Max Tegmark wants to bring everyone from Bernie Sanders to Steve Bannon together to prevent AI annihilation.
A theoretical physicist, he spent his life studying the universe.
A decade ago, he found a new cause.
I think if we create the right incentives, then the free market will really do the rest.
He has since become a statesman of the AI safety movement, proselytizing to everyone from presidents to the Pope.
Is he winning the argument?
Max, thank you for joining us.
Thank you.
So, you are a physicist.
Most of your career was the cosmology of the universe.
And then you shifted your focus to AI.
Why?
Actually, ever since I was a teenager lying in this hammock
I put up between two apple trees in my parents' backyard,
I remember being fascinated by big questions, the bigger the better.
And I remember then thinking that the two biggest questions of all
were our universe out there and our universe in here.
You know, intelligence, consciousness.
So maybe it was prophetic that I ended up spending
first quarter century of my career on that external universe