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Roman Yampolskiy: These Are The Only 5 Jobs That Will Remain In 2030 & Proof We're Living In a Simulation!
01:29:17
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- [00:01]
Host
This episode is brought to you by Lifelock. When you visit the Doctor, you probably hand over your insurance, your ID and contact details. It's just one of the many places that has your personal info, and if any of them accidentally expose it, you could be at risk for identity theft. Lifelock monitors millions of data points a second. If you become a victim, they'll fix it, guaranteed, or your money back. Save up to 40% your first year@lifelock.com podcast terms apply. You've been working on AI safety for two decades, at least.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah, I was convinced we can make safe AI, but the more I looked at it, the more I realized is not something we can actually do.
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Host
You have made a series of predictions about a variety of different dates. So what is your prediction for 2027? Dr. Roman Yampolsky is a globally recognized voice on AI safety and associate professor of computer science.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
He educates people on the terrifying truth.
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Host
Of AI and what we need to save humanity.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
In two years, the capability to replace most humans and most occupations will come very quickly. I mean, in five years, we're looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we've never seen before. Not talking about 10%, but 99%. And that's without superintelligence, a system smarter than all humans in all domains. So it would be better than us at making new AI, but it's worse than that. We don't know how to make them safe. And yet we still have the smartest people in the world competing to win the race to superintelligence.
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Host
What did you make of people like Sam Altman's journey with AI?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So a decade ago, we published guardrails for how to do AI right? They violated every single one. And he's gambling 8 billion lives on getting richer and more powerful. So I guess some people want to go to Mars, others want to control the universe, but it doesn't matter who builds it. The moment you switch to super intelligence, we will most likely regret it terribly.
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Host
And then by 2045.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Now this is where it gets interesting.
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Host
Dr. Roman Gympolski. Let's talk about simulation theory.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I think we are in one and there is a lot of agreement on this. And this is what you should be doing in it so we don't shut it down first.
- [02:13]
Host
Just give me 30 seconds of your time. Two things I wanted to say. The first thing is a huge thank you for listening and tuning into the show week after week means the world to all of us. And this really is a dream that we absolutely never had and couldn't have imagined getting to this place and. But secondly, it's a dream where we feel like we're only just getting started. And if you enjoy what we do here, Please join the 24% of people that listen to this podcast regularly and follow us on this app. Here's a promise I'm going to make to you. I'm going to do everything in my power to make this show as good as I can now and into the future. We're going to deliver the guests that you want me to speak to, and we're going to continue to keep doing all of the things you love about this show. Thank you. Dr. Roman Yampolski, what is the mission that you're currently on? Because it's quite clear to me that you are on a bit of a mission, and you've been on this mission for, I think, the best part of two decades at least.
- [03:09]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I'm hoping to make sure that superintelligence we are creating right now does not kill everyone.
- [03:21]
Host
Give me some context on that statement, because it's quite a shocking statement.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Sure. So the last decade, we actually figured out how to make artificial intelligence better. Turns out if you add more compute, more data, it just kind of becomes smarter. And so now, smartest people in the world, billions of dollars, all going to create the best possible super intelligence we can. Unfortunately, while we know how to make those systems much more capable, we don't know how to make them safe, how to make sure they don't do something we will regret. And that's the state of the art right now. When we look at just prediction markets, how soon will we get to advanced AI? The timelines are very short. Couple of years, two, three years, according to prediction markets, according to CEOs of Top Labs. And at the same time, we don't know how to make sure that those systems are aligned with our preferences. So we are creating this alien intelligence. If aliens were coming to Earth and you had three years to prepare, you would be panicking right now. But most people don't even realize this is happening.
- [04:43]
Host
So some of the counterarguments might be, well, these are very, very smart people. These are very big companies with lots of money. They have a obligation and a moral obligation, but also just a legal obligation to make sure they do no harm. So I'm sure it'll be fine.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
The only obligation they have is to make money for the investors. That's the legal obligation they have. They have no moral or ethical obligations. Also, according to them, they don't know how to do it yet? The state of the art answers are, we'll figure it out when we get there, or AI will help us control more advanced AI. That's insane.
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Host
In terms of probability, what do you think is the probability that something goes catastrophically wrong?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So nobody can tell you for sure what's going to happen, but if you're not in charge, you're not controlling it. You will not get outcomes you want. The space of possibilities is almost infinite. The space of outcomes we will like is tiny.
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Host
And who are you and how long have you been working on this?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I'm a computer scientist by training. I have a PhD in computer science and engineering. I probably started work in AI safety, mildly defined as control of bots, at the time. 15 years ago.
- [06:01]
Host
15 years ago. So you'd been working on AI safety.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Before it was cool, before the term existed. I coined the term AI safety.
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Host
So you're the founder of the term AI safety?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
The term, yes, not the field. There are other people who did brilliant work before I got there.
- [06:15]
Host
Why were you thinking about this 15 years ago? Because most people have only been talking about the term AI safety for the last two or three years.
- [06:21]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It started very mildly, just as a security project. I was looking at poker bots and I realized that the bots are getting better and better, and if you just project this forward enough, they're going to get better than us, smarter, more capable. And it happened. They are playing poker way better than average players. But more generally, it will happen with all other domains, all the other cyber resources. I wanted to make sure AI is a technology which is beneficial for everyone. So I started work on making AI safer.
- [06:57]
Host
Was there a particular moment in your career where you thought, oh my God.
- [07:03]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
First five years at least. I was working on solving this problem. I was convinced we can make this happen, we can make safe AI. And that was the goal. But the more I looked at it, the more I realized every single component of that equation is not something we can actually do. And the more you zoom in, it's like a fractal. You go in and you find 10 more problems and then 100 more problems. And all of them are not just difficult, they're impossible to solve. There is no seminal work in this field where like we solved this, we don't have to worry about this. There are patches, there are little fixes we put in place, and quickly people find ways to work around them. They drill, break whatever safety mechanisms we have. So while progress in AI capabilities is exponential, or maybe even hyper exponential, progress in AI safety is linear. Or constant. The gap is increasing. The gap between how capable the systems are and how well we can control them, predict what they're going to do, explain their decision making.
- [08:10]
Host
I think this is quite an important point because you said that we're basically patching over the issues that we find. So we're developing this core intelligence and then to stop it doing things or to stop it showing some of its unpredictability or its threats, the companies that are developing this AI are programming in code over the top to say, okay, don't swear, don't say that rude word, don't do that bad thing.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Exactly. And you can look at other examples of that. So HR manuals, right, they have those humans, they're general intelligences, but you want them to behave in a company so they have a policy, no sexual harassment, know this, know that. But if you're smart enough, you always find a workaround. So you're just pushing behavior into a different, not yet restricted subdomain.
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Host
We should probably define some terms here. So there's narrow intelligence, which can play chess or whatever. There's artificial general intelligence, which can operate across domains. And then superintelligence, which is smarter than all humans in all domains. And where are we?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's a very fuzzy boundary. We definitely have many excellent narrow systems, no question about it. And they are super intelligent in that narrow domain. Protein folding is a problem which was solved using narrow AI and it's superior to all humans in that domain in terms of AGI. Again, I said if we showed what we have today to a scientist from 20 years ago, they would be convinced we have full blown AGI. We have systems which can learn, they can perform in hundreds of dom. They better than human in many of them. So you can argue we have a weak version of AGI. Now, we don't have super intelligence yet. We still have brilliant humans who are completely dominating AI, especially in science and engineering. But that gap is closing so fast. You can see, especially in the domain of mathematics. Three years ago, large language models couldn't do basic algebra. Multiplying three digit numbers was a challenge. Now they're helping with mathematical proofs. They're winning mathematics Olympiads competitions. They are working on solving millennial problems, hardest problems in mathematics. So in three years, we closed the gap from subhuman performance to better than most mathematicians in the world. And we see the same process happening in science and in engineering.
- [10:37]
Host
You have made a series of predictions and they correspond to a variety of different dates. And I have those dates in front of me here. What Is your prediction for the year 2027?
- [10:51]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We're probably looking at AGI as predicted by prediction markets and tops of the labs.
- [10:57]
Host
So we'd have artificial general intelligence by 2027. And how would that make the world different to how it is now?
- [11:06]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So if you have this concept of a drop in employee, you have free labor, physical and cognitive, trillions of dollars of it. It makes no sense to hire humans for most jobs. If I can just get a $20 subscription or a free model to do what an employee does. First, anything on a computer will be automated. And next, I think humanoid robots are maybe five years behind. So in five years, all the physical labor can also be automated. So we're looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we've never seen before. Not talking about 10% unemployment, which is scary, but 99%. All you have left is jobs where for whatever reason you prefer, another human would do it for you. But anything else can be fully automated. It doesn't mean it will be automated in practice. A lot of times technology exists, but it's not deployed. Video phones were invented in the seventies. Nobody had them until iPhones came around. So we may have a lot more time with jobs and with world which looks like this. But capability to replace most humans and most occupations will come very quickly.
- [12:22]
Host
Okay, so let's try and drill down into that and stress test it.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So.
- [12:30]
Host
A podcaster like me would you need a podcaster like me?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So let's look at what you do. You prepare, you ask questions, you ask follow up questions and you look good on camera.
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Host
Thank you so much.
- [12:46]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Let's see what we can do. Large language model today can easily read everything I wrote and have very solid understanding. Better, I assume you haven't read every single one of my books. That thing would do can train on every podcast you ever did. So it knows exactly your style, the types of questions you ask. It can also find correspondence between what worked really well, like this type of question, really increased views. This type of topic was very promising. So you can optimize, I think, better than you can because you don't have a data set. Of course, visual simulation is trivial at this point.
- [13:23]
Host
So you can make a video within seconds of me sat here and so.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We can generate videos of you interviewing anyone on any topic very efficiently. And you just have to get likeness approval, whatever.
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Host
Are there many jobs that you think would remain in a world of AGI? If you're saying AGI is potentially going to be here whether it's deployed or not, by 2027, what kind? And then, okay, so let's take out of this any physical labor jobs for a second. Are there any jobs that you think a human would be able to do better in a world of AGI still?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So that's the question I often ask people in the world with AGI, and I think almost immediately we'll get super intelligence as a side effect. So the question really is, in a world of superintelligence, which is defined as better than all humans in all domains, what can you contribute? And so you know better than anyone what it's like to be you. You know what ice cream tastes to you. Can you get paid for that knowledge? Is someone interested in that? Maybe not. Not a big market. There are jobs where you want a human, maybe you're rich and you want a human accountant. For whatever historic reasons, old people like traditional ways of doing things. Warren Buffett would not switch to AI. He would use his human accountant. But it's a tiny subset of a market. Today we have products which are man made in US as opposed to mass produced in China. And some people pay more to have those. But it's a small subset, it's almost a fetish. There is no practical reason for it. And I think anything you can do on a computer could be automated using that technology.
- [15:11]
Host
You must hear a lot of rebuttals to this when you say it, because people experience a huge amount of mental discomfort when they hear that their job, their career, the thing they got a degree in, the thing they invested $100,000 into, is going to be taken away from them. So their natural reaction for some people is that cognitive dissonance that, no, you're wrong, AI can't be creative. It's not this, it's not that. It'll never be interested in my job. I'll be fine. Because you hear these arguments all the time, right?
- [15:39]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It's really funny. I ask people, and I ask people in different occupations, I'll ask my Uber driver, are you worried about self driving cars? And they go, no, no one can do what I do. I know the streets of New York. I can navigate like no AI, I'm safe. And it's true for any job. Professors are saying this to me, oh, nobody can lecture like I do. Like, this is so special. But you understand, it's ridiculous. We already have self driving cars replacing drivers. That is not even a question if it's possible. It's like, how soon before you fired?
- [16:13]
Host
Yeah, I mean, I've just been in LA yesterday and my car drives itself So I get in the car, I sit, I put in where I want to go, and then I don't touch the steering wheel or the brake pedals. And it takes me from A to B. Even if it's an hour long drive without any intervention at all, I actually still park it. But other than that I'm not, I'm not driving the car at all. And obviously in LA we also have Waymo now, which means you order it on your phone and it shows up with no driver in it and takes you to where you want to go.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Oh yeah.
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Host
So it's quite clear to see how that is potentially a matter of time for those people, because we do have some of those people listening to this conversation right now that their occupation is driving to offer them. And I think driving is the biggest occupation in the world, if I'm correct. I'm pretty sure it is the biggest occupation in the world.
- [17:00]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
One of the top ones, yeah.
- [17:03]
Host
What would you say to those people? What should they be doing with their lives? Should they be retraining in something or what time frame?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So that's the paradigm shift here. Before we always said this job is going to be automated, retrained to do this other job. But if I'm telling you that all jobs will be automated, then there is no plan B. You cannot retrain. Look at computer science. Two years ago we told people, learn to code. You are an artist, you cannot make money. Learn to code. Then we realized, oh, AI kind of knows how to code. And getting better. Become a prompt engineer. You can engineer prompts for AIs. It's going to be a great job, get a four year degree in it. But then we're like, AI is way better at designing prompts for our AIs than any human. So that's gone. So I can't really tell you right now. The hardest thing is design AI agents for practical applications. I guarantee you in a year or two it's going to be gone just as well. So I don't think there is a. This occupation needs to learn to do this. Instead, I think it's more like we as a humanity, then we all lose our jobs. What do we do? What do we do financially? Who's paying for us and what do we do in terms of meaning, what do I do with my extra 60, 80 hours a week?
- [18:26]
Host
You've thought around this corner, haven't you?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
A little bit.
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Host
What is around that corner in your view?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So the economic part seems easy. If you create a lot of free labor, you have a lot of free wealth, abundance, things which are right now not very affordable become dirt cheap. And so you can provide for everyone basic needs. Some people say you can provide beyond basic needs. You can provide very good existence for everyone. The hard problem is, what do you do with all that free time? For a lot of people, their jobs are what gives them meaning in their life. So they would be kind of lost. We see it with people who retire or do early retirement, and for so many people who hate their jobs, they'll be very happy not working. But now you have people who are chilling all day. What happens to society? How does that impact crime rate, pregnancy rate? All sorts of issues nobody thinks about. Governments don't have programs prepared to deal with 99% unemployment.
- [19:31]
Host
What do you think that world looks like?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Again, I think a very important part to understand here is the unpredictability of it. We cannot predict what a smarter than us system will do. And the point when we get to that is often called singularity. By analogy with physical singularity, you cannot see beyond the event horizon. I can tell you what I think might happen, but that's my prediction. It is not what actually is going to happen because I just don't have cognitive ability to predict a much smarter agent impacting this world. Then you read science fiction. There is never a super intelligence in it actually doing anything. Because nobody can write believable science fiction at that level. They either banned AI like Dune because this way you can avoid writing about it, or it's like Star wars, you have this really dumb bots, but nothing super intelligent ever. Because by definition you cannot predict at that level.
- [20:33]
Host
Because by definition of it being super intelligent, it will make its own mind up.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
By definition, if it was something you could predict, you would be operating at the same level of intelligence, violating our assumption that it is smarter than you. If I'm playing chess with superintelligence and I can predict every move I'm playing at that level, it's kind of like.
- [20:51]
Host
My French bulldog trying to predict exactly what I'm thinking and what I'm going to do.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's a good cognitive gap. And it's not just he can predict you going to work, you coming back, but he cannot understand why you're doing a podcast that is something completely outside of his model of the world.
- [21:08]
Host
Yeah, he doesn't even know that I go to work. He just sees that I leave the house and doesn't know where I go.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Buy food for him.
- [21:15]
Host
What's the most persuasive argument against your own perspective here?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That we will not have unemployment due to advanced technology, that there won't be.
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Host
This French bulldog human gap in understanding and I guess like power and control.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So some people think that we can enhance human minds either through combination with hardware, so something like neuralink, or through genetic re engineering to where we make smarter humans. It may give us a little more intelligence. I don't think we are still competitive in biological form with silicon form. Silicon substrate is much more capable for intelligence. It's faster, it's more resilient, more energy efficient in many ways, which is what.
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Host
Computers are made out of. First, the brain. Yeah.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So I don't think we can keep up just with improving our biology. Some people think maybe, and this is very speculative, we can upload our minds into computers. So scan your brain, kind of comb of your brain and have a simulation running on a computer and you can speed it up, give it more capabilities. But to me that feels like you no longer exist. We just created software by different means. And now you have AI based on biology and AI based on some other forms of training. You can have evolutionary algorithms, you can have many paths to reach AGI, but at the end, none of them are humans.
- [22:47]
Host
I have another date here which is 2030. What's your prediction for 2030? What will the world look like?
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So we probably will have humanoid robots with enough flexibility, dexterity to compete with humans in all domains, including plumbers. We can make artificial plumbers, not the plumbers.
- [23:13]
Host
That felt like the last bastion of human employment. So 20, 35 years from now, humanoid robots. So many of the companies, the leading companies, including Tesla, are developing humanoid robots at light speed. And they're getting increasingly more effective. These humanoid robots will be able to move through physical space, make an omelet, do anything humans can do, but obviously be connected to AI as well. So they can think, talk.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Right. They're controlled by AI, they're always connected to the network. So they are already dominating in many ways.
- [23:52]
Host
Our world will look remarkably different when humanoid robots are functional and effective. Because that's really when, you know, I start thinking cry. Like the combination of intelligence and physical ability is really, really doesn't leave much, does it for us human beings, not much.
- [24:15]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So today if you have intelligence through Internet, you can hire humans to do your bidding for you. You can pay them in Bitcoin, so you can have bodies, just not directly controlling them. So it's not a huge game changer to add direct control of physical bodies. Intelligence is where it's at. The important component is definitely higher ability to optimize to solve problems, to find patterns people cannot see.
- [24:41]
Host
And then by 2045, I guess the world looks even more, which is 20 years from now.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So if it's still around, if it's still around, Ray Kurzweil predicts that that's the year for the singularity. That's the year where progress becomes so fast. So this AI doing science and engineering work makes improvements so quickly we cannot keep up anymore. That's the definition of singularity point beyond which we cannot see, understand, predict, see.
- [25:13]
Host
And understand, predict the intelligence itself, or.
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Dr. Roman Yampolsky
What is happening in the world. The technology is being developed. So right now, if I have an iPhone, I can look forward to a new one coming out next year. And I'll understand it has slightly better camera. Imagine now this process of researching and developing this phone is automated. It happens every six months, every three months, every month, week, day, hour, minute, second. You cannot keep up with 30 iterations of iPhone in one day. You don't understand what capabilities it has, what proper controls are. It just escapes you. Right now, it's hard for any researcher in AI to keep up with the state of the art. While I was doing this interview with you, a new model came out. And I no longer know what the state of the art is. Every day, as a percentage of total knowledge, I get dumber. I may still know more because I keep reading, but as a percentage of overall knowledge, we're all getting dumber. And then you take it to extreme values. You have zero knowledge, zero understanding of the world around you.
- [26:20]
Host
Some of the arguments against this eventuality are that when you look at other technologies, like the Industrial revolution, people just found new ways to work and new careers that we could never have imagined at the time were created. How do you respond to that? In a world of superintelligence, it's a paradigm shift.
- [26:41]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We always had tools, new tools which allowed some job to be done more efficiently. So Instead of having 10 workers, you could have two workers and eight workers had to find a new job and there was another job. Now you can supervise those workers or do something cool. If you creating a meta invention, you're inventing intelligence, you're inventing a worker, an agent. Then you can apply that agent to the new job. There is not a job which cannot be automated. That never happened before. All the inventions we previously had were kind of a tool for doing something. So we invented fire. Huge game changer. But that's it. It stops with fire. We invent a wheel. Same idea, huge implications. But wheel itself is not an inventor. Here we're inventing a replacement for human mind. A new inventor capable of doing new inventions. It's the last invention we ever have to make. At that point, it takes over and the process of doing science research, even ethics research, morals, all that is automated at that point.
- [27:49]
Host
Do you sleep well at night?
- [27:51]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Really well.
- [27:53]
Host
Even though you spent the last 15, 20 years of your life working on AI safety and it suddenly among us in a way that I don't think anyone could have predicted five years ago. When I say among us, I really mean that. The amount of funding and talent that is now focused on reaching superintelligence faster has made it feel more inevitable and more soon than any of us could have possibly imagined.
- [28:19]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We as humans have this built in bias about not thinking about really bad outcomes and things we cannot prevent. So all of us are dying. Your kids are dying, your parents are dying, everyone's dying. But you still sleep well, you still go on with your day. Even 95 year olds are still doing games and playing golf and whatnot because we have this ability to not think about the worst outcomes, especially if we cannot actually modify the outcome. So that's the same infrastructure being used for this? Yeah, there is humanity level death like event we're happening to be close to it, probably. But unless I can do something about it, I can just keep enjoying my life. In fact, maybe knowing that you have limited amount of time left gives you more reason to have a better life. You cannot waste any.
- [29:14]
Host
And that's the survival trait of evolution, I guess, because those of my ancestors that spent all their time worrying wouldn't have spent enough time having babies and hunting to survive.
- [29:23]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Suicidal ideas, ideation. People who really start thinking about how horrible the world is usually escape pretty soon.
- [29:36]
Host
You co authored this paper analyzing the key arguments people make against the importance of AI safety. And one of the arguments in there is that there's other things that are of bigger importance right now. It might be world wars, it could be nuclear containment, it could be other things. There's other things that the governments and podcasters like me should be talking about that are more important. What's your rebuttal to that argument?
- [29:58]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So superintelligence is a meta solution. If we get superintelligence right, it will help us with climate change, it will help us with wars, it can solve all the other existential risks. If we don't get it right, it dominates. If climate change will take 100 years to boil us alive and superintelligence kills everyone at 5, I don't have to worry about Climate change. So either way, either it solves it for me or it's not an issue.
- [30:28]
Host
So you think it's the most important thing to be working on?
- [30:30]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Without question. There is nothing more important than getting this right. And I know everyone says it, you take any class, but you take English professor's class and he tells you this is the most important class you'll ever take. But you can see the meta level differences with this one.
- [30:51]
Host
Another argument in that paper is that we all be in control and that the danger is not AI. This particular argument asserts that AI is just a tool. Humans are the real actors that present danger and we can always maintain control by simply turning it off. Can't we just pull the plug out? I see that every time we have a conversation on the show about AI, someone says, can't we just unplug it?
- [31:11]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah, I get those comments on every podcast I make and I always want to like, get in touch with a guy and say, this is brilliant. I never thought of it. We're going to write a paper together and get a Nobel Prize for it. This is like, let's do it. Because it's so silly. Like, can you turn off a virus? You have a computer virus, you don't like it, turn it off. How about Bitcoin? Turn off Bitcoin network. Go ahead, I'll wait. This is silly. There's a distributed systems. You cannot turn them off. And on top of it, they're smarter than you. They made multiple backups. They predicted what you're going to do. They will turn you off before you can turn them off. The idea that we will be in control applies only to pre super intelligence levels. Basically what we have today. Today, humans with AI tools are dangerous. They can be hackers, malevolent actors. Absolutely. But the moment super intelligence becomes smarter, dominates they no longer the important part of that equation. It is the higher intelligence I'm concerned about, not the human who may add additional malevolent payload. But at the end still doesn't. Control.
- [32:16]
Host
Is tempting to follow. The next argument that I saw in that paper, which basically says, listen, this is inevitable. So there's no point fighting against it because there's really no hope here. So we should probably give up even trying and be faithful that it will work itself out, because everything you've said sounds really inevitable. And with China working on it, I'm sure Putin's got some secret division. I'm sure Iran are doing some bits and pieces. Every European country's trying to get ahead of AI. The United States is Leading the way. So it's inevitable. So we probably should just have faith and pray.
- [32:54]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Praying is always good. But incentives matter if you are looking at what drives these people. So yes, money is important. So there is a lot of money in that space. And so everyone's trying to be there and develop this technology. But if they truly understand the argument, they understand that you will be dead. No amount of money will be useful to you. Then incentives switch. They would want to not be dead. A lot of them are young people, rich people. They have their whole lives ahead of them. I think they would be better off not building advanced superintelligence, concentrating on narrow AI tools for solving specific problems. My company cures breast cancer. That's all. We make billions of dollars. Everyone's happy, everyone benefits. It's a win. We are still in control today. It's not over until it's over. We can decide not to build general superintelligences.
- [33:51]
Host
I mean, the United States might be able to conjure up enough enthusiasm for that. But if the United States doesn't build general superintelligences, then China are going to have the big advantage, right?
- [34:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So right now, at those levels, whoever has more advanced AI, has more advanced military, no question. We see it with existing conflicts. But the moment you switch to superintelligence, uncontrolled superintelligence, it doesn't matter who builds it, us or them. And if they understand this argument, they also would not build it. It's a mutually assured destruction on both ends.
- [34:25]
Host
Is this technology different than say, nuclear weapons, which require a huge amount of investment and you have to enrich the uranium and you need billions of dollars potentially to even build a nuclear weapon. But it feels like this technology is much cheaper to get to superintelligence potentially, or at least it will become cheaper. I wonder if it's possible that some guy, some startup is going to be able to build superintelligence in a couple of years without the need of billions of dollars of compute or electricity power?
- [34:59]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's a great point. So every year it becomes cheaper and cheaper to train sufficiently large model. If today it would take a trillion dollars to build superintelligence, next year it could be 100 billion and so on. At some point a guy in a laptop could do it, but you don't want to wait four years to make it affordable. So that's why so much money is pouring in. Somebody wants to get there this year and lucky and all the winnings litecoin level award. So in that regard, they both very expensive Projects like Manhattan Level projects, which.
- [35:33]
Host
Was the nuclear bomb project. Right.
- [35:35]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
The difference between the two technologies is that nuclear weapons are still tools. Some dictator, some country, someone has to decide to use them, deploy them, whereas superintelligence is not a tool, it's an agent. It makes its own decisions and no one is controlling it. I cannot take out this dictator and now superintelligence is safe. So that's a fundamental difference to me.
- [36:01]
Host
But if you're saying that it is going to get incrementally cheaper, I think it's Moore's Law, isn't it, that technology gets cheaper?
- [36:07]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It is.
- [36:08]
Host
Then there is a future where some guy on his laptop is going to be able to create superintelligence without oversight or regulation or employees, etc. Yeah.
- [36:17]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's why a lot of people suggesting we need to build something like Surveillance Planet, where you are monitoring who's doing what and you're trying to prevent people from doing it. Do I think it's feasible? No. At some point it becomes so affordable and so trivial that it just will happen. But at this point, we're trying to get more time. We don't want it to happen in five years, we want it to happen in 50 years.
- [36:44]
Host
I mean, that's not very hopeful.
- [36:47]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Depends on how old you are.
- [36:49]
Host
Depends on how old you are. I mean, if you're saying that you believe in the future people will be able to make super intelligence without the resources that are required today, then it is just a matter of time.
- [37:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah, but so will be true for many other technologies. We are getting much better in synthetic biology, where today someone with a bachelor's degree in biology can probably create a new virus. This will also become cheaper, other technologies like that. So we are approaching a point where it's very difficult to make sure no technological breakthrough is the last one. So essentially, in many directions, we have this pattern of making it easier in terms of resources, in terms of intelligence to destroy the world. If you look at, I don't know, 500 years ago, the worst dictator with all the resources could kill couple million people. He couldn't destroy the world. Now we know nuclear weapons, we can blow up the whole planet multiple times over. Synthetic biology we saw with COVID you can very easily create a combination virus which impacts billions of people, and all of those things becoming easier to do.
- [38:02]
Host
In the near term. You talk about extinction being a real risk, human extinction being a real risk. Of all the pathways to human extinction that you think are most likely, what is the leading pathway? Because I know you talk about There being some issue pre deployment of these AI tools, like, you know, someone makes a mistake when they're designing a model or other issues post deployment. When I say post deployment, I mean once a chatgpt or something, an agent's released into the world and someone hacking into it and changing it and reprogram, reprogramming it to be malicious, have all these potential paths to human extinction. Which one do you think is the highest probability?
- [38:42]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So I can only talk about the ones I can predict myself. So I can predict, even before we get to superintelligence, someone will create a very advanced biological tool, create a novel virus. And that virus gets everyone, or most everyone. I can envision it, I can understand the pathway. I can say that.
- [39:01]
Host
So just to zoom in on that, then that would be using an AI to make a virus and then releasing it. And would that be intentional or.
- [39:10]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
There is a lot of psychopaths, a lot of terrorists, a lot of doomsday cults we've seen historically. Again, they try to kill as many people as they can. They usually fail. They kill hundreds of thousands. But if they get technology to kill millions of billions, they would do that gladly. The point I'm trying to emphasize is that it doesn't matter what I can come up with. I am not a malevolent actor you're trying to defeat here. It's the superintelligence which can come up with completely novel ways of doing it. Again, you brought up example of your dog. Your dog cannot understand all the ways you can take it out. It can maybe think you'll bite it to death or something, but that's all. Whereas you have infinite supply of resources. So if I asked your dog exactly how you're going to take it out, it would not give you a meaningful answer. It can talk about biting, and this is what we know. We know viruses, we experienced viruses, we can talk about them. But what an AI system capable of doing novel physics research can come up with is beyond me.
- [40:21]
Host
One of the things that I think most people don't understand is how little we understand about how these AIs are actually working. Because one would assume, you know, with computers, we kind of understand how a computer works. We know that it's doing this and then this, and it's running on code. But from reading your work, you describe it as being a black box. So in the context of something like ChatGPT or an AI, we know you're telling me that the people that have built that tool don't actually know what's going on. Inside there.
- [40:50]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's exactly right. So even people making those systems have to run experiments on their product to learn what it's capable of. So they train it by giving it all of data, let's say all of Internet text. They run it on a lot of computers to learn patterns in that text. And then they start experimenting with that model. Oh, do you speak French? Or can you do mathematics? Or are you lying to me now? And so maybe it takes a year to train it and then six months to get some fundamentals about what it's capable of, some safety overhead. But we still discover new capabilities in old models. If you ask the question in a different way, it becomes smarter. So it's no longer engineering how it was the first 50 years where someone was a knowledge engineer programming an expert system AI to do specific things. It's a science. We are creating this artifact, growing it. It's like an alien plant. And then we study it to see what it's doing. And just like with plants, we don't have 100% accurate knowledge of biology. We don't have full knowledge here. We kind of know some patterns. We know, okay, if we add more compute, it gets smarter most of the time. But nobody can tell you precisely what the outcome is going to be given a set of inputs.
- [42:14]
Host
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- [43:28]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Company called Super Intelligent Safety. Because AI Safety wasn't challenging enough, he decided to just jump right to the hard problem.
- [43:38]
Host
As an onlooker, when you see that people are leaving OpenAI to start super intelligent safety companies, what was your read on that situation?
- [43:50]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So a lot of people who worked with Sam said that maybe he's not the most direct person in terms of being honest with them and they had concerns about his views on safety. That's part of it. So they wanted more control, they wanted more concentration on safety. But also it seems that anyone who leaves that company and starts a new one gets a $20 billion valuation just for having it started. You don't have a product, you don't have customers, but if you want to make many billions of dollars, just do that. So it seems like a very rational thing to do for anyone who can. So I'm not surprised that there is a lot of attrition. Meeting him in person. He's super nice, very smart, absolutely perfect public interface. You see him testify in the Senate, he says the right thing to the senators, you see him talk to the investors, they get the right message. But if you look at what people who know him personally are saying, it's probably not the right person to be controlling a project of that impact.
- [45:00]
Host
Why.
- [45:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
He puts safety second.
- [45:07]
Host
Second to.
- [45:09]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Winning this race to superintelligence. Being the guy who created garden controlling light cone of the universe, he's worse.
- [45:17]
Host
Do you suspect that's what he's driven by is by the legacy of being an impactful person that did a remarkable thing versus the consequence that that might have for society. Because it's interesting that his other startup is worldcoin, which is basically a platform to create universal basic income. That is a platform to give us income in a world where people don't have jobs anymore. So on one hand you're creating an AI company and the other hand you're creating a company that is preparing for people not to have employment.
- [45:48]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It also has other properties. It keeps track of everyone's biometrics. It keeps you in charge of the world's economy, world's wealth. They're retaining a large portion of world coins. So I think it's kind of very reasonable part to integrate with world dominance. If you have a super intelligence system and you control money, you're doing well.
- [46:19]
Host
Why would someone want world dominance?
- [46:23]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
People have different levels of ambition than you are a very young person with billions of dollars fame, you start looking for More ambitious projects. Some people want to go to Mars, others want to control light cone of the universe.
- [46:37]
Host
What did you say? Light coin of the universe, light cone.
- [46:40]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So every part of the universe light can reach from this point, meaning anything accessible you want to grab and bring into your control.
- [46:48]
Host
Do you think Sam Altman wants to control every part of the universe?
- [46:53]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I suspect he might, yes. It doesn't mean he doesn't want a side effect of it being a very beneficial technology which makes all the humans happy. Happy humans are good for control.
- [47:07]
Host
If you had to guess what the world looks like in 2100, if you had to guess, it's either free of.
- [47:21]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Human existence or it's completely not comprehensible to someone like us. It's one of those extremes.
- [47:29]
Host
So there's either no humans, it's basically.
- [47:32]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
The world is destroyed, or it's so different that I cannot envision those predictions.
- [47:39]
Host
What can be done to turn this ship to a more certain positive outcome at this point? Is there still things that we can do or is it too late?
- [47:51]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So I believe in personal self interest. If people realize that doing this thing is really bad for them personally, they will not do it. So our job is to convince everyone with any power in this space, creating this technology, working for those companies, they are doing something very bad for them. Not just forget our 8 billion people you're experimenting on with no permission, no consent, you will not be happy with the outcome. If we can get everyone to understand that's a default. And it's not just me saying it. You had Jeff Hinton, Nobel Prize winner, founder of a whole machine learning space. He says the same thing. Bengio, dozens of others, top scholars. We had a statement about dangers of AI signed by thousands of scholars, computer scientists. This is basically what we think right now. And we need to make it universal. No one should disagree with this. And then we may actually make good decisions about what technology to build. It doesn't guarantee long term safety for humanity, but it means we're not trying to get there as soon as possible to the worst possible outcome.
- [48:58]
Host
And are you hopeful that that's even possible?
- [49:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I want to try. We have no choice but to try.
- [49:06]
Host
And what would need to happen and who would need to act? Is it government legislation? Is it.
- [49:11]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Unfortunately, I don't think making it illegal is sufficient. There are different jurisdictions, there is, you know, loopholes. And what are you going to do if somebody does it? You're going to fine them for destroying humanity, like very steep fines for it? What are you going to do? It's not enforceable if they do create it. Now the superintelligence is in charge. So the judicial system we have is not impactful. And all the punishments we have are designed for punishing humans. Prisons, capital punishment doesn't apply to AI.
- [49:40]
Host
You know, the problem I have is when I have these conversations, I never feel like I walk away with I hope that something's going to go well. And what I mean by that is I never feel like I walk away with clear, some kind of clear set of actions that can course correct what might happen here. So what should I do? What should the person sat at home listening to this do you talk to.
- [50:04]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
A lot of people who are building this technology? Ask them precisely to explain some of those things that claim to be impossible, how they solved it or going to solve it before they get to where are they going.
- [50:18]
Host
Do you know? I don't think Sam Altman wants to talk to me.
- [50:21]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I don't know. He seems to go on a lot of podcasts. Maybe he does.
- [50:24]
Host
He wants to go on mine. I, I wonder why that is. I wonder why that is. I'd love to speak to him, but I don't. I don't think he wants to. I don't think he wants me to interview him.
- [50:38]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Have an open challenge. Maybe money is not the incentive, but whatever attracts people like that, whoever can convince you that it's possible to control and make safe superintelligence gets the prize. They come on your show and prove their case. Anyone? If no one claims the price or even accepts the challenge after a few years, maybe we don't have anyone with solutions. We have companies valued again at billions and billions of dollars working on safe superintelligence. We haven't seen their output yet.
- [51:13]
Host
Yeah, I'd like to speak to Ilya as well, because I know he's. He's working on safe superintelligence, so.
- [51:18]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Notice a pattern too. If you look at history of AI safety organizations or departments within companies, they usually start, well, very ambitious, and then they fail and disappear. So OpenAI had superintelligence alignment team. The day they announced it, I think they said they're going to solve it in four years. Like half a year later they canceled the team. And there is dozens of similar examples. Creating a perfect safety for superintelligence. Perpetual safety as it keeps improving, modifying, interacting with people. You're never going to get there. It's impossible. There is a big difference between difficult problems in computer science and p complete problems and impossible problems. And I think control, indefinite control of superintelligence is such a problem, so what's.
- [52:10]
Host
The point trying then if it's impossible?
- [52:12]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Well, I'm trying to prove that it is. Specifically that once we establish something is impossible, fewer people will waste their time claiming they can do it and looking for money. So many people going, give me a billion dollars in two years and I'll solve it for you. Well, I don't think you will, but.
- [52:28]
Host
People aren't going to stop striving towards it. So if there's no attempts to make it safe and there's more people increasingly striving towards it, then it's inevitable.
- [52:37]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
But it changes what we do. If we know that it's impossible to make it right, to make it safe, then this direct path of just build it as soon as you can becomes suicide mission. Hopefully fewer people will pursue that. They may go in other directions. Like, again, I'm a scientist, I'm an engineer. I love AI. I love technology, I use it all the time. But build useful tools. Stop building agents. Build narrow superintelligence, not a general one. I'm not saying you shouldn't make billions of dollars. I love billions of dollars. But don't kill everyone, yourself included.
- [53:16]
Host
They don't think they're going to, though.
- [53:19]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Then tell us why. I hear things about intuition. I hear things about, we'll solve it later. Tell me specifically in scientific terms. Publish a peer reviewed paper explaining how you're control superintelligence.
- [53:31]
Host
Yeah, it's strange to. It's strange to even bother. If there was even a 1% chance of human extinction. It's strange to do something like if there was a 1% chance, if someone told me there was a 1% chance that if I got in a car, I might not be alive, I would not get in the car. If you told me there was a 1% chance that if I drank whatever liquid is in this cup right now, I might die, I would not drink the liquid even if there was a billion dollars if I survived. So the 99% chance they get a billion dollars, the 1% is I die. I wouldn't drink it. I wouldn't take the chance.
- [54:03]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It's worse than that. Not just you die, everyone dies.
- [54:07]
Host
Yeah. Yeah.
- [54:08]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Now, would we let you drink it at any odds? That's for us to decide. You don't get to make that choice. For us to get consent from human subjects, you need them to comprehend what they are consenting to. If those systems are unexplainable, unpredictable, how can they consent? They don't know what they are Consenting to. So it's impossible to get consent by definition. So this experiment can never be run ethically. By definition, they are doing unethical experimentation on human subjects.
- [54:39]
Host
Do you think people should be protesting?
- [54:41]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
There are people protesting. There is stop AI, there is pause AI. They block offices of OpenAI. They do it weekly, monthly. Quite a few actions and we're recruiting new people.
- [54:52]
Host
You think more people should be protesting? Do you think that's an effective solution?
- [54:56]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
If you can get it to a large enough scale to where majority of population is participating, it would be impactful. I don't know if they can scale from current numbers to that, but I support everyone trying everything peacefully and legally.
- [55:10]
Host
And for the person listening at home, what should they. What should they be doing? Because they don't want to feel powerless. None of us want to feel powerless.
- [55:19]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So it depends on what scale we're asking about timescale. Are we saying like, this year your kid goes to college, what major to pick? Should they go to college at all? Should you switch jobs? Should you go into certain industries? Those questions we can answer. We can talk about immediate future. What should you do in five years with this being created for an average person? Not much. Just like they can't influence World War three, nuclear holocaust, anything like that. It's not something anyone's going to ask them about today. If you want to be a part of this movement, yeah, join Pause AI. Join Stop AI. Those organizations currently trying to build up momentum to bring democratic powers to influence those individuals.
- [56:06]
Host
So in the near term, not a huge amount. I was wondering if there are any interesting strategies in the near term, like, should I be thinking differently about my family, about. I mean, you've got kids, right?
- [56:18]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
You've got three kids that I know about.
- [56:19]
Host
Yeah, three kids. How are you thinking about parenting in this world that you see around the corner? How are you thinking about what to say to them, the advice to give them, what they should be learning?
- [56:28]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So there is general advice outside of this domain that you should live your everyday as if it's your last. It's a good advice no matter what. If you have three years left or 30 years left, you lived your best life. So try to not do things you hate for too long. Do interesting things, do impactful things. If you can do all that while helping people do that.
- [56:53]
Host
Simulation theory is a interesting sort of adjacent subject here because as computers begin to accelerate and get more intelligent and we're able to, you know, do things with AI that we could never have imagined in terms of like, can imagine the worlds that we could create with virtual reality. I think it was Google that recently released, what was it called, like the AI worlds.
- [57:19]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
You take a picture and it generates the whole world.
- [57:21]
Host
Yeah. And you can move through the world. I'll put it on the screen for people to see. But Google have released this technology which allows you, I think, with a simple prompt actually, to make a three dimensional world that you can then navigate through. And in that world it has memory. So in the world, if you paint on a wall and turn away, you look back the wall.
- [57:38]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It's persistent.
- [57:39]
Host
Yeah, it's persistent. And when I saw that, I could go, Jesus, bloody hell. This is. This is like the foothills of being able to create a simulation that's indistinguishable from everything I see here.
- [57:50]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Right. That's why I think we are in one. That's exactly the reason AI is getting to the level of creating human agents, Human level agents, and virtual reality is getting to the level of being indistinguishable from ours.
- [58:04]
Host
So you think this is a simulation?
- [58:06]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I'm pretty sure we are in a simulation, yeah.
- [58:09]
Host
For someone that isn't familiar with the simulation arguments, what are the first principles here that convince you that we are currently living in a simulation?
- [58:18]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So you need certain technologies to make it happen. If you believe we can create human level AI and you believe we can create virtual reality as good as this, in terms of resolution, haptics, whatever properties it has, then I commit right now, the moment this is affordable, I'm going to run billions of simulations at this exact moment, making sure you are statistically in one.
- [58:43]
Host
Say that last part again. You're going to run.
- [58:46]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I'm going to commit right now, and it's very affordable. It's like 10 bucks a month to run it. I'm going to run a billion simulations in this interview.
- [58:55]
Host
Why?
- [58:56]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Because statistically, that means you are in one right now. The chances of you being in a real one is one in a billion.
- [59:03]
Host
Okay, so to make sure I'm clear.
- [59:05]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
On this, it's a retroactive placement.
- [59:07]
Host
Yeah. So the minute it's affordable, then you can run billions of them and they would feel and appear to be exactly like this interview right now.
- [59:17]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So assuming the AI has internal states experience as qualia. Some people argue that they don't. Some say they already have it. That's a separate philosophical question. But if we can simulate this, I will.
- [59:32]
Host
Some people might misunderstand. You're not saying that you will, you're saying that someone will.
- [59:39]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I can also do it. I Don't mind, of course, others will do it before I get there. If I'm getting it for $10, somebody got it 4,000. That's not the point. If you have technology, we're definitely running a lot of simulations for research, for entertainment, games, all sorts of reasons. And the number of those greatly exceeds the number of real worlds we're in. Look at all the video games kids are playing. Every kid plays 10 different games. Billion kids in the world. So there is 10 billion simulations in one real world. Even more so when we think about advanced AI superintelligent systems. Their thinking is not like ours. They think in a lot more detail. They run experiments. So running a detailed simulation of some problem at the level of creating artificial humans and simulating the whole planet would be something they'll do routinely. So there is a good chance this is not me doing it for $10. It's a future simulation, thinking about something in this world.
- [60:46]
Host
So it could be the case that a species of humans or a species of intelligence in some form got to this point where they could affordably run simulations that are indistinguishable from this, and they decided to do it, and this is it right now. And it would make sense that they would run simulations as experiments or for games or for entertainment. And also, when we think about time, in the world that I'm in, in this simulation that I could be in right now, time feels long, relatively, you know, I have 24 hours in a day. But in their world, it could be time is relative. Relative? Yeah, it could be a second. My whole life could be a millisecond in there.
- [61:31]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Right? You can change speed of simulations you're running for sure.
- [61:36]
Host
So your belief is that this is probably a simulation, most likely.
- [61:40]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
And there is a lot of agreement on that. If you look again, returning to religions, every religion basically describes what a super intelligent being, an engineer, a programmer, creating a fake world for testing purposes or for whatever. But if you took the simulation hypothesis paper, you go to jungle, you talk to primitive people, a local tribe, and in their language you tell them about it. Go back two generations later, they have religion. That's basically what the story is.
- [62:13]
Host
Religion, yeah. Describes a simulation theory. Theory basically somebody created.
- [62:17]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So by default, that was the first theory we had. And now with science, more and more people are going like, I'm giving it non trivial probability. A few people are as high as I am, but a lot of people give it some credence.
- [62:28]
Host
What percentage are you at in terms of believing that we are currently living.
- [62:31]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
In a Simulation, very close to certainty.
- [62:35]
Host
And what does that mean for the nature of your life? If you're close to 100% certain that we are currently living in a simulation, does that change anything in your life?
- [62:46]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So all the things you care about are still the same. Pain, still hurts, love, still love. Right. Like, those things are not different, so it doesn't matter. They're still important. That's what matters. The little 1% different is that I care about what's outside the simulation. I want to learn about it, I write papers about it. So that's the only impact.
- [63:06]
Host
And what do you think is outside of the simulation?
- [63:08]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I don't know. But we can look at this world and derive some properties of the simulators. So clearly, brilliant engineer, brilliant scientist, brilliant artist, not so good with morals and ethics. Room for improvement in our view of.
- [63:27]
Host
What morals and ethics should be.
- [63:28]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Well, we know there is suffering in a world. So unless you think it's ethical to torture children, then I'm questioning your approach.
- [63:38]
Host
But in terms of incentives to create a positive incentive, you probably also need to create negative incentives. Suffering seems to be one of the negative incentives built into our design to stop me doing things I shouldn't do. So, like put my hand in a fire, it's gonna hur.
- [63:52]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
But it's all about levels, levels of suffering. Right. So unpleasant stimuli, negative feedback, doesn't have to be at like negative infinity hell levels. You don't want to burn alive and feel it. You want to be like, oh, this is uncomfortable. I'm going to stop.
- [64:08]
Host
It's interesting because we assume that they don't have great morals and ethics, but we too would. We'd take animals and cook them and eat them for dinner, and we also conduct experiments on mice and rats.
- [64:19]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
But to get university approval to conduct an experiment, you submit a proposal. There is a panel of ethicists who would say, you can't experiment on humans, you can't burn babies, you can't eat animals alive. All those things will be banned in most parts of the world where they have ethical boards. Yeah, some places don't bother with it so they have easier approval process.
- [64:43]
Host
It's funny, when you talk about the simulation theory, there's an element of the conversation that makes life feel less meaningful in a weird way. Like, I know it doesn't matter, but whenever I have this conversation with people not on the podcast about are we living in a simulation? You almost see a little bit of meaning come out of their life for a second and then they forget and then they carry on. But the thought that this is a simulation almost posits that it's not important or that I think humans want to believe that this is the highest level and we're that the most important and we're the. It's all about us. We're quite egotistical by design. And just an interesting observation I've always had when I have these conversations with people that it seems to strip something out of their life.
- [65:30]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Do you feel religious people feel that way? They know there is another world and the one that matters is not this one. Do you feel they don't value their lives the same? I guess in some religions I think.
- [65:43]
Host
They think that this world is being created for them and that they are going to go to this heaven or hell and that still puts them at the very center of it. But if it's a simulation, we could just be some computer game that a four year old alien is messing around with while he's got some time to burn.
- [66:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
But maybe there is a test and there is a better simulation, you go to a worse one. Maybe there are different difficulty levels. Maybe you want to play it on a harder setting next time.
- [66:13]
Host
I've just invested millions into this and become a co owner of the company. It's a company called Ketone iq and the story is quite interesting. I started talking about ketosis on this podcast and the fact that I'm very low carb, very, very low sugar, and my body produces ketones which have made me incredibly focused, have improved my endurance, have improved my mood and have made me more capable at doing what I do here. And because I was talking about it on the podcast, a couple of weeks later, these showed up on my desk in my HQ in London. These little shots and oh my God, the impact this had on my ability to articulate myself, on my focus on my workouts, on my mood, on stopping me crashing throughout the day was so profound that I reached out to the founders of the company and now I'm a co owner of this business. I highly, highly recommend you look into this. I highly recommend you look at the science behind the product. If you want to try it for yourself, visit ketone.com stephen for 30% off your subscription order and you'll also get a free gift with your second shipment. That's ketone.com Stephen and I'm so honored that once again a company I own can sponsor my podcast. I've built companies from scratch and backed many more. And there's a blind spot that I keep seeing in early stage founders. They spend very little Time thinking about hr. And it's not because they're reckless or they don't care. It's because they're obsessed with building their companies. And I can't fault them for that. At that stage, you're thinking about the product, how to attract new customers, how to grow your team, really how to survive. And HR slips down the list because it doesn't feel urgent. But sooner or later it is. And when things get messy, tools like our sponsor today, justworks, go from being a nice to have to being a necessity. Something goes sideways and you find yourself having conversations you did not see coming. This is when you learn that HR really is the infrastructure of your company. And without it, things wobble and just work stops you learning this the hard way. It takes care of the stuff that would otherwise drain your energy and your time, automating payroll, health insurance benefits. And it gives your team human support at any hour. It grows with your small business from startup through to growth, even when you start hiring team members abroad. So if you want HR support that's there through the exciting times and the challenging times, head to justworks.com now. That's justworks.com and do you think much about longevity?
- [68:30]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
A lot, yeah. It's probably the second most important problem because if AI doesn't get us, that will.
- [68:36]
Host
What do you mean?
- [68:37]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
You're gonna die of old age, which is fine. That's not good. You want to die.
- [68:43]
Host
I mean, you don't have to.
- [68:44]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Just a disease, we can cure it. Nothing stops you from living forever as long as universe exists. Unless we escape a simulation.
- [68:56]
Host
But we wouldn't want a world where everybody could live forever, right? That would be.
- [68:59]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Sure we do. Why? Who do you want to die?
- [69:02]
Host
Well, I don't know. I mean, I say this because it's all I've ever known, that people die. But wouldn't the world become pretty overcrowded if.
- [69:09]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
No, you stop reproducing. If you live forever, you have kids because you want a replacement for you. If you live forever, you're like, I'll have kids in a million years. That's cool. I'll go explore universe first. Plus, if you look at actual population dynamics outside of like one continent, we're all shrinking, we're not growing.
- [69:26]
Host
Yeah, this is crazy. It's crazy that the more rich people get, the less kids they have, which aligns with what you're saying. And I do actually think, I think if I'm going to be completely honest here, I think if I knew that I was going to live to A thousand years old. There's no way I'd be having kids at 30.
- [69:43]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Right, exactly. Biological clocks are based on terminal points. Whereas if your biological clock is infinite.
- [69:48]
Host
You'D be like, one day, and you think that's close. Being able to extend our lives, it's one breakthrough away.
- [69:56]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I think somewhere in our genome, we have this rejuvenation loop, and it's set to basically give us at most 120. I think we can reset it to something bigger.
- [70:07]
Host
AI is probably going to accelerate that.
- [70:09]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's one very important application area. Yes, absolutely.
- [70:14]
Host
So maybe Brian Johnson's right when he says, don't die now. He keeps saying to me, he's like, don't die now.
- [70:20]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Don't die ever.
- [70:21]
Host
Because he's saying, don't die before we get to the technology.
- [70:24]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Right. Longevity escape velocity. You want to live long enough to live forever. If at some point we. Every year of your existence, at two years to your existence through medical breakthroughs, then you live forever. You just have to make it to that point of longevity escape velocity.
- [70:41]
Host
And he thinks that longevity escape velocity, especially in the world of AI, is pretty. Is pretty. It's decades away, minimum.
- [70:49]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Which means as soon as we fully understand human genome, I think we'll make amazing breakthroughs very quickly because we know some people have genes for living way longer. They have generations of people who are centurions. So if we can understand that and copy that or copy it from some animals which live forever, we'll get there.
- [71:08]
Host
Would you want to live forever?
- [71:09]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Of course. Reverse. Reverse. The question. Let's say we lived forever, and you ask me, do you want to die in 40 years? Why would I say yes?
- [71:17]
Host
I don't know.
- [71:18]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Maybe you're just used to the default.
- [71:19]
Host
Yeah, I am used to the default.
- [71:21]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
And nobody wants to die. Like, no matter how old you are, nobody goes, yeah, I want to die this year. Everyone's like, I want to keep living.
- [71:27]
Host
I wonder if life and everything would be less special if I lived for 10,000 years. I wonder if going to Hawaii for the first time or, I don't know, a relationship. All of these things would be way less special to me if they were less scarce. And if I just, you know, it.
- [71:47]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Could be individually less special. But there is so much more you can do right now. You can only make plans to do something for a decade or two. You cannot have an ambitious plan of working on this project for 500 years. Imagine possibilities open to you with infinite time in an infinite universe.
- [72:04]
Host
Gosh, well, you can, because exhausting it's.
- [72:08]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
A big amount of time. Also, I don't know about you, but I don't remember like 99% of my life in detail. I remember big highlights. So even if I enjoyed Hawaii 10 years ago, I'll enjoy it again.
- [72:20]
Host
Are you thinking about that really practically, in terms of. In the same way that Brian Johnson is. Brian Johnson is convinced that we're maybe two decades away from being able to extend life. Are you thinking about that practically? And are you doing anything about it?
- [72:33]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Diet, nutrition? I try to think about investment strategies which pay out in a million years. Yeah.
- [72:40]
Host
Really?
- [72:40]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah, of course.
- [72:41]
Host
What do you mean, of course?
- [72:42]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Why wouldn't you? If you think this is what's going to happen, you should try that. So if we get AI right now, what happens to economy? We talked about world coin. We talked about free labor. What's money? Is it now bitcoin? Do you invest in that? Is there something else? Which becomes the only resource we cannot fake? So those things are very important research topics.
- [73:04]
Host
So you're investing in bitcoin, aren't you?
- [73:07]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah.
- [73:10]
Host
Because it's a.
- [73:11]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It's the only scarce resource. Nothing else has scarcity. Everything else, if price goes up, will make more. I can make as much gold as you want, given a proper price point. You cannot make more bitcoin.
- [73:25]
Host
Some people say Bitcoin is just this thing on a computer that we all agreed was valuable.
- [73:28]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We are a thing on a computer, remember?
- [73:33]
Host
Okay, so I mean, not investment advice, but investment advice.
- [73:38]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It's hilarious how that's one of those things where they tell you it's not, but you know it is. Immediately your call is important to us. That means your call is of zero importance. And investment is like that.
- [73:48]
Host
Yeah, yeah. When they say no investment advice, it's definitely investment advice, but it's not investment advice. Okay, so you're bullish on bitcoin because it can't be messed with.
- [73:59]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
It is the only thing which we know how much there is in the universe. So gold. There could be an asteroid made out of pure gold heading towards us, devaluing it. Well, also killing all of us. But bitcoin, I know exactly the numbers. And even the 21 million is an upper limit. How many are lost, passwords forgotten? I don't know what Satoshi is doing with his million. It's getting scarcer every day while more and more people are trying to accumulate it.
- [74:31]
Host
Some people worry that it could be hacked with a supercomputer.
- [74:34]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
A quantum computer can break that algorithm. There is strategies for switching to quantum resistant Cryptography for that. And quantum computers are still kind of week.
- [74:46]
Host
Do you think there's any changes to my life that I should make following this conversation? Is there anything that I should do differently the minute I walk out of this door?
- [74:55]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I assume you already invest in Bitcoin heavily.
- [74:57]
Host
Yes, I'm an investor in Bitcoin.
- [74:59]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
This is financial advice? No, just you seem to be winning. Maybe it's your simulation. You're rich, handsome, you have famous people hang out with you. That's pretty good. Keep it up. Robin Hansen has a paper about how to live in a simulation, what you should be doing in it. And your goal is to do exactly that. You want to be interesting. You want to hang out with famous people so they don't shut it down. So you are part of a part someone's actually watching on Pay per View or something like that.
- [75:32]
Host
Oh, I don't know if you want to be watched on Pay per View because then you would be the.
- [75:35]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Then they shut you down. If no one's watching, why would they play it?
- [75:41]
Host
I'm saying, don't you want to fly under the radar? Don't you want to be the guy just living a normal life that the masters.
- [75:46]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Those are NPCs. Nobody wants to be an NPC.
- [75:50]
Host
Are you religious?
- [75:52]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Not in any traditional sense. But I believe in simulation hypothesis which has a super intelligent being. So.
- [75:58]
Host
But you don't believe in the, like, you know, the religious books.
- [76:02]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
So different religions. This religion will tell you don't work Saturday, this one don't work Sunday. Don't eat pigs, don't eat cows. They just have local traditions on top of that theory. That's all it is. They're all the same religion. They all worship super intelligent being. They all think this world is not the main one. And they argue about which animal not to eat. Skip the local flavors, concentrate on what do all the religions have in common. And that's the interesting part. They all think there is something greater than humans. Very capable, all knowing, all powerful. Then I run a computer game for those characters in a game I am that I can change the whole world. I can shut it down. I know everything in a world.
- [76:49]
Host
It's funny, I was thinking earlier on, when we started talking about the simulation theory, that there might be something innate in us that has been left from the creator. Almost like a clue, like an intuition. Because that's what we tend to have through history. Humans have this intuition that all the things you said are true, that there's this somebody above.
- [77:08]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We have generations of people who were religious, who believed God told them and was there and give them books. And that has been passed on for many generations. This is probably one of the earliest generations not to have universal religious belief.
- [77:23]
Host
I wonder if those people are telling the truth. I wonder if there's those people that say God came to them and said something. Imagine that. Imagine if that was part of this.
- [77:30]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I'm looking at the news today. Something happened an hour ago, and I'm getting different, conflicting results. I can't even get with cameras, with drones, with, like, guy on Twitter there. I still don't know what happened. And you think 3,000 years ago we have accurate record of translations? No, of course not.
- [77:48]
Host
You know these conversations you have around AI safety, do you think they make people feel good?
- [77:55]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I don't know if they feel good or bad, but people find it interesting. It's one of those topics. So I can have a conversation about different cures for cancer with an average person, but everyone has opinions about AI. Everyone has opinions about simulation. It's interesting that you don't have to be highly educated or a genius to understand those concepts, because I tend to.
- [78:17]
Host
Think that it makes me feel not positive. And I understand that. But I've always been of the opinion that you shouldn't live in a world of delusion where you're just seeking to be positive, have sort of positive things said and avoid uncomfortable conversations. Actually, progress often in my life comes from, like, having uncomfortable conversations, becoming aware about something, and then at least being informed about how I can do something about it. And so I think that's why. That's why I asked the question, because I assume most people will should if they're, you know, if they're normal human beings, listen to these conversations and go, gosh, that's scary. And this is concerning. And then I keep coming back to this point, which is like, what. What do I do with that energy?
- [79:12]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Yeah. But I'm trying to point out this is not different than so many conversations we can talk about. Oh, there is starvation in this region, genocide in this region. You're dying, Cancer is spreading, Autism is up. You can always find something to be very depressed about and nothing you can do about it. And we are very good at concentrating on what we can change, what we are good at, and basically not trying to embrace the whole world as a local environment. So historically, you grew up with a tribe. You had a dozen people around you. If something happened to one of them, it was very rare. It was an accident. Now if I go on the Internet, somebody gets killed everywhere. All the time. Somehow thousands of people are reported to me every day. I don't even have time to notice, it's just too much. So I have to put filters in place. And I think this topic is what people are very good at filtering as. Like this was this entertaining talk I went to kind of like a show and the moment I exit, it ends. So usually I would go give a keynote at a conference and I tell them basically, you're going to die, you have two years left. Any questions? And people be like, will I lose my job? How do I lubricate my sex robot? Like all sorts of nonsense. Clearly not understanding what I'm trying to say there. And those are good questions, interesting questions, but not fully embracing the result. They're still in their bubble of local versus global.
- [80:47]
Host
And the people that disagree with you the most as it relates to AI safety, what is it that they say? What are their counterarguments?
- [80:55]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Typically so many don't engage at all. Like they have no background knowledge in a subject. They never write a single book, single paper, not just by me, by anyone. They may be even working in a field. So they are doing some machine learning work for some company maximizing ad clicks. And to them those systems are very narrow. And then they hear that, oh, this AI is going to take over the world. It has no hands. How would it do that? It's nonsense. This guy is crazy. He has a beard, why would I listen to him? Right? Then they start reading a little bit, they go, oh, okay, so maybe AI can be dangerous. Yeah, I see that. But we always solve problems in the past, we're going to solve them again. I mean, at some point we fix the computer virus or something. So it's the same. And basically the more exposure they have, the less likely they are to keep that position. I know many people who went from super careless developer to safety researcher. I don't know anyone who went from I worry about AI safety to like there is nothing to worry about.
- [82:12]
Host
What are your closing statements?
- [82:15]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Let's make sure there is not a closing statement we need to give for humanity. Let's make sure we stay in charge, in control. Let's make sure we only build things which are beneficial to us. Let's make sure people who are making those decisions are remotely qualified to do it. They are good not just at science, engineering and business, but also have moral and ethical standards. And if you doing something which impacts other people, you should ask their permission before you do that.
- [82:45]
Host
If there was one button in front of you and it would shut down every AI company in the world right now permanently, with the inability for anybody to start a new one. Would you press the button?
- [82:59]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Are we losing narrow AI or just super intelligent AGI?
- [83:02]
Host
Part losing all of AI?
- [83:05]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
That's a hard question because AI is extremely important. It controls stock market power plants, it controls hospitals. It will be a devastating accident. Millions of people would lose their lives.
- [83:18]
Host
Okay, we can keep narrow AI.
- [83:20]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Oh, yeah, that's what we want. We want narrow AI to do all this for us, but not God. We don't control doing things to us.
- [83:28]
Host
So you would stop it? You would stop AGI and superintelligence?
- [83:32]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
We have AGI. What we have today is great for almost everything. We can make secretaries out of it. 99% of economic potential of current technology has not been deployed. We make AI so quickly, it doesn't have time to propagate through the industry, through technology. Something like half of all jobs are considered BS jobs. They don't need to be done bullshit jobs. So those can be. Not even automated. They can be just gone. But I'm saying we can replace 60% of jobs today with existing models. We're not done that. So if the goal is to grow economy to develop, we can do it for decades without having to create superintelligence as soon as possible.
- [84:12]
Host
Do you think globally, especially in the western world, unemployment's only going to go up from here? Do you think relatively this is the low of unemployment?
- [84:20]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I mean, it fluctuates a lot with other factors. There are wars, there's economic cycles. But overall, the more jobs you automate and the higher is the intellectual necessity to start a job, the fewer people qualify.
- [84:34]
Host
So if we plotted it on a graph over the next 20 years, you're assuming unemployment's gradually going to go up over that time?
- [84:41]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
I think so. Fewer and fewer people would be able to contribute already. We kind of understand it because we created minimum wage, we understood some people don't contribute enough economic value to get paid anything, really. So we had to force employers to pay them more than they worth. And we haven't updated it. It's what, 725 federally? In US, if you keep up with economy, it should be like $25 an hour now. Which means all these people making less are not contributing enough economic output to justify what they're getting paid.
- [85:18]
Host
We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest leaves a question for the next guest, not knowing who they're leaving it for. And the question left for you is what are the most important characteristics of for A friend, colleague or mate.
- [85:35]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Those are very different types of people. But for all of them, loyalty is number one.
- [85:43]
Host
And what does loyalty mean to you?
- [85:46]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Not betraying you, not screwing you, not cheating on you.
- [85:54]
Host
Despite the temptation, despite the world being as it is.
- [85:58]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Situation, environment.
- [86:01]
Host
Dr. Roman, thank you so much. Thank you so much for doing what you do because you're, you're starting a conversation and pushing forward a conversation and doing research that is incredibly important. And you're doing it in the face of a lot of, a lot of skeptics, I'd say. There's a lot of people that have a lot of incentives to discredit what you're saying and what you do, because they have their own incentives and they have billions of dollars on the line and they have their jobs on the line potentially as well. So it's really important that they're are people out there that are willing to, I guess, stick their head above the parapet and come on shows like this and go on big platforms and talk about the unexplainable, unpredictable, uncontrollable future that we're heading towards. So thank you for doing that. This book, which, which I think everybody should, should check out if they want a continuation of this conversation, I think was published in 2024, gives a holistic view on many of the things we've talked about today. Preventing AI failures and much, much more. And I'm going to link it below for anybody that wants to read it. If people want to learn more from you, if they want to go further into your work, what's the best thing for them to do? Where do they go?
- [87:04]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
They can follow me, follow me on Facebook, follow me on X, just don't follow me home. Very important.
- [87:10]
Host
Okay, so I'll put your Twitter, your X account as well below so people can follow you there. And yeah, thank you so much for doing what you do. It's remarkably eye opening and it's given me so much food for thought and it's actually convinced me more that we are living in a simulation. But it's also made me think quite differently of religion, I have to say, because you're right. All the religions, when you get away from the sort of the local traditions, they do all point at the same thing. And actually if they are all pointing at the same thing, then maybe the fundamental truths that exist across them should be something I pay more attention to. Things like loving thy neighbor, things like the fact that we are all one, that there's a divine creator, and maybe also they all seem to have consequence beyond this life. So maybe I should be thinking more about how I behave in this life and where I might end up thereafter. Roman thank you.
- [87:56]
Dr. Roman Yampolsky
Amen. SA.
- [88:48]
Host
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