Max Tegmark

That roadblock is either behind us or in front of us.

I'm hoping very much that it's behind us.

I'm super excited every time we get a new report from NASA saying they failed to find any life on Mars.

I'm like, yes, awesome.

Because that suggests that the hard part, maybe it was getting the first ribosome or some very low level kind of stepping stone so that we're home free.

Because if that's true, then the future is really only limited by our own imagination.

It would be much suckier if it turns out that

This level of life is kind of a dime a dozen, but maybe there is some other problem.

Like as soon as a civilization gets advanced technology within a hundred years, they get into some stupid fight with themselves and poof.

That would be a bummer.

When I was a teenager...

I was already very fascinated by the biggest questions.

And I felt that the two biggest mysteries of all in science were our universe out there and our universe in here.

So it's quite natural after having spent a quarter of a century

on my career thinking a lot about this one that I'm now indulging in the luxury of doing research on this one.

It's just so cool.

I feel the time is ripe now for you trans- greatly deepening our understanding of this.

To start exploring this one.

Yeah, because I think a lot of people view intelligence as

something mysterious that can only exist in biological organisms like us, and therefore dismiss all talk about artificial general intelligence as science fiction.