The Age of Hyper Acceleration: AI, AGI & Beyond!
Josh:
The first person to break down and like reverse engineer the first protein,
Josh:
it took him 12 years to do. And he took this protein and he crystallized and
Josh:
he shot it with x-rays. And then he actually used like a ruler and pencil to
Josh:
like connect them together and kind of reverse engineer this.
Josh:
And then over the course of the next 60 or so years, we were able to finally
Josh:
discover 150,000. And now because of AI, we've just discovered 250 million.
David:
150,000 to 250 million, quite a different number.
Josh:
And that $250 million was only over the course of like the last two years and
Josh:
change. It was very quick.
Josh:
Okay, so David, there's this quote by Steve Jobs that I love that says,
Josh:
everything around us that we call life is made up by people no smarter than
Josh:
we are. And if you think about it, it's true. Like the clothes on our back,
Josh:
everything around us, no one smarter than us has ever made anything that we have here.
Josh:
And the same is true if we go back like 40,000 years to cavemen.
Josh:
We're not really even much smarter than they were. We have the same brain size,
Josh:
roughly same cognitive ability.
Josh:
We benefit, though, from the collective accumulation of knowledge over time.
Josh:
So it's like the snowball where theirs was very small, but over time it's kind
Josh:
of rolled down this hill faster and faster and it's grown and now we benefit
Josh:
from this collective knowledge but we're not actually smarter
Josh:
so the question i think we want to answer in this podcast and the really interesting
Josh:
question is like what happens to the world around us when people are actually
Josh:
smarter than we are like what happens when they're 10 smarter 20 100 a thousand percent smarter
Josh:
and we could ask that question because this new thing called agi which is artificial
Josh:
general intelligence it kind of has this fuzzy explanation this fuzzy definition.
Josh:
My definition of it is like a form of intelligence that is smarter than a human
Josh:
across pretty much every medium.
Josh:
And the initial expectations from experts were 2040s, 2050s,
Josh:
2060s. But the reality now is that we are months away from this intelligence instead of decades.
Josh:
So it's like, how crazy is this world about to be when everything around us
Josh:
is actually made up of people that are much, much smarter than we are.
David:
And let's back up with this. So I think you're setting this foundation of we've
David:
humans have always been on this exponential growth curve because we have capable
David:
brains that's why we're humans and we have been like
David:
building technologies building tools we created the wheel and then everyone
David:
had the wheel and then we could create like the next technology after that,
David:
on top of the foundation of having the wheel and then we created you know.
David:
Plumbing, agriculture, all these technologies got layered onto each other.
David:
And that's where we have this notion of like 2% growth year over year and 2%
David:
growth does compound like that is a that is an exponential growth.
David:
If you're growing 2% every single year, you are growing up an exponential.
David:
But I think what you're what you're doing, what you're setting us up for this
David:
episode, Josh, is you're.
David:
Calling for an inflection point, a change in that growth curve,
David:
because something different is happening where previously we have just been
David:
like layering technologies on each other. And humanity has been,
David:
you know, accelerating.
David:
Once we got the internet, we are going, we're going a lot faster because we
David:
somehow filled in all the gaps between, you know, building the wheel and having the internet.
David:
And we are layering all of our human advances on top of those previous technologies.
David:
But you're saying that this is different.
David:
Like in addition to all of that compounding growth curve, we are getting this
David:
new technology that is materially changing the rate of growth because
David:
where previously all of the intelligence of humans who created the wheel to
David:
create the internet where it was about the same, like we were all running on the same wetware.
David:
Our brains were about the same level of computational capacity.
David:
And everyone has been like able to become about the same level of smartness
David:
about each other. That's what you're saying is like the history.
David:
That's that's history up to today.
David:
And you're saying today is different. Now it's different. That's what you're saying.
Josh:
This time it's it's different and it actually is different. And I have the chart
Josh:
that I pulled up on the screen that I'll try to describe to people,
Josh:
which is the chart of human progress in relation to time over a long period of time.
Josh:
And it mostly looks like a fairly flat chart, except there is this like slight
Josh:
incline that starts to grow slightly exponentially about 60 years ago.
Josh:
And that's when the invention of Moore's law happened. So This was a big moment
Josh:
for us where we had transistors, and transistors led to computers,
Josh:
and computers led to a whole bunch of technology that accelerated things pretty
Josh:
quick. We have now this steeper ramp-up.
Josh:
Then today, things change. The reason I say this time it's different is because
Josh:
we have this new law called Quang's Law. It's loosely debated on how accurate
Josh:
it is, but it is basically the speed of training a cluster is...
Josh:
It improves 25-fold over every five years. And Moore's law was that the speed
Josh:
of the amount of transistors on a chip doubles every 24 months.
Josh:
So this is a 5x increase in Moore's law that initially started this growth trajectory.
Josh:
And that's why I think the chart will start to look like this.
Josh:
And it's really hard to, for the people that are listening, it's basically vertical.
Josh:
The line goes straight up.
David:
It's an exponential curve with a pretty strong kink in it that it's still curving
David:
upwards, but it goes up much faster, much sooner.
Josh:
Yes. And the idea is that like this is going to get pretty fast because we're
Josh:
entering the age of hyper acceleration.
Josh:
And the reason for that is because, like we said, everything has been built
Josh:
on this wetware that is like pretty dumb. Like we're smart, but we are only
Josh:
so smart relative to what's coming.
Josh:
Now, since we're able to accelerate five times faster than we were with Moore's
Josh:
Law in terms of training this new form of intelligence, there's going to be
Josh:
a lot of weird and wacky things that start to happen really,
Josh:
really quickly. And we're kind of seeing this.
Josh:
It's similar to COVID where like humans are very durable and very malleable
Josh:
and we're good at getting over trauma. So you can kind of like mute out your
Josh:
emotional bans to deal with this stuff. But if you just look at what happened in the last week...
Josh:
We were able to give gene therapy to a blind Irishman. We had another one that treats babies.
David:
Gene therapy to a blind Irishman. What does that mean? What happened?
Josh:
So we can inject these new forms of genes into a person who's blind and give them eyesight back.
David:
We made a blind person see again last week.
Josh:
See again, yes. And that's just through gene therapy. That's not through neural interfaces.
David:
We fixed blindness in one individual.
Josh:
In one individual, just like last week. And then there was another breakthrough
Josh:
With Arc Evo 2 DNA sequencing model.
Josh:
So there's this really interesting thing that's happened with DNA.
Josh:
And we won't go too deep, but basically, if you can reverse engineer a protein
Josh:
and rebuild it, you can create all these new forms of technology.
Josh:
You can solve forms of cancer. You can cure forms of Alzheimer's.
Josh:
We discovered 250 million of those. When over the past 60 years,
Josh:
we've only discovered 150,000. And the first person, it took him 12 years just to discover one.
Josh:
So we now have this like crazy slew of technology that was just released last week.
Josh:
Google AI has a co-scientist that accelerates the development of science.
Josh:
You can query 100 PhD students worth of compute for about like 10 cents in 10 minutes.
Josh:
Microsoft has a quantum, topological quantum chip.
Josh:
We have all these new humanoid figures. Croc 3 has a new AI model.
Josh:
There's all these new machine learning models that are frontier models.
Josh:
It's like accelerating very, very quickly. And every week there's something new.
Josh:
Just yesterday, for the people that remember the DeepSeek R1 model that broke
Josh:
Wall Street, that came out only two months ago.
Josh:
Yesterday, Alibaba released QWQ,
Josh:
which is 20 times more efficient than DeepSeek R1 and slightly better.
Josh:
So already, the thing that broke Wall Street has been broken 20-fold in a matter
Josh:
of two months. So things are going super fast.
Josh:
We're developing everything super fast. And that's because it's all kind of
Josh:
downstream of intelligence, is the smarter we are as people,
Josh:
the more complicated problems we can solve, and the faster we can solve them
Josh:
and the faster we can accelerate to these new problems worth solving.
David:
Let's back up and define Moore's law and extrapolate that into Huang's law.
David:
Once again, Moore's law, my understanding of Moore's law was it was just really
David:
an extrapolation on the computational power of a CPU, of a computer, of a computer chip.
David:
And the idea here is that we are just there's this trend line around how fast
David:
a chip can be. And it's and I think you defined it as two X's every two years.
David:
And Moore's law has been in effect for decades, many, many decades.
David:
My understanding of it is like it runs up against a wall based off of like this,
David:
thickness of silicon down to the nanometer level and so we eventually run out
David:
of slack to grow in Moore's law and I thought we are I thought we like my last
David:
understanding of Moore's law is we are approaching that limit
David:
maybe you can update me on that but then now we in addition to that we also have Huang's law which,
David:
I don't think is it's not apples to apples it's more apples to oranges but it's
David:
of the same spirit where it is talking about the computational power as it relates to,
David:
to, I mean, I'm guessing Huang is in Jensen Huang from NVIDIA.
David:
Yeah, so it's the computational power of clusters that is largely computing AI stuff.
David:
Maybe you can fill in the gap of all the gaps that I just left for our listeners.
Josh:
Yeah, so Moore's Law is the amount of transistors on a chip doubles every two years.
Josh:
That is roughly like, you could think of it as the computer processor,
Josh:
the CPU, the brain of a computer doubles in speed every two years.
Josh:
Huang's Law is slightly different. Apples to oranges, largely debated.
Josh:
But Huang's law is every five years, we get a 25x improvement in training capability
Josh:
for GPUs, which means we can train these LLMs, these AI models,
Josh:
25 times faster every five years.
Josh:
And Moore's law is running into this interesting law where it's actually constrained
Josh:
by physics now, where the particles have gotten so small that we're not quite
Josh:
able to fit many on there without these new innovations.
Josh:
And I think that's kind of why you're seeing things start to stagnate slightly,
Josh:
but equally an opposite takeoff in the world of AI.
Josh:
It's not certain that we won't hit a wall very quickly with Wang's Law as well,
Josh:
with GPU training clusters, but there's this other side of it with software.
Josh:
And the software can actually compensate for the lack of hardware in the case
Josh:
that this ever does degrade.
Josh:
What we just spoke about recently with DeepSeq and QWQ is they were able to
Josh:
take these giant foundational models that took hundreds of thousands of GPU
Josh:
clustered together, tons of energy, tons of compute, and they were able to distill
Josh:
them in a model that can actually run on a desktop computer.
Josh:
And that improvement is like a thousandfold improvement. And that happens on
Josh:
the software side of things.
Josh:
So there's these two pillars that are advancing really quickly.
Josh:
There's the software stack and there's the hardware stack, and both of them are going exponential.
Josh:
So even if Hwang's Law is half of what he says it is, or half of what is expected,
Josh:
the opposite forces that are happening in the software field will continue to
Josh:
accelerate that even faster. So we have these two tailwinds,
Josh:
I'm both going super quick.
David:
Okay, so Huang's Law is a 25x of computational efficiency every five years,
David:
which is pretty damn steep, much deeper than Moore's Law.
David:
But then you also gave us the 20x performance or efficiency increase between
David:
the Alibaba model that got released earlier this week versus the DeepSeq R1
David:
model that got released two months ago.
David:
So we're layering a 25x every five years of computational power.
David:
You're multiplying that with what we are seeing in the efficiency gains of the
David:
highly competitive AI Lab model releases.
David:
And that's software, right? And I love this metaphor. I use it many,
David:
many times on Banklist. There's two ways to scale.
David:
You can just have better hardware. Your Xbox 360 can upgrade to an Xbox One.
David:
You have a better chip in there. The hardware is better. But then also the software
David:
devs, the devs writing the games can write more efficient code.
David:
It can use the same hardware more efficiently, create more beautiful games.
David:
There's two ways to do this. And we're seeing both happen.
David:
Like at these crazy scales, a 20x increase in efficiency for a model in two months is insane.
David:
That growth curve can't be sustainable. I suspect it like tapers out by the end of this year.
David:
And I think it just illustrates that there's a lot of slack in the AI model,
David:
development race. There's like a lot of optimizations to be had.
David:
But there's still the fact that we are 20xing in efficiency in two months in
David:
terms of like one model release to the next just tells me that there's so much.
David:
Much optimizations to be done here. And so we actually don't really know where
David:
the efficiency gains happens on the software side of things.
Josh:
Also, a part of this to take into account is we are building,
Josh:
these efficiency gains are happening, and they're compounding because of the
Josh:
output of the efficiency gains.
Josh:
So now, because we have smarter models to help us, we are able to build even
Josh:
more efficiencies, even more improvements.
Josh:
And that will kind of, hopefully, the hope is that it will increase systematically,
Josh:
whereas we build these smarter models, they can help us create more efficiency,
Josh:
help us design more efficient chips, and it will be the self-fulfilling acceleration curve.
David:
The models help us design better hardware, the hardware gets better,
David:
and we can run more powerful models, and then the models can help us design more hardware.
David:
And it kind of just naturally converges at the theoretical optimal,
David:
the optimization point extremely fast.
Josh:
Exactly. Yes. And as we accelerate faster, there will be even more improvements
Josh:
to the world of atoms instead of just bits.
Josh:
So now it can teach us how to build these machines to build this new computer,
Josh:
to build this new chip that will make things even faster. So it's kind of this
Josh:
like self-fulfilling cycle up to wherever we end up going.
David:
OK, and so that's why you're illustrating this kink here again on the screen
David:
that we're showing where there's this been this compounding growth of humans
David:
and the technology that we've had ever since we invented the concept of technology
David:
and innovation and science.
David:
And there's been just, you know, call it 2% growth year over year over year.
David:
We've been on an exponential growth curve. It's been a modest 2%.
David:
But this is why you're saying that there is a kink here and we are entering
David:
the age of hyperacceleration where, sure, we've had more useful tools.
David:
We've invented, you know, power tools for building better homes.
David:
We've invented computers and that really helped accelerate things.
David:
But nowhere have we actually cheapened the cost of intelligence.
David:
And the idea here, I think we, like, right now, doing, like,
David:
ChatGPT and OpenAI, they're spending a ton of money on just running inference,
David:
running people's queries into ChatGPT, and that costs a bunch of money.
David:
But also, the amount of inference that they're doing is also quite high.
David:
And I think what you're saying here is...
David:
Basically, we are collapsing the cost of intelligence from being expensive,
David:
which is like you need to produce a whole entire human.
David:
You need to put them through school. You need to put them through college.
David:
You need to put them through a PhD program.
David:
That takes a lot of time. That takes a lot of energy. That's very costly.
David:
And that was the previous model. And now all of that intelligence is becoming
David:
inside of the span of five years, ten years. It's becoming free.
David:
Intelligence is like phd phd level intelligence will be free in a few short
David:
years that's is that what you're saying.
Josh:
Yeah totally and that was kind of the essence of why i created this like little
Josh:
visual is because it was mostly the intention of exploring the downstream effects
Josh:
of intelligence as the price rapidly decreases to zero because everything again
Josh:
everything around us is it requires intelligence to make but what happens if
Josh:
that intelligence becomes so cheap that it is readily accessible and 10 times
Josh:
smarter than we are by anyone in the world.
Josh:
Like it just, it makes you think a lot about the productive output that we can
Josh:
unlock. And that was the essence for the very steep curve.
David:
I see that there's two sides of this conversation. There is,
David:
there's so much optimizations left to be done on the hardware side.
David:
There's so much optimizations, way more optimizations left to be done on the AI model side.
David:
These things are going to get so much more efficient intelligence.
David:
The cost of intelligence is going to drop to zero. There's so much optimizations
David:
to be done on just like the mere intelligence side of the equation.
David:
But that's the producing intelligence. And then there's the application of intelligence.
David:
And that's where you went through some of this list here. And you talked about
David:
the gene therapy giving a blind man sight for the first time.
David:
Or like Google AI co-scientists literally just accelerating science broadly.
David:
And so while we have the AI lab wars...
David:
Reducing the cost of intelligence down to zero. We are still like on the in
David:
the very early days of actually seeing the application of that intelligence.
David:
And I think also something that you're saying is like, well,
David:
actually, some people are applying this and they're applying it into fields,
David:
all across science, all across academia, all across knowledge.
David:
And it's kind of like slipping under the radar. But if you pay attention,
David:
you'll kind of notice that we're doing some pretty crazy things really quickly.
Josh:
Yes, that's absolutely right. One of the more interesting ones that i do want
Josh:
to highlight here because i think it's so cool is the dna sequencing and the
Josh:
protein sequencing um that is like a core foundational part of biology and
Josh:
the first person to discover the to break down and like reverse engineer the
Josh:
first protein it took him 12 years to do and he he took this protein and he
Josh:
crystallized and he shot it with x-rays and then he actually used like a ruler
Josh:
and pencil to like connect them together and kind of reverse engineer this
Josh:
and then over the course of the next 60 or so years
Josh:
we were able to finally discover 150,000.
Josh:
And now, because of AI, we've just discovered 250 million.
David:
150,000 to 250 million. Quite a different number.
Josh:
And that 250 million was only over the course of like the last two years and
Josh:
change. It was very quick.
Josh:
And this was also, relatively speaking, two years ago, it was very early in the AI cycle.
Josh:
So by using this AI, we were able to unlock this entire foundational core of biology.
Josh:
And when you could break down proteins to the simplest form,
Josh:
it unlocks a lot of really cool innovation. So like I mentioned earlier,
Josh:
Alzheimer's is a direct result of a DNA misfolding or a protein misfolding.
Josh:
Same with a lot of forms of cancer.
Josh:
But there's also these other applications outside of just biology that...
Josh:
Where you can form a protein structure that eats plastic and you could just send it out into an ocean
Josh:
and design it so that it doesn't harm the ecosystem but can it can just eat
Josh:
a lot of plastic and convert it into something useful
Josh:
or you could design these new materials that are much more heat resistant like
Josh:
a like a rubber tire that never popped that lasts forever um material science that starts to expand
Josh:
and there's this whole world of biology that we've just unlocked that now we
Josh:
can manipulate and mutate for the first time because we understand it.
Josh:
So it's starting to give us these really like foundational basis of knowledge
Josh:
of biology that now we can take and we can use and we can apply to the real
Josh:
world. And that unlocks an entirely new industry.
David:
I think this is the subject that you're talking about. It's called synthetic biology.
David:
At least that's how I understand it. And maybe the best way to explain this
David:
to listeners is the way a computer works, like going back to a simple Turing
David:
machine is you have this tape and you have this tape of like serial numbers.
David:
It all goes down to like ones and zeros. But like the way a computer works is
David:
it processes the string of digits serially.
David:
And then we just make faster computers to do these things faster.
David:
And then we also have multiple cores to do them in parallel.
David:
But ultimately, at the end of the day, it boils down to a serial string of characters,
David:
a serial string of bits that a computer processes.
David:
And DNA is that same kind of structure. It is a serial chain of proteins with
David:
more combinations than just at ones and zeros.
David:
It has like the ATGE DNAs, but ultimately it's just a serial,
David:
like a string of information.
David:
And it's kind of like the, it's the organic code for biology.
David:
And there's this whole like universe out there where like, okay,
David:
if we figure out how to string the correct order of proteins together,
David:
we can make some really cool things.
David:
And I think what you're doing here, Josh, is you are combining our like intelligence,
David:
complete and comprehensive intelligence onto like how we can correctly order
David:
biology to create any sort of.
David:
Organic structure that can do almost anything that we want. We can cure blindness.
David:
We can produce this organism that consumes plastic, that helps fight climate change, whatever.
David:
And because it's biology, the actual applications are pretty boundless.
David:
They can kind of touch anything.
David:
And that is just synthetic biology. There's still like all the other subjects
David:
that we have to get into, which is like rocketry, like life on Mars,
David:
anything else, like any other science that any listener wants to imagine in their head.
David:
And so this is why you're saying we're entering the age of hyperacceleration
David:
because every single industry is about to hyperaccelerate.
Josh:
Yes. Everything around us that was made by us, if we were smarter, can be improved.
Josh:
So you will see these improvements across the board. Another interesting one
Josh:
about the synthetic biology too is the entire food supply chain and how we make
Josh:
food, how we create food, how food gets genetically modified over time.
Josh:
All of that changes too. So There's so many of these different areas that stand
Josh:
to change so much once we understand them better and we know how to refine them
Josh:
better to get better outputs.
David:
Okay, so between the eras of AI labs becoming hyper-efficient,
David:
creating massive intelligence, dropping the cost of intelligence to zero,
David:
and then before we get to the actual changes in the industries that are actually
David:
where the rubber meets the pavement, we're going to have kind of like the investment
David:
layer or the economics layer. This is going to change the economics of everything.
David:
Investors are going to reallocate capital. The cost of things are going to change
David:
and fluctuate, I think, go down.
David:
Where do you think this, before we actually talk about, and talking about all
David:
the possible ways that this impacts us is literally- We'd be here forever.
David:
We'd be here forever. We'd just be talking about the future of the universe.
David:
So let's talk about what are the economies of this? What was the economic impact
David:
of this in the short term?
Josh:
It probably leads to some sort of rapid deflation in the type of industries that it affects.
Josh:
So just to define deflation versus inflation, a lot of people know what inflation
Josh:
is. It's just kind of like the price of goods and services slowly increasing
Josh:
over time. They're very familiar. They see that in the grocery store.
Josh:
We see that gas stations, everything you buy has slowly increased over time.
Josh:
And the reasoning for that is there's this really great contrarian take by Peter
Josh:
Thiel that I love, where he says that we haven't actually accelerated a whole
Josh:
lot outside of the world of technology.
Josh:
Meaning if you took your grandma and you just kind of froze her in time 50 years
Josh:
ago and then dropped her into your living room today, not much would look very different.
Josh:
If I look out the window, I'm looking at New York City, I'm looking at bridges
Josh:
and buildings, and those have all been there for the last 50 years.
Josh:
The roads, the infrastructure.
David:
The cars look different, but they're still cars.
Josh:
They look different, but they still run on the same fuel. They still have the
Josh:
same materials that they're built with.
Josh:
They just have computers inside and the computers make them a little bit smarter.
Josh:
But outside of the world of computers, we haven't actually accelerated very quickly.
Josh:
So we haven't had this like gross overproduction surplus of things that we need
Josh:
that can lower the price. So we generally have seen inflation there,
Josh:
but the place where we have seen deflation is in technology.
Josh:
And that TV on the wall will look like magic to her. And the phone in your pocket
Josh:
where you can reach anything in the world instantly at your fingertips, that seems like magic.
Josh:
And the cost of that has come so low that now it's accessible to basically anyone.
Josh:
So that is deflation. That's where we see it in technology. And it's probably
Josh:
why we haven't seen it in many other industries outside of it.
Josh:
But once we're able to apply this new intelligence to these new industries to
Josh:
get that surplus, hopefully the downstream effects of that are more abundance,
Josh:
more surplus, and a lower cost of goods, a higher quality of living.
Josh:
I think we'll start to see that once we start to manufacture more in the world
Josh:
of atoms versus bits, which is digital.
David:
And that, Bankless Nation, is where we are going to take this conversation next.
David:
Welcome to Bankless, where we explore the frontier of internet finance and internet
David:
money, and now the future of Adams 2.
David:
This is David Hoffman. I'm joined here once again with our very own Josh Kale.
David:
Josh, welcome back to Bankless, your very own podcast.
Josh:
Thank you. Oh, it's great to be here again. I'm so grateful that I have someone
Josh:
who is interested in hearing me talk about this, because this is what I think
Josh:
about all the time. So thank you for having me again. It's a pleasure.
David:
Yeah, I really enjoyed the last conversation that we did. If this is your first
David:
time listening to Josh, we did one other podcast, the one last week,
David:
really just kind of doing the landscape of the AI arms race in a very like zoomed
David:
out way where like, sure, it's fun to talk about like the competitiveness between
David:
these different AI labs.
David:
But I think Josh really synthesizes information in this very big way.
David:
And that's what we want to do here again on this episode.
David:
So we're going to continue this episode. But first, we're going to talk to some
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Visit self.xyz and follow Self Protocol on X. Okay, Josh, with the arrival of AI.
David:
People like to talk about the job market because there's that classic line of
David:
AI is going to come take my job.
David:
And then there's the usual rebuttal to that is, well, AI might take your job,
David:
but the more likely thing is that it's actually going to be somebody who's using
David:
AI better than you is going to take your job, not strictly AI.
David:
And then there's also the additional rebuttal to that. Well,
David:
it's like, yes, there might be some job destruction, but it's a creative destruction.
David:
And there's going to be new jobs that are created.
David:
You know, think about when the internet came and all the news,
David:
we were worried about newspapers just going out of business,
David:
which, you know, definitely happened. Although, you know, there are still,
David:
you know, the Wall Street Journal, there's still the New York Times.
David:
And so there was some like elimination of jobs as a result of the internet.
David:
But then like YouTubers and influencers created this huge economy inside of the internet.
David:
And so this idea of creative destruction came where, yeah, we're going to lose
David:
some jobs, but we're going to create a lot new of opportunities ahead.
David:
There's one sector that I think people are actually going to just materially
David:
lose their jobs and they are going to have to figure out something else to do.
David:
Because when you're talking about deflation, we're bringing the cost down.
David:
Uber's biggest cost is probably paying drivers. And we're already seeing like
David:
Waymo in San Francisco have just driverless cars.
David:
And so like, I think there are material industries there. There's going to be
David:
like massive job, not like you don't really lay off your Uber driver,
David:
but that's millions of jobs going away.
David:
What do you think about this conversation?
Josh:
Yeah, it's a scary thing. And I want to preface it for the people that are rude about it.
Josh:
With just the essence of solving problems, which is what we're doing,
Josh:
we are solving the problem that transportation is very unsafe.
Josh:
It is very costly and it is very low production, meaning you have to sit there
Josh:
and you have to drive and cars kill the most amount of people every year.
Josh:
And it's just this very dangerous thing. Like you are allowed as a,
Josh:
what, 17 year old to drive a five ton vehicle at a hundred miles an hour anywhere in the world.
Josh:
That seems a little scary, a little unsafe. So what's happening here is we are
Josh:
solving problems and there will be this
Josh:
Dislocation of people who were solving the past problems.
Josh:
But it's important to note that like solving these problems creates a more exciting world.
Josh:
Like when you solve a problem, generally it leads to more problems,
Josh:
but these are better problems to solve, which is why like the world around us
Josh:
improves. It's not because we reduce the amount of problems,
Josh:
but because we solve the worst ones, multiplying the amount of better problems to solve.
Josh:
So we've kind of seen this happen with the agricultural revolution where there
Josh:
was like seed drilling and crop rotation and crossbreeding. And all the people
Josh:
who did those jobs originally, they lost their jobs.
Josh:
But the productive output, the downstream effects of it were so much higher.
Josh:
And it happened again in the industrial revolution where we invented the steam
Josh:
engine and we invented the production line, textile machines.
Josh:
And the people who did that, they lost their jobs. But the steam engine created
Josh:
a train and then the train created railways and then railways created transportation
Josh:
and cross-country distribution of goods and services.
Josh:
So it opened up all these additional industries. And I think that's probably what's going to happen.
Josh:
Cars is a great example because again, very unsafe, very expensive.
Josh:
If you can remove the human element from that, suddenly your one hour car ride
Josh:
to the airport is a fully productive time where you don't have to drive yourself.
Josh:
You can just do stuff on your phone. You could take a nap. The
Josh:
Amount of accidents that will happen will be much lower it'll be much safer
Josh:
you don't have to worry about it and the cost because there is no human element will will drop
Josh:
aggressively i think it's a few dollars currently per mile is the way you can
Josh:
gauge transportation in new york city um that should drop down to
Josh:
cents once these cars are able to drive themselves so it's one of those things
Josh:
where yes the cab drivers will lose their jobs but the world will be a better
Josh:
place because of it and the hope is that the productive unlock from this new
Josh:
technology will enable even more jobs for them to take and more interesting jobs.
David:
I think this conversation is quite timely for me personally,
David:
because right after this podcast, I go and on Turo, there's this there's this
David:
app out there for people who don't know who can just like rent a car.
David:
It's like Airbnb for cars.
David:
So there's this some guy like four blocks away from me has a Tesla that I'm
David:
going to rent and I'm going to drive for six hours upstate.
David:
And Tesla has auto driving, but I have to keep my hands on the steering wheel because of regulation.
David:
And so that is six hours where I am unproductive.
David:
I like my most productive form is going to be listening to a podcast and like
David:
growing my knowledge and that's that's if i have the brain power for that so
David:
otherwise i'm just like stuck in this car for six hours it's going to cost me like,
David:
i'm going for the weekend it's going to cost me like 300 or 400 to like rent
David:
this car for the weekend so it's going to cost me a bunch of money i'm going
David:
to be very unproductive for six hours there six hours back uh and,
David:
that is like it's some of the least i just have to get up there so there's no
David:
other way way to do this and so i think what you're saying,
David:
what we're extrapolating here is like, okay, so in the future,
David:
short-term future, maybe regulations aside, in the short-term future,
David:
that like $400 cost for a Tesla for three days is actually going to drop to
David:
like, I don't know, $25, $50.
David:
Maybe I don't rent a car, but there's just a car that takes me up there.
David:
And during that time, I am not like with my hands on the steering wheel.
David:
I have my laptop open on my lap. Maybe I'm even doing a podcast,
David:
but I'm doing something otherwise productive with my time.
David:
I think the low productivity angle of, you know, Uber drivers,
David:
cab drivers is actually really illustrative because, like,
David:
But other than getting some other human from point A to point B,
David:
that's the only production that actually happens as a result of that job.
Josh:
Yes, that's absolutely right. Actually, I would encourage you to try full self-driving
Josh:
on your road trip up because it's really good and it signals how close we actually are to...
David:
Oh, I intend to do it, but my last time I was in a Tesla, I had to keep my hands on the steering wheel.
Josh:
Now it's gotten better. It's just your eyes need to be on the road.
Josh:
So you don't have to touch anything. You just have to look forward.
David:
Can I wear sunglasses?
Josh:
You can, but there's actually these small sensors that can penetrate your sunglasses
Josh:
that can see your eyes beneath them.
Josh:
They've got it pretty good. And this is just really a matter of regulation.
Josh:
The technology is mostly there. In fact, Tesla is planning to roll out their
Josh:
cyber cab network, fully autonomous in Austin in the middle of this year.
Josh:
So we are very close to this happening. And I think a lot of people who haven't
Josh:
tried it don't know precisely how close we are.
Josh:
So give it a try. I'm curious to hear your thoughts, but it's very good.
Josh:
And it's very exciting because, yeah, you could either take a six hour nap or
Josh:
you could do whatever you would want during that time and do so much more safely
Josh:
than if you had a tire driver or if you yourself were tired.
David:
And that's just the idea of transportation. And I don't think that's really,
David:
I don't know if you have any takes on like airline transportation or if that's getting any cheaper.
David:
Oh, you do. Okay, so this was talking about like car automobile transportation
David:
is dropping, call it 100X in cost over when this technology gets absorbed by humanity.
David:
Aviation transportation has not progressed at all over decades.
David:
It's been one of the most frustrating things in my life.
David:
Is aviation transportation costs going down too?
Josh:
Yes, you can you can apply this to everything. We could have the same conversation
Josh:
about 10,000 different industries, and it will be very similar because once
Josh:
we have better materials, once we have better intelligence, once we have more
Josh:
abundant energy, we can create much better products.
Josh:
So one that I'm super excited about is called Boom Arrow. They're a supersonic airplane company.
Josh:
And what they've done is they've been able to basically take the plane and turn
Josh:
it into a supersonic plane that is much more efficient, much faster,
Josh:
and does not disturb the ground level of people with these hypersonic booms.
Josh:
So their new technology is allowing planes to go way faster.
Josh:
I'm not sure the multiple, but significantly faster at significantly higher volume.
Josh:
For the hope is a lower cost. So not only do you get a product that's better,
Josh:
you get an experience that's better, but you actually get a lower cost and higher safety because these
Josh:
will be built by really impressive engineers that don't have these edge cases
Josh:
that you've been seeing with these airplanes that are crashing and burning.
Josh:
And the airline industry has gotten a little scary. And it's mostly because
Josh:
it's a duopoly between Boeing and Airbus.
Josh:
Airbus. Yes, I believe those are the and they have no incentive to do right
Josh:
by the people because they are the monopoly.
Josh:
And if you can start to introduce these new competitors through this new technology
Josh:
that provide such a better experience at such a better price,
Josh:
then there's no reason why 10 more of those won't come into the market.
Josh:
And gradually over time, we will just remove the duopoly that is these unsafe
Josh:
kind of crappy airline companies and we'll have hypersonic travel and we will
Josh:
have hypersonic travel that's like really comfortable and really cheap and affordable.
Josh:
And it's mostly a matter of manufacturing materials and regulation.
Josh:
Those are the three things that are stopping that from happening. But it's happening.
David:
One thing I think we are doing with this conversation, maybe there is something
David:
to fill in here, is like first we grow hardware and then sophistication of our
David:
models. That's step one. Step one, grow intelligence.
David:
Step two, reduce the cost of intelligence.
David:
Step three is three question marks. And then step four is profit,
David:
where we have like super cheap transportation, super cheap airlines,
David:
and all of a sudden we can do a supersonic travel for very, very low.
David:
So how does that first conversation that we had about AI intelligence actually
David:
relate to producing deflation in transportation costs?
David:
Or are we just kind of assuming that eventually with the massive reduction in
David:
intelligence that we're going to figure out at scale hypersonic,
David:
supersonic airline travel?
Josh:
Yeah. So I want to amend your hierarchy slightly. You put intelligence at the
Josh:
top. I think there is one thing that is slightly higher than intelligence and
Josh:
that's energy to power all these intelligence systems to power us.
Josh:
We need tons of energy and we don't currently have enough energy.
Josh:
So I think this all kind of starts with the energy layer. And again,
Josh:
it's synchronous with intelligence. This is really, this is one fact that I love.
Josh:
It's that if you go outside into your backyard, if you go to like a park down
Josh:
the street and you pick up a rock, the rock actually has more potential energy
Josh:
inside of it than the equivalent size piece of coal.
Josh:
And it's interesting because we use coal, we burn coal, but it turns out that
Josh:
organic plant matter that's been stored underground isn't super dense in energy.
Josh:
Whereas this rock that's down the park, it has trace amounts of thorium and
Josh:
uranium, and they're very low amounts.
Josh:
But the only thing stopping us from extracting that versus coal is understanding how to process it.
Josh:
And the resource thing is really interesting because it's like,
Josh:
But nothing is really a resource until we assign the knowledge to it that it
Josh:
is a resource. Like we didn't get iron out of nowhere. Some guy found a rock
Josh:
and then he figured out how to smelt it and refine it. And we went from iron
Josh:
ore to iron ingots. And now we have skyscrapers.
Josh:
And there's this kind of progression through resources where as we get more
Josh:
intelligent, we are able to access them more abundantly.
Josh:
And I think this kind of happens synchronously with intelligence,
Josh:
where the more energy we have, the more we can power the GPU clusters,
Josh:
the more we can understand.
Josh:
And then to get to your question, the downstream effects of it,
Josh:
well, it can teach us how to manufacture better factories. So one of the really
Josh:
interesting developments has been humanoid robots recently.
Josh:
And these are robots that have general purpose intelligence.
Josh:
They have hands, they have actuators that kind of function like humans.
Josh:
And they've been starting to go into factories and starting to manufacture things themselves.
Josh:
And a lot of the production line has been simulated through these large AI models
Josh:
that can kind of emulate the efficiencies and inefficiencies of a system and
Josh:
then weed them out for you.
Josh:
So generally with like technology applications or products, the first one is
Josh:
kind of crappy. Like if you bought the first iPhone, it like wasn't that great.
Josh:
The second one was like pretty good. The third one was like really good.
Josh:
The fourth one was amazing. And the fourth one is basically the same as the
Josh:
16th one. They're all the same because we kind of reached this local maximum.
Josh:
But if a computer can do all those iterations for you because it's much smarter
Josh:
than you, then the first version can actually be the fourth version,
Josh:
that final version, that like local maximum of what we're able to do.
Josh:
So I think that probably applies through most places. as we kind of synchronize
Josh:
Manufacturing machine layer with the intelligence layer, it can basically teach us how to make things.
Josh:
And then our job as humans would be to go and create the infrastructure required
Josh:
to make these things that we want, to make these hypersonic airlines,
Josh:
to make these self-driving cars.
Josh:
It can remove all the inefficiencies and basically give us the answer, give us the blueprint.
David:
So your equation is that energy plus intelligence equals profit, basically.
David:
Once we have abundance of energy. We are currently growing an abundance of intelligence
David:
and you can combine those two things. And then the universe is our oyster.
David:
We can literally unlock every single door once we have those two things.
Josh:
Yes. From down to the biology example that we used all the way up to just like
Josh:
building the most large, like starship, rocket ships to other planets to go mine other resources.
Josh:
And these things are very abundant.
Josh:
China last week, the thorium in those rocks that I mentioned,
Josh:
they found a deposit of thorium that can power the country for 60,000 years.
Josh:
And it's just sitting there. And they don't really know what to do with it because
Josh:
they don't have the intelligence or the manufacturing capabilities.
Josh:
So they're starting to learn how to create these things called salt bed reactors
Josh:
that are safe nuclear reactors to extract it and to refine it.
Josh:
But it's not there yet. And if they had this higher form of intelligence that
Josh:
could feed them a blueprint, like, hey, here's exactly what you need to do in
Josh:
the optimal state to extract this energy, they suddenly have power for 60,000
Josh:
years. And then they can apply all of that energy to whatever problems they
Josh:
want to solve outside of that.
Josh:
And there's this chart, it's basically showing that there are no energy poor
Josh:
countries in the world. If you don't have energy, you cannot
Josh:
produce valuable things and so that that higher energy thing the higher intelligence
Josh:
thing they're the self-fulfilling loop and they're upstream of basically all of that that profit
David:
I remember doing an episode we've done a couple episodes with guests like this
David:
one of them is arthur hayes where he says he he denominates his wealth in,
David:
hydrocarbons in energy uh and i don't know if he actually does that but the
David:
point stands of just like well i mean what is the dollar what is the really.
David:
It's actually the petrodollar. And it's actually petro, the oil,
David:
oil reserves of the world that is actually the fundamental denominator of anything.
David:
And like, why is it so valuable? So well, because it produces energy.
David:
Josh, have you ever read any of David Dorsche's stuff?
Josh:
Oh, man, it's funny. I have the beginning of infinity and fabric of reality
Josh:
like right here. Actually, hold on.
David:
Yeah. Okay. Okay. So okay. So I think you know exactly where I'm going with
David:
this. Josh is zooming over to go get his books. Yeah. Have you read it?
Josh:
I've tried.
David:
David Deutsch is dense.
Josh:
This is a tough book. I don't want to say I've read it because I have not,
Josh:
but I have tried and I've actually consulted YouTubers on how to go about approaching
Josh:
this book because it is so dense.
Josh:
But it's very high signal. And I think a lot of people who I trust and respect
Josh:
really love and keep coming back to this book. So that is why I continue to
Josh:
chug away. But yes, I have attempted to read it.
David:
You're aware of David Deutsch. So he's got this idea. in these books,
David:
the two books that you named, he argues that the only fundamental limitation
David:
on what humans can achieve is constrained by knowledge.
David:
Like all constraints are knowledge constraints at the end of the day.
David:
And specifically, it's our ability to like discover the right explanations and
David:
create the technology for the
David:
necessary technology to do things is just a knowledge constraint. And so –.
David:
His idea is that if something doesn't break the law of physics,
David:
then the only thing preventing us from achieving that is the lack of knowledge to get there, right?
David:
So space travel, there's nothing in physics that forbids humans from colonizing
David:
other planets or traveling between galaxies. The reason why we haven't done
David:
it yet is we don't have the knowledge, right?
David:
Aging, if aging is just a biological process governed by physical laws,
David:
then in principle, we can learn how to reverse it. The only obstacle is the knowledge how.
David:
And so I think this is what you're alluding to is like, okay,
David:
we need the energy to power the intelligence. We actually have the intelligence,
David:
or at least we're getting it very, very soon.
David:
I consider us having the intelligence, but I'm sure we're going to have even
David:
more intelligence at the rate of these AI labs competitions.
David:
And so once we get the energy, we have the knowledge, and then the world is our oyster.
David:
And so, like, yes, we didn't really have a clear answer as to how AI actually
David:
allows for supersonic travel at, you know, very, very low cost.
David:
But it's making this big assumption that, you know, you smash energy and knowledge
David:
together and there's literally no problem that we can't access.
David:
And that is why you're calling this the age of hyper acceleration and why there's
David:
a kink in the compounding growth curve, because everything becomes accessible
David:
to us by like the end of this decade.
Josh:
Yeah, really, really soon. And there's this example I mentioned last time,
Josh:
but I really love so much.
Josh:
And it's the mouse in the prime number maze where you have this mouse that's
Josh:
not super smart. It's in the middle of a maze and it will run forever and never
Josh:
figure out how to get out of it.
Josh:
But if the mouse knows that it's a prime number maze and it understands what
Josh:
prime numbers are, then it can very easily get its way out of this maze.
Josh:
And there's so many questions to be explored to unlock that one key bit of knowledge
Josh:
that unlocks this entire world for us.
Josh:
So, part of the higher level of intelligence is asking just better questions
Josh:
or even knowing what questions to ask that are worth solving and then pointing it at those questions.
Josh:
I very much agree with with David in the sense that like all of this is just
Josh:
an intelligence problem and an energy problem.
Josh:
And if we have unlimited of both or if you have enough resources to harness
Josh:
a seemingly unlimited amount of both, there is no problem that we can't solve
Josh:
everything like any it kind of breaks your mind in the same way that LLMs kind
Josh:
of broke my mind when I first started using them.
Josh:
The only constraint is your own creativity or your own questions to ask it.
Josh:
Like I feel like I'm still not getting the most out of these large language
Josh:
models because I just don't know how to use them quite well and that's kind
Josh:
of the case with these these llms as they get better is the the hardest thing will be
Josh:
understanding what to ask what questions we should are worth learning wow
David:
That's deep once once we have infinite intelligence at our fingertips the question
David:
the constraint becomes what do we ask it.
Josh:
Yeah, within within the realms of physics, or perhaps not, like perhaps we understand
Josh:
more quantum physics that break all the rules that we have.
Josh:
Like we can kind of play God, you can create these, these like new forms of
Josh:
babies that are genetically perfect, and they never have any mutations and they
Josh:
age at the exact rate that you set.
Josh:
Or you could have this food that you create that looks nothing like what we've
Josh:
had, but it's the exact nutrient macro complex for your specific body.
Josh:
And it just shows up every day and it tastes delicious. And it's built just
Josh:
for you because we can manufacture it for every person on earth.
Josh:
And this kind of goes across the board for anything and everything that you can imagine.
Josh:
Again, once it's made up by people smarter than we are, it changes everything for everyone.
Josh:
So it's a weird thing. And we're getting there super quick.
David:
Can you pull up the graphic about how there are no energy-rich,
David:
there are no energy-poor-rich countries.
David:
And so the claim here is that we can look at all of the countries that exist
David:
in the world and all of the rich ones, all the ones that are wealthy,
David:
have an abundance of energy.
David:
Trace over this idea and why this is so important again.
Josh:
So what you're looking at is this relationship between electricity consumption
Josh:
and GDP per capita of countries along the world.
Josh:
And you'll notice in the bottom left, there is a lot of countries like Bangladesh,
Josh:
Pakistan, Sudan, Nigeria. These are all energy consumption.
Josh:
Poor companies in the sense that they haven't quite figured out how to unlock
Josh:
large amounts of energy.
Josh:
And then you reach this threshold, which is kind of set by India and Indonesia,
Josh:
where they're just kind of there.
Josh:
They've consumed, what is that, 1,000 kilowatt hours of energy per capita.
Josh:
And everything above that is the wealthy nations. That's where you'll see in
Josh:
the top right, Norway is actually very wealthy and has a lot of energy.
Josh:
But there you see the United States.
Josh:
A little bit lower down, you see China, Japan.
Josh:
You don't see any of the large dominant countries in the world underneath this
Josh:
threshold because energy is so important, because energy powers our transportation,
Josh:
our food, everything you do on a day-to-day basis requires that,
Josh:
particularly for manufacturing.
Josh:
We have managed to unlock through burning fossil fuels, alternative energy sources
Josh:
like solar, enough energy to power ourselves and to become wealthy.
Josh:
But we are pretty quickly outpacing our ability to create this energy.
Josh:
And we're starting to see it with data centers where people,
Josh:
companies like Project Stargate, the $500 billion plan by Masayoshi-san and OpenAI,
Josh:
they need to create large amounts of power just to power these energies because
Josh:
the grid can't support it.
Josh:
So we do have enough energy. It's very important for energy because everything
Josh:
is downstream of that energy.
Josh:
But again, we are quickly coming up against that threshold of how much energy
Josh:
we actually have versus how much we're going to need.
David:
Looking at this chart, I'm just very much reminded of Y equals MX plus B.
David:
Just to be clear, on the vertical axis is energy consumed per capita.
David:
And so if you're a country that has a higher energy consumption per individual,
David:
you are higher on the vertical axis. And on the horizontal axis is just wealth of the nation.
David:
And so if you're a more wealthy nation, you are further on the horizontal axis.
David:
And this is just a perfectly linear chart.
David:
As in like I've never seen something like more correlated to like wealth that
David:
I've seen in this than in this chart it's like if you have more energy your
David:
country is more wealthy uh,
David:
like this has definitely always been a topic of like policy debate and I think
David:
this is something that like the Trump administration is actually like leaning
David:
into it's just like more energy more energy that's,
David:
like the the Democrats the liberals are very hesitant to with his type of energy because it's coal.
David:
He's like very, he's into all forms of energy, including coal.
David:
The Democrats are like, well, what about global warming? But then the conservative
David:
right is like more energy, like accelerate, like innovate, dominate,
David:
like let's grow the energy conversation.
David:
And in terms of just like strictly, politics aside, in terms of strictly like
David:
domestic innovation, what does that conversation looks like about like our,
David:
what's the energy conversation inside the United States look like right now?
Josh:
Yeah, it's such a shame that technology has become politicized because it is
Josh:
so foundational to the well-being of everybody.
Josh:
So it sucks that there are these split views on how we should go about it.
Josh:
I think currently the ideology is to use as much energy as we can to accelerate
Josh:
quicker, which is something that I'm really excited about.
Josh:
Again, going to the problem-solving thing is like,
Josh:
solving one bad problem never leads to like a non-problematic state,
Josh:
but it leads to much better problems to solve.
Josh:
So if we do need to burn a lot more fossil fuels, a lot more coal to power these
Josh:
new plants that will then give us the information we need to unlock nuclear
Josh:
technology, say, that is a big win.
Josh:
And maybe we suffer on a short-term basis where we do produce a lot more pollution,
Josh:
but the second order effects of that vastly outweigh the slowing down and diminishing
Josh:
of this accelerative force that will get us out of the problem.
Josh:
So I think currently the United States is roughly aligned with the energy needs
Josh:
of what we're going to eventually have.
Josh:
There is a move over to nuclear energy, which I think is super exciting because
Josh:
that feels like the end game. That feels like the final form.
Josh:
And it's a shame that nuclear technology has gotten such a bad rap.
Josh:
Again, technology has become this politicized thing.
Josh:
Very few people have actually died from it. It is very safe.
Josh:
The old power plants that did melt down are nothing like these new power plants.
Josh:
And there's this new company actually just last week.
Josh:
I think it's Valor, Valor Electronics. I could be butchering that,
Josh:
but they created this modular nuclear reactor that is the size of a large apartment maybe.
Josh:
And the idea is that you can take a stack of these modular reactors and you
Josh:
could place them around a data center like the OpenAI Project Stargate one that's
Josh:
gonna require a lot of power.
Josh:
It can be fully self-sufficient and fully stable with nuclear energy.
Josh:
And I think that is like a really fun direction that we're headed to,
Josh:
where we are now able to produce these things.
Josh:
We don't really have the regulatory restrictions and safeguards preventing these
Josh:
people from innovating and accelerating on it.
Josh:
And I think that feels like a very healthy direction that I'm super excited
Josh:
about going, is now we do have permission to build these new nuclear systems.
Josh:
We do have permission to explore these new forms of energy that are necessary
Josh:
to power this world in which There will be a lot more robotics,
Josh:
a lot more manufacturing than we currently do today.
David:
I'm not terribly informed about the nuclear subject, but my loose understanding
David:
is that it was one of these industries that, A, got a bad rap downstream of
David:
the Cold War. We had the Three Mile Island incident inside the United States.
David:
There was a Chernobyl incident in Eastern Europe. And I think that's kind of
David:
like marked the tone of nuclear. But it's also just been highly regulated.
David:
Like it's been so incredibly regulated i think that's actually the main culprit
David:
as to why we don't see too much nuclear energy production because it's,
David:
we regulated it heavily because of well nuclear bombs and so maybe you can kind of understand that uh,
David:
but it is also like you say a shame that we don't have like this robust nuclear
David:
industry uh because again to my knowledge just like you said it's super safe
David:
it's super clean it's super powerful uh and super abundant uh and,
David:
And again, going with this relationship of like more energy equals more innovation,
David:
maybe we should like reset our priors on understanding nuclear as an industry
David:
inside of the United States.
Josh:
Yeah, the chart was so clear, like the correlation between energy and dominance
Josh:
is like, it's such a clear cut representation. That's really hard to debate that it's a shame.
Josh:
And I wish I had these specific examples, because I know the meltdowns were
Josh:
not as bad as most people think.
Josh:
But it's a shame that that very early form of technology impacts so greatly
Josh:
the technology that we could produce today.
Josh:
Day. We have accelerated so much in our understanding of nuclear engineering,
Josh:
but also manufacturing, technology, material science,
Josh:
where now we do have these things called pebble bed reactors and these new Gen
Josh:
4 reactors that are meltdown proof and they have a much smaller footprint and
Josh:
they don't lead to any extra pollution and they're self-sufficient and they
Josh:
don't require this grid that's kind of broken down to distribute energy, it could do so locally.
Josh:
So it largely has been a matter of this bad reputation that it's gotten,
Josh:
but also the people preventing it because they do feel like it's afraid.
Josh:
And we have this like very, we've had in the past this very afraid mindset where
Josh:
we don't want to hurt anybody. We are far too empathetic to harm anybody.
Josh:
But in not hurting anybody, we've harmed everybody because now we have this
Josh:
energy constraint and we don't have the ability to accelerate our way out of
Josh:
it because we have not been allowed to.
Josh:
So it's very clear, like we need energy and we would love more intelligence.
Josh:
These things are amazing. And we have the technology to do it without hurting
Josh:
people. We just need to get out of the way and let the people who are ambitious
Josh:
enough to try give it their best shot.
David:
Josh, I'm getting a very clear sense that you are a techno optimist with a very
David:
strong bent towards acceleration. Like you are, you are, you are acceleration, ride or die.
David:
I don't, I don't think you're not being pragmatic about it. I think you do understand
David:
that there are costs, but I think you are just heavily biased towards like,
David:
yeah, there's costs and there are solutions to those costs, too,
David:
which we will also discover if and only if we accelerate.
Josh:
Yeah, it's kind of like religion where I chose this because this one makes me
Josh:
the most excited about waking up in the morning. And it feels really good to me.
Josh:
And I'm very familiar with the downsides and actually less so because I choose
Josh:
to be blindly optimistic. I find it helpful.
Josh:
But I am familiar with the downsides of a lot of this technology.
Josh:
I understand that there are lots of them, but I also do feel pretty strongly
Josh:
that like solving these really hard problems will lead to more problems,
Josh:
but they are better problems, more interesting problems to solve.
Josh:
So I think the second order effects of this acceleration are better issues,
Josh:
even though there will be more of them.
Josh:
And that's something that that does get me excited.
David:
You know the name Ted Kaczynski, right, Josh?
Josh:
I'm not familiar. No, you have to fill me in.
David:
The Unabomber?
Josh:
Oh, yeah. Familiar with that name.
David:
Do you know why the Unabomber was the Unabomber?
Josh:
Unfamiliar? No.
David:
Okay, so he was, I think he had a mental disorder, something like schizophrenia
David:
or mania. I could be misremembering here.
David:
But he was the Unabomber because he had this,
David:
prediction about the future, which was that the abundance of technology and
David:
the cost of technology would become so high and the cost would be so low that
David:
long tail risks would be absolutely everywhere.
David:
And the optionality for an individual to cause outsized destruction upon the
David:
planet would become increasingly available to the point where merely statistics
David:
says that something bad will happen because we are creating so much potential
David:
out of the long tail of humans that one human can, using technology,
David:
using infinite intelligence, ask ChatGPT,
David:
or the uncensored, unhinged version of ChatGPT, how do I make an atom bomb with
David:
normal household equipment?
David:
And as we defined earlier in this podcast, the only constraint to whatever we
David:
want to do is access to intelligence, to the intelligence needed,
David:
the information needed to get what we want.
David:
I'm with you every step of the way. And I'm really like where this is going.
David:
And I think there's a lot of cool futures that we have. There's going to be
David:
cool technologies. We're going to be able to zip around the whole entire planet
David:
for pennies in like 10 years. It's going to be great.
David:
And I also think that most humans are good. Most humans are good people,
David:
like 98, 99% of people are inherently good people.
David:
But it actually, the problem is, and this is what Ted Kaczynski saw,
David:
it was that it actually only takes one person when technology is so powerful
David:
and information is so cheap and energy is so abundant.
David:
It actually only takes one person to cause outsized destruction.
David:
Have you thought about this subject? What are your thoughts or reflections?
Josh:
Yes. And my solution was actually derived from Palmer Luckey,
Josh:
who is just like the super interesting guy that I love. He's in defense tech.
Josh:
And he talks a lot about the war field and how like the dynamics of what works.
Josh:
Because he builds missiles and he builds weapons.
Josh:
And his thesis, and the thesis kind of since the beginning of time,
Josh:
is that defense is always slightly easier than offense.
Josh:
And this is true in software. This is true in hardware. It's always easier to
Josh:
defend something than it is to attack it.
Josh:
And in a lot of cases, we have built these malicious tools. I mean,
Josh:
lots of people have guns in their house. We have nuclear bombs.
Josh:
We have genetic mutations.
Josh:
One did get away from us with COVID where, sure, maybe a handful of people did
Josh:
do something bad. Maybe it leaked out. Like, that's really bad. The hope is that as we...
Josh:
Go faster as we understand more it will continue to be easier to defend against
Josh:
these bad actors than it will be for the actors to attack and that's generally
Josh:
the hope and again it's it's like it's hard to
Josh:
make a convincing argument to stop the progress because of the edge case of
Josh:
one person causing damage
Josh:
it's more interesting to continue the path forward while taking into account
Josh:
and being very careful about the edge cases that can harm people i think we're
Josh:
seeing this a lot in AI from
Josh:
the leading labs like OpenAI, where they're super concerned about alignment and safety
Josh:
Because they do understand the power of these large language models and this intelligence.
Josh:
And if it gets into the wrong person's hand, what can happen?
Josh:
Not necessarily if it gets into the wrong person's hand, but if it's able to
Josh:
manipulate a large group of people into doing things, changing their minds.
Josh:
There's a lot of weird edge cases where we're very malleable and we are very
Josh:
subject to these sways of opinion.
Josh:
So there's always going to be that bad thing.
Josh:
And there's going to be lots of them and they're going to get progressively worse, most likely.
Josh:
But I guess the hope is that the trade-offs for making things better,
Josh:
for moving faster, will offset the downside of those few bad actors that want to use it maliciously.
Josh:
And there's always this double-edged sword to all progression, all technology.
Josh:
But you just have to hope that people are smart and are caring and are thoughtful
Josh:
and can work together to kind of build something that is non-destructive.
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of the community that's uniting bitcoin and ethereum i think this is highly
David:
aligned or maybe even synonymous with vitalik buterin's deac or defensive acceleration
David:
it also goes like decentralized acceleration but i i.
David:
I think it's really kind of found its identity as defensive acceleration,
David:
where he says, yes, I'm a fan of acceleration as concept, but I'm even more
David:
of a fan of defensive acceleration.
David:
And there are technologies that he labels that are out there that are inherently
David:
defensive rather than offensive, where like weapons, armaments,
David:
bombs are inherently offensive.
David:
But cryptography is an inherently defensive technology. Bearer assets,
David:
Bitcoin, Ether, DeFi, inherently a defensive technology.
David:
I'm actually unfamiliar with Palmer Luckey's idea that defensive technologies
David:
are easier to create than offensive technologies.
David:
I'd love to hear like a deep dive on that. But if that is true,
David:
if those arguments are sound, then I too find myself highly unconcerned with
David:
the Unabomber's future of the universe.
Josh:
It's important to have people like Vitalik, to have people on both sides that
Josh:
are some people that are very like, oh, we are just going to go super fast,
Josh:
heads down as fast as we possibly can.
Josh:
And then other people that are like, wait a second, we're unlocking these like
Josh:
this whole slew of attack vectors that need to be accounted for.
Josh:
And like, let's build solutions for that.
Josh:
So there needs to be stuff that happens on both sides. It does feel as if it
Josh:
will be easier to defend than attack.
Josh:
But at the end of the day, like we still have nukes. It only takes one person to start a nuclear war.
Josh:
And that's that's it. So we exist in a very fragile state as a society,
Josh:
which is also why it's like, oh, like, why don't we just go to Mars and just
Josh:
like duplicate our intelligence there? That way we have some redundancy.
David:
Right. We have a plan B.
Josh:
Yeah, plan B. So there again, like there are ways to defend against these nukes.
Josh:
Well, let's just get off of the planet and let's take intelligence to this new
Josh:
place. So if they nuke this one, surely their nukes can't reach this next one.
Josh:
And you can kind of like follow this down the line of threat vectors and figure
Josh:
out solutions that are kind of creative and unique to all of them.
David:
Josh, I think this conversation that we've had spawns many, many new conversations.
David:
Something that we didn't talk about this episode that I think is still highly relevant is robotics.
David:
I think there has been just like a general movement towards robotics in just
David:
very recent weeks and months.
David:
My understanding of robotics is like we're going to totally have robots and
David:
like they're going to be humanoid robots because we have created a humanoid
David:
universe as in the form factor for navigating the universe is human.
David:
And so if we want help, if we want the most effective robots,
David:
they need to be robotic. And we can talk about like the downstream implications of that.
David:
I think there's like a nuclear episode to be done here.
David:
There is a synthetic biology episode to be done here.
David:
What would you be most interested in exploring next out of all the all the different
David:
doors that have been opened up once once we slam together the particles of energy
David:
and intelligence and we want to see the downstream impacts of that?
David:
What do you think are the first doors that we ought to go down here?
Josh:
Those are the top three. It's energy. It is manufacturing. It is synthetic biology.
Josh:
Those are all amazingly impressive.
Josh:
The energy one is probably the least exciting, even though it's the most important
Josh:
because they're just, okay, we figured out like nuclear fusion vision.
Josh:
We can build these reactors. They supply us with a lot of energy.
Josh:
Cool. The manufacturing is unbelievable. The biology is even crazier.
Josh:
I think if you want to like blow people's minds, the biology is cool because
Josh:
everything is downstream of biology. Like the materials that we use,
Josh:
our own chemistry, you can recreate the biological world synthetically.
Josh:
That's super cool because it creates a lot of outcomes.
Josh:
And then the manufacturing is super cool because our world will actually start to look different.
Josh:
That world we describe where if you take your grandma and you drop her into
Josh:
a living room 50 years from now,
Josh:
The hope is that it'll look much different because we'll have robotic helpers
Josh:
doing things and we'll have all
Josh:
this autonomous transport, things that we probably can't even imagine now.
Josh:
So I think robotics is super cool in the sense that for the first time,
Josh:
we'll have computers that can coexist with us in the real world that are autonomous.
Josh:
Our interaction with computers has only ever been static in the sense that like
Josh:
we have a computer on our desk, a phone in our pocket.
Josh:
But they've never been able to it's never really been two ways where there is
Josh:
this like this other person like thing that you can actually converse with or
Josh:
interact with and not only does it unlock a lot of
Josh:
quality of life improvements for us where it can do all the things that you
Josh:
don't want to do but it also allows them to do all the less favorable things
Josh:
in life as a society that we don't want to do like now all the
Josh:
the harmful jobs the the jobs that can hurt people they're all taken care of
Josh:
by robots and now all the manufacturing that kind of sucks that that isn't super
Josh:
precise, that's all done by robots.
Josh:
And the convergence of humanoid robot and alien looking robot that does a specific
Josh:
narrow set of tasks, that is super cool because it opens up this whole new world.
Josh:
It's the autonomous transport. It's the humanoid robots. It's the swarms of
Josh:
drones that can deliver anything, anytime.
Josh:
There's a lot of really cool improvements in both of those places.
Josh:
So I would say manufacturing, industrial manufacturing and biology,
Josh:
synthetic biology in particular are like two rabbit holes that go so deep,
Josh:
there is no end to them. They are black holes and they're all equally exciting in their potential.
David:
I can definitely feel your excitement through the microphone.
David:
I think maybe just one last like visual metaphor that is coming to my brain
David:
that we can leave the listeners with is something that you said earlier in this
David:
podcast is maybe what you said about Peter Thiel, which is,
David:
the only thing that has really innovated meaningfully over the last 50 years is technology.
David:
So computers are very powerful and they've been innovating very fast.
David:
Cell phones, anything, anything with a chip, anything electricity wise,
David:
all technology has innovated very, very fast.
David:
Now with the arrival of AI and like commoditized intelligence,
David:
using our favorite David Deutsch quote, which is like the only constraint that
David:
we have is knowledge. And now that we have knowledge at our fingertips,
David:
we have the means of all of that innovation that technology has seen over the last 50 years.
David:
Technology can now reach back at every single other industry that we haven't
David:
seen that industry and pull it forward simultaneously, all at once,
David:
all together, all in our lifespans and not just in our lifespans for like the next decade or so.
David:
I think we're really going to see a lot of change and that is something to definitely
David:
look forward to, maybe be scared about, maybe feel optimistic about,
David:
feel quite a lot about at the very least, no matter what.
David:
And it's going to be very exciting. And so I'm very, very interested in doing
David:
subjects around all of these episodes in the future.
David:
Josh, thanks so much for coming back on your very own podcast.
David:
Really, really glad to have you here.
Josh:
Thank you. Yeah, it's been my pleasure. It's been so much fun talking about
Josh:
this stuff. I really love chatting about it, but normally don't have many people to talk to.
Josh:
So thank you for listening to me. For everyone else who's listening,
Josh:
I appreciate it. I hope you also enjoy talking about this crazy,
Josh:
wacky, weird, wild future that that is coming fairly quickly.
David:
Bankless Nation, if this episode nerd sniped you, we can go talk about it inside
David:
of the Bankless Discord. That's where I hang out. That's where Josh hangs out.
David:
That's where all of the Bankless community talks about.
David:
Mostly crypto things, of course, but also there's Frontier technology channels in there as well.
David:
So if you like this episode, we can go talk about it in there.
David:
If you are not a Bankless citizen, there is a link in the show notes so you
David:
can go sign up to become a Bankless Citizen.
David:
There's also a $9 a month ad-free podcast feed. You do not get access to the Bankless Discord.
David:
That's the only thing that you get is the ad free podcast feed but if you're
David:
tired of the ads you can get that or if you become a full citizen you can come
David:
and hang out with me josh and the rest of the bankless team in the discord,
David:
guys thanks so much for bearing with us for this episode crypto is risky you
David:
can lose what you put in but nonetheless we are headed west this is the frontier
David:
it's not for everyone but we are glad you are with us on the bankless journey thanks a lot.
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