Tara Isabella Burton
Appearances
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
So I'm torn on this. Is this for the clout, whether or not it's for financial gain? But at the same time, I think it's also true that there is a long historical tradition of people living lives that are incredibly physically unpleasant or characterized by deprivation because they have chosen to do so in order to focus their attention and love on the ultimate reality. Historically, these have been
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
religious people. These have been hermits or mystics or monks who have willingly taken on a particular kind of life in order to focus on the hereafter. And what interests me, if let's assume Brian Johnson is in good faith here, is that the
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
What does it look like to want to have a life that is focused on the ultimate form of transcendence, a life that is focused on, you know, what you believe to be God, if you don't believe in a transcendent higher power? And I think what Brian Johnson is doing or claims to be doing is kind of serving as a model for what it might look like to basically be a priest in the religion of AI.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
the kinds of high-level interventions Brian Johnson is doing are not really accessible to most people. But I think I don't necessarily see a strong distinction between what he's doing and two different subcultures, one of which is the wellness subculture, which is usually more sort of traditionally female-coded, I'd say, and life optimization or life hacking, which is often coded as masculine.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
I think we're seeing... this proliferation of the idea that we owe it to ourselves to be our best selves, not necessarily morally, but in terms of how much work you put into self-improvement. You are earning your worth or proving your worth by constantly working on yourself.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
Thank you for having us. Thank you.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
So I see the current interest in longevity research as having, in part, a religious character. I think we can look at it as part of a whole bunch of things happening, particularly in the tech world, but in the culture more broadly now. that have a kind of spiritual sensibility around the idea of developing the post-human.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
This is associated with the transhumanist movement, with biohacking, with other forms of life optimization. But the idea behind it in many cases is that what it means to be human is to transcend our own humanity, to defeat death in the case of longevity research, or in the case of building AI, to build the thing that comes next. What if we build God rather than worship God?
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
And Brian Johnson is explicit about this on X. He specifically says, like, level one is you start a company. Level two is that you start a country. Level three is a religion. Level four is don't die. And level five is become God. So he's, you know, not exactly being subtle about it. He's not being coy.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
This is not just that he wants to live forever because, you know, he personally wants to live forever and things to be kind of cool. He very much sees this as the frontier of the human experience. He is leading the charge to the post-human age.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
This is all happening in and against the backdrop of the attention economy. Our time is money in a very particular way now because more and more of us, in terms of how we consume media, how we live our lives, so much of it online, our attention is in fact monetizable online. our time makes money for other people.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
Something I don't want to overlook about Brian Johnson is that he is also in some ways could be considered a wellness influencer. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. His fame, his public persona is, He is able to do what he's doing in part because we are watching it. We can't look away. He is a fascinating reality show character. We watch the documentary that was made about him. We read his tweets.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
And so he simultaneously perhaps is extending his own lifespan, but he's also a kind of very measurably taking from our lifespan in the sense that our time is being dedicated to him.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
Absolutely. In an era where saving for retirement is a kind of a source of stress and impossibility for so many, the idea that infinite time is something to be looked at only with desire rather than fear does mean a long life is for the wealthy.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
What Brian Johnson is doing or claims to be doing is kind of serving as a model for what it might look like to basically be a priest in the religion of AI.
It's Been a Minute
The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
There's been this like real Silicon Valley longstanding tradition of thinking you can use science and technology to hack yourself. But more recently, and I think more relevantly to both scientists Brian Johnson's desire to get rid of his rascal brain, as well as the interest in the power of AI, is a community known as the rationalist subculture or the rationalist community.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
And this is a bit of an umbrella term for what basically started out as commenters and readers of a group of blogs, most notably Overcoming Bias, Less Wrong, and Slate Star Codex, that claim to basically help people think better. The idea is that You're a human. You're a dumb animal. You have self-serving biases and ways you look at the world that make you dumber. Here's how not to do that.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
Certainly, there are ways you can, in fact, train your brain to not make certain kinds of errors. But it really turned into... A close subculture that had some kind of quasi-religious qualities. That language about self-overcoming became part of, let's say, the tech world mainstream. And a lot of rationalists as well were also interested in the problem of AI alignment.
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The "priest of AI" & tech's pursuit of eternal life
And particularly the X risk, the existential risk that someone might accidentally create an artificial intelligence that is hostile to humans and wipes us out. How do you address that fear? One answer is to stop AI development. One is to ensure that whatever AI you are creating wants to work with humans or is going to be friendly to humans.