Kind: captions
Language: en
Uh, let me ask point blank. Do you think
capitalism survives the AI transition?
>> No.
I mean, what's the definition of
capitalism?
>> Strictly speaking,
>> yeah,
>> I can give you a colloquial definition.
The aggregation of capital to build
something
>> uh that is a self-sustaining economic
engine.
>> Yeah. Will AI be able to do that better
than humans?
>> Yes.
Capitalism as it is is going to be great
for AIS,
but how are we going to compete again?
How do you compete with entities that
are strictly smarter than you? And this
is without getting to AGI or ASI or
anything like that that learn perfectly
from their mistakes, never sleep,
you can't tell it's an AI on the other
side of the screen.
I I don't see how. Again, they'll figure
out the micro to the macro better than
we can. allocate capital better. I mean
it's like be like let's take a practical
example you know a lot about Tom
launching a protein bar
you know how long did that process take
and how long do you think it's going to
take in a couple of years to do it end
to end calling all the suppliers
arranging all the contracts etc
>> it took years whereas there will be
you'll be able to spin up a million
agents hitting the exact niche doing AB
testing doing all the supply contracts
and other things remotely probably
within like months you know and that's
only because of this human bits stopping
it all the thinking that you had to do
the II will probably do in less than a
day
and so again I think capitalism is
doesn't survive for humans and the AI
will accumulate more and more capital
because there's no way we can out
compete them
>> so given that we are already in an
environment where people are becoming
increasingly violent due to the
uncertainty of their economic future.
I've always said that I believe in the
transition there will be pockets of
violence.
What do you see that like? Do you see it
breaking very bad? Do you see it? No,
this will be a managed transition like
how do you think through this problem?
Well, I mean,
where have you seen instances of
the nature of capital, stock, social
contracts, and more be displaced? You
see it in things like postworld war I
Germany, don't you?
Whereby the economic heart of Germany
was ripped out due to reparations and
others. And what emerged, you have
disorder. So people look for people that
can bring in order. This is kind of high
road to surf. It's the central planning
thing. It's the work programs. It's the
people that say, "Give up your liberty
so I can give you comfort. I can give
you security." It's Hobbs's Leviathan,
effectively. So, I think that you'll get
more and more people acting up. You'll
see more and more people moving towards
legal stuff. But we have to remember
that government, and one definition of
government that's very good, is the
entity with the the monopoly on the
legitimate use of violence.
And so even if people act up and they
say they you know where are our jobs you
know where's the support ban the AI and
other things like that the power centers
will be using AI to keep their capital
going up the power brokers will be the
ones with the most GPUs effectively and
that's going to cause a big disconnect
in society because a private company
particularly as someone like America
isn't obligated to hire anyone.
the fiduciary responsibility is to the
shareholders and the owners of capital
and so it makes sense to get rid of most
of the humans because AI is a
taxdeductible and humans aren't you know
like AI are more effective so I think
that you will get low-level violence the
thing that is the scariest thing is do
you get mass polarization particularly
those that are motivated by political
interests
>> you already
>> a large scale we haven't seen mass
Like again when we look at uprisings,
civil war type things
>> like Nepal burning their own parliament
or France rioting in the streets and
this is all yesterday.
>> You can go way higher than that. I used
to be an emerging market hedge fund
manager. I've seen proper coups and kind
of other things like that. When the big
power structures change, they take
advantage of the people underlying and
again that mechanism of transmission can
be even better now to do this. So, I
think that hopefully we don't get to
that point, but when the pie shrinks
because the stuff left over from the
owners of the GPUs and capital is going
to get smaller and smaller, people are
going to compete for capital and power.
And again, it's the manipulation of the
masses that's the most dangerous thing,
but also the discontent of the masses is
the it's the tinder to which the fire
can be applied. Right. I think it's very
optimistic of you uh to say low levels
of violence uh
>> as today.
>> Yeah. So if you think of profit as
essentially the answer to I don't have
anything else to apply my money to. Um
will we see those kinds of profits occur
in the future or are we going to see a
natural contraction of the tax basis
because
you'll always be able to buy more
compute to make your company basically a
little bit smarter. So there's now no
longer that upper bound to what you
would be able to intelligently spend
money on.
>> Your comparative advantage, your capital
stock
is all compute in the next few years for
all knowledge based work. And so
classically it was profit because you
needed profit
to pay for human
outcomes cuz we need to have money to
pay for the drink we're having or our
shelter or other things. The AIS don't
need that. They just need to have cash
flow to fund their compute effectively.
This is what I call the metabolic rift
where your marginal compar your marginal
productivity your comparative advantage
is all compute. If we look at companies
like Cursor
or any of these other AI companies, they
hit $und00 million revenue run rate
faster than anything we've seen. Anyone
who's kind of involved in the startup
scene has seen that. Like this is crazy,
right? Like it used to be that I think
Slack was the record holder for $und00
million revenue run rate. It took them
three years a few years ago. Now you see
companies literally hit that in three
months. What they're playing is the
Amazon game because Amazon never made
profits. Like now they make some profit,
right? But Jeff Bezos realized that if
he could have customers pay on day one
and then pay suppliers on day 60, he
could generate massive amounts of cash
flow that he could then use for other
things. AI companies are the same. AI
companies will never make a profit. So
you can't even tax that. And companies
that use AI, cuz more and more companies
that become AI companies, will never
have to make a profit either. They're
going to play the cash flow game. They
don't need to distribute. It's a land
grab.
Is the best use of money paying it to
your shareholders as a dividend or is it
getting more compute to out compete
everybody else? And when that race
starts, it doesn't slow down because
when you can have that human that I
can't tell it's a human on the other
side of my Zoom,
that's when it all kicks off because it
doesn't need new infrastructure, doesn't
need anything to plug in. All of a
sudden, you just have a bunch of amazing
workers who can do just about anything.
And that's like again probably in a
year's time.
>> Okay. So, I think profits actually drop.
>> Profits will drop.
>> I think profits drop, revenue goes up.
Yeah. Uh, okay. So, that's my read of
the situation as well. I think the tax
base is going to shrink. You've already
given us the math on UBI. It's not
really possible. I also don't think it
solves the real problem of meaning and
purpose. So, even if we did it, it
wouldn't matter. You're still going to
have all the discontent. Uh, and you may
just make it possible for people to be
more violent because they don't have to
work, but they're still pissed off. So,
the thing though, uh, I'm wondering if
you've accounted for in the mathematics
is people are going to fight back. So
people are not just going to take this
lying down. Uh just look at the doc
workers who have in my opinion very
foolishly uh put in contracts where you
cannot automate the docs which is
madness. Uh but nonetheless like I get
it from uh the perspective of all I care
about is me and making sure that I've
got a job and so the bit of leverage
that I have right now is that AI isn't
ready to take over yet. And so I'm going
to use that against you uh to forestall
the inevitable as long as I can. For me,
that just weakens us on an international
stage. And people don't seem to have the
game theoretic clarity to understand
that take China, they're just not going
to play that game. And because Xiinping
can force people to do whatever the hell
he wants, um that they will just
continue to deploy, deploy, deploy. So
given the likelihood of people fighting
back, going for regulatory capture
essentially, uh how do you see that
playing out? Well, that's why I said
public sector jobs are great. You know,
uni jobs great. Here in the UK, we've
just had four days of strikes because
the railway workers, the tube workers
won 32-hour work weeks. I mean, don't
don't we all, right? It's like the
entire of the London kind of shut down.
I think we all see more and more of
this. And in the book, I discuss the
lites. I discuss other things. They
weren't wrong necessarily. And again,
these are local maximum. Like why does
the dock worker compare about care about
the long term when he's worried about
now, you know, or when he can extract
more? It's a question of relative power.
But again, this is where we look at
America as being more
potentially disrupted than many other
nations with higher public sectors.
Public sector kind of
>> recyc I'm not tracking how that
statement makes any sense. So the public
sector only has money because
entrepreneurs generate profits and those
profits are taxed at the corporate level
and at the individual level. Once
corporations stop making money, this all
breaks. This is a whole thing that I'm
banging on about with the young people
are embracing socialism, which to me is
complete madness. Um, so what do you
mean? Like even if they try to like run
a coup on entrepreneurs, they're going
to find that all of a sudden you can
have all the private sector jobs in the
world that you want, but you're going to
have to fund that through deficit
spending. And now you're inflating the
currency into absolute oblivion and all
of a sudden you're Argentina.
>> And that's the transition period. So
what you get when you have a very high
public private sector is the jobs go
quicker. But it doesn't mean that you're
more stable if you're a public
sectorbased economy.
Because again you have to pay for it
somehow. The jobs still start
deteriorating across the entire world
because they get displaced by the AI.
But again in the US if you look at
something like a dock worker very
unionized. Yeah they have protections.
You know if you look at somewhere like
New York what's the value of a New York
taxi medallion going to do? I think it's
been going down. They'll have
protections there where again just like
with the Uber thing they're going to be
protected against auto driving etc.
But in most private sector jobs in the
US, there's not going to be a
protection. They're not going to say you
have to employ young lawyers or you have
to employ software developers, you know,
or you have to employ maybe accountants.
They'll push some things through. You
need a human to sign off at the end
because again, America is uniquely
competitive. And so I just think again
we're looking at a huge amount of mess.
And the question in the future is what
is money? You know, what is wealth? How
does it kind of circulate? Our current
economy is based on 97 91% of money
being inside money generated by banks in
exchange for debt.
You put a deposit in, the bank generates
loans based on a certain ratio. And
that's how most money in the US is
created. If you don't have a job, then
how you going to get a loan? You know,
how does monetary supply look in the US?
If the majority of economic activity
suddenly switches over time to AIS and
they don't need housing, they don't need
food, they don't need anything, they
just need compute, where's that capital
going? So I think that we have to have
some real questions about what is the
economy itself? How do we make sure
people get what they need to survive and
thrive? And how does any of this make
sense? Because we need to change the
overall flow of how all this works and
we don't have that much time to do it.
Like it could be 3 years, it could be 10
years, but all we know is it's
inevitable, right? That you're going to
get this breakdown mess. And we're
trying to minimize that period of
craziness. Well, we might end up in very
unpleasant things, and we have lots of
sci-fi stories about that. Can we get to
a pleasant environment?
>> Yeah. What is that bridge? Do you have a
vision for how we cross this chasm?
So my concept was um you need to have a
capability element which is universal AI
for everyone which is a sovereign AI
that looks out for you because again
chat GPT is not going to look out for
you or anything like that. You actually
need to have an AI that you own that can
give you capability access shall we say.
I think that we should shift monetary
supply from being at the banks to being
generated by the users of the AI
verified as humans. So that's a shift in
the way that the capital flows.
>> So I don't think most people understand
that how would an individual create
their own capital that people would
treat as capital.
>> So I think what you've had classically
is uh you had a gold and then
currencies linked to gold. Breton Woods
in 1972 broke that and then we had this
fiat monetary system coming in based
largely on debt. What we have now is a
really interesting thing because digital
assets are suddenly legal in America.
You know, like if you look at a year ago
versus now, like there's no wonder that
$150 billion has gone into digital
assets this year. Next year it's going
to be even bigger. You'll see a return
of ICOs. You'll see tokenized stocks.
The government says put GDP on the
blockchain. I'm not sure what that
means, you know. Um, so there are new
ways of generating money and I think
that Bitcoin was a great precursor. We
have a concept called foundation coin
which is like Bitcoin but it all goes to
compute for societal good organizing
knowledge giving people free AI etc. But
you need two types of money. You need to
have your gold type money bitcoin gold
type thing and I think you need a cash
that's linked to that. And so we have
foundation coin and we have what what's
called culture coins that are generated
through the use of AI by humans. And the
more AI
>> the difference between the two types of
coins.
>> One is cash, one is gold and the cash is
linked to gold and redeemable against
it. So we're trying
>> why not just make the culture coins or
the um foundation coin usable for
either.
>> So it's the nature of them. So
Foundationcoin is a fork of Bitcoin, but
every coin sold goes to a supercomputer
for cancer, supercomputer for ASD,
education or giving free AI to people.
>> So ASD
>> uh autism, so organizing our collective
knowledge, basically beneficial uses of
compute because like right now it's
stupid that you get a diagnosis of
cancer, why don't you have all the
knowledge at your fingertips? There's no
computer organizing all that knowledge.
Whereas we can make that happen. we can
give free AI to every person going
through a cancer diagnosis or free AI
for every single thing in health once
you work out the math. So we were like
that could be a positive thing because
you're stacking compute for that anyway.
20% of GDP is public sector anyway. So
that's probably going to be 20% of
compute and we're like that's a good way
to create your gold. So it's a version
of Bitcoin but with more benefit shall
we say. So that's acts as a store of
value that go up. Then we were like, you
need cash for your localization. And
people are looking at that in different
ways. And we were like, it'd be nice if
cash wasn't generated by debt. So you're
issuing credit and debt every single
time. Instead, it's issued for being
human. Because the only way I can see
it, and this is where some of the more
advanced UBI proposals come in, if
you're taxing the AI companies, they
will never make a profit. The entire tax
base of the corporate sector in the US
is less than a trillion dollars. And
like I said, poverty level UBI is $5
trillion.
You should change monetary issuance for
being human effectively. That's the only
way that we could see out of this. And
if you give everyone a free AI, it makes
it a lot easier to do that to verify
they're human as they interact with the
health services, education services,
financial services. This is still a work
in progress. Like we figured out how to
do the Bitcoin equivalent cuz that's
easy. But we're like, the way money
enters the economy, circulates in the
economy needs to change.
And we need to really think about how
that happens because
humans still need to have shelter. They
still need to have food. And we need to
provide that at a minimum if we're not
going to get massive social unrest.
>> That's the obvious for me. Why why do we
have to change the way that money
circulates in the economy? Because with
the advent of AI,
capital needed labor. That was the
classical linkage.
I need to hire people in order to make
my capital more capital.
Yeah. Kind of this was uh KL Marxist
thing MCM dash where money leads to
labor for commodities which leads to
more money effectively. And then you've
got that circle which you call the
exploitation. And again, we've got some
analysis of what that looks like in this
mathematical framework on the flows of
money.
AI will make that even crazier because
the capital no longer needs labor. I
don't need to hire my graduates. I don't
need to train them up anymore.
I can comparatively out compete people
with companies that are majority AI or
entirely AI. So where does labor get
capital?
And it can come from only a couple of
sources. You've got your handouts,
right? You've got your like unemployment
benefits or it can come from monetary
creation. Again, this is some of the UBI
things whereby what if we change the
nature of where money is actually
created because then the AI will be
buying money from the humans.
So, it's a different type of UBI from
the taxation based UBI. But this is
where again we need to really understand
what monetary flows look like, how money
flows in our economy and where it should
flow in a few years when
the number of jobs that we have
classically
is going to do that. And the new jobs of
the future, I'm not sure exactly what
they'll be. And I've not really heard
anyone tell me what they will be either.
So I couldn't figure out another way to
have it other than monetary creation go
for being human.
>> Okay. So to make sure that I understand
this uh when you say that there needs to
be a new way for capital to flow in the
economy, what you really mean is there
needs to be a way to inject uh capital
such that it goes right to the person
who's going to spend that money
presumably on some sort of weekly,
bi-weekly, monthly basis. They get
another cash injection. It's created out
of thin air. Then the rest is going to
take care of itself. The person goes and
buys whatever they want, whatever they
need.
>> Yeah. I think you've got two forms of
capital. You've got your universal AI.
So your universal basic AI and your
universal basic income that comes from
that as a result of being kind of the
consumer. And the mathematics we've seen
kind of works for that. We're still kind
of refining it. But then if you want to
exceed then you have your
um scarce assets, you have your Bitcoin
equivalent, you have your dollar cuz
again this is only to give a base level
cuz if we don't give people a base level
of dignity as we call it the UBI
universal AI but then capability the
ability to access these resources in an
aligned way versus like 1984 on steroid
like sorry Brave New World on steroids
or something like that then you're going
to get real mess. And again, I think
that you need to have not only a version
of safety net, shall we say, for this
transition, but you also need to have
the capability aspect.
Like the average IQ,
>> what do you mean?
>> The capability aspect is the universal
AI concept.
If you could give everyone a Jarvis Iron
Man style,
>> Yeah.
>> how should it be designed? That's the
access to all of these things because
it'll be able to talk to you in a very
human way, but it needs to be looking
out for you and your community and
society. So, we need to make that
infrastructure versus looking out for
open AI or anthropic or other bottom
lines. So there needs to be at least the
access to I think that intelligence cuz
you you can't compete otherwise.