Joe Rogan Experience #1211 - Dr. Ben Goertzel

Joe Rogan 0:06 Boom. Hello, Ben.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 0:08 Hey, there.

Joe Rogan 0:09 Good to see you, man.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 0:10 Yeah, it's a pleasure to be here.

Joe Rogan 0:11 Thanks for doing this.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 0:13 Yeah, yeah. Thank, thank, thanks for having me. I've been, I've been looking at, at some of your shows in, in the last few... last few days, just to, to get a sense of how you're thinking about AI and-

Joe Rogan 0:24 Th-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 0:24 ... crypto and the various other things I- I'm involved in, and it, it's been interesting.

Joe Rogan 0:28 Well, I've been following you as well. I've been, uh, paying attention to a lot of your lectures and talks and different things you've done over the last couple of days as well, getting ready for this. It's, uh, AI is, uh, either people are really excited about it or they're really terrified of it. Those are the sort of... It seems to be the two responses. Either people have this dismal view of these robots taking over the world, or they think it's going to be some amazing sort of symbiotic relationship with that we have with these things that's gonna evolve human beings past the, the monkey stage that we're at right now.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:00 Yeah. And I, I, I tend to be on the latter, more positive side-

Joe Rogan 1:05 Good.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05 ... of, of, of this dichotomy. But, I, I think one thing that has struck me in recent years is many people are now, you know, mentally confronting all the issues surrounding AI for the first time. And I, I mean, I've been working on AI for three decades, and I first started thinking about AI when I was a little kid in the early, late 60s and early 70s when I saw AIs and robots on the original Star Trek. So, I guess I've had a lot of cycles to process the positives and, and negatives of it. Whereas now, like suddenly mo- most of the world is thinking through all this for the first, for the first time. And, you know, when you first wrap your brain around the idea that there may be creatures 10,000 or a million times smarter than, than human beings, at first this is a bit of a shocker, right?

Joe Rogan 1:58 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:58 And, and then, I mean, it takes a while to internalize this into your world view.

Joe Rogan 2:02 Well, it's... That there's also, I think, there's a problem with the term artificial intelligence, 'cause it's, it's, it's intelligent. It's there. It's a real thing.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 2:13 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 2:13 Like, it's not artificial. It's not like a fake diamond or a fake Ferrari. It's a real thing. And it, it's very-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 2:20 It's not a great term, and-

Joe Rogan 2:21 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 2:21 ... there's been many attempts to replace it with synthetic intelligence for, for example.

Joe Rogan 2:28 Hmm. Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 2:28 But for better or worse, like, AI is there. It's part of the-

Joe Rogan 2:32 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 2:32 ... popular imagination. It seems... It's an imperfect word, but it's, it's not going away.

Joe Rogan 2:38 Well, I, I... My question is, like, are we married to this idea of intelligence and of life being biological, being carbon-based tissue and cells and blood and... Or, or insects, or mammals, or fish? Are, are we married to that too much? Do you think that it's entirely possible that what human beings are doing and what people that are at the, the tip of AI right now that are really pushing the technology, what they're doing is really creating a new life form? That it's, it's going to be a new thing, that just the same way we recognize wasps and buffalos-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 3:14 Right.

Joe Rogan 3:15 ... and artificial intelligence is just gonna be a life form that emerges from the creativity and ingenuity of human beings?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 3:20 Well, in-in-deed. So, I mean, I've long been, uh, an advocate of a philosophy I think of as, as patternism. Like, it's the pattern of organization that appears to be the, the critical thing, and the min- ... The... You know, the individual cells, and going down further, like the molecules and particles in our body are, are turning over all the time. So it's not-

Joe Rogan 3:44 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 3:44 ... the specific combination of elementary particles which makes me who I am or makes you who you are. It's the pattern by which they're organized and the patterns by which they change over time. So it... I mean, if we can create digital systems or quantum computers or femto computers or whatever it is manifesting the patterns of organization that constitute intelligence, I mean, then, then there you are. There, there, there is intelligence, right? So that, that's not to say that, you know, consciousness and experience is just about patterns of organization. There may be more dimensions to it. But when, when you look at what constitutes intelligence, thinking, cognition, problem-solving, you know, it's the pattern of organization, not, not the specific material as, as, as far as we can tell. So, we can see no reason, based on all the science that we know so far, that you couldn't make an intelligent system out of some other form of matter rather than the, the specific types of atoms and molecules that, that, that make up human beings, and it seems that we're, we're well on the way to being able to do so.

Joe Rogan 4:52 When you study intel- ... Uh, when you study intelligence, you're studying artificial intelligence, do... Did you spend any time, uh, studying the patterns that insects seem to cooperatively, uh, behave with, like, uh, how leaf-cutter ants build these elaborate structures underground and, you know, wasps build these giant colonies? And... Did you study how-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 5:14 I did. Actually, yes. So I, I, I sort of grew up with the philosophy of complex systems, which was championed by the, by the Santa Fe Institute in, in, in the 1980s. And the whole concept that there is an interdisciplinary complex system science which includes, you know, biology, cosmology, psychology, sociology. There's sort of universal patterns of, of self-organization. And, you know, ants and ant colonies ha- have long been a paradigm case for that. And I, I, I, I u-... I used to play with the ant colonies in my backyard wh- when I, when I was a kid, and you'd lay down food in certain patterns. You'd see how the ants are laying down pheromones and the colonies are, are organizing it in a, in a certain way. And that's an interesting selforganizing complex system.... on its own. It's lacking some types of adaptive intelligence that, that human minds and human societies have, but, but it has also interesting self-organizing patterns. This reminds me of the, the novel Solaris by Stanisław Lem, which was published in, in, in, in, in the '60s, which was really qui- quite, quite a deep novel, much deeper than the, the movie that was made of it. Did, did you ever read that book, Solaris?

Joe Rogan 6:33 No.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 6:33 So what-

Joe Rogan 6:34 No. I'm not familiar with the movie either. Who, who's in the movie?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 6:36 Um, well, so there was an amazing, brilliant movie by Tarkovsky, the Russian director from the late '60s. Then there was a, a movie by Steven Soderbergh, which was sort of glammed up and Americanized and-

Joe Rogan 6:47 Oh, that was fairly recent, right? Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 6:48 Yeah, 10 years ago.

Joe Rogan 6:49 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 6:49 But that, that, that, that wasn't ... didn't get all the deep points of the novel. The original novel, in essence, there's this i- ... there's this ocean on- coating the surface of some alien planet, which has amazingly complex fractal patterns of organization, and it's also interactive. Like, the patterns of organization on the ocean respond based on, on what you do, and when people get near the ocean, it causes them to hallucinate things, and even causes them to see simulacra of people from their past, even the, like, the person who they had most harmed or injured in their past-

Joe Rogan 7:24 Oh.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 7:24 ... appears and interacts with them. So clearly, this ocean has some type of amazing complexity and intelligence from the patterns it displays and from the weird things it wreaks in your mind, so that the people on Earth try to understand how the ocean is thinking. They send a scientific expedition there to, to in- interact with that ocean, but it's just so alien. Even though it monkeys with people's minds and clearly is doing complex things, no two-way communication is ever, is ever established. And eventually, the, the human expedition gives up and goes home, so it, it's a very Russian ending to the novel, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, I guess. It's not ... so-

Joe Rogan 8:08 I think I saw that.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 8:09 But the, the, the interest-

Joe Rogan 8:13 Show me.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 8:13 The interesting message there is, I mean, there can be many, many kinds of intelligence, right? I mean, human intelligence is one thing. The intelligence of an ant colony is a different thing. The intelligence of human society is a different thing. Ecosystem-

Joe Rogan 8:29 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 8:29 ... is a different thing. And there could be many, many types of AIs that we could build with many, many different properties. Some could be wonderful to human beings. Some could be horrible to human beings. Some could just be alien minds that, that we can't even relate, relate, relate to very, very well. So we, we have a very limited conception of what an intelligence is if we t- just think by close analogy to, to human minds. And this, this is important if you're thinking about engineering or growing artificial life forms or artificial minds, 'cause it, it's not just, "Can we do this?" It's, "What kind of mind are, are, are, are we going to engineer or evolve?"

Joe Rogan 9:14 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 9:14 And there's a, there's a huge spectrum of possibilities.

Joe Rogan 9:17 Yeah, that's one of the reasons why I asked you ... uh, if y- we had created, if human beings had created some sort of an insect, and this insect started organizing and developing these complex colonies like a leaf-cutter ant and building these structures underground, people would go crazy. They would panic. They would think, "These things are organizing. They're gonna, they're gonna build up the resources and attack us. They're gonna try to take over humanity." I mean, this ... What, what people are worried about more than anything when it comes to technology, I think, is the idea that we're going to be, uh, irrelevant, that we're going to be, uh, uh, antiques, and that something new and better is gonna take our place, which is ... It's a weird thing to worry about.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 9:56 Which is almost inevitable.

Joe Rogan 9:58 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 9:58 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 9:58 It's a weird thing to worry about it, 'cause it's sort of the history of biological life on Earth. I mean, what we know-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 10:04 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:04 ... is there's complex things. They become more comp- They go from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms. There seems to be a pattern leading up to us, and us with this unprecedented ability to change our environment. That's what we can do, right? We can manipulate things, poison the environment. We can blow up entire countries with bombs if we'd like to, and we can also do wild, creative things like send signals through space and land on someone else's phone on the other side of the world almost instantaneously. We have incredible power, but we're also, w- we're also so limited by our biology.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 10:36 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 10:37 The thing I think people are afraid of, and I, I'm afraid of, but I don't know if it makes any sense, is that the next level of life, whatever artificial life is or whatever the, the, the, the human symbiote is, that it's gonna lack emotions, it's gonna lack desires and needs, and all the things that we think are special about us. Our creativity, our desire for attention and love, all of our comradery, all these different things that are sort of programmed into us o- with-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 11:07 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 11:07 ... with our genetics in order to a- a- advance our species that we, we, we're so connected to these things, but they're so ... they're the reason for war. They're the reason for, uh, uh, lies, deception, the- thievery. There's so many things that are built into being a person that are responsible for all the woes of humanity, but we're afraid to lose those things.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 11:29 Yeah, I think it, it's almost inevitable by this point that humanity is going to create synthetic intelligences with tremendously greater general intelligence and practical capability than human beings have. I mean, I think I know how to do that with the software I'm working on with my own team, but if we fail, you know, there's a load of other teams who I think are a bit behind us, but are going in the same direction though, right? So-

Joe Rogan 12:00 So you guys feel like you're at the tip of the spear with this stuff?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 12:02 I do, but I also think that's not the most important thing from a human perspective. The most important thing is that humanity as a whole is quite close to this, this threshold event, right? So-

Joe Rogan 12:15 How far do you think it's quite close?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 12:17 ... by my own gut feeling, 5 to 30 years, let's say.

Joe Rogan 12:21 That's pretty close.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 12:22 But if I'm wrong and it's a 100 years, like in the historical time scale, that sort of doesn't matter. It's like, did the Sumerians create civilization 10,000 or 10,050 years ago?

Joe Rogan 12:32 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 12:32 Like, what- what difference does it make, right?

Joe Rogan 12:34 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 12:35 So I think we're quite close to creating superhuman artificial general intelligence, and that's, in a way, almost inevitable given where we are now. On the other hand, I think we still have some agency regarding whether this comes out in a way that, you know, respects human values and culture, which are important to us now given who and what we are...

Joe Rogan 13:04 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 13:04 ... or that is essentially indifferent to human values and- and culture in the same way that we're mostly indifferent to chimpanzee values and- and culture at- at- at- at this point, so...

Joe Rogan 13:15 Right. And completely indifferent to insect values and culture.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 13:18 Not completely, uh, if you think about it. I mean, if I'm building a new house, I will bulldoze a bunch of ants, but yet we get upset if we extinct an insect species, right? So we- we care- we care...

Joe Rogan 13:30 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 13:30 ... to some level, but not ... But we- but we would like the super AIs to care about us more than we care about insects or- or great apes.

Joe Rogan 13:38 Sure. Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 13:39 A- a- a- ab- ab- absolutely, right? And I think this- this is something we can impact right now. And to- to- to be honest, I mean, in a certain part of my mind, I- I can think, well, like, in- in the end, I don't matter that much, my four kids don't matter that much, my granddaughter doesn't matter that much. Like, we are patterns of organization in a very long lineage of patterns of organization.

Joe Rogan 14:05 But they matter very much to you, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 14:07 Yeah. And- and neither... You know, dinosaurs came and went, and Neanderthals came and went. Humans may come and go. The AIs that we create may come and go, and that's the nature of the universe, but on the other hand, of course, in my heart, from my situated perspective as an individual human, like, if- if some AI tried to annihilate my- my 10-month-old son, I would try to kill that AI, right? Like so...

Joe Rogan 14:34 Right. Sure.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 14:34 A- a- a- as- as a human being, uh, situated in this specific, you know, species, place, and time, I care a lot about the condition of- of all of us humans. And so I- I would like to not only create a powerful general intelligence but- but create one which- which is- is going to be beneficial to humans and- and other life forms on- on the planet, even while, in some ways, going- going beyond ev- everything that- that we are, right? And there can't be any guarantees about something like this. On the other hand, humanity has really never had any guarantees about anything anyway, right? I mean, since- since- since- since we created civilization, we've been leaping into the unknown one time after the other in- in a somewhat conscious and self-aware way about it, from, you know, agriculture, to language, to math, to the Industrial Revolution. We're leaping into the unknown all the time, which is part of why we're where we are today instead of just another animal species, right? So we can't have a guarantee that AGIs, artificial general intelligences, we create are going to do what we consider the right thing given our current value systems. O- o- on the other hand, I suspect we can bias the odds in the favor of- of human values and- and culture, and that's something I've- I've put a lot of thought and work into alongside the, you know, the basic algorithms of- of artificial cognition.

Joe Rogan 16:17 Is the issue that the initial creation would be subject to our programming, but that it could perhaps program something more efficient and design something? Like, if you build creativity...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 16:28 Well, certainly.

Joe Rogan 16:28 ... into artificial general intelligence, right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 16:29 I mean, you have to. I mean, general- generalization is about creativity, right?

Joe Rogan 16:34 Right. Yeah. But is the issue that it would choose to not accept our values, which it might find...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 16:41 Well, clearly, we'll choose not to accept our values.

Joe Rogan 16:43 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 16:43 And- and we want it to choose not to accept all of our values.

Joe Rogan 16:47 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 16:47 So it- it's more a matter of whether the ongoing creation evolution of new values occurs with some continuity and respect for the previous ones. So I mean, uh, with... I have four human kids now. One is a baby, but the other three are adults, right? And with each of them, I took the approach of trying to teach the kids what my values were, not just by preaching at them, but by entering with them...

Joe Rogan 17:11 Sure.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:11 ... in- into shared situations. But then, you know when your kids grow up, they're gonna go in their own different directions, right? And- and...

Joe Rogan 17:19 Right. But these are humans, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:20 But you... But...

Joe Rogan 17:21 They all have the same sort of biological needs, which is one of the reasons...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:24 M- mostly.

Joe Rogan 17:25 ... why we have these desires...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:25 Right. But- but...

Joe Rogan 17:26 ... in the first place.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:26 Yeah, there still is an analogy. I- I think the AIs that we create, you can think of as- as our mind children, and we're starting them off with our culture and values, if- if we do it properly, or at least with a certain subset of the whole diverse self-contradictory mess of human culture and values.

Joe Rogan 17:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 17:47 But you know they're going to evolve in a- in a different direction, but you want that evolution to take place in a reflective and- and- and caring way, rather than a heedless way. 'Cause if- if you think about it, the average human a thousand years ago, or even 50 years ago, would have thought you and me were, like, hopelessly immoral miscreants who had abandoned all the valuable thing- things in life, right? I mean...

Joe Rogan 18:12 Just 'cause of your hat? (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:13 Uh, my- my- my- my hat...

Joe Rogan 18:15 The long hair.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:15 I mean, I'm- I'm an... I'm an infidel, right? I don't... I don't... I haven't gone to church, uh, ever, I- I- I- I guess.

Joe Rogan 18:22 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:22 I mean, my- my- my mother is lesbian, right? I mean, there- there's all- all these things that we take for granted now...

Joe Rogan 18:29 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:29 ... that not that long ago...... were completely against what most humans considered maybe the most important values of life.

Joe Rogan 18:38 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:38 So I mean, human values itself is completely a moving, a moving target.

Joe Rogan 18:43 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:43 And so...

Joe Rogan 18:44 And moving in our generation-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:45 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 18:45 ... to just say during our lifetime.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:45 Moving in our, in our generation.

Joe Rogan 18:48 Pretty radically.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 18:49 Very radically. When I think back, like to my childhood, I, I, I, I lived in New Jersey for nine years of my childhood, and just the level of racism and antisemitism and sexism that were just-

Joe Rogan 19:03 Normal.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:04 ... am- ambient and take-

Joe Rogan 19:05 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:05 ... taken for granted then. I mean...

Joe Rogan 19:07 What years was this? Was this when you were...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:09 Between...

Joe Rogan 19:09 'Cause we're both... I think at this, we're the same age. We're both 51.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:12 Yeah, I, I'm bo- yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:13 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:13 Born in '66. I lived in Jersey from '73 to '82.

Joe Rogan 19:17 Oh, okay. So I was there from '67 to '73.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:22 Oh, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 19:23 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:23 Right, right. So, uh, yeah, I mean, like, my, I mean, my sister went to the high school prom with a, with a black guy-

Joe Rogan 19:31 Uh-oh.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:31 ... and so we got our car up- turned upside down, the windows of our house smashed in. It was like a hu- hu- humongous-

Joe Rogan 19:36 Wow.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:37 ... thing. And it's almost unbelievable now, right?

Joe Rogan 19:39 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:39 'Cause n- now, no one would care, care-

Joe Rogan 19:43 At all.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:43 ... whatsoever. It's, it's, it's, it's-

Joe Rogan 19:44 We would hope.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:44 ... it's ju- it's just life, right?

Joe Rogan 19:45 Yeah. Well, certainly there's some fringe parts of this culture that-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:48 Yeah, yeah, but, but still, the, the, the point is-

Joe Rogan 19:50 ... for the most part.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:50 ... there is no fixed list of, of...

Joe Rogan 19:54 Values.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:54 ... human values.

Joe Rogan 19:56 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:56 It's an ongoing, evolving process.

Joe Rogan 19:59 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 19:59 And what you want is for the evolution of the AI's values to be coupled closely with the evolution of human values, rather than going off in some utterly different direction-

Joe Rogan 20:12 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 20:12 ... that we can't even understand.

Joe Rogan 20:14 But this is literally playing God, right? I mean, if you're talking about, like, trying to program in values through an artificial intelligence.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 20:20 I don't think you can program in values that fully. You can program in a system for learning and growing values. And here, again, the analog- analogy with human kids is not hopeless. Like, telling, telling your kids, "These are the 10 things that are important," doesn't work that well, right?

Joe Rogan 20:41 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 20:41 What wor- what works better is, you enter into shared situations with them. They see how you deal with the situations. You guide them in dealing with real situations.

Joe Rogan 20:51 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 20:51 And that forms their system of values. And this is what needs to happen with AIs. They need to grow up entering into real-life situations with human beings so that the real-life patterns of human values, which are worth a lot more than the, the homilies that, that we ena- enunciate formally, right? The real-life pattern of human values gets inculcated, like, into the intellectual DNA of the, of the AI systems. And this is part of what worries me about the way the AI field is going at, at this moment, because I mean, most of the really powerful narrow AIs on the planet now are involved with, like, selling people stuff they don't need, spying on people, or, like, figuring out who should be killed or otherwise abused by some government, right? So if, if the early stage AIs that we build turn into general intelligences gradually, and these general intelligences are, you know, spy agents and advertising agents, then, like, what, what, what mindset do these early stage AIs have as, as they grow up?

Joe Rogan 21:57 Right, if they don't have any problem morally and ethically with manipulating us, which we're very malleable, right? We're so easy to manipulate.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:03 Well, and that we're teaching them-

Joe Rogan 22:05 How to do it.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:05 We're teaching them to manipulate people.

Joe Rogan 22:07 Sure.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:07 And we're rewarding them for doing it-

Joe Rogan 22:09 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:09 ... successfully, right?

Joe Rogan 22:10 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:10 So th- this is, this is one of these things that, from the outside point of view, might not seem to be all that intelligent. It, it, it, it's sort of like gun laws in the US. Living in Hong Kong, I mean, most people don't have a bunch of guns sitting around their house. And coincidentally, there, there are, are not that many random shootings happening in Hong Kong, right?

Joe Rogan 22:33 That's crazy.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:33 So yeah, you look in the-

Joe Rogan 22:35 What a weird coincidence.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:35 (laughs) Yeah, you look in the US, it's like somehow you have laws that allow random lunatics to buy all the guns they want, and you have all these people getting shot. So, similarly, like, from the outside, you could look at it like this species is creating the success or intelligence-

Joe Rogan 22:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 22:56 ... and almost all the resources going into creating their success or intelligence are going into making AIs to do surveillance, like military drones, and advertising agents that brainwash people into buying crap they don't need. Now, what's-

Joe Rogan 23:12 Don't you think that that's just-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:13 ... wha- what's wrong with this picture, right?

Joe Rogan 23:14 But isn't that just 'cause that's where the money is? Like, this is the-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:17 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:17 ... this is the introduction to it?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 23:19 And that, from then, we'll find other uses and applications for it? But like, right now, that's where-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:24 There's a l-

Joe Rogan 23:25 ... that's where there's-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:25 ... th- the thing is, there's a lot of other applications, and-

Joe Rogan 23:28 Financial app- financially viable applications?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:31 Well, yeah, the applications that are getting the most attention are the financial lowest hanging fruit, right?

Joe Rogan 23:37 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 23:37 So for, for, for, for, for example, among many projects I'm doing with my, my Singularity Net team, we're looking at applying AI to, you know, diagnose agricultural disease. So you can, you can look at images of plant leaves, you can look at data from the soil and atmosphere, and you can project whether disease in a plant is likely to progress badly or not, which tells you, do you need medicine for the plant, do you need pesticides? Now this, this is an interesting area of application. It's probably quite financially lucrative in, in a way, but it's a more complex industry than, than selling stuff online.

Joe Rogan 24:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 24:14 So the fraction of resources going into AI for agriculture is very small than, like, uh, e-commerce or something, right?

Joe Rogan 24:22 Right, and that's a s- very specific aspect of agriculture too, predicting diseases.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 24:26 Yeah, yeah, but there-

Joe Rogan 24:27 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 24:27 ... there's, there's a lot of specific aspects, right?

Joe Rogan 24:29 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 24:29 So I mean, AI for medicine, again, there's been papers on machine learning applied to medicine since the 80s and, and '90s.

Joe Rogan 24:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 24:37 But...... the amount of effort going into that, compared to advertising or surveillance, is very small. Now this has to do with the structure of the pharmaceutical business a- as- as compared to the structure of the tech business. So, you know, when you look into it there's- there's- there's good reasons- there's good reasons for- for everything, right? But ne- nevertheless, the way things are coming out- coming down right now, is certain biases to the development of early stage AIs are- are very marked. And- and- and you could- you could-

Joe Rogan 25:11 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 25:11 ... you could see them, and I mean, I'm trying to do something about that together with my colleagues in- in- in SingularityNET, but of course, we're sort- we're- it's sort of a David versus Goliath thing.

Joe Rogan 25:22 It seem... Well, it, um, of course you're trying to do something different, and, uh, I think it's awesome what you guys are doing, but it just makes sense to me that the first applications are gonna be the ones that are more financially viable. It's like, what pushes-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 25:35 Well, the first applications were military, right? I mean...

Joe Rogan 25:38 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 25:38 Until about 10 years ago, 85% of all funding into AI was from US plus- plus Western Europe militaries, uh-

Joe Rogan 25:45 Well, what I'm getting at is that it seems that money and- and- and commerce are inexorably linked to innovation and technology, because there's this sort of thing that we do as a culture where we're constantly trying to buy and purchase bigger and better things.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:02 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 26:02 We always want the newest iPhone, the greatest, you know, laptop. We want the- the coolest electric cars, whatever- whatever it is. And this fuels innovation, this- this desire for new, greater things. Materialism, in a lot of ways, fuels innovation, because this is how-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:18 It does, but I think there's an argument that as we approach a technological singularity, we need new systems.

Joe Rogan 26:27 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:27 'Cause i- i- if you look at how things have happened during the last century, what's happened is that governments have funded most of the core innovation.

Joe Rogan 26:37 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:37 I mean, this is well-known that, like, most of the technology inside a smartphone was funded by US government, a little by European government-

Joe Rogan 26:44 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:45 ... GP- GPS and the batteries in everything.

Joe Rogan 26:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 26:48 And then companies scaled it up. They- they- they ma- they made it user-friendly, they decreased cost of manufacturing, and this process occurs with a certain time cycle to it, where like government spends decades funding core innovation and- and- and universities, and then industry spends decades figuring out how to scale it up and make it palatable to- to users. And, you know, this matured probably since World War II, th- th- this sort of modality for technology development. But now that things are developing faster and faster and faster, there's sort of not time for- for that cycle to occur, where the government and universities incubate new ideas for a while ...

Joe Rogan 27:31 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 27:31 ... and then technology scales it up. So ...

Joe Rogan 27:33 So the genie's out of the bottle, essentially.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 27:34 Yeah, but we still need a lot of new amazing creative innovation to happen.

Joe Rogan 27:39 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 27:39 But somehow or other new- new structures are gonna have to evolve to- to make it happen. And you can see everyone's struggling to figure out what these are. So I mean this is why you have ... I mean you have big companies embracing open source, Google releases TensorFlow and- and there's a lot of- lot of other different things. And I- I think- I think some projects in the cryptocurrency world have been looking at that too, like how do we use tokens to incentivize, you know, independent scientists and- and- in- inventors to- to do new stuff without them having to be in a government research lab or- or- or in a big company? So I- I think we're gonna need the evolution of new systems of innovation and of- of technology transfer as things are- are developing faster and faster and faster. And this is another thing that's sort of gotten me interested in the whole decentralized world and- and the blockchain world, is the promise of new modes of economic and social organization ...

Joe Rogan 28:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 28:38 ... that can, you know, bring more of the world into the research process and accelerate the technology transfer process.

Joe Rogan 28:45 I definitely wanna talk about that. But o- one of the things that I wanted to ask you is when- when you're discussing this in ... Well, w- I think what you're ma- saying is a one very important point, that we need to move past the military gatekeepers of technology, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 28:58 It's not just military now though.

Joe Rogan 29:00 And that- that's sort of happening.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:00 It's- it's big tech which are ...

Joe Rogan 29:02 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:02 ... ad- advertising ...

Joe Rogan 29:03 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:03 ... agencies in- in- in- in essence.

Joe Rogan 29:05 Facebook, social media, things that are constantly predicting your next purchase, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:10 Yeah, 'cause if- if you thi- if you think about it, and I mean even in a- a semi-democracy like- like we have in the US, I mean those who control the brainwashing of the public, in essence ...

Joe Rogan 29:24 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:24 ... control who- who- who votes for what. And who controls the brainwashing of the public is advertising agencies. And who increasingly are the biggest advertising agencies are- are- are- are- are the big tech companies, who are accumulating everybody's data and- and using it to- to program their minds to buy things. So this is what's programming the global brain of- of- of- of the human race. And of course, there are close links between big tech and- and the military. Like look, Am- Amazon has, what, 25,000 person headquarters in Crystal City, Virginia right next to the Pentagon, and ...

Joe Rogan 29:57 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 29:58 I mean China it's even more direct and- and unapologetic, right? So it's a new like military industrial advertising complex which is- is guiding the evolution of the global brain on- on the planet, which ...

Joe Rogan 30:13 Well we found that with this past election, right? With, uh, all the ...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:16 Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:16 ... intrusion by foreign entities trying to influence the election, that they've ... th- these giant houses set up to write bad stories about whoever they don't want to be, uh, in office.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:29 Yeah, in a way that's almost a red herring, but it ... I mean the Russian stuff is almost a red herring. But it revealed what the processes ...... are, which, which are used to program-

Joe Rogan 30:41 Yeah. How is it also red herring?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:42 Oh, be- because I think the... whatever programming of Americans' minds is done by the Russians is minicu- minuscule compared to the programming of Americans' minds by (laughs) -

Joe Rogan 30:52 Americans.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:52 ... by, by the American-

Joe Rogan 30:53 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:53 ... American...

Joe Rogan 30:54 Sure.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 30:54 ... corporate and government elite, right? So... (laughs)

Joe Rogan 30:56 But it's fascinating that anybody's even jumping in, as well as the American elite.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:01 Yeah. Sure. It's, it's, it's...

Joe Rogan 31:02 Yeah. It all looks weird.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:02 It's an... It's, it's interesting, and if you look at what's happening in China, that's like...

Joe Rogan 31:07 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:08 Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're, they're way better at it than, th- th- than w- than we are, right?

Joe Rogan 31:11 Well, it's much more horrific, right? And that's one of the reasons...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:14 Well, it's more... it's more professional, it's more polished, it's more centralized.

Joe Rogan 31:20 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:21 On the other hand, for almost everyone in China, China's a very good place to live. And, you know, the level of improvement in that country in the last 30 years has just been astounding, right?

Joe Rogan 31:33 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:33 Like, you... I mean, you can't, you can't argue with how much better it's gotten there since Deng Xiaoping took over.

Joe Rogan 31:39 So is that because of-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:39 It's, it's tremendous.

Joe Rogan 31:40 ... because they're not... They, they've embraced capitalism to a certain extent?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:44 They've created their own unique system.

Joe Rogan 31:46 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:46 What la- what labels you give it is, is al-

Joe Rogan 31:48 Yes.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 31:48 ... is almost arbitrary. They- they've created their own unique system. As a, you know, crazy hippie, libertarian, anarcho-socialist, freedom-loving maniac, that system rubs against my grain in many ways. On the other hand, empirically, if you look at it, it's improved the well-being of a, of a tremendous number of, of people.

Joe Rogan 32:11 So, hopefully it evolves and it's one step better than it used to be.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:14 Well... But the way it's evolving now is not in a more...

Joe Rogan 32:17 Positive way.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:18 ... freedom-loving... Well, it's not in a more freedom-loving and anarchic direction-

Joe Rogan 32:23 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:23 ... one, one would say. It's positive in some ways and, and na- negative in others, like most complex things, yeah.

Joe Rogan 32:28 Why, why are you, uh, in Hong Kong? Why do you live there?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:30 Um, I fell in love with a Chinese woman, and, uh...

Joe Rogan 32:33 Oh. There you go.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:34 She's-

Joe Rogan 32:34 Good enough reason.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 32:35 Yeah, it was a great reason. We, we had a baby recently. She, she's not from Hong Kong. She's from mainland China. I met her when she was doing her PhD in, in computational linguistics in, in Xiamen. But that... That, that was what sort of first got me to spend a lot of time in, in China, but then I was doing some research at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and then my good friend David Hanson was visiting me in Hong Kong. I introduced him to some investors there, which ended up with him bringing his company, Hanson Robotics, to Hong Kong.

Joe Rogan 33:08 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:08 So now, after I moved there, because of, of falling in love with Rui Ting, then I brought my friend David there, then Hanson Robotics grew up there, and there's actually a good reason for Hanson Robotics to be there, 'cause I'm in the best place in the world to manufacture complex electronics is in, you know, Shenzhen, right across the border from Hong Kong. So now I've, I've been working there with Hanson Robotics on the Sophia robots and other robots for, for, for a while, and I've accumulated a whole AI team there around Hanson Robotics and, and SingularityNET. So I mean, by, by now I'm there because my whole AI and robotics t- teams are there.

Joe Rogan 33:45 All right, makes sense. Um, do you follow, uh, the, the State Department's recommendations to not use Huawei devices and they...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:53 (laughs)

Joe Rogan 33:53 They believe that they're...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:54 Well, no. Uh-uh.

Joe Rogan 33:55 You... Have you heard that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:56 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 33:56 Been paying attention to that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:57 I mean...

Joe Rogan 33:57 They think that the Chinese are spying on us too?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 33:59 You know, I'm sure. You know, I... When I lived in... I lived in Washington, DC for nine years. I did a bunch of consulting for various government agencies there, and my wife is a Communist Party member, actually.

Joe Rogan 34:13 Whoa.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 34:13 Just 'cause she joined in high school when it was sort of, uh, suggested for her to join. So, I'm, I'm, I'm sure I'm being watched by multiple governments. It doesn't...

Joe Rogan 34:23 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 34:23 I, I don't have any secrets. It d- d- d- d- doesn't really matter. I'm, I'm, I'm not in the business of trying to overthrow any government. I'm, I'm in the business of trying to bypass traditional governments and traditional monetary systems a- and all the rest by creating new methods of organization of people and, and information.

Joe Rogan 34:43 I understand that with you personally, but it is unusual if the government is actually spying on people through these devices and it built a backdoor.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 34:48 I doubt it's unusual. I doubt it's unusual at all.

Joe Rogan 34:51 And-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 34:51 I mean, I, I, I... I mean, without going into too much detail, like, when I was in DC working with various government agencies, it became clear there is tremendously more information obtained by government agencies than most people realize.

Joe Rogan 35:08 Yeah. Well, we found out-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:09 This was... This was true way before Snowden and-

Joe Rogan 35:11 Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:11 ... WikiLeaks and all these revelations, and what is publicly understood now is probably not the full scope of, of, of the information that governments have either. So I mean, privacy is, is pretty much dead, and David Brin... Do you know David Brin?

Joe Rogan 35:32 No.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:32 You should definitely interview David Brin.

Joe Rogan 35:34 Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:34 He- he's an amazing guy, but he's this-

Joe Rogan 35:36 Who is he?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:36 ... well-known science fiction writer. He- he's based in, in Southern California, actually San Diego, but-

Joe Rogan 35:40 Oh, okay. Cool.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:40 ... he wrote a book in... oh, years ago, called The Transparent Society, where he said there's two possibilities, surveillance and sousveillance. It's like, the power elite watching everyone, or everyone watching everyone.

Joe Rogan 35:54 I think everyone watching everyone is inevitable.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 35:55 Well, yeah. But he... So he articulated this as the on-... Essentially the only two viable possibilities, and he's like, "We should be choosing and then creating which of these alternatives we want." So now, now the world is starting to understand what he was talking about back, back when he wrote that book.

Joe Rogan 36:13 What year?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:14 Right?

Joe Rogan 36:14 Did he write the book?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:15 Oh, I can't remember. I mean, it was m- wha- well more than a decade ago, but, uh-

Joe Rogan 36:18 It's weird when some people just nail it on the head decades in advance.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:22 I mean, most of the things that are happening in the world now were foreseen by, uh, Stanislaw Lem, the Polish author I mentioned, Valentin Turchin, a friend of mine who was the founder of Russian AI. He wrote a book called The Phenomenon of Science in the late '60s, and, you know, and...... 1971 or '2 when I was a little kid, I read a book called, uh, The Prometheus Project by a Princeton physicist called Jeren Fa- Gerald Feinberg.

Joe Rogan 36:49 You read a physicist book when you're five years old?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:51 Yeah, I started reading when I was two.

Joe Rogan 36:53 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:53 When my grandfather was a physicist, so he-

Joe Rogan 36:55 Wow.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 36:55 ... I was reading a lot of stuff then, but he... Feinberg, in this book, he said, you know, "Within the next few decades, humanity is gonna create nanotechnology. It's gonna create machines smarter than people, and it's gonna create the technology to allow human biological immortality, and the question will be, do we wanna use these technologies, you know, to promote rampant consumerism, or do we want d- to use these technologies to promote, you know, spiritual growth of our, of our consciousness into new dimensions of experience?" And what Feinberg proposed in this book in the late '60s, which I read in the early '70s, he proposed the UN should send a task force out to go to everywhere in the world, every little African village, and educate the world about nanotech, life extension, and- and AGI, and get the whole world to vote on whether we should develop these technologies toward consumerism or toward consciousness expansion. So I read this when I'm a little kid, it's like-

Joe Rogan 37:52 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 37:52 ... this is almost obvious, this makes total sense, like why- why doesn't everyone understand this? Then I tried to explain this to people, and I'm like, "Oh... shit, I guess it's gonna be a while till the world catches on." So- so I instead decided I should build a spacecraft, go away from the world at rapid speed-

Joe Rogan 38:13 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 38:13 ... and come back after like a million years or something when the world was far more advanced. So-

Joe Rogan 38:17 Or covered in dust.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 38:19 Yeah, right. So now, well then you go away another million years and-

Joe Rogan 38:22 And come back. (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 38:23 ... see whether aliens have evolved for... So now, pretty much the world agrees that life extension, AGI and nanotechnology are plausible things that may come about in the near future. The same question is- is there that- that- that- that Feinberg saw like, uh, 50 years ago, right? The- the same question is there.

Joe Rogan 38:43 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 38:43 Like do we develop this for rampant consumerism or- or- or do we develop this for amazing new dimensions of- of, you know, consciousness, ex- ex- expansion and mental growth? But the UN is not in fact educating the world about this and- and pulling them to decide democratically what to do. On- on- on the other hand, there's the possibility that by bypassing governments in- in the UN and doing something decentralized, you can create a democratic framework, you know, w- within which, you know, a- a broad swath of the world can be involved in a participatory way in guiding the- the direction of these advances.

Joe Rogan 39:26 Do you think that it's possible that instead of choosing, that we're just gonna have multiple directions that it's growing in, that there's gonna be consumer-based or...

Dr. Ben Goertzel 39:33 There will be multiple directions.

Joe Rogan 39:35 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 39:35 And it's... That- that's inevitable. It- it's more a matter of- of whether anything besides the military advertising complex gets a shake, right?

Joe Rogan 39:46 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 39:46 So I mean if you look in the software development world open source is- is an amazing thing, right? L- L- Linux is awesome and it's led to so much AI being open- open source now.

Joe Rogan 39:58 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 39:58 Now open source didn't have to actually take over the entire software world like Richard Stallman wanted in order to have a huge impact, right? It- it- it's enough that it's a major force. So l- I mean let-

Joe Rogan 40:11 That's a very hippie concept, isn't it open source in a lot of ways?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:13 In a way but- but yet IBM-

Joe Rogan 40:15 In a good way, I mean, yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:16 ... IBM has probably thousands of people working on Linux, right?

Joe Rogan 40:19 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:19 So like Apple, it began as a hippie concept but it became very practical, right? So I mean something like 75% of all the servers running the internet are based in Linux, you know the vast majority of mobile phone OS is- is- is- is Linux, right? So this hippy-

Joe Rogan 40:37 So the vast majority being uh-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:39 Well An-

Joe Rogan 40:39 ... Android?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:40 ... Android is Linux.

Joe Rogan 40:40 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 40:40 Yeah. Yeah. So I mean this hippie crazy thing where no one owns the code, it didn't have to overtake the whole software economy and become everything to become highly valuable and then inject a different dimension into things. And I- I- I think the s- the same is true with decentralized AI which we're looking at with Singularity. Like it- it doesn't ha- we don't have to actually put Google and- and the US and Chinese military and Tencent out of business, right?

Joe Rogan 41:13 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 41:13 Although if that happens that- that's- that's fine but- but we- it's enough that we become an extremely major player in that ecosystem so that this, you know, participatory and benefit-oriented aspect becomes a really significant component of how humanity is- is- is- is developing general intelligence.

Joe Rogan 41:36 Well it's accepted, generally accepted, that human beings will consistently and constantly innovate, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 41:42 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 41:42 It just seems to be a characteristic that- that we have.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 41:45 Yep.

Joe Rogan 41:45 Why do you think that is and what... Do you think that es- especially when in terms of creating something like artificial intelligence, like why build our successors? Like why- why do that? Like what is- what is it about us that makes us want to constantly make bigger, better things?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 42:02 Well that's a interesting question. In the history of- of biology, which I may not be the most qualified person to answer, it is an interesting question and I think it has something to do with the weird way in which we embody various contradictions that we're always trying to resolve. Like we... Y- you mentioned ants and- and ants are social animals, right?

Joe Rogan 42:28 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 42:28 Whereas like cats are very individual. We're like trapped between the two, right? Like we're- we're somewhat individual and- and- and somewhat social and the- and then- and then since we created civilization it's- it's- it's even worse because I'm- I mean- I mean we have certain aspects which are- which are wanting to conform with the group and the tribe and others which are wanting to innovate and- and break out of that, and we're sort of trapped in these biological and cultural contradictions which tend to drive innovation. But I think there's a lot there that no one understands in- in the roots of the human psyche evolutionarily, but as- as an empirical fact...... what you said is, is, is, is, is very true, right? Like, we- we're driven to seek novelty. We're driven to create new things, and this is certainly-

Joe Rogan 43:19 And to improve.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 43:19 ... one of the factors which is driving the creation of AI. I don't think that alone would make the creation of AI inevitable, but the thing-

Joe Rogan 43:28 Why is that? Why don't you think it would make it inevitable if we consistently innovate and... It's always been a concept. I mean, you were talking about the concept existing 30-plus years ago.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 43:37 Well, I think a key point is that there's tremendous practical economic advantage and status advantage to be gotten from AI right now.

Joe Rogan 43:49 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 43:49 And this is driving the d- advancement of AI-

Joe Rogan 43:53 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 43:54 ... to be incredibly rapid, right? 'Cause, uh, there are some things that are interesting and would use a lot of human innovation, but they get very few resources.

Joe Rogan 44:05 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:05 So for example, my, my oldest son Zarathustra, he's doing his PhD now.

Joe Rogan 44:10 What is his name?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:11 Zarathustra.

Joe Rogan 44:12 Whoa.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:12 My kids are-

Joe Rogan 44:13 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:13 ... Zarathustra, Amadeus, Zebulun, Ulysses, Scheherazade, and then, uh, the new one is Corxi, C-O-R-X-I.

Joe Rogan 44:21 Whoa.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:22 Which is an acronym for quantum organized rationale expanding intelligence.

Joe Rogan 44:26 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:26 So, I was never happy with Ben. It's a very boring name.

Joe Rogan 44:29 (laughs) I'm Joe. I get it. I hear you.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:30 So, uh, so, so, uh, yeah, yeah, I had to, I had to, I had to do something more interesting-

Joe Rogan 44:34 I love it.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:34 ... with my, with my kids. Anyway. Zarathustra is doing his PhD on the application of machine learning to automated theorem proving.

Joe Rogan 44:42 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 44:42 Basically make AIs that can do mathematics better. And to me, that's, like, the most important thing we could be applying AI to because, you know, mathematics is the key to all modern science and engineering. My PhD was in math originally. But the amount of resources going into AI for automating mathematics is not large at this present moment.

Joe Rogan 45:02 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 45:02 Although, that's a beautiful and amazing area for invention and innovation and creativity. So, I think what's driving our rapid push toward building AI, I mean, it's not just our, our creative drive. It's, it's the fact there's tremendous economic value, military value, and, and human value. I mean, curing diseases, teaching kids.

Joe Rogan 45:24 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 45:24 There's tremendous value in almost everything that's important to human beings in, in building AI, right? So you put that together with our drive to create and innovate, and this becomes an almost unstoppable force within, within human society. And what we've seen in the last, you know, three to five years is suddenly, you know, national leaders and titans of industry and even, like, pop stars, right? They've woken up to the concept that, wow, smarter and smarter AI is real, and this is gonna get better and better, like, within years to decades, not centuries to, to millennia. So, now the cat's out of the bag. Nobody's gonna put it back, and it's about, you know, how can we direct it in the most beneficial possible way? And as you say, it doesn't have to be just one possible way, right? Like, what-

Joe Rogan 46:16 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:16 ... what I look forward to personally is bifurcating myself into an array of, of possible Bens. Like, uh, I'd like to let one copy of me fuse itself with a superhuman AI mind and, you know, b- become, become a, a, a God-

Joe Rogan 46:30 A Ben God.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:30 ... or something beyond a God. And I wouldn't even be myself.

Joe Rogan 46:33 Beyond a God?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:34 I wouldn't even be myself anymore, right?

Joe Rogan 46:36 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:36 I mean, you, you would lose all concepts of, of human self and identity, but-

Joe Rogan 46:40 But what would be the point of even holding to any of it?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:42 Yeah. Well, that's-

Joe Rogan 46:44 I mean, if you're-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:44 ... that's for the future. That's for the mega Ben to decide, right?

Joe Rogan 46:47 Right, mega Ben.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 46:47 Yeah, yeah. On the other hand, I'd like to let one of me remain in human form, you know, get, get, get rid of, uh, death and disease and, uh, psychological issues and, and just live, live happily forever, you know, in, in the people zoo watched over by the machines of love and grace, right? So I mean, you, you can have... It doesn't have to be either/or, because on- once, once you can scan your brain and body and 3D print new copies of yourself, you could have multiple of you explore different scenarios.

Joe Rogan 47:16 Right, but isn't that a giant resource hog? I mean, that's-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 47:17 There's a lot of mass energy in the universe.

Joe Rogan 47:20 In the universe? Okay, that's assuming that we can escape this planet. Because if you're, if you're talking about just people with money cloning themselves-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 47:27 Well, that's ... If, if you're gonna make a c-

Joe Rogan 47:27 ... w- could you live in a world with a billion Donald Trumps? Because, like-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 47:31 Uh...

Joe Rogan 47:31 ... literally w- that's what we're talking about. We're talking about wealthy people-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 47:33 You could play whack-a-Trump. Yeah, right. Yeah, okay.

Joe Rogan 47:35 ... but wealthy people being able to reproduce themselves, and just-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 47:37 Oh.

Joe Rogan 47:38 ... having this idea that they would like their ego to exist in multiple different forms, whether it's some super symbiote form that's connected to artificial intelligence, or some biological form that's immortal, or some other form that st- is, stands just as a, uh, a normal human being as we know it in 2018. If you have multiple versions of yourself over and over and over again like that, that's where you're, where you're talking about-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 48:00 Well, once you get, once you get to the point where you have a superhuman general intelligence that can do things like fully scan a human brain and body and 3D print more of them, by that point, you're at a level where scarcity of material resources is not an issue at the human scale of doing things. So I, I-

Joe Rogan 48:21 Scarcity of human resources in terms of what the Earth can hold?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 48:24 Scarcity of, of mass energy. Scarcity-

Joe Rogan 48:25 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 48:25 Scarcity of molecules to print more copies of yourself. Uh, I think that, I think that's not gonna be the, the issue at that point.

Joe Rogan 48:32 But, but what people are worried about is environmental concerns of overpopulation.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 48:35 Because people are worried about what they see in front of their faces right now, but people are not... Most people are not thinking deeply enough about what potential would be there once you had superhuman AIs doing the-

Joe Rogan 48:53 Calculation and s-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 48:54 ... the, the manufacturing and, and, and the thinking. I mean, I mean, the, the amount of energy in a single grain of sand, if you had an AI able to, to appropriately leverage that, that energy is, is tremendously more than, than most, than most people think. And the amount of computing power in a grain of sand is like a quadrillion times all the people on, on Earth put together. So, I mean, what-

Joe Rogan 49:17 What do you mean by that?... the amount of computing power in a grain of sand?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 49:20 Well, the, there's, there's... Well, the amount of computing power that could be achieved-

Joe Rogan 49:24 Potentially fit into that size.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 49:25 ... by, by reor- by reorganizing the elementary particles in, in the grain of sand. Yeah. There...

Joe Rogan 49:30 Oh.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 49:30 There, there's, there's a number in physics called the Bekenstein bound, which is the maximum amount of information that, that can be, can be stored in a certain amount of mass energy. So that, that... If the laws of physics, as we know them now are correct, which they certainly aren't, then the, then that, that would be the amount of computing you can do in a certain amount of mass energy. We're very, very far from that limit right now, right?

Joe Rogan 49:52 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 49:52 So, I mean my, my point is, once you have something a thousand times smarter than people, what we imagine to be the limits now doesn't matter too much, right?

Joe Rogan 50:02 So, all of the issues that we're dealing with in terms of environmental concerns, that could all potentially be-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:07 That... They're almost certainly gonna be irrelevant. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:09 Irrelevant in the face... Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:10 There may be other problem issues that we can't even conceive at this moment, of course.

Joe Rogan 50:14 Right. But the intelligence would be so vastly superior to what we have currently-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:19 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 50:19 ... that they'll be able to find solutions to virtually every single problem we have.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:22 Yes. Well, that's right. That-

Joe Rogan 50:22 Fukushima, uh, ocean, fish, depopulation, all that stuff will be-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:27 It's all just arrangements of molecules, man. Yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 50:29 Whoa. Now you're freaking me out, man.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:32 (laughs) But the, the-

Joe Rogan 50:32 People don't wanna hear that, though. Environmental people don't wanna hear that, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:34 Well, I mean, I, I'm also... On a everyday life basis, like, until we have these super AIs, I don't like the garbage washing up on the beach near my house either, right?

Joe Rogan 50:46 Right. Of course.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 50:46 So, I mean... But on the everyday basis, of, of course we wanna promote health in our bodies and in our, in, in our environments right now, as long as there's, you know, measurable uncertainty regarding when the benevolent super AIs will, will, will, will come about. Still, I think the main question isn't whether once you have a beneficially disposed super AI, it could solve all our current petty little problems. The question is, you know, can we wade through, you know, the muck of modern human society and psychology to create this beneficial super AI-

Joe Rogan 51:23 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 51:24 ... in, in, in the first place? Like, I, I believe I know how to create a beneficial super AI, but it's a lot of, a lot of work to get there. And, of course, there's many teams around the world working on vaguely similar projects now, and it, it's not obvious what kind of super AI we're actually gonna get once we get there.

Joe Rogan 51:46 Right. Yeah, it's all just guesses at this point, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 51:48 It's, it's more or less educated guesses.

Joe Rogan 51:51 It's educated guesses. Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 51:51 Depending on who's doing the guessing.

Joe Rogan 51:52 So, would you say that it's almost like we're in a race of the, th- the primitive primate biology versus the potentially, uh, beneficial and benevolent artificial intelligence that this, the best aspects of this primate can create? That it's almost a race to get... Who's gonna win? Is it the warmongers and the, the greedy whores that are smashing the world under its boots, or is it the scientists that are gonna figure out some super intelligent way to solve all of our problems with AGI?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 52:20 I look at it more as a... I look at it more as a, as a struggle between different modes of social organization-

Joe Rogan 52:29 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 52:30 ... than individual people. I mean, like when, when I worked in DC with intelligence agencies, most of the people I met there were really nice human beings who believed they were doing the best for the world, even if some of the things they were doing, like, uh, (laughs) I thought were very much not for the best of the world, right? So-

Joe Rogan 52:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 52:51 ... I mean, m- military mode of organization or large corporations as a mode of organization are, in my view, not generally gonna lead to, to beneficial outcomes for the overall species and, and, and for the global brain. And the, the scientific community, the open source community, I think are better modes of organization. And, you know, the, the better aspects of the blockchain and crypto community have, have a better mode of organization. So I think if, if this sort of open, decentralized mode of organization can marshal more resources as opposed to this centralized, authoritarian mode of organization, then I think things are gonna come out for the better. And it's, it's not so much about bad people versus good people. It... Y- you can look at, like the corporate mode of organization is almost a virus that, that's colonized a bunch of humanity-

Joe Rogan 53:48 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 53:48 ... and is, is sucking people in to working according to the-

Joe Rogan 53:51 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 53:51 ... to this mode. And even if they're really good people and the individual task they're working on isn't bad in itself, they're working within this-

Joe Rogan 54:00 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 54:01 ... this m- this mode that's leading their work to be used for ultimately a, a non-good end.

Joe Rogan 54:06 Yeah, that is a fascinating thing about corporations, isn't it? That, uh, uh, the diffusion of responsibility and being a part of a gigantic group that you as an individual don't feel necessarily connected or responsible to the ultimate group.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 54:18 Well, even the CEO isn't fully responsible. Like, if the CEO does something that isn't in accordance with the high, higher goals of the organization, they're just replaced, right? So, I mean-

Joe Rogan 54:28 That's right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 54:29 ... the, I mean, there, there's no one person who's in charge. It's really like, it's, it's like an ant colony.

Joe Rogan 54:33 Yes.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 54:33 It's like, it's like its own organism.

Joe Rogan 54:36 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 54:36 And, I mean, it's us who have let these organisms become parasites on, on humanity. In this way, in some ways, the Asian countries are a little more intelligent than Western countries, in that Asian governments realize the power of corporations to mold society. And there's a bit more feedback between the government and, and, and corporations, which can be f- for better or for worse. But in, in Ame- in America, there's some ethos of, like, free markets and free enterprise-

Joe Rogan 55:13 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:13 ... which is really not taking into account the oligopolistic nature of, of, of, of modern markets.

Joe Rogan 55:20 But in Asian countries, isn't it that the government is actually suppressing information as well? They're also suppressing Google.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:27 Well, in South Korea, no. I mean, S- South Korea, if you look at the-

Joe Rogan 55:30 It's one of the only ones.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:32 ... well, Singapore. I mean-

Joe Rogan 55:33 Yeah? Really? Singapore is ruthless in their drug laws, and some of their archaic-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:38 Well, so is US, I mean. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 55:39 ... sort of, well, they're far worse, though. Singapore gives you the death penalty for marijuana.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:44 They do. Yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 55:45 Yeah. It's, I mean, it's a-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:46 South Korea is an example which has roughly the same level of personal freedoms as the US, more in some ways, less than others.

Joe Rogan 55:55 Massive electronic in- innovation. Really.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 55:56 And it, uh, well, interesting their, thing there politically is, I mean, they were poorer than two-thirds of Sub-Saharan African nations in the late '60s, and it is through the government intentionally stimulating corporate development toward manufacturing le- and electronics that, that, that they grew up. So that, that, that, now, I mean, I'm not holding that up as a great paragon for the future or, or, or, or, or anything.

Joe Rogan 56:23 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 56:23 But it, it, it does show that there's, there's many modes of organization of people and resources-

Joe Rogan 56:29 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 56:30 ... other than the ones that we take for granted i- in the US. I don't think Samsung and LG are the ideal for the future either, though. I mean, I'm much more interested in, you know ...

Joe Rogan 56:41 You're interested in blockchain. You're interested in open source.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 56:43 I'm intere- I'm interested in open source.

Joe Rogan 56:45 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 56:45 I'm, I'm interested in, in blockchain. I'm, I basically am interested in anything that's, you know, open and participatory in, in nature.

Joe Rogan 56:52 Open and participatory, and also disruptive, right? I mean, yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 56:55 As well, because I think that's, I think that is the way to be ongoingly dis- disruptive. And open source is a good example of that. Like, when the open source movement started, they weren't thinking about machine learning. But, you know, the, the fact that open source is out there and is then prevalent in the software world, that paved the way for AI to now be centered on open source algorithms. So right now, even though big companies and governments dominate the scalable rollout of AI, the invention of new AI algorithms is mostly done by people creating new code and putting it, putting it on, on GitHub or GitLab or other open source reposi- repositories.

Joe Rogan 57:36 Now, open source is self-explanatory in i- in its title, pretty much. People kind of understand what it is. It means that v- various coders get to share in this, this code and the source code, and they, they get to innovate, and they, they all get to participate and use each other's work. Right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 57:53 Right.

Joe Rogan 57:54 Um, but blockchain is confusing for a lot of people.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 57:57 Yeah, yeah. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 57:57 Could you explain that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 57:59 Sure. I mean, bl- block, blockchain itself is a, is almost a misnomer. So we're confusing-

Joe Rogan 58:04 Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 58:04 ... things are confusing at, at, at every level, right?

Joe Rogan 58:07 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 58:07 So we can... We should start with the idea of a distributed ledger, which is basically like a distributed Excel spreadsheet or database. It's just a store of information which is not stored just in one place, but there's copies of it in a lot of different places. Every time my copy of it is updated, everyone else's copy of it has, has, has got to be updated. And then, then there's various bells and whistles like sharding, where, you know, it could be broken in many pieces, and each piece is stored many places or something. So that's a distributed ledger, and that's just distributed computing. Now, what, what makes it more interesting is when you layer decentralized control onto that. So imagine you have this distributed Excel spreadsheet or distributed database. There's copies of it stored in a thousand places, but to update it, you need like 500 of those 1,000 people who own the copies to vote, "Yeah, let's do that update." Right?

Joe Rogan 59:02 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 59:03 So then, then you have a distributed store of data, and you have, like, a democratic voting mechanism to determine when all those copies can get, can get updated together, right? So then, then what you have is a data storage and update mechanism that's controlled in a democratic way by the group of participants, rather than by any one central controller. And that, that can have all sorts of advantages. I mean, for one thing, it means that, you know, there's no one controller who can go rogue and screw with all the data without telling anyone. It also means there's no one who some lunatic can go hold a gun to their head and shoot them for, for what data updates were made, 'cause they're, you know, it's controlled democratically by, by everybody, right? It has all, ramifications in terms of, you know, legal defensibility. And, I mean, you could have some people in Iran, some in China, some in the US, and, and updates to this whole distributed data store are made by democratic decision of all the participants. Then where cryptography comes in is when I vote, I don't have to say, "Yeah, this is Ben Goertzel voting for this update to be accepted or not." It's just ID number 1357264.

Joe Rogan 1:00:13 Uh-huh.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:00:13 And then encryption is used to make sure that, you know, it's, it's the same guy voting every time that, that, that it, it claims to be with- without needing, like, your, your passport number or something, right?

Joe Rogan 1:00:26 But what's ironic about it is it's probably one of the best ways ever conceived to actually vote in this country.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:00:31 Yeah. Sure. It would be-

Joe Rogan 1:00:33 I mean, it is kind of ironic, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:00:34 There's a lot of applications for it that, you know, the, the, the, that's, that- that's right. So th- there's, so th- that, I mean, that's the core mechanism, though where the blockchain comes from is like a data structure where to store the data in this distributed database, it's stored in, in a chain of blocks, where each block contains data. The thing is, not every so-called blockchain system even uses a chain of blocks now. Like, some use a, a tree or a graph of blocks or something, so...

Joe Rogan 1:01:04 Is it a bad term?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:05 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:01:05 Or is there a better term?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:05 I mean, it's, it's an all right term. It-

Joe Rogan 1:01:08 Is it like AI? Like, just one of those terms we're stuck with?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:11 Yeah, yeah. It's one o-

Joe Rogan 1:01:11 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:11 ... it's one of those terms we're stuck with, even though it's not quite technically, not quite technically accurate. And I mean, anymore, I mean, 'cause w- w- what... I don't know another buzzword for it, right?

Joe Rogan 1:01:22 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:22 Wh- wh- what it is, is a, it's a distributed ledger with encryption and decentralized control. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:01:28 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:28 And blockchain is the buzzword that's come about for that. Now, what, what got me interested in blockchain really is this decentralized control aspect. So my, my, my wife, who I've been with for 10 years now, she dug up recently something I'd forgotten, which is a web page I'd made in 1995-

Joe Rogan 1:01:46 Wow.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:46 ... like a long time ago, where I'd said, "Hey, I'm gonna run for president on the decentralization platform," right? (laughs) ... which I'd completely forgotten that- that-

Joe Rogan 1:01:55 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:01:55 ... crazy idea. I, I, I was very young then. I had no idea what an annoying job being president would be, right? But, but (laughs) the, so the, the idea of decentralized control seemed very important to me back then, which is well before Bitcoin was invented, 'cause I could see, you know, a global brain is evolving on the planet, involving humans, computers, communication devices, and we don't want this global brain to be controlled by, by a small elite. We want the global brain to be controlled in a, in a decentralized way. So-

Joe Rogan 1:02:26 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:02:27 ... so that, that's really the, the beauty of this, uh, blockchain infrastructure, and what, what got me interested in the practical technologies of blockchain was really when Ethereum came out and you had the notion of a smart contract, which-

Joe Rogan 1:02:42 What's Ethereum?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:02:44 Ethereum, yeah, so-

Joe Rogan 1:02:45 What is that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:02:46 Well, so the first blockchain technology was Bitcoin, right?

Joe Rogan 1:02:50 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:02:50 Which is a well-known cryptocurrency now. Ethereum is another cryptocurrency-

Joe Rogan 1:02:55 Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:02:55 ... which is the number two cryptocurrency right now.

Joe Rogan 1:02:58 That's how out of the loop I am. Did you know about it? You did?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:02 Ho- ho- however, Ethereum came along with a really nice software framework, so it's not just like a digital money like Bitcoin is, but Ethereum has a programming language called Solidity that came with it-

Joe Rogan 1:03:18 Mmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:18 ... and this programming language lets you write what are called smart contracts. And, again, that's sort of a misnomer, 'cause a smart contract doesn't have to be either smart or a contract, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:29 Oh, boy.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:29 But, but it was a cool name, right? (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:03:31 Right. What does it mean then if it's not a smart-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:32 Really, if it's a smart contract-

Joe Rogan 1:03:34 ... contract.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:35 ... it's a tr- it, it, it's like a, a programmable transaction.

Joe Rogan 1:03:38 Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:38 So you, you can program a legal contract or you can program a, a financial transaction. So a s- a smart contract, it's a, it's a persistent-

Joe Rogan 1:03:48 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:03:48 ... piece of software that embodies like a secure, encrypted transaction between, between multiple parties. So pri- pretty much like anything on, on the backend of a, a bank's website or a transaction between two companies online, a purchasing relationship between you and a website online, this could all be scripted in, in a smart contract i- in a secure way, and then it would be automated in a simple and standard way. So the vision that Vitalik Buterin, who was the main creator behind Ethereum, had is to basically make the internet into a giant computing mechanism rather than mostly like an information storage and, and, and retrieval mechanism, make the internet into a giant computer by making a really simple programming language for scripting transactions among different computers and different parties on the internet, where you have encryption and you have democratic decision-making and distributed storage of information, like, programmed into this, this world computer, right? And that-

Joe Rogan 1:04:51 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:04:52 ... that was a really cool idea, and the Ethereum blockchain and Solidity programming language made it really easy to do that, so made it really easy to program, like, distributed secure transaction and, and computing systems o- on the internet. So I saw this, I thought, "Wow, like, now we finally have the toolset that's needed to implement some of this."

Joe Rogan 1:05:14 How popular is this?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:15 It's very popular.

Joe Rogan 1:05:16 Yeah?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:16 I mean, I mean, basically, almost every ICO that was done the last couple years was done on the Ethereum blockchain.

Joe Rogan 1:05:25 What's an ICO?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:26 Initial coin offering.

Joe Rogan 1:05:27 Oh, okay, so for Bitcoins, for-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:29 Not Bitcoin.

Joe Rogan 1:05:29 Or, no, I'm sorry. Cryptocurrency.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:31 Cryptocurrencies, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:05:32 So they use this technology for-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:33 Yeah, yeah. So-

Joe Rogan 1:05:34 ... offerings.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:35 Right. So what happened-

Joe Rogan 1:05:36 Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:36 ... in the last couple years is a bunch of people realized you could use this Ethereum programming framework to create a new cryptocurrency-

Joe Rogan 1:05:49 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:49 ... like, a new artificial money, and then you could try to get people to use your new artificial money for certain types of-

Joe Rogan 1:05:56 How many artificial-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:58 ... of transa-

Joe Rogan 1:05:58 ... c- coins?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:58 Thousands.

Joe Rogan 1:05:59 Thousands now?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:05:59 Yeah, maybe more.

Joe Rogan 1:06:00 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:00 I don't know. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:06:01 And the po-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:01 But, I mean, how, how much-

Joe Rogan 1:06:02 ... the most popular is Bitcoin, right? Or the-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:04 Bitcoin is-

Joe Rogan 1:06:05 ... or at least the most-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:05 Bitcoin is by far-

Joe Rogan 1:06:06 ... known.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:06 ... the most popular.

Joe Rogan 1:06:07 The most used.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:07 Ethereum is number two, and there's a bunch of others. I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:06:11 How, what comparison? Like, uh, how much bigger is Bitcoin than Ethereum?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:15 Hmm, I don't know, five, factor of-

Joe Rogan 1:06:18 Five times as big?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:18 Factor of three to five, so-

Joe Rogan 1:06:19 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:20 ... well, I don't, maybe just a factor of two now. It's, actually, last year, Ethereum almost took over Bitcoin.

Joe Rogan 1:06:27 When Bitcoin started crashing?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:28 Yeah, yeah. Now Ethereum is back down to it might be half or a third of the coins

Narrator 1:06:32 Mm-hmm.

Joe Rogan 1:06:32 Does that worry you, the, the fluctuating value of these things?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:35 Well, to my, to my mind, creating artificial monies is one tiny bit of the potential of what you could do with the whole blockchain-

Joe Rogan 1:06:47 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:48 ... toolset. It, it happened to become popular initially-

Joe Rogan 1:06:52 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:52 ... because it's where the money is, right? (laughs) I mean-

Joe Rogan 1:06:55 Right, it is money.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:06:56 I mean, yeah. It is, it is money, and that's interesting to people.

Joe Rogan 1:07:00 Yes.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:07:00 But on, on, on the other hand, what it's really about is making a world computer. It's about scripting, with a simple programming language, all sorts of transactions between people, companies, whatever, all sorts of exchanges of in- of information. So, I mean, it's about decentralized voting mechanisms. It's about AIs being able to send data and processing in- for each other and, and pay each other for their transactions. So, I mean, the, there's, it's about automating supply chains and, and, and shipping and e-commerce. So the, there's an in, in, in, in essence, you know, just like computers and the internet started with a certain small set of applications and then pervaded almost everything, right?

Joe Rogan 1:07:46 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:07:47 It's the same way with blockchain technology. Like, it started with digital money, but the core technology is, is gonna pervade almost everything, 'cause there's almost no domain of human pursuit that couldn't use, like-... security through cryptography, some sort of, you know, participatory decision-making, and then distributed storage o- of information, right? So... And these things are also valuable for AI, which is how I got into it in the first place. I mean, if you're making a very, very powerful AI that is gonna, you know, gradually, through the practical value it delivers, will grow up to be more and more and more intelligent. I mean, th- this AI should be able to engage a large party of people and AIs in participatory decision-making. The AI should be able to store information, you know, in a widely distributed way. And, and the AI certainly should be able to use, you know, security and encryption to validate who are the parties involved in its operation. And I mean, these are the key things behind, behind blockchain technology. So, I mean, the fact, the fact that blockchain began with artificial currencies, to me, is a detail of history, just like the fact, the fact that the internet began as, like, a nuclear early warning system, right?

Joe Rogan 1:09:01 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:01 I mean, it did. It's good for that. But it's... As it happens, it's also even better for a lot of other things. So...

Joe Rogan 1:09:08 Yeah. The, the solution for the financial situation that we find ourselves in, i- i- it's one of the more interesting things about cryptocurrency, is that someone said, "Okay, look. Obviously, we all kind of agree that our financial institutions are very flawed. The system that we operate under is... It's very fucked up. So how do we fix that? Well, send in the super nerds." And so they figure out a new currency-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:33 No, we gotta send in the super AIs. Sorry. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:35 ... super AI. Well, first-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:36 Oh, okay. (laughs)

Joe Rogan 1:09:36 ... the super nerds, and then the super AI.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:37 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:37 I mean, obviously... Who, who is the guy that they think... Th- this, uh, fake person that's maybe not real that came up with Bitcoin? Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:46 Oh, Satoshi Nakamoto. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:47 Do you have any, uh, suspicions as to who this is?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:50 Uh, I can neither confirm nor deny that.

Joe Rogan 1:09:52 Oh, okay. Okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:09:54 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:09:54 Yeah, you wouldn't be in the inside. We'll talk later. Um, but that this is... Uh, it's very, uh, it's very interesting, but it's also very promising. I, I've, like, high optimism for cryptocurrency, because I think that kids today, uh, are looking at it with much more open eyes than, uh, you know, grandfathers.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:15 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:15 Grandfathers are looking at Bitcoin. They're going, "Get it out of here."

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:17 Yeah, I'm a grand- I'm a grandfather.

Joe Rogan 1:10:18 I'm sure you are, but you're an ex- exceptional one.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:21 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:21 But there's a lot of people that are older that just-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:24 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:24 ... they're not open to accepting these ideas.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:27 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:10:27 But I think kids today, i- in particular, the ones that have grown up with the internet as a constant force in their life, they're, I think they're more likely to embrace something along those lines.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:38 Well, yeah. So th- there's no doubt that, you know, cryptographic formulations of money are going to become the standard. The question-

Joe Rogan 1:10:49 And do you think that's gonna be the standard worldwide?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:50 ... that will happen. H- uh, yeah. However, it could happen, potentially, in a very uninteresting way.

Joe Rogan 1:10:57 How's that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:10:57 I mean, w- you could just have the e-Dollar. I mean, the-

Joe Rogan 1:11:01 Oh, okay.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:11:01 I- I mean, a government could just say, "We will create this cryptographic token which counts as a dollar." I mean, most dollars are just electronic anyway. Right?

Joe Rogan 1:11:09 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:11:09 Right? So, so what, what, what habitually happens is technologies that are invented to subvert the establishment are, uh, converted to a form where they help bolster the establishment instead.

Joe Rogan 1:11:22 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:11:22 I mean, and i- in financial services, this happens very rapidly. Like PayPal, Peter Thiel and those guys started PayPal thinking they were gonna obsolete fiat currency-

Joe Rogan 1:11:33 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:11:33 ... and make an a- uh, an alternative to the currencies run by, by nation-states. Instead, they were driven to make it a credit card, uh, processing front-end, right? So-

Joe Rogan 1:11:43 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:11:43 ... so that's one thing that could happen with cryptocurrency, is it just becomes a mechanism for, you know, governments and big companies and banks to do the things more efficiently. So what, what's interesting isn't so much the digital money aspect, although it is, in some ways, a great way to do digital money. What- what- what- what's interesting is with all the flexibility it gives you to script, you know, complex computing networks, in there is the possibility to sc- to script new forms of, you know, participatory democratic self-organizing networks. So, blockchain, like the internet or computing, is a very flexible medium. You could use it to make tools of oppression, or y- or you could use it to make tools of amazing growth, growth and, and liberation. And obviously, we know which one I'm more interested in.

Joe Rogan 1:12:38 Yeah. Now, what, what is blockchain, what is blockchain being currently used for? Like, what, what different applications? 'Cause it's not just cryptocurrency.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:12:49 No-

Joe Rogan 1:12:49 They're using it for a bunch of different things now, right?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:12:51 They are. Uh, uh, I would say it's very early stage. So probably the-

Joe Rogan 1:12:56 How early?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:12:58 Well, the heaviest uses of blockchain now are probably inside large financial services companies, actually.

Joe Rogan 1:13:05 Wow.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:13:05 So if, if you look at Ethereum, the project I mentioned. So, Ethereum is run by an open source, an open foundation, the Ethereum Foundation. Then there's a consulting company called ConsenSys, which is a totally separate organization that was founded by Joe Lubin, who was one of the founders of Ethereum in the early days. And ConsenSys has, you know, it's funded a bunch of the work within the Ethereum Foundation and community. But ConsenSys has done a lot of contracts just working with governments and big companies to customize code based on Ethereum to help with their internal operations.

Joe Rogan 1:13:44 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:13:44 So actually, a lot of the practical value has been with stuff that isn't in the public eye that much, but it's, like, back end in, in, in, in, in- inside of companies. And in terms of practical customer-facing uses of, of cryptocurrency, I mean, uh...... the Tron blockchain, which is different than Ethereum, that has a bunch of games on it, for example, and some online gambling for, f- for that matter. So that, that's, uh, that, that's gotten a lot of users. But the-

Joe Rogan 1:14:15 Online games? Like, how, how do they use that?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:14:17 Oh, it's a payment mechanism.

Joe Rogan 1:14:19 Oh, I see.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:14:20 But that... there... this is one of the things there's a lot of hand-wringing about in the cryptocurrency world now is-

Joe Rogan 1:14:27 Gambling?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:14:28 No, just the fact that there aren't that many big consumer-facing uses of, of, of, of, of cryptocurrency.

Joe Rogan 1:14:35 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:14:35 I mean, I mean, everyone would l- everyone would like there to be. That was the idea. And this is one of the things we're aiming at with our SingularityNET project, is to... you know, we, by putting AI on the blockchain in a highly effective way, and then... W- we're also... we have these two tiers. So we have the SingularityNET Foundation, which is, is creating this open source, decentralized platform in which AIs can talk to other AIs and... you know, like ants in a colony, group together to form smarter and smarter AI. Then we're spinning off a company called the Singularity Studio, which will use this decentralized platform to help big companies integrate AI into their operations. So with the Singularity Studio company, we wanna get all these big companies using the AI tools in the SingularityNET platform, and then we wanna drive, you know, massive usage of, of blockchain in, in the SingularityNET that, that way. So that's... if, if we're successful with what we're doing, this will be, you know, within a year from now or something, by far the biggest usage of blockchain out- outside of financial exchange, is our use of blockchain within SingularityNET for AI. Basically for customers to get the AI services that they need for their businesses and then for AIs to transact with other AIs, paying other AIs for doing services for them. 'Cause this, this, this, I think, is, is the path forward. It's like a society and economy of minds. It's not like one monolithic AI.

Joe Rogan 1:16:13 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:16:13 It's a whole bunch of AIs created by different people all over the world, which not only are in the marketplace providing services to customers, but each AI is asking questions of each other and then rating each other of how good they are sending data to each other and paying each other for their services. So this, this like network of AIs can emerge an intelligence on the whole network level, as well as there being intelligence in e- in each, each component.

Joe Rogan 1:16:39 And is it also fascinating to you that this is not dependent upon nations? That this is a worldwide endeavor?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:16:43 Well, yeah, I thi- I think, I think that's gonna be important once e- once it starts to get a very high level of intelligence.

Joe Rogan 1:16:51 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:16:51 Like in, in the early stages, okay, what would it hur-... Like if, if I had, you know, my own database, a central record of, of everything, like I'm, I'm an honest person. I'm not gonna rip anyone off. But once we start to make a transition toward artificial general intelligence in this global decentralized network, which has component AIs from every country on the planet, like a- at that point, once it's clear you're getting toward AGI, a lot of people want to step in and control this thing-

Joe Rogan 1:17:24 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:17:24 ... you know, by law, by military might, by any means necessary. By that point, the fact that you have this open, decentralized network under- underpinning everything, like this gives an a- an amazing resilience to what you're doing. Like who can shut down Linux? Who can shut down Bitcoin? No-

Joe Rogan 1:17:38 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:17:38 Nobody can, right?

Joe Rogan 1:17:40 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:17:40 You, you, you want AI... You want AI to be like that. You want it to be a global, you know, upsurge of, of creativity and, and mutual benefit from people all over the planet, which no powerful party can, can shut down even if they're afraid that it threatens their hegemony.

Joe Rogan 1:17:57 It's very interesting because in a lot of ways that's a... i- it's a very elegant solution to what's an obvious problem.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:03 Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:03 Yeah. I'm... I-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:04 Just as the internet-

Joe Rogan 1:18:05 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:05 ... is an elegant solution to, to what's-

Joe Rogan 1:18:08 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:08 ... in hindsight an obvious problem, right? It's a...

Joe Rogan 1:18:10 Distribution of an information-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:11 Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Joe Rogan 1:18:12 ... to be able to communicate.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:13 Right.

Joe Rogan 1:18:13 Yeah. This... but this is, uh, extra special to me because e- e- if I was a person running a country, I would be terrified of this shit. I'd be like, "Well, this is what's gonna take power away." Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:22 That depends which country. If, if you're a person running the US or China, you, you would have a different relationship than if you're a per-... Like I know the prime minister of Ethiopia, Abiy Ahmed who's a... has a degree in software engineering and-

Joe Rogan 1:18:36 Wow.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:37 ... he, he, he loves this.

Joe Rogan 1:18:38 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:39 But o- of course Ethiopia isn't in any d-

Joe Rogan 1:18:42 Suppressing any other countries, right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:43 And they're not in any danger of, of individually like taking global AI hegemony, right?

Joe Rogan 1:18:48 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:48 So for, for the majority of countries in the world, they like this for the same reason they like Linux, right?

Joe Rogan 1:18:55 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:18:55 I'm, I'm, I mean, I mean this, this is something in which they have an equal role to anybody else.

Joe Rogan 1:19:00 Right. The, the superpowers.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:19:01 And you see this among-

Joe Rogan 1:19:02 The oppressive superpowers wants-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:19:02 ... among companies also though. So a lot of big companies that, that we're talking to, they like the idea of this decentralized AI fabric because, I mean, if you're not Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Tencent, Facebook, so on, if you're another large corporation, you don't necessarily want all your AI and all your data to be going into one of this handful of large AI companies. You would rather have it be in a, in a secure, dece- decentralized platform. And I mean, this is the same reason that, you know, Cisco and IBM, they run on Linux, they don't run on Microsoft, right? So if, if you're not one of the handful of large governments or large corporations that happen to be in a leading role in the AI ecosystem, then you would rather have this, this equalizing and decentralized thing because everyone gets to play.

Joe Rogan 1:19:57 Yeah. What, what would be the benefit of running it on Linux versus Microsoft?

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:20:01 Well, you're not at the behest of some other big company.

Joe Rogan 1:20:04 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:20:04 I mean, well, I mean imagine if... ima- imagine if, if you were...... Cisco or GM or something, and all of your internal machines are ... all your servers are running in Microsoft, what if Microsoft increases their price or, or removes-

Joe Rogan 1:20:20 Mm-hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:20:20 ... some feature? Then-

Joe Rogan 1:20:21 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:20:21 ... you're totally at, at, at, at, at their behest, right? And with AI, the same thing is true. I mean, if, if you put all your data in some big company's server farm, and you're analyzing all your data on their algorithms, and that's critical to your business model, what if they change their AI algorithm in some way? Then, I mean, the-

Joe Rogan 1:20:42 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:20:42 ... the, the, then your business is, is basically controlled by this other company. So ho- I mean, having a decentralized platform in which you're, you know, an equal participant, along with everybody else, is, is actually a much better position to be in. And I think this, this I think is why we can succeed with this plan of having this, you know, decentralized SingularityNET platform, then this Singularity Studio enterprise software company, which mediates between the decentralized platform and, and big companies. I mean, it's because most companies and governments in the world, you know, they don't want hegemony of a few large governments and, and corporations eith- either. And you can see this in, in a lot of ways. You can see this in embrace of, of Linux and, and Ethereum by many large corporations. You can also see, like, in a different way, you know, the in- the Indian government, you know, they rejected an offer by Facebook to give free internet to all Indians, because Facebook wanted to give, like, mobile phones that would give free internet, but only to access Facebook, right? (laughs) India's like, "Well, no, no, no thanks," right?

Joe Rogan 1:21:57 (laughs)

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:21:57 And India is now giving ... they're now creating laws that any internet company that collects data about Indian people has to store that data in India-

Joe Rogan 1:22:07 Hmm.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:22:07 ... which is so the Indian government can subpoena that data when, when, when, when they want to, right? So, so you, you're already seeing a bu- a bunch of resistance against hegemony by a few large governments or large, large corporations, by other companies and other governments, and I think this, this is, is very positive and is one of the factors that c- that can foster the, foster the, the growth of a decentralized AI ecosystem.

Joe Rogan 1:22:34 Is it fair to say that the future of AI is v- severely dependent upon who launches it first? Like whoever, if whether it's SingularityNET or whether it's-

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:22:46 So the bottom line is we don't-

Joe Rogan 1:22:47 ... artificial general intelligence.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:22:48 The bottom line is, as a scientist, I have to say we don't know, right?

Joe Rogan 1:22:52 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:22:53 It, it could be there's an end state that AGI will just self-organize into almost independent-

Joe Rogan 1:23:01 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:23:01 ... of the initial condition, but we don't know, and g-

Joe Rogan 1:23:05 Right.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:23:05 ... g- given that we don't know, I'm operating under the, you know, the heuristic assumption-

Joe Rogan 1:23:12 Yeah.

Dr. Ben Goertzel 1:23:12 ... that if the first AI is beneficially oriented, if, if it's controlled in a participatory democratic way, and