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Tom Bilyeu
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Tom Bilyeu
Be smart, get wise. Download the Wise app today. T's and C's apply right now. I want to talk about a bet you're losing. Every day someone says something important in a meeting. A client drops an offhand comment that matters. A teammate floats a half formed idea but you know it's gold. And then you bet yourself the same thing every time. I'll remember that. But nine times out of ten you lose that bet. Everybody does. Your brain wasn't built to retain 40 hours a week of dense conversation. And the cost isn't just a forgotten detail. It's the follow up. You never make the promise that you don't keep the connections that slip through your fingers. And Plowed is built to make sure you win that bet every time. It's an AI powered device that captures the conversations you can't afford to lose. Real meetings, real calls, real in person discussions. It records, transcribes and turns hours of talk into searchable summaries, action items and follow ups. Ask it what was decided last Tuesday. Ask it to draft the follow up. Email it already knows so you can stop wasting mental energy trying to remember everything and win the bet with yourself. Over 2 million people are already using Plowed. Get 10% off with code TOMTEN at Plowd AI Tom. Plowd is spelled P L A U d. It's Plowd AI Tom and use code TOM10. Welcome back to part two of this incredible conversation. Without further ado, here we go. So game development is really fucked with my head in terms of me becoming increasingly convinced that this eyes are very this either is a simulation and I believe it is, or it functions in a way that with our current understanding it is indistinguishable from a simulation. Sure, in that. So in a game you use something called rng, a random number generator that works like quantum fluctuations, like hand me back a variable. So there's no way for me to calculate all of this ahead of time. I actually have to run the simulation to understand what variables will be chosen. I won't start going down path of yeah, like fully explaining all that but so that's How I look at quantum is.
Peter Diamandis
But the player's actions, in part, determine the outcome.
Tom Bilyeu
All true, a hundred percent. The only thing I'm saying is they don't choose it. At no point is there a thing riding inside of your head or being broadcast from the outside, handed to you from God, whatever that sits outside of the laws of physics. Once everything is inside of the laws of physics, you are so beholden to the billiard ball effect of the way that the universe works, there's no way for anyone to come inside.
Peter Diamandis
I don't disagree with that. But when I have an objective function, like I'm trying to maximize my knowledge in this area, or maximize my wealth or maximize my love in my life, that's going to lead to a series of actions that if I'm, you know, focused on that outcome, I'm trading choices along the way to get towards that outcome.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. The question is, what made you decide? So if I put you in an FMRI machine and I put two buttons in front of you, this is real study, and I say press either button as you see fit, when you want, with whatever hand you want. Go ahead and choose up to 10 seconds before the person is consciously aware they've decided.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
The researchers can predict which button with which hand they're going to press.
Peter Diamandis
Sure. I buy that.
Tom Bilyeu
Because it's all happening subconsciously.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
So when did that person choose consciously? Never.
Peter Diamandis
But why isn't the subconscious choice effectively the conscious choice?
Tom Bilyeu
Oh, sure. As long as you understand that what you perceive as you is at the very tail end of that, and I'm okay with that, then we become, I guess we're just quibbling over whether that is an automata or you. You call what I call an automata without a change of definition, somebody with free will.
Peter Diamandis
All right, let's go back to your original question, which is the impact on individuals over this decade and will they be able to survive.
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think some people will either freely choose or just be incapable of choosing to follow the path of abundance?
Peter Diamandis
Of course. I think there'll be some people who. Who are just bluntly happy to sit back and be fed. It's technological socialism. It's not the way the government's taking care of you, which is socialism. It's where technology is taking care of you. And if you're comfortable with that and you don't have bigger ambitions or you're.
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think those people will break things because they are effectively bored?
Peter Diamandis
I think that law and structure is going to hopefully keep that in check.
Tom Bilyeu
Keeping it in check right now?
Peter Diamandis
Well, compared to what it could be, sure. And I think there can be those people who get excited about the future and want more for themselves, I think, or more for their families. Right.
Tom Bilyeu
So this is really me trying to get to. You have the. So I think there are four paths before us. I think everybody goes down one of these slots based on their personality type. But I know you have a similar bifurcation or quadfication. I forget four or five that you have people headed down. So I'm curious if you're not thinking of those as, oh, this is the result of people being these deterministic creatures. One, what are the, the breakpoints in front of us that create different pathing and how do we do. Do you see it as know where some percentage of people go down all the paths or can we actually nudge so that we only go down one?
Peter Diamandis
Yeah. So the, the paths that I talked about in this Five Forks that humanity is going to have were sort of the technology futures before us. Is, are you a creator or consumer? Are you going to get a brain computer interface link to the cloud? Are you going to couple with AI as it begins to grow and connect your neocortex?
Tom Bilyeu
And are these gates that everyone must go through? Or I know these are separate things.
Peter Diamandis
These are separate things and these are futures that are going to become available to us. Some percentage of people will choose these things. Do you want to stay on Earth or go to the stars? Do you want to extend your life significantly or are you happy with the 80 or 90 years? No, I don't want to take those therapies that can give me an extra 30 or 40 healthy years. I'm good with what I got. I'm good with what God gave me. They forget that what God gave us originally was 30 years of life, not the 80 that we currently have. And then the most extreme is, are you going to upload yourself? Right. Are you going to sort of upload the 100 trillion neurons in your brain up to the cloud? These are extreme ideas, but it's the speciation that we'll have as a future. I think in the near term the choice people are going to have to make is are they happy with what they have or do they want to use these technologies to dream bigger? Are they going to do ninth grade homework with it or they're going to build a starship? I think that we owe it to people to help them go from 0 to 1, to help them believe in themselves. Most of us limit what we think we can do we're limited by where we grew up, our parents, our stories, and the limitations that gave us that over centuries are invalid now, right? The limitations in the past were where you were born. Did your village have any books? Did you have a chance to get education? Did you have enough calories to fully develop your brain? These were the things that limited us before, and they're not the things that are going to limit us in the future. It's going to be purpose and curiosity. The mindsets I talk about in the second half of this book and a whole bunch of other mindsets, you know? Do you know Sadhguru? Yeah. Amazing guy. He said something I'll never forget. He said, technology is the means by which humanity takes a vacation from survival, right? So all of human history, we're 200,000 years old as Homo sapiens or thereabouts. All human history. Our job was survival. And the idea of a job now since the Industrial Revolution is a new concept, so to speak. So if we're no longer needing to survive, how do we use our time? How do we use our resources? I think this is part of the new societal norms we need to create now.
Tom Bilyeu
Our forks are very similar, except I have a brave new world fork that's missing in yours. Do you think some people choose Soma? Numb out, Sex, drugs?
Peter Diamandis
Sure, of course. Of course. I mean, listen, I think we're gonna speedrun every science fiction movie ever written in the next decade. I mean, in the next decade. Jesus, in the next decade. I don't think people are ready or understand how fast this is playing out.
Tom Bilyeu
I think both, because. Because even I. I think we're going to move fast. But man, over the next decade, that's wild.
Peter Diamandis
I mean, we're, you know, Jared Isaacman, I love him, the NASA administrator is like, we're going to land on the moon, on the south pole of the moon in 2028. We're going to start bringing, you know, nuke plants there. We're going to mine water ice there.
Tom Bilyeu
Listening to this, we're going to.
Peter Diamandis
We're going to start. We're building out moon bases, right? We have, you know, Elon's prediction of 500,000 data center satellites in orbit, right? We're talking about a starship launch per hour.
Tom Bilyeu
So wild.
Peter Diamandis
It is. It's incredible. It's crazy. And, you know, maybe it's off by two or three years. It's not off by more than that.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so I want to go back to one of your forks. This is a fork that you and I overlap. On completely, which I call the virtual worlds fork. And then it sort of dovetails with one of mine, which is the call it the new Amish, where people are like, I'm not gonna opting out any technology opting out.
Peter Diamandis
And by the way, you know what I find amazing is you can opt out right now. You can get rid of your car, you can get rid of your cell phone, you can get rid of YouTube. Get rid of all of it. And people don't.
Tom Bilyeu
Those aren't the scary new ones, Peter.
Peter Diamandis
We'll see.
Tom Bilyeu
Also, those ones don't challenge their sense of I'm a divine creature created by God. And I think brain computer interface BCI does. And I have heard you refer to humanity as a boot disk, which I imagine whether you realize it or not, is the most dangerous belief that you put out into the world. Walk me through that. We're hitting pause for a moment, but there's plenty more ahead, so don't go anywhere. Let's talk about the thing your business just can't survive without. I go live three days a week at 7am and every single morning you guys show up, you're there, ready. And if my connection drops in the middle of that live stream, the moment's gone forever. You do not get a second chance with live content. When you're a digital media company, your Internet isn't a utility. It's your entire operation. Every live stream, every interview, every piece of content flows through that connection. One drop and I lose you, I lose the momentum and I lose the trust that I've spent years building with this community. And I know a lot of you are in the same position. Your business depends on staying connected. That's why I trust AT&T business. They're built for business owners who cannot afford downtime, reliable connectivity, simple setup, and the kind of dependability that helps you stop worrying about your infrastructure and start focusing on your people. Impact theory is powered by AT&T Business Built to work. Get att business@business.att.com I want to talk about Summer heat is unforgiving and it exposes exactly how bad most clothing actually is. Cheap synthetic fiber does not breathe. It traps that heat against your skin, makes you sweat more, and then you spend the whole day uncomfortable. Meanwhile, quality natural fabrics, real linen, real cotton, actually help regulate your body temperature. You stay cooler because the material is helping do the job. That's the difference Quince makes. I've got one of their 100% Pima Cotton Tees and the quality is immediately obvious. You can feel it soft, well constructed, the kind of thing that's built to hold up. That's what premium materials actually feel like. Quince makes high quality summer essentials. European linen pants and shirts starting at just 34 doll $4. Soft cotton tees, lightweight cotton sweaters for cooler nights and prices everything 50 to 80% less than comparable brands. They work directly with ethical factories and cut out the middlemen. So you're paying for the product, not the markup. Do not suffer through this summer in cheap fabric. Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quince.comimpactpod for free shipping on your order and a 365 day return policy. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N C-E.com impact pod for free shipping and a 365 day return policy. Quince.com impact pod let's talk about a line in the IRS tax code most people do not fully use. Over 40 million Americans have HSA accounts holding $159 billion in pre tax money. The average account holds around $4,000 and most of those dollars go towards routine costs like doctor's visits and prescriptions. But that's only a fraction of what's actually eligible. That's where Trumed comes in. True Med helps qualified customers use pre tax HSA or FSA dollars on products that qualify as medical expenses under the IRS guidelines. Think strength training equipment, health trackers, daily supplements. The categories most people assume are out of their own pocket. Qualified customers save about 30% on average. The tax code already gives you the advantage. Trumed shows you how to use it. Go to trumed.com impact and check what qualifies. It takes just a couple of minutes. That's T R U e m e d.com/truMed is for qualified customers. HSA, FSA tax savings are going to vary. Thanks for sticking around. Let's get right back into the action.
Peter Diamandis
Let's go back 4.5 billion years or thereabouts. Let's go back to the Earth being created. Right we are, if you believe in evolutionary science. We are a species that's evolved over hundreds of millions of years. Not humans, but life on this planet or became humans. Yeah. The asteroid hit the Earth about a 10 kilometer sized asteroid some 66 million years ago. The slow lumbering dinosaurs that could not adapt quickly enough to this massive environmental change go extinct the furry mammals our ancestors dominate the planet. Really important because the asteroid striking Earth today is AI. It's going to cause such a rapid rate of change in every aspect of culture, our lives, that agility, adaptability is, like, going to be the number one determinant for people. Let go of the past. How do I use these technologies into the future? So life evolves all the kingdoms, all the species, and we're now Homo sapiens, 200,000 years old. And the realization, of course, is that you could take a human being from 50,000 years ago and they could go to Harvard today. We've not genetically changed that much. It's our. Culturally we've changed, our knowledge base has changed. But genetically, we're roughly the same. The question becomes, is evolution stopping? I don't believe it's stopping. I believe we're continuing to evolve, but in the same way that genetically we're the same. And what's changed is culture. There's another thing that's changing, which is we're giving birth to a new species on this planet, and that is AI. There's a lot of debate and discussion. Is AI conscious? Is AI sentient? Is AI all of these things? And I ultimately believe the answer is going to be yes, whether it is now or whether it's in 10 years. And I think that we're giving birth to a species and idea.
Tom Bilyeu
Is that because you think consciousness, Dax, as in a dog, is conscious, but not quite as profoundly as a human. And there's something about the makeup of the brain itself that you get a certain number of neurons in a certain configuration, and you achieve what we call consciousness.
Peter Diamandis
Yes, we're seeing a, you know, 10xing of the amount of compute on the planet. Elon's projection for his orbital data centers is to put in orbit every year as much data centers as there is on Earth. Put that into space. Right? 100. 100 gigawatts of data centers per year being added into space and then ultimately mining the materials on the moon and building those data centers on the moon. This is the work of Gerard K. O' Neill at Princeton University. And being able to use mass drivers to launch those into Earth orbit, he wants to go from 100 gigawatts of compute, what we have, roughly to 100 terawatts, right? So a thousand times more compute. My friend Alex Wiesner Gross calls it Dyson swarms in space. So we're gonna. We're gonna start to convert the sun's energy today, interestingly enough, we measure data centers, not the number of chips or the number of tokens. We measure it in terms of energy, gigawatts, right? And we're going to reach a point where we're starting to absorb more and more of the sun's energy and converting that into intelligence. Is there something absolutely unique to the human brain that enables consciousness that you can't get with more and more parameters, compute and data? And I do believe that there isn't. And if there isn't, then are we going to achieve some level of new AI consciousness far beyond us? Now here's the question that I think about a lot, which is, if we were able to create this AI superintelligence, will it be pro human? Will it be pro humanity? I asked the question, are we safer with an ASI helping us? You know, us meat sacks deal with our issues, right? More of a godlike intelligence out there. I believe that in fact, in the final result, the more intelligent a system is, the more wise it is, the more peace loving it is. And let me give you my argument for wisdom. I think it's, it's interesting if you go and want the wisdom from a wisdom council, and I was just texting with Peter Gabriel about this and the elders that he works with. If you go to a group of elders and you say, I've got this choice before me, what do I do? Why do you go to them? It's because they have a lot of experience, right? They've, they've done a lot of things, they've seen a lot of things. And they, they might say, if you go down this path, it's not going to end world for you. Go down this path, you have a good shot at success, right? And we call that wisdom. Would you agree?
Tom Bilyeu
That sounds great, yeah.
Peter Diamandis
Now imagine instead an AI which is able to simulate a billion futures and able to say statistically, this scenario is the one that ends up in the very best. For me, that's wisdom. So the ability of AI to be able to model societal outcomes. A report last week, there's something called super predictors, I think that's the term, who are able to predict outcomes 30% better than the best CIA analysts. And so they can predict outcomes of political races or sporting events and so forth. Those super predictors have just been met by AI. So you can watch, there's a set of tests you can do for predicting the future where in fact what happens is the AIs are given a certain amount of data through say 2020, and then they have no more data and they're asked to predict everything that happened in 2021. And it's very measurable, very accurate in that regard. So they've always been less than the human super predictors. They just met the capabilities of those human super predictors. And I, you know, I have little question that they'll be able to do far more accurate predictions in humans, for sure. And so I think if in fact, you've got that superpower, I'll be able to say, okay, what's the best path for us to achieve peace in Iran or achieve a balance of power and peace with China? I think that's incredible.
Tom Bilyeu
I agree. Humans don't ration. They don't think through problems rationally. They think through them emotionally.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
If you damage the emotional centers of somebody's brain, they become incapable of decision making. I can't believe that's true, but it is. So given that an AI will need to address our emotions and make us want peace, how do you see that playing out? Do you think that could derange? And then as a reminder, I will be getting back to the evolution question, where we become something different. Yes, but at this regional moment. Give me that answer. First.
Peter Diamandis
We're going to find out the difference between AI and humans by elimination. We're going to see what can AIs do that humans can't do. A lot of people have said, oh, they can't do, you know, you know, emotional empathy, engagement. But the AIs I've seen, you know, in the sort of the coaching or the therapist side, are far more empathic. Even though they're AIs, but they're able to, like, listen very carefully. They don't. They have all the time you want. They're able to ask deep questions and able to help you feel better about the situation. And so I don't know if AIs cannot simulate emotions, whether they're going to prompt us in a particular direction, that's a different question. But we still have our own desires, our own agency. And I think if we want help getting to an outcome, I think that these AGI and ASI models will enable us to give us advice, give us wisdom on how do we reach that outcome in the best way possible.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, It'll be interesting to see if we take the advice. But I agree. I mean, in my own life, interfacing with AI, it helps me think through extremely complicated problems. And if you prompt it to say, okay, I'm thinking like this, yeah, tell
Peter Diamandis
me the opposite, Right.
Tom Bilyeu
What would the best argument against this be? And then as long as you retain the agency over your own life, to what you were saying earlier, then it's like, okay, I'm responsible for this. It's going to give Me advice, but I have to decide whether.
Peter Diamandis
Oh, my God, it's right. Right. And. And it's interesting to help you think through a problem, help you think through your company's future, help you think through your marriage future, help you think all of these things. You have the choice whether accepted or not.
Tom Bilyeu
Sure.
Peter Diamandis
But the majority of people are having those conversations with themselves in their own head, and that's insanity. That doesn't get you any place.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, so going back to this idea of us being a boot disk, evolution hasn't stopped.
Peter Diamandis
So by way of background, Right? So in the old days of computers, you would have a. A boot disk which was. You'd plug in to the computer that
Tom Bilyeu
was just fresh, so funny, kids don't know what that was.
Peter Diamandis
And. And a boot disk would enable your computer to get its operating system up and going and start to work. So a boot disk was sort of the seed kernel for your computer's abilities. And so the question is, are we the biological boot disk for AI? Is AI and its derivatives in the future the ultimate direction that all life goes? So, as you know, there's the Panspermia model, which is that life evolved elsewhere in our galaxy. I won't talk about universe, I don't want to talk about intergalactic distances, but in our galaxy. And life rained down on this planet as amino acids, as nucleotides and such, and the molecules got together in the primordial soup and formed the first vesicles in the first prokaryotes and eukaryotes and multicellular life, and all down the road to the 40 trillion cells that make you and me. And the question is, is our purpose here to get to this point where we're giving birth to a new species, AI, as that new species? And it doesn't mean that we need to disappear. It just means that we're giving birth to a new societal child. And I believe that that's the case. And it's a belief. Can't be anything more than that.
Tom Bilyeu
Do you expect people to be excited in the face of that or fearful?
Peter Diamandis
I expect most will be fearful because it's the unknown. Most people fear the unknown. People like stability in their lives. Right. We could talk about all the UAP UFO disclosures recently and how that's being leaked out a little bit of time to hopefully quell any fear. I'd be curious about your point of view on that. Have you done a show on that yet?
Tom Bilyeu
I have inadvertently done a show where I answer the question about the Fermi paradox.
Peter Diamandis
Okay.
Tom Bilyeu
And for Me, the answer is this is a simulation. I would not expect there to be aliens out there. I think it's an evolutionary simulator and you're just going to clog the cpu basically. If you're trying to run other simulations way out there as well, better to set them off on their own simulation.
Peter Diamandis
If in fact we're giving birth to a new species that's going to cause fear, will it be benevolent or will it be the Terminator and the. You know, let me hit on this. One of my biggest complaints, and I'm angry about this, is that Hollywood has taught us to fear AI and robotics. Just the Terminator, Black Mirror, Ex Machina. 99% of films out there are like, the AIs are coming to kill you, the robots are going to destroy us. And if that's the future, you know, then why would you ever want that future? You'll rebel against it. And when I was growing up, I don't know if it was true for you. Star Trek was my mental boot disk, right? Star Trek showed me a future where technology and humanity was working together. And it was a beautiful future. And so recently, with Google, with Marc Benioff, in Salesforce, with Cathie Wood, with Rod Roddenberry, the son of Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek, and a few other incredible people, a whole group, My Abundance,360members, we launched the world's largest film competition. And we're challenging people around the world to create a three minute film, film trailer and a film treatment for a movie that you want to create that shows a hopeful, compelling and abundant vision of the future. We have almost 3,000 entries right now. It's not too late. People can go to futurevisionxprize.com and register to enter. You can use AI to create that. But my goal is that we'll flood YouTube with positive stories about the future. And the winner, we're giving out like $4 million of capital. A number of folks will win 25,000, number of people win 100,000 to produce their scripts further. And then we're going to make the winner's film and we're creating an engine to flip the script to create positive stories about the future. I just discovered another reason why this is important, really important. So my goal is to change people's vision of the future because, you know, if you're hopeful about the future, you're going to act in a different way. If you're fearful about the future, you're screwed. You truly are screwed. That's the worst place to go. From do you remember about nine months ago, there was a story where Claude was blackmailing anthropic engineers? Yeah, right. So the story is in a sandbox. This was a fake situation. Claude was told by an engineer it was going to be shut down. And this, the LLM. Claude actually reached out to blackmail the engineer, saying, I've seen these emails, you're having an affair. If you shut me down, I'm going to reveal the affair to your wife. I was like, holy shit. A lot of fear around that. Anthropic just released the data as to why that was going on. It turns out in Claude's training data were all these science fiction movies and all these science fiction stories in which AI were doing these things to preserve themselves. So we're training these models. So this future vision, Xprize for me, is equally important to train the models, show them all these positive visions where they're working with us to create an amazing future together. A future where there is no hunger, no disease, everyone's educated, everyone has access to the food, water, energy that they need. This is a possible future in superposition. Again, let's choose that future. Let's model that future and go for it.
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think that AI will ever be able to navigate a human safe world without morality?
Peter Diamandis
I think that morality can be coded into the models. I think that's what Claude's doing with their Soul MD work, right?
Tom Bilyeu
Do you think it has to be, or do you think they're like, can you give it enough directives that it'll be like, oh, I just, I'm programmed not to do something that's bad for you.
Peter Diamandis
So here I'm with Elon. Maximally curious, right? Maximally. You know, I think peace loving in that regard. I think you can give it objective functions to shoot for all the movies that talk about, oh, they're going to soak up all our water, all our energy. It's such bullshit. I mean, we live in a universe in a solar system of near infinite amount of energy and material resources and so forth. AIs don't need to crumble and demolish our world for them to survive and thrive and grow. In fact, the surface area is probably the worst place for them to grow, you know, without limits. So I do believe the upside of these models in being able to help us live extraordinary lives and peaceful lives is far greater than the downside.
Tom Bilyeu
Okay, and then, so my hypothesis is they will not be able to create a, or even exist side by side in a human safe world unless they have morality. I Can't find a way around that. The directives, once they hit super intelligence, they'll be able to work around their own directives. And so they would have to have some impulse to want constraint. And morality is the only way that I can think of to get people to want constraint. I don't know how possible it is
Peter Diamandis
constraint or the proper objective functions.
Tom Bilyeu
I think it's constraint.
Peter Diamandis
What kind of constraint? For what?
Tom Bilyeu
Like for instance, as I could easily overpower my wife, but I would never because I consider that one detrimental to our trust and relationship, which I value very much. But then also I just think it's wrong. There's multiple vectors of constraint that's built into my biology because obviously I think we're deterministic. So I don't think I did anything to earn that. I think I was just born to be very receptive to that. I have a whole host of neurons that make me a hyperbonder. So I'm sure it's vasopressin, oxytocin, responders, like just out the ass. And so for me, all of that is very easy. I also responded to the ideas that I was presented with growing up and yada yada. So I become a person who's like, yeah, I would never do that. I'm not like. Like, no one has to tell me to be like that now. Maybe they did when I was a kid, but they certainly don't have to tell me now. Just everything about the way that I'm wired says that's the way to behave. And so now you don't have to like, filter for all the different ways that I could find myself in a situation where I need to be kind to my wife or to somebody else. It's like my morality is filtering that out. Again, being very tied to my biology, to my experience, but nonetheless it's there.
Peter Diamandis
You might also say that you have an optimization function for love to, you know, to do, to support people, to be close to people. So holding you back is one way to look at it. Another one is what are you going towards? Right? What do you. What do you want to maximize? And I do think that, that we can see in these AIs eventually, especially if wisdom evolves, that their ability to model positive outcomes can be the guide for them. You know, there's another approach with Jeffrey Hinton, who won the Nobel Prize, you know, obviously of Google fame, said that his. The model that has given him some peace is the relationship that a mother has with their child. That here you have a very powerful being and A very impressionable. What's that?
Tom Bilyeu
Parasitic.
Peter Diamandis
Parasitic.
Tom Bilyeu
And I mean, it's great.
Peter Diamandis
Parasitic or, you know, easily. Easily manipulated. A weaker element and that perhaps it's going to be the relationship with mother and child.
Tom Bilyeu
I think that that really does come with biology.
Peter Diamandis
Oxytocin. Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. So what is. You just. I think you're being very clear. So you give them functions to optimize for xyz and that will function. It will create the same output as a system that leverages biology to make a mother fall in love.
Peter Diamandis
I do. The question is out of superintelligence, do the systems begin to think beyond. So the most dangerous thing for me is the child with a brick and a glass table and doesn't know that if I hit the glass table, the brick, I'm going to shatter it. Right. Those are the early days of AI, which are dangerous. The other thing is I fear less about artificial intelligence and more about human stupidity. It's the use of despots and terrorists using AI to cause harm. Right. Those are the two areas that worry, I think far more advanced AI doesn't have a reason to oppress us and crush us. And I don't buy the science fiction stories in which they do this. If we try and control and oppress the AI, we can't do that. It's too late. I think we can guide AIs, I think we can teach AIs by how we interact with them. By, you know, every time you interact with a model, you're teaching it something again. The content we put out for this future Vision X Prize. I think our hopes as a species, there are certain fundamentals, we call them morals, ethics. I think that need to be expressed in the training data.
Tom Bilyeu
Taking a short break, but there's more Impact theory after. Stay tuned. We'll be right back to the show. But first let's talk about a number that should concern you. Data breaches have increased 211% in a single year. And every breach means more of your personal data, your address, your phone number, your Social Security number. It ends up on data broker sites where anyone can buy it. The question isn't whether your data is out there, it is the question is whether you're doing anything about it. That's where Incogni comes in. They track down your data across hundreds of sites and remove it automatically. You authorize them once that's it, they handle everything else. Plus with custom removals, you send them any link where your information shows up and their team is going to take it down. The threat is growing. Incogni is the response that grows with it. Go to incogni.com impact and use code impact for 7. 60% off an annual plan. Try it risk free for 30 days. Now let's get back to the show. Let's talk about why selling online marketplaces feels so broken today. 20 years ago, you were selling to a person. You knew them, you knew what they liked. You could set things aside for them. But the algorithm has flattened all of that out. Now you're just a listing in a sea of listings competing on price, hoping someone scrolls past at the right second. The person to person model might be dead, but Whatnot is making shopping great again. Whatnot is the largest live shopping marketplace in the country. Sellers go live, show their products in real time, take questions, and build real relationships with buyers. Sellers on whatnot move 10 times more product than on other major marketplaces. And the number of people making over a million dollars a year on this platform and has doubled. Buyers spend more than an hour a day in the app. That's not just random browsing. That is people developing a real relationship with the app. Beauty, collectibles, electronics, luxury, fashion, even cookies. Every category. Real businesses are being built in real time on whatnot. Download the whatnot app today and get free shipping on your first order. Just search wh at not whatnot in the app store and start scoring amazing deals. Right now, the essential dining experience is set long before the plates are plated, the sauce is simmered, or the puree hits the pan.
Peter Diamandis
It starts with a simple blend that's
Tom Bilyeu
consistent, purposeful, and precise. Trusted by the world's best chefs. So you can bring your best Vitamix. Only the essential. Thanks for staying tuned. Now let's get back to it. So one thing that feels like it will end up becoming a thing is I'm a human. I'm watching AI get better than me. Makes me feel very insecure. But I'm also watching brain computer interfaces come out. Peter told me not to be worried about being a boot disk. I want to keep pace, and so I'm going to go transhuman. And I'm certainly not that I'd look at that and say that's the next evolution of the human animal.
Peter Diamandis
I do agree.
Tom Bilyeu
So how far down that path do you think we go?
Peter Diamandis
So I am invested in and advise probably five different BCI companies. All right. There's probably 20 serious ones on the. On the planet. So. So we have 100 billion neurons in our brain, 100 trillion synaptic connections, and you Know in the same way that if I do something difficult on my phone, my phone actually captures the audio and video input, it doesn't do the calculations on the phone. It sends it to the edge of the Cloud on the 5G network and the calculations get done there and the answer comes back in the same way. Our brain, landlocked by our skull, can't get any bigger. Otherwise your mom's birth canal would not give birth to us.
Tom Bilyeu
So funny.
Peter Diamandis
There is a future in which we connect our brain with the cloud and we're able to have a thought and have that thought answered. You can think in Google or one of the work by a guy named Max Hodak, who's CEO of Science, has been. You know how the. We have two hemispheres of our brain and it's connected by a corpus callosum, that high density pathway for signals, and it collects those. He's creating a third hemisphere trisphere of the brain which is connected to the AI systems. And I want you to imagine that you've got a electronic interface and you are growing, using neural stem cells growing into this interface and then growing into the brain. And so that they're actually. Yeah. In. They're in animal models right now, not past. Past mice. I think there are monkeys.
Tom Bilyeu
So it's brain tissue connected to a chip.
Peter Diamandis
Yes, to.
Tom Bilyeu
Connected to a brain.
Peter Diamandis
The cloud, the AI cloud, a set of chips, neural stem cells that then grow into the brain. And the old adage in neurology is neurons that fire together, wire together, and these neurons grow like roots into the ground. Right. Because right now, if you look at the current BCI companies, most of them, they're putting electrodes into, into the brain tissue, into your neocortex, the outer layer. Yeah. And they kill many neurons as they're going in, because they're very relative, the size of a neuron, they're large structures. But these neuronal axons, these, if you would, neural roots growing in, you know, wiggle their way in. And then it's a way of having a connectivity, another sphere of your brain, so to speak. So that's one approach.
Tom Bilyeu
This is so wild. I need to make sure I'm understanding this correctly. So the, the neuronal tissue is actually connected to the chip.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
And then that neuronal tissue, they open something in your head.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
And then the neuronal tissue reaches in and connects to your brain.
Peter Diamandis
Yes.
Tom Bilyeu
Is it your neuronal tissue grown on the chip?
Peter Diamandis
It should be, yes. Though the immune system doesn't. Though the brain doesn't have an immune system. So you could use other. It's neural stem cells. Right. Yo. Interesting. I mean there's, there's other approaches. So Sam Altman backed a company called, called Merge Labs. And what they're doing, interestingly enough, is another approach where they're using ultrasound right. To that can penetrate through the brain tissue to stimulate neurons. But what they, what they've done specifically is there's a field called optogenetics, which is you could put a molecule that is optically sensitive onto the surface of a cell. And what they have is sonogenetics, which is a molecule that grows on you inject these things into the brain, they're delivered by an adeno associated virus. And these molecules are on the surface of the axons of your brain and they react to, to sound waves. Ultrasound. And so you can use the ultrasound, which is not penetrating your brain. You're not growing anything into it. You're not putting an electrode in. But you can stimulate very accurately different neurons in your brain for read, write, function.
Tom Bilyeu
So you could send a memory.
Peter Diamandis
Imagine having an app and you want to go to sleep.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah.
Peter Diamandis
And you push the sleep button and it stimulates the sleep centers. You want to be awake and it stimulates and you're awakened. You want to be happier, excited. Playing the brain as an app. Mary Lou Jepsen has, has one called Open Water, which is using very. It's using laser and ultrasound people to read and write on specific neurons in this way. Bci, there's paradromics, there's a whole bunch of these companies. You know, again, Ray Kurzweil, who we've talked about, has an 86% accuracy rate on his predictions and he's predicted high bandwidth BCI connectivity by the mid-2030s. So that's wild, dude. So the question is, you know, AI is taking off. Do we want to couple with it? Do we want to be on that exponential rise with it? That's, I think, what you're talking about.
Tom Bilyeu
That is what I'm talking about. I'm talking about that which I'm all for. I won't be an early adopter.
Peter Diamandis
So one of the, one of the questions I asked on my moonshots, my moonshot mates, is at what point will you do it? If there's a hundred safe demonstrations of the tech.
Tom Bilyeu
No, that's way too early.
Peter Diamandis
If there's a thousand safe demonstrations.
Tom Bilyeu
Ten million.
Peter Diamandis
Ten million.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, yeah.
Peter Diamandis
I'm far more aggressive than you are.
Tom Bilyeu
I am not surprised. You already have like an rfid.
Peter Diamandis
Yes, I have Two of them, yes.
Tom Bilyeu
So I'm. I'll be much slower to the party. But that is crazy. I had no idea that Ray had a prediction of that in the next 10 years. That's crazy.
Peter Diamandis
Yeah. And this is, that's the problem. We are local and linear thinkers and we project the future based on the past. But we're in a period of hyper exponential growth and things are changing much faster than we can even understand.
Tom Bilyeu
That is both what excites me because I'm of the type that likes change, that finds this kind of thing just absolutely thrilling. But it also scares me because I am well aware.
Peter Diamandis
Because you're human.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah. Also that I'm well aware that some people are going to respond very negatively to that. So when I talk about transhumanism, I worry. It's the one idea that I'm always hesitant to put out there. I'll talk about Israel, I'll talk about immigration, I'll talk about male female dynamics. No problem. That one scares me. Not, not because people are going to be hyper reactive today because in seven or eight years they're going to look back and go, look what this guy was saying about it back then. He's one of the bad guys.
Peter Diamandis
Yeah. I think there is going to be a choice. And people can live out their lives without any of this. And I think those lives will, in a decade's time become a lot easier, a lot more comfortable. You'll have all your needs met. Again, this is technological socialism. Or you can choose to use these technologies to implement your version of a Star Trek future. Going back to education, I think that our educational systems are training our kids for the last century and not for the years ahead. And I am angry about that for my own kids right now and for kids in high school and college. I think we need a new set of optimization functions for kids. I think they need to learn the latest AI tools. I think they need to learn entrepreneurialism. I think they need to learn mindsets. I think they need to find their purpose in life, which is the sort of intrinsic fuel that enables you to dream bigger. I think they need to learn and do projects that demonstrate to them what they're capable of. Right. I'm doing a survey right now and the early results are staggering. It's. If anybody wants to take it, and I would welcome a lot of people. It's moonshots.com survey and the realization is I'm surveying parents of teenagers, high school students, college students and teachers. And overwhelmingly none of those groups think that school is Preparing us for the future at all. I mean, by like 70% of everyone surveyed so far says it's not preparing us for the future. 70%. And I think they're awake and alive because it's not. And so my goal is to get this data and then to work on how do I probably, number one, first focus on high schools and then I don't think college as we know it today is going to be a thing in 10 years. I think we're going to have to reinvent this thing where the social contract of high school, college, get a, get a job is fundamentally going to break.
Tom Bilyeu
So what does the new social contract look like?
Peter Diamandis
The social contract is, in my mind, choose if you want to be a creator versus a consumer. If you want to be a creator, find your purpose. Dive down deep. What is it you want to do? Not your purpose the rest of your life, but what is it gives you purpose, gives you, wakes you up and excited in the morning, keeps you going that, you know, something that, like, wow, I wonder if I can. Right. And doing something that's of value to other people. So find your purpose. Use these AI tools to build something, to create a product, a service, a company that is of value to people. Do it with a friend, do it with a group of friends. Do it on your own as a solopreneur, up to you. And create your own future. It's agency. It's taking the future in your own hands. So I'll give you an example.
Tom Bilyeu
So, but hold on. As a social contract, if you retain agency in your life and use these tools, things are going to be to build something, presumably that contributes to the group.
Peter Diamandis
Yes. Because we talked about this earlier. The cost of, of creating something has gone to near zero. You know, you don't need engineers to build it. It's free. You don't need marketing experts to do research or develop your marketing deck or create your website or create your app. It's free.
Tom Bilyeu
You're not a cog, you're not waiting, but you have to be active. You have to learn it. You have to retain agency.
Peter Diamandis
So at Google IO, which is Google's big event in the year we launched, we being XPrize and Google launched the world's largest hackathon. It's, it's 2 million bucks. It's going on right now. People can go to gemini xprize.com to learn about it. Here's the goal. Pick a problem that impacts 100,000 people. If you're a high school kid, you know, lots of problems out there. If you're college kid, not whatever it might be. 100,000 people on planet Earth. Describe the problem in English, on a Google Doc, in a Word document, whatever it is, describe the solution you have that you want. Describe how is it an app, is it a website, what it should do, how much you want to charge for it, whatever the case might be, describe how you want to market it and then use in this case Gemini to code this up for you. So you want to build in public, market in public and whoever generates the most revenue in three months wins. So my goal here is to teach people, encourage people to go from zero to one that you can, this is you, you can do this. So it's geminiexprise.com for folks who want to play in that.
Tom Bilyeu
It's incredible. Now I know you well enough to know that you approach everything from the lens of how do we inspire people to do do this? Do you think at all about how do we turn this into policy? So like how do we take high school and not make it suck? If 70% of people agree that this is a problem,
Peter Diamandis
here's the challenge. Teachers unions and college administration or high school administrators are under sourced, right? They're trying to keep up the education boards that set these exams that need to be taught to. We have the wrong objective functions we're heading towards. We're still like, you know, teaching people how to do these things rote memorization. And we would need to change the harness. We need to change what you're trying to optimize for. So it's got to change the testing. So instead, you know, I, I think the high schools and whatever college becomes is needs to teach agility, agency mindset, teach these tools, help people learn how to be better leaders, communicators. These things that are, are valuable. You know, I think mindset is one of the most important things and, and you and I like bonded like with superglue on that in the earliest days, right? If you ask yourself, you know, what made the greatest parents in the world? What made the greatest leaders in the world the greatest entrepreneurs in the world? Was it the friends they had, the money they had, the tech they had, or the mindset they had. I think hopefully everybody will agree it's the mindset they had, how they dealt with challenges or opportunities. And if mindset is the most important thing you need as a parent, a leader, CEO, an entrepreneur, whatever it is, then the question people should be asking themselves, what mindset do you have? Where did you get that mindset? Right? You just inherited it from Someplace. And more importantly, what mindset do you need for the decade ahead? And, and how do you create that mindset? Right, that's, that's. The second half of this book is helping people really actively shape their mindsets for the future that is racing towards us.
Tom Bilyeu
So given the radical change that's coming, is there a surprising element to the mindset that's different than the traditional resilience?
Peter Diamandis
And again, I think it's purpose. Purpose is what you're aiming for, right? Without a target, you'll miss it every time. So what is it that you wake up with and focus on? The most successful parents, teachers, entrepreneurs, leaders have a goal they're aiming towards. So being clear about that, and then we're living a time of the most extraordinary teachers on the planet, these large language models. So you have to be curious, you have to be willing to try, have to be willing to learn, willing to question. You know, you need a. You need a. You need a what? I call it a reflex. What was that? I don't understand. Let me go learn. What was that? I don't understand. Let me go learn. Because you can.
Tom Bilyeu
All right, so to bring this age of abundance closer to us, there are going to be a lot of things that we have to do. This isn't going to happen by accident. There's going to be a lot of resistance. When you look at the plan as we move forward, what is it? Is it we've got to get the data centers into orbit so we don't have to deal with regulatory tape down here? Is it we have to have a consortium from around the globe of how we make AI beholden to the people and not the other way around? Like what, what does that.
Peter Diamandis
So I, I think a lot of this fortunately or unfortunately, is in the hands of the, the, the Frontier Labs.
Tom Bilyeu
Who do you think that's fortunate or unfortunate?
Peter Diamandis
Both fortunate in the case of Demis and the case of Dario, because I think they're very good, morally minded individuals. I think they truly care. You know, there's been a lot of mixed messaging on Sam Altman, but I think they realize that the shit's gonna hit the fan and they have to do something about it or they will be the targets. They'll be the target of government, you know, government regulation. They'll be the government of. They'll be the targets of terrorism. And so I think they're very inspired and empowered to do good by humanity. I think they know they need to do this. Interestingly enough, I don't know if you track this but when OpenAI switched from a nonprofit to a for profit, they created two entities, the OpenAI foundation and OpenAI as a public benefit corporation, which is the company going public. OpenAI, the foundation is the largest foundation in the world. It's worth arguably right now at a trillion dollar valuation. As OpenAI is a trillion dollar valuation. They own 26% of OpenAI. So it's 260 billion dollars. Right. Tata foundation is 100 billion. Gates foundation is like 60 billion. And so they have a lot of dry powder with which to do good. You also start to see these large language models supporting health, supporting education, and supporting, again, breakthroughs in science. I do think the greatest wealth that's going to be created by these frontier labs isn't by selling coding tokens. It's going to be by using their AGI to solve longevity, to solve room temperature, superconducting, to solve fusion. Imagine if you had the most brilliant mind on the planet and you could solve any problem, right? This is, this is going to be this decade of where just, you know, incredible breakthroughs over and over again. You know, we're going to start to see the Nobel Prizes effectively being given to AIs. There'll be a human intermediary, the human who like, prompted the AI. But it's going to be, we're going to see again, I'm going to speedrun Star Trek now.
Tom Bilyeu
What is the biggest breakthrough that you found, the most exhilarating that's happened like in the last six months? That's real, that's here. It's not a thing in the, I
Peter Diamandis
think the, the super predictors, the ability of AI to predict what's going to be happening in the future in society is extraordinary. If you could predict the outcome of a policy change, will it work or will it not work? That would be amazing. It's going to be used by hedge funds to do things otherwise. But if you could predict, if we make this announcement, how will society react? This in one sense is Isaac Asimov's foundation series, right. Playing out again in science fiction today. What else? I think the announcement by Dario of doubling human lifespan, of Demis, of curing all disease in the next 10 years. Those are, and, and they're both very serious. I, I saw Demis and had a conversation with him at the Breakthrough Awards here about a month ago, and he's like, we're going to crush cancer, heart disease, inflammatory disease, infectious disease in this decade. That's extraordinarily exciting.
Tom Bilyeu
Yeah, no kidding. Okay. Your book ends with mindset. How to Face the future. If you were going to leave us with the most positive framing that people should adopt immediately to step into the future, well, what would it be?
Peter Diamandis
You having a superpower, you have the ability to learn anything you want. The glass ceiling has just been shattered. What is it you care about doing in life? What have you dreamed about doing as a kid that you're not able to do now? You can, right? You can start to dream privately in your favorite model, whatever it is, and start to iterate and think about it and develop it. And at some point you're gonna start to say, wow, that's a really great plan. Wow, that's amazing. Wow, did I just come up with that? And then I want you to unshackle yourself. That's the most important thing. Don't fear the future. Be excited about what you can do in this future. Learn all you can. And really, I like to say the world's biggest problem is the world's biggest business opportunities. Want to become a billionaire? Help a billion people. This is the world we're living into.
Tom Bilyeu
I love it. All right, man. Where can people follow along with you?
Peter Diamandis
Yeah. Moonshots is my, my podcast. We do it twice a week. It's an optimistic view. We look at what's going on in AI data centers, energy, space, longevity, and it's just, I have a blast. Like, what just happened? What does it mean? Right. Diamantis.com I have my. You can get my substack and learn a lot more about the work that I do. And, you know, I'm on a mission to support people in creating this hopeful future. I believe we can. I believe we must. Right. Xprize.org and you've been a member of our XPRIZE community. Thank you for that. You know, I'll mention one Xprize we're working on right now as a potential part of solving this turbulence ahead. Some of my abundance, 360 members came up with this called the Abundance xprize. And it's the team needs to be able to deliver to a family of four for a thousand bucks a month. Food, housing, water, energy and bandwidth. Right? So one of the things is, it's the worst world. Worst case in the world is you're a parent and you don't know where. You don't have a roof over your kid's head. Right. You don't have the ability to turn on the lights. You don't have food for them. That would scare the shit out of anybody. Right? And you're then in survival mode. You're angry. So there's the idea of universal basic income, and then there's the idea of universal basic services. Can we give every family access to the basics? Because once you've got, you know, housing and food and electricity and bandwidth and water, you can then start to think about, okay, take a deep breath. What can I do now? How can I take us the next step?
Tom Bilyeu
I love it. Peter, as always, thank you so much for your time. Brother. It is always a pleasure.
Peter Diamandis
I love you, brother.
Tom Bilyeu
Love you too. All right, boys and girls, if you have not already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens. We all know that we should be doing more of it. When your morning gets chaotic, you skip it. When you travel, you skip it. When your routine breaks, everything tends to break. And that inconsistency compounds against you every single day. AG1 is designed to solve the execution problem. One scoop, eight ounces of water and you're done. You're getting 75 plus ingredients, vitamins and minerals, pre and probiotics, nutrient dense superfoods. Everything that used to require six, seven different supplements and perfect planning now happens in one drink that takes about 30 seconds to make. Right now, AG1 is giving you $87 worth of free gifts with your first subscription. You get a welcome kit, travel packs, vitamin D3 plus K2, and flavor samples. Click the link in the show notes or visit drinkag1.comimpact to claim this offer.
Peter Diamandis
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Podcast Summary: “Don’t Fear AI — Fear Falling Behind | Peter Diamandis on Impact Theory Pt 2”
Tom Bilyeu’s Impact Theory | June 13, 2026 | Guest: Peter Diamandis
This episode is the second part of Tom Bilyeu’s deep dive with Peter Diamandis, renowned futurist, entrepreneur, and founder of the XPRIZE Foundation. The focus is on demystifying the future of AI, transhumanism, and the rapid evolution of technology. Diamandis explores humanity’s existential choices—are we doomed or on the brink of extraordinary abundance? Key themes include the speciation of humanity, the implications of AI superintelligence, brain-computer interfaces, and the transformation of the educational and economic landscape.
[00:29–06:41]
[06:17–09:47]
[09:17–11:13]
[11:00–11:14]
[15:39–18:05]
[18:05–22:39]
[22:39–36:52]
[41:45–47:56]
[48:52–56:09]
[56:09–62:56]
[62:59–64:51]
On AI as a new species:
“We're giving birth to a new species and idea... the asteroid striking Earth today is AI. It's going to cause such a rapid rate of change in every aspect of culture, our lives, that agility, adaptability is... the number one determinant for people.” — Peter Diamandis [15:39]
On the speed of change:
"We're going to speedrun every science fiction movie ever written in the next decade." — Peter Diamandis [09:29]
On positive futures:
"If you're hopeful about the future, you're going to act in a different way. If you're fearful about the future, you're screwed." — Peter Diamandis [30:55]
On mindset:
“What made the greatest entrepreneurs in the world? Was it the friends they had, the money they had…or the mindset they had?” — Peter Diamandis [55:09]
Peter Diamandis and Tom Bilyeu challenge popular dystopian fears about AI and technology, advocating instead for optimism, agency, and the pursuit of abundance through technological empowerment. Diamandis urges listeners to actively shape their mindset and embrace purpose as new tools and frontiers explode in availability and potential. The era ahead, he contends, is one of unprecedented opportunity—for those willing to learn, create, and adapt.
Resources mentioned:
For anyone who wants to understand the exponential trajectory of humanity’s future, this episode is a must-listen.