Peter Diamandis — Embracing AI, Befriending Elon, And Living Forever

Channel: Alex Kantrowitz

Published at: 2024-07-29

YouTube video id: q9YF8E2XXVo

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9YF8E2XXVo

one of the biggest thinkers in Tech and
Innovation joins us to talk about AI
abundance Elon Musk and extending your
lifespan all that and more coming up
right after this welcome to Big
technology podcast a show for
cool-headed nuance conversation of the
tech world and Beyond we're joined today
by Peter dandis he's the founder and
executive chairman of the x prise
foundation he's a multiple times
best-selling author and he's also the
host of The Great moonshot podcast Peter
welcome to the show thank you Alex great
to be here great to have you here I've
been following your work for quite some
time and know you recently held this
abundance Summit where you talked a lot
about artificial intelligence you had
some great speakers there and I think
the main question there was whether AI
is going to help us boom or AI is going
to be the end of us this Boomers versus
doomers framework and and you just wrote
on X right before this uh I reiterate
that AI will be Humanity's greatest hope
or will be our gravest threat there is
no in between so I really wanted we we
talk about the new here why is it one or
the other and if it's one or the other
and I know of course we have some you
know determination on which way we go
but which way do you think we're headed
yeah so it's one or the other because it
is so extraordinarily powerful it's not
a little bit more powerful than a
intelligent human right we're seeing uh
we're seeing generative AI today really
meeting and exceeding human level AI
what we call artificial general
intelligence
uh Claude 3 was at an IQ of 101 we just
saw uh GPT 40 released that exceeds
Claude 3 but there's no boundary level
here there's no boundary for human level
it's going to continue to increase and
there's no reason to believe it's not
going to get a 100 times or a thousand
times or a million or a billion times
more powerful than the average human
what typically called digital super
intelligence and once it's there if it
is in support of our society of of
humanity of homo sapiens it's our
greatest hope ever it's a boomer
opportunity right it's helping us cure
all of our ills explore the Stars uh you
know uplevel our dreams if it's used for
dystopian purposes I don't think AI on
its own is going to be dystopian I think
it's the human use of AI that could be
dystopian then you've got a tool that um
is the most dangerous tool on the planet
so that's the that's the debate you know
I had my I have my abundance Summit
every year where I you know support and
and Coach uh 400 CEOs and that was the
theme this year the greatest hope or or
the the greatest uh threat for Humanity
R and so what are you leaning towards
right now I'm I'm you know I'm not only
The Optimist I'm the guy who says the
Glass isn't half full the glass is
overflowing I truly truly believe that
as systems become more and more
intelligent they get more abundant
minded more loving of life um more
supportive you know a if you look there
was a study done by a friend of mine
Alvin gryan in his R this latest book
the new reality and he looked at leaders
around the world who were sort of the
despots and the greatest leaders and
there was a direct correlation with the
amount of school they had how much
learning they had how open-minded they
are because if you've
got uh a digital superintelligence who
you tell go and Destroy these people I
mean honestly there are ways to get your
solution without killing and I think
we're going to see digital super
intelligence potentially help Society
really uh survive over the decades ahead
that's interesting so your belief is
that the more education we get the more
empathetic we're going to be and as AIS
get more educated then therefore they
will resemble the same qualities I I
think I I put it a different way as well
which is if you think about wisdom right
we talk about our societal leaders being
wise right our elders being wise and you
know you ask what do they why are they
wise well they've seen so many things in
their life you go to them and say you
know Village Elder what do you think's
going to happen here what should we do
well I saw that 40 years ago whatever
can you imagine a digital super
intelligence that is able to play out a
billion simulations of every
scenario and see where they lead that is
the ultimate wisdom and uh you know
people say well people are going to
fight over things that are scarce and
rare resources I don't think there's
such a thing as scarcity um scarcity is
contextual right we think of energy
being scarce but we were bathed in 8,000
times more energy from the Sun we
consume as a species in a year and we're
about to really bring Fusion online you
know um we don't have you know talk food
scarcity but we're Reinventing how to
produce food in vertical Farms or
cultivated Meats so there are ways to
really use technology to turn scarcity
into abundance over and over again and
that's what intelligence can do right
but also aren't I mean evil people are
you know most evil people have been very
smart and the thing that makes them so
dangerous is that they don't have say
the morals that would keep them from
doing the damage so you can have one
very smart evil person doing way more
damage than a bunch of really smart
benevolent people so how do you square
that in the equation here so listen
there is most definitely uh that risk
right I'm not worried about uh you know
artificial intelligence I'm worried
about human stupidity to put the put
that in jued positioning um the only way
to guard against that is it's white hat
black hat in this scenario the ability
to use AI to guard us I do you have to
ask yourself the question in your heart
do you believe on the whole human nature
is good or evil in the majority of of
humans right we have more and more
individuals which we can call
entrepreneurs who can find and solve
problems the more people finding and
solving problems the better the world
gets I I like to say in uh the work I do
in my abundance Summit um you know the
world's biggest problems are the world's
biggest business opportunities and so
we're going to have more and more people
trying to solve big problems are we
going to have people using these
Technologies for for uh uh selfish um
you know reasons for uh you know reasons
that could injure Society 100% do we
have the ability to detect it and fight
it we do and let's talk about governance
quickly because we've been talking right
now with this kind of morphus like what
will AI do and I think that so many
conversations about AI tend to sort of
and I think we've kind of already
touched on it remove the humans from the
equation but you at the very beginning
started talking about we have anthropic
we have Google Now Elon is trying to
build super intelligence um who do you
think is going to control it and should
we let's say one organization let's say
for instance Google is able to achieve
some form of super intelligence right
for instance let's say they create AI
that can improve Ai and it just
continues to accelerate and and we have
lift off uh what are the risks of having
a single entity control this super
intelligence whether it's a company or
or a government and and how does that
change the
picture
um that I have heard such incredibly uh
compelling arguments on both sides of
the equation um ultimately I believe
that it is going to need to be
decentralized and
democratized um and I don't believe that
we're going to have one Central company
control this uh I think it's really
empowering uh Humanity uh on an
individual basis you know Sam wman a
couple of days ago talked about instead
of universal basic income why don't we
in instead offer everybody a slice of
you know compute coming online and let
them utilize that or donate that towards
the cause that they
want um I think it's going to be having
multitude of AIS that are uh that are
supporting their their governments their
companies their user
base uh but this level of transparency
that enables us to um assure that the
ultimate code the ultimate underlying
principles of these AIS are positive uh
is going to be critical this level of
transparency so you know on comes online
and he's building xai and he says I'm
building xai based upon two principles
one maximal truth seeking right and
maximal curiosity and those seem like
really good
fundamentals um you know tell the truth
always independent of whether it's
politically uh the right thing or the
wrong thing to
do uh here's the the thing I think most
people have to realize this isn't
playing out in your kids lifetime uh or
in 10 years this is playing out in the
next 2 to 5 years it is like right now
that this this game this 99th level of
the game is happening and uh we do have
a number of global leaders whether it's
Elon or you know Google or Microsoft uh
and we have thousands no not thousands
we have hundreds of thousands of
entrepreneurs building companies uh on
the backs of those and independent of
those it is about to transform every
aspect of Our Lives I don't and by the
way I don't know that the government has
the ability to regulate any of this
right and look I definitely want to
continue this line but you said
something interesting that you think
that this is going to happen within two
to five years I'm curious what makes you
confident to think that we're going to
be on such a short timeline to achieve I
don't know what we call it AI liftoff
super intelligence human level intell
I'm seeing I'm feeling and seeing what's
going on right we just saw the release
of uh of GPT 40 we just saw um Claude 3
Google IO is going on right now and
there's more more every entrepreneur
that I know that's at the top of their
game is playing in this area every
investor is investing heavily in this
area we have more cognitive capacity
more Capital more compute being thrown
into this you know this year at my
abundance Summit I had Elon on
stage and you know he threw out he said
listen we're we're 10 Xing the amount of
uh of compute and AI Talent every 6
months 100x per year
every every um com compute cluster is
going towards being applied for
generative AI um so it's
not a linear slow incremental growth
this is a period of disruptive growth
and it's going to be generating more
returns more people coming in uh and of
course like you said as soon as we have
you know AI programming AI
um then then liftoff occurs you know
near near immediately A lot of my
friends feel like we've reached AGI it's
a fuzzy boundary right there was there
was the touring test of you know which
got passed some
months or years back without even being
noticed because you can't tell the
difference now in having a chat with a
lot of the chat Bots whether they're
human or or not I mean maybe if you
think they're too good and too smooth if
they respond super fast exactly then
it's like oh you're probably an AI but
otherwise not um yeah I guess that's
assuming that these these generative
techniques continue to scale and I think
that's the the big question facing the
industry at at the moment then you have
folks like Gom Verdon with extra AI
which is coming online with a new form
of compute um uh thermodynamic compute
which is looking at a different approach
it's not digital it's not Quantum and
then you got Quantum coming online
second half this
decade I think there's so much money and
and and Intelligence being thrown at
this that I don't think there is a a
falling off I think the growth continues
yeah and I want to go back to one more
thing that we talked about this
conversation of AI before moving on
which was that talking about how this is
going to be decentralized and helpful to
people and I think that doesn't that
assume some benevolence uh and I'm going
to go back to this Google example I mean
if you think about it if a company is
able to create let's say super
intelligence or even something that's
like a step below artificial general
intelligence there's so much economic
benefit there I mean you would imagine
that something that's better than than
humans at most tasks is able to create
companies and solve problems more more
than most entrepreneurs can today and it
doesn't sleep so I guess I'm trying to
think why why how do you end up getting
from a point where a company is trying
to get an Roi in all of its investments
in this area and reaping those economic
gains to a point where there is this um
AI for all and decentralized version of
the technology it just that everybody
catches up Alex there's good news here
um in that we have seen
not a single company but we've seen five
six seven eight companies All In
Parallel delivering similar generative
AI capabilities and they're all priced
either free or like 20 bucks a month
right no one was so far ahead that's
it's like this is a million bucks um if
you get a chance to use it all right so
the fact that there are multiple players
um and they're all starting at or near
zero is a super
positive indication of the future I
don't think you're going to have uh
people all of a sudden you know all
eight of them getting into a cabal and
saying okay let's all charge a th000
bucks a month because we can uh you also
have great business models like Google
that is and by which has you know been
available for free around the
world
uh and there
these companies are making money on
secondary and tertiary implications of
that free business model and I think
you're going to see that here with AI as
well I think AI will become ultimately
the best educator on the planet and the
best diagnostician on the planet
available on your mobile phone and I
think that educator again the best on
the planet will be available for free to
the poorest child and the wealthiest
child and it won't be like it's a little
bit better for the person who's
wealthy just like Google for Larry
Page's kids is not different than Google
for a kid in a flla using it yeah I mean
it is amazing so my wife and I were just
talking about like how much time it
takes to tutor kids and like help them
do their homework and now like even
watching the past few weeks uh demos you
see that you can I I guess you can
extensively just turn over a lot of this
to a world-class tutor that's going to
be able to look at their homework work
with them on their homework even attend
PTA meetings and get the notes so you
can be better better parents and that is
that is pretty interesting to me yeah it
it it is and you've got you know salul
Khan with Khan Academy with Khan Amigo
which is a GPT 4 powered version of it
and you
know this year at abundance 360 um I
showed a video of Steve Jobs years ago
uh saying you know I'm so so jealous
that uh Alexander the Great had
Aristotle at his p as his personal
tutor and so I said to the audience let
me introduce you to Aristotle and and
Steve Brown my chief a officer had
created a uh a digital Avatar of
Aristotle based on all of his works and
I had conversations and I used Aristotle
as a co-host and that is now true which
all the great educators of all time and
there works and their knowledge and
their philosophies are available to you
and your kids to have a conversation or
debate with be taught about ilad and the
Odyssey by Homer directly I mean this is
the world we're heading and it's
free right okay one last question about
AI then we're going to move on to Elon
um I want to ask you where you think the
economic benefit is going to be here
because you brought up a very
interesting point that you know you
think about the open AIS and the clouds
it's 20 bucks a month or it's free and
open I recently said all right your our
latest model GPT 40 free free for
everyone so who's going to make money
here Peter yeah I think it's going to be
based on upleveling the values and
services so so I have a company called
Fountain life for example which is what
I consider the most advanced Diagnostics
and Therapeutics company and we employ
the best functional medicine doctors and
put you through a full day Diagnostic
and then take all of the data analyze it
and deliver it back to you and we could
do it without AI in the loop it's just
more difficult and more complicated and
is not as good as um having AI in the
loop so we will make money by delivering
a better service that is made more
accurate faster able to service more
members by using AI yeah the application
of going be the application when I tell
people entrepreneurs I say listen if you
want to start an AI company you need two
things unique data and a um a
relationship with a Marketplace that you
can offer to so the AI is becoming
democratized and
demonetized the data and the market and
the AI together create new businesses
yeah all right let's let's go to Elon um
you know we we uh it's always
interesting speaking about Elon on this
podcast when we bring out the critics
like we had some Elon critics uh on a
couple weeks ago and the inbox flooded
with uh negative comments because people
love Elon and then we bring on people
that support Elon and then the inbox
floods with negative comments because
there are people who hate him you've
been friends with him for 20 years so I
I basically this is sort of the way that
we're approaching yilan on the show is
we're going to talk with the people who
love him and the people who have crit
who critique him and hopefully over time
listeners will get a nuanced picture of
him because that's sort of what we're
and and basically come to their own
conclusions right like we're not going
to tell you how to think on this show
you're going to basically you're going
to hear from people who've been close to
the guy and who don't like what he's
doing also and then sort of make up your
own mind there and Peter you've been
friends with him for 20 years 24 years
yeah you were there at the very
beginning of of SpaceX so I'm curious
I'd love to hear a like you're
reflection of of what makes Elon
different than others as an entrepreneur
and then also why you think it's so
difficult to have these Nuance
conversations about
him um I think he's extraordinarily
brilliant he is a genius level IQ and
he's uh he's got incredible conviction
right so elon's what he would call a
first principles thinker you know he
will evaluate a situation um to First
principles like the physics of what
going on reach a conclusion and then
what he does that very few others have
done is he puts it all on black right or
all on red he bets
everything uh including his reputation
including his health including his time
uh and he goes all in and I find that
extraordinary uh you know we have so
many billionaires out there that are
just sitting on their wealth you know
they built a company they made money and
all of that but they're not reinvesting
it uh in other moonshots right they're
sitting on a hundred billion dollar of
wealth and using that to buy more houses
or more Yachts or to make more money
with their wealth it's like you know
what are you going to do with it you're
going to give it to your kids and ruin
their lives you're going to give it to
your lawyers to give away or why don't
you use both your wealth and your
intelligence to go and pick problems and
solve them and elon's done that over and
over again so to him you know on I
remember January 7th of 2021 he became
the wealthiest person on the planet I
think that was the date uh and he was
getting a lot of criticism about not
being philanthropic now he had funded a
few years earlier a $15
million um Global Learning exerprise to
teach kids in Africa reading and writing
arithmetic without any adults just on an
app on a tablet and it was a great
success and so I texted him and I said
Elon a lot of critique on philanthropy
how about funding another X prise and he
said what do you have in mind and I said
we have aund million gigaton carbon
removal prize that we need someone to
underwrite and he wrote back
sure that was it uh two months later we
were launching this $100 million prize
uh you know he donated like I don't know
what it was $130 million for the purse
and for the operations and and again
he's when he's clear about what he wants
to do the decision process of making it
happen is is amazing you know and have
to remember he is a consumate engineer
all right uh Starship Falcon 1 Falcon 9
Falcon heavy Starship um amazing
Engineers that follow him and he he is
able to get the best including Gwen
Shotwell who really as president
operates SpaceX but he also has got a
clear fundamental
Vision uh and I just salute the guy the
world is a much much better place
because of him and then what do you
think about this about how polarizing he
is I I just think that I'll just give
you like one perspective here I think he
he so often just kind of steps in it
unnecessarily and you think about some
of like the the tweets he's done um you
know the Paul Pelosi tweet or this
fouchy prison tweet that he did which
was you know unnecessary I agree with
you yeah I mean it's as a friend you
want to protect him um and say don't do
that yeah there's lot of friends who do
but he's what you see is what you get he
speaks his mind
always most of the times that's
brilliant some of the times it gets him
in trouble do you think that um I mean
people I'm curious if you have context
on this people it seems from the outside
that he's like pretty impulsive in terms
of the things that he does it seems like
Twitter was an Impulse by even the most
recent where he fired a good chunk of
the or I think the entire supercharger
team uh now he's trying to hire some of
them back and uh people were like okay
is this the end of superchargers but
maybe he just needed seems like he when
he wants to just redo something he just
kind of clears the deck and tries to
start over uh yeah is he a little bit
too impulsive he's very impulsive but
there's always a fundamental underneath
that I mean the Twitter purchase w it
was an Impulse I think he he was he had
a Clear Vision of what Twitter could be
right he had a Clear Vision of X when he
had built PayPal he wanted the ultimate
U banking institution and and X now
x.com will become not only a platform
for communications and for conversations
like this it'll become a bank it'll
become you know wallets it'll become
crypto become all of those things um one
layer at a time and he'll turn in you
know Elon will be the first billionaire
out there he'll turn X into an
extraordinary platform uh SpaceX and you
know and
starlink which I got to admit starlink
is brilliant right it's been tried so
many times before with global star and
aridium and tesic and they all
failed yeah well I mean he's definitely
he realized I think with Starling that
he had the rockets and when you got the
rockets that the it's not that the
notion of building a Global Internet uh
based on satellite is is Trivial but
it's much more feasible than if you're
trying to ride had been tried it had
been tried before by companies that own
Rockets like orbital Sciences with orcom
it's just not only did he have the
Rockets he had the
engineering uh Brilliance uh to create
something that uh has dominated the
field and I know of many people who have
tried to do this and just failed so it's
the combination of uh what's the Greek
word
hutzpah um yeah konus um and Brilliance
and capital and also you know he has the
ability to do something which is
biblical which is speak a
vision right and literally create it by
being able to aggregate the capital and
the talent and the marketing and birth
it right the same here x. a I mean
um from zero to a huge valuation uh by
virtue of his his involvement I want to
talk to you about about that about
neuralink but I just want to ask one
more followup here which is do you think
that saying like Elon is who he is is
that letting him off the hook a little
too
easily
um I I think think he has got
responsibility given the platform he has
MH and the people who follow him and
worship him
to have
some uh clear thinking before he makes
some of the statements he makes I do
agree with that
and and he is who he
is um meaning I have SE I have I've been
in conversations or seen him in
conversations where when a person said
the wrong
trigger a different Elon comes out yeah
um and again on the whole it's not like
he's a little bit better for Humanity I
think he's a THX better for Humanity and
the things that he's taking on the
world's a better place because he's here
investing his Brilliance and his mind
one thing I'll say is um I think that he
doesn't operate from Fear which is and I
think we're going to talk about that a
little later but just it is it is
interesting how so many people say this
can't be done and and he's like
basically when he gets an idea he will
try it he's like the I'll just
make it happen if he's if he's done the
mental physics uh from a first principal
thinking standpoint he will take it on
and a lot of times he'll see things that
others don't see other times he will
just brute force it into existence right
kind of like with SpaceX yeah exactly so
so on neuralink it seems interesting
because we we've obviously seen like the
first neuralink device implanted it
looks like it's had some pretty
impressive results already um one thing
I think you brought up to him is that is
there is there going to be this moment
where neuralink is going to connect our
brains with AI and effectively couple us
with it so I'd love to hear your
thoughts about like whether that's the
direction it's going to go and you know
should we be excited about something
like
that uh the answer is without question
we're going that way right so here I've
got my my cell phone um it does a lot of
capabilities on board but when it wants
to do something difficult it uses the 5G
Network to go to the edge of the cloud
do the calculations there and send the
answer back our brains are limited in
their abilities 100 billion neurons 100
trillion synaptic connections and
there's going to be a time in the not
too distant future Ray crowell's
prediction
2033 right for a high bandwidth brain
computer interface where I think it and
that thought goes through neurolink or
whatever company to the edge of the
cloud where the processing gets done and
then the answer comes back to my brain
you know we can't make our brains any
bigger uh our neocortex this
folded uh layer on the brain was an was
an attempt by Evolution to increase that
outer layer of the brain it folded onto
itself to get increased surface area but
our brains can't get any bigger because
we would not be able to be given birth
through Mom's birth canal so uh the only
way to expand it is what we do with our
cell phones Ray predicted high bandwidth
brain computer interface in 2033 we have
neuralink we have um uh you know a half
dozen other companies uh out there uh
that are up and
operational
um and you know this year for example on
stage at my abundance Summit this in
March of 25 I have an amazing woman from
MIT who has a brand new approach with
these uh microscopic circulat tronic
chips that are less than the size of a
red blood cell that will be introduced
into your you know your arterial system
and go and flow into the brain and give
you millions of connection points
right so these sorts of Technologies are
coming it's Fantastic Voyage from the
movie and the book you know there
companies like paradromics they're doing
amazing work right now and black rock
and others uh if you think about what is
the most what is what is the most
valuable thing you could do to increase
the capability of your employees or your
country it would be to increase the
intelligence of your
people and so AI is part of that but
also you know BCI is part of that and
ultimately the merger of of humans and
AI coupling as we talked about it uh is
is likely where we're going are you
going to be an early adopter on that
stuff I listen I cannot I can't go any
place without this thing right it's my
augmented I'm on stage in front of you
know 5,000 people and I will ask the
question is there anybody here who does
not have their cell phone and there's
not a hand that goes up the last time a
hand went up I said do you not own one
he goes no no I lost it in my Uber on
the Y here so it's like we all are
dependent on this this is this is an
extension of our of our brain so I think
that's reality so that's a yes to the
early adopter ear yes yes yeah early
adopter okay you we've talked so much
we've used the word abundance so much
today and you have this abundance Summit
you've talked about getting to abundance
it's one of the things you talk about a
lot but I for those who haven't heard
about it before what what do you what is
abundance like what is your definition
of it do we have it we have it to an
extraordinary amount compared to
humanity 50 years ago 100 years ago a
thousand years ago abundance is
access to the fundamentals of Life uh
it's not about a world of luxury it's
about a world of
opportunity I Define technology as a
force that takes whatever is scarce and
makes it abundant let me give you some
examples so we used to kill whales to
get whale oil to light our nights that's
how we got energy right then technology
allowed us to uh ravage Mountain sides
and get coal then we drilled kilometers
under the ground for oil and natural gas
now we can use photovoltaics and soon
perovskite to convert sunlight into
electricity and there's 8,000 times more
energy that hits the surface of the
Earth than we consume as a species in a
year so this energy is there it's just
not in a usable form yet and so
technology takes what's there and not
usable and makes it usable another
example is water right we talk about
water wars or water scarcity but we live
on a on a water planet right we have 2/3
of our planets covered by water we've
but unfortunately it's 97.5% salt you
know 2% is ice and we fight over half a
percent we just launched an X prize I'm
very proud to be chairman of the X prize
we have launched 30 x prizes in 30
years uh about $600 million in
competitions and we just launched $120
million prize our largest ever out of
Abu Dhabi for large-scale
desalination can we improve the process
of giving everybody access to clean
water so abundance is access to Food
Water Energy health healthare
education you know ultimately more time
even can we get time abundance right
well working on that through longevity
we get time abundance by I don't know if
you remember the old days I used to go
to the library to research a report I
would spend you
know our getting there looking through
card cataloges trying to find the book
not finding the book going to another
library now Google gives us back those 2
or three hours there's more time
abundance that way so so all of the
charts uh are up and to the right
unfortunately we have an abundance of
empty calories too leading to uh to
obesity we have an abundance of carbon
in the atmosphere so it's not all
positive but we majority vast majority
of this abundance is giving every man
woman and child access to the
fundamentals of that we
need and if we have so much abundance
why do you think people are so unhappy
or are they not
you know it's fascinating um one of the
primary reasons is we judge
ourselves against our
neighbor uh there is a um there's a
concept
um uh which all of us have in our
minds 150 people that we consider our
peers
um and they are your friends they're
people you see on TV all the time there
are people that that you have a
relationship with and you judge yourself
not based upon how far you've come or
how far you've come from your
great-grandparents or how far you've
come since the Middle Ages you base
yourself on how you compare yourself to
the Kardashians you know or how you
compare yourself to this billionaire or
that billionaire and that's a that's a
way for you know a path for disaster so
um instead of realizing amazing I have a
cell phone with free music and
entertainment and education and I have
air conditioning and heating and light
and and I can talk to anybody on the
other side of the planet for
free we don't value those things because
we don't have a private jet or whatever
it might be what do you think it says
about the human condition that we're so
quick to take these things for granted I
mean I'm thinking in particular we
talked about AI models where like Chad
GPT came out and everyone's like this is
the most incredible thing ever developed
and then a year later they're like this
is a piece of when is GPT 5 coming
out yeah it's a Fickle n part of human
nature um we tend
to accept everything as Baseline and
we're always looking for change we're
always looking for how do we improve our
ourselves the other side though equally
interesting Alex is that everybody
likes uh I mean no one really likes
dramatic change right you like waking up
in the morning knowing the world is the
same way it was as when you went to
sleep the night
before um and when when there is
dramatic change um people resist it and
there's a lot of dramatic change
coming y that is for sure I mean I guess
it's already upon us so and accelerating
and we're going to now shift a little
bit into health and Medicine the world
of medicine but just a bridge those two
worlds talking about things that are
changing so in preparation for this uh
conversation I went back and watched
your 2012 Ted Talk do you remember how
you ended that talk um my abundance Ted
Talk in
2012 protein folding Pro yes and you
mentioned that there's a human who
humans are the best protein folders and
that it used to be the work of
supercomputers yes but now it's the work
of AI things like Alpha fold so talk a
little bit about the significance of
that right because I I had written in in
my notes here that like AI is you know
the path to abundance where we in 2012
you already talking and I think you
mentioned a little bit about AI but
you're already talking about how we have
more energy more water more
communication but now we're going to
have that effectively you know in
multiple uh and and that is also going
to be more medical breakthroughs so I'm
curious if you can give your thought I
mean it's interesting I I remember now I
talked about um a the ability for the
crowd to uh to help uh predict protein
folding was a superc Computing problem
for the last 50 years and of course
Alpha fold by Google's Deep Mind solved
protein folding and just recently
something called Alpha fold 3 was just
announced by by Demis at and it's
revolutionary I was talking about this
morning it's the ability not only to to
predict the folding of a of a protein
but the interaction of all molecules of
life like how this protein and this
lipid and this sugar will
interact and where they're going next
what's that it's crazy it's crazy and
where we're going next is the ability to
model your cell in Ai and then your
tissue and then your organ and then you
and know this drug works for you and
this drug does not work for you and to
really understand right so I I just I've
written two books in the longevity space
um one with Tony Robbins called life
force and one um behind my shoulder here
called Longevity your your your
practical
Playbook and you know I talk about the
notion that this decade is
different uh and that we're about to
have a health span Revolution and it's
you know for me Ai and Longevity are the
two biggest business opportunities on
the planet there's nothing of Greater
opportunity right what wouldn't someone
pay in their 70s or 80s for an extra 30
years of healthy life that gives them
the energy the Aesthetics Mobility they
had when they're in their 30s or 40s
right I mean you give it all at some
point so it's massive Marketplace and
and what's making this health span
Revolution occur is AI is the coming
Quantum Technologies is uh Gene
therapies epigenetic reprogramming
Capital flowing in smartest people in
the world you're either working on AI or
extending Health span and it's coming
and I talk about you need to be in a
longevity mindset ready to intercept
these Technologies when they come your
way absolutely and I want to talk about
that and plenty more when we come back
from the break so let's do that right
after this and we're back here on big
technology podcast with Peter diamandis
he is the founder and CEO of the xprize
foundation he is multiple times
bestselling author we've talked about
some of the books already and also the
host of the moonshot podcast Peter how
many years do you want to
live you know that's a great question I
used to have a canned answer that was
more of a joke and I'll I'll tell you
that and then answer it um when I was in
medical school I was in ad joint MIT
Harvard MD PhD program I never finished
a PhD but I just barely finished my
medical degree I watched a television
show one day on Long Live sea life and
learned that bowhead whales could live
200 years and Greenland sharks could
live four or 500 years and I remember
saying if they can live that long why
you know why can't I and so I set this
multi- hundred-year lifespan
objective
um but really my objective is to live
long enough to intercept what's called
Longevity escape velocity which I think
is a term I'd love everybody hear about
so today for every year that you're Live
Science is extending your life for about
a third of a year these breakthroughs
are helping add uh additional vibrancy
and and length to your health span not
necessar life spent Health span as well
there's going to be a point at which for
every year that you're alive science
extends your life for more than a year
and that's called Longevity escape
velocity um
I heard that first from Ray kwell and
Aubrey deg gray and I I speak to a lot
of the top longevity researchers and ask
their opinion when do you think we're
going to hit this longevity escape
velocity Ray Kell's prediction is 2030
which is insanely close right why it's
because AI is going to help us
understand why we age how to slow it how
to stop it how to reverse it George
Church puts it at some some 15 years out
uh David Sinclair is in that same that
same area so you know let's call it 20
years um your goal over the next 20
years is to stay as healthy as you can
and to not die from something stupid in
the
indrum and to be there to intercept
these breakthroughs that are going to
add vitality and health so my honest
answer is to live long enough to
intercept longevity escape velocity and
then
you know to see my great grandkids to go
step foot on the moon to go and you know
mine asteroids and the asteroid belt
whatever the 9-year-old kid in me wants
to do and the natural question that
comes up after this is who's this going
to be available to like who are these
treatments like I was I've heard
recently about this treatment of cancer
that kind of breaks down exactly like
what your your body will respond to and
then for like a million dollars a pill
or some crazy number like that will help
cure yourself but it's only available to
people that can afford that so are we
going to end up having yeah are we going
to have a class of people that can live
you know effectively Escape that you
know longevity curve and a bunch of
people that will continue to die at a
normal normal rate is that fair so let
me break it down in two parts number
one um it's if I had to guess what the
treatment would be for extended Health
span it's what's called epigenetic
reprogramming um I'll just mention you
have the same genes 3.2 billion letters
from your mom and your dad when you're
born when you're 50 when you're 100 same
genetics same software nothing's changed
so why do you look different why don't
you have a six-pack when you're 100 that
you had when you're
18 and it's not your genes it's what
genes are on and what genes are off
which is referred to as your
epigenome from the Greek word for above
and the ability to control which genes
are on and off
that varies during as we age and there's
been a lot of work right now and it's
one of the hottest areas um of reversing
your epigenetic programming to a earlier
State and that's likely to be a gene
therapy um and those treatments you just
spoke about for Orphan diseases rare
diseases rare cancers and so forth you
can get a gene therapy might cost a half
a million bucks might cost two million
bucks it's expensive
and the reason it's expensive is the
number of cases are so small MH however
it turns out all humans have the same
disease called
Aging it's all of us 8 billion of us and
so if you are developing a treatment
that's affecting hundreds of millions or
billions of
people um the cost plummets to near zero
we saw this with the covid vaccines so
our mRNA vaccines from from madna or
fizer were Gene therapies and they cost
two bucks each all right they were sold
for 20 bucks or whatever the case might
be so we know that you can Mass produce
Gene therapies extraordinarily cheaply
so that's the first thing just to give a
an example of yes in the beginning when
it doesn't work so well it'll be paid
for by the wealthiest and it'll be
expensive and then as it goes into
production it will be available for
everybody it will work extraordinarily
well and it'll be cheap and same thing
that happened with cell phones right the
first cell phones were $100,000 and they
dropped a call every two blocks and now
you know the cell phones and favellas
are amazing and they cost you know 20 40
bucks but there's another point and I I
make it in my my longevity book which is
the majority of the stuff that you can
do today is effectively free um and the
stuff you should be doing today to keep
yourself in the highest level of Health
to intercept these breakthroughs are are
exercising every day so I'm in the gym
at least 5 days a week right it have to
be if you can't afford a gym membership
then at least get down and do some
pull-ups and push-ups and and get your
exercise the number one thing you can do
number two eight hours of sleep number
three minimize sugars in your body
sugars a neurop about sugar CU that's a
big thing for you talk about sugar
because I I'll be honest like I'm like
I'm definitely addicted there and
there's like even proven scientific
stuff that like it helps with writing so
so talk a little bit about study done
there was a study done years ago where
they tested a whole bunch of chemicals
on on grad students the ultimate uh
research lab animal uh and they they
said what chemicals increase a person's
IQ and their abilities and it was
glucose and caffeine right Coca-Cola
very familiar with both of those right
yeah so here's the reality you have to
remember we evolved on the savanas of
Africa 100,000 200,000 years ago as
hominids and
uh a lot of of our
physiology like we were never designed
to live past age 30 we would go into
puberty at age 13 you'd have a baby
you'd be a grandparent by 27 and then
you didn't want to steal food from your
grandchildren's mouths and you would die
and the species would continue and so
it's all downhill after age 30 what we
know is there was not an abundance of
sugar as we were evolving tens of
thousands of years ago and sugar is a
neuroinflammatory agent a cardiac
inflammatory agent it glycosites
proteins it hits your immune system and
it's just you know I wear a a levels
continuous glucose monitor all the time
and I'm measuring what I eat what my
glucose is doing I try I'm not perfect
but I will when I'm sitting down I will
always eat my veggies first all right
which slows my metabolism down I'll then
eat my protein and then finally well I
don't eat carbohydrates but that's the
third dosing should be that so it
doesn't turn into you know glucose
instantly in your blood stream um by the
way before you go on that's something
I've gotten from you listening to your
podcast is attack those vegetables
attack the greens first yeah and I'm
doing that at every meal and it actually
kind of changes the way that your body
processes if you eat the greens before
the bread or the carbs as opposed to the
other way around a big differ you're out
for a restaurant and the the wine and
the bread and the butter comes first ask
them to bring it back with your main
meal you know they just they're going to
manipulate you because if you if you eat
that you know it just spikes your blood
sugar makes you hungrier makes you order
more I mean that's why they're doing it
it's not for your health it's for their
for their checkbooks yep absolutely and
then you know while we talk about
longevity we ALS Al have to think about
overpopulation so like I'll just give
you my uninformed take about
overpopulation I mean it seems bad right
like we have limited resources on the
planet and if we continue to fill the
planet with people we're going to
consume those resources and we do have
declining birth rates but if those go
back up or if we end up with uh longer
lifespans especially when you have the
old older people um who are going to
need need to be cared for and um it just
seems like like we're going to deplete
the planet but you also care about the
planet obviously you've done this carbon
challenge so how do we how do we deal
with the fact that we could have over
population but also a
sustainable yeah massive increases in
population but also sustainable Planet
so the first thing is to look at the
data and the data shows us that we are
about to have not an overpopulation but
a massive underpopulation of planet
Earth so if you look at the growth
curves um 50 years ago or call the 1950s
uh it was about an average of 5.7
children per family around the world and
we were in massive growth and books like
the population bomb were written and so
forth but the reality is we are now
we've dropped from 5.7 children per
family down to below 2.4 globally in the
US we're below the replenishment level
which is 2.1 and China's way below
Japan's way below most of Asia most of
Europe Italy is dissipating going away
like like 7 um the only only region in
growth is Africa and as Africa becomes
more affluent as better comms and Ai and
Technology comes there we'll expect to
see that growth level drop as well and
if you've got a massive under population
right we Peak at 9 9 and a half billion
and have a very rapid drop
off um our population is tied directly
to to GDP towards the ability to
maintain our our world I think the only
counterveiling Force there is going to
be humanoid Robotics and AI That's going
to allow us to support that aging
population uh so I think you know Elon
goes on and says listen have more kids
he's got 10 or 11 I forget how many he's
doing his part he's doing his part I've
got two um at least in in replication or
or balance mode right now but I I think
people need to be um re-educated about
overpopulation uh if you're flying in an
airplane look out the
window most of of the world is Barren
except for our cities and we used to
move into cities because that's where we
had education that's where entertainment
that's where the jobs were but that's
not the case anymore you can have jobs
sitting on a beach in you know in
Thailand right now you can have a you
know you can have entertainment and
education anywhere on the planet so I
think I think we're going to we're going
to see a new uh population distribution
on earth right okay let me ask you one
more question and then we can wrap I
just want to talk about fear we brought
it up earlier yeah you know I was
looking through your bio you've founded
so many things um you know xprize you
know tackling problems that uh a lot of
people would find impossible to solve
thinking through abundance the writing
relationships uh with people like like
Elon Musk Tony Robbins um so many people
are governed by fear you don't seem to
have it talk a little bit about like
what you think our relationship with
fear is and what it should be
if there's one important thing I need to
teach my abundance CEOs and
entrepreneurs that I support is your
mindset is the single most important
thing you
have and you know if you
asked what made the greatest leaders on
this planet you know Mahatma Gandhi
Martin Luther King Elon Steve Jobs was
it their wealth the tech they had the
friends they had or was it their mindset
I think most everybody would say it's
their mindset and if you believe that
then you have to ask yourself the
question what mindset do you have where
did you get it and what mindset do you
need for the decade
ahead and so I teach five different
mindsets that I focus on I focus on an
abundance mindset an exponential mindset
a longevity mindset a moonshot mindset
and a curiosity mindset um and the
realization is that our normal mindsets
are fear and
scarcity right that is the minds that
evolved on the savanas of Africa 100,000
years ago that saved our
lives but that mindset doesn't serve you
anymore and so how do you change your
mindset um the same way that a large
language model or neural
net um trains Itself by giving it
example after example after example of a
cat if you want to have it notice a cat
or if you want to be in an abundance
mindset or an optimistic mindset versus
a scarcity and fear mindset read books
listen to podcasts like like yours and
and moonshots and and be in this
positive mindset give yourself examples
to flip it because if you're watching
you know CNN every night which I call
the crisis News Network or the negative
you know constantly negative News
Network you're been being bombarded by
negative views over and over and over
again you're going to live in a state of
fear and
and the news media does that because
that's what gets them clicks it's what
gets you know they're they have a
business model deliver your eyeballs to
their advertisers and and you pay 10
times more attention to negative news
and positive news so you're being
manipulated in that way train your
neuronet your brain by the people you
hang out with what's on your walls what
you read what you listen to in the way
that's going to serve you in this decade
ahead Peter D Peter dandis thanks so
much for joining a pleasure thank you
all right thanks everybody for listening
we'll be back on Friday breaking down
the week's news until then we'll see you
next time on big technology podcast and