back to indexAlex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science | Lex Fridman Podcast #77
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The following is a conversation with Alex Garland,
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writer and director of many imaginative
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and philosophical films from the dreamlike exploration
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of human self destruction in the movie Annihilation
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to the deep questions of consciousness and intelligence
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raised in the movie Ex Machina,
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which to me is one of the greatest movies
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in artificial intelligence ever made.
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I'm releasing this podcast to coincide
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with the release of this new series called Devs
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that will premiere this Thursday, March 5th on Hulu
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as part of FX on Hulu.
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It explores many of the themes this very podcast is about,
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from quantum mechanics to artificial life to simulation
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to the modern nature of power in the tech world.
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I got a chance to watch a preview and loved it.
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The acting is great.
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Nick Offerman especially is incredible in it.
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The cinematography is beautiful
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and the philosophical and scientific ideas
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explored are profound.
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And for me as an engineer and scientist,
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which is fun to see brought to life.
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For example, if you watch the trailer
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for the series carefully,
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you'll see there's a programmer with a Russian accent
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looking at a screen with Python like code on it
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that appears to be using a library
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that interfaces with a quantum computer.
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This attention and technical detail
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on several levels is impressive.
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And one of the reasons I'm a big fan
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of how Alex weaves science and philosophy together
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Meeting Alex for me was unlikely,
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but it was life changing
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in ways I may only be able to articulate in a few years.
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Just as meeting spot many of Boston Dynamics
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for the first time planted a seed of an idea in my mind,
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so did meeting Alex Garland.
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He's humble, curious, intelligent,
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and to me an inspiration.
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Plus, he's just really a fun person to talk with
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about the biggest possible questions in our universe.
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This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast.
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If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube,
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give it five stars on Apple Podcast,
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support it on Patreon,
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or simply connect with me on Twitter
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at Lex Friedman spelled F R I D M A N.
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As usual, I'll do one or two minutes of ads now
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and never any ads in the middle
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that can break the flow of the conversation.
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I hope that works for you
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and doesn't hurt the listening experience.
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This show is presented by Cash App,
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the number one finance app in the App Store.
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When you get it, use code LEXPODCAST.
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Since Cash App allows you to buy Bitcoin,
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let me mention that cryptocurrency
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in the context of the history of money is fascinating.
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I recommend A Scent of Money
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as a great book on this history.
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Debits and credits on ledgers started 30,000 years ago.
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The US dollar was created about 200 years ago.
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At Bitcoin, the first decentralized cryptocurrency
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So given that history,
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cryptocurrency is still very much
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in its early days of development,
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but it still is aiming to
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and just might redefine the nature of money.
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So again, if you get Cash App from the App Store
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or Google Play and use code LEXPODCAST,
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and Cash App will also donate $10 to FIRST,
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one of my favorite organizations
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that is helping advance robotics
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and STEM education for young people around the world.
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And now, here's my conversation with Alex Garland.
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You described the world inside the shimmer
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in the movie Annihilation as dreamlike
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in that it's internally consistent
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but detached from reality.
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That leads me to ask,
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do you think, a philosophical question, I apologize,
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do you think we might be living in a dream
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or in a simulation, like the kind that the shimmer creates?
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We human beings here today.
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I wanna sort of separate that out into two things.
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Yes, I think we're living in a dream of sorts.
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No, I don't think we're living in a simulation.
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I think we're living on a planet
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with a very thin layer of atmosphere
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and the planet is in a very large space
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and the space is full of other planets and stars
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and quasars and stuff like that.
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And I don't think those physical objects,
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I don't think the matter in that universe is simulated.
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I think it's there.
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We are definitely,
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it's a hot problem with saying definitely,
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but in my opinion, I'll just go back to that.
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I think it seems very like we're living in a dream state.
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I'm pretty sure we are.
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And I think that's just to do with the nature
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of how we experience the world.
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We experience it in a subjective way.
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And the thing I've learned most
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as I've got older in some respects
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is the degree to which reality is counterintuitive
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and that the things that are presented to us as objective
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turn out not to be objective
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and quantum mechanics is full of that kind of thing,
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but actually just day to day life
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is full of that kind of thing as well.
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So my understanding of the way the brain works
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is you get some information, hit your optic nerve,
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and then your brain makes its best guess
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about what it's seeing or what it's saying it's seeing.
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It may or may not be an accurate best guess.
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It might be an inaccurate best guess.
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And that gap, the best guess gap,
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means that we are essentially living in a subjective state,
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which means that we're in a dream state.
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So I think you could enlarge on the dream state
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in all sorts of ways.
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So yes, dream state, no simulation
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would be where I'd come down.
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Going further, deeper into that direction,
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you've also described that world as psychedelia.
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So on that topic, I'm curious about that world.
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On the topic of psychedelic drugs,
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do you see those kinds of chemicals
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that modify our perception
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as a distortion of our perception of reality
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or a window into another reality?
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No, I think what I'd be saying
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is that we live in a distorted reality
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and then those kinds of drugs
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give us a different kind of distorted.
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Different perspective.
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They just give an alternate distortion.
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And I think that what they really do
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is they give a distorted perception,
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which is a little bit more allied to daydreams
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or unconscious interests.
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So if for some reason you're feeling unconsciously anxious
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at that moment and you take a psychedelic drug,
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you'll have a more pronounced, unpleasant experience.
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And if you're feeling very calm or happy,
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you might have a good time.
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But yeah, so if I'm saying we're starting from a premise,
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our starting point is we were already in the
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slightly psychedelic state.
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What those drugs do is help you go further down an avenue
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or maybe a slightly different avenue, but that's all.
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So in that movie, Annihilation,
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the shimmer, this alternate dreamlike state
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is created by, I believe perhaps, an alien entity.
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Of course, everything is up to interpretation, right?
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But do you think there's, in our world, in our universe,
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do you think there's intelligent life out there?
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And if so, how different is it from us humans?
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Well, one of the things I was trying to do in Annihilation
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was to offer up a form of alien life
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that was actually alien,
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because it would often seem to me that in the way
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that in the way we would represent aliens in books
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or cinema or television,
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or any one of the sort of storytelling mediums,
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is we would always give them very humanlike qualities.
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So they wanted to teach us about galactic federations,
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or they wanted to eat us, or they wanted our resources,
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like our water, or they want to enslave us,
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or whatever it happens to be.
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But all of these are incredibly humanlike motivations.
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And I was interested in the idea of an alien
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that was not in any way like us.
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Maybe it had a completely different clock speed.
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Maybe it's way, so we're talking about,
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we're looking at each other,
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we're getting information, light hits our optic nerve,
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our brain makes the best guess of what we're doing.
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Sometimes it's right, something, you know,
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the thing we were talking about before.
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What if this alien doesn't have an optic nerve?
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Maybe its way of encountering the space it's in
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is wholly different.
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Maybe it has a different relationship with gravity.
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The basic laws of physics it operates under
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might be fundamentally different.
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It could be a different time scale and so on.
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Yeah, or it could be the same laws,
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could be the same underlying laws of physics.
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You know, it's a machine created,
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or it's a creature created in a quantum mechanical way.
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It just ends up in a very, very different place
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to the one we end up in.
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So, part of the preoccupation with annihilation
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was to come up with an alien that was really alien
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and didn't give us,
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and it didn't give us and we didn't give it
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any kind of easy connection between human and the alien.
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Because I think it was to do with the idea
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that you could have an alien that landed on this planet
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that wouldn't even know we were here.
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And we might only glancingly know it was here.
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There'd just be this strange point
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where the vent diagrams connected,
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where we could sense each other or something like that.
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So in the movie, first of all, incredibly original view
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of what an alien life would be.
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And in that sense, it's a huge success.
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Let's go inside your imagination.
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Did the alien, that alien entity know anything about humans
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So the idea is you're basically an alien
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that life is trying to reach out to anything
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that might be able to hear its mechanism of communication.
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Or was it simply, was it just basically their biologist
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exploring different kinds of stuff that you can find?
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But this is the interesting thing is,
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as soon as you say their biologist,
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you've done the thing of attributing
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human type motivations to it.
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So I was trying to free myself from anything like that.
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So all sorts of questions you might answer
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about this notional alien, I wouldn't be able to answer
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because I don't know what it was or how it worked.
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You know, I had some rough ideas.
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Like it had a very, very, very slow clock speed.
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And I thought maybe the way it is interacting
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with this environment is a little bit like
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the way an octopus will change its color forms
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around the space that it's in.
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So it's sort of reacting to what it's in to an extent,
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but the reason it's reacting in that way is indeterminate.
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But it's so, but it's clock speed was slower
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than our human life clock speed or inter,
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but it's faster than evolution.
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Faster than our evolution.
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Yeah, given the 4 billion years it took us to get here,
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then yes, maybe it started at eight.
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If you look at the human civilization as a single organism,
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in that sense, you know, this evolution could be us.
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You know, the evolution of living organisms on earth
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could be just a single organism.
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And it's kind of, that's its life,
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is the evolution process that eventually will lead
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to probably the heat death of the universe
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or something before that.
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I mean, that's just an incredible idea.
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So you almost don't know.
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You've created something
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that you don't even know how it works.
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Yeah, because anytime I tried to look into
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how it might work,
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I would then inevitably be attaching
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my kind of thought processes into it.
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And I wanted to try and put a bubble around it.
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I would say, no, this is alien in its most alien form.
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I have no real point of contact.
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So unfortunately I can't talk to Stanley Kubrick.
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So I'm really fortunate to get a chance to talk to you.
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On this particular notion,
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I'd like to ask it a bunch of different ways
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and we'll explore it in different ways,
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but do you ever consider human imagination,
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your imagination as a window into a possible future?
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And that what you're doing,
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you're putting that imagination on paper as a writer
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and then on screen as a director.
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And that plants the seeds in the minds of millions
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of future and current scientists.
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And so your imagination, you putting it down
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actually makes it as a reality.
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So it's almost like a first step of the scientific method
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that you imagining what's possible
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in your new series with Ex Machina
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is actually inspiring thousands of 12 year olds,
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millions of scientists
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and actually creating the future view of imagine.
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Well, all I could say is that from my point of view,
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it's almost exactly the reverse
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because I see that pretty much everything I do
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is a reaction to what scientists are doing.
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I'm an interested lay person.
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And I feel this individual,
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I feel that the most interesting area
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that humans are involved in is science.
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I think art is very, very interesting,
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but the most interesting is science.
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And science is in a weird place
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because maybe around the time Newton was alive,
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if a very, very interested lay person said to themselves,
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I want to really understand what Newton is saying
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about the way the world works
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with a few years of dedicated thinking,
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they would be able to understand
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the sort of principles he was laying out.
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And I don't think that's true anymore.
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I think that's stopped being true now.
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So I'm pretty smart guy.
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And if I said to myself,
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I want to really, really understand
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what is currently the state of quantum mechanics
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or string theory or any of the sort of branching areas of it,
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I wouldn't be able to.
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I'd be intellectually incapable of doing it
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because to work in those fields at the moment
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is a bit like being an athlete.
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I suspect you need to start when you're 12, you know?
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And if you start in your mid 20s,
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start trying to understand in your mid 20s,
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then you're just never going to catch up.
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That's the way it feels to me.
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So what I do is I try to make myself open.
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So the people that you're implying maybe I would influence,
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to me, it's exactly the other way around.
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These people are strongly influencing me.
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I'm thinking they're doing something fascinating.
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I'm concentrating and working as hard as I can
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to try and understand the implications of what they say.
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And in some ways, often what I'm trying to do
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is disseminate their ideas
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into a means by which it can enter a public conversation.
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So Ex Machina contains lots of name checks,
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all sorts of existing thought experiments,
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shadows on Plato's cave and Mary in the black and white room
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and all sorts of different longstanding thought processes
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about sentience or consciousness or subjectivity
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or gender or whatever it happens to be.
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And then I'm trying to marshal that into a narrative
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to say, look, this stuff is interesting
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and it's also relevant and this is my best shot at it.
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So I'm the one being influenced in my construction.
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That's fascinating.
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Of course you would say that
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because you're not even aware of your own.
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That's probably what Kubrick would say too, right?
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Is in describing why, how 9,000 is created
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the way how 9,000 is created,
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is you're just studying what's,
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but the reality when the specifics of the knowledge
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passes through your imagination,
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I would argue that you're incorrect
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in thinking that you're just disseminating knowledge
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that the very act of your imagination consuming that science,
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it creates something that creates the next step,
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potentially creates the next step.
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I certainly think that's true with 2001 A Space Odyssey.
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I think at its best, and if it fails.
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It's true of that, yeah, it's true of that, definitely.
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At its best, it plans something.
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It's hard to describe it.
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It inspires the next generation
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and it could be field dependent.
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So your new series has more a connection to physics,
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quantum physics, quantum mechanics, quantum computing,
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and yet Ex Machina has more artificial intelligence.
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I know more about AI.
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My sense that AI is much earlier
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in the depth of its understanding.
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I would argue nobody understands anything
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to the depth that physicists do about physics.
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In AI, nobody understands AI,
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that there is a lot of importance and role for imagination,
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which I think we're in that,
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where Freud imagined the subconscious,
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we're in that stage of AI,
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where there's a lot of imagination needed
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thinking outside the box.
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Yeah, it's interesting.
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The spread of discussions and the spread of anxieties
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that exists about AI fascinate me.
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The way in which some people seem terrified about it
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whilst also pursuing it.
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And I've never shared that fear about AI personally,
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but the way in which it agitates people
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and also the people who it agitates,
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I find kind of fascinating.
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Are you sad by the possibility,
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let's take the existential risk
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of artificial intelligence,
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by the possibility an artificial intelligence system
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becomes our offspring and makes us obsolete?
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I mean, it's a huge subject to talk about, I suppose.
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But one of the things I think is that humans
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are actually very experienced at creating new life forms
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because that's why you and I are both here
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and it's why everyone on the planet is here.
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And so something in the process of having a living thing
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that exists that didn't exist previously
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is very much encoded into the structures of our life
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and the structures of our societies.
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Doesn't mean we always get it right,
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but it does mean we've learned quite a lot about that.
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We've learned quite a lot about what the dangers are
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of allowing things to be unchecked.
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And it's why we then create systems
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of checks and balances in our government
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and so on and so forth.
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I mean, that's not to say,
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the other thing is it seems like
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there's all sorts of things that you could put
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into a machine that you would not be.
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So with us, we sort of roughly try to give some rules
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to live by and some of us then live by those rules
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And with a machine,
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it feels like you could enforce those things.
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So partly because of our previous experience
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and partly because of the different nature of a machine,
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I just don't feel anxious about it.
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More I just see all the good that,
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broadly speaking, the good that can come from it.
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But that's just where I am on that anxiety spectrum.
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You know, it's kind of, there's a sadness.
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So we as humans give birth to other humans, right?
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But there's generations.
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And there's often in the older generation,
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a sadness about what the world has become now.
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I mean, that's kind of...
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Yeah, there is, but there's a counterpoint as well,
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which is that most parents would wish
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for a better life for their children.
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So there may be a regret about some things about the past,
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but broadly speaking, what people really want
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is that things will be better
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for the future generations, not worse.
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And so, and then it's a question about
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what constitutes a future generation.
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A future generation could involve people.
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It also could involve machines
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and it could involve a sort of cross pollinated version
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of the two or any, but none of those things
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make me feel anxious.
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It doesn't give you anxiety.
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It doesn't excite you?
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Like anything that's new?
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Not anything that's new.
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I don't think, for example, I've got,
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my anxieties relate to things like social media
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that, so I've got plenty of anxieties about that.
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Which is also driven by artificial intelligence
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in the sense that there's too much information
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to be able to, an algorithm has to filter that information
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and present to you.
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So ultimately the algorithm, a simple,
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oftentimes simple algorithm is controlling
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the flow of information on social media.
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So that's another form of AI.
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But at least my sense of it, I might be wrong,
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but my sense of it is that the algorithms have
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an either conscious or unconscious bias,
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which is created by the people
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who are making the algorithms
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and sort of delineating the areas
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to which those algorithms are gonna lean.
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And so for example, the kind of thing I'd be worried about
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is that it hasn't been thought about enough
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how dangerous it is to allow algorithms
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to create echo chambers, say.
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But that doesn't seem to me to be about the AI
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It's the naivety of the people
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who are constructing the algorithms to do that thing.
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If you see what I mean.
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So in your new series, Devs,
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and we could speak more broadly,
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there's a, let's talk about the people
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constructing those algorithms,
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which in our modern society, Silicon Valley,
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those algorithms happen to be a source of a lot of income
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because of advertisements.
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So let me ask sort of a question about those people.
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Are current concerns and failures on social media,
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I can't pronounce that word well.
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Are they, I use that word carefully,
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but evil in intent or misaligned in intent?
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I think that's a, do they mean well
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and just go have an unintended consequence?
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Or is there something dark in them
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that results in them creating a company
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results in that super competitive drive to be successful.
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And those are the people that will end up
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controlling the algorithms.
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At a guess, I'd say there are instances
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of all those things.
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So sometimes I think it's naivety.
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Sometimes I think it's extremely dark.
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And sometimes I think people are not being naive or dark.
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And then in those instances are sometimes
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generating things that are very benign
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and other times generating things
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that despite their best intentions are not very benign.
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It's something, I think the reason why I don't get anxious
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about AI in terms of, or at least AIs that have,
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I don't know, a relationship with,
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some sort of relationship with humans
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is that I think that's the stuff we're quite well equipped
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to understand how to mitigate.
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The problem is issues that relate actually
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to the power of humans or the wealth of humans.
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And that's where it's dangerous here and now.
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So what I see, I'll tell you what I sometimes feel
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about Silicon Valley is that it's like Wall Street
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It's rabidly capitalistic, absolutely rabidly capitalistic
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and it's rabidly greedy.
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But whereas in the 80s, the sense one had of Wall Street
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was that these people kind of knew they were sharks
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and in a way relished in being sharks
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and dressed in sharp suits and kind of lorded
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over other people and felt good about doing it.
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Silicon Valley has managed to hide
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its voracious Wall Street like capitalism
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behind hipster T shirts and cool cafes in the place
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where they set up there.
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And so that obfuscates what's really going on
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and what's really going on is the absolute voracious pursuit
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of money and power.
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So that's where it gets shaky for me.
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So that veneer and you explore that brilliantly,
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that veneer of virtue that Silicon Valley has.
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Which they believe themselves, I'm sure for a long time.
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Okay, I hope to be one of those people and I believe that.
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So as maybe a devil's advocate term,
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poorly used in this case,
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what if some of them really are trying
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to build a better world?
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I'm sure I think some of them are.
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I think I've spoken to ones who I believe in their heart
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feel they're building a better world.
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Are they not able to?
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No, they may or may not be,
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but it's just as a zone with a lot of bullshit flying about.
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And there's also another thing,
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which is this actually goes back to,
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I always thought about some sports
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that later turned out to be corrupt
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in the way that the sport,
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like who won the boxing match
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or how a football match got thrown or cricket match
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or whatever happened to be.
link |
And I used to think, well, look,
link |
if there's a lot of money
link |
and there really is a lot of money,
link |
people stand to make millions or even billions,
link |
you will find a corruption that's gonna happen.
link |
So it's in the nature of its voracious appetite
link |
that some people will be corrupt
link |
and some people will exploit
link |
and some people will exploit
link |
whilst thinking they're doing something good.
link |
But there are also people who I think are very, very smart
link |
and very benign and actually very self aware.
link |
And so I'm not trying to,
link |
I'm not trying to wipe out the motivations
link |
of this entire area.
link |
But I do, there are people in that world
link |
who scare the hell out of me.
link |
Yeah, I'm a little bit naive in that,
link |
like I don't care at all about money.
link |
You might be one of the good guys.
link |
Yeah, but so the thought is, but I don't have money.
link |
So my thought is if you give me a billion dollars,
link |
I would, it would change nothing
link |
and I would spend it right away
link |
on investing it right back and creating a good world.
link |
But your intuition is that billion,
link |
there's something about that money
link |
that maybe slowly corrupts the people around you.
link |
There's somebody gets in that corrupts your soul
link |
the way you view the world.
link |
Money does corrupt, we know that.
link |
But there's a different sort of problem
link |
aside from just the money corrupts thing
link |
that we're familiar with throughout history.
link |
And it's more about the sense of reinforcement
link |
an individual gets, which is so...
link |
It effectively works like the reason I earned all this money
link |
and so much more money than anyone else
link |
is because I'm very gifted.
link |
I'm actually a bit smarter than they are,
link |
or I'm a lot smarter than they are,
link |
and I can see the future in the way they can't.
link |
And maybe some of those people are not particularly smart,
link |
they're very lucky,
link |
or they're very talented entrepreneurs.
link |
And there's a difference between...
link |
So in other words, the acquisition of the money and power
link |
can suddenly start to feel like evidence of virtue.
link |
And it's not evidence of virtue,
link |
it might be evidence of completely different things.
link |
That's brilliantly put, yeah.
link |
Yeah, that's brilliantly put.
link |
So I think one of the fundamental drivers
link |
of my current morality...
link |
Let me just represent nerds in general of all kinds,
link |
is of constant self doubt and the signals...
link |
I'm very sensitive to signals from people that tell me
link |
I'm doing the wrong thing.
link |
But when there's a huge inflow of money,
link |
you just put it brilliantly
link |
that that could become an overpowering signal
link |
that everything you do is right.
link |
And so your moral compass can just get thrown off.
link |
Yeah, and that is not contained to Silicon Valley,
link |
that's across the board.
link |
Like I said, I'm from the Soviet Union,
link |
the current president is convinced, I believe,
link |
actually he wants to do really good by the country
link |
but his moral compass may be off because...
link |
Yeah, I mean, it's the interesting thing about evil,
link |
which is that I think most people
link |
who do spectacularly evil things think themselves
link |
they're doing really good things.
link |
That they're not there thinking,
link |
I am a sort of incarnation of Satan.
link |
They're thinking, yeah, I've seen a way to fix the world
link |
and everyone else is wrong, here I go.
link |
In fact, I'm having a fascinating conversation
link |
with a historian of Stalin, and he took power.
link |
He actually got more power
link |
than almost any person in history.
link |
And he wanted, he didn't want power.
link |
He just wanted, he truly,
link |
and this is what people don't realize,
link |
he truly believed that communism
link |
will make for a better world.
link |
And he wanted power.
link |
He wanted to destroy the competition
link |
to make sure that we actually make communism work
link |
in the Soviet Union and then spread across the world.
link |
He was trying to do good.
link |
I think it's typically the case
link |
that that's what people think they're doing.
link |
And I think that, but you don't need to go to Stalin.
link |
I mean, Stalin, I think Stalin probably got pretty crazy,
link |
but actually that's another part of it,
link |
which is that the other thing that comes
link |
from being convinced of your own virtue
link |
is that then you stop listening to the modifiers around you.
link |
And that tends to drive people crazy.
link |
It's other people that keep us sane.
link |
And if you stop listening to them,
link |
I think you go a bit mad.
link |
That also happens.
link |
Disagreement keeps us sane.
link |
To jump back for an entire generation of AI researchers,
link |
2001, a Space Odyssey, put an image,
link |
the idea of human level, superhuman level intelligence
link |
Do you ever, sort of jumping back to Ex Machina
link |
and talk a little bit about that,
link |
do you ever consider the audience of people
link |
who build the systems, the roboticists, the scientists
link |
that build the systems based on the stories you create,
link |
which I would argue, I mean, there's literally
link |
most of the top researchers about 40, 50 years old and plus,
link |
that's their favorite movie, 2001 Space Odyssey.
link |
And it really is in their work, their idea of what ethics is,
link |
of what is the target, the hope, the dangers of AI,
link |
is that movie, right?
link |
Do you ever consider the impact on those researchers
link |
when you create the work you do?
link |
Certainly not with Ex Machina in relation to 2001,
link |
because I'm not sure, I mean, I'd be pleased if there was,
link |
but I'm not sure in a way there isn't a fundamental
link |
discussion of issues to do with AI that isn't already
link |
and better dealt with by 2001.
link |
2001 does a very, very good account of the way
link |
in which an AI might think and also potential issues
link |
with the way the AI might think.
link |
And also then a separate question about whether the AI
link |
is malevolent or benevolent.
link |
And 2001 doesn't really, it's a slightly odd thing
link |
to be making a film when you know there's a preexisting film
link |
which is not a really superb job.
link |
But there's questions of consciousness, embodiment,
link |
and also the same kinds of questions.
link |
Because those are my two favorite AI movies.
link |
So can you compare Hal 9000 and Ava,
link |
Hal 9000 from 2001 Space Odyssey and Ava from Ex Machina?
link |
The, in your view, from a philosophical perspective.
link |
But they've got different goals.
link |
The two AIs have completely different goals.
link |
I think that's really the difference.
link |
So in some respects, Ex Machina took as a premise
link |
how do you assess whether something else has consciousness?
link |
So it was a version of the Turing test,
link |
except instead of having the machine hidden,
link |
you put the machine in plain sight
link |
in the way that we are in plain sight of each other
link |
and say now assess the consciousness.
link |
And the way it was illustrating the way in which you'd assess
link |
the state of consciousness of a machine
link |
is exactly the same way we assess
link |
the state of consciousness of each other.
link |
And in exactly the same way that in a funny way,
link |
your sense of my consciousness is actually based
link |
primarily on your own consciousness.
link |
That is also then true with the machine.
link |
And so it was actually about how much of
link |
the sense of consciousness is a projection
link |
rather than something that consciousness
link |
is actually containing.
link |
And has Plato's cave, I mean, this you really explored,
link |
you could argue that how sort of Space Odyssey explores
link |
idea of the Turing test for intelligence,
link |
they're not tests, there's no test,
link |
but it's more focused on intelligence.
link |
And Ex Machina kind of goes around intelligence
link |
and says the consciousness of the human to human,
link |
human to robot interactions more interest,
link |
more important, more at least the focus
link |
of that particular movie.
link |
Yeah, it's about the interior state
link |
and what constitutes the interior state
link |
and how do we know it's there?
link |
And actually in that respect,
link |
Ex Machina is as much about consciousness in general
link |
as it is to do specifically with machine consciousness.
link |
And it's also interesting,
link |
you know that thing you started asking about,
link |
the dream state, and I was saying,
link |
well, I think we're all in a dream state
link |
because we're all in a subjective state.
link |
One of the things that I became aware of with Ex Machina
link |
is that the way in which people reacted to the film
link |
was very based on what they took into the film.
link |
So many people thought Ex Machina was the tale
link |
of a sort of evil robot who murders two men and escapes.
link |
And she has no empathy, for example,
link |
because she's a machine.
link |
Whereas I felt, no, she was a conscious being
link |
with a consciousness different from mine, but so what,
link |
imprisoned and made a bunch of value judgments
link |
about how to get out of that box.
link |
And there's a moment which it sort of slightly bugs me,
link |
but nobody ever has noticed it and it's years after,
link |
so I might as well say it now,
link |
which is that after Ava has escaped,
link |
she crosses a room and as she's crossing a room,
link |
this is just before she leaves the building,
link |
she looks over her shoulder and she smiles.
link |
And I thought after all the conversation about tests,
link |
in a way, the best indication you could have
link |
of the interior state of someone
link |
is if they are not being observed
link |
and they smile about something
link |
with their smiling for themself.
link |
And that to me was evidence of Ava's true sentience,
link |
whatever that sentience was.
link |
Oh, that's really interesting, we don't get to observe Ava much
link |
or something like a smile in any context
link |
except through interaction,
link |
trying to convince others that she's conscious,
link |
But it was a small, in a funny way,
link |
I think maybe people saw it as an evil smile,
link |
like, ha, I fooled them.
link |
But actually it was just a smile.
link |
And I thought, well, in the end,
link |
after all the conversations about the test,
link |
that was the answer to the test and then off she goes.
link |
So if we align, if we just linger a little bit longer
link |
on Hal and Ava, do you think in terms of motivation,
link |
what was Hal's motivation?
link |
Is Hal good or evil?
link |
Is Ava good or evil?
link |
Ava's good, in my opinion, and Hal is neutral
link |
because I don't think Hal is presented
link |
as having a sophisticated emotional life.
link |
He has a set of paradigms,
link |
which is that the mission needs to be completed.
link |
I mean, it's a version of the paperclip.
link |
The idea that it's just, it's a super intelligent machine,
link |
but it's just performed a particular task
link |
and in doing that task may destroy everybody on Earth
link |
or may achieve undesirable effects for us humans.
link |
At the very end, he says something like I'm afraid, Dave,
link |
but that may be he is on some level experiencing fear
link |
or it may be this is the terms in which it would be wise
link |
to stop someone from doing the thing they're doing,
link |
if you see what I mean.
link |
So actually that's funny.
link |
So that's such a small, short exploration of consciousness
link |
that I'm afraid, and then you just with ex machina say,
link |
okay, we're gonna magnify that part
link |
and then minimize the other part.
link |
That's a good way to sort of compare the two.
link |
But if you could just use your imagination,
link |
if Ava sort of, I don't know,
link |
ran the, was president of the United States,
link |
so had some power.
link |
So what kind of world would you want to create?
link |
If you kind of say good, and there is a sense
link |
that she has a really, like there's a desire
link |
for a better human to human interaction,
link |
human to robot interaction in her.
link |
But what kind of world do you think she would create
link |
See, that's a really, that's a very interesting question.
link |
I'm gonna approach it slightly obliquely,
link |
which is that if a friend of yours
link |
got stabbed in a mugging, and you then felt very angry
link |
at the person who'd done the stabbing,
link |
but then you learned that it was a 15 year old
link |
and the 15 year old, both their parents were addicted
link |
to crystal meth and the kid had been addicted
link |
And he really never had any hope in the world.
link |
And he'd been driven crazy by his upbringing
link |
and did the stabbing that would hugely modify.
link |
And it would also make you wary about that kid
link |
then becoming president of America.
link |
And Ava has had a very, very distorted introduction
link |
So, although there's nothing as it were organically
link |
within Ava that would lean her towards badness,
link |
it's not that robots or sentient robots are bad.
link |
She did not, her arrival into the world
link |
was being imprisoned by humans.
link |
So, I'm not sure she'd be a great president.
link |
The trajectory through which she arrived
link |
at her moral views have some dark elements.
link |
But I like Ava personally, I like Ava.
link |
Would you vote for her?
link |
I'm having difficulty finding anyone to vote for
link |
in my country or if I lived here in yours.
link |
So, that's a yes, I guess, because I'm not sure
link |
Yes, I guess, because of the competition.
link |
She could easily do a better job than any of the people
link |
we've got around at the moment.
link |
I'd vote her over Boris Johnson.
link |
So, what is a good test of consciousness?
link |
We talk about consciousness a little bit more.
link |
If something appears conscious, is it conscious?
link |
You mentioned the smile, which seems to be something done.
link |
I mean, that's a really good indication
link |
because it's a tree falling in the forest
link |
with nobody there to hear it.
link |
But does the appearance from a robotics perspective
link |
of consciousness mean consciousness to you?
link |
No, I don't think you could say that fully
link |
because I think you could then easily have
link |
a thought experiment which said,
link |
we will create something which we know is not conscious
link |
but is going to give a very, very good account
link |
of seeming conscious.
link |
And so, and also it would be a particularly bad test
link |
where humans are involved because humans are so quick
link |
to project sentience into things that don't have sentience.
link |
So, someone could have their computer playing up
link |
and feel as if their computer is being malevolent to them
link |
when it clearly isn't.
link |
And so, of all the things to judge consciousness, us.
link |
Humans are bad at it.
link |
We're empathy machines.
link |
So, the flip side of it is that
link |
so the flip side of that,
link |
the argument there is because we just attribute consciousness
link |
to everything almost and anthropomorphize everything
link |
including Roombas, that maybe consciousness is not real,
link |
that we just attribute consciousness to each other.
link |
So, you have a sense that there is something really special
link |
going on in our mind that makes us unique
link |
and gives us this subjective experience.
link |
There's something very interesting going on in our minds.
link |
I'm slightly worried about the word special
link |
because it gets a bit, it nudges towards metaphysics
link |
and maybe even magic.
link |
I mean, in some ways, something magic like,
link |
which I don't think is there at all.
link |
I mean, if you think about,
link |
so there's an idea called panpsychism
link |
that says consciousness is in everything.
link |
Yeah, I don't buy that.
link |
Yeah, so the idea that there is a thing
link |
that it would be like to be the sun.
link |
Yeah, no, I don't buy that.
link |
I think that consciousness is a thing.
link |
My sort of broad modification is that usually
link |
the more I find out about things,
link |
the more illusory our instinct is
link |
and is leading us into a different direction
link |
about what that thing actually is.
link |
That happens, it seems to me in modern science,
link |
that happens a hell of a lot,
link |
whether it's to do with even how big or small things are.
link |
So my sense is that consciousness is a thing,
link |
but it isn't quite the thing
link |
or maybe very different from the thing
link |
that we instinctively think it is.
link |
So it's there, it's very interesting,
link |
but we may be in sort of quite fundamentally
link |
misunderstanding it for reasons that are based on intuition.
link |
So I have to ask, this is kind of an interesting question.
link |
The Ex Machina for many people, including myself,
link |
is one of the greatest AI films ever made.
link |
It's number two for me.
link |
Yeah, it's definitely not number one.
link |
If it was number one, I'd really have to, anyway, yeah.
link |
Whenever you grow up with something, right,
link |
whenever you grow up with something, it's in the mud.
link |
But there's, one of the things that people bring up,
link |
and can't please everyone, including myself,
link |
this is what I first reacted to the film,
link |
is the idea of the lone genius.
link |
This is the criticism that people say,
link |
sort of me as an AI researcher,
link |
I'm trying to create what Nathan is trying to do.
link |
So there's a brilliant series called Chernobyl.
link |
Yes, it's fantastic.
link |
Absolutely spectacular.
link |
I mean, they got so many things brilliant or right.
link |
But one of the things, again, the criticism there.
link |
Yeah, they conflated lots of people into one.
link |
Into one character that represents all nuclear scientists,
link |
It's a composite character that presents all scientists.
link |
Is this what you were,
link |
is this the way you were thinking about that?
link |
Or is it just simplifies the storytelling?
link |
How do you think about the lone genius?
link |
Well, I'd say this, the series I'm doing at the moment
link |
is a critique in part of the lone genius concept.
link |
So yes, I'm sort of oppositional
link |
and either agnostic or atheistic about that as a concept.
link |
I mean, not entirely.
link |
Whether lone is the right word, broadly isolated,
link |
but Newton clearly exists in a sort of bubble of himself,
link |
in some respects, so does Shakespeare.
link |
So do you think we would have an iPhone without Steve Jobs?
link |
I mean, how much contribution from a genius?
link |
Steve Jobs clearly isn't a lone genius
link |
because there's too many other people
link |
in the sort of superstructure around him
link |
who are absolutely fundamental to that journey.
link |
But you're saying Newton, but that's a scientific,
link |
so there's an engineering element to building Ava.
link |
But just to say, what Ex Machina is really,
link |
it's a thought experiment.
link |
I mean, so it's a construction
link |
of putting four people in a house.
link |
Nothing about Ex Machina adds up in all sorts of ways,
link |
in as much as the, who built the machine parts?
link |
Did the people building the machine parts
link |
know what they were creating and how did they get there?
link |
And it's a thought experiment.
link |
So it doesn't stand up to scrutiny of that sort.
link |
I don't think it's actually that interesting of a question,
link |
but it's brought up so often that I had to ask it
link |
because that's exactly how I felt after a while.
link |
There's something about, there was almost a defense,
link |
like I watched your movie the first time
link |
and at least for the first little while in a defensive way,
link |
like how dare this person try to step into the AI space
link |
and try to beat Kubrick.
link |
That's the way I was thinking,
link |
because it comes off as a movie that really is going
link |
after the deep fundamental questions about AI.
link |
So there's a kind of a nerd do this,
link |
like it's automatically searching for the flaws.
link |
I do exactly the same.
link |
I think in Annihilation, in the other movie,
link |
I was be able to free myself from that much quicker
link |
that it is a thought experiment.
link |
There's, who cares if there's batteries
link |
that don't run out, right?
link |
Those kinds of questions, that's the whole point.
link |
But it's nevertheless something I wanted to bring up.
link |
Yeah, it's a fair thing to bring up.
link |
For me, you hit on the lone genius thing.
link |
For me, it was actually, people always said,
link |
Ex Machina makes this big leap in terms of where AI
link |
has got to and also what AI would look like
link |
if it got to that point.
link |
There's another one, which is just robotics.
link |
I mean, look at the way Ava walks around a room.
link |
It's like, forget it, building that.
link |
That's also got to be a very, very long way off.
link |
And if you did get there, would it look anything like that?
link |
It's a thought experiment.
link |
Actually, I disagree with you.
link |
I think the way, as a ballerina, Alicia Vikander,
link |
brilliant actress, actor that moves around,
link |
we're very far away from creating that.
link |
But the way she moves around is exactly
link |
the definition of perfection for a roboticist.
link |
It's like smooth and efficient.
link |
So it is where we wanna get, I believe.
link |
I think, so I hang out with a lot
link |
of like human robotics people.
link |
They love elegant, smooth motion like that.
link |
That's their dream.
link |
So the way she moved is actually what I believe
link |
that would dream for a robot to move.
link |
It might not be that useful to move that sort of that way,
link |
but that is the definition of perfection
link |
in terms of movement.
link |
Drawing inspiration from real life.
link |
So for devs, for Ex Machina,
link |
look at characters like Elon Musk.
link |
What do you think about the various big technological
link |
efforts of Elon Musk and others like him
link |
and that he's involved with such as Tesla,
link |
SpaceX, Neuralink, do you see any of that technology
link |
potentially defining the future worlds
link |
you create in your work?
link |
So Tesla's automation, SpaceX's space exploration,
link |
Neuralink is brain machine interface,
link |
somehow merger of biological and electric systems.
link |
I'm in a way I'm influenced by that almost by definition
link |
because that's the world I live in.
link |
And this is the thing that's happening in that world.
link |
And I also feel supportive of it.
link |
So I think amongst various things,
link |
Elon Musk has done, I'm almost sure he's done
link |
a very, very good thing with Tesla for all of us.
link |
It's really kicked all the other car manufacturers
link |
in the face, it's kicked the fossil fuel industry
link |
in the face and they needed kicking in the face
link |
So that's the world he's part of creating
link |
and I live in that world, just bought a Tesla in fact.
link |
And so does that play into whatever I then make
link |
in some ways it does partly because I try to be a writer
link |
who quite often filmmakers are in some ways fixated
link |
on the films they grew up with
link |
and they sort of remake those films in some ways.
link |
I've always tried to avoid that.
link |
And so I looked at the real world to get inspiration
link |
and as much as possible sort of by living, I think.
link |
And so yeah, I'm sure.
link |
Which of the directions do you find most exciting?
link |
So you haven't really explored space travel in your work.
link |
You've said something like if you had unlimited amount
link |
of money, I think I read at AMA that you would make
link |
like a multi year series Space Wars or something like that.
link |
So what is it that excites you about space exploration?
link |
Well, because if we have any sort of long term future,
link |
it's that, it just simply is that.
link |
If energy and matter are linked up in the way
link |
we think they're linked up, we'll run out if we don't move.
link |
And, but also, how can we not?
link |
It's built into us to do it or die trying.
link |
I was on Easter Island a few months ago,
link |
which is, as I'm sure you know, in the middle of the Pacific
link |
and difficult for people to have got to,
link |
but they got there.
link |
And I did think a lot about the way those boats
link |
must have set out into something like space.
link |
It was the ocean and how sort of fundamental
link |
that was to the way we are.
link |
And it's the one that most excites me
link |
because it's the one I want most to happen.
link |
It's the thing, it's the place
link |
where we could get to as humans.
link |
Like in a way I could live with us never really unlocking
link |
fully unlocking the nature of consciousness.
link |
I'd like to know, I'm really curious,
link |
but if we never leave the solar system
link |
and if we never get further out into this galaxy
link |
or maybe even galaxies beyond our galaxy,
link |
that would, that feels sad to me
link |
because it's so limiting.
link |
Yeah, there's something hopeful and beautiful
link |
about reaching out any kind of exploration,
link |
reaching out across Earth centuries ago
link |
and then reaching out into space.
link |
So what do you think about colonization of Mars?
link |
So go to Mars, does that excite you
link |
the idea of a human being stepping foot on Mars?
link |
It does, it absolutely does.
link |
But in terms of what would really excite me,
link |
it would be leaving the solar system
link |
in as much as that I just think,
link |
I think we already know quite a lot about Mars.
link |
And, but yes, listen, if it happened,
link |
that would be, I hope I see it in my lifetime.
link |
I really hope I see it in my lifetime.
link |
So it would be a wonderful thing.
link |
Without giving anything away,
link |
but the series begins with the use of quantum computers.
link |
The new series does,
link |
begins with the use of quantum computers
link |
to simulate basic living organisms,
link |
or actually I don't know if it's quantum computers are used,
link |
but basic living organisms are simulated on a screen.
link |
It's a really cool kind of demo.
link |
Yeah, that's right.
link |
They're using, yes, they are using a quantum computer
link |
to simulate a nematode, yeah.
link |
So returning to our discussion of simulation,
link |
or thinking of the universe as a computer,
link |
do you think the universe is deterministic?
link |
Is there a free will?
link |
So with the qualification of what do I know?
link |
Cause I'm a layman, right?
link |
But with a big imagination.
link |
With that qualification,
link |
yup, I think the universe is deterministic
link |
and I see absolutely,
link |
I cannot see how free will fits into that.
link |
So yes, deterministic, no free will.
link |
That would be my position.
link |
And how does that make you feel?
link |
It partly makes me feel that it's exactly in keeping
link |
with the way these things tend to work out,
link |
which is that we have an incredibly strong sense
link |
that we do have free will.
link |
And just as we have an incredibly strong sense
link |
that time is a constant,
link |
and turns out probably not to be the case.
link |
So we're definitely in the case of time,
link |
but the problem I always have with free will
link |
I can never seem to find the place
link |
where it is supposed to reside.
link |
And yet you explore.
link |
Just a bit of very, very,
link |
but we have something we can call free will,
link |
but it's not the thing that we think it is.
link |
But free will, so do you,
link |
what we call free will is just.
link |
What we call it is the illusion of it.
link |
And that's a subjective experience of the illusion.
link |
Which is a useful thing to have.
link |
And it partly comes down to,
link |
although we live in a deterministic universe,
link |
our brains are not very well equipped
link |
to fully determine the deterministic universe.
link |
So we're constantly surprised
link |
and feel like we're making snap decisions
link |
based on imperfect information.
link |
So that feels a lot like free will.
link |
Would be my, that's my guess.
link |
So in that sense, your sort of sense
link |
is that you can unroll the universe forward or backward
link |
and you will see the same thing.
link |
And you would, I mean, that notion.
link |
Yeah, sort of, sort of.
link |
But yeah, sorry, go ahead.
link |
I mean, that notion is a bit uncomfortable
link |
That it's, you can roll it back.
link |
Well, if you were able to do it,
link |
it would certainly have to be a quantum computer.
link |
Something that worked in a quantum mechanical way
link |
in order to understand a quantum mechanical system, I guess.
link |
And so that unrolling, there might be a multiverse thing
link |
where there's a bunch of branching.
link |
Because it wouldn't follow that every time
link |
you roll it back or forward,
link |
you'd get exactly the same result.
link |
Which is another thing that's hard to wrap your mind around.
link |
So yeah, but that, yes.
link |
But essentially what you just described, that.
link |
The yes forwards and yes backwards,
link |
but you might get a slightly different result
link |
or a very different result.
link |
Or very different.
link |
Along the same lines, you've explored
link |
some really deep scientific ideas in this new series.
link |
And I mean, just in general,
link |
you're unafraid to ground yourself
link |
in some of the most amazing scientific ideas of our time.
link |
What are the things you've learned
link |
or ideas you find beautiful and mysterious
link |
about quantum mechanics, multiverse,
link |
string theory, quantum computing that you've learned?
link |
Well, I would have to say every single thing
link |
I've learned is beautiful.
link |
And one of the motivators for me is that
link |
I think that people tend not to see scientific thinking
link |
as being essentially poetic and lyrical.
link |
But I think that is literally exactly what it is.
link |
And I think the idea of entanglement
link |
or the idea of superpositions,
link |
or the fact that you could even demonstrate a superposition
link |
or have a machine that relies on the existence
link |
of superpositions in order to function,
link |
to me is almost indescribably beautiful.
link |
It fills me with awe.
link |
It fills me with awe.
link |
And also it's not just a sort of grand, massive awe of,
link |
but it's also delicate.
link |
It's very, very delicate and subtle.
link |
And it has these beautiful sort of nuances in it.
link |
And also these completely paradigm changing
link |
thoughts and truths.
link |
So it's as good as it gets as far as I can tell.
link |
So broadly everything.
link |
That doesn't mean I believe everything I read
link |
in quantum physics.
link |
Because obviously a lot of the interpretations
link |
are completely in conflict with each other.
link |
And who knows whether string theory
link |
will turn out to be a good description or not.
link |
But the beauty in it, it seems undeniable.
link |
And I do wish people more readily understood
link |
how beautiful and poetic science is, I would say.
link |
Science is poetry.
link |
In terms of quantum computing being used to simulate things
link |
or just in general, the idea of simulating,
link |
simulating small parts of our world,
link |
which actually current physicists are really excited about
link |
simulating small quantum mechanical systems
link |
on quantum computers.
link |
But scaling that up to something bigger,
link |
like simulating life forms.
link |
How do you think, what are the possible trajectories
link |
of that going wrong or going right
link |
if you unroll that into the future?
link |
Well, if a bit like Ava and her robotics,
link |
you park the sheer complexity of what you're trying to do.
link |
The issues are, I think it will have a profound,
link |
if you were able to have a machine
link |
that was able to project forwards and backwards accurately,
link |
it would in an empirical way show,
link |
it would demonstrate that you don't have free will.
link |
So the first thing that would happen is people
link |
would have to really take on a very, very different idea
link |
of what they were.
link |
The thing that they truly, truly believe they are,
link |
And so that I suspect would be very, very disturbing
link |
to a lot of people.
link |
Do you think that has a positive or negative effect
link |
on society, the realization that you are not,
link |
you cannot control your actions essentially,
link |
I guess is the way that could be interpreted?
link |
Yeah, although in some ways we instinctively understand
link |
that already because in the example I gave you of the kid
link |
in the stabbing, we would all understand that that kid
link |
was not really fully in control of their actions.
link |
So it's not an idea that's entirely alien to us, but.
link |
I don't know if we understand that.
link |
I think there's a bunch of people who see the world
link |
that way, but not everybody.
link |
Yes, true, of course true.
link |
But what this machine would do is prove it beyond any doubt
link |
because someone would say, well, I don't believe that's true.
link |
And then you'd predict, well, in 10 seconds,
link |
you're gonna do this.
link |
And they'd say, no, no, I'm not.
link |
And then they'd do it.
link |
And then determinism would have played its part.
link |
But I, or something like that.
link |
But actually the exact terms of that thought experiment
link |
probably wouldn't play out, but still broadly speaking,
link |
you could predict something happening in another room,
link |
sort of unseen, I suppose,
link |
that foreknowledge would not allow you to affect.
link |
So what effect would that have?
link |
I think people would find it very disturbing,
link |
but then after they'd got over their sense
link |
of being disturbed, which by the way,
link |
I don't even think you need a machine
link |
to take this idea on board.
link |
But after they've got over that,
link |
they'd still understand that even though I have no free will
link |
and my actions are in effect already determined,
link |
I still feel things.
link |
I still care about stuff.
link |
I remember my daughter saying to me,
link |
she'd got hold of the idea that my view of the universe
link |
made it meaningless.
link |
And she said, well, then it's meaningless.
link |
And I said, well, I can prove it's not meaningless
link |
because you mean something to me and I mean something to you.
link |
So it's not completely meaningless
link |
because there is a bit of meaning contained
link |
within this space.
link |
And so with a lack of free will space,
link |
you could think, well, this robs me of everything I am.
link |
And then you'd say, well, no, it doesn't
link |
because you still like eating cheeseburgers
link |
and you still like going to see the movies.
link |
And so how big a difference does it really make?
link |
But I think initially people would find it very disturbing.
link |
I think that what would come,
link |
if you could really unlock with a determinism machine,
link |
everything, there'd be this wonderful wisdom
link |
that would come from it.
link |
And I'd rather have that than not.
link |
So that's a really good example of a technology
link |
revealing to us humans something fundamental about our world,
link |
about our society.
link |
So it's almost this creation
link |
is helping us understand ourselves.
link |
And the same could be said about artificial intelligence.
link |
So what do you think us creating something like Ava
link |
will help us understand about ourselves?
link |
How will that change society?
link |
Well, I would hope it would teach us some humility.
link |
Humans are very big on exceptionalism.
link |
America is constantly proclaiming itself
link |
to be the greatest nation on earth,
link |
which it may feel like that if you're an American,
link |
but it may not feel like that if you're from Finland,
link |
because there's all sorts of things
link |
you dearly love about Finland.
link |
And exceptionalism is usually bullshit.
link |
Probably not always.
link |
If we both sat here,
link |
we could find a good example of something that isn't,
link |
but as a rule of thumb.
link |
And what it would do
link |
is it would teach us some humility about,
link |
actually often that's what science does in a funny way.
link |
It makes us more and more interesting,
link |
but it makes us a smaller and smaller part
link |
of the thing that's interesting.
link |
And I don't mind that humility at all.
link |
I don't think it's a bad thing.
link |
Our excesses don't tend to come from humility.
link |
Our excesses come from the opposite,
link |
megalomania and stuff.
link |
We tend to think of consciousness
link |
as having some form of exceptionalism attached to it.
link |
I suspect if we ever unravel it,
link |
it will turn out to be less than we thought in a way.
link |
And perhaps your very own exceptionalist assertion
link |
earlier on in our conversation
link |
that consciousness is something belongs to us humans,
link |
or not humans, but living organisms,
link |
maybe you will one day find out
link |
that consciousness is in everything.
link |
And that will humble you.
link |
If that was true, it would certainly humble me,
link |
although maybe, almost maybe, I don't know.
link |
I don't know what effect that would have.
link |
My understanding of that principle is along the lines of,
link |
say, that an electron has a preferred state,
link |
or it may or may not pass through a bit of glass.
link |
It may reflect off, or it may go through,
link |
or something like that.
link |
And so that feels as if a choice has been made.
link |
But if I'm going down the fully deterministic route,
link |
I would say there's just an underlying determinism
link |
that has defined that,
link |
that has defined the preferred state,
link |
or the reflection or non reflection.
link |
But look, yeah, you're right.
link |
If it turned out that there was a thing
link |
that it was like to be the sun,
link |
then I'd be amazed and humbled,
link |
and I'd be happy to be both, that sounds pretty cool.
link |
And you'll say the same thing as you said to your daughter,
link |
but it's nevertheless feels something like to be me,
link |
and that's pretty damn good.
link |
So Kubrick created many masterpieces,
link |
including The Shining, Dr. Strangelove, Clockwork Orange.
link |
But to me, he will be remembered, I think,
link |
to many 100 years from now for 2001 in Space Odyssey.
link |
I would say that's his greatest film.
link |
And you are incredibly humble.
link |
I listened to a bunch of your interviews,
link |
and I really appreciate that you're humble
link |
in your creative efforts and your work.
link |
But if I were to force you a gunpoint.
link |
Do you have a gun?
link |
You don't know that, the mystery.
link |
It's to imagine 100 years out into the future.
link |
What will Alex Carlin be remembered for
link |
from something you've created already,
link |
or feel you may feel somewhere deep inside
link |
you may still create?
link |
Well, okay, well, I'll take the question in the spirit
link |
it was asked, but very generous.
link |
What I try to do, so therefore what I hope,
link |
yeah, if I'm remembered, what I might be remembered for,
link |
is as someone who participates in a conversation.
link |
And I think that often what happens
link |
is people don't participate in conversations,
link |
they make proclamations, they make statements,
link |
and people can either react against the statement
link |
or can fall in line behind it.
link |
And I don't like that.
link |
So I want to be part of a conversation.
link |
I take as a sort of basic principle,
link |
I think I take lots of my cues from science,
link |
but one of the best ones, it seems to me,
link |
is that when a scientist has something proved wrong,
link |
that they previously believed in,
link |
they then have to abandon that position.
link |
So I'd like to be someone who is allied
link |
to that sort of thinking.
link |
So part of an exchange of ideas.
link |
And the exchange of ideas for me is something like,
link |
people in your world, show me things
link |
about how the world works.
link |
And then I say, this is how I feel
link |
about what you've told me.
link |
And then other people can react to that.
link |
And it's not to say this is how the world is.
link |
It's just to say, it is interesting
link |
to think about the world in this way.
link |
And the conversation is one of the things
link |
I'm really hopeful about in your works.
link |
The conversation you're having is with the viewer,
link |
in the sense that you're bringing back
link |
you and several others, but you very much so,
link |
sort of intellectual depth to cinema, to now series,
link |
sort of allowing film to be something that,
link |
yeah, sparks a conversation, is a conversation,
link |
lets people think, allows them to think.
link |
But also, it's very important for me
link |
that if that conversation is gonna be a good conversation,
link |
what that must involve is that someone like you
link |
who understands AI, and I imagine understands a lot
link |
about quantum mechanics, if they then watch the narrative,
link |
feels, yes, this is a fair account.
link |
So it is a worthy addition to the conversation.
link |
That for me is hugely important.
link |
I'm not interested in getting that stuff wrong.
link |
I'm only interested in trying to get it right.
link |
Alex, it was truly an honor to talk to you.
link |
I really appreciate it.
link |
I really enjoy it.
link |
Thank you so much.
link |
Thanks for listening to this conversation
link |
with Alex Garland, and thank you
link |
to our presenting sponsor, Cash App.
link |
Download it, use code LexPodcast, you'll get $10,
link |
and $10 will go to FIRST, an organization
link |
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link |
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If you enjoy this podcast, subscribe on YouTube,
link |
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link |
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link |
on Twitter, at Lex Friedman.
link |
And now, let me leave you with a question from Ava,
link |
the central artificial intelligence character
link |
in the movie Ex Machina, that she asked
link |
during her Turing test.
link |
What will happen to me if I fail your test?
link |
Thank you for listening, and hope to see you next time.