AI for Good - Machines of Loving Grace?

**SPEAKER_1** (0:02)
The Bliss Business Podcast, the show about empathy, connection, and consciousness in business. Today's episode is brought to you by Zero Company, your paid search, social media, and programmatic ad experts.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:16)
Like my dad says, beer has water, so I'm good. I just noticed I've been drinking water all week, I haven't drink anything else. And Tullio is talking about drinking some cherry.
I see the cherry.

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:32)
It's so good.

**Ash Maher** (0:34)
He was downing that coke right before this started. And I was like, what is that?

**Tullio Siragusa** (0:37)
What is this peccative little thing? It's like cherry zero.

**Stephen Sakach** (0:42)
Hello, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Just how fast will AI be changing things? The CEO of one of the leading AI companies just released an essay. And I think some of the predicted advances and how fast they will happen will shock people. That's what we're talking about today. I'm Stephen Sakach here again with Tullio Siragusa and Ash Maher. Hey, guys.
All right. So it's October 2024 The CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amadei, just released an essay about AI. So Anthropic runs Cloud, which is one of the main competitors to ChatGPT. It has some big backers behind it. The essay is titled Machines of Loving Grace, which is quoting a poem talking about technology and humanity where humans return to nature and are watched over by machines of loving grace. So Dario writes, I think that most people are underestimating just how radical the upside of AI could be. Just as I think most people are underestimating, how bad the risk could be. So let's set the stage here. What he's going to base his predictions on is the moment when we reach AGI or Powerful AI, which he says I think could come as early as 2026
Though there are also some ways it could take much longer, he says. But for the purposes of this essay, I'd like to put these issues aside, assume it will come reasonably soon, and focus on what happens in the 5-10 years after that. Once we have AGI or this Powerful AI, he calls what happens in the 5-10 years after that, which he calls those 5-10 years a compressed 21st century. Basically, things that in the regular course of evolution could take a century will be compressed into 5-10 years, I think. So you're kind of 10Xing things. He says, quote, If all goes really well, if all this really does happen over the next 5-10 years, the defeat of most diseases, the growth of biological and cognitive freedom, the lifting of billions of people out of poverty to share in the new technologies, a renaissance of liberal democracy and human rights. I suspect everyone watching it will be surprised by the effect it has on them. And I don't just mean the experience of personally benefiting from all the new technologies, although that will certainly be amazing. I mean the experience of watching a long-held set of ideals materialize in front of us all at once. I think many will literally be moved to tears by it. He adds, it's a thing of transcendent beauty. We have an opportunity to play some small role in making it real. So I want to dive into some of the prediction he talks about today because they are truly massive. Tullio, he first talks about biology and health. What does he say here?

**Tullio Siragusa** (3:50)
Well, he's got an interesting prediction along the lines of the compressed timeline when things would happen a lot faster. And the next 7 to 12 years from now, basically, we would achieve prevention or treatment of nearly all natural infectious disease. That's a pretty big statement.
But, you know, with AI being able to do many, many permutations simultaneously, it's very possible. And then also the elimination of most cancers. Now, that would be amazing. I mean, the death rate of cancer has actually been dropping about 2% every year for the past decade, which is good news. But we could, with the right discoveries, accelerate this decline where it could potentially eliminate most cancers in the 21st century altogether. So that would be a tremendous win. And even the prevention of Alzheimer's, you know, some of us have lost our loved ones, parents to some of these diseases, including cancer and Alzheimer's. So it'd be like kind of cool not to have your kids go through that with maybe us or their grandparents or what have you. And then doubling the human lifespan, that's a pretty big prediction. Not necessarily related to, you know, violence. I don't think this will stop violence, but it would certainly, biologically speaking, with the right discoveries could double human lifespan and also the essay describes several other big achievements in terms of health overall.