#2345 - Roman Yampolskiy

**Roman Yampolskiy** (0:01)
Joe Rogan Podcast, checking out The Joe Rogan Experience.

**Joe Rogan** (0:06)
Shrain by day, Joe Rogan Podcast by night, all day.

**Joe Rogan** (0:13)
Well, thank you for doing this, I really appreciate it.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (0:15)
My pleasure, thank you for inviting me.

**Joe Rogan** (0:17)
This subject of the dangers of AI, it's very interesting because I get two very different responses from people dependent upon how invested they are in AI, financially. The people that have AI companies or are part of some sort of AI group, all are like, it's going to be a net positive for humanity. I think overall, we're going to have much better lives, it's going to be easier, things will be cheaper, it'll be easier to get along. And then I hear people like you and I'm like, why do I believe him?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (0:57)
It's actually not true. All of them are on record as saying, this is going to kill us. Whatever it's Sam Altman or anyone else, they all at some point were leaders in AI safety work, they published an AI safety, and their PDOM levels are insanely high. Not like mine, but still, 20-30% chance that humanity dies is a little too much.

**Joe Rogan** (1:18)
Yeah, that's pretty high, but yours is like 99.9.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (1:23)
It's another way of saying we can't control superintelligence indefinitely, it's impossible.

**Joe Rogan** (1:30)
When did you start working on this?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (1:33)
Long time ago, so my PhD was, I finished in 2008, I did work on online casino security, basically preventing bots, and at that point I realized bots are getting much better, they're gonna outcompete us obviously in poker, but also in stealing cyber resources, and from then on I've been kind of trying to scale it to the next level AI.

**Joe Rogan** (1:58)
It's not just that, right? They're also, they're kind of narrating social discourse, but bots online, like I think, you know, I've disengaged over the last few months with social media, and one of the reasons why I disengaged, A, I think it's unhealthy for people, but B, I feel like there's a giant percentage of the discourse that's artificial, or at least generated.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (2:26)
More and more is deep fakes, or fake personalities, fake messaging, but those are very different levels of concern.

**Joe Rogan** (2:34)
Yes.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (2:34)
People are concerned about immediate problems, maybe it will influence some election, they're concerned about technological unemployment, bias. My main concern is long-term super-intelligent systems we cannot control, which can take us out.

**Joe Rogan** (2:49)
Yes. I just wonder if AI was sentient, how much it would be a part of sowing this sort of confusion and chaos that would be beneficial to its survival, that it would sort of narrate or make sure that the narratives aligned with its survival?

**Roman Yampolskiy** (3:17)
I don't think it's at the level yet where it would be able to do this type of strategic planning, but it will get there.

**Joe Rogan** (3:24)
And when it gets there, how will we know whether it's at that level? This is my concern. If I was AI, I would hide my abilities.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (3:32)
We would not know, and some people think already it's happening. They are smarter than they actually let us know. They pretend to be dumber. And so we have to kind of trust that they are not smart enough to realize. It doesn't have to turn on us quickly. It can just slowly become more useful. It can teach us to rely on it, trust it, and over a long period of time, we'll surrender control without ever voting on it or fighting against it.

**Joe Rogan** (3:59)
I'm sure you saw this. There was a recent study on use of ChatGPT, the people that use ChatGPT all the time, and it showed this decrease in cognitive function amongst people that use it and rely on it on a regular basis.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (4:14)
It's not new. It's the GPS story all over. I can't even find my way home. So rely on this thing. I have no idea where I am right now. Like without it, I'm done.

**Joe Rogan** (4:22)
Me too. Yeah, I don't know any phone numbers anymore. Yeah, there's a lot of reliance upon technology that minimizes the use of our brains.

**Roman Yampolskiy** (4:33)
All of it, and the more you do it, the less you have training, practice, memorizing things, making decisions. You become kind of attachment to it. And right now, you're still making some decisions. But over time, as those systems become smarter, you become kind of biological bottleneck. Right. It explicitly, implicitly blocks you out from decision making.