[Music] so the first thing I'd like to say is that it's ridiculously exciting to be here welcome to be here this is quite the amazing place and I've been preparing to talk to you for a long time so I'm really looking forward to it you said something that caught me right away when we were discussing um various issues just before we started you said you were up till 4 in the morning yeah actually a little little more like 5 in the morning but we got to the um the XI data center uh or supercomputer Center uh training um from uh beginning installation to start of training in 19 days which is the fastest that anyone has ever uh gotten a supercomputer uh to train um and is that in that new building off to the side that's in Memphis actually it's in Memphis Yeah so so that's where you were yeah I see Memphis the capital of ancient Egypt right right right right right right yeah yeah you're bringing what perhaps that's where our new God will come from yeah no kidding no kidding yeah I wish that was funny yeah okay so I want to talk to you about a line that wish that was funny yeah yeah I me look um I mean there there are a few things we're aiming for with with grock the xai um you know but it's the name of the the the the AI from xai is called grock familiar with I'm familiar I want to ask you about that too well Gro just means to deeply understand something yeah but it's got that weird background that Stranger in a Strange Land right Robert heinlin that was of mine how old are you 53 yeah okay so we're roughly from the same era I read heand a lot when I was a kid the first two-thirds of stranger and a Strange Land are great gets kind of weird in the final third yeah so why did you pick why did you pick grock well I think well because of the meaning of the word yeah um to Gro something is to understand it at a very deep level yeah um to really fundamentally understand something and that's what we're aiming for with our AI the the the state of of um XI is to understand the universe yeah so to really just understand the nature of the universe like and even what questions to ask about the universe yeah um so that's that's our goal I think it's a good goal okay so let me ask you some specific questions about that so I played a lot around a lot with large language models I have some people on my team who built one actually we built one out of my writing that I've been using to help me with my new book so if I come across biblical passages that I can't understand I can use that system to give me a first pass approximation and it works quite nicely I've used Gro quite a lot too and chat GPT and I use them as research assistants and they chat GPT lies a lot so you have to keep an eye on it well so I've been thinking about this alignment problem and so I alignment problem is a big deal I got an idea to run by you and you tell me what you think about this well so there's a golden thread of conversation that constitutes the basis for Humanity education let's say that's run across centuries and in principle those would that concentrates on ideas that have been winnowed probably through a quasi evolutionary process across L large spans of time to get documents out of that like the well like the King James Bible for example and they're they're zeroing in on core conceptual structures that we don't even necessarily explicitly understand it seems to me that when we take young people and we give them a genuine human education we solve the alignment problem for them now so the question or make it worse well well you do that if it's prop if it's propagandistic you can make it much worse is these days yeah that's that's pretty much the that's exact well that's also exactly what happens and inevitably when that unbroken tradition is not transmitted and so this strikes to something that's very essential which is well what's the difference let's say or is there a difference between the Western C Canon let's say in the latest woke nonsense now I've used Gro a lot and it's not as woke as chat GPT but it's still woke like it's still deviates in so so how are you can you address that by it's just a language model at the moment let's say if if it also understood images if it also understood Behavior it does it actually does does understand images at this point okay and are those are is the language model and the image understanding are they stacked on top of each other CU I think that's partly how we triangulate psychologically right we have an imagination and we have a verbal module but those things have to work in sync and we also have it certainly is intended to work in sync um it's you know it it is intended to be what's called a multimodal model which means understanding text images and video uh and audio okay if it understands video will it start to understand Behavior yeah all this data that you've collected with your cars so I've been wondering I know Tesla is a car company but when I look at what you do yeah well exactly yeah well maybe more like those aren't cars those are autonomous robots yeah they're robots on four-wheels autonomous robots on four wheels yeah they just look like a car right they're disguised as a car yeah yeah okay okay so what advantage do you have in training Gro given that you have all this real world data that you've gathered from your automobiles um we haven't yet um applied real world video from Tesla to grock yet so I I I do want emphasize XI is a fairly new company it's just a little over a year old um so we really need we have a lot of catching up to do to companies relative to companies that have been around for 5 or 10 or 20 years um we're cashing up fast I think the the velocity of improvement of xai is faster than uh any other company out there um we just completed the um we just we were just able to install and bring online um a a massive new training center that we like as mentioned building in in Memphis um and it's a from beginning Hardware installation to it beginning training was only 19 days and that's the fastest by far that anyone's uh been able to do that so we're moving we're moving quickly but we're still catching up and so if you use catching up to who well catching up to um say Gemini uh chbt Claude uh and the others um so and how do you feel that Gro we're catching up fast how do you feel that grock performs say in relationship to CH GPT now well um so the the gro version that's been released is still based on grock one version one training um yeah we've made several improvements so it's sort of called grock 1.5 uh but the foundation model of of Gro is still uh an order of magnitude uh weaker than uh chbt um oh yes so it's it's doing it's doing quite well given that order of magnitude um difference and this new system how powerful is it compared let's say to CH GPT well I should so uh grock 2 actually finished training um now gr 2 was training um with uh called roughly 15,000 gpus um and and they h100 so gr 2 finished training uh about a month ago we're doing what's called fine tuning um fixing bugs and whatnot so we'll release grock 2 which will be um should be on par with uh or close to a a GPT 4 and that that's uh hopefully we release that next month um then uh what we're doing in the Memphis data center is we're actually training grock 3 uh so that'll probably finish training in about 3 or 4 months and then there'll be some fine-tuning and Buck fixing whatnot and we're hoping to release grock 3 by December um and grock 3 should be the most powerful AI uh in the world at that point so my my sense with chat GPT I I've worked with lots of undergraduates and graduate students so my my sense with chat GPT is if you can corner it into behaving properly that you kind of have something approximating a team of I would say master's degree level intelligence and something like that what do you envision for this new well let's say the new grock 3 and then you talked about delving deeper into the structure of of the universe let's say to answer fundamental questions like and you are a remarkably forward-looking person so what do you what the hell do you think you're building with these AI systems like what is this well I think really what uh what all the AI companies are aiming to build is um digital digital superintelligence um so you know intelligence that's far smarter than any any human yeah um and then ultimately an intelligence that is far smarter than all humans combined uh that's that's now now one can say like is this a wise thing to do isn't this isn't this dangerous well unfortunately whether we think that or not it it is being done um so yeah the really you know from standpoint of from my standpoint from the X team standpoint we are really we have the choice of being a spectator or a participant that's life man yeah be a spectator or or a participant and um I think if we're a participant we've got a better chance hopefully of steering uh AI in a direction that is beneficial to humanity so why do you why okay so why do you trust yourself on that front just out of I mean that's an important question right I don't trust s entirely good well that's yes fair enough okay but an ethical conundrum right yes is an ethical conundrum right cuz you said well this is happening now the excuse that something is happening is not irrational for participating in it but then your next take is well you know we have the chance to do this properly let's say as oppos just pull it if I mean I think we we the from a moral standpoint we really just need to think that maybe we've got a chance of it being um better uh to some degree than what others are doing and we you know we'll we'll strive to avoid some of the pitfalls or directions that the others are are going in um because the others from what I've seen do not strive for truth um what do they strive for uh they strive for well they they strive to give an answer but they they they are um I think trained to be politically correct um and the woke mind virus is woven in throughout them yeah I'm sure you've seen that yeah definitely defin definitely you know my students used to ask me when I because I've been teaching what I've been teaching for about 40 years and one of the questions they used to ask me is how I knew that what I was teaching wasn't just another ideology right because the postmodern take is well all it is is a plethora of power games and so there's no rank ordering approaches to the truth in terms of their ethical suitability but that's not the game that you're playing and and obviously would not agree with with with that philosophy why not sort of moral relativism what's convinced you that that's not that's not a useful way of approaching things well I think you can look at a given belief system and critique it as being uh likely to uh en enhance or decrease uh Enlightenment um will any given belief system uh improve our understanding of the universe will we learn more things will we achieve a deeper understanding of physics and um right so that's grounded at least in part in a scientific framework from the sounds of it that I mean I think there are facts about the world or right there there are things that are uh just say let's say extremely likely to be true versus less likely to be true yeah um I think if one thinks in terms of probabilities about any given sort of acatic statement then that that's the right I way to think about it um now some things are you know 99.99% to be true you you can run experiments you can confirm them um and others uh are perhaps have a low probability of Truth uh 1% likely to be true or you know just using extremes here but but any given um statement has uh I think should be thought of as having a unless it's a toogy uh should be thought of as having a probability of being true or untrue true um uh or a probability of being relevant to an argument or not relevant to an argument we just talking about the fun the basics of of of cogency here yeah yeah well okay so let me let me put a Twist on that too so one of the things that really struck me about your public pronouncements in recent years was your insistence that we're in a natal crisis and that that's actually a problem because that's actually true well well it depends whether you think that pop the planet would be better off if it was depopulated that's yeah yeah PO is a genocidal Maniac as far as I'm concerned and I I he's a terrible human being yes and he's never admitted that he was wrong and he was unbelievably wrong he made a famous bet you know the bet I hate po I want be clear about that I think he's terrible and and his books have done great damage to humanity so what okay fine I talked to a philosopher a while back who was an antinatalist trying to get my finger on that there was a recent research article published on this too antinatalists are much more to show dark tetrad traits mellan Psychopathic narcissistic and sistic because those first three weren't enough right and so those things are tightly aligned especially the best predictor was psychopathy for being an anti-natalist sure right right well and the psychopaths are very very very self-centered right it's they're like overgrown 2-year-olds overgrown aggressive 2-year-olds so that's not good how did you start to understand that the one of the fundamental ethical problems is different than a scientific problem one of the fundamental ethical problems that's plaguing the West is this catastrophically low birth rate can and you know when you start making public pring the numbers I mean I noticed this 20 plus years ago um that the the the trend in birth rates for really all countries uh past certain level of Economic Development uh was trending to wellow replacement uh if not already below replacement and if you extrapolate the curve which one always has cous about extrapolating any demographic curve but if you if just so I always proph by saying if these Trends continue uh um most countries will will dwindle into insignificance uh they might completely die out so I've been thinking about that in relationship to Sacred images okay okay well the sacred IM image of masculinity in the west is a crucifixtion but a man who's crucified but the sacred image of a woman isn't a woman the sacred image of a woman is a woman woman and an infant right it's a diad and not a monad right right right and then in in the Christian view those those two images you know they VI for Supremacy right I mean obviously Christ is the superordinate image but M Mary is the mother of God is sure what would the the female equivalent and so one of the things I've been playing with at an axiomatic level is the notion that unless the feminine is conceptualized as the combination of female and infant then the culture has lost its attachment to the traditional sacred images and is probably on its way out yeah um I think there is there's an argument that that um when a culture loses its uh religion that it starts to become anti-natalist um and decline uh in numbers and and and uh you know potentially disappear so I I've got a hypothesis about that you tell me what you think about this so I've been working this out in my next book which is coming out in November so it's an analysis of biblical stories and in a way it's an attempt to solve the alignment alignment problem okay okay so imagine this imagine that there's a a Unity of moral purpose yeah that that is conceptualized in the traditional writings as what should be put in the highest place so it's God and in in the final analysis it's ineffable but it is a fundamental uni unification monotheism okay now here's a hypothesis when that collapses two things arise to replace it okay one is a striving for power and the other is the untrammeled what would you call it the untrammeled Dominion of Hedonism and Es especially on the sexual gratification side so it's like if there's no ultimate unity that's future and Community oriented that's predicated on sacrifice you get a dissolution immediately into the next two contenders for Domination and one is it's about me buddy and get the hell out of the way and aligned with that is not only is it about me it's about me uh what would you say subjugated to my most base whims because why would I want Power except to do exactly what the hell I want whenever I want to and so part of the problem with the idea of people like Dawkins so Dawkins and the atheists presum I've had many conversations with dokins over the years you have oh yeah yeah oh we're going to do a podcast together which I'm very looking forward to yeah but I'm I'm very curious about this issue because his idea and it's kind of an enlightenment idea is that we dispensed with the idiot Superstition of the past then everyone would become you know bonian rationalists and that seemed yeah unfortunately not no well what seems to me to be happen much more likely is that power and Hedonism rise to take the place of what was holy so to speak you know and n warned about that when he proclaimed the death of God to begin with he thought nihilism would also enter the realm right nism power and Hedonism as the as the triumverate of replacement gods and so I've been trying to puzzle out in this new book the way the biblical Corpus is conceptualizing what's properly placed in the highest place and it does that's part of the reason I was asking you about the natalist issue because you figured out 20 years ago that's a long time before anybody been talking longer yeah yeah but that and then you also did publicly Proclaim it at a time when the the insistence the moral insistence was all on the side of you know Jane Good's pronouncements that if we don't reduce the population of the planet dramatically that the nature goddess is going to be upset which is also a very very old idea not a very good one so so I'm very curious about your intuition there like that's a long time ago and so how did you coton on to the fact that that antagonistic attitude towards birth that's embedded in our culture now was something that should be called out of that was pathological well I I mean I should perhaps go back to what is the foundation of My Philosophy um because uh that that I think helps build up you know to explain my actions uh so they when I was um I don't know about 11 or 12 years old I um had somewhat of an existential crisis because it I it just doesn't doesn't seem to be any meaning in the in in the world like no meaning to life and so I actually read uh try to read all the religious texts at that age yes so I was a a vicious reader as a kid so I you know obviously read read the Bible I um I read the Quran uh the Torah you know the the various uh but but on the the Hindu side just just trying to understand all these things um and um obviously as a 12-year-old you're not really going to understand these things super well but I've just well you understood it well enough to have an existential crisis when you were 11 or 12 yeah I'm just trying to F does anyone have an answer that that makes sense and then I start getting into uh the philosophy books um and I read uh quite a bit of schopenhauer N and and uh which is quite depressing to read as as a kid that less depressing as as an adult but um and um and and and none of them really seem to have to me answers that resonated at least to me um and um so but then I read uh Douglas Adams hit's Guide to the Galaxy which is really a book on philosophy disguises humor and what douas out the point Adams tries to make there is that um we don't actually know all the answers obviously yeah in fact we don't even know what the right questions all you ask um that's where he has you know this in in if if you read the book The you know Earth it is actually a giant computer to understand the answer to the like the question what is the meaning of life yeah um and comes up with the answer 42 yeah um and feel like what does it what does that mean it says oh you you actually you don't understand the the real the thing that's going to take a computer far more powerful than Earth uh is to understand what question to ask yeah right that's simply the wrong question so was that the key realization that that question I that was that was a fundamental Turning Point yeah yeah cuz that's it so that's very interesting because one of the things that you see constantly portrayed in Redemptive hero myths across the world is that the adventure is the thing and that the search is the thing rather than there being a final answer as absurd as 40 two might be right there's no there's no the the conclusive answer is something like deep engagement in the process so so I'll give you an example of that so in The Sermon on the Mount the sermon on the mount's a very detailed set of instructions so there's three parts to it the first is aim at the highest thing that you can possibly conceive of and keep modifying that so your aim gets better okay so that's number one number two is make the presumption that other people have the same intrinsic value as you do uh well we have to be careful about that one okay okay let's discussed that but but it's a what would you say it's it's it's a it's a recognition of the of the Universalist value of everyone who's made in the image of God it's something like that but the third thing is once you do those two things you can concentrate on the moment see and that seems to be even technically you can think about this neuropsychologically so if you're looking for meaning meaning is a form of incentive reward and incentive reward is dopaminergically mediated and incentive reward occurs in relation ship to advancement towards a goal which is a form of entropy minimization as it turns out according to Carl friston who knows this sort of thing entropy is the ultimate bus battle yeah right right right right while negative emotion signifies the emergence of entropy and positive emotion on the dopaminergic side signals its reduction but there's something that's more complex there because the higher the goal that you're trying to attain the more intrinsic value each step towards it comprises and that's neuropsychologically accurate and so part of the wisdom of The Sermon on the Mount is that if you posit the highest imaginable goal then any step towards it is that captures your attention is also deeply meaningful and so that's an answer to what the meaning is of process rather than say something like 42 and you said it seems to me that you were intimating that your Discovery through Adams that the question was the thing was key to the resolution of your existential crisis that's correct okay so that's part of the reason that you're motivated to say build grock 3 and look in look deeper to understand yeah yeah yeah understand the universe okay so once how old were you when you figured that when you figured out that the question 13 or something what did that do to you what did that do to you well I was I was a lot happier after that um because now it's like okay well I'm just going to accept that we are ignorant of of a great many things yeah and we wish to be less ignorant um and anything we can do uh that will improve our understanding of the universe and make us less ignorant and have a deeper understanding of the the universe and even more questions to answer to ask about the answer that is Universe which is I think Adam's Central Point um is good um and so and that was good enough to resolve that crisis it was it was for me at least um yeah and and so like is this a religion I don't know maybe it is but I think it's a good one I'd call the religion of curiosity yeah well the the the ancient god of the Mesopotamians his name was Marduk and he was the best defense against ensuing chaos and state corruption okay so that's how he was conceptualized okay mardock had eyes all the way around his head okay CU he paid attention right right and he spoke magic words okay right and he was literally for the Mesopotamians he was the agent that revitalized the tyrannical State and overcame evil and also the force that dispensed with chaos and built something magnificent and Cosmic out of it right so yeah yeah sounds like a Force for good yeah yeah yeah while I'm the Mesopotamian Emperor so his job was to embody that Spirit on Earth and they used to take him out of the city on New Year's Eve strip him of his kingly clothing humiliate him they slapped him the priests and then they'd ask him to confess all the ways that he hadn't been a good Marduk attentive and speaking properly in the previous year and that's how they renewed The Cosmos every year and that's our New Year celebration is a derivation of that all out with the old and in with the new and the Egyptians they worship the I right you've seen that famous eye they all seeing eye of Horus they all seeing eye of Horus that's the antidote to the eye of Sauron by the way right CU you get if you don't use that Vision if each citizen doesn't use that Vision it's replaced by the totalitarian allseeing eye right right so that's a hell of a thing to know okay so that okay so that's cool so I wondered I I see I see because I wondered what's motivated you because you push in so many directions simultaneously you have to be really highly motivated to do that and so you figured out that that the question in a sense was the answer yeah yeah the question or or you know I said another way that uh seeking greater Enlightenment um and a better understanding of the universe and what questions to ask about it um is something that we can continue to uh do as a civilization for a very long time yeah yeah likely forever right exactly so depending on how powerful grock turns out to be yeah so that's uh so then I thought okay I'll work on um things that uh improve our understanding of the universe um in now they said like at a base level well um this is why I I actually think we want a population increase uh because uh population increase means that there are more people um that that we've expanded uh the scale more brains man yeah we've expanded the scale of Consciousness um to the gree there are different cultures we've expanded the scope of Consciousness so that there's um okay so I read something here I talked to this gentleman who done a biography of Marx and he went and looked at Marx's poetry and drama that he wrote before he wrote The Communist Manifesto and he found out something very interesting he found out that Marx's favorite quote from girtha was a statement by mephistophiles it's a very specific statement and it's a very key statement Mephisto motivation so Lucifer's motivation is predicate on this argument said Consciousness is nothing but consciousness of pain and misery life is short and brutal and pointless therefore it would be better if Consciousness itself was eradicated sounds like Hobs yeah well so I I I named my I had a little yorksh terer who was um uh n nasty brsh and shorts so I named him Hobs perfect perfect well I think it's I think it's even deeper than Hobbs because Hobbs seem to understand that life without social order would degenerate into that but the mephistophelian Credence is Credo is that Consciousness itself is an evil that should be eradicated because it produces suffering that was Marx's favorite it is the very definition of crazy right it's the definition of the adversarial Spirit now your hypothesis your Axiom let's say is that that's wrong and that Consciousness should be so then we say so why should Consciousness be expanded if it's nothing but consciousness of suffering and your answer obviously false like okay what not so obvious lots of people suffer like lots of people are suicidal and nihilistic and so and you had that crisis of con of of Faith let's say when you were 11 or 12 an existential crisis but you resolved it meaning of life crisis right right so no I I think it's just obviously false that people um well while there are people who are very sad there are people also who are very happy and we go through sad and happy moments every human being does um so it's it's it's not it's it's an absurd and and and and obviously false statement that life is merely suffering yes that's just I mean that is just a ridiculously false statement so so one of the things I've tried to do is to understand so like there are a limited number of things that are undeniably real and pain is one of them yes okay like my back H's a little yes so that's cuz you were up till 5: in the morning no I just have some injuries whatever from wrestling um it's like from I think some childhood inj injuries that um although the final thing that that that caused some some some back and shoulder injuries was um me foolishly fighting the world champion T wrestler right and charging him Adam at full speed to knock him over which I did succeed in doing but uh but you paid a for it a very very high price carnivore diet will fix that the what sorry the carnivore diet will fix that I look I'm I I like meat I'm Pro meat I don't think carnal diet is going to fix this particular issue I think probably my wife had an injury of 40 years and it it resolved in two years on Carnivore diet if you just eat steak or something yeah I mean I all beef sure sure sure I I'm I'm a pro I like meat um but I I think this is a I I think I'll probably need operation or something but anyway I tried the carnivore diet first anyways I'm that did happen to her she couldn't lift her left arm above here it took 40 years and in two years it resolved okay yeah so that was something to see it also rejuvenated her physically in a variety of different ways that were quite miraculous to watch and that hasn't stopped so that's weird thing and I would have never believed it if I hadn't seen this because it's so Preposterous sure anyways I'm not going to pelze about carnivore diets yeah so okay okay so that now let's go back to AI if you don't mind so you were involved in the project that Sam Alman runs now open AI I was um one of the principal co-founders of a in fact I named it yeah so so what the hell happened was my idea what happened well I I saw it off um so um the origins of opening eye are uh that I was very close with with Larry Page who's one of my best friends and um in fact I'd stay at his house because I'd spent half the week in the Bay Area running Tesla and half in La running SpaceX and I and for the longest time I never even had a house in the baray I would just stay at friends friends places if they had a spare room I'd stay there if they didn't had sleep on the couch and um and I found it actually to be it's very funny that you stayed on the couch I think that's very funny yeah yeah I'm you know don't stay on the couch that often but it was uh but I I I didn't have a house for more than a decade so I would just uh stay at rotate through friends places which is a great way to catch up with friends yeah right right and um and so I I would have these conversations with ar paage long into the night about AI safety and I just grew increasingly concerned that L was not sufficiently concerned about AI safety um and at one point he did call me a speciest um um yes you are one yes mhm yes that's I guess correctly labeled um yes and uh ful ad there were other people around when he did that and nor does he attempt to deny it uh that I'm a specious in favor of humans instead of compared to lice for example well no more like relative to digital intelligence oh yeah that's even worse his view is that digital intelligence should be you know that I mean Larry's view is is um if I'm not misspeaking is that ultimately we will all upload our minds to the computer and everyone will just be robots yeah and for a while his see there's not much difference between that and the death of humanity well yeah I think that's um cuz whatever we'd be then it wouldn't be what we are now right and that you know and if the we we pay a price for what we are now and that's the the price of our intrinsic limitations and that is a difficult bitter let's say pill to swallow but I also think so I've thought recently you know how do you know that something's real so death makes things real death makes things real sure and so if you if you eradicate death it seems to me that in some fundamental level you also eradicate reality itself so and I don't like I haven't figured out the connection you know an important like that death death does play an important role um because I think you really could evolve humans to live much longer or most creatures live much longer but there's overtime uh Evolution as a do believe in evolution um has um found that there it's better for organisms to have a a finite life um and that that death death brings renewal essentially um and I think we do need to to be cautious about trying to solve longevity in in a in in sort of a love forever type sense because I think our our society our culture would aify um and the people in power would would always remain in power um well and you wouldn't you know if you had let's say you apprehended a 10,000 year span of Consciousness with no sleep yeah I don't know what the hell you'd be if that was who you were but you wouldn't be human sure and then we also don't understand that see part of the problem I think with the perspective that the technologists are taking with regards to human existence is that there's a reductionism there that's something it's it's something like there's no difference between us and the gist of our linguistic Network something like that like whatever we are as conscious beings is a hell of a lot deeper than the patterns of thought that make up our cortical existence Consciousness is way deeper than cortical EX existence and I like maybe yeah maybe um I I do think you have to ask this sort of this gradient question of um where along where um does Consciousness arise now obviously in a sort of traditional uh Christian uh Faith you would say that well there's a soul that inhabits the body and that's the Consciousness perhaps um but uh you know is it is it we all started as as a single cell so is that single cell conscious I mean it doesn't look right it's you can't talk to it it's just a cell um it differentiates very strangely first yeah it's it's it has that teeology built into it that's very difficult to understand but conscious it seems not to be not at that it doesn't seem to be conscious um so so where um as as it the it divides into many more cells eventually reaching to uh an you know an adult human has 30 to 40 trillion cells um so where where where does is where does Consciousness arrive does it grow slowly is there a step change um and uh you know I tend to generally believe in physics um and you seem to have done pretty well with that belief by the way yes well I I have a saying that uh physics is the law and everything else is a recommendation mhm uh because people can break um and do break uh man-made laws but they yet to see someone break laws of physics mhm so uh you know and so if you if you have uh beliefs that are incompatible with a rocket getting to orbit the rocket will not get to orbit right right right right a pragmatic phys physics is a har judge yes definitely definitely do you think these llms like do you think that any of the Machinery that you've interacted with is showing anything signs of anything that might be equated to Consciousness I mean the llms are remarkable right and they certainly pass the touring test as far as I'm concerned pass touring test so from from a testing standpoint I think we will if we're not there already we soon will be where you would not be able to tell that you're yeah interacting with a computer or that's coming right away man yes yeah in fact probably sort of here unless you're really sneaky and you ask like harsh questions and Corner the damn things we're probably already yeah as long as you you know don't know if if you know some of the tricks like how many RS are there in renderer um Bali can't figure that one out oh I didn't know that that was one of its yeah so it has these weird Lacuna in its knowledge right well it's it's it divides it divides everything into tokens and those tokens are more than one letter and so it it it it actually weirdly it's it's myopic with respect to single letters right I see so it's got a resolution problem yeah yeah um now you can get around with this with like like weird tricks like if you ask ask you to write a computer program to count the number of letters in a word it can create that computer program run it and then and then get the number of letters correct right right anyway but so back to cons the question of Consciousness I always think like where lines like is is everything conscious or is nothing conscious potentially um and I I think you want to just when you're trying to understand something um consider the various possible answers and think that there's a probability associated with each one of these answers as opposed to a certainty U now if physics is correct Universe started off um with consisting almost entirely of of hydrogen a little bit of helium and uh some lithium and the that coales into stars that exploded um when a coales and stars you had the formation of heavier elements and and then uh those Stars got got scattered and and then reformed uh and and made new stars um and uh so we eventually got uh elements that are higher in the periodic table besides the the very basic ones m um the physics equivalent of Jacob's Ladder I think yeah so this is this is what physics predicts this strange spiral upward towards some somewhat towards Consciousness well well yeah so um but the point is that the Universe at least according to physics started out essentially as hydrogen and given enough time you had more um you know complex uh or he heavy elements and more complex molecules and and then 13.8 billion years later at least on this planet we have what we call Consciousness in the form you know yeah but but but that means Consciousness had to arise it's implicit at least from hydrogen yeah well see so if you just leave hydrogen out in the sun long enough it starts talking to this is I think what you're I I I've seen your com on this before I think you're pointing to the same sort of thing that my friend Jonathan Paso has been trying to elucidate which is that there's a there's an implicit structure of possibility he Associates this with the concept of Heaven like there's an implicit structure of possibility that material forms are trying to flesh out and so in some sense the possibility of Consciousness is inherent in the hydrogen atoms right obviously because it emerged yeah so so it's it's a to it's a tautology some maybe everything's conscious in some way maybe it's just degrees of Consciousness or concentrations of Consciousness yeah well I wonder if that's associated with the notion the Christian notion that the word is primary you know CU in in in mythological representations you have three fundamental elements you have something like order which you could think about as Society but it's an it's the it's the a prior axiomatic interpretive structure you have that then you have chaotic potential that's the toou vabo that exists at the beginning of time and so the way God is represented in the story of Genesis is that so God is the a prior interpretive process that gives rise to order as a consequence of manipulating potential and the intermediary factor is the word that's the Christian conception and the word is something like it's something like well language but it's also something like the sacrificial gesture that's that's necessary for learning to take place so you could imagine this when you learn something it's not only that you add to a storehouse that you have it's that something that you already know has to undergo a death and a transformation you know most real learning is painful you think uh yeah I mean well painful well well the deeper the Axiom that's shifting when you learn the more chaos is associated with it that can be exciting but it can also be destabilizing that existential crisis that you had had great potential right because you resolved it but that didn't mean it was without its pain sure right so if you imagine a hierarchy of axioms right and so the lower down the Axiom hierarchy you go the more chaos is is released when that axium is challenged you get a negative emotional response to that with his anxiety and threat because God only knows what happens when all hell breaks loose but there's a positive aspect too that's why it's a dragon and a treasure always in the hero mythology it's because when all hell breaks loose there's immense opportunity and so and that's part of the meaning now I think you capitalize on that treasure let's say on the treasure portion of that chaos by assuming something like your own Ignorance by allowing your initial preconceptions to die and by tracking the trail of deep and insistent questioning so now you your questioning took the place if I've got it right you basically took the scientific tack he is that right because you're yeah well I'm trying to understand a truth the truth of the Universe um and um pH physics is essentially study of the truth of the universe at least those things that um are predictable so see when I when I resolv my existential crisis which happened about the same time years did I started I didn't study science precisely I wasn't as interested in the transformations of the material world so I'm probably more people oriented than thing oriented temperamentally so I started to study evil so that was my sure delving Into the Depths because I wanted to crack that I wanted to understand if it more not so much even whether it existed because I became consist convinced of that very quickly but what exactly that had to do with me CU when I was reading history I read it as a perpetrator and not as a victim or a hero I mean I try to read history to discern the facts of of what humans did you know so that also was shaped the way that you act though um probably sure I've read a lot of history um and I try to understand the R and full of civilizations and um what do you think makes them fall well one of the things is um a decreasing birth rate um which seems to be a natural consequence of prosperity um yeah isn't that strange he because You' you'd kind of predict the opposite wouldn't you as far as I know every civilization that has experienced Prosperity has um had a decline in population there may be a few exceptions perhaps people can enlighten me I I'll look at this the the comments on this interview to see perhaps what I can learn um but it seems that um from what I've read um every or almost every civilization when when when they become prosperous um the their birth rate drops um you think that's a consequences of the emergence of something like a a a nonp punished hidden IC egocentrism like well as you obviously you mean there certainly many examples of of civilizations they become prosperous there is generally a trend towards Hedonism yeah well you can get away with it if you're wealthy because the consequences of yourish don't smack you on the head instantly uh precisely so you know if you're if you're a civilization under threat like let's say you there's a um if you take say Rome when they were um trying to not get annihilated by Carthage um and had Hannibal running around Maring Italy um they didn't have time for Hedonism right Hedonism is not an option uh we're going to get destroyed by hanal chips are down yeah when the when when you're under when a civilization is under stress um there's there's very little Hedonism that takes place you know William James said that the modern world needed a moral equivalent to war right he investigated the religious realm very very deeply and this I think this was in varieties of religious experience and that really had an effect on me because I think that you need something akin to an existential threat in order to set you straight I think there's some truth to that yeah you know it's sort of like if it's a let's say if it's a spoiled child that we everything who gets that that kid gets everything he or she wants um and you have sort of a Vero assault situation um and uh and then r large that is a civilization that is pro PR where people get everything want I think it's the right way to think about it developmentally and neuropsychologically because maturation itself consists of two processes let's say the more mature I am the more I'm bringing other people into the perview of my vision so I extend myself across other people be my family first but then brought more the community more broadly the better you're out you are at that the more people you can play a game with at the same time but you also do the same thing with the future and that's actually as far as I can tell what the cortex is for it's to move you away from primordial hedonistic motivation to this more inclusive sense of future and Community right and that's higher order self yeah and so the default would be immaturity and wealth can obviously facilitate that and maybe it's partly because okay so you're a very wealthy man you could give your children anything they ever asked for okay so why not do it why not every time they ask for something why not just deliver it you know there's some wisdom that that comes comes through the ages that that you don't want to have someone be a spoiled rat um that's uh and why do you think giving people everything they want exactly when they want it necessarily produces that because it seems to it it I think it it it almost always is okay you had a rough childhood yeah yeah like rough and tumble rough childhood plenty of fights and a father who is a difficult creature to contend okay what did that do for you um and are you grateful for it or are you unhappy about it well I guess you never know the things that really made you who you are today so at the end of the day am I onet grateful for my life I am um and perhaps even for the the hard things um because those hard things you know I learned from them what did you learn I mean I read your auto your biography it's not an autobiography no it's not no no no no definitely not I I would tell it in a different way than isacon because isacson who I think is an excellent biographer is not nonetheless looking at things through his lens um and uh wasn't there at the time right of course of course well what one of the things that stood out for me too though from that and I would like your comments about this was the rather the rough details of your childhood a lot of physical altercations and a lot of I don't know exactly how I mean I was almost beaten to death within an inch of my life at one point right that counts that definitely counts as a phys a few blows here and there yeah so what what did that okay why Wen why aren't you bitter about that because that's a pathway that people take I I think that there there are one one can take and often people do take uh the path of Vengeance yeah that's for yeah so or or that's what antinatalism is yeah to say to feel that the world has treated them unfairly and that they will visit upon the world that which the world has visited upon them and so and justified by recourse to the reality of their own suffering ex which is often intense right yeah yeah so the story of Job one of the things I concluded from the story of job because it's a precursor to the crucifixion story so job makes two decisions the first decision is that no matter how Terrible Things become for him he will not lose faith in himself and the second is no matter what Horrors are visited on him by Satan himself he will not lose faith in the what would you say in the spirit that gave rise to the cosmic order right no matter what well so you know while I'm not a particularly religious person I do believe that the the teaching the teachings of Jesus are are good and and wise um and that there there's tremendous wisdom in turn the other cheek um and and for a while there when I was saying I thought well that's really a weak thing to yeah it can be um if some someone and and and with respect to bullies at school I think you shouldn't turn the other cheek you should punch them on the nose um and then ultim and then thereafter make peace with them um but they need to stop stop pulling you and and a punch on the nose will stop that um and then thereafter you know make peace um so sometimes that punch on the nose is the first step in making peace with bullies yes it may you know change their career from being a bully to perhaps they shouldn't be doing such things um but um yeah I think there's anyway so why this notion this notion of of forgiveness is important um it's I think it's essential uh because if if you don't forgive then you know as the I forget who said it but an eye for an eye makes everyone blind if you're going to seek Vengeance and and you have this NeverEnding cycle of Vengeance um there are anthropological speculations that we were caught in a 350,000 year cycle of not getting anywhere after modern human beings emerged precisely because of that because we couldn't get out of accelerating tit fortat Revenge Cycles right yeah so so I'm I'm actually a big believer in and and the principles of Christianity um I think they're very good so in what sense then are are you not religious well so Dawkins just came out three weeks ago or thereabouts and announced that he was a cultural Christian right and so the question right I I would say I'm I'm I'm probably a cultural Christian I was I was brought up as a Anglican and I was baptized um and although oddly enough my parents also simultaneously sent me to a a Jewish Nursery School Preschool um so it was Jesus our lord Jews have a reputation for being religious too you know yeah yeah no I I might have been the only non-sh kid at the school I didn't even realize that was the thing um so um but I was just singing hav ailla one day and Jesus out the next you know um so that that is my upbringing um so so when when when Dawkins announced he was a cultural Christian the question that came to my mind right away was okay there's a bunch of things going on there the first is Dawkins Proclamation or admission that if you compare different societies and their axiomatic suppositions he would prefer the ones predicated on Christian axiomatic assumptions I I I do think those are good ones okay so okay so so so that that's why I asked you the question about why you would consider yourself not a religious person because it seems to me that the essence of it isn't it isn't the statement that you abide by a particular Protestant Creed let's say it seems to be much more akin to the notion that you believe that this set of axima presuppositions is like the pronatalist presumption it's it's correct like it's not correct it's going lead to a better Society a society I think that we would prefer to be like I mean if you say like what what what will result in the greatest happiness for Humanity considering not just the present but all future humans happiness or meaning well which would you pick personally I'd pick meaning because for me meaning leads to happiness but I think that's right but the reverse isn't necessarily the case yeah let's let's just say the if you I could say contentment or something um but I think if if a set of principles is likely to lead to um a a society thinking them of themselves as happy or content or um well okay then you want you want to then principles that lead uh to the the most amount of Happiness over time yeah not just the present day yeah yeah yeah yeah that iteration elements important yeah um because you have to consider the happiness of future humans as well I think that's where the ethos actually develops is that it's a consequence of iterated games right now but the contentment issue I have a harder time with so you know reward divides into two categories there's satiation reward and there's dopamine incentive reward and they're not the same and it looks to me given what you've already told me about the way that you resolved your existential crisis is that you consistently pick that that's Adventure reward fundamentally over contentment now you like your kids and you're content with them I presume what you're playing but the way that you found meaning in your life is not through contentment it's through Adventure that seems to me the case to be the case well it's not adventure for the sake purely of Adventure I do like Adventure um but for example a lot of people find happiness and contentment with Adventure like climbing toll mountains um or or uh hiking along Trails doing doing um going going you know exploring the Wilderness and that kind of thing um and uh I I I've never really found personally found it uh compelling to say clim Mount Everest um the you're doing it conceptually conceptually and from a knowledge standpoint yeah knowledge Mount Everest um right so it's adventure it's it's adventure with a destination in mind right and you already described the destination it's deep understanding yes to to deepen our understanding of the the nature of the universe um I think that's just I mean one I guess could call it a religion I I wouldn't be upset about that but that's that that is my religion for you know La lack of a better way to describe it is is really it's the religion of curiosity the religion of Greater Enlightenment and and then and and then if you follow that so like that's the goal then what fall what falls out of that goal what falls out of that goal is to um have uh Consciousness expand in scale and and scope so you have so I use scale and scope say that you want you want more Consciousness and I think it's also good to have buried Consciousness uh you know so everyone's not thinking exactly the same that's those multiple eyes yeah so I think it's probably good to have multiple multiple religions and have different different different perspectives on things um and uh and so so what falls out of that is is we need to take the set of actions that increase the probability that the future will be good for um for Humanity and that uh and and we want to expand Consciousness we want to um I think we should increase the population of of Earth not decrease it um and I think that that will not result in the hungarians have been successful in that regard by the way they've they've made Family policy planning they fundamental concern that was driv that was driven in part by a woman named kathyn Novak who used to be president of Hungary she's a very very smart person and they've they've knocked the abortion rate in in in Hungary down by 38 % with no compulsion right they have a 12we limit in Hungary yeah they've increased the proportion of women in the labor force by about 15% okay they've knocked the divorce rate down substantially and at minimum they've decreased the decline in the birth rate I don't know if they've actually managed to tilt it back up in Hungary yet but they spend about 7% of their GDP on family policy right and this Arc Enterprise we've been building in London made Family policy a center point we're trying to bring classic conservative and liberals together all around the world and you know your thinking on the natalist front has actually been what would you say has been an input into that because I started to notice well I don't know I don't think it was 20 years ago that I'd caught on to that it was it was it was not that long ago but I knew that there was something terribly wrong with the fact that the birth rates have plummeted so terribly in South Korea and Japan I think in South Korea now it's something like 40% of men in their 30s are virginal cacs the Virgin not virgin thing is you know neither here or there but the uh the fact that uh I I believe the birth rate in uh South Korea is um9 I think right which which I think it even went maybe gone down to 08 last year or something um but that that essentially means that um if you fast forward um that the population of career would decline by 60% right necessarily if if you have a steady and that assumes over what SP time in fact if if that oh uh it well Koreans are long lived so it the you won't see the the numbers it won't be as obvious at first you'll just see that there's a very disproportionate number of of old people right um because they live a long time um but but for for predicting the future population of any country the simple way to do it is say how many babies were born last year and what is the average lifespan in that country and that that and and then if if that birth rate if that number of babies stays constant then eventually the old people will die and that will be the population of the country it's very very straightforward right right right um so if you look at say Japan um which I think had on the order of 800,000 births last year um and then you multiply that by the uh lifespan which is around 84 85 years um you you get to a population of that's in the sort of 60 60 to 70 million range which is um massive decrease from where it is today right um over 100 million well it seems to me the combination of that lack of engagement on the relationship side plus the plummeting birth rate it seems to me to be a primary biological marker of profound demoralization because people aren't committing to future or to each other yes I mean having a having a kid is a vote for the future um you so if if if you if you intend to have a child like that that is that means you are you care about the future yeah um you believe in the future you believe in the future having a child um assuming it's intentional is uh a you can it's the most optimistic thing that somebody could do so well so one of the things I derived from this analysis I've been doing of the Old Testament is that that faith and courage I'll I'll give you an example so when Moses is on the verge of the promised land he sends scouts out to check out Canan because that's the promised now Canaan is the home of the descendants of Cain so it's a very specific place mythologically it's the place of people who aren't aiming up put it that way okay so the scouts go out to look at the future and they come back in two teams and one team says there's nothing but Giants there it's a complete bloody catastrophe you let us out into the desert stupidly we were better off in the Ty there's no way we're going to survive right and the next scouts or the other set of Scouts Caleb and Joshua come back and say well there's trouble there but if we aim up and we get our act together we can turn this into the promised land okay it's at that point that God condemns Moses to die and Aaron who's the political wing and the Earth opens up and swallows up the faithless scouts and it's the people who are led by Caleb and Joshua who has the same name is Christ by the way and that's relevant they're the ones that are LED into the promised land okay so what's the meaning of the story well the future is always a challenge and the moral thing to do is to evince Faith and courage in the future regardless in some ways it's a weird thing because it's kind of regardless of the data because you can say well look at all the suffering that constitutes life and look at all the potential horrors of the future and certainly people do hesitate about bringing a child into a world like this that's hear that often yeah yeah yeah yeah well and it's weird because if you had to bring a child into the world and you had to pick a time you'd probably pick this one yes and so obviously everybody who had a child at least by choice in the past did that in spite of the catastrophe of the future but sorry it's a long-winded way of making a point there's an ethical requirement that's associated with living in the manner that would justify your life even to yourself to have faith and courage in the Future No Matter What sure right so it's not a fool foolishness or or or what defense against death anxiety or foolish Superstition that Faith it's not that at all it's a kind of Courage it's like we're going to make this work we're going to make this work and child a child is a vote in that direction child is a vote for the future yeah yeah how many kids do you have now H um I I have uh 12 12 12 yeah so you're definitely doing your part yeah what do you like about kids what do you like about your kids I mean there's there's an older batch and a younger batch okay so there quite quite a big difference our little ex who's over there he's the eldest of the youngest uh he's four um and my my older boys are 20 and 17 turning 18 shortly so big big gap um so what did you like about having kids well I think kids are delightful why what's delightful about them cuz they get a bad rap man so what did you find delightful about them um I mean I think you we all I mean most people fast Char of people are you know are going to love their kids and it's like a little little loved one yeah yeah that's a good deal and they also want to love you kids if you give them the chance they do they're the only people you'll ever meet in your life who want nothing more more than to have the best possible relationship they could have with anyone with you that's a good deal it's a good deal um and and I think there's you know like frankly if if if if we weren't uh biologically inclined to love our children um and to want to nurture them and to find reward um we would long ago uh have ceased to exist I mean you can take say um I don't know a a wolf or a a wild cat or some creature that that a Wolverine I some creature that would normally be very aggressive um and when that creature has babies the mother nurtures them and and and is tender and and caring um so you know there's we are uh We've evolved to to love our Offspring it's it's a natural thing um and I think people I mean even even if somebody's sort of Taken somewhat of a heat hedonistic uh approach to life I think there's an appeal even on the Hedonism side to say that well would you not you you'll actually find it very rewarding I think that's a good that's a good appeal and it's one that's exactly why I ask it's a solid it's a solid argument uh you know for for the hedonist out there and not all hedonists are bad I mean I have friends who are hedonistic and they're very good people but they uh and I've actually convinced some of them to have kids which I'm happy to say and they've thanked me after like I'm not one person who who I've said you know you should really have kids you won't regret it and not one person has said they regret it ever right so that means many to have kids friends so that's good yeah they love it so well when when I was working in Boston I had a very busy job and I pretty much stopped doing everything except my job and spending time with my kids but if I had to rank those in importance than spending my time with my kids yeah that was better and the reason it was more important was because it was partly cuz it was actually better like if your kids are capable of a modicum of pro-social behavior which is pretty much your choice although temperament makes a difference there isn't anyone more entertaining to associate with than little kids because partly I think it's because they're not as cortically inhibited so they're my daughter has a new there's no filter they just say they say what they think well and they you can see what they see through their eyes too so you're all filtered in and you know you see the presumptions everywhere and then child comes along you think oh yeah that's an amazing thing and i' forgotten all about that you know I replaced my perception with my memory right and so children reopen that yeah that's also why I think it says in the gospels that unless you become like a little child you can't enter the Kingdom of Heaven because you have to you have to make contact with that untrammeled perception that existed before you aifi your perceptions into your foolish and often nihilistic habits yeah but I mean to the point you P getting at earlier I do think um that uh and and I consider myself an environmentalist but uh I think the environmental movement has gone too far um and you're not supposed to worship nature you know well it's gone too far in the sense that uh the that that that in its extreme you you start viewing humans as a blight on this the face of the Earth that turns out to be a real problem yeah mostly implicitly but sometimes explicitly um and if if if you internalize that then you start thinking AI systems for example yeah I'm somewhat worried that the AI systems would be I mean you can say like VAR ways that AI could go bad would would train one on Paul a work and see what happens that would be hell yeah yeah well we have plenty of political systems that have already exactly done that yeah that would be would that would be hell that's exactly right that would be hell so yeah that's that's a disturbing thought um that that's for sure so so but just going back to the you know how can something which is I think generally it sort of starts out with good intentions but ultimately sort of um pave the road to hell is is environmentalism in the extreme yeah um that starts to view human humans as bad uh humans as a load on the earth that the Earth can't sustain this is these are completely false um yeah well it's it's interesting in that the economists and the biologists tend to separate into SE separ segregated camps on that front because the biologists tend to be malthusian and that makes them really bad biologists yeah so there I think it was I can never remember the philosopher who said this but it's a brilliant observation is that we evolved thoughts so that our thoughts could die instead of us and that's actually this it's great it's a great line and it it's actually the case because the prefrontal cortex evolved so that we could produce disposable avatars right so I in our conversation what I'm really doing in our conversation is I'm offering you a potential Avatar of myself for the future and I'm saying why don't you see if you can kill this thing now so I don't have to act it out and die and that's part of the right exactly and so and we're we've extended that with games for example right we've externalized that and so the reason the biologists are wrong is because they don't actually understand the qualitative difference between human beings and other creatures is that we can let our thoughts die instead of us we sub so that's substitutionary death that's a good way of thinking about it right and that means that the malthusian limits they don't apply to us in the same way and so the economists got that right it's like we can innovate our way out of scarcity in fact I don't like the idea of natural resource for example I think that's a Marxist notion natural resource it's like air okay I'll give you air everything else fresh water that is not a natural res SCE and kerosene or fossil fuel just laid in the ground until like 1850 because nobody could figure out what the hell to do with it so so what that implies is that it's something I think it's a religious ethos that's the natural resource the religious ethos that allows us to orient to the Future to be Community oriented and to and to be trustworthy yeah well look I mean at least some of these things one can actually apply physics or you know one can analyze in a scientific way to say is how many humans can Earth sustain without what what most people consider to be significant environmental damage and I think if you actually do the numbers um I think it's potentially 10 times the population we have today right um so so how did you arrive how did you arrive at that figure I mean obviously youve put a fair bit of thought into this and this is a very countercultural proposition since the mid 1960s the moral Proclamation has been that there are too many people on the planet and that is I think Paul Erick was the ultimate what exponent of that particular yeah his his analysis was very unscientific he based it on some visit to Delhi I believe right yeah right it's sort of visceral repugnance yeah wrapped himself in science and and produced nonsense um so I mean you just say like okay well how much land area do we need to grow food yeah um how much would that encroach on natural habitats what's the actual food growing potential given um especially if we got good at it right and we are actually quite good at it getting better right right um and um uh is there enough water well actually there's there's plenty of water because Earth is mostly water at 70% Water by that's convenient by surface area yeah um desalination is actually very inexpensive M um so there's there's really not not a shortage of water there's there's not a short of um of of sort of surface area and and energy to to BU to to um grow food um and uh there's no shortage of computational time and increasingly there's no shortage right and that's energy dependent to some degree yeah but the energy problem is solvable very solvable yeah so so let's turn to let's turn if you don't mind to pra some to some more practical Solutions I'd like to I want to let's start a little bit more with the AI issue with open AI because I'd like to explore that and then I'd like to talk about what you're doing with SpaceX I kind of like to walk through your companies and and I want to see how you're integrating your vision across them as well so let's start with with open AI now you you were you started talking about that story with Larry pagee you were ingly I was concerned that Larry was insufficiently worried about um AI safety um because well his his view is that we'll all be essentially upload our minds to computers and and then humans there won't really be a need for humans and I'm and I thought that was I was like what team are you on hard on the humans there right right what team are you on um and I said we really need to make sure Humanity thrives and and grows and and and then he called me a species for saying that yeah yeah yeah so I'm like well I I guess I am you know prum what are you right right right that's the question yeah if you're not prum that's not nothing right that's something else you're Pro something it's it's I think it's a crazy thing to not be prum I mean if humans are not going to be on team human who is um so that that was a final straw really and I was like okay um we really need some new ai ai company to serve as a counterbalance to Google because at the time they had uh almost all of the great AI researchers they had had massive computing power massive Financial Resources um and it was very much a unipolar world with respect to AI right um and and a unipolar world controlled by Larry Page and and uh who who you know had I I thought somewhat uh misanthropic views about humans or at least certainly insufficiently concerned about the what what might happen to the humans um so that that was the basis for creating open AI now yeah that's actually a real problem like insufficiently concerned with the humans that's that's a problem yes and has all the AI power so yeah right that that that that troubled me and so I thought well what would be the opposite of of Google would be a nonprofit uh that is open source so you can see what's going on not a black box um and uh and that was not um sort of what wasn't forced by sort of Market incentives to um make as much money as possible um so open AI was started as a as a nonprofit open source and the open and open the eye refers to open source yeah yeah yeah so why were you concerned about the profit mode of warping things at that point well at least at least at least well I think this perhaps is particularly a challenge for publicly traded companies you just get sued if you don't maximize profits MH you know the shareholders you'll get a share sh shareholder class action lawsuit yeah that uh will force you to maximize profits yeah so you thought that so that you thought a for-profit system might tilt the development of AI in directions that were short-term profit motivated instead of cracking the fundamental problem something like that yeah and like look I could be wrong about a lot of these things but that was that's what I thought at the time and uh and I wanted to create something that I thought would be the polar opposite of Google which is obviously a for for-profit and um close Source centralized yeah centralized and and you don't get to see what's going on and um that was the basis for open Ai and uh we you know recruited a lot of key people I was instrumental in recruiting ilas H SK um who um without him opening would not be where it is today um elas yeah ilas Sky um I uhhuh um pretty pretty famous pretty famous guy in AI uhhuh um and Ilia is also the guy that I I thought at opening ey who had the strongest moral compass uhuh um car cared the most about doing the right thing so it was troubling to see him get um oued from open AI um you know he he sort of was was part of a coup to exit Sam Elon the CEO yeah right um and when that that that coup somehow got turned around and and then Ilia was was was in fact exited from open AI um and open AI is now um really trying to maximize profit what happened I I still am not sure like and I'm considering concering you know leg legal action here to say like how is it possible that a that that that an organization is founded with the goal of being open source uh nonprofit and and I provided almost all the money in the beginning almost $50 million um to get it going with and no stock I have no stock or control or anything and uh I I how is it possible to go from there to a company that's now allegedly worth over100 billion and um is it seems to be maximizing profit and is it's hell of shift and it's and it's not not open source right right so that's very different than the original I I would say this like is it possibly more different I I'm not sure how you could be more different so so so I mean this would be like let's say you let's say you um you know fund fund um a nonprofit to preserve some part of the Amazon rainforest but instead that nonprofit uh becomes a lumber company right and chops down the forest and sells it now you would think that it was that seem are are you shocked by are you shocked by what happened is that a yes I'm I'm concerned about it and I have voice those concerns over the years and um you know I don't think anybody understands it like what what the hell happened I still don't know well what do you what do you think happened like I mean I look I don't want to push you obviously but I'm curious It's like how did that happen it doesn't make sense to me I would like can answer that question too um okay so are you addressing that with grock yeah so maybe maybe that's the solution rather like I'm sure the last thing you need is another like immense legal battle I I mean I'm cons I'm still considering a legal challenge to at least perhaps to have the court explain to me how a an organization that I funded for for one purpose can do the diametrically opposed purpose and that that's okay and become a for-profit I I please just show me the trailer I see I see why you want to do that because I'm confused and and and and this does sound like it should be legal if what missing something here well it sounds at least like it should be understood at least right at least that what the hell happened here you don't want that to happen especially given what's at stake yes yes exactly open a the leader in AI yeah okay so um okay so and and and I'm somewhat worried that that that that they've ingested the W mind virus in the training you can see some of that in the in the the output results we obviously saw that with Google Gemini as well um to absurd degrees that was really um where you know it said draw draw um a picture of the the founding PA of the United States and it's a group of diverse women yeah um this is a historical event this rewriting history y um yeah no that was really something that was really something to see that was like a jaw on the floor moment jaw on the floor moment and wow uh you know and and then asking questions like is you know which one's worse misgendering Caitlyn Jenner or global thermonuclear Warfare and it said misgendering clay Caitlin Jenner like this this powerful how how powerful do you want this AI to get with with with with beliefs like that and I should you know to Caitlyn Jenner's credit uh yes uh uh Jenner said uh I I would really much prefer to be U misgendered than half nuclear war well that that's good that's good so there there's a limit to all quite quite sensible yes yes yes thank God for that yes um performing better than the AI yes but you and and while it's sort of perhaps funny and ridiculous um at this stage imagine if the AI is it's not that funny I mean it's semi funny at this stage but it's if the more powerful that AI gets it it could decide that that is not merely that it wants to force that outcome and simply say eradicate its performative contradictions right act out what it believes oh yes that's highly likely it could conclude Society is insufficiently diverse according to its programming and will simply force uh that uh diversity by whatever means by whatever means is necessary MH okay so let's that's good that's good on the AI side for now look I don't think you're would make it in that scenario no I don't think so I don't think so yeah so how about we talk about Trump for a minute do the first thing there there's one question about Trump that I really wanted to ask you so do you are you shocked at the fact that you're donating a substantial amount of money to facilitate Trump's election is that something you would have believed in the realm of possibility say 5 years ago um well and I want to diversify out into California what's what's been reported in the media is is simply not true um so okay I'm I I I'm I'm not donating $45 million a month to Trump right um and uh uh now now what I have done is I've I have created a a pack or super pack whatever you want to call it um which uh is I you know I we call it the the America pack um and the do you want to tell everybody who's listening what a pack is because people it's a political action committee yeah um it's an organization it's sort of a legal entity that can receive funding um that funding can then be used to help with political campaigns yeah okay okay um and how does that differ from a direct donation there are specific limits on Direct donations to candidates and the pack system is is a way of putting a a political structure in place sort of runs parallel with the political with the with the formal political system and so yeah you can donate money directly to candidates that that amount is is fairly small yeah um then that there's and you can donate a lot more money to um political action committee or Super PAC um there are various rules that govern the operation of packs and super Pacs um but uh that's it it it certainly allows for a lot more money in the system than would otherwise be possible right right and and these are used I to be clear on the Democrat and Republican side yes um and um I I actually think that right so it's an open playing field on the pack side yes yes yeah what are you hoping to accomplish with this and what's the pack call it's called the America pack America pack okay that's easy to remember it's very easy to remember and it's it's actually it's not meant to be um sort of a hyperism uh pack it's it's actually the the the the core principles of of this americ pack are the intent is to promote the principles that um made America great in the first place so I wouldn't say that I'm say for example Maga of make America great again I um I think America is great um I'm I'm more mag make America greater and uh and and there's there there's some um you know core pillars of some core values that have I think made America great um could you elucidate those yeah so so um you know one of them is being a meritocracy um May as ascy as much of a meritocracy as possible such that uh you get ahead as a function of your hard work and your skill um and not nothing else yeah um which is um why I would be opposed to for for example things like Dei Adrian wridge documed the fact that the alternative to meritocracy historically is nepotism and Dynasty absolutely it's not it's not Equity it's not Equity corre it's nepotism and Dynasty right so that's very much worth knowing okay so meritocracy has its price because it's a severe judge but the alternative is nepotism and aristocracy so or Dynasty okay so meritocracy what else I mean clearly you know America it's not like America's been purely a meritocracy but it has been more of a meritocracy than any other place right right which is which is good that's good that's good which I regard as good y uh so uh promoting um meritocracy promoting um a freedom uh you know freedom to operate um meaning like the least amount of of of uh government intervention possible you know we we want and and this is I think important to fight as because the naal tendency over time sort of almost like entropy is that uh go the hand of government gets heavier every year y um the the the laws and regulations accumulate every year and these laws and regulations are Immortal right um and so that's the evil Uncle of the king a very very old story very very old Story the Egyptians were wrestling with that problem 4,000 years ago right yeah so you have to have some you have to really have take an active role in reducing the number of laws and regulations otherwise as more and more laws and regulations are passed eventually everything becomes legal right right um and you start getting into these oan situations where then everyone's poor and miserable well well where where action a is illegal and action B is illegal and there isn't anything you can do that is is legal right um so um you know take an example of of um to give example of some some lawfare that was leveled against basx for example we we were told for many years that we could not hire anyone who is not a permanent right yeah yeah that well so SpaceX develops Advanced rocket technology which is considered um uh an advanced weapons technology because it's it's a core part of like inter intercontinental ballistic missiles y so there are only a handful of things in the sort of highest level of weapon technology and Rocket technology is one of those because we could deliver a payload and basically bomb anywhere on earth right for from anywhere on Earth so um so we I was told knowing certain terms by the government that if we hired anyone who is not a uh permanent resident of the United States uh have either green card or a citizen that I would go to prison oh yeah um because the presumption if somebody's not a permanent resident is that they will leave the United States and take the rocket technology from SpaceX to to potentially to countries that would cause harm to the United States right right pretty you know solid reasoning I think um and then um a few years ago the Biden Administration decided to sue SpaceX for fail in to hire Asylum Seekers right right yeah I remember that I remember that so we're told on the one side that uh if we hire anyone who's not a permanent residents resident we we we go to prison now we're told um if we don't hire Asylum Seekers who not not Asylum not people who have been granted Asylum Seekers Seekers they aspire to Asylum they are therefore not a permanent resident but if you don't hire them we also go to prison right well the purpose of being damned if you do and damned if you don't is to make damn sure that you're damned correct right right so that's a kind of out so I mean that that seemed to be insane and unfair um and uh and and and why did theid administration because they can only proc they can only do so many big cases per year there's a finite number they can do yeah why would the justice department of of all the injustices that occur pick this as one of their biggest cases yeah why why do you think well I think they probably had a I don't know there was some lawfare I think it was it was a what do you think relationship to you well I don't know all the things but this is before supporting Trump or anything like that um in fact I I you know supported Biden and and before that Hillary and before that Obama so right that's why I was asking if this comes as a shock you know I don't know if if it could just be random it could be um like they didn't tell us uh you know why pick us why why why do such a crazy lawsuit um randoms a bad even if it is random that's still bad it's still it's it's still bad that's just a marker of incompetence but if it's not random well it seems to be highly unlikely to be yes and and also why why attack SpaceX and not say Boeing or locki um so um I think part of it might be that uh SpaceX is not unionized um and the Democratic Party in the US is fundamentally controlled by the unions M so that I'm I'm speculating here um but since since we're not unionized we're I think a very happy Workforce um and uh you know I'm out there on the out there on the factory floor I don't see a few people are happy it's it's a good vibe um well they're engaged in something ridiculously exciting at minimum well you know that's not nothing you know people can go a long ways if they're if they're part of a project that's well aiming at Mars let's say that's definitely aiming up so that's really exciting that's a real opportunity for people what do you think of trump well I mean I'm not going to you know I I I don't sort of subscribe to Cult of Personality um so for me it's really just um you know we've got a choice of administrations and we we have to pick one yeah um and uh you know I think both there are flaws on both sides there what do you think his flaws are um andan he's a complicated person and I've been trying to sus him out and figure him out because some of the things that look like flaws might be advantages in Disguise like he seems to me to be pretty good is standing up to Psychopathic bullies for example and that's kind of a useful skill and it's not easy you have to be a bit of a monster to manage that and it isn't obvious to me how many of the idio even the divisive idiosyncrasies of trump are the mirror image of his capacity to stand up to bullies right that's a tough call man but so you've obviously decided to lay your what lay your efforts down on the side of the Trump Administration in the for elction and so yeah I would think it's it's a it's really I think we need a change of administration um uh I I think uh in you know many years ago the I think probably Democratic party was the party of meritocracy and and and of personal freedom yeah um they used to be the Free Speech party yeah and and these days they seem to be the censorship party under the guise of hate speech yeah um so uh so weirdly the in my view the Republican party is actually the party of that that's the the meritocracy party uh because you know the Democrats are also promoting Dei which is really just um another form of racism and sexism um it's the most pernicious form I think actually right so it's anti- meritocratic di is f fundamentally anti meritocratic so so so then it insists on dividing people by groups as the primary what would you say conceptual distin between individuals rity sex I think Democratic party is is stoking um Division I think the evidence for that clear all of this group identity nonsense has made things much more I can see it in Toronto when my kids grew up in Toronto downtown I would say they were race they were race ethnicity and gender blind seriously yeah they had a unbelievably diverse range of friends and no one cared sure and even in Toronto that started to shift around with this emphasis on group division it's a really ugly thing to see so yeah not good not good yeah so my view and is that at this point in the United States the uh Republican party um is more in line with uh mer meritocracy and with personal freedom um so I've never had a conservative many times with my left-wing friends let's say they'd refuse to talk to someone oh me included definitely cuz I've invited prominent Democrats to come on my podcast in great numbers for a very long time and I've got like absolutely nowhere with that they'll talk to me in private they will not talk to me in public and so that's that's never happen they're afraid of being shunned absolutely 100% that's what they're afraid of sure definitely and they they theyve told me that it's not a secret but that's never happened on the Republican side I found it much easier cuz I've talked to a lot of Democrats and a lot of Republicans and I found it much much easier to talk to the Republicans and that is somewhat of a shock I wouldn't have necessarily expected that yeah and but I should be clear that it's not like I think the uh Republican party is Flawless um it certainly isn't it's got got its issues um there are extremists within the Republican party that I don't agree with um but one has if it's a two-party system essentially you got to pick one or the other um and so you weigh the the good and the bad and my opinion is that and you flip the coin we we need that the country would be better off with the Republican Administration than a Democrat well Trump was pretty good at not having Wars yes yeah which is actually quite a big thing like it's really a big thing and what he did with the uh Abraham Accords that was a miracle I think right no absolutely he should have got the Nobel price for that I I think this there's something to be said that you knower Amer needs a strong leader and with the that you have the perception of strength um now um you you have to admire that you know Trump after getting shot um with blood streaming down his face it could have been a second shooter who knows um nonetheless uh you know was was fist pumping fight fight y um after being shot yeah I mean and this is not he's an ordinary bastard and he's funny too yes and he's Brave he courage um this is this is instinctual courage uh it's not calculated it's not some some arranged event it's in the moment well you could see that then cuz that was not a time when you're going you see true courage in the moment yeah yeah absolutely um and if if you want a leader who's going to deal with some very very tough cookies out there um who's going to you know deal with with a Putin or Kim Kim jongan or you know uh China yeah China um and uh they will be in they will be they'll think twice about messing with Trump yeah they'll think twice okay okay um and and po poor Biden can't make it up the stairs and obviously he's he's stepped out of the race but it's nobody's going to be intimidated by by Biden it's it's impossible um but so but intim I think they will be intimidated by a guy who was puss popping after getting shot well we saw that I think in his administration because it was peace did Reign and that was quite that was quite uh well that's a bit of empirical evidence can I can I ask you a little bit about one of the things that you've been relatively vocal about and I understand that there's a personal connection to this as well so I am for what it's worth uh I'm particularly unhappy with my what my colleagues in the psychological field have done with regards to gender affirming care right I think they are a pack of contemptible cowards and I think that everyone who's been involved in this in relationship to minors should go to prison I agree okay okay why do you agree what like what what what's your ore in the water in this particular this is the worst medical and psychological malpractice I've ever seen anywhere including what I've done what I've studied in reference to historical atrocity Eugenics um what do you call those prefrontal abot even the sorts of things that were going on in Nazi Germany at least the bloody Nazis knew it was wrong and tried to hide it yes so okay so what what's your what's your why are you engaged in this particular battle I mean you you said you're going to move a couple of your company headquarters out of California because of the last legislative move that Gavin news pulled with regards to the trans issue so yes I mean there to be clear it was there there were many things leading up to that point yes um I just and I was clear like look it's it's not that it's the one straw it's just the final straw yeah okay okay okay so it's a accumulative issue fair enough it's a accumulative issue um so it's not dramatic grandstanding it's no and and moreover I have had conversations with Gavin new before where I said if you if you pass legislation like this if you sign legislation like this um that in my view puts uh children in danger um I will move my companies out of California he knew that ahead of time okay and so okay you've talked to him directly about this what the hell is he doing I I cannot understand I really cannot understand I mean the Democrats he's pandering to the far left why did the Democrat moderates constantly Pander to the farle what I worked with the Democrats in California for 5 years trying to get them to separate themselves from the farle they wouldn't admit that they existed even and they certainly would never separate them never they wouldn't admit for example that antifa even existed sure you know down build there's this unbelievable blind spot with regards to the far-left radicals and the moderate Democrats are I think they're useful idiots fundamentally so yeah well I mean going back to the um the so-called gender offorming care which is um a terrible euphemism that's for sure uh it's um it's it's really a child sterilization is what it should be no there's mutilation too yeah well we want to make sure that that amalgam is sure fair enough it's it's child mutilation and sterilization under the guys of gender affirming care and compassion right right right I can't I literally can't imagine anything worse than that yes it's evil um I mean you're taking kids who are obviously often far below the age of consent yep confused miserable yes the reality is that um almost every child goes through some kind of identity crisis you it's part of puberty exactly it's just part of growing up um if so it's very possible for manip for for adults to manipulate children into who have are having a natural identity crisis into believing that they are the wrong gender um ande yeah Absol and and and and that and that they need to be uh uh the other gender or they need to be a boy or boy needs to go be a girl or you know and and that the and that that will solve all their problems and that will solve their problems and uh and and then they uh give them sterilizing drugs uh which are called also aoma pu puberty blocker uh these are sterilization drugs uh so they can never have children again y um they uh can have m double momies um the mutilation their forearms stripped to build non-functioning penises yeah um it's maob um and um I mean we we have an age of consent for a reason that the reason um you can't get say tattoos below age 18 or um drink or drive a you know there there's there are ages at which you can do things because uh if we allow children to to take permanent actions when they're um 10 12 14 years old they they they will do things that they subsequently greatly regret yes I've interviewed a couple of people who've done exactly that and it's Prett damn painful so um so I think you you and during why are you willing to make this an issue do you think uh well to one of my it happened to one of my my older boys um uh where I was um I was essentially tricked into uh signing documents uh for one of my older boys Xavier uh this is before I had really any understanding of what was going on and we had co co going on and so there was a lot of confusion um and um you know I was told oh you know Xavier might commit suicide if that was a that was a lie right from the outset no reliable clinician ever believed that there was never any evidence for that and also if there's a higher suicide rate the reason is is because of the underlying depression and anxiety and not because of the gender dysphoria and every godamn clinician knows that too and they're too cowardly to come out and say it right and so that and then we end up in exactly when when I saw that lie start to propagate it just made the hair on the back of my neck stand up it's like I see so you're you're telling parents that unless they agree to this radical transformation that their children are going to die and you think that's moral and you think that's true that's so P that is so pathological that it's almost incomprehensible I can't imagine anything worse of I can't imagine a therapist doing anything worse than that or sitting by idly and remaining silent while his colleagues are doing it it's pathetic uh it's it's a incredibly evil and I agree with you that people that have been promoting this should go to prison uh I It Won't Stop till that happens yeah it'll just go underground there's all puberty blockers are being accessed online by kids all the time through non-med channels so yeah it's not going to stop yeah okay so I see so that's I was St into doing this um and uh you it wasn't explained to me that puberty blockers are actually just sterilization drugs um so um anyway uh and so I lost my son essentially uh so you know they uh they call it dead naming for a reason yeah all right so that the reason it's called deadnaming is because uh your son is dead so my son Xavier is dead killed by the woke mind virus I'm sorry to hear that yeah I can't imagine what that would be like yeah so um yeah and there's lots of people in that situation now right it's not pretty and lots of demolished kids yes yeah well that's a good that's a good reason to be the final straw all right so let's so I about to destroy the the woke mind virus after [Music] that and we're making some progress join the club yeah okay let's end on something positive you're shooting for Mars what do you think that's doing for people cuz it's kind of I don't want to be I don't want to step out of my box here but it's it's it's really interesting to me to watch you do this because it's Preposterous right it's a Preposterous thing to do to go to Mars and yet I I was old enough when the moon landing was happening to remember what that was like right it was an adventure positive Adventure everybody could participate in it was an unbelievable technological accelerant and it was a a Mark of Faith in the while in the west I would say right in the in the might of the United States and the upward aim and so I know you're playing I don't mean in the game like manner that's what you're tapping into what do you think you're doing with this with the Mars Venture well the Mars Venture I think is part of the ex expansion of consciousness beyond Earth so um I mean I want to be clear that that I I don't think we should apply some vast number amount of resources to to Mars I I'm talking about less than 1% of of uh of our economic output to go to making life multiplanetary but um it is natural extension of expanding the scope and scale of Consciousness um so I think we want to do everything we can to make sure that Earth is going to be great for a long time as long as possible and but also allocate a small amount of resources like I said less than 1% of our economy to um extending life beyond Earth um and uh and ultimately to other star systems right and so that's that's perfectly in keeping with what you described at the beginning of the of our discussion about the manner in which you resolved your crisis of Faith as a child your commitment to the validity of Consciousness your your desire to what would you say facilitate its transformation development extension that goes along with your pro-human ethos right so that's all thinking from first principles so I think you are stuck in the religious Camp one way or another so like I said you can call it I I don't mind it being called a religion um but I think uh yeah well I I came here at least in part today to find out just what the hell your religion was so so I want to end with this if you don't mind so I also asked you why you trust yourself in relationship to Ai and you said well I don't entirely and so I thought that's a good answer but I mean more broadly like you have a lot of admirers there's a lot of people who are hoping that you're the guy that you that you what would you say that you're the guy who can do what you say going to do and there's lots of evidence that you can it's like you think it's reasonable for people to trust you well I I think so I mean that's I wouldn't I wouldn't say trust me entirely but I I think uh on balance uh my track Ro could suggests that I'm fairly trustworthy what what elements of it do you think suggest that particularly um well I I've built uh a lot of companies that have done useful things yeah you've built a lot of impossible companies that done useful things yeah right so that's an existence proof of sorts yeah and do you accept the validity of entrepreneurial striving as an indicator of ethical conduct which I and I think it I think that's valid yeah I wouldn't be able to recruit great people to work with me to all these companies um I think if I was like a really bad person they would just would wouldn't want to work with me um so uh you know I think like one of the tests for you know assessing someone's character is um to look at the character of their friends and their Associates y um and while people can put up a mask themselves for their character their friends and Associates will not Y and so you can judge a judge a person's character by their Associates and to some degreee by their enemies right you know if evil people hate you well you might be doing something right okay sir thank you all right thank you much appreciated very good to talk to you it's real it was a real privilege you're welcome yeah good all right you bet [Music] the