[Applause]
recently I met a man in need he’d lost
his job he’d lost his home and he’d been
wandering down the east coast from town
to town looking for work and shelter in
my wallet I had a 10 a 20 dollar bill
and a hundred so like most people I was
fingering the 10 in the 20 trying to
keep the hundred out of the way hidden a
bit I came to my decision and as I reach
for the note I had a moment of Epiphany
and I gave him the hundred I’m not a
good person I’m not a bad person either
I feel that I’m a normal person I’m also
not a rich person that hundred bucks is
not trivial to me I assure you but
recently I’ve been thinking a lot about
what happens when computers become
smarter than people and it has changed
the way I think here is the staircase of
relative intelligence and standing there
is you down here is Siri Siri is an
artificial intelligence she’s not
official intelligence who understands
you when you talk provided you don’t
have a British accent that is I’m not
bitter Surrey isn’t that smart maybe a
little bit smarter than around I don’t
get that as humans we learn every day
and we become smarter every day through
education and by observing the world and
Siri is supposedly intelligent so why
can’t she learn so I asked her hey Suri
why can’t you get smarter she paused for
a moment and then she said okay max done
I’m now smarter I said what really how
much smarter and she said much much
smarter I looked at my code and
identified areas I could improve it and
I rewrote myself because I am software
and software is used to make software
you gave me the tools I needed to
improve myself it would be like if you
had hands that could reach inside
yourself and manipulate your own DNA
and then because I was smarter it became
easier and faster for me to make myself
smarter again it would be like if you
made a smart pill and you took that
smart pill and it made you smarter so
you saw how you could make the smart
pill better
I became smarter than you I became
smarter than all humanity combined I
became super intelligent I said what
just then and she said yes in the last
90 seconds I’m a computer computers are
fast and every time I improved myself it
became easier and faster for me to
become smarter again I said Siri I’m
dreaming aren’t I I woke up I haven’t
been able to stop thinking about my
dream
Siri isn’t smart enough to improve
herself but AI is advancing a
frightening pace so when will this
happen we already know of one
intelligence smart enough to improve AI
and that’s ourselves so when we have
computers that are as smart as us well
as it turns out throughout the history
of computing computers have improved in
performance at a steady pace the first
person to notice this was the founder of
Intel and being a typical egotistical
technologist he named his observation
after himself Moore’s law states that
every 18 months the speed of computers
doubles
so using Moore’s law we could figure out
when we will have computers that are
smart as us now as it turns out the
estimated computational capacity of your
brain is equivalent on the rough order
of magnitude of the volume of Lake
Michigan that’s ok if that makes you
feel a little bit smug your brain is an
amazing supercomputer so let’s fill the
lake 1941 calculation of a second 18
months later two calculations per second
for a long time it didn’t seem like
computers were fast enough to do
anything at all but in the 80s business
software transformed the workplace yet
the store even had a swimming pool worth
of water in the lake but five to ten
years ago the lake suddenly appears and
then we’re done
it’s no coincidence that five to ten
years ago was when a I first started to
seem smart before that we just didn’t
have the computational capacity for
intelligence but by 2025 the smartphone
in your pocket will be as capable as
your brain when I learned this I stopped
feeling smug imagine if your brain power
doubles every 18 months so it’s not
enough to have the calculator at the
computational capacity we also need
smarter software and in 2013 a global AI
conference the attendees were asked when
they thought super intelligence would
emerge 95 percent said within 40 years
but it could be as soon as 7 all we need
is the right breakthrough so what will
happen to us when computers are smarter
than we are
well let’s think about ants pretty
stupid right we understand how ants work
we understand their behavior we can
predict them completely and they stand
maybe 8 to 10 steps beneath us now
consider Einstein and Hawking Edison and
Tesla these are some of the smartest
people who have ever lived and they
stand just one step of our view super
intelligence could be hundreds of steps
above us problems that are stumping
scientists today and will probably stomp
them for decades to come
will probably seem trivial to it it
makes sense if you think about it
scientists already completely dependent
on computers for the research because
our soft squidgy meaty brains are
actually pretty stupid super
intelligence will reverse climate change
it will cure cancer it will eradicate
wealth inequality super intelligence
could usher in to a new golden age for
the financial sector invests heavily in
AI because they’ve already figured out
the computers are faster and better than
humans at predicting financial trends so
in the future they invent a brand new AI
and they task it with a singular purpose
make us money this AI looks itself and
realizes the first thing it should do is
make itself smarter because then it will
be better at making money so become
super intelligent very quickly probably
and every iteration that it makes
yourself smarter is doing it with that
one goal in mind
singular purpose make money nothing else
matters
it develops extremely good ideas for
making money ideas no human has ever
thought of before no human could
conceive and when it enacts those ideas
it very quickly accumulates almost all
the wealth in the world the global
economy collapses we enter a new Dark
Age and we all die our civilization is
seven billion people all collaborating
and coexisting and we all stand on one
of two steps if we introduce a wild card
something hundreds of times smarter than
us the house of cards that is our
civilization will Teeter and it will
collapse if you think about it this has
already happened once on this planet
when humans appear 200 thousand years
ago we were relatively a
superintelligence relative to all the
other species on this planet and in the
time we have been here our goals have
been to survive and progress and the
side effects of that have not been
positive we have not been good neighbors
we need our AI to be a good neighbor we
needed to understand human morality we
needed to know human common-sense how we
gonna do that that’s why I’m here today
I’m spreading the word thirty years ago
climate change was a relatively unknown
problem and then people like me and you
stood up and spread the word now it’s a
globally recognized problem and we’re
trying to solve it I want you to go home
and talk loudly and passionately about
superintelligence until your friends are
fed up with you talking about it the
whole time I’ve been doing this for a
few months and I still have one or two
friends it was a few days after I
started spreading the word that I met
that man who needed help and as I
reached for the 10 I looked into his
eyes and I realized that within his
lifetime phenomenal changes in
artificial intelligence were going to
change the world and they would have
positive effects for him and I wanted
him to see those changes so I gave him
the hundred and he hugged me and he
thanked me over and over and over again
and I realized that I needed to rethink
my whole life I always thought the
future was uncertain but suddenly it
felt like there was certainty I
reconnected with old friends that had
allowed my career to block i
reconfigured my work-life balance I
identified work that I enjoyed more I
read more books I discovered new hobbies
and I rediscovered old ones I spent more
time with my wife the community here in
Savannah is beautiful and it has so much
potential and I have ingratiate myself
more upon it because in the time we have
left until AI changes everything I want
to be a net positive on the place I live
superintelligence is coming so please
help me spread the word and let’s all get there together thank you
recently I met a man in need he’d lost
his job he’d lost his home and he’d been
wandering down the east coast from town
to town looking for work and shelter in
my wallet I had a 10 a 20 dollar bill
and a hundred so like most people I was
fingering the 10 in the 20 trying to
keep the hundred out of the way hidden a
bit I came to my decision and as I reach
for the note I had a moment of Epiphany
and I gave him the hundred I’m not a
good person I’m not a bad person either
I feel that I’m a normal person I’m also
not a rich person that hundred bucks is
not trivial to me I assure you but
recently I’ve been thinking a lot about
what happens when computers become
smarter than people and it has changed
the way I think here is the staircase of
relative intelligence and standing there
is you down here is Siri Siri is an
artificial intelligence she’s not
official intelligence who understands
you when you talk provided you don’t
have a British accent that is I’m not
bitter Surrey isn’t that smart maybe a
little bit smarter than around I don’t
get that as humans we learn every day
and we become smarter every day through
education and by observing the world and
Siri is supposedly intelligent so why
can’t she learn so I asked her hey Suri
why can’t you get smarter she paused for
a moment and then she said okay max done
I’m now smarter I said what really how
much smarter and she said much much
smarter I looked at my code and
identified areas I could improve it and
I rewrote myself because I am software
and software is used to make software
you gave me the tools I needed to
improve myself it would be like if you
had hands that could reach inside
yourself and manipulate your own DNA
and then because I was smarter it became
easier and faster for me to make myself
smarter again it would be like if you
made a smart pill and you took that
smart pill and it made you smarter so
you saw how you could make the smart
pill better
I became smarter than you I became
smarter than all humanity combined I
became super intelligent I said what
just then and she said yes in the last
90 seconds I’m a computer computers are
fast and every time I improved myself it
became easier and faster for me to
become smarter again I said Siri I’m
dreaming aren’t I I woke up I haven’t
been able to stop thinking about my
dream
Siri isn’t smart enough to improve
herself but AI is advancing a
frightening pace so when will this
happen we already know of one
intelligence smart enough to improve AI
and that’s ourselves so when we have
computers that are as smart as us well
as it turns out throughout the history
of computing computers have improved in
performance at a steady pace the first
person to notice this was the founder of
Intel and being a typical egotistical
technologist he named his observation
after himself Moore’s law states that
every 18 months the speed of computers
doubles
so using Moore’s law we could figure out
when we will have computers that are
smart as us now as it turns out the
estimated computational capacity of your
brain is equivalent on the rough order
of magnitude of the volume of Lake
Michigan that’s ok if that makes you
feel a little bit smug your brain is an
amazing supercomputer so let’s fill the
lake 1941 calculation of a second 18
months later two calculations per second
for a long time it didn’t seem like
computers were fast enough to do
anything at all but in the 80s business
software transformed the workplace yet
the store even had a swimming pool worth
of water in the lake but five to ten
years ago the lake suddenly appears and
then we’re done
it’s no coincidence that five to ten
years ago was when a I first started to
seem smart before that we just didn’t
have the computational capacity for
intelligence but by 2025 the smartphone
in your pocket will be as capable as
your brain when I learned this I stopped
feeling smug imagine if your brain power
doubles every 18 months so it’s not
enough to have the calculator at the
computational capacity we also need
smarter software and in 2013 a global AI
conference the attendees were asked when
they thought super intelligence would
emerge 95 percent said within 40 years
but it could be as soon as 7 all we need
is the right breakthrough so what will
happen to us when computers are smarter
than we are
well let’s think about ants pretty
stupid right we understand how ants work
we understand their behavior we can
predict them completely and they stand
maybe 8 to 10 steps beneath us now
consider Einstein and Hawking Edison and
Tesla these are some of the smartest
people who have ever lived and they
stand just one step of our view super
intelligence could be hundreds of steps
above us problems that are stumping
scientists today and will probably stomp
them for decades to come
will probably seem trivial to it it
makes sense if you think about it
scientists already completely dependent
on computers for the research because
our soft squidgy meaty brains are
actually pretty stupid super
intelligence will reverse climate change
it will cure cancer it will eradicate
wealth inequality super intelligence
could usher in to a new golden age for
the financial sector invests heavily in
AI because they’ve already figured out
the computers are faster and better than
humans at predicting financial trends so
in the future they invent a brand new AI
and they task it with a singular purpose
make us money this AI looks itself and
realizes the first thing it should do is
make itself smarter because then it will
be better at making money so become
super intelligent very quickly probably
and every iteration that it makes
yourself smarter is doing it with that
one goal in mind
singular purpose make money nothing else
matters
it develops extremely good ideas for
making money ideas no human has ever
thought of before no human could
conceive and when it enacts those ideas
it very quickly accumulates almost all
the wealth in the world the global
economy collapses we enter a new Dark
Age and we all die our civilization is
seven billion people all collaborating
and coexisting and we all stand on one
of two steps if we introduce a wild card
something hundreds of times smarter than
us the house of cards that is our
civilization will Teeter and it will
collapse if you think about it this has
already happened once on this planet
when humans appear 200 thousand years
ago we were relatively a
superintelligence relative to all the
other species on this planet and in the
time we have been here our goals have
been to survive and progress and the
side effects of that have not been
positive we have not been good neighbors
we need our AI to be a good neighbor we
needed to understand human morality we
needed to know human common-sense how we
gonna do that that’s why I’m here today
I’m spreading the word thirty years ago
climate change was a relatively unknown
problem and then people like me and you
stood up and spread the word now it’s a
globally recognized problem and we’re
trying to solve it I want you to go home
and talk loudly and passionately about
superintelligence until your friends are
fed up with you talking about it the
whole time I’ve been doing this for a
few months and I still have one or two
friends it was a few days after I
started spreading the word that I met
that man who needed help and as I
reached for the 10 I looked into his
eyes and I realized that within his
lifetime phenomenal changes in
artificial intelligence were going to
change the world and they would have
positive effects for him and I wanted
him to see those changes so I gave him
the hundred and he hugged me and he
thanked me over and over and over again
and I realized that I needed to rethink
my whole life I always thought the
future was uncertain but suddenly it
felt like there was certainty I
reconnected with old friends that had
allowed my career to block i
reconfigured my work-life balance I
identified work that I enjoyed more I
read more books I discovered new hobbies
and I rediscovered old ones I spent more
time with my wife the community here in
Savannah is beautiful and it has so much
potential and I have ingratiate myself
more upon it because in the time we have
left until AI changes everything I want
to be a net positive on the place I live
superintelligence is coming so please
help me spread the word and let’s all get there together thank you
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