In this Plutopia podcast interview, entrepreneur and author Brett Hurt presents the optimistic thesis of his book Love Conquers Fear: humanity can use AI and other rapidly advancing technologies to create broad abundance, cure disease, and expand access to energy and knowledge, but only if it replaces fear, tribalism, materialism, and profit-driven exploitation with love, cooperation, and concern for human flourishing.

Drawing on Buddhism, multiple spiritual traditions, philosophy, and his experience in technology and investing, Hurt argues that mastering one’s mind is essential to overcoming suffering and that wealth and consumption cannot produce lasting happiness.

He acknowledges legitimate concerns about AI, including overvalued startups, data-center demands, corporate concentration, and exaggerated predictions of job losses. But he expects open-source models, cheaper computing, and human-AI partnerships to make advanced intelligence widely accessible rather than render people obsolete.

The discussion also distinguishes intelligence from consciousness, questions whether current AI can reach true general intelligence, and emphasizes that technology alone cannot resolve political and social problems. Ultimately, Brett believes humanity faces a choice between self-destruction and a global awakening rooted in shared identity, spiritual responsibility, and cooperation, and is optimistic that it will choose the latter.

Brett Hurt:

A lot of people — in America, especially — are afraid of AI. The recent reports show that only about 25% of Americans are positive on it. And there’s a reason why there’s a lot of hand-waving going on by CEOs that are doing layoffs at public companies saying that it’s because of AI. It’s really just a convenient excuse. It’s the next excuse that they’re using to not take the tough medicine and talk about the fact that they’re actually laying off people because they overhired during the pandemic, as a lot of people did, as we had this melt up to the ZERP period, the zero interest rate period. And now they’re correcting as a result. Actually, if you look at the job stats, we haven’t had a meaningful change in hiring, and for engineering, it’s actually up to a five-year high right now since AI came online in terms of large language models starting three and a half years ago.