Jaron Lanier: Virtual Reality, Social Media & the Future of Humans and AI | Lex Fridman Podcast #218

Lex Fridman 0:00 The following is a conversation with Jaron Lanier, a computer scientist, visual artist, philosopher, writer, futurist, musician, and the founder of the field of virtual reality. To support this podcast, please check out our sponsors in the description. As a side note, you may know that Jaron is a staunch critic of social media platforms. Him and I agree on many aspects of this, except perhaps I am more optimistic about it being possible to build better platforms and better artificial intelligence systems that put long-term interests and happiness of human beings first. Let me also say, a general comment about these conversations: I try to make sure I prepare well, remove my ego from the picture, and focus on making the other person shine as we try to explore the most beautiful and insightful ideas in their mind. This can be challenging when the ideas that are close to my heart are being criticized. In those cases, I do offer a little pushback, but respectfully, and then move on, trying to have the other person come out looking wiser in the exchange. I think there's no such thing as winning in conversations, nor in life. My goal is to learn and to have fun. I ask that you don't see my approach to these conversations as weakness. It is not. It is my attempt at showing respect and love for the other person. That said, I also often just do a bad job of talking, but you probably already knew that, so please give me a pass on that as well. This is the Lex Fridman Podcast, and here is my conversation with Jaron Lanier.

Lex Fridman 1:39 You're considered the founding father of virtual reality. Do you think we will one day spend most or all of our lives in, uh, virtual reality worlds?

Jaron Lanier 1:52 I have always found the very most valuable moment in virtual reality to be the moment when you take off the headset and your senses are refreshed and you perceive physicality, uh, afresh, you know, as if you were a newborn baby-

Lex Fridman 2:07 Mm.

Jaron Lanier 2:07 ... but with a little more experience. So you can really notice just how incredibly strange and delicate and peculiar and impossible the real world is. Um...

Lex Fridman 2:20 So the magic is, and perhaps forever will be, in the physical world?

Jaron Lanier 2:25 Well, that's my take on it. That's just me. I mean, I think I don't get to tell everybody else how to think or how to experience virtual reality, and at this point, there have been multiple generations of younger people who've come along and liberated me from having to worry about these things.

Lex Fridman 2:43 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 2:44 Uh, but I should say also, even in, uh, what somet- well, I called it mixed reality back in the day, and these days it's called augmented reality, uh, but with something like a HoloLens, even then, like one of my favorite things is to augment a forest, not because I think the forest needs augmentation, but when you look at the augmentation next to a real tree, the real tree just pops out as being astounding, you know? It's- it's interactive, it's changing slightly all the time if you pay attention. And it's hard to pay attention to that, but when you compare it to virtual reality, all of a sudden you do. And even in practical applications, uh, my- my favorite early application of virtual reality which we prototyped going back to the 80s when I was working with Dr. Joe Rosen at Stanford Med, near- near where we are now, uh, we made the first surgical simulator. And to go from the fake anatomy of the simulation, which is incredibly valuable for many things, for designing procedures, for training, for all kinds of things, then to go to the real person, boy, it's really something. Like, uh, surgeons really get woken up by that transition. It's very cool. So I think the transition is actually more valuable than the simulation.

Lex Fridman 3:58 That's fascinating. I never really thought about that. It's almost ... it's- it's like traveling elsewhere in the physical space can help you appreciate how much you value your home once you return.

Jaron Lanier 4:11 Well, that's how I take it. I mean, um, once again, people have different attitudes towards it. All are welcome.

Lex Fridman 4:18 What do you think is the difference between the virtual world and the physical meat space world that- that you are still drawn, for you personally, still drawn to the physical world? Like, there clearly then is a distinction. Is there some fundamental distinction, or is it the peculiarities of the current set of technology?

Jaron Lanier 4:37 In terms of the kind of virtual reality that we have now, uh, it's made of software, and software is- is terrible stuff.

Lex Fridman 4:45 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 4:46 Software is always the slave of its own history, its own legacy.

Lex Fridman 4:52 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 4:52 It's always, um, infinitely arbitrarily messy and arbitrary. Working with it brings out a certain kind of nerdy personality in people, or at least in me-

Lex Fridman 5:02 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 5:03 ... which, um, I'm not that fond of. And there- there are all kinds of things about software I don't like. (laughs) And so that's different from the physical world. It's not something we understand, as you just pointed out. On the other hand, you know, I'm a little mystified when people ask me, "Well, do you think the universe is a computer?" And I have to say, well, I mean, what on earth could you possibly mean if you say it isn't a computer? If it isn't a computer, it wouldn't follow principles consistently and it wouldn't be intelligible, 'cause what else is a computer, ultimately? You know, I mean, a- a- and we have physics, we have technology, you know, so we can do technology, so we can program it. So I mean, of course it's some kind of computer. But I think trying to understand it as a Turing machine is probably a foolish approach.

Lex Fridman 5:52 Right. Th- that- that's the question, whether it- it performs, this computer we call the universe, performs the kind of computation that could be modeled as a- a universal Turing machine, or is it something much more fancy?... so fancy, in fact, that we- it may be beyond our cognitive capabilities to understand.

Jaron Lanier 6:12 Turing machines are kind of, um, I'd call them teases in a way.

Lex Fridman 6:18 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 6:18 'Cause like (laughs) if you have an infinitely smart programmer with an infinite amount of time, an infinite amount of memory, and an infinite clock speed, then they're universal.

Lex Fridman 6:29 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 6:29 But that cannot exist, so they're not universal in practice, and they- they actually are, in practice, a very particular sort of machine within, you know, the constraints, within the conservation principles of any reality that's worth being in, probably. (laughs) And so, uh, so I- I, uh, uh, I think universality of a particular model is probably a deceptive way to think. Even though at some sort of limit, of course, it's can- it's- something like that's gotta be true at some sort of high enough limit, but it's just not accessible to us, so what's the point?

Lex Fridman 7:10 Well- well, to me, the question of, like, whether we're living inside a computer or a s- a simulation is interesting in the following way. There's a technical question is here. How difficult is it to build a machine not that simulates the universe, but that makes it sufficiently realistic that we wouldn't know the difference? Or better yet, sufficiently realistic that we would kinda know the difference, but we would prefer to stay in the virtual world anyway.

Jaron Lanier 7:40 Mm. I wanna give you a few different answers. I wanna give you the one that I think has the most practical importance to human beings right now.

Lex Fridman 7:47 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 7:47 Which is that there's a kind of an assertion sort of built into the way the question's usually asked that I think is false.

Lex Fridman 7:55 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 7:55 Which- which is a suggestion that people have a fixed level of ability to perceive reality in- in- in a given way. And actually, people are always learning, evolving, forming themselves. We're- we're fluid too. We're also pro- programmable, self-programmable, changing, adapting. And so, uh, y- my favorite way to get at this is to talk about the history of other media. So for instance, there was a peer review paper that showed that an early wire recorder playing back an opera singer behind a curtain was indistinguishable from a real opera singer.

Lex Fridman 8:31 Hmm.

Jaron Lanier 8:31 And so, now, of course, to us, it would not only be distinguishable, but it would be very blatant 'cause the- the recording would be horrible. But to the people at the time without the experience of it, it seemed plausible. There was an early demonstration of extremely crude video teleconferencing between New York and DC in the '30s, I think so-

Lex Fridman 8:54 Wow.

Jaron Lanier 8:54 ... that people viewed as being absolutely realistic and indistinguishable-

Lex Fridman 8:57 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 8:57 ... which to us would be horrible. Uh, and there are many other example. Um, another one, one of my favorite ones, is in the Civil War era-

Lex Fridman 9:04 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 9:04 ... there were itinerant photographers who collected photographs of people who just looked kind of like a few archetypes.

Lex Fridman 9:10 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 9:10 So you could buy a photo of somebody who looked kinda like your loved one (laughs) -

Lex Fridman 9:15 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 9:15 ... to remind you of that person 'cause actually photographing them was inconceivable and hiring a painter was too expensive, and you didn't have any way for the painter to represent them remotely anyway. How would they even know what they looked like?

Lex Fridman 9:26 Wow.

Jaron Lanier 9:27 So these are all great examples of how in the early days of different media, we perceived the media as being really great, but then we evolved through the experience of the media. This gets back to what I was saying. Maybe the greatest gift of photography is that we can see the flaws in a photograph and appreciate reality more. Maybe the greatest gift of audio recording is that we can distinguish that opera singer now- singer now (laughs) from that recording of the opera singer on the horrible wire recorder. So- so we're- we're- we- we shouldn't limit ourselves by some assip- assumption of stasis that's incorrect. So, uh, that's the first thing- that's my first answer, which is, I think, the most important one.

Lex Fridman 10:05 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 10:06 Now, of course, somebody might come back and say, "Oh, but you know technology can go so far. There- there must be some point at which it would surpass." That's a different question. I- I think that's also an interesting question, but I think the answer I just gave you is actually the more important answer-

Lex Fridman 10:17 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 10:17 ... to the more important question.

Lex Fridman 10:18 That's profound, yeah. But can you- can you... The second question, which you're now making me realize is way different, is it possible to create worlds in which people would want to stay instead of the real world?

Jaron Lanier 10:32 Well...

Lex Fridman 10:33 Like, um, en masse, like, large numbers of- numbers of people.

Jaron Lanier 10:38 Uh, what I hope is, you know, as I said before, I hope that the experience of virtual worlds helps people appreciate this- this physical world we have and feel tender-

Lex Fridman 10:51 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 10:51 ... towards it and- and, uh, keep it from getting too fucked up. That's my hope. Um-

Lex Fridman 10:57 Do you see all of technology in that way? So basically-

Jaron Lanier 10:59 Oh.

Lex Fridman 10:59 ... technology helps us appreciate the more sort of-

Jaron Lanier 11:03 (sighs)

Lex Fridman 11:03 ... technology-free aspect of life?

Jaron Lanier 11:08 Well, media technology, you know? I mean, I- I- I- you can stretch that. I mean, you can... Let me say, I could definitely play McLuhan and turn this into a general theory.

Lex Fridman 11:18 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 11:19 It's totally doable. The program-

Lex Fridman 11:20 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 11:20 ... you just described is totally doable. Um, in fact, I will psychically predict that if you did the research, you could find 20 PhD theses that do that already.

Lex Fridman 11:28 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 11:29 I don't- I don't know, but they might exist. But, um, I- I don't know how much value i- there is in pushing, um, a particular idea that far. Claiming that reality isn't a computer in some sense seems incoherent to me 'cause-

Lex Fridman 11:43 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 11:43 ... we have- we can program it. We have technology. It has- it seems to obey physical laws. What more do you want from it to be a computer? I mean, it's a computer of some kind. We don't know exactly what kind. We might not know how to think about it. We're working on it. But-

Lex Fridman 11:57 Sorry to interrupt, but you're absolutely right. Like, that's my fascination with the AI as well, is it, uh, helps... In the case of AI, I see it as- as a set of techniques that help us understand ourselves, understand us humans. In the same way, virtual reality-... and you're putting it brilliantly, which it's a, it's a way to help us understand reality.

Jaron Lanier 12:19 Sure.

Lex Fridman 12:19 Uh, appreciate and open our eyes more richly to reality.

Jaron Lanier 12:23 That's how, that's certainly how I see it. And I, I, I wish people who become incredibly fascinated, who go down the rabbit hole of, uh, the different fascinations with whether we're in a simulation or not, or, you know, the... there's a whole world of variations on that. Um, I wish they'd step back and think about their own motivations and exactly what they mean, you know-

Lex Fridman 12:45 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 12:45 ... what... And, and I think the danger with these things is, um, it... so if you say is the universe some kind of computer broadly, it has to be 'cause it's not coherent to say that- that the, uh, that it isn't. On the other hand, to say that that means you know anything about what kind of computer-

Lex Fridman 13:04 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 13:05 ... that's something very different. And the same thing is true for the brain, the same thing is true for anything where you might use computational metaphors. Like, we have to have a bit of modesty about where we stand. And the, the problem I have with these framings of computation as these ultimate cosmic questions is that it has a way of getting people to pretend they know more than they do.

Lex Fridman 13:25 Can you maybe, um... this is a therapy session, psychoanalyze me for a second?

Jaron Lanier 13:29 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 13:29 Like for exa- I really like the Elder Scrolls series. It's a, it's a, uh, role-playing game. Uh, Skyrim, for example. Why do I enjoy so deeply just walking around that world and then there's people you could talk to and you can just like... it's an escape. But, you know, my l- my life is awesome. I'm tru- truly happy, but I also am happy with the, with the music that's playing and the, and the mountains and, uh, carrying around a sword and just-

Jaron Lanier 13:59 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 14:01 ... that. I don't know what that is. It's very pleasant though to go there.

Jaron Lanier 14:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 14:04 And I miss it sometimes.

Jaron Lanier 14:06 I think it's wonderful to love artistic creations. It's wonderful to love contact with other people. It's wonderful to love play and ongoing evolving meaning and patterns with other people. I think it's a, it's a good thing.

Lex Fridman 14:26 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 14:27 You know, I, um-

Lex Fridman 14:29 Please celebrate

Narrator 14:29 Me again.

Jaron Lanier 14:29 ... my, my... I'm not, I'm not like anti-tech and I'm certainly not anti-digital tech. I'm anti, as everybody knows by now, I think the, you know, manipulative economy of social media is making everybody nuts and all that stuff, so I'm anti that stuff. But the core of it, of course, I worked for many, many years on trying to make that stuff happen because I think it can be beautiful. Like I, um, I don't... like why not?

Lex Fridman 14:54 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 14:54 You know? And, and by the way-

Lex Fridman 14:56 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 14:57 ... um, there's a thing about humans which is, um, uh... we're problematic. Any, any kind of social interaction with other people is gonna have its problems. People are political and tricky. And like I love classical music, but when you actually go to a classical music thing and it turns out, oh, actually, this is like a backroom power deal kind of place and a big status ritual as well, and that's kind of not as fun, um, that's part of the package. And the thing is it's always going to be. There's always gonna be a mix of things. Um, I, I don't, uh, I don't think the search for purity is gonna get you anywhere. So I'm not worried about that. I worry about the, the really bad cases where we're becoming... where we're making ourselves crazy or cruel enough that we might not survive. And I think, you know, the social media criticism rises to that level, but I'm glad you enjoy it. I think it's great.

Lex Fridman 15:56 (laughs) And I like that you basically say that every experience has both the beauty and darkness as in with classical music. I also play classical piano-

Jaron Lanier 16:05 Oh.

Lex Fridman 16:05 ... so I appreciate it very much. But it's interesting. I mean every... and even the darkness, it's... A Man's Search For Meaning with Viktor Frankl in the, in the, in the concentration camps, even there there's opportunity to discover beauty.

Jaron Lanier 16:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 16:20 Now, and, and so it's... (laughs) that's, that's the interesting thing about humans is the capacity to discover beautiful in the darkest of moments. But there's always the dark parts too.

Jaron Lanier 16:31 Well, I mean it's... our situation is structurally difficult. We are, um-

Lex Fridman 16:39 (laughs) Structurally difficult.

Jaron Lanier 16:40 No, it is. It's true.

Lex Fridman 16:42 I like it.

Jaron Lanier 16:42 We perceive socially, we depend on each other for our sense of place and, and perception of the world. I mean we're dependent on each other, and yet there's also a degree in which we're inevitably, um... we inevitably let each other down. Uh, we are set up to be competitive as well as supportive. I mean it's a, it's just... w- our fundamental situation is complicated and challenging, and I wouldn't have it any other way.

Lex Fridman 17:13 Okay, let's t- talk about one of the most challenging things.

Jaron Lanier 17:16 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 17:17 One, one of the things I unfortunately am very afraid of, being human allegedly. You wrote an essay on death and consciousness in which you write and note, "Certainly the fear of death has been one of the greatest driving forces in the history of thought and in the formation of the character of civilization, and yet it is underacknowledged. The great book on the subject, The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker, deserves a reconsideration." I'm Russian so I have to ask you about this. What- what's the role of death in life?

Jaron Lanier 17:51 See, you would have enjoyed coming to our house 'cause uh-

Lex Fridman 17:55 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 17:55 ... my wife is Russian and we also have-

Lex Fridman 17:58 Awesome.

Jaron Lanier 17:58 ... we have a piano of such spectacular qualities you wouldn't... you would have freaked out-

Lex Fridman 18:03 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 18:04 ... if you played it, but anyway.

Lex Fridman 18:05 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 18:05 Let- we'll let all that go.

Lex Fridman 18:06 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 18:07 So, uh, the context in which... I, I remember that essay, uh, sort of. This was from maybe the '90s or something.

Lex Fridman 18:15 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 18:15 And, um, (laughs) I used to publish in a journal called The Journal of Consciousness Studies 'cause I was, I was interested in these endless debates about consciousness and science, uh-... which, uh, certainly continue today.

Lex Fridman 18:30 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 18:31 And I was interested in how the fear of death and the denial of death played into different philosophical approaches to consciousness.

Lex Fridman 18:44 Mm.

Jaron Lanier 18:44 Because (sighs) I, uh, I think on the one hand, uh, the sort of sentimental school of dualism, meaning the feeling that there's something apart from the physical brain, some kind of soul or something else, is obviously motivated in a sense by a hope that that whatever- whatever that is will s- survive death and continue, and that's a very core aspect of a lot of the world religions. Not all of them. Not- not really, but, you know, uh, most of them. Um, the thing I noticed is that the- the opposite of those, which might be the sort of hardcore, "No, the brain's a computer, and that's it," in a sense were motivated in the same way with a remarkably similar chain of- of- of, uh, of arguments, which is, "No, uh, the brain's a computer, and I'm gonna figure it out in my lifetime and upload it, upload myself, and I'll live forever." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 19:49 Ah. That's interesting.

Jaron Lanier 19:50 And so-

Lex Fridman 19:50 Yeah. That- that's- that's like the implied thought, right?

Jaron Lanier 19:53 Yeah. And so it's kind of this, in a funny way, it's- it's the same thing. I- i- i- it's, uh, um, it's peculiar that you... to notice that these people who would appear to be opposites in character-

Lex Fridman 20:09 (laughs) Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 20:10 ... and cultural references and, uh, uh, and in their ideas actually are remarkably similar. And- and- and, uh, to- to- to an incredible degree, the sort of hardcore, uh, computationalist idea a- about, uh, the brain has turned into medieval Christianity with... together. Like, there's a... there are the people who are afraid that if you have the wrong thought, you'll piss off the super AIs of the future who will come back and zap you and, and all that stuff.

Lex Fridman 20:38 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 20:38 Uh, it's like, it's really, it's really turned into medieval Christianity all over again.

Lex Fridman 20:42 Uh, this is... So the... Ernest Becker's idea that death, the fear of death is the warm at the core, which is like, that- that's the, that's the core motivator of everything we see humans have created. The question is if that fear of mortality is somehow core, is like a prerequisite-

Jaron Lanier 21:02 Mm.

Lex Fridman 21:03 ... uh, to consciousness.

Jaron Lanier 21:03 So what you... What you just... You just moved across this vast cultural chasm, uh, that separates me from most of my colleagues in a way, and I can't answer what you just said on the level-

Lex Fridman 21:15 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 21:15 ... without this huge deconstruction.

Lex Fridman 21:17 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 21:18 Should I do it?

Lex Fridman 21:18 Yes. What's the chasm?

Jaron Lanier 21:20 Okay.

Lex Fridman 21:21 Let us travel across this vast chasm.

Jaron Lanier 21:23 Okay. I don't believe in AI. I don't think there's any AI. There's just algorithms. We make them. We control them. Now, uh, they're tools, they're not creatures.

Lex Fridman 21:30 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 21:30 Now, th- this is something that rubs a lot of people the wrong way.

Lex Fridman 21:34 Okay.

Jaron Lanier 21:34 And don't I know it. When I was young, my main mentor was Marvin Minsky, who's the principal author of the computer as creature rhetoric that we still use. Uh, he wasn't the first person to have the idea at all, but he certainly populated the AI culture with most of its tropes, I would say. Uh, 'cause a lot of this stuff people will say, "Oh, did you hear this new idea about AI?" And I'm like, "Yeah, I heard it in 1978."

Lex Fridman 22:00 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 22:00 "Sure. Yeah, I remember that." So Marvin was really the person. And, uh, Marvin and I used to argue all the time about this stuff 'cause I always rejected it. And of all of his, um, of all of his, uh... I- I wasn't formally his student, but, uh, I worked for him as a researcher. But of- of all of his students and student-like people, (laughs) of his young adoptees, um, I think I was the one who argued with him about this stuff in particular, and he loved it 'cause, uh-

Lex Fridman 22:31 Yeah. I would have loved to hear that conversation.

Jaron Lanier 22:33 It was fun.

Lex Fridman 22:34 Did you ever converse to a place?

Jaron Lanier 22:36 Oh, no, no.

Lex Fridman 22:37 No.

Jaron Lanier 22:37 So the l- the very last time I saw him, he was quite frail, and, and, uh, I, I was in, um, in, in Boston, and I was going to the old house in Brookline, his amazing house. And one of our mutual friends said, "Hey, listen, Marvin's so frail. Don't do the argument with him." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 22:54 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 22:54 "Don't argue about AI."

Lex Fridman 22:55 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 22:55 You know? And so I said, "But Marvin loves that." And so I showed up, and he's like... you know, he was frail. He looked up, and he said, "Are you ready to argue?" (laughs)

Lex Fridman 23:06 (laughs) I love it. Ah, he's such an amazing person, man.

Jaron Lanier 23:10 So, um-

Lex Fridman 23:11 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 23:12 ... it's hard to summarize this 'cause it's decades of stuff. The first thing to say is that nobody can claim absolute knowledge about whether somebody or something else is conscious or not. Uh, this is all a matter of faith. And in fact, um, I think the whole idea of faith needs to be updated so it's not about God, but it's just about stuff in the universe, okay? We, we have faith in each other being conscious. And then, um... I used to frame this as a thing called the circle of empathy in my old papers. And then, um, it turned into a thing for the animal rights movement, too. I noticed Peter Singer using it. I don't know if it was coincident or... but anyway, we... there's this idea that you draw a circle around yourself and the stuff inside is more like you, might be conscious, might be deserving of your empathy, of your consideration, and the stuff outside the circle isn't-

Lex Fridman 24:04 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 24:04 And, um, outside the circle might be a rock (laughs) or (laughs) I don't know. Uh, so, uh-

Lex Fridman 24:12 And that circle is fundamentally based on faith?

Jaron Lanier 24:15 Well, it's... No, no, it-

Lex Fridman 24:15 Like, your faith in what is and what isn't.

Jaron Lanier 24:17 It... The thing about the circle is it can't be pure faith. It also has... it's also a pragmatic decision, and this is where things get complicated.

Lex Fridman 24:26 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 24:26 If you try to make it too big, you suffer from incompetence-If you say, "I don't want to kill a bacteria, I will not brush my teeth," I don't know. Like, what do you do?

Lex Fridman 24:35 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 24:36 Like, you know, like, there's a, there's a competence question where you do have to draw the line. People who make it too small become cruel. People are so clannish and political and so worried about themselves ending up on the bottom of society that they are always ready to gang up on some designated group. And so there's always these people who are being tried... They're, we're always trying to shove somebody out of the circle. And so-

Lex Fridman 24:59 Aren't you shoving AI outside the circle?

Jaron Lanier 25:01 Well, give me a second.

Lex Fridman 25:02 All right. (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 25:03 So, so there's a pragmatic consideration here.

Lex Fridman 25:05 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 25:05 And so... Uh, and, and, uh, the, the biggest questions are probably fetuses and animals lately, but AI is getting there. Now, with AI, I think, uh... And I've had this discussion so many times. People say, "But aren't you afraid if you exclude AI, you'd be cruel to some consciousness?" And then I would say, "Well, if you include AI, you make yourself... You, you exclude yourself from being able to be a good engineer or designer. And so you, you're facing incompetence immediately." So, like, I really think we need to subordinate algorithms and be much more skeptical of them.

Lex Fridman 25:43 Your intuition, you speak about this brilliantly with social media, how things can go wrong. Isn't it possible, uh, to des- design systems that sh- that show compassion, not to manipulate you, but give you control and make your life better if you so choose to, like grow together with systems in the way we grow with dogs and cats, with pets, with significant others, in that way. They grow to become better people. I, I don't understand why that's fundamentally not possible. You're saying oftentimes you get into trouble by thinking you know what's good for people.

Jaron Lanier 26:20 Well, look, there's this question of what frame we're, we're speaking in. Um, do you know who Alan Watts was?

Lex Fridman 26:27 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 26:27 So Alan Watts once said, "Morality is like gravity," that in some absolute cosmic sense, there can't be morality, because at some point it all becomes relative, and who are we anyway? Like, morality is relative to us tiny creatures. But here on Earth, we're with each other. This is our frame, and morality is a very real thing. Same thing with gravity. At some point, you know, you get, you get into interstellar space and you might not feel much of it, but here we are on Earth. And, and I think in the same sense, um, I think this, this identification with a frame that's quite remote cannot be separated from a feeling of wanting to feel sort of separate, separate from and superior to other people or something like that. There's, there's an impulse behind it that I really have to reject.

Lex Fridman 27:15 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 27:16 And

Jaron Lanier 27:17 we're just not competent yet to talk about these kinds of absolutes.

Lex Fridman 27:20 Yeah, but-

Jaron Lanier 27:20 Like-

Lex Fridman 27:21 Okay, so I agree with you that a lot of technologists sort of lack this basic respect, uh, understanding, and love for humanity. There's a separation there. The thing I'd like to push back against... It's not that you disagree, but I believe you can create technologies and you can create a new kind of technologist engineer that does build systems that respect humanity. Not just respect-

Jaron Lanier 27:45 Okay.

Lex Fridman 27:45 ... but admire humanity, that have empathy for common humans, have compassion. ?

Jaron Lanier 27:51 So, I mean, no, no, no. I, I, I think... Yeah. I mean, I think musical instruments are a great example of that. Musical instruments are technologies that help people connect in fantastic ways, and that's a, a great example. Um, my, uh, my invention or design during the pandemic period was this thing called together mode, where people see themselves seated sort of in a, a, a, a classroom or a theater instead of in squares. And it allows them to semi-consciously perform to each other as if they're... as if they have proper eye contact, as if they're paying attention to each other non-verbally. And weirdly, that turns out to work. And so it, it promotes empathy, so far as I can tell. I hope, I hope it is of some use to somebody. Uh, the AI idea isn't really new. Um, I would say it was born with Adam Smith's invisible hand-

Lex Fridman 28:46 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 28:47 ... with this idea that we build this algorithmic thing and it gets a bit beyond us, and then we think it must be smarter than us. And the thing about the invisible hand is absolutely everybody has some line they draw where they say, "No, no, no we're gonna take control of this thing." (laughs) They might have different lines, they might care about different things, but everybody ultimately became a Keynesian, 'cause it just didn't work. It really wasn't that smart. It was sometimes smart and sometimes it failed, you know? And, and, and so if you really... You know, people who really, really, really want to believe in the invisible hand as infinitely smart screw up their economies terribly. You have t-... You know, you have to recognize the economy as a subservient tool. Everybody does when it's to their advantage. They might not when it's not to their advantage. That's kind of an interesting game that happens. But the thing is, it's just like that with our algorithms. You know, like, uh, (laughs) you, you can, uh, you can have a sort of a Chicago eco-... You know (laughs) economic philosophy about your computer and say, "No, no, no, my things come alive. It's smarter than anything."

Lex Fridman 29:49 I think that there is a deep loneliness within all of us. This is what we seek. We seek love from each other. I think AI can help us connect deeper. Like this is, this is what you criticize social media for. I think there's much better ways of doing social media that doesn't lead to manipulation, but instead leads to deeper connection between humans, leads to you becoming a better human being. And what that requires is some agency on the part of AI to be almost like a therapist, I mean, a companion. It's not telling you what's right. It's not guiding you as if it's an all-knowing thing. It's just another companion that you can leave at any time, that you, you have complete transparency and control over. There's a lot of mechanisms that you can have that, that are counter to how...... current social media, uh, operates that I think is subservient to humans or no, deeply respects human beings and is empathetic to their experience and all those kinds of things. I think it's possible to create AI systems like that. And I think they n- I mean, that's a technical discussion of whether they need to have, um, uh, (sighs) th- uh, s- something that looks like more, like, AI versus algorithms, something that has a identity, something that has a personality, all those kinds of things.

Lex Fridman 31:09 AI systems, and you've spoken extensively how AI systems manipulate you within social networks, and that's the bigge- the biggest problem, isn't necessarily that, um, there's advertisement that, uh, you know, social networks present you with advertisements that then get you to buy stuff. That's not the biggest problem. The biggest problem is they then manipulate you. You're, they alter, like, your human nature to get you to buy stuff or, or to get you to, um, do whatever the advertiser wants. Uh, may- maybe you can correct me, but-

Jaron Lanier 31:47 Yeah. I, I don't see it quite that way, but we can work with that as an approximation.

Lex Fridman 31:52 Sure. So m- my-

Jaron Lanier 31:53 I think the actual thing is even-

Lex Fridman 31:54 Worse.

Jaron Lanier 31:54 ... sort of more ridiculous and stupider than that, but that's, that's okay. Let's, let's... (laughs)

Lex Fridman 31:58 So my, my question is, let's not use the word AI, uh, but how do we fix it?

Jaron Lanier 32:05 Oh, fixing social media, um, that diverts us into this whole other field, in my view, which is economics, which I always thought was really boring, but we have no choice but to turn into economists if we wanna fix this problem 'cause it's all about incentives. But, um, I- I've been around this thing since it started, and, and, uh, I've been in the meetings where the social media companies sell themselves to the people who put the most money into them, which are usually the big advertising holding companies and whatnot, and there's this, there's this idea that I think is kind of a fiction, and maybe it's even been recognized as that by everybody, that the, the algorithm will get really good at getting people to buy something 'cause I think people have looked at their returns and looked at what happens, and everybody recognizes it's not exactly right.

Lex Fridman 32:55 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 32:56 It's more like a cognitive access blackmail payment at this point. Like, you, just to be connected, you're paying them money. It's not so much that the persuasion algorithms... The, so Stanford renamed its program, but it used to be called Engage Persuade. The engage part works. The persuade part is iffy. But the thing is, that once people are engaged, in order for you to exist as a business, in order for you to be known at all, you have-

Lex Fridman 33:22 You have to stay connected.

Jaron Lanier 33:22 ... to put money into-

Lex Fridman 33:23 Oh, that's dark. (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 33:24 Oh, no, that's not, no, that-

Lex Fridman 33:25 So it doesn't work, but they have to-

Jaron Lanier 33:27 But they're, they're still, it's a, it's a giant, it's a giant cognitive access blackmail scheme at this point. So, um, because the science behind the persuade part, it's not entirely, it's not entirely, uh, a failure, but it's, it's not what... The, th- there's, we, we play make believe that it, it works more than it does.

Lex Fridman 33:46 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 33:46 Um, the, the damage doesn't come... Honestly, as I've, I've said in my books, I'm not anti-advertising. I actually think advertising can be demeaning and annoying and banal and ridiculous and take up a lot of our time with stupid stuff. It, like, there's a lot of ways to criticize that out- um, advertising that's accurate, and it can also lie and all kinds of things. However, if I look at the biggest picture, I think advertising, at least as it was understood before social media, helped bring people into modernity in a way that overall actually did benefit people overall.

Lex Fridman 34:24 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 34:24 And, uh, you might say, am I contradicting myself because I was saying you shouldn't manipulate people? Yeah, I am probably here. I mean, I'm not, I'm not pretending to have this perfect ar- airtight worldview without some contradictions, but I think there's a bit of a contradiction there, so, you know.

Lex Fridman 34:37 Well, looking at the long arc of history, advertisement has, has in some parts benefited society-

Jaron Lanier 34:43 Yeah, because it's-

Lex Fridman 34:44 ... uh, because it funded some efforts that perh- perhaps benefited society.

Jaron Lanier 34:46 Yeah, I, I mean, I think, like, there's a, there's a thing where, uh, sometimes I think it's actually been of some use. Uh, now, let's... Where the damage comes is a different thing though. Social media, um, algorithms on social media have to work on feedback loops where they present you with stimulus, and they have to see if you respond to the stimulus.

Lex Fridman 35:08 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 35:09 Now, the, the problem is that the, the measurement mechanism for telling if you respond in the engagement feedback loop is very, very crude. It's things like whether you click more or occasionally if you're staring at the screen more if there's a forward-facing camera that's activated, but typically there isn't.

Lex Fridman 35:25 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 35:25 So you have this incredibly crude back channel of information. And so it's crude enough that it only catches sort of the more dramatic responses from you, and those are the fight or flight responses. Those are the things where you get scared or pissed off or aggressive or horny, you know? These are these ancient, the sort of what are sometimes called the lizard brain circuits or whatever, (laughs) you know, these, these fast response, old, old, old evolutionary business circuits that we have that, um, are helpful in survival once in a while, but are not us at our best. They're not who we wanna be. They're not how we relate to each other. They're this old business. But they, it's... So then just when you're engaged using those intrinsically, totally aside from whatever the topic is, you start to get incrementally just a little bit more paranoid, xenophobic, aggressive. You know, you get a little stupid and, and like a, a, you become a jerk. And it happens slowly. It happens... It's not, it's not like everybody is, like, instantly transformed, but it does kinda happen progressively where people who get hooked kind- kind of get drawn more and more into this pattern of being at their worst.

Lex Fridman 36:33 Would you say that people are able to, when they get hooked in this way, look back at themselves from 30 days ago and say, "I am less happy"?... with who I am now, or I'm not happy with who I am now versus who I was 30 days ago. Are they able to self-reflect when you take yourself outside of the lizard brain?

Jaron Lanier 36:52 Sometimes. Um, I wrote a book about people, suggesting people take a break from their social media to see what happens, and maybe even del-... Well, uh, no. It was actually, the title of the book was just Del- Arguments to Delete Your Account.

Lex Fridman 37:04 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 37:04 Although it's very-

Lex Fridman 37:04 10, 10 Arguments to-

Jaron Lanier 37:05 Or 10 Arguments, although I always said, "I don't know that you should. I can give you the arguments. It's up to you."

Lex Fridman 37:10 Right.

Jaron Lanier 37:10 I'm always very clear about that. But, you know, I get, like... Uh, I don't have a social media account, obviously. And it's not that easy for people to reach me. They have to search out an old-fashioned email address on a super crappy, antiquated website. Like, it's, it's actually a bit... I, I don't make it easy. And even with that, I get this huge flood of mail from people who say, "Oh, I quit my social media and I'm doing so much better. I can't believe how bad it was." But the thing is, what's for me a huge flood of mail would be an in- imperceptible trickle from the perspective of Facebook, right?

Lex Fridman 37:39 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 37:40 And so, uh, I think it's rare for somebody to look at themselves and say, "Oh, boy, I sure screwed myself over." (laughs)

Lex Fridman 37:47 Well, I, I-

Jaron Lanier 37:47 It's a really hard thing to ask of somebody. None of us find that easy, right?

Lex Fridman 37:51 Well, the reason I-

Jaron Lanier 37:52 It's just hard.

Lex Fridman 37:52 The reason I ask this is, is it possible to design social media, um, systems that optimize for some longer term metrics of you- you just being happy with yourself?

Jaron Lanier 38:04 Well, see-

Lex Fridman 38:04 Personal growth?

Jaron Lanier 38:05 ... I don't think you should try to engineer personal growth or happiness. I think what you should do is design a system that's just respectful of the people and subordinates itself to the people, and doesn't have perverse incentives, and then at least there's a chance of something decent happening.

Lex Fridman 38:19 But, but-

Jaron Lanier 38:19 Like-

Lex Fridman 38:19 ... you have to recommend stuff, right? So we're... So you're saying, like, be respect-... What does that actually mean engineering-wise? Like, what-

Jaron Lanier 38:26 People... Yeah, curation. People have to, people have to be responsible. Algorithms shouldn't be recommending. Algorithms don't understand enough to recommend. Algorithms are crap in this era. I mean, I'm sorry, they are. Look, I... And I'm not saying this as somebody as a critic from the outside. I'm in the middle of it. I know what they can do, I know the math, I know what the corpora are. I'm, um... You know, I know the best ones. J- our office is funding GPT-3 and all these things that are, that are, you know, uh, at the, at the edge of what's possible. And they do not have, yet... I mean, it still is statistical emergent pseudo-semantics. It doesn't actually have deep representation emerging of anything. It's just not... Like, I mean, that... I am speaking the truth here, and you know it.

Lex Fridman 39:08 Well, let me push back on this. This, uh, there's several truths here. So one, uh, you're speaking to the way, uh, certain companies operate currently. I don't think it's outside the realm of what's technically, uh, feasible to do. There's just not incentive. Like, companies are not, "Why fix this thing?" I am aware that, for example, the YouTube search and discovery has been very helpful to me. And there's a huge number of... (laughs) There's so many videos that it's nice to have a little bit of help.

Jaron Lanier 39:39 Have you done the-

Lex Fridman 39:40 But I'm still in control. Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 39:41 Let me ask you something. Have you done the experiment of letting YouTube recommend videos to you, either starting from a absolutely anonymous random place where it doesn't know who you are, or from knowing who you or somebody else is, and then going 15 or 20 hops? Have you ever done that and just let it go top re- video recommend and then just go 20 hops?

Lex Fridman 40:00 No, I have not.

Jaron Lanier 40:01 I've done that many times now. Um, I have... Because of how large YouTube is and how widely it's used, it's very hard to get to enough scale to get a statistically solid result on this.

Lex Fridman 40:14 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 40:14 I've done it with high school kids, with dozens of kids doing it at a time. Every time I've done an experiment, the majority of times, after about 17 or 18 hops, you end up in really weird paranoid bizarre territory.

Lex Fridman 40:26 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 40:27 Because ultimately, that is the stuff the algorithm rewards the most because of the feedback crudeness I was just talking about.

Lex Fridman 40:34 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 40:34 So, uh, I'm not saying that the video never recommends something cool. I'm saying that its fundamental core is one that promotes a paranoid style, that promotes increasing irritability, that promotes xenophobia, promotes fear, anger, promotes selfishness, promotes separation between people. Uh, and I would encou-... The thing is, it's very hard to do this work solidly. Many have repeated this experiment.

Lex Fridman 41:00 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 41:00 And yet it still is kind of anecdotal. I'd like to do, like, a large, you know, citizen science thing sometime and do it. But then I think the problem with that is YouTube would detect it and then change it. Uh-

Lex Fridman 41:09 Yes. I definitely... See, I love that kinda stuff on Twit-... So, Jack Dorsey has spoken about, uh, uh, doing healthy conversations on Twitter or optimizing for healthy conversations.

Jaron Lanier 41:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 41:19 What that requires within Twitter are most likely citizen experiments of what does healthy conversation actually look like?

Jaron Lanier 41:27 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 41:27 And what, how do you incentivize those healthy conversations? You're describing what often happens and what is currently happening. What I'd like to argue is it's possible to strive for healthy conversations, not in a dogmatic way of saying, "Uh, I know what healthy conversations are, and I will tell you."

Jaron Lanier 41:45 Okay. I think one way to do this is to try to look around at social, and they're maybe not things that are officially social media, but things where people are together online and see which ones have more healthy conversations. Even if it's hard to be completely objective in that measurement, you can kind of, at least crudely, I agree-

Lex Fridman 42:03 You could do s- subjective annotation of, of this, like have a large-

Jaron Lanier 42:06 And so here-

Lex Fridman 42:06 ... crowdsourced annotation.

Jaron Lanier 42:07 Yeah. One that I've been really interested in is GitHub.

Lex Fridman 42:11 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 42:11 'Cause, um, uh, it could change. I'm not saying it'll always be. But for the most part, GitHub has had a ve- relatively quite low poison quotient.

Lex Fridman 42:21 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 42:22 And I think there's a few things about GitHub that are interesting. One thing about it is that people have a stake in it. It's not just empty status games. There's actual code, or there's actual stuff being done. And I think as soon as you have a real world stake in something, y- you have a motivation to not screw up that thing. And I think that that's often missing, that there's a, there's no incentive for the person to really preserve something if they, if they get a little bit of attention from, um, dumping on somebody's TikTok or something.

Lex Fridman 42:55 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 42:55 The- there's, they don't pay any price for it. But on... You have to kind of...... get decent with people when you have a shared stake, you know, a little secret. So, G- so GitHub does a bit of that. Um-

Lex Fridman 43:06 G- GitHub is wonderful, yes. But I, you know, I'm, I'm tempted to play, uh, the journey back at you, which is that so GitHub is currently is, is amazing. But the thing is, if you have a stake, then if it's a social media platform, they can use the fact that you have a stake to manipulate you because you want to preserve the stake. (laughs) So like-

Jaron Lanier 43:25 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 43:25 ... so like-

Jaron Lanier 43:26 Right. Well, this is why-

Lex Fridman 43:27 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 43:27 This gets... All right. This gets us into the economics.

Jaron Lanier 43:29 So there's this thing called data dignity-

Lex Fridman 43:30 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 43:31 ... that I've been studying for a long time. I wrote a book about an earlier version of it called Who Owns the Future?

Lex Fridman 43:36 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 43:36 Um, and the, the, the basic idea of it is that... (laughs) Once again, this is a 30-year conversation.

Lex Fridman 43:43 It's a fascinating topic, yeah.

Jaron Lanier 43:44 Let me do the fastest version of this I can do. The fastest way I know how to do this is to compare two futures.

Lex Fridman 43:50 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 43:50 All right. Uh, so future one is then the normative one, the one we're building right now. And, and future two is gonna be data dignity. Okay. And, um, and I'm gonna use a particular population. I live on The Hill in Berkeley. And one of the features about The Hill is that as the climate changes, we might burn down, and all, lose our houses or die or something. Like it's, it's dangerous, you know, and it didn't used to be. And so, um, who keeps us alive? Well, the city does. The city does some things. The electric company, kind of, sort of, maybe hopefully better. Um, individual people who own property take care of their property. That's all nice, but there's this other middle layer, which is fascinating to me, which is that the groundskeepers who work up and down that hill, many of whom are not legally here, many of whom don't speak English, cooperate with each other to make sure trees don't touch to transfer fr- fire easily from lot to lot. They have this whole little web that's keeping us safe. I didn't know about this at first. I just started talking to them 'cause they were out there during the pandemic. And so I tried to just see who are these people, who are these people who are keeping us alive. Now, I wanna talk about the two different fates for those people under future one and future two.

Lex Fridman 45:04 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 45:05 Future one, um, some weird like kindergarten paint job van with all these like cameras and where things... drives up, observes what the gardeners and groundskeepers are doing.

Lex Fridman 45:15 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 45:15 A few years later, some amazing robots that can shimmy up trees and all this show up. All those people are out of work.

Lex Fridman 45:21 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 45:21 And there are these robots doing the thing, and the robots are good. And they can scale to more land, and they're actually good, but then there are all these people out of work.

Lex Fridman 45:29 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 45:30 And these people have lost dignity, they don't know what they're gonna do. And, and then some will say, "Well, they go on basic income, whatever. They become w- uh, wards of the state." My problem with that solution is every time in history that you've had some centralized thing that's doling out the benefits, that things get seized by people because it's too centralized and it gets seized. This happened to every communist experiment I can find.

Lex Fridman 45:52 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 45:52 Um, so I think that turns into a, a poor future that will be de- unstable. I don't think people will feel good in it. I think it'll be a political disaster with a sequence of people seizing this central source of the, the basic income. And you'll say, "Oh, no, an algorithm can do it." Then people will seize the algorithm. They'll seize, they'll seize control.

Lex Fridman 46:11 Unless the algorithm is decentralized and it's impossible to seize the control.

Jaron Lanier 46:15 Yeah. But, but, uh-

Lex Fridman 46:17 It's very difficult.

Jaron Lanier 46:18 ... si- 60-something people own a quarter of all the Bitcoin. Like, like the things that we think are decentralized are not decentralized. So let's go to future two. Future two, the gardeners see that, that van with all the cameras and the kindergarten paint job and they say... or the groundskeepers and they say, "Hey, the robots are coming. We're gonna form a data union." And amazingly, California has a little baby data union law-

Lex Fridman 46:43 Really?

Jaron Lanier 46:43 ... emerging on the books. Yeah.

Lex Fridman 46:44 That's interesting. That's interesting.

Jaron Lanier 46:45 Uh, and so there's... and so they'll... um, and, and what they s- and they, they say, "We're gonna form, we're gonna form a data union and we're gonna... not only are we gonna sell our data to this place, but we're gonna make it better than it would have been if they were just grabbing it without our cooperation."

Lex Fridman 47:00 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 47:00 "And we're gonna improve it. We're gonna make the robots more effective. We're gonna make them better and we're gonna be proud of it. We're gonna become a new class of experts that are respected." And then here's the interesting... There's two things that are different about that world from future one. One thing, of cour- the people have more pride. They have more sense of, of ownership, of, uh, of auto- of, of agency, but what the robots do changes. Uh, instead of just like this functional, like, "We'll figure out how to keep the neighborhood from burning down," uh, you have this whole creative community that wasn't there before thinking, "Well, how can we make these robots better so we can keep on earning money?" There'll be waves of creative, uh, groundskeeping with spiral pumping- pumpkin patches and waves of cultural things. There'll be new ideas like, "Wow, I wonder if we could do something about climate change mitigation with how we do this? What about, what about fresh water? Can we... what about, can we make the food healthier? What about, what about..." All of a sudden, there'll be this whole creative community on the case. And isn't it nicer to have a high-tech future with more creative classes than one with more dependent classes? Isn't that a better future? But, but, but, but, but future one and future two have the same robots and the same algorithms. There's no technological difference. There's only a human difference.

Lex Fridman 48:20 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 48:21 And that second future too, that's data dignity.

Lex Fridman 48:25 The economy that you're... that means the game theory here is on the humans and then the technology is just the tools that enable what possibles-

Jaron Lanier 48:32 Yeah. You know, I mean, I think you can believe in AI and be in future two. I just think it's a little harder.

Lex Fridman 48:38 Harder.

Jaron Lanier 48:38 You have to do, you have to do more, um, contortions. It's, it's possible.

Lex Fridman 48:43 So in the case of social media, what does, uh, a data dignity look like? Is it the people getting paid for their data?

Jaron Lanier 48:51 Yeah. I think, um, what should happen is, in the future, there should be, uh, massive data unions, uh, for people putting...... content into the system and those data unions should smooth out the results a little bit so it's not winner take all, but at the same time, uh, and people have to pay for it too. They have to pay for Facebook the way they pay for Netflix with, with an allowance for the poor. There has to be a, there has to be a way out too. But the thing is, people do pay for Netflix. It's a going concern. Uh, people pay for Xbox and PlayStation. Like, people... There's enough people to pay for stuff they want this could happen to. It's just that this precedent started that moved it in the wrong direction. And then what has to happen i- uh, the economy's a measuring device. If it's an honest, honest measuring device, the outcomes for people form a normal distribution, a bell curve.

Lex Fridman 49:45 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 49:45 And then so there should be a few people who do really well, a lot of people who do okay, and then we should have an expanding economy reflecting more and more creativity and expertise flowing through the network. And that expanding economy moves the result just a bit forward so more people are getting money out of it than are putting money into it so it gradually expands the economy and lifts all boats. And it, and the society has to support the, the, the lower wing of the bell curve too, but not universal basic income. It has to be for the... you know, 'cause-

Lex Fridman 50:14 Right.

Jaron Lanier 50:14 ... if it's an honest, if it's an honest economy, there will be, uh, that lower wing and we, we have to support those people. There has to be a safety net. Um, but, um, see what I believe, I'm not gonna talk about AI, but I will say that I think there'll be more and more algorithms that are useful. And so I don't think everybody's gonna be supplying data to groundskeeping robots, nor do I think everybody's gonna make their living with TikTok videos. I think in both cases there'll be a rather small contingent that do well enough at either of those things, but I think there might be many, many, many, many of those niches that start to evolve as there are more and more algorithms, more and more robots. And it's that large number that will create the economic potential-

Lex Fridman 50:56 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 50:57 ... for a very large part of society to become members of new creative classes.

Lex Fridman 51:01 Do you think it's possible to, um, to create a social network that competes with Twitter and Facebook that's large and centralized in this way? Not centralized. Sorry, large, large.

Jaron Lanier 51:12 How to get... All right, so I gotta tell you, how to get from what I'm talking, how to get from where we are to anything kind of in the zone of what I'm talking about is challenging. Um, I know some of the people who run... Like, I know Jack Dorsey-

Lex Fridman 51:27 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 51:27 ... and I view Jack as somebody who's actually... (sighs) I think he's really striving and searching and find- and trying to find a way to make it better, uh, but is kind of, like... It's very hard to do it while in flight.

Lex Fridman 51:44 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 51:44 And he's under enormous business pressure too. Um-

Lex Fridman 51:47 So Jack-

Jaron Lanier 51:47 I don't-

Lex Fridman 51:47 ... Dorsey to me is a fascinating study because-

Jaron Lanier 51:50 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 51:50 ... I think his mind is in a lot of good places. He's a, he's a good-

Jaron Lanier 51:53 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 51:53 ... human being, but there's a big Titanic ship that's already moving in one direction. It's hard to know what to do with it.

Jaron Lanier 51:59 That's, I think that's the story of Twitter. I think that's the story of Twitter. Um, one of the things that I observe is that if you just wanna look at the human side, meaning like, how are people being changed, how do they feel, what is the culture like, almost all of the social media platforms that get big have an initial sort of honeymoon period where they're actually kind of sweet and cute.

Lex Fridman 52:20 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 52:20 Like, if you look at the early years of Twitter, it was really sweet and cute. But also look at Snap, um, TikTok. And then what happens is as they scale and the algorithms become more influential instead of just the early people, when it gets, when it gets big enough that it's the algorithm running it, then you start to see the rise of the paranoid style, and then they start to get dark. And, and we- we've seen that shift in TikTok rather recently.

Lex Fridman 52:43 But I feel like that scaling reveals the flaws within the incentives.

Jaron Lanier 52:51 I feel like I'm torturing you. I'm sorry. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 52:53 No, no, no, it's not torture. Uh, no, because-

Jaron Lanier 52:56 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 52:56 ... I, I have hope, uh, for the world with, with humans and I have hope for a lot of things that humans create, including technology. And I just, uh, I feel that it's possible to create, uh, social media platforms that incentivize lo-

Jaron Lanier 53:11 I think-

Lex Fridman 53:11 ... different things than the current. I think, eh, the current incentivization is around, like, the dumbest possible thing that was invented, like, 20 years ago or however long and it just works and so nobody's changing it. I just think that there could be a lot of innovation for more... See, see, you kind of pushed back this idea that we can't know what long-term growth or happiness is. I, I... If you give control to people to define what their long-term happiness and goals are, then you, that (laughs) optimization can happen for each of those individual people. Y- you know, the-

Jaron Lanier 53:46 Well, I mean, (sighs) imagine a future where probably a lot of people would love to make their living doing TikTok dance videos but people recognize generally that's kind of hard to get into.

Lex Fridman 54:03 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 54:04 Nonetheless, dance crews have an experience that's very similar to, uh, programmers working together on GitHub, so the future is like a cross between TikTok and GitHub.

Lex Fridman 54:14 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 54:14 And they get together and they have-

Lex Fridman 54:16 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 54:16 ... their nego- they have rights. They're negotiating, they're negotiating for returns. They join different artist societies in order to soften the blow of the randomness of who gets the, the network effect benefit 'cause nobody can know that.

Lex Fridman 54:30 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 54:31 And, uh, they, uh... And I think an individual person might join a thousand different data unions in the course of their lives-

Lex Fridman 54:39 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 54:39 ... or maybe even 10,000. I, I don't know. But the point is that we'll have, like, these very hedged, distributed portfolios of different data unions we're part of. And some of them might just trickle in a little money for nonsense stuff where we're contributing to health studies or something. And, but, I think people will find their way. They'll find their way to the right GitHub-like community in which they find their value.... in the context of supplying inputs and data and taste and correctives and, and all of this into the algorithms and the robots of the future.

Lex Fridman 55:14 And that is a way to resist the, um, the lizard brain-based funding assist mechanisms.

Jaron Lanier 55:23 It's an alternate economic system that rewards productivity, creativity, uh, value as perceived by others. It's a genuine market. It's not doled out from a center. There's not some communist person deciding who's valuable. It's an actual market. Uh, and the- that money is made by supporting that instead of just grabbing people's attention in the cheapest possible way, which is definitely how you get the lizard brain.

Lex Fridman 55:49 Yeah. I- I... Okay, so we- we're finally at the agreement, right?

Jaron Lanier 55:55 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 55:55 But I, I just think that... S- so here, I'll tell you what I- how I think, uh, to f- fix social media. There- there's a few thing-

Jaron Lanier 56:04 Okay.

Lex Fridman 56:04 ... there's a few things. So one, I think people should have complete control over their data and transparency of, uh, what that data is and how it's being used if they do hand over the control. Another thing, they should be able to delete, walk away with their data at any moment.

Jaron Lanier 56:19 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 56:19 Easy. Like, with a single click of a button. Maybe two buttons, I don't know. Just easily walk away with their data. Uh, th- the other is control of the algo- individualized control of the algorithm for them, so each one has their own algorithm. Each person has their own algorithm. They get to be the decider of, uh, what they see in this world. And to me, that... I mean, that's f- I guess fundamentally decentralized in terms of the key decisions being made. But if that's made transparent, I feel like people will choose that system over Twitter of today, over Facebook of today, when they have the ability to walk away, to control their data, and to control the kinds of thing they see. Now, let's walk away for a minute from the term AI. You're- you're right. In this case, you- y- you have full control of the algorithms that help you if you want to use their help, but you can also say F U to those algorithms and just, uh, uh, consume the raw beautiful waterfall (laughs) of the internet. I- I think that... Uh, to- to me, this not only fixes social media, but I think it would make a lot more money. So, I would like to challenge the idea, I- I know you're not presenting that, but that the only way to make a ton of money is to operate like Facebook is. I think you can make more money by giving people control.

Jaron Lanier 57:38 Yeah. I mean, I certainly believe that. We're- we're definitely in the territory of- of, uh, wholehearted agreement here.

Lex Fridman 57:45 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 57:46 Um, I- I do wanna caution against one thing, which is-

Lex Fridman 57:50 Okay.

Jaron Lanier 57:50 ... making a future that benefits programmers versus pe- like, this idea that people are in control of their data. So, um, years ago, I co-founded an advisory board for the EU with a guy named Giovanni Bottarelli who passed away. It's one of the reasons I wanted to mention it. A remarkable guy who'd been... Uh, he was originally a prosecutor (laughs) who was throwing mafioso in jail (laughs) in- in Sicily. So, he's like this intense guy who is like, "I've been... I dealt with death threats. Mar- Mark Zuckerberg doesn't scare me," whatever. So, um, we worked, we worked on this path of saying let's make it all about transparency and consent, and it was one of the feeders that led to this huge, uh, data, uh, data privacy and, and, uh, protection framework in Europe called the GDPR.

Lex Fridman 58:33 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 58:34 And, uh, so therefore, we've been able to have, uh, empirical feedback on how that goes. And the problem is that most people actually get stymied by the complexity of that kind of management. They have trouble, and reasonably so. I don't. I'm- I'm like a techie, you know? I can, I can go in and I can figure out what- what's going on. But, um, I... Most people really do. And my... A- and so there's the problem that it- it- it- it- it differentially, it differentially benefits those who kind of have a technical mindset and can go in and sort of-

Lex Fridman 59:06 Sure.

Jaron Lanier 59:06 ... have a feeling for how this stuff works. I kind of still want to come back to incentives. And so, if the incentive for whoever is... If the commercial incentive is to help the creative people of the future make more money-

Lex Fridman 59:18 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 59:18 ... 'cause you get a cut of it, that's how you grow an economy.

Lex Fridman 59:22 Not the programmers.

Jaron Lanier 59:24 W- well, some of them will be programmers. It's not anti-programmers.

Lex Fridman 59:26 All right.

Jaron Lanier 59:26 I'm just saying that, um, it's not only programmers.

Lex Fridman 59:29 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 59:30 You know? So, uh...

Lex Fridman 59:32 No, I- I mean, I def- so yeah, you- you have to make sure the incentives are right. I mean, I like... (laughs) Control is an interface problem to where you have to create something that's- that's, uh, compelling to everybody, to the creatives, to- to- to- to- to- to the public. I mean, th- there is, um, I don't know, Creative Commons, like, the licensing, uh...

Jaron Lanier 59:54 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 59:54 It's... You know, there- there's a bunch of legal speak just in- in- in- in general, the whole legal profession. It's nice when it can be simplified in a way that you can truly, you know, simply understand, everybody can simply understand, um, the- the basics. In that same way, it should, it should be very simple to understand how the data's being used and what data is being used for people.

Jaron Lanier 1:00:17 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:00:17 But then you're arguing that in order for that happen, you have to have the incentives aligned correctly.

Jaron Lanier 1:00:22 I mean, a lot of the reason that money works is actually information hiding and information loss. Like, one of the things about money is a particular dollar you get might have passed through your enemy's hands and you don't know it. But also, and this is... I mean, this is what Adam Smith... If you wanna give the most charitable interpretation possible-

Lex Fridman 1:00:43 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:00:43 ... to the invisible hand, is what he was saying, is that, like, there's this whole complicated thing, and not only do you not need to know about it, the truth is you'd never be able to follow it if you tried. And just, like, let the economic incentives solve for this whole thing, and- and- and that, um, in a sense, every transaction's like a neuron in a neural net. If- if- if he'd had that metaphor, he would've used it. And, uh, let the whole thing settle to a solution and don't worry about it. Um, I- I think this idea of, uh...... having incentives that reduce complexity for people can be made to work, and, a- and that's an example of an algorithm that could be manipulative or not, going back to your question before about can you do it in a way that's not manipulative. And I would say, um, a GitHub-like... if you just have this vision, GitHub plus TikTok combined, is it possible? I think it is. I really think it is.

Lex Fridman 1:01:34 I'm not gonna be able to unsee that idea (laughs) of creatives on TikTok collaborating in the same way that people on GitHub collaborate.

Jaron Lanier 1:01:42 Why not?

Lex Fridman 1:01:43 I like that kind of version. (laughs) I like it.

Jaron Lanier 1:01:45 Why not?

Lex Fridman 1:01:45 I like it. I love it.

Jaron Lanier 1:01:46 Like, I just... Like right now, when people use... By the way, father of teenage daughter, so-

Lex Fridman 1:01:50 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 1:01:50 (laughs) It's not-

Lex Fridman 1:01:51 It's all bought TikTok, right?

Jaron Lanier 1:01:53 (laughs) So, you know, when people use TikTok, there's a lot of, of, uh... it's kind of funny, I was gonna say cattiness, but I was just using the cat as this exemplar of what we're talking about, so

Narrator 1:02:03 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:02:04 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:02:04 I contradict myself. But anyway-

Lex Fridman 1:02:06 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:02:06 ... there's all this cattiness where people are like, "Eh, this person," blah, blah, blah, blah. And, and I, I just, um, uh... What about people getting together and

Narrator 1:02:13 (sighs)

Jaron Lanier 1:02:14 ... contemp- kind of saying, "Okay, we're gonna work on this move. We're gonna get a better... Can we get a better musician?" Like, and they, they do that-

Lex Fridman 1:02:20 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 1:02:20 ... but that's the part that's kind of off the books right now, you know?

Lex Fridman 1:02:25 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:02:25 That should be like right there, that should be the center. That's where the... That's the really best part.

Lex Fridman 1:02:29 Well, that's, that's where the invention of Git, period, the versioning, is brilliant, and-

Jaron Lanier 1:02:33 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:02:34 So some of the, some of the things you're talking about, technology, algorithms, tools, can empower.

Jaron Lanier 1:02:40 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:02:40 And that's, that's the thing, for humans to, to connect, to collaborate and so on. Can we, uh,

Lex Fridman 1:02:46 can we upset more people a little bit? You already-

Jaron Lanier 1:02:48 I th- maybe. We'd have to try.

Lex Fridman 1:02:50 No, no, can we, uh-

Jaron Lanier 1:02:51 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:02:51 ... can I ask you (laughs) to elabor-... 'Cause I... my intuition was that you would be a supporter of something like cryptocurrency and Bitcoin because-

Jaron Lanier 1:02:59 Oh.

Lex Fridman 1:02:59 ... it is fundamentally emphasizes decentralization.

Jaron Lanier 1:03:03 (sighs)

Lex Fridman 1:03:03 What do you... So, so can you elaborate (laughs) on what-

Jaron Lanier 1:03:05 Yeah. Okay, look.

Lex Fridman 1:03:06 ... your thoughts on Bitcoin?

Jaron Lanier 1:03:08 Um, I, um... It's kind of funny. Um, I, I wrote a... I... (sighs) I've been advocating some kind of digital currency for a long time.

Lex Fridman 1:03:17 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 1:03:17 And when the, the, uh... when the... when Bitcoin came out in the original paper on, on blockchain, um, my heart kind of sank because I thought, "Oh my God, we're, we're applying all of this fancy thought and all these very careful distributed security measures to recreate the gold standard?" Like, it's just so retro, it's so dysfunctional.

Lex Fridman 1:03:42 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:03:42 It's so useless from an economic point of view. So it's always ama-... And then the other thing is using computational inefficiency at a boundless scale as your form of security is a crime against this atmosphere, obviously. A lot of people know that now, but we knew that at the start. Like, the thing is, when the first paper came out, I remember a lot of people saying, "Oh my God, if this th- this thing scales, it's a carbon disaster," you know? And, and, um, I, I just like... I'm just mystified. But that, that's a different question than when you asked, can you have, um, a cryptographic currency, or at least some kind of digital currency, that's of a benefit? And absolutely. Like I'm... And there are people who are trying to be thoughtful about this. You should, uh... If you haven't, you should interview, uh, Vitalik Buterin some time.

Lex Fridman 1:04:25 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:04:26 There, there are people in-

Lex Fridman 1:04:26 I interviewed him twice. (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:04:27 Okay. So like, there are people in the community who are trying to be thoughtful and trying to figure out how to do this better.

Lex Fridman 1:04:32 Yeah. It has nice properties though, right? So the... one of the nice properties-

Jaron Lanier 1:04:35 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 1:04:35 ... is that like government centralized, it's hard to control. Uh, and then the other one... To fix some of the issues that you're referring to, I'm sort of playing devil's advocate-

Jaron Lanier 1:04:43 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:04:43 ... here is, you know, there's Lightning Network, there's ideas how to u-... how you, uh, build stuff on top of Bitcoin, similar with gold, that allow you to have this kind of vibrant economy that operates not on the blockchain, but outside the blockchain, and uses, uh, Bitcoin for, uh, for like checking the security of those transactions.

Jaron Lanier 1:05:03 Mm. So Bitcoin's not new. It's been around for a while.

Lex Fridman 1:05:05 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 1:05:06 I've been watching it closely. I've ne- I've not seen one e- example of it creating economic growth. There was this obsession with the idea that government was the problem. That idea that government's the problem, let's say, government earned that wrath honestly, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:05:22 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:05:22 ... because if you look at some of the things that governments have done in recent decades, it's not a pretty story. Like, uh, after, uh, after a very small number of people in the US government decided to bomb and landmine Southeast Asia, it's hard to come back and say, "Oh, government's this great thing." But, uh, then... (sighs) The problem is that this resistance to government is basically a resistance to politics. It's a way of saying, "If I can get rich, nobody should bother me." It's a way of not, of not having obligations to others. And that, ultimately, is a very suspect motivation.

Lex Fridman 1:06:00 But does that mean that the impulse, that the government, um, should not overreach its power is flawed?

Jaron Lanier 1:06:09 Well, I mean, what I want to ask you to do is to replace the word government with politics. Like, our politics is people having to deal with each other, but-

Lex Fridman 1:06:20 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:06:20 ... my theory about freedom is that the only authentic form of freedom is perpetual annoyance. That... All right. So-

Lex Fridman 1:06:28 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:06:28 ... annoyance means you're actually dealing with people 'cause people are annoying.

Lex Fridman 1:06:31 Right.

Jaron Lanier 1:06:31 Perpetual means that that annoyance is survivable, so it doesn't destroy us all.

Lex Fridman 1:06:36 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 1:06:36 So if you have perpetual annoyance, then you have freedom. If you don't-

Lex Fridman 1:06:39 And that's politics.

Jaron Lanier 1:06:39 That's politics. If you don't have-

Lex Fridman 1:06:41 (sighs)

Jaron Lanier 1:06:41 ... perpetual annoyance, something's gone very wrong, and you suppress those people, it is only temporary, it's gonna come back and be horrible. You should seek perpetual annoyance. I'll invite you to a Berkeley City Council meeting so you can know what that feels like. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:06:54 What perpetual annoyance feels like. (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:06:57 (laughs) But anyway, so freedom is being... the test of freedom is that you're annoyed by other people. If you're not, you're not free. If you're not, you're trapped in some temporary illusion that's gonna fall apart. Now, um, the- this quest to avoid government is really a quest to avoid that political feeling, but you have to have it. You have to deal with it.... um, and it sucks, but that's the con- the human situation. That's the human condition. And this idea that we're gonna have this abstract thing that protects us from having to deal with each other is always

Jaron Lanier 1:07:26 an illusion.

Lex Fridman 1:07:26 The idea... And I- I apologize, I'm... Uh, overstretched the use of the word government. The idea is there should be some punishment from the people when a group, um, when a bureaucracy, when a set of p- when a set of people or a particular leader, like in an authoritarian regime, which more than half the world currently lives under, if you...

Jaron Lanier 1:07:48 Mm.

Lex Fridman 1:07:48 Uh, like, if they become, they start, stop representing the people, it stops being like a Berkeley, uh, meeting and starts being more like a- like a dictatorial kind of, uh-

Jaron Lanier 1:08:01 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:08:01 ... situation. So, the point is, it- it's nice to give people, uh, the populous in- in decentralized way, power to, um, resist that kind of, uh-

Jaron Lanier 1:08:14 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:08:14 ... government becoming over-authoritarian.

Jaron Lanier 1:08:15 Yeah. But people... See this idea that the problem is always the government being powerful is false. Um, the problem can also be criminal gangs. The problem can also be weird cults. The problem can be abusive, um, abusive clergy. The problem can be, uh-

Lex Fridman 1:08:33 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:08:33 ... uh, fal- infrastructure that fails. The problem can be, uh, poisoned water. The problem can be failed electric grids. The problem can be, um, uh, a crappy education system that makes the- the whole society, uh, less and less able to- to create value. There are all these other problems that are different from an overbearing government. Like you have to keep some sense of perspective and not be obsessed with only one kind of problem, because then the others will pop up.

Lex Fridman 1:09:01 But- but empirically speaking, some problems are bigger than others. So like, some, uh, like, uh, uh, groups of people, like governments or gangs, or companies lead to problems more than-

Jaron Lanier 1:09:12 Have, has... Are you- are you a US citizen?

Lex Fridman 1:09:13 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 1:09:14 Has the government ever really been a problem for you?

Lex Fridman 1:09:16 Well, okay. So first of all, I grew up in the Soviet Union. Used to, used to... Well, and actually

Narrator 1:09:20 Live there.

Jaron Lanier 1:09:20 Yeah, my wife did too. Like, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:22 So, so I- I have-

Jaron Lanier 1:09:23 That-

Lex Fridman 1:09:23 ... I have seen, you know, um...

Jaron Lanier 1:09:25 Yeah, sure.

Lex Fridman 1:09:26 Uh, and has the government bothered me? I would say that, uh, that's- that's a really complicated question, especially because the United States is such... It's a special place in like- like a- like a lot of other countries, but there's-

Jaron Lanier 1:09:39 My wife's family were Refuseniks, and so we have like a very... And, uh, her dad was sent to the Gulag, uh, for what it's worth, uh, on my father's side, all but a few were killed by a pogrom in- in, uh, a post-Soviet pogrom in Ukraine. So, I- I-

Lex Fridman 1:09:58 S- I- I would think-

Jaron Lanier 1:09:58 ... I'm-

Lex Fridman 1:09:58 ... 'cause- 'cause you did a-

Jaron Lanier 1:09:59 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:09:59 ... little trick of, uh, eloquent trick of language that you switched to the United States to talk about government. So, I am... I'm... I believe, unlike my friend, Michael Malice, who's an anarchist, I believe, (laughs) go- government can do a lot of good in the world. That is exactly what you're saying, which is, it's- it's politics. The thing that Bitcoin folks and cryptocurrency folks argue is that one of the big ways that governments-

Jaron Lanier 1:10:25 Uh-huh.

Lex Fridman 1:10:25 ... can control the populous is a centralized bank, like, control the- the- the money. That was the case in the Soviet Union too. There's... You know, uh, inflation is- can really make poor people suffer. And so, th- what they argue is, this is one way to go around that power that government has, uh, of controlling the monetary system. So, that's a way to resist. That's not actually s- saying, "Government, bad." That's saying some of the ways that, uh, central banks get into trouble can be resisted-

Jaron Lanier 1:11:01 Right.

Lex Fridman 1:11:01 ... through decentralized

Narrator 1:11:01 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:11:01 So- so let me ask you on balance today in the real world, in terms of actual facts, do you think cryptocurrencies are doing more to prop up corrupt, murderous, horrible regimes or to resist those regimes? Where do you think the balance is right now?

Lex Fridman 1:11:17 I- I- I know exactly, uh, having talked to a lot of cryptocurrency folks what they would tell me, right? I... It's hard... It's... I don't... No, no.

Jaron Lanier 1:11:27 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:11:27 No, no. But-

Jaron Lanier 1:11:27 I- I'm asking it as a real question. I- there's no-

Lex Fridman 1:11:29 I- I-

Jaron Lanier 1:11:29 ... way to know the answer perfectly.

Lex Fridman 1:11:30 There's no way to know the answer perfectly.

Jaron Lanier 1:11:32 However, however, I gotta say, um, if you look at people who've been able to decode, uh, blockchains, and they- they do leak a lot of data. They're not as secure as is widely thought. There are a lot of unknown, uh, Bitcoin whales from pretty early, and they're huge. And if you ask, "Who are these people?" Um, there's evidence that a lot of them are quite un-... Not the people you'd wanna support, let's say. And I- I just don't... Look, I think empirically this idea that there's some intrinsic way that bad governments will be... will- will- will be disempowered and people will be able to resi- resist them more than new villains or even villainous governments will be empowered, there's no basis for that assertion. It- it just is kind of circumstantial. And, uh, I think in general, Bitcoin ownership is one thing, but Bitcoin transactions have tended to support criminality more than productivity.

Lex Fridman 1:12:37 Of course, they would argue that was- that was the story of its early days, that now more and more c- or, bi- bitcoin is being used for, uh, legitimate transactions. But-

Jaron Lanier 1:12:47 That's the differ-... I didn't say for legitimate transactions. I said for economic growth, for- for creativity. Like-

Lex Fridman 1:12:52 Sure.

Jaron Lanier 1:12:52 ... um, I, uh, I think what's happening is people are using it a little bit for- for buying... I don't know, maybe somebody's, uh... Companies make it available for this and that.

Lex Fridman 1:13:03 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:03 You can buy a Tesla with it or something.

Lex Fridman 1:13:05 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:05 Um, investing in a startup? Hard. It might have happened a little bit, but it's- it's not an engine of productivity, creativity and economic growth.

Lex Fridman 1:13:16 Sure.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:16 Uh, whereas old-fashioned currency still is.

Lex Fridman 1:13:18 Yes.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:18 And-... uh, anyway, I'm... Look, I think something... I'm, I'm pro the idea of digital currencies.

Lex Fridman 1:13:26 Sure.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:28 I'm anti the idea of economics wiping out politics as a result.

Lex Fridman 1:13:37 (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:13:37 I think they have to exist in some balance to avoid the worst dysfunctions of each.

Lex Fridman 1:13:42 In some ways, there's parallels to our discussion of algorithms and cryptocurrency, is you're pro the idea but it can be used, uh, to manipulate, it can use, be used poorly by, uh, aforementioned humans.

Jaron Lanier 1:13:59 Well, I think that you can make better designs and worse designs.

Lex Fridman 1:14:03 Sure.

Jaron Lanier 1:14:03 And I think... And, you know, the thing about cryptocurrency that's so interesting is how many of us are responsible for the poor designs because we're all so hooked on that Horatio Alger story on like, "I'm gonna be the one who gets the viral benefit." You know-

Lex Fridman 1:14:20 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:14:20 ... way, way back when all this stuff was starting, I remember, it would have been in the '80s, somebody had the idea of using viral as a metaphor for network effect. And the whole point was to talk about how bad network effect was, that it always created distortions that ruined the, the usefulness of economic incentives, that that created dangerous distortions. Like, eh, but then somehow, even after the pandemic, we think of viral as this good thing because we imagine ourselves as the virus, right? We wanna be on the, on the beneficiary side of it. But, of course, you're not likely to be.

Lex Fridman 1:14:54 There is a sense, because money is involved, people are not reasoning, uh, clearly always, because they want to be... they want to be part of that first viral wave that makes them rich, and that blinds people from their basic morality.

Jaron Lanier 1:15:11 I had an interesting conversation. I don't... uh, I sort of feel like I should respect some people's privacy, but some of the initial people who started, uh, Bitcoin, I, I remember having an argument about like, it's intrinsically a Ponzi scheme, like, you, you know, the early people have more than the later people. And the further down the chain you get, the more you're subject to gambling-like dynamics, where it's more and more random and more and more subject to weird network effects and whatnot, unless you're a very small player, uh, perhaps, and you're just buying something. But even then, you'll be subject to fluctuations because the whole thing is just kind of... Uh, it, like, the... As it fluctuates, it's gonna wave around the little people more. And, um, they... and I remember the conversation turned to gambling, because gambling is a pretty large economic sector, and it's always struck me as being non-productive. Like, somebody goes to Las Vegas and they lose money, and so one argument is, "Well, they got entertainment. They paid for entertainment as they lost money, so that's fine." And the, and Las Vegas does up the losing of money in an entertaining way. So why not? It's like going to a show. So that's one argument. The argument that was made to me was different from that is that, "No, what they're doing is they're getting a chance to experience hope, and a lot of people don't get that chance. And so that's really worth it, even if they're gonna lose, they have that moment of hope, and they need to be able to experience that." And it was a very interesting argument. Um-

Lex Fridman 1:16:34 That's so heartbreaking because I- I've seen-

Jaron Lanier 1:16:36 Uh, well-

Lex Fridman 1:16:37 I've seen, but I've seen that where they, uh, that... I have that a little bit of a sense, I've, I've talked to some young people who invest in cryptocurrency.

Jaron Lanier 1:16:45 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:16:46 And it, what I see is this hope. This is the first thing that gave them hope, and that's so heartbreaking to me that you've gotten hope from the... So much is invested. Fe- it's like hope from somehow becoming rich as opposed to something, to me, I apologize, but money is, in the long term, not going to be a source of that deep meaning. It's good to have enough money, but it should not be the source of hope.

Jaron Lanier 1:17:11 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:17:12 And it's heartbreaking to me how many people it's the source of hope.

Jaron Lanier 1:17:16 Yeah, um, you've just described the psychology of virality or the psychology of, of trying to base a civilization on semi-random occurrences of network effect peaks.

Lex Fridman 1:17:29 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:17:29 And it doesn't really work. I mean, I think we need to get away from that. We need to soften those peaks. Um, and, uh, except Microsoft, which deserves every penny, but in every other

Jaron Lanier 1:17:41 case. (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:17:42 Well, you mentioned GitHub.

Jaron Lanier 1:17:43 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:17:44 I think what Microsoft did with GitHub was brilliant. I, I was very... Uh, okay, uh, if I can give a, a, not a critical, but-

Jaron Lanier 1:17:51 Sure, go ahead.

Lex Fridman 1:17:52 Uh, on Microsoft, because they recently purchased Bethesda. So Elder Scrolls is in their hands. I'm watching you, Microsoft. Do not screw up my favorite game. So, um-

Jaron Lanier 1:18:04 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:18:04 ... .......................... (laughs)

Jaron Lanier 1:18:05 But look, um, I'm not speaking for Microsoft.

Lex Fridman 1:18:07 No, for sure.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:07 I have an, I have an explicit arrangement with them where I don't speak for them, obviously. Like, that should be very clear. I do not speak for them.

Lex Fridman 1:18:14 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:14 Um, I, I am not saying, um... I like them. I think Satya is amazing. Um, the term data dignity was coined by Satya.

Lex Fridman 1:18:23 Mm-hmm.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:23 Like, so you, you know, we have... Uh, it's, it's kind of extraordinary. But, you know, Microsoft's this giant thing.

Lex Fridman 1:18:29 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:29 It's gonna screw up this or that. You know, it's not, it's not... I don't know. It's kind of interesting. I've had a few occasions in my life to see how things work from the inside of some big thing. And, you know, it's always just people kind of... It- it- it's... I don't know. There's always like coordination problems-

Lex Fridman 1:18:48 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:48 ... and there's al- there's always-

Lex Fridman 1:18:49 There's just human problems.

Jaron Lanier 1:18:50 Oh, my God. You know, it's like-

Lex Fridman 1:18:51 And there's some good people, there's-

Jaron Lanier 1:18:52 I- I-

Lex Fridman 1:18:52 ... some bad people. There's always-

Jaron Lanier 1:18:53 I hope Microsoft doesn't screw up their game. (laughs) You know-

Lex Fridman 1:18:56 And I hope they bring Clippy back. You should never-

Jaron Lanier 1:18:58 but-

Lex Fridman 1:18:58 ... kill Clippy. Bring Clippy back.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:00 Oh, Clippy. But Clippy promotes the myth of AI.

Lex Fridman 1:19:04 Well, that's why-

Jaron Lanier 1:19:04 Okay. How about, how about-

Lex Fridman 1:19:05 This is why I think you're wrong, is Clippy came back.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:06 How about if we... All right. Could we bring back Bob instead of Clippy?

Lex Fridman 1:19:10 Which one was Bob?

Jaron Lanier 1:19:11 Oh. (laughs) Bob was another thing. Like, Bob was this other screen character who was supposed to be the voice of AI.

Lex Fridman 1:19:16 Oh, yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:16 Cortana? Cortana? Would Cortana do it for you?

Lex Fridman 1:19:19 No. Cortana is too corporate.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:21 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:21 I want... (laughs) I like it.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:23 There's actually-

Lex Fridman 1:19:24 It was fine, but-

Jaron Lanier 1:19:24 ... there's a, there's a woman in Seattle who's like the model for Cortana, did Cortana's voice and was like-

Lex Fridman 1:19:28 The voice?

Jaron Lanier 1:19:29 ... there was like ... We had a-

Lex Fridman 1:19:29 No, the voice is great. I just-

Jaron Lanier 1:19:31 We had a vis- we had her as a ... She used to walk around in a h- if you were wearing HoloLenses for a bit. I don't think that's happening anymore. I think, I don't think you should turn a softwar- software into a creature. I think-

Lex Fridman 1:19:41 Well, you, you and I-

Jaron Lanier 1:19:42 Get a cat. Just get a cat.

Lex Fridman 1:19:43 You, you and I, you and I ... Well get, or get a dog.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:46 (laughs)

Lex Fridman 1:19:46 Get a dog.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:46 Or a dog, yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:47 The, uh, yeah. You're-

Jaron Lanier 1:19:48 Or a, a hedgehog.

Lex Fridman 1:19:49 A hedgehog.

Jaron Lanier 1:19:50 Yeah.

Lex Fridman 1:19:51 Uh, you co-authored a paper, we mentioned Lee Smolin, uh, titled The Autodidactic Universe ...

Jaron Lanier 1:19:59 Mm-hmm.

Lex Fridman 1:20:00 ... which describes our universe as one that learns its own physical laws. That's a trippy and beautiful and powerful idea.

Jaron Lanier 1:20:09 (laughs) .

Lex Fridman 1:20:09 What are, what would you say are the key ideas in this paper?

Jaron Lanier 1:20:12 Ah, okay. Well, I should say, uh, that paper reflected work from last year. And the project, the program has moved quite a lot. So it's a little ... There's a lot of stuff that's not published that I'm quite excited about, so I have to kind of keep my frame in that, in that, uh, last year's things. So, I have to try to be a little careful about that.

Lex Fridman 1:20:32 Yeah.

Jaron Lanier 1:20:32 Um, we can think about it in a few different ways. Um, the core of the paper, the, the technical core of it, is a triple correspondence. Uh, one part of it was, uh, already established, and then another part is in the process. The part that was established was, um, of course understanding different theories of physics as matrix models. The part that w- uh, was, uh, fresher is understanding those as machine lea- machine learning systems, so that we