Balaji Opens Up on AI/AGI, Bitcoin & America’s Incoming Collapse w/ Dave Blundin & Salim Ismail | EP #191

Peter Diamandis (0:00)

And so your first point is there is no AGI, there are many AGI's.

Balaji Srinivasan (0:05)

Where I think AI does take us towards is, AI means everybody's a CEO, everybody's a manager. It's a lot like interacting with an employee, especially a junior employee, and you have to check their work.

Dave Blundin (0:17)

As intelligent as the AI is, it's far, far better with a human interacting with it.

Balaji Srinivasan (0:22)

Yes.

Peter Diamandis (0:23)

This means the smarter you are, the smarter the AI is working with you.

Balaji Srinivasan (0:28)

It reverses the extreme specialization of the 20th century. Your wingspan increases.

Peter Diamandis (0:32)

At the end of the day, Balaji, do you believe there are going to be multiple players out there that are going to be providing equal or similar capabilities compared to what you just said, Dave, which is there's going to be someone who will be supreme over everybody else?

Balaji Srinivasan (0:47)

So here's what I think about that.

Dave Blundin (0:51)

Now that's the Moonshot, ladies and gentlemen.

Peter Diamandis (0:56)

Welcome to Moonshots. Get out your second cup of coffee and pump up your IQ score by 20 points. We're about to jump in to another incredible episode of WTF Just Happened in Tech. I'm here with my amazing Moonshot mates, Dave Blundin and Salim Ismail. Gentlemen welcome. And today we're joined by one of the most extraordinary and outspoken thinkers on the future of AI, crypto and society at large, Balaji Srinivasan.

Balaji, it's a pleasure to have you. But before we jump in to this deep conversation, allow me to give a proper introduction to Balaji. If you already know his work, you know how extraordinary he is. If you don't, you're in for a real treat. Balaji is an entrepreneur, investor, futurist, formerly the CTO of Coinbase and general partner at Andreessen Horowitz. He's also a deep thinker in biotech and longevity, founder of Council, one of the earliest consumer genomics companies, an investor in biotech startups at Andreessen Horowitz, and he taught genomics at Stanford, which I found really cool. Most recently, Balaji is the author of the Network State, the founder of the Network School, offering a bold blueprint on how online communities can evolve into self-governing sovereign entities. I want one of those. I definitely want one around abundance. Today, we're going to speak about his recent paper, AI is polytheistic, not monotheistic, super important point. And we'll dive into Bitcoin and crypto. We'll make a right turn down longevity lane. End up talking about how insanely different the world's going to look in 2035 So like I said, hold on tight. We're going to jump in. Balaji, I think it's a good evening for you. You're in Singapore area today at the Network School.

Balaji Srinivasan (2:38)

That's right. I am. ns.com, baby. Yeah, go check it out.

Peter Diamandis (2:43)

We'll go there. And Salim, Dave, you and your normal spots?

Salim Ismail (2:48)

Normal habitat.

Dave Blundin (2:49)

There is no normal spot, but yeah, as close as you can get.

Peter Diamandis (2:52)

All right. Well, it's been another incredible week across the board on everything. But Balaji, last time you and I saw each other physically was in Saudi at the FII Summit. But then before that was in New York. We were talking about longevity. We were just getting the idea of the longevity, the HealthSpan XPRIZE up and going. It's since launched. We have 630 teams competing to add 20, 30 healthy years onto your life. I want to talk about that. I want to talk about how the future of extended human health span is going to mix in with Bitcoin, crypto, network states and all of that. But I think one of the most important papers you put out recently was this conversation around AI being polytheistic and not monotheistic.

You put out 10 points and I want to dive into that. But before I do, Salim and Dave, any opening thoughts?

Dave Blundin (3:55)

I'm really curious about that Stanford class. Seems kind of non sequitur in the, like you said, Peter, most wide-ranging bio I think he could ever have. But that was interesting.

Salim Ismail (4:05)

Sure.

Peter Diamandis (4:06)

So, yeah, let's jump in.

Salim Ismail (4:09)

I was looking through some of your podcasts and listened to them, Balaji, and I really loved the idea of fighting for Mars, Bitcoin and life extension. It covers a lot of the bases we look at here, so really awesome.

Balaji Srinivasan (4:21)

That's right. Infinite frontier, immutable money, eternal life.

Peter Diamandis (4:25)

What could possibly be better? Let me start with a broad-ranging question. Do you think the world is going to be recognizable 10 years from now in 2030?