The Ledger, every show

“At the top labs, the AI labs that are really driving this, a lot of people behind closed doors believe that we should in fact do that, that we're being foolish rebels. If we don't listen to artificial intelligence, tell us what to do.”

“The other thing is having sex with robots is going to make us worse at democracy.”

“To say that that is the ultimate end of human life, that that's what we move towards, gives you these kind of sinister conclusions, which is like, we should pass the baton to this higher, better intelligence if we can. You know, in other words, like. There's n…”

“Technology, even if it's immediately available, takes a long time to like propagate. In other words, you could stop right now. Google just did its big announcement, like stop, pause, you know, nothing else. And we would have, A few decades of like very profita…”

“UBI Crucially separates, like, untethers one's contribution from one's reward. And I don't mean this in a kind of moralistic way, like we need contributors. I think we do need contributors, but I mean that the price mechanism in markets is the thing that tells…”

“The stuff we're building now, mind blowing statistic, but it mediates, meaning AI mediates, 20% Of waking life.”

“You look across the landscape and you see universities almost without exception as being a place where people who are either narrow In their specialization, narrow technician or conforming ideologue who really is not thinking about these questions very deeply.”

“They are the very best when it comes to defending things like free speech, right? They're what the ACLU could have been.”

“As we use AI like a thousand times a day, if we are constantly delegating Delegating for micro abdicating what's going to happen. What's going to happen is we're going to develop a habit whereby we don't actually think about our ends. And if we lose that, we l…”

“AI will not be a good central planner. Fundamental epistemological reasons why it will not be a good central planner. Same reasons that were surfaced by Ludwig von Mises in the 19 twenties, enhanced by Hayek decades later same wall.”

“I think, you know, it'll be the biggest infrastructure build that humanity has ever done, I think. I think you could make that argument. I think we will hit a trillion dollars in the early 20 thirties.”

“Actually, the best way in complex systems is to have A very simple uniform set of rules like property rights or contract law or tort liability. And these things are much better at adapting than trying to come up with a patchwork of systems that just lead to in…”

“I think more jobs will arise out of this growth out of, but there'll be unpredictable categories of jobs.”

“Societies that are run by top-down mandate, they're highly, highly fragile. And so this is where, you know, US has a distinct advantage versus China versus Europe. Like these are Extremely maladaptive, though they may be more efficient at any given moment to r…”

“I went to Harvard Business School, which is like a Mecca of capitalism or a West Point of, I don't know what to call it, but not West Point, Naval Academy of capitalism. But there was one class on how markets work and it was called reimagining capitalism. And …”

“So I think Elon's right. I think you need to have people that are focused on the human goods, focused on key ideas that underpin the West, building these systems. And if you don't have that, you're going to have one of the most perfect systems of control ever,…”

“If we don't use AI, we will simply be left behind. I think we have to like embrace that fact. Like it's not optional. You could live a kind of a life like throw, you know, and like in, you know, in the woods, I guess. But for us who want to be part of civiliza…”

“This is a this is a software system that is programmed by another. And so it is very easy to modulate the extent to which and the way in which it delivers said recognition. So it's a, it's an incredible platform for manipulation. In other words, it's not an au…”

“The reason I invoke this is because when you have a small number of AI systems that have the role of giving this medical advice, like they may suppress treatments that work, but are not kind of like sanctioned, if you will. And if that happens, like a lifesavi…”

“And then for me, it brings up like the failed sort of like Soviet communism or the French revolution where like we really thought that we could apply a kind of Technocratic solution. Like we could design a better way. It feels like AI will magnify the possibil…”

“After I left, after I rolled off the project, we had deployed it in Afghanistan, all that, 4000 people came together and they protested Google's involvement.”

“Normal people, people who don't have great evil you know, genetically or pre, or, you know, they weren't engaging in active malice. Became concentration camp guards. Because they outsourced gradually, you know, bit by bit, pieces of their moral deliberation.”

“Human brain works on glucose. There's only so much glucose to go around. We're biologically wired to be passive. So AI presents this very interesting, sinister. It's very good in the sense that it can offload plausibly everything, but it's bad in the sense tha…”

“That's the most common dominant philosophy in the practitioner community, and it's three philosophies in a trench coat, but they're all very entangled. One is effective altruism, One is rationalism, one is long-termism.”

“And so it becomes like the ultimate goal is almost the ultimate end of human life is a kind of technological progress, or it's a progress in harnessing energy. I think that completely confuses the means with the ends. I think technology is incredible equipment…”

“There's a huge decentralized training run that I think prime intellect did recently that, you know, shows that the assumptions everyone has about how AI is just going to be a centralized thing could be wrong.”

“AI touches everything, and so AI regulation is a unique vector for, like, government Power.”

“Well, I think the reason for that is AI researchers don't really know what reasoning is.”

“There are these, like, strong mimetic bubbles in Silicon Valley, where people don't even really think they're busy, and they're like, all my other friends care about existential risk, I'm in, you know.”

“The job, I mean, it's clearly something more about, like, self-architecture or becoming. Like, we develop through the work that we do.”

“The lifetime leisure hours have gone from like 40,000 to 160,000 more. And so this is like the marvel of capitalism is that it's given us more leisure.”

“I would say Austin, I'm bullish on its ability to become, you know, not only a great startup hub, I think it's like probably fifth, fifth best startup hub in the U S and therefore the world. But I think I'm even more bullish on its ability to like fuse the kin…”

“The philosophical definition I would say is like means ends effectiveness. What I mean by that is for a given set for a given end. So for a given goal and means goal, right? Can you select the means to achieve that goal?... So it's like a narrow instrumental c…”

“So that's why I'm so confident in saying, will we? Because if we want to, Like we have entrepreneurs who will make it so, you know, and they'll be convincingly real and they'll be pleasurable and all the rest.”

“What's going to matter is the dispersed local context. It's going to mat what's going to matter is the intimate knowledge of how to serve people on the ground. And the tools are going to be able to do magical things, but applying them in context is going to be…”

“The quants were going to be merging with AI. And this is obvious now, but like, you know, the quant and self-driving worlds are kind of like the same talent base.”

“Whenever you have a technological revolution, you have two choices. You either build for freedom, or you watch as others build for control”

“The other thing that I think is concerning is it could create a hall of mirrors culture where everyone has a kind of a self curated reality.”

“When you use a Bloomberg terminal, you actually want to optimize for decision quality. When you are scrolling at night, you're kind of in engagement mode, right? So what does that tell an entrepreneur? Well, it tells maybe, like, look at those markets Where li…”

“The vast majority of states are pretty regulation happy and want to put up, like, 700 plus different versions.”

“But then you have Apple come out with a paper that shows that if you do minor perturbations, you drop the reasoning score on these systems by like, 65%.”

“So a librarian named Victor Miller runs for mayor of Cheyenne, Wyoming. And he says, I'm going to run because humans have to run, but I'm going to run as the meat avatar of Chachi PT. Okay. So like every question that comes across my desk, I'm just going to tu…”

“So this forty-year-old guy in Wyoming ran for mayor. Recently, and he, his name is Victor, and he runs as the humble meat avatar of an, of a chat GPT, of AI system. So he says, like, I'm gonna run, because humans can run from air, AI can't, but really I'm just…”