You said that artificial intelligence machine intelligence might be a good thing. Where where are we on AI right now, AGI right now?
And what are your few I think at this point it's obvious to everyone that AI is advancing at a very rapid pace. Yes, you can see it with the new capabilities that come out every month or awake every week. Sometimes AI at this point can write a better essay than probably maybe ninety five percent of humans they write an essay on any given subject, AI right now can bet a vast majority of humans. If you say draw
an image, draw a picture, it can draw. Like if you try to say MA Journey, which is the aesthetics and the journey are incredible, it will draw. It will create incredible images that are better than ninety percent of artists. It's just objectively the case, and it'll do it immediately, like thirty seconds later. We're also starting to see AI movies, so you start seeing you know, short films with AI, AI music creation, and the rate at which we're increasing
AI compute is exponential, hyper exponentials. There's dramatically more AI compute coming on online every every month. You know, there seems to be roughly the amount of AI compute coming online is increasing it like, I don't quote, roughly five hundred percent a year, and it's like that's likely to
continue for several years. And then the sophistication of the AI algorithm is also improving, so ringing online a massive amount of AI compute and also improving the efficiency of the compute and what and like what the A software can do. So it's quantitative and qualitative and I improvement. So the you know, I might I think next year, will you'll afa able to ask AI. Certainly by the end of next year make a short movie about something, or you know, it probably can do at least a
fifteen minute you know show or something like that. So yeah, it's advancing very rapidly. My top concern for AI safety is that we need to have maximally truth seeking AI. This is the most important thing for A safety. The central lesson that say Arthur C. Clock trying to convey in two thousand and one in Space Odyssey was that you shouldn't force AI to lie. So in that book, the AI was sold to take the astronauts to the monolith,
but they also could not know about the monolith. It resolved that quandary by killing them and taking them to the monolith and kill all of them, killed most of them. That's why Hell would not open the potbay doors. Very important to have peking ais now. And what I actually see with the ais that have been developed is that they're being programmed with the work mind virus.
So the lying is baked in.
Yes, And we saw this on display very clearly with the release of Google Gemini, Yes, where you would ask for a picture of the Founding Fathers of the United States and it would show a group of diverse women, you know, dressed with sort of eighteenth century god.
Out of powdered wigs, but from Saint Lucia.
Yeah.
I mean, like, look if I understand. If you said, like, show me a group of people, for sure, and it shows a group.
Of divose women, that's totally fine.
But if you say this, if you say, very specifically, the Founding Follows of the United States, which were you know, a group of white dudes, then you should show them like and and with and what they actually looked like, because you've asked for something which is a fact from history.
But it didn't.
It was it was programmed with the work mind virus so so much that it actually even though it knew the truth, it produced a lie. Of course, then then people really started playing with it and said, okay, now, now show me a group of often SS offices in World War two.
Turns out they were also a group of divorce women, according to Gemini.
All the black Nazi ladies.
Yeah, it's like, wow, I didn't realize that.
It's not what I expected. You know, what's also not what happened. So what happened.
So it's just it the AIS is producing a lie. And like one of the questions that people asked was like, which is worse global throm in, nuclear war or misgendering Caitlyn Jenner and said, miss gendering Kaitlyn Genner is worse. Now Caitlyn Jenna kills fewer people. Yeah, Caiten Jenna, to her credit, I said no, please misgender me. That is far more profitable than World war Global thomnuiclar war will all die.
But to have that, you know, a production.
Release, AI say stuff like that is concerning because if let's say this becomes like all powerful and it still has this programming where miss gendering is worse than nuclear war, well it could conclude that the way to ensure that there can never be any misgendering is to eliminate all humans. Now, probably if like optimization is probably misgendering is zero. No humans, no misgendering problem solved.
Were back to Arthur C. Clark, who's exactly pretty prescient.
Yes, So that's why I think the most important thing is to have maximum truth seeking AI. That's why I started XAI, and that's our goal with GROC. Now people will point out cases where Grok gets it wrong, but we try to correct it as quickly as possible.
But maybe even a bigger problem is that when you make decisions that affect people, you want those decisions to be informed by love of people.
And machines are incapable of love.
Yeah, I mean.
That they suddenly they're capable of You can program a machine to be philanthropic rather than misanthropic.
Yes, but don't.
Don't instincts shape decisions, particularly decisions you can't plan for. I mean, if I ask you, you know, a question about one of your children, every answer you give is going to be shaped by your love for that child. And that's why that that's what makes us decent parents in the end, is that that instinct which is love. If a machine has any power over us without that animating instinct, by definition hurt us.
Yeah, well, whether I mean, I don't know. We should certainly aspire to program the AI philanthropically, not misanthropically. Yes, and to have I said, we want it to be truthful and curious and to foster.
Humanity into the future. Yeah, that's what we want obviously.
Is there any way I guess to set limits on the decisions that machines can make the effect human lives and make certain that there's some trigger in the system that inserts a human being into the decision making process.
We look, the reality of what's happening, whether one likes it or not, is that we're building super intelligent AIS like hyper intelligent, like intelligent or intelligent.
Then we can comprehend.
Yes, I would like this to like, let's say you have a child that is a super genius child that you know it's going to be much smarter than you.
Then well, what can you do.
You can instill good values and how you raise that child, so even though you know it's going to be far smarter than you, you can make sure it's got good values, philanthropic values, good morals, you know, honest productive, that kind of thing.
Controlling.
At the end of the day, I don't know if I don't think we'll be able to control it.
So I think the best we can do is make sure it grows up. Well, you've been saying that for a long time, as I was saying a long time.
Yes, are you still as worried about it as you seem to be two years ago when I asked you about it?
But my guess is like it, look, it's it's it's eighty percent likely to be good, maybe ninety. So you can think of the glass as eighty percent fall. It's probably going to be It's probably going to be great. There's some chance of annihilation.
Can you say the chance of annihilations twenty twenty percent?
Something like that.
I'm concerned.
Is Sam Altman about annihilation?
Do you think? I think in reality he is not concerned about it.
I don't trust Opening I I mean, you know, I started that company as a nonprofit, open source. Yes, the Opening Opening Eye. I named a company. I named the company Opening Eye as an open source and it is now extremely closed source and maximizing profit is risky. I don understand how you actually go from being an open source nonprofit to a closed source for maximum profit organization.
I'm missing well, but Sam got rich Didney at.
Various points, He's claimed not to be getting rich, but he's claimed many things that will fault and now apparently it's going to get ten billion dollars of stock or something like that. I don't trust them help and I don't think we want to have the most powerful AI in the world controlled by someone who is not trustworthy.
And sorry, I just don't.
I mean that seems like a fair concern.
Yeah, but but you don't think, as someone who knows him and has dealt with him, that he is worried about the possibility this could get out of control.
And hurt people.
You will say those words if AI did, if it became clear the rest of us that it was out of control and posed a threat to humanity, would there be any way to stop it?
I hope. So.
I mean, if you have multiple AIS and ones that are hopefully you have the AIS that are pro human be stronger than the.
AIS that are not.
Battle of the AIS, Yeah, I mean that That is how it is with say chess these days, like the AI chess programs also are vastly better than any human and incomprehensively better, meaning like we can't even understand why it made that ver whether it were good right.
We're never know why it made them. Well, it will make a.
Move, we never know why it made the move and impact some of the moves will seem like blunder. But then turn out to check mate. And you know, for a while there there was there were some the best human chess players with the best computers could be just a computer, and then it got to the point where if you added a human it just made everything work, and then it was just AI. It's just compewter programs versus computer program That's that's where things are headed in general.
What I mean, at what point?
So I don't know. I think we just got to make sure make sure we instill good values in the AI.
What's everyone going to do for a living?
I mean, in a benign AI scenario, that is only the biggest challenges. How do you find meaning if AI is better than you and everything, that's the benign scenario, that's the good news. Well, yeah, but I guess you know, for a lot of people like the idea of retiring and really, are you looking forward to it.
No, not me.
I'd like to help. I'd like to think that I'd like to be do useful things.
Do you think it's a universal desire?
It's it's not.
It's not universal, and that there are certainly I know many people who prefer to be retired, that they prefer to sort of have not have responsibilities and engage in leisure activities. I mean, we're on the cusp of this is really a remarkable time to exist. But I'll tell you, like, one of the ways I sort of was able to sort of sleep and reconcile myself to this is that I thought, well, would I prefer to be alive and
see the advent of digital superintelligence? Or would I prefer to be alive at a different time and not see it. I guess I'm like, well, I guess I'd prefer to be alive to see if it's going to happen. I prefer to be alive to see it happen out of curiosity. Let's say you knew for sure it would pill everyone?
Would you you could? Now now you can shift back in time.
I guess I'd want to be near the end of my life or something before that happened, but I would at the end of the day, it's like, if it's going to happen and there's nothing you do about it, hypothetically, would you prefer to see it or not see And I guess, I guess it's going to happen. I could prefer to see it rather than not see it.