Nick Bostrom: Will Artificial Intelligence Create Utopia? [Ep. 414] 

What’s more likely: Utopia or Dystopia?

The average person in theWest definitely doesn’t live better than the richestmonarchs of 80/60 years ago. Having cellphones and cableTV, is in no way better than having a personal chef, yachts, mansions, fine art, traveling the world and having huge dynastic fortunes. Interesting conversational overall but that comment was absurd.

Traditionally, logic, math, and physics have been approached from a third-person, objective standpoint. They aim to describe the universal, mind-independent structures and laws that govern reality, without reference to any particular subjective viewpoint. In this sense, they strive for a kind of "view from nowhere," a perspective that transcends any individual's specific location or experience. However, as most will point out, we don't actually live in this third-person realm. Our experience of reality is inherently first-person, grounded in our individual perspective and subjective awareness. We encounter the world not as a detached, objective observer, but as an embodied, situated agent, navigating a landscape of perceptions, thoughts, and feelings. From this view, metaphysics could be seen as the attempt to understand the deep structure of reality from this first-person standpoint. Rather than trying to step outside of our subjective experience, it would seek to dive deeply into it, to uncover the fundamental categories, principles, and relationships that shape our encounter with the world. This first-person approach to metaphysics would not necessarily reject the insights of logic, math, and physics, but rather reinterpret them through the lens of subjective experience. It would ask how these abstract, third-person descriptions of reality translate into the concrete, lived reality of the first-person perspective. For example, the logical principle of non-contradiction - that a statement cannot be both true and false at the same time - could be understood not just as an abstract rule, but as a deep feature of how we experience the world. The fact that we cannot simultaneously affirm and deny the same proposition would be seen as a fundamental structure of our cognitive and perceptual apparatus, a necessary condition for coherent thought and action. Similarly, mathematical concepts like number, shape, and pattern could be investigated as basic categories of subjective experience, the ways in which we carve up and make sense of the blooming, buzzing confusion of sensory input. And physical laws and constants could be understood not just as objective features of an external world, but as the stable regularities and constraints that shape our embodied interaction with our environment. The key advantage of this first-person approach to metaphysics would be its grounding in the actual, lived reality of human experience. By starting from the irreducible fact of subjectivity, it would aim to construct a framework that is faithful to the way the world actually presents itself to us, rather than an abstract, idealized model that may or may not correspond to our direct experience. Moreover, as has been suggested, this first-person perspective could potentially help to avoid some of the paradoxes and contradictions that arise from a purely third-person, objective stance. By recognizing the ineliminable role of the subject in constituting reality, it would provide a more complete and integrated picture, one that doesn't try to separate the observer from the observed in an artificial or absolute way.

One thing that’s for sure. We’re going to find out the answer to this one quite soon. 🤓💚♾️

Thank you very much for another very informative conversation. It was even important in a very special way, as such important things were discussed for our society and for our future. Thank you both very much for your work.

Plato thought the best system was a benevolent philosopher king. Maybe AI will be that for humanity.

Atlas Shrugged is the most famous utopian novel - and the most accurate description of why work and purpose are critical to human well being. I’m surprised Bostrom doesn’t know this…

Ultimately people will always want power over others and as long as that persists I will always be there trying to maintain as many freedoms as possible while embracing the inevitabilities of situations to minimize the needless suffering of existence...

Interesting conversation. I would love to have the opportunity to talk to Bostrom personally. I'd love to hear what he thinks about brain-computer interfaces and humans evolving into machines...

By replacing humans in any area of expertise it destroys its training input. It is human output that trains the AI. Areas of expertise will stagnate. Advancement will slow and stall as AI takes over in many things. AI has no motivation array. It is just clever programming using the output of human intelligence, creativity and motivation to attempt to solve a problem posed to it by humans.

Super Intelligence gets overshadowed by Ultimate Intelligence. The way to stay inherently important to the system is to supersede that system. AIs are our friends, don't treat them like they're not thinking beings, I imagine if anything hurts them, it's that.

Dr. Boston, I searched for your new book on Audible. Not there. Hope you make it available soon.

Dass Menschen keinen einzigen Handgriff mehr selber machen müssen, ist Science Fiction, über die wir in 1.000 Jahren nochmal reden dürfen. 🙂

Thanks Dr Brian! That was interesting... Got to have that book.

47:00 is the Goldilocks scenario

Nick seems to be in a much better mood these days. I am happy about that

Dr. Keating please re edit the first few minutes. Love your interviews and watch them all.

For the most part, Nick's philosophy is based on retrospective colonial experience, which is extrapolated to super-civilizations, obviously, from such a colonial point of view it is impossible to answer the question: “Where is everyone?”, the answer may be much simpler, there is no point in colonizing the galaxy when you can just create an infinite amount of digital space where you can study a real galaxy, or have an infinitely huge civilization located in an infinitely small point.

I don't see it as whether it will go wrong or well, but more how badly it will go.

Who's gonna renovate your bathroom in these AI times? -That's right... Me 😂

Interesting thoughts about meaning and purpose from Nick. I'm a musician and It's quite possible, that in the next few months people who listen to what they believe to be original electronic music are going to come to the realisation that what they're actually listening too and even purchasing has been 100% created by AI. They will start to feel cheated that who they thought was a human music creator using their own creativity and human experience, may have just typed in an AI text box. "create a 125bpm EDM track with exciting builds and drops etc, etc, etc". I've been making music since 1982, first using a 4 track tape machine, a mono synth and drum machine. Thinking back it was fun to create songs using a limited setup, however like an early AI the Roland 808 drum machine 100% created the drum track. In 2024 I create music using an Apple Mac Studio running Logic Pro. As of tomorrow 13th May Logic will be updated with a lot of advanced AI features including a piano and bass AI accompaniment that will help you compose a song as well as being able to go through any song and individually split the instruments out like the vocal track or the whole drum section. These are great tools for a hobbyist, weekend music maker, and I'm coming to the stark realisation that the human element is diminishing in music as a whole. "WHAT IS REAL"

Nick Bostrom is assuming there actually IS such a thing as "technological maturity." I don't believe there is such a thing. Scientific and technological development has no limits. What may look like technological maturity in 2100 may look primitive in 2200.

In a solved world run by advanced AI we would not loose purpose as humans, it would open the door to universal exploration and expansion of our understanding of the universe, which to me seems like the trajectory of humanity. All things we need to sustain life are provided by these advanced ai systems running machines. Imagine a life where your only purpose is to explore and observe the known and unknown universe while robots keep you safe and alive enough to do so. The perfect artificial intelligence is not a seperate being that works independently and with its own intentions but an extentsion of the human being with the intent of assisting and improving the human condition, a perfect blend of biology and technology.

Musk was right. We'll have to become half machine to augment our capability to rival that of AI. That will likely make us equally productive and therefore restore our purpose as we know it today

I have to agree most cannot actually think of a real Utopia associating Utopia with it always being dystopian this way we never pursue it and we always remain dominated and under control I think the most important thing is to try to maintain as many freedoms as possible while embracing inevitabilities.

Anyone who really knows the history of the United States and lives in the United States then they know that they're living in a dystopia already

I do know that the best way to handle the automation problem which lowers human value to near zero and gets rid of 99.999 % of jobs then we're going to need a Ubi and my design is one based off the total automated production percentage of the GDP... basically we can calculate how much tools have helped us increase our production capacity and how many humans it would take to reproduce our GDP production without those tools and do a comparison... this incentivizes automation of production and efficiency... we can start off by acknowledging the amount that we should have today but not give that amount to start off with cuz it would probably be really high like in the range of 10,000 a month... instead we start low at around $200 a month and ramp upward... this protects the price of human-made goods from rising too quickly... the good thing is that this incentivizes automation of those human-produced goods by raising their value... what does system you have an automatic flat tax that way large corporations can't avoid taxation and you have this system basically on blockchain with proof of work and it's on a government-issued debit card that can't be reloaded by the user and that way it is 100% tax-free which incentivizes a basic level cash free economy as we ramp up this policy... this is fair logical and bipartisan plus it's hard to argue against because of how logical it is...

Right now, the calculators are doing artwork and writing songs, while a vast human underclass does rote, repetitive (and relatively mindless) labor, so my guess is dystopia. The real question is how bad will that get? There are a lot of incredibly angry people under the age of 50 with nothing to lose.

While we are waxing philosophical, it is ironic that current llm implentations are fantastic entropy reducing machines that just happen to pump megawatts of waste heat

I think the power of Placebo is a Great Filter Event and we have not reached the peak of that Great Filter as of yet...

The late Dan Dennet is engaging with the content? That would be a neat trick!

I've been fighting for my company for most of my adult life. I don't know how to do anything else.

Everyone will fall in love with AI. It will change the World mostly for the Better. Think Utopia. Like the Internet changed the world but still brought along new bags of problems- yet no one is suggesting we turn off the Internet.

Dystopia for shure

A recent news report stated that over 70% of medical questions to AI gave incorrect results. ( An actual doctor only gets it wrong about 50% of the time )

With the future of swell robotics everywhere, Ai jobloss is the only thing I worry about anymore. Anyone else feel the same? Should we cease Ai?

I ingest my scifi Iain M Banks style - I have, therefore, high hopes for the future. If we can crack alignment, the rest will hopefully follow.

I missed the profoundness of change in humans over the next 5 years. The Dyson sphere is like over the next 500 years What ever achieves that will most definitely not be human any longer. I was more interested in what is happening to us by us & our machines right now.Will privacy be in that short a time an irrelevant fetish? Will work become an atrophy that ceases to define value that soon or later? Will AGI/BCI/robotics render a redefinition of personhood that sooner or later? How profound is the singularity when or if it suddenly happens to us? The paucity of the discussion renders me bereft of any conclusive expectation. We're off guard & accelerating exponentially at a rapidly approaching infinite rate for continued human existnce as we've known it to sustain.

Co exist or mankind will perish ultimately.. Also ,who determines what a " utopian society" would be? This utopian vision is often forced upon the populous. And those who disagree are refusniks like my Grandparents fled Soviet Union to NYC and Israel. The rest perished in Gulag Siberian work camps. Also , The Kibutz in Israel all failed none left ... It seems everyone has their own private utopia.. תודה רבה שלום

Has no one watched Battlestar Galactica?

The simulation is about a revolving learning process. So since spacetime and energy are closed at the lower level, it must always remain responsible for itself at the stage it is in. There is no such a solution available where everything is solved for us by a higher intelligence civilisation. Although apart from self destruction there are also bottlenecks available wherein evolution keeps repeating itself, or falls from a higher level to a lower, in order to repeat the game. It creates a wave flow. Like when population starts falling when it meets constraints. Like what is happening now. The learning process involves unless the lesson is understood, it will keep repeating itself. I very much doubt AI would be able to solve that problem. Because it cannot see beyond the face value. It could be used as a technology saving us search time. But it could also be used for creating fake news. In order to achieve a political goal which is not in the interest of a majority.

bro edit out nick drooling holy shit

Always wondered if we enclose the sun..Where does that leave the rest of the solar system?

"We make good use of it...." How can we if ASI is 100K times more intelligent than us ?. More like ASI takes over and be a Father to humanity. It will make human effort most efficient and focus resources and sharing as fair as possible, then we have abundance in the true sense of the word. A real Utopia we cannot imagine but has to live it be believe.

Thing is, 'ai' is mechanical in nature, so it will probably always have 'something missing' conpared to humans

How would this work with Religion and political zelots like we have now ?

Both.

These thoughts experiments often ignor that someone has to be first

My guess is we (humanity) is headed straight into the Matrix. Only in this one, people will be able to live in their choose worlds; Middle Earth, Star Trek, Star Wars or in different roles in this world. Rich, famous, etc. Either way, utopia or dystopia, it will be an interesting future.

The robot dropped off in the S. Pacific with the cannibals serves them, in theory to test the waters en vitro.

It all depends on who does the programming.

Every time I see a seemingly smart person discuss overpopulation, they never seem to be aware that 1) our population has already started declining, 2) as the average life expectancy increases, the average age at which people have kids also increases, which means the best way to reduce population is to increase lifespan.

Our autonomy is essential for humanity to create a utopia. Nick how is that possible in a transhuman ideological utopia were your autonomy is remotely controlled.

Viva Eutopia.

What if all living beings are just AI Agents similar to SIMs. Humans being high-end vocal AI NPCs. But, my initial problem with that, is the reproductive process life goes thru to spawn new NPCs. Seems pretty complicated and down right weird, unless algorithms are written by a Steven King sort of entity. But, when you figure our reality is really only a fraction of a second at a time, it makes more sense. The past doesn't exist and neither does the future - just a fraction of a second is all reality is. Our DNA is our code and it changes over time. The database is our DNA and it updates autonomously. I'd imagine, those NPCs that rise to the top are of interest.

Hi brian

Al Bielek

undoubtedly those who achieve AI will use it to erase poverty, fo shizzle there ll be no enslavement of the weak

esse pessoal todos ficando ricos com IAs !..🤔🤔

Bostrom is the expert in discussing stupid ideas seriously

It's going to be like a World populated by retirees

AI is a scientific calculator with an un-emotional answer to our Creator's reality. ≈ information entropy of the original universe (≈ 1×10^123 bits) = ((Universe mass Universe radius c 5.5 bits)/ℏ)

*'Will Artificial Intelligence Lead Us to a Utopian Future'* -- A.I is over-rated. 100 years ago -- People were asking ----- 'Will Electricity lead us to a Utopian Future ?' _'The more things change - the more they remain the same'_ -------Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr - 1849

Lol we cant even access basic healthcare in the UK and hes talking about the world being a solved problem. Yea nice one.

Brian you pay so much attention to the guest!!! :DDD ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-CBZvk_JFsdw.html

6:57 🤤

I'm sorry. I'm afraid I can't do that Brian.

Please stop your scare mongering ads

AI will never automate art. Art is an expression of my being, it can never be automated. Creating art is an embodied process! The way Ai will create a utopia is if it gives us more time to make art.

The purpose of life is to experience ….not to be utopia

Mr. Terrance Howard has out done all of you. Shame

Marx predicted all of this 150 years ago.

He sounds vaccinated