WARNING: ChatGPT Could Be The Start Of The End! Sam Harris

Artificial intelligence is superhuman. It is smarter than you are, and there's something inherently dangerous for the dumber party in that relationship. You just can't put the genie back in the bottle. Sam Harris. Neuroscientist. Philosopher. Author. Podcaster.

He goes into intellectual territory where few others dare tread. Six years ago, you did a TED Talk.

The gains we make in artificial intelligence could ultimately destroy us.

If your objective is to make humanity happy and there was a button placed in front of you and it would end artificial intelligence, what would you do?

Well, I would definitely pause it. The idea that we've lost the moment to decide whether to hook our most powerful AI to everything is just oh, s-... It's already connected to the internet, got millions of people using it, and the idea that these things will stay aligned with us because we have built them, yet we gave them the capacity to rewrite their code, there's just no reason to believe that. And I worry about the near term problem of what humans do with increasingly powerful AI, how it amplifies misinformation. Most of what's online could soon be faked. Can we hold a presidential election 18 months from now that we recognize as valid, right? Like is it safe? And it just gets scarier and scarier. I worry we're just gonna have to declare bankruptcy to the internet. The internet. The internet. The internet.

If your intuition is correct, are you optimistic about our chances of survival? Before this episode starts, I have a small favor to ask from you. Two months ago, 74% of people that watch this channel didn't subscribe. We're now down to 69%. My goal is 50%. So if you've ever liked any of the videos we've posted, if you like this channel, can you do me a quick favor and hit the subscribe button? It helps this channel more than you know. And the bigger the channel gets, as you've seen, the bigger the guests get. Thank you and enjoy this episode. Sam, six years ago, you did a TED Talk. Um, I watched that TED Talk a few times over the last week, and the TED Talk was called Can We Build AI Without Losing Control Over It.

Mm-hmm.

In that TED Talk, you really discussed the idea whether, um, AI, when it gets to a certain point of sentience and intelligence will, will wreak havoc on humanity.

Mm-hmm.

Six years later, where do you stand on, on it today? Do you think, are you optimistic about our chances of survive, survival?

Yeah, I mean, uh, I can't say I'm optimistic. I'm, I am worried about t- two species of problem here that are r- r- related. I mean, there's, there's sort of the near term problem of just what humans do with increasingly powerful AI and, um, how it amplifies the, the problem of misinformation and disinformation and make, and just makes it harder and harder to make sense of reality together. Um, and then there's just the, the longer term concern about, well, you know, what's called alignment with, with artificial general intelligence, where we build AI that is, is truly general and, you know, by definition superhuman in its competence and power. And then the question is have we built it in such a way that is aligned in a, in a durable way with, with our interests? And, um, I mean, there's some people who just don't see this problem.