 When you look at Siegfried and these other sort of earlier visions of what would be you know a newer and greater being I Really feel these are they're very heavily anthropomorphized as our Wagner's gods and the Greek gods and so forth and when you look For that the kinds of AI we're going to be creating in the next decades I think it's important to see how broad the scope of possible AI minds is Going to be so we're we're really at a unique position in in human history now one that I think Nietzsche vaguely foresaw and Wagner did not foresee from what I know of we're at a point where we're really on the verge of being able to create minds and beings that go Very far beyond humanity as far let's say as we are beyond chimpanzees or car coaches or even one-celled organisms and That that that's that's an amazing thing. It's unique in the history of life on earth or humanity, right? So it's not of course. It's not going to begin that way What we have now we have what I call narrow AI systems We have a eyes that can carry out highly specific tasks and do these things better than better than Humans can so they can play go better before long they'll be driving a car better than any human They can already predict stock market better analyze DNA better than than people can but they don't understand the broader context And what in which they're they're operating so they're used as tools but by people rather than being autonomous intelligent agents right and the next step which I described in my book the mention the AGI revolution the artificial general intelligence revolution The next step is going to be a eyes that are able to Generalize far beyond their domain of experience which requires not just solving well-defined technical problems It requires imagination and and creativity and the ability to take a bold leap into the unknown once we have these AGI systems then of course this will have some minor social impact like eliminating the need for all human jobs, but Additionally these AIs will be able to do AI right they'll be able to design new hardware They'll be able to write new software. They'll be able to improve their own minds So once you have an AI which is at the level of general intelligence of say the people in this room That AI will then be able to replicate itself a million times because you can do that with software it will be able to improve its own hardware introspect into its own mind and software and Improve itself, but then once it's made itself a little smarter It will be even smarter at making itself smart and then you will repeat and this this is how you will get a mind that is is tremendously Superhuman not not a superman as Nietzsche called it, but a super mind a super being and You have to imagine at a certain point this sort of AI will leave Humanity as such far behind just as we've left fish and and and one cell organisms far behind But the scope of possibilities is really quite broad and people tend to Anthropomorphize tremendously and think that you know AI minds going beyond humanity They're either going to be our slaves or they're going to want to imprison us or oppress us We tend to envision these AIs as somehow entering into Human drama and and human emotion and human society whereas actually You know if you think about how we relate to answer squirrels We have no we have no desire to mess with their love lives or argue with them over a leaf or an acorn or something Right, we're we're just we're just occupied with different with different things So having said that that I think ultimately through recursive self-improvement AIs are going to become tremendously more Intelligent and capable than human beings in ways that no human will be able to understand without Following the AI and giving up their humanity. They're also can I ask you a question? Certainly why in the world? Do you find this attractive? It sounds completely horrifying to me That is to say if they will not be perfected human beings, which you're saying they won't be they will be an entirely new class of being then we're talking about Something that Will affect the human world in a way that will make it unrecognizable to us Extinct. Well, do you think that humans are undesirable because they're not simply upgraded and improved rats? No, no, I don't know. No, no, I you know there is a rat might well a rat might but you know There is are you reminded me there's a passage that I love in an early 17th century Jewish philosopher who lived in Prague and what the philosopher says is he says he begins by saying that the human being is And it's the standard medieval definition He says the human being is the creature who aspires to perfection that that is the definition of the human but then he turns the screw in one more time and he says and in such a creature whose definition is the Aspiration to perfection perfection itself would have to be accounted a flaw and a shortcoming Because that is not what we are That is not what we are. I mean, you know the limitations that you or others Want to transcend and go beyond are actually the conditions of our definition In other words, there are people who want to become who fantasize about immortality But if you study human life you realize that the relationship between human meaning and temporality and time Is so great that if you erase if you sever that connection you may get some new kind of creature But it's not clear that that that that redemption will be meaningful to the creature who's redeemed I Don't understand. You see I don't I mean it all sounds the fact that we can do it Doesn't mean that we should I mean this is the case with I mean There's a number of issues here. So one is whether this advent of Super intelligences is likely to happen. The other is whether it's desirable in some general sense The other is why I personally think it's a good thing and the first the first one of these is easiest I think it's gonna happen because advanced AI technology has so much economic and humanitarian value Each step along the way the AIs that people build are making money for people and they're delivering good but by Curing curing diseases by eliminating human drudgery. So we're it's not like nuclear weapons that blow people up We don't have much use otherwise. I mean AI AI being developed globally because what you said is that you want to that? ultimately it would eliminate Humanity human beings talking about another form. I did not say it will eliminate human beings by any means and Humans have not eliminated and squirrels or bacteria either They still exist and each of these forms of life and intelligence has its own beauty and Integrity and the fact that humans are more generally intelligent than rats or bacteria Doesn't mean they don't have their own intrinsic aesthetic or moral value in your book. You also write Getting old and dying is with capital letters a very bad thing Better frozen than rotten. I love this service You also write What I what I expect from new technologies world peace immortality for those who wanted everybody liberated from needing to work for a living I want to radically transform humanity for the better, but again, that's that's that's Leon's This gets back to one of Wagner's psychological defects that Nietzsche pointed out Which is the exaltation of death is something so amazing and beautiful Of course we can find beauty in everything I mean you can you can find beauty in torture or in a disfigured corpse if you're if you're a great artist on The other hand I think on balance We'd be better off if we didn't have to have to get old and die and the fact that people have found a way Why is that? Why do you think that? I mean putting the pain aside it would be much better if we could sicken and die without pain But why do you think that immortality is attractive? In fact, there's an opera You're gonna know it patterns the micropolis case remember in which in which it's a mystery story And the solution to the mystery is that the heroine of the opera in the 1600s drank a potion that gave her immortal life and she can't stand it anymore She just can't stand it anymore proving things about reality by recourse to fiction is usually a poor idea Hold on hold on when you just described what you just described the the entities and beings that you just described are at least as fictional as Elena macropolis. I mean that's a you know, you're imagining something