Humanity’s Last Invention — Richard Socher of Recursive

Swyx (0:03)

We're here in the studio with Vibhu and myself and Richard Socher. Welcome.

Richard Socher (0:06)

Thanks for having me.

Swyx (0:08)

We just talked about the Eureka Machine, or we just released a talk at AI Engineer about the Eureka Machine. You said it's your life's goal. What is the Eureka Machine?

Richard Socher (0:16)

The Eureka Machine is the ultimate invention that will afterwards invent most everything for humanity. It's essentially a super intelligence that can be given any kind of goal, any kind of environment, reward, and then it will try its best to achieve those goals, to create the kinds of inventions that humanity would hopefully ask it for.

Swyx (0:44)

Yeah, I think we have the book pulled up here that you've written.

Richard Socher (0:50)

That's right, yeah, I finished it last year, a little bit before we started Recursive, and now we're going to try to build parts of that.

Swyx (0:58)

You finished it last year, it's July, what takes so long?

Richard Socher (1:01)

Oh man, books, books are incredibly slow, it's ridiculous. That whole industry is just unfathomably slow. So yeah, a lot of the ideas have been out there for a while, but yeah, I'm really glad it's finally coming out in September this year.

Swyx (1:14)

I mean, we might have AGI by then.

Vibhu (1:18)

Any key takeaway that you're most excited to put in here?

Richard Socher (1:21)

Yeah, the key takeaway I think is that people could and should be much more excited about the positive implications of superintelligence especially for science, physics, chemistry, biology, but also economics and astrophysics and all kinds of other engineering tasks. I think there is so much more that can be done with better technology, and right now I feel like a lot of people need better marketing, not just for the future in general, but also better marketing for technology and in particular for AI.

This book should show even the AI skeptics how much positive upside there is for AI, especially when it comes to inventing new scientific discoveries.

Swyx (2:09)

I think you quoted the Techno Optimist Manifesto from Marc Andreessen, which I think was kind of beautiful in its ambition and clarity and simplicity almost.

Richard Socher (2:18)

I agree. Yeah. Yeah, you can disagree with him on some things, but I think he's right on the techno-optimism.

Swyx (2:23)

Where do you think optimists get in trouble?

Richard Socher (2:26)

You know, obviously, you shouldn't have blind optimism. You should be very clear-eyed, especially with such an omni-use type of technology as AI is, you need to think about the potential downside scenarios, especially when people use it for things that you don't want them to use it for. It's a little bit like the Internet.

And I feel like people are trying to regulate AI sometimes because of those potential downsides, the way you would regulate the Internet if you were to say, well, because there's bad content on the Internet, like torture porn or whatever, like we should just make it slower. That way, you can share the illegal content as quickly, or we should make the hard drive smaller, so you can store as much illegal content. But I'm like, that's not how you regulate that. That's like saying like we should regulate intelligence in the abstract. What you should regulate to avoid those downside scenarios, even as an optimist, are the specific applications. Sure, I don't want like some AI surgeon to like practice some L moves in my brain. It should be fully FDA certified. Sure, I don't want any random startup to like drive on the highway and cause a major accident. It should like have proper certifications before it's let loose on the highway. But I feel like those downside scenarios that some optimists sometimes maybe don't consider enough are fairly easily regulated compared to, you know, what sort of the do-mers are worried about.

Swyx (3:55)

Slow takeoff is part of the strategy as well.

Richard Socher (3:57)

I do think, as excited as I am about AI and its impact for society and culture even, and certainly technology and economics and wealth and health and all of those things, as excited as I am about all that, I do think the most bullish people on the AI hard takeoff scenarios overestimate how quickly things can move. There are hardware constraints. There are physical constraints about the compute substrate. How quickly can you get enough GPUs on? There are also constraints in the economy where there are a lot of industries that don't require an insane amount of complex intelligence and complex capabilities. If you think about jobs in brands and clothing and apparel and handbags and stuff, superintelligence isn't going to make your fancy $10,000 handbag any fancier. It will have no effect on the economy. When you think about travel and tourism, people wanting to see the pyramids in Egypt, it's not going to change that much with AI. Sure, you can like generate a fake photo of you.