This is that, and this is Brandon. This is the concerning AI podcast, and we, yeah, this is the summer schedule. It is the summer schedule, but we're still thinking about two questions. One question is, is AI a potential existential threat for humanity?
Okay, yeah, we're definitely thinking about that. And if it is, is there anything we can do about it? And what can we do? Sure.
Well, we have a couple things. Before we get into the meat of today's show, can we talk a little bit about my four-year-old birthday present? Yeah. Because it's mind-blowing to me.
Yeah. So my youngest boy, Ran, just turned four. And for his birthday, he wanted to remote control robot. Of course he did.
So we got him a toy, a remote control robot toy. Yeah. That has two wheels, and it balances on those wheels, and you can drive it around, and it has all different modes. Yeah.
You know, there's like the dancing mode, and then like move your hands, and it doesn't work that well on the move your hands thing, but then you can drive it around with remote controls. It is mind-blowingly good, and it's a toy. Yeah. It's like a cheap toy.
The same mechanism as a segue that somebody would ride around on as a whole. Yeah, and that was like state of the art, like this is gonna revolutionize the world, because it's so amazing that it's even possible. Yeah, it wasn't that long ago. And that was maybe more old.
And now you can't load it. It doesn't seem that long ago, but maybe it really was. Maybe that's the power of the exponential. That's something that was so groundbreaking, and it was changed transportation, and now it's just in a kid's toy.
Yeah, it was more than 10 years ago, I say, wait, what was it? Yeah, maybe it's... I'm thinking that maybe we should have had this robot earlier. Maybe it's been...
Maybe it's too slow. Maybe it's the things are slowing down. That could be maybe the rate of technical progress is going... Because a $35 or $50 toy, instead of a $2,000.
Yeah, sort of stand on thingy. Well, the other thing that's happened, we've had our first death from self-driving cars. What? I didn't hear that.
Yeah, somebody was watching a movie while he was driving his Tesla, instead of watching the road. And the car changed lanes, and he decapitated under a sunlight truck. Oh my goodness. Yeah.
We don't have self-driving cars yet, but we've had our first self-driving car death. It's not a self-driving car. It's a... It's cruise control plus.
It's cruise control plus, that's what it is. This guy's just stupid. This doesn't make sense, right? But the fact that it even happened at all, the fact that he trusted that much, we're close.
We're close. Oh my goodness. Watching a movie. Yeah.
Not smart, but why is it that he thinks that that could not be... Why does he not think that's a death wish? Because it's good. Pretty good.
I mean, it's not ready yet. It's not ready to be called the self-driving car. Yeah, when I'm watching movies, I keep one foot on the gas, and put it on the brake, and both hands on the wheel. Yeah, it's no good.
All right, we're ready for our main topic. Yeah, let's move on to the main topic. All right. Those of you that listened to the show before, you know that we have talked about the possibility that humanity is living in a simulation.
We've talked about this several times. We've talked about the math involved. We've talked about... We didn't even feel a thrill of shock when you said that this time.
We've talked about Elon Musk talking about the math, and we've gone over this idea a few times. And yeah, it was pretty new to us at the beginning, I think I'll say. Sure. And it's still a pretty strange idea.
Yeah, I'm getting used to it. It's kind of like when some foreign body invades your arm, you get something in your arm, and scar tissue builds up around it. I think I started building scar tissue around the idea that we're living in a simulation. So it's kind of there a little bit.
Well, in one of the novels I read over the last six months, and I share this novel with my wife, one of the plot twists was that the AI, the first AI, you know, the singular, the one, was put by its creators into a simulation to make sure that its ethics could be pushed to the limit, and it would still act the way we wanted it to act. Right, yeah. And... I remember you talking about that one.
Yeah, well, so my wife has been disturbed by this whole concept of the simulation, because we've been talking about it. Yeah, all right, she's been disturbed by it. But... It seems to be universal, so his mind is also...
It's kind of a brace, but it's also very disturbed by it. Well, she gave it some more thought, and she was really thinking a lot about how this AI was in a simulation, but didn't know that it was in a simulation. So here's the key. What if...
And I don't know if we have real terminology, like what do you call that? You call it a sim. You take a personality, you put it into a sim. And so I think, I don't know, I think maybe like a character.
If you took the AI's personality, you put it into a character in the simulation. And you somehow made it not know that it was in a simulation, well, that's interesting. Well, what if that was true for people, not for AI's? What if the creator of the simulation goes into the simulation, embodies a character there, forgets that that's what happened, or that's part of the process.
I would say that that creator is not actually an AI. Okay, well, maybe it doesn't matter, but I think it's simpler to just think about it for people. Just think about it before we had it. So to have some empathy for her.
Yeah, well, what if this meat bag sitting next to me on the couch, I prefer skin bag. That's Mr. Skin bag. That's Dr.
Skin bag to you. This Dr. Skin bag is next to me. What if that body that I'm seeing is just a character in the simulation, but the personality was the creator of the simulation, or came from outside the simulation?
And you didn't know it. And so you live your life in the simulation, and what if the only way to get out of the simulation is to die? What do you think happens when you die? You die, then your consciousness just goes back where it was before it went into the simulation.
It goes back to its n-1 reality. It's not necessarily a base reality, but whatever. It goes back to n-1. I don't know, I'm just thinking, what if that were true?
If that were true, would that explain reincarnation, or would that explain heaven, or would that explain the afterlife, or would that explain any of these religious ideas that human beings have been exploring for thousands of years? Yeah, it's interesting. I am kind of a hardcore skeptic, I think, as you know that. I'm kind of like, I tear everything apart.
Well, I think that's good. The idea that we're living in a simulation, thus far, has been able to tear apart. It's kind of a tear-in-a-part idea itself. Totally.
And so I'm not saying that this is right. As you were talking about it, we had sort of touched on it before, but now my mind is, the back part, the lizard brain has had a little chance to do on it, and it comes up with all sorts of weird things. And one of the things that came up with is, if you were a full-fledged personality, or whatever, and then you were injected into the simulation, how does development work? Like, baby through...
Well, in the novel, the AI was fully formed as an adult, but had memories, and they implanted the memories. You don't have to go in at the point of work. So now you're telling me that my entire childhood is of fabrication. I mean, maybe.
What about today? I enjoyed today, was today of... I don't know when the simulation started. It could be.
The simulation might have just started. And all the conversations about the simulation in the past, simulated. Could be. Well, that's true, even if they happen.
Ooh, that's weird. Like, what is it? It seemed like you would almost have to simulate them in order to have them to implant. Well, you could have an infinite number, almost an infinite number.
You could have a very large, tangible number of simulations in order to create as many memories as you wanted. So today, the part I liked about today and everything was simulated somewhere else so they could be injected into me at the start of this character right now? I mean, this is not part of the idea that, you know, this part of what you're talking about was not like the key insight. This might be also interesting.
Interesting. You're not talking segue here, are you? You're not giving me over the segue head here. No, no, I'm just saying that, that.
What if, what if, okay, so let me see if I can paraphrase back the key idea. Yeah. What if all of this, like, bruja that has been religion has been kind of a, an artifact of the fact that we're a simulation and the way in which that simulation occurs? Yeah.
Yeah. So like, with my mind that thinks like a scientist, the idea of heaven doesn't make any sense in our reality. Like, where would it be? Yeah.
And people say we have to faith. Well, I don't know what that means. But what if the way that this, you know, what happens to this body when I die is that I just wake up in, and minus one reality that there is an afterlife? Wouldn't that be weird to wake up in minus one?
Yeah. It really seems like it could happen. And I have all the memories of this life, or perhaps not. I mean, who knows?
But it seems like that would. You just triggered me. Yeah. Yeah.
You reminded me of a thought that I had to scary. Can we remind me of scary thought a little bit later on this? This show or another show? This show is about the simulation.
Okay. Yeah. So just, I'm making an ass hand here. Okay.
So scary thought. So what if we wake up and we find out that we have been in a simulation? Right. Do we go back then?
Into the simulation? Yeah. Who's up for round two? Kind of thing?
Or round in, I guess? Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
And how do we know that that space reality? I mean, that that is also a simulation. The only way to get out of that would be to die. So do you think that eventually we will, you know, when we eject our consciousness into our simulations, that we will, yeah, would we do that?
Would we do it this way? Well, okay. So that made me think, we were talking about this earlier too, that made me think about, about like, the oracles and the sages and the teachers and the miracle workers and all these people. The putters and the mamas and.
Yeah. Maybe they are injected personalities that kept more of their memories, you thinking? Yeah. You know, they didn't kind of keep it completely clean.
They, you know, tampered with it a little bit. Is there a prime directive in Star Trek or something like that about not interfering? Yeah. They violated the prime directive a little bit.
I mean, I don't know whether, I mean, it could be that it was a bug. Yeah. But not even attention. Yeah.
Maybe they didn't do it on purpose. They just were a little leakage. Yeah. Maybe the programming just wasn't, it wasn't that great.
Yeah. And why does it seem to be, well, again, this is the skeptic. I mean, why does it seem to be rarer when we have better explanations for things than when we have poor explanation in the sense that like, well, I don't know. I don't know if that's, well, it's hard to say because we live now.
So how do we know how much it was before? I mean, yeah, the things like the, you know, the earth standing still for like the battle. That's one of the miracles, I could still for a long time, the sun didn't move. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that's unusual. I mean, that certainly could be a bug in the, you know, in the code, but it also be, you know, a myth.
Like it's possible that there are myths as well. Okay. In our simulation. I was here, I guess I was probing for whether you could survive myths.
No, I think we make stuff up all the time. Anyway, I think we make up explanations. We're, we seem to be meeting, maybe that's sort of part of the, the, the froth from which myths are made. Well, yeah, maybe, I mean, humanity has had a hard time explaining lots of things.
And so we make up meanings and maybe we're still doing that. And maybe that's why we don't see the edges of the simulation because we just make up meanings for those. We just make up explanations. Maybe we don't even see them.
I mean, I don't know. I don't know if there's a lot of spots would be here that are the places where the, where the resolution isn't the strongest you might think it should be or like, I don't know. I'm just, I'm just grasping it. Why, you know, religion has been such a strong idea for humanity for thousands of years and it just makes absolutely no sense to me.
It's still such a strong hold on me today. What if there's actually something to it? What if there's, what if there actually isn't afterlife or what if there actually is reincarnation, but it's not, it's reincarnation sort of in reverse. Like you wake up into a life you have before.
Yeah. Great. Yeah. What would that be?
You know, you're a little bit like a little bit of a dream and then you live your life and you die and then your soul, whatever your soul is, your soul goes into a new body and it's born and it lives a life that dies. It's really like you're coming back from a trip. But yeah. Instead of like, yeah, you are getting ready to be reborn.
It's like you're actually getting back. You're getting back. You're getting back. Yeah.
Yeah. Retreat. Retreatation. Retreatation.
Right. Right. And I mean, I think your idea about when do I come into the simulation, how old am I when the simulation begins. I think that's also really kind of weird and fascinating.
Well, you know, you're just, you're helping me realize that this entire simulation is all about me. Well, yeah. So the scary thought is this. Let's say you're creating a simulation.
Yeah. And you're kind of watching it because it's hard to see all that's happening. Yeah. There's way too much resolution.
There's just so much going on. Right. So you kind of a sampling. But what happens when it becomes like clear and loud in your simulation that those within the simulation are now aware that it's a simulation?
Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Is that mess up the simulation and you shut it down at that point?
Are we like, are we bringing around the existential doom by, by becoming aware of the fact that we're in a simulation and ruining the simulation? What kind of makes my brain hurt? What kind of scares me a little bit? But I get scared easily.
Yeah. All right. Well, here's something we could use some help on. Because it feels like a threshold that we're hitting or we're like in, you know, the next 10 years kind of thing.
Like that's not a far out, a far out threshold. Well, okay. So, so listen out there. Help us with this.
Help us dig through. Like what, what could the threshold be if this were like set aside the fact that it might not be true at all. Just like if being it with us and like, yeah, pretend that we are in a simulation, pretend that we're in a simulation and what could, you know, could there be a threshold. It's not a problem because nobody's going to listen to us and pay any attention to this.
Nobody's actually going to believe us that anybody who listens to this podcast is going to hear it and say, those guys are crazy. So, it's not the podcast that wears me. It's when all everybody in the world has like embraced the idea. Like it's now scientific.
Well, one exit way that it could be is if we actually do find the edges of the simulation. Like the simulation hypothesis is a testable scientific hypothesis. There are things you can do. No, but people, there's tons of climate deniers.
I mean, there's tons of hardcore good science that people just don't believe in. I don't think people believe in the simulation no matter what kind of evidence we give them. Yeah, but it could still affect the simulation dramatically. You mean if there's any, it doesn't have to be critical mass.
There's a little, you know, there's a small number. Critical mass doesn't have to be in complete saturation. Yeah. It doesn't have to be that everybody believes that.
You know, there's nobody, you know, that's never the case that everybody believes something. But there are certain things that are well-equipped. I mean, so the germ theory, right? Not everybody accepts that.
Like disease, the germ theory of disease. But most people do. That's a pretty well accepted thing. So, you know, I mean, I'm talking like that type of thing.
Yeah, but I think there's a lot of science that people reject, even though the science is totally clear. Like, I think germ theory is pretty universally accepted. It's one of the more. It's way more accepted than, well, I mean, like, the Earth is round.
Everybody accepts that. Just about. Yeah. Just about.
You have to be really hardcore. You have to be a bit obtuse. Pretty diverse in the sense that you have to deny that. But there's lots of seemingly rational people that deny human cause for climate change.
Or just even evolution. Or even the fact that the Earth is more than 6,000 years old. There are lots of people who believe the Earth is 6,000 years old. Who knows?
They could actually be right. Because it could be a lot less than that. The simulation. Oh, man.
The geology. I don't like it that they might be right. That is one way that could be right. That kind of bothers me.
Yeah. You know, I went last. It is a pretty interesting time. I went last December with my family to eastern Oregon.
I went to the Painted Hills and the places where the fossils have been found. And the geology is anywhere between 7 billion and 45 billion years old. There's lots of layers. It's really fascinating.
The stab man. The stab man. Yeah. Yeah.
There's all these ages and mammals. Yeah. And we have all kinds of crazy wild horses living here. And like big cats and amazing stuff.
And it's all there in the fossil record. And I was staying in Airbnb. And in the place I was staying was a driving tour by a creationist. It was a driving tour of the places that I had seen with mile markers.
So I could stop the car and I could get creationist explanations for the science that I was learning from the guidebooks and everything. And it was really fascinating. It was fascinating that they would go point by point by point. No.
It would have been a lot easier if they just sent all simulations. And so that's where evidence comes from. Yeah. That also might be upsetting for other reasons.
Certainly. Yeah. There's certainly no God in that scenario is somebody that made the simulation. And there's not like kind of like the strong guarantees about the nature of God that God is all good or anything.
No. And that sort of sort of thing. No. I mean, I think if we did come to fully embrace the simulation idea then faith would have to be layered on top or to say that God is in base reality.
You know, maybe the God that they still think that really diminishes God because the world builders are not God in the simulation. The world builders of this simulation are not directly God. They're people or AIs. Yeah.
Well, you know, the LDS have a similar kind of like, I don't think God is really greatly diminished for them, but there's like different gods for different worlds. And our God is the world, the God for our world, like Jesus. Yeah. Which is interesting.
That's a mind blowing idea to me as someone who grew up with there being like just the one universal. Yeah. So maybe faith is still immune to some of these. Oh, yeah.
It could be. Some of these. It still turns all the way down. Yeah.
Could be. Ha. So if it makes you uncomfortable that we're talking about religion. Okay.
Let us know. If you love it, let us know too. We don't know. But we don't really know anything.
It's really. But we're really intrigued and tickled by the tickles. Can I say that? We're really fascinated.
There we go. That's the word. We're fascinated by a lot of things. I think we're also trying very hard not to freak out.
Do you feel that way? I feel that way. Yeah. I seriously like the scar tissue thing I said earlier about these things coming in and they just like really upset me and then I have to like figure out a way to compartmentalize them.
Yeah. I've totally been doing that. I'm like ignoring a lot of things right now. Summer has been great for that.
I have a shock level idea. We did a very early show on the idea of shock levels. Yeah. Maybe the simulation is no longer two shock levels for us.
It's less than one shock level. That's why we can even talk about it. So if it's still more than two for you, if it's still more than one for you, more than one shock level, then. Well, that sort of makes things up a little bit, right?
There's like there's how much it's upsetting and then there's how much it's surprising. Oh, okay. And those are different. Yeah.
For me. Well, it was definitely not surprising to me anymore. It was surprising at one time. It's not surprising for anymore.
So the shock, I would say that's the shock levels. That's right. That's right. Yeah.
I think we need a different mechanism to explain that. Yeah, we do. Yeah. And I don't know.
Is it his upsetting for you? So are you? It definitely goes in cycles. It depends.
And seeing you and working on the show again is raising it up again. My blood pressure was great. I should have gone for a checkup. I mean, on one hand, the talking about the simulation makes it like, oh, well, okay, great.
Well, I think the simulation is so what? My life is the same as it was before. I knew we were moving the simulation. Therefore, it's not upsetting.
So there's like that part of it too. So should we feel gratitude or anger towards the simulators given, like, where our outcomes are? I think. Are they to blame?
Are they to make it credit or are they to blame? Well, I don't know. I think another interesting question would be, does this conversation have any bearing on whether AI is an existential threat for humanity? Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, what we talked about this scary idea before, right? Is that we were going? No, I'm sorry.
I found out what you're saying. I think I missed it. In this simulation, you have not yet had human level AI or super intelligent AI. Will super intelligent AI destroy the simulation?
Like, could the humanity in this simulation be wiped out by super intelligent AI? And then would it matter? Yeah, it does seem like it matters less if it's just one of gazillions of human simulations. And if my consciousness wakes up in some other universe, some other reality, I'm not going to count on that, then I can't count.
For some reason, I just, yeah, I don't think I'm that important. I think I'm one of, you know, like when you play a game, a video game, and there are the, like, the non-player characters. Yeah, right. I think I might be one of those.
Wow. So a conscious non-player characters. I mean, assuming we're unconscious. Yeah, I'll make that assumption.
Well, that would be a super intelligent AI idea. I mean, right? So we already have super intelligent AI in this world. In the simulation.
In the simulation. I created conscious non-player characters. How does that work? Like, are we actually biological creatures?
Well, okay, I'm shocked levels are starting to rear their head, certainly here, again, on this topic. I mean, this is the woo-woo idea that we create our own reality, woo-woo-woo, like with our thoughts. What does that mean? You know, like, I don't feel like it's that idea.
No, we create our reality. This simulation, it's bits. It's not real. It's not real.
It's not real. It doesn't mean I'm in control of it. Well, maybe you are. Maybe you somehow can reprogram it.
I want that. Is that a powerup I could find somewhere in this game? Because I like in the Matrix where, you know, they can like, if they get really good at it, somehow they can like, build a little bend physics. They can just reprogram the simulation really.
Sure. Because that's all physics is. I never got how they did it though. Did you see that?
No. I didn't take notes. No. Did you take notes?
They were very hand-wavy. It didn't seem like they were giving out. It wasn't as much a tutorial as I would have liked. Is this how people bend spoons?
No, I think that's a different thing. You think that's science? Well, I think that can be explained without like bit hacking. Okay.
Hacking the simulation. Well, I think we might need a call to show here. You know, it really did get me, my pulse is elevated a little bit here at the end. Thank you for shocking me again a little bit out of complacency.
I'm going to have to think about whether I'm actually a biological or a, like which side should be on the biological side that I might actually be ones and zeros and some sort of thing. Well, let's think about that between now and the next show. And just so people who are listening can set expectations. This is going to be the July show for the summer.
We had been on kind of a weekly schedule more or less. We may or may not have an August show, but we hope we will have an August show, but it probably won't be more than one episode. Because it turns out that in the simulation that we live in, the summer is awesome. It's really nice and busy, both.
Lots of busy things, lots of people to see and simulated places to go. It's all happens during the summer break. Summer break of the simulation. It's not just that the weather is so great.
It's because there's summer break. Kids drive to school. Kids drive to school and because there's a lot more computer time available because it's not needed at the universities. Yeah.
To make the simulation that much more. And so it's just right. They don't have to be stuck in the rut. They can actually go on a holiday.
That's right. That's right. Yeah. So we will see back maybe in August we hope.
And if not then, they'll definitely be in September and we'll get back on some kind of regular schedule we think. And between now and then definitely, let's look at Fox. Easiest place to do that is Facebook. Just look up in front of AI.
And I'm sorry, Norbert. Yep. You can email us. Yeah, you know us, Norbert.
You've got our emails. Okay. And notice that the little jingle that I assume is going to be playing at this moment like ends with a kind of look. Aw!
Sorry I'm going to get into it. Okay. Now let me go back to the next one. Okay.
After that, I'm going back to the next one. Yeah. Yeah. You've got to go back to the next one.
Eh. Hey. Hey. Hey.
Hey. You've got to go back to the next one. Oh. Oh.
Oh, yeah. Oh. You've got to go back to the next one. Oh.
Oh. Hey. Oh. Look up.
Oh. Oh. Oh.