YouSaid · the spoken record

Alex Garland

lines on the record: 65
first: 2020-03-03
most recent: 2020-03-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“But also it's very important for me that if that conversation is going to be a good conversation, what that must involve is that someone like you who understands AI, and I imagine understands a lot about quantum mechanics, if they then watch the narrative feels, yes, this is a fair account. So it is a worthy addition to the conversation. That for me is hugely important. I'm not interested in getting that stuff wrong. I'm only interested in trying to get it right.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is how I feel about what you've told me, and then other people can react to that. It's not to say this is how the world is. It's just to say it is interesting to think about the world in this way.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“What I try to do, so therefore, what I hope. If I'm remembered what I might be remembered for is as someone who participates in a conversation. And I think that often what happens is people don't participate in conversations. They make proclamations. They make statements. And people can either react against the statement or can fall in line behind it. And I don't like that. So I want to be part of a conversation. I take as a sort of basic principle, I think I take lots of my cues from science, but one of the best ones, it seems to me, is that when a scientist has something proved wrong, that they previously believed in, they then have to abandon that position. So I'd like to be someone who is allied to that sort of thinking. So part of an exchange of an exchange of ideas and the exchange of ideas for me is something like people in your world show me things about how the world works. And then I say,”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If that was true, it would certainly humble me, although maybe almost maybe. Know what effect that would have. I sort of, I mean, my understanding of that principle is along the lines of, say, that an electron has a preferred state, or it may or may not pass through a bit of glass. It may reflect off or it may go through or something like that. And so that feels as if a choice has been made But if I'm going down the fully deterministic route, I would say there's just an underlying determinism that has defined that, that has defined the preferred state or the reflection or non-reflection. But look, yeah, you're right. If it turned out that there was a thing that it was like to be the sun, then I would. Be amazed and humbled, and I'd be happy to be both. That sounds pretty cool.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“We tend to think of consciousness as having some form of exceptionalism attached to it. I suspect if we ever unravel it, it will turn out to be less than we thought in a way.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think it's a bad thing. Our excesses don't tend to come from humility. You know, our excesses come from the opposite megalomania and stuff.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would hope it would teach us some humility. Humans are very big on exceptionalism, you know, America is constantly proclaiming itself to be the greatest nation on earth, which it may feel like that if you're an American, but it may not feel like that if you're from Finland, because there's all sorts of things you dearly love about Finland. And exceptionalism is usually bullshit. If we both sat here, we could find a good example of something that isn't. But as a rule of thumb, and what it would do is it would teach us some humility about, you know, actually often that's what science does in a funny way. It makes us more and more interesting, but it makes us a smaller and smaller part of the thing that's interesting. And I don't mind that humility at all.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I still care about stuff. I remember my daughter saying to me, she'd got hold of the idea that my view of the universe made it meaningless. And she said, well, then it's meaningless. And I said, well, I can prove it's not meaningless because you mean something to me and I mean something to you. So it's not completely meaningless because there is a bit of meaning contained within this space. And so with a lack of free will space, you could think, well, this robs me of everything I am. And then you'd say, well, no, it doesn't because you still like eating cheeseburgers and you still like going to see the movies. And so how big a difference does it really make? But I think initially people would find it very disturbing. I think that what would come if you could really unlock with a determinism machine everything, there'd be this wonderful wisdom that would come from it and I'd rather have.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Determinism would have played its part, but or something like that. Actually, the exact terms of that thought experiment probably wouldn't play out, but still broadly speaking, you could predict something happening in another room sort of unseen, I suppose, that foreknowledge would not allow you to affect. So what effect would that have? I think people would find it very disturbing. But then after they'd got over their sense of being disturbed, which by the way, I don't even think you need a machine to take this idea on board. But after they've got over that, they'd still understand that even though I have no free will and my actions are in effect already determined, I still feel things.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, true, of course. But what this machine would do is. Is prove it beyond any doubt because someone would say, Well, I don't believe that's true, and then you'd predict, well, in 10 seconds, you're going to do this. And they'd say, no, no, I'm not. And then they'd do it.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, although in some ways we instinctively understand that already because in the example I gave you of the kid in the stabbing, we would all understand that that kid was not really fully in control of their actions. So it's not an idea that's entirely alien to us.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if a bit like Ava and her robotics, you park the sheer complexity of what you're trying to do. The issues are, I think it will have a profound, if you were able to have a machine that was able to project forwards and backwards accurately, it would in an empirical way show it would demonstrate that you don't have free will. So the first thing that would happen is people would have to really take on a very, very different idea of what they were. The thing that they truly, truly believe they are, they are not. And so that, I suspect, would be very, very disturbing to a lot of people.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Has these beautiful sort of nuances in it and also these completely paradigm changing thoughts and truths. So it's as good as it gets as far as I can tell. So broadly everything. That doesn't mean I believe everything I read in quantum physics because obviously a lot of the interpretations are completely in conflict with each other. Who knows whether String theory will turn out to be a good description or not. But the beauty in it, it seems undeniable. And I do wish people more readily understood how beautiful and poetic science is, I would say.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would have to say every single thing I've learned is beautiful. And one of the motivators for me is that I think that people... Tend not to see scientific thinking as being essentially poetic and lyrical. But I think that is literally exactly what it is. And I think the idea of entanglement or the idea of superpositions or the fact that you could even demonstrate a superposition or have a machine that relies on the existence of superpositions in order to function to me is almost indescribably beautiful. It fills me with awe. It fills me with awe. And also it's not just the sort of grand massive awe of, but it's also delicate. It's very, very delicate and subtle.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, but essentially what you just described, that yes, forwards and yes backwards, but you might get a slightly different result. Very different”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“If you were able to do it, it would certainly have to be a quantum computer. Something that worked in a quantum mechanical way in order to understand a quantum mechanical system, I guess.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, which is a useful thing to have, and it partly comes down to although we live in a deterministic universe, our brains are not very well equipped to fully determine the deterministic universe. So we're constantly surprised and feel like we're making snap decisions based on imperfect information. So that feels a lot like free will. It just isn't. That's my guess.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It partly makes me feel that it's exactly in keeping with the way these things tend to work out, which is that we have an incredibly strong sense that we do have free will. And just as we have an incredibly strong sense that time is a constant and turns out probably not to be the case, or definitely in the case of time. The problem I always have with free will is that it gets I can never seem to find the place where it is supposed to reside.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Thanks. Without qualification, yep, I think the universe is deterministic and I see absolutely I cannot see how free will fits into that. So yes deterministic, no free will. That would be my position.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Really cool kind of demo. Yeah, that's right. They're using, yes, they are using a quantum computer to simulate a nematode. Yep.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It does. It absolutely does. But in terms of what would really excite me, it would be leaving this solar system. In as much as that, I just think... I think we already know quite a lot about Mars. But yes, listen, if it happened, that would be, I hope I see it in my lifetime. I really hope I see it in my lifetime. It would be a wonderful thing.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Few months ago, which is, as I'm sure you know, in the middle of the Pacific and difficult for people to have got to, but they got there. And I did think a lot about the way those boats must have set out into something like space. It was the ocean. And how sort of fundamental that was to the way we are. It's the one that most excites me because it's the one I want most to happen. It's the place where we could get to as humans. Like in a way, I could live with us never really unlocking, fully unlocking the nature of consciousness. I'd like to know. I'm really curious. But if we never leave the solar system and if we never get further out into this galaxy or maybe even galaxies beyond our galaxy, that feels sad to me because... Because it's so limiting.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, because if we have any sort of long-term future, it's that. It just simply is that if energy and matter are linked up in the way we think they're linked up, We'll run out if we don't move. So we got to move. But also. How can we not, it's built into us to do it or die trying? I was on Easter Island.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Makers are in some ways fixated on the films they grew up with and they sort of remake those films in some ways. I've always tried to avoid that and so I look to the real world to get inspiration and as much as possible sort of by living, I think. And so yeah, I'm sure.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“In a way, I'm influenced by that almost by definition because that's the world I live in. And this is the thing that's happening in that world. And I also feel supportive of it. So I think amongst various things, Elon Musk has done, I'm almost sure he's done a very, very good thing with Tesla for all of us. It's really kicked all the other car manufacturers in the face. kicked the fossil fuel industry in the face and they needed kicking in the face and he's done it so and and so that's the world he's part of creating and i live in that world um just bought a tesla in fact and so uh um does that play into whatever i then make in some ways it does partly because i try to be a writer who quite often feels”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's a fair thing to bring up. For me, you hit on the lone genius thing. For me, it was actually people always said X-Machina makes this big leap in terms of where AI has got to and also what AI would look like if it got to that point. There's another one which is just robotics. I mean, look at the way Ava walks around her room. It's like, forget it, building that. That's also got to be a very, very long way off. And if you did get there, would it look anything like that? It's a thought experiment.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Engineering But just to say what ex machinism is really, it's a thought experiment. I mean, so it's a construction of putting four people in a house. Nothing about X Machina adds up in all sorts of ways, inasmuch as that who built the machine parts did the people building the machine parts know what they were creating and how did they get there? And it's a thought experiment. It doesn't stand up to scrutiny of that”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Jobs clearly isn't a lone genius because there's too many other people in the sort of superstructure around him who are absolutely fundamental to that journey.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd say this series I'm doing at the moment is a critique in part of the lone genius concept. So yes, I'm sort of oppositional and either agnostic or atheistic about that as a concept. I mean, not entirely loan is the right word, broadly isolated, but Newton clearly exists in a sort of bubble of himself in some respects, so does Shakespeare.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't buy that. I don't buy that. Yeah. So the idea that there is a thing that it would be like to be the sun. Yeah. No, I don't buy that. I think that consciousness is a thing. My sort of broad modification is that usually the more I find out about things, the more illusory... Our instinct is and is leading us into a different direction about what that thing actually is. That happens, it seems to me, in modern science, that happens a hell of a lot, whether it's to do with how even how big or small things are. So my sense is that consciousness is a thing, but it isn't quite the thing or maybe very different from the thing that we instinctively think it is. So it's there. It's very interesting, but we may be... In sort of quite fundamentally misunderstanding it for reasons that are based on intuition.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There's something very interesting going on in our minds. I'm slightly worried about the word special because it gets a bit, it nudges towards metaphysics and maybe even magic. I mean, in some ways, something magic like, which I don't think is there at all.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, I don't think you could say that fully because I think you could then easily have a thought experiment which said we will create something which we know is not conscious but is going to give a very very good account of seeming conscious. And also it would be a particularly bad test where humans are involved because humans are so quick to project sentience into things that don't have sentience. So someone could have their computer playing up and feel as if their computer is being malevolent to them when it clearly isn't. And so of all the things to judge consciousness, us.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You could easily do a better job than any of the people we've got around at the moment. I'd vote for her over Boris Johnson.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a very interesting question. Approach it slightly obliquely, which is that if a friend of yours got stabbed in a mugging and you then felt very angry at the person who'd done the stabbing, but then you learned that it was a 15-year-old and the 15-year-old, both their parents were addicted to crystal meth and the kid had been addicted since he was 10 and he really never had any hope in the world and he'd been driven crazy by his upbringing. The stabbing that would hugely modify, and it would also make you wary about that kid then becoming president of America. And Ava has had a very, very distorted introduction into the world. So although there's nothing, as it were, organically within Ava that would lean her towards badness. Not that robots or sentient robots are bad. She did not.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At the very end, he says something like, I'm afraid, Dave, but that may be he is on some level experiencing fear, or it may be this is the terms in which it would be wise to stop someone from doing the thing they're doing, if you see what I mean.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Ava's good, in my opinion, and how is neutral? Because I don't think how is presented as having... A sophisticated emotional life. He has a set of paradigms, which is that the mission needs to be completed. I mean, it's a version of the paperclip.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Exactly, yeah, but it was a small, in a funny way, I think maybe people saw it as an evil smile, like, have I followed them, but actually it was just a smile. And I thought, well, in the end, after all the conversations about the test, that was the answer to the test. And then off she goes.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Get out of that box. And there's a moment which is sort of slightly bugs me, but nobody ever has noticed it and it's years after, so I might as well say it now, which is that after Ava has escaped She crosses a room, and as she's crossing a room, this is just before she leaves the building. She looks over her shoulder and she smiles. And I thought, after all the conversation about tests, in a way the best indication you could have of the interior state of someone is if they are not being observed and they smile about something whether they're smiling for themselves. And that, to me, was evidence of Ava's true sentience, whatever that sentience was.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And it's also interesting, you know, that thing you started asking about the dream state. And I was saying, well, I think we're all in a dream state because we're all in a subjective state. One of the things that I became aware of with XMANA is that the way in which people reacted to the film was very based on what they took into the film. So many people thought XMACNA was the tale of a sort of evil robot who murders two men and escapes. And she has no empathy, for example, because she's a machine. Whereas I felt, no, she was a conscious being with a consciousness different from mine, but so what? imprisoned and made a bunch of value judgments about how”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, it's about the interior state and what constitutes the interior state and how do we know it's there. And actually in that respect, ex-Machina is as much about Consciousness in general, as it is to do specifically with machine consciousness.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But they've got different goals, the two AIs have completely different goals. I think that's really the difference. So in some respects, ex-Machina took as a premise. How do you assess whether something else has consciousness? So it was a version of the Turing test, except instead of having the machine hidden, you put the machine in plain sight in the way that we are in plain sight of each other and say now assess the consciousness. And in a way it was illustrating that the way in which you'd assess the state of consciousness of a machine is exactly the same way we assess the state of consciousness of each other and in exactly the same way that in a funny way your sense of my consciousness is actually based primarily on your own consciousness. That is also then true with the machine. And so it was actually about how much of...”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Certainly not with X Machina in relation to 2001 because I'm not sure, I mean, I'd be pleased if there was, but I'm not sure in a way there isn't a fundamental discussion of issues to do with AI that isn't already and better dealt with by 2001. 2001 does a very, very good account of Of the way in which an AI might think and also potential issues with the way the AI might think, and also then a separate question about whether the AI is malevolent or benevolent. And 2001 doesn't really, it's a slightly odd thing to be making a film when you know there's a pre-existing film, which has done a really superb job.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think it's typically the case. That's what people think they're doing. And I think that you don't need to go to Stalin. I mean, Stalin, I think Stalin probably got pretty crazy. But actually, that's another part of it, which is that the other thing that comes from being convinced of your own virtue is that then you stop listening to the modifiers around you. And that tends to drive people crazy. It's other people that keep us sane. And if you stop listening to them, I think you go a bit mad. That also happens.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I mean, it's the interesting thing about evil, which is that. I think most people who do spectacularly evil things think themselves they're doing really good things. They're not there thinking I am a sort of incarnation of Satan. They're thinking, yeah. I've seen a way to fix the world, and everyone else is wrong. Here I go.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Money does corrupt. We know that, but there's a different sort of problem aside from just the money corrupts, you know. Thing that we're familiar with throughout history. And it's more about the sense of reinforcement an individual gets, which is so, it effectively works like the reason I earned all this money and so much more money than anyone else is because I'm very gifted. I'm actually a bit smarter than they are or I'm a lot smarter than they are and I can see the future in the way they can't. And maybe some of those people are not particularly smart. They're very lucky or they're very talented entrepreneurs. And there's a difference between, so in other words, the acquisition of the money and power can suddenly start to feel like evidence of virtue.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There really is a lot of money. People stand to make millions or even billions, you will find corruption. That's going to happen. So it's in the nature of its voracious appetite that some people will be corrupt and some people will exploit and some people will exploit whilst thinking they're doing something good. But there are also people who I think are very, very smart and very benign and actually very self-aware. And so I'm not trying to wipe out the motivations of this entire area. But I do there are people in that world who scare the hell out of me. Yeah, sure.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“No, they may or may not be, but it's just a zone with a lot of bullshit flying about. And there's also another thing, which is this actually goes back to, I always thought about some sports that later turned out to be corrupt in the way that the sport, like who won the boxing match or how a football match got thrown or cricket match or whatever happened to be. And I used to think, well, look, if there's a lot of money.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sure, I think some of them are. I think I've spoken to ones who I believe in their heart feel they're building a better work.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So, what I see, I'll tell you what, I sometimes feel about Silicon Valley is that it's like Wall Street in the 80s. It's rapidly capitalistic, absolutely rabidly capitalistic, and it's rabidly greedy. But whereas... In the 80s, the sense one had of Wall Street was that these people kind of knew they were sharks and in a way relished in being sharks and dressed in shark suits and kind of lauded over other people and felt good about doing it. Silicon Valley has managed to hide its voracious Wall Street-like capitalism behind hipster t-shirts and cool cafes in the place where they set up there. And so that obfuscates what's really going on and what's really going on is the absolute voracious pursuit of money and power. So that's where it gets shaky for me.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“At a guess, I'd say there are instances of all those things. So sometimes I think it's naivety. Sometimes I think it's extremely dark. And sometimes I think people are not being naive or dark. And then in those instances, sometimes... Generating things that are very benign and other times generating things that despite their best intentions are not very benign. It's something, I think the reason why I don't get anxious about AI in terms of at least AIs that have, I don't know, a relationship with some sort of relationship with humans is that I think that's the stuff we're quite well equipped to understand how to mitigate. The problem is issues that relate actually to the power of humans or the wealth of humans. And that's where it's dangerous here and now.”
2020-03-03 · Lex Fridman Podcast · #77 – Alex Garland: Ex Machina, Devs, Annihilation, and the Poetry of Science · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source