Elon Musk FULL INTERVIEW with Tucker Carlson AI, TruthGPT, Twitter, Banking Crisis, Aliens

so all of a sudden AI is everywhere people who weren't quite sure what it was or playing with it on their phones is that good or bad yeah so I've been um thinking about AI for a long time since I was in college really um it was one of the things that the sort of four or five things I thought would really uh affect future dramatically it is fundamentally profound in that the the smartest creatures as far as you know on this Earth are humans is uh defining characteristic yes we're obviously uh weaker than say chimpanzees and less agile um but real smarter so now what happens when something vastly smarter than the smartest person comes along in Silicon foam it's very difficult to predict what will happen in that circumstance it's called The Singularity it's a singularity like a black hole because you don't know what happens after that it's hard to predict so I think we should be cautious with AI and we should I think there should be some government oversight because it affects the it's a danger to the public and so when you when you have things that are endangered to the public uh you know like let's say um so Food Food and Drugs That's why we have the Food and Drug Administration right and the Federal Aviation Administration uh the FCC uh we have we have these agencies to oversee things that uh affect the public where they could be public harm um and you don't want companies cutting Corners uh on safety um and then having people suffer as a result so that's why I've actually for a long time been a strong advocate of AI regulation um so that I think regulation is uh you know it's not fun to be regulated it's a sort of some sort of a I saw an arduous to be able to be regulated um I have a lot of experience with regular regulated Industries because obviously uh Automotive is highly regulated you could fill this room with all the regulations that are required for a production car just in the United States and then there's a whole different set of regulations in Europe and China and the rest of the world so very familiar with being overseen by a lot of regulators um and the same thing is true with rockets you can't just willy-nilly you know shoot rockets off or not big ones anyway because the FAA is oversees that um and then even to get a launch license you there are probably half a dozen or more federal agencies that need to approve it uh plus state agencies so it's I've been through so many regulatory uh situations it's insane and and but you know sometimes I I people think I'm some sort of like regulatory Maverick that sort of defies Regulators on a regular basis but this is actually not the case uh so uh in you know once in a blue moon rarely I will disagree with Regulators but the vast majority of the time my companies agree with the regulations and comply yes anyway so I think I think we should take this seriously and and we should have um a regulatory agency I think it needs to start with um a group that initially seeks insight into AI uh then solicits opinion from industry and then has proposed rule making and then those rules you know uh we'll probably hopefully gradually be accepted by the major players in Ai and um and I think we'll have a better chance of um Advanced AI being beneficial to humanity in that circumstance but all regulations start with a perceived danger and planes fall out of the sky or food causes botulism yes I don't think the average person playing with AI on his iPhone perceives any danger can you just roughly explain what you think the dangers might be yeah so the the the the danger really AI is um perhaps uh more dangerous than say mismanaged uh aircraft design or production maintenance or or bad car production in the sense that it is it has the potential however small one make regard that probability but it is non-trivial it has the potential of civilizational Destruction there's movies like Terminator but it wouldn't quite happen like Terminator um because the the intelligence would be in the data centers right the robot's just the end effector but I think perhaps what you may be alluding to here is that um regulations are really only put into effect after something terrible has happened that's correct if that's the case for AI and we only putting regulations after something terrible has happened it may be too late to actually put the regulations in place the AI may be in control at that point you think that's real it is it is conceivable that AI could take control and reach a point where you couldn't turn it off and it would be making the decisions for people yeah absolutely absolutely no it's that's that's definitely the way things are headed uh for sure uh I mean um things like like say uh chat EVT which is uh based on jpd4 from openai which is the company that I played a a critical role in in creating unfortunately back when it was a non-profit yes um I mean the the reason uh opening eye exists at all is that um Larry Page and I used to be close friends and I would stay at his house in Palo Alto and I would talk to him later tonight about uh AI safety and at least my perception was that Larry was not taking uh AI safety uh seriously enough um and um what did he say about it he really seemed to be um sort of digital super intelligence basically digital God if you will uh as soon as possible um he wanted that yes he's made many public statements over the years uh that that the whole goal of Google is uh what's called AGI artificial general intelligence or artificial super intelligence you know and I agree with him that the there's great potential for good um but there's also potential for bad and so if if you've got some um radical new technology you want to try to take a set of actions that maximize probably it will do good a minimize probably will do bad things yes it can't just be Health leather let's just go you know barreling forward and you know hope for the best and then at one point uh I said well what about you know we're going to make sure humanity is okay here um and and um uh and they called me a speciesist [Laughter] that term yes and there were Witnesses the other I wasn't the only one there when you called me a specialist and so I was like okay that's it uh I've yes I'm a speciesist okay you got me what are you yeah I'm fully specious um busted um so um that was the last rule at the time uh Google uh had a quite Deep Mind and so Google deepmind together had about three quarters of all the AI talents in the world they obviously had a trans amount of money and more computers than anyone else so I'm like okay we're about unipolar world here where there's just one one company that it has close to Monopoly on AI talent and uh and computers like so scaled Computing and a person who's in charge doesn't seem to care about safety this is not good so uh so then I thought what's the the furthest thing from Google would be like a non-profit that is fully open because Google was closed for profit so that's why the open and open AI refers to open source uh you know transparency so people know what's going on yes and that it we don't want to have like a uh I mean well I'm normally in favor of for profit we don't want this to be sort of a profit maximizing a demon from hell that's right that just never stops right so that's how I open air was so you want specious incentives here incentives that yes I think we want to pro-human yeah this makes the future good for the humans yes yes because we're humans so can you just put it I keep pressing it but just just for people who haven't thought this through and aren't familiar with it and the cool parts of of artificial intelligence are so obvious you know write your college paper for you write a limerick about yourself like there's a lot there that's fun and useful can you be more precise about what's potentially dangerous and scary like what could it do what specifically are you worried about going with old sayings the pen is mightier than the sword um so the if you have a super intelligent AI that is capable of writing uh incredibly well and in a way that is very influential um you know convincing and then and as and is constantly figuring out what is more what is more and what is more convincing to people over time and then enter social media for example Twitter uh but also Facebook and others you know um and and potentially manipulates public opinion in a way that is very bad um how would we even know what's happening is they're training the AI to lie yes it's bad to lie that's exactly right and to withhold information July and and yes and um yeah exactly to to either you know comment on some things not comments on other things but but not to say what it what what the data uh actually uh demands that I'd say exactly um so um how did it get this way you funded it at the beginning what happened yeah well that would be ironic but Faith the most ironic outcome is most likely it seems um that's good that's actually a friend of mine Jonah came up with that one I actually have a slight variant on that which is the most entertaining outcome is the most likely but that's entertaining as viewed from a third party viewer right like uh so if we're like an alien for my show yes um like you could go see a movie about World War one and they're being blown to bits and the gas and everything and the trenches and it's like you're eating popcorn and having a soda you know it's fine not so great for the people in the movie True this little Occam's razor the simplest explanation is most likely donors variant uh which is um irony in and my variant which is uh the most entertaining as seen by a third-party audience which seems to be mostly true um but it seems true in this case so you gave them did you give them a lot I hear it with the name and uh the concept and pushed uh it had a number of dinners around the the Bay Area uh with uh you know with some of the people the leading figures in AI um and I helped recruit the initial team in fact the the Elia suits guy who who was uh really quite fundamental to the success of uh open AI uh it was I I I put a trans amount of effort into recruiting Ilia and he changed his mind a few times ultimately decided to go with the opening high but if he had not gone without any open air would not have succeeded I really put a lot a lot of effort into creating this this organization to serve as a counterweight to Google and then I kind of took mine off the ball I guess and uh they are now closed source and they are obviously for-profit and they're um closely allied with Microsoft uh you know in effect Microsoft uh has a very strong say if not um directly controls uh openai at this point so you really have an open air Microsoft situation and then at Google deepmind uh the other two sort of heavyweights in this Arena so it seems like the world needs a third option yes so I I I think I will create a third option um although it's starting very late in the game of course can it be done I don't know I think it's we'll see it's uh it's definitely starting late um but I will I will I'll try to create a third option um and that third option hopefully does more more good than harm uh like the intention with opening eye was obviously to do it good but it's not clear whether it's actually doing good or whether it's I can't tell at this point um except that I'm worried about the fact that uh it's been it's being trained to be politically correct which is simply another way of of being on Truth saying untruthful things yes so that's that's a bad sign there's certainly a path to AI dystopia is to train an AI to be deceptive so yeah I'm going to start something which I know you're called Truth gbt or uh a maximum truth seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe and I think this this might be the best path to Safety in the sense that uh an AI that cares about understanding the universe uh it is unlikely to annihilate humans because we are an interesting part of the universe uh hopefully they would think that I I think you know because yeah like like we like Humanity could um decide to hunt down all the chimpanzees and kill them but we don't because we're we're actually glad that they exist yes and um and we aspire to protect their habitats but we feel that way because we have souls and that makes us sentimental and reflective it gives us a moral sense longings can a machine ever have those things can a machine be sentimental can appreciate Beauty well I mean we're getting into some you know philosophical areas that are hard to resolve um you know I I take somewhat of a scientific view of things which is that we might have a soul or we might not have a soul I don't know um it feels like a we have I feel like I've got some sort of Consciousness that exists on a plane um that is not the one we observe yes that is certainly how I feel but it could be an illusion I don't know um but for um for AI uh in terms of of uh understanding beauty is it some sort of appreciated Beauty and being able to um create incredibly beautiful art yes will AI be able to create incredibly beautiful art it already does yes and if you see some of the majority uh I have this stuff it's incredible it is um so um no no question that it can create art that we that we perceive as uh stunning really um and um it's doing so it's still images now but it won't be long before it's doing uh movies and shorts and you know like movies just a series of frames with audio but at that point because it can mimic people and voices any image it can mimic reality itself so effectively I mean how could you have a criminal trial I mean how could you ever believe that evidence was authentic for example and I don't mean like in 30 years I mean like next year I mean that seems totally disruptive to the way to all of our institutions but I'm not sure I I think it's more like um our you know will Humanity um control its Destiny or not will we have a future that is better than the past or not [Music] you bought Twitter famously you've got a lot of other businesses and a lot going on yes you said you bought it because you believe in speech Free Speech you've had a lot of hassle since you bought it and retrospect was it worth buying it I mean it remains to be seen as to whether this was uh financially smart uh currently it is it is not uh you know we just revalued the company at less than half of the acquisition price yes um um no my timing was terrible for for when the uh offer was made because it was uh you know right before advertising plummeted and um you cut the high water mark I noticed yeah yeah so I must be a real genius here um my my timing is amazing um since I played a porter for at least twice as much as it should have been bought for um but some things are Priceless and um so the the whether I lose money or not that is a secondary issue compared to uh ensuring the uh strength of democracy and free speech is the Bedrock of a functioning democracy yes um and any the speech needs to be as transparent and truthful as possible um so we've got a huge push uh on Twitter to be as truthful as possible we've got this community notes feature which is great it is great it is awesome yeah and it's like I saw it this morning yeah it was far more honest than the New York Times it's great yeah we put a lot of effort to ensuring that Community notes does not get gamed or or have biases it is simply cares about what is the most accurate thing um and you know sometimes truth can be a little bit elusive but but you can still aspire to get closer to it yes you know and so um and I think the the effect of uh Community notes uh is more powerful than people may realize because once people know that they could get noted um you know Community noted on Twitter then uh they'll think that more carefully about what they say uh they're likely it's basically it's an encouragement to be more truthful and less deceptive when you jumped into this though when you bought it did you understand well clearly you understood its importance you wouldn't have bought it uh Twitter yes right but it's not the biggest but it's the most important in the social media companies but did you understand the kind of ferocity you'd be facing the attacks you'd be facing from Power centers in the country um I thought there'd probably be some um negative reactions yes [Laughter] so I'm sure everyone would not be pleased with the uh with with it um but um at the other day you know if if the public is happy with it that's what matters um and the public will speak with their actions oh though I mean though if if they find truth Pruder to be useful they will use it more and if they find it to be not useful I will use it less if they find it to be the best source of truth I think they will use it more you know no there's obviously a lot of um organizations that are used to having sort of unfettered influence uh on Twitter um that no longer have that New York Times of their of their badge this morning and then you called them diarrhea okay you did you did I'm just I'm just quoting you you you described their Twitter feed as a diarrhea I said it was a Twitter code Twitter equivalent of diarrhea okay it's not literally diarrhea but no it's uh you know it's a metaphor um but an accurate one um so I mean if you look at the uh at NY Times Twitter feed is uh unreadable uh it's like because what they do is they tweet every single article even the ones that are uh boring even ones that don't make it into the paper so uh so it's just non-stop zillion tweets a day with no uh you know they really should just be saying like what are the top tweets yeah like what what are the what are the what are the big stories of the day uh I don't know put out like 10 or something you know so it's a number that's manageable as opposed to right now if you if you were to follow NY at nytimes on Twitter you're going to get barraged with like hundreds of tweets a day yeah um and your whole feed will be filled with NY Times so um that's that's this is something I would recommend actually for oral Publications uh which is uh for your primary feed um only put out your best stuff like I think I know a thing or two about how to use Twitter because uh you know it was the most interacted with account on the whole system uh before the acquisition before the acquisition closed I didn't have the most number of followers so I had the most number of interactions and so I clearly know something about how to use Twitter you know people's attention is limited so just make sure you put the stuff that's most important there so because you know you and people like you do interact on Twitter it's obviously enormously powerful in shaping public opinion it's where a lot of ideas and Trends are incubated yeah you know what that's right absolutely it's also a magnet for Intel agencies from around the world and yes one of the things we learned after you started opening the books is that they were exerting influence from within Twitter I mean it was absurd um did you know that going in no since I've been a heavy Twitter user since 2009 um my it's it's sort of like I'm in The Matrix I mean I can see like things do things feel right do they not feel right what what tweets am I being shown as recommended uh like I get a feel like what accounts are making comments uh where are the comments uh eerily similar yeah um and and then you look at the account and it's just obviously a fake photo and uh you know uh that it's just obviously a bot cluster uh over and over again so I started to get like just more and more uneasy about the the Twitter situation I started starting to feel like something's about in the state of Denmark here this is so much feels wrong about the platform it seemed to be just drifting in a I I couldn't place it exactly just ahead of it it felt like it was drifting in a bad Direction so then I was like and and my conversations with the board and management seem to confirm my intuition about that but basically I was convinced these guys do not care about fixing Twitter uh and and uh and I had a bad feeling about where I was headed based in the conversations conversations I had with him so then I was like you know what I I'll try acquiring it and see if that's see if acquiring it is is possible um no I didn't have enough cash to acquire it so I would need you know support from others um from some of the existing investors I would also need like a lot of debt and um so it wasn't clear to me with a an acquisition would succeed but I thought I would try and uh ultimately it did succeed anyway here we are um but when you got there and all of a sudden you own it and all the data on the service belongs to you and what belongs to the people in my view but yes but but you can see what it is and you can see what they've been doing and you can see who's been working there you you were shocked to find out that various Intel agencies were affecting its operations uh the the degree to which uh various government agencies had effectively had full access to everything that was going on on Twitter uh blew my mind I was not aware of that would that include people's DMs uh yes yes because the dams are not encrypted so one of the first you know one of the things that we're about to release uh is ability to encrypt your DM that's pretty heavy duty though because a lot of well-known people reporters talking to their sources government officials the richest people in the world they're dming each other and the Assumption obviously was incorrect but was that that's private but that was being read by various governments uh yeah that seems yes scary uh yes it is uh so uh like I said we're moving to um have the DMS be optionally encrypted I mean you know there's like a lot of DM conversations which are you know just chatting with friends it's not not important um that's hopefully coming out later this month but no later the next month uh is the ability to toggle encryption on or off so if you if you are in a conversation you think is sensitive you can just toggle encryption on and then no one on Twitter can see what you're talking about they could put a gun to my head and I couldn't I couldn't tell I couldn't if somebody puts a gun to my head and I can I still not uh see your DMs that should be that's the acid test yes um and that's how that's that's how it should be if you want if you had complaints from various governments about doing this I haven't had Direct complaints to me I've had sort of like some indirect complaints I think people are a little concerned about complaining to me directly in case I tweet about it [Laughter] they're like oh uh so they're sort of trying to be more roundabout than that you know I mean if if I got something that was uh unconstitutional from the US government I would say my reply would be to send them a copy of the you know First Amendment and just say like what part of this are we getting wrong you have a lot of government you have a lot of government what part of this are we getting wrong please tell me I mean it's a pretty no I'm just saying but you're kind of exposed in your other businesses so this is just in case our viewers aren't following this this is not you're not just like a journalist taking a stand on behalf of the First Amendment you're a guy with big government contracts giving the finger to the government do you think um Twitter will be as Central to this presidential campaign as it was in the last several I think it will play a significant role in elections not just domestically but internationally the goal of new Twitter is to be um as fair and even-handed as possible so not favoring any political uh ideology uh but uh just um yeah being being fair at all why doesn't Facebook do this I know that Zuckerberg has said and I take him at face value that he I well I way that he is a kind of old-fashioned liberal who doesn't like to censor he has but he you know like why wouldn't a company like that take the stand that you have taken it was pretty rooted in American traditional political custom you know for free speech my understanding is that um Zuckerberg spent a 400 million dollars in the last election normally in a get out the vote campaign but really fundamentally in support of Democrats is that accurate or not accurate that is accurate does that sound unbiased to you no it doesn't yes so you don't see hope that Facebook will approach this as a a non-aligned Orbiter you've allowed Donald Trump back on Twitter he hasn't taken you up on your offer because he's got his own thing right do you think he will go back on Twitter well that's that's obviously up to him um you know my job is to uh I you know I take the freedom of speech just very seriously so it's um you know I didn't I didn't vote for Donald Trump I actually voted for Biden not saying I'm a huge fan of Biden because I I would think that would probably be inaccurate uh if it's um you know we have difficult choices to make in these residential elections it's not I I would prefer frankly that we we put someone just a normal person as president yeah a normal person with common sense uh and whose values are smack in the middle of the country you know just you know Center the normal distribution and uh I think they'll be that that would be great you know I think we have made maybe being president not that much fun you know it should be jolly Frank met a shrinking pie obviously for uh most of the traditional media companies um and made them more desperate to get clicks to get to get you know get attention um and it's made them when you know when they were when they were in a sort of a desperate State they will then tend to really push uh headlines that get the most clicks whether those headlines are accurate or not um so it's resulted in my view I think probably I think most people would agree a less truthful less accurate in use um so uh because they just got to get a rise out of people and I think it's also increased the negativity of the news because uh I think we humans instinctually respond more to make I think we have an instinctual negative bias which which kind of makes sense in that like uh if um like let's say you're uh like it's more important to remember where where was the lion or where was the tribe that wants to kill my tribe then where is the bush with berries yes like one's like a permanent negative outcome and the other is like well I might go hungry so meaning that there's an asymmetry in um it sort of involved asymmetry in negative versus positive stuff um and and also historically the negative stuff would have been quite proximate like it would have been near represented a real danger to you as a person um if you heard negative news because historically you know like a few hundred years ago we're not hearing about what negative things are happening on the other side of the world or on the other side of the country we're only we're hearing about negative things in our village um things that could actually have a a bad effect on you whereas now we're hearing about we mean the news very often seems to attempt to uh answer the question what is the worst thing that happened on Earth today and they wonder why you said after reading that you know do you read any Legacy Media Outlets I mean I really get most of my news from Twitter at this point and it is the number one music news source I think uh in the world at this point what percentage of your staff did you fire at Twitter one of the great business stories of the year I think we're about we're about uh 20 of the original size so 80 left uh yes so I mean a lot of people voluntarily sure sure but but it's 80 are gone from the data correct yes so how do you run the company with only 20 of the staff uh it turns out uh you don't need uh well that many people to run Twitter but 80 that's a lot um yes uh over I mean if you're not trying to run some sort of uh glorified activist organization uh with both and you're not care that much about censorship then you can really let go of a lot of people turns out okay so now how many I had dinner with somebody who runs a big company recently said I'm really inspired by Elon and I said you the Free Speech stuff he goes no the firing the staff stuff um how many other CEOs have come to you um to talk about this I I spent a lot of time at work uh so it's not like I'm meeting with lots of people basically what I what actions I've taken um and um but I think we just had a situation at Twitter where it was absurdly overstaffed you know so it wasn't uh you know like you could say like what does really take to operate Twitter um you know most of what we're talking about here is a group text service at scale um like how many people are really needed for that you know um and if you look at the you say like uh what has been the product development uh over time with Twitter and you're like so like you know years versus product improvements and it's like a pretty flat line so what are they doing you know uh it took a year to add an edit button that doesn't work most of the time I mean this is I feel like if it was a comedy situation here you know um you're not making cars you know uh it was very difficult to make cars um or should get Rockets to orbridge so um you know the real question is like how did it get so absurdly overstaffed this is insane um so anyway that's and it's clearly working um in fact I think it's working better than ever it's about we've increased the uh responsiveness of the system by in some cases over 80 percent we're trying to make make Twitter the most trusted place on the internet the least untrustworthy place on the internet I don't think anyone should trust the internet but but maybe we can make Twitter the least untrustworthy like I said try to get uh the truth to the people um as as best we can [Music] you've heard people say we should just blow up the server Farms because there's no way that once if this gets rolling there's no way to slow it down what do you think of that well the the really heavy duty intelligence is not going to be uh distributed all over the place it'll be in a limited number of server centers if you say like very like very sort of deep AI heavy duty AI it's not um it's not going to be in your laptop or your phone it's it's going to be in you know a situation where there's like a hundred thousand uh really powerful computers working together in a service center so it's not there are a limited number of places where that can happen in fact you could if you just you can just look at the heat signature from space yeah and it'll be very obvious I'm not suggesting we go and blow up to service centers right now but there may be some it may be wise to have some sort of contingency plan where the government's got an ability to shut down shut down power to these uh service centers like uh you don't have to blow it up you can just cut the power um and what would triple cut connectivity as well that's another way right yeah but what would trip that switch do you think in your mind what would be the threshold that you'd have to pass to warrant the government cutting off your power or cutting off your signal well I mean I guess if we lost control of some super AI um like for some reason like the things that would normally work to do a pass or shut down like the administrator passwords if they somehow stop working um where we can't uh slow down or or get out I don't have a precise answer but if if there's something that we're concerned about um and and uh and are unable to stop it with with the software commands then uh we probably want to have some kind of Hardware both switch yes I think you know can't hurt have you talked to since you know Larry Page and you obviously you know the open air guys because you started definitely have one have you talk to the the people who run these two the biggest AI companies about this recently I haven't talked to Larry Page in a few years because he got very upset with me about openai uh so when when opening AI was created uh it did it did shift things into it from unipolar world where Google Google do you mind controlled uh you know like I said three quarters of all AI Talent two where there's now a sort of uh bipolar world or open Ai and Google deepmind and their uh and now we're at least it seems opening eyes maybe a head um so uh so I have had conversations with um the open AI team Tim Altman I haven't talked to Larry Page because he doesn't want to talk to me anymore for a few years can I ask you this about since you've been around a lot of this the thinking so why would anyone not be a specist be human-centered in his thinking about technology like what's the thinking there um I think what he's trying to say is that um if I were to guess I that he that all Consciousness should be treated equally and whether that is digital or biological hmm and you disagree I disagree yeah especially if the digital uh Consciousness or whatever you want to call digital intelligence decides to curtail the biological intelligence right so you're just building your own slave master and why would you do that doesn't sound great [Laughter] yeah I mean we shouldn't we we should at least no need to rush you know like what's the hurry where's the fire how well what I mean tell us about the hurry so this for I know you've been talking about this for years and on the sort of the periphery of our attention we've heard Elon Musk talking about AI but for most people it's been like three months since they've had any interaction with this at all um so what's the timeline here at what point does it start to really change our society do you think I think it's supposed to have a probably an impact this year a gpd4 now it's like writing poetry um and pretty decent poetry actually pretty decent yeah Skillet rhyming is incredible yes yes and it's coherent yes it is uh it's you've got a narrative like yeah that's right yeah so you could say it's hard to do like most humans can't do that that's true so it's already past the point of what most humans can do most humans cannot write as well as uh chat gbt um and they certainly and no human can write that well that fast as the best way knowledge so maybe Shakespeare how can you have a democracy with technology like that if democracy is you know government by the people each person's vote is equal to every other person's vote I mean and people are choosing their votes freely can you have a democracy with this well that's why I raised the concern of um AI being a significant influence in elections um and and even if you say that AI doesn't have agency well it's very likely that people will use the AIA um as a tool in elections um and then you know if AI is smart enough are they using the tool or is the tool using them so I think things are getting weird and they're getting weird fast so you've seen a couple Regional Bank collapses yeah and we've been told that's not a big deal that these are isolated and each one collapsed for Unique reasons they're not it's not systemic in any sense what's your sense your sense of the stability of the American banking system well it's actually at this point a global banking system problems um so the uh you know we have a situation here where it's not merely it's not that the canary in the coal mine has died but the miners are starting to die too the you know the so and you know Silicon Valley Bank uh collapsing uh overnight um is one hell of a big Canary yeah it's more like a turkey I mean it's not just it's not like some small fry thing I think that there is a serious danger with the uh global banking system um there's there's a strong argument that the uh if you were to actually uh mock to mock at the portfolios of the banks the loans and whatnot uh that the entire banking industry would have negative equity it feels that way yes um so if you look at say uh commercial real estate like offices and whatnot the whole work from home thing has substantially reduced office usage in cities around the world and um you know I think I think San Francisco is a 40 percent uh off in San Francisco is like an extreme example but I think it's a 40 vacancy um uh even even New York has uh almost all cities at this point have have record vacancies and Commercial Real Estate so um now the commercial real estate used to be something that was a grade A asset that if a bank had commercial real estate holdings those would be considered the highest uh security the same some of the safest uh uh you know uh assets you could have now that is not the case anymore uh you one company after another is canceling their leases or not renewing their leases or if they go bankrupt you the the there's nothing for the the bank who owns that real estate to go after because they're you know previously strong company now dead what do you what do you what do you go after that point um so we really haven't seen the commercial realistic shoe drop that's more like a Anvil not a shoe um so the stuff we've seen thus far actually hasn't even it it is it's only slightly uh um real estate portfolio degradation but that will become a very serious thing later this year in my in my view um I think if we see what you're likely to see a drop in house prices because the interest rates are too high and for most people when buying a house they look at the monthly payment of course if you're a third year mortgages of the vast majority of his interest so if the Fed rate is high you have a a high base interest rate effectively the price you can pay for the house drops because you now have to pay more interest which means that if you've got a fixed monthly payments you can now afford to buy a house for less less money it effectively drops the the prices of houses yes this is the kind of thing that tends to accelerate uh so that so then you can get negative equity in the Home Market as well and so so if if banks end up having loan losses in both their commercial and they're definitely going to have a loan license in the commercial portfolio but also in their mortgage portfolio this is um a dire situation um the there is there is a solution to mitigate the magnitude of the damage here which is for the FED to lower the rate but they raised the rate again um now uh if I recall correctly which I you know important caveat I think the last time the FED raised rates going into a recession was 1929. what happened next yeah a Great Depression that concern I'm going to tell you nothing you don't know but the concern is If the Fed drops rates again then inflation will accelerate and you can't do that in an election so inflation is going to happen no matter what if you increase the money supply you get inflation right so there's no there's not some magical cure for getting rid of inflation um except to increase the productivity the output output of goods and services so if you say like like what is money um you've got you've got you've got these sort of um it's basically numbers in a database that's that that sum up to some account of some total then you've got the output of goods and services of the economy and the as long as the ratio of money to ratio of a business services stays if that stays constant you have no no inflation if uh if you add more money if you add money to the system faster than you increase goods and services then you have inflation so all of these covert sort of stimulus bills uh were not paid for they were they're just generated more uh currency more you know uh more money was was created because the the federal government uh the checks never let's just the checks always pass you know until unless you had a debt limit which there's probably going to be some debt limit crisis later this year but uh provided you haven't hit the dead limit the the federal government unlike state governments or city governments or individuals can simply issue more money and that's what they did I mean as old saying goes there's no there's no free lunch so uh if you could just issue massive amounts of money without negative consequences why don't we just take that to the loan and make everyone a trillionaire well I mean they tried that in Venezuela how'd that work out well they had to eat zoo animals right it's not good you know there's no free lunch if there's not some ability to issue money and not have inflation [Music] people sometimes take the fact that like we're here on Earth for granted you know and that there's the Consciousness is just a normal thing that happens but to the best of our knowledge we see no evidence of uh conscious uh life anywhere uh anywhere in the universe so it might be there um you know physics equals sort of the Fermi Paradox after Enrico film music amazing physicist I asked the fundamental question where are the aliens yeah um a lot of people ask me you know um where are the aliens and I I think if if anyone would know about aliens on Earth it would probably be me yeah I'm like you know very familiar with space stuff um and I've seen no evidence of aliens so I would I would immediately tweet you know tweet it out that says Split Second they'll be like that'll be like well all time probably a tough tweet of all time that one guys this is a jackpot these are some eight billion likes you know um Next Level jackpot if you finally hit that aliens like I don't think they're keeping this under you know and it was like some um uh General I think in the 60s who where they said like show us the aliens like error 51 Etc and he said like listen we're constantly trying to get the defense budget to uh expand and uh look you know what would really get uh no arguments for anyone uh if we pull out an alien and said we need money to protect ourselves from these guys I know how much money do you want you got it they look dangerous [Laughter] the fastest way to get a defense budget increase for me to pull out an alien you know we're like yeah I mean that could be the invasion Fleet we could be arriving any minute who knows so um I digress but but you were saying that our Consciousness makes us unique in the universe so far as we know I'm not saying that we are unique I'm simply stating to the best of my knowledge that there was no evidence for other uh conscious life I I I I hope that there is and I hope they're peaceful uh obviously the two important characteristics um but um I'm just saying we haven't seen anything yet so um but you think that we take our existence here for granted yeah I think there are threats to it yeah yeah yeah exactly so um I I just think we should not assume that Civilization is robust um and if you if you look at the history of civilizations the rise and fall of the ancient Egyptians the ancient Sumerians um Rome you know this uh throughout the world they've been rise and fall of many civilizations um so there's an arc there's sort of a live a sort of a life cycle Arc to to civilizations just as there is to to individual humans yes and um and I think we just want to make sure that that you know we have civilization go onward and upward um and uh that's for example why I'm concerned about decreasing both rates and and um the fact that for example Japan uh had twice as many deaths last year as births so the the that's it and they're they're a leading indicators this is can I say and you've you've written and talked a lot about this but can I just ask you to pause just for a parenthetical note why is that I mean the urge to have sex and to procreate is after breathing and eating the most basic urge how has it been subverted well it's just that in the past we could rely upon um you know simple uh limbic system rewards uh in order to procreate um but once you have birth control um and you know uh abortions and whatnot now now you now you can still satisfy Olympic Instinct but not appropriate um so we didn't we haven't yet evolved to deal with that because this is all fairly recent in the last 50 years or so um for birth control you know I'm sort of worried that hey civilization you know don't if we don't make enough people to at least sustain our numbers perhaps increase a little bit then civilization is going to crumble just the old question of like uh will civilization end with a bang or a whimper well it's currently trying to end with a whimper in adult diapers yes uh which is depressing as hell the most depressing I mean seriously yeah war is less depressing yeah I'd rather go out with a bang yeah your shoes on yeah not with your exciting yeah [Music]

Channel: ToddTech Insights

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Id: LCOe3a9EHJs

Length: 51min 11sec (3071 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 20 2023