George Hotz: Comma.ai, OpenPilot, and Autonomous Vehicles | Lex Fridman Podcast #31

1. 0:00 – 1:27:30

   Intro

   1. LFLex Fridman0:00

      The following is a conversation with George Hotz. He's the founder of Comma.ai, a machine learning based vehicle automation company. He is most certainly an outspoken personality in the field of AI and technology in general. He first gained recognition for being the first person to carrier unlock an iPhone and since then, he's done quite a few interesting things at the intersection of hardware and software. This is the Artificial Intelligence podcast. If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, or simply connect with me on Twitter @lexfridman, spelled F-R-I-D-M-A-N. And I'd like to give a special thank you to Jennifer from Canada for her support of the podcast on Patreon. Merci beaucoup, Jennifer. She's, uh, been a friend and an engineering colleague for many years since I was in grad school. Your support means a lot and inspires me to keep this series going. And now here's my conversation with George Hotz. Do you think we're living in a simulation?

   2. GHGeorge Hotz1:06

      Y- yes, but it may be unfalsifiable.

   3. LFLex Fridman1:10

      What do you mean by unfalsifiable?

   4. GHGeorge Hotz1:12

      So if the simulation is designed in such a way that they did like a formal proof to show that no information can get in and out, and if their hardware is designed to, for the, anything in the simulation to always keep the hardware in spec, it may be impossible to prove whether we're in a simulation or not.

   5. LFLex Fridman1:32

      So they've designed it such that it's a closed system, you can't get outside the system?

   6. GHGeorge Hotz1:37

      Well, maybe it's one of three worlds. We're either in a simulation which can be exploited, we're in a simulation which not only can't be exploited but like the same thing's true about VMs. Um, a really well-designed VM, you can't even detect if you're in a VM or not.

   7. LFLex Fridman1:50

      (laughs) That's brilliant. So we're, uh, it's, yeah, so the simulation's running on a, on a virtual machine?

   8. GHGeorge Hotz1:56

      Yeah. But now i- in reality all VMs have ways to detect.

   9. LFLex Fridman1:59

      That's the point. I mean, is it, uh, y- you've done quite a bit of hacking yourself, uh, and so you should know that, uh, really any complicated system will have ways in and out.

   10. GHGeorge Hotz2:11

       So this isn't necessarily true going forward. I spent my time away from Comma, I learned, uh, Coq.

   11. LFLex Fridman2:19

       Mm-hmm.

   12. GHGeorge Hotz2:19

       It's a dependently typed, like, uh, it's a language we're writing math proofs in.

   13. LFLex Fridman2:23

       Mm-hmm.

   14. GHGeorge Hotz2:24

       And if you write code that compiles in a language like that, it is correct by definition. The, the types check its correctness.

   15. LFLex Fridman2:32

       Mm-hmm.

   16. GHGeorge Hotz2:33

       So it's possible that the simulation is written in a language like this, in which case, you know...

   17. LFLex Fridman2:39

       Yeah, but that, that can't be sufficiently expressive a language like that.

   18. GHGeorge Hotz2:43

       Oh, it can.

   19. LFLex Fridman2:44

       It can be?

   20. GHGeorge Hotz2:45

       Oh, yeah.

   21. LFLex Fridman2:46

       Okay. Well so you, uh, hm, all right, so-

   22. GHGeorge Hotz2:48

       The simulation doesn't have to be Turing-complete if it has a scheduled end date. Looks like it does actually with Entropy.

   23. LFLex Fridman2:54

       I, uh, I don't think that, uh, a simulation as, that results in, uh, something as complicated as the universe wo- would have a form of proof th- of correctness, right? Uh, it's possible of course, uh...

   24. GHGeorge Hotz3:10

       We have no idea how good their tooling is, and we have-

   25. LFLex Fridman3:13

       True.

   26. GHGeorge Hotz3:13

       ... no idea how complicated the universe computer really is. It may be quite simple.

   27. LFLex Fridman3:18

       It's just very large, right?

   28. GHGeorge Hotz3:19

       It's very, it's definitely very large.

   29. LFLex Fridman3:22

       But the fundamental rules might be super simple.

   30. GHGeorge Hotz3:24

       Yeah. Conway's game of life kind of stuff.

Episode duration: 1:59:36