Are Humans Being Replaced? The Truth About AI | Malcolm & Simone Collins

Malcolm Collins (0:00)

Eventually, we will reach a level of technology where AI can do almost anything a human can do but better.

Amanda Cassatt (0:06)

People's natural impulse, maybe, is to have fewer children because they think, will there be a job for my child? Will my child even be necessary?

Malcolm Collins (0:13)

Now, I can do the same with music videos, with music, with programming. That world is such a more exciting world to be in than one where I maintained my monopoly on artistic ability. We don't just build art with AI and stories with AI and tools with AI, but we focus on helping other people make those as well and inspire them to make that first step to getting better with AI.

Amanda Cassatt (0:40)

I'm Amanda Cassatt and you're watching Endgame.

You guys have five kids. What are they interested in? What are you raising them to focus on? What kinds of jobs do you think they're going to have?

Malcolm Collins (0:51)

With AI, our kids have AI friends.

Simone Collins (0:53)

We think it's so important with kids to have them develop very lumpy skill sets, because in the future, being a generalist who's kind of good at everything is like the worst thing to be, because AI is kind of good at everything way better than you are. We're doing our best to just superpower their ability to leverage AI to do cool, agentic things.

Amanda Cassatt (1:15)

Welcome to Endgame. I'm your host, Amanda Cassatt. So today I have Malcolm and Simone Collins on Endgame. They're a married pair of former tech investors. He was a neuroscientist turned BC.

She was part of running Peter Thiel's invite-only club Dialogue. And they left all that to have as many children as possible and convince everyone else to do the same. They're known as that couple behind the pro-natalist movement. It's a very interesting episode about human beings and AI and the future. Please like, please subscribe, and I hope you enjoy.

Malcolm Collins (1:48)

We have become is key figures in an online sociopolitical movement that is really tied to AI within the online culture war space. And pro-natalism is what landed us in that community, but the community is much wider than just pro-natalism or AI or anything like that. If I was going to equate them to anything, I'd say it's kind of like whatever 4chan was like 10 years ago. Where like everyone would be like, this is irrelevant. What did these culture wars matter?

Amanda Cassatt (2:21)

Not to use up too much time on like preamble, but like where I want to also go is, there are almost new like political affiliations forming around what people think of AI. Right? There's effective altruism and all that stuff around Anthropic, which is a very childless kind of dark arena, if that's in my opinion, right?

Simone Collins (2:41)

Oh, absolutely.

Amanda Cassatt (2:42)

And then there's, you know, grind culture and like Bef Jaiso style like EAC, which I find corny, but you know, a little more vital, like a little more like vitalist. I think like placing you guys within like that whole thing and how that's all realigning.

Malcolm Collins (2:57)

Yeah, that's something I think would be very interesting to talk about.

Amanda Cassatt (2:59)

We love talking about that.

Malcolm Collins (3:01)

People are unaware, but if you contrast, like for example, our Discord was like the EA forums were probably about 15 times larger. For a while, our subreddit was in the top 20 subreddits on Reddit, like around the size of our relationships. Even still, it dwarfs things like the Effective Altruists relationship, even though it's been shadow banned. And so a lot of people, they're familiar with the Twitter wars cultures like EAC and EA, and they're unaware of other cultural movements that are actually significantly larger.

Amanda Cassatt (3:34)

Well, I want to get into what those different movements are and have you guys lay out the landscape of where you guys are within that and how that all started.

But I want to start at the beginning. So Simone, you were running Dialogue, Peter Thiel's private conversation series, let's say. Malcolm, you've been in tech and VC, and then you guys came to be known as that promatilist couple. What was that transition? How did you decide that the most interesting thing for you to do wasn't directly at that time building something in tech, but rather something on the social side?

Malcolm Collins (4:13)

So for clarification, she was managing director of it. She wasn't running it.

Simone Collins (4:16)

Yeah. Raffi runs it. Always has. We love him. Yeah.

But yeah, we welcome-

Amanda Cassatt (4:22)