-
♪ [music] ♪
-
- [Ian] In the past year,
-
artificial intelligence
has captured our imagination
-
like never before
and like nothing else.
-
It's transformed everything
from how we work,
-
to how we perceive
the world around us,
-
to increasingly
who we are as people.
-
And with this technological
renaissance,
-
there are very few names
-
that stand out as prominently
as Mustafa Suleyman.
-
He has a career
that's deeply rooted in AI.
-
He's been at the forefront
of this field
-
for well over a decade,
-
co-founding DeepMind
-
and playing a critical role
-
in its mission
to solve intelligence
-
and to use it to make
the world a better place.
-
And today,
we're sitting down with Mustafa
-
to discuss
both the exciting potential of AI,
-
as well as concerns
about the future of AI.
-
Mustafa, thank you for joining us.
-
Mustafa, you've been working
on artificial intelligence
-
for, you know,
like almost 20 years now, right?
-
So what's happened
that has made this
-
such an omnipresent thing
in all of our lives?
-
- [Mustafa] Well,
for much of that time,
-
like you said,
-
I've been among a small group
of very fringe AI researchers
-
who mostly been considered
to be a little bit crazy.
-
Back in 2010,
when I first started DeepMind,
-
most people who heard
that I was working on AI
-
thought that I was really
-
nothing to do
with mainstream culture,
-
a weirdo futurist,
-
and working on something
that was very speculative.
-
So for as long as I can remember,
-
we've been an outsider
-
and in the last sort of few years,
I would say,
-
it's kinda grown
in the popular imagination.
-
I think a lot of that started
several years back with AlphaGo,
-
which was an AI that we designed
-
to play the ancient Chinese
board game of Go,
-
which is played
on a 19 x 19 square grid.
-
- It's a lot more complicated
than chess, absolutely.
-
- Yeah. It was kind
of the next big frontier for AI
-
after IBM beat the game of chess
with Deep Blue back in 1997,
-
and obviously, as everyone knows,
that's on an 8 x 8 grid,
-
and the pieces can only move
in very fixed ways,
-
whereas on a 19 x 19 grid,
not only is it that much larger,
-
but all the pieces are equal,
-
there's just black
and white stones,
-
and you can place them
anywhere on the grid.
-
So the number of possible moves
that can happen in the board game
-
are just exponentially larger,
-
something like 10^170 possible
configurations of the board.
-
That is more atoms than there are
in the known universe.
-
So it's a 10 with 170 zeros
next to it, after it.
-
It's just an incredibly insane
possible number of configurations.
-
So all the traditional methods
of rule-based search,
-
where you would say, "If there are
some pieces in this area,
-
then don't place them there,
but place them adjacent,"
-
which is traditionally how people
trained AIs to play chess.
-
Those methods didn't work
-
because the size of the space
was just so huge.
-
So we had to invent
these learning methods,
-
and over the years,
-
we've applied
those learning methods
-
to other domains.
-
We started off with games,
-
then moved into image recognition,
-
then moved into audio transcription
-
so you can sort of write down
the words that I say phonetically.
-
And then, in the last couple years,
you know,
-
coming back to your question
-
of why things have gone crazy
in the last year or so,
-
is because we've actually been able
to apply a similar suite of methods
-
- deep learning -
-
to generate
new text that is unique, right?
-
And that's the incredible thing
that has happened here.
-
We've gone from classification -
-
so understanding
the content of images,
-
understanding that two languages
translate in the following way,
-
understanding the content
of a piece of text or a paragraph -
-
to then being able to generate
a new example of that paragraph,
-
or a new image,
or some new speech or music
-
at human-level performance.
-
A lot of these AIs now are
pretty much as good as most humans
-
at being creative
or, you know, answering questions.
-
- So nowadays,
-
we can have a conversation
with an AI bot,
-
and, I mean,
we can't really tell the difference
-
between it and another human being.
-
That a fair point, right?
-
- Yeah. I mean, that is
one of the surreal moments
-
that we live in, right?
-
When you talk to one of these AIs,
-
like ChatGPT,
-
or my own company, Inflection,
for example, makes an AI called Pi,
-
p-i, which stands
for personal intelligence.
-
When you talk to Pi, I mean,
-
it's just like chatting
to a regular human.
-
You can actually phone Pi,
-
and it will speak to you
-
in a very fluent, smooth,
conversational voice.
-
It has empathy.
It has emotional intelligence,
-
And yeah, in many respects,
it's just like talking to a human,
-
and so many people would say
-
that we have nearly passed
the famous Turing test,
-
which was proposed, you know,
back in the 1950s
-
by this great computer scientist
and mathematician
-
called Alan Turing,
-
who said that if you could,
you know, design a computer
-
to speak to another human,
-
and it would be impossible to tell
-
whether it was actually a computer
or a human speaking,
-
then we could say that that AI
or that computer system
-
was intelligent
and it had passed the Turing test.
-
And now, we're pretty much
at that moment.
-
I think, you know,
it's still possible to tell
-
if you really pay attention
-
or if the conversation
goes on long enough.
-
But if it's only just, you know, two
or three or five turns of conversation,
-
it's very difficult to tell.
-
And that's an amazing moment.
-
- It's not that the AI
is intelligent.
-
It's just that we perceive it
to be intelligent.
-
In reality,
-
it's just taking all of this data
and pattern recognition,
-
and it's predicting things
-
on the basis of the prompt
that we write in, right?
-
I mean, it's a program
at the end of the day.
-
It's not thinking.
-
- Well, it's interesting,
-
because with every new technology,
-
we're forced to reconsider
our basic assumptions.
-
So we thought we had a good grasp
of what intelligence is
-
because it was compared
to passing the Turing test.
-
Whereas now we've passed
the Turing test,
-
people are like,
-
"Well, maybe it's not
that intelligent after all," right?
-
So maybe it wasn't
a very good test.
-
And that is the process of science,
is that we posit a hypothesis,
-
we develop some, you know, experiments
to test that hypothesis,
-
and then, we review the evidence
and we generate a new test.
-
And so today,
-
we have to generate a new test,
-
because it's pretty clear
-
that these things
are not really intelligent,
-
even though they're very capable.
-
So I've proposed a new test,
a modern Turing test,
-
which actually evaluates
what an AI can do,
-
not just what it can say.
-
So I think
a better measure of an AI
-
is an artificial
capable intelligence,
-
an ACI.
-
So what what can this thing do
in the labor market?
-
What jobs can it do?
-
Can it write emails?
-
Can it negotiate contracts?
Can it invent new products?
-
Can it, you know,
-
market and promote a product
and persuade people to buy it?
-
And if it can do
all of those things,
-
and, you know, do it in a way
-
that enables it to make
a profit on a product,
-
that's kinda like
a mini entrepreneur.
-
It's like a little startup person.
-
And I think that over the next
sort of three or four years,
-
there will be AIs that can do
all those things I've described
-
and actually turn a real profit
from a new product.
-
And that'll be a watershed moment,
-
because that's many of the skills
-
that a lot of people use
in their day to day jobs.
-
- So I want to get to the future,
-
but let's start with the present
just for a moment.
-
I mean, for young people today
-
that are hearing
about artificial intelligence,
-
as so many of us are,
for the first time,
-
if they're curious,
-
what should they be doing
with artificial intelligence?
-
How should a person start engaging
-
in a way that will be constructive
and useful for their future?
-
- Well, the first thing to say
is that these AIs
-
have all of the knowledge
-
that has been put
on the open internet.
-
So they're actually
extremely smart.
-
Not only have they been trained
on Wikipedia many, many times over,
-
but they've read
millions of blog posts,
-
millions of news articles,
-
many books in many cases
that are available on the open web,
-
and so they're very knowledgeable.
-
So the first thing to do
is just talk to one.
-
Pick a topic
that you are really interested in,
-
maybe one that you know
something about,
-
and try to test the limits
of the AI's knowledge
-
by probing it, and questioning it,
and going back and forth.
-
I'm sure many people
have already tried them out.
-
And I think, you know
give Pi a go.
-
It's really
an incredible experience.
-
And once you play around with it
a little bit,
-
you realize, A, the magic
and how impressive it is,
-
but B, where it kind of trips up.
-
Sometimes it goes in circles.
-
Sometimes it doesn't remember
things correctly.
-
And that gives you an intuition
-
for where the cutting edge
is today,
-
where it's weak,
and where it's strong.
-
And then I would say,
if you're really interested,
-
is try and prompt one of these AIs.
-
Try and give it a stylistic guide.
-
You know, try and get it to,
-
you know, talk in the style
of, you know, President Obama,
-
or, you know, one of your favorite
celebrities, or Shakespeare.
-
You know,
and invent something with it,
-
you know, treat it as an aid,
a creative brainstorming partner,
-
and then you can see again
what the shape of it is.
-
And if you want to go even further,
-
you know, many of these models
-
are available
in open source software,
-
and you can have a go
at trying to program one of them.
-
- And what's something
that you could program
-
an AI today to do
that would be interesting?
-
I mean, you could program it,
for example,
-
to be a, you know, expert
in Formula One racing
-
and talk to you
in the style of Shakespeare,
-
if you like.
-
You know, it can embody
the character and persona
-
of anything that you can imagine,
-
and take advantage
of the depth of knowledge
-
that it has been trained on.
-
So it might be an expert
in talking about cactuses.
-
It might know everything
about Harley Davidsons.
-
It might know all
about the dinosaurs.
-
Anything that you can think of,
-
it is going to be able to imitate
that knowledge
-
in a particular style.
-
And so, the world is your oyster.
-
You can create game characters.
-
You can create,
you know, little aides,
-
or assistants, or friends,
-
you know, to play with
or to talk to,
-
fiction
that you can co-write together,
-
you know,
you write part of the story,
-
the AI writes
the other part of the story.
-
So, you know, it's really limitless
what can be done with these things.
-
- And you and I are great optimists
-
on how much AI is doing
and where this technology is going.
-
But we're also very well aware
-
that with all
of these opportunities
-
to program AI
to do incredible things,
-
if you want to program it
to do bad things,
-
you probably can.
-
And I mean, you can use it
to learn and promote information,
-
but you can use it
to promote disinformation,
-
and to fake people,
-
and to get people
to believe things that aren't true.
-
What do we need to do
to limit the potential
-
for AI to be used in ways
that are dangerous for our society?
-
- Well, one of the things is that,
at the moment,
-
many of the AI services
are available
-
through large,
established providers,
-
and those providers
have all committed
-
to responsible
and ethical principles.
-
And it's incumbent on all of us
to hold those providers to account
-
based on what they've said,
-
so, about not spreading
misinformation,
-
not spreading
factually untrue content,
-
and you know, crucially,
-
I think, not imitating
a known public figure, right?
-
Because what we don't want
is to have a bunch of AIs
-
that, you know,
where in the future,
-
it will be impossible
to tell whether, you know,
-
a celebrity, or a politician,
or a business person,
-
you know, had in fact given
a message, or said something,
-
made a recording,
issued a statement,
-
but in fact,
it was actually a deep fake,
-
it was a made-up piece of content.
-
And at the moment,
-
most of the big providers
of these AIs are very responsible
-
and take lots of efforts
to prevent those kinds of things.
-
I think, in the future,
these models are going to be
-
increasingly available
in open source,
-
and so,
that's going to get harder to,
-
you know, sort of contain
and to moderate.
-
- And when you say in open source,
-
you mean, like,
you're not going to just get it
-
from Meta, or Google,
or Microsoft, or Inflection,
-
that you could get it
just like on the open web.
-
And then the rules are
-
whatever the rules happen to be
for that provider.
-
- Yeah. And I think
that's going to become
-
more and more a challenge
of the open Internet,
-
is, you know, where are
the boundaries of that,
-
and how does it get restricted?
-
Because, you know,
-
you're going to be able
to take this software
-
and run your own AI
-
independent of any big provider
in five years time, right?
-
I mean, today you can run them,
you know, in the open source,
-
and they're pretty good,
but in the future,
-
they're going to be
really, really good.
-
So we just have to think
about the right way to make sure
-
that we have stable
and peaceful outcomes
-
and that the transition
to this new AI future
-
doesn't happen too quickly,
and isn't too chaotic,
-
because as we've seen in the past,
-
sometimes there can be
unintended consequences.
-
Now we aren't yet at the point that
we would use an AI to be our lawyer.
-
We might use it to help our lawyer,
-
but we wouldn't use it to be it or
to be our teacher or to be our nurse.
-
But it sounds like in in
very short periods of time,
-
you believe that AI is going to be able
to replace a lot of these functions.
-
Take us a little bit along
that path. Not all the way yet,
-
but just like the next year or two.
-
Because I mean, we keep seeing
all of these new announcements
-
and,
-
you know, you said, well, AI can generate
text and it can sound like a human being.
-
Yeah. But you can have
a conversation with it.
-
Well, now we see AI can generate images
-
and there are images that are more
impressive than almost any artist
-
or graphic design. Then now we see
just recently AI can generate video
-
and and can generate a movie that, I
mean, you know, you would see in Hollywood
-
maybe or really close.
-
What what's coming next? What
-
do we see in the next year or
two that's gonna blow our minds
-
that we're gonna start using everywhere?
-
I think that the reality is that
over the next two to three years,
-
we are going to be surrounded by
a new species of digital people.
-
And you know we have wrestled with
different metaphors for describing
-
this new technology era
-
for many decades and none of them seem
to be sufficient or up to the task.
-
You know, some people have compared AI
to another general purpose technology
-
like electricity.
-
General purpose because
it's like a raw commodity
-
that enables many many other
technologies and products and services
-
to be built on top of it. I mean, who could
think of living in a model world today
-
without electricity? You
know, going back even further,
-
the printing press was an earlier general
purpose technology because it it enabled
-
anybody to broadcast their
ideas and organize and plan
-
and so on. So many meta capabilities
arose because of the that platform.
-
Or the Internet.
-
Same thing.
-
Or indeed the Internet. That's another good
example of a general purpose technology.
-
But today, it's hard to say that
AI is a general purpose technology.
-
I mean, it certainly is,
but that's not all it is.
-
It is interactive.
-
It produces new and
dynamically emergent content
-
in a personalized way uniquely
to you at every moment.
-
That is very different
-
to the very predictable nature of
electricity, for example. Right?
-
The actual infrastructure of the
Internet was very stable and predictable.
-
We know exactly how many
packets can be sent across
-
a certain wire of a certain
speed at a certain time.
-
Whereas here, this is like a
completely new design material.
-
Right? That that no two answers to the
same question will be the same. Right?
-
Every interaction is very different. And
now that these interactions are becoming
-
completely dynamic. Right?
-
What you know, you say something, the
AI says something, you say something,
-
It's actually much more like
talking to a full digital person.
-
So in two or three years' time, there
will be an avatar that will be a human
-
like or other kind of character
representation that is very animated
-
and just like you or I
speaking to one another now.
-
As you say, it will be able to generate
video in real time completely seamlessly
-
on your phone, on your desktop,
on your tablet, in your car.
-
Right?
-
And so rather than browsing
-
a web page, right, today when
you go to look for information,
-
you type a query into Google,
-
and you get a static web page
-
that was probably made two years ago or
maybe even some cases five years ago.
-
And that's like a a billboard.
-
Right? It's a static
representation that doesn't change.
-
And it doesn't it certainly doesn't
change to adapt to you or me.
-
Right? It's just we both see the same
thing. You type in a website. You goes you
-
we we both see exactly the
same thing regardless of
-
the time of day or the location or back
history or what we're interested in.
-
In the future,
-
content is gonna be served to every
individual in a completely personalized
-
and interactive way. So
your web page of images
-
and text and video is gonna
unfurl itself on the fly,
-
completely novel,
-
adapted to your interests and what
you've talked about previously
-
with your AI. And that's just
a completely different paradigm
-
that I think, you know, we we, you know,
people are sort of not quite yet grasping.
-
Mustafa, when you say digital
people, what do you mean by that?
-
Well, if you think about it,
what makes a person a person is
-
my ability to speak to you right now,
-
my ability to see what you see,
and my ability to take actions.
-
So you know buy things, book things,
plan, arrange, coordinate, write emails,
-
make phone calls.
-
At some point in the next few years,
-
an AI is going to be able to do all of
those things pretty much as well as a human.
-
But of course, it won't be a
human. It will be a digital person
-
and I think that's
probably the best metaphor
-
to help us understand what's
coming over the next few years.
-
What does it mean
-
as we move into an environment
where so many of the interactions
-
that we will have will be with digital
people as opposed to people people.
-
How how do you think
that changes the economy?
-
How does it change society?
How does it change government?
-
What what what are some of your thoughts
about that? Well, one of the amazing things
-
about these digital people is that they
can actually be made to be very controlled,
-
right? You can actually
design very precise behaviors
-
and so for example in the
AI that we've made, Pai,
-
it is very kind and empathetic,
-
it's very supportive, it's very
encouraging, it's infinitely patient,
-
it doesn't judge you, right.
-
And so many of the downsides
of human interaction,
-
where you might feel socially anxious,
-
you might feel a bit paranoid about
what the other person's thinking,
-
you might feel pushed around,
-
right? Or you might feel that that
other person didn't didn't hear you out.
-
You know, you were telling a
story about your ski trip and
-
suddenly they're talking about their ski
trip that they had last year and you're
-
like wait but I haven't
finished my thought.
-
And your AI doesn't do that to you. Your
AI is infinitely patient and supportive
-
and so there's a huge amount of upside
there but it's also a big transition.
-
Right? Because I think increasingly
-
people will choose to
spend time with their AI's,
-
perhaps more than they spend
time with other humans.
-
And so one of the design considerations
-
that we have to factor in and we
think about a lot at inflection is
-
to really pay attention
-
to the values of the AI and how
we condition and shape the AI.
-
For example, to encourage you to
spend more time with your loved ones,
-
to encourage you to be brave and overcome
your social anxiety and go to the party,
-
to provide you with a safe space to
practice for your interview or your exam,
-
but still have you focused on being
out in the real world connected,
-
having experiences with other humans
-
and so every single discipline
-
every single area of society is gonna
have to grapple with this new reality
-
that there will in fact be digital
people that are as you know significant
-
and as important
-
as, you know, every other, you know,
-
sort of relationship in our lives.
I mean, it would be impossible
-
to consider today not having
a smartphone in your life,
-
right? Or a laptop.
-
That that's just become second
nature in in less than a a decade.
-
Yes. You know, six billion people
have a smartphone now or more. Right?
-
And so that's probably the trajectory
we're on for these personal intelligences.
-
I mean, this is the natural evolution
of technology from personal computing
-
to personal intelligence. And I I think
people will be relieved to hear you say
-
that you find it important that
the values of these AI people
-
that you are developing,
that you're inventing,
-
needs to be humane and needs to keep
people engaging with other people.
-
Of course,
-
you and I can both imagine that there
are going to be lots of corporations
-
that want to maximize
profitability and therefore ensure
-
that people are engaging with their
AI as much as humanly possible,
-
just as some companies do with their
smartphones or their applications.
-
Just as sometimes you wanna sell
as much food as you possibly can
-
to a person. So even if it means that
they're obese, all of these things.
-
And I wonder, I mean, do you think that
-
how do we guard against the excesses
that comes from a technology
-
that is changing so much faster
-
than our ability to understand it,
train with it, prepare for it? I mean,
-
you know, we're going to be mostly
-
the people we are right now,
-
and these things are suddenly
just gonna be poof around us.
-
Right? It's not like we can
train people to, like, okay.
-
This is, like, you've gotta grow into
becoming an adult, and here's what it is.
-
You know, it's it's just gonna be there.
-
Well, look, I I think that, you know,
we are making incredible progress
-
as a civilization including
-
on the corporation front. Right?
-
And society is changing much faster
than I think people fully realize.
-
If you roll back to
-
the 50s and the kinds of companies
that we had and the kind of
-
you know way that they would
externalize their downsides
-
whether it was dumping chemicals
into the into the river,
-
you know, or you know, really
mistreating their staff in horrible ways.
-
You know, I think that it's inconceivable
that we would have companies
-
that are really pushing smoking
-
in the way that they did back in the
day or really pushing, you know, obesity
-
and fatty foods. Like, we're
we're really, I think, making a
-
a a march forward and look,
it's not a solved problem.
-
You know, fundamentally,
-
companies are constantly in a
battle to try to be more responsible
-
and to be more considerate and
respectful of their of their people.
-
All I can say is that
for my part at Inflexion,
-
we've tried to structure the company
-
in a way that we proactively
think about those consequences
-
and we're actually registered legally
as a public benefit corporation.
-
Oh, okay. So
-
but now let's go maybe five years in the
future, not ten, not twenty, just five,
-
where we are already starting
to see AI that is able to do
-
a lot of the jobs that people that
-
that people have today, that young people
are thinking about having in the future.
-
How should how should someone considering
-
their career adapt to a future of AI
that is so explosive, so transformative,
-
and so near term,
-
so much uncertainty
-
about what society will look like more than
ever in the history of of human beings?
-
How do how do young people think
differently about preparing
-
themselves for the future?
-
Well, the cool thing about it is
that more so than ever before,
-
these technologies are
accessible and programmable
-
by people who don't have technical skills.
-
So you don't have to be a professional
engineer to be able to play with an AI model.
-
You can prompt it using your own
language with your own own ideas
-
and that means that you can
bring all your creativity
-
and you know, all of your inventiveness
-
to an off the shelf AI
model very very easily.
-
So, that's the first thing I would
say is, you know, don't be afraid
-
because people think that there's a
big technical barrier to get over.
-
That's not true anymore. Secondly,
-
there's clearly a huge benefit
to people who come from outside
-
of software engineering
-
and technical fields actually playing
with these things. So we need more,
-
you know, wide ranging voices,
people with different backgrounds,
-
you know,
-
grabbing hold of this stuff and making new
things with it because all perspectives
-
are needed at this time.
-
This is a massive transition just like
the arrival of the internet or the arrival
-
of of light.
-
I mean can you imagine what it
was like for the people who first
-
saw a light bulb turn on and saw the power
of electricity. That sparked a revolution
-
in people inventing things in
microelectronics and you know
-
in myriad ways to make our
lives more comfortable.
-
So think of this as a creative
and exciting moment to
-
you know be an inventor and
to to use these tools to
-
you know basically make our dreams
come true. This is a great moment.
-
Well, let me ask, all of
these transformations,
-
also create disruptions. Some of those
disruptions are super opportunities.
-
Some of them are more challenging. If
you're not ready, give us a couple of jobs
-
that you think people shouldn't actually
-
want to get into in the next five or ten
years because they're not gonna be around
-
with AI and why? Well, you know, any
new technology disrupts certain jobs.
-
Right? So, it's pretty clear that
call center operators, for example,
-
who manage customer service requests
-
or even you know who do sales for example.
-
You know there are going to be AIs
that try to do that more efficiently
-
and we're already seeing those kinds
of things so that I'd be worried about
-
those kinds of jobs.
-
I think that the most valuable skill
sets are going to be those that straddle
-
creative skills as well as
problem solving and technical.
-
You know so breadth is
more important than ever.
-
That's one of the things that
AI's don't do so well is integrate
-
a wide range of different skills
you know, into a single source.
-
So, I would say be bold
and do multidisciplinary,
-
you know, educational courses
that teach you the best of both.
-
So Mustafa,
-
this is a technology that will improve
human capabilities to anyone that has them.
-
It'll lead to faster inventions,
-
reduced waste, more
efficiency in every field.
-
As you say, it's more than just
a transformative technology.
-
It also changes how we think about
the entire world and society.
-
I'm wondering
-
for young people today
-
who who might think about having fifty,
sixty, seventy more years on the planet.
-
Do, how do you think about their
future? Will they even be recognizable
-
as human beings when they're adults?
Will they have, do you think they'll have
-
limitless lifespan?
-
I mean, in terms of when I think about
applying artificial intelligence to medicine
-
and to biotechnology and genetics,
-
I mean, it it really does seem staggering
-
how much the world could change
from what we can even imagine today.
-
I mean, I think that's true.
-
Technology and the scientific process of
invention is there to reduce our suffering.
-
It's there to make our lives
more peaceful and more enjoyable,
-
right? You know so just
a few hundred years ago
-
the average life expectancy was
closer to fifty years old, right?
-
So we have science has massively advanced
-
our well-being and health because we've
invented drugs and we've found ways to
-
you know get more crops for example
out of the same square hectare,
-
right? I think that is an incredible
achievement of creativity and invention
-
and we're about to take that engine of
creativity which was our human intelligence
-
and turn that into a, you know, commodity.
-
We're gonna make it widely
available to millions of people
-
to be able to be creative and inventive.
So I think you're totally right.
-
By twenty fifty, I wouldn't be surprised
if there were people who were being born
-
that might live for two
to three hundred years.
-
As we are going to make very
fundamental breakthroughs
-
in medical science that tackle
aging, right, that cure disease.
-
And so that raises the question
well what do we do with our lives?
-
Like how do we live?
-
What what if if if a large
chunk of people are not working
-
for their income for most of the day,
then how do we find meaning and purpose?
-
And people often ask me this
question and I actually think, well,
-
remember when you were
young and you know, you had
-
hobbies and passions and ambitions and
desires and you are obsessed with things.
-
That creativity
-
and playfulness is increasingly
going to be available to adults
-
and people of all ages because
I think in the long term future,
-
the real challenge for us is figuring out
how we support people when they don't work
-
and maybe give them a
universal basic income
-
so that for at least a portion of
their week they're freed up from
-
the everyday grind
-
of work to take care of their
families, to look after the elderly,
-
to be more involved in bringing
up children, to support We work
-
so that we can play,
-
right?
-
And so We work so that we can play,
-
right? And so the goal is to reduce the
amount of work that we are forced to do
-
and increase the amount of time that
we have for play and for chosen work.
-
You may choose to still work
super hard. That could be a choice
-
and it could be very productive,
could be very creative and inventive
-
but I think that's a much better society
that we wanna live in where most people,
-
most of the time,
-
are choosing
-
how to spend most of their week.
Yeah. And it feels like the pandemic
-
has in some ways helped us
think about that transition.
-
Right?
-
You already have people who say, you
know what? I don't wanna be in the office
-
from nine to five every day with
a one hour commute both ways.
-
I actually want to spend
more time with my family,
-
spend more time with my friends,
-
with my pets, engage more, live
in a place that I'm happy living.
-
It turns out that the
pandemic and the technology
-
that came from, you know, sort of distance
engagement, Zoom calls, all the rest,
-
technology facilitated more independence
-
of choice
-
for people all over the world to live
the way they want to live and balance
-
their lives with what
they do for a living.
-
And artificial intelligence
-
just turbocharges that. Is that is that
the way you're thinking about this?
-
Yeah. I think that we got a good taster
of prioritization during the pandemic
-
and in fact that's actually a really
interesting point because it shows you
-
how you know many unquestioned
assumptions are actually buried
-
underneath the structure of society.
-
Who would have thought that we
could actually work entirely
-
remote and be pretty productive, right?
-
And you know, there it's not
that it was without consequences
-
but the world carried on, right?
-
And there are actually huge
benefits now to working,
-
you know, part time and not being five days
in the office. Huge, huge benefits. So,
-
you know, I think that
-
who who would have thought that
actually that was something that
-
we could re engineer in terms of society
-
so I'm very interested in this
question like what are the other things
-
that we take for granted today
-
what are the silly rules what are the silly
social habits and customs and practices
-
and structures that just
are because they were
-
that we could re engineer and and
turn upside down and make them more,
-
you know, favorable to every
single one of us as as individuals.
-
And it turned out we could re engineer
it immediately because we had to,
-
because the pandemic forced it. It
didn't take years. It took weeks.
-
It took weeks and people showed they could
actually work completely differently.
-
You know, I can think of a few
things that could be re engineered
-
by a society that didn't
have to work for wealth.
-
You know, gender bias,
-
right? Racism, nationalism.
-
I mean, a world where people can actually
live the way they want to and not just
-
a few people,
-
but anyone that has access
to these technologies
-
will be a world where people choose,
-
not to be discriminated
-
against to a much greater degree.
-
Right? Because they don't have to play
those power games that society forces
-
upon them because that's the way it's
been done for generations and generations.
-
Yeah. And I I agree.
-
And
-
I think one of the other things that is
coming down the line that is gonna change
-
that is the ability to generate power,
-
electricity in a decentralized way.
-
If we really do get a battery breakthrough
-
in the next twenty years
such that renewables,
-
you know, I guess primarily
-
solar but also wind can be generated
very far away from cities and stored
-
and can carry you through,
-
that's gonna completely change the way
that cities operate and it's gonna change
-
how much emphasis we put on living
close to one another or in existing
-
you know you know existing
cities and and urban areas.
-
So there's there's lots of those
technological breakthroughs
-
which I think are cooking
away in the background
-
which will completely change the social
structure that we are currently so used to.
-
Mustafa Ghiliman. Thanks
so much for joining.
-
And for our viewers,
-
if you're intrigued by the possibilities
of AI and you wanna dive deeper into this
-
fascinating world, we invite you to check
out our other videos in this series.
-
And thank you for watching.