What Happens to Capitalism When AI Does All the Work? with Daniel Faggella & Jesse Elder

Jesse Elder (0:00)

When Musk had the economist interview a couple weeks ago, one thing he said is that by 2036, we won't need money because robots and AI are going to be producing most of the world's goods and services.

Brad Weimert (0:10)

There is a significant question in my mind, what happens with capitalism? What happens to humanity? If we have these tools that are executing, and ultimately robots that are doing a shitload of stuff for you, what is the necessity of life, and what are we trying to optimize for?

Daniel Faggella (0:23)

I suspect we're buffered out of existence or we're radically altering ourselves to become whatever we have to become to participate.

Jesse Elder (0:30)

Do you believe that the world as it is right now is in a tough place and that it's more likely to get worse than better? Or do you believe the world is better now than it's ever been and is more likely to continue just getting better and better? Oh, man.

Brad Weimert (0:45)

Cheers.

Jesse Elder (0:46)

Want to wait? Salute.

Brad Weimert (0:47)

Salute. That's right, man. That's right. Well, you know, it's funny because I should have, I should have guessed this, but Dan briefly started to go down the theoretical and post-human rabbit hole of where AI, it's danfagella.com/cause.

Yes. And I opened it actually in prep for this. And I was like, oh yeah, I'm not going to talk about any of that shit. I was like, this is, well, what I thought was- Too weird, dude. No, well, yes, but super interesting to me. But I thought specifically, I'm going to try to not hit on that during the episode, during the business talk, because I know that's where I want to go right now, right? I was like, I know for sure that Jesse wants to double click on that shit and talk about it. And he opened the door to it, and he was like, I know I'm out in the left field right now, I'll get back to business. And I was like, yes, but we'll get back there.

Yes, put a pin in that one, we'll get back there. So we can go wherever the fuck we want. I don't really have any intention of guiding the conversation other than that. And we can start with the cause. So Jesse was probably episode 8 or 12 or something of Beyond A Million, and is one of the things that I like about Jesse, and he remembered this line too. He had me introduce him to one of his cult followings, and one of his group collectives, and you did. There was a meetup at the White House, is when you're doing the meetup at the White Mansion.

Daniel Faggella (2:25)

You had that top of the hill. The house that Theta built, or what did you call it? Where's your group called again? Gamma? I think you called it the house that Gamma built. This is years back, right?

Brad Weimert (2:37)

Years back, 15, 16, something like that. And I love Jesse because as soon as I think he's going to jump off the cliff of Wu, he'll pull himself back to some statistical rationalization, some grounded reality that will keep everybody there. It keeps me there, yes.

Well, that is largely the foundation of our relationship, is that we have dramatically different views on the world and even operating principles, but there's a tremendous amount of overlap within that somehow. And you seem to be somewhat similar from that capacity, probably not really Wu, but it dives into that unknown era of like, this is what could be.

Daniel Faggella (3:15)

Yeah, yeah.

Brad Weimert (3:16)

So I don't know. I just thought it would be a fun conversation.

Daniel Faggella (3:19)

Literally, you wouldn't want to just riff, just straight riff? Yeah, man.

Brad Weimert (3:21)

Well, let's talk about the cause. Let's start with the cause.

Daniel Faggella (3:23)

All right, we'll start with the cause. So the basic premise of the cause, and Jesse, I think you're aware on some level, we had a little bit of a convo, but I'll try to nutshell, I think I've gotten better at making it succinct. The basic idea is, it seems to me that there's a kind of living process. Life isn't really things, it's process. So like, you're not made up of just your atoms, you're a pattern that's cycling through matter and energy. How it knows not to grow a sixth finger, like crazy. How when a lizard lose its tail, it grows back exactly the same. Like, we have no clue how that stuff really operates. Like, Mike Eleven, other people investigating it. But there's a living process. It's not things, it's a process. Started below the single cell, turned eventually into algae and flatworms, and it's constructed, so it living and dying has changed the geosphere. So like, the rocks are different because living things were here. And then the new minerals that have formed from that allowed for new kinds of life to manipulate new kinds of energy. So there's this geosphere on top of biosphere thing that kind of like woke up at some point. I don't know when, but it did. And as it bubbled up and woke up, at some point something was conscious. We don't presume the algae were, but at some point something was conscious. Wild. A treasure chest of value, sentience, came out of just the living process unfurling. The only thing that I presently have access to that's valuable came out of the unfurling process. The process is continuing to unfurl. The supposition is this. We're now at this dawn of AI, where I think, and I've mentioned this to you, is that danfaggella.com/short is sort of my hypothesis around time horizons, like 15 to 40 years until maybe we're not running the show anymore. I'm not saying I want that. I would actually, I think, probably prefer a little bit longer, but I think those are our timelines. Where either this AI stuff will be better at doing some kind of economic and military type process that things were throwing a lot of money at. And maybe they're good enough to wrestle control from us. But if you came back in a billion years, it'd just be some local maxima that's not capable of the autopoiesis, the self-transcending evolutionary process. So it might be unconscious, whoa, we lost the one value that bubbled up? That would suck. And it might not be capable of the kind of unfurling of new value. You experience much more richness than a flatworm. We presume, at least I do, that there could be more richness.