Artificial Intelligence Podcast

Key Takeaways 

• The universe is biased towards certain futures; there is a natural direction where the whole system wants to go 
• If you believe the future will be better, and that you have the agency to make it happen, then you are increasing the likelihood of that better future happenings 
• “Technically, e/acc was started in a basement. I quit big tech, moved back in with my parents, sold my car, let go of my apartment, bought about $100K of GPUs, and I just started building.” – Guillaume Verdon
• The goal of the e/acc movement is for the human techno-capital mimetic machine to become self-aware and to superstitiously engineer its growth
• The core thesis of e/acc: The adaptation of the system is what has gotten us to this point in time; this process is good, and we should keep it going 
• The market is more efficient at achieving optimums than are heavy-handed regulations, which tend to be subversive and written by the incumbents  
• Any centralized power structure becomes a target for those who want to co-opt it 
• A system that maintains dynamism and adaptability avoids tyranny  
• The way to a good future is to shape adversarial equilibria between the various AI players 
• Whatever configuration of matter or information leads to maximal growth is where humans and AI will converge; we can either align ourselves with this trajectory or get left behind by trying to decelerate
• Continuing to climb up the Kardashev scale is the great challenge of our time  

Read the full notes @ podcastnotes.org

Guillaume Verdon (aka Beff Jezos on Twitter) is a physicist, quantum computing researcher, and founder of e/acc (effective accelerationism) movement. Please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors:
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Transcript: https://lexfridman.com/guillaume-verdon-transcript

EPISODE LINKS:
Guillaume Verdon Twitter: https://twitter.com/GillVerd
Beff Jezos Twitter: https://twitter.com/BasedBeffJezos
Extropic: https://extropic.ai/
E/acc Blog: https://effectiveaccelerationism.substack.com/

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OUTLINE:
Here's the timestamps for the episode. On some podcast players you should be able to click the timestamp to jump to that time.
(00:00) - Introduction
(09:18) - Beff Jezos
(19:16) - Thermodynamics
(25:31) - Doxxing
(35:25) - Anonymous bots
(42:53) - Power
(45:24) - AI dangers
(48:56) - Building AGI
(57:09) - Merging with AI
(1:04:51) - p(doom)
(1:20:18) - Quantum machine learning
(1:33:36) - Quantum computer
(1:42:10) - Aliens
(1:46:59) - Quantum gravity
(1:52:20) - Kardashev scale
(1:54:12) - Effective accelerationism (e/acc)
(2:04:42) - Humor and memes
(2:07:48) - Jeff Bezos
(2:14:20) - Elon Musk
(2:20:50) - Extropic
(2:29:26) - Singularity and AGI
(2:33:24) - AI doomers
(2:34:49) - Effective altruism
(2:41:18) - Day in the life
(2:47:45) - Identity
(2:50:35) - Advice for young people
(2:52:37) - Mortality
(2:56:20) - Meaning of life