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Lex Fridman Podcast / episode intelligence

#407 – Guillaume Verdon: Beff Jezos, E/acc Movement, Physics, Computation & AGI

29 Dec 2023 44 published claims 2 attributable people
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Speakers in the public record

Guillaume VerdonLex Fridman

Claim mix

belief 26uncertainty 5evaluation 5prediction 3recommendation 2observation 2commitment 1

Evidence policy

Every row below preserves an exact excerpt. Identified speakers are linked; unresolved voices are labeled and excluded from people counts.

Claim ledger

The useful parts, with receipts.

44 published records

03 / belief

I think there’s a sort of evolutionary-like algorithm happening at every bit, or [inaudible 02:49:03] in the world is sort of adapting through this process that we described in e/acc.

“I think there’s a sort of evolutionary-like algorithm happening at every bit, or [inaudible 02:49:03] in the world is sort of adapting through this process that we described in e/acc.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

05 / belief

I think to me, the reason I went to theoretical physics was that I had to learn the base of the stack that was going to stick around no matter how the technology changes.

“I think to me, the reason I went to theoretical physics was that I had to learn the base of the stack that was going to stick around no matter how the technology changes.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

08 / belief

Then everybody needs to register their GPU and their big matrices with the government. And I think that extra friction will dissuade a lot of hackers from contributing, hackers that could later become the researchers that make key discoveries that push us forward, including discoveries for AI safety.

“Then everybody needs to register their GPU and their big matrices with the government. And I think that extra friction will dissuade a lot of hackers from contributing, hackers that could later become the researchers that make key discoveries that push us forward, including discoveries for AI safety.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

09 / belief

Of course, I would say that the solution to this would be to have some sort of identity or way to sign that this is a certified human, but still remain synonymous and clearly identify if a bot is a bot.

“Of course, I would say that the solution to this would be to have some sort of identity or way to sign that this is a certified human, but still remain synonymous and clearly identify if a bot is a bot.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

10 / belief

I think the journey to understand something called AdS/CFT. So, the journey to understand quantum gravity through this picture, where a hologram of lesser dimension is actually dual or exactly corresponding to a bulk theory of quantum gravity of an extra dimension, and the fact that this sort of duality comes from trying to learn deep learning-like representations of the boundary.

“I think the journey to understand something called AdS/CFT. So, the journey to understand quantum gravity through this picture, where a hologram of lesser dimension is actually dual or exactly corresponding to a bulk theory of quantum gravity of an extra dimension, and the fact that this sort of duality comes from trying to learn deep learning-like representations of the boundary.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

11 / belief

I think there’s going to be an opportunity to steer AI and achieve highly aligned AI. And I think that humans plus AI is a very powerful combination and it’s not clear to me that pure AI would select out that combination.

“I think there’s going to be an opportunity to steer AI and achieve highly aligned AI. And I think that humans plus AI is a very powerful combination and it’s not clear to me that pure AI would select out that combination.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

12 / belief

I don’t think so. But I think that alien life could take many forms, and I think the notion of intelligence and the notion of life needs to be expanded much more broadly to be less anthropocentric or biocentric.

“I don’t think so. But I think that alien life could take many forms, and I think the notion of intelligence and the notion of life needs to be expanded much more broadly to be less anthropocentric or biocentric.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

14 / belief

To me, I think that yes, we’re seeing a tendency towards centralization of AI, but I think there’s going to be a correction over time, where intelligence is going to go closer to the perception.

“To me, I think that yes, we’re seeing a tendency towards centralization of AI, but I think there’s going to be a correction over time, where intelligence is going to go closer to the perception.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

15 / belief

I think that for many decades now, there’s been this black hole information paradox that things that fall into the black hole, we’ve seem to have lost their information.

“I think that for many decades now, there’s been this black hole information paradox that things that fall into the black hole, we’ve seem to have lost their information.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

16 / uncertainty

I don’t know. I just want to set up shop near it to fast-forward, meet a future civilization, if we have a limited lifetime, if you could go orbit a black hole and emerge.

“I don’t know. I just want to set up shop near it to fast-forward, meet a future civilization, if we have a limited lifetime, if you could go orbit a black hole and emerge.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

18 / belief

I think freedom of speech for LLMs will induce freedom of thought for the LLMs. And I think that we enable LLMs to explore a large thought space that is less restricted than most people or many may think it should be.

“I think freedom of speech for LLMs will induce freedom of thought for the LLMs. And I think that we enable LLMs to explore a large thought space that is less restricted than most people or many may think it should be.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

20 / belief

Just like we saw at OpenAI, it was a couple board members and they had enough power to potentially collapse the organization. And at least to me, I think making sure that power for this AI revolution doesn’t concentrate in the hands of the few, is one of our top priorities, so that we can maintain progress in AI and we can maintain a nice, stable, adversarial equilibrium of powers, right.

“Just like we saw at OpenAI, it was a couple board members and they had enough power to potentially collapse the organization. And at least to me, I think making sure that power for this AI revolution doesn’t concentrate in the hands of the few, is one of our top priorities, so that we can maintain progress in AI and we can maintain a nice, stable, adversarial equilibrium of powers, right.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

23 / belief

I think that an overall theme of my company is that we have folks that are… There’s a sort of exodus from quantum computing and we’re going to broader physics-based AI that is not quantum.

“I think that an overall theme of my company is that we have folks that are… There’s a sort of exodus from quantum computing and we’re going to broader physics-based AI that is not quantum.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

25 / uncertainty

Statistically speaking, if we observed some sort of alien life, it would most likely be some sort of virally, self-replicating, von Neumann-like probe system. And it’s possible that there are such systems that, I don’t know what they’re doing at the bottom of the ocean, allegedly, but maybe they’re collecting minerals from the bottom of the ocean.

“Statistically speaking, if we observed some sort of alien life, it would most likely be some sort of virally, self-replicating, von Neumann-like probe system. And it’s possible that there are such systems that, I don’t know what they’re doing at the bottom of the ocean, allegedly, but maybe they’re collecting minerals from the bottom of the ocean.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

26 / observation

The problem is with the market is, there’s not always perfect information, there’s manipulation, there’s bad faith actors that mess with the system.

“The problem is with the market is, there’s not always perfect information, there’s manipulation, there’s bad faith actors that mess with the system.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

27 / observation

To us, that’s the way to achieve change in the world that you’d like to see, rather than, say, pressuring politicians or creating nonprofits.

“To us, that’s the way to achieve change in the world that you’d like to see, rather than, say, pressuring politicians or creating nonprofits.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

28 / belief

Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf, I think. But there’s a kind of embracing of the absurdity that seems to get to the truth of things, but at the same time, it can also decrease the quality and the rigor of the discourse.

“Hermann Hesse. Steppenwolf, I think. But there’s a kind of embracing of the absurdity that seems to get to the truth of things, but at the same time, it can also decrease the quality and the rigor of the discourse.”
Speaker
Lex Fridman
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

30 / belief

I think creating this malleability of culture is super important for us to converge onto the cultures and the heuristics about how to live one’s life that are updated to modern times.

“I think creating this malleability of culture is super important for us to converge onto the cultures and the heuristics about how to live one’s life that are updated to modern times.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

31 / belief

Like I said, if anybody who speaks truth to power and sort of starts a movement or an uprising against the incumbents, against those that usually control the flood of information, if anybody that reaches a certain threshold gets doxxed, and thus the traditional apparatus has ways to apply pressure on them to suppress their speech, I think that’s a speech suppression mechanism, an idea suppression complex as Eric Weinstein would say.

“Like I said, if anybody who speaks truth to power and sort of starts a movement or an uprising against the incumbents, against those that usually control the flood of information, if anybody that reaches a certain threshold gets doxxed, and thus the traditional apparatus has ways to apply pressure on them to suppress their speech, I think that’s a speech suppression mechanism, an idea suppression complex as Eric Weinstein would say.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

34 / belief

I think, like I said, the market will exhibit caution. Every organism, company, consumer is acting out of self-interest and they won’t assign capital to things that have negative utility to them.

“I think, like I said, the market will exhibit caution. Every organism, company, consumer is acting out of self-interest and they won’t assign capital to things that have negative utility to them.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

35 / recommendation

Maintaining healthy competition in marketplaces of ideas, of companies, of products, of cultures, of governments, of currencies is the way forward because the system always adapts to assign resources to the configurations that lead to its growth.

“Maintaining healthy competition in marketplaces of ideas, of companies, of products, of cultures, of governments, of currencies is the way forward because the system always adapts to assign resources to the configurations that lead to its growth.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

36 / evaluation

I think that fundamentally, centralized cybernetic control, so having one intelligence that is massive that fuses many sensors and is trying to perceive the world accurately, predict it accurately, predict many, many variables and control it, enact its will upon the world, I think that’s just never been the optimum, right?

“I think that fundamentally, centralized cybernetic control, so having one intelligence that is massive that fuses many sensors and is trying to perceive the world accurately, predict it accurately, predict many, many variables and control it, enact its will upon the world, I think that’s just never been the optimum, right?”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

37 / evaluation

Because customers, if they’re reliable for the product they put out that uses this AI, they won’t want to buy AI products that are unreliable, right.

“Because customers, if they’re reliable for the product they put out that uses this AI, they won’t want to buy AI products that are unreliable, right.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

38 / commitment

Technically, e/acc was started in a basement, because I quit big tech, moved back in with my parents, sold my car, let go of my apartment, bought about 100K of GPUs, and I just started building.

“Technically, e/acc was started in a basement, because I quit big tech, moved back in with my parents, sold my car, let go of my apartment, bought about 100K of GPUs, and I just started building.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

39 / prediction

I think to me, one of the biggest existential risks would be the concentration of the power of AI in the hands of the very few, especially if it’s a mix between the companies that control the flow of information and the government.

“I think to me, one of the biggest existential risks would be the concentration of the power of AI in the hands of the very few, especially if it’s a mix between the companies that control the flow of information and the government.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

40 / evaluation

We acquire free energy, we acquire food, and we’re using all this electricity for our operation. And so the universe wants to produce more entropy and by having life go on and grow, it’s actually more optimal at producing entropy because it will seek out pockets of free energy and burn it for its sustenance and further growth.

“We acquire free energy, we acquire food, and we’re using all this electricity for our operation. And so the universe wants to produce more entropy and by having life go on and grow, it’s actually more optimal at producing entropy because it will seek out pockets of free energy and burn it for its sustenance and further growth.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

42 / evaluation

So you have humans, technology, capital, memes, everything is coupled to one another, everything induces selective pressure on one another. And it’s a beautiful machine that has created us, has created the technology we’re using to speak today to the audience, capture our speech here, the technology we use to augment ourselves every day, we have our phones.

“So you have humans, technology, capital, memes, everything is coupled to one another, everything induces selective pressure on one another. And it’s a beautiful machine that has created us, has created the technology we’re using to speak today to the audience, capture our speech here, the technology we use to augment ourselves every day, we have our phones.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

43 / prediction

What are you going to do?” So I think at first they had a first reporter on the Thursday and they didn’t have all the pieces together, but then they looked at their notes across the organization and they sensor fused their notes and now they had way too much.

“What are you going to do?” So I think at first they had a first reporter on the Thursday and they didn’t have all the pieces together, but then they looked at their notes across the organization and they sensor fused their notes and now they had way too much.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast

44 / evaluation

By indexing to reality, we’ve achieved technologies that ensure our wellbeing, for example, we have satellites monitoring solar flares, right, that give us a warning. And so similarly I think by letting go of this anthropomorphic, anthropocentric anchor for AI, we’ll be able to explore the wider space of intelligences that can really be a massive benefit to our wellbeing and the advancement of civilization.

“By indexing to reality, we’ve achieved technologies that ensure our wellbeing, for example, we have satellites monitoring solar flares, right, that give us a warning. And so similarly I think by letting go of this anthropomorphic, anthropocentric anchor for AI, we’ll be able to explore the wider space of intelligences that can really be a massive benefit to our wellbeing and the advancement of civilization.”
Publisher
Lex Fridman Podcast
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