Yeah,

so, you know, obviously Anthropic rolling out this idea of something that feels UBI-ish, and it's probably not going to be the only offer on the table.

Interesting to see a corporation or a company do this instead of a government, which shakes up probably some of the preexisting kind of ideological stances on UBI.

There is some evidence that people actually like doing jobs, so there's that.

But I've been spending a lot of time on sci-fi, sort of marinating in that world for my latest piece in Frontier, and then for our friends over at FAI.

And if Peter Thiel has sort of the definite optimist versus definite pessimist, kind of indefinite optimism schema.

The schema that sort of emerged for me after going through a bunch of sci-fi is like, you know, usually dystopia is associated with pessimism and utopia is associated with optimism.

So which do you think are better than others?

How should Americans then do that? Would it just be trained chatbots on the right on the speeches of George Washington? What, what would that, what would that involve exactly?

Well, it's a little trickier for us because, you know, we do have the Bill of Rights, and sometimes I feel like the Bill of Rights is kind of the last scrap of the founding regime that still commands like an out-and-out majority instinctual appreciation and loyalty to.

Even the Declaration, you know, I think you kinda ask people to talk about the Declaration, and they might get out a line or two and then go, "I don't know, it was a long time ago." So you look at the Bill of Rights, uh, obviously the big amendments, First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, these are things that would have to apply, would have to still retain their force despite the rise of digital technology in order for America to remain recognizably American in a digital age.

That's kinda like the minimum bar that you would have to clear.

And if you go down that road, you would say, okay, so, you know, Fourth Amendment, those are some basic protections on, you know, due process, no unreasonable searches and seizures.

And you immediately start hitting up against things which are like, well, you know, okay, I mean, maybe the flock cameras do prevent crime, and maybe if you're in a Waymo, your odds of like mowing down some poor pedestrian like sinks a little bit.

And in the aggregate that becomes like, oh, you know, we hypothetically saved hundreds of thousands of lives.

Can you lay out for me those camps of different people who are now each trying to outrace each other and each trying to come up with some kind of ideological or pseudo-theological framework to deal with accelerating AI and everything else?

imagineering visionaries of the 20th century in the US.

If you can dream it, you can do it.

Just do it.

Imagine all the people.

It's a long list.

And the ethos was one of if you can dream it, and if you can dream it better and bigger than anyone else, then you deserve to be in charge.

You deserve to shape the everyday life in which we all, ultimately, the entire world, lose.

Could you tell me a bit about that as an example, if you don't mind, of course?

How should Americans then do that? Would it just be trained chatbots on the right on the speeches of George Washington? What, what would that, what would that involve exactly?

Well, it's a little trickier for us because, you know, we do have the Bill of Rights, and sometimes I feel like the Bill of Rights is kind of the last scrap of the founding regime that still commands like an out-and-out majority instinctual appreciation and loyalty to.

Even the Declaration, you know, I think you kinda ask people to talk about the Declaration, and they might get out a line or two and then go, "I don't know.

It was a long time ago." So you look at the Bill of Rights, uh, obviously the big amendments, First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Tenth Amendment.

These are things that would have to apply, would have to still retain their force despite the rise of digital technology in order for America to remain recognizably American in a digital age.

That's kinda like the minimum bar that you would have to clear.

And if you go down that road, you would say, okay, so, you know, Fourth Amendment, those are some basic protections on, you know, due process, no unreasonable searches and seizures.

Can you lay out for me those camps of different people who are now each trying to outrace each other and each trying to come up with some kind of ideological or pseudo-theological framework to deal with accelerating AI and everything else?

How should Americans then do that? Would it just be trained chatbots on the right on the speeches of George Washington? What, what would that, what would that involve exactly?

Well, it's a little trickier for us because, you know, we do have the Bill of Rights, and sometimes I feel like the Bill of Rights is kind of the last scrap of the founding regime that still commands like an out-and-out majority instinctual appreciation and loyalty to.

Even the Declaration, you know, I think you kinda ask people to talk about the Declaration, and they might get out a line or two and then go, "I don't know.

It was a long time ago." So you look at the Bill of Rights, uh, obviously the big amendments, First Amendment, Second Amendment, Fourth Amendment, Tenth Amendment, these are things that would have to apply, would have to still retain their force despite the rise of digital technology in order for America to remain recognizably American in a digital age.

That's kinda like the minimum bar that you would have to clear.

And if you go down that road, you would say, okay, so, you know, Fourth Amendment, those are some basic protections on, you know, due process, no unreasonable searches and seizures.

And you immediately start hitting up against things which are like, well, you know, okay, I mean, maybe the flock cameras do prevent crime, and maybe if you're in a Waymo, your odds of like mowing down some poor pedestrian like sinks a little bit.

Can you lay out for me those camps of different people who are now each trying to outrace each other and each trying to come up with some kind of ideological or pseudo-theological framework to deal with accelerating AI and everything else?

Could you please tell me how your study of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America led you to start thinking about digital technology and its impact on us now?

Sure.

This is a guy who viewed and analyzed democratic life as fundamentally a social and even a spiritual condition, even more than it might be an economic or political condition.

He talks about the equality of conditions, but he didn't spend a ton of time talking about money, although he touched on it a bit.

He really spoke of it in terms of social psychology.

So when he tried to make a recommendation about giving people lots of room to roam in their economic life, lots of freedom.

You want to go out there and accumulate money, you want to be acquisitive, go right ahead.

Could you tell me a bit about that as an example, if you don't mind, of course?

If you can dream it, you

can do it.

Just do it.

Imagine all the people.

It's a long list.

And the ethos was one of if you can dream it, and if you can dream it better and bigger than anyone else, then you deserve to be in charge.

You deserve to shape the everyday life in which we all, ultimately, the entire world, lose.

a lot of ideas

I'm curious what you think of all those strands of thought that are out there.

I think people have always wanted to run away from human responsibility.

There is a deep-seated reluctance to really accept the idea that Jesus Christ is the way, right? The only way, the only exit from this world you can run, but you can't hide.

And so acceleration, you know, in that sense can very easily be taken up by, by anyone who feels that feeling of like, well, maybe if I just ran a little bit faster, I would be able to, escape my responsibilities, escape the past, escape my wrong deeds, my wrong thoughts, my wrong actions.

If I just sort of shut down the introspection and floor the accelerator, then I can maybe just bust out of this entire enclosure.

And maybe I'll come out of it looking like an angel.

Maybe I'll come out of it looking like You know, something out of the Hellraiser movies, but gosh darn it, at least, you know, I won't have to be stuck with this sort of lame human condition that makes me feel bad about myself, no matter what drugs I take or what food I eat or how many people I have sex with or, you know, the list goes on and on.

What do we need to do, again, besides practicing Christianity for us to remain human forever in light of this new environment?

Uh, I'm curious, uh, what are you seeing right now? How does this look to you? Does it seem hopeful? Uh, what would you like to see happen in regards to, uh, regulating or not regulating AI?

AI?Well, you know, it's tough with regulation because in some ways, uh, as, as you know, regulation can only make things worse.

Uh, you, you, uh, you, you're probably old enough to remember, as, as am I, uh, back when all our libertarian friends would go around saying, "You can't legislate morality." And, uh, well, you know, yes you can, but, uh, the c- the question is how well does it work? And I think in this instance, what we're talking about is a spiritual condition that, that so many human beings find themselves in, a poor spiritual condition where they feel like they really have no choice, no alternative but to worship intelligence.

Not just to appreciate intelligence, not just to, uh, to, to increase their own intelligence, uh, but, but to actually throw themselves at the feet of intelligence as, uh, as the, the one true God and, uh, welcome it into their bodies, into their hearts, into their consciousness, really just, uh, just tear down the, the boundary between, um, between ourselves, our given bodies, our souls, uh, and this outside intelligence which, uh, you know, it's, is oftentimes just something flying around in the air.

You know, you can't see it, you can't smell it, you can't taste it, uh, you can't touch it, but it can do all those things to you.

Um, and so look, you know, this is a powerful technology and we are going to have powerful technologies.

Uh, there have always been powerful technologies in this world, um, and they always, uh, uh, in their, their, i- in virtue of their function as tools, they offer, uh, the possibility of temptation, um, as so many things do in this, in this lived world.

(laughs)

James, on the, on the free speech side of this, uh, we're coming out of a couple years of COVID where we now know that governments all over the world were colluding with big tech to silence us, and now we're out of that, and yet seemingly, and JD referenced this in his speech, there's a whole bunch of people that once again want to censor us online, that somehow think that free speech is in conflict with free societies. What do we do about that?

Well, thanks, Dave. I mean, it's absolutely true. Uh, there are, there are all manner of things to be afraid of, uh, and we're accustomed to being fearful. Uh, we've seen over the past 20 years society pulled forcefully in a direction that many of us don't like, not just as a matter of preference, but as something that goes deeper than preference. Uh, maybe even all the way down to the level of spirituality or religion. Uh, a profound problem with the way that human beings are reacting to the increase in technology, to the acceleration of technology. And so I like to think of myself as a good Tocquevillian. Alexis de Tocqueville said, "I don't try to see better than my colleagues. I try to see farther than them." And so what I've been thinking about lately is, we all sort of know what to do if there's a catastrophe. We know what to do in a dystopia. We've seen all the movies, we've read the novels. We know what Orwellianism is. Uh, there's a script. We've seen the movie. We know how it ends. Um, we even, even at a deeper level than knowing what to do, we know who we are in a disaster, in a dystopia. But do we know who we are in a utopia? Do we know what to do? What script do we turn to if actually instead of everything going horribly wrong because of technology, everything goes wonderfully right? What happens if the dog actually catches the car? And here, I think many priests, I know there's at least one priest in the audience, would say, "Well, you know, technology raises these fundamental questions about who we are, identity in a digital age." And historically, people who are confused at a personal level of their own experience would turn to their priest and they say, you know, "Father, you know me. You know what my strengths are, my, what my weaknesses are. How do I deal with this in my life?" And many people who would be inclined to ask that kind of question of their priest about their relationship with their technology, either they don't have that kind of priest, or in many cases, their priest or their church just isn't prepared to answer those kinds of questions. And so I think, you know, I'm thinking of one priest in particular, um, he might say, "I can do it." Well, yes, and that's very good, but even if we get the politics right, even if we get the technology right, even if we get the religious theological chunk right, even if we get all those things, three things right at the same time, which is a huge ask for a society, a society that gets all those things right yet doesn't have any art in it is not a recognizably human society.

(applause)

And we find ourselves at a moment when we need artists who can tell us who we are in a utopia. We need artists who can do what Tarkovsky said about the art, uh, the artists, which is to come together with the audience and share the misery and joy of bringing an image into being. That is what art does. If we're looking to tell better stories, we need artists, and we need artists who can reach down to the spiritual fundaments of human life to answer those ultimate questions for us about our relationship to our technology in a way where, you know, in many cases, religion is struggling to come up and join that conversation. It might take a minute. I'm convinced that religion is a place where people all over the world are turning for spiritual authority they can trust about how to live with their technology, whether it's questions of free speech, questions of biotech, questions of how much time you should spend staring at a screen. But if artists aren't a part of that conversation, we can't tell those better stories, and we can't reach and meet people where they are in their lives, looking for a voice that's coming from outside of their head. That's why I followed up my, my big tech book, Human Forever, which is all about technology, with a novel about the Jeffrey Epstein era and, and the, the experience of growing up and coming of age in that dark timeline. Uh, that's why I'm making a movie with my talented and beautiful wife, who's somewhere, somewhere out there, um, tackling, uh, the world of, of LA and pedophilia and Hollywood and, and all that sort of thing. Um, these are real issues that ordinary people are experiencing right now.And you look at Hollywood and you ask why it isn't working, it's because the specific people in charge of Hollywood, in charge of that industry, don't understand this present moment. They don't understand why free speech is important. They don't understand what's going on in the hearts of ordinary Americans, and they're unable to bring stories to bear on those audiences in a way that r- resonates deeply and powerfully with them. That's what I'm thinking about. I think that's where technology is taking to us. Let the golden age begin. But when we do get there, we're gonna need to be able to speak to one another and commune as creators and as audiences from the heart.