Roman Yampolskiy

Every other creature on the planet sort of exists within its ecosystem.

It thrives.

Maybe it's a predator.

Maybe it's a prey.

It does what it does in order to try to survive.

But this thing makes stuff.

And it keeps making better stuff all the time.

But what's its ultimate purpose?

Well, its ultimate purpose might be to make a better version of itself.

Because if you just extrapolate, if you take what we're doing from the first IBM computers to what we have today, where is that going?

Well, it's going to clearly keep getting better.

And what does that mean?

It means artificial life.

Are we just a bee making a beehive?

Are we a caterpillar making a cocoon that eventually the electronic butterfly is going to fly out of?

It seems like if I wasn't completely connected to being a human being, I would assume that.

Right.

But if you want to really motivate people, you have to, you know, like the only reason to create nuclear weapons is you're worried that other people are going to create nuclear weapons.

Like if you want to really motivate someone, you have to have evil tyrants in order to justify having this insane army filled with bombers and hypersonic missiles.

Like if you really want progress, you have to be motivated.