#479 — When Robots Take Over

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
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**Sam Harris** (0:25)
I am here with Vinod Khosla. Vinod, it's great to see you. Thanks for coming on the podcast.

**Vinod Khosla** (0:29)
It's great to be here.

**Sam Harris** (0:31)
So how would you describe your background in business and tech before we jump into all things in your wheelhouse here?

**Vinod Khosla** (0:39)
You know, I can do the business part, but I've never really had an interest in business. I'm sort of just very curious about tech and the impact it can have. So most of my focus is what technology is coming down the line and what impact can it have and what does it take to do that. So it's more about making things possible.
I like to say, I like to imagine the possible and then try and make that happen. That's sort of my main goal in life.

**Sam Harris** (1:09)
But you were a technologist first and then a venture capitalist second, correct?

**Vinod Khosla** (1:14)
Yeah. In fact, funny thing is I've never actually in 40 years called myself a venture capitalist.

**Sam Harris** (1:20)
Oh, sorry. Sorry to insult you to your face. So what do you call yourself?

**Vinod Khosla** (1:27)
I'm in the business of helping entrepreneurs build companies with new technology. And I'm only curious about technology. The other business applications don't interest me very much. Our business only applications.

**Sam Harris** (1:42)
So we're going to talk about AI and its social and even political implications. But I guess a big picture question for you to start. What most concerns you about the economy at this moment? Is there anything you're worried about?

**Vinod Khosla** (2:01)
Yeah. Look, when I look forward 10 years from today, two big things stand out.
One, we have AI progressing rapidly, and I'm not worried about its capability. Almost anything we want it to do that's economically valuable, it'll be able to do over the next 10 years. It doesn't matter whether we are talking about robotics or AI or any frankly function that the human brain can do. What worries me a lot is if we're going to maximize the impact of that AI for good purpose, societal good, we are going to have a lot of disruption and change.
My biggest worry to get to your question is, AI may not be permitted because of that disruption. Politics is most likely the biggest impact on AI the next decade, and more than anything to do with technology or capital or data centers or power.

**Sam Harris** (3:12)
So you're fearing regulation that proves unwise? Does that summarize this concern?

**Vinod Khosla** (3:19)
I would say a simple idea, for AI to be fully effective, we should have large-scale job displacement.
If we let things happen, just happen to be most efficient in a capitalist sense. We probably get to 50% unemployment or underemployment by 2035 or so. That obviously cannot happen without a lot of political pushback. So the answer is, we have to do something radically different for us to accept the level of disruption. And that worries me, because politicians will take short-term advantage of things like job displacement. My nightmare would be Bernie Sanders or AOC get elected president. That'd be about as bad as Trump getting elected president. So you could get AIs being slowed down by politics of job displacement and fear.
AIs as feared as popular among general people as ISIS. And if you look at that perspective, then it's worrisome.

**Sam Harris** (4:35)
So if memory serves, and I think this is implicit in what you just said, you're not very concerned about the so-called alignment problem, the idea that we'll build superhuman AI that could be unaligned with our interests and pose some kind of existential risk to us.

**Vinod Khosla** (4:52)
I wouldn't say I'm not concerned. First, there's two versions of the alignment problem, the way it's traditionally defined, which is you align with human interests, and this is what all the labs are trying to do.
The more egregious version of that is an AI gets so dominant, it decides to take over the planet. Look, none of these risks can be completely discounted. So I won't dismiss that. But my much bigger concern would be strong AI in the hands of Putin or President Xi. On a relative basis, which is the larger risk, maybe even the largest expected value in terms of impact slash, clearly I worry about the West falling behind what we would consider bad actors on AI and them using it to dominate us.