Bryan Johnson: Kernel Brain-Computer Interfaces | Lex Fridman Podcast #186

1. 0:00 – 1:13

   Introduction

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with Brian Johnson, founder of Kernel, a company that has developed devices that can monitor and record brain activity. And previously, he was the founder of Braintree, a mobile payment company that acquired Venmo and then was acquired by PayPal and eBay. Quick mention of our sponsors: Four Sigmatic, NetSuite, Grammarly, and ExpressVPN. Check them out in the description to support this podcast. As a side note, let me say that this was a fun and memorable experience wearing the Kernel Flow brain interface in the beginning of this conversation, as you can see if you watch the video version of this episode. And there's a Ubuntu Linux machine sitting next to me collecting the data from my brain. The whole thing gave me hope that the mystery of the human mind will be unlocked in the coming decades as we begin to measure signals from the brain in a high bandwidth way. To understand the mind, we either have to build it or to measure it. Both are worth a try. Thanks to Brian and the rest of the Kernel team for making this little demo happen. This is the Lex Fridman podcast, and here is my conversation with Brian Johnson.

2. 1:13 – 10:25

   Kernel Flow demo

   1. LFLex Fridman1:13

   2. BJBryan Johnson1:13

      You ready, Lex?

   3. LFLex Fridman1:14

      Yes, I'm ready.

   4. BJBryan Johnson1:15

      Do you guys wanna come in and put the interfaces on our heads? And then I will proceed to tell you a few jokes.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:22

      So, we, uh, we have two incredible pieces of technology and a machine running Ubuntu 20.04 in front of us. What are we doing?

   6. BJBryan Johnson1:31

      All right.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:31

      Are these going on our heads?

   8. BJBryan Johnson1:33

      They're going on our heads, yeah.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:34

      Oh.

   10. BJBryan Johnson1:34

       And they will place it on our heads for proper alignment.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:41

       L- does this support giant heads? Because I kinda have a giant head.

   12. BJBryan Johnson1:44

       (laughs)

   13. LFLex Fridman1:45

       Is this- is this- is giant heads fine?

   14. BJBryan Johnson1:46

       Are you saying as, like, an ego or are you saying physically?

   15. LFLex Fridman1:49

       Both. Both.

   16. BJBryan Johnson1:50

       Both.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:50

       Okay. I'm gonna drop it on you slowly. It's a nice massage. Yes. Okay. How does this feel? It feel- it- You can move around. It-s-it's okay to move around? Yeah. It feels... Oh, yeah. He- hey.

   18. BJBryan Johnson2:09

       (laughs)

   19. LFLex Fridman2:10

       I'm not gonna tug at all 'cause it actually- This feels awesome. ... is a pretty good fit. Thank you.

   20. BJBryan Johnson2:13

       That feels good.

   21. LFLex Fridman2:13

       All right. So this is big head friendly?

   22. BJBryan Johnson2:17

       It suits you well, Lex.

   23. LFLex Fridman2:19

       Thank you. (laughs)

   24. BJBryan Johnson2:20

       (laughs)

   25. LFLex Fridman2:22

       I f- I feel like I need to, uh... I feel like when I wear this, I need to sound like Sam Harris; calm, collected, eloquent. I feel smarter, actually. I don't think I've ever felt quite as much like I'm part of the future as now.

   26. BJBryan Johnson2:38

       Have you ever worn a brain interface or had your brain imaged?

   27. LFLex Fridman2:42

       (laughs) Oh, uh, never had my brain imaged. The only way I've analyzed my brain is by, uh, talking to myself and thinking.

   28. BJBryan Johnson2:52

       (laughs)

   29. LFLex Fridman2:52

       No direct data.

   30. BJBryan Johnson2:53

       Yeah. Yeah, that is a- that is definitely a- an- a brain interface-
3. 10:25 – 43:54

   The future of brain-computer interfaces

   1. LFLex Fridman10:25

   2. BJBryan Johnson10:25

      All right.

   3. LFLex Fridman10:26

      So that was an incredible experience. Uh, can you maybe speak to what kind of opportunities that opens up, that stream of data, that rich stream of data from the brain?

   4. BJBryan Johnson10:35

      First, I, I'm curious, what is your reaction? What, what comes to mind when you put that on your head? What does it mean to you, and what possibilities emerge, and what significance might it have? I mean, I'm curious where your orientation is at.

   5. LFLex Fridman10:50

      Well, f- for me, I'm really excited by the possibility of, uh, various information about my body, about my mind being converted into data, such that data can be used to create products that make my life better. So that, that, to me, is a really exciting possibility. Even just, like, a Fitbit that measures, I don't know, some very basic measurements about your body, it is really cool. But it's, uh, the, the bandwidth of information, the resolution of that information-

   6. BJBryan Johnson11:22

      Mm-hmm.

   7. LFLex Fridman11:22

      ... is very crude, so it's not very interesting. The possibility of recording, of just building a data set coming in a clean way and a high bandwidth way from my brain-

   8. BJBryan Johnson11:33

      Mm-hmm.

   9. LFLex Fridman11:35

      ... opens up, uh, all kinds of ... Y- you know, at the very ... (laughs) I was kinda joking when we were talking, but it's not really, is, like, I feel heard in the sense that it feels like the full richness-

   10. BJBryan Johnson11:49

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LFLex Fridman11:49

       ... of the information coming from my mind is actually being recorded by the machine. I mean, there's a ... it's, uh ... I can't, I can't quite put it into words, but there is this ... genuinely, for me, this is not some kinda joke about me being a robot, it just genuinely feels like I'm being heard, uh, in a way that, uh ...... that's going to improve my life, as long as the thing that's on the other end can do something useful with that data. But even the, the recording itself is like, once you record, it's like taking a picture.

   12. BJBryan Johnson12:24

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman12:25

       That moment is forever saved in time. Now, a picture cannot allow you to step back into that world, but perhaps recording... Your brain is a much higher resolution thing, uh, much more personal recording of that information than a picture that would allow you to step back into that, uh, where you were in that particular moment in history and then map out a certain trajectory to tell you certain things about, uh, about yourself. That can open up all kinds of applications. Of course, there's health that I consider, but I, honestly, to me, the exciting thing is just being heard, my state of mind, the level of focus, all those kinds of things, being heard.

   14. BJBryan Johnson13:10

       What I heard you say is you have an entirety of lived experience.

   15. LFLex Fridman13:15

       Yeah.

   16. BJBryan Johnson13:15

       Some of which you can communicate in words and in body language, some of which you feel internally, which cannot be captured in those communication modalities.

   17. LFLex Fridman13:24

       Yeah.

   18. BJBryan Johnson13:24

       And that this measurement system captures both the things you can try to articulate in words, maybe in a lower dimensional space using one word, for example, to communicate focus-

   19. LFLex Fridman13:34

       Yeah.

   20. BJBryan Johnson13:34

       ... when it really may be represented in a 20-dimensional space of this particular kind of focus.

   21. LFLex Fridman13:39

       Yeah.

   22. BJBryan Johnson13:39

       And that this information is being captured, so it's a closer representation to the entirety of your experience, captured in a dynamic fashion that is not just a static image of your conscious experience.

   23. LFLex Fridman13:53

       Yeah. Yeah. That, that's, that, that's the promise, that's the hope. That was the feeling, and it felt like the future, so it's, it was a pretty cool experience. And from the sort of, um, mechanical perspective, it was cool to have an actual device that feels pretty good, that doesn't, uh, doesn't require me to go into the lab. And also, the other thing I was, I was feeling, there's a guy named Andrew Huberman. He's a friend of mine. Amazing podcast, people should, uh, uh, should listen to it, Huberman Lab Podcast. We're, uh, working on a paper together about eye movement and so on, and we're kinda... He's a neuroscientist and I'm a data person, a machine learning person, and we're, we're both excited by how much the, that... how much the data measurements of the human mind, the brain, and all the different metrics that come from that could be used to understand-

   24. BJBryan Johnson14:47

       Mm-hmm.

   25. LFLex Fridman14:47

       ... human beings and in a rigorous, scientific way. So the other thing I was thinking about is how this could be turned into a, a tool for science.

   26. BJBryan Johnson14:55

       Mm-hmm.

   27. LFLex Fridman14:56

       Sort of not just personal science, not just like Fitbit style, like, uh, how am I doing on my personal metrics of health, but doing larger scale studies of human behavior and so on. So like data not at the scale of an individual, but data at a scale of many individuals-

   28. BJBryan Johnson15:12

       Mm-hmm.

   29. LFLex Fridman15:12

       ... or a large number of individuals.

   30. BJBryan Johnson15:13

       Mm-hmm.
4. 43:54 – 49:33

   Existential risk

   1. BJBryan Johnson43:54

   2. LFLex Fridman43:54

      (laughs) Do you worry about the survival of this process? That, uh, life as we know it on Earth comes to an end? Or at least intelligent life? That, uh, as the cost goes to zero-

   3. BJBryan Johnson44:08

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman44:09

      ... uh, something happens where, uh, all of that intelligence is thrown in the trash by something like nuclear war or development of AGI systems that are very dumb. Not AGI I guess, but AI systems, it's the paperclip thing with, en masse is dumb but has unintended consequences to where it destroys human civilization. Do you worry about those kinds of things?

   5. BJBryan Johnson44:32

      I mean, it's- it's unsurprising that a new thing comes into the sphere of human consciousness, humans identify the foreign object, in this case artificial intelligence, our amygdala fires up and says, "Scary, foreign, we should be apprehensive about this."

   6. LFLex Fridman44:52

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BJBryan Johnson44:53

      And so it- it makes sense from a biological perspective that humans fir- the- the knee-jerk reaction is fear. What I don't think has been properly weighted with that is that we are the first generation of intelligent beings on this Earth that has been able to look out over their expected lifetime and see there is a real possibility of evolving into entirely novel forms of consciousness.

   8. LFLex Fridman45:27

      Yeah.

   9. BJBryan Johnson45:28

      So different that it would be totally unrecognizable to us today. We don't have words for it, we can't hint at it, we can't point at it, we can't... You can't look in the sky and s- see that thing that is shining, we're gonna go up there. You- you cannot even create an aspirational statement about it. And instead, we've had this knee-jerk reaction of fear about everything that could go wrong, but in my estimation, this should be the defining aspiration of all intelligent life on Earth, that- that we would aspire, 'cause that, basically every generation surveys the landscape of possibilities they're afforded given the technological, cultural, and other contextual situation that they're in. We're in this context, we haven't yet identified this and said, "This is unbelievable, we should carefully think this thing through," not just of mitigating the things that'll wipe us out, but like, we have this potential and so we just haven't given voice to it, e- even though it's within the realm of possibilities.

   10. LFLex Fridman46:33

       So you're excited about the possibility of, uh, superintelligence systems and what, uh, the opportunities does that bring? I mean, there's parallels to this, you think about people before the internet as the internet was coming to life, I mean there's kind of a fog through which you can't see, what does the future look like?

   11. BJBryan Johnson46:52

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LFLex Fridman46:53

       We could, like predicting collective intelligence, which I don't think we're understanding that we're living through that now is that there's now, we've s- we've in some sense stopped being individual intelligences and become much more like collective intelligences, because ideas travel much, much faster now.

   13. BJBryan Johnson47:13

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LFLex Fridman47:13

       And they can in a viral way, like sweep across the population. And so it's almost, I mean, it- it almost feels like a thought is had by many people now, thousands or millions of people as opposed to an individual person, and that's changed everything. But to- to- to me, I don't think we're realizing how much that actually changed people or societies. But like, to predict that before the internet would have been very difficult. And in that same way we're sitting here-

   15. BJBryan Johnson47:43

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LFLex Fridman47:43

       ... with the fog before us thinking, what is, uh, superintelligence systems, wh- how is that going to change the world? What is, uh, in- uh, increasing the bandwidth like, um, plugging our brains into this whole thing, how is that going to change the world? And it seems like, um, it's a fog, you don't know. And th- it could be-

   17. BJBryan Johnson48:07

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LFLex Fridman48:07

       ... it- it could, uh, whatever c- comes to be could destroy the world. That this- we could be the last generation (laughs) .

   19. BJBryan Johnson48:14

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman48:15

       But it also could, uh, transform in- in ways that creates a- an incredibly fulfilling life experience that's unlike anything we've ever experienced. It- it might r- involve dissolution of ego and consciousness and so on, you're no longer one individual. It might be more, you know, that might be a certain kind of death, an ego death, but the experience might be really exciting and enriching. Maybe we'll live in a virtual, like, it's like, it's- it's- it's- it's funny to think about...... a bunch of sort of hypothetical questions of would it be more fulfilling to live in a virtual world. Like if you were able to plug your brain in, in a very dense way into a video game, like which world would you want to live in? In the video game or in the physical world? For most of us, we kind of toying with the idea of the video game, but we still want to live in the physical world, have friendships and relationships in the physical world. But we don't know that. Again, it's a fog. And maybe, maybe in 100 years, we're all living inside a video game. Hopefully not Call of Duty.

   21. BJBryan Johnson49:29

       (laughs)

   22. LFLex Fridman49:29

       Hopefully more like, like Sims 5. Which, which version is it on?

5. 49:33 – 1:04:52

   Overcoming depression

   1. LFLex Fridman49:34

      For you individually though, does it make you sad that your brain ends, that you die one day very soon? That the whole thing, that, that, that, uh, that data source just goes offline sooner than you would like?

   2. BJBryan Johnson49:54

      That's a complicated question. I've, I would have answered it differently in different times in my life. I, you know, had chronic depression for 10 years. And so in that 10-year time period, I desperately wanted lights to be off. And the thing that made it even worse is I was in a religious ... I, I was born into a religion. It was the only reality I ever understood. And, and it's difficult to articulate to people when you're born into that kind of reality and it's the only reality you're exposed to, you're literally blinded to the existence of other realities, because it's so much the ingroup/outgroup thing. And so in that situation, it was not only that I desperately wanted lights out forever, it was that I couldn't have lights out forever. It was ... There was an afterlife, and this afterlife had this system that would either penalize or, or, uh, reward you for your behaviors. And so it was almost like this, this indescribable hopelessness of not only being in hopeless despair of not wanting to exist, but then also being forced to be, to exist. And so there was a duration of my time, uh, of duration of life where I'd say like, "Yes, I have no remorse for lights being out, and actually want it more than anything in the entire world." There are other times where I'm looking out at the future and I say, "This is an opportunity for future evolving human conscious experience that is beyond my ability to understand." And it, and I jump out of bed and I race to work and I, I can't think about anything else. But I, I think the, the reality for me is I don't know what it's like to be in your head. But in my head, when I wake up in the morning, I don't say, "Good morning, Brian. I'm so happy to see you." Like, I'm sure you're just gonna be beautiful to me today. You're not gonna make a huge long list of everything you should be anxious about. You're not gonna repeat that list to me 400 times. You're not gonna have me re- uh, relive all the regrets I've made in life. I'm sure you're not doing any of that. You're just gonna just help me along all day long. I mean, it's a brutal environment in my brain.

   3. LFLex Fridman52:11

      Mm-hmm.

   4. BJBryan Johnson52:11

      And we've just become normalized to this environment, that we just accept that this is what it means to be human. But if we look at it, if we try to muster as much soberness as we can about the realities of being human, it's brutal. Uh, if it is for me. And so am I sad that the brain may be off one day?

   5. LFLex Fridman52:36

      Hmm.

   6. BJBryan Johnson52:36

      You know, it depends on the contextual setting. Like, how am I feel ... At what moment are you asking me that? And that's it's ... My mind is so fickle. And this is why, again, I don't trust my conscious mind. I have been given realities. I got ... I was given a religious reality that was a video game, and then I figured out it was not a real reality. And then I lived in a depressive reality, which delivered this terrible hopelessness. That wasn't a real reality. Then I discovered, uh, behavioral psychology and I figured out how biased, uh, 188 chronical biases and how my brain is distorting reality all the time. I have gone from one reality to another. I don't trust reality. I don't trust realities are given to me. And so to make, try to make a decision on what I value or not value, that future state, I don't trust my response.

   7. LFLex Fridman53:23

      So not fully, not fully listening to the conscious mind at any one moment as the ultimate truth, but allowing it to go up and down as it does.

   8. BJBryan Johnson53:33

      I-

   9. LFLex Fridman53:33

      And just kind of being observing it.

   10. BJBryan Johnson53:35

       Yes. I assume that whatever my conscious mind delivers up to my awareness is wrong, uh, uh, on pond landing. And I just need to figure out where it's wrong, how it's wrong, how wrong it is, and then try to crack for it as best I can. But I, I assume that on impact, it's, it's mistaken in some critical ways.

   11. LFLex Fridman53:55

       Is there something you could say by way of advice when the mind is depressive, when the conscious mind serves up something that, uh, you know, the dark thoughts, how you deal with that? Like how in your own life you've overcome that, and others who are experiencing that-

   12. BJBryan Johnson54:13

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman54:13

       ... uh, can overcome it?

   14. BJBryan Johnson54:15

       Two things. One, that those depressive states are biochemical states. It's not you. And the suggestions that these things, that this state delivers to you about suggestion of the hopelessness of life or, or the meaninglessness of it, or that you should hit the eject button, that's a false reality.

   15. LFLex Fridman54:44

       Yeah.

   16. BJBryan Johnson54:45

       And that it's when I, I completely understand the rational decision to commit suicide-... there's, it is not lost on me at all that that is an un- that is an irrational situation. But the key is, when you're in that situation and those thoughts are landing, to be able to say, "Thank you. You're not real."

   17. LFLex Fridman55:06

       (laughs)

   18. BJBryan Johnson55:06

       I know you're not real.

   19. LFLex Fridman55:07

       Yeah, yeah.

   20. BJBryan Johnson55:08

       And so I'm in a situation where, for whatever reason, I'm having this, this, uh, neurochemical state. But that state can be altered. And so it, again, it, it goes back to the realities of, of the difficulties of, of being human. And like when I was trying to solve my depression, I tried literally ev- you name it, I tried it systematically and nothing would fix it. And so this is what gives me hope with brain interfaces, for example. Like could I have numbers on my brain? Can I see what's going on? Because I, I go to the doctor and it's like, "How do you feel?" "I don't know. Terrible."

   21. LFLex Fridman55:41

       (laughs)

   22. BJBryan Johnson55:41

       "Like on a scale from one to 10, how bad do you want to commit suicide?" "10."

   23. LFLex Fridman55:44

       (laughs)

   24. BJBryan Johnson55:44

       (laughs) You know, like, okay.

   25. LFLex Fridman55:46

       Yeah, at this moment, yeah.

   26. BJBryan Johnson55:47

       Here's a, here's this bottle. How much should I take? Well, I don't know. Like just ...

   27. LFLex Fridman55:51

       Yeah, it's very, very crude.

   28. BJBryan Johnson55:52

       It

   29. LFLex Fridman55:53

       And as data opens up the, the, yeah, it- it- it opens up the possibility of really helping in those dark moments to- to first understand the- the waves, the ups and downs of those dark moments.

   30. BJBryan Johnson56:06

       Mm-hmm.
6. 1:04:52 – 1:13:05

   Zeroth principles thinking

   1. BJBryan Johnson1:04:52

   2. LFLex Fridman1:04:52

      So in your blog post, Zeroth Principle Thinking, good title, you ponder how do people come up with, uh, truly original ideas. Uh, what, what's your thoughts on this as a human and as a person who's measuring brain data?

   3. BJBryan Johnson1:05:05

      Zeroth principles are building blocks. First principles are understanding of system laws. So if you take, for example, like in Sherlock Holmes, he's a first principles thinker. So he says, "Once you've eliminated the impossible, anything that remains, however improbable, is true."

   4. LFLex Fridman1:05:29

      Mm-hmm.

   5. BJBryan Johnson1:05:31

      Whereas Dirk Gently, the Holistic Detective by Douglas Adams says, "I don't like eliminating the impossible." So when someone says from a first principles perspective and they- they're trying to assume the fewest number of things within a given time frame. And so when I after Braintree Venmo, I set my mind to the question of what single thing can I do that would maximally increase the probability that the human race thrives beyond what we can even imagine? And I found that in my conversations with others, in, in the books I read, in my own deliberations, I had a missing piece of the puzzle because I didn't feel like, uh, over F- yet, I didn't feel like the future could be deduced fr- from first principles thinking.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:06:26

      Mm-hmm.

   7. BJBryan Johnson1:06:27

      And that's when I- I read the book Zero: A Biography of a Dangerous Idea.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:06:32

      Mm-hmm.

   9. BJBryan Johnson1:06:33

      And I, I-

   10. LFLex Fridman1:06:33

       It's a really good book, by the way.

   11. BJBryan Johnson1:06:35

       It's, I think it's my favorite book I've ever read.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:06:38

       That's also a really interesting number, zero.

   13. BJBryan Johnson1:06:40

       And I, I wasn't aware that the number zero had to be discovered. I didn't realize that it caused a revolution in philosophy and, and just tore up math and it tore up... I mean, it builds modern society but yet it wrecked everything in its way. It was an unbelievable disrupter and it was so difficult for society to get their heads around it.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:07:00

       Yeah.

   15. BJBryan Johnson1:07:01

       And so zero is because, of course, the-... a representation of a zeroth principle thinking, which is, it's the caliber and consequential nature of an idea. And so when you talk about what kind of ideas have civilization transforming properties, oftentimes they fall into zeroth category. And so in thinking this through, I, I was wanting to find a quantitative structure on how to think about these zeroth principles, and that's, uh, so I came up with that to be a, a coupler with first principles thinking. And so now it's a staple as part of how I think about the world and the future.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:07:45

       So, uh, it emphasizes trying to identify the lens on that word impossible. Like, what is impossible? Essentially trying to identify what is impossible and what is possible, and being as, um, how do you... I mean, like, this, this is the thing, is most of society tells you the range of things they say is impossible is very wide.

   17. BJBryan Johnson1:08:06

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:08:06

       So you need to be shrinking that. I mean, that's the whole process of, uh, of this kind of thinking, is you need to tr- be very rigorous in, in, uh, trying to be, trying to draw the lines of what is actually impossible, because, uh, very few things are actually impossible. I don't know what is actually impossible.

   19. BJBryan Johnson1:08:28

       Hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:08:29

       Like, uh, it's the Joe Rogan is entirely possible. I like that approach to, uh, to science, to engineering, to entrepreneurship. It's entirely possible. Basically shrink the impossible to zero, to a very small set.

   21. BJBryan Johnson1:08:45

       Yeah, life constraints favor first principles thinking because it, it en- enables faster action with higher probability of success.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:08:57

       Mm-hmm.

   23. BJBryan Johnson1:08:57

       Pursuing zeroth principle optionality is expensive and uncertain. And so, in a society constrained by resources, time and money, and a desire for social status accomplishment, et cetera, it minimizes zeroth principle thinking. But it, but the reason why I think zeroth principle thinking should be a staple of our shared cognitive infrastructure is if you look through the history of past couple thousand years, and let's just say we arbitrarily, we subjectively try to assess what is a zero level, zero level idea. And we say, "How many have occurred on what time scales and what were the contextual settings for it?" I would argue that if you look at AlphaGo, when it, it played Go from another dimension, what the, the human Go players, when it saw AlphaGo's moves, it attributed it to like playing with an alien, playing Go with, uh, with AlphaGo being from another dimension.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:09:59

       Mm-hmm.

   25. BJBryan Johnson1:10:00

       And so if you say computational intelligence has an attribute of introducing zero-like insights, then if you say, "What is going to be the occurrence of zeros in society going forward?" And you could reasonably say, "Probably a lot more than have occurred and probably more at a faster pace." So then if you say, "What happens if you have this computational intelligence throughout society, that the manufacturing design and distribution of intelligence is now going to heading towards zero, you have an increased number of zeros being produced with a tight connection between humans and computers." That's when I got to a point and said, "We cannot predict the future with first principles thinking. We can't, that cannot be our imagination set. It can't be, uh, our sole anchor in this situation that basically the future of our conscious existence 20, 30, 40, 50 years is probably a zero."

   26. LFLex Fridman1:11:03

       So j- just to clarify, when you say zero, you're referring to basically a truly revolutionary idea.

   27. BJBryan Johnson1:11:12

       Yeah. Something that is currently not a building block of our shared conscious existence, either in the form of knowledge, uh, yeah, it's, it's currently not manifest-

   28. LFLex Fridman1:11:26

       Yeah.

   29. BJBryan Johnson1:11:26

       ... in what we acknowledge.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:11:28

       And so zeroth principle thinking is playing with ideas that are so revolutionary that we can't even clearly reason about the consequences once those ideas come to be.
7. 1:13:05 – 1:19:19

   Engineering consciousness

   1. BJBryan Johnson1:13:05

   2. LFLex Fridman1:13:05

      Yeah, I, I've been engaged in that kind of thinking, uh, quite a bit-... in thinking about the engineering of consciousness. I think it's feasible. I think it's possible in the language that we're using here. And it's very difficult to reason about a world w- when inklings of consciousness can be engineered into, uh, artificial systems. N- not from a philosophical perspective, but from an engineering perspective, I believe a good step towards engineering consciousness is, is creating, engineering the illusion of consciousness.

   3. BJBryan Johnson1:13:44

      Mm-hmm.

   4. LFLex Fridman1:13:45

      I'm captivated by our natural predisposition to anthropomorphize things, and I think that's what we... (exhales sharply) I, I don't wanna hear from the philosophers, but (laughs) I think that's what we kind of do to each other.

   5. BJBryan Johnson1:14:05

      Okay.

   6. LFLex Fridman1:14:05

      That consciousness is created socially, that, like, much of the power of consciousness is in the social interaction. I create-

   7. BJBryan Johnson1:14:19

      Mm-hmm.

   8. LFLex Fridman1:14:19

      ... your consciousness.

   9. BJBryan Johnson1:14:19

      Mm-hmm.

   10. LFLex Fridman1:14:20

       No. I create my consciousness by having interaction with you.

   11. BJBryan Johnson1:14:24

       Mm-hmm.

   12. LFLex Fridman1:14:25

       And that, that's the display of consciousness. It's the same as, like, the display of emotion. Emotion is created-

   13. BJBryan Johnson1:14:31

       Mm-hmm.

   14. LFLex Fridman1:14:31

       ... through communication.

   15. BJBryan Johnson1:14:32

       Mm-hmm.

   16. LFLex Fridman1:14:33

       Language is created-

   17. BJBryan Johnson1:14:34

       Mm-hmm.

   18. LFLex Fridman1:14:34

       ... through its use. And then we somehow, humans kinda, especially philosophers, you know, the hard problem of consciousness, really wanna believe-

   19. BJBryan Johnson1:14:42

       Mm-hmm.

   20. LFLex Fridman1:14:42

       ... that we possess this thing that's like there's a, there's a bo- there's a, there's an elf sitting there with a, with a hat that says, or like name tag that says consciousness. And they're, like, feeding this ex- subjective experience to us, as opposed to, like, it actually being an illusion of a construct to make social communication more effective. And so I, I think if you focus on creating the illusion of consciousness, you can create some very fulfilling-

   21. BJBryan Johnson1:15:12

       Mm-hmm.

   22. LFLex Fridman1:15:12

       ... experiences-

   23. BJBryan Johnson1:15:12

       Mm-hmm.

   24. LFLex Fridman1:15:13

       ... in, in software. And so that, to me, is a compelling space of ideas to explore.

   25. BJBryan Johnson1:15:18

       I agree with you, and I think, going back to our experience together what Brain Interface is on, you could imagine if we get to a certain level of maturity. So first, let's take the, the inverse of this. So you and I text back and forth, and we're sending each other emojis. That has a certain amount of information transfer rate as we are communicating with each other, and so in our communication with people via email and text and whatnot, we've taken the bandwidth of human interaction, the information transfer rate, and we've reduced it. We have less social cues. We have less information to work with. There's a lo- a lot more opportunity for misunderstanding. So that is altering the conscious experience between two individuals.

   26. LFLex Fridman1:15:58

       Mm-hmm.

   27. BJBryan Johnson1:15:59

       And if we add Brain Interfaces to the equation, let's imagine now we amplify the dimensionality of our communications. That, to me, is what you're talking about, which is consciousness engineering. Perhaps I understand you with dimensions... So maybe I understand your hap- when you look at the cup-

   28. LFLex Fridman1:16:16

       Mm-hmm.

   29. BJBryan Johnson1:16:16

       ... and you experience that happiness, you can tell me you're happy, and I then do theory of mind to say, "I can imagine what it might be l- like to be Lex and feel happy about seeing this cup." But if the interface could then quantify and give me a fif- 50 vector space model and say, "This is the version of happiness that Lex is experiencing as he looks at this cup," then it would allow me potentially to have much greater empathy for you and understand you as a human, that this is how you experience joy.

   30. LFLex Fridman1:16:41

       Yes.
8. 1:19:19 – 1:23:48

   Privacy

   1. LFLex Fridman1:19:19

      (laughs) so th- that's be- I mean, you- you kinda s- spoke to ethics. The- one of the concerns that people have in this modern world of digital data is that of privacy and security. But privacy, you know, th- they're concerned that when they share data, it's the same thing with you when we are, uh, trust other human beings-

   2. BJBryan Johnson1:19:41

      Mm-hmm.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:19:41

      ... uh, in being fragile and revealing something that we're vulnerab- um, vulnerable about.

   4. BJBryan Johnson1:19:47

      Mm-hmm.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:19:48

      There's a, there's a leap of faith. There's a leap of trust that, uh, that's going to be just between us. There's a privacy to it. And then the challenge is when you're in the digital space and sharing your data with companies-

   6. BJBryan Johnson1:20:01

      Mm-hmm.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:20:01

      ... that, uh, use that data for advertisement and all those kinds of things, there's a hesitancy-

   8. BJBryan Johnson1:20:06

      Mm-hmm.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:20:06

      ... to share that much data, to share a lot of deep, personal data. And if you look at brain data, that feels a whole lot like-

   10. BJBryan Johnson1:20:14

       Mm-hmm.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:20:14

       ... it's richly, deeply personal data.

   12. BJBryan Johnson1:20:17

       Mm-hmm.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:20:17

       So how do you think about privacy-

   14. BJBryan Johnson1:20:19

       Mm-hmm.

   15. LFLex Fridman1:20:20

       ... with this kind of ocean of data?

   16. BJBryan Johnson1:20:22

       I think we got off to a wrong start with the internet, where the basic rules of play for the, for the company that be was, if you're a company, you can go out and get as much information on a person as you can find without their approval, and you can also do things to induce them to give you as much information. And you don't need to tell them what you're doing with it. You can do anything on the backside. You can make money on it. But the game is who can acquire the most information and devise the most clever schemes to do it. That was a bad starting place. And so we are in this period where we need to rec- we need to correct for that, and we n- we need to say, first of all, the individual always has control over their data. It's not a free-for-all. It's not like a game of Hungry Hippo, like they can just go at it and grab as much as they want. So for example, when your brain data was recorded today, the first thing we did in the Kernel app was, you have control over your data. And so it's individual, uh, consent. It's individual control, and then you can build up on top of that. But it has to be based upon some clear rules of play of everyone knows what's being collected, they know what's being done with it, and the person has control over it.

   17. LFLex Fridman1:21:42

       So transparency in control, so everybody knows what does control look like? Me abil- my ability to delete the data if I want?

   18. BJBryan Johnson1:21:48

       That's right. Yeah, delete it and to know who it's being shared with under what, you know, what, under what terms and conditions. We haven't reached that level of sophistication with our products of if- if you say, for example, "Hey, Spotify, please give me a customized playlist according to my neurome," you know, you could say, "You can have access to this vector-space model, but only for this duration of time, and, uh, and then you've gotta delete it." We haven't gotten there to that level of sophistication, but these are ideas we need to start talking about of how do you, how would you actually structure permissions?

   19. LFLex Fridman1:22:22

       Yeah.

   20. BJBryan Johnson1:22:22

       And I think it creates a much more stable set for society to build where we understand the rules of play and people aren't vulnerable to being taken adv- uh, it's not fair for an individual to be taken advantage of without their awareness with some other practice that some company's doing for their sole benefit. And so hopefully we are going through a process now where we're correcting for these things, and that it can be an economy-wide shift that... Because really th- these are, these are fundamentals we need to have in place.

   21. LFLex Fridman1:23:01

       It's kinda fun to think about, like, uh, in Chrome when you install an extension or, like, install an app, it's ask you, like, what permissions you're willing to give. It'd be cool if in the future it says, like, "Uh, you can have access to my brain data." (laughs)

   22. BJBryan Johnson1:23:17

       I mean, and in the f- it's- it's not unimaginable in the future that the big technology companies have built a business based upon acquiring data about you that they can then-

   23. LFLex Fridman1:23:26

       Yeah.

   24. BJBryan Johnson1:23:26

       ... create a view, a model of you and sell that predictability. And so it's not unimaginable that you will create with, like, Kernel device, for example, a more reliable predictor of you than they could, and that they're asking you for permission to complete their objectives, and you're the one that gets to negotiate that with them and say-

   25. LFLex Fridman1:23:43

       Yeah.

   26. BJBryan Johnson1:23:43

       ... "Sure." But so it's not un- unimaginable that that might be the case.

9. 1:23:48 – 1:33:27

   Neuralink

   1. LFLex Fridman1:23:49

      So there's a guy named Elon Musk, and he has a company, one of the many companies called Neuralink, that has, uh, that's also excited about the brain, so it'd be interesting to hear your kind of opinions about a very different approach that's invasive, that requires surgery, that implants a data collection device in the brain. How do you think about the difference between Kernel and Neuralink in the approaches of, uh, getting that stream of brain data?

   2. BJBryan Johnson1:24:17

      Uh, Elon and I spoke about this a lot early on. We, we met up. I had started Kernel, and he had an interest in brain interfaces as well, and we explored doing something together, him joining Kernel, and ultimately it wasn't the right move, and so he started Neuralink and I- I continued building Kernel. But it was interesting because we were both at this very early time where it wasn't certain what... if there was a path to pursue, if now was the right time to do something, and then the technological choice of doing that. And so we were both... our starting point was looking at invasive technologies, and I was building t- uh, invasive technology at the time. Uh, that's ultimately where he's gone. Uh, little less than a year after, uh, Elon and I were engaged, I shifted Kernel to do non-invasive, and we had this neuroscientist come to Kernel we were talking about. He had been doing neural surgery for 30 years, one of the most respected neuroscientists in the US, and we brought him to Kernel to figure out the ins and outs of his profession.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:25:23

      Mm-hmm.

   4. BJBryan Johnson1:25:23

      And at the very end of our three-hour conversation he said, "You know..."... every 15 or so years, a new technology comes along that changes everything. He said, "It's probably already here. You just can't see it yet." And my jaw dropped. I thought ... 'Cause I, I had spoken to Bob Greenberg, uh, who had built, uh, second site, first on the optical nerve and then he did a cor- uh, an array on the optical, um, cortex. And then I also, uh, became friendly with, um, NeuroPace, who does, who does the implants for seizure detection and remediation. And I saw in their e- their eyes what it was like to take something through, an implantable device through for, for, for a 15 year run. They initially thought seven years, ended up being 15 years, and they thought it'd be 100 million, ended up being, you know, 300, 400 million. And I really didn't want to build invasive technology. It was the only thing that appeared to be possible. But then once I spun up an internal effort to start looking at non-invasive options, we said, "Is there something here? Is there anything here that, again, has the characteristics of it has the high-quality data, it could be low-cost, it could be accessible? Could it make brain interfaces mainstream?"

   5. LFLex Fridman1:26:41

      Mm-hmm.

   6. BJBryan Johnson1:26:42

      And so I did a bet-the-company move. We shifted from non-invasive to, uh, inva- invasive to non-invasive.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:26:47

      So the answer is yes to that? There is something there that's possible.

   8. BJBryan Johnson1:26:51

      Uh, the answer is we'll see. We've now built both technologies, and they're now ... You experienced one of them today. We were ap- uh, applying ... We're now deploying it, so we're trying to figure out what value is really there. But I'd say it's, it's really too early to express confidence whether ... It's too, I think it's too early to assess which technological choice is the right one on what time scales.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:27:19

      Yeah, time scales are really important here.

   10. BJBryan Johnson1:27:20

       Very important.

   11. LFLex Fridman1:27:21

       Yeah.

   12. BJBryan Johnson1:27:21

       Because if you look at the, like on the invasive side, there's so much activity going on right now of less invasive techniques to get at the neuron firings which what, what Neuralink is building. It's possible that in 10, 15 years when they're scaling that technology, other things have come along, you'd much rather do that, that thing starts to clock again. It may not be the case. It may be the case that Neuralink has properly chosen the right technology.

   13. LFLex Fridman1:27:50

       Mm-hmm.

   14. BJBryan Johnson1:27:50

       And that that's exactly where they want to be. Totally possible. And it's also possible that the paths we chose that are non-invasive fall short for a variety of reasons. It's just, it's unknown. And so right now, the two technologies we chose, the analogy I'd give t- give you to create a baseline of understanding is, if you think about it like the internet in the '90s, the internet became useful when people could do a dial-up connection, and then the paid ... And then as, as, as bandwidth increased, so did the utility of that connection and so did the ecosystem improve. And so if you say what ... Kernel Flow, uh, is going to give you a full screen on the picture of information, but ... So you're gonna be watching a movie, but the image is going to be blurred and the audio is gonna be muffled.

Episode duration: 2:31:30