AI's Impact on Society and Democracy

You've heard people say we should just blow up the server farms because there's

no

way... Once, uh, this gets rolling, there's no way to slow it down.

What do you think of that?

Well, the,

the, the really heavy-duty intelligence is not going to be, uh, distributed all

over the place. It'll be in, uh, a limited number of server centers.

If you say, like, a very, like very sort of deep AI, heavy-duty AI.

Uh, it's not, um,

it- it's not gonna be on your laptop or your phone.

It's, it's gonna be in, you know, a situation where there's, like,

100,000, uh, really powerful computers working together

i- in a server center. So it's not

s- it's not, it's not, like, subtle, and there, th- there

are a limited number of

places where that, that can happen.

I- in fact, you could, y- if you can just l-

you can just look at the heat

signature from space.

Yeah.

And it's, it'll be very obvious. Uh, I'm not suggesting we, we go

and blow up data

service centers right now, but

there may be some... It may be wise to have some sort of

contingency plan

wh- wh- wh- where the government's got an ability to

shut down, shut down

power to these, uh, s- server centers.

Like, uh,

you don't have to blow it up. You can just cut the power. Um...

And what would trip-

Or, or 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, like the things that would normally work

to

do a passive shut down, like the administrator passwords,

if they somehow

stop working,

um, where w- w- where we can't, uh,

slow down or, or,

you know, t-

I'm, I'm not su- I- I don't have a precise answer, but if,

if there's something

that we're concerned about, um, and, and,

uh, the, and, and are, are, unable to stop it with, with, uh,

software commands, then, uh, we probably want to have some kind of

hardware off switch.

Yes.

I think, you know, it can't hurt.

Have you talked to- Since you know Larry Page-

Probably have one, yeah

... and you obviously you know the OpenAI guys

'cause you started it.

We definitely have one.

Do, do, have you

talked to the,

the people who run these two, the biggest AI companies, about this

recently?

I haven't talked to Larry Page, uh, in a few years because he got very upset

with

me about OpenAI.

Uh-

Hmm

... so when, when OpenAI was created, uh,

it, it did, it did shift things into a, fr- from unipolar world

where Google, Google DeepMind controlled,

uh, you know, like I said, three-quarters of all AI talent to

where there's now sort of, uh,

bipolar world or OpenAI and Google DeepMind, and they're,

uh... And now weirdly, it, it seems, uh, OpenAI is maybe ahead.

Um,

so, uh, so I, I have had conversations with, um,

the OpenAI team and Sam Altman. I haven't talked to Larry Page because he

doesn't

want to talk to me anymore, uh, for a few years.

Uh-

Can I ask you just 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, uh, all

consciousness, uh, should be treated, uh, equally, um, and whether

that is digital or biological.

Hmm.

And you disagree.

I disagree, yeah.

Um, especially if the, uh, digital, uh,

consciousness or whatever you want to call it, digital intelligence, uh, 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.

Yeah, I mean,

we shouldn't, we, we should at least, uh, we- no need to rush, you know?

Like, what's the hurry?

Where, where's the fire?

How, uh, 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 starts to have, um, uh, probably

a, an impact this year. GPT-4, uh, now it's, like, writing

poetry. Um, and-

Pretty decent poetry, actually.

Pretty decent.

Yeah.

It's, uh,

skill at rhyming is incredible.

Yes. Yes, and it's coherent.

Yes, it is. Uh, it, it's even got a narrative.

Like-

Yes

... so you've got a-

That's right.

Yeah.

So you could say, like-

That'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.

Uh, most humans cannot write as well as, uh, uh, ChatGPT.

Um,

and they certainly, and, and no, no human can write that well, that fast-

Right

... as, to the best of my knowledge. Uh, so, uh, maybe Shakespeare.

How can you have a democracy with technology like that?

I mean, 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 raise the concern of, um, AI being a significant

influence in elections. Um, and it, and even if you say the AI

doesn't have agency, well, it's very likely

that people will use the AI,

um, as a tool,

uh, in elections. Um,

and then

it, you know, if the AI is smart enough,

it, it, are they using the tool, or is the tool using them?

So I think things, things are getting weird,

and they're getting weird fast.

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