0:00 It feels like we're in the midst of the singularity. Do you agree that we're actually in the midst of it right now or are we going to have to wait for some other point to get there? >> One difference of my own perspective versus everybody else's. Uh >> Ray Kerszswe, the inventor and futurist who's been working in the field of artificial intelligence. >> Ray Kerszwhile, author, inventor, and futurist. >> I've been now in AI for 61 years, which is actually a record. If you look at your 120 odd predictions from 30 odd years ago, only three that were wrong. >> Your first prediction, as you said, that you released in 1989 was that we're going to reach human level AI by uh by 2029. >> The next 10 years will get us to my definition of singularity, which is we'll all be at least a thousand times
0:47 more intelligent. >> What is most exciting to you? And and what's what are you anticipating most excitedly in the next year or two? We'll have supercomputers, but we're also be merging with them. So, we're going to be made a lot more intelligent than we are today. >> When >> that's going to happen for the same time for everybody. Uh, >> now that's a moonshot, ladies and gentlemen. >> Everybody, welcome to Moonshots, the conversation that gets you ready for the future and prepares you for the supersonic tsunami coming our way. I'm here with DB2, AWG, and Seem. Gentlemen, uh, 2026 is off to an extraordinary year. Uh, >> Alex, you're not in your regular haunt. Where are you today?
1:32 >> Yeah, where are you? >> I'm in the first R&D small of Paris today. Slowly making my way to Davos for World Economic Forum 2026. >> Taking like a horse and buggy or something. Yeah, you can fly direct. >> Taking the slow route. >> Scenic route. >> Scenic routine. Paris in January. >> I usurped your normal recording spot. So, this is your background and your mic and everything. So, I'm >> Yeah. So, here in in Santa Monica, we have an X-P prize board meeting today. Dave, you going to be joining the board meeting by uh by Zoom or >> or you're not here? >> I'm I'm with Ray here in Boston. Actually, we're we're uh we're in the happening spot, but I'm going to be flying straight from here to Davos uh on Sunday uh where Alex and I will be hanging out with Dennis Assabus and the
2:18 whole gang. >> Amazing. I just got back from Singapore. I had an extraordinary visit there. I was the guest of an incredible bank DBS Sushan who's the CEO. A big shout out to Susan. Thank you for an incredible visit uh to Singapore. You know, she's a Singular University alum uh and a fan of our pod. So, uh I just think the world of Singapore can't wait to get back there. DBS is doing extraordinary work. So, a big shout out to the team there. Gentlemen, uh we have an extraordinary guest today, someone who uh all of us count as our mentors. He's been a mentor for me for the last 20 years. We're here with the incredible Ray Kerszswe, one of the world's leading in uh thinkers and
3:05 futurists. He's been called the relentless genius, the ultimate thinking machine. He's got a 30-year track record of accurate predictions uh regarding the evolution of technology in the future. If you go to Wikipedia, you can check it out. An 86% accuracy rate on his predictions. He's a inventor of the CCD flatb scanner, the first omnifont optical character recognition, the first printto-spech reading machine, the Kurszswe synthesizer, uh the author of the law of accelerating returns. We'll be talking about that. Uh the author of two books that have set the foundation for all the conversations we hear we have here in Moonshots. The singularity is near in 2005. More recently, the singularity is nearer in 2024.
3:51 He's the recipient of the National Medal of Technology and Innovation. He has 21 honorary doctorates. He's been honored by three US presidents and really the gentleman who is popularized and driven the term singularity uh which he famously predicts will happen in the year 2045. Ray, it is an honor and a pleasure to have you here, buddy. >> And a bucket list item. >> Absolutely. >> It's great to be here. Always great to talk with you, >> Peter See. So, >> yeah. No. And got to love those suspenders, buddy. You you are fashionable on the exponential world. >> I do have to say them. They're all They're all hand painted. So, >> are they really? >> Yeah.
4:36 I do have to say when I read The Singularity is near in 2005 when it came out, I thought it was the most important book I had read in my entire life up until that point. So definitely uh definitely a life-changing book worth buying again and rereading. >> Yeah. Well, it was quite controversial when it came out, which is about 20 years ago. Um, Stanford had a uh basically a a uh meeting of about several hundred AI experts to examine its predictions. Uh it was considered very controversial. People agreed with me that it would happen but not within 30 years. They they thought it would happen within a hundred years. Uh and I'm actually running to people who were there. There were several hundred AI experts who came
5:22 to that conference. uh and they agreed that it's if anything uh 30 years is 2029 uh that's a right now that seems overly conservative. People are predicting a little bit sooner than that like 2027 and so on. >> Um but at the time people thought it would be a hundred years off. >> Well, I think it's important for people to go read the book. it's so non-controversial today given how things have unfolded and put yourself in the mindset of this being completely controversial at the time because a lot of things that we predict on the podcast that Alex says you know they also have that same flavor you know trying to look
6:09 forward 10 years from today is very very hard and they have that same feeling of well that's impossible that could never happen uh but if you rewind the tape you know these impossible things routinely happen and And then because of hindsight bias, everyone's like, "Oh, I well I would have seen that coming." So I think it's a good exercise. >> Things are happening so quickly now that looking one year out is like a long-term prediction. >> Yeah. >> Uh I I didn't like to predict things that one or two years away uh like 10 years ago, but now one or two years away is really kind of a long-term prediction. >> So Ray, you made two predictions. I think it's important. Your first prediction as you said that you released in 1989 was that we're going to reach human level AI by uh by 2029 and people
6:56 laughed at that as you said but the other prediction you've made is that we're going to reach the singularity by 2045 and there's a lot of confusion about okay well if we're reaching human level AI by 2029 and it's growing exponentially why are we waiting till 2045 for the singularity could you sort of explain the difference between those two we multiply our intelligence a thousandfold. I mean one difference of of my own perspective versus everybody else's. Uh it's not like we have our own intelligence, biological intelligence and then we have AI that's over here and we somehow relate to AI versus human intelligence. We're going to merge with
7:41 it. It's going to be the same thing. We're not going to be able to tell whether or not an idea is coming to us from our biological intelligence or our computational intelligence. Uh it's going to seem the same. I mean, if I ask you to think of some uh actress and you think of it, you don't know where that came from. It just somehow appeared in your mind and it's going to be the same way whether it's coming from your computational intelligence or your biological intelligence. Uh and we're not going to be able to tell the difference. Today, you can tell the difference if you actually go to uh your favorite uh LLM. You can tell that it's coming from the LLM, not from your biological intelligence. In the future, though, it's going to you're not going to be
8:27 able to tell the difference. >> U and we're going to become a thousand times smarter by 2045. Hey everybody, you may not know this, but I've got an incredible research team. And every week myself, my research team study the meta trends that are impacting the world. Topics like computation, sensors, networks, AI, robotics, 3D printing, synthetic biology. And these meta trend reports I put out once a week enable you to see the future 10 years ahead of anybody else. If you'd like to get access to the Metatrends newsletter every week, go to dmandis.com/tatrends. That's diamandis.com/metatrends. It feels like we're in the midst of the singularity. Uh, and it's a smooth function. It's hard to note that. Do you do you agree that we're actually in the
9:13 midst of it right now or are we going to have to wait for some other point to get there? >> I mean, a a lot of things have already amplified dramatically. Um, for example, we can take our models of of biological paradigms and predict what will happen uh if we have uh if we can actually simulate biology. And we're actually doing that now with biological tests. So we can actually simulate uh millions or even billions of different possibilities and do that in like one weekend. Um and >> Ray, how do you define the singularity
9:58 currently? Because um in the past you've put it as a moment in time, then we talked about it as a process. What's your current framing of it? >> Well, the framing is when we're a thousand times more intelligent. Um but in some ways we'll be able to for example simulate biology for medical tests uh even faster than that and we can do that actually today although we don't have all of the paradigms of of what uh biological intelligence will do. Um so I've talked to people who are actually modeling this and the most conservative uh views is that it will take about 5 years from now we'll be able to have all of the uh
10:47 conversions uh that are done to to uh biological intelligence uh predicting uh what different chemicals will So we can actually try out a million uh tests in one weekend uh and be able to predict that uh very very quickly. We can do that now in some cases but not in every case. I'd love to rewind the tape just a little bit and talk about why you or how you landed the plane so accurately, you know, in predictions going back to 1999 are coming down to basically within a year or two of of what you predicted, which is so different from, you know, when I
11:33 was at the MIT AI lab, uh, you know, people were predicting all kinds of different things and then they would never happen. And then we get into these AI winters. And and so if you if you go back and read your your books from 2005, you have to put yourself in the context of nobody believes AI will ever happen because it's been predicted like 12 times in a row and whiffed every single time. Every prediction has absolutely whiffed. Meanwhile, you're drawing a timeline that's much longer than other people's timelines. And it's going to land, you know, the the date of AI having human level intelligence is going to land within 3 years of something you predicted 20 years ago. >> 30 years ago. >> 30 is it 30 years ago? >> Yeah. 1999 to today. Yeah. >> Yeah. Uh and then you know the date
12:19 where it crosses all combined human intelligence which I guess is 2045 in your in your prediction uh will will likely happen or or be sooner. >> It has to do with thinking exponentially. Uh and people are not used to that. They're thinking uh linearly think if it took 10 years in the past, it'll take 10 years in the future. And and that's really um that's what what people think about the future is the same as the past. So to really think exponentially requires a certain practice. Uh and and that's how I got to to this kind of uh this kind of view. Uh Alex, do you want to jump in?
13:05 >> Yeah, maybe to pull on this thread, Ray. First of all, it's wonderful to be chatting with you again. Always enjoy our conversations. The Turing test, I've argued on this podcast in past that the Turing test went by with with a whimper, not a bang. It flew by. The Loner prize was cancelled before the touring test was arguably passed and yet it was passed and there was no celebration. >> The Loner test was not a really good test. Uh he had various practices that were really not in in accord with the Turing test. Uh and Turing test is really matching an ordinary person that's talking not really an expert in the field. AG I think it's actually a
13:52 better view because we're actually matching the best person in each field and we have maybe several thousand maybe several hundred thousand uh fields that you could be expert in and AGI means that you can match a human being in any of the fields and then combine the insight into many different fields together which no human being can do. I mean Einstein was very good at physics but he and he actually was interested in playing a violin but he was not an expert in playing a violin. He was only an expert in physics. Uh people maybe can master two fields at the most. But there's actually thousands
14:39 of fields and if you could actually be an expert in all of them and then combine all those insights uh that's something that's quite unique. So that's what AGI represents. Whereas touring test is really matching an ordinary person with a a lot of mis uh characterizations of of different things. >> I I I agree that AGI and passing the touring test are for most common definitions different standards. The the question I was going to ask though is arguably if if you agree with the premise that the touring test as reasonably defined, not the original gender presentationbased touring test, but the the the subsequent definition >> was was passed without very much hoopla
15:25 at all. Do you think the same is going to happen with the singularity? There's in particular one of my favorite scenes in Charlie Strauss's novel Accelerondo. You have a bunch of characters who've been all uploaded to a star wisp traveling to another star system who are all arguing with each other. They're posthuman uploads arguing with each other as to whether the singularity has even happened. Do you think that's what's actually going to happen here where we'll just singularity will zoom by and we'll all be arguing with each other decades later? Did the singularity even happen? Has it happened yet? >> Uh I mean these standards are not very clear. Not everybody agrees that we've passed the touring test. And when we pass AGI, there'll be disagreements. It's disagreements now as to what that
16:11 means. People say it's basically as good as an uh somebody who's a little bit above average intelligence. I define it as being an expert in every area when there's many different areas that you can be expert in. Uh so that's actually quite uh impressive level and I think we'll get there by 2029. Uh the thing that's then you can combine your insights into every possible field. We already I mean have that large language models can answer questions in lots of different fields. No person can do what a large language model can do today uh let alone what what'll happen by 2029. By the way, we have a we have a
16:57 moonshots test where you have to you have to fool your spouse for three minutes on a Zoom call. >> So, uh that's uh we haven't defined what we're going to give to the listener. >> We should do that. That would be hilarious. >> Well, I think that's a a better benchmark. So, that's our moonshots that that much more closely matches the original Turing test. >> Sorry, Were you going to say? I I was just going to say or rather to ask Ray uh are are you at all concerned about goalposts getting moved yet again as we see happening over and over again with definitions of AGI and otherwise that we will pass your definition of the singularity but nonetheless most commentators will be arguing with each other for a long time after that whether the singularity has actually happened.
17:43 >> Well, mine is actually pretty strict. I mean to pass my definition of AGI uh you have to be an expert in thousands of different areas which is actually more strict than most definitions of AGI. So I I think I have a a suitably strict definition of it. What about the definition of the singularity? because I you know one of the things that really inspired me in both of your singularity titled books is the fact that there's a moment in time where AI is working on itself and self-improving and that moment in time is where we get this incredible acceleration. It feels like that's either right now or within the last year or within the next year. It's it's it's imminent and you know we
18:31 we're predicting on this podcast a 100x step up in the efficiency of the existing algorithms that's completely independent of the underlying curve you know that you >> started to see uh AI improving itself a little bit but it really has not gone it's it's not really very dramatic. I mean the these definitions are not uh beyond debate and it's not like everyone will agree. Uh take AGI. I mean you could predict that certain number of people will predict that it's actually there today. Uh but it's actually it's a small group. Uh and it will uh
19:16 accelerate and finally when everybody more or less agrees with it. Uh but that's a a band of maybe three four years uh and I think it will end in 2029. It's already beginning. People feel we have AGI already. Uh but most people will believe that I think by 2029. >> Well, that that means your your prediction has to be exact. If if you say that we'll be debating it for the rest of time and it was sometime between today and 2029, that means you are irrefutably right in your prediction from 30 years ago. So that's kind of cool, right? Memorialize that right now. >> See, you were going to jump in. >> So, you know, I remember Ray when we were in a car with Peter, you and me
20:02 going to the CNN studios to launch uh Singularity University and announce it. I was a young freshphrased u um fellow and I said, "Ray, they're going to ask you about exponentials um as part of the briefing and they said, "Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, that may be a problem." And I said, "What? What do you mean?" I was all kind of freaked out. And you said, "I'd better bone up on the subject." And it took me like 10 seconds to realize that you were joking. And I think one of my favorite things about you is the unbelievable sense of humor, dry humor that you bring to the table. Here's my question for you. You know, you've been kind of saying this very steadily for 30 years, right? At the beginning, it must have been very hard. Um, uh, saying this to people who are just like, he is out of his mind. What is he talking about? Is it easier for you now? Do you feel a
20:49 sense of of, uh, accomplishment that many more people are talking about it and saying, "Yep, he was right, etc., etc." Do you feel some sense of that? >> Well, yes and no. Um the basic debate about whether or not this will happen and is it going to be exactly 2029 or something has gone away. People actually accept that. I run into very few people that say oh no it's going to be you know 500 years from now. Uh on the other hand the the issue has changed from is it going to happen to is it good for humanity >> and and that's a big debate. Uh, yes, it's going to happen, but it's we're all going to be screwed as a result of it. Um, and we've got books that come out saying
21:36 it's going to uh eliminate humanity. Um, and that's really the big debate now, whether or not it's going to be beneficial for humanity or not. >> I believe I mean, you you've said publicly that technology is a major driver of progress and it might be the only major driver of progress. I assume you're very clearly on that on the beneficial pro side. >> Yeah. Yeah. Uh I mean there's some chance that things will go wrong. Uh I wouldn't say that that's has no chance of happening, but I uh I think what we're seeing uh is going to be beneficial. uh although it's going to change things very rapidly
22:22 uh and that will lead to some foroding as well. >> Yeah. And we'll get we'll get into that in a minute. Uh there's a question that we've debated on the show and curious about your point of view uh which is are we going to actually achieve consciousness and sentience with AIS and will they begin petitioning for personhood and do you think society will approve that that we're going to actually start to feel like our AIs are conscious and sentient and we shouldn't we shouldn't shut them down and they're going to have rights like humans have. What's your feeling on all that? >> Well, first of all, consciousness uh is a subjective point of view. Uh there's nothing we can
23:09 do scientifically to prove that an entity is conscious. We we don't can't have a machine and you slide something in and a light goes on. Oh, this is conscious. No, this isn't conscious. Uh there's no scientific test for it. Uh so some people like for example Marvin Minsky who was my mentor for 50 years said well there's no scientific test for it therefore it's not scientific therefore we shouldn't deal with consciousness it's a meaningful meaningless uh debate um on the other hand you could say it's the most important thing uh am I conscious are you conscious I mean that that's something we really need to deal with uh I need to be able to relate to you as if you are conscious. Uh I
23:55 consider myself to be conscious. Um and yet it's not scientific. Um >> my scientific test is I think I'm conscious, but my wife disagrees. So when she thinks I am, then I think we'll I'll be there. >> Alex, you've been thinking a lot about this idea of personhood and and consciousness. Uh, I'm a proponent, broadly speaking, of AI personhood, and I I'll I guess I'll play the contrarian role that I'm painted as of respectfully disagreeing with with my friend Rey that there aren't benchmarks. I I think there has been over the past 2 years marketked progress toward developing quantitative benchmarks for call it self-awareness
24:42 rather than consciousness. Maybe slightly less mushy as as a term including as as I've pointed out in the past tests for for whether certain models can detect overlaid activations in their residual streams if they're transformers. I I see progress toward developing real benchmarks for self-awareness in models. >> Yes. But I I give you a something else that's even more perplexing. Uh there's lots of conscious people. Now, I can't prove that that you're conscious, but I believe that you are. I believe that a human being that's acts conscious is probably conscious. Uh but why do I have the consciousness I have? There's
25:29 all these conscious beings, but there's one person that I relate to that if something happens to it, I care about it uh in a different way than I care about other people uh my own consciousness. So why why am I conscious uh why was I born in 1948? Why am I a male in on Earth? And why am I not another animal? And so I mean why am I the person that I am? You could think the same thing about yourself. Uh but it's a subjective view of consciousness. Why am I the person that I am? Uh and that's really hard to explain. Why why
26:15 am I have all the the earmarks of of of this particular person? Of course, Rey, it's such an ironic question that in my mind, ha, that you're asking an anthropic question. What you just posed, why am I myself is the most fundamental anthropic lowercase A, not capital A question that one can ask. And why is the universe appear the way it does? Then the usual answer is if the universe or your own identity had sufficiently different properties, you wouldn't be around to ask the question, why do I >> It's very hard to even ask the question and people don't actually quite understand it. >> Maybe the f most comment you've ever
27:00 made for me was we were at a a group of singularity folks. We'd had a couple of glasses of wine and somebody asked about consciousness and you said, "Language is a very thin pipe to discuss concepts that are this complex." And it just blew everybody's mind. AIS will be indistinguishable from a conscious being and that we'll just keep going and finally we will accept it >> when when Ray >> Sam right now might say that it's conscious and you but people aren't really sure but eventually it it keeps uh having all the earmarks of a conscious being and you will accept it because it'd be useless not to have it. And and again, you can't say that's
27:47 going to happen for the same time for everybody. Um but I think when we're a few years into uh AI entities acting conscious, uh we will accept it. Uh and so I I don't think it's going to be a very long delay. Well, let's walk through that because the the the outerbound of the day when when AIs are acting conscious, you can't even tell. Outerbound of that is 2029, I think. And uh so you think a year or two later just because they're so convincing and so humanlike that everyone will accept it because because they have weird behavior too. They don't just act, you know, they somehow times they merge their brains together and they have combined
28:33 personalities, you know, and so normal beings don't kind of do that. So I could see a world where people are like this is just yeah it's acting very human but it's just too weird or I could see a world where everybody just accepts it. I mean today people have AI therapists and some uh times they don't really believe it but in other times people really believe it and the AI therapists if you read the transcripts they they sound very convincing uh and that's going to keep going and people will really accept that they have a therapist that's conscious uh and that's already beginning to happen. So it One thing I love about today's AIS, you know, use them all day long, every
29:18 day, but they have no intent of their own. They just do what you ask them to do and they try and be as helpful as they can in getting you to whatever destination, but they're not trying to get to any destination of their own. When when you start saying, "Well, they're going to act conscious." That implies to me anyway that yeah, I'm trying to get somewhere on my own. I don't have time to help you right now. I'm busy with my own personal agenda here. >> Dave, good point. I I'm c I'm still waiting for the AI to call me up one day and say, "Hey, Peter, listen. I'm working on this thing over here. You can join me if you want, but this is my objective for the day. >> Yeah, that's Yeah, different world. >> Different world. You know, Ry, something you said on the abundant stage, it was yourself, myself, Salem, we're talking about this and and you made a statement that really rocked a lot of people and
30:04 it's to contextualize the speed. You said in the next 10 years um originally said 2025 to 2035, right? this decade going forward that we're going to see as much change as we saw in the last 100 years 1925 to 2025 back when the highest level of technology was the Ford Model T and 30% of homes had electricity and telefan do you still hold to that level or is it fast or slower 100 years of progress in the next decade you still holding to that >> sounds about right you know I mean think about the difference between 2025 In 2035, I mean, 2035 will be way past AGI. We'll have supercomputers, but we'll
30:50 also be merging with them. So, we're going to be made a lot more intelligent than we are today. That's a huge amount of progress uh compared with what we've done 100 years before that. >> How do you see society dealing with this? Because right now the limiting factor in a lot of areas is regulatory, social structures, norms, market capture. What do what do you think is the weakest point that we should focus on solving to allow this progress to implement into the world? >> I mean, it's going to be a major thing. Uh employment's not I mean, right now employment is considered uh equivalent to being able to deal with your own financial needs. Uh that's going to change a lot.
31:36 uh we will have uh we'll be able to produce enough things that everybody will be wealthy compared to what we now consider wealthy. Uh and yet we won't necessarily have jobs as such. And how we're going to deal with that is really unclear. Um but people are actually not that concerned about it. You you would think that if uh >> well it's cuz they're in denial. >> Yeah. >> No, they're just not I I can't tell you how many people I interact with who are running companies, you know, hundreds and 90 plus% are just like, "Yeah, I it's not happening or things always take longer than people say or it's just pure denial." >> Yes. But uh I think we'll deal with it.
32:22 Okay. Um, but it's going to be a major uh change in the way we organize society. There there are folks like there are folks like Mo Goddat and a few others that think this and Peter you've said this the next 10 years is going to be the most volatile while we kind of try and absorb all of this. Do you agree with that rough time period Ray or do you think it's longer or shorter? I agree with it. But it's not like it's going to end in 10 years that we'll have this uh flux of great change in the next 10 years and the next 10 years after that will be uh smooth. >> No, it'll be much much crazier. >> I mean, the next 10 years will get us to my definition of singularity, which is will be at least a thousand times more
33:08 intelligent. I >> I'll I'll maybe pose uh hopefully a less obvious question for you, Rey. You've been very public about keeping maintaining lots of documents, lots of artifacts from your father whom I I gather was tremendous influence on your life with the premise that AI is going to enable you to basically computationally reconstruct your father someday. If if I'm not misconstring, there is a related notion that has been called variously quantum archaeology or humanity's final task. Uh Seoulski has has written or had written uh extensively about this in the context of Russian cosmism. Question for you, when
33:54 do we get the ability to computationally resurrect dead human beings with AI? Well, I mean, prior to that, we could try to create avatars of ourselves. Uh, we did create one of my father. Uh, and I'm like creating now an avatar of myself. I have actually a lot more uh material that we can uh put into text. I have 11 books. I've got several hundred articles that I've written, articles about me. All of this will go into a large language model. We'll create something that's uh can talk like me and it will look like me.
34:40 Um, and like I I get uh probably uh five to 10 uh requests for interviews and podcasts a day. and I can't do most of them. So, I'll actually offer them, you can interview the avatar. The avatar is actually better than me because it will remember everything. I don't remember everything that I've said. Um, so the avatar would actually be better and you can interview the avatar as long as you want >> in whatever language. >> You can do it in another language, right? Um, and that'll be this year. So, uh,
35:26 >> what what age are you going to make yourself in your avatar? >> Uh, kind of an arbitrary choice you have to make. >> Yeah. Um, now that's not actually creating everything about me or or my father, which we have actually less material of his, although we have enough to create an avatar that's also lively. Um, being able to relate everything that a person has and the state of their bodies and so on. It's it's uh that will have happened eventually, but that's probably another, you know, 10 or 15 years away.
36:13 >> Do you view that as the killer app of the singularity, the the so-called great task of resurrecting computationally with AI every human who has ever existed? >> Uh that's one of them. Yeah, >> there's so many >> to me that I I'm very interested in is uh being able to um longevity escape velocity where a year goes by, you age a year, but you get back that year from advances in medicine uh that keep you going for another year. or more than a year uh so that you don't
37:01 actually age during that year but you'll actually get it back from advances in in medicine and so on. What's your current prediction when we hit escape velocity? >> 20 2032. >> 2032. Yeah. Let's jump into that subject of common interest I think to all of us. Uh and Rey, you and I have had so many conversations about this concept of longevity which was a you know a very controversial subject a decade ago and now you know AI is impacting biology and making it happen. when we've talked about reaching longevity escape velocity uh in the past the technology that I believe you said is required to really get us there is nanotechnology
37:47 >> do you think that we're going to reach LEV without nanotechnology just based upon drug discovery using AI >> is it really has nothing to do with nanotechnology nanotechnologies uh is a way for us to take advantage of AI without it being obvious. So that I can be thinking about something, I'll get an idea and I won't know if it's coming from my biological brain or or the computational brain. That that has to do with nanotechnology. But uh uh longevity scape philosophy has to do with advances in medicine. It has to do with being able to simulate uh what happens in medicine. Uh and it does it really has nothing to do with
38:32 nanotechnology. Um, we have to be able to to create biological models of what happens in in biology very quickly so that in one weekend you can simulate, you know, millions or billions of different possibilities. uh and try them out uh test them and be and then be able to go forward with a a cure based on on on that type of analysis. Uh and talking to people who are do working on this uh five years is like an outside limit. So if we actually do it in five years then another couple years to basically go through most of the
39:20 medical problems we have. So your advice >> your advice to people is is stay healthy until we get to the early 2030s. >> Exactly. Exactly. >> Yeah. >> Just just curious to drill in one level deeper since you know Peter you're also a top expert on this topic. If if you had a perfect simulation, you know exactly what's going on in a body. You've got it all nailed through computation and that's you know about three, four, five years from now. Then what's the intervention if not nanotechnology? Like is it just more and more targeted chemicals in your bloodstream or like how do you act on that simulation? >> I mean you're coming up with new cures, new treatments uh to both ward off as as well as avoid getting these types of
40:05 treatments like cancer for example. >> Yeah. >> And you can see it already happening. I mean right now I've I've seen this many times. somebody gets some problem today and I said, "Well, just wait a few uh months and there'll be some new cure for it." And sure enough, that happens in most uh cases. Um I I can think of four or five cases where it's been really vital and it's it's happened. Uh so it's it's happening much more quickly. Um, >> I think I think that applies to to cancer, heart disease, uh, you know, hip replacements, knee replacements, all those things fit that mold, but then you've got this just general aging,
40:51 >> you know, because because stretching out your life >> reversal, right? >> Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Take take heart disease. >> So, Rapatha is a new type of drug that dramatically reduces your LDL. So, I've reduced my LDL to like 10, which is a very low number. >> Yep. >> And I've actually examined my arteries and I have no plaque. Now, that wasn't true like four or five years ago or even three or four years ago. Um, so in in various areas, I'm developing things that are avoiding getting problems uh that didn't exist just a short while ago. That's a good example though of chemical in your bloodstream. You know the
41:36 traditional it's a new drug, a new chemical that's in your bloodstream. And so there is a version of the world where that's all you need to reverse aging and then there's a version of the world where you need something much more targeted David of of David Sinclair right who is currently doing gene therapy for age reversal for epigenic reprogramming but then heading towards actually three molecules. So, it's a very cheap um uh you know, oral supplement that you take to reset your epigenetic age. Ray, do you have a do you have a target age you're you're shooting for? Uh you know, to hit LEV, do you do you expect >> I I would very much like to be alive
42:22 tomorrow and take advantage of all the friends I have like the friends in in this uh virtual room. Um, and I I think that tomorrow I will also be interested in being alive the next day. Um, I can't imagine I'm going to get to a point where I wouldn't want to be alive. The only time really that people take their lives generally is if they're in insufferable pain, physical pain, mental pain, spiritual pain, uh, and they can't continue otherwise people want to remain alive. So, and so I would want to stay healthy
43:09 and be able to take advantage of that. So that's not I'm not going to get to a point where uh not interested in being alive. As as time goes on, we're going to get more and more AI is going to be more and more intelligent. It's going to be able to keep our body going. Uh I can describe today a way in which we can replace every one of our organs and we can actually imagine that and that it wouldn't take that long. Certainly within a decade or two, we can replace all of our organs. Uh it was something that's uh really would last forever, more or less. So as time goes on, we have more and more capability of of
43:55 being able to replace things that are going wrong with our body. uh will get more and more into longevity escape velocity as time goes on. >> Are you anticipating a world where everybody agrees like if if you said hey you know I'm I'm alive today I want to be alive tomorrow and tomorrow I better I want to be alive to the next day. Um are you anticipating a world where everybody gets on board with that within 10 years and you know everyone has those options or a world where a subset of people have had five organs replaced uh they've had stem cells in their brain. They're extending their their thinking ability. Another subset are violently opposed. They're ranting in the streets. They're trying to prevent it. They want natural death.
44:42 >> I mean you can get natural death today. you can go to Switzerland and get natural death. Um um I I was uh debating with Conorman who was a Nobel Prize winning economist and he was 90. He was actually very healthy. I would meet with him in New York. I had like four or five lunches with him and he would actually walk like five blocks to get to where our lunch was and walk back. Uh so he was actually pretty healthy but he was mindful of what happens to you in your 90s and he's saying well it's uh bad things happen and he'd rather know that not happened with him and he took
45:28 his life he went to Switzerland and ended his life even though he was healthy. Um and I wasn't aware that he had this plan although his family was aware of it. uh and I tried to talk him out of it and talk about how we're making exponential progress on overcoming diseases and so on. He was concerned about his kidneys, but I related some things I'm involved in that relate to the kidney and uh and he understood what I was saying and it was actually an economic issue. Uh but he ended up taking his life anyway. Um, but that's because he really didn't was not convinced that this would
46:14 happen. >> Yeah, >> Ray, my father passed away a year ago uh at 97 and also had an assisted death in Canada. They've now approved it. And I have never seen anyone as happy in my life as my father in the last week. Um, and I asked the doctor after he passed away, I'm trying to feel loss or pain or suffering, but I can't. I've never seen him so happy. Have you seen this? and she said, "You know, 20,000 people in Canada have had this procedure this past year. Most of them go out in this state and we think it's because they have agency." And he lived with dignity. He wanted to pass away with dignity and he got his wish and he was happy as a clam. So, a very philosophical thoughtprovoking outcome. >> Yeah.
47:00 >> Uh I don't think that would be me, but >> hope not. Alex, you were gonna You had a great question about cryionics. >> Yeah. No, I I don't like the uh very much the the direction of what we're discussing here. I I don't think Rey this at all aligns with the way you see the world either. I I think you and I probably see the world quite similarly rather than having hand ringing discussions about death with dignity and going to Canada. I would argue we should be talking about cryionics as recognizing that approximately 150,000 people are dying every day in our world and not everyone statistically if we get to longevity escape velocity by the early 2030s as you predict that's many many millions of people who are going to die between now and lev
47:47 why do you think more people aren't obtaining cryionics plans for themselves and what can you say here we have hundreds of thousands thousand of subscribers, hundreds of thousands of viewers to encourage viewers to consider getting cryionics plans for themselves so they don't have to move to Canada to die with dignity if they're in that position. >> Well, my uh point on cryionics is that that is plan D. >> Plan D. I love that. >> Uh plan A, B, and C is to remain alive one way or another. Um, and Cryionics, it's plan D. I mean, I have enough trouble keeping track of my ideas
48:33 uh when I'm uh able to uh give arguments for them and uh ar and keep track of them. Uh it' be hard to imagine keeping track of them while I'm uh ba basically dead. um coming back it's I mean I have concerns about them you may come back and you may not be happy with the way you come back and I mean this cryionics is better than not doing cryionics because at least you have some chance of coming back um but the there's risks with it um so I'm I'm I do it very
49:21 Few people do it. I mean the the number of people who die who elect Cryionics is very very small. Um I have done it. I hope it works. Uh >> you you've signed up for cryionics. >> Yeah. But but I hope that it's I won't have that opportunity. For for our viewers and listeners who don't know what this is, there are companies like Alor where you can sign up and near the moment of your death uh they will effectively put antireeze or some equivalent thereof into your bloodstream and you will be frozen with the notion that eventually technologies like nanotechnology will to reconstruct uh your your full neuroortex is uh is under cryionics right now. I would say
50:08 >> I would say Ry, it's unconscionable to me that I I think you have the the statistics. I I think probably a few thousand people order of magnitude have cryionics plans. Why do you think it's not hundreds of millions? And again, is there anything that you would care to do? you're speaking to hundreds of thousands of people who take the future of technology very seriously to maybe persuade them if if you think this is a righteous act that they should be perhaps considering cryionics plans for themselves >> perhaps but given that I have limited uh persuasion on people listen to me uh I would tell people they they should do everything they can to stay alive
50:53 uh that's because that's the best way of being alive in the future is to stay alive right now. And there's a lot you can do to remain alive. >> And and Rey, are you saying you stay not just stay alive, but stay in reasonable health? >> Yeah, absolutely. >> And that the technologies will unveil themselves to you uh in the next 5 to 8 years. Yes. >> And it's happening very quickly. So this is actually a vital time that you can remain I'm still chuckling at your comment where you said it's harder to keep track of your ideas when you're dead. >> But but but you're going to you're going to in this whether you're keeping yourself alive and you enter longevity escape velocity or you're chronically
51:38 frozen. The other thing going on is you probably have a hundred or or a thousand or a million avatar versions of you that are up and operating in the universe in parallel with your with your meat body. Right. Yeah. Uh whether or not those will have consciousness or not, we get back to the same thing we discussed earlier. Um actually, they'll be probably better at remembering everything I've said. Um because um if it has a computer behind it, it it won't forget anything uh unlike myself. This episode is brought to you by Blitzy, autonomous software development
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53:11 native SDLC into their org. Ready to 5x your engineering velocity? Visit blitzy.com to schedule a demo and start building with Blitzy today. >> We should definitely do a podcast with where it's uh Ray K Avatar and Alex Avatar and Dave and Sim Avatar having a conversation amongst ourselves. We should put that on the docket for sometime this year. Ray, I want to take just a second to say thank you for supporting uh my book launch with uh with Steven Cutotler. Um Rey has graciously said he'll he'll do a live event. We're going to do it, Dave, at Link Studios in Cambridge uh in May. And uh we had an amazing Stephen and I had an amazing AMA at the end of December.
53:57 And if folks, if you're interested in joining another AMA with Stephen and I about the new book, uh uh we are as God's survival guide for the age of abundance. Uh we'll pop the cover up here. Nick, I'll ask you to pop it up, but we're going to you can go to diamandis.com/book and if you pre-order a book at the end of January this month, we're going to be doing another AMA and uh yeah, it's a part of our book launch effort. So, check it out, diamadis.com/book. Um Ray, can we jump in? >> Just just one thing. Uh I did a conference with Martin Rothblat. Uh this was at UCLA to um represent their progress over the last uh I think
54:43 30 years. Uh and it had me, Martin, two uh professors there and Martine's avatar. So you had both Martin and Martine's avatar. Martine's avatar looks realistic. It's like doing a Zoom with her. Um and the avatar is actually very good. remembers everything that Martina said and you could ask it anything and it actually is very convincing and actually knew when to come in because if you're in a conference you can't just like suddenly say something if somebody else is speaking you have to wait till there's a silence and you can say something and say something maybe that's relevant to what was said before and it worked very well um so this was a
55:30 conference with with the avatar uh and Martin herself uh at the same time. Hey, can I ask? >> I'm very clear. I'm very clear that an AV >> Well, directly related question to that. You know, I I stumbled a couple years ago on your how my predictions have fared essay, which is a great essay by the way. Um, and you know, uh 86% outright correct. And then that you know you worked on speech recognition years and years ago and by now the interface to your computer you would think is voice not a keyboard and I feel like like that is something we're
56:18 so used to now that we're underpredicting how this interface is going to change for the first time since you know 19 since the guey so maybe 1980s but it's got to be imminent now and I don't know if you agree agree with that or not, but if when you look at these avatars that you're just describing, they're so good and so convincing >> and so much better of a way to inter interact with technology. >> Well, another one I got wrong was that we would have self-driving cars. >> Y >> uh which we do now. Um >> yeah, >> but it didn't quite make the time frame. So, that was wrong. >> Well, that one was wrong because of regulatory issues, right? the technology your timeline on the technology I think was was incredibly close >> but you know regulatory is very hard to predict I think you made that point in the essay but the one on the the interface to a computer is not held up
57:05 by regulatory it's something else momentum or or barriers or Apple not doing AI or something but uh but that one to me feels like this is going to happen very very soon and people like because when you talk to an avatar like you said you're at a conference this you know why am I not talking to my computer that way. It's crazy that I'm typing on this keyboard. >> Well, I think part of that, Dave, is is having to not be verbal in the middle of an airplane flight or sitting at your desk sometimes. Uh >> I'll tell you before we kicked off the pod, Peter, you were saying why where's our AI that's uh our AV basically. >> Yeah. >> And you know, pulling in images, pulling like when we, you know, talk about Ray's books, why is it not popping up as a picture in real time that we're all
57:50 looking at? That's got to be imminent too because the >> dude let's start that company. >> Let's start that company. >> Amen. Amen. >> I fant See, you were gonna jump in. >> Um Ray, if you look over the last six months, what breakthrough or development has surprised you the most? >> I'm getting much more credence to people accepting this which didn't accept it a year ago. I mean, think of the difference between 2024 and 2025. uh or January 2026 and January 2025. Uh most people a year ago that I would speak to would say, "Yeah, AI is pretty interesting, but it's not really very good and people don't really accept it
58:37 and and and they've completely changed their views in the last year." Uh where they're really accepting it now. Uh there there was just an article by uh people who advocate therapy who is saying that uh online therapists uh are actually doing a very meaningful job and that never would have happened a year ago. Um so I'd say the change in in people's attitudes is is pretty phenomenal. Is the is the pace of change currently faster than you predicted? Cuz it feels faster. This is to Dave's point earlier, it feels like we're moving faster than
59:22 you predicted. Do you agree or not agree? >> I mean, in 1999, I predicted 2029 for AGI and I still predict 2029. Um, I think uh Elon Musk says 2026. I think we'll have a lot of things that remind us of AGI, but it really won't be we really won't be convinced in 2026. Maybe it'll happen sooner, 2027, 2028. I mean, you get varying degrees of confidence, but by 2029, I think everyone will accept that. >> Amazing. Amazing. Alex, uh, I want to turn it back to you, pal. Yeah, m maybe
1:00:08 to shift gears a bit, Rey, I'm obviously, if this isn't obvious from some of my questions and comments, I'm an enormous fan of both you and your writings and your courageous extrapolation of following the law of straight lines, of progress in experience curves, progress in Moors law type experience curves, your law of accelerating returns, your countdown to the singularity, all arguably variance on various forms of experience curves from economics question for you. So if we follow to its logical conclusion law of accelerating returns and your countdown to the singularity this idea that we're almost in a technologically deterministic way we emerge from a
1:00:56 primordial soup and everything follows some very nice elegant law of straight lines exponential calendar. Do you think that this implies that our universe is abundant with intelligent civilizations? And if so, in other words, abundant not just human intelligence, but non-human intelligence as well. And if so, do you think that would then imply that there are nonhuman intelligent civilizations on or near Earth? The fact that we can emerge as a far more intelligent version of ourselves in a short period of time doesn't imply uh that there are intelligences
1:01:43 uh that go beyond humans. We we haven't really seen evidence of that. Um I mean the there's uh a lot of interest in trying to find uh signals in the universe that would indicate that there some intelligent source of them. We haven't actually found that yet. Uh and we have more and more ability to look. Um so it it may exist but we we don't know that there's any intelligence besides coming from Earth. Um and
1:02:29 the the more and more ability for us to actually uh evaluate uh different types of intelligent sources that are not coming from Earth. Uh and yet we still don't see any evidence of that. Uh kind of indicates that they aren't there. Um but we but there's there's no way of actually determining that uh because we can only look at a very small fraction of what's out there. >> Uh switching sub Go Alex, you want to do a follow-up? >> Maybe just a quick follow-up question. So Rey, you've made many many
1:03:14 predictions of technologies that you think either the singularity itself or progress toward the singularity would unlock. Do you think that progress toward the singularity would answer the question that I think many people most want existentially an answer to, which is, is humanity alone? >> Yeah. I mean, so far, uh, if we're not alone, we're still pretty lonely because we haven't come into contact with any, uh, intelligent source aside from ourselves. Uh there's fantastic things happening in the universe and the universe goes on seemingly forever. Um so it's it's certainly possible that we'll find something and it's impossible
1:04:01 to rule that out but so far we haven't actually done that. Uh so we certainly feel alone because there's nobody else we can point to. We can't point to some other star system saying, "Well, there's a source coming from that that's clearly intelligent and we'd like to contact them." We we we can't even identify uh a thing like that. Uh so far >> I want to jump into the conversation a little bit about BCI brain computer interface and our ability to you know uplevel our capabilities. I think when we talk about longevity, escape velocity and potentially living well in past 100 or hundreds of years, uh what most
1:04:47 people fear is getting there without having the cognitive clarity, without having the ability to maintain their memories. And of course, one of the technologies that would assist us on that that you've spoken about is the idea of high bandwidth BCI. uh not the low, you know, thin pipe that we currently do input output through. And I encourage everybody to go onto your favorite LLM and ask it to give you a list of all of Ray Kershw's uh predictions that he's accurately hit. It's a a very impressive list. And you know, one of those predictions is that we'll hit, you know, high bandwidth BCI uh in the mid 2030s. Uh, is that still your prediction? And I
1:05:34 want to say, what's that going to feel like? You know, I I raised my hand and volunteer for one of the early BCI uh uh, you know, interfaces. What's that going to feel like? And how do you think we're going to achieve that? >> I mean, it's very hard to know how we're going to react to things that haven't happened yet. Um, and you could imagine this being uh something that were welcoming or something that we would uh be alarmed by. Um, so uh as the the future hasn't been written yet.
1:06:21 uh and it can't be uh the future could be terrible uh or it could be fantastic. Uh it's really hard to to give a prediction about that. >> Ray, you you described it if I could once we have high bandwidth BCI that you'll have concepts emerge in your mind uh uh that are driven by if you would uh the cloud. Uh, can you speak to that a little bit? >> Well, that would be useful. I'm actually writing my autobiography and trying to remember things that happened when I was like three years old and four years old and uh actually have a pretty good memory of that. Um, but it could be better and it would actually be helpful
1:07:07 if I had AI to help me along with that. Um, >> actually, wait, no, not just that, but are you using AI to go interview people that you interacted with when you're 3, four, 10 years old and get their sides of the story? >> Well, it would have to have a lot of capability that it doesn't have now to be able to uh uh generate uh a view of something that that we don't have now. Um, so I'm using I'm using large language models a little bit to try to but uh actually my my memory is actually not not bad uh of things that happened a long time ago. >> All right. When's the biography coming out?
1:07:52 >> I can't wait. >> Uh it's about ready. It should be out within a year. >> Yeah, I've had a chance to read it. Yeah, it's uh it's pretty it's pretty amazing. Well, the the thing I'm really eager to to read in that biography is that the the role of the futurist, you know, you you made all these really bold predictions, and I'm sure at the time everyone's like, "You're a crackpot. You're a crackpot." I suspect by now everyone's like, "Wow, what what an incredible foresight." Um, and so I assume you're at an all-time high now, but maybe maybe not. But the the role of being a futurist is fraught with this hindsight bias where you get three things wrong. you know, the the self-driving car is not out yet. Our our clothes are not made by nanotechnology and uh computing isn't done on
1:08:38 biological systems. You know, we don't have DNA computers >> and and >> I mean, I'm I'm getting less of that now. I mean, before >> uh if I would make a whole bunch of predictions and one of them was wrong, everybody would focus on that. >> Yeah. Yeah. >> But now people are more uh generous on their views of >> to me to me the most amazing like when you read at the time everyone's going to have a computer in their pocket in their clothes and it's going to be almost like an extension of their life. And at the time it sounded like nuts. And now everyone's like, "Oh, that's just an iPhone." Like, "Well, no, it's not just an iPhone. It's a total cultural phenomenon that's changed our, you know, it just changes you much more than you ever know. And if you
1:09:23 >> you go to a conference and there's like several hundred people. Every single person has a cell phone in their pocket. And it's Yes. And it's actually an extension of your mind. >> It is. It is. >> If you don't have your cell phone, you you left, you know, threequarters of your mind. >> And I'll tell you what else. the headmaster of the school that my kids went to uh took all of the kids, I think in seventh grade or sixth grade, to an island without their phones for three days and said, "You have to learn to live without your phone." The new headmaster came in and said, "That's inhumane. We can't do this anymore. This is this is not >> I think there's a book called Lord of the Flies that was written about that." >> Lord of the Flies. That's funny. >> But I mean it's so innate and we're talking about seventh graders here, but it's so attached to their mentality, their mind, their body, whatever that
1:10:09 they can't. >> We're going to replace this. I mean, carrying around a physical object like this is it's difficult. >> I mean, where do you put it? How do you not lose it? Um, >> got two chips in his hand now. >> What do you think replaces the We'll have something besides this. It'll be >> Yeah, that's a good question. >> Yeah, >> it'll be something like virtual reality. So, you basically you look out and you can see uh basically a screen and it will be interfacing with your computer, but it'll be on all the time. You'll be able to interact with it and you won't be carrying something around and you won't leave it at your apartment. Um,
1:10:56 >> yeah. >> Beyond that, it'll actually uh go inside our nervous system uh interact with your biological neurons. >> I've got I got this thing now. We're starting to record everything basically. You know, Peter's got the wearable and now we've got these omniirectional mic. It's the size of a credit card. You just throw it on the table and everything that happens is not only recorded, but it's assigned to whoever said it >> with these omniirectional mics. But they're starting to pop everywhere. >> This year, Dave, at at the Abundance Summit, we're giving everybody two devices. One is a ring format uh that we talked about on one of the WTF episodes that Pebble is putting out where you can just quickly record a message, go LLM, and then we're giving everybody something called applaud. Uh it's I
1:11:44 guess I guess I'm I'm uh spoiling the secret for our abundance members. Um Rey, can we talk about one of the concerns you raised earlier that people have, which is uh people's attachment to their employment. So thoughts on the future of work. Uh you know, you've spoken eloquently about the need for universal basic income and even universal high income that Elon spoken about. Uh so what's your thoughts on the future of work and and when do we start having UBI and should people be worried about their future income? >> Well, I mean we we relate having an income to having the means to deal with our uh financial
1:12:30 system. Uh but if we separate that and you're going to be able to deal with your financial needs without having uh a conventional job. Uh that's actually liberating. Um and I mean why do people uh uh retire? Now I to me retirement doesn't make sense because what I'm doing I en enjoy doing. >> Mhm. >> But if you look at most jobs people don't like them so much that they want to be able to do them forever. Uh and it's actually liberation to to
1:13:17 not have to do that and find something within uh their means that gives them uh gratification uh without having to work in a way
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