Tristan Harris

Demis Hassabis, the co-founder of Google DeepMind, used to say, first solve intelligence and then use that to solve everything else.

It's important to say, why is AI distinct from all other kinds of technologies?

It's because if I make an advance in one field like rocketry, let's say I uncover some secret in rocketry, that doesn't advance biomedicine knowledge or doesn't advance energy production or doesn't advance coding.

Right?

But if I can advance generalized intelligence, think about all science and technology development over the course of all human history.

So science and technology is all done by humans thinking and working out problems, working out problems in any domain.

So if I automate intelligence, I'm suddenly going to get an explosion of all scientific and technological development happening.

Everywhere.

Does that make sense?

Of course, yeah.

It's foundational to everything.

Exactly.

Which is why there's a belief that if I get there first and can automate generalized intelligence...

I can own the world economy because suddenly everything that a human can do that they would be paid to do in a job, the AI can do that better.

And so if I'm a company, do I want to pay the human who has health care, might whistleblow, complains, has to sleep, has sick days, has family issues?

Or do I want to pay the AI that will work 24-7 at superhuman speed, doesn't complain, doesn't whistleblow, doesn't have to be paid for health care?

there's the incentive for everyone to move to paying for AIs rather than paying humans.

And so AGI, artificial general intelligence, is more transformative than any other kind of technology that we've ever had.

And it's distinct.

It's not clear how long it will take.