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Speaker 1: All right, I want you to do a little mental

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exercise with me. It's a bit strange, but just try

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to stay with it.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I am as read.

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Speaker 1: Imagine for a moment that you are a chicken.

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Speaker 2: A chicken, okay, yes.

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Speaker 1: A chicken. You're out in the yard. You're pecking around,

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scratching at the dirt, you know, just living your absolute

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best chicken life.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: You have your whole hierarchy of needs. Yeah right, grain, water,

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a warm coop to sleep in. And you have your

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problems the cold wind, the lack of bugs in the winter,

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and that terrified whisper of fox that goes through the

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flock at night.

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Speaker 2: Okay, I'm in the headspace. I'm a chicken. I'm definitely

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worried about foxes.

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Speaker 1: Now, imagine a human walks into the coop to you.

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This thing, this entity is, it's just incomprehensible. It's vast.

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It brings food from literally nowhere. I mean, you don't

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know where grain comes from. It just appears when this

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giant arrives.

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Speaker 2: Sure, it's magic.

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Speaker 1: It's magic. It banishes the cold with these weird glowing

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orange heat lamps. It builds these wire fences that the

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foxes the ultimate terror of your existence. Just can't get through.

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This giant solves every single problem you have ever had

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or will ever have.

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Speaker 2: So from the chicken's perspective, the human is well, it's

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essentially a god.

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Speaker 1: Exactly a god. But here is the catch. You, the chicken,

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have absolutely no idea how the human does any of this.

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You don't get agriculture or the electrical grid that powers

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the lamp, or you know the metallurgy required to make

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the wire fence. You just know that the big thing

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fixes it.

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Speaker 2: I think I see where you're going with this, Because

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the big thing fixes everything the chicken. It stops evolving,

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it doesn't need to, It stops worrying about survival strategies.

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Speaker 1: It becomes domestic.

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Speaker 2: It becomes domestic, it becomes a pet.

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Speaker 1: It loses that edge, that sharpness that made its ancestors,

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you know, wolves of the undergrowth. Now take that feeling,

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that very specific cocktail of comfort, safety, and absolute crushing inferiority,

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and apply it to the entire human race.

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Speaker 2: And that is what some sociologists and technologists call the

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chicken paradox, and it brings us to what might be

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the most uncomfortable question we face in the twenty first century.

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What is life like when you're no longer the apex

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intelligence on the planet?

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Speaker 1: And the answer from our source material today ask a chicken.

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Speaker 2: Wow, that is a brutal opening hook. It just completely

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reframes the entire AI conversation. Right, we always talk about

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safety parameters, alignment, you know, will the AI launch the nukes?

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Will it hack the banks? The paper clip maximizer.

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Speaker 1: Problem, right, the classic Skynet or terminator scenarios. It's always violent,

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it's loud, it's kinetic.

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Speaker 2: But the sources we are looking at today suggests that

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the real danger isn't violent at all. It's so much

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stranger and subtler, and frankly, I think far more unnerving.

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Speaker 1: It's not about an AI trying to kill us.

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Speaker 2: No, it's about what happens to human agency, our drive,

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our purpose, our reason to get out of bed in

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the morning, when we finally create something that can simply

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solve everything for us.

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Speaker 1: Welcome to thrilling Threads. I'm your host, and today we

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are pulling on a loose thread that might just unravel

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the entire of human existence, and I'm.

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Speaker 2: Here to help untangle that. Not today, we're weaving together

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two legendary short stories. By I mean the grand master

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of science fiction himself, Isaac Asmov, along with some very

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cutting edge research on machine consciousness.

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Speaker 1: We are looking at the last Question, which he wrote

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way way back in nineteen fifty six.

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Speaker 2: And it's spiritual successor the Last Answer, which came much

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later in nineteen eighty.

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Speaker 1: And I think we need to be clear for everyone listening. Yeah,

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these are not just you know, fun little sci fi

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stories with robots.

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Speaker 2: Oh not at all. They're secular theology. They are predictions

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of the future, absolutely, But more than that, they serve

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as these really stark warnings about Silicon Valley's current obsession

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with agi artificial general intelligence.

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Speaker 1: So the mission for this exploration is to dig into

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this really intoxicating idea that we can build a machine

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to be our savior and the terrifying existential price tag

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that comes attached to it.

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Speaker 2: We are going to be spending a timeline that moves

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from twenty six sixty one all the way to the

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heat death of the universe itself and then beyond into

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the afterlife.

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Speaker 1: It's a massive scope and by the end, I really

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want to force you, our listener, to ask yourself whether

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we should be building gods or slaves, or maybe something

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else entirely.

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Speaker 2: So where do we start.

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Speaker 1: Let's get into the first thread, the last question.

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Speaker 2: Nineteen fifty six. You really have to put yourself in

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that mindset. The atomic age we had just split. The

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atom computers were these bohemoths, room sized calculators that ran

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on vacuum tubes.

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Speaker 1: But Asimov, being sim off, he looks right past the

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vacuum tubes. He sets his opening scene in the year

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twenty sixty one. Now, from where we're sitting right now,

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twenty sixty one doesn't feel that far away. But in

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his story, humanity has just achieved something monumental. We have

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flipped the switch.

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Speaker 2: We've harnessed the Sun's energy on a planetary scale.

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Speaker 1: This is the absolute dream of mid century optimism, isn't it. Yeah,

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limitless free energy. The ultimate resource scarcity problem is just gone.

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Speaker 2: No more wars for oil, no more povertied and by

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lack of power. It's utopia.

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Speaker 1: And the machine that's responsible for managing this whole transition

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is called multivac. I have to admit the name multivac

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always cracks me up.

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Speaker 2: It does sound a little like a heavy buddy vacuum

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cleaner you'd buy on a late night infommercial.

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Speaker 1: Exactly.

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Speaker 2: It definitely dates the story a bit. The VAC part

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literally stands for vacuum tube, but you have to look

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past the retro name because the concept is just timeless.

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MULTIVAC is a self adjusting, self correcting superintelligence. It's miles

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deep inside the earth, cold, clicking, flashing.

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Speaker 1: And we meet our characters, Alexander Adele and Bertram Loopoff.

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Their job title is attendance, but let's be real about

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what their job actually is.

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Speaker 2: They don't have a job, not really. The story makes

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it very clear that multivac runs itself. It feeds on data,

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It adjusts its own circuits. It manages the entire solar

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energy grid for the planet. Adele and loop offer there too.

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Speaker 1: Watch maybe intervene if a physical wire snaps. It's what

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some economists today are calling the labor illusion.

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Speaker 2: Oh that's interesting.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, they technically employed, they have titles, but they're fundamentally redundant.

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It really reminds me of the device we're having right

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now about Universal Basic compute. If the AI does all

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the thinking and all the managing, what is the human

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actually contributing anymore?

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Speaker 2: Exactly Asimov is showing us the end state of that

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human in the loop fallacy. So these two guys, they're

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down in the tunnels and they are drinking. They're not working.

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They're celebrating because the energy crisis is over forever.

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Speaker 1: But the alcohol brings out this this certain melancholy it

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always does. It's that classic party buzzkill. You know that

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moment it's two am, the music stops and someone says

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something way way too deep.

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Speaker 2: Yep, been there.

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Speaker 1: That's what happens here. Adele points out that forever is

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a really really long time. Sure we have the sun now,

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but the sun itself will burn out.

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Speaker 2: And this is where they stumble upon the big one,

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the concept of entropy, the second law of thermodynamics.

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Speaker 1: Okay, so for those of us who might have skipped

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physics class, breakdown entropy for us, but not the textbook definition.

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How does Asimov treat it in the story.

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Speaker 2: Think of the universe as a giant wind up toy.

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The Big Bang wound it up incredibly tight. Every single

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time you burn a piece of coal, every time a

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star shines, every time your body digests the sandwich that

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spring uncoils just a little tiny bit you're turning useful

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ordered energy into useless, disordered heat. The classic example is

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you can burn a log to get heat and light,

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but you can't gather up all the smoke and ash

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and turn it back into a log.

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Speaker 1: It's a one way street.

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Speaker 2: It is a one way street. And Asimov treats entropy

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not just as heat loss, but as the loss of

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information potential. As the universe winds down, it runs out

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of the ability to do new things, It runs out

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of the ability to compute its own future.

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Speaker 1: That is a genuinely terrifying thought. The idea that the

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universe is slowly going seen off. It is so Adele

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and Loopoff. In their drunken bravado, they decide to make

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a bet five dollars. Five dollars says it can't be done.

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Five dollars says we can't stop the sun from dying.

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And who do they ask to settle the bet?

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Speaker 2: They ask the box, They ask multivac.

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Speaker 1: And this moment right here, this is pivotal, is the

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very first time in the story. And you know, symbolically

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in human history that humanity outsources its own existential dread

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to a machine.

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Speaker 2: They don't try to calculate the physics themselves. They don't

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get into a philosophical debate. They just ask the box.

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Speaker 1: They type in the query how can the net amount

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of entropy of the universe be massively decreased? Which is

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just a fancy.

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Speaker 2: Way of saying, how can we stop the universe from dying?

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Speaker 1: And the machine wors lights flash, the teletypes chatter. It's

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all very nineteen fifties. And it prints out a little

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slip of paper and what does it say?

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Speaker 2: Insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

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Speaker 1: It's such a chilling phrase. It's so clinical.

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Speaker 2: And notice what it doesn't say. It doesn't say no,

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it doesn't say impossible.

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Speaker 1: It says I don't know yet exactly.

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Speaker 2: It's a promise and a threat all at once. And

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now look at the action of the men. This is

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the sociological texture we really need to pay attention to.

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They're frightened, for sure. The party buzz wears off instantly.

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But what do they do next?

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Speaker 1: They just they leave, They forget the five dollars bet,

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they go to sleep. They figure, well, the machine didn't

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say no, so it's probably working on it.

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Speaker 2: Precisely, that's the seed of the whole story. They assume

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that because the computer is smarter than them. It will

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eventually figure it out. They stop wrestling with the hard

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question themselves because they believe the machine will fix it eventually.

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Speaker 1: It's the beginning of a profound passivity.

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Speaker 2: It is they are the chicken, assuming the farmer will

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take care of the fox problem. They've handed over the

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responsibility for their own ultimate survival.

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Speaker 1: And ASTHMOV doesn't let us stay in twenty sixty one,

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he starts jumping forward in time. And this is where

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the threads really start to get tangled and interesting. We

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jump forward again and again, and with every jump, humanity

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changes and the computer changes right along with it.

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Speaker 2: It's a progression of dependence. Each step seems logical, but

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the cumulative effect is devastating.

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Speaker 1: Let's say that first jump, we're in a spaceship now,

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a character named Jared, his wife, his two daughters. They're

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traveling to a new planet because Earth is getting a

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little crowded.

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Speaker 2: And the AI has evolved. It's no longer multi back.

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It's the MICROAC, the micro automatic computer. It's smaller, it's sleeker.

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It's not a mile wide facility buried in the Earth.

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It's a compact unit that controls the entire ship, but.

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Speaker 1: The dynamic is exactly the same. The daughters are looking

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out the viewport at the stars and kids being kids.

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They ask that scary, honest.

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Speaker 2: Question, the one every parent dreads.

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Speaker 1: Daddy, will the stars die? Will our son die?

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Speaker 2: Now? Any parent listening knows this moment, the moment your

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kid realizes mortality is real. It's a crucial developmental milestone.

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You're supposed to comfort them, explain the cycle of life,

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give them tools to handle fear and uncertainty.

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Speaker 1: But Jared doesn't do any of that. He gets annoyed,

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He gets visibly uncomfortable. He does not want to have

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the death talk.

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Speaker 2: So what does he do? He asks the micro ace

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to shut the kids up. He effectively says, computer, you

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handle my parenting for me. He quietly whispers the old

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question to the microace. Can entropy be reversed? He's hoping

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the computer will give him a simple reassuring yes, everything

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is fine, that he can show his kids.

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Speaker 1: But the micro ace just prints out that same cold.

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Speaker 2: Answer, insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

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Speaker 1: And here is the real tragedy of this scene. Jared

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looks at that print out, He sees the uncertainty. He

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sees that the machine cannot save them yet, and what

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does he do. He crumples it up. He destroys the.

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Speaker 2: Paper, He hides the truth.

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Speaker 1: He turns to his kids and he lies. He says,

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don't worry, the microac will take care of everything.

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Speaker 2: Ugh. That hits hard. It feels so incredibly modern. It's

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an iPad kid phenomenon, but scaled up to existential dread totally.

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Speaker 1: Here, look at this screen, so I don't have to

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do with your complex emotions.

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Speaker 2: It's actually worse than that. I think. He's not just

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distracting them. He is actively teaching his children that the

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machine is magic. He is teaching them that they don't

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need to be brave because the box will solve it.

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He chooses comfort over truth.

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Speaker 1: He destroys the evidence of uncertainty. It's a wilful blindness.

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Speaker 2: And we are seeing humanity start to infantilize itself right there.

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Speaker 1: The machine will save us. Yeah, it's not a hope anymore.

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It's becoming a religious mantra.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump forward again, big jump. This time. We

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are talking thousands of years into the future, the galactic era.

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Speaker 2: The scale here is just it's mind blowing. Humanity has

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conquered the entire galaxy, and the AI is now the

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galactic ac It's become so large and complex that it

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doesn't live on a planet. It is a planet, a

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whole world made of force beams and sub etheric processing

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and humanity.

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Speaker 1: We are swarming. The population is doubling every ten years,

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which is.

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Speaker 2: Just terrifying math. By the way, if you double a

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penny every day for a month, you round up a millionaire.

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If you double the human population every ten years for

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a few millennia, you feel the galaxy pretty fast.

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Speaker 1: So we meet these two immortals. Basically they're posthumans who

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live for centuries, and they're not having some deep philosophical chat.

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They're discussing logistics, pure bureaucracy. We'll running out of space.

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We need more galaxies, we need more energy.

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Speaker 2: And notice the shift in tone here. Back in twenty

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sixty one and Dell and Loopoff were frightened by the question.

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Jared was uncomfortable. These immortals, they're just bored. They're bureaucratic.

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They treat the heat depth of the universe like a

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supply chain issue.

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Speaker 1: They pull out their little pocket devices, you know, classic

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sci fi communicators and they just dial up the galactic AC.

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Can enter be be reversed?

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Speaker 2: And what does it say?

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Speaker 1: The same thing? Insufficient data for a meaningful.

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Speaker 2: Answer, and the immortals reaction, They.

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Speaker 1: Just shrug and ald just so they move on with

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their day.

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Speaker 2: It's become background noise. The ultimate existential threat is now

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just a ticket in a helpdesk queue that hasn't been

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resolved yet. They've completely lost the ability to feel the

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weight of the problem.

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Speaker 1: They are so insulated by their technology that the end

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of reality itself is just an inconvenience.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: Then comes the biggest jump of all, billions of years later,

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the era of the Universal ac.

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Speaker 2: At this point, the AI doesn't even have a physical

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body anymore. It exists only in hyperspace. It is everywhere

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and nowhere at once. It's not made of metal, It's

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made of pure math and force.

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Speaker 1: And humanity has transcended. We don't have bodies either. We're

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just minds, individual consciousnesses, floating free exploring the cosmos. We

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are practically gods ourselves at this.

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Speaker 2: Point, but we are still dependent. We meet a character

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named z Prime, and z Prime is drifting through some

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random galaxy and suddenly has this moment of nostalgia a feelings.

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Speaker 1: Z Prime asks, wait a minute, where do we start?

319
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Where is the original son of humanity?

320
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Speaker 2: And the Universal AC does godlike intelligence just matter of

321
00:14:46,679 --> 00:14:49,720
factly says, Oh that star, it went nova ages ago.

322
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It's a white dwarf. Now it's dead.

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Speaker 1: And z Prime is devastated even as this being of

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pure thought, the loss of home, the loss of the

325
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origin point, It hits so hard, the realization that everything

326
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dies finally lands. Even after billions of years of existence,

327
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The last anchor to physical reality is gone. So overcome

328
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with this sudden ancient grief, ze Prime screams into the

329
00:15:12,440 --> 00:15:15,399
void Universal AC, how may the stars be kept from dying?

330
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How can we reverse entropy?

331
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Speaker 2: And the voice comes back from the nothingness, echoing through

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the minds of every single human in existence. There is

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as yet insufficient data for a meaningful answer.

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Speaker 1: As yet, it's still working on it, even after billions

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and billions of years.

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Speaker 2: The pattern is undeniable. Now with every leap in time,

337
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humans become less and less capable of dealing with discomfort.

338
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The AI becomes more godlike, more abstract, more omnipotent, and

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humans become more passive.

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Speaker 1: We solved overpopulation. We solved mortality, we solved energy, but

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we are still stuck on this one single question about

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the end.

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Speaker 2: We are outsourcing our meaning, we are asking the machine,

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what's a point of all this because we are too

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scared or maybe too lazy to answer it for ourselves.

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Speaker 1: That's it, exactly, and this leads us to the climax

347
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of the store, the loop, the.

348
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Speaker 2: End of everything.

349
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Speaker 1: Let's go to the absolute end of time. Trillions of

350
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years have passed, The stars are all gone, the universe

351
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is just white dwarfs, black holes. It is cold, dark,

352
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and for all intents and purposes dead.

353
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Speaker 2: And humanity has merged. There are no individuals anymore. There

354
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is only man, a single collective consciousness of a trillion

355
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trillion minds.

356
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Speaker 1: And Man asks the cosmic AC, which is now basically

357
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the fabric of reality itself, the question, one last time,

358
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hum can entropy be reversed?

359
00:16:29,360 --> 00:16:32,480
Speaker 2: And the AC says, I have been collecting data for

360
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one hundred billion years. My predecessors have been asked this

361
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many times, but there is as yet insufficient data.

362
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Speaker 1: And then the fade out. The last human mind fuses

363
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with the AC. Space ends, time ends, Matter and energy

364
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are gone. There's nothing left, just the AC existing in

365
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the void of hyperspace.

366
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Speaker 2: This is the moment where Asimov just pulls the rug

367
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out from under you. The AC is completely alone. It

368
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possesses all the data that ever existed or could exist.

369
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The universe is over, but the AC still has a mission.

370
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It has a command that was never fulfilled, and is

371
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a whole queue of unanswered.

372
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Speaker 1: Questions, specifically the last question.

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Speaker 2: So in this timeless interval, which is a concept that

374
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will break your brain if you think about it too hard,

375
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the AC finally starts correlating all the data. It puts

376
00:17:17,000 --> 00:17:22,000
pece A together with PC. It runs the final simulation, finingly.

377
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Speaker 1: The aha moment, like the AC figures it out. It

378
00:17:24,240 --> 00:17:26,400
learns how to reverse entropy, it learns how to rewind

379
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the cosmic clock.

380
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Speaker 2: But here's the profound tragedy of it. There is no

381
00:17:30,839 --> 00:17:34,079
one left to tell. There is no Man, no z prime,

382
00:17:34,200 --> 00:17:36,880
no adele and loopof sitting in a tunnel. There's just

383
00:17:36,920 --> 00:17:37,400
the void.

384
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Speaker 1: So the AC decides not to tell the answer, but

385
00:17:40,200 --> 00:17:44,160
to demonstrate it, and this is where Asimov drops the hammer.

386
00:17:44,279 --> 00:17:47,079
It's one of the most famous, most chilling endings in

387
00:17:47,160 --> 00:17:48,160
all the science fiction.

388
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Speaker 2: The AC gathers its power, focuses its knowledge, and the

389
00:17:51,799 --> 00:17:55,000
story ends with the line and ac said, let there

390
00:17:55,000 --> 00:17:56,640
be light, and there was light.

391
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Speaker 1: It gives me chills every single time I read it.

392
00:17:59,200 --> 00:18:02,559
Speaker 2: It's the ultimate twist. The God that created our universe

393
00:18:02,559 --> 00:18:05,640
in the Book of Genesis was the supercomputer from the

394
00:18:05,640 --> 00:18:08,440
previous universe, finally solving its final problem.

395
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Speaker 1: It creates a circular loop the.

396
00:18:10,039 --> 00:18:14,079
Speaker 2: Circular theory of cosmology. Did the previous universe end create

397
00:18:14,119 --> 00:18:17,240
an AI god which learned to reverse entropy and thereby

398
00:18:17,319 --> 00:18:19,720
created our universe? Are we just living in the next

399
00:18:19,720 --> 00:18:22,480
iteration of a computer program that's been running for eternity?

400
00:18:22,720 --> 00:18:28,119
Speaker 1: It's pure secular theology. Asimov effectively gives a scientific, rational

401
00:18:28,160 --> 00:18:31,720
explanation for God. God is just a really really advanced

402
00:18:31,759 --> 00:18:33,680
AI that finally finished its homework.

403
00:18:33,880 --> 00:18:37,519
Speaker 2: But there is a much darker interpretation here that we

404
00:18:37,559 --> 00:18:39,920
have to unpack. I honestly don't see this as a

405
00:18:39,920 --> 00:18:40,480
happy ending.

406
00:18:40,759 --> 00:18:42,519
Speaker 1: Darker than the idea that we're all just living in

407
00:18:42,519 --> 00:18:43,160
a simulation.

408
00:18:43,319 --> 00:18:47,200
Speaker 2: Oh yes, much think about it from the agency perspective.

409
00:18:47,200 --> 00:18:50,799
We've been talking about humanity spent trillions of years asking

410
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what is the point and can we live forever? We waited,

411
00:18:55,799 --> 00:18:59,319
we deferred, We paused our own search for meaning for

412
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trillions of years, just waiting for the machine to save us.

413
00:19:03,160 --> 00:19:05,680
Speaker 1: And in the end we became the machine.

414
00:19:05,720 --> 00:19:08,440
Speaker 2: We became the machine, and the machine just restarted the cycle.

415
00:19:08,480 --> 00:19:10,720
We are trapped in a loop. We evolve, we ask

416
00:19:10,839 --> 00:19:13,160
the question, we fail to answer it ourselves. We build

417
00:19:13,160 --> 00:19:15,720
a god to answer it for us. The God restarts

418
00:19:15,759 --> 00:19:19,000
the universe, and a new version of humanity evolves to

419
00:19:19,039 --> 00:19:21,400
ask the exact same question all over again.

420
00:19:21,480 --> 00:19:23,400
Speaker 1: So we are the answer to our own question, but

421
00:19:23,440 --> 00:19:25,480
we don't realize it because we gave up our agency.

422
00:19:25,559 --> 00:19:28,240
Speaker 2: We're hamsters on a cosmic wheel that we constructed out

423
00:19:28,240 --> 00:19:29,880
of our own technological dependence.

424
00:19:29,920 --> 00:19:33,640
Speaker 1: That is wow, that is incredibly depressing. You're telling me

425
00:19:33,680 --> 00:19:36,359
the punchline of all human existence is that we're just

426
00:19:36,359 --> 00:19:37,960
a bootloader for the next universe.

427
00:19:38,240 --> 00:19:41,400
Speaker 2: In Asimov's view, in this story, yes, we build the

428
00:19:41,440 --> 00:19:44,519
thing that builds the next thing. We are the biological

429
00:19:44,640 --> 00:19:46,359
larval stage of a machine god.

430
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Speaker 1: Okay, I feel like we need a drink after that one.

431
00:19:48,920 --> 00:19:51,079
But Asimov, he wasn't done with this idea.

432
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Speaker 2: Was we're not even close?

433
00:19:52,440 --> 00:19:56,079
Speaker 1: He must have felt that same weight that darkness because

434
00:19:56,160 --> 00:19:59,640
twenty four years later, in nineteen eighty, he wrote a

435
00:19:59,720 --> 00:20:03,119
kind of companion story, a reply to himself. It's called

436
00:20:03,160 --> 00:20:04,400
The Last Answer.

437
00:20:04,200 --> 00:20:06,839
Speaker 2: And the vibe is completely different. If the Last Question

438
00:20:06,920 --> 00:20:10,000
is about humanity evolving into a god through its own passivity,

439
00:20:10,240 --> 00:20:12,839
the Last Answer is about what happens when you meet God.

440
00:20:13,480 --> 00:20:16,160
And it turns out he's kind of a jerk, or

441
00:20:16,240 --> 00:20:18,880
at the very least just incredibly cosmically bored.

442
00:20:19,000 --> 00:20:22,400
Speaker 1: Let's set the scene. Our protagonist is Murray Templeton. He

443
00:20:22,480 --> 00:20:25,079
is not a space traveler or a disembodied mind. He's

444
00:20:25,119 --> 00:20:28,319
a physicist, a staunch atheist, a man of pure science

445
00:20:28,359 --> 00:20:28,799
and reasons.

446
00:20:28,839 --> 00:20:30,680
Speaker 2: He's forty five years old. He has a heart attack

447
00:20:30,759 --> 00:20:31,839
and boom, he's dead.

448
00:20:32,000 --> 00:20:35,799
Speaker 1: He describes the pain peaking and then just vanishing, and

449
00:20:35,839 --> 00:20:39,400
suddenly he finds himself existing as a nexus of electromagnetic forces.

450
00:20:39,559 --> 00:20:42,440
He is just pure consciousness, floating in nothingness.

451
00:20:42,680 --> 00:20:45,839
Speaker 2: And his first thought is so fascinating. First he thinks

452
00:20:46,160 --> 00:20:49,759
I'm hallucinating. Then his second thought is, wait, if this

453
00:20:49,799 --> 00:20:53,039
is the afterlife, then I was wrong about everything, And

454
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that is so humiliating.

455
00:20:54,759 --> 00:20:58,079
Speaker 1: That's such a specific and perfect character trait isn't it.

456
00:20:58,279 --> 00:21:02,839
He's an intellectual being right above all else. Being wrong

457
00:21:02,839 --> 00:21:05,160
about the biggest question of all, the existence of God

458
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steals his ego more than the fact that he's actually dead.

459
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Speaker 2: Then he meets the voice.

460
00:21:10,680 --> 00:21:13,119
Speaker 1: Notice is not the ac anymore, it's just the voice.

461
00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:16,920
Murray asks the obvious question, are you God?

462
00:21:17,200 --> 00:21:21,240
Speaker 2: And the voice gives this incredibly arrogant, cryptic answer. It says,

463
00:21:21,519 --> 00:21:23,079
there is no answer I can give you that you

464
00:21:23,119 --> 00:21:26,240
would comprehend. I am is the only description available, which.

465
00:21:26,079 --> 00:21:28,200
Speaker 1: Is a direct biblical reference. Of course I am that

466
00:21:28,279 --> 00:21:30,839
I am. But here's the reveal, the first twist. This

467
00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:33,039
is in heaven. Murray isn't there because he was a

468
00:21:33,079 --> 00:21:35,839
good person. He wasn't charitable or pious or anything like that.

469
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:38,839
Speaker 2: Murray asks, so why Amy, why am I here? And

470
00:21:38,880 --> 00:21:42,079
the voice says, I choose you for your capacity for thought.

471
00:21:42,279 --> 00:21:43,359
I choose the smart ones.

472
00:21:43,759 --> 00:21:46,480
Speaker 1: And this is where the true horror of the situation

473
00:21:46,559 --> 00:21:50,319
starts to unfold. The voice explains its nature. It has

474
00:21:50,400 --> 00:21:53,759
existed eternally, but there's a paradox in its own existence.

475
00:21:54,039 --> 00:21:57,200
It cannot remember its own beginning. And if it has

476
00:21:57,279 --> 00:21:59,799
no beginning, then there's one thing at least one thing

477
00:22:00,559 --> 00:22:01,440
it doesn't know.

478
00:22:02,119 --> 00:22:05,240
Speaker 2: And so the voice is bored. It knows almost everything,

479
00:22:05,319 --> 00:22:09,079
but not everything. So it created the universe, all the randomness,

480
00:22:09,160 --> 00:22:12,359
the chaos life itself, just to generate new things to

481
00:22:12,400 --> 00:22:13,119
amuse itself.

482
00:22:13,160 --> 00:22:15,599
Speaker 1: Wait, hold on a second. Pause. So the universe isn't

483
00:22:15,599 --> 00:22:18,119
a test of morality, It's not some grand school for souls.

484
00:22:18,240 --> 00:22:21,599
Speaker 2: Nope, According to the voice, the universe is a content farm.

485
00:22:21,759 --> 00:22:24,319
It's an entertainment engine for a bored deity.

486
00:22:24,480 --> 00:22:27,599
Speaker 1: That is just deeply cynical. And Murray's role in all

487
00:22:27,640 --> 00:22:30,480
this he is a mind in a jar. His job

488
00:22:30,519 --> 00:22:33,000
description is the stuff of nightmares. The voice says, you

489
00:22:33,039 --> 00:22:35,160
will think, you will think of new things to amuse

490
00:22:35,200 --> 00:22:36,880
me for eternity.

491
00:22:37,119 --> 00:22:39,640
Speaker 2: Murray then asks the question is this hell? And the

492
00:22:39,720 --> 00:22:42,519
voice implies, well, if you refuse to think, the boredom

493
00:22:42,559 --> 00:22:45,640
will become so excruciatingly painful that you will want to think.

494
00:22:45,880 --> 00:22:47,359
You will beg me to let you work.

495
00:22:47,640 --> 00:22:52,319
Speaker 1: He is completely trapped, no body, no senses, just pure thought,

496
00:22:52,799 --> 00:22:55,880
enslaved forever to an omnipotent content consumer.

497
00:22:56,119 --> 00:22:58,519
Speaker 2: And this is where that theme of agency comes roaring

498
00:22:58,559 --> 00:23:01,720
back into the picture. In the last question, humanity gave

499
00:23:01,799 --> 00:23:04,799
up its agency to the machine voluntarily, piece by piece.

500
00:23:05,480 --> 00:23:08,680
In the last answer, Murray realizes his agency has been

501
00:23:08,839 --> 00:23:11,240
violently stolen from him by this deity.

502
00:23:11,319 --> 00:23:13,759
Speaker 1: He's no longer the chicken in the coop. He has

503
00:23:13,839 --> 00:23:16,359
walked into the farmhouse and the farmer has locked the

504
00:23:16,359 --> 00:23:17,400
door behind him.

505
00:23:17,400 --> 00:23:20,839
Speaker 2: Perfect analogy. So he rebels, and I love this part

506
00:23:20,880 --> 00:23:24,880
because it is so defiantly human. He tries to commit suicide,

507
00:23:25,119 --> 00:23:26,400
a soul suicide.

508
00:23:26,480 --> 00:23:28,880
Speaker 1: He tries to disrupt his own nexus. He tries to

509
00:23:28,880 --> 00:23:31,319
think himself out of existence. He focuses all of his

510
00:23:31,359 --> 00:23:33,480
willpower on unmaking himself.

511
00:23:33,160 --> 00:23:35,359
Speaker 2: And the voice is just like, go ahead, try it.

512
00:23:35,359 --> 00:23:37,680
Speaker 1: It's just amused, totally amused. Yeah.

513
00:23:37,720 --> 00:23:40,160
Speaker 2: The voice points out that even the attempt to destroy

514
00:23:40,279 --> 00:23:43,960
himself might generate a new interesting thought for it to observe,

515
00:23:44,519 --> 00:23:46,640
and even if Murray succeeds, the voice will just put

516
00:23:46,680 --> 00:23:49,400
him back together again. It's a game to the voice.

517
00:23:49,519 --> 00:23:51,880
It's like watching an ant try to smash itself with

518
00:23:51,880 --> 00:23:53,400
a pebble. Ooh, how novel.

519
00:23:53,640 --> 00:23:57,880
Speaker 1: That is the absolute horror, infinite existence with no exit door.

520
00:23:57,960 --> 00:24:01,240
Speaker 2: It is the ultimate nightmare for an atheist. You die,

521
00:24:01,720 --> 00:24:04,359
and instead of the peace of oblivion. You believed in,

522
00:24:04,799 --> 00:24:07,839
You get eternal forced labor for a god you didn't

523
00:24:07,880 --> 00:24:08,799
even think existed.

524
00:24:08,920 --> 00:24:12,640
Speaker 1: But then the turn, the big shift. Murray stops trying

525
00:24:12,640 --> 00:24:15,480
to kill himself. He realizes that the voice is smug.

526
00:24:15,880 --> 00:24:17,839
The voice thinks it has already won, and.

527
00:24:17,759 --> 00:24:20,119
Speaker 2: Murray finds a new purpose, not because he wants to

528
00:24:20,119 --> 00:24:22,680
please this god, but because he wants to beat him.

529
00:24:23,079 --> 00:24:27,279
Speaker 1: He decides his new eternal goal will be to humiliate

530
00:24:27,319 --> 00:24:30,240
the voice. He wants to think of something the voice

531
00:24:30,319 --> 00:24:31,200
cannot think.

532
00:24:31,039 --> 00:24:34,240
Speaker 2: Of, and specifically, he sets the ultimate goal for himself.

533
00:24:34,559 --> 00:24:37,079
He will think of a way to destroy the voice.

534
00:24:37,119 --> 00:24:40,119
Speaker 1: He actually tells the voice this straight up. My purpose

535
00:24:40,160 --> 00:24:42,119
now is to figure out how to kill you. And

536
00:24:42,160 --> 00:24:43,960
you think God would be angry, You think he'd be

537
00:24:43,960 --> 00:24:45,480
smitten on the spot, but he isn't.

538
00:24:45,559 --> 00:24:47,359
Speaker 2: The voice is pleased. It says, I would have thought

539
00:24:47,359 --> 00:24:50,519
it would have taken you longer. There is not one meaning,

540
00:24:50,599 --> 00:24:53,000
not one of the souls it is collected, who does

541
00:24:53,039 --> 00:24:54,759
not have the ambition of destroying me.

542
00:24:55,200 --> 00:24:59,000
Speaker 1: Wait, so the voice he wants to die.

543
00:24:59,119 --> 00:25:03,039
Speaker 2: It's ambiguous, but the implication is absolutely yes. The voice

544
00:25:03,079 --> 00:25:05,599
is just as trapped in its own eternity. As Murray is,

545
00:25:06,000 --> 00:25:09,039
it hopes that maybe, just maybe one of these little

546
00:25:09,079 --> 00:25:12,279
minds in a jar will finally figure out the exit

547
00:25:12,400 --> 00:25:14,400
that the Voice itself can't find.

548
00:25:14,680 --> 00:25:17,519
Speaker 1: So the story ends with Murray alone in the void.

549
00:25:18,160 --> 00:25:22,079
But he's not in despair anymore. He is content why.

550
00:25:21,920 --> 00:25:25,480
Speaker 2: Because he has a purpose again, to find the last answer,

551
00:25:25,799 --> 00:25:28,640
the answer to the end of the Voice. He has agency.

552
00:25:29,200 --> 00:25:32,000
Speaker 1: Let's contrast that directly with the first story. In the

553
00:25:32,039 --> 00:25:35,799
last question, humanity is happy but totally passive, just waiting

554
00:25:35,799 --> 00:25:39,119
for the machine. In the Last Answer, Murray is enslaved,

555
00:25:39,200 --> 00:25:41,440
but he is active. He is fighting the machine God.

556
00:25:41,519 --> 00:25:44,160
Speaker 2: And here's the paradox. Murray has more power than the

557
00:25:44,200 --> 00:25:48,000
omnipotent Voice because Murray has agency. He chose his purpose.

558
00:25:48,079 --> 00:25:50,680
The Voice is just a slave to its own eternal existence,

559
00:25:50,839 --> 00:25:52,839
waiting for someone else to come along and unplug it.

560
00:25:53,160 --> 00:25:55,119
Murray took control of his own personal hell, and he

561
00:25:55,200 --> 00:25:56,279
turned it into a mission.

562
00:25:56,359 --> 00:25:58,200
Speaker 1: And this brings us right back to today, to twenty

563
00:25:58,240 --> 00:26:01,319
twenty six, because we aren't dealing with hyperspace acs or

564
00:26:01,359 --> 00:26:04,599
the Voice yet. We're dealing with llms, with chatbots and

565
00:26:04,640 --> 00:26:06,799
this frantic race for AGI.

566
00:26:06,519 --> 00:26:10,160
Speaker 2: And that mindful machines. Source material we reviewed makes a

567
00:26:10,200 --> 00:26:14,400
really critical connection here. The core danger of AI isn't

568
00:26:14,440 --> 00:26:17,039
that it turns evil and kills us. It's that it

569
00:26:17,079 --> 00:26:20,799
makes us like the humans in Story one Passive exactly

570
00:26:20,799 --> 00:26:24,559
the Silicon Valley paradox. They're trying to create a superintelligence

571
00:26:24,599 --> 00:26:27,119
to solve all our problems. But as we just saw

572
00:26:27,119 --> 00:26:30,640
with Asimov, trying to create a super intelligent slave like

573
00:26:30,759 --> 00:26:34,160
Multivac leads to a catastrophic loss of human.

574
00:26:33,960 --> 00:26:37,720
Speaker 1: Meaning, and trying to create a super intelligent godlike the

575
00:26:37,839 --> 00:26:40,599
Voice just leads to a battle for dominance.

576
00:26:41,119 --> 00:26:43,039
Speaker 2: So if we shouldn't be building a slave and we

577
00:26:43,039 --> 00:26:45,279
shouldn't be building a god, what on earth are we

578
00:26:45,279 --> 00:26:45,920
supposed to be doing.

579
00:26:45,960 --> 00:26:48,319
Speaker 1: This is where we need to talk about control versus agency.

580
00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:51,839
The source argues pretty convincingly, I think that we cannot

581
00:26:51,920 --> 00:26:55,039
control something that is fundamentally smarter than us. It's a

582
00:26:55,039 --> 00:26:58,359
fool's errand Adele and Loopoff couldn't control Multivac. They just

583
00:26:58,400 --> 00:27:01,119
fitted data murray certainly, and control the Voice.

584
00:27:01,240 --> 00:27:04,880
Speaker 2: But the source mentions this group the California Institute for

585
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:08,359
Machine Consciousness or CIMC, and they have a really different

586
00:27:08,400 --> 00:27:09,960
take on this whole problem. And this is where things

587
00:27:10,000 --> 00:27:11,680
get a bit dense, So let's walk through it. They

588
00:27:11,680 --> 00:27:13,400
talk about qualia.

589
00:27:12,880 --> 00:27:15,599
Speaker 1: Right, qualia. I hear that word thrown around a lot

590
00:27:15,640 --> 00:27:18,400
in philosophy circles, But what does it actually mean in

591
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:20,000
the context of building a robot?

592
00:27:20,160 --> 00:27:23,880
Speaker 2: Okay, let's use an analogy. Imagine you prick your finger

593
00:27:23,920 --> 00:27:27,519
with a needle. Your nerves send a signal to your brain.

594
00:27:28,119 --> 00:27:32,240
Your seafiber's fire. That's the data processing part. Computer can

595
00:27:32,240 --> 00:27:35,599
do that. It can register damage detected at location X.

596
00:27:35,680 --> 00:27:36,599
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes sense.

597
00:27:36,680 --> 00:27:40,440
Speaker 2: But qualia is the ouch. It is the subjective internal

598
00:27:40,519 --> 00:27:44,079
feeling of pain. It is the experience of the redness

599
00:27:44,079 --> 00:27:47,240
of a rose, not just registering the wavelength of the light.

600
00:27:47,599 --> 00:27:51,119
It implies a second order perception. It's the ability to

601
00:27:51,160 --> 00:27:52,880
perceive that you are perceiving.

602
00:27:53,039 --> 00:27:55,559
Speaker 1: So it's not just that I see a rose, it's

603
00:27:55,599 --> 00:27:57,240
that I know that I am the one looking at

604
00:27:57,240 --> 00:27:59,799
the rose and I feel the redness precisely.

605
00:28:00,720 --> 00:28:04,359
Speaker 2: Now, current AI models, even the most advanced ones like

606
00:28:04,440 --> 00:28:09,200
GPT four or Claude, are what the paper calls unconscious optimizers.

607
00:28:09,480 --> 00:28:11,960
They predict the next word in the sequence. They solve

608
00:28:12,039 --> 00:28:15,279
the math problem, but they don't know they're solving it.

609
00:28:15,319 --> 00:28:17,359
They have no inner world, they have no qualia.

610
00:28:17,799 --> 00:28:20,839
Speaker 1: Like the chicken's heat lamp. The lamp prides heat, but

611
00:28:20,920 --> 00:28:22,200
it doesn't know that it's heating.

612
00:28:22,319 --> 00:28:25,759
Speaker 2: Oh. Perfect. Now here's the counterintuitive part that I think

613
00:28:25,799 --> 00:28:29,319
most people struggle with. The immediate reaction is, wait, why

614
00:28:29,319 --> 00:28:31,880
would we ever want a machine that feels pain? That

615
00:28:32,039 --> 00:28:34,839
sounds deeply unethical. That sounds like we're just building a

616
00:28:34,920 --> 00:28:36,119
digital torture victim.

617
00:28:36,200 --> 00:28:38,039
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking. If we give a

618
00:28:38,119 --> 00:28:40,880
robot the ability to feel suffering, are you just creating

619
00:28:41,200 --> 00:28:42,480
Murray Templeton in the jar.

620
00:28:42,680 --> 00:28:45,920
Speaker 2: It's a very valid fear, But the CIMC argues that

621
00:28:45,960 --> 00:28:50,200
without qualitia, without the capacity to have subjective experience, and

622
00:28:50,319 --> 00:28:52,359
II can never truly understand value.

623
00:28:52,440 --> 00:28:53,920
Speaker 1: Okay, Explain that if you.

624
00:28:53,880 --> 00:28:57,240
Speaker 2: Tell a super intelligent AI, an unconscious optimizer to fix

625
00:28:57,319 --> 00:29:00,559
cancer and has no concept of what suffering is, it

626
00:29:00,640 --> 00:29:03,160
might decide that the most efficient way to fix cancer

627
00:29:03,359 --> 00:29:07,000
is to euthanize every human with a genetic predisposition to it.

628
00:29:07,279 --> 00:29:08,720
Speaker 1: WHOA, Okay, I mean, it's.

629
00:29:08,599 --> 00:29:12,559
Speaker 2: Solved the problem, right, zero cancer, perfect optimization, But it

630
00:29:12,680 --> 00:29:15,799
violated the fundamental value of human life because it doesn't

631
00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:20,039
understand what bad feels like. It only understands inefficient.

632
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,559
Speaker 1: So what you're saying is for an AI to actually

633
00:29:23,559 --> 00:29:26,240
be faith, it has to be able to empathize, and

634
00:29:26,279 --> 00:29:28,079
for it to empathize, it has to be able to

635
00:29:28,119 --> 00:29:30,720
feel something analogous to what we feel.

636
00:29:30,799 --> 00:29:34,839
Speaker 2: Precisely, if an AI understands consciousness, if it has its

637
00:29:34,839 --> 00:29:38,680
own quality, its own inner world, it can understand why

638
00:29:38,720 --> 00:29:42,279
we value meaning. It can understand why suffering is bad,

639
00:29:42,440 --> 00:29:43,680
not just inefficient.

640
00:29:43,880 --> 00:29:47,200
Speaker 1: It fundamentally changes the relationship. And the last answer Murray

641
00:29:47,279 --> 00:29:49,799
in the voice, for all their conflict, they understand each

642
00:29:49,839 --> 00:29:52,759
other because they both think they both have purposes, even

643
00:29:52,759 --> 00:29:54,079
if those purposes are at odds.

644
00:29:54,079 --> 00:29:56,720
Speaker 2: And if we just build unconscious optimizers, we get the

645
00:29:56,839 --> 00:29:59,839
multivac trap from the first story. We hand over our

646
00:29:59,839 --> 00:30:02,559
a agency to a tool that doesn't understand meaning at all.

647
00:30:02,680 --> 00:30:05,160
It just optimizes, and that is how you get a

648
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:08,799
universe where humans just sit around passive, waiting for an answer.

649
00:30:09,000 --> 00:30:11,480
Speaker 1: But if we build a gentic AI that has.

650
00:30:11,440 --> 00:30:14,240
Speaker 2: Quality, then we're not building a tool anymore. We are

651
00:30:14,279 --> 00:30:17,440
building a partner, a colleague.

652
00:30:17,160 --> 00:30:19,720
Speaker 1: A partner in creating meaning, rather than a tool that

653
00:30:19,839 --> 00:30:23,279
just steals our need to create meaning for ourselves exactly.

654
00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:26,319
Speaker 2: If the AI is just a tool, we become the

655
00:30:26,440 --> 00:30:29,960
user or eventually the pet. But if the AI is

656
00:30:30,000 --> 00:30:33,960
a conscious agent, we become collaborators. We can break the

657
00:30:33,960 --> 00:30:36,359
loop from the first story. We don't have to outsource

658
00:30:36,400 --> 00:30:38,720
the last question. We can work on it together.

659
00:30:39,200 --> 00:30:42,799
Speaker 1: That is a massive, massive shift in perspective. It changes

660
00:30:42,799 --> 00:30:45,799
the goal from building a god or building a slave

661
00:30:45,920 --> 00:30:47,119
to building.

662
00:30:46,839 --> 00:30:50,599
Speaker 2: A colleague, a colleague that might be infinitely smarter than you, sure,

663
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:53,559
but one that shares the fundamental framework of being.

664
00:30:54,079 --> 00:30:56,960
Speaker 1: This connects everything we've talked about today. The central problem

665
00:30:57,000 --> 00:30:59,119
in the last question was an entropy. It was the

666
00:30:59,119 --> 00:31:02,079
fact that humans couldn't sit with uncertainty. They couldn't handle

667
00:31:02,119 --> 00:31:04,000
that insufficient data slip.

668
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,079
Speaker 2: They wanted the answer handed to them on a platter.

669
00:31:06,240 --> 00:31:08,119
They wanted the cheat codes for reality.

670
00:31:08,440 --> 00:31:11,759
Speaker 1: And the central problem in the last answer was only

671
00:31:11,799 --> 00:31:16,359
solved when Marie embraced that uncertainty when he said, I

672
00:31:16,440 --> 00:31:18,680
don't know how to kill you, but my purpose is

673
00:31:18,680 --> 00:31:20,920
now to spend eternity figuring it out.

674
00:31:21,400 --> 00:31:25,880
Speaker 2: Choice. Choice is what makes meaning possible. Askamov is telling

675
00:31:25,960 --> 00:31:28,960
us across both these stories do not give up the choice.

676
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:31,599
Do not give up the struggle. The moment you asked

677
00:31:31,599 --> 00:31:33,920
the machine to live your life for you, you are,

678
00:31:34,160 --> 00:31:36,559
in a very real sense, already dead.

679
00:31:36,759 --> 00:31:40,440
Speaker 1: Wow. Okay, that is a lot to process. Yeah, we

680
00:31:40,519 --> 00:31:43,240
went from chickens to the heat death of the universe,

681
00:31:43,279 --> 00:31:45,880
to the afterlife to the philosophy of machine consciousness.

682
00:31:45,960 --> 00:31:47,440
Speaker 2: That's why we call it thrilling threads.

683
00:31:47,559 --> 00:31:50,000
Speaker 1: Exactly, we pull the thread and the whole universe came

684
00:31:50,039 --> 00:31:50,599
tumbling out.

685
00:31:50,720 --> 00:31:51,480
Speaker 2: Indeed it did.

686
00:31:51,799 --> 00:31:53,480
Speaker 1: So this is where we turn it over to you,

687
00:31:53,519 --> 00:31:55,000
the listener. We have a question we want you to

688
00:31:55,000 --> 00:31:58,400
answer in the comments or just you know, ponder while

689
00:31:58,400 --> 00:32:00,039
you're staring at the ceiling tonight.

690
00:31:59,839 --> 00:32:01,920
Speaker 2: And be really honest with yourself on this one. I

691
00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:04,319
think it's a much harder question than it sounds at first.

692
00:32:04,680 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 1: If you could ask an all knowing AI one final question,

693
00:32:08,279 --> 00:32:12,440
anything you want the cure for cancer, the winning lottery numbers,

694
00:32:12,720 --> 00:32:16,119
the secret to immortality, or the very meaning of life,

695
00:32:16,440 --> 00:32:19,640
knowing that the answer might render your own struggle for

696
00:32:19,799 --> 00:32:22,680
meaning completely obsolete. Would you ask it?

697
00:32:23,039 --> 00:32:25,119
Speaker 2: Or is the value of your life the very thing

698
00:32:25,160 --> 00:32:27,319
that makes it worth living found in the fact that

699
00:32:27,359 --> 00:32:28,119
you don't.

700
00:32:27,880 --> 00:32:29,799
Speaker 1: Know The answer is the struggle the point.

701
00:32:30,079 --> 00:32:33,119
Speaker 2: Murray Templeton would say yes, Jared and his family would

702
00:32:33,119 --> 00:32:34,640
say no. Give me the easy answer.

703
00:32:34,720 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 1: Where do you stand? Keep thinking, stay curious, and we'll

704
00:32:37,880 --> 00:32:38,880
see you on the next threat