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AI Safety Expert: No One Is Ready for What's Coming in 2 Years | Roman Yampolskiy

This episode is brought to you by Higgsfield — the AI video platform with Cinema Studio 2.5, built for creators who want cinematic quality without a production team. https://higgsfield.ai/s/general-siliconvalleygirl-tkNWEY Roman Yampolskiy has spent 15 years at the University of Louisville studying one question: can we control AI? His answer is no — and in 2026, he's watching the early evidence arrive. This year his CS department recorded a 28% drop in co-op placements. Prediction markets for AGI collapsed from 2045 to somewhere between 2028 and 2030. In this episode we cover what that actually means for your career, your money, and the companies racing to build what he believes cannot be controlled. If you've been using "AI" and "superintelligence" as the same word, this conversation will fix that. Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 1:14 Which Jobs Are Already Dead 4:38 The Broken Career Ladder 9:02 What Happens to Wealth With Free Labor? 14:24 AGI to Superintelligence: The Full Progression 15:31 Why We Can't Code Ethics Into AI 19:50 Can Anyone Actually Stop This? 23:29 Roman's Personal 5-Year Prediction 28:32 Where to Invest Before It's Too Late 31:33 5 Jobs That Survive the AI Takeover 34:37 College in 2026: Worth It or Not? Links: 📩 Follow my Newsletter: https://siliconvalleygirl.beehiiv.com/subscribe?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=video&utm_campaign=futureproof-sub&utm_content=RomanYampolskiy 🔗 My Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/siliconvalleygirl/ 📌 My Companies & Products: https://Marinamogilko.co 📹 Video brainstorming, research, and project planning - all in one place - https://partner.spotterstudio.com/ideas-with-marina 💻 Resources that helps my team and me grow the business: - Email & SMS Marketing Automation - https://your.omnisend.com/marina - AI app to work with docs and PDFs - https://www.chatpdf.com/?via=marina 📱Develop your YouTube with AI apps: - AI tool to edit videos in a minutes https://get.descript.com/fa2pjk0ylj0d - Boost your view and subscribers on YouTube - https://vidiq.com/marina - #1 AI video clipping tool - https://www.opus.pro/?via=7925d2 💰 Investment Apps: - Top credit cards for free flights, hotels, and cash-back - https://www.cardonomics.com/i/marina - Intuitive platform for stocks, options, and ETFs - https://a.webull.com/Tfjov8wp37ijU849f8 ⭐ Download my English language workbook - https://bit.ly/3hH7xFm I use affiliate links whenever possible (if you purchase items listed above using my affiliate links, I will get a bonus).

Roman YampolskiyguestMarina Mogilkohost
Apr 17, 202645mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

  1. 0:00 – 1:14

    Intro

    1. RY

      Long term, all jobs can be automated. Question is, do we decide to automate the job or do we prefer a human being to do it?

    2. MM

      [electronic music] This is Roman Yampolskiy, an AI safety professor who spent 15 years studying one question: Can we control AI? [whooshing sound]

    3. RY

      [sighs] I don't think we can. If we build them, there's nothing we can do. [electronic music] Artificial general intelligence means the system can do anything a human can do. So if we live in a world where that is true, let's say in two years, traditional paths to accumulate wealth, just having a job may not be available. [electronic music] But there are always other opportunities. We'll still have more time to ...

    4. MM

      You made this prediction that by 2030, 99% of jobs are going away. We're in 2026, how we're doing so far?

    5. RY

      I'm doing great. I don't know about the rest of you. The prediction is about capabilities.

    6. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    7. RY

      The technology will have to make it happen. It doesn't mean we'll decide to actually do that. Deployment through economy is very different from having technological capability to do something. Today we have self-driving cars, but we also have millions of drivers.

  2. 1:14 – 4:38

    Which Jobs Are Already Dead

    1. MM

      That's true, but I f- I feel like with the self-driving, the, the technology's not yet there 100% in terms of safety. Yes, it can do it within the city, like San Francisco. Once it go outside, like highways, they're still not sure. So when talking about... I have a lot of people who are watching who are maybe CPAs, managers, product managers, designers, and Anthropic released this. Uh, have you seen the, the stats that AI is capable to do like 20% of their jobs? There are still a lot of areas where AI is not capable. So according to you, how much can AI do now for a typical white collar worker?

    2. RY

      So there is no typical one. Some occupations, basically if you're a white collar worker, you're doing simple manipulation on a computer. For some of them, it's gone. It's gonna be-

    3. MM

      Already

    4. RY

      ... So many jobs, you don't buy tickets from an agent anymore. That used to be a human job. Thousands of people sold-

    5. MM

      Yeah. But that's not AI, that's internet. What about like AI?

    6. RY

      Well, I'm saying technology can replace-

    7. MM

      Yeah

    8. RY

      ... certain jobs completely-

    9. MM

      Yeah

    10. RY

      ... the moment technology comes. Right now, I, I, I think things like translation, for example, I can fully automate translation for many languages.

    11. MM

      Mm.

    12. RY

      Are there some esoteric languages? Are there needs for political translators? Maybe. But for many of those jobs, there is no future. I wouldn't suggest-

    13. MM

      So translator is done

    14. RY

      ... majoring in Spanish.

    15. MM

      Yeah. Yeah. Translator is done. Okay, who else?

    16. RY

      Uh, junior programmers. We see huge reduction in need for people who are just graduating college or looking for a co-op who need to, uh, basically be trained to, at some point in the future, be software engineers, system architects. Right now all they know is C, C++. That's not enough.

    17. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    18. RY

      We have, I think 28% drop in, uh, co-op placement for our department.

    19. MM

      Oh, wow. So you see it within your department already.

    20. RY

      Yeah.

    21. MM

      What do you tell them, those people who are unable to find jobs?

    22. RY

      Unfortunately, we don't tell them what they need to hear. We tell them, "Try to write a new CV, try to, you know, learning additional skills." But reality is, by the time they graduate, those are usually first year co-op students, they've been in the program for a couple years, by the time they graduate in another two years, it's gonna be much worse.

    23. MM

      Well, if you could talk to them right now, someone comes to you, a student, and says, "You know, I've learned C++ for two years, I can't find a job. What do I do?"

    24. RY

      So some of them decided they'll have more protection if they add hardware components. So if they do engineering on, on top of computer science, electrical engineering, nanoengineering, it will give them a little more protection.

    25. MM

      For a couple years, or [laughs] ...

    26. RY

      For a couple years. It's all question of so we got cognitive labor automated, then physical labor-

    27. MM

      Mm-hmm

    28. RY

      ... comes as soon as we get robots deployed, so another three years.

    29. MM

      You give three years till I have a robot in my household.

    30. RY

      I, I think, uh, again, there is a big difference between you can buy it today and it's commonplace. So you can buy a flying car today.

  3. 4:38 – 9:02

    The Broken Career Ladder

    1. RY

      That's exactly the problem we're facing. They don't have any future. And when we talk about seniors are fine right now, we're talking about very short term. Long term, all jobs can be automated. Question is, do we decide to automate the job, or do we prefer a human being to do it?

    2. MM

      Hmm. Who decides? Is it the companies?

    3. RY

      Consumer. If I want a human podcaster to interview me, I'll come to you. If I want a robot, I'll go to a robot.

    4. MM

      Is this... When we see, when you see layoffs, like we're seeing Meta is about to lay off-

    5. RY

      Mm

    6. MM

      ... a lot of people. Uh, we, we s- we saw Jack Dorsey's, um-

    7. RY

      Blog

    8. MM

      ... message blogs.

    9. RY

      Blog.

    10. MM

      But I think he's rehiring people. But also, I was just talking to Gary Vee. Um, he's a... I think he has 700 people in his company. He thinks it's really dumb to fire people right now just because, and I see it in my operation too, if 35 people can 2X my output, then I just hire more to, like, 5X my output. And if my competitor thinks the same, then it's... it makes no sense to fire people right now, just because a human plus 10 AI agents, uh, is way better than, you know, not having that human.

    11. RY

      And right now that's the case, that one human manages them and improves the productivity. But if you can replace that human with a model you get for 20 bucks a month, are you gonna pay that human?

    12. MM

      The thing is, there is no such model right now-

    13. RY

      Right now

    14. MM

      ... that makes-

    15. RY

      But again-

    16. MM

      ... strategic decisions, has taste, understands me

    17. RY

      ... we are not talking about today.

    18. MM

      Mm.

    19. RY

      Today is not interesting. You can look outside your window and see today. We wanna know what's coming.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm. And how fast, how soon is it coming?

    21. RY

      It's hyper-exponential. It's faster than we anticipated. Prediction markets had all this happen around 2045, then it collapsed. Then it's what you said, 2030, 2028.

    22. MM

      Okay. So is that most of the jobs... Are you still feel like, for example, agriculture. When you see it on, uh, look at Anthropic's report, agriculture is nowhere near being replaced with AI. When you say all the jobs, is it really all the jobs or just specific sectors?

    23. RY

      So I know nothing about agriculture.

    24. MM

      Okay.

    25. RY

      But if you have humanoid robots, that's physical labor, so that's the next wave. First, you have cognitive labor, anything you can do on a computer, any symbol manipulation.

    26. MM

      Yeah.

    27. RY

      That's where you're gonna see it happen. As soon as we get to human level, I see no reason to pay a human if the results are the same and you can get drop-in employee, essentially.

    28. MM

      Couple of years, you think?

    29. RY

      I- it seems quite possible. Okay, I'll give you that.

    30. MM

      Okay.

  4. 9:02 – 14:24

    What Happens to Wealth With Free Labor?

    1. RY

      We don't know what happens to economy with free labor. The moment you have free labor, do you get abundance and everything is just available because it's so cheap to produce, or something else happens? We don't have any good studies on what happens to value of fiat currency with free labor. What happens to cryptocurrencies? What happens to other investments? So do stocks in non-AI companies go down? Do stocks in AI companies go up? We don't have any understanding of that space. So generally, it's a good idea to have wealth and to have it early. You'll still have more time to grow it. But it may be the case that traditional paths to accumulate wealth, just having a job, may not be available.

    2. MM

      But do you think our society wouldn't be as... Like, it wouldn't adjust that fast to this new... Like, our governments, they wouldn't let this happen, or humans w- I don't know. Like, I can't imagine that in three years there's no way to make money.

    3. RY

      I, I didn't say that. I, I said-

    4. MM

      Mm

    5. RY

      ... traditional pathways where you get a job as a junior programmer-

    6. MM

      Mm

    7. RY

      ... may not be available to you.

    8. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    9. RY

      There are always other opportunities. AI is a great assistant to start a company.

    10. MM

      Yeah.

    11. RY

      If you have a team, 35 people right now, I can have 35 agents working for me for free. A lawyer, an accountant, Lego designer, web designer. That's an opportunity we never had before.

    12. MM

      That's also true, but then I think what prevents an LLM from seeing a gap in the market, creating a business to fill that gap, and making all the money for whoever made that model? Do you ever think about that?

    13. RY

      Models are not limited to whoever made them. We all get access to open source models, typically a few months after the top model, private model is released.

    14. MM

      That's true, but also I've seen the... I've heard this theory where, for example, if you're talking to a particular chat LLM, it collects all the data about your business, and then the goal for the owner of that model is to just identify those opportunities and take over them. Do you believe that?

    15. RY

      Luckily, the scale is very different. So if Sam Altman is trying to raise $6 trillion, your mom-and-pop business is not exactly his target to overtake.

    16. MM

      But if it's a whole market where mom-and-pop businesses thrive, I don't know, like, like car sales, whatever. Like where he takes over the whole industry.

    17. RY

      I think the bigger concern is automation of labor, not that an evil human will use AI-

    18. MM

      Mm-hmm

    19. RY

      ... to steal your business process.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. RY

      It may happen.

    22. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. RY

      No doubt it happened before AI, but I don't think that's where the big damage will come from.

    24. MM

      How many years do you give entrepreneurs?

    25. RY

      So there is two very different question we should be talking about. One is kinda business as usual, economics, and now we're trying to understand what works in new economy. The real problem, and that's kinda what I'm talking about in some of my research, is are we still around? Are we all dead? Is superintelligence going to take us out?

    26. MM

      I really... I can't imagine a world where we have, I don't know, one country, one company owning everything, 'cause that's when everything disappears, right? How, how does humanity disappear? I know AGI, and it starts within one company. If one company reaches AGI earlier than other companies, then it takes over the whole world. How do I utilize the years that I have left then?

    27. RY

      I, I think it's good idea to do things which you always postpone. So a lot of people kind of think, "I'll retire in 50 years, and that's when I'm gonna really live my life, have fun and all that." And sometimes it doesn't work out. Sometimes they die of cancer at 40. So try to do things you like sooner and not do things you don't care about at all.

    28. MM

      But wh- when it comes to a career, right? For a lot of people, careers... But this is interesting, right? So some people... Like, this is my hobby, right? I love that it pays the bills, but also I would do it anyway. I would find something else, but I would just still have these conversations. Isn't that amazing? If labor is free, then anyone can just do their hobby. For some people, it's gardening. For some people, it's having kids and just spending time with their kids. From what I've experienced so far, like, my life has become easier just because there are so many decisions I don't wanna be making, like s- choosing new insurance or thinking about how to optimize taxes or whatever, immigration. Uh, now AI solves it for me. I stopped missing days when my kids have to wear pajamas at school. Because they would always send us these long emails.

    29. RY

      Mm-hmm.

    30. MM

      Now I just ask Gemini to put everything in my calendar. So I wake up in the morning, I know it's pajama day today. I used to forget all the... So now my life's getting easier, and if I could do this podcast and, you know, it's cheaper for me to have my team or whatever. Like, isn't, isn't that a great world?

  5. 14:24 – 15:31

    AGI to Superintelligence: The Full Progression

    1. MM

      Is that the same?

    2. RY

      AGI is a precursor.

    3. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    4. RY

      So AGI is basically automation of human cognitive labor. It's a scientist. It's an engineer. Then artificial scientists and engineers start doing AI research. Very quickly progress goes hyper-exponential. We have systems not just smarter than any human in any domain, but smarter than all of us in all domains. Think someone with IQ of a million.

    5. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    6. RY

      We have no concept for that. We're like, oh, Einstein was 200. Many standard deviations away from the norm. So the cognitive gap is something like humans versus squirrels. Squirrels have no concept of what we are doing.

    7. MM

      Yeah.

    8. RY

      How we can harm them, traps, poisons, none of it makes sense to them. That will be very similar. We have systems capable of doing novel science, discovering novel physics. And if for whatever reason they decide to take us out, I don't know what the reason could be. It could be to protect them from creation of competing superintelligence. It could be to lower temperature of a planet, to improve compute. Could be something I cannot even think about.

    9. MM

      But can-

    10. RY

      But if they decide to do that, we cannot stop them.

  6. 15:31 – 19:50

    Why We Can't Code Ethics Into AI

    1. MM

      Can we instill the right values into AI?

    2. RY

      If you have a book of right values, you would be doing really well. We don't. Philosophers have spent millennia trying to agree on a set of ethical values. We don't. We disagree by religion, by region, by basically time in the history of humanity. What was ethical 100 years ago is considered completely unacceptable today. What we believe is ethical today, likewise, will be unacceptable in the future. If we somehow manage to agree on static ethics, not dynamically changing, but static, we have eight billion agents who don't agree on much. And then if we manage to agree and keep it static, we don't know how to code it up 'cause we don't program AI models. They are self-learning from data we supply.

    3. MM

      But if we supply data, this is your, like, personal constitution, right?

    4. RY

      Yeah.

    5. MM

      You don't kill humans.

    6. RY

      Yeah.

    7. MM

      You work for humans.

    8. RY

      Correct.

    9. MM

      You work for-

    10. RY

      So this is science fiction.

    11. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RY

      Isaac Asimov, Three Laws of Robotics, and he wrote that exactly to demonstrate that will never work. It will always fail. It creates interesting science fiction, but if you have a superintelligent lawyer, you're not gonna fool them. Every one of those terms is self-contradictory. It's ill-defined. What does it mean not to harm a human? Is the system fighting you eating a donut because it's unhealthy?

    13. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    14. RY

      Is the system banning abortion? It's not obvious what you encode in that meaning. So people often say, "Do good. Don't do bad." Great, but now define what that means in C++.

    15. MM

      Well, I feel like if it's superintelligent, it will be able to. [laughs]

    16. RY

      It's a very common misconception. People think if something is smart, it's also good, and it has common sense. But common sense is not common. Human common sense is not common. What is obviously true in one culture is horrible crime in another.

    17. MM

      Yeah.

    18. RY

      If I say to a system, "I don't want any cancer in this world. Cancer is bad," one solution is to kill all humans. It accomplishes the goal.

    19. MM

      But then it's against the Constitution. Like, we don't kill. We try to prolong life.

    20. RY

      Right. And the worst dictatorships in the world all had constitutions which were beautiful.

    21. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    22. RY

      If a human dictator can find a way to bypass any regulation, a superintelligent lawyer with no way for us to punish it, it's immortal. It has no body to put in prison. It's smarter than you. Y- you can't turn it off. It's not an option. It has backups.

    23. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    24. RY

      So I don't think in any adversarial relationship we would be competitive. We would lose. So the only way to not lose is not to play the game. We can benefit from creating narrow systems. Very practical advice for your audience. Create tools for solving real world problems. Cure breast cancer. Wonderful. But if you create general superintelligence, which is right now goal of many corporations, we're all gonna regret it.

    25. MM

      How do you create something that cures cancer without-Creating this general intelligence 'cause as far as I understand, I interviewed, uh, Priscilla Chan who has Biohub, and they're trying to map the cell and so far even with AI tools, I think they are only able to map, like, 1% of cell 'cause there's, there's so much going on. I feel like you need the most intelligent system to go that deep. Is it even possible to create something, something that only works in a cell but doesn't understand the world?

    26. RY

      The hope is it's possible. We have some precedents. So protein folding problem was a major problem in science, very important for curing diseases, understanding human genome, and it was solved with a system which was dedicated to that problem. It was trained on relevant data. It wasn't trained on all of internet. It's at the same time not a chess player, not a politician, not a poker player. It has one task and one type of data. If you make it super capable, eventually there is a fuzzy boundary between a tool and an agent. So long term it could still be dangerous, and combination of tools can be dangerous, but it's definitely much easier for us to understand and control something narrow domain versus something completely general with full set of capabilities.

    27. MM

      But the, a company... Like, again, protein folding is DeepMind, and DeepMind, I guess, is working on superintelligence, right? It's the same people. I feel like it's impossible to stop this.

  7. 19:50 – 23:29

    Can Anyone Actually Stop This?

    1. RY

      I don't disagree with you.

    2. MM

      So for anyone who's watching who's concerned about this, is there anything they can do? 'Cause fr- from what I'm hearing, okay, someone's gonna reach this superintelligence. Uh, I just trust them. I hope. I-

    3. RY

      Trust

    4. MM

      ... well, like, I mean, what, what can I do? [swish] If you're enjoying this episode and if you want to stay relevant in the era of AI or at least understand what's going on, please follow this channel. I sit down with the most amazing guests every single week to learn about AI. And the thing is, when I sit down with people like Roman, I do care if it goes live, but also, like, having these conversations is really important for my mental health to understand what's going on, to be prepared because I like to stay in control, right, and at least be able to do something with this information. So if you're like me and you want to tune in, please do not forget to subscribe to this channel. [swish]

    5. RY

      So that's the common assumption people make.

    6. MM

      Not buy their stock. [laughs]

    7. RY

      They think that, uh, people working on this technology understand what they are doing. They have no idea. They publicly say it. They don't understand how the system works. They cannot predict it. They cannot fully control it. The best they can do is put some filters in place. "Don't talk about this topic. Don't say that word." So depending on who the member of your audience is, maybe there is nothing they can do. If there's someone in positions of leadership, political or in a company, they can make those decisions what to build, what not to build.

    8. MM

      I just wonder... 'Cause again, if we take those large companies, they work for shareholders. They're all competing with each other. The only way to win is to reach superintelligence, right? 'Cause there's no other way to win this game.

    9. RY

      Well, you can make a lot of money curing real problems in the real world. You don't have to create superintelligence to get most of economic benefit.

    10. MM

      It feels like once you reach superintelligence, you, you're able to solve... able to build businesses, you're able to cure cancer, and just solve every problem in the world. Isn't that-

    11. RY

      Except controlling it

    12. MM

      ... except controlling it.

    13. RY

      Which seems like a big problem. No amount of money is a good investment if you're gonna be dead.

    14. MM

      Have you ever... Like, have you seen a leader, uh, of those companies or similar companies who are committed to doing what you're describing?

    15. RY

      So they all on record even before they became CEOs of those companies are saying AI safety is very important. This is very dangerous and likely to kill us. More recently, many of them have indicated that if others stop, they would stop.

    16. MM

      But nobody... But-

    17. RY

      I think CEO of Anthropic made a statement exactly that. I think China versus US, likewise, China said, "We're interested in doing it right." The Communist Party doesn't wanna lose power, so they would be open to slowing down if US did.

    18. MM

      But nobody, nobody's doing that. They're just saying that.

    19. RY

      We're still alive. We should try. We cannot give up.

    20. MM

      It feels like we need to have a nuclear level accident for people to actually start paying attention.

    21. RY

      We considered that. Unfortunately, people don't learn from those. We had nuclear war. We had nuclear bombs dropped, uh-

    22. MM

      And we... And then we agreed on something

    23. RY

      ... civilian population, and we continued developing nuclear weapons and spreading them to new countries.

    24. MM

      But at least we haven't used them since in that-

    25. RY

      So far

    26. MM

      ... at that scale, so.

    27. RY

      Give it some time.

    28. MM

      Hopefully, hopefully not.

    29. RY

      Sadly, really sadly, something like that would reduce our technological capabilities for a while. So while we would suffer tremendously from a weapon of mutual assured destruction like nuclear weapon, we would not deal with another mutually assured destruction coming from-

    30. MM

      Like a destruction

  8. 23:29 – 28:32

    Roman's Personal 5-Year Prediction

    1. MM

      What is your personal view on the next five years? What do you think is gonna happen?

    2. RY

      More of what we see, automation of more and more capabilities, and very likely we'll fully cross the human intelligence barrier. We'll have systems smarter than smartest humans.

    3. MM

      How do you prepare for that?

    4. RY

      You always ask questions assuming there is an answer. Some things are impossible to do. If you ask me how to build perpetual motion device, I would not say I need more funding or more time. I would say it is impossible to do. So if you ask me how do we control superintelligent machines, I don't think we can. If we build them, there is nothing you can do. If we made a smart decision against financial incentives not to build it, to benefit from narrow tools, then how do I learn more about those tools? How do I deploy them? Those are great questions.

    5. MM

      Since you know... Like, you, you know the worst case scenario, right? And you know it's very, very possible.You're basically going on podcasts and talking about this problem, right, to raise more awareness. But someone who doesn't have an ability to go and just talk about it, what can they do? Stop using those tools? Stop buying stocks of those companies? Like, what is a practical thing?

    6. RY

      So if you have a chance to vote for a politician who is on board with limits, and we're starting to see those-

    7. MM

      It's so ri- Like, I don't really see politicians talking about this. What I see is, like, "Don't regulate AI. Let's just let companies figure it out."

    8. RY

      So federal government is exactly like that. Right now they removed all previous regulations. They made it through executive order illegal for all 50 states to regulate AI. But we have certain senators, certain congresspeople now waking up to at least some of those problems. They may not fully comprehend long-term gain, but they are going, "Oh, deepfakes are bad," or maybe the large data centers will use too much energy. Doesn't matter what they are concerned about, they're sort of directionally correct.

    9. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    10. RY

      So they are suggesting limits. They are suggesting some regulation. It's true for other countries. I testified to UK Parliament. I testified to Kentucky legislation. There are people who are willing to listen, but it needs to be a lot of support from people where politicians can sort of come out of a closet and say, "I'm worried about superintelligence. I wanna make sure we pass the right legislation."

    11. MM

      It's just, I feel like even on a personal level it's so hard. I'm just imagining, like, okay, you're going, you're going and voting for this politician who's pausing whatever superintelligence, but then you have someone in your family who has cancer, and you know that if this progresses, then your family member might survive a couple years. And as humans, we tend to prioritize short-term gains over long-term threats.

    12. RY

      Yeah.

    13. MM

      How do you see this possible when... Like, if, okay, so in the US I feel like 70% of people are kind of have negative attitude towards AI, according to Edelman Trust Barometer. But in countries like China, I feel like 80% are pro-AI. How do you see this? 'Cause it, it feels to me that people who are, who are gonna be voting for those politicians are still gonna be a minority.

    14. RY

      So you said long term versus short term.

    15. MM

      Short-term gains versus long-term threats.

    16. RY

      I, I understand. And historically you would be right. It's 20 years away, 30 years away, and this is now. Cancer is measured by five-year survival rate. We're saying AGI's coming in two to five. So there is no time difference. Your cancer relative-

    17. MM

      You see, cancer is much more-

    18. RY

      ... is going to be dealing with one of those outcomes no matter what.

    19. MM

      I feel like for people it's so much easier to understand cancer 'cause we already saw it. We haven't seen AGI yet, and we don't understand it. And we still think, again, even with AI, like you've seen these graphs where only 1% of people really use it to optimize things. 99% of people have no idea, or like 90 per- 90% haven't used it, 10% use it for search. It's just so hard to imagine that in two years or, like, five years it's gonna be a human threat. And you think people who are building it won't be able to control it?

    20. RY

      They have nothing. There is no patents, no papers, no algorithms which can possibly scale. They're literally telling us, "We'll figure it out when we get there."

    21. MM

      [sighs] Okay. As a mom of two, if you're saying that, okay, I'm, I, I'm talking about this, you know. I don't know any politicians [laughs] who are, who are talking about this. But anyways, when it comes to our day-to-day life, if we're all facing a future we can't really predict, what is the best thing to do now? Enjoy life?

    22. RY

      It's always a good advice.

    23. MM

      Take that vacation?

    24. RY

      If I'm completely wrong, you're gonna regret having awesome time.

    25. MM

      [laughs] Uh, okay, that, that actually makes me feel better. What about using it? Do you feel like by using AI we're helping that progress or...?

    26. RY

      We do, but unless all of us stop, it doesn't matter. You alone-

    27. MM

      Yeah

    28. RY

      ... will not financially impact development. The investors, independent of what the membership fees are, I think OpenAI is making, like, I don't know, 13 billion, but investments are in the trillions, so it's just not a significant source

  9. 28:32 – 31:33

    Where to Invest Before It's Too Late

    1. RY

      of-

    2. MM

      What should people be investing in? I, I've heard you say invest in Bitcoin 'cause it, it has a finite supply. Uh, would you say investing in stocks, gold?

    3. RY

      Invest in something AI cannot make more of. So if AI can just produce more of it-

    4. MM

      Mm-hmm

    5. RY

      ... that's probably gonna go down in value.

    6. MM

      Well, gold is-

    7. RY

      Gold is a wonderful example, yeah.

    8. MM

      Mm.

    9. RY

      There is limited supply of it. But it's not so limited that if a price goes up, we cannot produce more of it. Some of the gold is, uh, mineable, but it costs a lot more than current price per ounce.

    10. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    11. RY

      So let's say right now we're at, I don't know, 4,500 or whatever it is. If price of gold was a million, we can get a lot more gold at that price point, whereas Bitcoin, it doesn't matter what the price is, it's exactly the same supply.

    12. MM

      What about real estate?

    13. RY

      It, it seems like we're not very good at making more water fronts. Countries like, uh, United Arab Emirates with Dubai definitely tried. I think, uh, Qatar has some good examples of artificial islands, but it's very limited. So I think long term, having a place to be and limited ability to produce more could be a good investment.

    14. MM

      Yeah, it's the, just the way that I see it, so for me, when I'm hearing this, superintelligence still, superintelligence still seems very far away, but what I actually can feel is automation of this white collar labor. And it looks like f- I think in five years, yes, we're gonna have more automated jobs, but again, when I'm talking to people like, I don't know, Mustafa Suleyman, right? He says AI's gonna produce more jobs than, uh, it takes away. Uh, I just talked to LinkedIn's CEO, and they saw 1.2 million new jobs because of AI 'cause you require a new skill set. Yes, some jobs are going away, but I, I don't know, I just can't believe a future where it's that drastic.

    15. RY

      Let's just go with definitions. So when we say we'll create artificial general intelligence, what are we saying? We're saying we'll have a system capable of doing what a human can do.

    16. MM

      But we still haven't... We're, like, we have automated some tasks, but are we even able to create that?

    17. RY

      So it's a very different question. Are you arguing that it's impossible to ever get software to human level performance?

    18. MM

      Yeah.

    19. RY

      It seems very unlikely. Some people have argued it, usually from some sort of a religious perspective.

    20. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    21. RY

      We have an immortal soul, nothing material can automate that. But i- it seems in many domains we started with not knowing how to do it, got to reasonable performance, got to human level, and now in most domains it's superintelligent. So a human will never win a game of chess against a computer again. Same happens in artificial general intelligence, means the system can do anything a human can do.

    22. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    23. RY

      So if we live in a world where that is true, let's say in two years, five years, whatever number makes you happy, what jobs will be there? Jobs where I choose to hire a human-

    24. MM

      Yeah

    25. RY

      ... but that's it. If I don't care who does it, then it gets automated.

  10. 31:33 – 34:37

    5 Jobs That Survive the AI Takeover

    1. MM

      So basically the plan is then, uh, within the next few months, identify those jobs, right? And for me, it's definitely a nanny, right? I don't want a robot. Well, my husband's like, "A robot is even more precise if it teaches your kids how to swim." [laughs] So my husband's like y- like closer to what [laughs] to what you're thinking. Uh, well, can you name let's say five jobs-

    2. RY

      Yeah, sure

    3. MM

      ... that are still gonna be relevant?

    4. RY

      Oldest profession. Must be the last one too.

    5. MM

      Uh, I don't know. I've heard a lot of people say how it's getting robotized. [laughs]

    6. RY

      It is, and there's going to be a huge market for it, just like we see with virtual stimuli, but I think humans will always have certain weak spot for human females.

    7. MM

      Okay. I don't think my target audience really wants to [laughs] switch to that job. Can you give me four more?

    8. RY

      Anything similar where a human is a sensei, a guide, a leader, someone who is personally a trainer for you becoming a human like that.

    9. MM

      Mm-hmm. So nannies.

    10. RY

      S- s- so again, your yoga teacher, your, I don't know, hiking guru.

    11. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    12. RY

      Whatever-

    13. MM

      Offline experience basically

    14. RY

      ... meditation expert. Experts in what it's like to be human in certain domains where it's not so much about algorithmic following of steps, but an experience maybe.

    15. MM

      Do you think for people who are starting their personal brands now, there's still opportunity, or the... it's already done?

    16. RY

      There is, but you have to do it pretty quickly. You have to become somewhat recognizable before AI is better than you, and you are competing now as a nobody with something better.

    17. MM

      And that gives you how long?

    18. RY

      Again-

    19. MM

      A year? Mm-hmm

    20. RY

      ... as soon as we switch to human level or above. So I don't know how long it's gonna take in practice. I've seen people say 2027-

    21. MM

      Mm-hmm

    22. RY

      ... 2020, '28, 2030. All of those numbers have been suggested by people who are not insane.

    23. MM

      So would you say if you have goals right now within your certain job that you think is gonna be automated, you need to be running as fast as you can right now to reach those goals?

    24. RY

      I think it's-

    25. MM

      Or just chill, just because whatever it is, in five years we're all gone. [laughs]

    26. RY

      Ideally, it's like what you did, where you combine your hobby with something financially lucrative. That's the best. If you can get paid for doing what you like and it benefits society, that's the concept behind Ikigai, right? Japanese concept.

    27. MM

      Japanese, yeah.

    28. RY

      You try to combine those. We call it I-risks, Ikigai risks, where that meaning is taken from you by AI. So you wanna kinda grandfather yourself in as a famous podcaster.

    29. MM

      Well, h- how do you think about your career as a researcher? Is it done, or you still have couple more years? [laughs]

    30. RY

      So i- it seems right now the writing of code is, uh, pretty much automatable. Still, top humans in machine learning are designing new architectures, new systems, so a few more years in that. But I wouldn't recommend someone spend 10 years at a university to become a professor today. I don't think they have future.

  11. 34:37 – 45:42

    College in 2026: Worth It or Not?

    1. MM

      What about higher education in general? Should I be saving for my kids' college?

    2. RY

      It's always been a bad idea.

    3. MM

      Really?

    4. RY

      It's not worth it. So half the majors were dead-end majors. They never got jobs in the major they got, and the ones which were, like, uh, for specific tasks, like programming and such, you could have gotten a certificate online in six months and get the job in Silicon Valley making more than your professor.

    5. MM

      But don't you think it teaches you how to think? So for me, like, I started my university when I was 17. I had no idea what... Actually, I wanted to become a translator. I love languages. I'm like, "I wanna be translator." My parents were like, "No, no, no. You're gonna go study mathematics." But I'm glad they, [laughs] they told me that 'cause I was able to do both. And for me, those five years were about meeting my husband-

    6. RY

      Mm-hmm

    7. MM

      ... starting a business because I saw an opportunity being among those students. And so I feel like when it comes to education, it's really not about learning the skill-

    8. RY

      Mm

    9. MM

      ... 'cause, yeah, I studied mathematics. Did I use it in my business? N- not really, but it taught me how to think. It taught me how to interact with professors, which is certain skill [laughs] that you need. Um, it taught me how to learn and how to be among students.

    10. RY

      Yeah.

    11. MM

      Do you feel this is going to lose value in 10 years-

    12. RY

      It has

    13. MM

      ... or it's gonna be different form?

    14. RY

      Then, I don't know how long you went to college, but-

    15. MM

      Five years, yeah

    16. RY

      ... I'm sure you didn't pay 100,000 a year.

    17. MM

      No.

    18. RY

      This is what they're charging now in some universities. So historically, it made sense. You went to socialize, you went to kinda mature, grow up. Today, for 100,000, you have alternative ways of meeting your spouse, socializing. Join a private club. Join gym membership. Go to a scientific conference. Go to a TED Talk. You'll accomplish all those things without spending five years and half a million dollars.

    19. MM

      When you say that, I feel like people, to, to do that, you need agency. You need-

    20. RY

      You do

    21. MM

      ... to be able to tell yourself, "This is my plan," and stick to the plan.

    22. RY

      Yeah.

    23. MM

      For a 17-year-old, it's so much easier to just be put into an institution [laughs] for four years that tells you what to do, and sometimes it doesn't have to cost, like, 100,000. Like, if you're doing PhD, it's sponsored for you, right? By-

    24. RY

      You usually don't start with PhD.

    25. MM

      Well, you don't, you don't start with PhD.

    26. RY

      You still need to pay for four years.

    27. MM

      I agree. But then you can, I don't know, you can... I studied in Germany. I got a, the scholarship that-Paid for my studies, which was great. So I, I don't know. Like, I've heard from you, I've heard from Mustafa Suleyman, colleges don't make sense. I'm still, I s- I started the 529 accounts for [laughs] for my daughters 'cause I feel like, I don't know, it's, it's just, yes, it's not a must, but it's such a great opportunity to go and study for four years and-

    28. RY

      So I meet a lot of students, and here's what I hear a lot lately. "I went to college for four years to learn this trade. I paid a lot of money. I wasted four years of my life not doing fun things I wanted. I now graduate, and there is no job waiting for me."

    29. MM

      Mm-hmm.

    30. RY

      "My job has been automated. What should I do?" And at this point I wanna tell them, "Go back in time four years and not get-

Episode duration: 45:42

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