Looking up the AI Exponential with Azeem Azhar of the Exponential View

**Erik Torenberg** (0:00)
Turpentine is a network of podcasts, newsletters, and more, covering tech, business, and culture, all from the perspective of industry insiders and experts. We're the network behind the show you're listening to right now.
At Turpentine, we're building the first media outlet for tech people by tech people. We have a slate of hit shows across a range of topics and industries, from AI with Cognitive Revolution, to Econ 102 with Noah Smith. Our other shows drive the conversation in tech with the most interesting thinkers, founders, and investors, like Moment of Zen and my show Upstream. We're looking for industry leading hosts and shows along with sponsors. If you think that might be you or your company, email me at erik.turpentine.co.

**Azeem Azhar** (0:43)
Moore's Law was turning into this acceleration of AI capabilities over the top. The other was that what was happening in renewables with things like lithium ion batteries and solar was on a Moore's Law-like trajectory.
There were some other technologies like genome sequencing and genome synthesis that seemed to be doing something similar. I started to bundle those up in this idea that we're going through the exponential transition, a transition where our economy gets driven not by the economics of the oil industry and internal combustion engines and telephones, but by AI and renewables. And that these technologies, being on an exponential trend, being fundamentally at some level kind of information technologies, behave really differently to the ones of the previous generation.

**Nathan Labenz** (1:37)
Hello and welcome to The Cognitive Revolution, where we interview visionary researchers, entrepreneurs, and builders working on the frontier of artificial intelligence. Each week we'll explore their revolutionary ideas, and together we'll build a picture of how AI technology will transform work, life, and society in the coming years. I'm Nathan Labenz, joined by my co-host Eric Thornburg. Hello and welcome back to The Cognitive Revolution. Today I'm speaking with Azeem Azhar, founder of The Exponential View and fellow AI Scout, for a wide-ranging discussion about the transformative power of AI and its implications for humanity. Azeem's core observations, that we are in the midst of a transition from an economy driven by the likes of phones and oil to one fueled by AI and renewables, and that these new technologies, fundamentally rooted in information and already growing exponentially, behave differently than their predecessors, will be familiar to Cognitive Revolution listeners. So I took the opportunity to get a bit deeper into Azeem's worldview and expectations for the coming years and ended up having what I think was a really engaging and delightful exchange. In this conversation, we cover a number of familiar topics, plus some new ones that we haven't explored in quite the same way before, including why Azeem believes that, while incumbents are racing to adopt AI technology, yes, startups are still likely to drive the true disruption in the form of entirely new products and markets. Also, what forward-thinking business leaders are doing today to retrain their teams and to position their companies to lead their respective markets in AI adoption, and why Azeem still finds it necessary to challenge them to think bigger, asking the question, what would they do if they had a million times more compute?
We also explore why Azeem agrees with Sam Altman's recent comments that AGI will likely arrive soon, but will be less of a big deal than people expect, at least initially. How AI is likely to change human relationships, especially considering the rise of so many different forms of AI companions.
What sorts of new governance mechanisms the AI era will require. And finally, why we might ought to worry about what I call the Great Embedding. That is, the seemingly natural tendency for AI systems to communicate with each other in high-dimensional vector formats. Which, while efficient for them, is broadly inscrutable to humans and could lead to various loss of control scenarios.
As always, if you're finding value in the show, we'd appreciate it if you'd take a moment to share it with your friends. Azeem's perspective is both imaginative and exciting, and also grounded and sobering. So I definitely recommend this episode to anyone trying to get a better zoomed-out view of the future. I would also encourage you to consider subscribing to Azeem's work directly, which you can find at exponentialview.co.
Of course, your feedback is always welcome, whether in the form of an Apple or Spotify review, a YouTube comment, or a DM on the social media platform of your choice. Now, I hope you enjoy this conversation with founder of The Exponential View, Azeem Azhar. Azeem Azhar, founder of The Exponential View, welcome to The Cognitive Revolution.

**Azeem Azhar** (4:44)
I'm really happy to be here, Nathan. I've enjoyed so many of the episodes, and want to thank you for your hard service as a red teamer for GPT-4. I watched that episode with my jaw on the floor.