion is positive. I mean, music and other things. To us. To us.

But if it gets to the point where artificial intelligence is no longer stimulated by mere human creations, creativity, all these different things. Why would it even have the ambition to do any sort of galaxy-wide engineering? Why would it want to? Because it's based on us it is based on us until it decides it's not based on us anymore That's my point if it realized that like if we're based on a Very violent chimpanzee and we say, you know what, there's a lot of what we are because of our genetics that it really are a problem and this is what's causing all of our violence, all of our crime, all of our war. If we just

step in and put a stop to all that, will we also put a stop to our ambition? I would maintain that we're actually moving away from that. We are moving away from that, but that's just natural, right? That's natural with our understanding and our mitigations of these social problems. Right. So if we expand that even more, we'll be even more in that direction. As long as we're still we. But as soon as you become something different, why would it even have the desire to expand?

If it was infinitely intelligent, why would it even want to physically go anywhere? Why would it want to? What's the reason for our motivation to expand? What is it? It's human. So the same humans that were tribal creatures that roamed, the same humans that stole resources from neighboring villages, this is our genes, right? This is what made us, that got us to this point.

If we create a sentient artificial intelligence that's far superior to us, and it can create its own version of artificial intelligence, the first thing it's going to engineer out is all these stupid emotions that get us in trouble. If it just can create happiness and joy from just from programming, why would it create happiness and joy through the acquisition of other people's creativity, art, music, all those things?

And then why would it have any ambition at all to travel? Why would it want to go anywhere? Well, I mean, it's an interesting philosophical problem. Right. It is a problem because a lot of what we are and the things that we create is because of all these flaws that you would say. If you were programming us, you would say, well, what is the cause of all these issues that plague the human race?

I wouldn't necessarily say that they're flaws. Murder is a flaw. Isn't it a flaw? But that's way down. Right. But it's a technology that moves ahead. If it happens to you, it's a flaw. And crime is a flaw.

All these thefts are fraud. Those are flaws. If we could engineer those out, what would be the way that we'd do it? Well, one of the things we do, we get rid of what it is to be a person. Because what it is, is corrupt people that go down these terrible paths and cause harm to other people, right? You're taking a step there that our ability to feel emotion and so on is a flaw. No, I'm not.

I'm saying that it's the root of these flaws. That greed and envy and lust and anger are the root. I'd like to go to the bathroom. Yeah, okay. Go to the bathroom. We'll come back and we'll talk about flaws. And we're back. Provide an answer to that.

I mean as I think about myself now, it's when I have emotions that are positive emotions, like really getting off on a song or picture or some new art form that didn't exist in the past, that's positive. That's what I live for, relating to another person in a way that's intimate. So I mean, the idea, if we're actually more intelligent, we'd not to get rid of that, but to actually enjoy that to a greater extent. Hopefully. What I'm saying is that... Yes, the things that can go wrong, but lead us in an incorrect direction.

I'm not even saying it's wrong. I'm not saying that it's going to go wrong. I'm just saying that if you wanted to program away some of the issues that human beings have in terms of what keeps us from working with each other universally all over the globe. What keeps us from these things? We're actually doing that more than we used to do. Sure, sure, but also not. You know, we're also like massive inequality. You've got people in the Congo mining cobalt with sticks that powers your cell phones. There's a lot of real problems with society today. Right, but there used to be even more of that.

Mm-hmm. There's a lot of that though. There's a lot of that. And if you looked at greed and war and crime and all the problems with human beings, a lot of it has to do with these biological instincts, these instincts to control things, these built-in genetic codes that we have that are from our Our ancestors because when we haven't gotten there yet, right, but when we get there You think we will be a better version of a human being and we will be able to experience all the good positive aspects of being human being the art and creativity and all these different things. I hope so.

And actually, if you look at what human beings have done already, we're moving in that direction. Right. It may not seem that way. No, it does seem that way to me. It does overall, you know, but it's also like, you know, if you look at a graph of temperatures, it goes up and it goes down and it goes up and it goes down, but it's moving in a general direction. We are moving like generally positive direction. Why do we want to continue moving in this same direction? Yeah, I don't think that it's not a guarantee. I mean, you can describe things that would be horrible,

and it's feasible. Yeah. It could be the end of the human race, right? Or it could be the beginning of the next race of this new thing. Well, I mean, when I was born, we created nuclear weapons. And people were concerned. Very soon, we had hydrogen weapons, and we have

enough hydrogen weapons to wipe out all humanity. We still have that. That didn't exist like a hundred years ago. Well, it didn't exist 80 years ago. So that is something that concerns me. And you could do the same thing with the artificial intelligence. It could also create something that would be very negative.

But what I'm getting at is like, what do you think life looks like if it's engineered? What do you think human life looks like if it's engineered by a far superior intelligence and what would it change about what it means to be a person? I mean if you first of all we would base it on what human beings are already so we become better versions of ourselves. For example, we'd be able to overcome life-threatening diseases.

And we're actually working on that, and that's going to go into high gear very soon. Yes, but that's still being a human being. If you're implementing large-scale artificial intelligence, you're essentially a superhuman. You're a different thing. You're not what we are. If you have the computational power... Well, if you're superhuman, you have the human being as part of it. For now. But this is the thing. If you're engineering this artificial intelligence and you're engineering this with essentially like a superior life form, it's going to look at it logically. It's going to look at the issues that human beings have logically and say, well, we don't

need this. This is a problem. This is what we needed when we were primates and we're not that anymore. We're in this new thing. We're going to, like, who cares what the movie's like? We don't need this. This is a problem. This is what we needed when we were primates, and we're not that anymore. This new thing. We're going to... Who cares what the movie's like? It's just a thing that's tricking your body into pretending that it's involved in drama,

but it's not really... Well, you're making certain assumptions about what we'll create. No, I'm just making an assumption. I mean, in my mind, we would want to create better music and better art and better relationships. Well, the relationship should be all perfect eventually if we keep going in this general direction. Well, it's not perfect. I mean... But if you get artificial intelligence, we're all reading each other's minds and everyone's

working towards the same goal. Well, no, you can't read each other's minds. Ever? We can create, yes, we can create privacy that's virtually unbreakable and you could keep the privacy to yourselves. But can you do that as technology scales upward? If it continues to move, I mean, it's difficult like your phone. Anyone can listen to you on your phone.

I mean, anyone who has a significant technology. significant technology. Actually it has pretty good technology already. You can't really read someone else's phone. You're definitely good. Yeah, if you have Pegasus, you can hack into your phone easily, not hard at all. The new software that they have, all they need is your phone number. All they need is your phone number and they can look at every text message you send, every email you send, they can look at your camera, they can turn on your microphone, easy. We have ways of keeping total privacy and if it's not built into your phone now it will be. Right, but it's definitely not built into your phone now.

The security people that really understand the capabilities of intelligence agencies, they 100% can listen to your phone. 100% can turn on your camera. 100% can turn on your camera. 100% can record your voice. Yes and no. I mean, we have an ability to keep total privacy in a device. But from who?

You can keep privacy from me because I don't have access to your device. But if I was working for an intelligence agency and I had access to a Pegasus program, I am in your device. Now I've talked to people- Only because it's not perfect. We can actually build much better privacy than exists today.

But the privacy that we have today is far less than the privacy that we had before we had phones. I don't really quite agree with that. How so? the privacy that we had before we had phones. I don't really quite agree with that. How so? If you didn't have a phone, okay, and you were at home having a conversation, a sensitive conversation about maybe you didn't pay as much taxes as you should, there's no way anybody would hear that.

But now your phone hears that. If you have an Alexa in your home your your Alexa hears you say that people have been charged with crimes because Alexa heard them committing murder we actually know how to create perfect privacy in your phone and if your phone doesn't have that that's just an imperfection in the way we're building these things now but it's not just an imperfection in the way we're building these things now. But it's not just an imperfection, it's sort of built into the program itself because that's what fuels the algorithm, is it has access to all of your data. It has access to all of your, what you're interested in, what you like, what you don't like, you can opt out of it, especially you, you've got a Google phone.

That thing is just a net scooping up information. We know how to build perfect privacy. How do we do it? I mean if it's not built into your phone now, it should be. Unless they don't want it to be built in there because there's an actual business model and it not being built in there. Okay, but it can be done and if people want that, it'll happen. But you recognize the financial incentive in not doing that, right?

Because that's what, like a company like Google, for instance, that's where they make the majority of their money is from data or a lot of their money, I should say. Well, I mean, there's actually a lot of effort that goes into keeping what's on your phone private. It's not that easy. Private from some people, but not really private. It's only private until they want to listen. And now the capability of listening to your phone is super easy. Not really.

No. With the Pegasus program, it's very easy. Well, that has to do with imperfections in the way phones are created. Right, but I think it's a feature. I think part of the feature is that they want as much data from you and knowing about what you're doing, what you're talking about. Have you ever had a conversation with someone and then you see an ad for that thing on Google? Um... It happens.

Yes, but... So something's going on where it's listening to your conversations. It's picking up on key words. It's not picking up on everything. Not yet. Well, it's not unless it wants to. Like I said, if they're using a program,

an intelligence program, to gather information from your phone, it is. And you're basically, you got a little spy that you carry around with you everywhere you go. Unless you're using, I mean there's- I mean if you think that's a major issue, we could build phones that are impossible to spy on. Maybe.

But if we did, well there are some phones that likes graphene Do you know about that? You know about what people that they take a Google phone and they put a different Linux based operating system on it Makes it much more difficult to track and there's multi levels of protection There's a bunch of phones that are being made there are security phones But I mean we lose access to apps You lose access to a lot of the features that people rely on when it comes to phones, like for instance, like if you have GPS on your phone,

as soon as you're using GPS, you're easy to find, right? So you lose that privacy. They want to know where Ray's phone is, they know exactly where Ray's phone is. And that's where you are and you're with your phone, they've got you tracked everywhere you go. It's complicated. If this were a major issue, we could definitely overcome that. I think it's a major issue, but I don't think it's a major concern for most people. But it's because they reap the benefits of it. The algorithm is specifically tailored to their interests, the kind of things we put

on phones. But you can't opt out of it unless you just decide to get a flip phone. But even if you do, they can figure out where you are to triangulate you from cell phone towers. I mean, we give up certain things in order to get the benefits of shawls. Yeah, we do. If what you're giving up is a grave concern, we could overcome that. We know how to do that. Yeah. If people agree that the benefit of overcoming that outweighs the loss in the financial loss

that you would have with not having access to everybody's data and information. Well, I mean, what you're giving up is a certain type of data that you want, certain type of capability that you could buy, and so they can advertise that to you, and people feel that that's okay. Yeah. But for example, keeping your email private is quite feasible. It's possible, but it's also easy to hack.

People could be reading your emails all the time. You should probably assume that they do. Well, it's a complicated issue, but we keep, for example, your emails private, and generally we actually do that. Generally, for most people. But my point is, as this technology scales upward, when you have greater and greater computational power, and then you're also integrated with this technology, how does that keep whatever group is in charge

from being able to essentially access the thing that is inside your head now. How do you, if you have a technology that's going to be upgraded and you're going to get new, you know, new software that's going to keep improving as time goes on, what kind of privacy would be involved in that if you're literally having something that can get into your brain? And if most people can't get into your brain, can intelligence agencies get into your brain? Can foreign governments get into your brain?

Like what does that look like? I'm not looking at this as a negative. I'm just saying, if you're just looking at this, just completely objectively, like what are the possibilities that this could look like? I'm trying to paint like a weird picture of what this could look like. Well a lot of things you want to share. I mean music and so on. It's desirable to share that and you'd want that to be shared. If you didn't share anything you'd be pretty lonely. Sure. What do you think about the potential

for a universal language? Do you think that one of the things that holds people back is the Rosetta Stone, the Tower of Battle, the idea that we can't really understand what all these other people are saying. We don't know how they think. If we can develop a universal worldwide language through this, do you think it's feasible?

I mean, all languages that we have were created. They're all... Well, we have a certain means of changing one language into another. Right. That's what I'm saying. And we're doing that now with some, like Google does that, would translate. And the new Samsung phones do that in real time. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I wrote about that in 1989 that we'd be able to have universal translation between languages. But do you think that the adoption of a universal language? But it's actually pretty good. It's pretty good. But there's also context that's missing, because there's different cultural significance.

There's different ways that people say things. There's gendered language and other nationalities used and other countries used. Well, you could try to get that into the language translation as well. You can, but it's a little bit imperfect, right? This is what I'm saying. You might have something that's said very quickly and you'd have to translate it into much longer language in order to capture that. But would a universal language be possible?

If you're creating something... Why would you need that? Because what we have, all of our language is pretty flawed. Ultimately. I mean, we use it, but how many versions of your do we have? How many, there's a bunch of different weird things about language that's imperfect because it's old. It's like old technology.

If we decided to make a better version of technology through artificial technology and say, listen, instead of trying to translate everything, now that we're super powerful intelligent beings that are enhanced by artificial intelligence, let's create a better, more superior, universally adopted language. Maybe. I mean, do you see that as a major need? Yeah, I do. Yeah. I think that would change a lot. I mean, we'd lose all the amazing nuances of cultures,

which I don't think is good for us as human beings. But we're not going to be human beings. So maybe it would be better if we could communicate exactly the way we prefer to. Well, it would be human beings. And in my mind, the human being is someone who can change both ourselves and means of communication to enjoy better means of expressing art and culture

and so on. No other animal really quite does that, except human beings. So that is an essence of what it means to be a human being. For now. But when you're a mind reading eagle and you're flying around, are you really a human being anymore? Yes, because we are able to change ourselves. So that's just a new definition of what a human being is.

What are your thoughts on simulation theory? If you mean that we're living in a simulation... Well, first of all, some people believe that we can express physics as formulas and that the universe is actually able to It's capable of computation, and therefore everything that happens is a result of some computation. And therefore the universe is capable of, we are living in something that is computable. And there's some debate about whether that's feasible, but that doesn't necessarily mean that we're living in a simulation.

Generally, if you say we're living in a simulation, you assume that some other place and teenagers in that world like to create a simulation. So they created a simulation that we live in and you want to make sure that they don't turn the simulation off so we'd have to be interesting to them and so they keep the simulation going. But the whole universe could be capable of simulating reality and that's what we live in and it's not a game, it's just the way the universe works. I mean, what would the difference be if we lived in a simulation? This is what I'm saying.

If we can, and we're on our way to creating something that is indiscernible from reality itself, I don't think we're that far away from that, many decades away from having some sort of a virtual experience that's indiscernible from regular reality. I mean, we try to do that with games and so Right and work those are far superior to what they were just I mean I'm I'm younger than you but I can remember Pong remember Pong. It was groundbreaking You could play a video game on your television. This is crazy. It was so nuts and we're way beyond that now Yeah, now you look at like the unreal 5 engine. It's insane

How beautiful it is and how incredible and what the capabilities are. So if you live in that, that's kind of a simulation. Right, but as you expand that further and you get to the point where you're actually in a simulation and that your life is not this carbon-based biological life, feeling and texture that you think it is, whether you're really a part of this thing that's been created. This is where it gets real weird with probability theory, right? Because they think that if a simulation is possible, it's more an unlimited amount of things that we could simulate in experience. And so it's hard to say we're living in the simulation because a lot of what we're doing is it's living in a computational world anyway, so it's basically being simulated.

In a way, yeah. And if you were some sort of an alien life form, wouldn't that be the way you go, instead of like taking physical metal crafts and shooting them off into space? Wouldn't you sort of create artificial space, create artificial worlds, create something that exists in the sense that you experience it. And it's indiscernible to the person experiencing it. But if you're intelligent enough, you'll be able to tell what's being simulated and what's not. Up to a point. Until it actually does all the same things that regular reality does.

It just does it through technology and maybe that's what the universe is. But that's okay. We could still experience what's happening. Yeah. And we could also experience people doing galaxy-wide engineering, which not all of which would be simulated. So the galaxy-wide engineering is the main thing that you look at to the point where I don't see any evidence for life outside.

Well, there's definitely no real evidence that we see other than these people that talk about UFOs, UAPs and pilots and all these people that say that there's these things. Well, we basically don't see any evidence that life has simulated outside of our own life. We can simulate things and experience it. We don't see any evidence that other beings are doing that elsewhere. But this is based on such limited data, though, right? I mean, look at what limited data we just have of Mars.

Rover, rolling around, satellites, and orbit. Very limited data with something that's just one planet over. We don't really have the data to understand what's going on in Alpha Centauri. It's possible that it's simulated life elsewhere. I mean, we don't see any evidence for it but it's possible. Is it something that intrigues you or do you just look at it like there's no evidence so I'm not going to concentrate on that? I'm very interested to see what we can achieve because we're actually out I can see they were on that path and And so it doesn't take a lot of curiosity in my part to imagine other people simulating

life and enjoying it. I'm much more interested to see what will be feasible for us and we're not that far away from it. So over the next four years, five years, you think we're going to be able to far surpass the ability of human beings. We're going to be able to stop aging and then eventually reverse aging. And then 2045 comes along. What does that look like? Well, one of the reasons we call it singularity is because we really don't know. I mean, that's why it's called singularity. Singularity in physics is where you have a black hole, no

energy can get out of a black hole, and therefore we don't really know what's going on in it and we call it a singularity So this is a historical singularity based on the kinds of things we've been talking about And again, we don't really know what that will be like and that's why we call it a singularity Another way of looking at it, I mean, we have mice and they have experiences. It's a limited amount of complexity because that particular species hasn't really evolved very much. And we'll be going beyond what human beings can do. So to ask a human being what it's like to be a human being in singularity, it's like asking a mouse, what would it be like if you were to evolve to become like a human being in singularity is like asking a mouse,

what would it be like if you were to evolve to become like a human? Now if you ask a mouse that, it wouldn't understand the question, it wouldn't be able to formulate an answer, it wouldn't even be able to think about it. And asking a card human being what it's going to be like to live in a singularity is a little bit like that.

So it's just who knows? It's going to be wild. We'll be able to do things that we can't even imagine today, right? Well, I'm very excited about it. Even though it's scary, I know I ask a lot of tough questions about this because these are my own questions. This is like what bounces around inside my own head. Well, that's why I'm excited about it also because it basically means more intelligence

and we'll be able to think about things that we can't even imagine today. And solve problems. Yes. Yes. Including like dying, for example. Yeah. Listen, man, I'm glad you're out there. It's very important that people have access to this kind of thinking.

And you've dedicated your whole life to this. In this book, Ray Kurzweil, the Singularity is Near When We Merge with AI. It's available now. Did you do the audio version of it? That's being worked on now. Are you doing it? It's coming out June.

No. No? I want to hear it in your voice. It's your words. Yeah, that's what people say. Yeah, why don't you do it? You should do it. You know what you should do.

Just get AI to do it. Why waste all that time sitting around doing it basically We do it now yesterday a hundred percent looking they could take your voice from this podcast and And do this book in an audio version easy Do you know what they're doing now at Spotify they're translating this podcast. They're going to translate it to German, French and Spanish. And it's going to be like your voice in perfect Spanish, my voice in perfect Spanish. This actually came up yesterday. I'll think about that. Pretty wild. It's 100%. You should do that. My friend Duncan does that all the time. He'll have friends, text friends, or send a voice message.

It's a fake voice message. That's ridiculous. You know, talking about how he's marrying his cat or something like that. It's just like, just, but he does it with AI and it sounds exactly like whoever that person is. Okay. So that's the, that's the solution. Have AI read your, of course you should have AI read your book. I can't believe we even would think of you sitting down for 40 hours or whatever it would take. It would probably take more than that to read this whole book and then if you mess up, you got to go back and start again.

Well, certainly that's going to be feasible. Whether it's feasible now to get all the nuances correct. I bet it's pretty close. Yeah. I bet it's pretty close right now. But it has to be very close because we're doing it like in the next month or so. I bet I bet they don't you think they could do it Jamie Yeah, I think they could do it right now listen Ray. I appreciate you very much. Thank you very much for being here

I think I'm and thank you for this book When is it available? June 24, June I got an early copy kids. kids. Thank you, sir. Really appreciate you. Thank you very much. My pleasure. Bye, everybody.