ChatGPT CEO on Mindfulness, AI and the Future of Life || Sam Altman Jack Kornfield & Soren Gordhamer

foreign [Music] so Sam welcome thank you Jack welcome pleasure um I have some questions Jack I know has various questions about I think it's maybe five months ago I had this idea of mindfulness Ai and the future of life on the planet and I asked Jack Jack what if you talked to Sam and he said instantly said yes and then I emailed you and I said what if you guys talked about this and came back very quickly and said absolutely so I'm curious maybe both of you just talk a little bit about why you're here today and why this topic kind of resonated with you so I'll start in a certain way Sam and I have known each other for a few years done meditation practices together and kind of been connected in some way through that and then through a mutual friend and one of the first questions you asked me Sam when we started talk with side meditating together was was about Consciousness like how will we know if if AI becomes conscious and what is consciousness um and of course it's not an answer that one can easily give although you were just becoming Consciousness so there was a little peek into an answer but also knowing that he spent his time as Burning Man and all the things that people might do there I said how about this how about how about if some knife you or we go and put a mat down between all the servers and take a good dose of psilocybin and talk to it and see if it answers us so that was the opening gamut just so you know kind of where the territory is what is consciousness but it asks a really huge question um you know one of my teachers says the mind creates the abyss all our ideas and thoughts and how it should be and the Heart crosses it what does it mean as we develop and open all these technological capabilities we're on the brink of you know tremendous new things happening um what channel are we tuning into what channel are we building into them and then just a couple more things to say we talked from the very beginning about how it's possible to build in values the bodhisatta vows you know to care for all beings or the ethical vows of non-harming and and so forth how can that be programmed in in some way in the deepest way and I remember as a kid reading iRobot you know from Isaac Asimov and the first three principles that the robot will not harm a human being and it will not let anyone else tell it to harm or there's those kind of things so we had these kind of conversations and we also meditated and practiced in different ways together and I think this is important to say you'll get your own sense of Sam you know he's really open to answering the kind of questions we have but my experience is that Sam is it's a language I'd like to use is very much a servant leader which is kind of the best of what it means to be put into a leadership position and somehow we were talking back their Central Casting has put him into this role right um my experiences that he has I'm going to embarrass you that he has a pure heart and it means a lot to me because having been around companies in Silicon Valley and mentored a lot of people there's some kind of inner sense of values and care for life in the world that needs to be there to underline underlie something that gets developed that's so big and so important and so my experience in our conversations and so forth has been how do we do this in a conscious and beautiful way yeah and then there's one more thing I'll say um and that is that the people have been okay I'll I'll say that later lots of people have said oh you're going to talk to Sam Altman tell him this ask him that you've got to be tough ask him the hard questions who's going to make all the money from this you know and there's a money gonna twist what happens in it or who gets to make decisions is it the you know these five young white guys who are determining the future of the world and things like that where's the power in this how do we all fit together so I've had people besiege me it's nothing poor Sam has been on the receiving end of this from a huge you know outpouring in the world um and I think from our conversations that the fact that he has a meditation practice and it's not I'm a meditator but that it invites him to open to be in that role of stewarding and caring has meant a huge amount and in a way it's what we want if we're going to develop things we want to come from that place of Consciousness so now I I'm I'm a little shy because I built you up in that one you have to forgive me for that but I also think it's because people are nervous and they're worried and that's why you've been going around in some ways saying is this going to get out of control can we um you know can we regulate it well what will happen with it and so forth and um Sam will answer those questions and he does he actually has some really interesting answers so that's a little bit of an opening game so so um Sam Jack kind of has to show up because we've been friends for a long time but I'm curious when you got that email maybe it was to spend time with Jack or there's this conversation on Consciousness and mindfulness and wisdom and Ai and Technology but I was curious kind of what's what was the yes that maybe brought you here versus probably the Thousand other invitations yeah right look um I'm definitely interested in this topic but uh meeting Jack becoming friends getting to meditate together has been one of the great joys of my life so I would be delighted to come hang out with Jack Forever on literally any topic beautiful that's basically why I'm wondering you know we uh there's been some questions and I I know on the open AI website it says uh we're here to benefit uh Humanity we're here to create AGI that benefits humanity and I don't know if we've really heard enough about what's your vision for the ways it can it can benefit Humanity what are what are some of the things where you guys get together as a team they're like wow these are some things if we could bring this out we could ease suffering and support people living a more full life well I think we're seeing that uh in a very early stage even with the way people are using Chachi PT you know Chachi BT is just this small preview of what's to come but even with that we're seeing really amazing things we get the most fun part of the job is every day we just get this Deluge of positive stories from people about the way they're transforming their lives learning new things learning how to meditate more making spiritual progress uh solving problems that they've had for a long time just having fun being more efficient doing their jobs better and we'll see I think so much more of this that you know soon we'll start to see more scientific progress uh we can hopefully cure a lot of diseases I think we'll make progress on environmental problems that we face now with this new technology so I am a firm believer that if you give people better tools they their Creative Energy will always surprise you on the upside and what people will do for each other for the world um I think we're already seeing that but it's going to go much much further that's great great and um so Jack what I know you've worked closely with Sam but what are what are some of the questions you think are most essential as a society as we enter what what feels like a new chapter and I we talked about this backstage maybe it's not a new chapter maybe it is but technology is increasing at a pace that we've never seen before and that's unlikely to slow down what's your sense of the kind of questions we as a society should be asking as this all unfolds and does is there anything in the Buddhist scriptures that guides us to uh I'll get to the Buddhist stuff a little bit later because it's a good question and something we also talked about but I do think that it's important to name the fears in some way and to acknowledge them and to hear from you how you look at first the kinds of fears of the misuse of the technology because you heard him I hope you could hear Sam say this is just a little window into what's going to happen so and already it's happening very quickly so there's fears of it being misused there's certainly fears of artificial general intelligence kind of taking over and those other kinds of fears you don't seem to be so afraid of that can you speak to it to to us I do think things are going to change a lot and we try to be super upfront about this uh and super open about it we are part of the reason that we try to release the technology even in this imperfect state is that I think it's we all think at the company it's really important that the whole world get a sense of what's Happening many people in the field have advocated that this should be developed more in secret and there are reasons for that I don't want to totally dismiss it from a safety perspective but this is going to be such a massive change to so many aspects of society that we we need the world as a whole peop as many people as we can to understand this to weigh in on it for people and institutions to have time to think about this to understand it to really feel it and gradually update and decide how we all want to move forward what a global regulatory framework should be like what the social norms are going to be how we want to use this and I I think there are going to be scary times ahead and there's going to be a lot of transition I'm very confident this can be managed I think the more we can all do it together the the more likely we'll get something that works for all of us um but it does mean we have to confront what I think will be one of the biggest technological changes we've ever had to confront um I think there will be good and bad far far more good than bad like orders of magnitude more good than bad um and there's a lot of different aspects we have to solve problems so we need a technical solution to be able to align these super intelligent systems we need this Global regulatory framework we need as much cooperation as we can get between the leading Developers so I think we need something both like something like an iaea for advanced AI systems that has Global regulatory authority over what these systems are training and how it's used we also need a lot of Industry collaboration and we'll need a framework and there's a lot of ways this could go for as representative of a slice of humanity as we can get or as much of humanities we can get to say you know these are the value systems to put in these are the limits of what the system should never do this is where it should be customizable I'm super excited for that project um I think it's like going to be very exciting to get to get the collective human wisdom and preferences in uh and then to see how people use it within that and how that's going to evolve and grow over time I hope we'll make a lot of moral progress with these systems it's been fun to see some of that already with Chachi pity um but I think we will head towards the world where it's not just human intelligence and we have this other thing and you know there's like a lot of examples in Sci-Fi movies we were talking about one backstage like in Star Wars you kind of just have C3PO walking around and it's this other thing and sort of surprisingly normal um and they just sort of become part of I think AI will just become part of society and it'll be different than human intelligence and very different than other parts of humanity but it'll sort of collectively Lift us all up you the question of values where we started some years ago um can this be programmed in such a way or directed so that it can't be used in malevolent or bad ways or that underlying it there's the bodhisattva vow or something like that what's your sense of that where we are I mean certainly a thing I would take is for Jack to just write down 10 pages of you know here's what the collective value should be and here's how we all should live we'll have the system do that that'd be pretty good I I think another way is if if you know let's say someday Chachi PT gets most people on Earth using it or everybody on Earth can use it in that you could imagine a system asking you a bunch of questions or you can provide it feedback and sort of teach it you know no this is sort of not what I think is the value and out of that uh the system can learn the collective moral preferences of humanity and how we want to manage trade-offs between that and how we rank things that are in conflict and then within that Within These very wide bounds individuals should have a huge amount of autonomy and they can decide you know okay here's what we Society have have globally decided but here's my value system and here's how I want chat GPT version 19 to work for me um and I think that'll be a pretty good start Jack could you think could you see a wisdom Council of sorts or like a a group of people who have values from different Traditions or how how do you feel like that would be guided because asking the tech leaders to do it might be so not their expertise yeah we've talked about a couple of things one of which is first um it's clear that some kind of Regulation and you just you said it earlier would be helpful this is a whole new huge thing and part of my understanding of Watching You release it before some other people which would have come soon anyway was to say we need people to know and get a sense of what this is even in the beginning so that we can do this together that was a very deliberate move to actually bring us in collectively in some people that are released it too soon and shouldn't have done so but what it's done is it's woke it's awakened the world or woke people up to say we have to really pay attention because we're entering new territory with that one thought a number of us have had is first that there should be a group of the key players like Sam and the heads of some of the other AI things and one dream some of us had would be someone like Barack Obama would be kind of the coordinator of it because I don't think the government's going to get to it soon enough but to bring together the key players and say all right let's start here what kind of boundaries do we want to set or what kind of slow down or what kind of organization do we want to make to help Steward this so that's a step and I'll ask Sam in a second does that make sense to you and then the second is that group May indeed look for a Council of Elders and others who are willing to be whether it's ethical or moral guides and and so forth but in some ways the players themselves have to come together and one of the questions that you know was asked of all the things that came to me in 1945 after the first nuclear explosion there was a chance for there to be an international Consortium to Steward nuclear weapons the US was the only one that had it and we could have turned it over to that but we decided not to we're going to be the ones who have it and that started the arms race which continues to this day we're now in a somewhat similar window here and the question is can we have a different game happen a different collaboration which would start both with those who have the decision and the power at this point but also then extending it or creating as you said an organization so would you say more about that or what your thoughts yeah I'll caveat this by just saying I'm deeply uncertain about everything I will say in this entire answer it's we're trying to learn and get smarter as fast as we can but the playing field keeps evolving the technology keeps evolving so everything I say could turn out to be a totally bad idea in six months because the research went in a different direction or Society reacted in some different way the the things that I think will be important to get right uh I think governance needs to be as democratically shared among all the people of Earth as much as possible which includes not only what I was talking about earlier in terms of what the value systems are but like literally the whatever This Global regulatory regime will be um and what what an international Consortium could look like making decisions not only about the values in the systems but how they're trained how they're deployed all of that uh the second is that the benefits of the system the systems the benefits of having these AI in the world uh get shared widely part of the reason that we started the company was a fear that it would be contained in a single tech company that wouldn't you know that would use it sort of to maximize shareholder value uh and and then if so so that could be benefits like saying you know we all collectively decide we want to use this compute power to cure all human diseases or it could just be like we want to you know share the economic upside as best as possible and then the third and I think this is not yet obvious that it's so important but will become more obvious over time is access to these systems has to get shared as fairly as possible um I can imagine a world where getting to use a powerful AI is sort of the high order bit for what an individual can can make happen in the world and you don't want use of that system to go to whoever has the most money my dream world would be you know there's eight billion ish people on Earth we talk about all the compute available once these systems are trained you slice it up into eight billion pieces you give out one of those to each year to everybody on Earth and they can do whatever they want with it they can pool it for a problem they think is important they can you know use it to talk to a future version of Chachi PT they can sell it whatever but how we're going to distribute access to these systems I think will become super important over time um there's a question about structure uh I I think you know we talked a little bit earlier about Facebook I think probably almost everybody that worked at Facebook is like a good person but I I deeply believe that incentives are superpowers and if you throw people into an incentive system where you're sort of trying to locally optimize to make a number go up into the right uh that that has very complex effects and so the structure that we put in place for openai was a uh this thing that we call the capped profit where people that work at open AI are investors our employees can can get a great return but almost all of the almost all of the economics that we generate over time go to a non-profit that is going to try to figure out how to use that for the best interest of humanity and figuring out structures like that where thank you whereas the sort of what I hope happens will be in increasing Global cooperation on the development of this technology and as the technology becomes more important if it can happen more in structures like that where the incentives are designed thoughtfully from the beginning I think that will help us avoid some of the you know tempting darker paths off off of the side and then to accomplish these goals uh I I do think something like this international organization is necessary I I cannot come up when I can come up with some like maybe that would work but I wouldn't want to bet the future on it scenarios I can't come up with a super high conviction path that does not involve something like that I think a better way to start is just with industry collaboration because it can happen faster but I think we will need a real regulatory framework here over time uh and then we also need a technical solution we need the ability to we call it the alignment problem to align these systems to what humans want and make sure that we can avoid all of the things people are very naturally scared about I'm feeling more optimistic about the rate of progress there but I want to be very clear like we have a giant amount of work to do and it's not done yet and so putting enough effort into that is is super important so there are a couple of things um one just as a little aside because we talked about there had been the concerns about the issue of fairness and diversity and how from the broader database the AI might favor certain people or certain class of people and it could become racist or you know classes or all those kind of things what are you seeing in that is there a danger that it will increase that there uh I'm optimistic it'll decrease that it it certainly needs to be paid close attention to and and if you just sort of blindly train on the internet you will end up with something that none of us should be proud of but uh but you know there's a lot of techniques in the field now about how we align these systems after the pre-training step and a lot of people have said that they're you know they were worried about this and now they they use this and they think it's a less biased system than most humans and and that they find or they're hopeful um that it'll help people who want to become less biased become less biased obviously I don't think an AI should project you know Force values onto anyone um but as a check as a tool uh you know I don't think it has all the psychological flaws we do and then as you as you talked are you willing to yourself become part of a small group of the other AI leaders to do this we're trying really hard to make that happen great I'm curious um you know we look at a lot of these new technologies so the iPhone came out social media came out and they're like we're going to connect you we're going to connect the world and they're beautiful in some aspects but they've always had these things like if you look at the loneliness epidemic in our culture people are more lonely than ever yeah statistically increasing uh the CDC just came out to report that one in three teenage girls in 2021 seriously considered committing suicide so there's like this mental health issue that young people are facing so it it seems that Technologies um uh record of actually helping people in their inner life hasn't been so good and I'm curious do you have thoughts on is is that just part of what we have to is that part of uh is there any way to correct that if you will look Chachi PT is only less than five months old uh maybe it's exactly five months old today actually no tomorrow um and we so we just haven't had very much time to see how this is going to evolve people report you know people who are using it as a sort of life coach or for personal growth or as a sort of and I feel it kind of icky even saying this but as a friend as a companion as a uh as a supporter uh that they're getting incredible value out of that I'm not sure we want that I don't think we know yet I I feel quite strange about that um but but definitely the self-reported value that people who are have experience in real struggle with or getting out of this is worth paying attention to um but you could write a million sci-fi stories about how it goes badly yeah so I think we have to watch it extremely extremely closely there's a lot of uses we don't support and then you're on like another that's another problem right because why does opening I get to decide that if people want to use this for whatever we don't allow it the answer is of course we shouldn't and the sooner we can hand over control of that stuff the better um but when we're in this rapidly evolving phase we do still have to make some decisions for now and you know my guess is there'll be some good some bad and we'll try to push it more say a little more about like how you um how your inner how do you tend to your inner life because I think there's a there's a notion sometimes that technology has a place right but so does meditation have a place so does certain Journeys have a place and I'm curious like how have you found that balance in your life and what are some of the things that you do to kind of both with technology but also not with technology that helps you feel connected and in a heart space of course of course I said this to jack a few weeks ago I am really happy for all of the time I've spent meditating because me having like a reserve of calmness to draw on these last few months where it feels like I've just been in this crazy Onslaught uh has been a very nice thing to have had and I know I'm like drawing down the debt right now yeah or the build up and I need to go replenish it um but it's been a great thing meditation has definitely been the center of this for me um and I you know I kind of like found it somewhat randomly uh and it immediately stuck and was very transformative uh maybe someday you'll find a good teacher to support you which would be amazing what happens do you want to say anything Jack about the inner life and and how we tend to that and what what what technology can do for us because I think it's interesting you still work with Jack versus a an AI right you find youthful Jack and there's for now [Laughter] right you could just make a chat jackpot jackpot Jack GPT I'll go I'll go go on vacation I think a lot of people would like that a lot of people want that yeah um I mean in a certain way what you're saying Sam is something that I wish were true for a lot of other folks who were in the position of trying to develop things that are going to be used and affect so many people to get quiet enough going back to that statement of one of my teachers that mine creates the abyss and the Heart crosses it that to find a way that we can get quiet enough to listen um listen to our own values and also to watch or listen in the way that David CMAs talked about earlier today where his work was to actually listen deeply um so you know I don't see meditation so much as okay I'm going to get rid of my stress or have some great state those can happen but that you actually get present and tuned in to where you are and that there's a spaciousness or graciousness in that from which you can make decisions that are wiser yeah and that's really the value and the point of it then from the Buddhist side um the most Central teachings and it would have been fun to actually bring it there's a big text called the avatamsika Sutra which is a Mahayana text and in it it speaks of the Buddhist Four Noble Truths that there's suffering anybody not experienced raise your hand you can have your money back okay their causes which are greed hatred and ignorance fear maybe goes in the in there too and the more agreed hatred and ignorance there are the more suffering there'll be the less of it the more there's generosity the more there's instead of hatred there's love the more there's Clarity and wisdom instead of ignorance the greater the well-being of all beings of those and so forth and then the beautiful thing is suffering isn't the end of the story there's a path there are practices mindfulness compassion connection so the question in some way and the Avatar is a Sutra I've go back to it it describes dozens of universes universe is made out of flowers the universe is made out of thought universe is made out of fire universe is made out of silicon I'm not sure that's in there but they go through the elements we're getting close and in every one of those universes it says there's a Buddha or a Buddha Consciousness arises and it teaches the same Noble Truth that the more greed and hatred and ignorance the more suffering and then there's a path to the Liberation from it so it feels like it applies in some deep way to what's being created can what's be created what's being created create from the foundation of promoting generosity wisdom trust and Clarity or honesty those kind of things and love if it does it will benefit and it will create a universe of value so there's something about the underlying looking at the underlying value structures where you have to bring what we know in the heart together with the Technologies and I don't know how that resonates for you Sam as I say it absolutely yes and you have conversations with your team is this a kind of a team conversation that you can have with them that says okay as we build this is there who has an idea to how how can this support let's say compassion in the world or is it or is it is it the feeling that if we can kind of provide people the information they can kind of find it on their own no I I we we talk I think as much about having a positive impact and not having a negative impact as we do on actually building the technology in the early years it was like are we going to get anything to work at all right this is all happening fairly quickly yeah um I mean not in the grand scheme we've been working on a company for seven yeah something years um but at this point you know we're relatively confident we know how to make technological progress from here and now a huge amount of the conversations are about where we want to go and how we want to manage things could you say a little bit if we were talking backstage about identity because I know that you're as a meditation practitioner I don't know if you call yourself a spiritual practitioner you know there's this like inquiry into who do I think I am right am I this person with this name and this body and or am I much kind of bigger than that you're talking about how sometimes people have this experience with with the technology or chat gbt where there's also that kind of questioning I'm curious like how do you see the role of identity in your life and and and any you know ego Tendencies and how can how do you kind of notice those particularly as more kind of power influence comes to you and then how potentially can a technology maybe help us rather than solidify a sense of ego herself maybe kind of help us expand it is that possible it's been interesting to watch people wrestle with these questions through the lens of AI and say okay well do I think this thing could be aware if it if it's aware does it have a sense of self is there a self if so where did that come from what if I made a copy what if I like cut the neural network in half and you kind of like go down this and you sort of get to the same answers as before but it's like a new yeah it's a New Perspective a new learning tool and it's there's like a lot of you know a lot of chatter about this on Reddit there's like subreddits about it and it's it's been fun to watch all of that yeah and you think for some people it helps some question a little bit about that sense I think anything that gets you questioning is like a good you know any any little approach to that is good and how do you work with that in the world right now where you're kind of I wouldn't say forced to be out and talking about it but you don't seem like you're somebody like this is me this is mine I did this which is kind of uh yeah I I am not look I think anybody who's building what we're building uh has an absolute obligation to show up and answer questions I look forward to a time when there's more people to show up and answer questions um I will go back I will go back to my normal Hideout from the Press strategy but uh yeah I think it's like super it would be super unreasonable not to yeah um so I'm trying to show up and answer questions anytime I think we deserve great scrutiny right now thank you thank you here when you [Applause] you you're you've been on the hot seat around now for a few months going whether it's Business Leaders or government leaders or whatever um and yet you seem relatively calm and you do yeah honestly and and and I said that um and not worried and and people who don't understand you're very close into it so you understand what's happening but the the cultural imagination because it's changing so quickly people are scared or they're worried or they're concerned are you worried I mean I See You In This Way describing here things because you're talking about a meditate Jack that's yeah if you talk about things that we have to tend to and it's partly it's a relief to hear it in a way say all right these are the potential downsides these are things that we've found we can do we can build in good values so that'll keep and so forth um what do you have to say to people who are worried about it and about your experience yeah I mean it would be it would be ridiculous not to be worried and I have huge empathy for people that are a lot worried I am very optimistic that we can manage through this but I also am in it every day and you know most people are busy with other things in their lives they don't get to think about this every day they don't get to see the rate of progress uh and and again that's part of why we thought it's so important to release this and let people gradually or at least gradually relative to what it could be otherwise have time to adapt and think about this and decide what they want are what we want and and so I totally empathize with people who are extremely worried and there are a lot of those um I am somewhat worried but I am pretty optimistic that we will find we will discover as we go ways to integrate this into our lives ways to solve the Myriad set of not only safety challenges but Social Challenges like this is I go back and forth about whether we should understand this as a primarily a technological Revolution or a societal Revolution obviously this is like both like all technology revolutions are but and I I also think it's always annoying to say This Time It's Different or you know my thing is super cool but uh I I do think in some sense AI will be bigger than a standard technological Revolution and is is much closer to a societal Revolution and which means we need to think about it as a social problem primarily not not just a technological problem and and so how we are going to choose to navigate this and this speed with which it will happen even if we slow it down as much as we can even if we do get this you know uh dream regulatory body set up tomorrow uh it's it's still going to happen on a societal skill relatively fast and so I totally get why people are scared I think people should be somewhat scared but I think people should also take pride take take so let's take pride in the fact that Humanity has come together to do incredibly complicated things before uh you mentioned the example of nuclear weapons and I think we just need to do the same thing here we need to come together decide what we want decide we're going to enforce it and accept the fact the future is going to be very different and probably like wonderfully better not a nervous laugh I could lie to you and say oh we can totally stop it you know but I think this is did you have any idea that this is so you guys it was the fastest internet application ever supposedly I think it took from what I read it took uh Instagram two and a half years to reach 100 million users and it took uh chat gbt two months or less than two months something like that dude I mean the fastest thing ever is have you is it was it part of were you as surprised as other people or you're like yeah this is kind of how this is we we thought it was going to be good like we wouldn't have shipped something we thought it was gonna be bad but I also think it would be ridiculous to sit around and say we think this is going to be the fastest growing you know product ever so in that sense we were surprised but it was by magnitude not like we we you know we had seen the utility it could provide people right like things grow fast because people like them and because it helps them in some way yeah I see so many people who are excited using it and finding all these new ways to use it and so forth and in our conversation Sam has said in the last couple of few years you know it's like it's growing really fast like a kid it's from kindergarten it's now in elementary school then he says now it's in middle school now it's in high school you know it's graduated college that's in a matter of months I really want you to understand what I'm getting is that this is changing very very fast that this isn't a matter of decades but it's a matter of the next year or two or three well maybe more than a few years but there's some really really big changes that we're all a part of and personally I appreciate I always appreciate Collective wisdom when technology said the next Buddha is going to be the community the Sangha and not an individual that part of that principle underlies what you've done to say let us release this and let us learn together how we can Steward it and benefit from it in some way and that seems absolutely critical yeah I think that has worked really well I think the really the whole world is now engaged in this conversation and we will debate and wrestle with questions about what we want how we like where we'd like to see this go and I think that's happening I think it's very important that's happening right now could you say a little bit about artificial general intelligence and the capacity of the AI to be because we've had AI around for a while but the capacity of the AI to like teach itself and learn and are is it learning things that you're shocked that it was not a program to learn or is there could you say a little bit about what that process is like and what it has control over it doesn't have control not yet but look people Define AGI in these different ways uh one for me is when when the system can go just figure something new out and a reason like the reason that I'm excited for that is I think we need more scientific and technological progress in the world and when these tools can help humans do that Faster come up with things that are out of our reach right now we can have a much much better world now I come at this from like a nerd lens but I think there will be other ways that we use that in very other content very different contexts to say you know how can we identify better governance structures or better sort of win-win situations in society in in very different ways and but it really is just the same tool and it's you know when on this exponential curve we say okay now it has this new capability um I I think there's been this caricature in sci-fi of it's going to be and I kind of have thought this way too sometimes because it's just easy to visualize it's going to be this one giant brain in the sky and it's gonna kind of answer any question and it's going to be this like singular thing I think what will happen is more like a society of systems that are you know human scale a little above human scale but maybe can do things faster or better at certain things and like all of us do they contribute to the scaffolding to the accumulated wisdom the technology tree the the build out of society and you know any one bad actor is controllable just like with humans things get steered and kind of flow throughout the community we're part of it too um but I think of it as like you know many new members of society yeah pushing all of society forward got it thanks I want to go back to the question of decision making because it was raised to me by somebody who said it seems opaque who actually gets to make these decisions about when things are released you know or how they're used uh so there's seven board members of open AI right now uh they are not democratically elected we should make them and we want to figure out over time how to do that it actually turns out to be a harder design problem than I thought it would to say like we would like you know someday to turn over governance to democratic votes of the entire world um but I think that's a good platonic ideal to get to maybe you want to have you know some checks and balances on that because people voting In the Heat of the Moment sometimes sometimes people very interesting characters for president for sure uh yeah but I would still take democracy over any other system totally um and I still think kind of the right to for all of us to self-determine the Future here seems Seems right um but it's like seven board members uh I don't have any special control I mean I have like a lot of soft power but I don't have like super voting shares I actually don't have any equity in opening eye at all um so it's really the board with the power helpful for some people anyway to have a sense like who's stewarding this at this point and maybe it will shift as you say if there's a international organization um and you worry about that's what that's what I think do you worry about what else is out there I'm sure that there's you're not the only player in town so even if you held certain values that other companies might not hold those values or other efforts totally although I think most other players out there also are trying really hard to do the right thing yeah I know that um there's a lot of people who look at things like education and health care and these industries that are probably going to be radically shifted in a very short time and they're just concerned about how do they use it in a way that's beneficial but yeah are there Industries where you think wow this is going to really take over and I'll pick education is an example since you mentioned it first we've really gone through the arc there you know when Chachi PT first came out uh students started using it to write their take home essays and school districts were like falling all over themselves to ban it as fast as possible and saying this at the end of education and you know there were some people were saying well we adapted to calculators we'll probably adapt to this but their voices were sort of like drowned out by this is just the end and that lasted for a few weeks to like great media fanfare and then teachers in many cases led the uh led the charge to get it unbanned because they said like this is the greatest learning tool for our students we've ever had and students were using it as a personalized tutor um and teachers were able to still do what teachers do great but you know teachers are horribly overworked and having the ability to have an AI tutor help and really figure out on any topic what a student needed to learn and explain things and catch mistakes and explain the mistakes turned out to be great and it was teachers that drove the unbanning of chat gbt and I think it's now like I saw a statistic last week that like 71 of teachers are using chat gbt in their education process somehow and as an aide or as an aid of some sort yeah and students you know talk about it and they're like this is awesome like this is like how I learn things now uh so that was like a full up and down Arc there will be other ones that go the other way um but I think we're still collectively figuring out how we're going to use these new tools yeah great yeah there is a big concern and you've talked about it too with there are certain kinds of jobs that are just going to disappear or there are for sure that a AI will take over and how that will get regulated and how that will affect our society at large is a really big question for yeah I mean this happens this happens with every technological Revolution and we always find new jobs and we adapt but I don't think we've ever had to contend with one that will be as fast as we'll have to contend with this one and that's going to be challenging yeah yeah yeah when when it went to steam engines or that part of the Industrial Revolution there was a there were more years to actually yeah I have no doubt we can do this I have no doubt we'll be fine on the other side but the compressed time frame and do you think we can do it within the capitalist framework that's what some people wonder whether the capitalism itself is kind of has its own particular motives and that whatever kind of comes into that inevitably economic value overrides um kind of planetary betterment and do you feel like that also needs to be questioned do we need to like look at what is our new monetary system for this new chapter or do you feel like we can work with this current one or how do you see that um I think capitalism people famously say capitalism is like the worst system except all other systems and I would say so far like I believe we can find something much better yeah I think it's been the right it's been the best system up until now and I hope in a world with the level of abundance that we're talking about with powerful AI we find something much much better than capitalism yeah and I kind of think we'll have to because the like I think the shift from the relative leverage from labor to Capital has already gone way too far but it goes way further in a world with AI and also the whole social contract changes so I think it's like an app time to figure out keep the good parts then there have been a lot of great parts of capitalism that I think unfortunately get totally dismissed like it has been a miracle in many ways um but it's been really bad in a lot of others and as Society continues to evolve I I'm I'm sure we'll make progress yeah if you look walk around you know there's so many places where economic disparity is just disheartening right to see the level of sometimes poverty and homelessness and and do you feel that there the structure that needs to take have you thought about what that structure might look like and whether there's something that guarantees housing or guarantees financial support for people or would you have peace you know there's like there's some people who are like disparity is the problem there's some people whose poverty poverty is the problem people talk about the Solutions in a world with AI differently depending on where they come out of it but one thing I think we all could agree on is that we just shouldn't have poverty in the world and the definition of what poverty is should like lift up every year yeah yeah yeah and for sure Ai and the abundance that comes with that can contribute to that and hopefully pretty fast we've actually again for all of the doomsane we've been on a pretty great trajectory as a society like if you look at the graphs of global extreme poverty or Global poverty over time like good job you know if we look at it as look as how much does wealth does the top 0.1 percent own and how much everybody else owns that's that's gotten worse but I agree with you the the poverty's gotten better that's gotten worse and again I think there's two valid lenses that people look at this from I but I think it's still worth acknowledging already and again I think AI is going to do this much better the progress that we have made on the progress that we as Society have made in terms of lifting the fork around the world a lot further to go um but like look at that graph I think it's like we should all collectively be proud of that I agree so this is talking about social structures and the most important ones of how we live equity equitability and so forth there's a different dimension of development which is human development or inner development and in some way I want to ask and envision that AI can actually help raise human consciousness from the competitive or the you know greed and fear-based way that we relate not just as a society but somehow Elevate our Consciousness so that there's some way in which we operate feeling that we're more interconnected that there's a deeper sense of compassion and care for one another that those kind of values that we might aspire to that it's time for Humanity in some way to uplevel our Consciousness in our game because that's what we are I mean that that's your truest nature and to be able to embody that in some way and bring that alive becomes really the next task yes we can develop technology but we have to develop conscious develop our connection to a higher conscious Consciousness is already here and it's the game we're in actually that's a we are the play of Consciousness but somehow to embody that in a different way do you sense or feel that AI can help with that development if you will of Humanity's coming into buddhahood rather you know rather than if you can do that selfish Hood I I think you were the first one to say this to me but uh we're talking once about what it what are people gonna do in this post AI world when we have you know we all have tremendous resources we've solved a lot of inequities in the world we have a lot of time on our hands yeah like well there's a lot of people who need a lot of time for Spiritual practice and we're going to have that time right instead instead of going instead of going to work you're going to go to work on yourself I I'm I hope that happens and I think it will maybe that is there a division of open AI that can can tackle that or is that just you like inherent in the in what you're doing that seems like Jack is better qualified when I go to bed some not at night sometimes I think like oh did I I didn't attach that email that I had that I so sent to somebody or oh I didn't um I wrote a letter or something email and I made a grammar mistake or like oh I did something when you go to sleep at night do you like oh oh I I just let out the killer AI That's going to destroy your planet like like like or like how is your own not yet how is your own thought process with it and are you able to kind of stay as much in your heart as possible and and kind of in a in the Buddha Space and of course that's probably why Jack is super helpful but look I have no idea why Jack put an interest in me years ago I'm very grateful he did and one of the things that I think I really learned was how to let that stuff go at the end of the day yeah yeah um and you know just realized I write it down whatever but go to bed with like a clean head every night great it's really nice okay I have a question for you but in some way for us how can we support you and you as the stand and not you as Sam so much but how can we support this new development so that it really benefits Humanity what can we as you know the thing I really hoped for is happening which is a global conversation with all of the passion and hope and fear and ugliness and beauty that is now happening about how we want the future to look how we're going to think about Equity how we're going to think about technology how we're going to think about our lives the rules of society and we weren't sure that people were ever going to Care while there was still enough time to act on it and now people really do and I feel very happy and grateful for that so the thing that I think we needed support from to get to the right outcome here is is really happening and people are clearly taking time out from all of the other priorities and busyness and demands on their time to debate this to wrestle with the issues to to put these regulatory things in place but more than that to like make the social decisions and I'm really pleased about that yeah yeah and and how about the the spiritual journey do you feel like that's is there a way that we can support everybody in that inner development just as we support them and here's this external technology it's amazing it's incredible and it's great whether it's a new iPhone a new AI like there's all that kind of like amazement and then there's the inner world and I'm sure you know people I know people they they make they have all this fancy technology they have making all this money and they're kind of miserable right like in the end greed hatred and delusion kind of increases the money doesn't doesn't dissipate that and I'm curious is there a way in which you feel like as a as a culture we can kind of um or maybe it's already happening we can kind of reinforce that that we take time for our inner life that hopefully uh is just as important as what we create externally I would love to hear what Jack has to say about that and that is um that's the game really that is you know that's that's where we are and somehow Consciousness life has put us put us in this place and we are as I said the other day on the stage we're the nation of nuclear Giants and ethical infants in some way yeah the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and so the technological development now is demanding in some way that we also develop these other capacities but the algorithms largely get us to spend more time in that zone so less far our friends that's true you raised the danger and there was the social dilemma which everybody's watched and then now there's the AI dilemma or those kind of concerns um I think we're in a bigger game than that okay you know this is bigger than our iPhones and it's and and in some way I think it is really going to as as you say it's going to change the outer Society but it's going to demand that we start to look at what are our values and how do we support each other and can there it can we actually respond to the poverty in in a way that makes it so that that we honor everybody and and we honor the Earth this is in our laps now and it's our hands yeah um and so then you get the inner and the outer somehow needing to come together right I think the challenge I have Jack is that there's billions and billions of dollars being spent every year to get you to look at your phone more yeah there's like a whole industry to look at your thing for more and there's not as much of an industry if you will to uh support you putting down your phone talking to a human being going for a walk sitting practicing some form of inner Journey or meditation so I'm just kind of curious there's one one one side has like lots of uh bandwidth and focus and the other side has less and and maybe chat gbt and other AIS will kind of create solve some of the problems that give us more time but uh it does seem that the technology itself can be so immersive that sometimes uh you know I go into stores sometimes the restaurants and everyone's looking at their phone and a part of me is like well I look at my phone a lot too who cares another part of me is kind of sad because it's like oh we're not connecting as people anymore and I'm just curious if maybe that's my old story that I need to let go of you know that's like well this is just a time where you know most kids spend seven hours of of their life on their phone and that's just life right or how much of it is like like hold it are we losing something that's really important and can we kind of maybe remind ourselves that's like oh yeah I need to spend time in nature I need to like connect with a friend or I need to to um so I'm curious how both of you see that is there anything we need to to do about that I think it's a fabulous question and a really Central One um and I'm somehow at my best envisioning you know people are already typing into chat GPT write me a story or do a play or you know a young friend of mine had um chat GPT write a letter from Buddha to Dracula who was saying to Dracula you know I we we're both we've been around a long time both of us I just wanna I'm the Buddha and I just want to note that your form of livelihood is really not necessarily a good for you or others there are other ways to nourish yourself it was really fun what I want somehow is AI to help us design our life yeah that has the very things that you talk about that has human connection and value and time and nature and so forth we know it's possible that that's a different kind of integration where we're served by it rather than Serbia rather than serving it um and we are on the cusp of something very big that's happening so these values and at least that kind of a vision really has to be kept in mind and so forth and I don't know I'll note this I don't know if you want to talk about it Sam but there's also a whole revolution in energy and Sam's been involved in the nuclear fusion world and believes he can speak for himself that we could have nuclear fusion power which is safe totally safe available in large amounts in the next few years again this is revolutionary no more need for oil no more need for all this kind of stuff I'm saying it only because our imagination is being asked to open both in terms of the technology but also then how if we have that kind of energy what do we do with our lives in our inner life and how do we care for one another so I don't know so energy and inner life what I hope with AI is that it serves our individual will and that we can explain what we want in our best moments we can have a conversation to figure out what that really is when we're not tired when we're not distracted when we're not enjoying those dopamine hits of scrolling or whatever and say like this is what I want you to help me with great this is what I want myself to be this I want to spend my time and and then the system as Faithfully as it can the tool as Faithfully as they can helps encourage that if people want to scroll on their phone all day I think that's totally valid but you should really want that and not just being like dopamine impact on it and if you want I I'd like mostly live on a ranch with no cell phone service if you want to not have cell phones like I think that's great um and you should be able to do that too but what I hope is that this is a technology and the and the the way that we make societal decisions about this prioritize amplification of your individual will for yourself wonderful and I think technology has not always done that um but this that the shape of this particular technology means we have a very good chance to get it right beautiful the fact that it can understand right right are a natural thing uh and and then help us with that is very powerful so we just have a minute or two left any last words that we did not touch on that feels either of you feels like it's kind of on your heart but it hasn't been said yet anything that feels um like it it was not quite spoken to Jack any um yeah in this in this moment of the conversation with you Sam and Soren with all of us together because we really are all in it together um what I want to ask from you is your good wishes in a very sincere way we're talking about some things that are going to affect a lot of us and our children our grandchildren and also climate and the other things we're concerned about um and at least for me this kind of conversation and the willingness that you have Sam to sit in front of people and say I I want to answer the question it's not like oh I want to go on the road and be in front of people peppered by questions a lot of whom are you know demanding but the openness to say this is us it's not Sam and it's not a small group of people but it's really something that we need to hold and and work and collaborate together I just like a few seconds of us feeling that we're together in this that it's not somebody else but it's us yeah and the energy and the clarity and the love and the care that we bring matters a great deal yeah and that you feel whatever people might feel you know personally that somehow that there's a well-wishing behind let's do this right and let's make this a benefit yeah and I'm sure Sam at times I mean as as Jack said a Central Casting puts you in this role and I'm trying this rule must feel uh isolating I would think or maybe not or how would you describe do you feel a sense of responsibility no you feel like you're on your path work with the smartest and most well-meaning people I could imagine you know in the trenches every waking hour and it's a great gift but it never feels isolating it really is a wonderful set of people it's beautiful beautiful all right thank you so much Josh Sam thank you

Channel: Wisdom 2.0

Views: 89,653

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Id: hn1Y6GVWUV0

Length: 64min 19sec (3859 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023

Reddit Comments

[u/EkkoThruTime]

Oh wow, Jack Kornfield and Sam Altman, not a combination I would expect.