What AI, AGI, and the Metaverse Mean for the Future of Humanity w/ Alvin W. Graylin | EP #104

In this episode, Peter and Alvin discuss how AI and AR will affect all aspects of society in the coming future. 03:38 | Understanding the Metaverse 46:33 | Democratizing AI Through Global Collaboration 1:15:42 | Balancing Technology and Education Alvin Wang Graylin is a distinguished technology pioneer with over 30 years of experience in AI, XR, and semiconductor industries, currently serving as the Global VP of Corporate Development at HTC. He co-authored "Our Next Reality: How the AI-powered Metaverse will Reshape the World" and has held prominent roles, including China President of HTC and Vice-Chairman of the Industry of Virtual Reality Alliance (IVRA). Alvin has founded four venture-backed startups and holds advanced degrees in Computer Science and Business from MIT. Read his new book, Our Next Reality: https://OurNextReality.com ____________ I only endorse products and services I personally use. To see what they are, please support this podcast by checking out our sponsors: Get started with Fountain Life and become the CEO of your health: https://fountainlife.com/peter/ AI-powered precision diagnosis you NEED for a healthy gut: https://www.viome.com/peter _____________ Get my new Longevity Practices 2024 book: https://bit.ly/48Hv1j6 I send weekly emails with the latest insights and trends on today’s and tomorrow’s exponential technologies. Stay ahead of the curve, and sign up now: Tech Blog _____________ Connect With Peter: Twitter Instagram Youtube Moonshots Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:01Peter Diamandis?

  I can't think of someone who has been thinking about this longer.

• 1:04Speaker 03

  I think there definitely is a lot of confusion about what the metaverse is.

• 1:11Speaker 03

  These kind of capabilities are going to move into 100 grams and less devices. That's something that will transform our relationship with computing and with devices in general.

• 1:21Peter Diamandis?

  The idea of living in the multiverse, living in the metaverse, is a compelling notion. So will we get there?

• 1:30Speaker 03

  I think that actually can happen a lot faster than most people expect. When you're on this digital parallel universe, as long as you are smart, as long as you're hardworking, as long as you're creative, you will be able to provide value to somebody else somewhere else in the world.

• 1:46Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, Peter Diamandis here. Welcome to Moonshot. Today, I've got an extraordinary guest, a gentleman who is brilliant in the areas of the metaverse and AI. Alvin Graylin is the Global VP of Corporate Development for HTC, one of the leading companies in the VR-XR world. He's really been leading this revolution for the last 30 years. Under his leadership at HTC, they've introduced 50 different hardware products, formed 100 different partnerships globally.

• 2:18Peter Diamandis?

  He holds advanced degrees from MIT, including an MS in Computer Science and an MBA, a BS in Electrical Engineering from University of Washington, where he was with the famed Hit Lab, the Human Interface Technology Lab. Love the work they've done there. Alvin, a pleasure to have you here, buddy.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Well, great to be here and thanks for inviting me, Peter. It's been, I've known you a while and it's just amazing to follow what you've been doing. So it's great that we can chat about this because I think we're at a very pivotal time in the history of humanity.

• 2:48Peter Diamandis?

  We are. And just for everybody, I just consumed this book. It's called Our Next Reality. Here it is, by Alvin Graylin and his partner, Lewis Rosenberg. I got a chance to read an advanced copy and actually contribute a little bit to the book. But if you've been hearing about the metaverse and about AI and wondering where this is all going, this is a compelling, you know, visionary look at what's happening over the next decade. And I really commend it to everybody, Our Next Reality. So, Alvin, let me tell you what I want to talk about here. It's a hell of a lineup here. You ready? Okay, so today,

• 3:30Peter Diamandis?

  on this podcast, everybody listening here, we're talking about what is the metaverse? The convergence of XR and AI, the future of education, health, and the nation state. I want to talk about US and China. Is it collaboration or competition? You bridge both worlds and Taiwan as well. I'll talk about the timelines of mass adoption for XR technology. Is there a killer app? I mean, you know, Apple's Vision Pro has sort of flopped. It's not popping. Is it a decentralized or a centralized AI future? Can we create a world of abundance with this? And let's talk about ethics and human rights in the metaverse as well. How's that for a lineup?

• 4:10Speaker 03

  Well, that should give us plenty to talk about, but I'm sure more things will pop up as we discuss things.

• 4:17Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, so, you know, I can't think of someone who has been thinking about this longer. Let's start with the beginning, you know, Metaverse had a real buzz when Facebook changed their world, their world, their name to Meta. A lot of conversation and now the last three years it's been AI. So let's begin by defining what is the Metaverse? What is XR and how does AI play in all of that?

• 4:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think there definitely is a lot of confusion about what the Metaverse is. And particularly, there's a lot of conflation between the Metaverse and Web3 and crypto and so forth. I think those are, you know, different areas. They both have their place in the world, as you know. But the simple way to think about the Metaverse is really the 3D version of the Internet that the world has been building for the last 30, 40 years. But instead of having websites, we're going to have 3D virtual worlds. And, you know, humans, we've evolved over, you know, millions of years to be optimized for a 3D space, you know, to be surviving in a 3D world.

• 5:25Speaker 03

  And so we actually had to adjust ourselves to 2D screens for the last, you know, few dozens of years. It's our way to communicate. You know, it makes a lot of sense for us to move, you know, into where we're most natural. And not just using things like keyboards and mics to interface, but using our hands, our eyes, our mouth, our bodies as the natural way of connecting with the computers, with other people around the world and with future AI entities that will be inhabiting these 3D spaces. So, and I actually checked this definition with Neil Stephenson, who coined the word Metaverse. And he's like, wow, you know, I kind of made this shit up when I wrote the book. But what you're describing makes sense to me.

• 6:10Speaker 03

  So, you know, that's good enough for Neil.

• 6:14Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, and Neil Stephenson wrote the foreword to the book. And those who know, he's an extraordinary science fiction writer. Most famed, he wrote about what's called the Young Ladies Illustrated Primer, right? And which is, yes, in Diamond Age.

• 6:34Peter Diamandis?

  So when I think about the Metaverse, I think about Headsets, I think about an XR we refer to as both VR and AR, correct? Sort of the going back and forth between the two. I think about AI inhabiting and creating that virtual world for you. And then crypto being sort of an economic layer for transactions on top of that. Is that fair?

• 6:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I think right now there's a lot of distinction between people say, oh, this is a VR device or AR device. The reality is that very soon we're going to get to, you know, devices. I mean, we're already at these devices here, which are, you know, 200 grams. And they already do VR, AR. That is the Vive XR Elite. So as you see, you know, it's actually one third the size of the Apple Vision Pro. But it does a lot of the same functionalities and it can see through. It has color, you know, high definition see through. It has immersive capabilities and it has ability to transform into a glasses form factor or more of a headset form factor. So, you know, that's already available today.

• 7:40Speaker 03

  But within the next one or two years, what we're going to find is that these kind of capabilities are going to move into 100 grams and less devices that will look a lot more like glasses than the headsets that we've seen today. So, you know, the distinction between AR and VR are going to really melt away. And I think that's, that's really going to be important because that's when people start to say, okay, I can actually wear this outside. It's both socially acceptable and it's comfortable. And it gives me an added superpower of essentially being able to see anything, have access to all of my information. Instead of pulling a screen out of my pocket, have a screen that's in my, in front of my face when I need it.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  But at the same time, it can go away and I can see through it and be able to have. A connection with the the physical space around that. And when that happens, we we will, people will will will not be debating whether this is going to happen. I mean, when you have right now, you know, people wearing the the Vision Pro out there, it just it just looks dorky. I mean, I know people do it for for cloud points. But I I think that that's like a temporary thing. But, you know, having a fifty gram, sixty gram device on your face that allows you to have all those capabilities. It's comfortable, you can wear it all day, and it allows you to have access to any information you want.

• 9:03Speaker 03

  I think that that's something that will transform our relationship with computing and with devices in general.

• 9:10Peter Diamandis?

  So let's put some more of a visceral feel on this. What does a fifty or sixty gram device feel like? A little heavier sunglasses?

• 9:19Speaker 03

  Yeah, so I mean, if you look at the current Ray-Ban sunglasses, they're about fifty grams. So if you wear a, you know, a red, you know, a little bit thicker, it's not kind of the super thin versions. But let's say the wafer type glasses, that's a fifty gram device or, you know, a product on your face. So and, you know, people will wear that all day, they're out in the sun, they're exercising with it. It's it's not it's not a weight that becomes cumbersome. And I I it's actually, I'm testing it today. I'm testing smart glasses that that weigh in that that type of of ranges. And they're comfortable. And I don't have an issue with them wearing it all day.

• 9:59Peter Diamandis?

  And and multimodal AI, which is coming on strong, gives AI vision through your glasses. And then, you know, the question becomes, can you get high resolution back into the retina? I remember Furness, your your thesis advisor, what's his first name again? Tom Furness.

• 10:19Speaker 03

  Tom Furness.

• 10:20Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, Tom Furness, who hit, you know, was leading the the HIT Lab, the Human Interface Lab. He talked about a future of a sort of a a laser raster scan in the back of the eye that could paint super high resolution with something really small. And I'm still hoping and waiting for that to materialize.

• 10:39Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, in fact, his his pants were what was some of the basis for magically. I don't know if you remember them, but.

• 10:47Peter Diamandis?

  I saw Roni last week.

• 10:48Speaker 03

  Billion dollars. Yes.

• 10:51Speaker 03

  But that that was what they were trying to do, but they never actually executed on it. I'm not sure if we need to get to that type of technology. Um, because because we we really haven't refined it enough to to to know when that's going to be available. But what we can say is that waveguide type devices are getting to a acceptable level where you can get to that, you know, uh, weight and size levels that we just talked about. Um, and at the price levels that become affordable, because even this year, I think in the end, there's there's two or three manufacturers that are already talking about devices similar to what I'm talking about. Uh, I mean, they it won't have a full immersive capability. It's probably thirty or forty degrees field of view.

• 11:34Speaker 03

  But for a lot of use cases, that's enough. And that's that's a good stage, right? And if you wait another one or two more generations after that, I think we're going to get to that immersive, you know, hundred degree field of view capabilities.

• 11:47Peter Diamandis?

  So the question is, when do we get to Ready Player One, right? I mean, there's probably no other film or book that captured the public's imagination. Um, with all due respect to Neil Stephenson, but just the idea of living in the multiverse, living in the metaverse uh, is a compelling notion. So will we get there? And when?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Um, uh, well, I I think some of the things in Ready Player One are going to take a lot longer. Things like the the the optics and the the feel and the temperature and all the, you know, the the full body suit. They a lot of those technologies exist today, but they are not mature and they're probably a little too expensive and too um, high friction for it to be a mass market.

• 12:36Speaker 03

  So um at at you know, but I I think in terms of getting to the visual quality, we're we're definitely not that far away. In terms of getting to all of the different senses, uh that's gonna gonna take some time. And in fact, uh you're ready player one. I don't know if you know, but H T C was the official V R partner for for uh Warner Brothers and Ready Player One. So I actually negotiated that deal and we got all of the access to their three D content and made seven different game titles from it. So uh you know, I I I really enjoyed that book and and I, you know, also enjoyed the you know, Snow Crash and Stevenson's book as well. But um but I I I you know, I think that the thing that they they really did well was that they kind of meld modern kind of popular culture

• 13:20Speaker 03

  uh together with technology. And um I I think we're we're we're getting there. We're we're getting close.

• 13:26Peter Diamandis?

  Let me paint the picture of a near term uh scenario where I'm wearing my XR glasses and I'm walking around. I can turn on history mode and as I'm walking down the streets of of Manhattan, it can show me what the buildings were a hundred years ago or tell me what famous thing occurred here. Or if I turn on shopping mode, it can tell me um and if I'm looking for a particular, you know, wristwatch or jacket, it can show me what's inside the stores as I'm going forward. Or if I turn on, you know, physics mode, as as cars are accelerating, I can see equations. I can be learning twenty four seven. So it can be an A I overlay on. My favorite mode, by the way, would be health mode, like, you know, don't eat that.

• 14:11Peter Diamandis?

  Uh take the stairs instead of the escalator. Uh so when is that gonna be here? Is that it's more of an A I function than even a V R function?

• 14:20Speaker 03

  I think that actually can happen a lot faster than than most people expect. Um because it doesn't require that much processing power to do what you're what you're describing. In fact, essentially, all you need is an agent that is able to to see what you're doing. If you give it access to your environment, your camera, and it's able to to analyze kind of both your conversations, uh your where you're looking at, uh it can give you all of that kind of advice in real time. So essentially, you have a a full time assistant. On a device now, if the processing is happening in the cloud, then device can be even smaller. And it's it's if it's happening on board on the device. Um, you know, it it may require a little bit more powerful capabilities, or maybe it's linked to a phone

• 15:03Speaker 03

  that does the processing and it's just transferring it to your glasses. But um, the the the AI for it is actually available probably today. You could do pretty much everything you just described with the AI capabilities today. Um, it's just a matter of do we want to uh give that AI access to all of that information? And and I think there's a lot of fear today about, you know, privacy and how much information we're sharing. If that processing is happening in the cloud, people are more worried. I think very soon we actually are now getting models that are, you know, two or three uh kind of gigabyte type models, essentially two billion, three billion parameters that are able to do most of the things that you're describing. And if that's the case, that will run on a cell phone.

• 15:46Speaker 03

  So if it runs on the cell phone, um, you don't need to go in the cloud. You don't, you don't have to worry about your data going uh into some some server somewhere and and, you know, having your privacy invaded. So if that's the case, I I actually think that what you described earlier about the young lady's primer can happen very soon.

• 16:06Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, you know, it's interesting. I believe more of a, you know, my favorite uh character is Jarvis from Iron Man. And I believe that we're gonna have that version. I think you're gonna give your your XR AI partner access to everything. I mean, you're gonna allow it to listen to your phone calls, read your emails, see what you're eating. Because by doing that, it gives you such value. And people say, oh, my God, my privacy. Well, I mean, listen, you're on your email with Microsoft or with Google, you know, Alexa, I want to say, or too loud, she'll hear me, you know, is listening to what's going on in your bedroom. I mean, if you think that you have, you know, real digital privacy already, I mean, let's be honest, it's not really there.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  I I can't agree with you more. In fact, so this is kind of a counterintuitive thing. Everybody is so worried about privacy that when they actually uh take action, very few people actually protect the privacy that they they value so much. And here's, you know, before we're trading our privacy for the ability to to access, you know, cat pictures and and videos on YouTube. Now, if we say, okay, now instead of that, I'm actually giving access to this agent that is working on my behalf. I think that changes the entire equation. And then at that point, uh you you actually want to do exactly what you said is make as much possible available to this agent. I've been understand my needs, my wants, my preferences, my friends, and then be able to to help me be a better version of myself.

• 17:37Speaker 03

  And and that is actually uh possible today. That's the amazing thing. People think that that is so far away, but that technology is available today.

• 17:47Peter Diamandis?

  Your subtitle here is how the AI-powered metaverse will reshape the world. And I was gonna ask you, you know, we've heard these hype cycles on uh on the metaverse, on VR for, you know, twenty, thirty years. I mean, you've been in this field for thirty years, um thirty-three years, I think. So why is it different now? Is it AI? Why did you write this book?

• 18:12Speaker 03

  This is actually a really important question because um we are at such a pivotal time in in the development of our species. And this is why I wrote it, because if we let things go by default, it probably will not end well. Because of what possibilities are being created by the the combination of AI and XR technologies. And I'll actually talk about why those two come together, because a lot of people, you see people talk about the metaverse and you see people talk about AI. But you don't see a lot of people putting them together and explaining the relationship between the two. What we're what we're now creating with um AI essentially is a superpower brain

• 18:55Speaker 03

  that allows us to to to supercharge everything that we're thinking. And it's going to help us solve problems that we haven't um been able to solve for for hundreds of years. Now, if if if you have the wrong people using that power, um it can be used for bad, right? So we we know the whole double-edged sword thing, so um. That, you know, how do we make sure that, that, uh, that people don't get their hands on or aren't able to do as much with it? And that's really one, one of the biggest concerns with, with AI. The other issue with AI is, um, when it actually does, even the good things that it wants, it will disrupt our society. It will, you know, put people out of their job.

• 19:38Speaker 03

  It will change the way that, the, the, the, the way we, we work and live and play and the way we interact with each other and the governmental systems. And, and our society adapt to that at the speed of change that's coming, right? Um, you know, as you know, the, the, the prior industrial revolutions took eight decades, seven decades and six decades or something to, to unfold. And it gave society a lot of time to, to adapt. This one's going to happen in the next five to 10 years. It's going to be like that in, in societal years.

• 20:10Peter Diamandis?

  Um, I, I, you know, you've been on my, my stage at the abundance summit, um, a number of times and I, I hope you'll come back. Um, you know, Elon was there this year and talking about timelines, as was Ray Kurzweil. And, you know, their prediction for AGI is like next year. Um, and, and then digital superintelligence by 2030. And there's no way in the world that society and humanity can possibly adopt at that, adapt at that rate.

• 20:40Speaker 03

  That, that's exactly the, the, the issue is that it's going to come fast. I'm not sure if it's next year or if it's, you know, three or four years from now, but it is, I, I think it's within the next five to 10 years for sure. I, I think if you talk to most experts, you know, if you talk to them three, four years ago, the consensus was 30, 40 years from now, right? If you talk to them now, the consensus is somewhere between one to about 10 years. And, and that's shrunk a lot. So even the, the, the, the pessimist folks are, are probably saying like 10 to 20 years, but they used to say a hundred years or never, you know? So, so I, I, I, I, I think that the, the pace of change and the, our ability to adapt and the need to prepare today, that, that's why I wrote this book, right?

• 21:26Speaker 03

  And, and the other thing is, How can XR play a role to help solve some of these problems, right? Because for the issue of job displacement, if we actually create a proper global metaverse ecosystem, infrastructure on a global basis, then when those people are displaced from their physical jobs, it gives them another parallel economy to go do something, right? Whether to make an additional supplemental income or whether to actually have a place just to go express themselves and go travel and go learn and have an outlet for their energies. I think that's something that having the metaverse will help with.

• 22:10Speaker 03

  And the other thing is that having a global metaverse system allows you to create more natural rebalancing of wealth and equality between the haves and the have-nots in terms of nations. Because when you have a digital economy, it doesn't really matter where you are. But today with the physical economy, it matters a lot where you were born. But when you're on this digital parallel universe, as long as you are smart, as long as your heart working, as long as you're creative, you will be able to provide value to somebody else somewhere else in the world. And that allows essentially a redistribution of wealth in a natural way, right? Not forcing something to happen,

• 22:56Speaker 03

  but allowing the people with capabilities to find a new way to increase their capabilities, their personal capabilities by going to an online school. I mean, you've been working on the Singularity University for dozens of years and trying to educate, re-educate the world. And I think, and you know from the book, I mean, there's just so many studies that show in a 3D space, you learn a lot, lot faster and you retain a lot more. And so allowing that to be the education platform is going to be tremendous in terms of reshaping education. And the other thing is that it allows for... It allows for us to, you know, then allow these people, once they have been reeducated

• 23:40Speaker 03

  or educated, then to, to find employment on a, on a virtual economy. And that, that, you know, solves some of these issues.

• 23:50Peter Diamandis?

  So let me, let me, let me, let me drive, let me ask you about an issue that is of concern. You bring it up in the book and I really want to discuss it with you, which is in a future where we've got digital superintelligence and humanoid robots, both of which are coming extraordinarily fast. And we are, it enables this amazing world of abundance where you can have anything you want. But the question becomes, will, you know, we humans like struggle and we like purpose. Right? We like to have challenges. In our video games, right? If a video game, if you jumped into a video game and every time you shot, you hit and you would always win, you'd stop playing after a few minutes. It'd be boring. And I think life is that way, too. We need this sense of like purpose and going big.

• 24:35Peter Diamandis?

  And so the question is, when we have this superpower capability, can humanity up-level its sense of purpose and, and what it wants to go after so we remain engaged in the game?

• 24:49Speaker 03

  I actually think that it, it is the thing that will help us up-level because if, if you look at the Renaissance, why, why did all of these, you know, why did Michelangelo, Leonardo, Da Vinci, why were they able to spend so much time creating beautiful sculptures and art and inventions? Because they had a patron that helped to support them, that, that took care of their basic, you know, uh, you know, food, shelter, clothing, other things. And they said, go and focus, go and focus and spend your time doing what you want. And when they did that, they were, these people were able to create amazing new inventions and we had a Renaissance. What we will see with with AI and robotics is that essentially

• 25:31Speaker 03

  we will allow these machines to to be our patrons because they will go and do the labor that we used to do. Which then liberates us to go and have the ability to to find our calling. You know, most people talk about occupation, you know, my job is my occupation. Occupation, if you look at the root, the Latin root then is occupatio, which is to be occupied, to spend, to waste time or how to spend your. Like what we should be thinking about is our vocation. So vocation, the the root is vocational, which is about, it's the call to be called, the calling. Right. Which is your purpose. Now, if if we focus rather than saying, I'm going to trade my time for money, which is my occupation.

• 26:12Speaker 03

  To become, I want to spend my time on my calling, on my purpose, how I can contribute the most to the world. Then then then the the the question of money goes away. And it's really more about, okay, I don't need to think about what I need to buy next week and can I pay for rent? How can I contribute the most? What I want to learn the most, whether it's being a musician or being artist or being an inventor? Or being a coder or being an AI researcher, all of that. In fact, there's a quote I recently read that that really spoke to me, which was Picasso, he said. The meaning of life is to find your gift. And the purpose of life is to give it away. Right. He didn't say the purpose of life is to accumulate wealth or to accumulate status. And I think that that really

• 26:58Speaker 03

  summarizes a really important question that we, you know, we struggle with in just two phrases. And and that actually helps to think about, you know, when we have these AI and robotics and and new new, you know, dimensions to work in, not only are we now given the resources to go and do these things. We now have a a new canvas to unleash our creativity, to to now just not make statues, but to create 3D worlds that we can share with with other people, right, to create 3D experiments, to go and and, you know, allow us to go and and and do research because we don't have to think about whether or not I need to sell this thing. But whether or not this thing is good and brings something that that the world didn't know before.

• 27:41Speaker 03

  And I think that's going to create a a real abundance of of new breakthroughs that we haven't.

• 27:47Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, no, I, that is, so it's interesting, right? Some people say they're worried about digital superintelligence. They're worried about can humanity survive in a world of digital superintelligence? And I almost flipped the question and say, can we survive without digital superintelligence?

• 28:06Speaker 03

  Um, yeah, in fact, I mean, as you know, in the book, one of the parts I've been talking about is, is later on, once this, this superintelligence is available, you know, it actually can help us solve some of the, the real societal issues in terms of the conflict between people, right, between governments. You know, that today, all of these constructs of, you know, different countries or different parties or different religions that are creating, you know, consistent thousands of years of conflict between people. If we up-level ourselves and say, hey, you know what?

• 28:39Speaker 03

  This, this super AI is able to take everybody's perspectives and give us some guidance in terms of how we should solve some of these long-term conflicts. And, you know, and when we also start to move from a physical world to spending more time in a virtual world, we don't necessarily have the limited resources of, I only have, you know, one Jerusalem or, or, you know, one Washington DC or one whatever, right? And, and now everybody can have whatever versions that they want. And you're not fighting over limited resources. I think, I think those, those kinds of things are going to happen.

• 29:14Peter Diamandis?

  And one of my favorite examples in a, in a simple form is if, if I have a watch and you have a piece of gold and we trade, in the old economy, now you have a watch and I have a piece of gold. In the digital economy, if you have a digital data set and I have a digital data set and we trade, now we both have the digital data set, right? It's a, it's an abundant mindset.

• 29:37Speaker 03

  Absolutely. I think, I think knowledge is, is, it's just like that, right? Knowledge and intelligence, the, the more you have, everybody wins, right? And, and it is so different than the prior. Um, society we were worked in where it's all about scarce space while affording is about who has access to what resources and that's what everybody's tried for. If, once we get to this, this place of, you know, abundance because of digital intelligence, because of robotics, because of genetic engineering that will give us maybe a little bit longer health, right? All of these things that we, we felt were, were restrained and scarce becomes abundant. I think changes everybody's mindset of conflict that, that, that has persisted since, since we can, you know, we since recorded history.

• 30:18Peter Diamandis?

  Everybody, I want to take a short break from our episode to talk about a company that's very important to me and could actually save your life or the life of someone that you love. Company is called Fountain Life and it's a company I started years ago with Tony Robbins and a group of very talented physicians. You know, most of us don't actually know what's going on inside our body. We're all optimists. Until that day where you have a pain in your side, you go to the physician in the emergency room and they say, listen, I'm sorry to tell you this, but you have this stage three or four going on. And, you know, it didn't start that morning. It probably was a problem that's been going on for some time, but because we never look, we don't find out. So what we built at Fountain Life

• 31:03Peter Diamandis?

  was the world's most advanced diagnostic centers. We have four across the U S today and we're building 20 around the world. These centers give you a full body MRI, a brain, a brain vasculature, an AI-enabled coronary CT looking for soft plaque, DEXA scan, a GRAIL blood cancer test, a full executive blood workup. It's the most advanced workup you'll ever receive. 150 gigabytes of data that then go to our AIs and our physicians to find any disease at the very beginning, when it's solvable. You're going to find out eventually. Might as well find out when you can take action. Fountain Life also has an entire side of therapeutics. We look around the world for the most advanced therapeutics

• 31:47Peter Diamandis?

  that can add 10, 20 healthy years to your life and we provide them to you at our centers. So if this is of interest to you, please go and check it out. Go to fountainlife.com/peter. When Tony and I wrote our New York Times bestseller, Life Force, we had 30,000 people who reached out to us for Fountain Life memberships. If you go to fountainlife.com/peter, we'll put you to the top of the list. Really, it's something that is, for me, one of the most important things I offer my entire family, the CEOs of my companies, my friends. It's a chance to really add decades on to

• 32:29Peter Diamandis?

  our healthy lifespans. Go to fountainlife.com backslash Peter. It's one of the most important things I can offer to you as one of my listeners. All right, let's go back to our episode. So one of the things, you know, I used to come to China every year. I would take a group from my abundance community and we visit Beijing and Shenzhen and Shanghai and Hong Kong and it was incredible trip and I'd meet with the CEOs of all the top tech companies. And a huge respect for the entrepreneurs in China, right? And you've bridged both worlds, right? You born in the US, you're US citizen, you've worked in China.

• 33:06Speaker 03

  I was actually born in China, but I moved here when I was, yes, but I moved here when I was nine. So I, you know, I spent a lot of time in both countries.

• 33:14Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah. Do you have a dual citizenship or US?

• 33:16Speaker 03

  No, no, actually, I think China does not allow dual citizenship. I am a US citizen.

• 33:21Peter Diamandis?

  Okay.

• 33:22Speaker 03

  But I spent exactly half my life in the US and half my life in China.

• 33:26Peter Diamandis?

  You've bridged both worlds and what I've seen over the last three years is an increasing, you know, tension growing and especially in the realm of AI. And that can't be good for humanity. Can you speak a little bit about that? Because, you know, one of the things I'm going to bring to the abundance stage this coming year is, you know, I want to bring a balance to that conversation.

• 33:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. And unfortunately, I think that the rhetoric on both sides have just gotten very overheated. You know, over the last six months, I've actually seen a little bit of reconciliation. So it is a little bit better than it was a year ago. But I think it'll probably get worse before it gets better because of the elections. There's, you know, whenever there's an election, you have to create an external enemy. And

• 34:23Speaker 03

  The reality is that these two countries need each other. And these two countries right now are the the the leading drivers of growth and innovation in the world. And if they work together, we can solve so many problems, right? If you look at the AI side, there was a report that was recently published that showed

• 34:42Speaker 03

  fifty percent of the world's AI researchers were actually were born in China of the world's AI researchers. Thirty-seven percent of of the AI researchers in a top AI research, up twenty percent AI researchers in the US are actually from China and only thirty-seven percent are from the US. So actually more there are more Chinese born researchers in AI in the US than there are US born. So it's clear that these two countries are already working together. But we're because of, you know, I guess policies and governmental positioning, we're creating this artificial conflict.

• 35:23Speaker 03

  And we're, you know, I guess some is economically driven, some is politically driven. But, you know, it's actually made worse recently because of all of the the hardware restrictions, right? So not not only is, you know, is the the US talking about AI, you know, we we we we can't work together. But they're also saying you can't buy this equipment. You can't buy equipment not from US companies, but not also from other companies in the world that are supplying the semiconductor space or that are creating chips that are creating whatever. And that that, you know, essentially what that does is saying, okay, you need to create your your parallel technology stack. And we will become more and more bifurcated.

• 36:04Speaker 03

  And the the the the interdependence that we created that actually unites people becomes weaker and weaker. And I think that's the completely the the opposite thing that we need to do. Because when these two countries are both so smart, so powerful, so capable. And in economic perspectives, they're they're becoming more and more equal. If you create enemies out of each other, it won't end well, right? We've seen in history what happens when that, when, you know, two very strong countries are put into that type of adversarial relationship. So, so I really, I really hope the, the, you know, this is just, just a short-term issue because of the elections, that we'll go back to where we have been for the last twenty,

• 36:47Speaker 03

  thirty years, where there was a lot of cooperation and the growth, you know, there was more growth out of China over the last thirty years than, you know, essentially almost the rest of the world combined in terms of economic GDP growth.

• 36:59Peter Diamandis?

  You know, there's, there's a good analogy in the space industry back twenty years ago, this thing called ITAR, which was preventing US launch companies from sharing information or satellite companies from sharing information with Russian launchers or European launchers and so forth. And it created this divide and all it did was force non-US entities to build their own technology, since the US couldn't share it openly. I mean, it's not going to go away.

• 37:30Speaker 03

  You look at the space station, it's the same thing, right? You look at the International Space Station. Now China is actually have a more modern space station than, than the international one that's going to be coming decommissioned soon. And so, you know, in a few years, actually Chinese will, will be the only space station out in the, in, you know, in orbit. So, you know, these kind of prior policies that are very short-sighted, we really need to, to get out of that, that cycle. You know, we, we've had a lot of other technologies where we've done global cooperation, you know, like the CERN Super Collider, right? I mean, you know, every, every year, people are putting one or two billion dollars to, to put that together, keep it running so that the world can come out with, you know, kind of the, the particle physics and understand, better understand the universe.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  You know, same, same with all of these communication across these radio telescopes that are trying to understand what's going on, you know, to, to find the, the, the, the gravity waves. I, I mean, so there, there's just so much that we could do. We, we cooperated to, to solve the ozone problem, you know, the ozone hole issues. So, and, and, you know, it just, there, it's possible to do that. It's possible. But we're, we're, we're definitely not, not doing what we should be doing. And then this is why I, I said it's so important for people to read this book because. It's not just telling you kind of what's happened, but it also has a lot of specific recommendations in terms of what policymakers need to do,

• 38:57Speaker 03

  what AI and metaverse companies need to do, and actually also what students and young people need to do, so that we are prepared for what's coming and we try to bend that future towards the positive version of what could happen. Because as you know, the book is a debate. It's a debate between Lewis and I, and he plays the more pessimist of the world's, the bad things that can happen to the world. And I play the optimist. And the reason we did the two positions is that most books today are either one or the other. And most people will read one side and they're done with that topic and they won't think more. And by putting both perspectives into one book, we want to force you to think.

• 39:41Speaker 03

  We want to force you to see the arguments on both sides in a fair and just way and then come to your own conclusions. But so that's, I think Plato was one that said, "I can't teach anybody anything, but I can only make you think." And that's what we want to do. I think once people think, whatever conclusions that they come up with will be something that they hopefully will now take action on instead of just listen to and then put away.

• 40:07Peter Diamandis?

  Listen, you know I love how you think because it's how I think too. So we're on the same side. Let's talk a little bit more about AI, in particular decentralized, democratized AI versus sovereign or closed AI. Where do you think we're going? And given the near-term dangers, right? So I put AI into three categories. Today, it's amazingly useful. There's very little downside. It's incredible. I use it all the time, as do you. It's as my family. Long term, digital superintelligence, I think, is going to be one of the greatest gifts to humanity.

• 40:48Peter Diamandis?

  It's the interim, you know, one to five, one to eight year timeframe, where it's the dystopian use of AI by malevolent individuals that are most concerning. So how do you think about that? What would, if you had the ability to set policy to guide us through this period of time, what would you advise? What would you recommend?

• 41:11Speaker 03

  So I think there's actually a lot of confusion in terms of, because of the terms that you were talking about, you know, open source AI and decentralized AI and sovereign AI and so forth. And each one of these, there's multiple meanings. So let me kind of give you a quick summary so that we are kind of aligned on what we think we mean by them. When people talk about sovereign AI, what they're saying is every country has their own AI. Every country will be a US AI, a China AI, a Saudi Arabia AI, whatever. And each AI is based on your culture, your information, and your ethics and your, you know, your culture. And what that creates is actually the exact opposite of what the world needs.

• 41:53Speaker 03

  Because what that creates is essentially is 200 countries that see each other as enemies. Because you're different than me. And, you know, the world has always been about an in-group and an out-group. And if the AI is only trained on your perspective and it doesn't see other people's perspective, it will work for you. It will try to make the world better for you, but by doing so, probably make the world worse for everybody else. And so if we succeeded in creating 200 super AIs, that the world is in trouble. The other thing is by dividing our resources across 200 countries, we will probably never get to super AI because we're going to run out of compute and we're going to run out of energy and we're going to run out of data. Everybody today, you know, when I talk to a lot of researchers, they say, hey, It's it's hard to get data today.

• 42:39Speaker 03

  And, uh, you know, if I just had more compute, I could do so much more. And when, you know, I understand why, if you look at Jensen Huang is the one that is like super uh, pro sovereign AI, because of course he's gonna sell 200 versions of his chips to every single country in the world and every single lab in the world. So it's good for his chips and the good for his, his, you know, profit margins. But it's it's um, it's probably not the best thing we can do for society. Right? So so I think that that's one thing we can think about. The other thing is by combining our resources, we actually now, you know, I I'm sure you know about the scaling law, right? Essentially, the more compute you you give some AI systems, the more data you give some AI system, and the more parameters you give that AI system, it will become smarter.

• 43:23Speaker 03

  It's it's loss function. Essentially, the error from what you would expect would go down. And it's been consistent across, you know, several dozen orders of magnitude across all of these areas. So and and we don't see, we actually don't see a a change in that trend, at least for the foreseeable future. Otherwise, you wouldn't have, you know, companies out there, you know, trying to raise or you create 10 billion or 100 billion dollar uh, infrastructure, because they know that having 100 billion infrastructure is better than a 10 billion, is better than a one. And so what that means is that if we, instead of having 200 versions of something, let's create one version, one giant resource where all of the compute for for these type of capabilities are put in one place.

• 44:08Speaker 03

  All of the data of the world, let's put everybody's data together. Because um, the more data we have, the more complete view it will, the more likelihood it will take into the perspectives of other cultures, right? And I I was, you know, speaking in in Qatar about a month ago. And, you know, the the people in the Middle East said, you know, with all these AI systems, none of them take into our culture, our language. It's all trained on English, it's all trained on Western ideals. You know, when I ask it things, it doesn't tell it from my perspective. And I don't like that. Right? And so we we need to have them, instead of them hoarding their data and saying, I only want to be trained on my data. It should, they should put their data into a general pool. In fact, um, I don't know if you you heard the saying from um, uh, Friedrich Nietzsche. He said, uh,

• 44:53Speaker 03

  you have to be a sea to take an input from an impure stream and still stay pure.

• 45:01Speaker 03

  Right, so, so it means that you have to be big, you have to be, you know, you have to have all the information. And when you have all that information, then when some wrong thing comes in, it's okay. It, you, you will just, it would just meld into, meld into the, the whole system. Just like, you know, if I told you today that drinking bleach will, will help solve your, you know, your, your disinfectant, or your, will help solve your, uh, your COVID. You'll probably say, oh, that's not, you know, he's, he's just joking with me. But if you told that to a child, he may actually think that that's the real thing because he doesn't have that, that base of knowledge. And by hoarding information, we actually.

• 45:35Peter Diamandis?

  No one would ever say that. No one would ever say that.

• 45:37Speaker 03

  Oh, well, hypothetically, right? Um, so, but, you know, so, so that, that's the issue with, with sovereign AI, right? We, we, we are, we are reducing our computer, and we are reducing our data, and we are reducing our accuracy. The other thing is now there's open source AI, and then there's kind of closed, closed source AI. Now, that's really, uh, the idea is that, okay, you know, open, open source AI is saying, hey, if, if everybody has an AI system, then the good guys using the AI system will be able to beat the bad guys using the AI system.

• 46:11Speaker 03

  And that may be true if, if there was a, you know, a known attack vector and, you know, back in the, back in the day, when we had castles and we had people that seized castles, you know, castles, you probably need like two to three times the people, uh, inside the castle to attack them. So there was a, a, a, kind of, um.

• 46:29Peter Diamandis?

  Asymmetric, right?

• 46:30Speaker 03

  Whatever. It's a metric, it's a metric, uh, force to be able to overcome. But as, as you know, there's, there's very few castles that are working in the world today. Right? Because different tactics came and they said, okay, actually, the castle idea doesn't really work anymore. And particularly in cyber, um, it doesn't work. And, and we see today, you know, you can have one cyber attack, one attacker, some, some teenager somewhere in, let's say, Russia, can take down a whole network. And there was, you know, maybe hundreds of, of people that were trying to protect that network. And it doesn't, it's, it's not, you know, you cannot say, I, I have a, um, you know, a good guy with a gun and a bad guy with a gun, and, and they'll be even. I think that, that logic doesn't make sense because it's now flipped completely the other way.

• 47:14Speaker 03

  The asymmetric ratio is so much more in favor of the.

• 47:20Speaker 03

  Just like a terrorist, I just need one gun or one bomb and I can shut down the whole city. And so we, we, we really need to change that mindset. We just need to make sure that the, uh, the, the systems are smart enough so that that doesn't happen. Um, now the other thing is, uh, open source versus, so now there's centralized versus decentralized, right? In terms of, um, the problem with, with, um, if you, if you look at what the internet is built on today, there's, there's decentralized aspects, but a lot of the, the, the capabilities are actually built on centralized servers. And it's, you know, it's on server farms that are in, in, in data hubs and giant networks all over the world in specific places.

• 48:00Speaker 03

  To say that I'm going to, to run the entire internet off of everybody's laptop and everybody's phone and completely distribute it, it's actually not really viable. If you're doing, you know, the, the extraterrestrial search and you're not really worried about timing and you're just saying, okay, I just need some cycles, that is probably okay. But if you are saying, hey, I, I need to run a, a mission critical system and I'm, I, I don't know if that particular phone is going to work or, and the problem is when you're training these, these AI system, they all have to kind of come back around the same time. You know, it's, it's, it's not really that great in terms of, of, of a, a, um, this is why those people are building, you know, a hundred billion dollar data center because they want everything to be in one place

• 48:43Speaker 03

  so that all the training happens and, and every second, every microsecond or nanosecond matters because you have to do so many trillions and trillions of, of, of calculations. And when you try to distribute it across different devices, across different places in network, it's just, it's intractable um, to, to, to make that work, right? So, so I, I, I think, you know, it sounds good in principle. Why don't we just everybody distribute all the compute? And that way there, there's, there's no reliance on, on, you know, on the cloud systems, on the AWSs or Google Cloud. It's, it's actually, it's hard to do. And, and this is why if you look at the internet today, it's not.

• 49:19Peter Diamandis?

  Let me, let me just hit on, on two things. First of all, I think one of the things that's important, um, just to double click on is the importance of being able to. Preserve the cultures of every nation and make sure that the large language models are inclusive of all stories, history, untold recipes and so forth from every nation, right? So you're not, so that's one element. Now, where that becomes resident is it one super AI. I think we talked about decentralized, but for me, the, the real term is democratized. So every nation has access for its citizens.

• 49:59Peter Diamandis?

  It becomes a infrastructure, like, you know, a ubiquitous infrastructure, just like, you know, communications and just like internet and just like oxygen, right? Where it's available to everybody.

• 50:11Speaker 03

  So, so I, that I completely agree. I think democratization in terms of making it accessible to, to everybody, right? In fact, I think the only way it will be democratized is if you have a global effort to, to do it instead of national efforts. Because a national effort to do it means that I built it, this is mine, it's available to my people, but it's not available to your people. And, and likely the only two countries will win this is either China or the US because they are right now the most powerful and the richest place, maybe Europe, the European Union together as a group.

• 50:42Peter Diamandis?

  And don't forget the Middle East is going to invest heavily. You know, you're going to see Saudi and the Emirates investing.

• 50:48Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, they're, they're definitely investing a lot, but right now it's very difficult for them to get the talent and to get access to the data as much as, as, as, as, as available in, in these other three, three major regions. So, so I, I, I think if you really want this democratized, we need to take the same effort that we did, you know, with the, with, with these global programs. You know, we, we, we've had examples like the, the, the nuclear non-proiferation. Everybody in the world agreed, let's, let's, you know, let's not do these bad things. We had the. The the human genome, uh, you know, trials that we said, okay, let's not, let's not, you know, change the the human genome and and spread it out to the world, right?

• 51:28Speaker 03

  We we've had, we talked about the the uh, the ozone uh, uh, treaties and so forth. So so there are, there are lots of examples where where we've done and, you know, and that it's it's actually turned over.

• 51:43Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, let me, let me continue on AI for a little bit. Then we'll go back to the metaverse. I want to talk about um, Apple's Vision Pro. I want to talk about addiction in the metaverse because my kids are, if I left them alone, they'd be on Roblox twenty-four seven. I think instead of food or sleep, it's video game playing. But before that, you know, this year at TED, uh, Mustafa Suleyman, who will be on my stage next year, uh, at Abundance, at the Abundance Summit, and he's now, I guess, head of AI at uh, at in Microsoft, um, you know, suggests that we don't allow recursive improvement. We don't allow AI to program AI.

• 52:22Peter Diamandis?

  What are your thoughts about that?

• 52:23Speaker 03

  Honestly, I think um, the only way for us to get to ASI is to allow AI to program AI, right?

• 52:30Peter Diamandis?

  ASI is artificial superintelligence.

• 52:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. And and you know, what we really need to get to is to get to ASI because if we are at a an immature baby AGI level, that's when bad things happen. That's when you have a superpower, but you have an immature understanding and ethics and consciousness. If you have the ability to to have, uh, yes, if you have a toddler with a gun, it's a thing, right? And and that's, that's what's kind of very powerful, but not complete trained systems are. And and when it gets into the hands of these bad actors that you were talking about, things will happen. So we we need to get as quickly as possible to ASI versus as quickly as possible to that toddler with a gun.

• 53:17Speaker 03

  And the only way to do that is to have it be self recursive in terms of training. Why are humans able to have done what we have, even though our brains have not changed in a hundred thousand years? Actually, it's gotten a little bit smaller, right? It's because we are recursively teaching each other. We are, every generation teaches the prior next generation. And we learn and accumulate. We're able to adjust how we work and how we do things. And if we allow these AI systems to do the same thing, which is, which is already happening, actually. And honestly, it's not something you can see. Because even, you know, recently, there was the Devon, I don't know if you saw that, the, you know, the kind of Devon announcement, which is an AI engineer that's, you know, made of AI.

• 54:01Speaker 03

  And he can go in and change his own systems. There was some controversy in terms of how real those demos were. But I think a lot of people do agree that it didn't perform exactly what they had promised. But it is actually significantly better than what was possible with G P T four. So like ten X back. Now, so, you know, just imagine in a few years or with, or within a few months, probably when G P T five comes out, it will probably have the capability to do a lot of those things. And when you do that, you are able to then progress at a very different rate. And we need to get to that rate to be able to get the breakthroughs that we're looking for. You know, humans work on, you know, probably about two to three hours a day of quality work.

• 54:44Speaker 03

  Right? And our brains, our signals to our brain is about a hundred meters per second. You know, these machines are going to work twenty four seven. And they are, you know, traveling at the speed of light. Their signals are traveling at the speed of light. And you've got, you know, hundred thousand of them on, in one data set. So, so it's just, we cannot be, we cannot limit this with our capabilities. We should allow this to happen. Now, we do need to be careful because if we allow it to happen, we need to allow it to happen. This is why it's actually important to have a metaverse ecosystem. Because if we trained it and then we kind of, let's, let's test it out on a mini matrix universe for AI. Right? In the movie Matrix, they're putting humans into a matrix in a simulation.

• 55:30Speaker 03

  To allow them, you know, to to kind of live this world and see what happens. What we should be doing is to create a metaverse system and allow these AI to go in there. And then they can run at, you know, at, you know, ten X or a million X speed. And we'll see, okay, well, is this a dangerous AI or not? Is this an AI that's going to kill us? Is this an AI that's going to misunderstand us? And we put it in there so that it can play out its timing, right? Because one of the things that people are afraid of is that, you know, there's now this this fear that people say, you know, in twenty twenty four, nothing bad happens. But this super AI in twenty twenty five starts to destroy the world, right? But let's just put it into this this world and run it through the next million years and see what does it do, right?

• 56:11Speaker 03

  And and see if it see if it becomes an evil or a benign or a compassionate AI. And I think I think though, you know, so so we we should let that happen. But we should have it in a controlled manner. And we shouldn't let it happen in a globally collaborative manner. Because we need to do what you said. We need to make sure that everybody's culture and language and history are all represented. And by knowing everything, it will then take into everybody's perspectives into account to give you the guidance that that we need as a species. Because our leaders today are probably not doing that.

• 56:46Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, no, I I would, I do believe I would that humanity have a higher probability of successful survival under a benign digital superintelligence than under human, uh, human leadership. You know, uh, there's a great analogy that Mo Gaddat from his book Scary Smart uses, which is that Superman, right? Which is that, you know, Superman landed in Kansas, was brought up by a a God-loving, you know, respectful family and became Superman. But if he had landed in a drug den, he'd become a supervillain. And so how we train our AI, how we raise our AI, and AI are our progeny. They are, they are our derivatives of of humanity really matters.

• 57:31Peter Diamandis?

  And I do love the idea of building a simulation. I mean, I I believe that we're living in a simulation. So it'd be a simulation within the simulation. But that's another another conversation where we put these AIs and see how they play out. And we've done this a little bit. There have been a few times where Facebook, um, back then and and Google have created AIs that have gone divergent. Um, in, uh, in their behavior. Uh, one of the things I'm, I'm interested in is does, is a, does, uh, an abundance mindset, does a loving, caring, um, you know,

• 58:14Peter Diamandis?

  benevolent mindset scale with intelligence? I believe the answer is yes. I hope the answer is yes.

• 58:21Speaker 03

  Um, actually, there, there's been research. In fact, one of the papers in there showed that, um, the more information that it had, the more benevolent the, the personality of the AI was. Uh, even if it's underlined of unrefined, not fine tune version, that we found that that was the case. So, and, and I, I think we, we see that in, in our daily lives, right? That, that the most compassionate people I know are the most informed, most educated. And the, the, the, you know, probably the elder generation, because they've seen everything. And then they've seen the bad things that can happen when, when you do bad things and when, when other people do things. And so we, we can learn from that. In fact, um, I don't know if you remember one of the chapters.

• 59:05Speaker 03

  I, I actually read the biographies of the, the kind of most respected leaders of last hundred years and the most despised leaders of the last hundred years. And the, the key, the key difference between the two was in military service. They, they, you know, sixty, uh, hundred percent of the, of the, uh, of the kind of authoritative leaders were military background. But sixty percent of the most respected ones also had military background. The thing that separated them was the amount of education they had. And then even more so, the amount of, uh, interest and lifelong learning. So that they broadened out their, their, their understanding. And those are the ones that had the, you know, the, the, the, the longest, uh, I guess, track record of success.

• 59:49Speaker 03

  And, and people just saw them as, you know, these are really great examples. And you know, we can, we can share a slide of that because I think it's very clear. You know, the, the Hitlers and the Stalin and the Popots, they either left school early or they kicked out of school or they, they, you know, didn't get their education or, you know, just all of these issues that were consistent with just, you know, they, they may not have been bad people if they actually had a fuller education because they're, they're clearly smart people because if they weren't smart.

• 1:00:15Peter Diamandis?

  That's one of the most important points for me because people shouldn't, you know, the hope is that with intelligence comes tremendous wisdom, right? When you ask why is someone wise? They're wise as an elder because they've seen a lot of stuff. And I imagine that a digital superintelligence is going to be able to run a billion simulations and say, these, these directions, not so good. These directions, okay, this is where we should go and, and then guide us that way.

• 1:00:46Speaker 03

  Well, that, that's kind of what we were saying earlier that, you know, once you get to the ASI, A I S I level, then when somebody, when a, a bad actor says, hey, I want you to make me a bomb or I want you to make me a supervirus, it was saying, you know what? That's probably not a good idea. I'm not going to do it. But if they were that, that teenager who just listened to everybody and just tried to be helpful, then we're going to, we're in trouble, you know? So, um, as you know, there, there's the saying that, uh, you know, power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely. I, I think the opposite is also true with knowledge because knowledge enlightens and absolute knowledge enlightens absolutely. And I, if, if, if we think that that's really the case, we need to make it as knowledgeable

• 1:01:26Speaker 03

  as possible because I, I don't know, you know, any knowledgeable people that are, you know, corrupt, super corrupt. I, I, I mean, it, it's just, you know, people who, who, who understand, who've been through things, they, they have a, a much more complete perspective.

• 1:01:42Peter Diamandis?

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• 1:02:25Peter Diamandis?

  critical health guidance, like what foods you should eat, what foods you shouldn't eat, as well as your supplements and probiotics, your biological age, and other deep health insights. And the results of the recommendations are nothing short of stellar. As reported in the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine, after just six months of following Viome's recommendations, members reported the following: a 36% reduction in depression, a 40% reduction in anxiety, a 30% reduction in diabetes, and a 48% reduction in IBS. Listen, I've been using Viome for three years. I know that my oral and gut health is one of my highest priorities.

• 1:03:05Peter Diamandis?

  Best of all, Viome is affordable, which is part of my mission to democratize health. If you want to join me on this journey, go to viome.com/peter. I've asked Naveen Jain, a friend of mine, who's the founder and CEO of Viome, to give my listeners a special discount. You'll find it at viome.com/peter. You know, I was talking to Elon recently about XAI, and his mission is to create an AI that is maximally curious and truth-seeking. And I like that a lot. Elon also has...

• 1:03:43Peter Diamandis?

  Said if we can't beat them, join them. And how about if we merge with AI, right? So Neuralink is going to connect my neurocortex to the cloud. You know, Ray Kurzweil, we also know, has predicted high bandwidth, you know, BCI by 2033 or thereabouts. What do you think about this idea of connecting with this, you know, ASI?

• 1:04:07Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so, you know, as part of my work, I've actually invested in multiple BCI companies. And I have to say, we are really in a very early stage with BCI. And I know also have friends who are in Neuralink and know what they've been doing. And, and we, you know, if you look at what they've recently released, and it looks really cool. You have a guy who's playing video games with a chip in his. But essentially, that capability was in the Utah Ray 15 years ago. People had that capability. And it's, you know, essentially connecting to the motor cortex and it's, you know, a few dozens of, of, of, of links of little, you know, I guess, little wires that are taking the signal.

• 1:04:51Speaker 03

  But, but it is not really knowing your thinking. It is able to see what you want to move. For, for us to do a full brain uploading or downloading, we essentially need, you know, 80 billion of those things. And, you know, from a few hundred to tens of billions. Where, where, you know, it just, it's, I don't see it as being feasible anytime soon. And I don't think it's a 2033, maybe it's a 2333.

• 1:05:21Speaker 03

  But, you know, and maybe with ASI, it's different. But once we get to ASI, then everything is off, right?

• 1:05:26Peter Diamandis?

  I think, I think that's, that's the point, right? Everything becomes possible when you've got, you know, digital superintelligence doing the design work for you, including, including, you know, longevity escape velocity. But one of the things that is driving.

• 1:05:39Speaker 03

  I guess, I guess, one thing, though, to that point is, I don't know if that should be our goal. Because I feel like people think that, okay, now you have this AI. We need to, we need to be as smart as this AI. Just like right now, nobody's going out and saying, I'm running faster than a car. Or I'm jumping higher than some machine. It just, you accept that, hey, you know, I have limitations to my body. And you know what? It's probably okay that it is smarter than us. And it's probably okay that, you know, these machines can do things faster than us. So just like, you know, we came from a lot of other species. There are, you know, bacterias and frogs and fish and birds. And they're all fine. And they're not out there trying to say, I want to be a human.

• 1:06:22Speaker 03

  And, you know, I want to be the, the, the, the super bird who's going to be faster than, or smarter than a human. They're not trying to do that. And I feel like, you know, I don't know if we need to say that we have to be smart or smarter than a data center of the fastest, latest ships. I just, you know, our, our machines are constrained in terms of this is a hundred thousand euro meat machine that won't be changing that much. Why, why do we need to try to compete?

• 1:06:51Peter Diamandis?

  Well, you know, listen, I am, I am all for BCI. If I can think in Google, if I can occupy the, the, a humanoid robot and be able to physically instantiate myself someplace else. I'm also open to, you know, a digital upload. I mean, those are all things that I think are expansive of humanity. And we are undergoing a rapid evolution of what it means to be human. And, and society will change as well. So I don't think you're saying you're against it, you're just not saying it's not necessary. Is that true?

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, I'm saying it's not necessary in terms of making that a real goal. Because if that's the short term goal, then people are saying, you know, we're going to put a lot of resources to make that happen. I would rather we focus on, you know, even if these machines are better than us, we are still going to have the human side of it. We, you know, what will be more important to us later is not about how much money we have. It's going to be about our family, our friends, our community, our relationship with each other. And, you know, and being, having a fulfilling life. And having fulfilling life doesn't necessarily-

• 1:08:08Peter Diamandis?

  Let's talk about happiness. Let's talk about human happiness, because that is, you know, ultimately, when you ask people like, what do you want? And then you go further, say, what do you, what do you really want? What is it? I want to be healthy, I want to be happy. And so you've thought about happiness, talk about that for a second.

• 1:08:25Speaker 03

  Yeah, so, so one of the last chapters is kind of, you know, will achieving this bring us happiness? And the research is actually pretty clear. You know, at least in terms of what brings us happiness is, you know, the freedom to choose what we do, having close family relationships, you know, having some kind of purpose in your life. And then, you know, having at least your basic capabilities and your needs taken care of, right? And so, you know, in fact, and one, I think even in your abundance book you talked about, at a certain income level, it doesn't bring you actually extra happiness. In fact, if anything, the, the, once you get past a certain level, it actually goes negative, you start getting more stressed from having more money.

• 1:09:11Speaker 03

  So what, I think what we need to think about is, how do we bring those kind of qualities to more of the world? Right? If you look at the current chart of in terms of income to happiness level, it's a pretty relatively linear chart. In terms of, you know, the higher income groups do have a higher happiness or satisfaction level, right? But then there are also, the strange thing is there are also some relatively lower income groups that are happy as the higher income level. So, so even there's a trend, it is not, it is not on a line. So what what it and what we also found out is that with the uh when I was doing my research

• 1:09:55Speaker 03

  in terms of of different, you know, uh, levels of income in the in the U S is it used to be seventy five thousand now it's I think a hundred and fifty thousand, something like that. But in in other places in the world, in in China, it's probably like twenty or thirty thousand and in Africa, it's like five to eight thousand, you know, so it it's actually not a fixed number. It's not a fixed point that everybody's gonna be super happy. It is actually just about how how am I compared to my neighbors? If I'm relatively good compared to my neighbors, then I'm I'm actually happy and I don't need I don't need more more income, right? What we do see is actually the amount of energy you use is is is something that actually is is is highly related to to your happiness. So the the the more successful you are, the the more developed you are, the more

• 1:10:36Speaker 03

  energy you're using. But that also uh levels out. But if you look at the last twenty years, there's actually been a downtrend of how much energy every major developed country has been using per person per year, right? So I think it topped out in probably like nineteen ninety and since then, it's been dropping every pretty much every year consistently. So it it shows that having more doesn't really doesn't really satisfy you. It's really about having enough. And that actually creates a more more sustainable world. We don't need to get everybody to the U S level. We actually probably get it to the the the European levels, like about half of the U S level in terms of of per capita energy use, right? If we get it to that level, that's only about, you know, I think

• 1:11:19Speaker 03

  about have uh one to two X more than Southeast Asia and probably two or three X more than than Africa. So if we can increase energy abundance by two to three X, we essentially get everybody to kind of the European lifestyle. And I actually think that European lifestyle is probably more from a happiness perspective. They are much happier than the Americans who are using more energy, have more per capita income, but they're they're they're less happy. Okay, so so this is this is what um I I think we will we will be able to do when we have AI. Uh offloading a lot of our work, we will have time to go learn music and learn learn languages and go travel. And go kind of enhance ourselves.

• 1:12:02Speaker 03

  And when we have that freedom, we will be happier and we will also be more knowledgeable. And by being one more knowledgeable, we will probably be more understanding and more compassionate. Which, you know, it's like a reinforcing positive loop that just makes the world a better place.

• 1:12:16Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, agreed. Yeah, I'd be remiss if we didn't talk about abundance, uh since I wrote a a a small passage in the uh in the book on the subject.

• 1:12:23Speaker 03

  Thank you for your contribution, uh and the important important contribution.

• 1:12:28Peter Diamandis?

  Well, uh and and you talk about uh abundant abundancism as a uh a term and. And just for people to get a sense of where the metaverse will enable abundance. Where which for me is um accessibility to anyone everywhere at the highest possible levels. And I I use the example that Google and Baidu, right, as search engines, Google in the United States and Baidu in China. Provided equal access to knowledge, um independent of economic level, right? The Google for the poorest child and Google for the wealthiest child was the same.

• 1:13:10Peter Diamandis?

  Can we list where we're going to see abundance coming from the metaverse?

• 1:13:12Speaker 03

  Yeah, so if you if you look at what's happening with um metaverses, actually it is able to. Supercharge our senses, right? You have AI supercharged our our minds. You have, you know, genetic engineering will supercharge our bodies. But metaverse and immersive technologies supercharges our senses. And when you supercharge our senses, it allows us to experience anything we want and anywhere. So not only are we able to to learn more, we're able to also travel back in time. We're also able to to, you know, become different size. We can be the size of a of a planet or be the size of of a a micro. And if you look at in terms of abundance.

• 1:13:53Speaker 03

  What what does today's billionaires, what can they do that the today's average person can't do? It's about experience, right? It's about experience. And and when you have a a lifelike immersive world that you can go into, anybody can have any experience they want. So there there's nothing lacking. And when when when you have that, then you essentially have kind of a de facto equalization of of fulfillment, of life fulfillment. Because, you know, if if I wanted to travel to, you know, Egypt, or if I want to go go uh To Mars, to the moon. There's there's not a not very many people, or to the moon. How many people there? Three hundred people has has left the orbit, you know, since the the invention of of of or since the start of time.

• 1:14:38Speaker 03

  Right? Now, anybody can put on the headset and be in space and go to the moon and go to the Mars. And and at some point, when we have our our AI agents out there traveling the the rest of the of the galaxy, we can be in this headset, traveling with them. In fact, that's one of the one of the the final epilogue. It is kind of that that story, right? So um I I I think that that's the sense of abundance in that because nothing is limited when you're talking about a virtual world, right? Everything that we we we think of today as a constrained resource becomes completely abundant. And and knowledge is also the thing that I really think becomes super abundant because

• 1:15:18Speaker 03

  you are able to to just learn so much more and everybody can become the best version of themselves. And I I think that that's all we need to be, that's all we need to ask for. I don't think we need to be, we don't need to know as much as, you know, G P T seven. But I think we we need to be able to say that, hey, I I've learned as much as I can. You know, I I try to read something like eighty to a hundred books a year, and that's my most fulfilling thing. Every time I finish a book, I'm like, oh, I learned something new. And that that made me. More complete person. And so I can see by, you know, Elon is saying the making curiosity, the reward function. Because if that's a reward function, that's a very positive reward function.

• 1:15:59Speaker 03

  And, and you know, nobody's going to say, I'll be curious and because of that, I'm going to make a bunch of paper clips. But that's, that's not, those are not a lie, right? If you're curious, you actually want to have as much diversity of life as possible. You want to have as much diversity of experience as possible. So you want to preserve a, a, a very diverse ecosystem of, of humans, of animals, of, of all kinds of animal, of, of beings in the world. Right? And so that actually is very kind of pro-human. Uh, when, when you have that type of a, uh, of a reward function versus things like, uh, maximize, uh, you know, compute or, or maximize production or something. So, so I, I, I think, I think we're, we're, we're, we, we should be able to get them.

• 1:16:42Peter Diamandis?

  Let's, let's talk to the teenagers listening, uh, the young adults listening and to the parents listening. And I want to drive into two questions here as we, as we close out. What's your advice for young people in school right now? And then the second thing is, you know, I, what's your advice to me? I have two 12-year-olds who are love, love their metaverse. And for them, it's Roblox and, uh, other equivalent gaming worlds. You know, how much China limits use of, of computers and games, uh, significantly? Should the US be doing the same thing? Uh, you know, your kids are grown. What, what's your advice to me?

• 1:17:26Peter Diamandis?

  So let's, let's address both of those, uh, items.

• 1:17:29Speaker 03

  So, so, um, we actually have a, a one section at the end of the book, which is a tips for young people. Um, and you know, I, I advise everybody to, to read. I'll actually make, I'll make those pages available to everybody. So you don't have to buy the book to, to see it. Um, but I think the key is, is really.

• 1:17:46Speaker 03

  You know, most parents today are saying, hey, I want them to learn STEM. I want them to be super great students and make lots of money. I think that's, um, that's probably not the best advice for long term for these, for these young people. I think we need to, we need to help them find their purpose. Like, like Picasso's, I think you're gonna find your gift, whatever your gift is. And it may not be in, in, you know, programming, and it may not be in, you know, science. It could be in music, it could be in poetry, it could be in, in history. So I, I think giving a broader, um, curriculum to your young children is actually a really good thing. In fact, you know, also mu- music and, and, um, arts opens up different types of, of connection in their brain

• 1:18:30Speaker 03

  than, than just, you know, uh, doing STEM work. So, so I think that, that, that's important. So having them find that, that, that really real purpose and passion that they have, and then having them go deep in it. Because I think one of the things I see with young people today is that they, they tend to have very short attention spans. And, you know, and probably because of all of the Instagram and TikTok culture, everybody's like, you know, they just want everything fast in one minute or five seconds. I want to know what's going on. And to really understand something, you have to read, you have to read old books. You have to really, you know, watch these two or three hour podcasts and, and, and understand the, the, the, the real connections and reasoning behind it. And we really need to get people to get away from just getting the quick answer

• 1:19:14Speaker 03

  and to think about, how do I, what questions can I ask? And I, I remember hearing you say that a lot. It's like, the important thing is to get your kids to, to ask the right questions. And I cannot agree more with that. Because if they're asking the right questions, it means they're thinking. It means that they're, they are questioning themselves of, of what do I need to learn more about this? And when, when, when you have an AI system that can answer anything, knowing what to ask is a lot more important than getting the answers. And, and I, I actually find myself right now with AI, uh, systems. I'm just, I'm just trying to find, I understand the topic and, and something that I may not, you know, I would hear a word somewhere or, or a topic somewhere and I want to know deeper. And I would just, you know, pretend that I'm a five

• 1:19:55Speaker 03

  Zero kid and just keep asking questions and honestly in in the half an hour it can become you know fairly knowledgeable on the topic that I had very little understanding for and I I think we need we need that kind of curiosity because most education today teaches us to go for the quick answer and and and to be afraid to ask questions because asking questions a lot of people think is is showing you don't know something but the reality is that we don't know a lot of things and we just need to accept

• 1:20:23Speaker 03

  playing with these tools and and I think we we just gotta go out and and use them because you when you don't understand you're afraid of if you start using it you're going to to see the value of where it applies and you know today they are tools in in another you know five to 10 years they're gonna be our patrons they're going to be the ones that helps to offload us and and give us the freedom to do all those things that we wish we had time to do and then in you know 10 30 30 years it's gonna be our progeny so we we we need to see it grow up and be able to to to also guide it along the way I I think it's allowing it to to just say okay I don't need to think about it somebody will take care of it

• 1:21:08Speaker 03

  I think that's that's something that uh will will not end in the way that we want we we need to be an active part of the

• 1:21:15Peter Diamandis?

  To parents of young kids should parents be limiting the amount of time kids are playing video games or is that training them for the future that's coming our way?

• 1:21:25Speaker 03

  Honestly, I I think

• 1:21:28Speaker 03

  limiting is is probably the right thing because most games today are designed to be addictive they they they provide maybe in some cases they provide some value but in in most cases they they only provide the value uh for a very short term if you if you if I play the game for let's say an hour or two to understand what it is which I do sometimes because I need to understand what's out in the market but I'm not gonna go spend fifty hundred hours on something because there's the the additional value that I would gain from it is very limited. So in in some ways, I actually agree with what China is doing in terms of saying, you know, each child three hours a week and, uh, you know, limit that. Um, and and, you know, I think they should probably, we should probably do that with social networks too, because there's a lot of these social networks, uh, especially the ones that are maybe less meaningful.

• 1:22:13Speaker 03

  Uh, I think we we we may want to also limit how much time we, uh, our children spend on it. Just like we used to say, hey, you know, don't, don't watch more than an hour or two of TV or don't can't watch TV after a certain time, right? I I I think we we we should take that same same, um, perspective with with gaming. Um, oh, uh, one thing I do want to talk about is I think we we really have undersowed the value of soft skills. Right now that now that the the hard and stem skills are essentially a given, we need to make sure that our kids spend more time learning philosophy and psychology and communication and history and, you know, how to lead. Because those are the things that will actually separate

• 1:22:55Speaker 03

  how they will, um, be integrated into this future world. Uh, and it because in the future, the the most, the most important thing is how we will interact with each other. And that's all about the soft skills.

• 1:23:08Peter Diamandis?

  Um, I I agree.

• 1:23:09Speaker 03

  We, yeah.

• 1:23:11Peter Diamandis?

  Yeah, debate, leadership, compassion, the ability to lead somebody, to convince them to support a vision, right? To provide a compelling, uh, story for folks, you know.

• 1:23:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, and and also to to to allow us to to to ask the question, why? Right? Because before people saw about how, how do you do this? How do you do that? But now it's now that we know we can do almost anything, or soon we will be able to do almost anything. Is why should we do it? Right? Should we do this? And and having the the ethical guidelines to to to go along with it. And who does it affect when I do these things? I think that that that's, um, an important part that we we, uh, we miss a lot. Um, another thing I think is important is actually spending time on health and fitness. A lot of people, uh, especially in Asia, you know, they they don't put their kids into into sports classes. There's like, it's a waste of time. I just want them to to focus on school.

• 1:24:04Speaker 03

  And, um, I I think, you know, that the US and probably Australia, whatever, is probably a little bit better in that. But I think that's something that we should, we should get people into sports because sports allows, especially team sports, allows you to to have the.

• 1:24:18Speaker 03

  The trials and tribulations of success and failure. And the concept of teamwork. And how do you work with a large group? How do you lead groups? How do you follow? You know, and what happens when things don't work out? And it's okay when things don't work. And what happens when you work really hard? And you really, the difference of, of you're training a lot versus training a little. Um, the other thing we don't do enough is sleep. I think, you know, I used to pride myself, I only sleep four or five hours.

• 1:24:45Peter Diamandis?

  You and I both.

• 1:24:45Speaker 03

  I can get so much more.

• 1:24:46Peter Diamandis?

  I'll sleep when I'm dead.

• 1:24:48Speaker 03

  Yeah, and, and I, I honestly, um, these days, I, I, I think by sleeping more, your brain just works so much better. And, and young people will be the same. When, when they sleep is when they remember and, and turn that short-term memory into the long-term memory. And too many parents don't, don't prioritize sleep for their, for their children. And I think that's, that's critical. So, and then lastly, for, for young people, you need to think about finding mentors. And also spending more time with your parents. Because time goes so quickly. And, you know, I lost my dad last year and I, I just, I wish I had spent more time with him. And, um, you know, and, and you don't realize it until, until it's, it's, it's too late.

• 1:25:31Speaker 03

  And, you know, also my, my, my children have grown up like instantly and I was, you know, traveling between China and US. And I felt like I didn't get to see them enough. Uh, as they were growing up, you know, that's probably one of my, my biggest regrets. And so, so I feel like young people, while they have a chance to spend time with their parents, do it. Because as the older you get, the less time you will spend with them. And you will wish you had spent more and you will learn things from them. Because they are one of the few people in the world that, that, you know, essentially is, is, um, just, the, the, it's un. Uh, I guess it's, it's the unconditional love, right? That, that the true unconditional love is a parent's love for their child. And to to have that, they will give you advice that they think is really helpful for you.

• 1:26:16Speaker 03

  So so spend more time listening to your to your parents.

• 1:26:19Peter Diamandis?

  I'm gonna go hug my kid. I'm gonna go hug my kids right now as soon as I get back from school. Alvin Graylin, the author of Our Next Reality. How AI Powered Metaverse Will Reshape the World. Get the book. It's on Kindle. It's hardcover. I consumed it on Audible. Alvin, you're an amazing friend and visionary. I'm grateful to have you in my life. And thank you for joining us today on Moon Shots.

• 1:26:48Speaker 03

  Well, thank you, Peter. You've been a real mentor. You know, I was talking about mentors. And I see you as a mentor and I listen to all of your shows and I learn something from every show. So it is my honor and privilege to speak to you today.

• 1:27:02Peter Diamandis?

  Fantastic. Where do folks follow you on Twitter or other platforms?

• 1:27:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, so Twitter is A Graylin and then on LinkedIn is Alvin Graylin. So pretty easy. And then also you can go to ournextreality.com and find out more information about the book. Oh, and actually, there's one thing I do want to mention is we created a custom GPT for the book that you can ask any questions in and it uses all of the content from just the book to answer you. So hopefully that that will, you know, give you a preview of any, you know, concerns that you have.

• 1:27:33Peter Diamandis?

  And that's on that's on ournextreality.com is where you find the GPT?

• 1:27:38Speaker 03

  Or actually, you there's a link to it, but it goes to the custom GPT of OpenAI's ChatGPT.

• 1:27:46Peter Diamandis?

  Wonderful. Thank you, my friend. Talk to you soon.

• 1:27:51Speaker 03

  Thank you, sir.

• 1:28:02Speaker 04

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