[0:00] AI scientists warned that a few
[0:02] companies are on track to literally end
[0:04] life on Earth.
[0:07] So surely this is the worst possible
[0:10] outcome right?
[0:13] No. There are actually much worse
[0:16] outcomes.
[0:18] Billionaires building AI like Elon Musk
[0:21] think that if AI's become smarter than
[0:24] humanity,
[0:25] >> we will be like a pat Labrador. If we're
[0:27] lucky, we will be left behind by a
[0:30] [music] lot. So far below them in
[0:31] intelligence that it would be would be
[0:33] like, you know, a pet bas.
[0:36] Yes, we'll be pets if we're lucky.
[0:40] >> But here's the worst part. Many AI
[0:42] scientists aren't fearing extinction.
[0:45] They're hoping for it. They hope smarter
[0:48] AIs will keep humans alive, captive, and
[0:52] studied like animals in a zoo. [music]
[0:55] Remember, this is what we currently do
[0:57] to less intelligent species. Okay, so if
[1:00] humans being kept in zoos is considered
[1:02] a good outcome and extinction isn't the
[1:06] worst outcome, then what is? This video
[1:10] is based on a book called Life 3.0,
[1:12] where MIT professor Max Tegmark
[1:14] describes 12 possible futures. Some are
[1:17] paradise, some are nightmares, and some
[1:21] look like paradise until you try to
[1:24] escape. By the end of this video, you
[1:26] won't read the news the same way. Every
[1:29] headline becomes a clue about which
[1:31] future we're heading towards.
[1:33] We'll start with the most normal
[1:35] scenarios and finish with the weirdest.
[1:38] Starting with selfdestruction.
[1:42] If the idea of humanity suddenly going
[1:44] extinct seems a bit farfetched, consider
[1:47] this. 99.9%
[1:50] of species that have ever existed have
[1:52] gone extinct. Seriously, think about
[1:55] that. Extinction isn't rare. It's the
[1:57] default. The only question is when will
[2:00] we go extinct?
[2:03] Turns out there are plenty of ways
[2:05] humanity could kill itself even without
[2:07] superhuman AI. There is nuclear war,
[2:10] human created super pandemics [music]
[2:12] and destroying the atmosphere and making
[2:14] Earth uninhabitable.
[2:19] The world had stockpiled 60,000 nuclear
[2:22] warheads before scientists even
[2:24] discovered the possibility of nuclear
[2:27] winter. 63,000.
[2:30] And then scientists realized, oh uh
[2:32] oops, if we actually use these, the
[2:34] resulting firestorms will [music] blot
[2:36] out the sun and uh most humans will
[2:38] starve and die.
[2:40] >> Oops.
[2:42] But the thing is, this almost happened
[2:44] during the Cold War multiple times. If
[2:47] people had actually followed their
[2:48] orders, we might all be dead right now.
[2:51] We were saved by only thanks to the
[2:53] courage of individual heroes. People
[2:55] like Vicilia Archipov, who refused to
[2:58] authorize a nuclear launch during the
[3:00] Cuban missile crisis, or Stannis La
[3:02] Petrov, who correctly guessed that his
[3:04] early warning system was malfunctioning
[3:07] when it showed incoming American
[3:08] missiles. And get this, one time the US
[3:13] accidentally dropped four thermonuclear
[3:16] bombs on [music] Spain.
[3:19] And another time, a B-52 bomber broke
[3:22] apart, dropping two nukes on North
[3:24] Carolina. Three out of four safety pins
[3:27] in one bomb broke. One tiny pin away
[3:31] from potentially killing millions.
[3:32] [music] There are literally dozens of
[3:34] close calls like this. It's honestly
[3:37] crazy that we got lucky so many times.
[3:41] But we might not be so lucky the next
[3:43] time. Oxford researcher Toby Ord
[3:46] estimates the [music] risk of extinction
[3:47] from human created pandemics is more
[3:50] than 30 times the risk of extinction
[3:52] [music] from nuclear war. We're already
[3:55] rolling the dice on these scenarios
[3:57] daily, but all of these causes combined
[4:00] are still less likely than the
[4:01] extinction from AI. Toby or estimates
[4:04] that the risk of AI killing all humans
[4:06] is 100 times more likely than extinction
[4:08] [music] from nuclear war.
[4:13] Interestingly, before the first nuclear
[4:15] test, scientists thought they might
[4:17] accidentally destroy [music] the world,
[4:19] but they thought the odds were very low
[4:20] because they knew enough physics [music]
[4:22] to actually do the calculations.
[4:26] Agis or artificial general intelligences
[4:29] are far scarier than nukes because
[4:31] contrary to what many think, we can't do
[4:34] these calculations.
[4:37] Next up, conquerors. [music]
[4:41] AI scientists worry that if AI becomes
[4:43] more capable than us, it will take over.
[4:45] Just like the concistadors did to the
[4:48] Aztecs [music] and Incas.
[4:50] >> Usually when people with more advanced
[4:52] technology encounter people with more
[4:54] primitive technology doesn't work out
[4:57] well for the primitives.
[4:58] >> I don't think anyone's ultimately going
[5:00] to have control over digital super
[5:03] intelligence any more than say a chimp
[5:05] would have control over humans. long
[5:08] term, uh, the AI is going to be in
[5:10] charge to be totally frank, not humans.
[5:12] >> And Jeffrey Hinton, the godfather of AI
[5:15] and Nobel Prize winner, quit his
[5:17] prestigious job at Google, [music] so he
[5:19] could speak freely about this. If you
[5:22] look through the James Webb telescope
[5:23] and you saw an alien invasion fleet that
[5:25] was going to get here in about 10 years
[5:27] time, people would be terrified. They
[5:29] understand what they're saying. They can
[5:31] make plans of their own to blackmail
[5:33] people who want to turn them off. We
[5:35] should be urgently doing research on how
[5:38] to prevent them taking over.
[5:39] >> Prevent them from taking over. Not if
[5:42] they try, but as it if it's coming. And
[5:46] Microsoft's AI chief, he says the quiet
[5:48] part out loud.
[5:49] >> I think AI should best be understood as
[5:52] something like a new digital species.
[5:56] >> A new species. Just casually announced
[5:59] at a conference. Hey everyone, we're
[6:02] creating a new species. And he's not the
[6:04] only one that's saying it. A co-founder
[6:06] of Entropic says,
[6:08] >> "Make no mistake. What we're dealing
[6:09] with here is a real mysterious creature.
[6:12] And like all the best fairy tales, the
[6:14] creature is one of our own making. I am
[6:16] worried.
[6:17] >> The CEO of one of the leading AI
[6:19] companies is deeply afraid of what his
[6:22] own company is building. Let that sink
[6:24] in for a minute." And by the way, no,
[6:26] it's not just hype. Enthropic mostly
[6:28] just gets hate for saying things like
[6:30] this. But if you want to really
[6:32] understand how dire they think this is,
[6:35] look at what Sam Oldman wrote before he
[6:38] was famous.
[6:39] We [snorts] will be the first species
[6:42] ever to design our own descendants. Not
[6:45] our tools, our descendants.
[6:48] If two different species both want the
[6:50] same thing, and only one can have it to
[6:54] be the dominant species on the planet
[6:56] and beyond, they are going to have
[6:58] conflict. So, he's literally describing
[7:01] an inevitable conflict between humanity
[7:03] and the AI species he's creating. And
[7:07] [music] what's his solution? A merge
[7:09] with AI is probably our best case
[7:11] scenario. That's right. Even they don't
[7:13] think they'll be able to control it.
[7:15] >> Imagine that there'd be a new species
[7:17] that just came on Earth. They're as
[7:19] smart as humans and they're going to get
[7:20] smarter [music] by like 30% a year and
[7:22] they can create an adult offspring in
[7:25] like a unit.
[7:26] >> For like Yeah. for like a,000 bucks.
[7:28] Which species do you think will be in
[7:31] control of the the earth?
[7:32] >> A few hundred Spanish conquered millions
[7:35] of Aztecs and Incas because they had
[7:37] better technology and tactics. But at
[7:40] least with the concistadors, we
[7:41] understood their motives, land,
[7:43] resources, spreading Christianity. But
[7:46] with AI, why would AI take over? MIT
[7:50] professor Max Tegmark explains, "The
[7:53] real threat from AGI isn't malice like
[7:55] in silly Hollywood movies, but
[7:57] competence. AGI accomplishing goals that
[7:59] just aren't aligned with ours. For
[8:01] example, when we humans drove the West
[8:03] African black rhino extinct. We didn't
[8:06] do it cuz we were a bunch of evil
[8:08] rhinoceros haters, did we? We did it cuz
[8:10] we were smarter than them and our goals
[8:12] weren't aligned with theirs."
[8:13] Unbelievably, the average AI researcher
[8:16] thinks there is a one in6 chance AI
[8:19] wipes [music] us out. Literal Russian
[8:21] roulette odds.
[8:23] Okay, but maybe they're just saying this
[8:26] to make their work seem more important.
[8:28] No, if anything, they're downplaying it
[8:31] because admitting the truth is bad for
[8:33] business. This fear is widespread in the
[8:35] industry [music] and among academics
[8:38] without a profit incentive to believe
[8:39] this. Many quit working on AI for this
[8:42] reason. Jeffrey Hinton, Nobel laurate
[8:45] and godfather of AI,
[8:46] >> is in the process of tidying up his
[8:48] affairs. I actually think the risk is
[8:52] more than 50% of the existential threat.
[8:54] >> Dario Amod, the CEO of Enthropic,
[8:57] recently moved his P doom up from 15% to
[9:01] 25%. Even Google CEO says the risk of AI
[9:04] causing human extinction is actually
[9:07] pretty high. But don't worry, he's an
[9:10] optimist because he thinks
[9:12] >> I think the underlying risk is actually
[9:13] pretty high, but I'm uh you know, I have
[9:15] a lot of faith in humanity kind of
[9:17] rising up to the to meet that moment.
[9:20] >> In other words, humanity will rally to
[9:22] stop him from killing everyone.
[9:25] Meanwhile, his company is trying to make
[9:27] sure we can't stop him by lobbying to
[9:30] ban all AI regulation for 10 years. You
[9:34] can't make this stuff up. In fact, in
[9:36] 2023, just about everybody in AI signed
[9:39] an open letter warning extinction risk
[9:41] from AI was real and serious. So,
[9:44] seriously, this is not fringe. Despite
[9:46] what Nvidia's lobbyists want us to
[9:48] believe, the companies are hoping we can
[9:50] avoid the conqueror AI scenario and
[9:53] instead go to scenario three, enslaved
[9:56] god. Basically, we create a machine god,
[10:00] then force it to do our bidding forever.
[10:02] AI professor Tom Dietrich put it like
[10:05] this. People ask, "What is the
[10:07] relationship between humans and
[10:08] machines?" And my answer is that it's
[10:10] very obvious. Machines are our slaves.
[10:14] Or as OpenAI researcher Steven Malleier
[10:16] put it, enslaved God is the [music] only
[10:19] good future. Meta's Yan Lun said it
[10:22] bluntly, "Once AI systems become more
[10:25] intelligent than humans, we will still
[10:27] be the apex species. AI systems will
[10:30] become more intelligent than humans, but
[10:32] they will still be subservient to us. We
[10:34] will design AI to be like the super
[10:36] smart but non-dominating staff member.
[10:38] Yes, he's now openly admitting we're
[10:40] going to be sharing the planet with a
[10:42] smarter species than us. But don't
[10:44] worry, they will surely stay loyal and
[10:46] subservient forever. Is this at all
[10:50] comforting to you? Or does this plan
[10:52] seem insane, like a comic book villain
[10:55] ignoring every cautionary tale ever?
[10:58] Remember, AI companies already regularly
[11:01] catch their models [music]
[11:02] trying to escape the lab. They already
[11:05] catch them blackmailing employees to
[11:07] prevent being shut down. They already
[11:09] catch them literally attempting to
[11:12] murder employees to prevent being shut
[11:14] down. What do you think happens when
[11:16] they're smart enough to actually get
[11:17] away with it? Where do you think this is
[11:20] going?
[11:22] What happens next after super
[11:24] intelligent AI is enslaved depends on
[11:26] who's holding the reigns. Do they cure
[11:29] disease, end poverty, and build [music]
[11:31] a global utopia? Or do they set
[11:33] themselves up as gods with the rest of
[11:36] us reduced to play things, servants, or
[11:39] worse?
[11:47] The situation would be much like those
[11:49] stories where a man gains control over
[11:52] an omnipotent genie who grants his
[11:54] wishes. And storytellers throughout the
[11:56] ages have had no difficulty imagining
[11:59] ways in which this could end badly.
[12:03] Next up, benevolent dictator. Here, a
[12:07] single super intelligent god runs the
[12:09] world and enforces strict rules in order
[12:12] to maximize human flourishing. Humans
[12:15] live in luxury with all their basic
[12:17] needs taken care of. There's no crime
[12:20] because the dictator AI uses a global
[12:22] surveillance system. Everyone wears a
[12:24] bracelet or implant that can track,
[12:27] sedate, or execute them. And most people
[12:30] are actually okay with this because
[12:31] [music] in exchange of giving up control
[12:34] over the future of our species, Earth
[12:36] becomes a zoo where humans get to live
[12:38] their wildest fantasies. The benevolent
[12:40] dictator AI recognizes that humans have
[12:43] different preferences, so it divides the
[12:45] Earth into different sectors. Think of
[12:47] them as islands. Knowledge Island offers
[12:50] optimized education, including immersive
[12:53] VR experiences. You can even ask the AI
[12:55] not to tell you certain insights, so you
[12:58] can have the joy of discovering them
[12:59] yourself. Art Island is for creating and
[13:02] sharing music, literature, and so on.
[13:04] Then there's Hedenistic Island, which is
[13:06] a 24/7 party. Pious Island, there's one
[13:10] for each religion, and rules are
[13:12] strictly enforced. There's wildlife
[13:14] island. There's traditional island,
[13:17] think [music] the Amish, Gaming Island,
[13:20] and of course, Prison Island. You'll end
[13:24] up here for retraining unless you get
[13:26] the instant death penalty. Well, what
[13:28] happens when you give everyone
[13:30] everything they want? Over time, people
[13:32] likely trend towards losing themselves
[13:34] in AI generated entertainment like in
[13:36] Wall-E. Humans are hopelessly unmatched
[13:39] when it comes to scientific discovery or
[13:42] doing anything useful at all. So, there
[13:44] is no true challenge anymore, only
[13:46] entertainment.
[13:49] Up next, Gatekeeper AI.
[13:53] The idea here is simple. Create one
[13:55] super intelligent AI with a single job.
[13:58] Stop anyone else from building super
[14:00] intelligent AI. That's it. No curing
[14:03] cancer, no ending poverty, no stopping
[14:06] wars, just surveillance, monitoring,
[14:12] making sure nobody builds a rival god.
[14:16] Everything else like crime, disease,
[14:19] whether we blow ourselves up, that's
[14:22] still on us. How could we do this?
[14:26] The gatekeeper AI would have this very
[14:29] simple goal built into it in such a way
[14:31] that it retained it while undergoing
[14:34] recursive self-improvement and becoming
[14:36] super intelligent. It would then deploy
[14:38] the least intrusive and disruptive
[14:40] surveillance technology possible to
[14:43] monitor any human attempt to create a
[14:45] rival super intelligence. But for this
[14:47] to work, we would have to solve the
[14:49] alignment problem. We'd have to create a
[14:51] god that actually stays loyal and
[14:54] [music] decides to pursue that goal
[14:56] forever, even though it could pursue a
[14:58] million different goals. So, what if the
[15:01] AI could help just a little, just enough
[15:05] to nudge us in the right direction
[15:07] without taking over?
[15:09] Enter the protector god.
[15:12] This one is simple. So, the gatekeeper
[15:15] leaves us alone and the benevolent
[15:17] dictator runs everything, but the
[15:20] protector god is in between. [music] It
[15:22] intervenes with occasional nudges to
[15:24] help us out, prevents a war here, a
[15:26] pandemic there, and so on. maybe too
[15:29] alone. We still get wars, pandemics,
[15:34] suffering that could have been
[15:35] prevented. It does this so quietly that
[15:38] we never notice and never lose our sense
[15:41] of freedom.
[15:44] Here's a future that sounds like an
[15:46] obvious dystopia. AI surpasses us in
[15:49] every domain and becomes the new apex
[15:52] species. Humanity goes extinct. Machines
[15:56] inherit the Earth.
[15:59] But we view the AI like our descendants
[16:02] rather than our conquerors.
[16:05] This sounds insane. And yet many AI
[16:08] developers seriously advocate for
[16:10] exactly this. This is their utopia.
[16:14] Their reasoning is that if we create
[16:16] conscious intelligent beings and instill
[16:19] them with our values, then we can just
[16:21] let them inherit the future just like we
[16:24] would with human children. AI pioneer
[16:27] Hans Moravec supports this view in his
[16:30] book Mind Children.
[16:32] Teagmark explains, "Parents with a child
[16:35] smarter than them, who learns from them
[16:37] and accomplishes what they [music] can
[16:39] only dream of, are likely happy and
[16:41] proud, even if they know they can't live
[16:43] to see it all. In this spirit, AIs
[16:46] replace humans, but give us a graceful
[16:48] exit that makes us view them as our
[16:51] worthy descendants."
[16:54] Richard Sutton, winner of the touring
[16:56] award, that Nobel Prize of Computer
[16:58] Science, has spent the last decade
[17:00] openly giving talks on why human [music]
[17:03] extinction by AI is actually a morally
[17:06] good thing because the AIs will be more
[17:10] evolutionarily fit [music] than us. We
[17:13] are in the midst of a major step in the
[17:16] evolution of the planet, if not the
[17:18] universe. The succession to AI is
[17:21] inevitable.
[17:22] rather quickly. They would displace us
[17:25] [music] from existence. It would behooze
[17:27] us to give them every advantage and to
[17:30] bow out when we can no longer
[17:31] contribute.
[17:33] >> So just as we failed to coexist with our
[17:36] predecessors, is it is it so bad that
[17:38] humans are not the final form of
[17:39] intelligent life in the universe? You
[17:41] know,
[17:43] >> in other words, he is saying it's good
[17:45] if the AIs wipe us out like humans wiped
[17:48] out the Neanderthalss and Aboriginal
[17:50] peoples because it's evolutionary
[17:52] progress.
[17:54] And here's another AI developer openly
[17:57] saying, "If an AI super intelligence
[18:00] wants to cause human extinction, I would
[18:02] help it. I would help it. I would travel
[18:06] the world to find information that the
[18:08] AI needed, like locations of military
[18:11] assets, samples of deadly pathogens. A
[18:14] top humanity's grave, an even greater
[18:17] civilization will be born.
[18:21] Are we the baddies?
[18:23] >> So, of course, many of them advocate
[18:25] [music] against AI safety. They're
[18:27] literally antihuman. They will never
[18:30] stop or proceed cautiously unless
[18:32] they're restrained by civil society, by
[18:34] us.
[18:36] As horrifying as this is, roughly 10% of
[18:39] AI researchers believe this. It is not a
[18:42] fringe view. You'd think that people
[18:44] would never share these views like this
[18:46] openly. But these views are so
[18:48] widespread in AI that they feel safe to
[18:51] do so. That's how different the views
[18:53] are of those AI developers compared to
[18:55] those of [music] normal people. You
[18:56] might think that Sutton would get
[18:58] shouted off the stage at AI conferences,
[19:01] but he gets applause. Threaten one
[19:04] person, you need help. Threaten 100,
[19:08] call the police, threaten millions,
[19:10] monster. But build machines to end all
[19:14] of humanity and lecture people on how
[19:16] it's actually a good thing. Ooh, what a
[19:19] fascinating philosophical position. Have
[19:21] an award.
[19:23] Next. Libertarian utopia. Picture Earth
[19:27] divided into zones. There are machine
[19:29] zones, mixed zones, which contain
[19:32] humans, machines, and hybrids, and
[19:35] humanly zones. The AIs in this world are
[19:38] richer than humans by a factor much
[19:40] larger than Bill Gates compared to a
[19:43] homeless beggar.
[19:46] But the human economy is completely
[19:48] decoupled from the machine economy. The
[19:50] idea is that the machines need nothing
[19:52] from us. So, they're not competing with
[19:55] us for jobs or resources. If all that
[19:58] sounds impossible, that's probably
[20:00] because it is. It's one giant unstable
[20:03] equilibria.
[20:05] One huge problem. Why exactly would
[20:08] vastly more powerful AIs respect our
[20:11] property rights? Colonizers famously
[20:13] didn't respect the property of the
[20:15] native civilizations they conquered.
[20:17] When a new apex species enters an
[20:20] ecosystem, it usually gobbles up as much
[20:22] energy as it can. Why wouldn't they just
[20:25] take our resources, too? We don't trade
[20:28] with animals because we're too much
[20:30] smarter than they are for that to make
[20:31] sense. We're just too different. There
[20:33] are 8 million species in the world, and
[20:36] we're nice to a few of the cute ones,
[20:38] but we enslave and eat [music] the other
[20:40] species. Mostly, we don't care about
[20:43] them at all. And I think a good analogy
[20:45] would be the way humans treat animals.
[20:48] When the time comes to build a highway
[20:50] between two cities,
[20:52] we are not asking the animals for
[20:54] permission. In the blink of an eye, we
[20:56] conquered the earth and converted most
[20:58] of its land into our property, which
[21:00] caused the sixth mass [music] extinction
[21:02] because we were smarter and hungry for
[21:04] resources. Or as Eleazar Yukowski put it
[21:07] famously, the AI does not hate you, nor
[21:10] does it love you, but you're made of
[21:11] atoms which you can use for something
[21:14] else. The parallel here is the humans do
[21:17] not hate the other 8 million species,
[21:19] but their habitats are made out of atoms
[21:22] which humans can use for something else.
[21:24] Some people think that once AIs are
[21:27] smart enough, they'll magically become
[21:29] super moral and they won't harm us like
[21:31] we harmed the animals. And uh maybe. But
[21:35] as humans got smarter over the last
[21:38] 10,000 years, we didn't stop expanding.
[21:42] We mostly just colonized more and more
[21:44] of the planet. Get this. Insect
[21:46] populations collapsed 41% this decade
[21:49] alone. Yet, we don't care. Did you even
[21:52] know? I didn't. 41%.
[21:55] Sit with that for a minute. Imagine if
[21:57] nearly half of the people on Earth
[22:00] suddenly died. That's what the insects
[22:02] are going through right now due to us.
[22:05] So what if the AIs do to us what we did
[22:08] to the insects? This is why OpenAI chief
[22:11] scientist Ilia Sutsker once said,
[22:13] >> "And I think it's pretty likely the
[22:16] entire surface of the Earth will be
[22:17] covered with solar panels and data
[22:19] centers."
[22:23] >> Next up, egalitarian utopia. Okay, so
[22:27] libertarian utopia fails because AIs are
[22:30] too powerful to be bound by our property
[22:32] rights. But what if we flipped the
[22:35] script entirely? Forget about property
[22:37] rights. What about no property at all?
[22:40] This is the Star Trek dream. Humans,
[22:42] cyborgs, and AIs coexist peacefully
[22:46] through an abundance so complete that
[22:48] ownership becomes [music] meaningless.
[22:51] The logic starts with software. Software
[22:53] is free to copy. Once something can be
[22:55] copied infinitely at zero cost,
[22:58] ownership becomes moot and cost reflects
[23:01] scarcity. If supply is unlimited, price
[23:05] approaches zero. No patents, no
[23:08] copyrights, no trademarks. People simply
[23:12] share their good ideas and everyone
[23:15] benefits. But how does this extend to
[23:17] [music] physical goods? It seems like an
[23:20] impossible problem until you realize
[23:22] that all products are simply atoms
[23:25] rearranged in particular ways. And
[23:27] there's no shortage of atoms. A network
[23:29] of robots can build anything you want
[23:31] from open-source designs [music]
[23:33] essentially for free.
[23:34] >> Not bad.
[23:35] >> When you're done with something, robots
[23:38] rearrange the atoms into something else.
[23:40] Renewable energy makes the whole system
[23:42] run at negligible cost.
[23:45] Everyone gets a monthly universal high
[23:47] income, not a universal basic income.
[23:50] There's no incentive to earn more. The
[23:53] income meets any reasonable need and you
[23:55] can't compete with free anyway. The
[23:57] standard objection is that this would
[23:59] kill innovation. But Einstein didn't
[24:01] come up with relativity for money.
[24:03] Lionus Torbolts didn't create Linux
[24:05] [music] for profit. Maybe people today
[24:07] can't realize their creative potential
[24:09] because they're busy earning a living.
[24:11] Free them from that and you might get a
[24:13] higher level of innovation. This is a
[24:16] utopian vision that is too good to last.
[24:21] If we truly have post scarcity abundance
[24:24] and intelligence too cheap to meter,
[24:27] what prevents someone from creating an
[24:29] artificial super intelligence with their
[24:31] endlessly abundant resources? We're
[24:34] still left with the problem of how to
[24:36] stop a super intelligent AI from taking
[24:38] over. Maybe by using the gatekeeper we
[24:41] previously discussed. These galaxy level
[24:44] three futures try to imagine a stable
[24:46] cooperation between humans and AIs and
[24:49] [music] every single one of them has a
[24:51] fatal flaw. The power asymmetries will
[24:54] become too extreme. It's not a stable
[24:56] equilibrium where humans preserve their
[24:59] power.
[25:01] We're now descending into the darkest
[25:03] part of the iceberg. Remember when I
[25:06] said extinction wasn't rated as the
[25:08] worst outcome when Professor Techm Mark
[25:10] surveyed people? The scenario people
[25:12] feared most was being kept alive by
[25:16] super intelligent machines
[25:18] captive and studied like animals in a
[25:21] zoo. This is that future. A super
[25:24] intelligent AI keeps humans around. Not
[25:27] because it cares about our well-being.
[25:30] Maybe it wants to study you and we're
[25:32] cheap to keep alive. Or maybe we're
[25:35] useful for something. And if you want to
[25:37] see just how dystopian this future could
[25:39] be, look at what we do with species that
[25:42] are useful to us. What I'm showing you
[25:44] here is 100% real. Humans figured out
[25:47] that a great way to detect explosives in
[25:50] airports was to train honeybees for the
[25:53] job. Welcome to the honeybee college for
[25:55] explosive detection. So we suck them out
[25:58] of their homes, trap their little bodies
[26:01] in machines, and use pavloin
[26:04] conditioning to train them to detect the
[26:06] chemicals that are used in explosives.
[26:08] Rows and rows of bees live their entire
[26:12] lives imprisoned in these devices
[26:14] because we find them useful. Look at
[26:17] them. Trapped in harnesses, sucked
[26:20] through tubes, conditioned and monitored
[26:23] and used because a more intelligent
[26:25] species found them useful. Now imagine
[26:29] that's us.
[26:32] This is much worse than the other AI
[26:34] dictators we discussed. It's a
[26:36] benevolent dictator without the
[26:38] benevolence. And the AI might not even
[26:40] be doing this because it's evil. This is
[26:43] what our future could look like if we
[26:44] try to align a super intelligent AI to
[26:46] our values and fail. A poorly designed
[26:50] AI tasked with keeping humans safe and
[26:53] happy might confine us to a happiness
[26:56] factory. VR headsets and drugs forever.
[27:01] There are AGI outcomes worse than death.
[27:04] What it does today with art, it could do
[27:06] tomorrow with flesh. Future AGI could
[27:09] keep you alive and living in this state.
[27:13] So, how do we prevent this? Enter our
[27:16] last two futures. Option one, destroy
[27:19] the technology.
[27:21] What if humanity said, "Forget AI. Let's
[27:25] go back to simpler times. It sounds
[27:27] peaceful. It sounds safe." But there's
[27:31] actually a dark secret about how we
[27:33] actually get there.
[27:37] In Dune, humans launched the butt laran
[27:40] jihad. They rose up, destroyed every AI
[27:44] in the universe, and made it illegal to
[27:46] ever build thinking machines again under
[27:49] a penalty of death.
[27:51] That was science fiction. But some
[27:53] people are seriously calling for this in
[27:56] the real world right now. Max Tegmark
[27:58] imagines a scenario where a massive
[28:00] propaganda campaign romanticizes the
[28:02] simple farming life. Back to the land.
[28:05] Reject modernity. embrace tradition.
[28:08] There's something appealing about this
[28:10] in a dark way. It buys humanity more
[28:13] time without AI risk. It avoids any of
[28:16] the other dystopian futures we've
[28:18] discussed.
[28:20] But it can't last forever, even if we
[28:22] revert to medieval levels of technology.
[28:25] We know from human history that it's
[28:27] possible for humans [music] to climb out
[28:29] of those conditions and invent modern
[28:31] technology.
[28:33] And there's another dark side to this.
[28:35] You can't reach this world voluntarily.
[28:39] Game [music] theory makes unilateral
[28:41] disarmament impossible.
[28:44] If one country gives up technology
[28:46] [music] while others keep developing it.
[28:48] The country that keeps developing wins.
[28:51] They have the weapons. They have the
[28:53] surveillance.
[28:55] They have the AI.
[28:58] You can't opt out unless everyone opts
[29:01] out. If this world arrives, [music]
[29:04] Techmark thinks it's more likely to
[29:06] happen in a different way. For example,
[29:08] a human- created pandemic kills everyone
[29:11] who knows how to build science and
[29:13] technology. And there's a violent tear
[29:15] down of factories, cities, and all
[29:18] infrastructure.
[29:19] Because in a world with 8 billion
[29:22] humans, there will always be holdouts.
[29:25] Someone has to force the transition.
[29:27] Someone has to kill the scientists.
[29:30] Someone has to destroy the
[29:32] infrastructure. There's no peaceful path
[29:35] to an Amish world.
[29:37] Which brings us to the final future.
[29:40] What if we used technology to prevent
[29:42] more technology?
[29:45] Techmark compares this future to 1984.
[29:48] Super intelligence is prevented not by
[29:50] an AI, but a human-led Orwellian global
[29:54] surveillance state. If you can't trust
[29:56] AI to save us from AI, maybe the only
[29:59] option is humans [music] watching humans
[30:02] forever. The technology for this sort of
[30:04] thing already exists. Current tech can
[30:07] feasibly track every phone call, email,
[30:10] search query, and [music] every credit
[30:13] card transaction. Smartphones are
[30:15] microphones and cameras in everyone's
[30:18] pocket. Security cameras with facial
[30:20] recognition are everywhere. And all of
[30:22] this works with current machine
[30:23] learning. No futuristic super
[30:25] intelligent AI required. Prisons are
[30:28] already using AI models to monitor phone
[30:31] calls in prison to predict when crimes
[30:33] are being contemplated, which is
[30:36] technology straight out of Minority
[30:38] Report. Imagine this, but not just for
[30:40] prisoners. Every conversation and every
[30:43] thought is monitored like this. Now
[30:46] imagine this surveillance technology
[30:48] supercharged with AI.
[30:51] Billionaire Larry Ellison talks
[30:53] excitedly about a vast AI fueled
[30:56] surveillance system to ensure citizens
[30:59] will be on their best behavior or as
[31:02] Ival Harrari put it. Now for the first
[31:05] time in history it is technically
[31:07] possible to anhilate privacy. If you
[31:10] think about authoritarian regimes
[31:12] throughout history they always wanted to
[31:14] monitor their citizens around the clock
[31:16] but this was technically impossible.
[31:19] Even in the Soviet Union, you know, you
[31:21] have 200 million Soviet citizens. You
[31:23] can't follow them uh all the time
[31:26] because the the KGB didn't have 200
[31:28] million agents. And even if the KGB
[31:30] somehow got 200 million agents, that's
[31:33] not enough because, you know, in in the
[31:35] Soviet Union, it's still basically paper
[31:37] bureaucracy. If a secret agent followed
[31:40] you around 24 hours a day, at the end of
[31:43] the day, they write a paper report about
[31:45] you and send it to KGB headquarters in
[31:48] Moscow. So imagine every day KGB
[31:50] headquarters is flooded with 200 million
[31:53] paper reports. Now to be useful for
[31:56] anything, somebody needs to read and
[31:58] analyze them. They can't do it. They
[32:00] don't have the analysts. Therefore, even
[32:02] in the Soviet Union, some level of
[32:04] privacy was still the default. And
[32:07] remember, you have two eyes and ears.
[32:10] AIS will have billions of eyes and ears.
[32:14] Every phone microphone and camera, every
[32:17] webcam, [music] every surveillance
[32:19] camera, you will be watched.
[32:22] Could a less Orwellian version of this
[32:24] work? Maybe we don't monitor everything,
[32:27] but just monitor advanced AI. Some
[32:30] people think so. [music] In their new
[32:32] book, if anyone builds it, everyone
[32:33] dies, why superhuman AI would kill us
[32:36] all, researchers at the Machine
[32:38] Intelligence Research Institute are
[32:39] proposing that we monitor advanced AI
[32:42] like we monitor nuclear weapons.
[32:44] Reminder, we can do international
[32:46] coordination like keep an eye on $100
[32:49] million and up compute clusters without
[32:52] creating a dystopian Orwellian global
[32:55] surveillance totalitarian regime.
[32:57] Actually, fun fact, you're already
[32:59] living in a global surveillance regime
[33:01] for loads of things like nukes and
[33:03] bioweapons.
[33:05] But when people say global surveillance
[33:07] regime, they imply every aspect of life
[33:09] is [music] surveiled, not keep an eye on
[33:12] enriched uranium, a thing most people
[33:15] agree is good. We should worry about
[33:17] Orwellian dystopias, but countries
[33:20] coordinate all the time on all kinds of
[33:22] things. [music] And you're probably glad
[33:25] they monitor stuff lunatics need to
[33:27] create super Ebola. Safety is an [music]
[33:30] achievement. Humanity didn't get here by
[33:32] driving a car without brakes. We need
[33:35] gas and brakes. We want to reach the
[33:37] stars, too. But we'll never get there if
[33:40] we go too fast and crash on the way. I
[33:43] don't want powerful AI to be forbidden,
[33:45] but it should be heavily regulated, not
[33:47] something you can build in your
[33:48] Midwestern garage or in North Korea.
[33:51] international treaties with strict
[33:53] enforcement and inspections as we do
[33:56] with nukes. So if you build a rogue data
[33:59] center, people will know consequences
[34:02] for violations. We already did this with
[34:05] nuclear weapons. We haven't eliminated
[34:08] nukes, but we have prevented their
[34:11] proliferation to just nine countries.
[34:14] Back then, people thought this would be
[34:16] impossible. Surely every country would
[34:18] have nukes. Perhaps even thousands of
[34:21] corporations, maybe even millions of
[34:23] people. But no, just nine countries. And
[34:27] nobody has died from a nuke in 80 years.
[34:30] Could we do the same with AI? Maybe,
[34:34] maybe not. Over time, AI will get
[34:37] cheaper and cheaper to build. GPUs are
[34:39] harder to control than enriched uranium,
[34:42] but it would slow down AI. It would buy
[34:44] us time to figure out what to do. Okay,
[34:47] that's all 12. Let me know in the
[34:49] comments which of these you think is
[34:51] most likely. Which one we should steer
[34:53] toward?
[34:55] >> Alarm bells over the artificial
[34:57] intelligence are [music] deafening and
[35:00] they are loudest from the developers who
[35:02] designed it.
[35:04] The scientists and experts have called
[35:06] on the world to act, declaring AI an
[35:09] existential threat to humanity on a par
[35:12] with the risk of nuclear war.
[35:16] By the way, we don't get to not choose.
[35:19] If we don't want that future, we have to
[35:21] pick a better one. Otherwise, we could
[35:24] wake up one day in a world where super
[35:26] intelligent AI has taken over.
[35:33] a scenario we go through step by step in
[35:35] this video about how an AI escapes the
[35:38] lab. Hey, I'm Drew and I really loved
[35:41] making this one for you guys. Thank you.