Jimmy Carr on Why Everyone Is Wrong About AI

0:00 We went to San Francisco. We were there for a few days. A third of the cars on the road don't have a human in them. They're just driving around by themselves. They're way. >> You know, the big AI stuff is moving. Don't know how quickly it will manifest and things that replace human beings, but it's moving pretty quickly. And when we were in New York, I don't know if you saw it when you were there, giant billboard in Time Square or somewhere there, uh, saying, "Stop hiring humans, the age of the AI employees here." And I thought I thought that was pretty badly thought through, personally. Wow. That's really Orwellian, isn't it?

0:31 >> A little bit. And also kind of stupid if you're that company because you're putting, you know, a big mark on your on yourself, I would think, in in many people's eyes. But anyway, my point being the the world is is going I think the vast vast vast majority of people, including myself, until we went there, have absolutely no idea what's coming. And I I think even now after having been there, I don't think we know exactly the way it's going to take shape.

0:56 >> Well, it's the one rule of history. unintended consequences, >> right? >> So you go, okay, so the people are worried about the wrong thing with AI. In my humble opinion, people are worried about losing their job, right? Perfectly valid thing to worry about, but I think you're worried about the wrong thing. There's two other things you could really worry about. Firstly, the cost of running an authoritarian regime like the Staryzy has come down by 10 orders of magnitude in the last three years. you used to be when you if you had to run the stars. If you're in East Germany back in the day, that was like 20% of GDP on spying on people and keeping an eye out. Okay, that's now you got a bunch of cameras, you've got AI, everyone's got a phone on them, and we're tracking everything at all times.

1:40 >> Okay, that's a worry because we live in liberal democracies and we're very lucky to. But our leaders, how long will they resist that temptation? you know you digital ID >> um is >> what happened during co I mean >> well digital ID is terrifying there's lots of lessons from history >> about digital ID uh that that we should take very seriously >> because even if the good guys are in charge when it comes in >> well at what point does the world turn and people vote for a bad guy and then they have the power more Jews died in the Netherlands than in France >> you know why better records. Holland kept better records so they knew where everyone was. That's terrifying. You know, the idea of you go digital ID.

2:30 Yeah, great. Fabulous. Give them all the information. Great. Fine. We don't know what's coming down the pike. I think that that thing about it's about um and Thomas Al gets quoted a lot. Rightly so, a brilliant man. There's no solutions, only trade-off, you know, safety and freedom. Where do you want to be on that line? >> You need a little bit of both. I mean that's one thing for AI is okay the job fine you might be worried about your job but you've got transferable skills and if you've got critical thinking and you're a smart person jobs for life is gone but you'll find something else to do you will find something else great you you'll be all right trust in that trust in your independence that you know if you don't work for that company you work for a different company you'll find something you you know have some belief in yourself uh and then the idea that you go running a authoritarian regime becomes very cheap. So we have to resist that that civilization is a clearing in the forest. We need to stand very firm against any authoritarian uh regime whether it comes from the left or the right. Whether it comes from a good place or a bad place, we have to resist that. The other thing is physics.

3:38 So this is Peter Teal's point, but minus the screens from any room, we're living in the 1970s, right? >> So nothing's happened in physics since 72. string theory has not got us anywhere. But if you take the compute power of AI and point it as at physics now everything else in science is stamp collecting, right? Physics is the real thing that gave us everything. Every bit of technology that we have comes from the physics department.

4:09 And you know what happens when you point AI at that? That's a That feels to me like something that people aren't really thinking about and is incredibly um could be incredible. We could have a a world of uh plenty where there's no, you know, if we if we increase productivity by 50 times uh and there's a human flourishing, fantastic. I [snorts] hope that's the world we live in. But it could go another way.