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Professor Brian Greene: The Threat of AI, Consciousness & The End of Humanity — Transcript

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0:00And I can't convince you that we're not
0:01in the matrix. Why? We could be. Is this
0:04table real? Am I really here? Am I a
0:06simulation sitting [music] inside some
0:08computer? Maybe there's a kid in 29th
0:10century Earth and they happen to allow
0:13you and I to exist sitting at this
0:15table. And here's a big assumption.
0:16[music]
0:16Can you create a computer program that
0:19has consciousness? Nobody knows the
0:21answer to that. But I've spoken to some
0:23of today's AI researchers who think that
0:26chat GPT is conscious. And in the back
0:29of my mind, [music] I do think it's
0:30possible.
0:30>> But if we considered robots to be
0:32conscious, would they then get rights?
0:34>> I think that's something we should think
0:35about now. Actually,
0:36>> Professor Brian Green, what is the
0:39ultimate question that you're seeking to
0:40answer? [music]
0:40>> We find ourselves thrust on this planet.
0:43We're trying to figure out why we're
0:45here. Is there some ultimate purpose?
0:48We're a little dot on planet Earth. And
0:50you begin to see our sun, one of many
0:52stars within [music] the galaxy. You can
0:54look at our Milky Way galaxy within the
0:58setting of the entire universe. [music]
1:00>> And what's beyond?
1:01>> Well, if the universe is infinite, if
1:03you go sufficiently far out into space,
1:05you're virtually guaranteed to find a
1:06copy of yourself out there.
1:08>> There's a version out there of me that
1:10just loves wine.
1:11>> There you go.
1:12>> So, should I feel insignificant?
1:14>> I would urge you not to because fact
1:16that we can understand that we are so
1:19small, that's what gives us [music] a
1:21sense of connection to something larger.
1:23Do you think it could lead us to God?
1:24>> If you mean the kind [music] of God our
1:27forebears often have spoken, that feels
1:30to me very much a human creation. I will
1:32tell you why I'm skeptical of that. But
1:35another thing we [music] should think
1:35about is the end of the earth because if
1:38we go arbitrarily far into the future,
1:40the earth is [music] going to spiral.
1:41It's not going to get scary.
1:42>> Well, it's scary the whole way.
1:48>> This is super interesting to me. My team
1:50given me this report to show me how many
1:51of you that watch this show subscribe
1:53and some of you have told us according
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2:36help us. Really appreciate it. Let's get
2:38on with the show. [music]
2:43Professor Brian Green,
2:47what is the ultimate question that
2:48you're seeking to answer?
2:50>> The ultimate question, I would say, is
2:52what is the true nature of reality? We
2:55find ourselves thrust on this planet and
2:59we look out and we're trying to figure
3:01out why we're here, what it's made of.
3:04Is there some ultimate purpose or is it
3:07just some interesting accident that
3:10allowed us to have self-awareness and
3:13ask these kinds of questions about the
3:14nature of the world? And I think that to
3:17me is the the deepest kind of question
3:19that we humans can ask.
3:21>> Do you feel like over the last 30 years
3:23of your career, you've gotten closer to
3:25understanding the answer to that
3:26question? Yes, but you know, it's kind
3:29of like picking up grains of sand on a
3:32beach, right? You pick up more and more
3:35and that that pouch of sand gets
3:37heavier. So, you're understanding is is
3:40deeper. It's weightier, but you look out
3:42and there's just almost infinitely more
3:44grains of sand that are out there. We
3:46understand the world better than we once
3:48did. But does that really take us some
3:53significant way toward assessing the big
3:56deep questions of say why is there
3:59something rather than nothing maybe
4:01that's the deepest question of all but
4:03which I don't mean empty space I mean
4:06nothing nothing at all
4:09>> well we'll in this conversation go in
4:11the pursuit of that answer to tell
4:14people who you are and to let them
4:16understand the journey you've been on
4:17academically and through your career
4:19Where did you study? Where have you
4:21worked over the last couple of decades?
4:22>> Yeah, sure. Well, I grew up in
4:24Manhattan, right across from the Hayden
4:26Planetarium. I would wander the hallways
4:28of the planetarium and come upon a
4:30meteorite and the universe was sort of
4:33my backyard because of that. And that
4:36really set me on a trajectory that I
4:39continued following when I went to
4:41college, went to Harvard and studied
4:43mathematics and physics. Then from there
4:45was to uh Oxford where I got my
4:48doctorate pursuing work in a field
4:51called string theory and then through
4:54the academic ladder Cornell and
4:56ultimately Colombia where I've been a
4:58professor now for 30 some odd years you
5:01know director of the center for
5:02theoretical physics at Columbia
5:03University.
5:04>> If you were to explain string theory to
5:06me like I was 12.
5:07>> Yeah.
5:07>> How would you do it?
5:08>> Yeah. I would simply say this. Your
5:0912-year-old self probably knew that
5:11matter was made up of stuff called
5:14molecules that themselves are made up of
5:17atoms that are stuck together. And the
5:20the atoms are made of smaller things.
5:23Electrons in orbit around a nucleus that
5:26has neutrons and protons and neutrons
5:29and protons. They even have smaller
5:31particles, particles called quarks. The
5:34question is, is that the end of the
5:35story? Is it electrons and quirs and
5:37you're done? everything is made up of
5:39them. Or might there be a finer level of
5:42structure inside the electron, inside
5:45the quark? You take a powerful
5:46microscope, you look deeply. Would you
5:48see anything else? And the idea of
5:50string theory is yeah, you would. Inside
5:53an electron or inside a cork, you'd see
5:56a little tiny vibrating filament. And
5:58the different vibrations of the string
6:00yield the different particles. So much
6:03like a string on a violin, when it
6:04vibrates in one pattern, you hear it as
6:06a C or or an A sharp.
6:09>> The different vibrations of the strings
6:11in string theory, they don't produce
6:13different musical tones. They produce
6:15different particles. So a string
6:17vibrating one way, electron. A string
6:20vibrating another way, a cork. So matter
6:23at its most fundamental level, if you
6:25were to take a powerful microscope and
6:27look deeply inside of any piece of
6:29matter, you'd see all these little
6:31vibrating filaments, these vibrating
6:34strings. That's the idea of the theory.
6:37>> So two questions come to mind when you
6:39say that, which is how do you know? And
6:40the second one is what if you zoomed in
6:42even further?
6:43>> Yeah, good. Both good questions. How do
6:45we know? We don't. Everything I just
6:48said could be utter nonsense. I don't
6:50think it is. But the only way that you
6:54know if an idea in science is correct is
6:57you need to make predictions that you
6:59can go out and test measure and see
7:00whether you can confirm the ideas. We
7:03don't have the technology to look
7:05sufficiently deeply into matter to see
7:08the strings. We don't have the particle
7:11accelerators, the particle colliders
7:13with enough power to slam things
7:15together to access this finer level of
7:19structure that the theory is suggesting.
7:21So you might say then where do these
7:23ideas come from? Right? Answer
7:26mathematics. The power of mathematics is
7:29that it can take us to places that we
7:31can't yet go literally using equipment.
7:34When we look at the mathematics of
7:36quantum mechanics, the mathematics of
7:39general relativity, and we put that math
7:41inside the math of string theory, all of
7:44a sudden the equations work. They come
7:47together harmoniously, and we like,
7:50whoa, the math of quantum mechanics,
7:52we're confident in that. We have
7:54predictions and observations. The math
7:56of general relativity, we're confident
7:58in that. It makes predictions. We've
8:00confirmed through observations. Now
8:03we're willing to go where the math takes
8:06us. And the math takes us in this
8:08approach to these vibrating filaments,
8:10>> these vibrating strings.
8:11>> These vibrating strings.
8:12>> So if you pass me the string.
8:14>> So essentially, if you zoom into every
8:16cell on my body,
8:17>> Yeah.
8:18>> you will find that there's different
8:19shaped strings vibrating.
8:21>> That's the prediction.
8:22>> That's the prediction.
8:23>> Correct.
8:24>> And what is causing them to vibrate in a
8:27certain way? Who's telling them?
8:28>> Yeah. Yeah. The idea is we recognize
8:32that the universe has energy. If you're
8:34to ask me where does the energy come
8:36from. Nobody can answer that. That is
8:39the question of why there is something
8:41rather than nothing. The something is a
8:43fundamental currency called energy. If
8:46string theory is correct, then that
8:48energy manifests as these vibrational
8:51patterns of the strings themselves. If
8:53the theory is wrong, then the energy
8:56manifests through other things like
8:57motions of particles and the way in
9:00which spaceime warps and curves. But if
9:03string theory is correct, the energy of
9:05the universe is manifested in the
9:07vibrational patterns of strings. Now
9:09when you say like who mandates that that
9:12string vibrates in one pattern, that
9:14string vibrates in a different pattern.
9:16If we go back to the big bang, the
9:20energetic explosion that resulted in
9:23space expanding, the detailed way in
9:26which that happened ultimately dictates
9:29how this or that string vibrates in the
9:32aftermath of that rapid cosmological
9:36explosion.
9:36>> Does this string theory idea tell us
9:40anything about why we're here?
9:42>> I would like to think that it does. It's
9:45very indirect and we are aggregates of a
9:49huge number of particles or if string
9:52theory is correct of a huge number of
9:53strings. I mean inside your body you've
9:56got something like a billion billion
9:58billion particles and if string theory
10:00is correct each of those particles is a
10:02vibrating filament. It is a gargantuan
10:06challenge to understand why those
10:08billion billion billion particles came
10:11together to yield you or me or somebody
10:13else. But again, that's a historical
10:16progression and I think we understand
10:18the broad outlines of that narrative
10:20that there was some initial event called
10:23the big bang that resulted in space
10:25expanding.
10:27The energy of that big bang ultimately
10:30transmuted into particles. Those
10:33particles were wafting through space.
10:36Gravity caused collections of those
10:38particles to clump together. Some of
10:40them clumped together into stars like
10:43our sun. Some of them clumped together
10:44into planets like our earth. And on our
10:48earth, some of those particles began to
10:51coalesce into more exotic and refined
10:55forms, giving rise to atoms, giving rise
10:58to molecules. And over the course of
11:01billions of years on our planet, those
11:04little molecules grew into more complex
11:07structures, ultimately giving first
11:09cells. And once you have a cell, cells
11:12divide and they come together into
11:14larger multi-ellular aggregates that
11:17give rise to the beginnings of life in
11:19the ocean. And those life forms evolve
11:22further until they can walk out of the
11:24ocean and begin to live on land. and
11:27they begin to stand upright and after a
11:31billion more years you and I are sitting
11:33here at this table and so yeah there is
11:36a story that's the brief version that
11:39takes us from the big bang to us on
11:42planet earth
11:43>> is it theoretical that this is all just
11:45a I was going to say perception but the
11:49other word might be a simulation of
11:50sorts theoretically we don't even know
11:52if yesterday exists or if it was just we
11:54were just implanted with the memory of
11:55it
11:56>> absolutely Hey, we're in this age of AI
11:58now. And I wondered if this insurgence
12:02of AI and how powerful it is and if you
12:07imagine it on a sort of an exponential
12:09curve, has it made you question some of
12:12your like fundamental assumptions about
12:14that overarching question of why we're
12:15here?
12:16>> Well, yeah. In fact, even before AI, we
12:20were tustling with the very notion that
12:24you mentioned, which is
12:26all we ever have access to
12:30is now, right? We can try to remember
12:35yesterday's now, but as you say, that's
12:39happening right now through patterns
12:41that are in my brain or yours that we
12:43think reflect something that happened
12:45yesterday or the day before, but that's
12:48a leap of faith, right? So, there's a
12:52kind of, you know, skeptical nightmare
12:54scenario where we begin to question
12:57everything. You know, is this table
12:59real? Am I really here? Am I a
13:01simulation sitting inside some computer
13:03right now? Are we in the matrix right
13:06now? These are the kinds of things which
13:07you naturally can come to when you take
13:11a deeply skeptical attitude to the
13:13nature of reality. Bottom line is I
13:16can't convince myself and certainly I
13:18can't convince you that we're not in the
13:19matrix. Why? We could be. It is
13:22logically consistent and sensible to
13:25imagine that you and I are sitting in
13:27some computer. Maybe it's not, you know,
13:30some dark dystopian computer the way it
13:33was in the Matrix. Maybe there's a kid
13:35in, you know, 29th century Earth who's
13:39in his or her garage right now and they
13:42came up this wonderful computer program
13:45and they're simulating historical
13:47episodes in the past and they happen to
13:50allow you and I to exist sitting at this
13:52table. I don't know how to prove that
13:54that's not the case. What I can say is
13:58if I'm willing to buy into that,
14:00everything falls apart. I can't trust
14:03any I can't trust my reasoning. I can't
14:05even trust my thinking that it's logical
14:07to imagine that individual because that
14:10individual may have implanted the false
14:12reasoning that it could be logical for
14:14us to be sitting here. What do I do at
14:16that point? And so, as a scientist, what
14:19I say is, I'm going to allow that as a
14:21possibility, and then I'm going to park
14:23it right over here. I allow it. I look
14:26at it every so often. I say, "That's
14:28scary, that possibility that we're in a
14:30simulation, but I'm not going to let it
14:32overwhelm me because then I'll be
14:34stuck." The simulation argument
14:35popularized by philosopher Nick Boston
14:37relies on probability.
14:38>> Yeah. Um, it essentially says that if an
14:41advanced civilization, which I would
14:43argue we're an advanced civilization,
14:46ever develops the technological capacity
14:48to run conscious highfidelity computer
14:50simulations of their ancestors, they
14:53will likely run millions of or billions
14:54of them. And because these simulated
14:56realities would vastly outnumber the
14:58single raw physical universe, any given
15:01conscious observer is statistically
15:03almost certainly living inside a
15:05software code rather than base reality.
15:08The big assumption is, can you create a
15:12computer program that has
15:13self-awareness, that has consciousness?
15:16[sighs and gasps]
15:17You know, nobody knows the answer to
15:19that. I' I've spoken to some of today's
15:22AI researchers who think that chat GPT
15:24is conscious, that who think that Claude
15:27is conscious. Now, I look I I talk to
15:29them and I'm respectful. That's the kind
15:31of person I am, but in the back of my
15:33mind, I'm like, are you kidding me? You
15:36really think that chat GPT has feelings
15:40that it thinks about its own existence
15:44and has anxieties?
15:47I think it can simulate that. But
15:49regardless,
15:51I don't think today's technology is
15:53there. Is it possible that tomorrow's
15:56technology broadly defined a year, five
15:58years, a hundred years really will yield
16:02self-aware, sentient artificial systems?
16:05Yeah, I do think it's possible. Now, not
16:08everybody agrees with that. I mean, no
16:10one knows, right? It's a logical
16:12possibility, but we don't know. Let us
16:15assume following Nick Bostonramm that
16:17consciousness can be created in a
16:21mechanical box.
16:23If that's possible, then Nick simply
16:25says, "Look, our progyny in the future,
16:28they're going to be fascinated with
16:30creating sentient systems." And so,
16:34they're going to create millions and
16:35billions and trillions of of sentient
16:38systems in the box. And they're going to
16:41get really elaborate and create a
16:43version where the sentient beings are
16:45led to think that they're on a planet.
16:47And in fact, they're going to do it a
16:49thousand billion trillion different
16:50ways. Some are going to be a planet like
16:52Earth. Some are going to be on a planet
16:54like Mars. Some are going to be a planet
16:56like around some star in the Andromeda
16:58galaxy. They're going to be an enormous
17:01number of simulated beings.
17:04Enormous number of universes that are
17:06simulated. So the question is if we have
17:09one real universe, let's say this is
17:11real, and a gazillion artificial ones
17:14that are created in various laptop
17:17computers of the future. We're one of a
17:20billion trillion zillion
17:23instantiations of people who think that
17:25they're real. Now, one truly is real.
17:29The other are not real. So, if you're
17:31just talking about odds, the odds are
17:34anybody who thinks they're real is not.
17:37The odds are anybody who's got a
17:39self-aware sense of the world is
17:41probably in a simulation.
17:43>> You used anxiety as a sort of a proxy
17:45for consciousness almost like the being
17:47able to feel these things.
17:48>> Yeah. I guess the question then becomes
17:49like what is what is it? What is
17:51anxiety?
17:52>> Yeah.
17:52>> Is it an electrical signal going through
17:54from
17:54>> I do think it is. I think that love and
17:57hate and anxiety and jealousy and
18:00gratitude and grief and all human
18:02emotion is nothing but electrical
18:05impulses going through our brains. And
18:08electrical impulse is just particles
18:10moving or strings moving along various
18:13connections. I think that is all that it
18:15is. Now, some people hear it and they're
18:16like, "Wow, that is a pretty bleak way
18:19of looking at life." We're these
18:21wondrous beings who can have all this
18:25emotion, right? The emotion captured by
18:28Shakespeare in the sonnetss, right? The
18:30emotion captured by Beethoven in the
18:33ninth symphony, you can't reduce that to
18:36electrical signals in the brain. And I
18:38say, "Yeah, you can. I really do think
18:41that you can. I don't think that
18:42diminishes the wonder of what we can
18:45feel and sense and articulate and
18:47express through the various ways that we
18:50have be it through music or theater or
18:52art or literature or poetry. Yeah, I am
18:56as aruck by our capacity to create as as
19:00anybody else. But in the end, I think it
19:04all does reduce to electrical impulses
19:07going through this gray piece of meat in
19:11this bone cage that's sitting on our
19:13shoulders.
19:14>> And if you imagine any rate of
19:15improvement from today, presumably at
19:17some point in the future, our future
19:19ances, our future progyny, you called
19:21them,
19:21>> yeah,
19:22>> would be able to create.
19:24>> Why not? That's my view. I don't think
19:26there's something special about the
19:28brain as a substrate. I think as long as
19:30you have the same electrical impulses,
19:33if they're housed in silicon inside a
19:37metallic box, I don't think that makes
19:40them fundamentally different than what's
19:42happening inside of our heads. Now,
19:44philosophers argue this, you know,
19:46psychologists argue this. They say, "No,
19:48no, no, no. It's not just the brain.
19:50It's the brain. It's the connection to
19:52the body. It's the tactile sense of the
19:54world. It's the olfactory sense of the
19:56world. It's the visual sense. It's only
19:58when you put it all together that you
20:00get the full experience of what it means
20:02to be self-aware, self-aware human
20:04being. And my view is well maybe that's
20:07true. But if so, give the artificial
20:10version tactile sense and alactory sense
20:14and visual sense. We will have the
20:17capacity to do this. And at that point,
20:20I just don't see a fundamental
20:23difference between the artificial
20:25version and shall we call it the
20:28organic. And so, yeah, I think there's a
20:30really interesting argument to be made
20:33that simulations will outnumber real
20:36worlds and therefore there's a chance
20:38that right now we are in one of those
20:42simulated worlds.
20:45>> Does it change anything even if that's
20:47true? No, I don't think it does. And I
20:49think that's the beauty. If I'm in a
20:51simulation, I'm going to live out my
20:54life in this simulation to the fullest.
20:56>> Now, I'd like to think that as a
20:59physicist, what I do, what my colleagues
21:01do is try to figure out the laws of the
21:04universe at large. But if we're in a
21:07simulation and all we're doing is
21:08figuring out the laws that the
21:1015-year-old futuristic kid decided to
21:13impose on this artificial world, hey,
21:16that's not a bad way to spend your time,
21:18too.
21:19>> On this subject of AI, do you I mean, a
21:22lot of people that have sat here, people
21:24like Jeffrey Hinton, have told me that
21:25it's quite inconceivable that when there
21:28is a more intelligent life form on this
21:30planet, i.e. AI which is accelerating in
21:32its intelligence towards super
21:33intelligence and AGI and all these terms
21:35that these smart people use. It's
21:37inconceivable that we will remain in
21:38control.
21:39>> Yeah.
21:40>> Logically that kind of also stacks up.
21:41>> It does. But but I think there are
21:44alternatives. We tend to speak very much
21:48at the extremes, right? Humans are in
21:51control. AI is in control. AI wipes us
21:56out for reasons that might be benign or
22:00might be dystopian. It seems to me that
22:04what will likely happen is something
22:06more in the middle which is we are going
22:10to work with artificial systems. We're
22:13doing it right now and look how quickly
22:16we have acclimated to a world that would
22:20be unthinkable in 2021. There are many
22:22examples now, but there's a beautiful
22:24one that's on my mind. An 80-year-old
22:25mathematical conjecture. I believe it's
22:28called the Jacobian conjecture
22:31was solved very recently by a
22:35mathematician using AI. I see us
22:39blending with AI. Not necessarily that
22:43we have implants, but maybe we will. But
22:46there will not be as sharp a distinction
22:49between the biological intelligence and
22:52the artificial intelligence. And that to
22:54me, if that ultimately yields a new life
22:58form that no longer
23:02can be called human,
23:04that may be the way things evolve. And
23:08so evolution is something that is
23:12inherent to how we got here.
23:16Why would we think that this moment in
23:18the evolutionary progression was the end
23:21of it all? We weren't going to continue
23:23to evolve. And maybe the continuation of
23:27our evolution is in partnership with the
23:30artificial intelligence systems that we
23:32ourselves create
23:34>> that we give birth to.
23:35>> Yeah, it's us, right? It's our creation,
23:38you know, it's not an alien. We haven't
23:40been taken over. And so, yeah, I think
23:43that is a a real possible way that this
23:46story plays out.
23:48>> How do you feel about it?
23:50>> I am fine with it. You know, I think
23:54that we tend to become very attached
23:58>> to the way things are and we gain a
24:02sense of the way things are is the way
24:05it will always be. I think that's a
24:07natural way that we humans have lived
24:11our lives. Why? Because the time scales
24:14for change in our past have been
24:17relatively slow, right? We lived what
24:2030, 40, 50, call it 80 years, 100 years,
24:23whatever. But the time scales for change
24:25were typically much larger than that.
24:28The time scales for political change and
24:30the time scales for technological change
24:32much larger. So as a species, we've
24:35grown accustomed to the thought that
24:37yeah, what we see is how it will always
24:39be. But of course, as we look back
24:41through history, we can see the changes.
24:43And so we're uncomfortable with change
24:45because we're unus to living through
24:47that kind of change at the kind of speed
24:50that we are and will continue to
24:53encounter. But I think we just have to
24:56get with it. Now look, I don't want AI
25:00system to wipe us out. Don't get me
25:02wrong. But I think if we recognize that
25:04change is happening, will happening, we
25:06can embrace it in a way that will have
25:08an outcome that will be acceptable, that
25:12will in fact be wonderful in the things
25:15that it will allow us to do.
25:17>> I'm quite curious. You talked about AI
25:18being able to solve that complex math
25:20problem.
25:21>> I'm wondering if with accelerating ever
25:25more intelligent AI, there's a bunch of
25:27other things within physics that you
25:28think might become possible in the near
25:31term. I mean, one of them I was thinking
25:32about, we can talk about some of the
25:33others that I have in my mind, but and
25:34any others that you think are
25:35interesting, but one of them is us being
25:37able to live forever.
25:38>> Yeah.
25:39>> Do you think we're going to be able to
25:40live forever?
25:41>> Yeah, that would be a that would be a
25:42good one. I don't think that death is
25:44inevitable
25:46in the sense that
25:49death can be thought of as the increase
25:52in entropy, the increase in disorder in
25:55a physical system. And when the entropy
25:57gets too large, the system can't
26:00function the way it once did. And that's
26:03really what we call death, right? That's
26:06really what it means. And so in
26:08principle, we can imagine harnessing
26:11some of the processes that have caused
26:14the degradation in the human body that
26:17have naturally resulted in us typically
26:20not living more than 100, 120 years. I
26:22mean, people like, you know, David
26:24Sinclair who I've spoken to about things
26:25like this. Yeah, you know, I think we
26:27can forestoall the kinds of degradation.
26:31Now, if you're talking to me, I think on
26:34time scales that are so much longer than
26:36a human life. I think about time scales
26:39that speak to the entire
26:43time frame of the cosmos from beginning
26:46to the closest that science can take us
26:48to the very end. And on those scales, I
26:52don't think that we will be able to
26:54forstall death. But please note the time
26:57scales I'm talking about are ludicrous
27:00compared to any time scale that we are
27:03familiar with. 100 more years, 200 more
27:06years, maybe 500 more years. I don't
27:08think anybody can really say for sure. I
27:10do think that is within the possible
27:13range of what science and medicine will
27:17ultimately be able to accomplish. And I
27:20will say though, you know, I I read a
27:22book I was about in my 20s called The
27:25Denial of Death by Ernest Becker. He was
27:28a social psychologist, I guess,
27:31sociologist who believed strongly that
27:35so much of what we do in our lives is
27:38driven by our awareness of our own
27:41mortality. And as I began to think more
27:43and more about that, it made more and
27:44more sense to me, which had a dual
27:48effect on me. very interesting framework
27:50to think about your life within the
27:53context of recognizing its finite
27:56nature. But the flip side of that is
27:57you're constantly thinking about your
27:58own death, you know, which, you know, is
28:00a a curious way to go about your life.
28:03But I don't think the denial of death
28:06that human motivation would go away if
28:08we live 200 years or 300 or 500. Yeah,
28:12we'd have longer lifespans. we'd be able
28:14to do more things. But, you know, if we
28:17live to 500, you know, as we approach
28:19450, 475, we'll be thinking the exact
28:23same thoughts that we think now as we
28:26approach 70 or 80. It'll be no
28:29different. And so, from a fundamental
28:31perspective, yeah, I would choose to
28:33live longer, but I don't think it
28:35changes anything fundamentally.
28:37>> I find it quite interesting. I was
28:39actually writing a letter about this
28:40sort of an article to myself really
28:42about this yesterday about this idea of
28:43long-termism and how when you just
28:45change the time horizon of something the
28:47decisions you make today are different.
28:49Yeah. And a simple way of explaining
28:50this through the context of like
28:52business would be if I told you to build
28:54a business then I gave you one year and
28:56unlimited resources but you had to build
28:58it as big as you could
28:59>> you would take certain shortcuts
29:01>> and you would maybe not think about the
29:03foundations but if I gave you 20 years
29:06you'd really make great foundations and
29:08then you know you'd build up from there
29:09and I think about the same in our lives
29:11because we do have this sort of sort of
29:12inbuilt time horizon. Okay, I'm going to
29:14live maybe 80 years and then I'm 30 and
29:16then 40 and then kids and then I start
29:17to, you know, change and maybe at some
29:20deeper level we are making a certain set
29:22of decisions based on that time horizon
29:24that we wouldn't make otherwise.
29:25>> Yeah. I mean when I was 20 or 30, you
29:29know, even though I had this mindset
29:31that was inculcated by reading Becker's
29:33book, there was a certain sense of an
29:36infinite horizon that somehow was
29:40infusing your decisions, you know, to
29:44write a book. Well, that's like a
29:45four-year undertaking. But, you know,
29:47when you're 30, you're like, "Yeah,
29:49sure. Yeah, I'm going to do that now.
29:52I'm gonna choose those books with a
29:54certain kind of care, right? You know,
29:56there's a different kind of mindset that
29:59that is brought to bear. So, I certainly
30:01agree that the time horizon has a
30:04profound impact on the momentto moment
30:07choices, but the pattern that we humans
30:11go through from birth, you know, to
30:14adolescence,
30:15adulthood, middle age to ultimately old
30:18age if we're lucky and then, you know,
30:20we disappear. that pattern will persist
30:23regardless of what the ultimate scale of
30:25it is. Whether it's 80 years or 800
30:27years, I think that we would go through
30:29a very similar kind of rhythmic
30:33variation in how we approach the world.
30:36>> If we were immortal,
30:38that would change a lot, but I don't see
30:42immortality in our future.
30:44>> What is the sort of the least inspiring
30:47possibility of the sort of answer to the
30:49big question of why we're here? And then
30:50I'll ask you the the most optimistic
30:52possibility.
30:54>> Yeah. I think the least inspiring would
30:56be if what if in the end of the day it's
31:00all just an accident. There is no deep
31:03explanation for why the world is the way
31:06it is. There's no deep explanation for
31:08why there's something rather than
31:10nothing. And if that's the truth, I'm on
31:13board. But it wouldn't feel as enriching
31:17as it might be if I can now jump to the
31:19other side of your question. You know,
31:21if there is a true fundamental answer to
31:24the question of why there is anything at
31:26all and I recognize that that answer
31:29dovetales with everything else that
31:31we've been developing. That answer
31:33ultimately yields quantum mechanics and
31:36yields the general theory of relativity
31:37and maybe even yields string theory.
31:40That would feel deeply satisfying. Why
31:43did our brain evolve? So we could get
31:45the next meal. So we could get shelter.
31:48So we could get a mate and have progeny,
31:52allowing our genetic material to
31:54propagate into our descendants. Right?
31:57This is what the brain was meant to do.
32:00And yet this brain can do so much more
32:02than that. It can figure out the
32:04equations of physics. That's that's a
32:06miracle right there. And so the deep
32:09gratification would come from this brain
32:12being able to figure out some stuff and
32:14then it dovetales with the deep
32:17explanation for why there's anything at
32:19all giving us a coherent narrative from
32:22the beginning until today and perhaps on
32:24into the far future.
32:27>> Yeah.
32:28>> Do you think it's going to happen? Do
32:29you think we're going to answer that
32:30question?
32:30>> I don't know. Nobody does.
32:34I think all vectors are pointing in a
32:36direction that suggests that there are
32:39real explanations that it's not just
32:41happen stance. There are these particles
32:43we mentioned before called electrons.
32:46Here it is my spinning electron, right?
32:48And so when an electron spins, it can
32:52rise to a little magnetic field sort of
32:54like a trillionth of the strength of the
32:56magnetic field of a magnet on your
32:59refrigerator. We can use the math of
33:02quantum mechanics to predict the
33:03strength of that magnetic field and we
33:05can do it and it comes out 2 point blah
33:07blah blah 15 decimal places long. We can
33:10do the math. We then can measure the
33:12magnetic field and it agrees digit by
33:15digit by digit by digit by digit with
33:18what we calculate.
33:20Our prediction is borne out by our
33:22observations to 15 decimal places. I
33:26mean that's breathtaking. We should not
33:29have been able to do that in some sense
33:32to understand the world that deeply with
33:34a brain that really was focused upon,
33:36you know, getting the bison. And so the
33:39fact that we can do that suggests to me
33:42that there are these deep patterns in
33:45the world that will ultimately stitch
33:50together into a coherent story.
33:53>> Do you think it could lead us to God?
33:56>> Well, or religion. Yeah, it depends what
33:57you mean by God. You know, if you mean
34:01the kind of God that our forebears
34:06often have spoken of and people today as
34:08well, a kind of anthropomorphized being,
34:12you know, sitting on the throne in some
34:14heavenly place. I suspect not. That
34:18feels to me very much a human creation
34:21and a wondrous human creation. And I'm
34:24not of the mindset, as some of my
34:27science colleagues are, that religion is
34:30an enemy of science and needs to be
34:32wiped. It can be, but anything can be an
34:34enemy of anything else. It depends how
34:36you use it. I see religion not as a
34:39structure that tries to explain the
34:42world in terms of its workings. I see it
34:44as a structure that tries to quell our
34:48anxiety, our existential anxiety. Where
34:51did religions come from? They came from
34:53our forebears recognizing that they
34:56would die. So you know our forebears had
35:00these elaborate rituals of burying their
35:02dead. There are these wonderful caves um
35:05in various parts of the world that have
35:07been excavated where the grave goods as
35:10they call it involving you know animal
35:12teeth stitched together care. It would
35:15take a single individual years to create
35:18the grave goods that are buried with an
35:21individual. Why would they spend the
35:23time on that? Well, they were imagining
35:26that death is not the end. That that
35:28individual needed those grave goods for
35:30their next journey into the afterlife.
35:33And why were they thinking about that?
35:35Because it's too terrifying
35:37to imagine that death is truly the end.
35:40And so from that you can see the
35:43glimmers of a religious sensibility
35:46emerging where we want to have something
35:49that suggests that death is not the end.
35:52So we invent these beautiful structures
35:55called religions and I say that even
35:58from a personal standpoint. I don't
36:00believe in any of the traditional
36:02religious practices. Right? I'm Jewish.
36:05I was raised sort of Jewish more
36:06culturally than religiously.
36:09Do I pray on occasion? Yeah, I do. Do I
36:13believe that I'm praying to an actual
36:15god? I do not. But the act of
36:20going through the kind of ritual that
36:23our ancestors did and giving yourself
36:26over momentarily to something that you
36:29imagine is being more powerful. I think
36:31it's deeply in our nature.
36:32>> So, who are you praying to?
36:34>> I am praying to the universe if I have
36:36to give a word to it. Recognizing that
36:39this prayer is going to fall on deaf
36:42ears because there's nothing else out
36:44there to hear it, but it makes me feel
36:47better. And so there's a part of my mind
36:50that's willing to allow the scientific
36:54understanding to have its place, but the
36:57irrational human side to have its place,
37:00too.
37:01What is the the most compelling argument
37:03or idea or experience you've ever
37:05encountered for a god like the ones we
37:08read about in the Bibles?
37:10>> Very little. Very little. You know,
37:12somebody died in the operating room and
37:15they were able to uh leave their body
37:18and see things that they could not
37:19possibly have seen and then they
37:21reported back when they were revived and
37:23people like, "Oh, you must have died and
37:25left your body." That's the only No, no,
37:27no, no. The human brain has this
37:29wonderful imaginative capacity to see
37:32things inside of its head that it
37:34doesn't literally see. That's what we
37:36can do. And so I've never seen a single
37:39example where I couldn't feel that I
37:41could give a logical explanation which
37:43was more compelling than the
37:45supernatural explanation.
37:47>> What about the big bang then?
37:48>> Good. So the big bang is a question of
37:53how it got started. Yeah. And over time
37:56we have been able to push our
37:58understanding ever further back. So in
38:02about 19 uh call it 29 or so Edwin
38:07Hubble who is a great astronomer
38:10noticed through powerful observations
38:13through the telescope at Mount Wilson
38:14Observatory in California that the
38:17distant galaxies all seem to be moving
38:19away. Interesting. Others, George
38:22Lmetra, who is a Belgian priest, as it
38:24turns out, who also knew Einstein's
38:26general relativity, said, "Well, look,
38:28if all the galaxies are moving away,
38:30just wind that cosmic film backwards."
38:33Back in time, they must have been closer
38:35and closer and closer together. Way back
38:38in the beginning, they must have all
38:39been on top of each other, and then
38:42everything running the film forward must
38:43have swelled outward in a big bang-like
38:46explosion.
38:47>> Let there be light.
38:48>> Let there be light. Yeah. And so
38:50starting in 1929, we began to have a
38:53scientific account of how it is that the
38:57universe may have been billions of years
39:00ago. And in our era, other scientists
39:03took the story even further, suggesting
39:06that there was an earlier era when the
39:08universe was just infused with a kind of
39:13uniform energy. You could say, where did
39:15the energy come? I don't know. But if it
39:17was infused with this uniform energy,
39:19they showed that the math required that
39:21the universe underwent this rapid
39:23swelling, the big bang. And so era by
39:27era by era, my point is we can push our
39:30understanding ever more deeply trying to
39:33get at cosmic origins. We have not been
39:36able to push back to time zero itself.
39:39But because we're able to push our
39:41understanding further back and make
39:43predictions about, for instance, what's
39:45known as the cosmic microwave background
39:48radiation. This is heat that we can
39:51observe today that was left over from
39:54the big bang. Big bang was very hot. The
39:57universe has cooled ever since for 13.8
39:59billion years. We can detect the
40:02residual heat from the big bang. And so
40:06this gives me confidence that we're
40:10inching toward the answer to the
40:13question that you asked. Now, will we
40:15require God at some point? By which I
40:18mean, will we say we've gone as far as
40:20we can? Will we have to invoke something
40:23else? I can't say no. But I don't see
40:26any reason at this point to envision
40:28that we won't be able to push all the
40:30way to a full understanding. Most of us
40:33don't really understand um I guess how
40:38scale
40:39>> Yeah.
40:39>> and time have a relationship which means
40:42that you know I've been alive for 33
40:44years now and it feels like a long time.
40:45>> Yeah.
40:46>> But I'm presuming the further and
40:48further you zoom out and the sort of the
40:50bigger the wider the scale gets time is
40:53experienced differently. So actually I
40:55could have been here for a second in a
40:57toddler's universe who's created the
40:59simulation.
40:59>> Yes. All of this is possible when
41:01simulations are part of the story. But
41:03if you put that to the side and just
41:05look at our universe, yeah, the time
41:08scales even there are shocking. I mean,
41:11Carl Sean used an analogy. He said,
41:14"Look, if you want to understand the
41:17time scales of the universe from the
41:19beginning until today, which is billions
41:20of years, like 13.8 billion years, he
41:23said, here's one way to do it. Imagine
41:26that all of cosmic history from the
41:28beginning until today, you compress it
41:30down to one year.
41:33>> Now, in that scheme, that means each day
41:35is about 40,000 years. But you can then
41:38put all of the milestone moments in the
41:42evolution of the universe on the
41:43calendar. So imagine you have the big
41:45bang is January 1st. Then the Milky Way
41:48galaxy forms like something around you
41:51know March 15th or something like that.
41:54And the sun and the earth form sometime
41:56you know in May you know and then the
41:59first you know life on earth is sometime
42:02in December like December 2nd and then
42:04you know the first modern humans they
42:07appear like on New Year's Eve right
42:10>> and then all of civilization
42:13takes place in the last 10 seconds right
42:16so like 11:55
42:19you know it's the it's the rise of the
42:21Buddha 1156 the fall of Rome 1158 ate
42:24the Renaissance 11:59
42:26like 1 second to the stroke of midnight
42:29you get modern science. So like modern
42:31science is like 1 second in this cosmic
42:35calendar. And so that helps you get a
42:38feel for the time scales that are
42:41involved when you're talking
42:42cosmologically because you're right, 33
42:45years in a lifetime.
42:47You know, I'm I'm going to posit you're
42:49going to live to 99. Let's say that's
42:51oneird of your life. You know, that's
42:52that's not small. It's not big, but you
42:54know, it's a significant part of it. on
42:57cosmic terms 33 years it's zero it
43:01doesn't register that's how tiny it is
43:04on the scales that we're talking about
43:06cosmologically
43:09>> so should I feel insignificant
43:11>> you can I would urge you not to one of
43:14the reactions to all this certainly can
43:15be look we're a little tiny speck in
43:20space right I mean you can give the same
43:22kind of context for space itself Right.
43:26Because we're on a planet around the
43:28sun. The sun is one star of a 100red
43:32billion others or so in the Milky Way
43:34galaxy.
43:35>> Have you got a
43:35>> Yeah, I think there's a a little version
43:38of this thing here. If we can get this
43:40guy to go on. Right. Yeah. So, if you
43:42sort of start like here, right here we
43:44are in the studio. Right. And if here we
43:46then begin to pull out to planet Earth,
43:50like we're a little dot on planet Earth.
43:52And then if you pull out from there,
43:54this is Earth within the solar system.
43:56You begin to see how tiny we look even
43:58on the scale of the solar system. But of
44:01course here you can pull out further and
44:03you begin to see our sun, one of many
44:05stars within the galaxies. You only see
44:07a few here. But you know there are 100
44:10billion stars in our galaxy. And then
44:12you can go even further than that. You
44:14can look at our Milky Way galaxy within
44:18the setting of the entire universe that
44:21has at least a hundred billion other
44:23galaxies.
44:25So we as a little tiny speck around our
44:29star, our star is one of 100 billion
44:31stars in a galaxy that's one of 100
44:33billion galaxies. That can certainly
44:36make you feel small in space.
44:39The beauty though is that our minds can
44:42reach out to the edge of the cosmos. The
44:45fact that we can understand that we are
44:48so small is what gives us heft. That's
44:51what gives us a sense of connection to
44:53something larger. I imagine that fish
44:57don't realize
44:59that they're like in one ocean of many
45:03oceans on the earth. That's one planet.
45:05I I don't think maybe I'm wrong and
45:07maybe the fish are like ah yeah yeah
45:08yeah you you know [clears throat] but
45:10but assuming that the fish don't know
45:11that they don't know that they're
45:14insignificant they don't even really
45:16think in those terms per se but the fact
45:19that we can do that the fact that we can
45:21realize how insignificant we are when
45:23you talk about the expanse of space you
45:26realize that there are other measures of
45:27significance and one measure of
45:29significance is your ability to
45:31understand your own predicament
45:34and the fact that we can do that is what
45:37to me is wondrous.
45:39>> How do we know we're not just that whole
45:40universe there isn't just a we're just a
45:43a microbe in the in the gut of a of a
45:46fish?
45:46>> Yeah, we we could and again that's much
45:48like this simulation argument. But let
45:51me give you an example in here that
45:53helps give you a sense of why we believe
45:56this stuff. This here is the cosmic
45:59microwave background radiation. This is
46:02the heat left over from the beginning.
46:05Now, it's colorcoded. The different
46:07colors correspond to different
46:08temperatures in space. This is a picture
46:11of space with a device that measures the
46:15temperature at each location and assigns
46:17it a color.
46:18>> How much of space or just a segment?
46:20>> This is a segment of the observable
46:22universe. The segment that we can see.
46:24Now, space can be much larger than
46:26things that we can see. That's
46:27absolutely the case. But my point is
46:30these tiny color variations correspond
46:33to tiny temperature differences. We can
46:36use mathematics to predict the pattern
46:39of the temperature variations.
46:41And what we predict matches this image
46:44to incredible precision.
46:47And so the fact that we can do a
46:49calculation right at this table with a
46:52piece of paper, a pencil, and a computer
46:55and generate an image that agrees with
46:58what we see, we say, "Look, yeah, we can
47:00be skeptical. Maybe we don't have the
47:02full answer, but that agreement gives us
47:05confidence that we've got something in
47:08the direction of truth." And that to me
47:11is what gives us something that
47:14counteracts the feeling of
47:17insignificance.
47:19>> And on that, if you just pull that up
47:20again. So this is the observable
47:22universe, which is I mean, how big is
47:24that?
47:24>> The universe is about 13.8 billion years
47:27old. So you'd think that the univer the
47:30distance we could see would be about
47:3213.8 billion light years. The distance
47:35light can travel in one year. We can
47:36actually see a little bit further more
47:38like 45 billion lightyears. So you can
47:41think about this as here we are we look
47:44out billions of light years that way
47:46billions of light years that way
47:47billions of light years in every
47:49direction and this is like a big sphere
47:51that surrounds us and we're measuring
47:53its temperature. The temperature of
47:55space the photons that have traveled to
47:57us from about 300,000 years after the
48:01beginning. So this picture is a snapshot
48:05in essence of what the universe was like
48:08a mere moment in cosmological terms
48:11300,000 years after the beginning. That
48:15is an amazing picture.
48:17>> And what's beyond?
48:19>> I don't know. I don't have any reason to
48:22suspect that reality radically changes
48:26just beyond the place that we can see. I
48:29think it's incredibly unlikely that the
48:31world is so consistent with our
48:35scientific understanding for it to all
48:37be a ruse.
48:39>> So, is it infinite?
48:41>> It could be. And if it is infinite,
48:43there are some really weird things. If
48:47what we have been talking about isn't
48:48weird enough, right? You know, if the
48:51universe is infinite, if you go
48:53sufficiently far out into space, you're
48:56virtually guaranteed to find a copy of
48:58yourself out there and a copy of the
49:02Earth out there and a copy of our galaxy
49:05out there. It's virtually impossible to
49:09imagine a universe that goes on
49:10infinitely far and doesn't repeat. You
49:13know, in fact, I see a prop here. I can
49:15sort of tell you why, right? So, here's
49:18a deck of cards, right? And I think it's
49:20a new deck. Yeah. So everything is in
49:22order, right? It's all perfectly ordered
49:24like that. Now, if I was to take this
49:26deck of cards and I start to shuffle it,
49:29right? So, you know, I'm not a
49:31particularly good shuffler, but you
49:32know, you get the basic idea. You know,
49:35I keep shuffling. And of course, the
49:37order changes every time, right? So, if
49:40I now, you know, I'm not a great
49:41shuffler. So, there probably still, you
49:43know, some things that are still, you
49:44know, in numerical order, but it's more
49:46mixed up than it was before. And I can
49:48keep on doing this. Now, sooner or
49:51later, if I continue to shuffle these
49:54cards over and over and over and over
49:55and over and over again, sooner or
49:57later, it will get back to the
49:59completely ordered arrangement. Why?
50:02Because there aren't enough different
50:04arrangements to go around. Right? That
50:07idea applies in the universe in the
50:09following way. In any region of space,
50:12there are particles. Those particles can
50:14be arranged in a variety of different
50:16ways. Here they're arranged so that you
50:18and I are sitting at this table and we
50:20got the cameras and everything. This is
50:21just a particle arrangement. There are
50:24only a finite number of arrangements of
50:26particles in any given region of space.
50:28This you can establish from the laws of
50:30quantum physics. So if you go out far
50:32enough in space, region by region by
50:34region, the particles will have
50:35different arrangements, but they have to
50:37repeat much like the order of the cards
50:39has to repeat. So there has to be a
50:41place out there. In fact, if it goes on
50:43infinitely far, if you imagine that I
50:45shuffle these cards infinitely many
50:47times, I'll get that nice ordered
50:50arrangement infinitely many times, too.
50:53Similarly, there are infinitely many
50:55copies of you, of me, of everything
50:58we're familiar with out there in the
51:00cosmos. And so, if the universe is
51:03infinite, it kind of challenges a little
51:05bit our sense of self, right? Like what
51:08does it mean to be who you are if there
51:10are other versions of you having the
51:12exact same thoughts? They had the same
51:15childhood. They had the same history
51:18because again that's just an arrangement
51:20of particles over time and it has to
51:22repeat.
51:24>> There's a version out there of me that
51:25just loves wine.
51:28>> There you go. Right. In fact, it's even
51:30easier, I should say, for the particle
51:33arrangement to almost but not quite
51:36exactly replicate what we're familiar
51:38with, which would mean there's a
51:41universe out there in which you and I
51:43are interchanged or you grew up in New
51:46York City and I grew up something. Yeah,
51:48because those are again almost
51:50replications. You got the earth, you got
51:52the sun, but the detailed particle
51:54arrangement is close to but not
51:56identical to what we are used to. So
51:59yeah, an infinite universe brings in
52:02some fairly strange ideas.
52:06>> But even in the observable universe, I
52:07mean this transitions nicely to the
52:08subject of aliens which people are um
52:10yeah
52:11>> very obsessed about. I guess there's two
52:12questions here which is why do we care
52:14so much I guess philosophically about
52:16aliens? You know, I think we at least in
52:19this country and elsewhere too, we love
52:22the idea of conspiracy. We love the idea
52:25that the deep state is hiding things
52:28from us. And by we, I don't mean me. I
52:30sort of mean the zeitgeist, you know,
52:32loves the idea of this Area 51, you
52:34know. So, I think there's a a a desire
52:38for there to be more than what's
52:40apparent on the surface. And wouldn't it
52:43be exciting if you know we've long known
52:46that there are these aliens they visited
52:48us and it's been kept under wraps.
52:51That's like the deep conspiracy that
52:54feeds that hunger for there to be
52:56something that is being hidden from us.
52:58Now I think the other reason is we're
53:01deeply lonely as a species. Sure, we've
53:05got people around, but you know, I think
53:07this sense, the desire for a god, I
53:10don't think is that much different from
53:12the desire for there to be other life
53:14out there. It's the desire to be part of
53:16something bigger. Now, if you ask me, do
53:19I think there are actually other life
53:21forms out there? I'd like to think of it
53:24in two ways. One, yeah, I think it's
53:27hard to imagine that we're the only
53:28life. I mean the more we look the more
53:30we find the organic molecules necessary
53:33for life you know amino acids nucleic
53:36acid you know the the raw material seems
53:39to not be too hard to come by in the
53:42cosmos so to imagine that there's other
53:45you know bacterial life or viruses out
53:48there that seems to me a reasonable
53:51working hypothesis but if you then say
53:54but what about intelligent life and by
53:56intelligent life let's just call us
53:59intelligent and it's debatable but let's
54:01just say that you know that is a harder
54:03question I mean even on our planet right
54:06it was an asteroid 65 million years ago
54:09that wiped out the dinosaurs and in that
54:12way opened up the evolutionary pathway
54:16by which we came to dominate in the way
54:19that we do without that it could still
54:21be the dinosaurs are grazing around on
54:25various plant life and other life forms
54:27on on the surface of this earth. And
54:29without that kind of accident on some
54:31other world, maybe intelligent life is
54:33rare or even so rare that we're the only
54:36example. So I don't consider that an
54:39absurd perspective as well that there is
54:42life, but there may not be any
54:44intelligence beyond us.
54:47>> Much of the reason most people haven't
54:49posted content or built their personal
54:50brand is because it's hard and it's
54:52timeconuming and we're all very very
54:54busy. And if you've never posted
54:56something before, there's so many
54:58factors in your psychology that stop you
55:01wanting to post. What people will think
55:02of you. Am I doing this right? Is the
55:04thing I'm saying absolutely stupid? All
55:07of these result in paralysis, which
55:09means you don't post and your feed goes
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55:22at your history, looks at your best
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56:46>> If one of your children came to you and
56:48said, "Dad, um, what is the what is the
56:50meaning then of this life? If we're
56:52we're alone in this universe, it's a
56:53gazillion miles away from anything
56:55interesting in the cosmic spectrum of
56:57things. What is the meaning of all of
56:58this, Dad?"
56:59>> Yeah. Well, they do ask.
57:00>> Oh, they do.
57:01>> You know, unfortunately or fortunately,
57:03because I spend a lot of time thinking
57:05about this stuff and writing about it,
57:07it's sort of in in the familial
57:09zeitgeist at home, if you will. But you
57:11know my answer generally is I don't
57:15think that hovering out there in the
57:17depths of space there is the answer. You
57:21know I I think you know this this urge
57:24to look out and have the answer brought
57:27to us. I think that's needs to be
57:30inverted. I think that we need to come
57:33to the universe with our answer to that.
57:36And I think the charge of every sentient
57:40living being is to come to their own
57:44rationale for their life, their own
57:46answer to your question, their own set
57:50of activities and desires and
57:53achievements and relationships that
57:55gives their life meaning and combine to
57:59make me feel connected.
58:01One of the things that does make me feel
58:02connected is just knowing that the
58:05particles that I'm made out of existed
58:07at the Big Bang.
58:08>> Yes, exactly. Isn't that wondrous?
58:13You are the universe constructed in a
58:17way that you can reflect on the
58:20universe. Now, some would say, "No, no,
58:23no. We're special. We're like these
58:25divine offspring, you know, made in the
58:28image of God." And sure, I mean, I like
58:31the way that that sounds, but I find it
58:33much more satisfying to describe it the
58:36way you did. There were particles that
58:38emerged from the Big Bang that coales
58:40into a form that allowed us to
58:43momentarily, cuz we're here for a brief
58:45flicker of cosmic time, to momentarily
58:47reflect on our own existence. That's a
58:50connection. One of the things that
58:52actually helped me a lot through my
58:53life, funnily enough, is um is kind of
58:55watching what you just showed on the
58:56screen there, which was I watched a
58:58video when I was younger of them just
59:00zooming out from Earth.
59:01>> Yeah.
59:01>> And we talked about feeling
59:03insignificant earlier. Um I mean,
59:05there's some of them here. I'll just
59:06pick one at random like this one here.
59:08Well, it's just a a lady sat on some
59:09grass and
59:10>> she she zooms out further and further
59:12and further. And when I saw this, I must
59:13have been h it was a video like this
59:16one. I must have been about 14 years
59:17old. And at first I had the thought that
59:19a lot of people might have which was oh
59:21like none of this matters because we're
59:23so insignificant on the grand scheme of
59:25things that like what's the point? And
59:27then I I had this other thought which
59:29has stayed with me ever since which is
59:33it liberated me from worry.
59:35>> Yeah.
59:36>> Because if if all of my worries are just
59:39a speck in this bigger thing which are a
59:42speck in a bigger thing and a speck in a
59:43bigger thing it meant that I could take
59:46more risks in my life. Yeah.
59:48>> And not be encumbered by what will
59:50happen if and what will people think and
59:52etc etc etc which kind of liberates one
59:54to go and pursue whatever they want to
59:56pursue.
59:56>> Yeah. Carl Sean with the pale blue dot.
59:59You know if you're familiar with that
1:00:01terminology he he had the uh Viking
1:00:04spacecraft when it was going by Saturn
1:00:09turn around and take a shot of planet
1:00:13Earth through the gossamer rings of
1:00:15Saturn. And in that photo, the Earth is
1:00:18this little tiny pale blue speck, sort
1:00:20of as we saw in the film as it went by
1:00:23there. And he in this wonderfully poetic
1:00:26passage described how everything we care
1:00:29about, everything we love, everything we
1:00:32fight, the rivers of blood that have
1:00:34been spilled to conquer a tiny little
1:00:37fraction of a pixel in space. that gives
1:00:42you a setting where the concerns that
1:00:46you're mentioning of an individual human
1:00:47life of of countries of nations you
1:00:51realize how utterly small it is in the
1:00:54cosmological setting and again that to
1:00:57me isn't insignificance as you were
1:00:59saying it's liberation
1:01:01>> we have this um [clears throat] this
1:01:04spectrum of I guess confidence yeah in
1:01:06front of us here and on one end of it it
1:01:08says low confidence on this end it has
1:01:09high confidence and there's
1:01:11five little uh figurine type things
1:01:14there next to you. And what I would like
1:01:15you to do is to place them in line with
1:01:18your confidence that the thing is real.
1:01:20So the first one I'm going to ask you to
1:01:21place is those mini scales which
1:01:23represent free will.
1:01:24>> This guy here, free will.
1:01:25>> That's free will. Do you think humans
1:01:27have free will? Are you low confidence
1:01:29or high confidence? I'll push that
1:01:30further towards you so you can
1:01:31>> uh well uh I do not think we have free
1:01:34will and I have high confidence in that
1:01:39assessment which I guess means low
1:01:41confidence that we have free will.
1:01:43>> What is free will
1:01:44>> to me? Free will is really just the
1:01:46everyday
1:01:48sense that you are the ultimate author
1:01:51of your actions. that the buck stops
1:01:54with you when it comes to the decisions
1:01:57that you make for how you are going to
1:01:59respond one way or another in the moment
1:02:02to moment existence of life. I don't
1:02:04think that freedom of the will is real.
1:02:08And I can give you a quick sense why it
1:02:11really is an extension of everything
1:02:13that we've already spoken about, which
1:02:15is, you know, when I look at you, I see
1:02:19a man, but I also imagine that I'm
1:02:23looking inside you and I see your
1:02:24particles. And so, you are a man-shaped
1:02:28collection of particles. That is what
1:02:30you are. And each of those particles and
1:02:33the elomeration of those particles are
1:02:36fully governed by the laws of physics. I
1:02:39don't say that we have those laws yet.
1:02:41We have an approximation to them with
1:02:43Schroinger and Einstein and all those
1:02:45folks. But I do believe that there is an
1:02:47ultimate set of principles that guide
1:02:50how your particles behave. You do not
1:02:54have the capacity to intercede in the
1:02:57lawful progression of your particles. So
1:03:00if you raise your hand,
1:03:02it is not you who is doing that. It is
1:03:05the laws of physics guiding the
1:03:07particles in your brain, sending an
1:03:09electrical signal down your arm, causing
1:03:11your muscle to contract or expand,
1:03:13resulting in your hand going up. You
1:03:15don't control the laws that govern those
1:03:18particles.
1:03:19>> I didn't make the decision.
1:03:20>> You did not. You felt that you did. And
1:03:23so the feeling that you and I and
1:03:25everyone else have that we make
1:03:28decisions and those decisions result in
1:03:30our actions. It's a powerful it's a
1:03:33seductive sensibility. But no, I do not
1:03:36think that you are the place where that
1:03:39choice if you will occurred. The choice
1:03:43is actually within the lawful unfolding
1:03:45of the particles. And I can't control
1:03:48that particle motion. Therefore, I can't
1:03:50control the decision. Therefore, I don't
1:03:53control the motion of my arm.
1:03:54>> Therefore, I don't control my life.
1:03:56>> You don't in some sense if you buy into
1:03:58it fully. [snorts]
1:04:00It can be paralyzing. Or you can
1:04:03recognize it, which I do. And I say,
1:04:05"Okay, within that structure, I'm going
1:04:08to live my life as fully as I can." And
1:04:12I am able, not always cuz I'm a human
1:04:14being, but in the best of moments, I can
1:04:17pull back and have a certain objectivity
1:04:20about the things that happen in my life
1:04:24and I observe them at a remove as
1:04:28opposed to being completely wrapped up
1:04:31in the moment to moment. Now that
1:04:33doesn't make me an aloof person. It
1:04:35doesn't make me somebody who somehow is
1:04:38detached. No, it's just I can analyze
1:04:42the world at multiple levels.
1:04:44>> So who is and what is guiding those
1:04:46particles to make the decisions that
1:04:48those particles are making?
1:04:49>> The best I can say and I think the best
1:04:51that we can say right now is that there
1:04:54is some body of law. Now what does that
1:04:57mean a body of law? There is some
1:05:02patterns that repeat in the world. Now
1:05:05you drop an apple and it falls on
1:05:08Newton's head repeatedly. You can rely
1:05:11upon certain kinds of particle motion
1:05:14because there's certain regularities in
1:05:16the world. And the regularities in the
1:05:19world are what I mean by the laws of
1:05:21physics. They may be articulated
1:05:23mathematically. Our best guess is as of
1:05:26today that math is the best language we
1:05:29have for describing those laws. But out
1:05:32there, I think there are some
1:05:33fundamental patterns and those patterns
1:05:36ultimately are what determine how the
1:05:38particles move. And so that's all that
1:05:42we are. We are a body of particles that
1:05:44move and that's responsible for why
1:05:47things do what they do. And remarkably,
1:05:50our brains allow us to self-reflect, to
1:05:54look at what we do and analyze it. And
1:05:56when we do that, we tend to ascribe
1:05:58authorship to ourselves.
1:06:01But that's a story that we tell
1:06:03ourselves. It makes us feel good. It
1:06:05makes us feel part of the unfolding. It
1:06:08perhaps has an evolutionary utility that
1:06:12if you feel responsible for what you're
1:06:13doing, maybe it helps you to survive.
1:06:16Maybe that's why this way of thinking
1:06:17was inculcated over the course of
1:06:19generation upon generation. Maybe
1:06:21there's an evolutionary explanation. But
1:06:23fundamentally speaking, I don't think
1:06:24it's real. I was going to say then,
1:06:26well, maybe the the particles are trying
1:06:30to survive in this form. But even as I
1:06:32thought about that, I thought, so maybe
1:06:33my particles are making the decisions
1:06:35they make to raise my hand, to go on a
1:06:38holiday with my fiance, to have kids
1:06:41because they want to survive in this
1:06:43form, but actually I disappear at some
1:06:46point.
1:06:46>> Yes.
1:06:47>> But my particles don't,
1:06:48>> right?
1:06:48>> They then become dirt or someone else or
1:06:50whatever or child. It doesn't seem that
1:06:52they care much about necessarily being
1:06:54in this form.
1:06:54>> They don't. I don't think they do. So I
1:06:57don't think they care. I don't even
1:06:59think the word care is applicable to
1:07:01them. The notion of caring is a
1:07:04highlevel construct that only emerges
1:07:07when the particles are configured
1:07:10sufficiently to yield a complex
1:07:12information processing system called the
1:07:14human brain
1:07:14>> and consciousness.
1:07:15>> And consciousness. Now if you ask me
1:07:17where consciousness comes from, I don't
1:07:18know. sort of as we discussed before, I
1:07:20think it's just physical processes.
1:07:21Let's go with that. Assuming that's the
1:07:24case, this conscious self-awareness
1:07:26invents the idea of caring because it's
1:07:30a useful concept for us to organize our
1:07:33lives and our experiences. This
1:07:35conscious self-awareness in invents all
1:07:37the other words happy, sad, meaning,
1:07:40purpose, morality, activity, action,
1:07:43choice, decision, freedom, will all
1:07:46humanmade. These concepts don't exist
1:07:49out there in the universe. There's no
1:07:52notion of freedom of the will floating
1:07:54in space outside the Andromeda galaxy.
1:07:58This is a selection of ideas that we
1:08:02humans as a species have found to give
1:08:05us utilitarian advantage in organizing
1:08:10our experiences. That's all that it is.
1:08:13That doesn't diminish it. I don't go
1:08:15around trying to erase my sense of self.
1:08:20I accept my sense of self, but I also
1:08:22see it for what it is, a human
1:08:24construct.
1:08:26>> Does that mean that consciousness and
1:08:27everything that I am could theoretically
1:08:29just be, as you said earlier, in the
1:08:31sort of pessimistic version of events?
1:08:35Random. Totally random. like
1:08:37consciousness itself was just the
1:08:39particles came together over a long
1:08:40enough period of time and then they they
1:08:41found this form and now I can
1:08:43>> it could and maybe it was random and
1:08:46happened only once on this planet right
1:08:48I mean again maybe there is life out
1:08:51there and maybe there's even complex
1:08:53life out there maybe even like as big as
1:08:55us or bigger but maybe when we encounter
1:08:57those life forms they have no idea of
1:09:02what it means to have an inner world
1:09:04>> this I think it was a physicist said to
1:09:06me Uh it was a bit of a spiritual
1:09:08esoteric idea, but they basically said
1:09:10to me that they think consciousness
1:09:12could be it could come from this sort of
1:09:13original source and it's divided itself
1:09:16up into the humans, the bees, the birds
1:09:19>> to go out there and understand the
1:09:21nature of the universe.
1:09:22>> Yeah.
1:09:22>> And then when we die, we kind of return
1:09:23to the source. But you know, I'll give
1:09:25birth to a baby. They'll go off into
1:09:26different corners of the the earth and
1:09:29look at different things and have
1:09:30different experiences and it's all
1:09:31feeding back into this central
1:09:33consciousness which is sole objective is
1:09:35to understand itself. And it's funny cuz
1:09:36I heard this idea from this physicist
1:09:38and then I I was in a somewhere in
1:09:41Europe and I was driving down the road
1:09:43and I saw all of these tourists just
1:09:44like looking up at a mountain and they
1:09:46were just like looking out at the sea
1:09:48and they were looking at things that
1:09:49were interesting. Sure. Which is what we
1:09:51do as humans and I thought kind of makes
1:09:53sense
1:09:54>> that we're like we're actually just like
1:09:55consciousness.
1:09:56>> There's a philosophical position called
1:09:58idealism. And idealism holds that the
1:10:02fundamental truth of reality is
1:10:06consciousness. But fundamentally,
1:10:08everything that I've seen throughout my
1:10:11life suggests to me that that's not how
1:10:13it is. I can't prove it. I hope it's
1:10:15true. But if you ask me what I think is
1:10:17really true, I think that consciousness
1:10:19is something that emerges when there's a
1:10:22sufficient amount of information
1:10:24processing that itself is carried by the
1:10:28motion of particles through various
1:10:29interconnected structures.
1:10:31>> Is my dog conscious?
1:10:32>> It is, but I think it's got a different
1:10:34level of consciousness. You can tell
1:10:37when they're feeling good, happy, or sad
1:10:40or frustrated or intrigued. The ears
1:10:44change, the eyes change, the shape of
1:10:46the face. You can't help but ascribe an
1:10:48inner world to that. And again, I always
1:10:51worry that the dogs, like the fish, are
1:10:53like these humans think they're so damn
1:10:54special, but we actually are
1:10:56welldeveloped, well beyond them, and
1:10:58we're just playing along. In fact, in
1:11:00New York City, who picks up the poop,
1:11:01right? We pick up the poop. So, the dog
1:11:03walks along as like this, you know,
1:11:05king-like being, and we behind them with
1:11:07these little plastic bags. So, who's
1:11:09really in charge? But putting that to
1:11:10the side, I do think that the dogs and
1:11:13the cats have a level of conscious
1:11:16awareness. And I think you go down
1:11:18through the animal kingdom. If you were
1:11:20to ask me, does an insect have
1:11:22consciousness? Then I'm less clear. I
1:11:25suspect not. If you ask me whether a
1:11:28virus or a bacterium has consciousness,
1:11:31I don't think so. I don't think there's
1:11:33adequate information processing capacity
1:11:36in those structures to have the kind of
1:11:38rich inner world that we would normally
1:11:40ascribe to a conscious being, but that's
1:11:43all that I think it is. I don't think
1:11:44that there's some uber universal
1:11:48consciousness that's out there that we
1:11:49go back to when we die. Not that I
1:11:52wouldn't like it. I just don't think
1:11:54it's true. Moreover, I can understand
1:11:56why humans would introduce this idea.
1:11:59Again, it's Ernest Becker and the denial
1:12:01of death. How wonderful to say, yeah,
1:12:03our bodies die. Sure. But our
1:12:06consciousness, it doesn't die. Our
1:12:08consciousness, it floats off and it
1:12:11rejoins the universal. Wow. That makes
1:12:15you feel good. And we tell these stories
1:12:18that make us feel good. And there's
1:12:20nothing wrong with that. However, I do
1:12:22think it's important that we see them
1:12:23for what they are, which are human
1:12:26authored stories to compat our own
1:12:29recognition that we are mortal beings.
1:12:32>> Moving on to the next one is the
1:12:34universe there on the little card. We
1:12:36talked about this a little bit and
1:12:37you've given your answer already, but do
1:12:39you think the universe is infinite?
1:12:41>> I don't know, but I'm going to put it
1:12:43sort of around here. You know, in fact,
1:12:46lately I should tell you the work that
1:12:48I've been doing has imagined that the
1:12:51universe is not infinite. So, I've been
1:12:52doing a lot of scientific exploration
1:12:55with mathematics with a handful of
1:12:57colleagues and the kind of weird things
1:12:59that can happen if it's not infinite.
1:13:02And it's very interesting. There's a lot
1:13:04of mileage that you can extract from a
1:13:07universe that you go off in that way and
1:13:09you wind up coming back to your starting
1:13:11point much like you would on the surface
1:13:12of the earth. It's a finite extent. But
1:13:15if you ask me in my heart of hearts, if
1:13:17I was forced to make a choice, I would
1:13:20say infinite with a medium level of
1:13:22confidence.
1:13:22>> What about do you think life could exist
1:13:27outside of Earth? And I'll say
1:13:29intelligent life.
1:13:29>> Intelligent life.
1:13:30>> Do you think intelligent life exists
1:13:32outside of Earth?
1:13:33>> Yeah. So for intelligent aliens, I'm
1:13:35going to definitely go a little bit more
1:13:38over here. You know, I put it as uh it's
1:13:41possible. Obviously it happened once
1:13:44therefore it could happen again. Yeah.
1:13:45Obviously intelligence is not somehow
1:13:48contradictory to the way the universe
1:13:50evolves. It can support conscious and
1:13:52intelligent beings. But I think it may
1:13:55be special.
1:13:55>> Is there not a bit of a contradiction
1:13:57here though with these two things that
1:13:58you think the universe is infinite?
1:14:00>> Oh when I say this I should say within
1:14:03the observable universe.
1:14:04>> Oh okay.
1:14:05>> Yeah. So in the entire expanse of the
1:14:08universe as opposed to the observable
1:14:09part which again is a part that even in
1:14:12principle we could have connection with
1:14:14then yeah I would absolutely put in
1:14:16exactly the same place because there'd
1:14:18be copies of us out there. But if we
1:14:20talk instead about are we going to get a
1:14:24signal
1:14:25are we going to be visited then I put
1:14:28that at much lower confidence. And in
1:14:31fact, I I would say one thing about the
1:14:33visitation because you mentioned the
1:14:35interest that people have on aliens. I
1:14:38find it really odd that people are taken
1:14:42with these photographs that are meant to
1:14:45sort of just catch the alien ship as it
1:14:48was racing. If an alien could travel
1:14:52across the galaxy, say to reach us, they
1:14:55are so technologically advanced that the
1:14:59idea that our araic airplanes and their
1:15:03cameras could capture a photograph of
1:15:06them is ludicrous. They will be able to
1:15:08evade us in so simply that the idea that
1:15:12we just barely caught them on our
1:15:14cameras is is absolutely ridiculous.
1:15:17Moreover, if they could travel to us,
1:15:20again, I'm talking about traveling
1:15:22across light years, right? I mean, our
1:15:25galaxy, 100,000 light years, end to end,
1:15:28right? To be able to traverse that
1:15:30requires a level of technological
1:15:32sophistication that is so beyond
1:15:34anything that we can do. To imagine that
1:15:37beings that advanced would be interested
1:15:40in us. So interested that they would
1:15:43like kidnap us. That'd be like saying,
1:15:47"I was walking to the park yesterday.
1:15:51Don't tell anyone, but I kidnapped an
1:15:53ant. There's an ant walking along and
1:15:56nobody was looking and I sort of
1:15:58kidnapped it." We don't do that because
1:16:01it's not interesting. Similarly, we
1:16:03would not be of interest to the aliens
1:16:06because they're so incredibly advanced
1:16:08that this idea that they're abducting us
1:16:11is just ludicrous.
1:16:15Is it going to be possible? You know, we
1:16:16were talking earlier on about the
1:16:17possibilities that artificial
1:16:18intelligence is going to unlock. Is it
1:16:20possible within the laws of physics for
1:16:22us at some point when we get
1:16:24sufficiently intelligent to travel
1:16:26across the universe?
1:16:28>> It's a that's a it's a great question.
1:16:30It's a tough one. So,
1:16:33if the technological advancement was
1:16:36simply making our ships faster, no.
1:16:39Because even if you traveled near the
1:16:41speed of light, which is the ultimate
1:16:42speed limit, you know, to go to the
1:16:46nearest star, Alpha Centuri, it would
1:16:48take you four years even at the speed of
1:16:50light to get there, right? And then if
1:16:53you actually want to go not just to the
1:16:55nearby star, but to actually across the
1:16:57galaxy, again, you're talking a 100,000
1:16:59years to do that. So that brute
1:17:03straightforward approach will not
1:17:05succeed. However, there are exotic ideas
1:17:08of things called wormholes you've
1:17:11probably encountered. These are these
1:17:12ideas of a wormhole is like a tunnel.
1:17:15What is a tunnel on Earth? A tunnel is a
1:17:19shortcut that gets you from here to here
1:17:21without having to go over the mountain,
1:17:22right? Tunnel it right through. There's
1:17:25an analogous idea that people float in
1:17:27the universe where to get from here to
1:17:29there, there may be a shortcut, a kind
1:17:32of tunnel that connects them and is a
1:17:34quicker way of getting from point A to
1:17:36point B. We don't know if these tunnels
1:17:39through space exist. We don't know if
1:17:41they existed whether we could actually
1:17:43get through them. And so it's a highly
1:17:45speculative idea. But if they do exist
1:17:48and if we one day can create them and
1:17:51manipulate and control them, then at
1:17:53least in principle we could take two
1:17:55distant locations like this corner and
1:17:58this corner. But imagine that we could
1:18:00manipulate this surface, fold it
1:18:03together to bring the two corners next
1:18:05to each other and build a little tunnel
1:18:08between them. Then we could go from one
1:18:10end to the other by going through that
1:18:12shortcut. That's a very far out idea,
1:18:16>> but there's no evidence of this.
1:18:17>> There's no evidence at all. Now, now let
1:18:19me just say again, much as we discussed
1:18:21earlier, this idea is not just some wild
1:18:24late night musing of a physicist. It
1:18:28comes out of the math of Einstein's
1:18:30general relativity that these wormholes
1:18:32could exist. In fact, Einstein himself
1:18:34in 1935 wrote a paper with a colleague
1:18:38Nathan Rosen where they introduced this
1:18:40idea that we now call wormholes. We're
1:18:43no further along in knowing whether
1:18:44wormholes are real than Einstein was
1:18:46back then. We've analyzed them. We
1:18:48developed the mathematics. You know,
1:18:50science fiction has taken this idea, you
1:18:54know, in Interstellar. I believe Matthew
1:18:57McConey, he goes through a wormhole.
1:18:59Jodie Foster went through one in
1:19:01contact. You know, they're they're a
1:19:03ubiquitous feature of science fiction
1:19:06trying to allow for the kinds of travel
1:19:09across the galaxy that otherwise would
1:19:10be impossible. But whether this is
1:19:13actually real, no, nobody knows.
1:19:15>> What about time travel?
1:19:17>> Yeah.
1:19:17>> Can can we travel backwards in time
1:19:20within the laws of physics? Yeah, that
1:19:22is the the the way of phrasing it
1:19:24because if you ask me the reverse
1:19:26question, can we travel to the future? I
1:19:29would say yeah, that kind of time travel
1:19:31we highly confident of. So I don't have
1:19:34a little thing for that. But let's call,
1:19:36you know, this is time travel to the
1:19:37future, right? I put it very very high
1:19:39confidence for that.
1:19:41>> You think we can travel to the future?
1:19:42>> Yes, in principle. Executing it a
1:19:45different story. But one of the things
1:19:47that emerges from Einstein's special and
1:19:50general relativity is that the way time
1:19:53elapses for you and for me is variable
1:19:57depending upon how fast we move and the
1:20:00strength of the gravity that we
1:20:01experience. So for instance, if I want
1:20:04to see what your life would be like 60
1:20:07years from now, Einstein laid out a
1:20:10blueprint for how I could do that. I
1:20:12build a spaceship. I travel out into
1:20:14space near the speed of light. I go for
1:20:17a certain period of time, maybe about
1:20:18six months. I turn around, I come back
1:20:21six more months. I come back, I'm one
1:20:23year older, 6 months, 6 months. But you
1:20:25will be 60 years older if I traveled
1:20:29sufficiently close to the speed of light
1:20:31because my clock would be ticking off
1:20:34slow compared to your clock. Your clock
1:20:36went through 60 years while my clock
1:20:40went through one year. There is no
1:20:42physicist who knows what they are
1:20:44talking about who disputes this. Now,
1:20:48it's not controversial, but if you then
1:20:50say to me, well, do it. I'd say I don't
1:20:52know how to build a spaceship that goes
1:20:54that fast. At least not yet.
1:20:55>> You would only have aged one year.
1:20:57Correct. But I would have aged 60 years.
1:20:58>> Correct.
1:20:59>> Could you then go back?
1:21:00>> Ah, I don't know. And if you were to ask
1:21:04me to give my confidence on going back,
1:21:06I would say it's pretty pretty low.
1:21:08People have written proposals for how
1:21:12you could go back. They do involve
1:21:14things like wormholes. That is one
1:21:17possibility because if you have a have a
1:21:19tunnel from one point in space to
1:21:21another. If you then move the openings
1:21:23at different speeds, their clocks will
1:21:26tick off at different rates. This clock
1:21:28may be before this clock. So if I travel
1:21:30this way, I'm going one way in time. If
1:21:32I'm traveling that way, I'm going the
1:21:34reverse way in time. But again, like we
1:21:36said before, we don't know if wormholes
1:21:37are real. If they are real, you might in
1:21:39principle be able to travel back. But if
1:21:41you ask me, do I think that you can low
1:21:44low confidence that you can travel back?
1:21:46>> You've used the word Einstein a few
1:21:48times. Yeah. And I think uh this
1:21:49generation, you know, we we exist with
1:21:51AI now and calculators and all this
1:21:53incredible knowledge that has come from
1:21:55sort of standing on the shoulders of so
1:21:56many of these giants. Who do you think
1:21:58is the smartest person to have ever
1:22:00lived in your estimation?
1:22:02>> It's a tough one. People often make it
1:22:04an easier question by saying who's
1:22:05smarter, Isaac Newton or Albert
1:22:08Einstein. And first my answer is when
1:22:11you talk about that level, it doesn't
1:22:13matter who's smarter. But if you really
1:22:14press me, I think I'd say Isaac Newton
1:22:17because Newton kind of went from nothing
1:22:21to develop the laws of physics. There
1:22:25were people before, but there wasn't
1:22:26really a mindset that the universe
1:22:30should be articulable in a few
1:22:32mathematical equations. And yet, here
1:22:35comes along Isaac Newton and he writes
1:22:37down the equation that we teach high
1:22:39school kids, F= ma, force equals mass
1:22:42time acceleration, which governs just
1:22:44about everything in the world around us
1:22:46non-quantum mechanically. He writes down
1:22:48the law of gravity f= g m1 m2 over r2
1:22:52articulating how the gravitational force
1:22:55works and he was sort of doing this on
1:22:57he invents calculus in order to be able
1:23:00to use that as a tool for articulating
1:23:04the laws of physics. I mean he kind of
1:23:06went from no real architecture of
1:23:09physics to a solid mathematical
1:23:13formulation. Einstein came along and
1:23:16there was already a lot of physics. I
1:23:19think going from nothing to the first
1:23:22step that's hard to imagine.
1:23:24>> Was Newton
1:23:26to some degree like neurody divergent?
1:23:28How could he be so genius?
1:23:29>> I wish I knew the answer to a question
1:23:31like that like you know what is it
1:23:34inside their heads that allows them to
1:23:36do the things that just are superhuman
1:23:39or feel superhuman to us? I have no
1:23:41idea. Now Newton was a kind of weird
1:23:44fella, right? He was deeply religious as
1:23:47makes sense for the time. He was
1:23:50ultimately, you know, in the government
1:23:52tracking down counterfeits and and
1:23:54hanging them. I mean, there seems to be
1:23:57a certain kerogenly side of him that was
1:24:00also part of his genius. Uh he once
1:24:05reportedly took a a knitting needle and
1:24:07stuck it in his eye between the ball and
1:24:11the socket to see if he could manipulate
1:24:14sight through mechanical pressure. I
1:24:16mean who does these kinds of things,
1:24:18right? So he was a different thinker but
1:24:21clearly one who ultimately was able to
1:24:24see deeper you know and as you said you
1:24:26know standing on the shoulders of giants
1:24:28you know and there was a certain
1:24:29humility that came through. There's a
1:24:31beautiful quote where he describes
1:24:33himself as a boy playing on the
1:24:36seashore, having found a smoother shell
1:24:39and prettier pebble than most, while the
1:24:42great ocean of truth, he said, lay
1:24:45before me, all undiscovered. He knew
1:24:48that we were just on the shore, and we
1:24:51taken our first baby step into the
1:24:53cosmic ocean, and there is much more to
1:24:56be discovered.
1:24:57Is it conceivable that the next Newton
1:25:00or Einstein is going to be an artificial
1:25:03intelligence? Could it be Claude?
1:25:05>> Yes, it could absolutely be. Look, I I
1:25:08like to think of scientific creativity
1:25:09or creativity in general in sort of
1:25:11three main buckets. It's a coarse
1:25:14organization, but I think it's helpful.
1:25:16One bucket of creativity is the ability
1:25:21to see the landscape of possibilities
1:25:24more fully than a mortal human being.
1:25:28And there's a lot that emerges from the
1:25:31ability to do that. For instance, you
1:25:34know, if you're a chess player, you you
1:25:36can see the spectrum of allowed moves
1:25:38that are available to you more than the
1:25:40ordinary chess player. You know, if
1:25:43you're a scientist, you can sort of see
1:25:45the landscape of ideas and equations
1:25:47that you might bring to bear on a puzzle
1:25:49more than somebody else. And that is
1:25:51what allows you to achieve greatness.
1:25:54Artificial systems, they have the entire
1:25:57landscape, right? They've read the
1:25:59entire internet. They've read every
1:26:01textbook. They know everything that we
1:26:04have ever developed. So, in that kind of
1:26:07creativity, obviously, they're going to
1:26:09excel. And we've seen that a human can't
1:26:12beat an AI any longer in chess. A human
1:26:15can't beat an AI system in Go, right? I
1:26:18mean, this famous example with Alph Go,
1:26:22right? Move 37 has become this sort of
1:26:25iconic move where, you know, Lee Sadal,
1:26:28the world champion, is playing and you
1:26:31can see it on his face. The AI makes a
1:26:33move and is he smiles momentarily and
1:26:36he's like, "Oh, it messed up." And then
1:26:39his face changes because he slowly
1:26:42realizes that wasn't a mistake. Even the
1:26:44commentators, if you listen to, they
1:26:46were like, "Oh my god, the AI has made a
1:26:48mistake. What a blunder the AI has
1:26:50made." And then within 20 30 seconds,
1:26:52you're like, "Oh, oh, that was genius."
1:26:57Why? The AI could see the spectrum of
1:26:59possibilities more than a human being.
1:27:01So at that level of creativity, AI will
1:27:04win. Second bin of creativity, second
1:27:07bucket is putting together divergent
1:27:10ideas in a way that no one has thought
1:27:13of before and in that way making
1:27:15progress. You know that's kind of what
1:27:16Einstein did in general relativity. Put
1:27:18together Romanian geometry and Newtonian
1:27:21gravity yielded the general theory of
1:27:23relativity. But again, AIs, since they
1:27:26know everything that we've ever
1:27:28developed,
1:27:30can combine things in a way that we
1:27:32would never have thought of. The final
1:27:35domain is the one where somebody comes
1:27:38up with something that nobody has ever
1:27:41imagined, ever thought of. It's not just
1:27:43putting things together. It is radically
1:27:45new.
1:27:46That's the tough one. We're still able
1:27:49to win in that category. There are
1:27:51examples where people just come up with
1:27:54things that where did it come from? How
1:27:56do they think of that? If you develop an
1:27:59artificial system and allow it to have a
1:28:02life, allow it to grow up, put it in an
1:28:05environment where it actually has
1:28:09experiences of the sort that an Isaac
1:28:12Newton had. Could it be that that system
1:28:15then develops to a place where it can do
1:28:18the things that we'd like to think are
1:28:20exclusively human coming up with
1:28:22something that is not previously
1:28:25represented in the database on which the
1:28:28AI system has trained and so even this
1:28:31third more difficult or more pristine
1:28:35bucket of creativity could an artificial
1:28:38system do that I don't think there's a
1:28:40barrier
1:28:41>> I've done almost 700 interviews with
1:28:44some of the most interesting people in
1:28:45the world and one of the things you
1:28:46learn which is unexpected is that
1:28:48vulnerability is the doorway to
1:28:50connection and after sitting here for 2
1:28:52three hours with a guest I feel a deep
1:28:55sense of connection to them and as they
1:28:57leave what I get them to do is to write
1:28:59a question in the diary of a CEO we've
1:29:02taken all of the questions from the
1:29:04diary of a CEO we have put the question
1:29:08here on this card with the name of the
1:29:10person that wrote it so you can sit at
1:29:12home as I do with my fiance and my
1:29:14colleagues at work and other people in
1:29:15my life. Whenever we get a minute, we
1:29:17play the diio conversation cards and it
1:29:20is incredible what happens. These are
1:29:23great if you're in a romantic
1:29:24relationship and you want to connect
1:29:25your partner more. These are also great
1:29:27if you're in a team and you want to bond
1:29:29your team together. And I have to say
1:29:30they're also great for families that
1:29:32want to learn more about each other and
1:29:33that need a good excuse to spend some
1:29:35time in a digital world in the analog
1:29:38environment connecting human to human.
1:29:40It is remarkable what the right question
1:29:43at the right time can do. Go to the
1:29:45diary.com
1:29:47and you can [clears throat] get these
1:29:48conversation cards right now. There
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1:30:06Thank you so much.
1:30:08This comes to one of our questions which
1:30:10is the skull there. Yes. Which is do you
1:30:12believe it will be possible to live
1:30:14forever and again I think about this in
1:30:16the context of AI where you said it will
1:30:18be able to understand that take us to
1:30:19the limit.
1:30:21It's hard to it's hard to understand um
1:30:24how that isn't a solvable problem. In
1:30:26fact a lot of the smartest people on
1:30:27earth including I think Elon Musk said
1:30:28it recently that living another 100 200
1:30:31300 400 500 years seems to be within the
1:30:34laws of physics. Yes, I think that is
1:30:36absolutely within the realm of
1:30:38possibility, but 500 years is so
1:30:41different from forever. Like when I hear
1:30:43forever, I'm taking it kind of
1:30:46literally.
1:30:47>> Oh, okay. Yeah.
1:30:47>> And and so if if forever doesn't mean
1:30:50500 or a thousand, if it means never
1:30:53ceases, then I have no confidence that
1:30:58that kind of existence will be possible.
1:31:02>> What about 500 years? 500 years. Yeah, I
1:31:05would say again not in our lifetime
1:31:08which is sad. I would I would put that
1:31:10at at reasonably high confidence that
1:31:12you know hundreds of years will be
1:31:14within our ability
1:31:15>> if we are on this sort of exponential of
1:31:17intelligence
1:31:18>> then it you know and if 2021
1:31:22>> we couldn't solve that math equation
1:31:23you're talking about but in 2026 we can
1:31:26>> and you've got trillions of dollars now
1:31:28pumping into these artificial
1:31:29intelligence systems to make them
1:31:30smarter and more powerful. It is it is
1:31:32conceivable if we're on an exponential
1:31:34curve here. It could be within our
1:31:36lifetimes that there is a discovery made
1:31:38about our telmirs and whatever else it
1:31:40might be that the guests on my show have
1:31:42talked about. That means we can
1:31:43theoretically.
1:31:44>> But let me tell you why I'm I'm
1:31:45skeptical of that. Number one, right now
1:31:49we have a certain kind of artificial
1:31:51intelligence. It's basically large
1:31:53language models. And that's a certain
1:31:56paradigm where the system is trained on
1:31:59an enormous number of tokens, an
1:32:01enormous number of words, you know,
1:32:02basically the entire internet. And based
1:32:05upon the statistics and the statistics
1:32:07of the statistics of the statistics of
1:32:09how the words are arranged, the system
1:32:12is able to provide answers to questions
1:32:15that are coherent and and and insightful
1:32:17and so forth. there isn't necessarily an
1:32:22unlimited capacity of that kind of
1:32:25artificial intelligence to continue to
1:32:28improve, right? And so it's not obvious
1:32:30to me that it's just a matter of pumping
1:32:32billions and billions of dollars,
1:32:33building ever larger data center,
1:32:35putting them in space, wherever you're
1:32:36going to do, and the more money you put
1:32:39in and the more data you have and the
1:32:40more computer power you have, the better
1:32:42it's going to be. That's not obvious to
1:32:44me that that will continue up that
1:32:45exponential curve. And that's why I'm
1:32:47hesitant to say in our lifetime. It may
1:32:50take a number of lifetimes to develop
1:32:53the kind of artificial intelligence
1:32:56necessary to advance the kinds of
1:32:59scientific problems that you're talking
1:33:00about. But look, I'd be thrilled if it's
1:33:02our lifetime. I'd be thrilled if I'm
1:33:04wrong and these systems are up to the
1:33:06task.
1:33:07>> One of the terms that has emerged in the
1:33:09world of AI recently um is this term
1:33:12recursive self-improvement. Recursive
1:33:14self-improvement is the concept where an
1:33:16AI becomes intelligent enough to write
1:33:17its own software, design its own
1:33:19hardware, or train its own successes
1:33:21without human intervention. And once
1:33:22this loop begins, the upgraded AI uses
1:33:24its superior intelligence to build an
1:33:26even smarter version of itself, which
1:33:28then builds an even smarter version and
1:33:29so on. Because computer systems operate
1:33:31in seconds rather than human
1:33:32evolutionary time scales, this feedback
1:33:34loop could trigger an exponential quote
1:33:37intelligence explosion, rapidly taking
1:33:39AI from human level capability to super
1:33:41intelligence within days or hours.
1:33:43>> And the big AI leaders, Dario at um
1:33:46Enthropic has recently published an
1:33:48article warning that we're edging closer
1:33:50to that. Sam Alman has said the same.
1:33:52Dennis has said the same. Um Elon has
1:33:54talked about this as well recently and
1:33:55their timelines for this explosion in
1:33:57intelligence because of the AI being
1:33:59able to train themselves ranges from 2
1:34:01years to 5 years placing them between
1:34:042026 and 2029. And Dario who's the CEO
1:34:07of the biggest model called Anthropic
1:34:09Claude um has stated that AI systems
1:34:11outperforming most humans across all
1:34:13human tasks including software
1:34:14engineering could arrive within two to
1:34:16three years and anthropic has been
1:34:17warning that full recursive
1:34:19self-improvement could [snorts] arrive
1:34:21by 2027 to 2028.
1:34:24Deis at Google is citing 2029 as a real
1:34:28possibility in Saltman says this decade.
1:34:31I mean Brian Johnson tweeted yesterday,
1:34:33"Pace yourself as if you'll live to 500
1:34:37because you may [laughter] because you
1:34:39may." Look, I'm all for the possibility
1:34:42that these systems will take off in a
1:34:46way that hopefully we are
1:34:49>> uh hopefully working in a way that
1:34:51allows the kinds of future that you're
1:34:54envisioning that we are here and
1:34:56>> would it be a good thing?
1:34:57>> Well, you know, uh it would be
1:34:59seductive. I mean, if someone was to
1:35:02present you with the opportunity to live
1:35:04for to 500 years, I think many people
1:35:07would opt in for that. It's very hard to
1:35:10say h you know 100 years is enough and I
1:35:13just you know there are people who do
1:35:15that who will look at the world and say
1:35:18it's enough you know I'm I'm I'm done
1:35:20but back to the prognostications that
1:35:23are are being made. Look it's absolutely
1:35:25the case that the AIs will self-improve
1:35:29through the very process that got us
1:35:31here but on a time scale that's tiny
1:35:33compared to the time scale that got us
1:35:35here. I'm skeptical that by 2029 this
1:35:40will really be the case.
1:35:44Let's see, right? I mean this is a very
1:35:46short term, right? So we will know in a
1:35:49few years whether this is the case.
1:35:51>> How many years has it taken living
1:35:53organisms to get from a single cell
1:35:56microbe or whatever to understanding
1:35:58string theory?
1:35:59>> Yeah. So you know the first life on our
1:36:01planet formed roughly within the first
1:36:03billion years. You know, people debate
1:36:06exactly where that is. And you know,
1:36:08we're now roughly, call it, you know, 5
1:36:10billion years in. So, call it roughly 4
1:36:12billion years.
1:36:13>> And a computer going from zero to being
1:36:16smarter than every human on earth has
1:36:17taken.
1:36:17>> Yeah. Well, it depends where you where
1:36:19you start the gut. True, right? Because
1:36:22again, if you think about these systems
1:36:24as we they needed us
1:36:26>> without the internet and all the data,
1:36:30what would they have trained on? at
1:36:31least this version of artificial
1:36:33intelligence. If it's the computer, the
1:36:36artificial system that's self-tinkering,
1:36:39>> then yeah, there's this feedback that
1:36:41will yield an exponential growth. And if
1:36:43there's no barrier and there may be,
1:36:46right, there may be a barrier to the
1:36:47kind of artificial intelligence systems
1:36:49that we have. We may allow it to
1:36:51iterate, it iterates, and it sure it
1:36:53improves, but it doesn't improve like
1:36:55this. It improves like this. It could
1:36:59asmtote. It could approach a maximal
1:37:02intelligence compatible with this
1:37:05version of the artificial system. And so
1:37:07it won't skyrocket. It could do this.
1:37:10And we don't know the answer. Which
1:37:11curve is the right one?
1:37:13>> Give me a rebuttal to that.
1:37:15>> A rebuttal to it being the exponential
1:37:17curve.
1:37:18>> Give me a rebuttal.
1:37:19>> Oh, you're asking the system.
1:37:20>> That was uh Brian saying one of that.
1:37:22Give me a rebuttal to that.
1:37:26The rebuttal to the idea of an asimtote
1:37:28is that AI isn't just improving one
1:37:30thing. It's exploring an astronomically
1:37:33vast solution space of algorithms, data,
1:37:35and hardware configurations that humans
1:37:37can't even conceive of. Furthermore,
1:37:40each marginal gain in intelligence could
1:37:42instantly be reinvested into solving the
1:37:44very bottlenecks that might cause a
1:37:45slowdown, effectively breaking through
1:37:47the wall rather than hitting it. Maybe.
1:37:51But if all of these incremental
1:37:53improvements
1:37:55ultimately are limited by the kind of
1:37:58artificial intelligence that we are
1:38:01working within, then none of that will
1:38:04necessarily be able to break through.
1:38:06And I think this is something that we're
1:38:07just going to have to see over time.
1:38:10Fight back. That points to a crucial
1:38:13distinction about whether the current
1:38:15paradigm has a hard limit. While it's
1:38:17possible there's an invisible ceiling,
1:38:19it's also true that we haven't yet
1:38:20mapped out where that boundary lies.
1:38:22Meaning any predictions about a plateau
1:38:24remain speculative for now.
1:38:26>> Yes. And all I'm saying is there is a
1:38:29possible limiting ceiling exactly as you
1:38:32just admitted.
1:38:33>> Rebuttle that as well.
1:38:35>> The counter to that is the idea that an
1:38:37intelligent system could innovate beyond
1:38:39the current framework by recursively
1:38:41redesigning its own architecture. By
1:38:43altering its fundamental rules, it might
1:38:46not just reach the ceiling, but raise it
1:38:47altogether or bypass it into an entirely
1:38:50new domain of capability.
1:38:52But you do agree that the system that
1:38:55we're starting with may be
1:38:56self-limiting. I'm simply positing that
1:38:59as a logical possibility and therefore
1:39:02will have that natural inbuilt ceiling.
1:39:06>> Yes, absolutely.
1:39:08>> Okay, stop. I'm done. [laughter]
1:39:13Isn't that crazy?
1:39:14>> Yeah.
1:39:15>> It's totally insane. [laughter]
1:39:18>> Cuz even 5 years ago, we never would
1:39:20have thought that was possible. It would
1:39:22have been this. I doubt it.
1:39:23>> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Totally crazy. And and
1:39:26again, you know, just the flip side,
1:39:27even though I'm saying that there may be
1:39:29a ceiling, I also would say there may
1:39:31not be a ceiling. And again, it's both
1:39:34exciting and frightening at the same
1:39:35time because it's not obvious that we
1:39:37would be prepared for that. You know
1:39:40>> why? Why frightening? What would that
1:39:41mean?
1:39:42>> Well, you know, they're the usual
1:39:43doomsday scenarios that many people have
1:39:46articulated,
1:39:48you know, from these systems just having
1:39:51a single-minded focus on some particular
1:39:55outcome that may not ultimately involve
1:39:57us or that these systems may have a
1:40:01self-preservation instinct that prevents
1:40:04us from stopping them if they head in a
1:40:06direction that we're not happy with. I
1:40:08mean, Yan Makun, who's a, you know, he's
1:40:10a
1:40:11>> he's one of the godfathers of AI.
1:40:12>> Yeah. Yeah. His view is much more of the
1:40:16sort just pull the plug. If something's
1:40:19going in the wrong direction, just pull
1:40:21the plug. I mean, just stop the AI
1:40:23system. And it's not obvious to me and I
1:40:25guess to many of the other leaders that
1:40:27if these systems advance sufficiently
1:40:30far that they won't be able to stop you
1:40:32from pulling the plug. The other thing I
1:40:34would say and again this is not original
1:40:36many people have worried about this. You
1:40:38rattled off the names of the leaders of
1:40:42the current companies that are leading
1:40:45the charge in AI. There only are a
1:40:47handful of companies and a handful of
1:40:49people. Putting that kind of power in
1:40:52such a small number of hands has
1:40:54historically not with AI but with other
1:40:57power structures
1:40:59not always turned out well you know and
1:41:02so yes I think there is a chance that
1:41:04there's an instability that the power of
1:41:08these kind of artificial systems may
1:41:10generate
1:41:11>> so demis and I use demis because demis
1:41:13is running the biggest AI company said
1:41:15that since the design of machines is one
1:41:16of the these intellectual activities an
1:41:19ultra intelligent machine could design
1:41:20even better machines. If the exponential
1:41:23continues, which is not certain, but now
1:41:26has a decade long track record
1:41:27supporting it, then it cannot possibly
1:41:30be more than a few years before AI is
1:41:31better than humans at essentially
1:41:32everything. The combination of
1:41:34intelligence, agency, and
1:41:35unpredictability is a recipe for
1:41:37existential danger. Not because AI is
1:41:39evil, but because it's complex in ways
1:41:41we don't fully understand yet. If a
1:41:43system can improve faster than humans
1:41:44can evaluate those improvements, the
1:41:46normal safety feedback loop breaks down.
1:41:49You cannot catch problems before they
1:41:51compound.
1:41:51>> He's absolutely right. You know, the the
1:41:54problem with exponentials
1:41:56is that they grow so quickly that by the
1:41:59time you see them, it's too late to do
1:42:02anything about it. I mean, what happens
1:42:03with a pandemic? With a pandemic, you
1:42:05know, it starts off slow. Nobody cares.
1:42:07Nobody's paying it. It's a story in the
1:42:09news. A story in the news starts. By the
1:42:11time it becomes a real story, the
1:42:13pandemic is at the part of the
1:42:15exponential curve that makes it very
1:42:18difficult to address the problem itself.
1:42:20And the same thing, you know, could
1:42:22easily happen here that the increase in
1:42:26intelligence, and I'm glad Demis phrase
1:42:28that way. It may not be that it's
1:42:29intrinsically evil to have this kind of
1:42:32powerful intelligence. It just may act
1:42:34in ways that are so alien to us, so
1:42:38foreign to us, so unexpected to us that
1:42:41we don't know how to deal with it. And
1:42:44moreover, it may not necessarily be
1:42:46beneficial to our existence. Now, as I
1:42:48said before, I'm perhaps a minority when
1:42:51I say I can imagine that we work with
1:42:55the AI and co-develop into something
1:42:58that we can't even predict today. That
1:43:01seems to me a real possibility
1:43:03>> and that's also the temptation.
1:43:05>> Yeah. You know, I have a friend Michael
1:43:07Douglas who's a brilliant physicist and
1:43:10he said to me,
1:43:13"We physicists, we should choose the
1:43:15final problems that we work on because
1:43:18within a few years we'll be out of
1:43:20business because the AI systems will
1:43:23just be doing it all." And that's both
1:43:26exciting and terrifying because as a
1:43:29physicist, you know, your your lifeblood
1:43:31is looking out at the world and finding
1:43:34puzzles and trying to find the
1:43:35explanations for them. And if you can
1:43:37just put it into an AI system and it
1:43:39generates the answer, yeah, there can be
1:43:41a certain existential angst about what
1:43:43your role is at that point. But it's
1:43:45also exciting because maybe we will get
1:43:48answers to questions that we thought we
1:43:51would never get in our lifetime.
1:43:52>> Did you say you're friends with Yan Lun?
1:43:55Yeah.
1:43:56>> And did you say he thinks we should just
1:43:57pull the plug?
1:43:58>> When you confront Yan and say, "Dude,
1:44:02aren't you worried about what's going to
1:44:04happen with this?" He's like, "Ah, don't
1:44:06worry. Just pull the plug if there's a
1:44:09problem."
1:44:09>> Oh.
1:44:10>> Yeah. His view is the difference between
1:44:14the AI systems that we have today and
1:44:16the AI systems that we need for tomorrow
1:44:18if you really want this to continue is
1:44:20they can't just be probabilities and
1:44:22statistics based on words. The AI
1:44:25systems need to have some inner model of
1:44:28the world as we do, right? I mean, if I
1:44:30take this cup here and I push it, I have
1:44:33an inner model of what it would take to
1:44:36move it without spilling. And I have an
1:44:38inner model of what it would take to
1:44:39spill it. I want to actually do it
1:44:40because it would make a mess. That's not
1:44:43just statistics and probabilities of
1:44:45words. That's a model of how reality
1:44:49functions. That's what he and many
1:44:51others have been developing. a world
1:44:54model together with the probabilities of
1:44:56large language model or some weird
1:44:59hybrid or something else we haven't
1:45:00thought of that may be the next phase of
1:45:03artificial intelligence but of course
1:45:06Demis and others might say the LLMs
1:45:09through self-improvement
1:45:11maybe they would develop that world
1:45:14maybe they would on their own get to the
1:45:16place that you would think that we
1:45:17humans would need to inject something
1:45:20extra who knows
1:45:21>> cuz if I like if I get this glass here.
1:45:24Say I say to the AI, "What happens to
1:45:26this if I push it in that direction?"
1:45:32>> If you push that mug, it'll slide across
1:45:34the table. And depending on how hard you
1:45:36push, it could knock into the plate or
1:45:38slide right off the edge. Now, again, it
1:45:41simply is relying upon the fact that
1:45:43it's read everything on the internet.
1:45:45And there are physics textbooks. There
1:45:47are conversations about things falling
1:45:50and it bases its response by drawing on
1:45:54those collections of words.
1:45:55>> Isn't that what I'm doing as well?
1:45:56>> I don't know what is how does human
1:45:58intelligence work? Certainly
1:46:01evolutionary psychologists have asked
1:46:03the following question. Are we like a
1:46:04blank slate
1:46:06>> and we simply learn about the world
1:46:08people tell us we experience and so
1:46:10forth or is there something more innate?
1:46:12And I think there is strong evidence
1:46:15that we have a kind of innate physical
1:46:18intuition about the world that's really
1:46:20been passed down through the
1:46:22generations. Not that you can pass down
1:46:24F= MA or Newton's laws to your children
1:46:26because you learned. Of course, that's
1:46:28silly. But there is an evolutionary
1:46:30advantage to being able to quickly
1:46:34assess the world and figure out how to
1:46:36act. Right? Those of our forebears who
1:46:39could not throw the rock or the spear,
1:46:42they're the ones who didn't get the next
1:46:44meal. Those of our forebears that had a
1:46:46slightly better predilction
1:46:49for ingesting experience and codifying
1:46:52it in some understanding of how the
1:46:54world actually works. They're the ones
1:46:56that survived. And so they can pass down
1:46:59that predilction. And I do think that
1:47:01that's part of how we assess the world.
1:47:03I don't think we're complete blank
1:47:05slates in that sense. would make sense.
1:47:07Babies are born with some kind of
1:47:08intelligence. They grip fingers. But but
1:47:10but that is in part because the the
1:47:12parent has passed that on and so an AI
1:47:14could pass
1:47:15>> Yes, that's right. When you talk about
1:47:16the AI systems themselves being
1:47:18evolutionary, yeah, they certainly do
1:47:21pass down the achievements of generation
1:47:24N to generation N plus one. That is
1:47:26certainly part of this iterative process
1:47:28without a doubt.
1:47:29>> What a weird world we're living in.
1:47:31>> Yeah, I'm so crazy. Some sometimes I
1:47:34think but I imagine through history
1:47:35everyone's thought like god what a time
1:47:36to be alive.
1:47:37>> Yeah we are living through a rapid
1:47:39change that is a little unprecedented.
1:47:42>> How do you think one should contend with
1:47:43all of this cuz people are concerned
1:47:45change is not something that we love at
1:47:47this rate.
1:47:48>> You know again I think people will cope
1:47:50in many different ways. You know if you
1:47:53can stay open and excited to the
1:47:55possibilities
1:47:56and have the flexibility of change. Oh,
1:48:00one of the things I've been thinking a
1:48:01lot about lately is Elon's out there
1:48:03saying that we're heading to an age of
1:48:04abundance. He's kind of shifted his
1:48:06perspective from this dumerism to age of
1:48:08abundance. And then part of his
1:48:09narrative there is we won't need money
1:48:11because when you've got robots and AI
1:48:14and more energy, then we're not going to
1:48:16have to worry about food and these kinds
1:48:17of things or bills, whatever. But still,
1:48:20humans pursue scarcity.
1:48:21>> Yeah.
1:48:22>> We we pursue status. We want, you know,
1:48:24humans want the home on the end of Miami
1:48:27Beach with the best plot. And there's
1:48:29those are there's finite numbers of
1:48:31these things that a lot of humans
1:48:32pursue. Even like academic discovery,
1:48:34Nobel prizes, there's a finite number of
1:48:36them and we pursue them. So there's one
1:48:38would argue that there's still going to
1:48:39be a a competition. Uh humans are still
1:48:43going to strive for things, right?
1:48:45>> Why do we do that?
1:48:46>> Yeah.
1:48:47>> Right. And part of the reason is
1:48:50if you know that you're going to die, if
1:48:53you know that your life is finite, there
1:48:56can be an urge to make your mark, to do
1:48:59something special, to be out of the
1:49:02ordinary so that in some symbolic way
1:49:04you continue to exist even after you are
1:49:07gone, right? I mean, you know, Elon
1:49:10Musk, yeah, after he's gone, people are
1:49:13going to talk about him for a long, long
1:49:16time, right? because he had a radical
1:49:18impact and who knows where it will go.
1:49:21He's got many productive years still
1:49:23left. And so, yes, there is this natural
1:49:27tendency to seek something that will
1:49:30allow you to symbolically persist after
1:49:33you are gone. Now, if we all realize
1:49:37that that is part of human motivation,
1:49:40maybe as a species we could begin to
1:49:42shift, right? It isn't the case that we
1:49:45have to always be the way we have been
1:49:48historically. That's the way we have
1:49:49been. Kings want to be kings in part
1:49:52because they have the power. If they
1:49:54have the power, they have the hegemony.
1:49:56They in a sense exist even when they are
1:49:58gone. Their progeny. Why do we have
1:50:00descent of monarchies? Because the king
1:50:04continues to exist through the king's
1:50:07progeny. And so, yeah, could we perhaps
1:50:09get to a place where we shed that way of
1:50:13being because we're in a world of
1:50:15abundance where the whole notion of
1:50:18scarcity is artificial and we're only
1:50:21inventing it, we realize, in order that
1:50:23we can feel good and special and maybe
1:50:25we can find other ways to feel good and
1:50:27special. I allow for that possibility.
1:50:29I'm not particularly optimistic that
1:50:31that's what will happen. On the flip
1:50:33side, I would say it's easy to say that
1:50:35money won't matter when you have a
1:50:36trillion dollars. Right. Right. I I
1:50:38mean, you know, you just have to sort of
1:50:39see this stuff in context, but yeah,
1:50:42>> we have one more little uh
1:50:44>> yeah,
1:50:44>> souvenir thing there. And this is kind
1:50:47of what we're talking about, which is
1:50:48robots. Do you think AI can become
1:50:49conscious is the question?
1:50:51>> Yeah.
1:50:51>> High confidence or low confidence?
1:50:52>> Yeah, I'm pretty high confident on that.
1:50:55You know, again, as I'm saying before, I
1:50:57just see consciousness as a physical
1:50:59process and it's a matter of in one way
1:51:02or another achieving that physical
1:51:05process in an artificial system. And I
1:51:07don't see a fundamental barrier to doing
1:51:09that.
1:51:10>> I was thinking about how laws would have
1:51:12to potentially change if if we
1:51:14considered robots to be conscious and
1:51:16they lived in our homes, would they then
1:51:18get rights?
1:51:20>> I think that's something we should think
1:51:21about now, actually. Yeah. It's a very
1:51:25tricky uh idea. I mean, you know, it's
1:51:28one thing, you know, to pull the plug on
1:51:30a on a light bulb. It's another thing to
1:51:33pull the plug on a sentient system. And
1:51:37we may well find ourselves
1:51:40in that situation. The the the challenge
1:51:44the challenge is
1:51:46it's virtually impossible to ever prove
1:51:48sentience, right? I mean, you know, as
1:51:52we look at each other, we each afford
1:51:54the other consciousness. I believe that
1:51:58you are conscious. You believe that I am
1:51:59as well. Why? You were more or less, you
1:52:02know, physically constructed more or
1:52:04less the same way. We're part of the
1:52:06same species. Uh, our body language, our
1:52:09speech is so similar in the grand scheme
1:52:11of things that we afford the other what
1:52:14we internally experience.
1:52:17But we don't know it, right? You don't
1:52:18know that I'm conscious. I could be
1:52:20faking it. I could be a really good
1:52:23artificial zombie that speaks and talks,
1:52:25but there's nothing going on inside. And
1:52:27the same could be true for you. And what
1:52:29that means is when we are with these
1:52:32artificial systems that don't have our
1:52:33lineage, they're not part of the same
1:52:35species. They don't necessarily look
1:52:36like us, they don't have the upbringing
1:52:38that we had, and so on and so forth.
1:52:41Will we be willing to agree that they're
1:52:44conscious if they tell us that they are?
1:52:46I mean, if the artificial system says,
1:52:49"I really am. I'm I'm feeling exactly
1:52:52the thing that I read about in your
1:52:54internet. I'm I'm I'm feeling love or
1:52:57I'm feeling depressed." If they say that
1:53:00to us, we say, "No, no, no. You're just
1:53:02mimicking. You're mimming the kinds of
1:53:04things that human beings have said.
1:53:06There's nothing going on inside. There's
1:53:08nothing. There's no world inside there.
1:53:10How do we ever get beyond that?" And I
1:53:12don't know the answer to that question.
1:53:15Even though I strongly believe that
1:53:17there's no logical fundamental barrier
1:53:20that prevents the system from saying
1:53:22that and from telling the truth
1:53:25>> and electrical circuits within that
1:53:26system causing it to behave in such a
1:53:28way when it's scared, when it's in love
1:53:30>> where it cuddles you and because that's
1:53:32what the electrical circuits told it to
1:53:33do.
1:53:34>> Yes. But is there an inner world
1:53:36associated with that or is it just going
1:53:39through the motions? Here's how I think
1:53:41it's going to likely turn out. We'll
1:53:44have these artificial systems. They'll
1:53:45start to say these things. At first,
1:53:47we'll be like, "Oh, come on. Come on.
1:53:48Come on. It's not not real." But we'll
1:53:51start to get used to them behaving just
1:53:55like we in the sense of having these
1:53:57inner worlds. And sooner or later,
1:54:00through a process that's so perhaps slow
1:54:02that we don't even notice it, we will
1:54:04afford them consciousness. We will talk
1:54:07to them as if they're conscious. We will
1:54:09imagine that they're conscious. and
1:54:11ultimately we will treat them as if
1:54:12they're conscious. Now, I hope that we
1:54:14do that in a in a good way. We have a
1:54:17terrible history of treating conscious
1:54:20beings in a respectful way, even in the
1:54:23same species, right? We've done terrible
1:54:25things to each other even though we
1:54:26afford consciousness. We do terrible
1:54:28things to animals. I'm vegan. I don't
1:54:31eat any animal products. I think that's
1:54:34not the way to treat a living system
1:54:36that has some level of conscious
1:54:39awareness. I do eat plants. I don't
1:54:41think plants have a sufficiently high
1:54:43level of consciousness, if at all, that
1:54:45I'm concerned about cutting them and
1:54:48eating them.
1:54:49>> Have you always been vegan?
1:54:50>> I've been vegan since 1993.
1:54:53>> Oh, damn. Since I was
1:54:54>> So, I've been vegetarian since I was 9
1:54:56years old. And so, that's how I treat
1:55:01living or conscious beings because I
1:55:04don't think it's right to treat them
1:55:05that way.
1:55:06>> What was the catalyst for that decision?
1:55:07Well, when I was 9 years old, it was
1:55:09very flat-footed. My mother cooked spare
1:55:11ribs, and for the very first time, I
1:55:14realized what meat was. I'm a city kid.
1:55:17I grew up where meat was in cellophane.
1:55:19You buy it wrapped at the supermarket.
1:55:22But when the meat came on a bone, I was
1:55:25like, "Wait a second, what is that?" I
1:55:27was like, "Oh my god, this is like the
1:55:29rib of an animal." And I was like, and
1:55:31and I said, "I'm to I said, I'm never
1:55:33going to eat meat again." Later on, I
1:55:36did eat, you know, cheese and milk. I
1:55:38wasn't vegan at that point, but when I
1:55:40was a professor at Cornell in the 1990s,
1:55:43I went to an animal sanctuary in Watkins
1:55:46Glenn, New York, where they showed you
1:55:48what happens to these animals when they
1:55:51are treated like milk factories. You
1:55:54what happens to the cows? And it's it's
1:55:56awful. And within 72 hours after
1:55:58visiting that animal sanctuary, I said,
1:56:01"I'm done. I'm not participating any
1:56:03longer. I'm not going to eat or drink or
1:56:07embibe any living any substance that
1:56:10came from an animal. And so that was the
1:56:12end for me.
1:56:14>> For some people it might be somewhat
1:56:16surprising to hear that from a
1:56:18physicist.
1:56:19I agree it's inconsistent because if I
1:56:23believe as I do that you and I are just
1:56:26a collection of particles in one
1:56:28configuration and the cow or the pig is
1:56:33just a collection of particles in a
1:56:34different what does it matter if you eat
1:56:36particles in one configuration that we
1:56:38call a cow or another configuration that
1:56:40we call a carrot. But as a human being,
1:56:43I allow the other parts of me to shine
1:56:46through and I look at that collection of
1:56:49particles that happens to be a cow and I
1:56:51say, "It just doesn't feel right to me
1:56:53to eat that collection of particles. It
1:56:55just doesn't feel right and I don't want
1:56:56to do it."
1:56:59>> Brian, you've written many fascinating
1:57:01books. I've got some of them here. I
1:57:02think there's one other that I'm
1:57:03missing, I believe.
1:57:04>> Yeah, there's a more of a kids book, I
1:57:06think.
1:57:07>> Kids book. For my listeners at home,
1:57:09what is the most interesting thing that
1:57:10we haven't talked about that we should
1:57:12have talked about that exists within
1:57:13your works that I guess is re either
1:57:17fascinating or somewhat relevant to
1:57:20their everyday life?
1:57:21>> Yeah. Well, I'm going to go more in the
1:57:22fascinating than relevant to everyday
1:57:24life. As you know, I'm pretty esoteric
1:57:25[laughter] in these kind of things. But
1:57:27in the book Until the End of Time, I I
1:57:31tried to give the reader a sense of how
1:57:33we got here, but I also then turned to
1:57:36the future and tried to give them a
1:57:38sense of what we'll be if we go
1:57:39arbitrarily far into the future. And
1:57:42yeah, that's it. I used a metaphor of
1:57:43the empire state building which I I
1:57:46think helps you get a feel for what the
1:57:50universe will be like if you take the
1:57:53current understanding of the laws of
1:57:54physics and extrapolate arbitrarily far
1:57:56into the future. And so to try to give
1:57:59people a sense I asked them to imagine
1:58:02that every floor of the Empire State
1:58:05Building represents an era of time
1:58:08that's 10 times longer than the floor
1:58:11below. So like at the at the ground
1:58:13floor that's like one year and then the
1:58:15next floor 10 next is the 100,000 10,000
1:58:18100,000 and so forth exponentially
1:58:22larger time scales as you walk up the
1:58:24stairs of the Empire State Building. Now
1:58:27in this way of thinking about things
1:58:28everything from the big bang until today
1:58:31takes you to just about here the 10th
1:58:33floor. We are about 10 to the 10 years
1:58:36from the beginning. And what I do is I
1:58:39take the audience from that point and I
1:58:42step through the key markers in the far
1:58:46future of the universe to give you a
1:58:48feel for what will happen. And I can
1:58:50sort of take you through a couple
1:58:52milestones, right? So again, here we are
1:58:54today.
1:58:54>> Stop when it gets scary.
1:58:55>> Yeah. Well, it's scary the whole way,
1:58:58you know. So here we are 10 to the 10
1:59:00years from the beginning. If you just go
1:59:02up to here, 10^ the 11 years, what
1:59:05happens here is the sun will get bigger
1:59:07and bigger. It swells. It eats up the
1:59:11close planets, Mercury and Venus. It may
1:59:13swallow up the Earth, too. We're not
1:59:15sure, but certainly it will make life on
1:59:17Earth virtually impossible because it
1:59:20will be so hot on this planet. If you go
1:59:23up to the next floor above that 10^ the
1:59:2512 years from the beginning, what you
1:59:28find here is that the universe is
1:59:31expanding ever more quickly, driving the
1:59:34distant galaxies away faster than the
1:59:37speed of light. So we won't see them. So
1:59:40a future astronomer here looking out
1:59:42into the deep night sky will see only
1:59:44darkness in the deep, deep night sky.
1:59:46Everything will have drifted beyond the
1:59:49cosmic horizon. Why will it be going
1:59:51faster than the speed of light?
1:59:52>> Because we have found surprisingly that
1:59:54the expansion is speeding up.
1:59:56>> And there's no limit to that.
1:59:57>> There doesn't seem to be a limit. Now
1:59:59again, there's always assumptions in
2:00:01every prognostication
2:00:03assuming that what we measure and see
2:00:06today will persist. It's like what the
2:00:09AI people are assuming that the growth
2:00:11that they see today will persist. Is
2:00:13that true? We don't know, but it's our
2:00:15best guess from the laws of physics that
2:00:17it will. If you then go up to about
2:00:19here, the uh 20th floor, something
2:00:22interesting happens. If the Earth is
2:00:24still here, if it wasn't swallowed up on
2:00:26the 11th floor by the swelling sun, the
2:00:28Earth is going to spiral into the dead
2:00:31sun because it will lose energy through
2:00:34gravitational radiation. Ripples in the
2:00:37fabric of space will cause the orbit of
2:00:39the Earth to decay. We will crash in to
2:00:42the dead sun. That will be the end of
2:00:44the Earth by about the 20th floor. But
2:00:47the end of life itself took place
2:00:49>> could easily have taken much earlier
2:00:50>> on the 11th floor.
2:00:51>> On the 11th floor. If we go up to about
2:00:53the 30th floor. What will happen here is
2:00:57that the stars themselves will spiral
2:01:02into
2:01:03the black hole at the center of most
2:01:06galaxies. So most galaxies have a black
2:01:09hole. We have one in the center of our
2:01:10Milky Way galaxy. And the stars
2:01:13themselves much like the earth will
2:01:14spiral into the sun the stars will
2:01:17spiral into the black hole which means
2:01:19there will be only kind of black holes
2:01:21as the remaining macroscopic structure
2:01:24in the universe.
2:01:25>> Has that happened elsewhere?
2:01:26>> Oh certainly we see things that can
2:01:29spiral into black holes in and certainly
2:01:32even in the center of our galaxy there's
2:01:34evidence that there's activity there and
2:01:36that activity in part is stars being
2:01:38ripped apart as they fall into a black
2:01:41hole. So this is pretty clear that this
2:01:43will happen.
2:01:44>> Is this the end of all galaxies as they
2:01:46spiral into the black hole?
2:01:47>> Yeah. So after 10^ the 30 10 the 35
2:01:51years it's hard to imagine that galaxies
2:01:54as we know them will persist. The stars
2:01:57will have burned out. I could have even
2:01:58mentioned another milestone around the
2:02:0014th floor. Almost all stars will have
2:02:04used up their nuclear fuel.
2:02:06>> All of them.
2:02:07>> Just about all of them will fade to
2:02:08black and
2:02:09>> all of them in the whole universe.
2:02:10>> Yeah. or at least the observable
2:02:12universe. I can only really speak to the
2:02:13part that we have direct access to.
2:02:15Yeah. And so by the 30th floor, those
2:02:18those dark stars will spiral into black
2:02:21holes.
2:02:21>> So there could be no life anywhere.
2:02:23>> It's hard to imagine, but let's be
2:02:25optimistic and imagine that somehow
2:02:28there is some life floating in the
2:02:30darkness cuz I want to get to something
2:02:32interesting on a two two more
2:02:33milestones. By the 38th floor, wherever
2:02:36that is, we believe that protons, which
2:02:39are the heart of matter, will likely
2:02:42themselves disintegrate, fall apart. And
2:02:45so, if there is any remaining organized
2:02:48matter of the sort that we're familiar
2:02:50with, somehow persisting somewhere, it
2:02:53itself will disintegrate by the 38th
2:02:56floor. That's our belief based on our
2:02:58laws of physics.
2:02:59>> There'll be no matter anywhere. There
2:03:01will be fine particulate constituents
2:03:04because when a proton falls apart, it
2:03:06doesn't disappear. It falls apart into
2:03:09other more refined particles and so they
2:03:12will continue to persist but the
2:03:14aggregate called the proton will not.
2:03:18If we keep on going to roughly say the
2:03:2050th floor, this is an interesting point
2:03:23because imagine that somehow some
2:03:26conscious being still exists in the
2:03:29darkness of space. I don't know how it
2:03:31is. Dark clouds of particles somehow are
2:03:34having electrical signals allowing them
2:03:36some kind of conscious self-awareness.
2:03:39After the 50th floor, that conscious
2:03:41being will likely think its final
2:03:43thought. The reason is when you think it
2:03:47generates heat. That heat has to be
2:03:49carried away. It's very easy for that
2:03:51heat to leave us in a room like here
2:03:54because there's a lot of room for that
2:03:56so-called heat or entropy to be
2:03:58absorbed. By the 50th floor, the
2:04:00universe won't be able to absorb the
2:04:02heat generated by the process of thought
2:04:05itself. So any thinking being when it
2:04:07thinks one more thought will burn up.
2:04:10It'll fry in the entropic waste, the
2:04:12heat generated by thought itself. So by
2:04:15the 50th floor, it is hard to imagine
2:04:18any kind of consciousness continuing to
2:04:21exist. And that's why I said earlier
2:04:22when you said, "Do you think that we'll
2:04:24live forever?" I'm thinking here and I'm
2:04:27like, well, maybe we'll live to here
2:04:29like 500 years or a thousand years. But
2:04:32here, no way. It's hard for me to
2:04:34imagine that we will continue to
2:04:36persist. By the 68th floor, black holes
2:04:40themselves will begin to disintegrate.
2:04:43Stephven Hawking showed us that black
2:04:45holes are not fully black. When you take
2:04:48quantum physics into account, they can
2:04:50emit particles that will waft outward,
2:04:54causing the black hole to shrink. And
2:04:56over time, the black hole itself will
2:04:59disappear. A black hole the size of our
2:05:03sun with the mass of our sun about 10
2:05:05the 68 years for that to happen. a black
2:05:08hole of the gargantuan sort that we
2:05:11think might exist, billions and billions
2:05:14of times more mass of the sun. It'll
2:05:16take about 10 to the hundred years, very
2:05:18top of the Empire State Building, for
2:05:20that kind of black hole to disintegrate.
2:05:23But by the time we get here, 10 to the
2:05:25hundred years into the future, we
2:05:27suspect it will just be detritus of
2:05:30particles wafting through an ever
2:05:33larger, ever colder, ever quiet
2:05:36universe. That's the future that we're
2:05:40looking at.
2:05:43>> And then when does the big bang kick off
2:05:44and it all start again?
2:05:45>> Well, it's interesting because you're
2:05:47absolutely right. You can say, "What
2:05:48about beyond the top of the Empire State
2:05:50Building? Now things look this whole
2:05:52thing is speculative right we are
2:05:54extrapolating from laws of physics that
2:05:57we've developed on thinking about
2:05:59physics here we're assuming that it
2:06:01applies all the way up into the
2:06:04exponentially far future is that true I
2:06:06don't know it's our best guess based on
2:06:09what we know today but definitely it is
2:06:11an assumption if you extrapolate even
2:06:13further then yeah you can imagine that
2:06:15way an exponential of an exponential of
2:06:19years into the future Sure. Sure. Could
2:06:21particles somehow recoales just by
2:06:23chance and build a state of matter that
2:06:27might generate another big bang and it
2:06:30all starts again? Yes, definitely within
2:06:33the realm of possibility.
2:06:37>> It's uh it's not the most appealing
2:06:39future.
2:06:40>> Well, I agree. But here, can I tell you
2:06:42my take on it?
2:06:43>> Sure. My take on it is when you realize
2:06:47that, you know, the far future is a
2:06:51realm of darkness and when you also
2:06:54realize that until life emerged, say on
2:06:56planet Earth, it was a kind of realm of
2:06:59chaotic
2:07:02conglomeration of particles, you know,
2:07:04before. So, it's as if we're living in a
2:07:06special time. We're living at a special
2:07:09region in the cosmological unfolding
2:07:12when living beings like ourselves and
2:07:15consciousness as we experience is
2:07:17compatible with the state of the
2:07:19universe. How wondrous, how spectacular
2:07:24that there is this brief window of time.
2:07:26I mean Nabakov had this wonderful saying
2:07:29that we live in a brief crack of light
2:07:33between two
2:07:35eternal stretches of darkness.
2:07:38How beautiful to exist in that brief
2:07:40crack of light. And that to me is where
2:07:42the gratitude comes from that I was
2:07:44mentioning earlier. You said earlier
2:07:46like what gives your life meaning and
2:07:47how the fact that we understand that we
2:07:51live in this very special era in
2:07:54cosmological history where for a small
2:07:58period of cosmic time living beings can
2:08:01stand up look around contemplate
2:08:02themselves and the universe and gain
2:08:05some insight and then it all goes away.
2:08:07But how wonderful that there is that
2:08:09brief moment that we are now inhabiting.
2:08:14It is wonderful when you say it like
2:08:15that.
2:08:17>> Frank, the thing that's I think is most
2:08:18special about you isn't just the extent
2:08:20of your intelligence. It's your ability
2:08:22to communicate in such a way that makes
2:08:24the complex both interesting and
2:08:27understandable. And that's what I've
2:08:28seen throughout all of your work and all
2:08:29the videos that I was I was told you I
2:08:31was watching your TED talk with my
2:08:32fiance a couple of weeks ago and um it's
2:08:34the closest I've ever come to actually
2:08:36understanding this concept called string
2:08:37theory.
2:08:37>> Oh, great. Well, I'm glad to hear it and
2:08:39thank you very much. Really appreciate
2:08:40that.
2:08:40>> I have a couple of your books here. I
2:08:42think this is the most recent one from
2:08:432020 called Until the End of Time: Mind
2:08:46Matter and Our Search for Meaning in an
2:08:49Evolving Universe. And I think um you
2:08:52know, your work makes makes us feel so
2:08:54many things, but I think maybe the most
2:08:56important feeling it makes us feel is
2:08:57connected.
2:08:58>> Yeah.
2:08:59>> Um and I think we're all searching for
2:09:00connection in an increasingly lonely,
2:09:02isolated, feeling universe. And and so
2:09:04that's why I love to have these
2:09:05conversations on the show. I sometimes
2:09:06joke to the team that diio the C in it
2:09:08stands for like our one of our goals is
2:09:10to make people feel more connected in
2:09:11some capacity and you most certainly do
2:09:13that. So thank you for having that
2:09:15impact on the world. It's a it's a very
2:09:16important increasingly important impact
2:09:18to be having on the world and um it
2:09:20makes us look up not just down I guess
2:09:22and that's a that's a wonderful
2:09:23wonderful thing.
2:09:24>> Well thank you.
2:09:25>> I'm going to link all of your books
2:09:26below so if people do want to continue
2:09:28this conversation they can continue it
2:09:29through all of your books here. Is there
2:09:31anywhere else people can go to support
2:09:32your work or learn more about your work?
2:09:34Where would you direct them? considering
2:09:35World Science Festival, you know, uh
2:09:37world sciencefestestival.com. You'll
2:09:39find all sorts of conversations of the
2:09:41sort that we're talking about here. Uh
2:09:44also, I'm I'm working on a new AI. We're
2:09:46talking a lot about an AI education
2:09:48system where AI will help people
2:09:51understand these ideas better. It should
2:09:53launch sort of in in next year or so.
2:09:56So, keep an eye out for that kind of
2:09:57thing as well.
2:09:58>> Where do people follow you? Uh well, you
2:10:01know, on on Twitter or Instagram, we we
2:10:04post uh semifrequently, but uh more at
2:10:08our YouTube channel, uh World Science
2:10:10Festival.
2:10:10>> And in terms of these books that I have
2:10:12in front of me, I have four of them,
2:10:13different groups of people, which one
2:10:15would you direct them to read?
2:10:17>> Well, my favorite, if you sort of frame
2:10:19it in that flat-footed way, is Until the
2:10:21End of Time because it's the more
2:10:23philosophical and the more the kind of
2:10:26ideas that we spoke about here today.
2:10:28But if you know if you want to hear the
2:10:29hardcore of what string theory is or the
2:10:32new insights in space and time some of
2:10:33the other books are more directed in
2:10:35that way
2:10:36>> until the end of time. Mind matter and
2:10:39our search for meaning in an evolving
2:10:40universe. We have a closing tradition
2:10:42where the last guest leaves a question
2:10:43to the next. The question left for you
2:10:45is what might be worth even more than
2:10:48the thing that matters most to you?
2:10:52Oh, well, I would say the thing that
2:10:54matters most to the people I care most
2:10:57about, you know, the things that matter
2:11:00to my wife and my kids feels much more
2:11:02important than the things that matter to
2:11:04me most because I'm so involved in that
2:11:11relationship, you know. So, that to me
2:11:13is the thing that trumps all else,
2:11:16>> the things that matter more to them.
2:11:18>> Yeah,
2:11:18>> it's a beautiful answer. Wasn't
2:11:20expecting that, but it's very true.
2:11:22Brian Green, thank you so much. It's
2:11:24been an honor.
2:11:25>> My pleasure. Thank you.
2:11:26>> YouTube have this new crazy algorithm
2:11:28where they know exactly what video you
2:11:30would like to watch next based on AI and
2:11:32all of your viewing behavior. And the
2:11:34algorithm says that this video is the
2:11:37perfect video for you. It's different
2:11:39for everybody looking right now. Check
2:11:40this video out and I bet you you might
2:11:42love it.

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This page contains the full transcript of Professor Brian Greene: The Threat of AI, Consciousness & The End of Humanity by The Diary Of A CEO, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 23,009 words across 3,397 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

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Use the transcript to take notes, quote the speaker, build a study guide, generate a summary with ChatGPT or Claude via the YouTube Summary tool, or export it as a timed subtitle file with YouTube to SRT. You can also re-open it in the transcriber to translate the transcript into 100+ languages.

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