EVERY SPOKEN WORD
150 min read · 30,114 words- 0:00 – 1:18:04
Intro
- LFLex Fridman
As part of MIT Course 6.099, Artificial General Intelligence, I've gotten a chance to sit down with Max Tegmark. He is a professor here at MIT. He's a physicist, spent a large part of his career studying the mysteries of our cosmological universe, but he's also studied and delved into the beneficial possibilities and the existential risks of artificial intelligence. Amongst many other things, he's the co-founder of the Future of Life Institute, author of two books, both of which I highly recommend. First, Our Mathematical Universe. Second is Life 3.0. He's truly an out-of-the-box thinker, and a fun personality, so I really enjoyed talking to him. If you'd like to see more of these videos in the future, please subscribe and also click the little bell icon to make sure you don't miss any videos. Also, Twitter, LinkedIn, agi.mit.edu if you wanna watch other lectures or conversations like this one. Better yet, go read Max's book, Life 3.0. Chapter 7 on goals is my favorite. It's really where philosophy and engineering come together, and it opens with a quote by Dostoevsky, "The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for." Lastly, I believe that every failure rewards us with an opportunity to learn. In that sense, I've been very fortunate to fail in so many new and exciting ways, and, uh, this conversation was no different. I've learned about something called radio frequency interference, RFI. Look it up. Apparently, music and conversations from local radio stations can bleed into the audio that you're recording in such a way that it almost completely ruins that audio. It's an exceptionally difficult sound source to remove. So, I've gotten the opportunity to learn how to avoid RFI in the future during recording sessions. I've also gotten the opportunity to learn how to use Adobe Audition and iZotope RX 6 to do some noise, some audio repair. Of course, this is an exceptionally difficult noise to remove. I am an engineer. I'm not an audio engineer, neither is anybody else in our group, but we did our best. Nevertheless, I thank you for your patience, and I hope you're still able to enjoy this conversation. Do you think there's intelligent life out there in the universe? Let's open up with an easy question.
- MTMax Tegmark
I have a minority view here, actually. When I give public lectures, I often ask for a show of hands, who thinks there's intelligent life out there somewhere else, and almost everyone puts their hand up and when I ask why, they'll be like, "Oh, there's so many galaxies out there, there's gotta be." But, I'm a nu- numbers nerd, right? So, when you look more carefully at it, it's not so clear at all. Th- the, when we talk about our universe, first of all, we don't mean all of space. We actually mean, I don't know, you can throw me the universe if you want, it's behind you there.
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MTMax Tegmark
It's, we simply mean the spherical region of space from which light has had time to reach us so far during the 14.8 billion year, 13.8 billion years since our Big Bang. There's more space here, but this is what we call a universe, because that's all we have access to.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MTMax Tegmark
So, is there intelligent life here that's gotten to the point of building telescopes and, and computers? My guess is no, actually. Uh, the probability-
- LFLex Fridman
Interesting.
- MTMax Tegmark
... of it happening on any given planet is some number, we don't know what it is, and, um, what we do know is that, uh, the number can't be super high, 'cause there's over a billion Earth-like planets in the Milky Way galaxy alone, many, uh, which are billions of years older than Earth. And, um, aside from some, um, UFO believers-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MTMax Tegmark
... you know, there isn't much evidence that any super advanced civilization has come here at all. And so, that's the famous Fermi paradox, right? And, and then if you, if you work the numbers, what you find is that, um, if- if you have no clue what the probability is of getting life on a given planet, so it could be 10 to the -10, 10 to the -20, or 10 to the -2, or any power of 10 is sort of equally likely if you wanna be really open-minded.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MTMax Tegmark
That translates into it being equally likely that our nearest neighbor is 10 to the 16 meters away, 10 to the 17 meters away, 10 to the 18. You know, by the time you get much less than, than 10 to the 16 already, we, we pretty much know there is nothing else that close. (clears throat) And when you get beyond-
- LFLex Fridman
Because they would've discovered us.
- MTMax Tegmark
They, yeah, they would've been discovered us long ago or if they're really close, we would've probably noted some engineering projects that they're doing.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MTMax Tegmark
And if it's beyond 10 to the 26 meters, that's already outside of here.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MTMax Tegmark
So, so my guess is actually that there, we are the only life in here that's gotten to the point of, uh, building advanced tech, which I think is, is very, um, puts a lot of responsibility on our shoulders to not screw up, you know? I, I think-
- LFLex Fridman
Absolutely.
- MTMax Tegmark
... people who take for granted that it's okay for us to screw up, have an accidental nuclear war or go extinct somehow because there's a sort of Star Trek-like situation out there where some other life forms are gonna come and bail us out, and it doesn't matter, so I, I think they're lulling us into a false sense of security.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- MTMax Tegmark
I think it's much more prudent to say, you know, "Let's be really grateful for this amazing opportunity we've had," and, uh, make the best of it, just in case it is down to us.
- LFLex Fridman
So from a physics perspective, do you think intelligent life, so it's unique from a sort of statistical view of the size of the universe, but from the basic matter of the universe, how difficult is it for intelligent life to come about, the kind of advanced tech building life?... are, i- is implied in your statement that it's really difficult-
- MTMax Tegmark
Mm-hmm.
- LFLex Fridman
... to create something like a human species?
- MTMax Tegmark
Well, I th- I think what we know is that going from no life to having life that can do our k- level of tech, there is some sort of, to going beyond that and actually settling a whole universe with life, there is some road, major roadblock there, which is some Great Filter, as, um, it's sometimes called. Which, whi- which is tough to get through. It's either... That r- that roadblock is either bef- behind us or in front of us.
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- MTMax Tegmark
I'm hoping very much that it's behind us. I'm, I'm super excited every time we get a new, uh, report from NASA saying they failed to find any life on Mars.
- LFLex Fridman
Mm.
- MTMax Tegmark
My guess, awesome.
- 1:18:04 – 1:21:38
Excitement about AI
- LFLex Fridman
sort of, um... I come from the... Russia, from the Soviet Union, and, um, I think for a lot of people in the 20th century, going to the moon, going to space was ins- an inspiring thing. I feel like the, the, uh... the, the universe of the mind, so AI, understanding, creating intelligence, is that for the 21st century. Uh, so it's really surprising, and I've heard you mention this. It's really surprising to me, both on the research funding side that it's not funded as greatly as it could be, but most importantly on the pol- politician side, that it's not part of the public discourse except in the killer bots, Terminator kind of view. That people are not yet, I think, perhaps excited by the possible positive future that we can, uh, build together, so-
- MTMax Tegmark
And we should be, because politicians usually just focus on the next election cycle, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Right.
- MTMax Tegmark
The single most important thing I feel we humans have learned in the entire history of science is that we're the masters of underestimation. We underestimated the size of, of, of our cosmos, again and again, realizing that everything we thought existed was just a small part of something grander, right? Planet, solar system, the galaxy, you know, clusters of galaxies, the universe. And we now know that we- that the future has just so much more potential-
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MTMax Tegmark
... than our ancestors could ever have dreamt of. Uh, this cosmos, I- I- imagine if all of Earth was completely devoid of life except for Cambridge, Massachusetts, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MTMax Tegmark
Wouldn't it be kind of lame if all we ever aspired to was to stay in Cambridge, Massachusetts forever, and then go extinct in one week, even though Earth was gonna continue on for longer? That, that, that sort of attitude, I think, we, we have now on the cosmic scale. We can fl- life can flourish on Earth not for, uh, not for four years, but for billions of years.
- LFLex Fridman
Yes.
- MTMax Tegmark
I can even tell you about how to move it out of harm's way when the sun, sun gets too hot. And, and then we have so much more resources out here, which today, yeah, maybe there are a lot of other planets with bacteria or, or cow-like life on them, but I... Most of this, all this opportunity seems, as far as we can tell, to be largely dead, like the Sahara Desert, and yet we have the opportunity that- to help life flourish-
- LFLex Fridman
Right. (laughs)
- MTMax Tegmark
... throughout this-
- LFLex Fridman
Throughout.
- MTMax Tegmark
... for billions of years. And so, like, let's quit squabbling about whether some little border should be drawn one-
- LFLex Fridman
(laughs)
- MTMax Tegmark
... one mile to the left or right, and-
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah.
- MTMax Tegmark
... look up into the skies and realize, hey, you know, we can do such incredible things.
- LFLex Fridman
Yeah, and that's, I think, why it's really exciting that, uh, uh, you and others are connected with some of the work Elon Musk is doing, because he's literally going out into that space-
- MTMax Tegmark
Yeah.
- LFLex Fridman
... really exploring our universe, and it's wonderful.
- MTMax Tegmark
And that is exactly why Elon Musk is so misunderstood, right?
- LFLex Fridman
Mm-hmm.
- MTMax Tegmark
People misconstrue him as some kind of pessimistic doomsayer. The, the reason he cares so much about AI safety is because he more than almost anyone else appreciates these amazing opportunities that we'll squander if we wipe o- out here on Earth. We're not just gonna wipe out the next generation, but all generations, and this incredible opportunity that's out there, and that would be- really be a waste. And AI, for people who, who think that it would be better to do without technology, well, let me just mention that if we don't improve our technology, the question isn't whether humanity is gonna go extinct.
Episode duration: 1:22:57
Install uListen for AI-powered chat & search across the full episode — Get Full Transcript
Transcript of episode Gi8LUnhP5yU
